internet wiretap edition of my watch by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (jun 1993, #16). (written about 1870.) my watch an instructive little tale my beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. i had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. but at last, one night, i let it run down. i grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. but by and by i cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. next day i stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. then he said, "she is four minutes slow -regulator wants pushing up." i tried to stop him -tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. but no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up a little; and so, while i danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. my watch began to gain. it gained faster and faster day by day. within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. at the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. it was away into november enjoying the snow, while the october leaves were still turning. it hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that i could not abide it. i took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. he asked me if i had ever had it repaired. i said no, it had never needed any repairing. he looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. he said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating -come in a week. after being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. i began to be left by trains, i failed all appointments, i got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; i gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone i was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight. i seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and desire to swap news with him. i went to a watch maker again. he took the watch all to pieces while i waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." he said he could reduce it in three days. after this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. for half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that i could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. but the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. so at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. it would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. but a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and i took this instrument to another watchmaker. he said the kingbolt was broken. i said i was glad it was nothing more serious. to tell the plain truth, i had no idea what the kingbolt was, but i did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. he repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. it would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. and every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. i padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. he picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hairtrigger. he fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. it did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. the oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so i went again to have the thing repaired. this person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. he also remarked that part of the works needed halfsoling. he made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. she would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. i went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. then i prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. the watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and i seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. while i waited and looked on i presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance -a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer, either. he examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner. he said: "she makes too much steam -you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve!" i brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense. my uncle william (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. and he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him. end. . internet wiretap edition of a new crime by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (jun 1993, #18). a new crime legislation needed this country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention in history. for instance, there was the baldwin case, in ohio, twenty-two years ago. baldwin, from his boyhood up, had been of a vindictive, malignant, quarrelsome nature. he put a boy's eye out once, and never was heard upon any occasion to utter a regret for it. he did many such things. but at last he did something that was serious. he called at a house just after dark one evening, knocked, and when the occupant came to the door, shot him dead, and then tried to escape, but was captured. two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, and the man he afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet had knocked him down. such was the baldwin case. the trial was long and exciting; the community was fearfully wrought up. men said this spiteful, bad-hearted villain had caused grief enough in his time, and now he should satisfy the law. but they were mistaken; baldwin was insane when he did the deed -they had not thought of that. by the argument of counsel it was shown that at half-past ten in the morning on the day of the murder, baldwin became insane, and remained so for eleven hours and a half exactly. this just covered the case comfortably, and he was acquitted. thus, if an unthinking and excited community had been listened to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creature would have been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak of madness. baldwin went clear, and although his relatives and friends were naturally incensed against the community for their injurious suspicions and remarks, they said let it go for this time, and did not prosecute. the baldwins were very wealthy. this same baldwin had momentary fits of insanity twice afterward, and on both occasions killed people he had grudges against. and on both these occasions the circumstances of the killing were so aggravated, and the murders so seemingly heartless and treacherous, that if baldwin had not been insane he would have been hanged without the shadow of a doubt. as it was, it required all his political and family influence to get him clear in one of the cases, and cost him not less than ten thousand dollars to get clear in the other. one of these men he had notoriously been threatening to kill for twelve years. the poor creature happened, by the merest piece of ill fortune, to come along a dark alley at the very moment that baldwin's insanity came upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded with slugs. take the case of lynch hackett, of pennsylvania. twice, in public, he attacked a german butcher by the name of bemis feldner, with a cane, and both times feldner whipped him with his fists. hackett was a vain, wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and family in high esteem, and believed that a reverent respect was due to his great riches. he brooded over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in a momentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town, waited a couple of hours until he saw feldner coming down the street with his wife on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in which he had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into feldner's neck, killing him instantly. the widow caught the limp form and eased it to the earth. both were drenched with blood. hackett jocosely remarked to her that as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the artistic neatness of the job that left her in condition to marry again, in case she wanted to. this remark, and another which he made to a friend, that his position in society made the killing of an obscure citizen simply an "eccentricity" instead of a crime, were shown to be evidences of insanity, and so hackett escaped punishment. the jury were hardly inclined to accept these as proofs at first, inasmuch as the prisoner had never been insane before the murder, and under the tranquilizing effect of the butchering had immediately regained his right mind; but when the defense came to show that a third cousin of hackett's wife's stepfather was insane, and not only insane, but had a nose the very counterpart of hackett's, it was plain that insanity was hereditary in the family, and hackett had come by it by legitimate inheritance. of course the jury then acquitted him. but it was a merciful providence that mrs. h.'s people had been afflicted as shown, else hackett would certainly have been hanged. however, it is not possible to recount all the marvelous cases of insanity that have come under the public notice in the last thirty or forty years. there was the durgin case in new jersey three years ago. the servant girl, bridget durgin, at dead of night, invaded her mistress' bedroom and carved the lady literally to pieces with a knife. then she dragged the body to the middle of the floor, and beat and banged it with chairs and such things. next she opened the feather beds, and strewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosene, and set fire to the general wreck. she now took up the young child of the murdered woman in her bloodsmeared hands and walked off, through the snow, with no shoes on, to a neighbor's house a quarter of a mile off, and told a string of wild, incoherent stories about some men coming and setting fire to the house; and then she cried piteously, and without seeming to think there was anything suggestive about the blood upon her hands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she was afraid those men had murdered her mistress! afterward, by her own confession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress had always been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in the murder; and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from the burning house, not even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was not the motive. now, the reader says, "here comes that same old plea of insanity again." but the reader has deceived himself this time. no such plea was offered in her defense. the judge sentenced her, nobody persecuted the governor with petitions for her pardon, and she was promptly hanged. there was that youth in pennsylvania, whose curious confession was published some years ago. it was simply a conglomeration of incoherent drivel from beginning to end, and so was his lengthy speech on the scaffold afterward. for a whole year he was haunted with a desire to disfigure a certain young woman, so that no one would marry her. he did not love her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not want anybody else to do it. he would not go anywhere with her, and yet was opposed to anybody else's escorting her. upon one occasion he declined to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the escort. after spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a full year, he at last attempted its execution -that is, attempted to disfigure the young woman. it was a success. it was permanent. in trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper table with her parents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar its comeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, and she dropped dead. to the very last moment of his life he bewailed the ill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment. and so he died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly her own fault that she got killed. this idiot was hanged. the plea of insanity was not offered. insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dying out. there are no longer any murders -none worth mentioning, at any rate. formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane -but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic. in these days, too, if a person of good family and high social standing steals anything, they call it kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic asylum. if a person of high standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with strychnine or a bullet, "temporary aberration" is what was the trouble with him. is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? and is it not so cheap, and so common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when the newspaper mentions it? and is it not curious to note how very often it wins acquittal for the prisoner? of late years it does not seem possible for a man to so conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly insane. if he talks about the stars, he is insane. if he appears nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. if he weeps over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is "not right." if, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease, preoccupied and excited, he is unquestionably insane. really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. there is where the true evil lies. end. . internet wiretap edition of political economy by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (jun 1993, #17). (written about 1870.) political economy political economy is the basis of all good government. the wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the -[here i was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see me down at the door. i went and confronted him, and asked to know his business, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething political economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get tangled in their harness. and privately i wished the stranger was in the bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. i was all in a fever, but he was cool. he said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he was passing he noticed that i needed some lightningrods. i said, "yes, yes -go on -what about it?" he said there was nothing about it, in particular -nothing except that he would like to put them up for me. i am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses all my life. like anybody else of similar experience, i try to appear (to strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently i said in an off-hand way that i had been intending for some time to have six or eight lightning-rods put up, but - the stranger started, and looked inquiringly at me, but i was serene. i thought that if i chanced to make any mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance. he said he would rather have my custom than any man's in town. i said, "all right," and started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many "points" i wanted put up, what parts of the house i wanted them on, and what quality of rod i preferred. it was close quarters for a man not used to the exigencies of housekeeping; but i went through creditably, and he probably never suspected that i was a novice. i told him to put up eight "points," and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod. he said he could furnish the "plain" article at 20 cents a foot; "coppered," 25 cents; "zinc-plated spiral-twist," at 30 cents, that would stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and "render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal." i said apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did, but, philology aside, i liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand. then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to do it right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admiration of the just and the unjust alike, and compel all parties to say they never saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning-rods since they were born, he supposed he really couldn't get along without four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted he was willing to try. i said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a job he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work. so i got rid of him at last; and now, after half an hour spent in getting my train of political economy thoughts coupled together again, i am ready to go on once more.] richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and their learning. the great lights of commercial jurisprudence, international confraternity, and biological deviation, of all ages, all civilizations, and all nationalities, from zoroaster down to horace greeley, have -[here i was interrupted again, and required to go down and confer further with that lightning-rod man. i hurried off, boiling and surging with prodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each one of them was in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might be fifteen minutes passing a given point, and once more i confronted him -he so calm and sweet, i so hot and frenzied. he was standing in the contemplative attitude of the colossus of rhodes, with one foot on my infant tuberose, and the other among my pansies, his hands on his hips, his hat-brim tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically and admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. he said now there was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive; and added, "i leave it to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque than eight lightning-rods on one chimney?" i said i had no present recollection of anything that transcended it. he said that in his opinion nothing on earth but niagara falls was superior to it in the way of natural scenery. all that was needed now, he verily believed, to make my house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other chimneys a little, and thus "add to the generous coup d'oeil a soothing uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturally consequent upon the first coup d'etat." i asked him if he learned to talk out of a book, and if i could borrow it anywhere? he smiled pleasantly, and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books, and that nothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his conversational style with impunity. he then figured up an estimate, and said that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix me right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; and added that the first eight had got a little the start of him, so to speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had calculated on -a hundred feet or along there. i said i was in a dreadful hurry, and i wished we could get this business permanently mapped out, so that i could go on with my work. he said, "i could have put up those eight rods, and marched off about my business -some men would have done it. but no; i said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and i will die before i'll wrong him; there ain't lightning-rods enough on that house, and for one i'll never stir out of my tracks till i've done as i would be done by, and told him so. stranger, my duty is accomplished; if the recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your --" "there, now, there," i said, "put on the other eight -add five hundred feet of spiral-twist -do anything and everything you want to do; but calm your sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them with the dictionary. meanwhile, if we understand each other now, i will go to work again." i think i have been sitting here a full hour this time, trying to get back to where i was when my train of thought was broken up by the last interruption; but i believe i have accomplished it at last, and may venture to proceed again.] wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have found it a worthy adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and smiling after every throw. the great confucius said that he would rather be a profound political economist than chief of police. cicero frequently said that political economy was the grandest consummation that the human mind was capable of consuming; and even our own greeley has said vaguely but forcibly that "political -[here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me. i went down in a state of mind bordering on impatience. he said he would rather have died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that job was expected to be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he stood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and saw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a thunder storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen lightning-rods -"let us have peace!" i shrieked. "put up a hundred and fifty! put some on the kitchen! put a dozen on the barn! put a couple on the cow! -put one on the cook! -scatter them all over the persecuted place till it looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted cane-brake! move! use up all the material you can get your hands on, and when you run out of lightning-rods put up ramrods, cam-rods, stair-rods, piston-rods -anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain and healing to my lacerated soul!" wholly unmoved -further than to smile sweetly -this iron being simply turned back his wristbands daintily, and said he would now proceed to hump himself. well, all that was nearly three hours ago. it is questionable whether i am calm enough yet to write on the noble theme of political economy, but i cannot resist the desire to try, for it is the one subject that is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain of all this world's philosophy.] "-economy is heaven's best boon to man." when the loose but gifted byron lay in his venetian exile he observed that, if it could be granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again, he would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition, not of frivolous rhymes, but of essays upon political economy. washington loved this exquisite science; such names as baker, beckwith, judson, smith, are imperishably linked with it; and even imperial homer, in the ninth book of the iliad, has said: - fiat justitia, ruat coelum, post mortem unum, ante bellum, hic jacet hoc, ex-parte res, politicum e-conomico est. the grandeur of these conceptions of the old poet, together with the felicity of the wording which clothes them, and the sublimity of the imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that stanza, and made it more celebrated than any that ever -["now, not a word out of you -not a single word. just state your bill and relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these premises. nine hundred dollars? is that all? this check for the amount will be honored at any respectable bank in america. what is that multitude of people gathered in the street for? how? -'looking at the lightning-rods!' bless my life, did they never see any lightning-rods before? never saw 'such a stack of them on one establishment,' did i understand you to say? i will step down and critically observe this popular ebullition of ignorance."] three days later. -we are all about worn out. for four-and-twenty hours our bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town. the theaters languished, for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and commonplace compared with my lightning-rods. our street was blocked night and day with spectators, and among them were many who came from the country to see. it was a blessed relief on the second day when a thunder storm came up and the lightning began to "go for" my house, as the historian josephus quaintly phrases it. it cleared the galleries, so to speak. in five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of my place; but all the high houses about that distance away were full, windows, roof, and all. and well they might be, for all the falling stars and fourth of july fireworks of a generation, put together and rained down simultaneously out of heaven in one brilliant shower upon one helpless roof, would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic display that was making my house so magnificently conspicuous in the general gloom of the storm. by actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral-twist and shot into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the thing was done. and through all that bombardment only one patch of slates was ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods in the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly accommodate. well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world began. for one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck his head out of the window but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth as a billiard-ball; and, if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever dreamt of stirring abroad. but at last the awful siege came to an end -because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. then i sallied forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap did we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific armament except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and one on the barn -and, behold, these remain there even unto this day. and then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again. i will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time i did not continue my essay upon political economy. i am not even yet settled enough in nerve and brain to resume it. to whom it may concern. -parties having need of three thousand two hundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twist lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one silvertipped points, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by use, still equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargain by addressing the publisher. end. . internet wiretap edition of a ghost story by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (may 1993). a ghost story i took a large room, far up broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years, until i came. the place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence. i seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead, that first night i climbed up to my quarters. for the first time in my life a superstitious dread came over me; and as i turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and clung there, i shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom. i was glad enough when i reached my room and locked out the mould and the darkness. a cheery fire was burning in the grate, and i sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. for two hours i sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now. and as my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the distance and left no sound behind. the fire had burned low. a sense of loneliness crept over me. i arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what i had to do, as if i were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. i covered up in bed, and lay listening to the rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep. i slept profoundly, but how long i do not know. all at once i found myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. all was still. all but my own heart -i could hear it beat. presently the bedclothes began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were pulling them! i could not stir; i could not speak. still the blankets slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. then with a great effort i seized them and drew them over my head. i waited, listened, waited. once more that steady pull began, and once more i lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. at last i roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and held them with a strong grip. i waited. by and by i felt a faint tug, and took a fresh grip. the tug strengthened to a steady strain -it grew stronger and stronger. my hold parted, and for the third time the blankets slid away. i groaned. an answering groan came from the foot of the bed! beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. i was more dead than alive. presently i heard a heavy footstep in my room -the step of an elephant, it seemed to me -it was not like anything human. but it was moving from me -there was relief in that. i heard it approach the door -pass out without moving bolt or lock -and wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it passed -and then silence reigned once more. when my excitement had calmed, i said to myself, "this is a dream -simply a hideous dream." and so i lay thinking it over until i convinced myself that it was a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and i was happy again. i got up and struck a light; and when i found that the locks and bolts were just as i had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. i took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting down before the fire, when -down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp! in the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison mine was but an infant's'! then i had had a visitor, and the elephant tread was explained. i put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. i lay a long time, peering into the darkness, and listening. then i heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response to the concussion. in distant parts of the building i heard the muffled slamming of doors. i heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. sometimes these noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. i heard the clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the clanking grew nearer -while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. i heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. then i became conscious that my chamber was invaded -that i was not alone. i heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped -two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. they spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. intuition told me they had turned to gouts of blood as they fell -i needed no light to satisfy myself of that. then i saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating bodiless in the air -floating a moment and then disappearing. the whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, and a solemn stillness followed. i waited and listened. i felt that i must have light or die. i was weak with fear. i slowly raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand! all strength went from me apparently, and i fell back like a stricken invalid. then i heard the rustle of a garment -it seemed to pass to the door and go out. when everything was still once more, i crept out of bed, sick and feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a hundred years. the light brought some little cheer to my spirits. i sat down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the ashes. by and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. i glanced up and the broad gas flame was slowly wilting away. in the same moment i heard that elephantine tread again. i noted its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. the tread reached my very door and paused -the light had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. the door did not open, and yet i felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. i watched it with fascinated eyes. a pale glow stole over the thing; gradually its cloudy folds took shape -an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic cardiff giant loomed above me! all my misery vanished -for a child might know that no harm could come with that benignant countenance. my cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. never a lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as i was to greet the friendly giant. i said: "why, is it nobody but you? do you know, i have been scared to death for the last two or three hours? i am most honestly glad to see you. i wish i had a chair -here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing! but it was too late. he was in it before i could stop him, and down he went -i never saw a chair shivered so in my life. "stop, stop, you'll ruin ev--" too late again. there was another crash, and another chair was resolved into its original elements. "confound it, haven't you got any judgment at all? do you want to ruin all the furniture on the place? here, here, you petrified fool--" but it was no use. before i could arrest him he had sat down on the bed, and it was a melancholy ruin. "now what sort of a way is that to do? first you come lumbering about the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death, and then when i overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex, you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on. and why will you? you damage yourself as much as you do me. you have broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. you ought to be ashamed of yourself -you are big enough to know better." "well, i will not break any more furniture. but what am i to do? i have not had a chance to sit down for a century." and the tears came into his eyes. "poor devil," i said, "i should not have been so harsh with you. and you are an orphan, too, no doubt. but sit down on the floor here -nothing else can stand your weight -and besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up there above me; i want you down where i can perch on this high counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face." so he sat down on the floor, and lit a pipe which i gave him, threw one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. then he crossed his ankles, while i renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honey-combed bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth. "what is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your legs, that they are gouged up so?" "infernal chillblains -i caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting out there under newell's farm. but i love the place; i love it as one loves his old home. there is no peace for me like the peace i feel when i am there." we talked along for half an hour, and then i noticed that he looked tired, and spoke of it. "tired?" he said. "well, i should think so. and now i will tell you all about it, since you have treated me so well. i am the spirit of the petrified man that lies across the street there in the museum. i am the ghost of the cardiff giant. i can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again. now what was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? terrify them into it! -haunt the place where the body lay! so i haunted the museum night after night. i even got other spirits to help me. but it did no good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. then it occurred to me to come over the way and haunt this place a little. i felt that if i ever got a hearing i must succeed, for i had the most efficient company that perdition could furnish. night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, i am almost worn out. but when i saw a light in your room to-night i roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. but i am tired out -entirely fagged out. give me, i beseech you, give me some hope!" i lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed: "this transcends everything -everything that ever did occur! why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing -you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself -the real cardiff giant is in albany! [footnote by twain: a fact. the original fraud was ingeniously and fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in new york as the "only genuine" cardiff giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a museum in albany.] confound it, don't you know your own remains?" i never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation, overspread a countenance before. the petrified man rose slowly to his feet, and said: "honestly, is that true?" "as true as i am sitting here." he took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood irresolute a moment (uncon sciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast), and finally said: "well -i never felt so absurd before. the petrified man has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own ghost! my son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. think how you would feel if you had made such an ass of yourself." i heard his, stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow -and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my bath tub. end. . internet wiretap edition of niagara by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (may 1993). (written about 1871.) niagara niagara falls is a most enjoyable place of resort. the hotels are excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant. the opportunities for fishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even equaled elsewhere. because, in other localities, certain places in the streams are much better than others; but at niagara one place is just as good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and so there is no use in your walking five miles to fish, when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home. the advantages of this state of things have never heretofore been properly placed before the public. the weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant and none of them fatiguing. when you start out to "do" the falls you first drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of looking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the niagara river. a railway "cut" through a hill would be as comely if it had the angry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom. you can descend a staircase here a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of the water. after you have done it, you will wonder why you did it; but you will then be too late. the guide will explain to you, in his bloodcurdling way, how he saw the little steamer, maid of the mist, descend the fearful rapids-how first one paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the other, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard, and where her planking began to break and part asunder-and how she did finally live through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of traveling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen minutes, i have really forgotten which. but it was very extraordinary, anyhow. it is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the story nine times in succession to different parties, and never miss a word or alter a sentence or a gesture. then you drive over to suspension bridge, and divide your misery between the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and the chances of having the railway train overhead smashing down on to you. either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together, they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness. on the canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the light of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime niagara; and a great many people have the incredible effrontery or the native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime. any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately pictures of papa and mamma, johnny and bub and sis, or a couple of country cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this hackful of small reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood relations, the other worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust. there is no actual harm in making niagara a background whereon to display one's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it. when you have examined the stupendous horseshoe fall till you are satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to america by the new suspension bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the cave of the winds. here i followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and put on a waterproof jacket and overalls. this costume is picturesque, but not beautiful. a guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight of winding stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding long after the thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before it had begun to be a pleasure. we were then well down under the precipice, but still considerably above the level of the river. we now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our persons shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which i clung with both hands-not because i was afraid, but because i wanted to. presently the descent became steeper, and the bridge flimsier, and sprays from the american fall began to rain down on us in fast increasing sheets that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the nature of groping. now a furious wind began to rush out from behind the waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. i remarked that i wanted to go home; but it was too late. we were almost under the monstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was in vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound. in another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and, bewildered by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arrowy tempest of rain, i followed. all was darkness. such a mad storming, roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed my ears before. i bent my head, and seemed to receive the atlantic on my back. the world seemed going to destruction. i could not see anything, the flood poured down so savagely. i raised my head, with open mouth, and the most of the american cataract went down my throat. if i had sprung a leak now i had been lost. and at this moment i discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. i never was so scared before and survived it. but we got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water, and look at it. when i saw how much of it there was, and how fearfully in earnest it was, i was sorry i had gone behind it. the noble red man has always been a friend and darling of mine. i love to read about him in tales and legends and romances. i love to read of his inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and forest, and his general nobility of character, and his stately metaphorical manner of speech, and his chivalrous love for the dusky maiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. when i found the shops at niagara falls full of dainty indian beadwork, and stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing human beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, i was filled with emotion. i knew that now, at last, i was going to come face to face with the noble red man. a lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of curiosities were made by the indians, and that they were plenty about the falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to speak to them. and sure enough, as i approached the bridge leading over to luna island, i came upon a noble son of the forest sitting under a tree, diligently at work on a bead reticule. he wore a slouch hat and brogans, and had a short black pipe in his mouth. thus does the baneful contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp which is so natural to the indian when far removed from us in his native haunts. i addressed the relic as follows: "is the wawhoo-wang-wang of the whack-awhack happy? does the great speckled thunder sigh for the warpath, or is his heart contented with dreaming of the dusky maiden, the pride of the forest? does the mighty sachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied to make bead reticules for the pappooses of the paleface? speak, sublime relic of bygone grandeur-venerable ruin, speak!' the relic said: "an' is it mesilf, dennis hooligan, that ye'd be takin' for a dirty injin, ye drawlin', lanternjawed, spider-legged divil! by the piper that played before moses, i'll ate ye!" i went away from there. by and by, in the neighborhood of the terrapin tower, i came upon a gentle daughter of the aborigines in fringed and beaded buckskin moccasins and leggins, seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her. she had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family resemblance to a clothespin, and was now boring a hole through his abdomen to put his bow through. i hesitated a moment, and then addressed her: "is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? is the laughing tadpole lonely? does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race, and the vanished glory of her ancestors? or does her sad spirit wander afar toward the hunting-grounds whither her brave gobbler-of-the-lightnings is gone? why is my daughter silent? has she aught against the paleface stranger?" the maiden said: "faix, an' is it biddy malone ye dare to be callin' names? lave this, or i'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!" i adjourned from there also. "confound these indians!" i said. "they told me they were tame; but, if appearances go for anything, i should say they were all on the warpath." i made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one. i came upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum and moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship: "noble red men, braves, grand sachems, war chiefs, squaws, and high muck-a-mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you! you, beneficent polecat-you, devourer of mountains-you, roaring thundergust-you, bully boy with a glass eye-the paleface from beyond the great waters greets you all! war and pestilence have thinned your ranks and destroyed your once proud nation. poker and seven-up, and a vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have depleted your purses. appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of others has gotten you into trouble. misrepresenting facts, in your simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. trading for fortyrod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the purlieus of new york. for shame! remember your ancestors! recall their mighty deeds! remember uncas!-and red jacket!-and hole in the day!-and whoopdedoodledo! emulate their achievements! unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes--" "down wid him!" "scoop the blaggard!" "burn him!" "hang him!" "dhround him!" it was the quickest operation that ever was. i simply saw a sudden flash in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins-a single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them in the same place. in the next instant the entire tribe was upon me. they tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to injury, they threw me over the niagara falls, and i got wet. about ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest caught on a projecting rock, and i was almost drowned before i could get loose. i finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the foot of the fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several inches above my head. of course i got into the eddy. i sailed round and round in it forty-four times -chasing a chip and gaining on it -each round trip a half mile -reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time. at last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe in his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the other on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind. presently a puff of wind blew it out. the next time i swept around he said: "got a match?" "yes; in my other vest. help me out, please." "not for joe." when i came round again, i said: "excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will you explain this singular conduct of yours?" "with pleasure. i am the coroner. don't hurry on my account. i can wait for you. but i wish i had a match." i said: "take my place, and i'll go and get you one. he declined. this lack of confidence on his part created a coldness between us, and from that time forward i avoided him. it was my idea, in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my custom into the hands of the opposition coroner over on the american side. at last a policeman came along, and arrested me for disturbing the peace by yelling at people on shore for help. the judge fined me, but i had the advantage of him. my money was with my pantaloons and my pantaloons were with the indians. thus i escaped. i am now lying in a very critical condition. at least i am lying anyway-critical or not critical. i am hurt all over, but i cannot tell the full extent yet, because the doctor is not done taking inventory. he will make out my manifest this evening. however, thus far he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. i don't mind the others. upon regaining my right mind, i said: "it is an awful savage tribe of indians that do the bead work and moccasins for niagara falls, doctor. where are they from?" "limerick, my son." end. . internet wiretap edition of extracts from adam's diary by mark twain from "the writings of mark twain volume xx", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain, may 1993. monday. -this new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. it is always hanging around and following me about. i don't like this; i am not used to company. i wish it would stay with the other animals.... cloudy to-day, wind in the east; think we shall have rain. we? where did i get that word? -i remember now -the new creature uses it. tuesday. -been examining the great waterfall. it is the finest thing on the estate, i think. the new creature calls it niagara falls -why, i am sure i do not know. says it looks like niagara falls. that is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. i get no chance to name anything myself. the new creature names everything that comes along, before i can get in a protest. and always that same pretext is offered -it looks like the thing. there is the dodo, for instance. says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo." it will have to keep that name, no doubt. it wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway. dodo! it looks no more like a dodo than i do. wednesday. -built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to myself in peace. the new creature intruded. when i tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress. i wish it would not talk; it is always talking. that sounds like a cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but i do not mean it so. i have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. and this new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear, first on one side and then on the other, and i am used only to sounds that are more or less distant from me. friday. -the naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything i can do. i had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty -garden of eden. privately, i continue to call it that, but not any longer publicly. the new creature says it is all woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a park. consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named -niagara falls park. this is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. and already there is a sign up: keep off the grass my life is not as happy as it was. saturday. -the new creature eats too much fruit. we are going to run short, most likely. "we" again -that is its word; mine, too, now, from hearing it so much. good deal of fog this morning. i do not go out in the fog myself. the new creature does. it goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet. and talks. it used to be so pleasant and quiet here. sunday. -pulled through. this day is getting to be more and more trying. it was selected and set apart last november as a day of rest. i had already six of them per week before. this morning found the new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree. monday. -the new creature says its name is eve. that is all right, i have no objections. says it is to call it by, when i want it to come. i said it was superfluous, then. the word evidently raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word and will bear repetition. it says it is not an it, it is a she. this is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me if she would but go by herself and not talk. tuesday. -she has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive signs: this way to the whirlpool. this way to goat island. cave of the winds this way. she says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was any custom for it. summer resort -another invention of hers -just words, without any meaning. what is a summer resort? but it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining. friday. -she has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the falls. what harm does it do? says it makes her shudder. i wonder why; i have always done it -always liked the plunge, and the excitement and the coolness. i supposed it was what the falls were for. they have no other use that i can see, and they must have been made for something she says they were only made for scenery -like the rhinoceros and the mastodon. i went over the falls in a barrel -not satisfactory to her. went over in a tub -still not satisfactory. swam the whirlpool and the rapids in a fig-leaf suit. it got much damaged. hence, tedious complaints about my extravagance. i am too much hampered here. what i need is change of scene. saturday. -i escaped last tuesday night, and traveled two days, and built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks as well as i could, but she hunted me cut by means of a beast which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with. i was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again when occasion offers. she engages herself in many foolish things; among others, to study out why the animals called lions and tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each other. this is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each other, and that would introduce what, as i understand it, is called "death"; and death, as i have been told, has not yet entered the park. which is a pity, on some accounts. sunday. -pulled through. monday. -i believe i see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest up from the weariness of sunday. it seems a good idea.... she has been climbing that tree again. clodded her out of it. she said nobody was looking. seems to consider that a sufficient justification for chancing any dangerous thing. told her that. the word justification moved her admiration -and envy, too, i thought. it is a good word. tuesday. -she told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. this is at least doubtful, if not more than that. i have not missed any rib. ....she is in much trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. the buzzard must get along the best it can with what it is provided. we cannot overturn the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard. saturday. -she fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at herself in it, which she is always doing. she nearly strangled, and said it was most uncomfortable. this made her sorry for the creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to her, she is such a numskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but i have noticed them now and then all day and i don't see that they are any happier there than they were before, only quieter. when night comes i shall throw them outdoors. i will not sleep with them again, for i find them clammy and unpleasant to lie among when a person hasn't anything on. sunday. -pulled through. tuesday. -she has taken up with a snake now. the other animals are glad, for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and i am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest. friday. -she says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. i told her there would be another result, too -it would introduce death into the world, that was a mistake -it had been better to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea -she could save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent lions and tigers. i advised her to keep away from the tree. she said she wouldn't. i foresee trouble. will emigrate. wednesday. -i have had a variegated time. i escaped last night, and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear out of the park and hide in some other country before the trouble should begin; but it was not to be. about an hour after sun-up, as i was riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion and every beast was destroying its neighbor. i knew what it meant -eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world. ....the tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when i ordered them to desist, and they would have eaten me if i had stayed -which i didn't, but went away in much haste.... i found this place, outside the park, and was fairly comfortable for a few t days, but she has found me out. found me out, and has named the place tonawanda -says it looks like that. in fact i was not sorry she came, for there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some of those apples. i was obliged to eat them, i was so hungry. it was against my principles, but i find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.... she came curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when i asked her what she meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she tittered and blushed. i had never seen a person titter and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. she said i would soon know how it was myself. this was correct. hungry as i was, i laid down the apple half-eaten -certainly the best one i ever saw, considering the lateness of the season -and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not make such a spectacle of herself. she did it, and after this we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected some skins, and i made her patch together a couple of suits proper for public occasions. they are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes.... i find she is a good deal of a companion. i see i should be lonesome and depressed without her, now that i have lost my property. another thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter. she will be useful. i will superintend . ten days later. -she accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! she says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. i said i was innocent, then, for i had not eaten any chestnuts. she said the serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term meaning an aged and mouldy joke. i turned pale at that, for i have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort. though i had honestly supposed that they were new when i made them. she asked me if i had made one just at the time of the catastrophe. i was obliged to admit that i had made one to myself, though not aloud. it was this. i was thinking about the falls, and i said to myself, "how wonderful it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!" then in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and i let it fly, saying, "it would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up there!" -and i was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature broke loose in war and death and i had to flee for my life. "there," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the first chestnut, and said it was coeval with the creation." alas, i am indeed to blame. would that i were not witty; oh, that i had never had that radiant thought! next year. -we have named it cain. she caught it while i was up country trapping on the north shore of the erie; caught it in the timber a couple of miles from our dug-out -or it might have been four, she isn't certain which. it resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation. that is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment. the difference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different and new kind of animal -a fish, perhaps, though when i put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the experiment to deter mine the matter. i still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have it to try. i do not understand this. the coming of the creature seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable about experiments. she thinks more of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is not able to explain why. her mind is disordered -everything shows it. sometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to the water. at such times the water comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. i have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. she used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them, before we lost our property, but it was only play; she never took on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them. sunday. -she doesn't work, sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh. i have not seen a fish before that could laugh. this makes me doubt.... i have come to like sunday myself. superintending all the week tires a body so. there ought to be more sundays. in the old days they were tough, but now they come handy. wednesday. -it isnõt a fish. i cannot quite make out what it is. it makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo" when it is. it is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; i feel sure it is not a fish, though i cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. it merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. i have not seen any other animal do that before. i said i believed it was an enigma; but she only admired the word without understanding it. in my judgment it is either an enigma or some kind of a bug. if it dies, i will take it apart and see what its arrangements are. i never had a thing perplex me so. three months later. -the perplexity augments instead of diminishing. i sleep but little. it has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs now. yet it differs from the other fourlegged animals, in that its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air, and this is not attractive. it is built much as we are, but its method of traveling shows that it is not of our breed. the short front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is of the kangaroo family, but it is a marked variation of the species, since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does. still it is a curious and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued before. as i discovered it, i have felt justified in securing the credit of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called it kangaroorum adamiensis.... it must have been a young one when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. it must be five times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented it is able to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made at first. coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary effect. for this reason i discontinued the system. she reconciles it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously told it she wouldn't give it. as already observed, i was not at home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods. it seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so, for i have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another one to add to my collection, and for this one to play with; for surely then it would be quieter and we could tame it more easily. but i find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no tracks. it has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself; therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? i have set a dozen traps, but they do no good. i catch all small animals except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of curiosity, i think, to see what the milk is there for. they never drink it. three months later. -the kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and perplexing. i never knew one to be so long getting its growth. it has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of being black is red. i am like to lose my mind over the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. if i could catch another one -but that is hopeless; it is a new variety, and the only sample; this is plain. but i caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among friends; but it was a mistake -it went into such fits at the sight of the kangaroo that i was convinced it had never seen one before. i pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing i can do to make it happy. if i could tame it -but that is out of the question; the more i try the worse i seem to make it. it grieves me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and passion. i wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. that seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right. it might be lonelier than ever; for since i cannot find another one, how could it? five months later. -it is not a kangaroo. no, for it supports itself by holding to her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then falls down. it is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has no tail -as yet -and no fur, except on its head. it still keeps on growing -that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their growth earlier than this. bears are dangerous -since our catastrophe -and i shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle on. i have offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no good -she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks, i think. she was not like this before she lost her mind. a fortnight later. -i examined its mouth. there is no danger yet: it has only one tooth. it has no tail yet. it makes more noise now than it ever did before -and mainly at night. i have moved out. but i shall go over, mornings, to breakfast, and see if it has more teeth. if it gets a mouthful of teeth it will be time for it to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be dangerous. four months later. -i have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that she calls buffalo; i don't know why, unless it is because there are not any buffaloes there. meantime the bear has learned to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa" and "momma." it is certainly a new species. this resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that ease it is still extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do. this imitation of speech, taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. the further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. meantime i will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the north and make an exhaustive search. there must certainly be another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company of its own species. i will go straightway; but i will muzzle this one first. three months later. -it has been a weary, weary hunt, yet i have had no success. in the meantime, without stirring from the home estate, she has caught another one! i never saw such luck. i might have hunted these woods a hundred years; i never would have run across that thing. next day. -i have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is perfectly plain that they are the same breed. i was going to stuff one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so i have relinquished the idea, though i think it is a mistake. it would be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away. the old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in a highly developed degree. i shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; and yet i ought not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it could think of since those first days when it was a fish. the new one is as ugly now as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. she calls it abel. ten years later. -they are boys; we found it out long ago. it was their coming in that small, immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. there are some girls now. abel is a good boy, but if cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him. after all these years, i see that i was mistaken about eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the garden with her than inside it without her. at first i thought she talked too much; but now i should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit! end. . internet wiretap edition of the great revolution in pitcairn by mark twain from "the writings of mark twain volume xx", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain, may 1993. let me refresh the reader's memory a little. nearly a hundred years ago the crew of the british ship bounty mutinied, set the captain and his officers adrift upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and sailed southward. they procured wives for themselves among the natives of tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely little rock in mid-pacific, called pitcairn's island, wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that might be useful to a new colony, and established themselves on shore. pitcairn's is so far removed from the track of commerce that it was many years before another vessel touched there. it had always been considered an uninhabited island; so when a ship did at last drop its anchor there, in 1808, the captain was greatly surprised to find the place peopled. although the mutineers had fought among themselves, and gradually killed each other off until only two or three of the original stock remained, these tragedies had not occurred before a number of children had been born; so in 1808 the island had a population of twenty-seven persons. john adams, the chief mutineer, still survived, and was to live many years yet, as governor and patriarch of the flock. from being mutineer and homicide, he had turned christian and teacher, and his nation of twenty-seven persons was now the purest and devoutest in christendom. adams had long ago hoisted the british flag and constituted his island an appanage of the british crown. to-day the population numbers ninety persons -sixteen men, nineteen women, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls -all descendants of the mutineers, all bearing the family names of those mutineers, and all speaking english, and english only. the island stands high up out of the sea, and has precipitous walls. it is about three-quarters of a mile long, and in places is as much as half a mile wide. such arable land as it affords is held by the several families, according to a division made many years ago. there is some livestock -goats, pigs, chickens, and cats; but no dogs, and no large animals. there is one church building -used also as a capitol, a schoolhouse, and a public library. the title of the governor has been, for a generation or two, "magistrate and chief ruler, in subordination to her majesty the queen of great britain." it was his province to make the laws, as well as execute them. his office was elective; everybody over seventeen years old had a vote -no matter about the sex. the sole occupations of the people were farming and fishing; their sole recreation, religious services. there has never been a shop in the island, nor any money. the habits and dress of the people have always been primitive, and their laws simple to puerility. they have lived in a deep sabbath tranquility, far from the world and its ambitions and vexations, and neither knowing nor caring what was going on in the mighty empires that lie beyond their limitless ocean solitudes. once in three or four years a ship touched there, moved them with aged news of bloody battles, devastating epidemics, fallen thrones, and ruined dynasties, then traded them some soap and flannel for some yams and breadfruit, and sailed away, leaving them to retire into their peaceful dreams and pious dissipations once more. on the 8th of last september, admiral de horsey, commander-in-chief of the british fleet in the pacific, visited pitcairn's island, and speaks as follows in his official report to the admiralty: they have beans, carrots, turnips, cabbages, and a little maize; pineapples, fig-trees, custard-apples, and oranges; lemons, and cocoa-nuts. clothing is obtained alone from passing ships, in barter for refreshments. there are no springs on the island, but as it rains generally once a month they have plenty of water, although at times, in former years, they have suffered from drought. no alcoholic liquors, except for medicinal purposes, are used, and a drunkard is unknown... the necessary articles required by the islanders are best shown by those we furnished in barter for refreshments: namely, flannel, serge, drill, half-boots, combs, tobacco, and soap. they also stand much in need of maps and slates for their school, and tools of any kind are most acceptable. i caused them to be supplied from the public stores with a union-jack for display on the arrival of ships, and a pit-saw, of which they were greatly in need. this, i trust, will meet the approval of their lordships. if the munificent people of england were only aware of the wants of this most deserving little colony, they would not long go unsupplied... divine service is held every sunday at 10.30 a.m. and at 3 p.m., in the house built and used by john adams for that purpose until he died in 1829. it is conducted strictly in accordance with the liturgy of the church of england, by mr. simon young, their selected pastor, who is much respected. a bible class is held every wednesday, when all who conveniently can attend. there is also a general meeting for prayer on the first friday in every month. family prayers are said in every house the first thing in the morning and the last thing in the evening, and no food is partaken of without asking god's blessing before and afterwards. of these islanders' religious attributes no one can speak without deep respect. a people whose greatest pleasure and privilege is to commune in prayer with their god, and to join in hymns of praise, and who are, moreover, cheerful, diligent, and probably freer from vice than any other community, need no priest among them. now i come to a sentence in the admiral's report which he dropped carelessly from his pen, no doubt, and never gave the matter a second thought. he little imagined what a freight of tragic prophecy it bore! this is the sentence: one stranger, an american, has settled on the island - a doubtful acquisition. a doubtful acquisition, indeed! captain ormsby in the american ship hornet, touched at pitcairn's nearly four months after the admiral's visit, and from the facts which he gathered there we now know all about that american. let us put these facts together in historical form. the american's name was butterworth stavely. as soon as he had become well acquainted with all the people -and this took but a few days, of course -he began to ingratiate himself with them by all the arts he could command. he became exceedingly popular, and much looked up to; for one of the first things he did was to forsake his worldly way of life, and throw all his energies into religion. he was always reading his bible, or praying, or singing hymns, or asking blessings. in prayer, no one had such "liberty" as he, no one could pray so long or so well. at last, when he considered the time to be ripe, he began secretly to sow the seeds of discontent among the people. it was his deliberate purpose, from the beginning, to subvert the government, but of course he kept that to himself for a time. he used different arts with different individuals. he awakened dissatisfaction in one quarter by calling attention to the shortness of the sunday services; he argued that there should be three three-hour services on sunday instead of only two. many had secretly held this opinion before; they now privately banded themselves into a party to work for it. he showed certain of the women that they were not allowed sufficient voice in the prayermeetings; thus another party was formed. no weapon was beneath his notice; he even descended to the children, and awoke discontent in their breasts because -as he discovered for them -they had not enough sunday-school. this created a third party. now, as the chief of these parties, he found himself the strongest power in the community. so he proceeded to his next move -a no less important one than the impeachment of the chief magistrate, james russell nickoy; a man of character and ability, and possessed of great wealth, he being the owner of a house with a parlor to it, three acres and a half of yam land, and the only boat in pitcairn's, a whale-boat; and, most unfortunately, a pretext for this impeachment offered itself at just the right time. one of the earliest and most precious laws of the island was the law against trespass. it was held in great reverence, and was regarded as the palladium of the people's liberties. about thirty years ago an important case came before the courts under this law, in this wise: a chicken belonging to elizabeth young (aged, at that time, fifty-eight, a daughter of john mills, one of the mutineers of the bounty) trespassed upon the grounds of thursday october christian (aged twenty-nine, a grandson of fletcher christian, one of the mutineers). christian killed the chicken. according to the law, christian could keep the chicken; or, if he preferred, he could restore its remains to the owner, and receive damages in "produce" to an amount equivalent to the waste and injury wrought by the trespasser. the court records set forth that "the said christian aforesaid did deliver the aforesaid remains to the said elizabeth young, and did demand one bushel of yams in satisfaction of the damage done." but elizabeth young considered the demand exorbitant; the parties could not agree; therefore christian brought suit in the courts. he lost his case in the justice's court; at least, he was awarded only a half peck of yams, which he considered insufficient, and in the nature of a defeat. he appealed. the case lingered several years in an ascending grade of courts, and always resulted in decrees sustaining the original verdict; and finally the thing got into the supreme court, and there it stuck for twenty years. but last summer, even the supreme court managed to arrive at a decision at last. once more the original verdict was sustained. christian then said he was satisfied; but stavely was present, and whispered to him and to his lawyer, suggesting, "as a mere form," that the original law be exhibited, in order to make sure that it still existed. it seemed an odd idea, but an ingenious one. so the demand was made. a messenger was sent to the magistrate's house; he presently returned with the tidings that it had disappeared from among the state archives. the court now pronounced its late decision void, since it had been made under a law which had no actual existence. great excitement ensued immediately. the news swept abroad over the whole island that the palladium of the public liberties was lost -maybe treasonably destroyed. within thirty minutes almost the entire nation were in the courtroom -that is to say, the church. the impeachment of the chief magistrate followed, upon stavely's motion. the accused met his misfortune with the dignity which became his great office. he did not plead, or even argue; he offered the simple defense that he had not meddled with the missing law; that he had kept the state archives in the same candle-box that had been used as their depository from the beginning; and that he was innocent of the removal or destruction of the lost document. but nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision of treason, and degraded from his office, and all his property was confiscated. the lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggested by his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit: that he did it to favor christian, because christian was his cousin! whereas stavely was the only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin. the reader must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and bore grandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried; after them, great and greatgreat-grandchildren intermarried; so that to-day everybody is blood kin to everybody. moreover, the relationships are wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated. a stranger, for instance, says to an islander: "you speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her your aunt." "well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too. and also my step-sister, my niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin, my greataunt, my grandmother; my widowed sister-in-law -and next week she will be my wife." so the charge of nepotism against the chief magistrate was weak. but no matter; weak or strong, it suited stavely. stavely was immediately elected to the vacant magistracy, and, oozing reform from every pore, he went vigorously to work. in no long time religious services raged everywhere and unceasingly. by command, the second prayer of the sunday morning service, which had customarily endured some thirtyfive or forty minutes, and had pleaded for the world, first by continent and then by national and tribal detail, was extended to an hour and a half, and made to include supplications in behalf of the possible peoples in the several planets. everybody was pleased with this; everybody said, "now this is something like." by command, the usual three-hour sermons were doubled in length. the nation came in a body to testify their gratitude to the new magistrate. the old law forbidding cooking on the sabbath was extended to the prohibition of eating, also. by command, sundayschool was privileged to spread over into the week. the joy of all classes was complete. in one short month the new magistrate had become the people's idol. the time was ripe for this man's next move. he began, cautiously at first, to poison the public mind against england. he took the chief citizens aside, one by one, and conversed with them on this topic. presently he grew bolder, and spoke out. he said the nation owed it to itself, to its honor, to its great traditions, to rise in its might and throw off "this galling english yoke." but the simple islanders answered: "we had not noticed that it galled. how does it gall? england sends a ship once in three or four years to give us soap and clothing, and things which we sorely need and gratefully receive; but she never troubles us; she lets us go our own way." "she lets you go your own way! so slaves have felt and spoken in all the ages! this speech shows how fallen you are, how base, how brutalized you have become, under this grinding tyranny! what! has all manly pride forsaken you? is liberty nothing? are you content to be a mere appendage to a foreign and hateful sovereignty, when you might rise up and take your rightful place in the august family of nations, great, free, enlightened, independent, the minion of no sceptered master, but the arbiter of your own destiny, and a voice and a power in decreeing the destinies of your sister-sovereignties of the world?" speeches like this produced an effect by and by. citizens began to feel the english yoke; they did not know exactly how or whereabouts they felt it, but they were perfectly certain they did feel it. they got to grumbling a good deal, and chafing under their chains, and longing for relief and release. they presently fell to hating the english flag, that sign and symbol of their nation's degradation; they ceased to glance up at it as they passed the capitol, but averted their eyes and grated their teeth; and one morning, when it was found trampled into the mud at the foot of the staff, they left it there, and no man put his hand to it to hoist it again. a certain thing which was sure to happen sooner or later happened now. some of the chief citizens went to the magistrate by night, and said: "we can endure this hated tyranny no longer. how can we cast it off?" "by a coup d'etat." "how?" "a coup d'etat. it is like this: everything is got ready, and at the appointed moment i, as the official head of the nation, publicly and solemnly proclaim its independence, and absolve it from allegiance to any and all other powers whatsoever." "that sounds simple and easy. we can do that right away. then what will be the next thing to do?" "seize all the defenses and public properties of all kinds, establish martial law, put the army and navy on a war footing, and proclaim the empire!" this fine program dazzled these innocents. they said: "this is grand -this is splendid; but will not england resist?" "let her. this rock is a gibraltar." "true. but about the empire? do we need an empire and an emperor?" "what you need, my friends, is unification. look at germany; look at italy. they are unified. unification is the thing. it makes living dear. that constitutes progress. we must have a standing army, and a navy. taxes follow, as a matter of course. all these things summed up make grandeur. with unification and grandeur, what more can you want? very well -only the empire can confer these boons." so on the 8th day of december pitcairn's island was proclaimed a free and independent nation; and on the same day the solemn coronation of butterworth i., emperor of pitcairn's island, took place, amid great rejoicings and festivities. the entire nation, with the exception of fourteen persons, mainly little children, marched past the throne in single file, with banners and music, the procession being upwards of ninety feet long; and some said it was as much as three-quarters of a minute passing a given point. nothing like it had ever been seen in the history of the island before. public enthusiasm was measureless. now straightway imperial reforms began. orders of nobility were instituted. a minister of the navy was appointed, and the whale-boat put in commission. a minister of war was created, and ordered to proceed at once with the formation of a standing army. a first lord of the treasury was named, and commanded to get up a taxation scheme, and also open negotiations for treaties, offensive, defensive, and commercial, with foreign powers. some generals and admirals were appointed; also some chamberlains, some equerries in waiting, and some lords of the bedchamber at this point all the material was used up. the grand duke of galilee, minister of war, complained that all the sixteen grown men in the empire had been given great offices, and consequently would not consent to serve in the ranks; wherefore his standing army was at a standstill. the marquis of ararat, minister of the navy, made a similar complaint. he said he was willing to steer the whale-boat himself, but he must have somebody to man her. the emperor did the best he could in the circumstances: he took all the boys above the age of ten years away from their mothers, and pressed them into the army, thus constructing a corps of seventeen privates, officered by one lieutenant-general and two major-generals. this pleased the minister of war, but procured the enmity of all the mothers in the land; for they said their precious ones must now find bloody graves in the fields of war, and he would be answerable for it. some of the more heartbroken and unappeasable among them lay constantly in wait for the emperor and threw yams at him, unmindful of the bodyguard. on account of the extreme scarcity of material, it was found necessary to require the duke of bethany, postmaster-general, to pull stroke-oar in the navy, and thus sit in the rear of a noble of lower degree, namely, viscount canaan, lord justice of the common pleas. this turned the duke of bethany into a tolerably open malcontent and a secret conspirator -a thing which the emperor foresaw, but could not help. things went from bad to worse. the emperor raised nancy peters to the peerage on one day, and married her the next, notwithstanding, for reasons of state, the cabinet had strenuously advised him to marry emmeline, eldest daughter of the archbishop of bethlehem. this caused trouble in a powerful quarter -the church. the new empress secured the support and friendship of two-thirds of the thirty-six grown women in the nation by absorbing them into her court as maids of honor; but this made deadly enemies of the remaining twelve. the families of the maids of honor soon began to rebel, because there was nobody at home to keep house. the twelve snubbed women refused to enter the imperial kitchen as servants; so the empress had to require the countess of jericho and other great court dames to fetch water, sweep the palace, and perform other menial and equally distasteful services. this made bad blood in that department. everybody fell to complaining that the taxes levied for the support of the army, the navy, and the rest of the imperial establishment were intolerably burdensome, and were reducing the nation to beggary. the emperor's reply -"look at germany; look at italy. are you better than they? and haven't you unification?" -did not satisfy them. they said, "people can't eat unification, and we are starving. agriculture has ceased. everybody is in the army, everybody is in the navy, everybody is in the public service, standing around in a uniform, with nothing whatever to do, nothing to eat, and nobody to till the fields --" "look at germany; look at italy. it is the same there. such is unification, and there's no other way to get it -no other way to keep it after you've got it," said the poor emperor always. but the grumblers only replied, "we can't stand the taxes -we can't stand them." now right on top of this the cabinet reported a national debt amounting to upwards of forty-five dollars -half a dollar to every individual in the nation. and they proposed to fund something. they had heard that this was always done in such emergencies. they proposed duties on exports; also on imports. and they wanted to issue bonds; also paper money, redeemable in yams and cabbages in fifty years. they said the pay of the army and of the navy and of the whole governmental machine was far in arrears, and unless something was done, and done immediately, national bankruptcy must ensue, and possibly insurrection and revolution. the emperor at once resolved upon a high-handed measure, and one of a nature never before heard of in pitcairn's island. he went in state to the church on sunday morning, with the army at his back, and commanded the minister of the treasury to take up a collection. that was the feather that broke the camel's back. first one citizen, and then another, rose and refused to submit to this unheard-of outrage -and each refusal was followed by the immediate confiscation of the malcontent's property. this vigor soon stopped the refusals, and the collection proceeded amid a sullen and ominous silence. as the emperor withdrew with the troops, he said, "i will teach you who is master here." several persons shouted, "down with unification!" they were at once arrested and torn from the arms of their weeping friends by the soldiery. but in the meantime, as any prophet might have foreseen, a social democrat had been developed. as the emperor stepped into the gilded imperial wheelbarrow at the church door, the social democrat stabbed at him fifteen or sixteen times with a harpoon, but fortunately with such a peculiarly social democratic unprecision of aim as to do no damage. that very night the convulsion came. the nation rose as one man -though forty-nine of the revolutionists were of the other sex. the infantry threw down their pitchforks; the artillery cast aside their cocoanuts; the navy revolted; the emperor was seized, and bound hand and foot in his palace. he was very much depressed. he said: "i freed you from a grinding tyranny; i lifted you up out of your degradation, and made you a nation among nations; i gave you a strong, compact, centralized government; and, more than all, i gave you the blessing of blessings, -unification. i have done all this, and my reward is hatred, insult, and these bonds. take me; do with me as you will. i here resign my crown and all my dignities, and gladly do i release myself from their too heavy burden. for your sake i took them up; for your sake i lay them down. the imperial jewel is no more; now bruise and defile as ye will the useless setting." by a unanimous voice the people condemned the exemperor and the social democrat to perpetual banishment from church services, or to perpetual labor as galley-slaves in the whale-boat -whichever they might prefer. the next day the nation assembled again, and rehoisted the british flag, reinstated the british tyranny, reduced the nobility to the condition of commoners again, and then straightway turned their diligent attention to the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches, and the rehabilitation of the old useful industries and the old healing and solacing pieties. the exemperor restored the lost trespass law, and explained that he had stolen it -not to injure any one, but to further his political projects. therefore the nation gave the late chief magistrate his office again, and also his alienated property. upon reflection, the ex-emperor and the social democrat chose perpetual banishment from religious services in preference to perpetual labor as galley-slaves "with perpetual religious services," as they phrased it; wherefore the people believed that the poor fellows' troubles had unseated their reason, and so they judged it best to confine them for the present. which they did. such is the history of pitcairn's "doubtful acquisition." end. . internet wiretap edition of tom sawyer, detective by mark twain from "the writings of mark twain, volume xx" copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain, may 1993. electronic edition by <dell@wiretap.spies.com> tom sawyer, detective chapter i. an invitation for tom and huck [footnote: strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not inventions, but facts -even to the public confession of the accused. i take them from an old-time swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenes to america. i have added some details, but only a couple of them are important ones. -m. t.] well, it was the next spring after me and tom sawyer set our old nigger jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on tom's uncle silas's farm in arkansaw. the frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. it just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and there's something the matter with him, he don't know what. but anyway, he gets out by himself and mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the big mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so far off and still, and everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead and gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all. don't you know what that is? it's spring fever. that is what the name of it is. and when you've got it, you want -oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! it seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away from the same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired of, and set something new. that is the idea; you want to go and be a wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. and if you can't do that, you'll put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you can go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too. well, me and tom sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but it warn't any use to think about tom trying to get away, because, as he said, his aunt polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. we was setting on the front steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt polly with a letter in her hand and says: "tom, i reckon you've got to pack up and go down to arkansaw -your aunt sally wants you." i 'most jumped out of my skin for joy. i reckoned tom would fly at his aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a rock, and never said a word. it made me fit to cry to see him act so foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. why, we might lose it if he didn't speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. but he set there and studied and studied till i was that distressed i didn't know what to do; then he says, very ca'm, and i could a shot him for it: "well," he says, "i'm right down sorry, aunt polly, but i reckon i got to be excused -for the present." his aunt polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this gave me a chance to nudge tom and whisper: "ain't you got any sense? sp'iling such a noble chance as this and throwing it away?" but he warn't disturbed. he mumbled back: "huck finn, do you want me to let her see how bad i want to go? why, she'd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and dangers and objections, and first you know she'd take it all back. you lemme alone; i reckon i know how to work her." now i never would 'a' thought of that. but he was right. tom sawyer was always right -the levelest head i ever see, and always at himself and ready for anything you might spring on him. by this time his aunt polly was all straight again, and she let fly. she says: "you'll be excused! you will! well, i never heard the like of it in all my days! the idea of you talking like that to me! now take yourself off and pack your traps; and if i hear another word out of you about what you'll be excused from and what you won't, i lay i'll excuse you -with a hickory!" she hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. up in his room he hugged me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going traveling. and he says: "before we get away she'll wish she hadn't let me go, but she won't know any way to get around it now. after what she's said, her pride won't let her take it back." tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and mary would finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and sweet and gentle again; for tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. then we went down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said. she was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. we set down, and she says: "they're in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and huck'll be a kind of diversion for them -'comfort,' they say. much of that they'll get out of you and huck finn, i reckon. there's a neighbor named brace dunlap that's been wanting to marry their benny for three months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he couldn't; so he has soured on them, and they're worried about it. i reckon he's somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for they've tried to please him by hiring his noaccount brother to help on the farm when they can't hardly afford it, and don't want him around anyhow. who are the dunlaps?" "they live about a mile from uncle silas's place, aunt polly -all the farmers live about a mile apart down there -and brace dunlap is a long sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers. he's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. i judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get benny. why, benny's only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and lovely asñ well, you've seen her. poor old uncle silas -why, it's pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way -so hard pushed and poor, and yet hiring that useless jubiter dunlap to please his ornery brother." "what a name -jubiter! where'd he get it?" "it's only just a nickname. i reckon they've forgot his real name long before this. he's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first time he ever went in swimming. the school teacher seen a round brown mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they got to calling him jubiter, and he's jubiter yet. he's tall, and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasn't got a cent, and brace boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and despises him. jubiter is a twin." "what's t'other twin like?" "just exactly like jubiter -so they say; used to was, anyway, but he hain't been seen for seven years. he got to robbing when he was nineteen or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away -up north here, somers. they used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and then, but that was years ago. he's dead, now. at least that's what they say. they don't hear about him any more." "what was his name?" "jake." there wasn't anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady was thinking. at last she says: "the thing that is mostly worrying your aunt sally is the tempers that that man jubiter gets your uncle into." tom was astonished, and so was i. tom says: "tempers? uncle silas? land, you must be joking! i didn't know he had any temper." "works him up into perfect rages, your aunt sally says; says he acts as if he would really hit the man, sometimes." "aunt polly, it beats anything i ever heard of. why, he's just as gentle as mush." "well, she's worried, anyway. says your uncle silas is like a changed man, on account of all this quarreling. and the neighbors talk about it, and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he's a preacher and hain't got any business to quarrel. your aunt sally says he hates to go into the pulpit he's so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool toward him, and he ain't as popular now as he used to was." "well, ain't it strange? why, aunt polly, he was always so good and kind and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable -why, he was just an angel! what can be the matter of him, do you reckon?" chapter ii. jake dunlap we had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler from away north which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers away down louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the upper mississippi and all the way down the lower mississippi to that farm in arkansaw without having to change steamboats at st. louis; not so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull. a pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. we was four days getting out of the "upper river," because we got aground so much. but it warn't dull -couldn't be for boys that was traveling, of course. from the very start me and tom allowed that there was somebody sick in the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there by the waiters. by and by we asked about it -tom did and the waiter said it was a man, but he didn't look sick. "well, but ain't he sick?" "i don't know; maybe he is, but 'pears to me he's just letting on." "what makes you think that?" "because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off some time or other -don't you reckon he would? well, this one don't. at least he don't ever pull off his boots, anyway." "the mischief he don't! not even when he goes to bed?" "no." it was always nuts for tom sawyer -a mystery was. if you'd lay out a mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn't have to say take your choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. because in my nature i have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to mystery. people are made different. and it is the best way. tom says to the waiter: "what's the man's name?" "phillips." "where'd he come aboard?" "i think he got aboard at elexandria, up on the iowa line." "what do you reckon he's a-playing?" "i hain't any notion -i never thought of it." i says to myself, here's another one that runs to pie. "anything peculiar about him? -the way he acts or talks?" "no -nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night and day both, and when you knock he won't let you in till he opens the door a crack and sees who it is." "by jimminy, it's int'resting! i'd like to get a look at him. say -the next time you're going in there, don't you reckon you could spread the door and --" "no, indeedy! he's always behind it. he would block that game." tom studied over it, and then he says: "looky here. you lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast in the morning. i'll give you a quarter." the boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldn't mind. tom says that's all right, he reckoned he could fix it with the head steward; and he done it. he fixed it so as we could both go in with aperns on and toting vittles. he didn't sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get in there and find out the mystery about phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing about it all night, which warn't no use, for if you are going to find out the facts of a thing, what's the sense in guessing out what ain't the facts and wasting ammunition? i didn't lose no sleep. i wouldn't give a dern to know what's the matter of phillips, i says to myself. well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple of trays of truck, and tom he knocked on the door. the man opened it a crack, and then he let us in and shut it quick. by jackson, when we got a sight of him, we 'most dropped the trays! and tom says: "why, jubiter dunlap, where'd you come from?" well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he looked like he didn't know whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which, but finally he settled down to being glad; and then his color come back, though at first his face had turned pretty white. so we got to talking together while he et his breakfast. and he says: "but i aint jubiter dunlap. i'd just as soon tell you who i am, though, if you'll swear to keep mum, for i ain't no phillips, either." tom says: "we'll keep mum, but there ain't any need to tell who you are if you ain't jubiter dunlap." "why?" "because if you ain't him you're t'other twin, jake. you're the spit'n image of jubiter." "well, i'm jake. but looky here, how do you come to know us dunlaps?" tom told about the adventures we'd had down there at his uncle silas's last summer, and when he see that there warn't anything about his folks -or him either, for that matter -that we didn't know, he opened out and talked perfectly free and candid. he never made any bones about his own case; said he'd been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned he'd be a hard lot plumb to the end. he said of course it was a dangerous life, and -he give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a person that's listening. we didn't say anything, and so it was very still for a second or so, and there warn't no sounds but the screaking of the woodwork and the chugchugging of the machinery down below. then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and how brace's wife had been dead three years, and brace wanted to marry benny and she shook him, and jubiter was working for uncle silas, and him and uncle silas quarreling all the time -and then he let go and laughed. "land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle, and does me good. it's been seven years and more since i heard any. how do they talk about me these days?" "who?" "the farmers -and the family." "why, they don't talk about you at all -at least only just a mention, once in a long time." "the nation!" he says, surprised; "why is that?" "because they think you are dead long ago." "no! are you speaking true? -honor bright, now." he jumped up, excited. "honor bright. there ain't anybody thinks you are alive." "then i'm saved, i'm saved, sure! i'll go home. they'll hide me and save my life. you keep mum. swear you'll keep mum -swear you'll never, never tell on me. oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted day and night, and dasn't show his face! i've never done you any harm; i'll never do you any, as god is in the heavens; swear you'll be good to me and help me save my life." we'd a swore it if he'd been a dog; and so we done it. well, he couldn't love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was all he could do to keep from hugging us. we talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it, and told us to turn our backs. we done it, and when he told us to turn again he was perfectly different to what he was before. he had on blue goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you ever see. his own mother wouldn't 'a' knowed him. he asked us if he looked like his brother jubiter, now. "no," tom said; "there ain't anything left that's like him except the long hair." "all right, i'll get that cropped close to my head before i get there; then him and brace will keep my secret, and i'll live with them as being a stranger, and the neighbors won't ever guess me out. what do you think?" tom he studied awhile, then he says: "well, of course me and huck are going to keep mum there, but if you don't keep mum yourself there's going to be a little bit of a risk -it ain't much, maybe, but it's a little. i mean, if you talk, won't people notice that your voice is just like jubiter's; and mightn't it make them think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was hid all this time under another name?" "by george," he says, "you're a sharp one! you're perfectly right. i've got to play deef and dumb when there's a neighbor around. if i'd a struck for home and forgot that little detail -however, i wasn't striking for home. i was breaking for any place where i could get away from these fellows that are after me; then i was going to put on this disguise and get some different clothes, and --" he jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it and listened, pale and kind of panting. presently he whispers: "sounded like cocking a gun! lord, what a life to lead!" then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and wiped the sweat off of his face. chapter iii. a diamond robbery from that time out, we was with him 'most all the time, and one or t'other of us slept in his upper berth. he said he had been so lonesome, and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to in his troubles. we was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he would get suspicious and shet up his shell. it turned out just so. it warn't no trouble to see that he wanted to talk about it, but always along at first he would scare away from it when he got on the very edge of it, and go to talking about something else. the way it come about was this: he got to asking us, kind of indifferent like, about the passengers down on deck. we told him about them. but he warn't satisfied; we warn't particular enough. he told us to describe them better. tom done it. at last, when tom was describing one of the roughest and raggedest ones, he gave a shiver and a gasp and says: "oh, lordy, that's one of them! they're aboard sure -i just knowed it. i sort of hoped i had got away, but i never believed it. go on." presently when tom was describing another mangy, rough deck passenger, he give that shiver again and says: "that's him! -that's the other one. if it would only come a good black stormy night and i could get ashore. you see, they've got spies on me. they've got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder forrard, and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on me -porter or boots or somebody. if i was to slip ashore without anybody seeing me, they would know it inside of an hour." so then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure enough, he was telling! he was poking along through his ups and downs, and when he come to that place he went right along. he says: "it was a confidence game. we played it on a juleryshop in st. louis. what we was after was a couple of noble big di'monds as big as hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see. we was dressed up fine, and we played it on them in broad daylight. we ordered the di'monds sent to the hotel for us to see if we wanted to buy, and when we was examining them we had paste counterfeits all ready, and them was the things that went back to the shop when we said the water wasn't quite fine enough for twelve thousand dollars." "twelveñthousandñdollars!" tom says. "was they really worth all that money, do you reckon?" "every cent of it." "and you fellows got away with them?" "as easy as nothing. i don't reckon the julery people know they've been robbed yet. but it wouldn't be good sense to stay around st. louis, of course, so we considered where we'd go. one was for going one way, one another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the upper mississippi won. we done up the di'monds in a paper and put our names on it and put it in the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either of us have it again without the others was on hand to see it done; then we went down town, each by his own self -because i reckon maybe we all had the same notion. i don't know for certain, but i reckon maybe we had." "what notion?" tom says. "to rob the others." "what -one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?" "cert'nly." it disgusted tom sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest, low-downest thing he ever heard of. but jake dunlap said it warn't unusual in the profession. said when a person was in that line of business he'd got to look out for his own intrust, there warn't nobody else going to do it for him. and then he went on. he says: "you see, the trouble was, you couldn't divide up two di'monds amongst three. if there'd been three -but never mind about that, there warn't three. i loafed along the back streets studying and studying. and i says to myself, i'll hog them di'monds the first chance i get, and i'll have a disguise all ready, and i'll give the boys the slip, and when i'm safe away i'll put it on, and then let them find me if they can. so i got the false whiskers and the goggles and this countrified suit of clothes, and fetched them along back in a handbag; and when i was passing a shop where they sell all sorts of things, i got a glimpse of one of my pals through the window. it was bud dixon. i was glad, you bet. i says to myself, i'll see what he buys. so i kept shady, and watched. now what do you reckon it was he bought?" "whiskers?" said i. "no." "goggles?" "no." "oh, keep still, huck finn, can't you, you're only just hendering all you can. what was it he bought, jake?" "you'd never guess in the world. it was only just a screwdriver -just a wee little bit of a screwdriver." "well, i declare! what did he want with that?" "that's what i thought. it was curious. it clean stumped me. i says to myself, what can he want with that thing? well, when he come out i stood back out of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand slopshop and see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old ragged clothes -just the ones he's got on now, as you've described. then i went down to the wharf and hid my things aboard the up-river boat that we had picked out, and then started back and had another streak of luck. i seen our other pal lay in his stock of old rusty second-handers. we got the di'monds and went aboard the boat. "but now we was up a stump, for we couldn't go to bed. we had to set up and watch one another. pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a strain on us, because there was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks back, and we was only friends in the way of business. bad anyway, seeing there was only two di'monds betwixt three men. first we had supper, and then tramped up and down the deck together smoking till most midnight; then we went and set down in my stateroom and locked the doors and looked in the piece of paper to see if the di'monds was all right, then laid it on the lower berth right in full sight; and there we set, and set, and by-and-by it got to be dreadful hard to keep awake. at last bud dixon he dropped off. as soon as he was snoring a good regular gait that was likely to last, and had his chin on his breast and looked permanent, hal clayton nodded towards the di'monds and then towards the outside door, and i understood. i reached and got the paper, and then we stood up and waited perfectly still; bud never stirred; i turned the key of the outside door very soft and slow, then turned the knob the same way, and we went tiptoeing out onto the guard, and shut the door very soft and gentle. "there warn't nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was slipping along, swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight. we never said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and plumb back aft, and set down on the end of the skylight. both of us knowed what that meant, without having to explain to one another. bud dixon would wake up and miss the swag, and would come straight for us, for he ain't afeard of anything or anybody, that man ain't. he would come, and we would heave him overboard, or get killed trying. it made me shiver, because i ain't as brave as some people, but if i showed the white feather -well, i knowed better than do that. i kind of hoped the boat would land somers, and we could skip ashore and not have to run the risk of this row, i was so scared of bud dixon, but she was an upper-river tub and there warn't no real chance of that. "well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow never come! why, it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never come. 'thunder,' i says, 'what do you make out of this? -ain't it suspicious?' 'land!' hal says, 'do you reckon he's playing us? -open the paper!' i done it, and by gracious there warn't anything in it but a couple of little pieces of loaf-sugar! that's the reason he could set there and snooze all night so comfortable. smart? well, i reckon! he had had them two papers all fixed and ready, and he had put one of them in place of t'other right under our noses. "we felt pretty cheap. but the thing to do, straight off, was to make a plan; and we done it. we would do up the paper again, just as it was, and slip in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and let on we didn't know about any trick, and hadn't any idea he was a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his'n; and we would stick by him, and the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and search him, and get the di'monds; and do for him, too, if it warn't too risky. if we got the swag, we'd got to do for him, or he would hunt us down and do for us, sure. but i didn't have no real hope. i knowed we could get him drunk -he was always ready for that -but what's the good of it? you might search him a year and never find -"well, right there i catched my breath and broke off my thought! for an idea went ripping through my head that tore my brains to rags -and land, but i felt gay and good! you see, i had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and just then i took up one of them to put it on, and i catched a glimpse of the heelbottom, and it just took my breath away. you remember about that puzzlesome little screwdriver?" "you bet i do," says tom, all excited. "well, when i catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that went smashing through my head was, i know where he's hid the di'monds! you look at this boot heel, now. see, it's bottomed with a steel plate, and the plate is fastened on with little screws. now there wasn't a screw about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a screwdriver, i reckoned i knowed why." "huck, ain't it bully!" says tom. "well, i got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to listening to bud dixon snore. hal clayton dropped off pretty soon, but i didn't; i wasn't ever so wide awake in my life. i was spying out from under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. it took me a long time, and i begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at last i struck it. it laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color of the carpet. it was a little round plug about as thick as the end of your little finger, and i says to myself there's a di'mond in the nest you've come from. before long i spied out the plug's mate . "think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! he put up that scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead and done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd'nheads. he set there and took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs and stick in the di'monds and screw on his plates again . he allowed we would steal the bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and get drownded, and by george it's just what we done! i think it was powerful smart." "you bet your life it was!" says tom, just full of admiration. chapter iv. the three sleepers well, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and it was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, i can tell you. about night we landed at one of them little missouri towns high up toward iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room upstairs with a cot and a double bed in it, but i dumped my bag under a deal table in the dark hall while we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and the landlord in the lead with a tallow candle. we had up a lot of whisky, and went to playing high-low-jack for dimes, and as soon as the whisky begun to take hold of bud we stopped drinking, but we didn't let him stop. we loaded him till he fell out of his chair and laid there snoring. "we was ready for business now. i said we better pull our boots off, and his'n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and haul him around and ransack him without any trouble. so we done it. i set my boots and bud's side by side, where they'd be handy. then we stripped him and searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside of his boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. never found any di'monds. we found the screwdriver, and hal says, 'what do you reckon he wanted with that?' i said i didn't know; but when he wasn't looking i hooked it. at last hal he looked beat and discouraged, and said we'd got to give it up. that was what i was waiting for. i says: "'there's one place we hain't searched.' "'what place is that?' he says. "'his stomach.' "'by gracious, i never thought of that! now we're on the homestretch, to a dead moral certainty. how'll we manage?' "'well,' i says, 'just stay by him till i turn out and hunt up a drug store, and i reckon i'll fetch something that'll make them di'monds tired of the company they're keeping.' "he said that's the ticket, and with him looking straight at me i slid myself into bud's boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. they was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than being too small. i got my bag as i went a-groping through the hall, and in about a minute i was out the back way and stretching up the river road at a five-mile gait. "and not feeling so very bad, neither -walking on di'monds don't have no such effect. when i had gone fifteen minutes i says to myself, there's more'n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. another five minutes and i says there's considerable more land behind me now, and there's a man back there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. another five and i says to myself he's getting real uneasy -he's walking the floor now. another five, and i says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind me, and he's awful uneasy -beginning to cuss, i reckon. pretty soon i says to myself, forty minutes gone -he knows there's something up! fifty minutes -the truth's a-busting on him now! he is reckoning i found the di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never let on -yes, and he's starting out to hunt for me. he'll hunt for new tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely send him down the river as up. "just then i see a man coming down on a mule, and before i thought i jumped into the bush. it was stupid! when he got abreast he stopped and waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. but i didn't feel gay any more. i says to myself i've botched my chances by that; i surely have, if he meets up with hal clayton. "well, about three in the morning i fetched elexandria and see this stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because i felt perfectly safe, now, you know. it was just daybreak. i went aboard and got this stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilothouse -to watch, though i didn't reckon there was any need of it. i set there and played with my di'monds and waited and waited for the boat to start, but she didn't. you see, they was mending her machinery, but i didn't know anything about it, not being very much used to steamboats. "well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and long before that i was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast i see a man coming, away off, that had a gait like hal clayton's, and it made me just sick. i says to myself, if he finds out i'm aboard this boat, he's got me like a rat in a trap. all he's got to do is to have me watched, and wait -wait till i slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand miles away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me give up the di'monds, and then he'll -oh, i know what he'll do! ain't it awful -awful! and now to think the other one's aboard, too! oh, ain't it hard luck, boys -ain't it hard! but you'll help save me, won't you? -oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted to death, and save me -i'll worship the very ground you walk on!" we turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan for him and help him, and he needn't be so afeard; and so by and by he got to feeling kind of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and held up his di'monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them; and when the light struck into them they was beautiful, sure; why, they seemed to kind of bust, and snap fire out all around. but all the same i judged he was a fool. if i had been him i would a handed the di'monds to them pals and got them to go ashore and leave me alone. but he was made different. he said it was a whole fortune and he couldn't bear the idea. twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while, once in the night; but it wasn't dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. but the third time we had to fix it there was a better chance. we laid up at a country woodyard about forty mile above uncle silas's place a little after one at night, and it was thickening up and going to storm. so jake he laid for a chance to slide. we begun to take in wood. pretty soon the rain come a-drenching down, and the wind blowed hard. of course every boat-hand fixed a gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet, the way they do when they are toting wood, and we got one for jake, and he slipped down aft with his hand-bag and come tramping forrard just like the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when we see him pass out of the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the dark, we got our breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. but it wasn't for long. somebody told, i reckon; for in about eight or ten minutes them two pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump and darted ashore and was gone. we waited plumb till dawn for them to come back, and kept hoping they would, but they never did. we was awful sorry and low-spirited. all the hope we had was that jake had got such a start that they couldn't get on his track, and he would get to his brother's and hide there and be safe. he was going to take the river road, and told us to find out if brace and jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out about sundown and tell him. said he would wait for us in a little bunch of sycamores right back of tom's uncle silas's tobacker field on the river road, a lonesome place. we set and talked a long time about his chances, and tom said he was all right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it wasn't likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely they would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill him when it come dark, and take the boots. so we was pretty sorrowful. chapter v. a tragedy in the: woods we didn't get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we never stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight as we could go, to tell jake what the delay was, and have him wait till we could go to brace's and find out how things was there. it was getting pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty yards ahead of us; and just then we see a couple of men run into the bunch and heard two or three terrible screams for help. "poor jake is killed, sure," we says. we was scared through and through, and broke for the tobacker field and hid there, trembling so our clothes would hardly stay on; and just as we skipped in there, a couple of men went tearing by, and into the bunch they went, and in a second out jumps four men and took out up the road as tight as they could go, two chasing two. we laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more sounds, but didn't hear none for a good while but just our hearts. we was thinking of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. the moon come a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and bright, behind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison bars, and the black shadders and white places begun to creep around, and it was miserable quiet and still and night-breezy and graveyardy and scary. all of a sudden tom whispers: "look! -what's that?" "don't!" i says. "don't take a person by surprise that way. i'm 'most ready to die, anyway, without you doing that." "look, i tell you. it's something coming out of the sycamores." "don't, tom!" "it's terrible tall!" "oh, lordy-lordy! let's --" "keep still -it's a-coming this way." he was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to whisper. i had to look. i couldn't help it. so now we was both on our knees with our chins on a fence rail and gazing -yes, and gasping too. it was coming down the road -coming in the shadder of the trees, and you couldn't see it good; not till it was pretty close to us; then it stepped into a bright splotch of moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracks -it was jake dunlap's ghost! that was what we said to ourselves. we couldn't stir for a minute or two; then it was gone we talked about it in low voices. tom says: "they're mostly dim and smoky, or like they're made out of fog, but this one wasn't." "no," i says; "i seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly plain." "yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified sunday clothes -plaid breeches, green and black --" "cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares --" "leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them hanging unbottoned --" "yes, and that hat --" "what a hat for a ghost to wear!" you see it was the first season anybody wore that kind -a black sitff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round top -just like a sugar-loaf. "did you notice if its hair was the same, huck?" "no -seems to me i did, then again it seems to me i didn't." "i didn't either; but it had its bag along, i noticed that." "so did i. how can there be a ghost-bag, tom?" "sho! i wouldn't be as ignorant as that if i was you, huck finn. whatever a ghost has, turns to ghoststuff. they've got to have their things, like anybody else. you see, yourself, that its clothes was turned to ghost-stuff. well, then, what's to hender its bag from turning, too? of course it done it." that was reasonable. i couldn't find no fault with it. bill withers and his brother jack come along by, talking, and jack says: "what do you reckon he was toting?" "i dunno; but it was pretty heavy." "yes, all he could lug. nigger stealing corn from old parson silas, i judged." "so did i. and so i allowed i wouldn't let on to see him." "that's me, too." then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. it showed how unpopular old uncle silas had got to be now. they wouldn't 'a' let a nigger steal anybody else's corn and never done anything to him. we heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and getting louder, and sometimes a cackle of a laugh. it was lem beebe and jim lane. jim lane says: "who? -jubiter dunlap?" "yes." "oh, i don't know. i reckon so. i seen him spading up some ground along about an hour ago, just before sundown -him and the parson. said he guessed he wouldn't go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted him." "too tired, i reckon." "yes -works so hard!" "oh, you bet!" they cackled at that, and went on by. tom said we better jump out and tag along after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn't be comfortable to run across the ghost all by ourselves. so we done it, and got home all right. that night was the second of september -a saturday. i sha'n't ever forget it. you'll see why, pretty soon . chapter vi. plans to secure the diamonds we tramped along behind jim and lem till we come to the back stile where old jim's cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set him free, and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and there was the lights of the house, too; so we warn't afeard any more, and was going to climb over, but tom says: "hold on; set down here a minute. by george!" "what's the matter?" says i. "matter enough!" he says. "wasn't you expecting we would be the first to tell the family who it is that's been killed yonder in the sycamores, and all about them rapscallions that done it, and about the di'monds they've smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine, and have the glory of being the ones that knows a lot more about it than anybody else?" "why, of course. it wouldn't be you, tom sawyer, if you was to let such a chance go by. i reckon it ain't going to suffer none for lack of paint," i says, "when you start in to scollop the facts." "well, now," he says, perfectly ca'm, "what would you say if i was to tell you i ain't going to start in at all?" i was astonished to hear him talk so. i says: "i'd say it's a lie. you ain't in earnest, tom sawyer?" "you'll soon see. was the ghost barefooted?" "no, it wasn't. what of it?" "you wait -i'll show you what. did it have its boots on?" "yes. i seen them plain." "swear it?" "yes, i swear it." "so do i. now do you know what that means?" "no. what does it mean?" "means that them thieves didn't get the di'monds." "jimminy! what makes you think that?" "i don't only think it, i know it. didn't the breeches and goggles and whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff? everything it had on turned, didn't it? it shows that the reason its boots turned too was because it still had them on after it started to go ha'nting around, and if that ain't proof that them blatherskites didn't get the boots, i'd like to know what you'd call proof." think of that now. i never see such a head as that boy had. why, i had eyes and i could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. but tom sawyer was different. when tom sawyer seen a thing it just got up on its hind legs and talked to him -told him everything it knowed. i never see such a head. "tom sawyer," i says, "i'll say it again as i've said it a many a time before: i ain't fitten to black your boots. but that's all right -that's neither here nor there. god almighty made us all, and some he gives eyes that's blind, and some he gives eyes that can see, and i reckon it ain't none of our lookout what he done it for; it's all right, or he'd 'a' fixed it some other way. go on -i see plenty plain enough, now, that them thieves didn't get way with the di'monds. why didn't they, do you reckon?" "because they got chased away by them other two men before they could pull the boots off of the corpse." "that's so! i see it now. but looky here, tom, why ain't we to go and tell about it?" "oh, shucks, huck finn, can't you see? look at it. what's a-going to happen? there's going to be an inquest in the morning. them two men will tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not save the stranger. then the jury'll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle, and finally they'll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or busted over the head with something, and come to his death by the inspiration of god. and after they've buried him they'll auction off his things for to pay the expenses, and then's our chance." "how, tom?" "buy the boots for two dollars!" well, it 'most took my breath. "my land! why, tom, we'll get the di'monds!" "you bet. some day there'll be a big reward offered for them -a thousand dollars, sure. that's our money! now we'll trot in and see the folks. and mind you we don't know anything about any murder, or any di'monds, or any thieves -don't you forget that." i had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. i'd 'a' sold them di'monds -yes, sir -for twelve thousand dollars; but i didn't say anything. it wouldn't done any good. i says: "but what are we going to tell your aunt sally has made us so long getting down here from the village, tom?" "oh, i'll leave that to you," he says. "i reckon you can explain it somehow." he was always just that strict and delicate. he never would tell a lie himself. we struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t'other thing that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got to the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was, even to uncle silas's old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to it, and raggedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and walked in. aunt sally she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and the children was huddled in one corner, and the old man he was huddled in the other and praying for help in time of need. she jumped for us with joy and tears running down her face and give us a whacking box on the ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed us again, and just couldn't seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to see us; and she says: "where have you been a-loafing to, you good-fornothing trash! i've been that worried about you i didn't know what to do. your traps has been here ever so long, and i've had supper cooked fresh about four times so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is just plumb wore out, and i declare i -i -why i could skin you alive! you must be starving, poor things! -set down, set down, everybody; don't lose no more time." it was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. old uncle silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the slack of it i was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so long. when our plates was all loadened and we'd got a-going, she asked me, and i says: "well, you see, -er -mizzes --" "huck finn! since when am i mizzes to you? have i ever been stingy of cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and i took you for tom sawyer and blessed god for sending you to me, though you told me four thousand lies and i believed every one of them like a simpleton? call me aunt sally -like you always done." so i done it. and i says: "well, me and tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of the woods, and we run across lem beebe and jim lane, and they asked us to go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow jubiter dunlap's dog, because he had told them just that minute --" "where did they see him?" says the old man; and when i looked up to see how he come to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes was just burning into me, he was that eager. it surprised me so it kind of throwed me off, but i pulled myself together again and says: "it was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards sundown or along there." he only said, "um," in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn't take no more intrust. so i went on. i says: "well, then, as i was a-saying --" "that'll do, you needn't go no furder." it was aunt sally. she was boring right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. "huck finn," she says, "how'd them men come to talk about going a-blackberrying in september -in this region?" i see i had slipped up, and i couldn't say a word. she waited, still a-gazing at me, then she says: "and how'd they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying in the night?" "well, m'm, they -er -they told us they had a lantern, and --" "oh, shet up -do! looky here; what was they going to do with a dog? -hunt blackberries with it?" "i think, m'm, they --" "now, tom sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing your mouth to contribit to this mess of rubbage? speak out -and i warn you before you begin, that i don't believe a word of it. you and huck's been up to something you no business to -i know it perfectly well; i know you, both of you. now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern, and the rest of that rot -and mind you talk as straight as a string -do you hear?" tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified: "it is a pity if huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a little bit of a mistake that anybody could make." "what mistake has he made?" "why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant strawberries." "tom sawyer, i lay if you aggravate me a little more, i'll --" "aunt sally, without knowing it -and of course without intending it -you are in the wrong. if you'd 'a' studied natural history the way you ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in arkansaw they always hunt strawberries with a dog -and a lantern --" but she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him under. she was so mad she couldn't get the words out fast enough, and she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. that was what tom sawyer was after. he allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave her alone and let her burn herself out. then she would be so aggravated with that subject that she wouldn't say another word about it, nor let anybody else. well, it happened just so. when she was tuckered out and had to hold up, he says, quite ca'm: "and yet, all the same, aunt sally --" "shet up!" she says, "i don't want to hear another word out of you." so we was perfectly safe, then, and didn't have no more trouble about that delay. tom done it elegant. chapter vii. a night's vigil benny she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then; but pretty soon she got to asking about mary, and sid, and tom's aunt polly, and then aunt sally's clouds cleared off and she got in a good humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. but the old man he didn't take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to see him so sad and troubled and worried. by and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the door and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and scraping, and said his marse brace was out at the stile and wanted his brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would marse silas please tell him where he was? i never see uncle silas speak up so sharp and fractious before. he says: "am i his brother's keeper?" and then he kind of wilted together, and looked like he wished he hadn't spoken so, and then he says, very gentle: "but you needn't say that, billy; i was took sudden and irritable, and i ain't very well these days, and not hardly responsible. tell him he ain't here." and when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands through his hair. it was real pitiful to see him. aunt sally she whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed him. she said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles come on, and she allowed he didn't more'n about half know what he was about when the thinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in his sleep considerable more now than he used to, and sometimes wandered around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. she said she reckoned it didn't do him no harm, and may be it done him good. she said benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. said benny appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave him alone. so he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and by he begun to look pretty tired; then benny she went and snuggled up to his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and walked with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed her; and so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded him off to his room. they had very petting ways together, and it was uncommon pretty to see. aunt sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and by it got dull and tedious, and me and tom took a turn in the moonlight, and fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good deal of talk. and tom said he'd bet the quarreling was all jubiter's fault, and he was going to be on hand the first time he got a chance, and see; and if it was so, he was going to do his level best to get uncle silas to turn him off. and so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours, and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet and dark, and everybody gone to bed. tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize work-gown was gone, and said it wasn't gone when he went out; so he allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed. we could hear benny stirring around in her room, which was next to ourn, and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and couldn't sleep. we found we couldn't, neither. so we set up a long time, and smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and down-hearted. we talked the murder and the ghost over and over again, and got so creepy and crawly we couldn't get sleepy nohow and noway. by and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was late sounds and solemn, tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and i done it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn't know just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we couldn't see him good. then he started for the stile, and as he went over it the moon came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder, and we see the white patch on the old workgown. so tom says: "he's a-walking in his sleep. i wish we was allowed to follow him and see where he's going to. there, he's turned down by the tobacker-field. out of sight now. it's a dreadful pity he can't rest no better." we waited a long time, but he didn't come back any more, or if he did he come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went to sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. but before dawn we was awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the gullies was running rivers. tom says: "looky here, huck, i'll tell you one thing that's mighty curious. up to the time we went out last night the family hadn't heard about jake dunlap being murdered. now the men that chased hal clayton and bud dixon away would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor that heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t'other and try to be the first to tell the news. land, they don't have such a big thing as that to tell twice in thirty year! huck, it's mighty strange; i don't understand it." so then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything about it to us. and he said if they did we must be horribly surprised and shocked. we was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. it was just broad day then. we loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the folks at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but none of them said a word about that thing; which was just astonishing, and no mistake. tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we would find that body laying there solitary and alone, and not a soul around. said he believed the men chased the thieves so far into the woods that the thieves prob'ly seen a good chance and turned on them at last, and maybe they all killed each other, and so there wasn't anybody left to tell. first we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the sycamores. the cold chills trickled down my back and i wouldn't budge another step, for all tom's persuading. but he couldn't hold in; he'd got to see if the boots was safe on that body yet. so he crope in -and the next minute out he come again with his eyes bulging he was so excited, and says: "huck, it's gone!" i was astonished! i says: "tom, you don't mean it." "it's gone, sure. there ain't a sign of it. the ground is trampled some, but if there was any blood it's all washed away by the storm, for it's all puddles and slush in there." at last i give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as tom said -there wasn't a sign of a corpse. "dern it," i says, "the di'monds is gone. don't you reckon the thieves slunk back and lugged him off, tom?" "looks like it. it just does. now where'd they hide him, do you reckon?" "i don't know," i says, disgusted, "and what's more i don't care. they've got the boots, and that's all i cared about. he'll lay around these woods a long time before i hunt him up." tom didn't feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know what come of him; but he said we'd lay low and keep dark and it wouldn't be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out. we went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and disappointed and swindled. i warn't ever so down on a corpse before. chapter viii. talking with the ghost it warn't very cheerful at breakfast. aunt sally she looked old and tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn't seem to notice it was going on, which wasn't her usual style; me and tom had a plenty to think about without talking; benny she looked like she hadn't had much sleep, and whenever she'd lift her head a little and steal a look towards her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as for the old man, his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him knowing they was there, i reckon, for he was thinking and thinking all the time, and never said a word and never et a bite. by and by when it was stillest, that nigger's head was poked in at the door again, and he said his marse brace was getting powerful uneasy about marse jubiter, which hadn't come home yet, and would marse silas please -he was looking at uncle silas, and he stopped there, like the rest of his words was froze; for uncle silas he rose up shaky and steadied himself leaning his fingers on the table, and he was panting, and his eyes was set on the nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his other hand up to his throat a couple of times, and at last he got his words started, and says: "does he -does he -think -what does he think! tell him -tell him --" then he sunk down in his chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could hardly hear him: "go away -go away!" the nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all felt -well, i don't know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting there, and his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. none of us could budge; but benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and begun to stroke it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and we done it, going out very quiet, like the dead was there. me and tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and saying how different it was now to what it was last summer when we was here and everything was so peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much of uncle silas, and he was so cheerful and simplehearted and pudd'n-headed and good -and now look at him. if he hadn't lost his mind he wasn't muck short of it. that was what we allowed. it was a most lovely day now, and bright and sun. shiny; and the further and further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier and lovelier the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange and somehow wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this. and then all of a sudden i catched my breath and grabbed tom's arm, and all my livers and lungs and things fell down into my legs. "there it is!" i says. we jumped back behind a bush shivering, and tom says: "'sh! -don't make a noise." it was setting on a log right in the edge of a little prairie, thinking. i tried to get tom to come away, but he wouldn't, and i dasn't budge by myself. he said we mightn't ever get another chance to see one, and he was going to look his fill at this one if he died for it. so i looked too, though it give me the fantods to do it. tom he had to talk, but he talked low. he says: "poor jakey, it's got all its things on, just as he said he would. now you see what we wasn't certain about -its hair. it's not long now the way it was: it's got it cropped close to its head, the way he said he would. huck, i never see anything look any more naturaler than what it does." "nor i neither," i says; "i'd recognize it anywheres." "so would i. it looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it done before it died." so we kept a-gazing. pretty soon tom says: "huck, there's something mighty curious about this one, don't you know? it oughtn't to be going around in the daytime." "that's so, tom -i never heard the like of it before." "no, sir, they don't ever come out only at night -and then not till after twelve. there's something wrong about this one, now you mark my words. i don't believe it's got any right to be around in the daytime. but don't it look natural! jake was going to play deef and dumb here, so the neighbors wouldn't know his voice. do you reckon it would do that if we was to holler at it?" "lordy, tom, don't talk so! if you was to holler at it i'd die in my tracks." "don't you worry, i ain't going to holler at it. look, huck, it's a-scratching its head -don't you see?" "well, what of it?" "why, this. what's the sense of it scratching its head? there ain't anything there to itch; its head is made out of fog or something like that, and can't itch. a fog can't itch; any fool knows that." "well, then, if it don't itch and can't itch, what in the nation is it scratching it for? ain't it just habit, don't you reckon?" "no, sir, i don't. i ain't a bit satisfied about the way this one acts. i've a blame good notion it's a bogus one -i have, as sure as i'm a-sitting here. because, if it -huck!" "well, what's the matter now?" "you can't see the bushes through it!" "why, tom, it's so, sure! it's as solid as a cow. i sort of begin to think --" "huck, it's biting off a chaw of tobacker! by george, they don't chaw -they hain't got anything to chaw with. huck!" "i'm a-listening." "it ain't a ghost at all. it's jake dunlap his own self!" "oh your granny!" i says. "huck finn, did we find any corpse in the sycamores?" "no." "or any sign of one?" "no." "mighty good reason. hadn't ever been any corpse there." "why, tom, you know we heard --" "yes, we didê-heard a howl or two. does that prove anybody was killed? course it don't. and we seen four men run, then this one come walking out and we took it for a ghost. no more ghost than you are. it was jake dunlap his own self, and it's jake dunlap now. he's been and got his hair cropped, the way he said he would, and he's playing himself for a stranger, just the same as he said he would. ghost? hum! -he's as sound as a nut." then i see it all, and how we had took too much for granted. i was powerful glad he didn't get killed, and so was tom, and we wondered which he would like the best -for us to never let on to know him, or how? tom reckoned the best way would be to go and ask him. so he started; but i kept a little behind, because i didn't know but it might be a ghost, after all. when tom got to where he was, he says: "me and huck's mighty glad to see you again, and you needn't be afeared we'll tell. and if you think it'll be safer for you if we don't let on to know you when we run across you, say the word and you'll see you can depend on us, and would ruther cut our hands off than get you into the least little bit of danger." first off he looked surprised to see us, and not very glad, either; but as tom went on he looked pleasanter, and when he was done he smiled, and nodded his head several times, and made signs with his hands, and says: "goo-goo -goo-goo," the way deef and dummies does. just then we see some of steve nickerson's people coming that lived t'other side of the prairie, so tom says: "you do it elegant; i never see anybody do it better. you're right; play it on us, too; play it on us same as the others; it'll keep you in practice and prevent you making blunders. we'll keep away from you and let on we don't know you, but any time we can be any help, you just let us know." then we loafed along past the nickersons, and of course they asked if that was the new stranger yonder, and where'd he come from, and what was his name, and which communion was he, babtis' or methodis', and which politics, whig or democrat, and how long is he staying, and all them other questions that humans always asks when a stranger comes, and animals does, too. but tom said he warn't able to make anything out of deef and dumb signs, and the same with googooing. then we watched them go and bullyrag jake; because we was pretty uneasy for him. tom said it would take him days to get so he wouldn't forget he was a deef and dummy sometimes, and speak out before he thought. when we had watched long enough to see that jake was getting along all right and working his signs very good, we loafed along again, allowing to strike the schoolhouse about recess time, which was a three-mile tramp. i was so disappointed not to hear jake tell about the row in the sycamores, and how near he come to getting killed, that i couldn't seem to get over it, and tom he felt the same, but said if we was in jake's fix we would want to go careful and keep still and not take any chances. the boys and girls was all glad to see us again, and we had a real good time all through recess. coming to school the henderson boys had come across the new deef and dummy and told the rest; so all the scholars was chuck full of him and couldn't talk about anything else, and was in a sweat to get a sight of him because they hadn't ever seen a deef and dummy in their lives, and it made a powerful excitement. tom said it was tough to have to keep mum now; said we would be heroes if we could come out and tell all we knowed; but after all, it was still more heroic to keep mum, there warn't two boys in a million could do it. that was tom sawyer's idea about it, and reckoned there warn't anybody could better it. chapter ix. finding of jubiter dunlap in the next two or three days dummy he got to be powerful popular. he went associating around with the neighbors, and they made much of him, and was proud to have such a rattling curiosity among them. they had him to breakfast, they had him to dinner, they had him to supper; they kept him loaded up with hog and hominy, and warn't ever tired staring at him and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed more about him, he was so uncommon and romantic. his signs warn't no good; people couldn't understand them and he prob'ly couldn't himself, but he done a sight of goo-gooing, and so everybody was satisfied, and admired to hear him go it. he toted a piece of slate around, and a pencil; and people wrote questions on it and he wrote answers; but there warn't anybody could read his writing but brace dunlap. brace said he couldn't read it very good, but he could manage to dig out the meaning most of the time. he said dummy said he belonged away off somers and used to be well off, but got busted by swindlers which he had trusted, and was poor now, and hadn't any way to make a living. everybody praised brace dunlap for being so good to that stranger. he let him have a little log-cabin all to himself, and had his niggers take care of it, and fetch him all the vittles he wanted. dummy was at our house some, because old uncle silas was so afflicted himself, these days, that anybody else that was afflicted was a comfort to him. me and tom didn't let on that we had knowed him before, and he didn't let on that he had knowed us before. the family talked their troubles out before him the same as if he wasn't there, but we reckoned it wasn't any harm for him to hear what they said. generly he didn't seem to notice, but sometimes he did. well, two or three days went along, and everybody got to getting uneasy about jubiter dunlap. everybody was asking everybody if they had any idea what had become of him. no, they hadn't, they said: and they shook their heads and said there was something powerful strange about it. another and another day went by; then there was a report got around that praps he was murdered. you bet it made a big stir! everybody's tongue was clacking away after that. saturday two or three gangs turned out and hunted the woods to see if they could run across his remainders. me and tom helped, and it was noble good times and exciting. tom he was so brimful of it he couldn't eat nor rest. he said if we could find that corpse we would be celebrated, and more talked about than if we got drownded. the others got tired and give it up; but not tom sawyer -that warn't his style. saturday night he didn't sleep any, hardly, trying to think up a plan; and towards daylight in the morning he struck it. he snaked me out of bed and was all excited, and says: "quick, huck, snatch on your clothes -i've got it! bloodhound!" in two minutes we was tearing up the river road in the dark towards the village. old jeff hooker had a bloodhound, and tom was going to borrow him. i says: "the trail's too old, tom -and besides, it's rained, you know." "it don't make any difference, huck. if the body's hid in the woods anywhere around the hound will find it. if he's been murdered and buried, they wouldn't bury him deep, it ain't likely, and if the dog goes over the spot he'll scent him, sure. huck, we're going to be celebrated, sure as you're born!" he was just a-blazing; and whenever he got afire he was most likely to get afire all over. that was the way this time. in two minutes he had got it all ciphered out, and wasn't only just going to find the corpse -no, he was going to get on the track of that murderer and hunt him down, too; and not only that, but he was going to stick to him till -"well," i says, "you better find the corpse first; i reckon that's a-plenty for to-day. for all we know, there ain't any corpse and nobody hain't been murdered. that cuss could 'a' gone off somers and not been killed at all." that graveled him, and he says: "huck finn, i never see such a person as you to want to spoil everything. as long as you can't see anything hopeful in a thing, you won't let anybody else. what good can it do you to throw cold water on that corpse and get up that selfish theory that there ain't been any murder? none in the world. i don't see how you can act so. i wouldn't treat you like that, and you know it. here we've got a noble good opportunity to make a ruputation, and --" "oh, go ahead," i says. "i'm sorry, and i take it all back. i didn't mean nothing. fix it any way you want it. he ain't any consequence to me. if he's killed, i'm as glad of it as you are; and if he --" "i never said anything about being glad; i only --" "well, then, i'm as sorry as you are. any way you druther have it, that is the way i druther have it. he --" "there ain't any druthers about it, huck finn; nobody said anything about druthers. and as for --" he forgot he was talking, and went tramping along, studying. he begun to get excited again, and pretty soon he says: "huck, it'll be the bulliest thing that ever happened if we find the body after everybody else has quit looking, and then go ahead and hunt up the murderer. it won't only be an honor to us, but it'll be an honor to uncle silas because it was us that done it. it'll set him up again, you see if it don't." but old jeff hooker he throwed cold water on the whole business when we got to his blacksmith shop and told him what we come for. "you can take the dog," he says, "but you ain't a-going to find any corpse, because there ain't any corpse to find. everybody's quit looking, and they're right. soon as they come to think, they knowed there warn't no corpse. and i'll tell you for why. what does a person kill another person for, tom sawyer? -answer me that." "why, he -er --" "answer up! you ain't no fool. what does he kill him for?" "well, sometimes it's for revenge, and --" "wait. one thing at a time. revenge, says you; and right you are. now who ever had anything agin that poor trifling no-account? who do you reckon would want to kill him? -that rabbit!" tom was stuck. i reckon he hadn't thought of a person having to have a reason for killing a person before, and now he sees it warn't likely anybody would have that much of a grudge against a lamb like jubiter dunlap. the blacksmith says, by and by: "the revenge idea won't work, you see. well, then, what's next? robbery? b'gosh, that must 'a' been it, tom! yes, sirree, i reckon we've struck it this time. some feller wanted his gallus-buckles, and so he --" but it was so funny he busted out laughing, and just went on laughing and laughing and laughing till he was 'most dead, and tom looked so put out and cheap that i knowed he was ashamed he had come, and he wished he hadn't. but old hooker never let up on him. he raked up everything a person ever could want to kill another person about, and any fool could see they didn't any of them fit this case, and he just made no end of fun of the whole business and of the people that had been hunting the body; and he said: "if they'd had any sense they'd 'a' knowed the lazy cuss slid out because he wanted a loafing spell after all this work. he'll come pottering back in a couple of weeks, and then how'll you fellers feel? but, laws bless you, take the dog, and go and hunt his remainders. do, tom." then he busted out, and had another of them fortyrod laughs of hisn. tom couldn't back down after all this, so he said, "all right, unchain him;" and the blacksmith done it, and we started home and left that old man laughing yet. it was a lovely dog. there ain't any dog that's got a lovelier disposition than a bloodhound, and this one knowed us and liked us. he capered and raced around ever so friendly, and powerful glad to be free and have a holiday; but tom was so cut up he couldn't take any intrust in him, and said he wished he'd stopped and thought a minute before he ever started on such a fool errand. he said old jeff hooker would tell everybody, and we'd never hear the last of it. so we loafed along home down the back lanes, feeling pretty glum and not talking. when we was passing the far corner of our tobacker field we heard the dog set up a long howl in there, and we went to the place and he was scratching the ground with all his might, and every now and then canting up his head sideways and fetching another howl. it was a long square, the shape of a grave; the rain had made it sink down and show the shape. the minute we come and stood there we looked at one another and never said a word. when the dog had dug down only a few inches he grabbed something and pulled it up, and it was an arm and a sleeve. tom kind of gasped out, and says: "come away, huck -it's found." i just felt awful. we struck for the road and fetched the first men that come along. they got a spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you never see such an excitement. you couldn't make anything out of the face, but you didn't need to. everybody said: "poor jubiter; it's his clothes, to the last rag!" some rushed off to spread the news and tell the justice of the peace and have an inquest, and me and tom lit out for the house. tom was all afire and 'most out of breath when we come tearing in where uncle silas and aunt sally and benny was. tom sung out: "me and huck's found jubiter dunlap's corpse all by ourselves with a bloodhound, after everybody else had quit hunting and given it up; and if it hadn't a been for us it never would 'a' been found; and he was murdered too -they done it with a club or something like that; and i'm going to start in and find the murderer, next, and i bet i'll do it!" aunt sally and benny sprung up pale and astonished, but uncle silas fell right forward out of his chair on to the floor and groans out: "oh, my god, you've found him now!" chapter x. the arrest of uncle silas them awful words froze us solid. we couldn't move hand or foot for as much as half a minute. then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man up and got him into his chair, and benny petted him and kissed him and tried to comfort him, and poor old aunt sally she done the same; but, poor things, they was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their right minds that they didn't hardly know what they was about. with tom it was awful; it 'most petrified him to think maybe he had got his uncle into a thousand times more trouble than ever, and maybe it wouldn't ever happened if he hadn't been so ambitious to get celebrated, and let the corpse alone the way the others done. but pretty soon he sort of come to himself again and says: "uncle silas, don't you say another word like that. it's dangerous, and there ain't a shadder of truth in it." aunt sally and benny was thankful to hear him say that, and they said the same; but the old man he wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless, and the tears run down his face, and he says; "no -i done it; poor jubiter, i done it!" it was dreadful to hear him say it. then he went on and told about it, and said it happened the day me and tom come -along about sundown. he said jubiter pestered him and aggravated him till he was so mad he just sort of lost his mind and grabbed up a stick and hit him over the head with all his might, and jubiter dropped in his tracks. then he was scared and sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted his head up, and begged him to speak and say he wasn't dead; and before long he come to, and when he see who it was holding his head, he jumped like he was 'most scared to death, and cleared the fence and tore into the woods, and was gone. so he hoped he wasn't hurt bad. "but laws," he says, "it was only just fear that gave him that last little spurt of strength, and of course it soon played out and he laid down in the bush, and there wasn't anybody to help him, and he died." then the old man cried and grieved, and said he was a murderer and the mark of cain was on him, and he had disgraced his family and was going to be found out and hung. but tom said: "no, you ain't going to be found out. you didn't kill him. one lick wouldn't kill him. somebody else done it." "oh, yes," he says, "i done it -nobody else. who else had anything against him? who else could have anything against him?" he looked up kind of like he hoped some of us could mention somebody that could have a grudge against that harmless no-account, but of course it warn't no use -he had us; we couldn't say a word. he noticed that, and he saddened down again, and i never see a face so miserable and so pitiful to see. tom had a sudden idea, and says: "but hold on! -somebody buried him. now who --" he shut off sudden. i knowed the reason. it give me the cold shudders when he said them words, because right away i remembered about us seeing uncle silas prowling around with a long-handled shovel away in the night that night. and i knowed benny seen him, too, because she was talking about it one day. the minute tom shut off he changed the subject and went to begging uncle silas to keep mum, and the rest of us done the same, and said he must, and said it wasn't his business to tell on himself, and if he kept mum nobody would ever know; but if it was found out and any harm come to him it would break the family's hearts and kill them, and yet never do anybody any good. so at last he promised. we was all of us more comfortable, then, and went to work to cheer up the old man. we told him all he'd got to do was to keep still, and it wouldn't be long till the whole thing would blow over and be forgot. we all said there wouldn't anybody ever suspect uncle silas, nor ever dream of such a thing, he being so good and kind, and having such a good character; and tom says, cordial and hearty, he says: "why, just look at it a minute; just consider. here is uncle silas, all these years a preacher -at his own expense; all these years doing good with all his might and every way he can think of -at his own expense, all the time; always been loved by everybody, and respected; always been peaceable and minding his own business, the very last man in this whole deestrict to touch a person, and everybody knows it. suspect him? why, it ain't any more possible than --" "by authority of the state of arkansaw, i arrest you for the murder of jubiter dunlap!" shouts the sheriff at the door. it was awful. aunt sally and benny flung themselves at uncle silas, screaming and crying, and hugged him and hung to him, and aunt sally said go away, she wouldn't ever give him up, they shouldn't have him, and the niggers they come crowding and crying to the door and -well, i couldn't stand it; it was enough to break a person's heart; so i got out. they took him up to the little one-horse jail in the village, and we all went along to tell him good-bye; and tom was feeling elegant, and says to me, "we'll have a most noble good time and heaps of danger some dark night getting him out of there, huck, and it'll be talked about everywheres and we will be celebrated;" but the old man busted that scheme up the minute he whispered to him about it. he said no, it was his duty to stand whatever the law done to him, and he would stick to the jail plumb through to the end, even if there warn't no door to it. it disappointed tom and graveled him a good deal, but he had to put up with it. but he felt responsible and bound to get his uncle silas free; and he told aunt sally, the last thing, not to worry, because he was going to turn in and work night and day and beat this game and fetch uncle silas out innocent; and she was very loving to him and thanked him and said she knowed he would do his very best. and she told us to help benny take care of the house and the children, and then we had a good-bye cry all around and went back to the farm, and left her there to live with the jailer's wife a month till the trial in october. chapter xi. tom sawyer discovers the murderers well, that was a hard month on us all. poor benny, she kept up the best she could, and me and tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the house, but it kind of went for nothing, as you may say. it was the same up at the jail. we went up every day to see the old people, but it was awful dreary, because the old man warn't sleeping much, and was walking in his sleep considerable and so he got to looking fagged and miserable, and his mind got shaky, and we all got afraid his troubles would break him down and kill him. and whenever we tried to persuade him to feel cheerfuler, he only shook his head and said if we only knowed what it was to carry around a murderer's load in your heart we wouldn't talk that way. tom and all of us kept telling him it wasn't murder, but just accidental killing! but it never made any difference -it was murder, and he wouldn't have it any other way. he actu'ly begun to come out plain and square towards trial time and acknowledge that he tried to kill the man. why, that was awful, you know. it made things seem fifty times as dreadful, and there warn't no more comfort for aunt sally and benny. but he promised he wouldn't say a word about his murder when others was around, and we was glad of that. tom sawyer racked the head off of himself all that month trying to plan some way out for uncle silas, and many's the night he kept me up 'most all night with this kind of tiresome work, but he couldn't seem to get on the right track no way. as for me, i reckoned a body might as well give it up, it all looked so blue and i was so downhearted; but he wouldn't. he stuck to the business right along, and went on planning and thinking and ransacking his head. so at last the trial come on, towards the middle of october, and we was all in the court. the place was jammed, of course. poor old uncle silas, he looked more like a dead person than a live one, his eyes was so hollow and he looked so thin and so mournful. benny she set on one side of him and aunt sally on the other, and they had veils on, and was full of trouble. but tom he set by our lawyer, and had his finger in everywheres, of course. the lawyer let him, and the judge let him. he 'most took the business out of the lawyer's hands sometimes; which was well enough, because that was only a mud-turtle of a back-settlement lawyer and didn't know enough to come in when it rains, as the saying is. they swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up and begun. he made a terrible speech against the old man, that made him moan and groan, and made benny and aunt sally cry. the way he told about the murder kind of knocked us all stupid it was so different from the old man's tale. he said he was going to prove that uncle silas was seen to kill jubiter dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it deliberate, and said he was going to kill him the very minute he hit him with the club; and they seen him hide jubiter in the bushes, and they seen that jubiter was stone-dead. and said uncle silas come later and lugged jubiter down into the tobacker field, and two men seen him do it. and said uncle silas turned out, away in the night, and buried jubiter, and a man seen him at it. i says to myself, poor old uncle silas has been lying about it because he reckoned nobody seen him and he couldn't bear to break aunt sally's heart and benny's; and right he was: as for me, i would 'a' lied the same way, and so would anybody that had any feeling, to save them such misery and sorrow which they warn't no ways responsible for. well, it made our lawyer look pretty sick; and it knocked tom silly, too, for a little spell, but then he braced up and let on that he warn't worried -but i knowed he was, all the same. and the people -my, but it made a stir amongst them! and when that lawyer was done telling the jury what he was going to prove, he set down and begun to work his witnesses. first, he called a lot of them to show that there was bad blood betwixt uncle silas and the diseased; and they told how they had heard uncle silas threaten the diseased, at one time and another, and how it got worse and worse and everybody was talking about it, and how diseased got afraid of his life, and told two or three of them he was certain uncle silas would up and kill him some time or another. tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn't no use, they stuck to what they said. next, they called up lem beebe, and he took the stand. it come into my mind, then, how lem and jim lane had come along talking, that time, about borrowing a dog or something from jubiter dunlap; and that brought up the blackberries and the lantern; and that brought up bill and jack withers, and how they passed by, talking about a nigger stealing uncle silas's corn; and that fetched up our old ghost that come along about the same time and scared us so -and here he was too, and a privileged character, on accounts of his being deef and dumb and a stranger, and they had fixed him a chair inside the railing, where he could cross his legs and be comfortable, whilst the other people was all in a jam so they couldn't hardly breathe. so it all come back to me just the way it was that day; and it made me mournful to think how pleasant it was up to then, and how miserable ever since. lem beebe, sworn, said -"i was a-coming along, that day, second of september, and jim lane was with me, and it was towards sundown, and we heard loud talk, like quarrelling, and we was very close, only the hazel bushes between (that's along the fence); and we heard a voice say, 'i've told you more'n once i'd kill you,' and knowed it was this prisoner's voice; and then we see a club come up above the bushes and down out of sight again. and heard a smashing thump and then a groan or two: and then we crope soft to where we could see, and there laid jupiter dunlap dead, and this prisoner standing over him with the club; and the next he hauled the dead man into a clump of bushes and hid him, and then we stooped low, to be cut of sight, and got away." well, it was awful. it kind of froze everybody's blood to hear it, and the house was 'most as still whilst he was telling it as if there warn't nobody in it. and when he was done, you could hear them gasp and sigh, all over the house, and look at one another the same as to say, "ain't it perfectly terrible -ain't it awful!" now happened a thing that astonished me. all the time the first witnesses was proving the bad blood and the threats and all that, tom sawyer was alive and laying for them; and the minute they was through, he went for them, and done his level best to catch them in lies and spile their testimony. but now, how different. when lem first begun to talk, and never said anything about speaking to jubiter or trying to borrow a dog off of him, he was all alive and laying for lem, and you could see he was getting ready to cross-question him to death pretty soon, and then i judged him and me would go on the stand by and by and tell what we heard him and jim lane say. but the next time i looked at tom i got the cold shivers. why, he was in the brownest study you ever see -miles and miles away. he warn't hearing a word lem beebe was saying; and when he got through he was still in that brown-study, just the same. our lawyer joggled him, and then he looked up startled, and says, "take the witness if you want him. lemme alone -i want to think." well, that beat me. i couldn't understand it. and benny and her mother -oh, they looked sick, they was so troubled. they shoved their veils to one side and tried to get his eye, but it warn't any use, and i couldn't get his eye either. so the mud-turtle he tackled the witness, but it didn't amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it. then they called up jim lane, and he told the very same story over again, exact. tom never listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and thinking, miles and miles away. so the mud-turtle went in alone again and come out just as flat as he done before. the lawyer for the prostitution looked very comfortable, but the judge looked disgusted. you see, tom was just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it was arkansaw law for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted to help his lawyer, and tom had had uncle silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching it and you could see the judge didn't like it much. all that the mud-turtle got out of lem and jim was this: he asked them: "why didn't you go and tell what you saw?" "we was afraid we would get mixed up in it ourselves. and we was just starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon as we come back we found out they'd been searching for the body, so then we went and told brace dunlap all about it." "when was that?" "saturday night, september 9th." the judge he spoke up and says: "mr. sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being accessionary after the fact to the murder." the lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says: "your honor! i protest against this extraordi --" "set down!" says the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his pulpit. "i beg you to respect the court." so he done it. then he called bill withers. bill withers, sworn, said: "i was coming along about sundown, saturday, september 2d, by the prisoner's field, and my brother jack was with me and we seen a man toting off something heavy on his back and allowed it was a nigger stealing corn; we couldn't see distinct; next we made out that it was one man carrying another; and the way it hung, so kind of limp, we judged it was somebody that was drunk; and by the man's walk we said it was parson silas, and we judged he had found sam cooper drunk in the road, which he was always trying to reform him, and was toting him out of danger." it made the people shiver to think of poor old uncle silas toting off the diseased down to the place in his tobacker field where the dog dug up the body, but there warn't much sympathy around amongst the faces, and i heard one cuss say "'tis the coldest blooded work i ever struck, lugging a murdered man around like that, and going to bury him like a animal, and him a preacher at that." tom he went on thinking, and never took no notice; so our lawyer took the witness and done the best he could, and it was plenty poor enough. then jack withers he come on the stand and told the same tale, just like bill done. and after him comes brace dunlap, and he was looking very mournful, and most crying; and there was a rustle and a stir all around, and everybody got ready to listen, and lost of the women folks said, "poor cretur, poor cretur," and you could see a many of them wiping their eyes. brace dunlap, sworn, said: "i was in considerable trouble a long time about my poor brother, but i reckoned things warn't near so bad as he made out, and i couldn't make myself believe anybody would have the heart to hurt a poor harmless cretur like that" -[by jings, i was sure i seen tom give a kind of a faint little start, and then look disappointed again] -"and you know i couldn't think a preacher would hurt him -it warn't natural to think such an onlikely thing -so i never paid much attention, and now i sha'n't ever, ever forgive myself; for if i had a done different, my poor brother would be with me this day, and not laying yonder murdered, and him so harmless." he kind of broke down there and choked up, and waited to get his voice; and people all around said the most pitiful things, and women cried; and it was very still in there, and solemn, and old uncle silas, poor thing, he give a groan right out so everybody heard him. then brace he went on, "saturday, september 2d, he didn't come home to supper. by-and-by i got a little uneasy, and one of my niggers went over to this prisoner's place, but come back and said he warn't there. so i got uneasier and uneasier, and couldn't rest. i went to bed, but i couldn't sleep; and turned out, away late in the night, and went wandering over to this prisoner's place and all around about there a good while, hoping i would run across my poor brother, and never knowing he was out of his troubles and gone to a better shore --" so he broke down and choked up again, and most all the women was crying now. pretty soon he got another start and says: "but it warn't no use; so at last i went home and tried to get some sleep, but couldn't. well, in a day or two everybody was uneasy, and they got to talking about this prisoner's threats, and took to the idea, which i didn't take no stock in, that my brother was murdered so they hunted around and tried to find his body, but couldn't and give it up. and so i reckoned he was gone off somers to have a little peace, and would come back to us when his troubles was kind of healed. but late saturday night, the 9th, lem beebe and jim lane come to my house and told me all -told me the whole awful 'sassination, and my heart was broke. and then i remembered something that hadn't took no hold of me at the time, because reports said this prisoner had took to walking in his sleep and doing all kind of things of no consequence, not knowing what he was about. i will tell you what that thing was that come back into my memory. away late that awful saturday night when i was wandering around about this prisoner's place, grieving and troubled, i was down by the corner of the tobacker field and i heard a sound like digging in a gritty soil; and i crope nearer and peeped through the vines that hung on the rail fence and seen this prisoner shoveling -shoveling with a long-handled shovel -heaving earth into a big hole that was most filled up; his back was to me, but it was bright moonlight and i knowed him by his old green baize work-gown with a splattery white patch in the middle of the back like somebody had hit him with a snowball. he was burying the man he'd murdered!" and he slumped down in his chair crying and sobbing, and 'most everybody in the house busted out wailing, and crying, and saying, "oh, it's awful -awful -horrible! and there was a most tremendous excitement, and you couldn't hear yourself think; and right in the midst of it up jumps old uncle silas, white as a sheet, and sings out: "it's true, every word -i murdered him in cold blood!" by jackson, it petrified them! people rose up wild all over the house, straining and staring for a better look at him, and the judge was hammering with his mallet and the sheriff yelling "order -order in the court -order!" and all the while the old man stood there a-quaking and his eyes a-burning, and not looking at his wife and daughter, which was clinging to him and begging him to keep still, but pawing them off with his hands and saying he would clear his black soul from crime, he would heave off this load that was more than he could bear, and he wouldn't bear it another hour! and then he raged right along with his awful tale, everybody a-staring and gasping, judge, jury, lawyers, and everybody, and benny and aunt sally crying their hearts out. and by george, tom sawyer never looked at him once! never once -just set there gazing with all his eyes at something else, i couldn't tell what. and so the old man raged right along, pouring his words out like a stream of fire: "i killed him! i am guilty! but i never had the notion in my life to hurt him or harm him, spite of all them lies about my threatening him, till the very minute i raised the club -then my heart went cold! -then the pity all went out of it, and i struck to kill! in that one moment all my wrongs come into my mind; all the insults that that man and the scoundrel his brother, there, had put upon me, and how they laid in together to ruin me with the people, and take away my good name, and drive me to some deed that would destroy me and my family that hadn't ever done them no harm, so help me god! and they done it in a mean revenge -for why? because my innocent pure girl here at my side wouldn't marry that rich, insolent, ignorant coward, brace dunlap, who's been sniveling here over a brother he never cared a brass farthing for -"[i see tom give a jump and look glad this time, to a dead certainty]" -and in that moment i've told you about, i forgot my god and remembered only my heart's bitterness, god forgive me, and i struck to kill. in one second i was miserably sorry -oh, filled with remorse; but i thought of my poor family, and i must hide what i'd done for their sakes; and i did hide that corpse in the bushes; and presently i carried it to the tobacker field; and in the deep night i went with my shovel and buried it where --" up jumps tom and shouts: "now, i've got it!" and waves his hand, oh, ever so fine and starchy, towards the old man, and says: "set down! a murder was done, but you never had no hand in it!" well, sir, you could a heard a pin drop. and the old man he sunk down kind of bewildered in his seat and aunt sally and benny didn't know it, because they was so astonished and staring at tom with their mouths open and not knowing what they was about. and the whole house the same. i never seen people look so helpless and tangled up, and i hain't ever seen eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn did. tom says, perfectly ca'm: "your honor, may i speak?" "for god's sake, yes -go on!" says the judge, so astonished and mixed up he didn't know what he was about hardly. then tom he stood there and waited a second or two -that was for to work up an "effect," as he calls it -then he started in just as ca'm as ever, and says: "for about two weeks now there's been a little bill sticking on the front of this courthouse offering two thousand dollars reward for a couple of big di'monds -stole at st. louis. them di'monds is worth twelve thousand dollars. but never mind about that till i get to it. now about this murder. i will tell you all about it -how it happened -who done it -every detail." you could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was worth. "this man here, brace dunlap, that's been sniveling so about his dead brother that you know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry that young girl there, and she wouldn't have him. so he told uncle silas he would make him sorry. uncle silas knowed how powerful he was, and how little chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and worried, and done everything he could think of to smooth him over and get him to be good to him: he even took his noaccount brother jubiter on the farm and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them; and jubiter done everything his brother could contrive to insult uncle silas, and fret and worry him, and try to drive uncle silas into doing him a hurt, so as to injure uncle silas with the people. and it done it. everybody turned against him and said the meanest kind of things about him, and it graduly broke his heart -yes, and he was so worried and distressed that often he warn't hardly in his right mind. "well, on that saturday that we've had so much trouble about, two of these witnesses here, lem beebe and jim lane, come along by where uncle silas and jubiter dunlap was at work -and that much of what they've said is true, the rest is lies. they didn't hear uncle silas say he would kill jubiter; they didn't hear no blow struck; they didn't see no dead man, and they didn't see uncle silas hide anything in the bushes. look at them now -how they set there, wishing they hadn't been so handy with their tongues; anyway, they'll wish it before i get done. "that same saturday evening bill and jack withers did see one man lugging off another one. that much of what they said is true, and the rest is lies. first off they thought it was a nigger stealing uncle silas's corn -you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out somebody overheard them say that. that's because they found out by and by who it was that was doing the lugging, and they know best why they swore here that they took it for uncle silas by the gait -which it wasn't, and they knowed it when they swore to that lie. "a man out in the moonlight did see a murdered person put under ground in the tobacker field -but it wasn't uncle silas that done the burying. he was in his bed at that very time. "now, then, before i go on, i want to ask you if you've ever noticed this: that people, when they're thinking deep, or when they're worried, are most always doing something with their hands, and they don't know it, and don't notice what it is their hands are doing. some stroke their chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up under their chin with their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a button, then there's some that draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their cheek, or under their chin or on their under lip. that's my way. when i'm restless, or worried, or thinking hard, i draw capital v's on my cheek or on my under lip or under my chin, and never anything but capital v's -and half the time i don't notice it and don't know i'm doing it." that was odd. that is just what i do; only i make an o. and i could see people nodding to one another, same as they do when they mean "that's so." "now, then, i'll go on. that same saturday -no, it was the night before -there was a steamboat laying at flagler's landing, forty miles above here, and it was raining and storming like the nation. and there was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di'monds that's advertised out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped ashore with his hand-bag and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping he could get to this town all right and be safe. but he had two pals aboard the boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill him the first chance they got and take the di'monds; because all three stole them, and then this fellow he got hold of them and skipped. "well, he hadn't been gone more'n ten minutes before his pals found it out, and they jumped ashore and lit out after him. prob'ly they burnt matches and found his tracks. anyway, they dogged along after him all day saturday and kept out of his sight; and towards sundown he come to the bunch of sycamores down by uncle silas's field, and he went in there to get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before he showed himself here in the town -and mind you he done that just a little after the time that uncle silas was hitting jubiter dunlap over the head with a club -for he did hit him. "but the minute the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes and slid in after him. "they fell on him and clubbed him to death. "yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never had no mercy on him, but clubbed him to death. and two men that was running along the road heard him yelling that way, and they made a rush into the syca i more bunch -which was where they was bound for, anyway -and when the pals saw them they lit out and the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight as they could go. but only a minute or two -then these two new men slipped back very quiet into the sycamores. "then what did they do? i will tell you what they done. they found where the thief had got his disguise out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one of them strips and puts on that disguise." tom waited a little here, for some more "effect" -then he says, very deliberate: "the man that put on that dead man's disguise was -jubiter dunlap!" "great scott!" everybody shouted, all over the house, and old uncle silas he looked perfectly astonished. "yes, it was jubiter dunlap. not dead, you see. then they pulled off the dead man's boots and put jubiter dunlap's old ragged shoes on the corpse and put the corpse's boots on jubiter dunlap. then jubiter dunlap stayed where he was, and the other man lugged the dead body off in the twilight; and after midnight he went to uncle silas's house, and took his old green work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on, and stole the long-handled shovel and went off down into the tobacker field and buried the murdered man." he stopped, and stood half a minute. then -"and who do you reckon the murdered man was? it was -jake dunlap, the long-lost burglar!" "great scott!" "and the man that buried him was -brace dunlap, his brother!" "great scott!" "and who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here that's letting on all these weeks to be a deef and dumb stranger? it's -jubiter dunlap!" my land, they all busted out in a howl, and you never see the like of that excitement since the day you was born. and tom he made a jump for jubiter and snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there was the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as anybody! and aunt sally and benny they went to hugging and crying and kissing and smothering old uncle silas to that degree he was more muddled and confused and mushed up in his mind than he ever was before, and that is saying considerable. and next, people begun to yell: "tom sawyer! tom sawyer! shut up everybody, and let him go on! go on, tom sawyer!" which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was nuts for tom sawyer to be a public character thataway, and a hero, as he calls it. so when it was all quiet, he says: "there ain't much left, only this. when that man there, bruce dunlap, had most worried the life and sense out of uncle silas till at last he plumb lost his mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a club, i reckon he seen his chance. jubiter broke for the woods to hide, and i reckon the game was for him to slide out, in the night, and leave the country. then brace would make everybody believe uncle silas killed him and hid his body somers; and that would ruin uncle silas and drive him out of the country -hang him, maybe; i dunno. but when they found their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing him, because he was so battered up, they see they had a better thing; disguise both and bury jake and dig him up presently all dressed up in jubiter's clothes, and hire jim lane and bill withers and the others to swear to some handy lies -which they done. and there they set, now, and i told them they would be looking sick before i got done, and that is the way they're looking now. "well, me and huck finn here, we come down on the boat with the thieves, and the dead one told us all about the di'monds, and said the others would murder him if they got the chance; and we was going to help him all we could. we was bound for the sycamores when we heard them killing him in there; but we was in there in the early morning after the storm and allowed nobody hadn't been killed, after all. and when we see jubiter dunlap here spreading around in the very same disguise jake told us he was going to wear, we thought it was jake his own self -and he was goo-gooing deef and dumb, and that was according to agreement. "well, me and huck went on hunting for the corpse after the others quit, and we found it. and was proud, too; but uncle silas he knocked us crazy by telling us he killed the man. so we was mighty sorry we found the body, and was bound to save uncle silas's neck if we could; and it was going to be tough work, too, because he wouldn't let us break him out of prison the way we done with our old nigger jim. "i done everything i could the whole month to think up some way to save uncle silas, but i couldn't strike a thing. so when we come into court to-day i come empty, and couldn't see no chance anywheres. but by and by i had a glimpse of something that set me thinking -just a little wee glimpse -only that, and not enough to make sure; but it set me thinking hard -and watching, when i was only letting on to think; and by and by, sure enough, when uncle silas was piling out that stuff about him killing jubiter dunlap, i catched that glimpse again, and this time i jumped up and shut down the proceedings, because i knowed jubiter dunlap was a-setting here before me. i knowed him by a thing which i seen him do -and i remembered it. i'd seen him do it when i was here a year ago." he stopped then, and studied a minute -laying for an "effect" -i knowed it perfectly well. then he turned off like he was going to leave the platform, and says, kind of lazy and indifferent: "well, i believe that is all." why, you never heard such a howl! -and it come from the whole house: "what was it you seen him do? stay where you are, you little devil! you think you are going to work a body up till his mouth's a-watering and stop there? what was it he done?" that was it, you see -he just done it to get an "effect "; you couldn't 'a' pulled him off of that platform with a yoke of oxen. "oh, it wasn't anything much," he says. "i seen him looking a little excited when he found uncle silas was actuly fixing to hang himself for a murder that warn't ever done; and he got more and more nervous and worried, i a-watching him sharp but not seeming to look at him -and all of a sudden his hands begun to work and fidget, and pretty soon his left crept up and his finger drawed a cross on his cheek, and then i had him!" well, then they ripped and howled and stomped and clapped their hands till tom sawyer was that proud and happy he didn't know what to do with himself. and then the judge he looked down over his pulpit and says: "my boy, did you see all the various details of this strange conspiracy and tragedy that you've been describing?" "no, your honor, i didn't see any of them." "didn't see any of them! why, you've told the whole history straight through, just the same as if you'd seen it with your eyes. how did you manage that?" tom says, kind of easy and comfortable: "oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your honor; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could 'a' done it." "nothing of the kind! not two in a million could 'a' done it. you are a very remarkable boy." then they let go and give tom another smashing round, and he -well, he wouldn't 'a' sold out for a silver mine. then the judge says: "but are you certain you've got this curious history straight?" "perfectly, your honor. here is brace dunlap -let him deny his share of it if he wants to take the chance; i'll engage to make him wish he hadn't said anything...... well, you see he's pretty quiet. and his brother's pretty quiet, and them four witnesses that lied so and got paid for it, they're pretty quiet. and as for uncle silas, it ain't any use for him to put in his oar, i wouldn't believe him under oath!" well, sir, that fairly made them shout; and even the judge he let go and laughed. tom he was just feeling like a rainbow. when they was done laughing he looks up at the judge and says: "your honor, there's a thief in this house." "a thief?" "yes, sir. and he's got them twelve-thousanddollar di'monds on him." by gracious, but it made a stir! everybody went shouting: "which is him? which is him? p'int him out!" and the judge says: "point him out, my lad. sheriff, you will arrest him. which one is it?" tom says: "this late dead man here -jubiter dunlap." then there was another thundering let-go of astonishment and excitement; but jubiter, which was astonished enough before, was just fairly putrified with astonishment this time. and he spoke up, about half crying, and says: "now that's a lie. your honor, it ain't fair; i'm plenty bad enough without that. i done the other things -brace he put me up to it, and persuaded me, and promised he'd make me rich, some day, and i done it, and i'm sorry i done it, and i wisht i hadn't; but i hain't stole no di'monds, and i hain't got no di'monds; i wisht i may never stir if it ain't so. the sheriff can search me and see." tom says: "your honor, it wasn't right to call him a thief, and i'll let up on that a little. he did steal the di'monds, but he didn't know it. he stole them from his brother jake when he was laying dead, after jake had stole them from the other thieves; but jubiter didn't know he was stealing them; and he's been swelling around here with them a month; yes, sir, twelve thousand dollars' worth of di'monds on him -all that riches, and going around here every day just like a poor man. yes, your honor, he's got them on him now." the judge spoke up and says: "search him, sheriff." well, sir, the sheriff he ransacked him high and low, and everywhere: searched his hat, socks, seams, boots, everything -and tom he stood there quiet, laying for another of them effects of hisn. finally the sheriff he give it up, and everybody looked disappointed, and jubiter says: "there, now! what'd i tell you?" and the judge says: "it appears you were mistaken this time, my boy." then tom took an attitude and let on to be studying with all his might, and scratching his head. then all of a sudden he glanced up chipper, and says: "oh, now i've got it ! i'd forgot." which was a lie, and i knowed it. then he says: "will somebody be good enough to lend me a little small screwdriver? there was one in your brother's hand-bag that you smouched, jubiter. but i reckon you didn't fetch it with you." "no, i didn't. i didn't want it, and i give it away." "that's because you didn't know what it was for." jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when the thing tom wanted was passed over the people's heads till it got to him, he says to jubiter: "put up your foot on this chair." and he kneeled down and begun to unscrew the heel-plate, everybody watching; and when he got that big di'mond out of that boot-heel and held it up and let it flash and blaze and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it just took everybody's breath; and jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never see the like of it. and when tom held up the other di'mond he looked sorrier than ever. land! he was thinking how he would 'a' skipped out and been rich and independent in a foreign land if he'd only had the luck to guess what the screwdriver was in the carpet-bag for. well, it was a most exciting time, take it all around, and tom got cords of glory. the judge took the di'monds, and stood up in his pulpit, and cleared his throat, and shoved his spectacles back on his head, and says: "i'll keep them and notify the owners; and when they send for them it will be a real pleasure to me to hand you the two thousand dollars, for you've earned the money -yes, and you've earned the deepest and most sincerest thanks of this community besides, for lifting a wronged and innocent family out of ruin and shame, and saving a good and honorable man from a felon's death, and for exposing to infamy and the punishment of the law a cruel and odious scoundrel and his miserable creatures!" well, sir, if there'd been a brass band to bust out some music, then, it would 'a' been just the perfectest thing i ever see, and tom sawyer he said the same. then the sheriff he nabbed brace dunlap and his crowd, and by and by next month the judge had them up for trial and jailed the whole lot. and everybody crowded back to uncle silas's little old church, and was ever so loving and kind to him and the family and couldn't do enough for them; and uncle silas he preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons you ever struck, and would tangle you up so you couldn't find your way home in daylight; but the people never let on but what they thought it was the clearest and brightest and elegantest sermons that ever was; and they would set there and cry, for love and pity; but, by george, they give me the jim-jams and the fantods and caked up what brains i had, and turned them solid; but by and by they loved the old man's intellects back into him again, and he was as sound in his skull as ever he was, which ain't no flattery, i reckon. and so the whole family was as happy as birds, and nobody could be gratefuler and lovinger than what they was to tom sawyer; and the same to me, though i hadn't done nothing. and when the two thousand dollars come, tom give half of it to me, and never told anybody so, which didn't surprise me, because i knowed him. end of "tom sawyer, detective". . internet wiretap edition of tom sawyer abroad by mark twain from "the writings of mark twain, volume xx" copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain, may 1993. electronic edition by <dell@wiretap.spies.com> tom sawyer abroad chapter i. tom seeks new adventures do you reckon tom sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? i mean the adventures we had down the river, and the time we set the darky jim free and tom got shot in the leg. no, he wasn't. it only just p'isoned him for more. that was all the effect it had. you see, when we three came back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and the village received us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and everybody hurrah'd and shouted, it made us heroes, and that was what tom sawyer had always been hankering to be. for a while he was satisfied. everybody made much of him, and he tilted up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. some called him tom sawyer the traveler, and that just swelled him up fit to bust. you see he laid over me and jim considerable, because we only went down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but tom went by the steamboat both ways. the boys envied me and jim a good deal, but land! they just knuckled to the dirt before tom. well, i don't know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn't been for old nat parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and slim, and kind o' good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account of his age, and about the talkiest old cretur i ever see. for as much as thirty years he'd been the only man in the village that had a reputation -i mean a reputation for being a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud of it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had told about that journey over a million times and enjoyed it every time. and now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring and gawking over his travels, and it just give the poor old man the high strikes. it made him sick to listen to tom, and to hear the people say "my land!" "did you ever!" "my goodness sakes alive!" and all such things; but he couldn't pull away from it, any more than a fly that's got its hind leg fast in the molasses. and always when tom come to a rest, the poor old cretur would chip in on his same old travels and work them for all they were worth; but they were pretty faded, and didn't go for much, and it was pitiful to see. and then tom would take another innings, and then the old man again -and so on, and so on, for an hour and more, each trying to beat out the other. you see, parsons' travels happened like this: when he first got to be postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village. well, he didn't know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave him a conniption. the postage wasn't paid on it, and that was another thing to worry about. there wasn't any way to collect that ten cents, and he reckon'd the gov'ment would hold him responsible for it and maybe turn him out besides, when they found he hadn't collected it. well, at last he couldn't stand it any longer. he couldn't sleep nights, he couldn't eat, he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he da'sn't ask anybody's advice, for the very person he asked for advice might go back on him and let the gov'ment know about the letter. he had the letter buried under the floor, but that did no good; if he happened to see a person standing over the place it'd give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with suspicions, and he would sit up that night till the town was still and dark, and then he would sneak there and get it out and bury it in another place. of course, people got to avoiding him and shaking their heads and whispering, because, the way he was looking and acting, they judged he had killed somebody or done something terrible, they didn't know what, and if he had been a stranger they would've lynched him. well, as i was saying, it got so he couldn't stand it any longer; so he made up his mind to pull out for washington, and just go to the president of the united states and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it before the whole gov'ment, and say, "now, there she is -do with me what you're a mind to; though as heaven is my judge i am an innocent man and not deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind me a family that must starve and yet hadn't had a thing to do with it, which is the whole truth and i can swear to it." so he did it. he had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took him three weeks to get to washington. he saw lots of land and lots of villages and four cities. he was gone 'most eight weeks, and there never was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. his travels made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most talked about; and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country, and from over in the illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him -and there they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. you never see anything like it. well, there wasn't any way now to settle which was the greatest traveler; some said it was nat, some said it was tom. everybody allowed that nat had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever tom was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and climate. it was about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up their dangerous adventures, and try to get ahead that way. that bullet-wound in tom's leg was a tough thing for nat parsons to buck against, but he bucked the best he could; and at a disadvantage, too, for tom didn't set still as he'd orter done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked his limp while nat was painting up the adventure that he had in washington; for tom never let go that limp when his leg got well, but practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right along. nat's adventure was like this; i don't know how true it is; maybe he got it out of a paper, or somewhere, but i will say this for him, that he did know how to tell it. he could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he'd turn pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls got so faint they couldn't stick it out. well, it was this way, as near as i can remember: he come a-loping into washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to the president's house with his letter, and they told him the president was up to the capitol, and just going to start for philadelphia -not a minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. nat 'most dropped, it made him so sick. his horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. but just then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his chance. he rushes out and shouts: "a half a dollar if you git me to the capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty minutes!" "done!" says the darky. nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping and a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it was something awful. nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down nat's feet was on the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn't keep up with the hack. he was horrible scared, but he laid into his work for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs fairly fly. he yelled and shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the crowds along the street, for they could see his legs spinning along under the coach, and his head and shoulders bobbing inside through the windows, and he was in awful danger; but the more they all shouted the more the nigger whooped and yelled and lashed the horses and shouted, "don't you fret, i'se gwine to git you dah in time, boss; i's gwine to do it, sho'!" for you see he thought they were all hurrying him up, and, of course, he couldn't hear anything for the racket he was making. and so they went ripping along, and everybody just petrified to see it; and when they got to the capitol at last it was the quickest trip that ever was made, and everybody said so. the horses laid down, and nat dropped, all tuckered out, and he was all dust and rags and barefooted; but he was in time and just in time, and caught the president and give him the letter, and everything was all right, and the president give him a free pardon on the spot, and nat give the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because he could see that if he hadn't had the hack he wouldn't'a' got there in time, nor anywhere near it. it was a powerful good adventure, and tom sawyer had to work his bullet-wound mighty lively to hold his own against it. well, by and by tom's glory got to paling down gradu'ly, on account of other things turning up for the people to talk about -first a horse-race, and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and on top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival, same as it always does, and by that time there wasn't any more talk about tom, so to speak, and you never see a person so sick and disgusted. pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day out, and when i asked him what was he in such a state about, he said it 'most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a name for himself that he could see. now that is the way boys is always thinking, but he was the first one i ever heard come out and say it. so then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and jim in. tom sawyer was always free and generous that way. there's a-plenty of boys that's mighty good and friendly when you've got a good thing, but when a good thing happens to come their way they don't say a word to you, and try to hog it all. that warn't ever tom sawyer's way, i can say that for him. there's plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you when you've got an apple and beg the core off of you; but when they've got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a core one time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core. but i notice they always git come up with; all you got to do is to wait. well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and tom told us what it was. it was a crusade. "what's a crusade?" i says. he looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a person, and says: "huck finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?" "no," says i, "i don't. and i don't care to, nuther. i've lived till now and done without it, and had my health, too. but as soon as you tell me, i'll know, and that's soon enough. i don't see any use in finding out things and clogging up my head with them when i mayn't ever have any occasion to use 'em. there was lance williams, he learned how to talk choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. now, then, what's a crusade? but i can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a patent-right, there's no money in it. bill thompson he --" "patent-right!" says he. "i never see such an idiot. why, a crusade is a kind of war." i thought he must be losing his mind. but no, he was in real earnest, and went right on, perfectly ca'm. "a crusade is a war to recover the holy land from the paynim." "which holy land?" "why, the holy land -there ain't but one." "what do we want of it?" "why, can't you understand? it's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our duty to take it away from them." "how did we come to let them git hold of it?" "we didn't come to let them git hold of it. they always had it." "why, tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?" "why of course it does. who said it didn't?" i studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. i says: "it's too many for me, tom sawyer. if i had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to --" "oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, huck finn. it ain't a farm, it's entirely different. you see, it's like this. they own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folks, our jews and christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. it's a shame, and we ought not to stand it a minute. we ought to march against them and take it away from them." "why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing i ever see! now, if i had a farm and another person --" "don't i tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? farming is business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally different." "religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?" "certainly; it's always been considered so." jim he shook his head, and says: "mars tom, i reckon dey's a mistake about it somers -dey mos' sholy is. i's religious myself, en i knows plenty religious people, but i hain't run across none dat acts like dat." it made tom hot, and he says: "well, it's enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance! if either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that richard cur de loon, and the pope, and godfrey de bulleyn, and lots more of the most noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land away from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time -and yet here's a couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of missouri setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it than they did! talk about cheek!" well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and jim felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn't been quite so chipper. i couldn't say nothing, and jim he couldn't for a while; then he says: "well, den, i reckon it's all right; beca'se ef dey didn't know, dey ain't no use for po' ignorant folks like us to be trying to know; en so, ef it's our duty, we got to go en tackle it en do de bes' we can. same time, i feel as sorry for dem paynims as mars tom. de hard part gwine to be to kill folks dat a body hain't been 'quainted wid and dat hain't done him no harm. dat's it, you see. ef we wuz to go 'mongst 'em, jist we three, en say we's hungry, en ast 'em for a bite to eat, why, maybe dey's jist like yuther people. don't you reckon dey is? why, dey'd give it, i know dey would, en den --" "then what?" "well, mars tom, my idea is like dis. it ain't no use, we can't kill dem po' strangers dat ain't doin' us no harm, till we've had practice -i knows it perfectly well, mars tom -'deed i knows it perfectly well. but ef we takes a' axe or two, jist you en me en huck, en slips acrost de river to-night arter de moon's gone down, en kills dat sick fam'ly dat's over on the sny, en burns dey house down, en --" "oh, you make me tired!" says tom. "i don't want to argue any more with people like you and huck finn, that's always wandering from the subject, and ain't got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing that's pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!" now that's just where tom sawyer warn't fair. jim didn't mean no harm, and i didn't mean no harm. we knowed well enough that he was right and we was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the how of it, and that was all; and the only reason he couldn't explain it so we could understand it was because we was ignorant -yes, and pretty dull, too, i ain't denying that; but, land! that ain't no crime, i should think. but he wouldn't hear no more about it -just said if we had tackled the thing in the proper spirit, he would 'a' raised a couple of thousand knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a lieutenant and jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed the whole paynim outfit into the sea like flies and come back across the world in a glory like sunset. but he said we didn't know enough to take the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer it again. and he didn't. when he once got set, you couldn't budge him. but i didn't care much. i am peaceable, and don't get up rows with people that ain't doing nothing to me. i allowed if the paynim was satisfied i was, and we would let it stand at that. now tom he got all that notion out of walter scott's book, which he was always reading. and it was a wild notion, because in my opinion he never could've raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would've got licked. i took the book and read all about it, and as near as i could make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky time of it. chapter ii. the balloon ascension well, tom got up one thing after another, but they all had tender spots about 'em somewheres, and he had to shove 'em aside. so at last he was about in despair. then the st. louis papers begun to talk a good deal about the balloon that was going to sail to europe, and tom sort of thought he wanted to go down and see what it looked like, but couldn't make up his mind. but the papers went on talking, and so he allowed that maybe if he didn't go he mightn't ever have another chance to see a balloon; and next, he found out that nat parsons was going down to see it, and that decided him, of course. he wasn't going to have nat parsons coming back bragging about seeing the balloon, and him having to listen to it and keep quiet. so he wanted me and jim to go too, and we went. it was a noble big balloon, and had wings and fans and all sorts of things, and wasn't like any balloon you see in pictures. it was away out toward the edge of town, in a vacant lot, corner of twelfth street; and there was a big crowd around it, making fun of it, and making fun of the man, -a lean pale feller with that soft kind of moonlight in his eyes, you know, -and they kept saying it wouldn't go. it made him hot to hear them, and he would turn on them and shake his fist and say they was animals and blind, but some day they would find they had stood face to face with one of the men that lifts up nations and makes civilizations, and was too dull to know it; and right here on this spot their own children and grandchildren would build a monument to him that would outlast a thousand years, but his name would outlast the monument. and then the crowd would burst out in a laugh again, and yell at him, and ask him what was his name before he was married, and what he would take to not do it, and what was his sister's cat's grandmother's name, and all the things that a crowd says when they've got hold of a feller that they see they can plague. well, some things they said was funny, -yes, and mighty witty too, i ain't denying that, -but all the same it warn't fair nor brave, all them people pitching on one, and they so glib and sharp, and him without any gift of talk to answer back with. but, good land! what did he want to sass back for? you see, it couldn't do him no good, and it was just nuts for them. they had him, you know. but that was his way. i reckon he couldn't help it; he was made so, i judge. he was a good enough sort of cretur, and hadn't no harm in him, and was just a genius, as the papers said, which wasn't his fault. we can't all be sound: we've got to be the way we're made. as near as i can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and that is perfectly natural. if they was humbler, and listened and tried to learn, it would be better for them. the part the professor was in was like a boat, and was big and roomy, and had water-tight lockers around the inside to keep all sorts of things in, and a body could sit on them, and make beds on them, too. we went aboard, and there was twenty people there, snooping around and examining, and old nat parsons was there, too. the professor kept fussing around getting ready, and the people went ashore, drifting out one at a time, and old nat he was the last. of course it wouldn't do to let him go out behind us. we mustn't budge till he was gone, so we could be last ourselves. but he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. i heard a big shout, and turned around -the city was dropping from under us like a shot! it made me sick all through, i was so scared. jim turned gray and couldn't say a word, and tom didn't say nothing, but looked excited. the city went on dropping down, and down, and down; but we didn't seem to be doing nothing but just hang in the air and stand still. the houses got smaller and smaller, and the city pulled itself together, closer and closer, and the men and wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling around, and the streets like threads and cracks; and then it all kind of melted together, and there wasn't any city any more it was only a big scar on the earth, and it seemed to me a body could see up the river and down the river about a thousand miles, though of course it wasn't so much. by and by the earth was a ball -just a round ball, of a dull color, with shiny stripes wriggling and winding around over it, which was rivers. the widder douglas always told me the earth was round like a ball, but i never took any stock in a lot of them superstitions o' hers, and of course i paid no attention to that one, because i could see myself that the world was the shape of a plate, and flat. i used to go up on the hill, and take a look around and prove it for myself, because i reckon the best way to get a sure thing on a fact is to go and examine for yourself, and not take anybody's say-so. but i had to give in now that the widder was right. that is, she was right as to the rest of the world, but she warn't right about the part our village is in; that part is the shape of a plate, and flat, i take my oath! the professor had been quiet all this time, as if he was asleep; but he broke loose now, and he was mighty bitter. he says something like this: "idiots! they said it wouldn't go; and they wanted to examine it, and spy around and get the secret of it out of me. but i beat them. nobody knows the secret but me. nobody knows what makes it move but me; and it's a new power -a new power, and a thousand times the strongest in the earth! steam's foolishness to it! they said i couldn't go to europe. to europe! why, there's power aboard to last five years, and feed for three months. they are fools! what do they know about it? yes, and they said my air-ship was flimsy. why, she's good for fifty years! i can sail the skies all my life if i want to, and steer where i please, though they laughed at that, and said i couldn't. couldn't steer! come here, boy; we'll see. you press these buttons as i tell you." he made tom steer the ship all about and every which way, and learnt him the whole thing in nearly no time; and tom said it was perfectly easy. he made him fetch the ship down 'most to the earth, and had him spin her along so close to the illinois prairies that a body could talk to the farmers, and hear everything they said perfectly plain; and he flung out printed bills to them that told about the balloon, and said it was going to europe. tom got so he could steer straight for a tree till he got nearly to it, and then dart up and skin right along over the top of it. yes, and he showed tom how to land her; and he done it first-rate, too, and set her down in the prairies as soft as wool. but the minute we started to skip out the professor says, "no, you don't!" and shot her up in the air again. it was awful. i begun to beg, and so did jim; but it only give his temper a rise, and he begun to rage around and look wild out of his eyes, and i was scared of him. well, then he got on to his troubles again, and mourned and grumbled about the way he was treated, and couldn't seem to git over it, and especially people's saying his ship was flimsy. he scoffed at that, and at their saying she warn't simple and would be always getting out of order. get out of order! that graveled him; he said that she couldn't any more get out of order than the solar sister. he got worse and worse, and i never see a person take on so. it give me the cold shivers to see him, and so it did jim. by and by he got to yelling and screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn't ever have his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean. he said he would sail his balloon around the globe just to show what he could do, and then he would sink it in the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. well, it was the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming on! he give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat, and he laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works, and put his old pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if anybody come fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him. we set scrunched up together, and thought considerable, but didn't say much -only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something or bust, we was so scared and worried. the night dragged along slow and lonesome. we was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear the farm sounds, and wished we could be down there; but, laws! we just slipped along over them like a ghost, and never left a track. away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a late feel, and a late smell, too -about a two-o'clock feel, as near as i could make out -tom said the professor was so quiet this time he must be asleep, and we'd better -"better what?" i says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over, because i knowed what he was thinking about. "better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship," he says. i says: "no, sir! don' you budge, tom sawyer." and jim -well, jim was kind o' gasping, he was so scared. he says: "oh, mars tom, don't! ef you teches him, we's gone -we's gone sho'! i ain't gwine anear him, not for nothin' in dis worl'. mars tom, he's plumb crazy." tom whispers and says -"that's why we've got to do something. if he wasn't crazy i wouldn't give shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn't hire me to get out -now that i've got used to this balloon and over the scare of being cut loose from the solid ground -if he was in his right mind. but it's no good politics, sailing around like this with a person that's out of his head, and says he's going round the world and then drown us all. we've got to do something, i tell you, and do it before he wakes up, too, or we mayn't ever get another chance. come!" but it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said we wouldn't budge. so tom was for slipping back there by himself to see if he couldn't get at the steering-gear and land the ship. we begged and begged him not to, but it warn't no use; so he got down on his hands and knees, and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we a-holding our breath and watching. after he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower than ever, and it did seem like years to me. but at last we see him get to the professor's head, and sort of raise up soft and look a good spell in his face and listen. then we see him begin to inch along again toward the professor's feet where the steering-buttons was. well, he got there all safe, and was reaching slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked down something that made a noise, and we see him slump down flat an' soft in the bottom, and lay still. the professor stirred, and says, "what's that?" but everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he begun to mutter and mumble and nestle, like a person that's going to wake up, and i thought i was going to die, i was so worried and scared. then a cloud slid over the moon, and i 'most cried, i was so glad. she buried herself deeper and deeper into the cloud, and it got so dark we couldn't see tom. then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear the professor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing the weather. we was afraid every minute he would touch tom, and then we would be goners, and no help; but tom was already on his way back, and when we felt his hands on our knees my breath stopped sudden, and my heart fell down 'mongst my other works, because i couldn't tell in the dark but it might be the professor! which i thought it was. dear! i was so glad to have him back that i was just as near happy as a person could be that was up in the air that way with a deranged man. you can't land a balloon in the dark, and so i hoped it would keep on raining, for i didn't want tom to go meddling any more and make us so awful uncomfortable. well, i got my wish. it drizzled and drizzled along the rest of the night, which wasn't long, though it did seem so; and at daybreak it cleared, and the world looked mighty soft and gray and pretty, and the forests and fields so good to see again, and the horses and cattle standing sober and thinking. next, the sun come ablazing up gay and splendid, and then we began to feel rusty and stretchy, and first we knowed we was all asleep. chapter iii. tom explains we went to sleep about four o'clock, and woke up about eight. the professor was setting back there at his end, looking glum. he pitched us some breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass. that was about the middle of the boat. well, when you are sharp-set, and you eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what it done before. it makes a body feel pretty near comfortable, even when he is up in a balloon with a genius. we got to talking together. there was one thing that kept bothering me, and by and by i says: "tom, didn't we start east?" "yes." "how fast have we been going?" "well, you heard what the professor said when he was raging round. sometimes, he said, we was making fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety, sometimes a hundred; said that with a gale to help he could make three hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale, and wanted it blowing the right direction, he only had to go up higher or down lower to find it." "well, then, it's just as i reckoned. the professor lied." "why?" "because if we was going so fast we ought to be past illinois, oughtn't we?" "certainly." "well, we ain't." "what's the reason we ain't?" "i know by the color. we're right over illinois yet. and you can see for yourself that indiana ain't in sight." "i wonder what's the matter with you, huck. you know by the color?" "yes, of course i do." "what's the color got to do with it?" "it's got everything to do with it. illinois is green, indiana is pink. you show me any pink down here, if you can. no, sir; it's green." "indiana pink? why, what a lie!" "it ain't no lie; i've seen it on the map, and it's pink." you never see a person so aggravated and disgusted. he says: "well, if i was such a numbskull as you, huck finn, i would jump over. seen it on the map! huck finn, did you reckon the states was the same color out-of-doors as they are on the map?" "tom sawyer, what's a map for? ain't it to learn you facts?" "of course." "well, then, how's it going to do that if it tells lies? that's what i want to know." "shucks, you muggins! it don't tell lies." "it don't, don't it?" "no, it don't." "all right, then; if it don't, there ain't no two states the same color. you git around that if you can, tom sawyer." he see i had him, and jim see it too; and i tell you, i felt pretty good, for tom sawyer was always a hard person to git ahead of. jim slapped his leg and says: "i tell you! dat's smart, dat's right down smart. ain't no use, mars tom; he got you dis time, sho'!" he slapped his leg again, and says, "my lan', but it was smart one!" i never felt so good in my life; and yet i didn't know i was saying anything much till it was out. i was just mooning along, perfectly careless, and not expecting anything was going to happen, and never thinking of such a thing at all, when, all of a sudden, out it came. why, it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to any of them. it was just the same way it is when a person is munching along on a hunk of corn-pone, and not thinking about anything, and all of a sudden bites into a di'mond. now all that he knows first off is that it's some kind of gravel he's bit into; but he don't find out it's a di'mond till he gits it out and brushes off the sand and crumbs and one thing or another, and has a look at it, and then he's surprised and glad -yes, and proud too; though when you come to look the thing straight in the eye, he ain't entitled to as much credit as he would 'a' been if he'd been hunting di'monds. you can see the difference easy if you think it over. you see, an accident, that way, ain't fairly as big a thing as a thing that's done a-purpose. anybody could find that di'mond in that corn-pone; but mind you, it's got to be somebody that's got that kind of a corn-pone. that's where that feller's credit comes in, you see; and that's where mine comes in. i don't claim no great things -i don't reckon i could 'a' done it again -but i done it that time; that's all i claim. and i hadn't no more idea i could do such a thing, and warn't any more thinking about it or trying to, than you be this minute. why, i was just as ca'm, a body couldn't be any ca'mer, and yet, all of a sudden, out it come. i've often thought of that time, and i can remember just the way everything looked, same as if it was only last week. i can see it all: beautiful rolling country with woods and fields and lakes for hundreds and hundreds of miles all around, and towns and villages scattered everywheres under us, here and there and yonder; and the professor mooning over a chart on his little table, and tom's cap flopping in the rigging where it was hung up to dry. and one thing in particular was a bird right alongside, not ten foot off, going our way and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the time; and a railroad train doing the same thing down there, sliding among the trees and farms, and pouring out a long cloud of black smoke and now and then a little puff of white; and when the white was gone so long you had almost forgot it, you would hear a little faint toot, and that was the whistle. and we left the bird and the train both behind, 'way behind, and done it easy, too. but tom he was huffy, and said me and jim was a couple of ignorant blatherskites, and then he says: "suppose there's a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist is making a picture of them. what is the main thing that that artist has got to do? he has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute you look at them, hain't he? of course. well, then, do you want him to go and paint both of them brown? certainly you don't. he paints one of them blue, and then you can't make no mistake. it's just the same with the maps. that's why they make every state a different color; it ain't to deceive you, it's to keep you from deceiving yourself." but i couldn't see no argument about that, and neither could jim. jim shook his head, and says: "why, mars tom, if you knowed what chuckleheads dem painters is, you'd wait a long time before you'd fetch one er dem in to back up a fac'. i's gwine to tell you, den you kin see for you'self. i see one of 'em a-paintin' away, one day, down in ole hank wilson's back lot, en i went down to see, en he was paintin' dat old brindle cow wid de near horn gone -you knows de one i means. en i ast him what he's paintin' her for, en he say when he git her painted, de picture's wuth a hundred dollars. mars tom, he could a got de cow fer fifteen, en i tole him so. well, sah, if you'll b'lieve me, he jes' shuck his head, dat painter did, en went on a-dobbin'. bless you, mars tom, dey don't know nothin'." tom lost his temper. i notice a person 'most always does that's got laid out in an argument. he told us to shut up, and maybe we'd feel better. then he see a town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the glass and looked at it, and then looked at his silver turnip, and then at the clock, and then at the turnip again, and says: "that's funny! that clock's near about an hour fast." so he put up his turnip. then he see another clock, and took a look, and it was an hour fast too. that puzzled him. "that's a mighty curious thing," he says. "i don't understand it." then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, and sure enough it was an hour fast too. then his eyes began to spread and his breath to come out kinder gaspy like, and he says: "ger-reat scott, it's the longitude!" i says, considerably scared: "well, what's been and gone and happened now?" "why, the thing that's happened is that this old bladder has slid over illinois and indiana and ohio like nothing, and this is the east end of pennsylvania or new york, or somewheres around there." "tom sawyer, you don't mean it!" "yes, i do, and it's dead sure. we've covered about fifteen degrees of longitude since we left st. louis yesterday afternoon, and them clocks are right. we've come close on to eight hundred miles." i didn't believe it, but it made the cold streaks trickle down my back just the same. in my experience i knowed it wouldn't take much short of two weeks to do it down the mississippi on a raft. jim was working his mind and studying. pretty soon he says: "mars tom, did you say dem clocks uz right?" "yes, they're right." "ain't yo' watch right, too?" "she's right for st. louis, but she's an hour wrong for here." "mars tom, is you tryin' to let on dat de time ain't de same everywheres?" "no, it ain't the same everywheres, by a long shot." jim looked distressed, and says: "it grieves me to hear you talk like dat, mars tom; i's right down ashamed to hear you talk like dat, arter de way you's been raised. yassir, it'd break yo' aunt polly's heart to hear you." tom was astonished. he looked jim over wondering, and didn't say nothing, and jim went on: "mars tom, who put de people out yonder in st. louis? de lord done it. who put de people here whar we is? de lord done it. ain' dey bofe his children? 'cose dey is. well, den! is he gwine to scriminate 'twixt 'em?" "scriminate! i never heard such ignorance. there ain't no discriminating about it. when he makes you and some more of his children black, and makes the rest of us white, what do you call that?" jim see the p'int. he was stuck. he couldn't answer. tom says: "he does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; but this case here ain't no discrimination of his, it's man's. the lord made the day, and he made the night; but he didn't invent the hours, and he didn't distribute them around. man did that." "mars tom, is dat so? man done it?" "certainly." "who tole him he could?" "nobody. he never asked." jim studied a minute, and says: "well, dat do beat me. i wouldn't 'a' tuck no sich resk. but some people ain't scared o' nothin'. dey bangs right ahead; dey don't care what happens. so den dey's allays an hour's diff'unce everywhah, mars tom?" "an hour? no! it's four minutes difference for every degree of longitude, you know. fifteen of 'em's an hour, thirty of 'em's two hours, and so on. when it's one clock tuesday morning in england, it's eight o'clock the night before in new york." jim moved a little way along the locker, and you could see he was insulted. he kept shaking his head and muttering, and so i slid along to him and patted him on the leg, and petted him up, and got him over the worst of his feelings, and then he says: "mars tom talkin' sich talk as dat! choosday in one place en monday in t'other, bofe in the same day! huck, dis ain't no place to joke -up here whah we is. two days in one day! how you gwine to get two days inter one day? can't git two hours inter one hour, kin you? can't git two niggers inter one nigger skin, kin you? can't git two gallons of whisky inter a one-gallon jug, kin you? no, sir, 'twould strain de jug. yes, en even den you couldn't, i don't believe. why, looky here, huck, s'posen de choosday was new year's -now den! is you gwine to tell me it's dis year in one place en las' year in t'other, bofe in de identical same minute? it's de beatenest rubbage! i can't stan' it -i can't stan' to hear tell 'bout it." then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and tom says: "now what's the matter? what's the trouble?" jim could hardly speak, but he says: "mars tom, you ain't jokin', en it's so?" "no, i'm not, and it is so." jim shivered again, and says: "den dat monday could be de las' day, en dey wouldn't be no las' day in england, en de dead wouldn't be called. we mustn't go over dah, mars tom. please git him to turn back; i wants to be whah --" all of a sudden we see something, and all jumped up, and forgot everything and begun to gaze. tom says: "ain't that the --" he catched his breath, then says: "it is, sure as you live! it's the ocean!" that made me and jim catch our breath, too. then we all stood petrified but happy, for none of us had ever seen an ocean, or ever expected to. tom kept muttering: "atlantic ocean -atlantic. land, don't it sound great! and that's it -and we are looking at it -we! why, it's just too splendid to believe!" then we see a big bank of black smoke; and when we got nearer, it was a city -and a monster she was, too, with a thick fringe of ships around one edge; and we wondered if it was new york, and begun to jaw and dispute about it, and, first we knowed, it slid from under us and went flying behind, and here we was, out over the very ocean itself, and going like a cyclone. then we woke up, i tell you! we made a break aft and raised a wail, and begun to beg the professor to turn back and land us, but he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back, and we went, but nobody will ever know how bad we felt. the land was gone, all but a little streak, like a snake, away off on the edge of the water, and down under us was just ocean, ocean, ocean -millions of miles of it, heaving and pitching and squirming, and white sprays blowing from the wave-tops, and only a few ships in sight, wallowing around and laying over, first on one side and then on t'other, and sticking their bows under and then their sterns; and before long there warn't no ships at all, and we had the sky and the whole ocean all to ourselves, and the roomiest place i ever see and the lonesomest. chapter iv. storm and it got lonesomer and lonesomer. there was the big sky up there, empty and awful deep; and the ocean down there without a thing on it but just the waves. all around us was a ring, where the sky and the water come together; yes, a monstrous big ring it was, and we right in the dead center of it -plumb in the center. we was racing along like a prairie fire, but it never made any difference, we couldn't seem to git past that center no way. i couldn't see that we ever gained an inch on that ring. it made a body feel creepy, it was so curious and unaccountable. well, everything was so awful still that we got to talking in a very low voice, and kept on getting creepier and lonesomer and less and less talky, till at last the talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there and "thunk," as jim calls it, and never said a word the longest time. the professor never stirred till the sun was overhead, then he stood up and put a kind of triangle to his eye, and tom said it was a sextant and he was taking the sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. then he ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he begun to carry on again. he said lots of wild things, and, among others, he said he would keep up this hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow afternoon, and then he'd land in london. we said we would be humbly thankful. he was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give us a long look of his blackest kind -one of the maliciousest and suspiciousest looks i ever see. then he says: "you want to leave me. don't try to deny it." we didn't know what to say, so we held in and didn't say nothing at all. he went aft and set down, but he couldn't seem to git that thing out of his mind. every now and then he would rip out something about it, and try to make us answer him, but we dasn't. it got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me i couldn't stand it. it was still worse when night begun to come on. by and by tom pinched me and whispers: "look!" i took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a bottle. i didn't like the looks of that. by and by he took another drink, and pretty soon he begun to sing. it was dark now, and getting black and stormy. he went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it was awful. it got so black we couldn't see him any more, and wished we couldn't hear him, but we could. then he got still; but he warn't still ten minutes till we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his noise again, so we could tell where he was. by and by there was a flash of lightning, and we see him start to get up, but he staggered and fell down. we heard him scream out in the dark: "they don't want to go to england. all right, i'll change the course. they want to leave me. i know they do. well, they shall -and now!" i 'most died when he said that. then he was still again -still so long i couldn't bear it, and it did seem to me the lightning wouldn't ever come again. but at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. my, but his eyes was terrible! he made a lunge for tom, and says, "overboard you go!" but it was already pitch-dark again, and i couldn't see whether he got him or not, and tom didn't make a sound. there was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and i see tom's head sink down outside the boat and disappear. he was on the rope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. the professor let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark again, and jim groaned out, "po' mars tom, he's a goner!" and made a jump for the professor, but the professor warn't there. then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so loud, and then another that was 'way below, and you could only just hear it; and i heard jim say, "po' mars tom!" then it was awful still, and i reckon a person could 'a' counted four thousand before the next flash come. when it come i see jim on his knees, with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was crying. before i could look over the edge it was all dark again, and i was glad, because i didn't want to see. but when the next flash come, i was watching, and down there i see somebody a-swinging in the wind on the ladder, and it was tom! "come up!" i shouts; "come up, tom!" his voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, i couldn't make out what he said, but i thought he asked was the professor up there. i shouts: "no, he's down in the ocean! come up! can we help you?" of course, all this in the dark. "huck, who is you hollerin' at?" "i'm hollerin' at tom." "oh, huck, how kin you act so, when you know po' mars tom --" then he let off an awful scream, and flung his head and his arms back and let off another one, because there was a white glare just then, and he had raised up his face just in time to see tom's, as white as snow, rise above the gunnel and look him right in the eye. he thought it was tom's ghost, you see. tom clumb aboard, and when jim found it was him, and not his ghost, he hugged him, and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on like he was gone crazy, he was so glad. says i: "what did you wait for, tom? why didn't you come up at first?" "i dasn't, huck. i knowed somebody plunged down past me, but i didn't know who it was in the dark. it could 'a' been you, it could 'a' been jim." that was the way with tom sawyer -always sound. he warn't coming up till he knowed where the professor was. the storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was dreadful the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared out, and the wind sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come down. one second you couldn't see your hand before you, and the next you could count the threads in your coatsleeve, and see a whole wide desert of waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. a storm like that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain't at its best when you are up in the sky and lost, and it's wet and lonesome, and there's just been a death in the family. we set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor professor; and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made fun of him and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could, and hadn't a friend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him from brooding his mind away and going deranged. there was plenty of clothes and blankets and everything at the other end, but we thought we'd ruther take the rain than go meddling back there. chapter v. land we tried to make some plans, but we couldn't come to no agreement. me and jim was for turning around and going back home, but tom allowed that by the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far toward england that we might as well go there, and come back in a ship, and have the glory of saying we done it. about midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the ocean, and we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again till sun-up. the sea was sparkling like di'monds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon our things was all dry again. we went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was that there was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood. then tom was disturbed. he says: "you know what that means, easy enough. it means that somebody has got to stay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she'll wander around and go wherever the wind wants her to." "well," i says, "what's she been doing since -er -since we had the accident?" "wandering," he says, kinder troubled --" wandering, without any doubt. she's in a wind now that's blowing her south of east. we don't know how long that's been going on, either." so then he p'inted her east, and said he would hold her there till we rousted out the breakfast. the professor had laid in everything a body could want; he couldn't 'a' been better fixed. there wasn't no milk for the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you could want, and a charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and matches; and wine and liquor, which warn't in our line; and books, and maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end of rubbish, like brass beads and brass jewelry, which tom said was a sure sign that he had an idea of visiting among savages. there was money, too. yes, the professor was well enough fixed. after breakfast tom learned me and jim how to steer, and divided us all up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was out i took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens and wrote a letter home to his aunt polly, telling her everything that had happened to us, and dated it "in the welkin, approaching england," and folded it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it, and wrote above the direction, in big writing, "from tom sawyer, the erronort," and said it would stump old nat parsons, the postmaster, when it come along in the mail. i says: "tom sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon." "well, now, who said it was a welkin, smarty?" "you've wrote it on the letter, anyway." "what of it? that don't mean that the balloon's the welkin." "oh, i thought it did. well, then, what is a welkin?" i see in a minute he was stuck. he raked and scraped around in his mind, but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say: "i don't know, and nobody don't know. it's just a word, and it's a mighty good word, too. there ain't many that lays over it. i don't believe there's any that does." "shucks!" i says. "but what does it mean? -that's the p'int. " "i don't know what it means, i tell you. it's a word that people uses for -for -well, it's ornamental. they don't put ruffles on a shirt to keep a person warm, do they?" "course they don't." "but they put them on, don't they?" "yes." "all right, then; that letter i wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the ruffle on it." i judged that that would gravel jim, and it did. "now, mars tom, it ain't no use to talk like dat; en, moreover, it's sinful. you knows a letter ain't no shirt, en dey ain't no ruffles on it, nuther. dey ain't no place to put 'em on; you can't put em on, and dey wouldn't stay ef you did." "oh do shut up, and wait till something's started that you know something about." "why, mars tom, sholy you can't mean to say i don't know about shirts, when, goodness knows, i's toted home de washin' ever sence --" "i tell you, this hasn't got anything to do with shirts. i only --" "why, mars tom, you said yo'self dat a letter --" "do you want to drive me crazy? keep still. i only used it as a metaphor." that word kinder bricked us up for a minute. then jim says -rather timid, because he see tom was getting pretty tetchy: "mars tom, what is a metaphor?" "a metaphor's a -well, it's a -a -a metaphor's an illustration." he see that didn't git home, so he tried again. "when i say birds of a feather flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying --" "but dey don't, mars tom. no, sir, 'deed dey don't. dey ain't no feathers dat's more alike den a bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits till you catches dem birds together, you'll --" "oh, give us a rest! you can't get the simplest little thing through your thick skull. now don't bother me any more." jim was satisfied to stop. he was dreadful pleased with himself for catching tom out. the minute tom begun to talk about birds i judged he was a goner, because jim knowed more about birds than both of us put together. you see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and that's the way to find out about birds. that's the way people does that writes books about birds, and loves them so that they'll go hungry and tired and take any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it. their name is ornithologers, and i could have been an ornithologer myself, because i always loved birds and creatures; and i started out to learn how to be one, and i see a bird setting on a limb of a high tree, singing with its head tilted back and its mouth open, and before i thought i fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down from the limb, all limp like a rag, and i run and picked him up and he was dead, and his body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin over his eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side of his head; and, laws! i couldn't see nothing more for the tears; and i hain't never murdered no creature since that warn't doing me no harm, and i ain't going to. but i was aggravated about that welkin. i wanted to know. i got the subject up again, and then tom explained, the best he could. he said when a person made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of the people made the welkin ring. he said they always said that, but none of them ever told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. well, that seemed sensible enough, so i was satisfied, and said so. that pleased tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says: "well, it's all right, then; and we'll let bygones be bygones. i don't know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land in london we'll make it ring, anyway, and don't you forget it." he said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and said it was a mighty sight finer to be tom sawyer the erronort than to be tom sawyer the traveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn't give shucks to be a traveler now. toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and we felt pretty good, too, and proud; and we kept watching with the glasses, like columbus discovering america. but we couldn't see nothing but ocean. the afternoon wasted out and the sun shut down, and still there warn't no land anywheres. we wondered what was the matter, but reckoned it would come out all right, so we went on steering east, but went up on a higher level so we wouldn't hit any steeples or mountains in the dark. it was my watch till midnight, and then it was jim's; but tom stayed up, because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land, and didn't stand no regular watch. well, when daylight come, jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked over, and there was the land sure enough -land all around, as far as you could see, and perfectly level and yaller. we didn't know how long we'd been over it. there warn't no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and tom and jim had took it for the sea. they took it for the sea in a dead ca'm; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea and rough, it would 'a' looked smooth, all the same, in the night, that way. we was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and hunted everywheres for london, but couldn't find hair nor hide of it, nor any other settlement -nor any sign of a lake or a river, either. tom was clean beat. he said it warn't his notion of england; he thought england looked like america, and always had that idea. so he said we better have breakfast, and then drop down and inquire the quickest way to london. we cut the breakfast pretty short, we was so impatient. as we slanted along down, the weather began to moderate, and pretty soon we shed our furs. but it kept on moderating, and in a precious little while it was 'most too moderate. we was close down now, and just blistering! we settled down to within thirty foot of the land -that is, it was land if sand is land; for this wasn't anything but pure sand. tom and me clumb down the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt amazing good -that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our feet like hot embers. next, we see somebody coming, and started to meet him; but we heard jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly dancing, and making signs, and yelling. we couldn't make out what he said, but we was scared anyway, and begun to heel it back to the balloon. when we got close enough, we understood the words, and they made me sick: "run! run fo' yo' life! hit's a lion; i kin see him thoo de glass! run, boys; do please heel it de bes' you kin. he's bu'sted outen de menagerie, en dey ain't nobody to stop him!" it made tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. i could only just gasp along the way you do in a dream when there's a ghost gaining on you. tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and waited for me; and as soon as i got a foothold on it he shouted to jim to soar away. but jim had clean lost his head, and said he had forgot how. so tom shinned along up and told me to follow; but the lion was arriving, fetching a most ghastly roar with every lope, and my legs shook so i dasn't try to take one of them out of the rounds for fear the other one would give way under me. but tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a little, and stopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or twelve feet above ground. and there was the lion, a-ripping around under me, and roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder, and only missing it about a quarter of an inch, it seemed to me. it was delicious to be out of his reach, perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and thankful all up one side; but i was hanging there helpless and couldn't climb, and that made me feel perfectly wretched and miserable all down the other. it is most seldom that a person feels so mixed like that; and it is not to be recommended, either. tom asked me what he'd better do, but i didn't know. he asked me if i could hold on whilst he sailed away to a safe place and left the lion behind. i said i could if he didn't go no higher than he was now; but if he went higher i would lose my head and fall, sure. so he said, "take a good grip," and he started. "don't go so fast," i shouted. "it makes my head swim." he had started like a lightning express. he slowed down, and we glided over the sand slower, but still in a kind of sickening way; for it is uncomfortable to see things sliding and gliding under you like that, and not a sound. but pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the lion was catching up. his noise fetched others. you could see them coming on the lope from every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them under me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each other; and so we went skimming along over the sand, and these fellers doing what they could to help us to not forgit the occasion; and then some other beasts come, without an invite, and they started a regular riot down there. we see this plan was a mistake. we couldn't ever git away from them at this gait, and i couldn't hold on forever. so tom took a think, and struck another idea. that was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box revolver, and then sail away while the others stopped to fight over the carcass. so he stopped the balloon still, and done it, and then we sailed off while the fuss was going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off, and they helped me aboard; but by the time we was out of reach again, that gang was on hand once more. and when they see we was really gone and they couldn't get us, they sat down on their hams and looked up at us so kind of disappointed that it was as much as a person could do not to see their side of the matter. chapter vi. it's a caravan i was so weak that the only thing i wanted was a chance to lay down, so i made straight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. but a body couldn't get back his strength in no such oven as that, so tom give the command to soar, and jim started her aloft. we had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it was breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon i was all straight again. tom had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and says: "i bet you a thousand to one i know where we are. we're in the great sahara, as sure as guns!" he was so excited he couldn't hold still; but i wasn't. i says: "well, then, where's the great sahara? in england or in scotland?" "'tain't in either; it's in africa." jim's eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end of interest, because that was where his originals come from; but i didn't more than half believe it. i couldn't, you know; it seemed too awful far away for us to have traveled. but tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions and the sand meant the great desert, sure. he said he could 'a' found out, before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if he had thought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said: "these clocks. they're chronometers. you always read about them in sea voyages. one of them is keeping grinnage time, and the other is keeping st. louis time, like my watch. when we left st. louis it was four in the afternoon by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this grinnage clock. well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about seven o'clock. now i noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went down, and it was half-past five o'clock by the grinnage clock, and half past 11 a.m. by my watch and the other clock. you see, the sun rose and set by my watch in st. louis, and the grinnage clock was six hours fast; but we've come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of setting by the grinnage clock now, and i'm away out -more than four hours and a half out. you see, that meant that we was closing up on the longitude of ireland, and would strike it before long if we was p'inted right -which we wasn't. no, sir, we've been a-wandering -wandering 'way down south of east, and it's my opinion we are in africa. look at this map. you see how the shoulder of africa sticks out to the west. think how fast we've traveled; if we had gone straight east we would be long past england by this time. you watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up, and when we can't cast a shadow we'll find that this grinnage clock is coming mighty close to marking twelve. yes, sir, i think we're in africa; and it's just bully." jim was gazing down with the glass. he shook his head and says: "mars tom, i reckon dey's a mistake som'er's. hain't seen no niggers yit." "that's nothing; they don't live in the desert. what is that, 'way off yonder? gimme a glass." he took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched across the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was. "well," i says, "i reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and we can drop down and look at its number, and --" "oh, shucks, huck finn, i never see such a lunkhead as you. did you s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the earth?" "tom sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly well, and here they are, and you can see for yourself." "of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on the ground." "tom, do you know that to be so?" "certainly i do." "well, then, that map's a liar again. i never see such a liar as that map." he fired up at that, and i was ready for him, and jim was warming his opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument, if tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac and sing out: "camels! -camels!" so i grabbed a glass and jim, too, and took a look, but i was disappointed, and says: "camels your granny; they're spiders." "spiders in a desert, you shad? spiders walking in a procession? you don't ever reflect, huck finn, and i reckon you really haven't got anything to reflect with. don't you know we're as much as a mile up in the air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away? spiders, good land! spiders as big as a cow? perhaps you'd like to go down and milk one of 'em. but they're camels, just the same. it's a caravan, that's what it is, and it's a mile long." "well, then, let's go down and look at it. i don't believe in it, and ain't going to till i see it and know it." "all right," he says, and give the command: "lower away." as we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was camels, sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with bales strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with tassels and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some was riding and some was walking. and the weatherê-well, it was just roasting. and how slow they did creep along! we swooped down now, all of a sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads. the men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their stomachs, some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and scampered every which way, and so did the camels. we see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to the cool weather, and watched them from there. it took them an hour to get together and form the procession again; then they started along, but we could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to anything but us. we poked along, looking down at them with the glasses, and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the other side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the mound that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be watching the caravan or us, we didn't know which. as the caravan got nearer, he sneaked down on the other side and rushed to the other men and horses -for that is what they was -and we see them mount in a hurry; and next, here they come, like a house afire, some with lances and some with long guns, and all of them yelling the best they could. they come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you could only catch glimpses of them struggling together. there must 'a' been six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. then they broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and scurrying and scampering around, and laying into each other like everything; and whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead and wounded people and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and camels racing off in every direction. at last the robbers see they couldn't win, so their chief sounded a signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering across the plain. the last man to go snatched up a child and carried it off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging after him, and followed him away off across the plain till she was separated a long ways from her people; but it warn't no use, and she had to give it up, and we see her sink down on the sand and cover her face with her hands. then tom took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and we come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked him out of the saddle, child and all; and he was jarred considerable, but the child wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. the man went staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him, for we was three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time. we judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. we could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head bowed down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance, and thought her child was clean gone with the man. she was nearly a half a mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child, which was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her before the caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and besides, we reckoned they had enough business on their hands for one while, anyway, with the wounded. we thought we'd chance it, and we did. we swooped down and stopped, and jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up the kid, which was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor, too, considering it was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a horse; and then we started for the mother, and stopped back of her and tolerable near by, and jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he was close back of her the child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she heard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for the kid and snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged jim, and then snatched off a gold chain and hung it around jim's neck, and hugged him again, and jerked up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all the time; and jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we was back up in the sky and the woman was staring up, with the back of her head between her shoulders and the child with its arms locked around her neck. and there she stood, as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in the sky. chapter vii. tom respects the flea "noon!" says tom, and so it was. his shadder was just a blot around his feet. we looked, and the grinnage clock was so close to twelve the difference didn't amount to nothing. so tom said london was right north of us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles north, too; as many as from new york to the city of mexico, he guessed. jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the world, unless it might be some kinds of birds -a wild pigeon, maybe, or a railroad. but tom said he had read about railroads in england going nearly a hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in the world that could do that -except one, and that was a flea. "a flea? why, mars tom, in de fust place he ain't a bird, strickly speakin' --" "he ain't a bird, eh? well, then, what is he?" "i don't rightly know, mars tom, but i speck he's only jist a' animal. no, i reckon dat won't do, nuther, he ain't big enough for a' animal. he mus' be a bug. yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug." "i bet he ain't, but let it go. what's your second place?" "well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but a flea don't." "he don't, don't he? come, now, what is a long distance, if you know?" "why, it's miles, and lots of 'em -anybody knows dat." "can't a man walk miles?" "yassir, he kin." "as many as a railroad?" "yassir, if you give him time." "can't a flea?" "well -i s'pose so -ef you gives him heaps of time." "now you begin to see, don't you, that distance ain't the thing to judge by, at all; it's the time it takes to go the distance in that counts, ain't it?" "well, hit do look sorter so, but i wouldn't 'a' b'lieved it, mars tom." "it's a matter of proportion, that's what it is; and when you come to gauge a thing's speed by its size, where's your bird and your man and your railroad, alongside of a flea? the fastest man can't run more than about ten miles in an hour -not much over ten thousand times his own length. but all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can jump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make five jumps a second too -seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in one little second -for he don't fool away any time stopping and starting -he does them both at the same time; you'll see, if you try to put your finger on him. now that's a common, ordinary, third-class flea's gait; but you take an eyetalian first-class, that's been the pet of the nobility all his life, and hasn't ever knowed what want or sickness or exposure was, and he can jump more than three hundred times his own length, and keep it up all day, five such jumps every second, which is fifteen hundred times his own length. well, suppose a man could go fifteen hundred times his own length in a second -say, a mile and a half. it's ninety miles a minute; it's considerable more than five thousand miles an hour. where's your man now? -yes, and your bird, and your railroad, and your balloon? laws, they don't amount to shucks 'longside of a flea. a flea is just a comet b'iled down small." jim was a good deal astonished, and so was i. jim said: "is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, mars tom?" "yes, they are; they're perfectly true." "well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. i ain't had no respec' for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, dey do deserve it, dat's certain." "well, i bet they do. they've got ever so much more sense, and brains, and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in the world. a person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn it quicker than any other cretur, too. they've been learnt to haul little carriages in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other way according to their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. they've been learnt to do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. s'pose you could cultivate a flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartness a-growing and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener and keener, in the same proportion -where'd the human race be, do you reckon? that flea would be president of the united states, and you couldn't any more prevent it than you can prevent lightning." "my lan', mars tom, i never knowed dey was so much to de beas'. no, sir, i never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'." "there's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other cretur, man or beast, in proportion to size. he's the interestingest of them all. people have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an elephant's, and a locomotive's. shucks, they don't begin with a flea. he can lift two or three hundred times his own weight. and none of them can come anywhere near it. and, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and is very particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his judgment, or whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a mistake. people think all humans are alike to a flea. it ain't so. there's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and i'm one of them. i've never had one of them on me in my life." "mars tom!" "it's so; i ain't joking." "well, sah, i hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." jim couldn't believe it, and i couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a supply and see. tom was right. they went for me and jim by the thousand, but not a one of them lit on tom. there warn't no explaining it, but there it was and there warn't no getting around it. he said it had always been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them as not; they'd never touch him nor bother him. we went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing for the last few hours. the reason was, that the longer we was in that solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it. so we had cramped the speed down, as i was saying, and was having a most noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap. it didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to find land and git ashore, but it was. but we had got over that -clean over it. we was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't want to be anywheres else. why, it seemed just like home; it 'most seemed as if i had been born and raised in it, and jim and tom said the same. and always i had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do this, and making me do that and t'other, and always selecting out the things i didn't want to do, and then giving me sam hill because i shirked and done something else, and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to eat, and plenty of sleep, and strange things to see, and no nagging and no pestering, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. land, i warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at civilization again. now, one of the worst things about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter with trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal 'most all the time, and it's such a heavy load for a person. i hate them newspapers; and i hate letters; and if i had my way i wouldn't allow nobody to load his troubles on to other folks he ain't acquainted with, on t'other side of the world, that way. well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that, and it's the darlingest place there is. we had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights i ever see. the moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we see a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of ink. that's the kind of moonlight to have. mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep. tom said we was right in the midst of the arabian nights now. he said it was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened; so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about. it was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel, and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says: "have you run across a stray camel to-day?" and the man says: "was he blind in his left eye?" "yes." "had he lost an upper front tooth?" "yes." "was his off hind leg lame?" "yes." "was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?" "yes, but you needn't go into no more details -that's the one, and i'm in a hurry. where did you see him?" "i hain't seen him at all," the man says. "hain't seen him at all? how can you describe him so close, then?" "because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got a meaning to it; but most people's eyes ain't any good to them. i knowed a camel had been along, because i seen his track. i knowed he was lame in his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it, and his track showed it. i knowed he was blind on his left side because he only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. i knowed he had lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod his teeth-print showed it. the millet-seed sifted out on one side -the ants told me that; the honey leaked out on the other -the flies told me that. i know all about your camel, but i hain't seen him." jim says: "go on, mars tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin'." "that's all," tom says. "all?" says jim, astonished. "what 'come o' de camel?" "i don't know." "mars tom, don't de tale say?" "no." jim puzzled a minute, then he says: "well! ef dat ain't de beatenes' tale ever i struck. jist gits to de place whah de intrust is gittin' red-hot, en down she breaks. why, mars tom, dey ain't no sense in a tale dat acts like dat. hain't you got no idea whether de man got de camel back er not?" "no, i haven't." i see myself there warn't no sense in the tale, to chop square off that way before it come to anything, but i warn't going to say so, because i could see tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out and the way jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and i don't think it's fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he's down. but tom he whirls on me and says: "what do you think of the tale?" of course, then, i had to come out and make a clean breast and say it did seem to me, too, same as it did to jim, that as long as the tale stopped square in the middle and never got to no place, it really warn't worth the trouble of telling. tom's chin dropped on his breast, and 'stead of being mad, as i reckoned he'd be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to be only sad; and he says: "some people can see, and some can't -just as that man said. let alone a camel, if a cyclone had gone by, you duffers wouldn't 'a' noticed the track." i don't know what he meant by that, and he didn't say; it was just one of his irrulevances, i reckon -he was full of them, sometimes, when he was in a close place and couldn't see no other way out -but i didn't mind. we'd spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he couldn't git away from that little fact. it graveled him like the nation, too, i reckon, much as he tried not to let on. chapter viii. the disappearing lake we had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn't high up. you have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting toward dawn, you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand. we was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and now and then gazing off across the desert to see if anything was stirring, and then down on the shadder again, when all of a sudden almost right under us we see a lot of men and camels laying scattered about, perfectly quiet, like they was asleep. we shut off the power, and backed up and stood over them, and then we see that they was all dead. it give us the cold shivers. and it made us hush down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. we dropped down slow and stopped, and me and tom clumb down and went among them. there was men, and women, and children. they was dried by the sun and dark and shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books. and yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just like they was asleep. some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand, but most of them not, for the sand was thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard. most of the clothes had rotted away; and when you took hold of a rag, it tore with a touch, like spiderweb. tom reckoned they had been laying there for years. some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had swords on and had shawl belts with long, silvermounted pistols stuck in them. all the camels had their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the freight out on the ground. we didn't reckon the swords was any good to the dead people any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. we took a small box, too, because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and then we wanted to bury the people; but there warn't no way to do it that we could think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that would blow away again, of course. then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot on the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people again in this world. we wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't make it out. first we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around and about till their food and water give out and they starved to death; but tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them, and so that guess wouldn't do. so at last we give it up, and judged we wouldn't think about it no more, because it made us low-spirited. then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile, and some little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes made out of curious gold money that we warn't acquainted with. we wondered if we better go and try to find them again and give it back; but tom thought it over and said no, it was a country that was full of robbers, and they would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on us for putting the temptation in their way. so we went on; but i wished we had took all they had, so there wouldn't 'a' been no temptation at all left. we had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was dreadful thirsty when we got aboard again. we went straight for the water, but it was spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to scald your mouth. we couldn't drink it. it was mississippi river water, the best in the world, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that would help, but no, the mud wasn't any better than the water. well, we hadn't been so very, very thirsty before, while we was interested in the lost people, but we was now, and as soon as we found we couldn't have a drink, we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter of a minute before. why, in a little while we wanted to hold our mouths open and pant like a dog. tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, everywheres, because we'd got to find an oasis or there warn't no telling what would happen. so we done it. we kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. two hours -three hours -just gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, sand, and you could see the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. dear, dear, a body don't know what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain he ain't ever going to come to any water any more. at last i couldn't stand it to look around on them baking plains; i laid down on the locker, and give it up. but by and by tom raised a whoop, and there she was! a lake, wide and shiny, with pa'm-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. i never see anything look so good. it was a long ways off, but that warn't anything to us; we just slapped on a hundredmile gait, and calculated to be there in seven minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we couldn't seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like a dream; but we couldn't get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she was gone! tom's eyes took a spread, and he says: "boys, it was a myridge!" said it like he was glad. i didn't see nothing to be glad about. i says: "maybe. i don't care nothing about its name, the thing i want to know is, what's become of it?" jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn't speak, but he wanted to ask that question himself if he could 'a' done it. tom says: "what's become of it? why, you see yourself it's gone." "yes, i know; but where's it gone to?" he looked me over and says: "well, now, huck finn, where would it go to! don't you know what a myridge is?" "no, i don't. what is it?" "it ain't anything but imagination. there ain't anything to it. " it warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and i says: "what's the use you talking that kind of stuff, tom sawyer? didn't i see the lake?" "yes -you think you did." "i don't think nothing about it, i did see it." "i tell you you didn't see it either -because it warn't there to see." it astonished jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of pleading and distressed: "mars tom, please don't say sich things in sich an awful time as dis. you ain't only reskin' yo' own self, but you's reskin' us -same way like anna nias en siffra. de lake wuz dah -i seen it jis' as plain as i sees you en huck dis minute." i says: "why, he seen it himself! he was the very one that seen it first. now, then!" "yes, mars tom, hit's so -you can't deny it. we all seen it, en dat prove it was dah." "proves it! how does it prove it?" "same way it does in de courts en everywheres, mars tom. one pusson might be drunk, or dreamy or suthin', en he could be mistaken; en two might, maybe; but i tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, drunk er sober, it's so. dey ain't no gittin' aroun' dat, en you knows it, mars tom." "i don't know nothing of the kind. there used to be forty thousand million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the other every day. did that prove that the sun done it?" "course it did. en besides, dey warn't no 'casion to prove it. a body 'at's got any sense ain't gwine to doubt it. dah she is now -a sailin' thoo de sky, like she allays done." tom turned on me, then, and says: "what do you say -is the sun standing still?" "tom sawyer, what's the use to ask such a jackass question? anybody that ain't blind can see it don't stand still." "well," he says, "i'm lost in the sky with no company but a passel of low-down animals that don't know no more than the head boss of a university did three or four hundred years ago." it warn't fair play, and i let him know it. i says: "throwin' mud ain't arguin', tom sawyer." "oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah's de lake agi'n!" yelled jim, just then. "now, mars tom, what you gwine to say?" yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert, perfectly plain, trees and all, just the same as it was before. i says: "i reckon you're satisfied now, tom sawyer." but he says, perfectly ca'm: "yes, satisfied there ain't no lake there." jim says: "don't talk so, mars tom -it sk'yers me to hear you. it's so hot, en you's so thirsty, dat you ain't in yo' right mine, mars tom. oh, but don't she look good! 'clah i doan' know how i's gwine to wait tell we gits dah, i's so thirsty." "well, you'll have to wait; and it won't do you no good, either, because there ain't no lake there, i tell you." i says: "jim, don't you take your eye off of it, and i won't, either." "'deed i won't; en bless you, honey, i couldn't ef i wanted to." we went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like nothing, but never gaining an inch on it -and all of a sudden it was gone again! jim staggered, and 'most fell down. when he got his breath he says, gasping like a fish: "mars tom, hit's a ghos', dat's what it is, en i hopes to goodness we ain't gwine to see it no mo'. dey's been a lake, en suthin's happened, en de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's proof. de desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, mars tom, le''s git outen it; i'd ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag'in en de ghos' er dat lake come a-mournin' aroun' us en we asleep en doan' know de danger we's in." "ghost, you gander! it ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness pasted together by a person's imagination. if i -gimme the glass!" he grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right. "it's a flock of birds," he says. "it's getting toward sundown, and they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. they mean business -maybe they're going for food or water, or both. let her go to starboard! -port your hellum! hard down! there -ease up -steady, as you go." we shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out after them. we went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, tom says: "take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the birds." jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. he was most crying, and says: "she's dah ag'in, mars tom, she's dah ag'in, en i knows i's gwine to die, 'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. i wisht i'd never come in dis balloon, dat i does." he wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because i knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so then i wouldn't look any more, either. both of us begged tom to turn off and go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant superstitious blatherskites. yes, and he'll git come up with, one of these days, i says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. they'll stand it for a while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that knows about ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they are. so we was all quiet and still, jim and me being scared, and tom busy. by and by tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says: "now get up and look, you sapheads." we done it, and there was the sure-enough water right under us! -clear, and blue, and cool, and deep, and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest sight that ever was. and all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and shady groves of big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so peaceful and comfortable -enough to make a body cry, it was so beautiful. jim did cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out of his mind for joy. it was my watch, so i had to stay by the works, but tom and jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a lot, and i've tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that ever begun with that water. then we went down and had a swim, and then tom came up and spelled me, and me and jim had a swim, and then jim spelled tom, and me and tom had a foot-race and a boxing-mill, and i don't reckon i ever had such a good time in my life. it warn't so very hot, because it was close on to evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. clothes is well enough in school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them when there ain't no civilization nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness around. "lions a-comin'! -lions! quick, mars tom! jump for yo' life, huck!" oh, and didn't we! we never stopped for clothes, but waltzed up the ladder just so. jim lost his head straight off -he always done it whenever he got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing the ladder up from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he turned on a raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in the sky before he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he was doing. then he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next; so there we was, so high that the lions looked like pups, and we was drifting off on the wind. but tom he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her down, and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a camp-meeting, and i judged he had lost his head, too; for he knowed i was too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and things? but no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. he swooped down to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over the center, and sung out: "leggo, and drop!" i done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile toward the bottom; and when i come up, he says: "now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck back, then i'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard." i done it. now that was ever so smart in tom, because if he had started off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a' come along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till i got tuckered out and fell. and all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying to hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you never see anything like it in the world. there must 'a' been fifty of them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was which, and the sand and fur a-flying. and when they got done, some was dead. and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and have some fun, but which we didn't want any. as for the clothes, they warn't any, any more. every last rag of them was inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, i don't reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk and marbles and fishhooks and things. but i wasn't caring. all that was bothering me was, that all we had now was the professor's clothes, a big enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came across any, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats and things according. still, there was everything a tailor needed, and jim was a kind of jack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or two down for us that would answer. chapter ix. tom discourses on the desert still, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another errand. most of the professor's cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. when you fetch missouri beefsteak to the great sahara, you want to be particular and stay up in the coolish weather. so we reckoned we would drop down into the lion market and see how we could make out there. we hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the reach of the animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled up a dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub tiger. we had to keep the congregation off with the revolver, or they would 'a' took a hand in the proceedings and helped. we carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the rest overboard. then we baited some of the professor's hooks with the fresh meat and went a-fishing. we stood over the lake just a convenient distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever see. it was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak, fried fish, and hot corn-pone. i don't want nothing better than that. we had some fruit to finish off with. we got it out of the top of a monstrous tall tree. it was a very slim tree that hadn't a branch on it from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a featherduster. it was a pa'm-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa'm-tree the minute he see it, by the pictures. we went for cocoanuts in this one, but there warn't none. there was only big loose bunches of things like oversized grapes, and tom allowed they was dates, because he said they answered the description in the arabian nights and the other books. of course they mightn't be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. they done it; so we done it, too, and they was most amazing good. by this time monstrous big birds begun to come and settle on the dead animals. they was plucky creturs; they would tackle one end of a lion that was being gnawed at the other end by another lion. if the lion drove the bird away, it didn't do no good; he was back again the minute the lion was busy. the big birds come out of every part of the sky -you could make them out with the glass while they was still so far away you couldn't see them with your naked eye. tom said the birds didn't find out the meat was there by the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. oh, but ain't that an eye for you! tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of dead lions couldn't look any bigger than a person's finger-nail, and he couldn't imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so far off. it was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe they warn't kin. but jim said that didn't make no difference. he said a hog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. he thought likely a lion wouldn't eat his own father, if he knowed which was him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was uncommon hungry, and eat his mother-in-law any time. but reckoning don't settle nothing. you can reckon till the cows come home, but that don't fetch you to no decision. so we give it up and let it drop. generly it was very still in the desert nights, but this time there was music. a lot of other animals come to dinner; sneaking yelpers that tom allowed was jackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the time. they made a picture in the moonlight that was more different than any picture i ever see. we had a line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn't stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but i was up two or three times to look down at the animals and hear the music. it was like having a front seat at a menagerie for nothing, which i hadn't ever had before, and so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the most of it; i mightn't ever have such a chance again. we went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all day in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see that none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for dinner. we was going to leave the next day, but couldn't, it was too lovely. the day after, when we rose up toward the sky and sailed off eastward, we looked back and watched that place till it warn't nothing but just a speck in the desert, and i tell you it was like saying good-bye to a friend that you ain't ever going to see any more. jim was thinking to himself, and at last he says: "mars tom, we's mos' to de end er de desert now, i speck." "why?" "well, hit stan' to reason we is. you knows how long we's been a-skimmin' over it. mus' be mos' out o' san'. hit's a wonder to me dat it's hilt out as long as it has." "shucks, there's plenty sand, you needn't worry." "oh, i ain't a-worryin', mars tom, only wonderin', dat's all. de lord's got plenty san', i ain't doubtin' dat; but nemmine, he ain't gwyne to was'e it jist on dat account; en i allows dat dis desert's plenty big enough now, jist de way she is, en you can't spread her out no mo' 'dout was'in' san'." "oh, go 'long! we ain't much more than fairly started across this desert yet. the united states is a pretty big country, ain't it? ain't it, huck?" "yes," i says, "there ain't no bigger one, i don't reckon." "well," he says, "this desert is about the shape of the united states, and if you was to lay it down on top of the united states, it would cover the land of the free out of sight like a blanket. there'd be a little corner sticking out, up at maine and away up northwest, and florida sticking out like a turtle's tail, and that's all. we've took california away from the mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of the pacific coast is ours now, and if you laid the great sahara down with her edge on the pacific, she would cover the united states and stick out past new york six hundred miles into the atlantic ocean." i say: "good land! have you got the documents for that, tom sawyer?" "yes, and they're right here, and i've been studying them. you can look for yourself. from new york to the pacific is 2,600 miles. from one end of the great desert to the other is 3,200. the united states contains 3,600,000 square miles, the desert contains 4,162,000. with the desert's bulk you could cover up every last inch of the united states, and in under where the edges projected out, you could tuck england, scotland, ireland, france, denmark, and all germany. yes, sir, you could hide the home of the brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under the great sahara, and you would still have 2,000 square miles of sand left." "well," i says, "it clean beats me. why, tom, it shows that the lord took as much pains makin' this desert as makin' the united states and all them other countries." jim says: "huck, dat don' stan' to reason. i reckon dis desert wa'n't made at all. now you take en look at it like dis -you look at it, and see ef i's right. what's a desert good for? 'taint good for nuthin'. dey ain't no way to make it pay. hain't dat so, huck?" "yes, i reckon." "hain't it so, mars tom?" "i guess so. go on." "ef a thing ain't no good, it's made in vain, ain't it?" "yes." "now, den! do de lord make anything in vain? you answer me dat." "well -no, he don't." "den how come he make a desert?" "well, go on. how did he come to make it?" "mars tom, i b'lieve it uz jes like when you's buildin' a house; dey's allays a lot o' truck en rubbish lef' over. what does you do wid it? doan' you take en k'yart it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot? 'course. now, den, it's my opinion hit was jes like dat -dat de great sahara warn't made at all, she jes happen'." i said it was a real good argument, and i believed it was the best one jim ever made. tom he said the same, but said the trouble about arguments is, they ain't nothing but theories, after all, and theories don't prove nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell, when you are tuckered out butting around and around trying to find out something there ain't no way to find out. and he says: "there's another trouble about theories: there's always a hole in them somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. it's just so with this one of jim's. look what billions and billions of stars there is. how does it come that there was just exactly enough starstuff, and none left over? how does it come there ain't no sand-pile up there?" but jim was fixed for him and says: "what's de milky way? -dat's what i want to know. what's de milky way? answer me dat!" in my opinion it was just a sockdologer. it's only an opinion, it's only my opinion and others may think different; but i said it then and i stand to it now -it was a sockdologer. and moreover, besides, it landed tom sawyer. he couldn't say a word. he had that stunned look of a person that's been shot in the back with a kag of nails. all he said was, as for people like me and jim, he'd just as soon have intellectual intercourse with a catfish. but anybody can say that -and i notice they always do, when somebody has fetched them a lifter. tom sawyer was tired of that end of the subject. so we got back to talking about the size of the desert again, and the more we compared it with this and that and t'other thing, the more nobler and bigger and grander it got to look right along. and so, hunting among the figgers, tom found, by and by, that it was just the same size as the empire of china. then he showed us the spread the empire of china made on the map, and the room she took up in the world. well, it was wonderful to think of, and i says: "why, i've heard talk about this desert plenty of times, but i never knowed before how important she was." then tom says: "important! sahara important! that's just the way with some people. if a thing's big, it's important. that's all the sense they've got. all they can see is size. why, look at england. it's the most important country in the world; and yet you could put it in china's vest-pocket; and not only that, but you'd have the dickens's own time to find it again the next time you wanted it. and look at russia. it spreads all around and everywhere, and yet ain't no more important in this world than rhode island is, and hasn't got half as much in it that's worth saving." away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just on the edge of the world. tom broke off his talk, and reached for a glass very much excited, and took a look, and says: "that's it -it's the one i've been looking for, sure. if i'm right, it's the one the dervish took the man into and showed him all the treasures." so we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the arabian nights. chapter x. the treasure-hill tom said it happened like this. a dervish was stumping it along through the desert, on foot, one blazing hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now he run across a camel-driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some a'ms. but the cameldriver he asked to be excused. the dervish said: "don't you own these camels?" "yes, they're mine." "are you in debt?" "who -me? no." "well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain't in debt is rich -and not only rich, but very rich. ain't it so?" the camel-driver owned up that it was so. then the dervish says: "god has made you rich, and he has made me poor. he has his reasons, and they are wise, blessed be his name. but he has willed that his rich shall help his poor, and you have turned away from me, your brother, in my need, and he will remember this, and you will lose by it." that made the camel-driver feel shaky, but all the same he was born hoggish after money and didn't like to let go a cent; so he begun to whine and explain, and said times was hard, and although he had took a full freight down to balsora and got a fat rate for it, he couldn't git no return freight, and so he warn't making no great things out of his trip. so the dervish starts along again, and says: "all right, if you want to take the risk; but i reckon you've made a mistake this time, and missed a chance." of course the camel-driver wanted to know what kind of a chance he had missed, because maybe there was money in it; so he run after the dervish, and begged him so hard and earnest to take pity on him that at last the dervish gave in, and says: "do you see that hill yonder? well, in that hill is all the treasures of the earth, and i was looking around for a man with a particular good kind heart and a noble, generous disposition, because if i could find just that man, i've got a kind of a salve i could put on his eyes and he could see the treasures and get them out." so then the camel-driver was in a sweat; and he cried, and begged, and took on, and went down on his knees, and said he was just that kind of a man, and said he could fetch a thousand people that would say he wasn't ever described so exact before. "well, then," says the dervish, "all right. if we load the hundred camels, can i have half of them?" the driver was so glad he couldn't hardly hold in, and says: "now you're shouting." so they shook hands on the bargain, and the dervish got out his box and rubbed the salve on the driver's right eye, and the hill opened and he went in, and there, sure enough, was piles and piles of gold and jewels sparkling like all the stars in heaven had fell down. so him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded every camel till he couldn't carry no more; then they said good-bye, and each of them started off with his fifty. but pretty soon the camel-driver come a-running and overtook the dervish and says: "you ain't in society, you know, and you don't really need all you've got. won't you be good, and let me have ten of your camels?" "well," the dervish says, "i don't know but what you say is reasonable enough." so he done it, and they separated and the dervish started off again with his forty. but pretty soon here comes the camel-driver bawling after him again, and whines and slobbers around and begs another ten off of him, saying thirty camel loads of treasures was enough to see a dervish through, because they live very simple, you know, and don't keep house, but board around and give their note. but that warn't the end yet. that ornery hound kept coming and coming till he had begged back all the camels and had the whole hundred. then he was satisfied, and ever so grateful, and said he wouldn't ever forgit the dervish as long as he lived, and nobody hadn't been so good to him before, and liberal. so they shook hands good-bye, and separated and started off again. but do you know, it warn't ten minutes till the camel-driver was unsatisfied again -he was the lowdownest reptyle in seven counties -and he come arunning again. and this time the thing he wanted was to get the dervish to rub some of the salve on his other eye. "why?" said the dervish. "oh, you know," says the driver. "know what?" "well, you can't fool me," says the driver. "you're trying to keep back something from me, you know it mighty well. you know, i reckon, that if i had the salve on the other eye i could see a lot more things that's valuable. come -please put it on." the dervish says: "i wasn't keeping anything back from you. i don't mind telling you what would happen if i put it on. you'd never see again. you'd be stone-blind the rest of your days." but do you know that beat wouldn't believe him. no, he begged and begged, and whined and cried, till at last the dervish opened his box and told him to put it on, if he wanted to. so the man done it, and sure enough he was as blind as a bat in a minute. then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him and made fun of him; and says: "good-bye -a man that's blind hain't got no use for jewelry." and he cleared out with the hundred camels, and left that man to wander around poor and miserable and friendless the rest of his days in the desert. jim said he'd bet it was a lesson to him. "yes," tom says, "and like a considerable many lessons a body gets. they ain't no account, because the thing don't ever happen the same way again -and can't. the time hen scovil fell down the chimbly and crippled his back for life, everybody said it would be a lesson to him. what kind of a lesson? how was he going to use it? he couldn't climb chimblies no more, and he hadn't no more backs to break." "all de same, mars tom, dey is sich a thing as learnin' by expe'ence. de good book say de burnt chile shun de fire." "well, i ain't denying that a thing's a lesson if it's a thing that can happen twice just the same way. there's lots of such things, and they educate a person, that's what uncle abner always said; but there's forty million lots of the other kind -the kind that don't happen the same way twice -and they ain't no real use, they ain't no more instructive than the small-pox. when you've got it, it ain't no good to find out you ought to been vaccinated, and it ain't no good to git vaccinated afterward, because the small-pox don't come but once. but, on the other hand, uncle abner said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful. but i can tell you, jim, uncle abner was down on them people that's all the time trying to dig a lesson out of everything that happens, no matter whether --" but jim was asleep. tom looked kind of ashamed, because you know a person always feels bad when he is talking uncommon fine and thinks the other person is admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that way. of course he oughtn't to go to sleep, because it's shabby; but the finer a person talks the certainer it is to make you sleep, and so when you come to look at it it ain't nobody's fault in particular; both of them's to blame. jim begun to snore -soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a stronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones like the last water sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power to it, and some big coughs and snorts flung in, the way a cow does that is choking to death; and when the person has got to that point he is at his level best, and can wake up a man that is in the next block with a dipperful of loddanum in him, but can't wake himself up although all that awful noise of his'n ain't but three inches from his own ears. and that is the curiosest thing in the world, seems to me. but you rake a match to light the candle, and that little bit of a noise will fetch him. i wish i knowed what was the reason of that, but there don't seem to be no way to find out. now there was jim alarming the whole desert, and yanking the animals out, for miles and miles around, to see what in the nation was going on up there; there warn't nobody nor nothing that was as close to the noise as he was, and yet he was the only cretur that wasn't disturbed by it. we yelled at him and whooped at him, it never done no good; but the first time there come a little wee noise that wasn't of a usual kind it woke him up. no, sir, i've thought it all over, and so has tom, and there ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore. jim said he hadn't been asleep; he just shut his eyes so he could listen better. tom said nobody warn't accusing him. that made him look like he wished he hadn't said anything. and he wanted to git away from the subject, i reckon, because he begun to abuse the cameldriver, just the way a person does when he has got catched in something and wants to take it out of somebody else. he let into the camel-driver the hardest he knowed how, and i had to agree with him; and he praised up the dervish the highest he could, and i had to agree with him there, too. but tom says: "i ain't so sure. you call that dervish so dreadful liberal and good and unselfish, but i don't quite see it. he didn't hunt up another poor dervish, did he? no, he didn't. if he was so unselfish, why didn't he go in there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go along and be satisfied? no, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with a hundred camels. he wanted to get away with all the treasure he could." "why, mars tom, he was willin' to divide, fair and square; he only struck for fifty camels." "because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by." "mars tom, he tole de man de truck would make him bline." "yes, because he knowed the man's character. it was just the kind of a man he was hunting for -a man that never believes in anybody's word or anybody's honorableness, because he ain't got none of his own. i reckon there's lots of people like that dervish. they swindle, right and left, but they always make the other person seem to swindle himself. they keep inside of the letter of the law all the time, and there ain't no way to git hold of them. they don't put the salve on -oh, no, that would be sin; but they know how to fool you into putting it on, then it's you that blinds yourself. i reckon the dervish and the camel-driver was just a pair -a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and a dull, coarse, ignorant one, but both of them rascals, just the same." "mars tom, does you reckon dey's any o' dat kind o' salve in de worl' now?" "yes, uncle abner says there is. he says they've got it in new york, and they put it on country people's eyes and show them all the railroads in the world, and they go in and git them, and then when they rub the salve on the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with their railroads. here's the treasure-hill now. lower away!" we landed, but it warn't as interesting as i thought it was going to be, because we couldn't find the place where they went in to git the treasure. still, it was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere hill itself where such a wonderful thing happened. jim said he wou'dn't 'a' missed it for three dollars, and i felt the same way. and to me and jim, as wonderful a thing as any was the way tom could come into a strange big country like this and go straight and find a little hump like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps that was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but only his own learning and his own natural smartness. we talked and talked it over together, but couldn't make out how he done it. he had the best head on him i ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself equal to captain kidd or george washington. i bet you it would 'a' crowded either of them to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it warn't nothing to tom sawyer; he went across sahara and put his finger on it as easy as you could pick a nigger out of a bunch of angels. we found a pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt around the edges, and loaded up the lion's skin and the tiger's so as they would keep till jim could tan them. chapter xi. the sand-storm we went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full moon was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a string of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. you could see them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. it was another caravan. we cooled down our speed and tagged along after it, just to have company, though it warn't going our way. it was a rattler, that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun come a-streaming across the desert and flung the long shadders of the camels on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-longlegses marching in procession. we never went very near it, because we knowed better now than to act like that and scare people's camels and break up their caravans. it was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style. some of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very tall, and they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and they rock the man that is on them pretty violent and churn up his dinner considerable, i bet you, but they make noble good time, and a camel ain't nowheres with them for speed. the caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started again about the middle of the afternoon. before long the sun begun to look very curious. first it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper, and after that it begun to look like a bloodred ball, and the air got hot and close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and looked thick and foggy, but fiery and dreadful -like it looks through a piece of red glass, you know. we looked down and see a big confusion going on in the caravan, and a rushing every which way like they was scared; and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and laid there perfectly still. pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide wall, and reached from the desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it was coming like the nation, too. then a little faint breeze struck us, and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our faces and sting like fire, and tom sung out: "it's a sand-storm -turn your backs to it!" we done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we couldn't see a thing. in five minutes the boat was level full, and we was setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads out and could hardly breathe. then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off across the desert, awful to look at, i tell you. we dug ourselves out and looked down, and where the caravan was before there wasn't anything but just the sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. all them people and camels was smothered and dead and buried -buried under ten foot of sand, we reckoned, and tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered them, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of that caravan. tom said: "now we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords and pistols from." yes, sir, that was just it. it was as plain as day now. they got buried in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't fit to eat. it seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder. you see, the others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. we was huvvering around them a whole night and 'most a whole day, and had got to feeling real friendly with them, and acquainted. i have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. just so with these. we kind of liked them from the start, and traveling with them put on the finisher. the longer we traveled with them, and the more we got used to their ways, the better and better we liked them, and the gladder and gladder we was that we run across them. we had come to know some of them so well that we called them by name when we was talking about them, and soon got so familiar and sociable that we even dropped the miss and mister and just used their plain names without any handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just the right thing. of course, it wasn't their own names, but names we give them. there was mr. elexander robinson and miss adaline robinson, and colonel jacob mcdougal and miss harryet mcdougal, and judge jeremiah butler and young bushrod butler, and these was big chiefs mostly that wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and dressed like the grand mogul, and their families. but as soon as we come to know them good, and like them very much, it warn't mister, nor judge, nor nothing, any more, but only elleck, and addy, and jake, and hattie, and jerry, and buck, and so on. and you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. now we warn't cold and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right down friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was going, and the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it didn't make no difference what it was. when they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet up in the air. when they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so much homeliker to have their company. when they had a wedding that night, and buck and addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very starchiest of the professor's duds for the blow-out, and when they danced we jined in and shook a foot up there. but it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a funeral that done it with us. it was next morning, just in the still dawn. we didn't know the diseased, and he warn't in our set, but that never made no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was enough, and there warn't no more sincerer tears shed over him than the ones we dripped on him from up there eleven hundred foot on high. yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to part with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so long, anyway. we had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them, too, and now to have death snatch them from right before our faces while we was looking, and leave us so lonesome and friendless in the middle of that big desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we mightn't ever make any more friends on that voyage if we was going to lose them again like that. we couldn't keep from talking about them, and they was all the time coming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was all alive and happy together. we could see the line marching, and the shiny spearheads a-winking in the sun; we could see the dromedaries lumbering along; we could see the wedding and the funeral; and more oftener than anything else we could see them praying, because they don't allow nothing to prevent that; whenever the call come, several times a day, they would stop right there, and stand up and face to the east, and lift back their heads, and spread out their arms and begin, and four or five times they would go down on their knees, and then fall forward and touch their forehead to the ground. well, it warn't good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was in their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it didn't do no good, and made us too down-hearted. jim allowed he was going to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a better world; and tom kept still and didn't tell him they was only mohammedans; it warn't no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad enough just as it was. when we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed there is, and i don't see why people that can afford it don't have it more. and it's terrible good ballast, too; i never see the balloon so steady before. tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do with it; it was good sand, and it didn't seem good sense to throw it away. jim says: "mars tom, can't we tote it back home en sell it? how long'll it take?" "depends on the way we go." "well, sah, she's wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en i reckon we's got as much as twenty loads, hain't we? how much would dat be?" "five dollars." "by jings, mars tom, le's shove for home right on de spot! hit's more'n a dollar en a half apiece, hain't it?" "yes." "well, ef dat ain't makin' money de easiest ever i struck! she jes' rained in -never cos' us a lick o' work. le's mosey right along, mars tom." but tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never heard him. pretty soon he says: "five dollars -sho! look here, this sand's worth -worth -why, it's worth no end of money." "how is dat, mars tom? go on, honey, go on!" "well, the minute people knows it's genuwyne sand from the genuwyne desert of sahara, they'll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a curiosity. all we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all over the united states and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. we've got all of ten thousand dollars' worth of sand in this boat." me and jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout whoopjamboreehoo, and tom says: "and we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we've carted this whole desert over there and sold it out; and there ain't ever going to be any opposition, either, because we'll take out a patent." "my goodness," i says, "we'll be as rich as creosote, won't we, tom?" "yes -creesus, you mean. why, that dervish was hunting in that little hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn't know he was walking over the real ones for a thousand miles. he was blinder than he made the driver." "mars tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?" "well, i don't know yet. it's got to be ciphered, and it ain't the easiest job to do, either, because it's over four million square miles of sand at ten cents a vial." jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook his head and says: "mars tom, we can't 'ford all dem vials -a king couldn't. we better not try to take de whole desert, mars tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho'." tom's excitement died out, too, now, and i reckoned it was on account of the vials, but it wasn't. he set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer, and at last he says: "boys, it won't work; we got to give it up." "why, tom?" "on account of the duties." i couldn't make nothing out of that, neither could jim. i says: "what is our duty, tom? because if we can't git around it, why can't we just do it? people often has to." but he says: "oh, it ain't that kind of duty. the kind i mean is a tax. whenever you strike a frontier -that's the border of a country, you know -you find a customhouse there, and the gov'ment officers comes and rummages among your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it's their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don't pay the duty they'll hog your sand. they call it confiscating, but that don't deceive nobody, it's just hogging, and that's all it is. now if we try to carry this sand home the way we're pointed now, we got to climb fences till we git tired -just frontier after frontier -egypt, arabia, hindostan, and so on, and they'll all whack on a duty, and so you see, easy enough, we can't go that road." "why, tom," i says, "we can sail right over their old frontiers; how are they going to stop us?" he looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave: "huck finn, do you think that would be honest?" i hate them kind of interruptions. i never said nothing, and he went on: "well, we're shut off the other way, too. if we go back the way we've come, there's the new york custom-house, and that is worse than all of them others put together, on account of the kind of cargo we've got." "why?" "well, they can't raise sahara sand in america, of course, and when they can't raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand per cent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it." "there ain't no sense in that, tom sawyer." "who said there was? what do you talk to me like that for, huck finn? you wait till i say a thing's got sense in it before you go to accusing me of saying it." "all right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. go on." jim says: "mars tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything we can't raise in america, en don't make no 'stinction 'twix' anything?" "yes, that's what they do." "mars tom, ain't de blessin' o' de lord de mos' valuable thing dey is?" "yes, it is." "don't de preacher stan' up in de pulpit en call it down on de people?" "yes." "whah do it come from?" "from heaven." "yassir! you's jes' right, 'deed you is, honey -it come from heaven, en dat's a foreign country. now, den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin'?" "no, they don't." "course dey don't; en so it stan' to reason dat you's mistaken, mars tom. dey wouldn't put de tax on po' truck like san', dat everybody ain't 'bleeged to have, en leave it off'n de bes' thing dey is, which nobody can't git along widout." tom sawyer was stumped; he see jim had got him where he couldn't budge. he tried to wiggle out by saying they had forgot to put on that tax, but they'd be sure to remember about it, next session of congress, and then they'd put it on, but that was a poor lame come-off, and he knowed it. he said there warn't nothing foreign that warn't taxed but just that one, and so they couldn't be consistent without taxing it, and to be consistent was the first law of politics. so he stuck to it that they'd left it out unintentional and would be certain to do their best to fix it before they got caught and laughed at. but i didn't feel no more interest in such things, as long as we couldn't git our sand through, and it made me low-spirited, and jim the same. tom he tried to cheer us up by saying he would think up another speculation for us that would be just as good as this one and better, but it didn't do no good, we didn't believe there was any as big as this. it was mighty hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could 'a' bought a country and started a kingdom and been celebrated and happy, and now we was so poor and ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands. the sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold and di'monds, and the feel of it was so soft and so silky and nice, but now i couldn't bear the sight of it, it made me sick to look at it, and i knowed i wouldn't ever feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, and i didn't have it there no more to remind us of what we had been and what we had got degraded down to. the others was feeling the same way about it that i was. i knowed it, because they cheered up so, the minute i says le's throw this truck overboard. well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so tom he divided it up according to fairness and strength. he said me and him would clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and jim threefifths. jim he didn't quite like that arrangement. he says: "course i's de stronges', en i's willin' to do a share accordin', but by jings you's kinder pilin' it onto ole jim, mars tom, hain't you?" "well, i didn't think so, jim, but you try your hand at fixing it, and let's see." so jim reckoned it wouldn't be no more than fair if me and tom done a tenth apiece. tom he turned his back to git room and be private, and then he smole a smile that spread around and covered the whole sahara to the westward, back to the atlantic edge of it where we come from. then he turned around again and said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was satisfied if jim was. jim said he was. so then tom measured off our two-tenths in the bow and left the rest for jim, and it surprised jim a good deal to see how much difference there was and what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said he was powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time and got the first arrangement altered, for he said that even the way it was now, there was more sand than enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed. then we laid into it. it was mighty hot work, and tough; so hot we had to move up into cooler weather or we couldn't 'a' stood it. me and tom took turn about, and one worked while t'other rested, but there warn't nobody to spell poor old jim, and he made all that part of africa damp, he sweated so. we couldn't work good, we was so full of laugh, and jim he kept fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and we had to keep making up things to account for it, and they was pretty poor inventions, but they done well enough, jim didn't see through them. at last when we got done we was 'most dead, but not with work but with laughing. by and by jim was 'most dead, too, but: it was with work; then we took turns and spelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could be, and would set on the gunnel and swab the sweat, and heave and pant, and say how good we was to a poor old nigger, and he wouldn't ever forgit us. he was always the gratefulest nigger i ever see, for any little thing you done for him. he was only nigger outside; inside he was as white as you be. chapter xii. jim standing siege the next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don't make no difference when you are hungry; and when you ain't it ain't no satisfaction to eat, anyway, and so a little grit in the meat ain't no particular drawback, as far as i can see. then we struck the east end of the desert at last, sailing on a northeast course. away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see three little sharp roofs like tents, and tom says: "it's the pyramids of egypt." it made my heart fairly jump. you see, i had seen a many and a many a picture of them, and heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to come on them all of a sudden, that way, and find they was real, 'stead of imaginations, 'most knocked the breath out of me with surprise. it's a curious thing, that the more you hear about a grand and big and bully thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing solid to it. it's just so with george washington, and the same with them pyramids. and moreover, besides, the thing they always said about them seemed to me to be stretchers. there was a feller come to the sunday-school once, and had a picture of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest pyramid covered thirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep mountain, all built out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up in perfectly regular layers, like stair-steps. thirteen acres, you see, for just one building; it's a farm. if it hadn't been in sunday-school, i would 'a' judged it was a lie; and outside i was certain of it. and he said there was a hole in the pyramid, and you could go in there with candles, and go ever so far up a long slanting tunnel, and come to a large room in the stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would find a big stone chest with a king in it, four thousand years old. i said to myself, then, if that ain't a lie i will eat that king if they will fetch him, for even methusalem warn't that old, and nobody claims it. as we come a little nearer we see the yaller sand come to an end in a long straight edge like a blanket, and on to it was joined, edge to edge, a wide country of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through it, and tom said it was the nile. it made my heart jump again, for the nile was another thing that wasn't real to me. now i can tell you one thing which is dead certain: if you will fool along over three thousand miles of yaller sand, all glimmering with heat so that it makes your eyes water to look at it, and you've been a considerable part of a week doing it, the green country will look so like home and heaven to you that it will make your eyes water again. it was just so with me, and the same with jim. and when jim got so he could believe it was the land of egypt he was looking at, he wouldn't enter it standing up, but got down on his knees and took off his hat, because he said it wasn't fitten' for a humble poor nigger to come any other way where such men had been as moses and joseph and pharaoh and the other prophets. he was a presbyterian, and had a most deep respect for moses which was a presbyterian, too, he said. he was all stirred up, and says: "hit's de lan' of egypt, de lan' of egypt, en i's 'lowed to look at it wid my own eyes! en dah's de river dat was turn' to blood, en i's looking at de very same groun' whah de plagues was, en de lice, en de frogs, en de locus', en de hail, en whah dey marked de door-pos', en de angel o' de lord come by in de darkness o' de night en slew de fust-born in all de lan' o' egypt. ole jim ain't worthy to see dis day!" and then he just broke down and cried, he was so thankful. so between him and tom there was talk enough, jim being excited because the land was so full of history -joseph and his brethren, moses in the bulrushers, jacob coming down into egypt to buy corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all them interesting things; and tom just as excited too, because the land was so full of history that was in his line, about noureddin, and bedreddin, and such like monstrous giants, that made jim's wool rise, and a raft of other arabian nights folks, which the half of them never done the things they let on they done, i don't believe. then we struck a disappointment, for one of them early morning fogs started up, and it warn't no use to sail over the top of it, because we would go by egypt, sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass straight for the place where the pyramids was gitting blurred and blotted out, and then drop low and skin along pretty close to the ground and keep a sharp lookout. tom took the hellum, i stood by to let go the anchor, and jim he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his eyes and watch out for danger ahead. we went along a steady gait, but not very fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that jim looked dim and ragged and smoky through it. it was awful still, and we talked low and was anxious. now and then jim would say: "highst her a p'int, mars tom, highst her!" and up she would skip, a foot or two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with people that had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap and stretch; and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he could gap and stretch better, we took him a blip in the back and knocked him off. by and by, after about an hour, and everything dead still and we a-straining our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a little, very sudden, and jim sung out in an awful scare: "oh, for de lan's sake, set her back, mars tom, here's de biggest giant outen de 'rabian nights acomin' for us!" and he went over backwards in the boat. tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill a man's face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a house looks out of its windows, and i laid down and died. i must 'a' been clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then i come to, and tom had hitched a boathook on to the lower lip of the giant and was holding the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head back and got a good long look up at that awful face. jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in a begging way, and working his lips, but not getting anything out. i took only just a glimpse, and was fading out again, but tom says: "he ain't alive, you fools; it's the sphinx!" i never see tom look so little and like a fly; but that was because the giant's head was so big and awful. awful, yes, so it was, but not dreadful any more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind of sad, and not thinking about you, but about other things and larger. it was stone, reddish stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that give it an abused look, and you felt sorrier for it for that. we stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just grand. it was a man's head, or maybe a woman's, on a tiger's body a hundred and twenty-five foot long, and there was a dear little temple between its front paws. all but the head used to be under the sand, for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, but they had just lately dug the sand away and found that little temple. it took a power of sand to bury that cretur; most as much as it would to bury a steamboat, i reckon. we landed jim on top of the head, with an american flag to protect him, it being a foreign land; then we sailed off to this and that and t'other distance, to git what tom called effects and perspectives and proportions, and jim he done the best he could, striking all the different kinds of attitudes and positions he could study up, but standing on his head and working his legs the way a frog does was the best. the further we got away, the littler jim got, and the grander the sphinx got, till at last it was only a clothespin on a dome, as you might say. that's the way perspective brings out the correct proportions, tom said; he said julus cesar's niggers didn't know how big he was, they was too close to him. then we sailed off further and further, till we couldn't see jim at all any more, and then that great figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out over the nile valley so still and solemn and lonesome, and all the little shabby huts and things that was scattered about it clean disappeared and gone, and nothing around it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet, which was the sand. that was the right place to stop, and we done it. we set there a-looking and a-thinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made us feel quiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking over that valley just that same way, and thinking its awful thoughts all to itself for thousands of years. and nobody can't find out what they are to this day. at last i took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering around on that velvet carpet, and some more a-climbing up the cretur's back, and then i see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told tom to look. he done it, and says: "they're bugs. no -hold on; they -why, i believe they're men. yes, it's men -men and horses both. they're hauling a long ladder up onto the sphinx's back -now ain't that odd? and now they're trying to lean it up a -there's some more puffs of smoke -it's guns! huck, they're after jim." we clapped on the power, and went for them abiling. we was there in no time, and come a-whizzing down amongst them, and they broke and scattered every which way, and some that was climbing the ladder after jim let go all holts and fell. we soared up and found him laying on top of the head panting and most tuckered out, partly from howling for help and partly from scare. he had been standing a siege a long time -a week, he said, but it warn't so, it only just seemed so to him because they was crowding him so. they had shot at him, and rained the bullets all around him, but he warn't hit, and when they found he wouldn't stand up and the bullets couldn't git at him when he was laying down, they went for the ladder, and then he knowed it was all up with him if we didn't come pretty quick. tom was very indignant, and asked him why he didn't show the flag and command them to git, in the name of the united states. jim said he done it, but they never paid no attention. tom said he would have this thing looked into at washington, and says: "you'll see that they'll have to apologize for insulting the flag, and pay an indemnity, too, on top of it even if they git off that easy." jim says: "what's an indemnity, mars tom?" "it's cash, that's what it is." "who gits it, mars tom?" "why, we do." "en who gits de apology?" "the united states. or, we can take whichever we please. we can take the apology, if we want to, and let the gov'ment take the money." "how much money will it be, mars tom?" "well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least three dollars apiece, and i don't know but more." "well, den, we'll take de money, mars tom, blame de 'pology. hain't dat yo' notion, too? en hain't it yourn, huck?" we talked it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as any, so we agreed to take the money. it was a new business to me, and i asked tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says: "yes; the little ones does." we was sailing around examining the pyramids, you know, and now we soared up and roosted on the flat top of the biggest one, and found it was just like what the man said in the sunday-school. it was like four pairs of stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up and comes together in a point at the top, only these stair-steps couldn't be clumb the way you climb other stairs; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and you have to be boosted up from behind. the two other pyramids warn't far away, and the people moving about on the sand between looked like bugs crawling, we was so high above them. tom he couldn't hold himself he was so worked up with gladness and astonishment to be in such a celebrated place, and he just dripped history from every pore, seemed to me. he said he couldn't scarcely believe he was standing on the very identical spot the prince flew from on the bronze horse. it was in the arabian night times, he said. somebody give the prince a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could git on him and fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the world, and steer it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land wherever he wanted to. when he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don't see no way, and before you can pull your mind together and do something, that silence has got in and spread itself and done the business. i was embarrassed, jim he was embarrassed, and neither of us couldn't say a word. well, tom he glowered at me a minute, and says: "come, out with it. what do you think?" i says: "tom sawyer, you don't believe that, yourself." "what's the reason i don't? what's to hender me?" "there's one thing to hender you: it couldn't happen, that's all." "what's the reason it couldn't happen?" "you tell me the reason it could happen." "this balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, i should reckon." "why is it?" "why is it? i never saw such an idiot. ain't this balloon and the bronze horse the same thing under different names?" "no, they're not. one is a balloon and the other's a horse. it's very different. next you'll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing." "by jackson, huck's got him ag'in! dey ain't no wigglin' outer dat!" "shut your head, jim; you don't know what you're talking about. and huck don't. look here, huck, i'll make it plain to you, so you can understand. you see, it ain't the mere form that's got anything to do with their being similar or unsimilar, it's the principle involved; and the principle is the same in both. don't you see, now?" i turned it over in my mind, and says: "tom, it ain't no use. principles is all very well, but they don't git around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain't no sort of proof of what a horse can do." "shucks, huck, you don't get the idea at all. now look here a minute -it's perfectly plain. don't we fly through the air?" "yes." "very well. don't we fly high or fly low, just as we please?" "yes." "don't we steer whichever way we want to?" "yes." "and don't we land when and where we please?" "yes." "how do we move the balloon and steer it?" "by touching the buttons." "now i reckon the thing is clear to you at last. in the other case the moving and steering was done by turning a peg. we touch a button, the prince turned a peg. there ain't an atom of difference, you see. i knowed i could git it through your head if i stuck to it long enough." he felt so happy he begun to whistle. but me and jim was silent, so he broke off surprised, and says: "looky here, huck finn, don't you see it yet?" i says: "tom sawyer, i want to ask you some questions." "go ahead," he says, and i see jim chirk up to listen. "as i understand it, the whole thing is in the buttons and the peg -the rest ain't of no consequence. a button is one shape, a peg is another shape, but that ain't any matter?" "no, that ain't any matter, as long as they've both got the same power." "all right, then. what is the power that's in a candle and in a match?" "it's the fire." "it's the same in both, then?" "yes, just the same in both." "all right. suppose i set fire to a carpenter shop with a match, what will happen to that carpenter shop?" "she'll burn up." "and suppose i set fire to this pyramid with a candle -will she burn up?" "of course she won't." "all right. now the fire's the same, both times. why does the shop burn, and the pyramid don't?" "because the pyramid can't burn." "aha! and a horse can't fly!" "my lan', ef huck ain't got him ag'in! huck's landed him high en dry dis time, i tell you! hit's de smartes' trap i ever see a body walk inter -en ef i --" but jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and couldn't go on, and tom was that mad to see how neat i had floored him, and turned his own argument ag'in him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it, that all he could manage to say was that whenever he heard me and jim try to argue it made him ashamed of the human race. i never said nothing; i was feeling pretty well satisfied. when i have got the best of a person that way, it ain't my way to go around crowing about it the way some people does, for i consider that if i was in his place i wouldn't wish him to crow over me. it's better to be generous, that's what i think. chapter xiii. going for tom's pipe: by and by we left jim to float around up there in the neighborhood of the pyramids, and we clumb down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and went in with some arabs and candles, and away in there in the middle of the pyramid we found a room and a big stone box in it where they used to keep that king, just as the man in the sunday-school said; but he was gone, now; somebody had got him. but i didn't take no interest in the place, because there could be ghosts there, of course; not fresh ones, but i don't like no kind. so then we come out and got some little donkeys and rode a piece, and then went in a boat another piece, and then more donkeys, and got to cairo; and all the way the road was as smooth and beautiful a road as ever i see, and had tall date-pa'ms on both sides, and naked children everywhere, and the men was as red as copper, and fine and strong and handsome. and the city was a curiosity. such narrow streets -why, they were just lanes, and crowded with people with turbans, and women with veils, and everybody rigged out in blazing bright clothes and all sorts of colors, and you wondered how the camels and the people got by each other in such narrow little cracks, but they done it -a perfect jam, you see, and everybody noisy. the stores warn't big enough to turn around in, but you didn't have to go in; the storekeeper sat tailor fashion on his counter, smoking his snaky long pipe, and had his things where he could reach them to sell, and he was just as good as in the street, for the camel-loads brushed him as they went by. now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage with fancy dressed men running and yelling in front of it and whacking anybody with a long rod that didn't get out of the way. and by and by along comes the sultan riding horseback at the head of a procession, and fairly took your breath away his clothes was so splendid; and everybody fell flat and laid on his stomach while he went by. i forgot, but a feller helped me to remember. he was one that had a rod and run in front. there was churches, but they don't know enough to keep sunday; they keep friday and break the sabbath. you have to take off your shoes when you go in. there was crowds of men and boys in the church, setting in groups on the stone floor and making no end of noise -getting their lessons by heart, tom said, out of the koran, which they think is a bible, and people that knows better knows enough to not let on. i never see such a big church in my life before, and most awful high, it was; it made you dizzy to look up; our village church at home ain't a circumstance to it; if you was to put it in there, people would think it was a drygoods box. what i wanted to see was a dervish, because i was interested in dervishes on accounts of the one that played the trick on the camel-driver. so we found a lot in a kind of a church, and they called themselves whirling dervishes; and they did whirl, too. i never see anything like it. they had tall sugar-loaf hats on, and linen petticoats; and they spun and spun and spun, round and round like tops, and the petticoats stood out on a slant, and it was the prettiest thing i ever see, and made me drunk to look at it. they was all moslems, tom said, and when i asked him what a moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn't a presbyterian. so there is plenty of them in missouri, though i didn't know it before. we didn't see half there was to see in cairo, because tom was in such a sweat to hunt out places that was celebrated in history. we had a most tiresome time to find the granary where joseph stored up the grain before the famine, and when we found it it warn't worth much to look at, being such an old tumble-down wreck; but tom was satisfied, and made more fuss over it than i would make if i stuck a nail in my foot. how he ever found that place was too many for me. we passed as much as forty just like it before we come to it, and any of them would 'a' done for me, but none but just the right one would suit him; i never see anybody so particular as tom sawyer. the minute he struck the right one he reconnized it as easy as i would reconnize my other shirt if i had one, but how he done it he couldn't any more tell than he could fly; he said so himself. then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived that learned the cadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones, and said it was out of the arabian nights, and he would tell me and jim about it when he got time. well, we hunted and hunted till i was ready to drop, and i wanted tom to give it up and come next day and git somebody that knowed the town and could talk missourian and could go straight to the place; but no, he wanted to find it himself, and nothing else would answer. so on we went. then at last the remarkablest thing happened i ever see. the house was gone -gone hundreds of years ago -every last rag of it gone but just one mud brick. now a person wouldn't ever believe that a backwoods missouri boy that hadn't ever been in that town before could go and hunt that place over and find that brick, but tom sawyer done it. i know he done it, because i see him do it. i was right by his very side at the time, and see him see the brick and see him reconnize it. well, i says to myself, how does he do it? is it knowledge, or is it instink? now there's the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain it their own way. i've ciphered over it a good deal, and it's my opinion that some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. the reason is this: tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum with his name on it and the facts when he went home, and i slipped it out and put another brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn't know the difference -but there was a difference, you see. i think that settles it -it's mostly instink, not knowledge. instink tells him where the exact place is for the brick to be in, and so he reconnizes it by the place it's in, not by the look of the brick. if it was knowledge, not instink, he would know the brick again by the look of it the next time he seen it -which he didn't. so it shows that for all the brag you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it for real unerringness. jim says the same. when we got back jim dropped down and took us in, and there was a young man there with a red skullcap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket and baggy trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it that could talk english and wanted to hire to us as guide and take us to mecca and medina and central africa and everywheres for a half a dollar a day and his keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the power, and by the time we was through dinner we was over the place where the israelites crossed the red sea when pharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught by the waters. we stopped, then, and had a good look at the place, and it done jim good to see it. he said he could see it all, now, just the way it happened; he could see the israelites walking along between the walls of water, and the egyptians coming, from away off yonder, hurrying all they could, and see them start in as the israelites went out, and then when they was all in, see the walls tumble together and drown the last man of them. then we piled on the power again and rushed away and huvvered over mount sinai, and saw the place where moses broke the tables of stone, and where the children of israel camped in the plain and worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as interesting as could be, and the guide knowed every place as well as i knowed the village at home. but we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to a standstill. tom's old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelled and warped that she couldn't hold together any longer, notwithstanding the strings and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. tom he didn't know what to do. the professor's pipe wouldn't answer; it warn't anything but a mershum, and a person that's got used to a cob pipe knows it lays a long ways over all the other pipes in this world, and you can't git him to smoke any other. he wouldn't take mine, i couldn't persuade him. so there he was. he thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we could roust out one in egypt or arabia or around in some of these countries, but the guide said no, it warn't no use, they didn't have them. so tom was pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said he'd got the idea and knowed what to do. he says: "i've got another corn-cob pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearly new. it's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove at home in the village. jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me and huck will camp here on mount sinai till you come back." "but, mars tom, we couldn't ever find de village. i could find de pipe, 'case i knows de kitchen, but my lan', we can't ever find de village, nur sent louis, nur none o' dem places. we don't know de way, mars tom." that was a fact, and it stumped tom for a minute. then he said: "looky here, it can be done, sure; and i'll tell you how. you set your compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the united states. it ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strike the other side of the atlantic. if it's daytime when you strike it, bulge right on, straight west from the upper part of the florida coast, and in an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of the mississippi -at the speed that i'm going to send you. you'll be so high up in the air that the earth will be curved considerable -sorter like a washbowl turned upside down -and you'll see a raft of rivers crawling around every which way, long before you get there, and you can pick out the mississippi without any trouble. then you can follow the river north nearly, an hour and three quarters, till you see the ohio come in; then you want to look sharp, because you're getting near. away up to your left you'll see another thread coming in -that's the missouri and is a little above st. louis. you'll come down low then, so as you can examine the villages as you spin along. you'll pass about twenty-five in the next fifteen minutes, and you'll recognize ours when you see it -and if you don't, you can yell down and ask." "ef it's dat easy, mars tom, i reckon we kin do it -yassir, i knows we kin." the guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he could learn to stand his watch in a little while. "jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an hour," tom said. "this balloon's as easy to manage as a canoe." tom got out the chart and marked out the course and measured it, and says: "to go back west is the shortest way, you see. it's only about seven thousand miles. if you went east, and so on around, it's over twice as far." then he says to the guide, "i want you both to watch the tell-tale all through the watches, and whenever it don't mark three hundred miles an hour, you go higher or drop lower till you find a storm-current that's going your way. there's a hundred miles an hour in this old thing without any wind to help. there's twohundred-mile gales to be found, any time you want to hunt for them." "we'll hunt for them, sir." "see that you do. sometimes you may have to go up a couple of miles, and it'll be p'ison cold, but most of the time you'll find your storm a good deal lower. if you can only strike a cyclone -that's the ticket for you! you'll see by the professor's books that they travel west in these latitudes; and they travel low, too." then he ciphered on the time, and says -"seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an hour -you can make the trip in a day -twenty-four hours. this is thursday; you'll be back here saturday afternoon. come, now, hustle out some blankets and food and books and things for me and huck, and you can start right along. there ain't no occasion to fool around -i want a smoke, and the quicker you fetch that pipe the better." all hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was out and the balloon was ready for america. so we shook hands good-bye, and tom gave his last orders: "it's 1o minutes to 2 p.m. now, mount sinai time. in 24 hours you'll be home, and it'll be 6 to-morrow morning, village time. when you strike the village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in the woods, out of sight; then you rush down, jim, and shove these letters in the post-office, and if you see anybody stirring, pull your slouch down over your face so they won't know you. then you go and slip in the back way to the kitchen and git the pipe, and lay this piece of paper on the kitchen table, and put something on it to hold it, and then slide out and git away, and don't let aunt polly catch a sight of you, nor nobody else. then you jump for the balloon and shove for mount sinai three hundred miles an hour. you won't have lost more than an hour. you'll start back at 7 or 8 a.m., village time, and be here in 24 hours, arriving at 2 or 3 p.m., mount sinai time." tom he read the piece of paper to us. he had wrote on it: "thursday afternoon. tom sawyer the erro nort sends his love to aunt polly from mount sinai where the ark was, and so does huck finn, and she will get it to-morrow morning half-past six." * [* this misplacing of the ark is probably huck's error, not tom's. -m.t.] "that'll make her eyes bulge out and the tears come," he says. then he says: "stand by! one -two -three -away you go!" and away she did go! why, she seemed to whiz out of sight in a second. then we found a most comfortable cave that looked out over the whole big plain, and there we camped to wait for the pipe. the balloon come hack all right, and brung the pipe; but aunt polly had catched jim when he was getting it, and anybody can guess what happened: she sent for tom. so jim he says: "mars tom, she's out on de porch wid her eye sot on de sky a-layin' for you, en she say she ain't gwyne to budge from dah tell she gits hold of you. dey's gwyne to be trouble, mars tom, 'deed dey is." so then we shoved for home, and not feeling very gay, neither. end. . pudd'nhead wilson a tale by mark twain <a whisper to the reader> there is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. observe the ass, for instance; his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> a person who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable to make mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his pen; and so i was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go to press without first subjecting them to rigid and exhausting revision and correction by a trained barrister -if that is what they are called. these chapters are right, now, in every detail, for they were rewritten under the immediate eye of william hicks, who studied law part of a while in southwest missouri thirty-five years ago and then came over here to florence for his health and is still helping for exercise and board in macaroni vermicelli's horse-feed shed which is up the back alley as you turn around the corner out of the piazza del duomo just beyond the house where that stone that dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into the wall when he let on to be watching them build giotto's campanile and yet always got tired looking as soon as beatrice passed along on her way to get a chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a ghibelline outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand where they sell the same old cake to this day and it is just as light and good as it was then, too, and this is not flattery, far from it. he was a little rusty on his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and those two or three legal chapters are right and straight, now. he told me so himself. given under my hand this second day of january, 1893, at the villa viviani, village of settignano, three miles back of florence, on the hills -the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found on this planet, and with it the most dream-like and enchanting sunsets to be found in any planet or even in any solar system -and given, too, in the swell room of the house, with the busts of cerretani senators and other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me as they used to look down upon dante and mutely asking me to adopt them into my family, which i do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will. i tell the truth or trump -but get the trick. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the scene of this chronicle is the town of dawson's landing, on the missouri side of the mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat, below st. louis. in 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest oneand two-story frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles and morning-glories. each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the window-sills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss-rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. when there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there -in sunny weather -stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. a home without a cat -and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat -may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title? all along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick sidewalks, stood locust-trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrance in spring when the clusters of buds came forth. the main street, one block back from the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business street. it was six blocks long, and in each block two or three brick stores three stories high towered above interjected bunches of little frame shops. swinging signs creaked in the wind, the street's whole length. the candy-striped pole which indicates nobility proud and ancient along the palace-bordered canals of venice, indicated merely the humble barber-shop along the main street of dawson's landing. on a chief corner stood a lofty unpainted pole wreathed from top to bottom with tin pots and pans and cups, the chief tinmonger's noisy notice to the world (when the wind blew) that his shop was on hand for business at that corner. the hamlet's front was washed by the clear waters of the great river; its body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its most rearward border fringed itself out and scattered its houses about the base-line of the hills; the hills rose high, inclosing the town in a half-moon curve, clothed with forests from foot to summit. steamboats passed up and down every hour or so. those belonging to the little cairo line and the little memphis line always stopped; the big orleans liners stopped for hails only, or to land passengers or freight; and this was the case also with the great flotilla of "transients." these latter came out of a dozen rivers -the illinois, the missouri, the upper mississippi, the ohio, the monongahela, the tennessee, the red river, the white river, and so on; and were bound every whither and stocked with every imaginable comfort or necessity which the mississippi's communities could want, from the frosty falls of st. anthony down through nine climates to torrid new orleans. dawson's landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich slave-worked grain and pork country back of it. the town was sleepy and comfortable and contented. it was fifty years old, and was growing slowly -very slowly, in fact, but still it was growing. the chief citizen was york leicester driscoll, about forty years old, judge of the county court. he was very proud of his old virginian ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately manners he kept up its traditions. he was fine and just and generous. to be a gentleman -a gentleman without stain or blemish -was his only religion, and to it he was always faithful. he was respected, esteemed and beloved by all the community. he was well off, and was gradually adding to his store. he and his wife were very nearly happy, but not quite, for they had no children. the longing for the treasure of a child had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away, but the blessing never came -and was never to come. with this pair lived the judge's widowed sister, mrs. rachel pratt, and she also was childless -childless, and sorrowful for that reason, and not to be comforted. the women were good and commonplace people, and did their duty and had their reward in clear consciences and the community's approbation. they were presbyterians, the judge was a free-thinker. pembroke howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged about forty, was another old virginian grandee with proved descent from the first families. he was a fine, brave, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest requirements of the virginian rule, a devoted presbyterian, an authority on the "code," and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if any act or word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious to you, and explain it with any weapon you might prefer from brad-awls to artillery. he was very popular with the people, and was the judge's dearest friend. then there was colonel cecil burleigh essex, another f. f. v. of formidable caliber -however, with him we have no concern. percy northumberland driscoll, brother to the judge, and younger than he by five years, was a married man, and had had children around his hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by measles, croup and scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a chance with his effective antediluvian methods; so the cradles were empty. he was a prosperous man, with a good head for speculations, and his fortune was growing. on the 1st of february, 1830, two boy babes were born in his house: one to him, the other to one of his slave girls, roxana by name. roxana was twenty years old. she was up and around the same day, with her hands full, for she was tending both babies. mrs. percy driscoll died within the week. roxy remained in charge of the children. she had her own way, for mr. driscoll soon absorbed himself in his speculations and left her to her own devices. in that same month of february, dawson's landing gained a new citizen. this was mr. david wilson, a young fellow of scotch parentage. he had wandered to this remote region from his birthplace in the interior of the state of new york, to seek his fortune. he was twenty-five years old, college-bred, and had finished a post-college course in an eastern law school a couple of years before. he was a homely, freckled, sandy-haired young fellow, with an intelligent blue eye that had frankness and comradeship in it and a covert twinkle of a pleasant sort. but for an unfortunate remark of his, he would no doubt have entered at once upon a successful career at dawson's landing. but he made his fatal remark the first day he spent in the village, and it "gaged" him. he had just made the acquaintance of a group of citizens when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl and make himself very comprehensively disagreeable, whereupon young wilson said, much as one who is thinking aloud - "i wished i owned half of that dog." "why?" somebody asked. "because i would kill my half." the group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even, but found no light there, no expression that they could read. they fell away from him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him. one said: "'pears to be a fool." "'pears?" said another. "<is>, i reckon you better say." "said he wished he owned <half> of the dog, the idiot," said a third. "what did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half? do you reckon he thought it would live?" "why, he must have thought it, unless he <is> the downrightest fool in the world; because if he had n't thought it, he would have wanted to own the whole dog, knowing that if he killed his half and the other half died, he would be responsible for that half just the same as if he had killed that half instead of his own. don't it look that way to you, gents?" "yes, it does. if he owned one half of the general dog, it would be so; if he owned one end of the dog and another person owned the other end, it would be so, just the same; particularly in the first case, because if you kill one half of a general dog, there ain't any man that can tell whose half it was, but if he owned one end of the dog, maybe he could kill his end of it and -" "no, he could n't, either: he could n't and not be responsible if the other end died, which it would. in my opinion the man ain't in his right mind." "in my opinion he hain't <got> any mind." no. 3 said: "well, he 's a lummox, anyway." "that 's what he is," said no. 4, "he 's a labrick -just a simon-pure labrick, if ever there was one." "yes, sir, he 's a dam fool, that 's the way i put him up," said no. 5. "anybody can think different that wants to, but those are my sentiments." "i 'm with you, gentlemen," said no. 6. "perfect jackass -yes, and it ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. if he ain't a pudd'nhead, i ain't no judge, that 's all." mr. wilson stood elected. the incident was told all over the town, and gravely discussed by everybody. within a week he had lost his first name; pudd'nhead took its place. in time he came to be liked, and well liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it stayed. that first day's verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to get it set aside, or even modified. the nickname soon ceased to carry any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was to continue to hold its place for twenty long years. ii adam was but human -this explains it all. he did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. the mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> pudd'nhead wilson had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he bought a small house on the extreme western verge of the town. between it and judge driscoll's house there was only a grassy yard, with a paling fence dividing the properties in the middle. he hired a small office down in the town and hung out a tin sign with these words on it: david wilson. attorney and counselor-at-law. surveying, conveyancing, etc. but his deadly remark had ruined his chance -at least in the law. no clients came. he took down his sign, after a while, and put it up on his own house with the law features knocked out of it. it offered his services now in the humble capacities of land-surveyor and expert accountant. now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. with scotch patience and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his way into the legal field yet. poor fellow, he could not foresee that it was going to take him such a weary long time to do it. he had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy on his hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was born into the universe of ideas, and studied it and experimented upon it at his house. one of his pet fads was palmistry. to another one he gave no name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose was, but merely said it was an amusement. in fact he had found that his fads added to his reputation as a pudd'nhead; therefore he was growing chary of being too communicative about them. the fad without a name was one which dealt with people's finger-marks. he carried in his coat pocket a shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five inches long and three inches wide. along the lower edge of each strip was pasted a slip of white paper. he asked people to pass their hands through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the natural oil) and then make a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. under this row of faint grease-prints he would write a record on the strip of white paper -thus: john smith, <right hand> - and add the day of the month and the year, then take smith's left hand on another glass strip, and add name and date and the words "left hand." the strips were now returned to the grooved box, and took their place among what wilson called his "records." he often studied his records, examining and poring over them with absorbing interest until far into the night; but what he found there -if he found anything -he revealed to no one. sometimes he copied on paper the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of a finger, and then vastly enlarged it with a pantograph so that he could examine its web of curving lines with ease and convenience. one sweltering afternoon -it was the first day of july, 1830 -he was at work over a set of tangled account-books in his workroom, which looked westward over a stretch of vacant lots, when a conversation outside disturbed him. it was carried on in yells, which showed that the people engaged in it were not close together: "say, roxy, how does yo' baby come on?" this from the distant voice. "fust-rate; how does <you> come on, jasper?" this yell was from close by. "oh. i 's middlin'; hain't got noth'n' to complain of. i 's gwine to come a-court'n' you bimeby, roxy." "<you> is, you black mud-cat! yah -yah -yah! i got somep'n' better to do den 'sociat'n' wid niggers as black as you is. is ole miss cooper's nancy done give you de mitten?" roxy followed this sally with another discharge of care-free laughter. "you 's jealous, roxy, dat 's what 's de matter wid <you>, you hussy -yah -yah -yah! dat 's de time i got you!" "oh, yes, <you> got me, hain't you. 'clah to goodness if dat conceit o' yo'n strikes in, jasper, it gwine to kill you sho'. if you b'longed to me i 'd sell you down de river 'fo' you git too fur gone. fust time i runs acrost yo' marster, i 's gwine to tell him so." this idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties enjoying the friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share of the wit exchanged -for wit they considered it. wilson stepped to the window to observe the combatants; he could not work while their chatter continued. over in the vacant lots was jasper, young, coal-black and of magnificent build, sitting on a wheelbarrow in the pelting sun -at work, supposably, whereas he was in fact only preparing for it by taking an hour's rest before beginning. in front of wilson's porch stood roxy, with a local hand-made baby-wagon, in which sat her two charges -one at each end and facing each other. from roxy's manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but she was not. only one sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did not show. she was of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were imposing and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble and stately grace. her complexion was very fair, with the rosy glow of vigorous health in the cheeks, her face was full of character and expression, her eyes were brown and liquid, and she had a heavy suit of fine soft hair which was also brown, but the fact was not apparent because her head was bound about with a checkered handkerchief and the hair was concealed under it. her face was shapely, intelligent and comely -even beautiful. she had an easy, independent carriage -when she was among her own caste -and a high and "sassy" way, withal; but of course she was meek and humble enough where white people were. to all intents and purposes roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro. she was a slave, and salable as such. her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a negro. he had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the children apart -little as he had commerce with them -by their clothes: for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to its knees, and no jewelry. the white child's name was thomas ;aga becket driscoll, the other's name was valet de chambre: no surname -slaves had n't the privilege. roxana had heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her ear, and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded it on to her darling. it soon got shortened to "chambers," of course. wilson knew roxy by sight, and when the duel of wit began to play out, he stepped outside to gather in a record or two. jasper went to work energetically, at once, perceiving that his leisure was observed. wilson inspected the children and asked - "how old are they, roxy?" "bofe de same age, sir -five months. bawn de fust o' feb'uary." "they 're handsome little chaps. one 's just as handsome as the other, too." a delighted smile exposed the girl's white teeth, and she said: "bless yo' soul, misto wilson, it 's pow'ful nice o' you to say dat, 'ca'se one of 'em ain't on'y a nigger. mighty prime little nigger, <i> al'ays says, but dat 's 'ca'se it 's mine, o' course." "how do you tell them apart, roxy, when they have n't any clothes on?" roxy laughed a laugh proportioned to her size, and said: "oh, <i> kin tell 'em 'part, misto wilson, but i bet marse percy could n't, not to save his life." wilson chatted along for a while, and presently got roxy's finger-prints for his collection -right hand and left -on a couple of his glass strips; then labeled and dated them, and took the "records" of both children, and labeled and dated them also. two months later, on the 3d of september, he took this trio of finger-marks again. he liked to have a "series," two or three "takings" at intervals during the period of childhood, these to be followed by others at intervals of several years. the next day -that is to say, on the 4th of september -something occurred which profoundly impressed roxana. mr. driscoll missed another small sum of money -which is a way of saying that this was not a new thing, but had happened before. in truth it had happened three times before. driscoll's patience was exhausted. he was a fairly humane man toward slaves and other animals; he was an exceedingly humane man toward the erring of his own race. theft he could not abide, and plainly there was a thief in his house. necessarily the thief must be one of his negroes. sharp measures must be taken. he called his servants before him. there were three of these, besides roxy: a man, a woman, and a boy twelve years old. they were not related. mr. driscoll said: "you have all been warned before. it has done no good. this time i will teach you a lesson. i will sell the thief. which of you is the guilty one?" they all shuddered at the threat, for here they had a good home, and a new one was likely to be a change for the worse. the denial was general. none had stolen anything -not money, anyway -a little sugar, or cake, or honey, or something like that, that "marse percy would n't mind or miss," but not money -never a cent of money. they were eloquent in their protestations, but mr. driscoll was not moved by them. he answered each in turn with a stern "name the thief!" the truth was, all were guilty but roxana; she suspected that the others were guilty, but she did not know them to be so. she was horrified to think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she had been saved in the nick of time by a revival in the colored methodist church, a fortnight before, at which time and place she "got religion." the very next day after that gracious experience, while her change of style was fresh upon her and she was vain of her purified condition, her master left a couple of dollars lying unprotected on his desk, and she happened upon that temptation when she was polishing around with a dust-rag. she looked at the money a while with a steadily rising resentment, then she burst out with - "dad blame dat revival, i wisht it had 'a' be'n put off till to-morrow!" then she covered the tempter with a book, and another member of the kitchen cabinet got it. she made this sacrifice as a matter of religious etiquette; as a thing necessary just now, but by no means to be wrested into a precedent; no, a week or two would limber up her piety, then she would be rational again, and the next two dollars that got left out in the cold would find a comforter -and she could name the comforter. was she bad? was she worse than the general run of her race? no. they had an unfair show in the battle of life, and they held it no sin to take military advantage of the enemy -in a small way; in a small way, but not in a large one. they would smouch provisions from the pantry whenever they got a chance; or a brass thimble, or a cake of wax, or an emery bag, or a paper of needles, or a silver spoon, or a dollar bill, or small articles of clothing, or any other property of light value; and so far were they from considering such reprisals sinful, that they would go to church and shout and pray their loudest and sincerest with their plunder in their pockets. a farm smoke-house had to be kept heavily padlocked, for even the colored deacon himself could not resist a ham when providence showed him in a dream, or otherwise, where such a thing hung lonesome and longed for some one to love. but with a hundred hanging before him the deacon would not take two -that is, on the same night. on frosty nights the humane negro prowler would warm the end of a plank and put it up under the cold claws of chickens roosting in a tree; a drowsy hen would step on to the comfortable board, softly clucking her gratitude, and the prowler would dump her into his bag, and later into his stomach, perfectly sure that in taking this trifle from the man who daily robbed him of an inestimable treasure -his liberty -he was not committing any sin that god would remember against him in the last great day. "name the thief!" for the fourth time mr. driscoll had said it, and always in the same hard tone. and now he added these words of awful import: "i give you one minute" -he took out his watch. "if at the end of that time you have not confessed, i will not only sell all four of you, <but> -i will sell you down the river!" it was equivalent to condemning them to hell! no missouri negro doubted this. roxy reeled in her tracks and the color vanished out of her face; the others dropped to their knees as if they had been shot; tears gushed from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up, and three answers came in the one instant: "i done it!" "i done it!" "i done it! -have mercy, marster -lord have mercy on us po' niggers!" "very good," said the master, putting up his watch, "i will sell you <here>, though you don't deserve it. you ought to be sold down the river." the culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of gratitude, and kissed his feet, declaring that they would never forget his goodness and never cease to pray for him as long as they lived. they were sincere, for like a god he had stretched forth his mighty hand and closed the gates of hell against them. he knew, himself, that he had done a noble and gracious thing, and was privately well pleased with his magnanimity; and that night he set the incident down in his diary, so that his son might read it in after years, and be thereby moved to deeds of gentleness and humanity himself. iii whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to adam, the first great benefactor of our race. he brought death into the world. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> percy driscoll slept well the night he saved his house-minions from going down the river, but no wink of sleep visited roxy's eyes. a profound terror had taken possession of her. her child could grow up and be sold down the river! the thought crazed her with horror. if she dozed and lost herself for a moment, the next moment she was on her feet and flying to her child's cradle to see if it was still there. then she would gather it to her heart and pour out her love upon it in a frenzy of kisses, moaning, crying, and saying "dey sha'n't, oh, dey <sha'n't>! -yo' po' mammy will kill you fust!" once, when she was tucking it back in its cradle again, the other child nestled in its sleep and attracted her attention. she went and stood over it a long time, communing with herself: "what has my po' baby done, dat he could n't have yo' luck? he hain't done noth'n'. god was good to you; why war n't he good to him? dey can't sell <you> down de river. i hates yo' pappy; he ain't got no heart -for niggers he hain't, anyways. i hates him, en i could kill him!" she paused a while, thinking; then she burst into wild sobbings again, and turned away, saying, "oh, i got to kill my chile, dey ain't no yuther way, -killin' <him> would n't save de chile fum goin' down de river. oh, i got to do it, yo' po' mammy's got to kill you to save you, honey" -she gathered her baby to her bosom, now, and began to smother it with caresses -"mammy 's got to kill you -how <kin> i do it! but yo' mammy ain't gwine to desert you, -no, no; <dah>, don't cry -she gwine <wid> you, she gwine to kill herself too. come along, honey, come along wid mammy; we gwine to jump in de river, den de troubles o' dis worl' is all over -dey don't sell po' niggers down the river over <yonder>." she started toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing it; midway she stopped, suddenly. she had caught sight of her new sunday gown -a cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic figures. she surveyed it wistfully, longingly. "hain't ever wore it yet," she said, "en it 's jist lovely." then she nodded her head in response to a pleasant idea, and added, "no, i ain't gwine to be fished out, wid everybody lookin' at me, in dis mis'able ole linsey-woolsey." she put down the child and made the change. she looked in the glass and was astonished at her beauty. she resolved to make her death-toilet perfect. she took off her handkerchief-turban and dressed her glossy wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of rather lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious artificial flowers; finally she threw over her shoulders a fluffy thing called a "cloud" in that day, which was of a blazing red complexion. then she was ready for the tomb. she gathered up her baby once more; but when her eye fell upon its miserably short little gray tow-linen shirt and noted the contrast between its pauper shabbiness and her own volcanic irruption of infernal splendors, her mother-heart was touched, and she was ashamed. "no, dolling, mammy ain't gwine to treat you so. de angels is gwine to 'mire you jist as much as dey does yo' mammy. ain't gwine to have 'em putt'n' dey han's up 'fo' dey eyes en sayin' to david en goliah en dem yuther prophets, `dat chile is dress' too indelicate fo' dis place.'" by this time she had stripped off the shirt. now she clothed the naked little creature in one of thomas a becket's snowy long baby-gowns, with its bright blue bows and dainty flummery of ruffles. "dah -now you 's fixed." she propped the child in a chair and stood off to inspect it. straightway her eyes began to widen with astonishment and admiration, and she clapped her hands and cried out, "why, it do beat all! -i <never> knowed you was so lovely. marse tommy ain't a bit puttier -not a single bit." she stepped over and glanced at the other infant; she flung a glance back at her own; then one more at the heir of the house. now a strange light dawned in her eyes, and in a moment she was lost in thought. she seemed in a trance; when she came out of it she muttered, "when i 'uz a-washin' 'em in de tub, yistiddy, his own pappy asked me which of 'em was his'n." she began to move about like one in a dream. she undressed thomas a becket, stripping him of everything, and put the tow-linen shirt on him. she put his coral necklace on her own child's neck. then she placed the children side by side, and after earnest inspection she muttered - "now who would b'lieve clo'es could do de like o' dat? dog my cats if it ain't all <i> kin do to tell t' other fum which, let alone his pappy." she put her cub in tommy's elegant cradle and said - "you 's young marse <tom> fum dis out, en i got to practise and git used to 'memberin' to call you dat, honey, or i 's gwine to make a mistake some time en git us bofe into trouble. dah -now you lay still en don't fret no mo', marse tom -oh, thank de good lord in heaven, you 's saved, you 's saved! -dey ain't no man kin ever sell mammy's po' little honey down de river now!" she put the heir of the house in her own child's unpainted pine cradle, and said, contemplating its slumbering form uneasily - "i 's sorry for you, honey; i 's sorry, god knows i is, -but what <kin> i do, what <could> i do? yo' pappy would sell him to somebody, some time, en den he' d go down de river, sho', en i could n't, could n't, <could n't> stan' it." she flung herself on her bed and began to think and toss, toss and think. by and by she sat suddenly upright, for a comforting thought had flown through her worried mind - "'t ain't no sin -<white> folks has done it! it ain't no sin, glory to goodness it ain't no sin! <dey 's> done it -yes, en dey was de biggest quality in de whole bilin', too -<kings!> --" she began to muse; she was trying to gather out of her memory the dim particulars of some tale she had heard some time or other. at last she said - "now i 's got it; now i 'member. it was dat ole nigger preacher dat tole it, de time he come over here fum illinois en preached in de nigger church. he said dey ain't nobody kin save his own self -can't do it by faith, can't do it by works, can't do it no way at all. free grace is de <on'y> way, en dat don't come fum nobody but jis' de lord; en <he> kin give it to anybody he please, saint or sinner -<he> don't kyer. he do jis' as he 's a mineter. he s'lect out anybody dat suit him, en put another one in his place, en make de fust one happy forever en leave t' other one to burn wid satan. de preacher said it was jist like dey done in englan' one time, long time ago. de queen she lef' her baby layin' aroun' one day, en went out callin'; en one o' de niggers roun' 'bout de place dat was 'mos' white, she come in en see de chile layin' aroun', en tuck en put her own chile's clo'es on de queen's chile, en put de queen's chile's clo'es on her own chile, en den lef' her own chile layin' aroun' en tuck en toted de queen's chile home to de nigger-quarter, en nobody ever foun' it out, en her chile was de king bimeby, en sole de queen's chile down de river one time when dey had to settle up de estate. dah, now -de preacher said it his own self, en it ain't no sin, 'ca'se white folks done it. <dey> done it -yes, <dey> done it; en not on'y jis' common white folks nuther, but de biggest quality dey is in de whole bilin'. oh, i 's <so> glad i 'member 'bout dat!" she got up light-hearted and happy, and went to the cradles and spent what was left of the night "practising." she would give her own child a light pat and say humbly, "lay still, marse tom," then give the real tom a pat and say with severity, "lay <still>, chambers! -does you want me to take somep'n' <to> you?" as she progressed with her practice, she was surprised to see how steadily and surely the awe which had kept her tongue reverent and her manner humble toward her young master was transferring itself to her speech and manner toward the usurper, and how similarly handy she was becoming in transferring her motherly curtness of speech and peremptoriness of manner to the unlucky heir of the ancient house of driscoll. she took occasional rests from practising, and absorbed herself in calculating her chances. "dey 'll sell dese niggers to-day fo' stealin' de money, den dey 'll buy some mo' dat don't know de chillen -so <dat 's> all right. when i takes de chillen out to git de air, de minute i 's roun' de corner i 's gwine to gaum dey mouths all roun' wid jam, den dey can't <nobody> notice dey 's changed. yes, i gwineter do dat till i 's safe, if it 's a year. "dey ain't but one man dat i 's afeard of, en dat 's dat pudd'nhead wilson. dey calls him a pudd'nhead, en says he 's a fool. my lan', dat man ain't no mo' fool den i is! he 's de smartes' man in dis town, less 'n it 's jedge driscroll or maybe pem howard. blame dat man, he worries me wid dem ornery glasses o' hisn; <i> b'lieve he's a witch. but nemmine, i 's gwine to happen aroun' dah one o' dese days en let on dat i reckon he wants to print de chillen's fingers ag'in; en if <he> don't notice dey 's changed, i bound dey ain't nobody gwine to notice it, en den i 's safe, sho'. but i reckon i 'll tote along a hoss-shoe to keep off de witch-work." the new negroes gave roxy no trouble, of course. the master gave her none, for one of his speculations was in jeopardy, and his mind was so occupied that he hardly saw the children when he looked at them, and all roxy had to do was to get them both into a gale of laughter when he came about; then their faces were mainly cavities exposing gums, and he was gone again before the spasm passed and the little creatures resumed a human aspect. within a few days the fate of the speculation became so dubious that mr. percy went away with his brother the judge, to see what could be done with it. it was a land speculation as usual, and it had gotten complicated with a lawsuit. the men were gone seven weeks. before they got back roxy had paid her visit to wilson, and was satisfied. wilson took the finger-prints, labeled them with the names and with the date -october the first -put them carefully away and continued his chat with roxy, who seemed very anxious that he should admire the great advance in flesh and beauty which the babies had made since he took their finger-prints a month before. he complimented their improvement to her contentment; and as they were without any disguise of jam or other stain, she trembled all the while and was miserably frightened lest at any moment he - but he did n't. he discovered nothing; and she went home jubilant, and dropped all concern about the matter permanently out of her mind. iv adam and eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped teething. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> there is this trouble about special providences -namely, there is so often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. in the case of the children, the bears and the prophet, the bears got more real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they got the children. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> this history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change which roxana has consummated, and call the real heir "chambers" and the usurping little slave "thomas a becket" -shortening this latter name to "tom," for daily use, as the people about him did. "tom" was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. he would cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper without notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall, then climax the thing with "holding his breath" -that frightful specialty of the teething nursling, in the throes of which the creature exhausts its lungs, then is convulsed with noiseless squirmings and twistings and kickings in the effort to get its breath, while the lips turn blue and the mouth stands wide and rigid, offering for inspection one wee tooth set in the lower rim of a hoop of red gums; and when the appalling stillness has endured until one is sure the lost breath will never return, a nurse comes flying, and dashes water in the child's face, and -presto! the lungs fill, and instantly discharge a shriek, or a yell, or a howl which bursts the listening ear and surprises the owner of it into saying words which would not go well with a halo if he had one. the baby tom would claw anybody who came within reach of his nails, and pound anybody he could reach with his rattle. he would scream for water until he got it, and then throw cup and all on the floor and scream for more. he was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever troublesome and exasperating they might be; he was allowed to eat anything he wanted, particularly things that would give him the stomach-ache. when he got to be old enough to begin to toddle about and say broken words and get an idea of what his hands were for, he was a more consummate pest than ever. roxy got no rest while he was awake. he would call for anything and everything he saw, simply saying "awnt it!" (want it), which was a command. when it was brought, he said in a frenzy, and motioning it away with his hands, "don't awnt it! don't awnt it!" and the moment it was gone he set up frantic yells of "awnt it! awnt it! awnt it!" and roxy had to give wings to her heels to get that thing back to him again before he could get time to carry out his intention of going into convulsions about it. what he preferred above all other things was the tongs. this was because his "father" had forbidden him to have them lest he break windows and furniture with them. the moment roxy's back was turned he would toddle to the presence of the tongs and say "like it!" and cock his eye to one side to see if roxy was observing; then, "awnt it!" and cock his eye again; then, "hab it!" with another furtive glance; and finally, "take it!" -and the prize was his. the next moment the heavy implement was raised aloft; the next, there was a crash and a squall, and the cat was off on three legs to meet an engagement; roxy would arrive just as the lamp or a window went to irremediable smash. tom got all the petting, chambers got none. tom got all the delicacies, chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. in consequence tom was a sickly child and chambers was n't. tom was "fractious," as roxy called it, and overbearing; chambers was meek and docile. with all her splendid common sense and practical every-day ability, roxy was a doting fool of a mother. she was this toward her child -and she was also more than this: by the fiction created by herself, he was become her master; the necessity of recognizing this relation outwardly and of perfecting herself in the forms required to express the recognition, had moved her to such diligence and faithfulness in practising these forms that this exercise soon concreted itself into habit; it became automatic and unconscious; then a natural result followed: deceptions intended solely for others gradually grew practically into self-deceptions as well; the mock reverence became real reverence, the mock obsequiousness real obsequiousness, the mock homage real homage; the little counterfeit rift of separation between imitation-slave and imitation-master widened and widened, and became an abyss, and a very real one -and on one side of it stood roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on the other stood her child, no longer a usurper to her, but her accepted and recognized master. he was her darling, her master, and her deity all in one, and in her worship of him she forgot who she was and what he had been. in babyhood tom cuffed and banged and scratched chambers unrebuked, and chambers early learned that between meekly bearing it and resenting it, the advantage all lay with the former policy. the few times that his persecutions had moved him beyond control and made him fight back had cost him very dear at headquarters; not at the hands of roxy, for if she ever went beyond scolding him sharply for "forgitt'n' who his young master was," she at least never extended her punishment beyond a box on the ear. no, percy driscoll was the person. he told chambers that under no provocation whatever was he privileged to lift his hand against his little master. chambers overstepped the line three times, and got three such convincing canings from the man who was his father and did n't know it, that he took tom's cruelties in all humility after that, and made no more experiments. outside of the house the two boys were together all through their boyhood. chambers was strong beyond his years, and a good fighter; strong because he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the house, and a good fighter because tom furnished him plenty of practice -on white boys whom he hated and was afraid of. chambers was his constant body-guard, to and from school; he was present on the playground at recess to protect his charge. he fought himself into such a formidable reputation, by and by, that tom could have changed clothes with him, and "ridden in peace," like sir kay in launcelot's armor. he was good at games of skill, too. tom staked him with marbles to play "keeps" with, and then took all the winnings away from him. in the winter season chambers was on hand, in tom's worn-out clothes, with "holy" red mittens, and "holy" shoes, and pants "holy" at the knees and seat, to drag a sled up the hill for tom, warmly clad, to ride down on; but he never got a ride himself. he built snow men and snow fortifications under tom's directions. he was tom's patient target when tom wanted to do some snowballing, but the target could n't fire back. chambers carried tom's skates to the river and strapped them on him, then trotted around after him on the ice, so as to be on hand when wanted; but he was n't ever asked to try the skates himself. in summer the pet pastime of the boys of dawson's landing was to steal apples, peaches, and melons from the farmers' fruit-wagons, -mainly on account of the risk they ran of getting their head laid open with the butt of the farmer's whip. tom was a distinguished adept at these thefts -by proxy. chambers did his stealing, and got the peach-stones, apple-cores, and melon-rinds for his share. tom always made chambers go in swimming with him, and stay by him as a protection. when tom had had enough, he would slip out and tie knots in chambers's shirt, dip the knots in the water to make them hard to undo, then dress himself and sit by and laugh while the naked shiverer tugged at the stubborn knots with his teeth. tom did his humble comrade these various ill turns partly out of native viciousness, and partly because he hated him for his superiorities of physique and pluck, and for his manifold clevernesses. tom could n't dive, for it gave him splitting headaches. chambers could dive without inconvenience, and was fond of doing it. he excited so much admiration, one day, among a crowd of white boys, by throwing back somersaults from the stern of a canoe, that it wearied tom's spirit, and at last he shoved the canoe underneath chambers while he was in the air -so he came down on his head in the canoe-bottom; and while he lay unconscious, several of tom's ancient adversaries saw that their long-desired opportunity was come, and they gave the false heir such a drubbing that with chambers's best help he was hardly able to drag himself home afterward. when the boys were fifteen and upward, tom was "showing off" in the river one day, when he was taken with a cramp, and shouted for help. it was a common trick with the boys -particularly if a stranger was present -to pretend a cramp and howl for help; then when the stranger came tearing hand over hand to the rescue, the howler would go on struggling and howling till he was close at hand, then replace the howl with a sarcastic smile and swim blandly away, while the town boys assailed the dupe with a volley of jeers and laughter. tom had never tried this joke as yet, but was supposed to be trying it now, so the boys held warily back; but chambers believed his master was in earnest, therefore he swam out, and arrived in time, unfortunately, and saved his life. this was the last feather. tom had managed to endure everything else, but to have to remain publicly and permanently under such an obligation as this to a nigger, and to this nigger of all niggers -this was too much. he heaped insults upon chambers for "pretending" to think he was in earnest in calling for help, and said that anybody but a blockheaded nigger would have known he was funning and left him alone. tom's enemies were in strong force here, so they came out with their opinions quite freely. they laughed at him, and called him coward, liar, sneak, and other sorts of pet names, and told him they meant to call chambers by a new name after this, and make it common in the town -"tom driscoll's niggerpappy," -to signify that he had had a second birth into this life, and that chambers was the author of his new being. tom grew frantic under these taunts, and shouted - "knock their heads off, chambers! knock their heads off! what do you stand there with your hands in your pockets for?" chambers expostulated, and said, "but, marse tom, dey 's too many of 'em -dey 's -" "do you hear me?" "please, marse tom, don't make me! dey 's so many of 'em dat -" tom sprang at him and drove his pocket-knife into him two or three times before the boys could snatch him away and give the wounded lad a chance to escape. he was considerably hurt, but not seriously. if the blade had been a little longer his career would have ended there. tom had long ago taught roxy "her place." it had been many a day now since she had ventured a caress or a fondling epithet in his quarter. such things, from a "nigger," were repulsive to him, and she had been warned to keep her distance and remember who she was. she saw her darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw <that> detail perish utterly; all that was left was master -master, pure and simple, and it was not a gentle mastership, either. she saw herself sink from the sublime height of motherhood to the somber deeps of unmodified slavery. the abyss of separation between her and her boy was complete. she was merely his chattel, now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing and helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious temper and vicious nature. sometimes she could not go to sleep, even when worn out with fatigue, because her rage boiled so high over the day's experiences with her boy. she would mumble and mutter to herself - "he struck me, en i war n't no way to blame -struck me in de face, right before folks. en he 's al'ays callin' me nigger-wench, en hussy, en all dem mean names, when i 's doin' de very bes' i kin. oh, lord, i done so much for him -i lift' him away up to what he is -en dis is what i git for it." sometimes when some outrage of peculiar offensiveness stung her to the heart, she would plan schemes of vengeance and revel in the fancied spectacle of his exposure to the world as an impostor and a slave; but in the midst of these joys fear would strike her: she had made him too strong; she could prove nothing, and -heavens, she might get sold down the river for her pains! so her schemes always went for nothing, and she laid them aside in impotent rage against the fates, and against herself for playing the fool on that fatal september day in not providing herself with a witness for use in the day when such a thing might be needed for the appeasing of her vengeance-hungry heart. and yet the moment tom happened to be good to her, and kind, -and this occurred every now and then, -all her sore places were healed, and she was happy; happy and proud, for this was her son, her nigger son, lording it among the whites and securely avenging their crimes against her race. there were two grand funerals in dawson's landing that fall -the fall of 1845. one was that of colonel cecil burleigh essex, the other that of percy driscoll. on his death-bed driscoll set roxy free and delivered his idolized ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother the judge and his wife. those childless people were glad to get him. childless people are not difficult to please. judge driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month before, and bought chambers. he had heard that tom had been trying to get his father to sell the boy down the river, and he wanted to prevent the scandal -for public sentiment did not approve of that way of treating family servants for light cause or for no cause. percy driscoll had worn himself out in trying to save his great speculative landed estate, and had died without succeeding. he was hardly in his grave before the boom collapsed and left his hitherto envied young devil of an heir a pauper. but that was nothing; his uncle told him he should be his heir and have all his fortune when he died; so tom was comforted. roxy had no home, now; so she resolved to go around and say good-by to her friends and then clear out and see the world -that is to say, she would go chambermaiding on a steamboat, the darling ambition of her race and sex. her last call was on the black giant, jasper. she found him chopping pudd'nhead wilson's winter provision of wood. wilson was chatting with him when roxy arrived. he asked her how she could bear to go off chambermaiding and leave her boys; and chaffingly offered to copy off a series of their finger-prints, reaching up to their twelfth year, for her to remember them by; but she sobered in a moment, wondering if he suspected anything; then she said she believed she did n't want them. wilson said to himself, "the drop of black blood in her is superstitious; she thinks there 's some devilry, some witch-business about my glass mystery somewhere; she used to come here with an old horseshoe in her hand; it could have been an accident, but i doubt it." v training is everything. the peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> remark of dr. baldwin's, concerning up-starts: we don't care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> mrs. york driscoll enjoyed two years of bliss with that prize, tom -bliss that was troubled a little at times, it is true, but bliss nevertheless; then she died, and her husband and his childless sister, mrs. pratt, continued the bliss-business at the old stand. tom was petted and indulged and spoiled to his entire content -or nearly that. this went on till he was nineteen, then he was sent to yale. he went handsomely equipped with "conditions," but otherwise he was not an object of distinction there. he remained at yale two years, and then threw up the struggle. he came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had lost his surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and smooth, now; he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a good-natured semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him from getting into trouble. he was as indolent as ever and showed no very strenuous desire to hunt up an occupation. people argued from this that he preferred to be supported by his uncle until his uncle's shoes should become vacant. he brought back one or two new habits with him, one of which he rather openly practised -tippling -but concealed another, which was gambling. it would not do to gamble where his uncle could hear of it; he knew that quite well. tom's eastern polish was not popular among the young people. they could have endured it, perhaps, if tom had stopped there; but he wore gloves, and that they could n't stand, and would n't; so he was mainly without society. he brought home with him a suit of clothes of such exquisite style and cut and fashion, -eastern fashion, city fashion, -that it filled everybody with anguish and was regarded as a peculiarly wanton affront. he enjoyed the feeling which he was exciting, and paraded the town serene and happy all day; but the young fellows set a tailor to work that night, and when tom started out on his parade next morning he found the old deformed negro bell-ringer straddling along in his wake tricked out in a flamboyant curtain-calico exaggeration of his finery, and imitating his fancy eastern graces as well as he could. tom surrendered, and after that clothed himself in the local fashion. but the dull country town was tiresome to him, since his acquaintanceship with livelier regions, and it grew daily more and more so. he began to make little trips to st. louis for refreshment. there he found companionship to suit him, and pleasures to his taste, along with more freedom, in some particulars, than he could have at home. so, during the next two years his visits to the city grew in frequency and his tarryings there grew steadily longer in duration. he was getting into deep waters. he was taking chances, privately, which might get him into trouble some day -in fact, <did>. judge driscoll had retired from the bench and from all business activities in 1850, and had now been comfortably idle three years. he was president of the free-thinkers' society, and pudd'nhead wilson was the other member. the society's weekly discussions were now the old lawyer's main interest in life. pudd'nhead was still toiling in obscurity at the bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that unlucky remark which he had let fall twenty-three years before about the dog. judge driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind above the average, but that was regarded as one of the judge's whims, and it failed to modify the public opinion. or rather, that was one of the reasons why it failed, but there was another and better one. if the judge had stopped with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made the mistake of trying to prove his position. for some years wilson had been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement -a calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and fancies of wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful of them around, one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens. but irony was not for those people; their mental vision was not focussed for it. they read those playful trifles in the solidest earnest, and decided without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that dave wilson was a pudd'nhead -which there had n't -this revelation removed that doubt for good and all. that is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect. after this the judge felt tenderer than ever toward wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit. judge driscoll could be a free-thinker and still hold his place in society because he was the person of most consequence in the community, and therefore could venture to go his own way and follow out his own notions. the other member of his pet organization was allowed the like liberty because he was a cipher in the estimation of the public, and nobody attached any importance to what he thought or did. he was liked, he was welcome enough all around, but he simply did n't count for anything. the widow cooper -affectionately called "aunt patsy" by everybody -lived in a snug and comely cottage with her daughter rowena, who was nineteen, romantic, amiable, and very pretty, but otherwise of no consequence. rowena had a couple of young brothers -also of no consequence. the widow had a large spare room which she let to a lodger, with board, when she could find one, but this room had been empty for a year now, to her sorrow. her income was only sufficient for the family support, and she needed the lodging-money for trifling luxuries. but now, at last, on a flaming june day, she found herself happy; her tedious wait was ended; her year-worn advertisement had been answered; and not by a village applicant, oh, no! -this letter was from away off yonder in the dim great world to the north; it was from st. louis. she sat on her porch gazing out with unseeing eyes upon the shining reaches of the mighty mississippi, her thoughts steeped in her good fortune. indeed it was specially good fortune, for she was to have two lodgers instead of one. she had read the letter to the family, and rowena had danced away to see to the cleaning and airing of the room by the slave woman nancy, and the boys had rushed abroad in the town to spread the great news, for it was matter of public interest, and the public would wonder and not be pleased if not informed. presently rowena returned, all ablush with joyous excitement, and begged for a re-reading of the letter. it was framed thus: honored madam: my brother and i have seen your advertisement, by chance, and beg leave to take the room you offer. we are twenty-four years of age and twins. we are italians by birth, but have lived long in the various countries of europe, and several years in the united states. our names are luigi and angelo capello. you desire but one guest; but dear madam, if you will allow us to pay for two, we will not incommode you. we shall be down thursday. "italians! how romantic! just think, ma -there 's never been one in this town, and everybody will be dying to see them, and they 're all <ours>! think of that!" "yes, i reckon they 'll make a grand stir." "oh, indeed they will. the whole town will be on its head! think -they 've been in europe and everywhere! there 's never been a traveler in this town before. ma, i should n't wonder if they 've seen kings!" "well, a body can't tell; but they 'll make stir enough, without that." "yes, that 's of course. luigi -angelo. they 're lovely names; and so grand and foreign -not like jones and robinson and such. thursday they are coming, and this is only tuesday; it 's a cruel long time to wait. here comes judge driscoll in at the gate. he 's heard about it. i 'll go and open the door." the judge was full of congratulations and curiosity. the letter was read and discussed. soon justice robinson arrived with more congratulations, and there was a new reading and a new discussion. this was the beginning. neighbor after neighbor, of both sexes, followed, and the procession drifted in and out all day and evening and all wednesday and thursday. the letter was read and re-read until it was nearly worn out; everybody admired its courtly and gracious tone, and smooth and practised style, everybody was sympathetic and excited, and the coopers were steeped in happiness all the while. the boats were very uncertain in low water, in these primitive times. this time the thursday boat had not arrived at ten at night -so the people had waited at the landing all day for nothing; they were driven to their homes by a heavy storm without having had a view of the illustrious foreigners. eleven o'clock came; and the cooper house was the only one in the town that still had lights burning. the rain and thunder were booming yet, and the anxious family were still waiting, still hoping. at last there was a knock at the door and the family jumped to open it. two negro men entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded up-stairs toward the guest-room. then entered the twins -the handsomest, the best dressed, the most distinguished-looking pair of young fellows the west had ever seen. one was a little fairer than the other, but otherwise they were exact duplicates. vi let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> at breakfast in the morning the twins' charm of manner and easy and polished bearing made speedy conquest of the family's good graces. all constraint and formality quickly disappeared, and the friendliest feeling succeeded. aunt patsy called them by their christian names almost from the beginning. she was full of the keenest curiosity about them, and showed it; they responded by talking about themselves, which pleased her greatly. it presently appeared that in their early youth they had known poverty and hardship. as the talk wandered along the old lady watched for the right place to drop in a question or two concerning that matter, and when she found it she said to the blond twin, who was now doing the biographies in his turn while the brunette one rested - "if it ain't asking what i ought not to ask, mr. angelo, how did you come to be so friendless and in such trouble when you were little? do you mind telling? but don't if you do." "oh, we don't mind it at all, madam; in our case it was merely misfortune, and nobody's fault. our parents were well to do, there in italy, and we were their only child. we were of the old florentine nobility" -rowena's heart gave a great bound, her nostrils expanded, and a fine light played in her eyes -"and when the war broke out my father was on the losing side and had to fly for his life. his estates were confiscated, his personal property seized, and there we were, in germany, strangers, friendless, and in fact paupers. my brother and i were ten years old, and well educated for that age, very studious, very fond of our books, and well grounded in the german, french, spanish, and english languages. also, we were marvelous musical prodigies -if you will allow me to say it, it being only the truth. "our father survived his misfortunes only a month, our mother soon followed him, and we were alone in the world. our parents could have made themselves comfortable by exhibiting us as a show, and they had many and large offers; but the thought revolted their pride, and they said they would starve and die first. but what they would n't consent to do we had to do without the formality of consent. we were seized for the debts occasioned by their illness and their funerals, and placed among the attractions of a cheap museum in berlin to earn the liquidation money. it took us two years to get out of that slavery. we traveled all about germany, receiving no wages, and not even our keep. we had to be exhibited for nothing, and beg our bread. "well, madam, the rest is not of much consequence. when we escaped from that slavery at twelve years of age, we were in some respects men. experience had taught us some valuable things; among others, how to take care of ourselves, how to avoid and defeat sharks and sharpers, and how to conduct our own business for our own profit and without other people's help. we traveled everywhere -years and years -picking up smatterings of strange tongues, familiarizing ourselves with strange sights and strange customs, accumulating an education of a wide and varied and curious sort. it was a pleasant life. we went to venice -to london, paris, russia, india, china, japan -" at this point nancy the slave woman thrust her head in at the door and exclaimed: "ole missus, de house is plum' jam full o' people, en dey 's jes a-spi'lin' to see de gen'lmen!" she indicated the twins with a nod of her head, and tucked it back out of sight again. it was a proud occasion for the widow, and she promised herself high satisfaction in showing off her fine foreign birds before her neighbors and friends -simple folk who had hardly ever seen a foreigner of any kind, and never one of any distinction or style. yet her feeling was moderate indeed when contrasted with rowena's. rowena was in the clouds, she walked on air; this was to be the greatest day, the most romantic episode, in the colorless history of that dull country town. she was to be familiarly near the source of its glory and feel the full flood of it pour over her and about her; the other girls could only gaze and envy, not partake. the widow was ready, rowena was ready, so also were the foreigners. the party moved along the hall, the twins in advance, and entered the open parlor door, whence issued a low hum of conversation. the twins took a position near the door, the widow stood at luigi's side, rowena stood beside angelo, and the march-past and the introductions began. the widow was all smiles and contentment. she received the procession and passed it on to rowena. "good mornin', sister cooper" -hand-shake. "good morning, brother higgins -count luigi capello, mr. higgins" -hand-shake, followed by a devouring stare and "i 'm glad to see ye," on the part of higgins, and a courteous inclination of the head and a pleasant "most happy!" on the part of count luigi. "good mornin', roweny" -hand-shake. "good morning, mr. higgins -present you to count angelo capello." hand-shake, admiring stare, "glad to see ye," -courteous nod, smily "most happy!" and higgins passes on. none of these visitors was at ease, but, being honest people, they did n't pretend to be. none of them had ever seen a person bearing a title of nobility before, and none had been expecting to see one now, consequently the title came upon them as a kind of pile-driving surprise and caught them unprepared. a few tried to rise to the emergency, and got out an awkward "my lord," or "your lordship," or something of that sort, but the great majority were overwhelmed by the unaccustomed word and its dim and awful associations with gilded courts and stately ceremony and anointed kingship, so they only fumbled through the hand-shake and passed on, speechless. now and then, as happens at all receptions everywhere, a more than ordinarily friendly soul blocked the procession and kept it waiting while he inquired how the brothers liked the village, and how long they were going to stay, and if their families were well, and dragged in the weather, and hoped it would get cooler soon, and all that sort of thing, so as to be able to say, when they got home, "i had quite a long talk with them"; but nobody did or said anything of a regrettable kind, and so the great affair went through to the end in a creditable and satisfactory fashion. general conversation followed, and the twins drifted about from group to group, talking easily and fluently and winning approval, compelling admiration and achieving favor from all. the widow followed their conquering march with a proud eye, and every now and then rowena said to herself with deep satisfaction, "and to think they are ours -all ours!" there were no idle moments for mother or daughter. eager inquiries concerning the twins were pouring into their enchanted ears all the time; each was the constant center of a group of breathless listeners; each recognized that she knew now for the first time the real meaning of that great word glory, and perceived the stupendous value of it, and understood why men in all ages had been willing to throw away meaner happinesses, treasure, life itself, to get a taste of its sublime and supreme joy. napoleon and all his kind stood accounted for -and justified. when rowena had at last done all her duty by the people in the parlor, she went up-stairs to satisfy the longings of an overflow-meeting there, for the parlor was not big enough to hold all the comers. again she was besieged by eager questioners and again she swam in sunset seas of glory. when the forenoon was nearly gone, she recognized with a pang that this most splendid episode of her life was almost over, that nothing could prolong it, that nothing quite its equal could ever fall to her fortune again. but never mind, it was sufficient unto itself, the grand occasion had moved on an ascending scale from the start, and was a noble and memorable success. if the twins could but do some crowning act, now, to climax it, something unusual, something startling, something to concentrate upon themselves the company's loftiest admiration, something in the nature of an electric surprise - here a prodigious slam-banging broke out below, and everybody rushed down to see. it was the twins knocking out a classic four-handed piece on the piano, in great style. rowena was satisfied -satisfied down to the bottom of her heart. the young strangers were kept long at the piano. the villagers were astonished and enchanted with the magnificence of their performance, and could not bear to have them stop. all the music that they had ever heard before seemed spiritless prentice-work and barren of grace or charm when compared with these intoxicating floods of melodious sound. they realized that for once in their lives they were hearing masters. vii one of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the company broke up reluctantly, and drifted toward their several homes, chatting with vivacity, and all agreeing that it would be many a long day before dawson's landing would see the equal of this one again. the twins had accepted several invitations while the reception was in progress, and had also volunteered to play some duets at an amateur entertainment for the benefit of a local charity. society was eager to receive them to its bosom. judge driscoll had the good fortune to secure them for an immediate drive, and to be the first to display them in public. they entered his buggy with him, and were paraded down the main street, everybody flocking to the windows and sidewalks to see. the judge showed the strangers the new graveyard, and the jail, and where the richest man lived, and the freemasons' hall, and the methodist church, and the presbyterian church, and where the baptist church was going to be when they got some money to build it with, and showed them the town hall and the slaughter-house, and got out the independent fire company in uniform and had them put out an imaginary fire; then he let them inspect the muskets of the militia company, and poured out an exhaustless stream of enthusiasm over all these splendors, and seemed very well satisfied with the responses he got, for the twins admired his admiration, and paid him back the best they could, though they could have done better if some fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand previous experiences of this sort in various countries had not already rubbed off a considerable part of the novelty of it. the judge laid himself out hospitably to make them have a good time, and if there was a defect anywhere it was not his fault. he told them a good many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub, but they were always able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a pretty early vintage, and they had had many a rejuvenating pull at them before. and he told them all about his several dignities, and how he had held this and that and the other place of honor or profit, and had once been to the legislature, and was now president of the society of free-thinkers. he said the society had been in existence four years, and already had two members, and was firmly established. he would call for the brothers in the evening if they would like to attend a meeting of it. accordingly he called for them, and on the way he told them all about pudd'nhead wilson, in order that they might get a favorable impression of him in advance and be prepared to like him. this scheme succeeded -the favorable impression was achieved. later it was confirmed and solidified when wilson proposed that out of courtesy to the strangers the usual topics be put aside and the hour be devoted to conversation upon ordinary subjects and the cultivation of friendly relations and good-fellowship, -a proposition which was put to vote and carried. the hour passed quickly away in lively talk, and when it was ended the lonesome and neglected wilson was richer by two friends than he had been when it began. he invited the twins to look in at his lodgings, presently, after disposing of an intervening engagement, and they accepted with pleasure. toward the middle of the evening they found themselves on the road to his house. pudd'nhead was at home waiting for them and putting in his time puzzling over a thing which had come under his notice that morning. the matter was this: he happened to be up very early -at dawn, in fact, and he crossed the hall which divided his cottage through the center, and entered a room to get something there. the window of the room had no curtains, for that side of the house had long been unoccupied, and through this window he caught sight of something which surprised and interested him. it was a young woman -a young woman where properly no young woman belonged; for she was in judge driscoll's house, and in the bedroom over the judge's private study or sitting-room. this was young tom driscoll's bedroom. he and the judge, the judge's widowed sister mrs. pratt and three negro servants were the only people who belonged in the house. who, then, might this young lady be? the two houses were separated by an ordinary yard, with a low fence running back through its middle from the street in front to the lane in the rear. the distance was not great, and wilson was able to see the girl very well, the window-shades of the room she was in being up and the window also. the girl had on a neat and trim summer dress, patterned in broad stripes of pink and white, and her bonnet was equipped with a pink veil. she was practising steps, gaits and attitudes, apparently; she was doing the thing gracefully, and was very much absorbed in her work. who could she be, and how came she to be in young tom driscoll's room? wilson had quickly chosen a position from which he could watch the girl without running much risk of being seen by her, and he remained there hoping she would raise her veil and betray her face. but she disappointed him. after a matter of twenty minutes she disappeared, and although he stayed at his post half an hour longer, she came no more. toward noon he dropped in at the judge's and talked with mrs. pratt about the great event of the day, the levee of the distinguished foreigners at aunt patsy cooper's. he asked after her nephew tom, and she said he was on his way home, and that she was expecting him to arrive a little before night; and added that she and the judge were gratified to gather from his letters that he was conducting himself very nicely and creditably -at which wilson winked to himself privately. wilson did not ask if there was a newcomer in the house, but he asked questions that would have brought light-throwing answers as to that matter if mrs. pratt had had any light to throw; so he went away satisfied that he knew of things that were going on in her house of which she herself was not aware. he was now waiting for the twins, and still puzzling over the problem of who that girl might be, and how she happened to be in that young fellow's room at daybreak in the morning. viii the holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> consider well the proportions of things. it is better to be a young june-bug than an old bird of paradise. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> it is necessary now, to hunt up roxy. at the time she was set free and went away chambermaiding, she was thirty-five. she got a berth as second chambermaid on a cincinnati boat in the new orleans trade, the <grand mogul>. a couple of trips made her wonted and easy-going at the work, and infatuated her with the stir and adventure and independence of steamboat life. then she was promoted and became head chambermaid. she was a favorite with the officers, and exceedingly proud of their joking and friendly ways with her. during eight years she served three parts of the year on that boat, and the winters on a vicksburg packet. but now for two months she had had rheumatism in her arms, and was obliged to let the wash-tub alone. so she resigned. but she was well fixed -rich, as she would have described it; for she had lived a steady life, and had banked four dollars every month in new orleans as a provision for her old age. she said in the start that she had "put shoes on one bar'footed nigger to tromple on her with," and that one mistake like that was enough; she would be independent of the human race thenceforth forevermore if hard work and economy could accomplish it. when the boat touched the levee at new orleans she bade good-by to her comrades on the <grand mogul> and moved her kit ashore. but she was back in an hour. the bank had gone to smash and carried her four hundred dollars with it. she was a pauper, and homeless. also disabled bodily, at least for the present. the officers were full of sympathy for her in her trouble, and made up a little purse for her. she resolved to go to her birthplace; she had friends there among the negroes, and the unfortunate always help the unfortunate, she was well aware of that; those lowly comrades of her youth would not let her starve. she took the little local packet at cairo, and now she was on the home-stretch. time had worn away her bitterness against her son, and she was able to think of him with serenity. she put the vile side of him out of her mind, and dwelt only on recollections of his occasional acts of kindness to her. she gilded and otherwise decorated these, and made them very pleasant to contemplate. she began to long to see him. she would go and fawn upon him, slave-like -for this would have to be her attitude, of course -and maybe she would find that time had modified him, and that he would be glad to see his long-forgotten old nurse and treat her gently. that would be lovely; that would make her forget her woes and her poverty. her poverty! that thought inspired her to add another castle to her dream: maybe he would give her a trifle now and then -maybe a dollar, once a month, say; any little thing like that would help, oh, ever so much. by the time she reached dawson's landing she was her old self again; her blues were gone, she was in high feather. she would get along, surely; there were many kitchens where the servants would share their meals with her, and also steal sugar and apples and other dainties for her to carry home -or give her a chance to pilfer them herself, which would answer just as well. and there was the church. she was a more rabid and devoted methodist than ever, and her piety was no sham, but was strong and sincere. yes, with plenty of creature comforts and her old place in the amen-corner in her possession again, she would be perfectly happy and at peace thenceforward to the end. she went to judge driscoll's kitchen first of all. she was received there in great form and with vast enthusiasm. her wonderful travels, and the strange countries she had seen and the adventures she had had, made her a marvel, and a heroine of romance. the negroes hung enchanted upon the great story of her experiences, interrupting her all along with eager questions, with laughter, exclamations of delight and expressions of applause; and she was obliged to confess to herself that if there was anything better in this world than steamboating, it was the glory to be got by telling about it. the audience loaded her stomach with their dinners and then stole the pantry bare to load up her basket. tom was in st. louis. the servants said he had spent the best part of his time there during the previous two years. roxy came every day, and had many talks about the family and its affairs. once she asked why tom was away so much. the ostensible "chambers" said: "de fac' is, ole marster kin git along better when young marster 's away den he kin when he 's in de town; yes, en he love him better, too; so he gives him fifty dollahs a month -" "no, is dat so? chambers, you 's a-jokin', ain't you?" "'clah to goodness i ain't, mammy; marse tom tole me so his own self. but nemmine, 't ain't enough." "my lan', what de reason 't ain't enough?" "well, i 's gwine to tell you, if you gimme a chanst, mammy. de reason it ain't enough is 'ca'se marse tom gambles." roxy threw up her hands in astonishment and chambers went on - "ole marster found it out, 'ca'se he had to pay two hunderd dollahs for marse tom's gamblin' debts, en dat 's true, mammy, jes as dead certain as you 's bawn." "two -hund'd -dollahs! why, what is you talkin' 'bout? two -hund'd -dollahs. sakes alive, it 's 'mos' enough to buy a tol'able good second-hand nigger wid. en you ain't lyin', honey? -you would n't lie to yo' ole mammy?" "it 's god's own truth, jes as i tell you -two hund'd dollahs -i wisht i may never stir outen my tracks if it ain't so. en, oh, my lan', ole marse was jes a-hoppin'! he was b'ilin' mad, i tell you! he tuck 'n' dissenhurrit him." he licked his chops with relish after that stately word. roxy struggled with it a moment, then gave it up and said - "dissen<whiched> him?" "dissenhurrit him." "what 's dat? what do it mean?" "means he bu'sted de will." "bu's -ted de will! he would n't <ever> treat him so! take it back, you mis'able imitation nigger dat i bore in sorrow en tribbilation." roxy's pet castle -an occasional dollar from tom's pocket -was tumbling to ruin before her eyes. she could not abide such a disaster as that; she could n't endure the thought of it. her remark amused chambers: "yah-yah-yah! jes listen to dat! if i 's imitation, what is you? bofe of us is imitation <white> -dat 's what we is -en pow'ful good imitation, too -yah-yah-yah! -we don't 'mount to noth'n' as imitation <niggers>; en as for -" "shet up yo' foolin', 'fo' i knock you side de head, en tell me 'bout de will. tell me 't ain't bu'sted -do, honey, en i 'll never forgit you." "well, <'tain't> -'ca'se dey 's a new one made, en marse tom 's all right ag'in. but what is you in sich a sweat 'bout it for, mammy? 't ain't none o' your business i don't reckon." "'t ain't none o' my business? whose business is it den, i 'd like to know? wuz i his mother tell he was fifteen years old, or wus n't i? -you answer me dat. en you speck i could see him turned out po' en ornery on de worl' en never care noth'n' 'bout it? i reckon if you 'd ever be'n a mother yo'self, valet de chambers, you would n't talk sich foolishness as dat." "well, den, ole marse forgive him en fixed up de will ag'in -do dat satisfy you?" yes, she was satisfied now, and quite happy and sentimental over it. she kept coming daily, and at last she was told that tom had come home. she began to tremble with emotion, and straightway sent to beg him to let his "po' ole nigger mammy have jes one sight of him en die for joy." tom was stretched at his lazy ease on a sofa when chambers brought the petition. time had not modified his ancient detestation of the humble drudge and protector of his boyhood; it was still bitter and uncompromising. he sat up and bent a severe gaze upon the fair face of the young fellow whose name he was unconsciously using and whose family rights he was enjoying. he maintained the gaze until the victim of it had become satisfactorily pallid with terror, then he said - "what does the old rip want with me?" the petition was meekly repeated. "who gave you permission to come and disturb me with the social attentions of niggers?" tom had risen. the other young man was trembling now, visibly. he saw what was coming, and bent his head sideways, and put up his left arm to shield it. tom rained cuffs upon the head and its shield, saying no word; the victim received each blow with a beseeching "please, marse tom! -oh, please, marse tom!" seven blows -then tom said, "face the door -march!" he followed behind with one, two, three solid kicks. the last one helped the pure-white slave over the door-sill, and he limped away mopping his eyes with his old ragged sleeve. tom shouted after him, "send her in!" then he flung himself panting on the sofa again, and rasped out the remark, "he arrived just at the right moment; i was full to the brim with bitter thinkings, and nobody to take it out of. how refreshing it was! i feel better." tom's mother entered now, closing the door behind her, and approached her son with all the wheedling and supplicating servilities that fear and interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave. she stopped a yard from her boy and made two or three admiring exclamations over his manly stature and general handsomeness, and tom put an arm under his head and hoisted a leg over the sofa-back in order to look properly indifferent. "my lan', how you is growed, honey! 'clah to goodness, i would n't a-knowed you, marse tom! 'deed i would n't! look at me good; does you 'member old roxy? -does you know yo' old nigger mammy, honey? well now, i kin lay down en die in peace, 'ca'se i 's seed -" "cut it short, -----it, cut it short! what is it you want?" "you heah dat? jes de same old marse tom, al'ays so gay and funnin' wid de ole mammy. i 'uz jes as shore -" "cut it short, i tell you, and get along! what do you want?" this was a bitter disappointment. roxy had for so many days nourished and fondled and petted her notion that tom would be glad to see his old nurse, and would make her proud and happy to the marrow with a cordial word or two, that it took two rebuffs to convince her that he was not funning, and that her beautiful dream was a fond and foolish vanity, a shabby and pitiful mistake. she was hurt to the heart, and so ashamed that for a moment she did not quite know what to do or how to act. then her breast began to heave, the tears came, and in her forlornness she was moved to try that other dream of hers -an appeal to her boy's charity; and so, upon the impulse, and without reflection, she offered her supplication: "oh, marse tom, de po' ole mammy is in sich hard luck dese days; en she 's kinder crippled in de arms en can't work, en if you could gimme a dollah -on'y jes one little dol -" tom was on his feet so suddenly that the supplicant was startled into a jump herself. "a dollar! -give you a dollar! i've a notion to strangle you! is <that> your errand here? clear out! and be quick about it!" roxy backed slowly toward the door. when she was half-way she stopped, and said mournfully: "marse tom, i nussed you when you was a little baby, en i raised you all by myself tell you was 'most a young man; en now you is young en rich, en i is po' en gitt'n' ole, en i come heah b'lievin' dat you would he'p de ole mammy 'long down de little road dat 's lef' 'twix' her en de grave, en -" tom relished this tune less than any that had preceded it, for it began to wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he interrupted and said with decision, though without asperity, that he was not in a situation to help her, and was n't going to do it. "ain't you ever gwine to he'p me, marse tom?" "no! now go away and don't bother me any more." roxy's head was down, in an attitude of humility. but now the fires of her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely. she raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at the same time her great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and masterful attitude, with all the majesty and grace of her vanished youth in it. she raised her finger and punctuated with it: "you has said de word. you has had yo' chance, en you has trompled it under yo' foot. when you git another one, you 'll git down on yo' knees en <beg> for it!" a cold chill went to tom's heart, he did n't know why; for he did not reflect that such words, from such an incongruous source, and so solemnly delivered, could not easily fail of that effect. however, he did the natural thing: he replied with bluster and mockery: "<you 'll> give me a chance -<you!> perhaps i 'd better get down on my knees now! but in case i don't -just for argument's sake -what 's going to happen, pray?" "dis is what is gwine to happen. i 's gwine as straight to yo' uncle as i kin walk, en tell him every las' thing i knows 'bout you." tom's cheek blenched, and she saw it. disturbing thoughts began to chase each other through his head. "how can she know? and yet she must have found out -she looks it. i 've had the will back only three months, and am already deep in debt again, and moving heaven and earth to save myself from exposure and destruction, with a reasonably fair show of getting the thing covered up if i 'm let alone, and now this fiend has gone and found me out somehow or other. i wonder how much she knows? oh, oh, oh, it 's enough to break a body's heart! but i 've got to humor her -there 's no other way." then he worked up a rather sickly sample of a gay laugh and a hollow chipperness of manner, and said: "well, well, roxy dear, old friends like you and me must n't quarrel. here 's your dollar -now tell me what you know." he held out the wild-cat bill; she stood as she was, and made no movement. it was her turn to scorn persuasive foolery, now, and she did not waste it. she said, with a grim implacability in voice and manner which made tom almost realize that even a former slave can remember for ten minutes insults and injuries returned for compliments and flatteries received, and can also enjoy taking revenge for them when the opportunity offers: "what does i know? i 'll tell you what i knows. i knows enough to bu'st dat will to flinders -en more, mind you, <more!>" tom was aghast. "more?" he said. "what do you call more? where 's there any room for more?" roxy laughed a mocking laugh, and said scoffingly, with a toss of her head, and her hands on her hips - "yes! -oh, i reckon! <co'se> you 'd like to know -wid yo' po' little ole rag dollah. what you reckon i 's gwine to tell <you> for? -you ain't got no money. i 's gwine to tell yo' uncle -en i 'll do it dis minute, too -he 'll gimme <five> dollahs for de news, en mighty glad, too." she swung herself around disdainfully, and started away. tom was in a panic. he seized her skirts, and implored her to wait. she turned and said, loftily - "look-a-heah, what 'uz it i tole you?" "you -you -i don't remember anything. what was it you told me?" "i tole you dat de next time i give you a chance you 'd git down on yo' knees en beg for it." tom was stupefied for a moment. he was panting with excitement. then he said: "oh, roxy, you would n't require your young master to do such a horrible thing. you can't mean it." "i 'll let you know mighty quick whether i means it or not! you call me names, en as good as spit on me when i comes here po' en ornery en 'umble, to praise you for bein' growed up so fine en handsome, en tell you how i used to nuss you en tend you en watch you when you 'uz sick en had n't no mother but me in de whole worl', en beg you to give de po' ole nigger a dollah for to git her sum'n' to eat, en you call me names -<names>, dad blame you! yassir, i gives you jes one chance mo', and dat's <now>, en it las' on'y a half a second -you hear?" tom slumped to his knees and began to beg, saying - "you see i 'm begging, and it 's honest begging, too! now tell me, roxy, tell me." the heir of two centuries of unatoned insult and outrage looked down on him and seemed to drink in deep draughts of satisfaction. then she said - "fine nice young white gen'l'man kneelin' down to a nigger-wench! i 's wanted to see dat jes once befo' i 's called. now, gabr'el, blow de hawn, i 's ready ... git up!" tom did it. he said, humbly - "now, roxy, don't punish me any more. i deserved what i 've got, but be good and let me off with that. don't go to uncle. tell me -i 'll give you the five dollars." "yes, i bet you will; en you won't stop dah, nuther. but i ain't gwine to tell you heah -" "good gracious, no!" "is you 'feared o' de ha'nted house?" "n-no." "well, den, you come to de ha'nted house 'bout ten or 'leven to-night, en climb up de ladder, 'ca'se de sta'r-steps is broke down, en you 'll fine me. i 's a-roostin' in de ha'nted house 'ca'se i can't 'ford to roos' nowher's else." she started toward the door, but stopped and said, "gimme de dollah bill!" he gave it to her. she examined it and said, "h'm -like enough de bank 's bu'sted." she started again, but halted again. "has you got any whisky?" "yes, a little." "fetch it!" he ran to his room overhead and brought down a bottle which was two thirds full. she tilted it up and took a drink. her eyes sparkled with satisfaction, and she tucked the bottle under her shawl, saying, "it 's prime. i 'll take it along." tom humbly held the door for her, and she marched out as grim and erect as a grenadier. ix why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? it is because we are not the person involved. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> it is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. there was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands, and rested his elbows on his knees. he rocked himself back and forth and moaned. "i 've knelt to a nigger-wench!" he muttered. "i thought i had struck the deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to this. ... well, there is one consolation, such as it is -i 've struck bottom this time; there 's nothing lower." but that was a hasty conclusion. at ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak, and wretched. roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms, waiting, for she had heard him. this was a two-story log house which had acquired the reputation a few years before of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness. nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime. as it had no competition, it was called <the> haunted house. it was getting crazy and ruinous, now, from long neglect. it stood three hundred yards beyond pudd'nhead wilson's house, with nothing between but vacancy. it was the last house in the town at that end. tom followed roxy into the room. she had a pile of clean straw in the corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the wall, there was a tin lantern freckling the floor with little spots of light, and there were various soapand candle-boxes scattered about, which served for chairs. the two sat down. roxy said - "now den, i 'll tell you straight off, en i 'll begin to k'leck de money later on; i ain't in no hurry. what does you reckon i 's gwine to tell you?" "well, you -you -oh, roxy, don't make it too hard for me! come right out and tell me you 've found out somehow what a shape i 'm in on account of dissipation and foolishness." "disposition en foolishness! <no> sir, dat ain't it. dat jist ain't nothin' at all, 'longside o' what <i> knows." tom stared at her, and said - "why, roxy, what do you mean?" she rose, and gloomed above him like a fate. "i means dis -en it 's de lord's truth. you ain't no more kin to ole marse driscoll den i is! -<dat 's> what i means!" and her eyes flamed with triumph. "what!" "yassir, en <dat> ain't all! you 's a <nigger>! -<bawn> a nigger en a <slave>! -en you 's a nigger en a slave dis minute; en if i opens my mouf ole marse driscoll 'll sell you down de river befo' you is two days older den what you is now!" "it 's a thundering lie, you miserable old blatherskite!" "it ain't no lie, nuther. it 's jes de truth, en nothin' <but> de truth, so he'p me. yassir -you 's my <son> -" "you devil!" "en dat po' boy dat you 's be'n a-kickin' en a-cuffin' to-day is percy driscoll's son en yo' <marster> -" "you beast!" "en <his> name 's tom driscoll, en <yo'> name 's valet de chambers, en you ain't <got> no fambly name, beca'se niggers don't <have> 'em!" tom sprang up and seized a billet of wood and raised it; but his mother only laughed at him, and said - "set down, you pup! does you think you kin skyer me? it ain't in you, nor de likes of you. i reckon you 'd shoot me in de back, maybe, if you got a chance, for dat 's jist yo' style -<i> knows you, thoo en thoo -but i don't mind gitt'n' killed, beca'se all dis is down in writin', en it 's in safe hands, too, en de man dat 's got it knows whah to look for de right man when i gits killed. oh, bless yo' soul, if you puts yo' mother up for as big a fool as <you> is, you 's pow'ful mistaken, i kin tell you! now den, you set still en behave yo'self; en don't you git up ag'in till i tell you!" tom fretted and chafed awhile in a whirlwind of disorganizing sensations and emotions, and finally said, with something like settled conviction - "the whole thing is moonshine; now then, go ahead and do your worst; i 'm done with you." roxy made no answer. she took the lantern and started toward the door. tom was in a cold panic in a moment. "come back, come back!" he wailed. "i did n't mean it, roxy; i take it all back, and i 'll never say it again! please come back, roxy!" the woman stood a moment, then she said gravely: "dah 's one thing you 's got to stop, valet de chambers. you can't call me <roxy>, same as if you was my equal. chillen don't speak to dey mammies like dat. you 'll call me ma or mammy, dat 's what you 'll call me -leastways when dey ain't nobody aroun'. <say> it!" it cost tom a struggle, but he got it out. "dat 's all right. don't you ever forgit it ag'in, if you knows what 's good for you. now den, you has said you would n't ever call it lies en moonshine ag'in. i 'll tell you dis, for a warnin': if you ever does say it ag'in, it 's de <las'> time you 'll ever say it to me; i 'll tramp as straight to de judge as i kin walk, en tell him who you is, en <prove> it. does you b'lieve me when i says dat?" "oh," groaned tom, "i more than believe it; i <know> it." roxy knew her conquest was complete. she could have proved nothing to anybody, and her threat about the writings was a lie; but she knew the person she was dealing with, and had made both statements without any doubt as to the effect they would produce. she went and sat down on her candle-box, and the pride and pomp of her victorious attitude made it a throne. she said - "now den, chambers, we 's gwine to talk business, en dey ain't gwine to be no mo' foolishness. in de fust place, you gits fifty dollahs a month; you 's gwine to han' over half of it to yo' ma. plank it out!" but tom had only six dollars in the world. he gave her that, and promised to start fair on next month's pension. "chambers, how much is you in debt?" tom shuddered, and said - "nearly three hundred dollars." "how is you gwine to pay it?" tom groaned out - "oh, i don't know; don't ask me such awful questions." but she stuck to her point until she wearied a confession out of him: he had been prowling about in disguise, stealing small valuables from private houses; in fact, had made a good deal of a raid on his fellow-villagers a fortnight before, when he was supposed to be in st. louis; but he doubted if he had sent away enough stuff to realize the required amount, and was afraid to make a further venture in the present excited state of the town. his mother approved of his conduct, and offered to help, but this frightened him. he tremblingly ventured to say that if she would retire from the town he should feel better and safer, and could hold his head higher -and was going on to make an argument, but she interrupted and surprised him pleasantly by saying she was ready; it did n't make any difference to her where she stayed, so that she got her share of the pension regularly. she said she would not go far, and would call at the haunted house once a month for her money. then she said - "i don't hate you so much now, but i 've hated you a many a year -and anybody would. did n't i change you off, en give you a good fambly en a good name, en made you a white gen'l'man en rich, wid store clothes on -en what did i git for it? you despised me all de time, en was al'ays sayin' mean hard things to me befo' folks, en would n't ever let me forgit i 's a nigger -en -en -" she fell to sobbing, and broke down. tom said - "but you know i did n't know you were my mother; and besides -" "well, nemmine 'bout dat, now; let it go. i 's gwine to fo'git it." then she added fiercely, "en don't you ever make me remember it ag'in, or you 'll be sorry, <i> tell you." when they were parting, tom said, in the most persuasive way he could command - "ma, would you mind telling me who was my father?" he had supposed he was asking an embarrassing question. he was mistaken. roxy drew herself up with a proud toss of her head, and said - "does i mine tellin' you? no, dat i don't! you ain't got no 'casion to be shame' o' yo' father, <i> kin tell you. he wuz de highest quality in dis whole town -ole virginny stock. fust famblies, he wuz. jes as good stock as de driscolls en de howards, de bes' day dey ever seed." she put on a little prouder air, if possible, and added impressively: "does you 'member cunnel cecil burleigh essex, dat died de same year yo' young marse tom driscoll's pappy died, en all de masons en odd fellers en churches turned out en give him de bigges' funeral dis town ever seed? dat 's de man." under the inspiration of her soaring complacency the departed graces of her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to itself a dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her surroundings had been a little more in keeping with it. "dey ain't another nigger in dis town dat 's as high-bawn as you is. now den, go 'long! en jes you hold yo' head up as high as you want to -you has de right, en dat i kin swah." x all say, "how hard it is that we have to die" -a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> when angry, count four; when very angry, swear. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> every now and then, after tom went to bed, he had sudden wakings out of his sleep, and his first thought was, "oh, joy, it was all a dream!" then he laid himself heavily down again, with a groan and the muttered words, "a nigger! i am a nigger! oh, i wish i was dead!" he woke at dawn with one more repetition of this horror, and then he resolved to meddle no more with that treacherous sleep. he began to think. sufficiently bitter thinkings they were. they wandered along something after this fashion: "why were niggers <and> whites made? what crime did the uncreated first nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for him? and why is this awful difference made between white and black? .... how hard the nigger's fate seems, this morning! -yet until last night such a thought never entered my head." he sighed and groaned an hour or more away. then "chambers" came humbly in to say that breakfast was nearly ready. "tom" blushed scarlet to see this aristocratic white youth cringe to him, a nigger, and call him "young marster." he said roughly - "get out of my sight!" and when the youth was gone, he muttered, "he has done me no harm, poor wretch, but he is an eyesore to me now, for he is driscoll the young gentleman, and i am a -oh, i wish i was dead!" a gigantic irruption, like that of krakatoa a few years ago, with the accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of volcanic dust, changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond recognition, bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before. the tremendous catastrophe which had befallen tom had changed his moral landscape in much the same way. some of his low places he found lifted to ideals, some of his ideals had sunk to the valleys, and lay there with the sackcloth and ashes of pumice-stone and sulphur on their ruined heads. for days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking, thinking -trying to get his bearings. it was new work. if he met a friend, he found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished -his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a shake. it was the "nigger" in him asserting its humility, and he blushed and was abashed. and the "nigger" in him was surprised when the white friend put out his hand for a shake with him. he found the "nigger" in him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to the white rowdy and loafer. when rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his secret worship, invited him in, the "nigger" in him made an embarrassed excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on equal terms. the "nigger" in him went shrinking and skulking here and there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe detection in all faces, tones, and gestures. so strange and uncharacteristic was tom's conduct that people noticed it, and turned to look after him when he passed on; and when he glanced back -as he could not help doing, in spite of his best resistance -and caught that puzzled expression in a person's face, it gave him a sick feeling, and he took himself out of view as quickly as he could. he presently came to have a hunted sense and a hunted look, and then he fled away to the hilltops and the solitudes. he said to himself that the curse of ham was upon him. he dreaded his meals; the "nigger" in him was ashamed to sit at the white folks' table, and feared discovery all the time; and once when judge driscoll said, "what 's the matter with you? you look as meek as a nigger," he felt as secret murderers are said to feel when the accuser says, "thou art the man!" tom said he was not well, and left the table. his ostensible "aunt's" solicitudes and endearments were become a terror to him, and he avoided them. and all the time, hatred of his ostensible "uncle" was steadily growing in his heart; for he said to himself, "he is white; and i am his chattel, his property, his goods, and he can sell me, just as he could his dog." for as much as a week after this, tom imagined that his character had undergone a pretty radical change. but that was because he did not know himself. in several ways his opinions were totally changed, and would never go back to what they were before, but the main structure of his character was not changed, and could not be changed. one or two very important features of it were altered, and in time effects would result from this, if opportunity offered -effects of a quite serious nature, too. under the influence of a great mental and moral upheaval his character and habits had taken on the appearance of complete change, but after a while with the subsidence of the storm both began to settle toward their former places. he dropped gradually back into his old frivolous and easy-going ways and conditions of feeling and manner of speech, and no familiar of his could have detected anything in him that differentiated him from the weak and careless tom of other days. the theft-raid which he had made upon the village turned out better than he had ventured to hope. it produced the sum necessary to pay his gaming-debts, and saved him from exposure to his uncle and another smashing of the will. he and his mother learned to like each other fairly well. she could n't love him, as yet, because there "war n't nothing <to> him," as she expressed it, but her nature needed something or somebody to rule over, and he was better than nothing. her strong character and aggressive and commanding ways compelled tom's admiration in spite of the fact that he got more illustrations of them than he needed for his comfort. however, as a rule her conversation was made up of racy tattle about the privacies of the chief families of the town (for she went harvesting among their kitchens every time she came to the village), and tom enjoyed this. it was just in his line. she always collected her half of his pension punctually, and he was always at the haunted house to have a chat with her on these occasions. every now and then she paid him a visit there on between-days also. occasionally he would run up to st. louis for a few weeks, and at last temptation caught him again. he won a lot of money, but lost it, and with it a deal more besides, which he promised to raise as soon as possible. for this purpose he projected a new raid on his town. he never meddled with any other town, for he was afraid to venture into houses whose ins and outs he did not know and the habits of whose households he was not acquainted with. he arrived at the haunted house in disguise on the wednesday before the advent of the twins -after writing his aunt pratt that he would not arrive until two days after -and lay in hiding there with his mother until toward daylight friday morning, when he went to his uncle's house and entered by the back way with his own key, and slipped up to his room, where he could have the use of mirror and toilet articles. he had a suit of girl's clothes with him in a bundle as a disguise for his raid, and was wearing a suit of his mother's clothing, with black gloves and veil. by dawn he was tricked out for his raid, but he caught a glimpse of pudd'nhead wilson through the window over the way, and knew that pudd'n-head had caught a glimpse of him. so he entertained wilson with some airs and graces and attitudes for a while, then stepped out of sight and resumed the other disguise, and by and by went down and out the back way and started down town to reconnoiter the scene of his intended labors. but he was ill at ease. he had changed back to roxy's dress, with the stoop of age added to the disguise, so that wilson would not bother himself about a humble old woman leaving a neighbor's house by the back way in the early morning, in case he was still spying. but supposing wilson had seen him leave, and had thought it suspicious, and had also followed him? the thought made tom cold. he gave up the raid for the day, and hurried back to the haunted house by the obscurest route he knew. his mother was gone; but she came back, by and by, with the news of the grand reception at patsy cooper's, and soon persuaded him that the opportunity was like a special providence, it was so inviting and perfect. so he went raiding, after all, and made a nice success of it while everybody was gone to patsy cooper's. success gave him nerve and even actual intrepidity; insomuch, indeed, that after he had conveyed his harvest to his mother in a back alley, he went to the reception himself, and added several of the valuables of that house to his takings. after this long digression we have now arrived once more at the point where pudd'nhead wilson, while waiting for the arrival of the twins on that same friday evening, sat puzzling over the strange apparition of that morning -a girl in young tom driscoll's bedroom; fretting, and guessing, and puzzling over it, and wondering who the shameless creature might be. xi there are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. no. 1 admits you to his respect; no. 2 admits you to his admiration; no. 3 carries you clear into his heart. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> as to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the twins arrived presently, and talk began. it flowed along chattily and sociably, and under its influence the new friendship gathered ease and strength. wilson got out his calendar, by request, and read a passage or two from it, which the twins praised quite cordially. this pleased the author so much that he complied gladly when they asked him to lend them a batch of the work to read at home. in the course of their wide travels they had found out that there are three sure ways of pleasing an author; they were now working the best of the three. there was an interruption, now. young tom driscoll appeared, and joined the party. he pretended to be seeing the distinguished strangers for the first time when they rose to shake hands; but this was only a blind, as he had already had a glimpse of them at the reception, while robbing the house. the twins made mental note that he was smooth-faced and rather handsome, and smooth and undulatory in his movements -graceful, in fact. angelo thought he had a good eye; luigi thought there was something veiled and sly about it. angelo thought he had a pleasant free-and-easy way of talking; luigi thought it was more so than was agreeable. angelo thought he was a sufficiently nice young man; luigi reserved his decision. tom's first contribution to the conversation was a question which he had put to wilson a hundred times before. it was always cheerily and good-naturedly put, and always inflicted a little pang, for it touched a secret sore; but this time the pang was sharp, since strangers were present. "well, how does the law come on? had a case yet?" wilson bit his lip, but answered, "no -not yet," with as much indifference as he could assume. judge driscoll had generously left the law feature out of the wilson biography which he had furnished to the twins. young tom laughed pleasantly, and said: "wilson 's a lawyer, gentlemen, but he does n't practise now." the sarcasm bit, but wilson kept himself under control, and said without passion: "i don't practise, it is true. it is true that i have never had a case, and have had to earn a poor living for twenty years as an expert accountant in a town where i can't get hold of a set of books to untangle as often as i should like. but it is also true that i did fit myself well for the practice of the law. by the time i was your age, tom, i had chosen a profession, and was soon competent to enter upon it." tom winced. "i never got a chance to try my hand at it, and i may never get a chance; and yet if i ever do get it i shall be found ready, for i have kept up my law-studies all these years." "that 's it; that 's good grit! i like to see it. i 've a notion to throw all my business your way. my business and your law-practice ought to make a pretty gay team, dave," and the young fellow laughed again. "if you will throw -" wilson had thought of the girl in tom's bedroom, and was going to say, "if you will throw the surreptitious and disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to something"; but thought better of it and said, "however, this matter does n't fit well in a general conversation." "all right, we 'll change the subject; i guess you were about to give me another dig, anyway, so i'm willing to change. how 's the awful mystery flourishing these days? wilson 's got a scheme for driving plain window-glass out of the market by decorating it with greasy finger-marks, and getting rich by selling it at famine prices to the crowned heads over in europe to outfit their palaces with. fetch it out, dave." wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said - "i get the subject to pass the fingers of his right hand through his hair, so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on them, and then press the balls of them on the glass. a fine and delicate print of the lines in the skin results, and is permanent, if it does n't come in contact with something able to rub it off. you begin, tom." "why, i think you took my finger-marks once or twice before." "yes; but you were a little boy the last time, only about twelve years old." "that 's so. of course i 've changed entirely since then, and variety is what the crowned heads want, i guess." he passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and pressed them one at a time on the glass. angelo made a print of his fingers on another glass, and luigi followed with the third. wilson marked the glasses with names and date, and put them away. tom gave one of his little laughs, and said - "i thought i would n't say anything, but if variety is what you are after, you have wasted a piece of glass. the hand-print of one twin is the same as the hand-print of the fellow-twin." "well, it 's done now, and i like to have them both, anyway," said wilson, returning to his place. "but look here, dave," said tom, "you used to tell people's fortunes, too, when you took their finger-marks. dave 's just an all-round genius -a genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great scientist running to seed here in this village, a prophet with the kind of honor that prophets generally get at home -for here they don't give shucks for his scientifics, and they call his skull a notion-factory -hey, dave, ain't it so? but never mind; he 'll make his mark some day -finger-mark, you know, he-he! but really, you want to let him take a shy at your palms once; it 's worth twice the price of admission or your money 's returned at the door. why, he 'll read your wrinkles as easy as a book, and not only tell you fifty or sixty things that 's going to happen to you, but fifty or sixty thousand that ain't. come, dave, show the gentlemen what an inspired jack-at-all-science we 've got in this town, and don't know it." wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff, and the twins suffered with him and for him. they rightly judged, now, that the best way to relieve him would be to take the thing in earnest and treat it with respect, ignoring tom's rather overdone raillery; so luigi said - "we have seen something of palmistry in our wanderings, and know very well what astonishing things it can do. if it is n't a science, and one of the greatest of them, too, i don't know what its other name ought to be. in the orient -" tom looked surprised and incredulous. he said - "that juggling a science? but really, you ain't serious, are you?" "yes, entirely so. four years ago we had our hands read out to us as if our palms had been covered with print." "well, do you mean to say there was actually anything in it?" asked tom, his incredulity beginning to weaken a little. "there was this much in it," said angelo; "what was told us of our characters was minutely exact -we could not have bettered it ourselves. next, two or three memorable things that had happened to us were laid bare -things which no one present but ourselves could have known about." "why, it 's rank sorcery!" exclaimed tom, who was now becoming very much interested. "and how did they make out with what was going to happen to you in the future?" "on the whole, quite fairly," said luigi. "two or three of the most striking things foretold have happened since; much the most striking one of all happened within that same year. some of the minor prophecies have come true; some of the minor and some of the major ones have not been fulfilled yet, and of course may never be: still, i should be more surprised if they failed to arrive than if they did n't." tom was entirely sobered, and profoundly impressed. he said, apologetically - "dave, i was n't meaning to belittle that science; i was only chaffing -chattering, i reckon i 'd better say. i wish you would look at their palms. come, won't you?" "why, certainly, if you want me to; but you know i 've had no chance to become an expert, and don't claim to be one. when a past event is somewhat prominently recorded in the palm i can generally detect that, but minor ones often escape me, -not always, of course, but often, -but i have n't much confidence in myself when it comes to reading the future. i am talking as if palmistry was a daily study with me, but that is not so. i have n't examined half a dozen hands in the last half dozen years; you see, the people got to joking about it, and i stopped to let the talk die down. i 'll tell you what we 'll do, count luigi: i 'll make a try at your past, and if i have any success there -no, on the whole, i 'll let the future alone; that 's really the affair of an expert." he took luigi's hand. tom said - "wait -don't look yet, dave! count luigi, here 's paper and pencil. set down that thing that you said was the most striking one that was foretold to you, and happened less than a year afterward, and give it to me so i can see if dave finds it in your hand." luigi wrote a line privately, and folded up the piece of paper, and handed it to tom, saying - "i 'll tell you when to look at it, if he finds it." wilson began to study luigi's palm, tracing life lines, heart lines, head lines, and so on, and noting carefully their relations with the cobweb of finer and more delicate marks and lines that enmeshed them on all sides; he felt of the fleshy cushion at the base of the thumb, and noted its shape; he felt of the fleshy side of the hand between the wrist and the base of the little finger, and noted its shape also; he painstakingly examined the fingers, observing their form, proportions, and natural manner of disposing themselves when in repose. all this process was watched by the three spectators with absorbing interest, their heads bent together over luigi's palm, and nobody disturbing the stillness with a word. wilson now entered upon a close survey of the palm again, and his revelations began. he mapped out luigi's character and disposition, his tastes, aversions, proclivities, ambitions, and eccentricities in a way which sometimes made luigi wince and the others laugh, but both twins declared that the chart was artistically drawn and was correct. next, wilson took up luigi's history. he proceeded cautiously and with hesitation, now, moving his finger slowly along the great lines of the palm, and now and then halting it at a "star" or some such landmark, and examining that neighborhood minutely. he proclaimed one or two past events, luigi confirmed his correctness, and the search went on. presently wilson glanced up suddenly with a surprised expression - "here is record of an incident which you would perhaps not wish me to -" "bring it out," said luigi, good-naturedly; "i promise you it sha'n't embarrass me." but wilson still hesitated, and did not seem quite to know what to do. then he said - "i think it is too delicate a matter to -to -i believe i would rather write it or whisper it to you, and let you decide for yourself whether you want it talked out or not." "that will answer," said luigi; "write it." wilson wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to luigi, who read it to himself and said to tom - "unfold your slip and read it, mr. driscoll." tom read: <"it was prophesied that i would kill a man. it came true before the year was out."> tom added, "great scott!" luigi handed wilson's paper to tom, and said - "now read this one." tom read: <"you have killed some one, but whether man, woman or child, i do not make out."> "caesar's ghost!" commented tom, with astonishment. "it beats anything that was ever heard of! why, a man's own hand is his deadliest enemy! just think of that -a man's own hand keeps a record of the deepest and fatalest secrets of his life, and is treacherously ready to expose him to any black-magic stranger that comes along. but what do you let a person look at your hand for, with that awful thing printed in it?" "oh," said luigi, reposefully, "i don't mind it. i killed the man for good reasons, and i don't regret it." "what were the reasons?" "well, he needed killing." "i 'll tell you why he did it, since he won't say himself," said angelo, warmly. "he did it to save my life, that 's what he did it for. so it was a noble act, and not a thing to be hid in the dark." "so it was, so it was," said wilson; "to do such a thing to save a brother's life is a great and fine action." "now come," said luigi, "it is very pleasant to hear you say these things, but for unselfishness, or heroism, or magnanimity, the circumstances won't stand scrutiny. you overlook one detail: suppose i had n't saved angelo's life, what would have become of mine? if i had let the man kill him, would n't he have killed me, too? i saved my own life, you see." "yes; that is your way of talking," said angelo, "but i know you -i don't believe you thought of yourself at all. i keep that weapon yet that luigi killed the man with, and i 'll show it to you some time. that incident makes it interesting, and it had a history before it came into luigi's hands which adds to its interest. it was given to luigi by a great indian prince, the gaikowar of baroda, and it had been in his family two or three centuries. it killed a good many disagreeable people who troubled that hearthstone at one time and another. it is n't much to look at, except that it is n't shaped like other knives, or dirks, or whatever it may be called -here, i 'll draw it for you." he took a sheet of paper and made a rapid sketch. "there it is -a broad and murderous blade, with edges like a razor for sharpness. the devices engraved on it are the ciphers or names of its long line of possessors -i had luigi's name added in roman letters myself with our coat of arms, as you see. you notice what a curious handle the thing has. it is solid ivory, polished like a mirror, and is four or five inches long -round, and as thick as a large man's wrist, with the end squared off flat, for your thumb to rest on; for you grasp it, with your thumb resting on the blunt end -so -and lift it aloft and strike downward. the gaikowar showed us how the thing was done when he gave it to luigi, and before that night was ended luigi had used the knife, and the gaikowar was a man short by reason of it. the sheath is magnificently ornamented with gems of great value. you will find the sheath more worth looking at than the knife itself, of course." tom said to himself - "it's lucky i came here. i would have sold that knife for a song; i supposed the jewels were glass." "but go on; don't stop," said wilson. "our curiosity is up now, to hear about the homicide. tell us about that." "well, briefly, the knife was to blame for that, all around. a native servant slipped into our room in the palace in the night, to kill us and steal the knife on account of the fortune incrusted on its sheath, without a doubt. luigi had it under his pillow; we were in bed together. there was a dim night-light burning. i was asleep, but luigi was awake, and he thought he detected a vague form nearing the bed. he slipped the knife out of the sheath and was ready, and unembarrassed by hampering bed-clothes, for the weather was hot and we had n't any. suddenly that native rose at the bedside, and bent over me with his right hand lifted and a dirk in it aimed at my throat; but luigi grabbed his wrist, pulled him downward, and drove his own knife into the man's neck. that is the whole story." wilson and tom drew deep breaths, and after some general chat about the tragedy, pudd'nhead said, taking tom's hand - "now, tom, i 've never had a look at your palms, as it happens; perhaps you 've got some little questionable privacies that need -hel-lo!" tom had snatched away his hand, and was looking a good deal confused. "why, he 's blushing!" said luigi. tom darted an ugly look at him, and said sharply - "well, if i am, it ain't because i 'm a murderer!" luigi's dark face flushed, but before he could speak or move, tom added with anxious haste: "oh, i beg a thousand pardons. i did n't mean that; it was out before i thought, and i 'm very, very sorry -you must forgive me!" wilson came to the rescue, and smoothed things down as well as he could; and in fact was entirely successful as far as the twins were concerned, for they felt sorrier for the affront put upon him by his guest's outburst of ill manners than for the insult offered to luigi. but the success was not so pronounced with the offender. tom tried to seem at his ease, and he went through the motions fairly well, but at bottom he felt resentful toward all the three witnesses of his exhibition; in fact, he felt so annoyed at them for having witnessed it and noticed it that he almost forgot to feel annoyed at himself for placing it before them. however, something presently happened which made him almost comfortable, and brought him nearly back to a state of charity and friendliness. this was a little spat between the twins; not much of a spat, but still a spat; and before they got far with it they were in a decided condition of irritation with each other. tom was charmed; so pleased, indeed, that he cautiously did what he could to increase the irritation while pretending to be actuated by more respectable motives. by his help the fire got warmed up to the blazing-point, and he might have had the happiness of seeing the flames show up, in another moment, but for the interruption of a knock on the door -an interruption which fretted him as much as it gratified wilson. wilson opened the door. the visitor was a good-natured, ignorant, energetic, middle-aged irishman named john buckstone, who was a great politician in a small way, and always took a large share in public matters of every sort. one of the town's chief excitements, just now, was over the matter of rum. there was a strong rum party and a strong anti-rum party. buckstone was training with the rum party, and he had been sent to hunt up the twins and invite them to attend a mass-meeting of that faction. he delivered his errand, and said the clans were already gathering in the big hall over the market-house. luigi accepted the invitation cordially, angelo less cordially, since he disliked crowds, and did not drink the powerful intoxicants of america. in fact, he was even a teetotaler sometimes -when it was judicious to be one. the twins left with buckstone, and tom driscoll joined company with them uninvited. in the distance one could see a long wavering line of torches drifting down the main street, and could hear the throbbing of the bass drum, the clash of cymbals, the squeaking of a fife or two, and the faint roar of remote hurrahs. the tail-end of this procession was climbing the market-house stairs when the twins arrived in its neighborhood; when they reached the hall it was full of people, torches, smoke, noise, and enthusiasm. they were conducted to the platform by buckstone -tom driscoll still following -and were delivered to the chairman in the midst of a prodigious explosion of welcome. when the noise had moderated a little, the chair proposed that "our illustrious guests be at once elected, by complimentary acclamation, to membership in our ever-glorious organization, the paradise of the free and the perdition of the slave." this eloquent discharge opened the flood-gates of enthusiasm again, and the election was carried with thundering unanimity. then arose a storm of cries: "wet them down! wet them down! give them a drink!" glasses of whisky were handed to the twins. luigi waved his aloft, then brought it to his lips; but angelo set his down. there was another storm of cries: "what 's the matter with the other one?" "what is the blond one going back on us for?" "explain! explain!" the chairman inquired, and then reported - "we have made an unfortunate mistake, gentlemen. i find that the count angelo cappello is opposed to our creed -is a teetotaler, in fact, and was not intending to apply for membership with us. he desires that we reconsider the vote by which he was elected. what is the pleasure of the house?" there was a general burst of laughter, plentifully accented with whistlings and cat-calls, but the energetic use of the gavel presently restored something like order. then a man spoke from the crowd, and said that while he was very sorry that the mistake had been made, it would not be possible to rectify it at the present meeting. according to the by-laws it must go over to the next regular meeting for action. he would not offer a motion, as none was required. he desired to apologize to the gentleman in the name of the house, and begged to assure him that as far as it might lie in the power of the sons of liberty, his temporary membership in the order would be made pleasant to him. this speech was received with great applause, mixed with cries of - "that 's the talk!" "he 's a good fellow, any way, if he <is> a teetotaler!" "drink his health!" "give him a rouser, and no heel-taps!" glasses were handed around, and everybody on the platform drank angelo's health, while the house bellowed forth in song: for he 's a jolly good fel-low, for he 's a jolly good fel-low, for he 's a jolly good fe-el-low, - which nobody can deny. tom driscoll drank. it was his second glass, for he had drunk angelo's the moment that angelo had set it down. the two drinks made him very merry -almost idiotically so -and he began to take a most lively and prominent part in the proceedings, particularly in the music and cat-call and side-remarks. the chairman was still standing at the front, the twins at his side. the extraordinarily close resemblance of the brothers to each other suggested a witticism to tom driscoll, and just as the chairman began a speech he skipped forward and said with an air of tipsy confidence to the audience - "boys, i move that he keeps still and lets this human philopena snip you out a speech." the descriptive aptness of the phrase caught the house, and a mighty burst of laughter followed. luigi's southern blood leaped to the boiling-point in a moment under the sharp humiliation of this insult delivered in the presence of four hundred strangers. it was not in the young man's nature to let the matter pass, or to delay the squaring of the account. he took a couple of strides and halted behind the unsuspecting joker. then he drew back and delivered a kick of such titanic vigor that it lifted tom clear over the footlights and landed him on the heads of the front row of the sons of liberty. even a sober person does not like to have a human being emptied on him when he is not doing any harm; a person who is not sober cannot endure such an attention at all. the nest of sons of liberty that driscoll landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there was probably not an entirely sober one in the auditorium. driscoll was promptly and indignantly flung on to the heads of sons in the next row, and these sons passed him on toward the rear, and then immediately began to pummel the front-row sons who had passed him to them. this course was strictly followed by bench after bench as driscoll traveled in his tumultuous and airy flight toward the door; so he left behind him an ever lengthening wake of raging and plunging and fighting and swearing humanity. down went group after group of torches, and presently above the deafening clatter of the gavel, roar of angry voices, and crash of succumbing benches, rose the paralyzing cry of "fire!" the fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased; for one distinctly defined moment there was a dead hush, a motionless calm, where the tempest had been; then with one impulse the multitude awoke to life and energy again, and went surging and struggling and swaying, this way and that, its outer edges melting away through windows and doors and gradually lessening the pressure and relieving the mass. the fire-boys were never on hand so suddenly before; for there was no distance to go, this time, their quarters being in the rear end of the market-house. there was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company. half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies, after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the frontier town of the period. enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters to man the engine and the ladders. in two minutes they had their red shirts and helmets on -they never stirred officially in unofficial costume -and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row of windows and poured out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were ready for them with a powerful stream of water which washed some of them off the roof and nearly drowned the rest. but water was preferable to fire, and still the stampede from the windows continued, and still the pitiless drenchings assailed it until the building was empty; then the fire-boys mounted to the hall and flooded it with water enough to annihilate forty times as much fire as there was there; for a village fire-company does not often get a chance to show off, and so when it does get a chance it makes the most of it. such citizens of that village as were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did not insure against fire; they insured against the fire-company. xii courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -not absence of fear. except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. consider the flea! -incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of god, if ignorance of fear were courage. whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. when we speak of clive, nelson, and putnam as men who "did n't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea -and put him at the head of the procession. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> judge driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on friday night, and he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the morning with his friend pembroke howard. these two had been boys together in virginia when that state still ranked as the chief and most imposing member of the union, and they still coupled the proud and affectionate adjective "old" with her name when they spoke of her. in missouri a recognized superiority attached to any person who hailed from old virginia; and this superiority was exalted to supremacy when a person of such nativity could also prove descent from the first families of that great commonwealth. the howards and driscolls were of this aristocracy. in their eyes it was a nobility. it had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly defined and as strict as any that could be found among the printed statutes of the land. the f. f. v. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in life was to watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched. he must keep his honor spotless. those laws were his chart; his course was marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as half a point of the compass it meant shipwreck to his honor; that is to say, degradation from his rank as a gentleman. these laws required certain things of him which his religion might forbid: then his religion must yield -the laws could not be relaxed to accommodate religions or anything else. honor stood first; and the laws defined what it was and wherein it differed in certain details from honor as defined by church creeds and by the social laws and customs of some of the minor divisions of the globe that had got crowded out when the sacred boundaries of virginia were staked out. if judge driscoll was the recognized first citizen of dawson's landing, pembroke howard was easily its recognized second citizen. he was called "the great lawyer" -an earned title. he and driscoll were of the same age -a year or two past sixty. although driscoll was a free-thinker and howard a strong and determined presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment in consequence. they were men whose opinions were their own property and not subject to revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their friends. the day's fishing finished, they came floating down stream in their skiff, talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met a skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said: "i reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a kicking last night, judge?" "did <what>?" "gave him a kicking." the old judge's lips paled, and his eyes began to flame. he choked with anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to say - "well -well -go on! give me the details." the man did it. at the finish the judge was silent a minute, turning over in his mind the shameful picture of tom's flight over the footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud - "h'm -i don't understand it. i was asleep at home. he did n't wake me. thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, i reckon." his face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said with a cheery complacency, "i like that -it 's the true old blood -hey, pembroke?" howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly. then the news-bringer spoke again - "but tom beat the twin on the trial." the judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said - "the trial? what trial?" "why, tom had him up before judge robinson for assault and battery." the old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received a death-stroke. howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon, and took him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat. he sprinkled water in his face, and said to the startled visitor - "go, now -don't let him come to and find you here. you see what an effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been more considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as that." "i 'm right down sorry i did it now, mr. howard, and i would n't have done it if i had thought: but it ain't a slander; it 's perfectly true, just as i told him." he rowed away. presently the old judge came out of his faint and looked up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over him. "say it ain't true, pembroke; tell me it ain't true!" he said in a weak voice. there was nothing weak in the deep organ-tones that responded - "you know it 's a lie as well as i do, old friend. he is of the best blood of the old dominion." "god bless you for saying it!" said the old gentleman, fervently. "ah, pembroke, it was such a blow!" howard stayed by his friend, and saw him home, and entered the house with him. it was dark, and past supper-time, but the judge was not thinking of supper; he was eager to hear the slander refuted from headquarters, and as eager to have howard hear it, too. tom was sent for, and he came immediately. he was bruised and lame, and was not a happy-looking object. his uncle made him sit down, and said - "we have been hearing about your adventure, tom, with a handsome lie added to it for embellishment. now pulverize that lie to dust! what measures have you taken? how does the thing stand?" tom answered guilelessly: "it don't stand at all; it 's all over. i had him up in court and beat him. pudd'nhead wilson defended him -first case he ever had, and lost it. the judge fined the miserable hound five dollars for the assault." howard and the judge sprang to their feet with the opening sentence -why, neither knew; then they stood gazing vacantly at each other. howard stood a moment, then sat mournfully down without saying anything. the judge's wrath began to kindle, and he burst out - "you cur! you scum! you vermin! do you mean to tell me that blood of my race has suffered a blow and crawled to a court of law about it? answer me!" tom's head drooped, and he answered with an eloquent silence. his uncle stared at him with a mixed expression of amazement and shame and incredulity that was sorrowful to see. at last he said - "which of the twins was it?" "count luigi." "you have challenged him?" "n -no," hesitated tom, turning pale. "you will challenge him to-night. howard will carry it." tom began to turn sick, and to show it. he turned his hat round and round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and said piteously - "oh, please don't ask me to do it, uncle! he is a murderous devil -i never could -i -i 'm afraid of him!" old driscoll's mouth opened and closed three times before he could get it to perform its office; then he stormed out - "a coward in my family! a driscoll a coward! oh, what have i done to deserve this infamy!" he tottered to his secretary in the corner repeating that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones, and got out of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits scattering the bits absently in his track as he walked up and down the room, still grieving and lamenting. at last he said - "there it is, shreds and fragments once more -my will. once more you have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most noble father! leave my sight! go -before i spit on you!" the young man did not tarry. then the judge turned to howard: "you will be my second, old friend?" "of course." "there is pen and paper. draft the cartel, and lose no time." "the count shall have it in his hands in fifteen minutes," said howard. tom was very heavy-hearted. his appetite was gone with his property and his self-respect. he went out the back way and wandered down the obscure lane grieving, and wondering if any course of future conduct, however discreet and carefully perfected and watched over, could win back his uncle's favor and persuade him to reconstruct once more that generous will which had just gone to ruin before his eyes. he finally concluded that it could. he said to himself that he had accomplished this sort of triumph once already, and that what had been done once could be done again. he would set about it. he would bend every energy to the task, and he would score that triumph once more, cost what it might to his convenience, limit as it might his frivolous and liberty-loving life. "to begin," he said to himself, "i 'll square up with the proceeds of my raid, and then gambling has got to be stopped -and stopped short off. it 's the worst vice i 've got -from my standpoint, anyway, because it 's the one he can most easily find out, through the impatience of my creditors. he thought it expensive to have to pay two hundred dollars to them for me once. expensive -<that!> why, it cost me the whole of his fortune -but of course he never thought of that; some people can't think of any but their own side of a case. if he had known how deep i am in, now, the will would have gone to pot without waiting for a duel to help. three hundred dollars! it 's a pile! but he 'll never hear of it, i 'm thankful to say. the minute i 've cleared it off, i 'm safe; and i 'll never touch a card again. anyway, i won't while he lives, i make oath to that. i 'm entering on my last reform -i know it -yes, and i 'll win; but after that, if i ever slip again i 'm gone." xiii when i reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who i know have gone to a better world, i am moved to lead a different life. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> october. this is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. the others are july, january, september, april, november, may, march, june, december, august, and february. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> thus mournfully communing with himself tom moped along the lane past pudd'nhead wilson's house, and still on and on between fences inclosing vacant country on each hand till he neared the haunted house, then he came moping back again, with many sighs and heavy with trouble. he sorely wanted cheerful company. rowena! his heart gave a bound at the thought, but the next thought quieted it -the detested twins would be there. he was on the inhabited side of wilson's house, and now as he approached it he noticed that the sitting-room was lighted. this would do; others made him feel unwelcome sometimes, but wilson never failed in courtesy toward him, and a kindly courtesy does at least save one's feelings, even if it is not professing to stand for a welcome. wilson heard footsteps at his threshold, then the clearing of a throat. "it's that fickle-tempered, dissipated young goose -poor devil, he finds friends pretty scarce to-day, likely, after the disgrace of carrying a personal-assault case into a law-court." a dejected knock. "come in!" tom entered, and drooped into a chair, without saying anything. wilson said kindly - "why, my boy, you look desolate. don't take it so hard. try and forget you have been kicked." "oh, dear," said tom, wretchedly, "it 's not that, pudd'n-head -it 's not that. it's a thousand times worse than that -oh, yes, a million times worse." "why, tom, what do you mean? has rowena -" "flung me? no, but the old man has." wilson said to himself, "aha!" and thought of the mysterious girl in the bedroom. "the driscolls have been making discoveries!" then he said aloud, gravely: "tom, there are some kinds of dissipation which -" "oh, shucks, this has n't got anything to do with dissipation. he wanted me to challenge that derned italian savage, and i would n't do it." "yes, of course he would do that," said wilson in a meditative matter-of-course way; "but the thing that puzzled me was, why he did n't look to that last night, for one thing, and why he let you carry such a matter into a court of law at all, either before the duel or after it. it 's no place for it. it was not like him. i could n't understand it. how did it happen?" "it happened because he did n't know anything about it. he was asleep when i got home last night." "and you did n't wake him? tom, is that possible?" tom was not getting much comfort here. he fidgeted a moment, then said: "i did n't choose to tell him -that 's all. he was going a-fishing before dawn, with pembroke howard, and if i got the twins into the common calaboose -and i thought sure i could -i never dreamed of their slipping out on a paltry fine for such an outrageous offense -well, once in the calaboose they would be disgraced, and uncle would n't want any duels with that sort of characters, and would n't allow any." "tom, i am ashamed of you! i don't see how you could treat your good old uncle so. i am a better friend of his than you are; for if i had known the circumstances i would have kept that case out of court until i got word to him and let him have a gentleman's chance." "you would?" exclaimed tom, with lively surprise. "and it your first case! and you know perfectly well there never would have <been> any case if he had got that chance, don't you? and you 'd have finished your days a pauper nobody, instead of being an actually launched and recognized lawyer to-day. and you would really have done that, would you?" "certainly." tom looked at him a moment or two, then shook his head sorrowfully and said - "i believe you -upon my word i do. i don't know why i do, but i do. pudd'nhead wilson, i think you 're the biggest fool i ever saw." "thank you." "don't mention it." "well, he has been requiring you to fight the italian and you have refused. you degenerate remnant of an honorable line! i 'm thoroughly ashamed of you, tom!" "oh, that 's nothing! i don't care for anything, now that the will 's torn up again." "tom, tell me squarely -did n't he find any fault with you for anything but those two things -carrying the case into court and refusing to fight?" he watched the young fellow's face narrowly, but it was entirely reposeful, and so also was the voice that answered: "no, he did n't find any other fault with me. if he had had any to find, he would have begun yesterday, for he was just in the humor for it. he drove that jack-pair around town and showed them the sights, and when he came home he could n't find his father's old silver watch that don't keep time and he thinks so much of, and could n't remember what he did with it three or four days ago when he saw it last; and so when i arrived he was all in a sweat about it, and when i suggested that it probably was n't lost but stolen, it put him in a regular passion and he said i was a fool -which convinced me, without any trouble, that that was just what he was afraid <had> happened, himself, but did not want to believe it, because lost things stand a better chance of being found again than stolen ones." "whe-ew!" whistled wilson; "score another on the list." "another what?" "another theft!" "theft?" "yes, theft. that watch is n't lost, it 's stolen. there 's been another raid on the town -and just the same old mysterious sort of thing that has happened once before, as you remember." "you don't mean it!" "it 's as sure as you are born! have you missed anything yourself?" "no. that is, i did miss a silver pencil-case that aunt mary pratt gave me last birthday -" "you 'll find it 's stolen -that 's what you 'll find." "no, i sha'n't; for when i suggested theft about the watch and got such a rap, i went and examined my room, and the pencil-case was missing, but it was only mislaid, and i found it again." "you are sure you missed nothing else?" "well, nothing of consequence. i missed a small plain gold ring worth two or three dollars, but that will turn up. i 'll look again." "in my opinion you 'll not find it. there 's been a raid, i tell you. come <in>!" mr. justice robinson entered, followed by buckstone and the town-constable, jim blake. they sat down, and after some wandering and aimless weather-conversation wilson said - "by the way, we 've just added another to the list of thefts, maybe two. judge driscoll's old silver watch is gone, and tom here has missed a gold ring." "well, it is a bad business," said the justice, "and gets worse the further it goes. the hankses, the dobsons, the pilligrews, the ortons, the grangers, the hales, the fullers, the holcombs, in fact everybody that lives around about patsy cooper's has been robbed of little things like trinkets and teaspoons and such-like small valuables that are easily carried off. it 's perfectly plain that the thief took advantage of the reception at patsy cooper's, when all the neighbors were in her house and all their niggers hanging around her fence for a look at the show, to raid the vacant houses undisturbed. patsy is miserable about it; miserable on account of the neighbors, and particularly miserable on account of her foreigners, of course; so miserable on their account that she has n't any room to worry about her own little losses." "it 's the same old raider," said wilson. "i suppose there is n't any doubt about that." "constable blake does n't think so." "no, you 're wrong there," said blake; "the other times it was a man; there was plenty of signs of that, as we know, in the profession, though we never got hands on him; but this time it 's a woman." wilson thought of the mysterious girl straight off. she was always in his mind now. but she failed him again. blake continued: "she 's a stoop-shouldered old woman with a covered basket on her arm, in a black veil, dressed in mourning. i saw her going aboard the ferry-boat yesterday. lives in illinois, i reckon; but i don't care where she lives, i 'm going to get her -she can make herself sure of that." "what makes you think she 's the thief?" "well, there ain't any other, for one thing; and for another, some of the nigger draymen that happened to be driving along saw her coming out of or going into houses, and told me so -and it just happens that they was <robbed> houses, every time." it was granted that this was plenty good enough circumstantial evidence. a pensive silence followed, which lasted some moments, then wilson said - "there 's one good thing, anyway. she can't either pawn or sell count luigi's costly indian dagger." "my!" said tom, "is <that> gone?" "yes." "well, that was a haul! but why can't she pawn it or sell it?" "because when the twins went home from the sons of liberty meeting last night, news of the raid was sifting in from everywhere, and aunt patsy was in distress to know if they had lost anything. they found that the dagger was gone, and they notified the police and pawnbrokers everywhere. it was a great haul, yes, but the old woman won't get anything out of it, because she 'll get caught." "did they offer a reward?" asked buckstone. "yes; five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred more for the thief." "what a leather-headed idea!" exclaimed the constable. "the thief da's n't go near them, nor send anybody. whoever goes is going to get himself nabbed, for there ain't any pawnbroker that 's going to lose the chance to -" if anybody had noticed tom's face at that time, the gray-green color of it might have provoked curiosity; but nobody did. he said to himself: "i 'm gone! i never can square up; the rest of the plunder won't pawn or sell for half of the bill. oh, i know it -i 'm gone, i 'm gone -and this time it 's for good. oh, this is awful -i don't know what to do, nor which way to turn!" "softly, softly," said wilson to blake. "i planned their scheme for them at midnight last night, and it was all finished up shipshape by two this morning. they 'll get their dagger back, and then i 'll explain to you how the thing was done." there were strong signs of a general curiosity, and buckstone said - "well, you have whetted us up pretty sharp, wilson, and i 'm free to say that if you don't mind telling us in confidence -" "oh, i 'd as soon tell as not, buckstone, but as long as the twins and i agreed to say nothing about it, we must let it stand so. but you can take my word for it you won't be kept waiting three days. somebody will apply for that reward pretty promptly, and i 'll show you the thief and the dagger both very soon afterward." the constable was disappointed, and also perplexed. he said - "it may all be -yes, and i hope it will, but i 'm blamed if i can see my way through it. it 's too many for yours truly." the subject seemed about talked out. nobody seemed to have anything further to offer. after a silence the justice of the peace informed wilson that he and buckstone and the constable had come as a committee, on the part of the democratic party, to ask him to run for mayor -for the little town was about to become a city and the first charter election was approaching. it was the first attention which wilson had ever received at the hands of any party; it was a sufficiently humble one, but it was a recognition of his debut into the town's life and activities at last; it was a step upward, and he was deeply gratified. he accepted, and the committee departed, followed by young tom. xiv the true southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. it is chief of this world's luxuries, king by the grace of god over all the fruits of the earth. when one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. it was not a southern watermelon that eve took: we know it because she repented. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> about the time that wilson was bowing the committee out, pembroke howard was entering the next house to report. he found the old judge sitting grim and straight in his chair, waiting. "well, howard -the news?" "the best in the world." "accepts, does he?" and the light of battle gleamed joyously in the judge's eye. "accepts? why, he jumped at it." "did, did he? now that 's fine -that 's very fine. i like that. when is it to be?" "now! straight off! to-night! an admirable fellow -admirable!" "admirable? he 's a darling! why, it 's an honor as well as a pleasure to stand up before such a man. come -off with you! go and arrange everything -and give him my heartiest compliments. a rare fellow, indeed; an admirable fellow, as you have said!" howard hurried away, saying - "i 'll have him in the vacant stretch between wilson's and the haunted house within the hour, and i 'll bring my own pistols." judge driscoll began to walk the floor in a state of pleased excitement; but presently he stopped, and began to think -began to think of tom. twice he moved toward the secretary, and twice he turned away again; but finally he said - "this may be my last night in the world -i must not take the chance. he is worthless and unworthy, but it is largely my fault. he was intrusted to me by my brother on his dying bed, and i have indulged him to his hurt, instead of training him up severely, and making a man of him. i have violated my trust, and i must not add the sin of desertion to that. i have forgiven him once already, and would subject him to a long and hard trial before forgiving him again, if i could live; but i must not run that risk. no, i must restore the will. but if i survive the duel, i will hide it away, and he will not know, and i will not tell him until he reforms and i see that his reformation is going to be permanent." he re-drew the will, and his ostensible nephew was heir to a fortune again. as he was finishing his task, tom, wearied with another brooding tramp, entered the house and went tiptoeing past the sitting-room door. he glanced in, and hurried on, for the sight of his uncle had nothing but terrors for him to-night. but his uncle was writing! that was unusual at this late hour. what could he be writing? a chill of anxiety settled down upon tom's heart. did that writing concern him? he was afraid so. he reflected that when ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers. he said he would get a glimpse of that document or know the reason why. he heard some one coming, and stepped out of sight and hearing. it was pembroke howard. what could be hatching? howard said, with great satisfaction: "everything 's right and ready. he's gone to the battle-ground with his second and the surgeon -also with his brother. i 've arranged it all with wilson -wilson 's his second. we are to have three shots apiece." "good! how is the moon?" "bright as day, nearly. perfect, for the distance -fifteen yards. no wind -not a breath; hot and still." "all good; all first-rate. here, pembroke, read this, and witness it." pembroke read and witnessed the will, then gave the old man's hand a hearty shake and said: "now that 's right, york -but i knew you would do it. you could n't leave that poor chap to fight along without means or profession, with certain defeat before him, and i knew you would n't, for his father's sake if not for his own." "for his dead father's sake i could n't, i know; for poor percy -but you know what percy was to me. but mind -tom is not to know of this unless i fall to-night." "i understand. i 'll keep the secret." the judge put the will away, and the two started for the battle-ground. in another minute the will was in tom's hands. his misery vanished, his feelings underwent a tremendous revulsion. he put the will carefully back in its place, and spread his mouth and swung his hat once, twice, three times around his head, in imitation of three rousing huzzas, no sound issuing from his lips. he fell to communing with himself excitedly and joyously, but every now and then he let off another volley of dumb hurrahs. he said to himself: "i 've got the fortune again, but i 'll not let on that i know about it. and this time i 'm going to hang on to it. i take no more risks. i 'll gamble no more, i 'll drink no more, because -well, because i 'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. it 's the sure way, and the only sure way; i might have thought of that sooner -well, yes, if i had wanted to. but now -dear me, i 've had a bad scare this time, and i 'll take no more chances. not a single chance more. land! i persuaded myself this evening that i could fetch him around without any great amount of effort, but i 've been getting more and more heavy-hearted and doubtful straight along, ever since. if he tells me about this thing, all right; but if he does n't, i sha'n't let on. i -well, i 'd like to tell pudd'nhead wilson, but -no, i 'll think about that; perhaps i won't." he whirled off another dead huzza, and said, "i 'm reformed, and this time i 'll stay so, sure!" he was about to close with a final grand silent demonstration, when he suddenly recollected that wilson had put it out of his power to pawn or sell the indian knife, and that he was once more in awful peril of exposure by his creditors for that reason. his joy collapsed utterly, and he turned away and moped toward the door moaning and lamenting over the bitterness of his luck. he dragged himself upstairs, and brooded in his room a long time disconsolate and forlorn, with luigi's indian knife for a text. at last he sighed and said: "when i supposed these stones were glass and this ivory bone, the thing had n't any interest for me because it had n't any value, and could n't help me out of my trouble. but now -why, now it is full of interest; yes, and of a sort to break a body's heart. it 's a bag of gold that has turned to dirt and ashes in my hands. it could save me, and save me so easily, and yet i 've got to go to ruin. it 's like drowning with a life-preserver in my reach. all the hard luck comes to me, and all the good luck goes to other people -pudd'nhead wilson, for instance; even his career has got a sort of a little start at last, and what has he done to deserve it, i should like to know? yes, he has opened his own road, but he is n't content with that, but must block mine. it 's a sordid, selfish world, and i wish i was out of it." he allowed the light of the candle to play upon the jewels of the sheath, but the flashings and sparklings had no charm for his eye; they were only just so many pangs to his heart. "i must not say anything to roxy about this thing," he said, "she is too daring. she would be for digging these stones out and selling them, and then -why, she would be arrested and the stones traced, and then -" the thought made him quake, and he hid the knife away, trembling all over and glancing furtively about, like a criminal who fancies that the accuser is already at hand. should he try to sleep? oh, no, sleep was not for him; his trouble was too haunting, too afflicting for that. he must have somebody to mourn with. he would carry his despair to roxy. he had heard several distant gunshots, but that sort of thing was not uncommon, and they had made no impression upon him. he went out at the back door, and turned westward. he passed wilson's house and proceeded along the lane, and presently saw several figures approaching wilson's place through the vacant lots. these were the duelists returning from the fight; he thought he recognized them, but as he had no desire for white people's company, he stooped down behind the fence until they were out of his way. roxy was feeling fine. she said: "whah was you, child? warn't you in it?" "in what?" "in de duel." "duel? has there been a duel?" "'co'se dey has. de ole jedge has be'n havin' a duel wid one o' dem twins." "great scott!" then he added to himself: "that 's what made him re-make the will; he thought he might get killed, and it softened him toward me. and that 's what he and howard were so busy about ... oh dear, if the twin had only killed him, i should be out of my -" "what is you mumblin' 'bout, chambers? whah was you? did n't you know dey was gwyne to be a duel?" "no. i did n't. the old man tried to get me to fight one with count luigi, but he did n't succeed, so i reckon he concluded to patch up the family honor himself." he laughed at the idea, and went rambling on with a detailed account of his talk with the judge, and how shocked and ashamed the judge was to find that he had a coward in his family. he glanced up at last, and got a shock himself. roxana's bosom was heaving with suppressed passion, and she was glowering down upon him with measureless contempt written in her face. "en you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin' at de chance! en you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell me, dat fetched sich a po' low-down ornery rabbit into de worl'! pah! it make me sick! it 's de nigger in you, dat 's what it is. thirty-one parts o' you is white, en on'y one part nigger, en dat po' little one part is yo' <soul>. tain't wuth savin'; tain't wuth totin' out on a shovel en thowin in de gutter. you has disgraced yo' birth. what would yo' pa think o' you? it 's enough to make him turn in his grave." the last three sentences stung tom into a fury, and he said to himself that if his father were only alive and in reach of assassination his mother would soon find that he had a very clear notion of the size of his indebtedness to that man, and was willing to pay it up in full, and would do it too, even at risk of his life; but he kept his thought to himself; that was safest in his mother's present state. "whatever has come o' yo' essex blood? dat 's what i can't understand. en it ain't on'y jist essex blood dat 's in you, not by a long sight -'deed it ain't. my great-great-great-gran'father en yo' great-great-great-great-gran'father was ole cap'n john smith, de highest blood dat ole virginny ever turned out, en <his> great-great-gran'mother or somers along back dah, was pocahontas de injun queen, en her husbun' was a nigger king outen africa -en yit here you is, a slinkin' outen a duel en disgracin' our whole line like a ornery low-down hound! yes, it 's de nigger in you!" she sat down on her candle-box and fell into a reverie. tom did not disturb her; he sometimes lacked prudence, but it was not in circumstances of this kind. roxana's storm went gradually down, but it died hard, and even when it seemed to be quite gone, it would now and then break out in a distant rumble, so to speak, in the form of muttered ejaculations. one of these was, "ain't nigger enough in him to show in his finger-nails, en dat takes mighty little -yit dey 's enough to paint his soul." presently she muttered, "yassir, enough to paint a whole thimbleful of 'em." at last her ramblings ceased altogether, and her countenance began to clear -a welcome sign to tom, who had learned her moods, and knew she was on the threshold of good-humor, now. he noticed that from time to time she unconsciously carried her finger to the end of her nose. he looked closer and said: "why, mammy, the end of your nose is skinned. how did that come?" she sent out the sort of whole-hearted peal of laughter which god has vouchsafed in its perfection to none but the happy angels in heaven and the bruised and broken black slave on the earth, and said: "dad fetch dat duel, i be'n in it myself." "gracious! did a bullet do that?" "yassir, you bet it did!" "well, i declare! why, how did that happen?" "happen dis-away. i 'uz a-sett'n' here kinder dozin' in de dark, en <che-bang!> goes a gun, right out dah. i skips along out towards t' other end o' de house to see what 's gwyne on, en stops by de ole winder on de side towards pudd'nhead wilson's house dat ain't got no sash in it, -but dey ain't none of 'em got any sashes, fur as dat 's concerned, -en i stood dah in de dark en look out, en dar in de moonlight, right down under me 'uz one o' de twins a-cussin' -not much, but jist a-cussin' soft -it 'uz de brown one dat 'uz cussin', 'ca'se he 'uz hit in de shoulder. en doctor claypool he 'uz a-workin' at him, en pudd'nhead wilson he 'uz a-he'pin', en ole jedge driscoll en pem howard 'uz a-standin' out yonder a little piece waitin' for 'em to git ready agin. en treckly dey squared off en give de word, en <bang-bang> went de pistols, en de twin he say, `ouch!' -hit him on de han' dis time, -en i hear dat same bullet go <spat!> ag'in' de logs under de winder; en de nex' time dey shoot, de twin say, `ouch!' ag'in, en i done it too, 'ca'se de bullet glance' on his cheek-bone en skip up here en glance on de side o' de winder en whiz right acrost my face en tuck de hide off'n my nose -why, if i 'd 'a' be'n jist a inch or a inch en a half furder 't would 'a' tuck de whole nose en disfigger me. here 's de bullet; i hunted her up." "did you stand there all the time?" "dat 's a question to ask, ain't it! what else would i do? does i git a chance to see a duel every day?" "why, you were right in range! were n't you afraid?" the woman gave a sniff of scorn. "'fraid! de smith-pocahontases ain't 'fraid o' nothin', let alone bullets." "they 've got pluck enough, i suppose; what they lack is judgment. <i> would n't have stood there." "nobody 's accusin' you!" "did anybody else get hurt?" "yes, we all got hit 'cep' de blon' twin en de doctor en de seconds. de jedge did n't git hurt, but i hear pudd'nhead say de bullet snip some o' his ha'r off." "'george!" said tom to himself, "to come so near being out of my trouble, and miss it by an inch. oh dear, dear, he will live to find me out and sell me to some nigger-trader yet -yes, and he would do it in a minute." then he said aloud, in a grave tone - "mother, we are in an awful fix." roxana caught her breath with a spasm, and said - "chile! what you hit a body so sudden for, like dat? what 's be'n en gone en happen'?" "well, there 's one thing i did n't tell you. when i would n't fight, he tore up the will again, and -" roxana's face turned a dead white, and she said - "now you 's <done>! -done forever! dat 's de end. bofe un us is gwyne to starve to -" "wait and hear me through, can't you! i reckon that when he resolved to fight, himself, he thought he might get killed and not have a chance to forgive me any more in this life, so he made the will again, and i 've seen it, and it 's all right. but -" "oh, thank goodness, den we 's safe agin! -safe! en so what did you want to come here en talk sich dreadful -" "hold <on>, i tell you, and let me finish. the swag i gathered won't half square me up, and the first thing we know, my creditors -well, you know what 'll happen." roxana dropped her chin, and told her son to leave her alone -she must think this matter out. presently she said impressively: "you got to go mighty keerful now, i tell you! en here 's what you got to do. he did n't git killed, en if you gives him de least reason, he 'll bust de will ag'in, en dat 's de <las>' time, now you hear me! so -you 's got to show him what you kin do in de nex' few days. you 's got to be pison good, en let him see it; you got to do everything dat 'll make him b'lieve in you, en you got to sweeten aroun' ole aunt pratt, too, -she 's pow'ful strong wid de jedge, en de bes' frien' you got. nex', you 'll go 'long away to sent louis, en dat 'll <keep> him in yo' favor. den you go en make a bargain wid dem people. you tell 'em he ain't gwyne to live long -en dat 's de fac', too, -en tell 'em you 'll pay 'em intrust, en big intrust, too, -ten per -what you call it?" "ten per cent. a month?" "dat 's it. den you take and sell yo' truck aroun', a little at a time, en pay de intrust. how long will it las'?" "i think there 's enough to pay the interest five or six months." "den you 's all right. if he don't die in six months, dat don't make no diff'rence -providence 'll provide. you 's gwyne to be safe -if you behaves." she bent an austere eye on him and added, "en you <is> gwyne to behave -does you know dat?" he laughed and said he was going to try, anyway. she did not unbend. she said gravely: "tryin' ain't de thing. you 's gwyne to <do> it. you ain't gwyne to steal a pin -'ca'se it ain't safe no mo'; en you ain't gwyne into no bad comp'ny -not even once, you understand; en you ain't gwyne to drink a drop -nary single drop; en you ain't gwyne to gamble one single gamble -not one! dis ain't what you 's gwyne to <try> to do, it 's what you 's gwyne to <do>. en i 'll tell you how i knows it. dis is how. i 's gwyne to foller along to sent louis my own self; en you 's gwyne to come to me every day o' yo' life, en i 'll look you over; en if you fails in one single one o' dem things -jist <one> -i take my oath i 'll come straight down to dis town en tell de jedge you 's a nigger en a slave -en <prove> it!" she paused to let her words sink home. then she added, "chambers, does you b'lieve me when i says dat?" tom was sober enough now. there was no levity in his voice when he answered: "yes, mother. i know, now, that i am reformed -and permanently. permanently -and beyond the reach of any human temptation." "den g' long home en begin!" xv nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> behold, the fool saith, "put not all thine eggs in the one basket" -which is but a manner of saying, "scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "put all your eggs in the one basket and -watch that basket." -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> what a time of it dawson's landing was having! all its life it had been asleep, but now it hardly got a chance for a nod, so swiftly did big events and crashing surprises come along in one another's wake: friday morning, first glimpse of real nobility, also grand reception at aunt patsy cooper's, also great robber-raid; friday evening, dramatic kicking of the heir of the chief citizen in presence of four hundred people; saturday morning, emergence as practising lawyer of the long-submerged pudd'nhead wilson; saturday night, duel between chief citizen and titled stranger. the people took more pride in the duel than in all the other events put together, perhaps. it was a glory to their town to have such a thing happen there. in their eyes the principals had reached the summit of human honor. everybody paid homage to their names; their praises were in all mouths. even the duelists' subordinates came in for a handsome share of the public approbation: wherefore pudd'nhead wilson was suddenly become a man of consequence. when asked to run for the mayoralty saturday night he was risking defeat, but sunday morning found him a made man and his success assured. the twins were prodigiously great, now; the town took them to its bosom with enthusiasm. day after day, and night after night, they went dining and visiting from house to house, making friends, enlarging and solidifying their popularity, and charming and surprising all with their musical prodigies, and now and then heightening the effects with samples of what they could do in other directions, out of their stock of rare and curious accomplishments. they were so pleased that they gave the regulation thirty days' notice, the required preparation for citizenship, and resolved to finish their days in this pleasant place. that was the climax. the delighted community rose as one man and applauded; and when the twins were asked to stand for seats in the forthcoming aldermanic board, and consented, the public contentment was rounded and complete. tom driscoll was not happy over these things; they sunk deep, and hurt all the way down. he hated the one twin for kicking him, and the other one for being the kicker's brother. now and then the people wondered why nothing was heard of the raider, or of the stolen knife or the other plunder, but nobody was able to throw any light on that matter. nearly a week had drifted by, and still the thing remained a vexed mystery. on saturday constable blake and pudd'nhead wilson met on the street, and tom driscoll joined them in time to open their conversation for them. he said to blake - "you are not looking well, blake; you seem to be annoyed about something. has anything gone wrong in the detective business? i believe you fairly and justifiably claim to have a pretty good reputation in that line, is n't it so?" -which made blake feel good, and look it; but tom added, "for a country detective" -which made blake feel the other way, and not only look it, but betray it in his voice - "yes, sir, i <have> got a reputation; and it 's as good as anybody's in the profession, too, country or no country." "oh, i beg pardon; i did n't mean any offense. what i started out to ask was only about the old woman that raided the town -the stoop-shouldered old woman, you know, that you said you were going to catch; and i knew you would, too, because you have the reputation of never boasting, and -well, you -you 've caught the old woman?" "d -----the old woman!" "why, sho! you don't mean to say you have n't caught her?" "no; i have n't caught her. if anybody could have caught her, i could; but nobody could n't, i don't care who he is." "i am sorry, real sorry -for your sake; because, when it gets around that a detective has expressed himself so confidently, and then -" "don't you worry, that 's all -don't you worry; and as for the town, the town need n't worry, either. she 's my meat -make yourself easy about that. i 'm on her track; i 've got clues that -" "that 's good! now if you could get an old veteran detective down from st. louis to help you find out what the clues mean, and where they lead to, and then -" "i 'm plenty veteran enough myself, and i don't need anybody's help. i 'll have her inside of a we -inside of a month. that i 'll swear to!" tom said carelessly - "i suppose that will answer -yes, that will answer. but i reckon she is pretty old, and old people don't often outlive the cautious pace of the professional detective when he has got his clues together and is out on his still-hunt." blake's dull face flushed under this gibe, but before he could set his retort in order tom had turned to wilson, and was saying, with placid indifference of manner and voice - "who got the reward, pudd'nhead?" wilson winced slightly, and saw that his own turn was come. "what reward?" "why, the reward for the thief, and the other one for the knife." wilson answered -and rather uncomfortably, to judge by his hesitating fashion of delivering himself - "well, the -well, in fact, nobody has claimed it yet." tom seemed surprised. "why, is that so?" wilson showed a trifle of irritation when he replied - "yes, it 's so. and what of it?" "oh, nothing. only i thought you had struck out a new idea, and invented a scheme that was going to revolution-ize the time-worn and ineffectual methods of the -" he stopped, and turned to blake, who was happy now that another had taken his place on the gridiron: "blake, did n't you understand him to intimate that it would n't be necessary for you to hunt the old woman down?" "b'george, he said he 'd have thief and swag both inside of three days -he did, by hokey! and that 's just about a week ago. why, i said at the time that no thief and no thief's pal was going to try to pawn or sell a thing where he knowed the pawnbroker could get both rewards by taking <him> into camp <with> the swag. it was the blessedest idea that ever <i> struck!" "you 'd change your mind," said wilson, with irritated bluntness, "if you knew the entire scheme instead of only part of it." "well," said the constable, pensively, "i had the idea that it would n't work, and up to now i 'm right, anyway." "very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further show. it has worked at least as well as your own methods, you perceive." the constable had n't anything handy to hit back with, so he discharged a discontented sniff, and said nothing. after the night that wilson had partly revealed his scheme at his house, tom had tried for several days to guess out the secret of the rest of it, but had failed. then it occurred to him to give roxana's smarter head a chance at it. he made up a supposititious case, and laid it before her. she thought it over, and delivered her verdict upon it. tom said to himself, "she 's hit it, sure!" he thought he would test that verdict, now, and watch wilson's face; so he said reflectively - "wilson, you 're not a fool -a fact of recent discovery. whatever your scheme was, it had sense in it, blake's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. i don't ask you to reveal it, but i will suppose a case -a case which will answer as a starting-point for the real thing i am going to come at, and that 's all i want. you offered five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred for the thief. we will suppose, for argument's sake, that the first reward is <advertised>, and the second offered by <private letter> to pawnbrokers and -" blake slapped his thigh, and cried out - "by jackson, he 's got you, pudd'nhead! now why could n't i or <any> fool have thought of that?" wilson said to himself, "anybody with a reasonably good head would have thought of it. i am not surprised that blake did n't detect it; i am only surprised that tom did. there is more to him than i supposed." he said nothing aloud, and tom went on: "very well. the thief would not suspect that there was a trap, and he would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a song, or found it in the road, or something like that, and try to collect the reward, and be arrested -would n't he?" "yes," said wilson. "i think so," said tom. "there can't be any doubt of it. have you ever seen that knife?" "no." "has any friend of yours?" "not that i know of." "well, i begin to think i understand why your scheme failed." "what do you mean, tom? what are you driving at?" asked wilson, with a dawning sense of discomfort. "why, that there <is n't> any such knife." "look here, wilson," said blake, "tom driscoll 's right, for a thousand dollars -if i had it." wilson's blood warmed a little, and he wondered if he had been played upon by those strangers; it certainly had something of that look. but what could they gain by it? he threw out that suggestion. tom replied: "gain? oh, nothing that you would value, maybe. but they are strangers making their way in a new community. is it nothing to them to appear as pets of an oriental prince -at no expense? is it nothing to them to be able to dazzle this poor little town with thousand-dollar rewards -at no expense? wilson, there is n't any such knife, or your scheme would have fetched it to light. or if there is any such knife, they 've got it yet. i believe, myself, that they 've seen such a knife, for angelo pictured it out with his pencil too swiftly and handily for him to have been inventing it, and of course i can't swear that they 've never had it; but this i 'll go bail for -if they had it when they came to this town, they 've got it yet." blake said - "it looks mighty reasonable, the way tom puts it; it most certainly does." tom responded, turning to leave - "you find the old woman, blake, and if she can't furnish the knife, go and search the twins!" tom sauntered away. wilson felt a good deal depressed. he hardly knew what to think. he was loth to withdraw his faith from the twins, and was resolved not to do it on the present indecisive evidence; but -well, he would think, and then decide how to act. "blake, what do you think of this matter?" "well, pudd'nhead, i 'm bound to say i put it up the way tom does. they had n't the knife; or if they had it, they 've got it yet." the men parted. wilson said to himself: "i believe they had it; if it had been stolen, the scheme would have restored it, that is certain. and so i believe they 've got it yet." tom had no purpose in his mind when he encountered those two men. when he began his talk he hoped to be able to gall them a little and get a trifle of malicious entertainment out of it. but when he left, he left in great spirits, for he perceived that just by pure luck and no troublesome labor he had accomplished several delightful things: he had touched both men on a raw spot and seen them squirm; he had modified wilson's sweetness for the twins with one small bitter taste that he would n't be able to get out of his mouth right away; and, best of all, he had taken the hated twins down a peg with the community; for blake would gossip around freely, after the manner of detectives, and within a week the town would be laughing at them in its sleeve for offering a gaudy reward for a bauble which they either never possessed or had n't lost. tom was very well satisfied with himself. tom's behavior at home had been perfect during the entire week. his uncle and aunt had seen nothing like it before. they could find no fault with him anywhere. saturday evening he said to the judge - "i 've had something preying on my mind, uncle, and as i am going away, and might never see you again, i can't bear it any longer. i made you believe i was afraid to fight that italian adventurer. i had to get out of it on some pretext or other, and maybe i chose badly, being taken unawares, but no honorable person could consent to meet him in the field, knowing what i knew about him." "indeed? what was that?" "count luigi is a confessed assassin." "incredible!" "it is perfectly true. wilson detected it in his hand, by palmistry, and charged him with it, and cornered him up so close that he had to confess; but both twins begged us on their knees to keep the secret, and swore they would lead straight lives here; and it was all so pitiful that we gave our word of honor never to expose them while they kept that promise. you would have done it yourself, uncle." "you are right, my boy; i would. a man's secret is still his own property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like that. you did well, and i am proud of you." then he added mournfully, "but i wish i could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the field of honor." "it could n't be helped, uncle. if i had known you were going to challenge him i should have felt obliged to sacrifice my pledged word in order to stop it, but wilson could n't be expected to do otherwise than keep silent." "oh no; wilson did right, and is in no way to blame. tom, tom, you have lifted a heavy load from my heart; i was stung to the very soul when i seemed to have discovered that i had a coward in my family." "you may imagine what it cost <me> to assume such a part, uncle." "oh, i know it, poor boy, i know it. and i can understand how much it has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time. but it is all right now, and no harm is done. you have restored my comfort of mind, and with it your own; and both of us had suffered enough." the old man sat a while plunged in thought; then he looked up with a satisfied light in his eye, and said: "that this assassin should have put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the field of honor as if he were a gentleman is a matter which i will presently settle -but not now. i will not shoot him until after election. i see a way to ruin them both before; i will attend to that first. neither of them shall be elected, that i promise. you are sure that the fact that he is an assassin has not got abroad?" "perfectly certain of it, sir." "it will be a good card. i will fling a hint at it from the stump on the polling-day. it will sweep the ground from under both of them." "there 's not a doubt of it. it will finish them." "that and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty. i want you to come down here by and by and work privately among the rag-tag and bobtail. you shall spend money among them; i will furnish it." another point scored against the detested twins! really it was a great day for tom. he was encouraged to chance a parting shot, now, at the same target, and did it. "you know that wonderful indian knife that the twins have been making such a to-do about? well, there 's no track or trace of it yet; so the town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh. half the people believe they never had any such knife, the other half believe they had it and have got it still. i 've heard twenty people talking like that to-day." yes, tom's blemishless week had restored him to the favor of his aunt and uncle. his mother was satisfied with him, too. privately, she believed she was coming to love him, but she did not say so. she told him to go along to st. louis, now, and she would get ready and follow. then she smashed her whisky bottle and said - "dah now! i 's a-gwyne to make you walk as straight as a string, chambers, en so i 's bown' you ain't gwyne to git no bad example out o' yo' mammy. i tole you you could n't go into no bad comp'ny. well, you 's gwyne into my comp'ny, en i 's gwyne to fill de bill. now, den, trot along, trot along!" tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with his heavy satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep of the unjust, which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the hanging-eve history of a million rascals. but when he got up in the morning, luck was against him again: a brother-thief had robbed him while he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing. xvi if you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. this is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> we know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. it seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> when roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her. he was ruined past hope, now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and he would be an outcast and friendless. that was reason enough for a mother to love a child; so she loved him, and told him so. it made him wince, secretly -for she was a "nigger." that he was one himself was far from reconciling him to that despised race. roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded uncomfortably, but as well as he could. and she tried to comfort him, but that was not possible. these intimacies quickly became horrible to him, and within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to tell her so, and require that they be discontinued or very considerably modified. but he was afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull, now, for she had begun to think. she was trying to invent a saving plan. finally she started up, and said she had found a way out. tom was almost suffocated by the joy of this sudden good news. roxana said: "here is de plan, en she 'll win, sure. i 's a nigger, en nobody ain't gwyne to doubt it dat hears me talk. i 's wuth six hund'd dollahs. take en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers." tom was dazed. he was not sure he had heard aright. he was dumb for a moment; then he said: "do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?" "ain't you my chile? en does you know anything dat a mother won't do for her chile? dey ain't nothin' a white mother won't do for her chile. who made 'em so? de lord done it. en who made de niggers? de lord made 'em. in de inside, mothers is all de same. de good lord he made 'em so. i 's gwyne to be sole into slavery, en in a year you 's gwyne to buy yo' ole mammy free ag'in. i 'll show you how. dat 's de plan." tom's hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them. he said - "it 's lovely of you, mammy -it 's just -" "say it ag'in! en keep on sayin' it! it 's all de pay a body kin want in dis worl', en it 's mo' den enough. laws bless you, honey, when i 's slavin' aroun', en dey 'buses me, if i knows you 's a-sayin' dat, 'way off yonder somers, it 'll heal up all de sore places, en i kin stan' 'em." "i <do> say it again, mammy, and i 'll keep on saying it, too. but how am i going to sell you? you 're free, you know." "much diff'rence dat make! white folks ain't partic'lar. de law kin sell me now if dey tell me to leave de state in six months en i don't go. you draw up a paper -bill o' sale -en put it 'way off yonder, down in de middle 'o kaintuck somers, en sign some names to it, en say you 'll sell me cheap 'ca'se you 's hard up; you 'll fine you ain't gwyne to have no trouble. you take me up de country a piece, en sell me on a farm; dem people ain't gwyne to ask no questions if i 's a bargain." tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an arkansas cotton-planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars. he did not want to commit this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved him the necessity of going up country to hunt up a purchaser, with the added risk of having to answer a lot of questions, whereas this planter was so pleased with roxy that he asked next to none at all. besides, the planter insisted that roxy would n't know where she was, at first, and that by the time she found out she would already have become contented. and tom argued with himself that it was an immense advantage for roxy to have a master who was so pleased with her, as this planter manifestly was. in almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point of even half believing he was doing roxy a splendid surreptitious service in selling her "down the river." and then he kept diligently saying to himself all the time: "it 's for only a year. in a year i buy her free again; she 'll keep that in mind, and it 'll reconcile her." yes; the little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out right and pleasant in the end, any way. by agreement, the conversation in roxy's presence was all about the man's "up-country" farm, and how pleasant a place it was, and how happy the slaves were there; so poor roxy was entirely deceived; and easily, for she was not dreaming that her own son could be guilty of treason to a mother who, in voluntarily going into slavery -slavery of any kind, mild or severe, or of any duration, brief or long -was making a sacrifice for him compared with which death would have been a poor and commonplace one. she lavished tears and loving caresses upon him privately, and then went away with her owner -went away broken-hearted, and yet proud of what she was doing, and glad that it was in her power to do it. tom squared his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very letter of his reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again. he had three hundred dollars left. according to his mother's plan, he was to put that safely away, and add her half of his pension to it monthly. in one year this fund would buy her free again. for a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the villainy which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his rag of a conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was presently able to sleep like any other miscreant. the boat bore roxy away from st. louis at four in the afternoon, and she stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle-box and watched tom through a blur of tears until he melted into the throng of people and disappeared; then she looked no more, but sat there on a coil of cable crying till far into the night. when she went to her foul steerage-bunk at last, between the clashing engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for the morning, and, waiting, grieve. it had been imagined that she "would not know," and would think she was traveling up stream. she! why, she had been steamboating for years. at dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on the cable-coil again. she passed many a snag whose "break" could have told her a thing to break her heart, for it showed a current moving in the same direction that the boat was going; but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she did not notice. but at last the roar of a bigger and nearer break than usual brought her out of her torpor, and she looked up, and her practised eye fell upon that tell-tale rush of water. for one moment her petrified gaze fixed itself there. then her head dropped upon her breast, and she said - "oh, de good lord god have mercy on po' sinful me -<i 's sole down de river!>" xvii even popularity can be overdone. in rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that you did n't see him do it. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> <july 4.> statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. this proves, by the number left in stock, that one fourth of july per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so. <pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the summer weeks dragged by, and then the political campaign opened -opened in pretty warm fashion, and waxed hotter and hotter daily. the twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart, for their self-love was engaged. their popularity, so general at first, had suffered afterward; mainly because they had been <too> popular, and so a natural reaction had followed. besides, it had been diligently whispered around that it was curious -indeed, <very> curious -that that wonderful knife of theirs did not turn up -<if> it was so valuable, or <if> it had ever existed. and with the whisperings went chucklings and nudgings and winks, and such things have an effect. the twins considered that success in the election would reinstate them, and that defeat would work them irreparable damage. therefore they worked hard, but not harder than judge driscoll and tom worked against them in the closing days of the canvass. tom's conduct had remained so letter-perfect during two whole months, now, that his uncle not only trusted him with money with which to persuade voters, but trusted him to go and get it himself out of the safe in the private sitting-room. the closing speech of the campaign was made by judge driscoll, and he made it against both of the foreigners. it was disastrously effective. he poured out rivers of ridicule upon them, and forced the big mass-meeting to laugh and applaud. he scoffed at them as adventurers, mountebanks, side-show riff-raff, dime-museum freaks; he assailed their showy titles with measureless derision; he said they were back-alley barbers disguised as nobilities, peanut pedlers masquerading as gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their brother-monkey. at last he stopped and stood still. he waited until the place had become absolutely silent and expectant, then he delivered his deadliest shot; delivered it with ice-cold seriousness and deliberation, with a significant emphasis upon the closing words: he said he believed that the reward offered for the lost knife was humbug and buncombe, and that its owner would know where to find it whenever he should have occasion <to assassinate somebody>. then he stepped from the stand, leaving a startled and impressive hush behind him instead of the customary explosion of cheers and party cries. the strange remark flew far and wide over the town and made an extraordinary sensation. everybody was asking, "what could he mean by that?" and everybody went on asking that question, but in vain; for the judge only said he knew what he was talking about, and stopped there; tom said he had n't any idea what his uncle meant, and wilson, whenever he was asked what he thought it meant, parried the question by asking the questioner what <he> thought it meant. wilson was elected, the twins were defeated -crushed, in fact, and left forlorn and substantially friendless. tom went back to st. louis happy. dawson's landing had a week of repose, now, and it needed it. but it was in an expectant state, for the air was full of rumors of a new duel. judge driscoll's election labors had prostrated him, but it was said that as soon as he was well enough to entertain a challenge he would get one from count luigi. the brothers withdrew entirely from society, and nursed their humiliation in privacy. they avoided the people, and went out for exercise only late at night, when the streets were deserted. xviii gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. you have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> thanksgiving day. let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks, now, but the turkeys. in the island of fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. it does not become you and me to sneer at fiji. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the friday after the election was a rainy one in st. louis. it rained all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its best to wash that soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding. toward midnight tom driscoll arrived at his lodgings from the theater in the heavy downpour, and closed his umbrella and let himself in; but when he would have shut the door, he found that there was another person entering -doubtless another lodger; this person closed the door and tramped up-stairs behind tom. tom found his door in the dark, and entered it and turned up the gas. when he faced about, lightly whistling, he saw the back of a man. the man was closing and locking his door for him. his whistle faded out and he felt uneasy. the man turned around, a wreck of shabby old clothes sodden with rain and all a-drip, and showed a black face under an old slouch hat. tom was frightened. he tried to order the man out, but the words refused to come, and the other man got the start. he said, in a low voice - "keep still -i 's yo' mother!" tom sunk in a heap on a chair, and gasped out - "it was mean of me, and base -i know it; but i meant it for the best, i did indeed -i can swear it." roxana stood awhile looking mutely down on him while he writhed in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime; then she seated herself and took off her hat, and her unkempt masses of long brown hair tumbled down about her shoulders. "it ain't no fault o' yo'n dat dat ain't gray," she said sadly, noticing the hair. "i know it, i know it! i 'm a scoundrel. but i swear i meant for the best. it was a mistake, of course, but i thought it was for the best, i truly did." roxy began to cry softly, and presently words began to find their way out between her sobs. they were uttered lamentingly, rather than angrily - "sell a pusson down de river -<down de river!> -for de bes'! i would n't treat a dog so! i is all broke down en wore out, now, en so i reckon it ain't in me to storm aroun' no mo', like i used to when i 'uz trompled on en 'bused. i don't know -but maybe it 's so. leastways, i 's suffered so much dat mournin' seem to come mo' handy to me now den stormin'." these words should have touched tom driscoll, but if they did, that effect was obliterated by a stronger one -one which removed the heavy weight of fear which lay upon him, and gave his crushed spirit a most grateful rebound, and filled all his small soul with a deep sense of relief. but he kept prudently still, and ventured no comment. there was a voiceless interval of some duration, now, in which no sounds were heard but the beating of the rain upon the panes, the sighing and complaining of the winds, and now and then a muffled sob from roxana. the sobs became more and more infrequent, and at last ceased. then the refugee began to talk again: "shet down dat light a little. more. more yit. a pusson dat is hunted don't like de light. dah -dat 'll do. i kin see whah you is, en dat 's enough. i 's gwine to tell you de tale, en cut it jes as short as i kin, en den i 'll tell you what you 's got to do. dat man dat bought me ain't a bad man; he 's good enough, as planters goes; en if he could 'a' had his way i 'd 'a' be'n a house servant in his fambly en be'n comfortable: but his wife she was a yank, en not right down good lookin', en she riz up agin me straight off; so den dey sent me out to de quarter 'mongst de common fiel' han's. dat woman war n't satisfied even wid dat, but she worked up de overseer ag'in' me, she 'uz dat jealous en hateful; so de overseer he had me out befo' day in de mawnin's en worked me de whole long day as long as dey 'uz any light to see by; en many 's de lashin's i got 'ca'se i could n't come up to de work o' de stronges'. dat overseer wuz a yank, too, outen new englan', en anybody down south kin tell you what dat mean. <dey> knows how to work a nigger to death, en dey knows how to whale 'em, too -whale 'em till dey backs is welted like a washboard. 'long at fust my marster say de good word for me to de overseer, but dat 'uz bad for me; for de mistis she fine it out, en arter dat i jist ketched it at every turn -dey war n't no mercy for me no mo'." tom's heart was fired -with fury against the planter's wife; and he said to himself, "but for that meddlesome fool, everything would have gone all right." he added a deep and bitter curse against her. the expression of this sentiment was fiercely written in his face, and stood thus revealed to roxana by a white glare of lightning which turned the somber dusk of the room into dazzling day at that moment. she was pleased -pleased and grateful; for did not that expression show that her child was capable of grieving for his mother's wrongs and of feeling resentment toward her persecutors? -a thing which she had been doubting. but her flash of happiness was only a flash, and went out again and left her spirit dark; for she said to herself, "he sole me down de river -he can't feel for a body long; dis 'll pass en go." then she took up her tale again. "'bout ten days ago i 'uz sayin' to myself dat i could n't las' many mo' weeks i 'uz so wore out wid de awful work en de lashin's, en so downhearted en misable. en i did n't care no mo', nuther -life war n't wuth noth'n' to me if i got to go on like dat. well, when a body is in a frame o' mine like dat, what do a body care what a body do? dey was a little sickly nigger wench 'bout ten year ole dat 'uz good to me, en had n't no mammy, po' thing, en i loved her en she loved me; en she come out whah i 'uz workin' en she had a roasted tater, en tried to slip it to me, -robbin' herself, you see, 'ca'se she knowed de overseer did n't gimme enough to eat, -en he ketched her at it, en give her a lick acrost de back wid his stick, which 'uz as thick as a broom-handle, en she drop' screamin' on de groun', en squirmin' en wallerin' aroun' in de dust like a spider dat 's got crippled. i could n't stan' it. all de hell-fire dat 'uz ever in my heart flame' up, en i snatch de stick outen his han' en laid him flat. he laid dah moanin' en cussin', en all out of his head, you know, en de niggers 'uz plumb sk'yerd to death. dey gathered roun' him to he'p him, en i jumped on his hoss en took out for de river as tight as i could go. i knowed what dey would do wid me. soon as he got well he would start in en work me to death if marster let him; en if dey did n't do dat, they 'd sell me furder down de river, en dat 's de same thing. so i 'lowed to drown myself en git out o' my troubles. it 'uz gitt'n' towards dark. i 'uz at de river in two minutes. den i see a canoe, en i says dey ain't no use to drown myself tell i got to; so i ties de hoss in de edge o' de timber en shove out down de river, keepin' in under de shelter o' de bluff bank en prayin' for de dark to shet down quick. i had a pow'ful good start, 'ca'se de big house 'uz three mile back f'om de river en on'y de work-mules to ride dah on, en on'y niggers to ride 'em, en <dey> war n't gwine to hurry -dey 'd gimme all de chance dey could. befo' a body could go to de house en back it would be long pas' dark, en dey could n't track de hoss en fine out which way i went tell mawnin', en de niggers would tell 'em all de lies dey could 'bout it. "well, de dark come, en i went on a-spinnin' down de river. i paddled mo'n two hours, den i war n't worried no mo', so i quit paddlin', en floated down de current, considerin' what i 'uz gwine to do if i did n't have to drown myself. i made up some plans, en floated along, turnin' 'em over in my mine. well, when it 'uz a little pas' midnight, as i reckoned, en i had come fifteen or twenty mile, i see de lights o' a steamboat layin' at de bank, whah dey war n't no town en no woodyard, en putty soon i ketched de shape o' de chimbly-tops ag'in' de stars, en de good gracious me, i 'most jumped out o' my skin for joy! it 'uz de <gran' mogul> -i 'uz chambermaid on her for eight seasons in de cincinnati en orleans trade. i slid 'long pas' -don't see nobody stirrin' nowhah -hear 'em a-hammerin' away in de engine-room, den i knowed what de matter was -some o' de machinery 's broke. i got asho' below de boat and turn' de canoe loose, den i goes 'long up, en dey 'uz jes one plank out, en i step' 'board de boat. it 'uz pow'ful hot, deckhan's en roustabouts 'uz sprawled aroun' asleep on de fo'cas'l', de second mate, jim bangs, he sot dah on de bitts wid his head down, asleep -'ca'se dat 's de way de second mate stan' de cap'n's watch! -en de ole watchman, billy hatch, he 'uz a-noddin' on de companionway; -en i knowed 'em all; 'en, lan', but dey did look good! i says to myself, i wished old marster 'd come along <now> en try to take me -bless yo' heart, i 's 'mong frien's, i is. so i tromped right along 'mongst 'em, en went up on de b'iler deck en 'way back aft to de ladies' cabin guard, en sot down dah in de same cheer dat i 'd sot in 'mos' a hund'd million times, i reckon; en it 'uz jist home ag'in, i tell you! "in 'bout an hour i heard de ready-bell jingle, en den de racket begin. putty soon i hear de gong strike. `set her back on de outside,' i says to myself -`i reckon i knows dat music!' i hear de gong ag'in. `come ahead on de inside,' i says. gong ag'in. `stop de outside.' gong ag'in. `come ahead on de outside -now we 's pinted for sent louis, en i 's outer de woods en ain't got to drown myself at all.' i knowed de <mogul> 'uz in de sent louis trade now, you see. it 'uz jes fair daylight when we passed our plantation, en i seed a gang o' niggers en white folks huntin' up en down de sho', en trou-blin' deyselves a good deal 'bout me; but i war n't troublin' myself none 'bout dem. "'bout dat time sally jackson, dat used to be my second chambermaid en 'uz head chambermaid now, she come out on de guard, en 'uz pow'ful glad to see me, en so 'uz all de officers; en i tole 'em i 'd got kidnapped en sole down de river, en dey made me up twenty dollahs en give it to me, en sally she rigged me out wid good clo'es, en when i got here i went straight to whah you used to wuz, en den i come to dis house, en dey say you 's away but 'spected back every day; so i did n't dast to go down de river to dawson's, 'ca'se i might miss you. "well, las' monday i 'uz pass'n' by one o' dem places in fourth street whah dey sticks up runaway-nigger bills, en he'ps to ketch 'em, en i seed my marster! i 'mos' flopped down on de groun', i felt so gone. he had his back to me, en 'uz talkin' to de man en givin' him some bills -nigger-bills, i reckon, en i 's de nigger. he 's offerin' a reward -dat 's it. ain't i right, don't you reckon?" tom had been gradually sinking into a state of ghastly terror, and he said to himself, now: "i 'm lost, no matter what turn things take! this man has said to me that he thinks there was something suspicious about that sale. he said he had a letter from a passenger on the <grand mogul> saying that roxy came here on that boat and that everybody on board knew all about the case; so he says that her coming here instead of flying to a free state looks bad for me, and that if i don't find her for him, and that pretty soon, he will make trouble for me. i never believed that story; i could n't believe she would be so dead to all motherly instincts as to come here, knowing the risk she would run of getting me into irremediable trouble. and after all, here she is! and i stupidly swore i would help him find her, thinking it was a perfectly safe thing to promise. if i venture to deliver her up, she -she -but how can i help myself? i 've got to do that or pay the money, and where 's the money to come from? i -i -well, i should think that if he would swear to treat her kindly hereafter -and she says, herself, that he is a good man -and if he would swear to never allow her to be overworked, or ill fed, or -" a flash of lightning exposed tom's pallid face, drawn and rigid with these worrying thoughts. roxana spoke up sharply now, and there was apprehension in her voice - "turn up dat light! i want to see yo' face better. dah now -lemme look at you. chambers, you 's as white as yo' shirt! has you seen dat man? has he be'n to see you?" "ye-s." "when?" "monday noon." "monday noon! was he on my track?" "he -well, he thought he was. that is, he hoped he was. this is the bill you saw." he took it out of his pocket. "read it to me!" she was panting with excitement, and there was a dusky glow in her eyes that tom could not translate with certainty, but there seemed to be something threatening about it. the handbill had the usual rude woodcut of a turbaned negro woman running, with the customary bundle on a stick over her shoulder, and the heading in bold type, "$100 reward." tom read the bill aloud -at least the part that described roxana and named the master and his st. louis address and the address of the fourth-street agency; but he left out the item that applicants for the reward might also apply to mr. thomas driscoll. "gimme de bill!" tom had folded it and was putting it in his pocket. he felt a chilly streak creeping down his back, but said as carelessly as he could - "the bill? why, it is n't any use to you; you can't read it. what do you want with it?" "gimme de bill!" tom gave it to her, but with a reluctance which he could not entirely disguise. "did you read it <all> to me?" "certainly i did." "hole up yo' han' en swah to it." tom did it. roxana put the bill carefully away in her pocket, with her eyes fixed upon tom's face all the while; then she said - "you 's lyin'!" "what would i want to lie about it for?" "i don't know -but you is. dat 's my opinion, anyways. but nemmine 'bout dat. when i seed dat man i 'uz dat sk'yerd dat i could sca'cely wobble home. den i give a nigger man a dollar for dese clo'es, en i ain't be'n in a house sence, night ner day, till now. i blacked my face en laid hid in de cellar of a ole house dat 's burnt down, daytimes, en robbed de sugar hogsheads en grain sacks on de wharf, nights, to git somethin' to eat, en never dast to try to buy noth'n', en i 's 'mos' starved. en i never dast to come near dis place till dis rainy night, when dey ain't no people roun' sca'cely. but to-night i be'n a-stannin' in de dark alley ever sence night come, waitin' for you to go by. en here i is." she fell to thinking. presently she said - "you seed dat man at noon, las' monday?" "yes." "i seed him de middle o' dat arternoon. he hunted you up, did n't he?" "yes." "did he give you de bill dat time?" "no, he had n't got it printed yet." roxana darted a suspicious glance at him. "did you he'p him fix up de bill?" tom cursed himself for making that stupid blunder, and tried to rectify it by saying he remembered, now, that it <was> at noon monday that the man gave him the bill. roxana said - "you 's lyin' ag'in, sho." then she straightened up and raised her finger: "now den! i 's gwine to ast you a question, en i wants to know how you 's gwine to git aroun' it. you knowed he 'uz arter me; en if you run off, 'stid o' stayin' here to he'p him, he 'd know dey 'uz somethin' wrong 'bout dis business, en den he would inquire 'bout you, en dat would take him to yo' uncle, en yo' uncle would read de bill en see dat you be'n sellin' a free nigger down de river, en you know <him>, i reckon! he 'd t'ar up de will en kick you outen de house. now, den, you answer me dis question: hain't you tole dat man dat i would be sho' to come here, en den you would fix it so he could set a trap en ketch me?" tom recognized that neither lies nor arguments could help him any longer -he was in a vise, with the screw turned on, and out of it there was no budging. his face began to take on an ugly look, and presently he said, with a snarl - "well, what could i do? you see, yourself, that i was in his grip and could n't get out." roxy scorched him with a scornful gaze awhile, then she said - "what could you do? you could be judas to yo' own mother to save yo' wuthless hide! would anybody b'lieve it? no -a dog could n't! you is de low-downest orneriest hound dat was ever pup'd into dis worl' -en i 's 'sponsible for it!" -and she spat on him. he made no effort to resent this. roxy reflected a moment, then she said - "now i 'll tell you what you 's gwine to do. you 's gwine to give dat man de money dat you 's got laid up, en make him wait till you kin go to de jedge en git de res' en buy me free agin." "thunder! what are you thinking of? go and ask him for three hundred dollars and odd? what would i tell him i want with it, pray?" roxy's answer was delivered in a serene and level voice - "you 'll tell him you 's sole me to pay yo' gamblin' debts en dat you lied to me en was a villain, en dat i 'quires you to git dat money en buy me back ag'in." "why, you 've gone stark mad! he would tear the will to shreds in a minute -don't you know that?" "yes, i does." "then you don't believe i 'm idiot enough to go to him, do you?" "i don't b'lieve nothin' 'bout it -i <knows> you 's a-goin', i knows it 'ca'se you knows dat if you don't raise dat money i 'll go to him myself, en den he 'll sell <you> down de river, en you kin see how you like it!" tom rose, trembling and excited, and there was an evil light in his eye. he strode to the door and said he must get out of this suffocating place for a moment and clear his brain in the fresh air so that he could determine what to do. the door would n't open. roxy smiled grimly, and said - "i 's got de key, honey -set down. you need n't cle'r up yo' brain none to fine out what you gwine to do -<i> knows what you 's gwine to do." tom sat down and began to pass his hands through his hair with a helpless and desperate air. roxy said, "is dat man in dis house?" tom glanced up with a surprised expression, and asked - "what gave you such an idea?" "you done it. gwine out to cle'r yo' brain! in de fust place you ain't got none to cle'r, en in de second place yo' ornery eye tole on you. you 's de low-downest hound dat ever -but i done tole you dat befo'. now den, dis is friday. you kin fix it up wid dat man, en tell him you 's gwine away to git de res' o' de money, en dat you 'll be back wid it nex' tuesday, or maybe wednesday. you understan'?" tom answered sullenly - "yes." "en when you gits de new bill o' sale dat sells me to my own self, take en send it in de mail to mr. pudd'nhead wilson, en write on de back dat he 's to keep it tell i come. you understan'?" "yes." "dat 's all, den. take yo' umbreller, en put on yo' hat." "why?" "beca'se you 's gwine to see me home to de wharf. you see dis knife? i 's toted it aroun' sence de day i seed dat man en bought dese clo'es en it. if he ketched me, i 'uz gwine to kill myself wid it. now start along, en go sof', en lead de way; en if you gives a sign in dis house, or if anybody comes up to you in de street, i 's gwine to jam it into you. chambers, does you b'lieve me when i says dat?" "it 's no use to bother me with that question. i know your word 's good." "yes, it 's diff'rent from yo'n! shet de light out en move along -here 's de key." they were not followed. tom trembled every time a late straggler brushed by them on the street, and half expected to feel the cold steel in his back. roxy was right at his heels and always in reach. after tramping a mile they reached a wide vacancy on the deserted wharves, and in this dark and rainy desert they parted. as tom trudged home his mind was full of dreary thoughts and wild plans; but at last he said to himself, wearily - "there is but the one way out. i must follow her plan. but with a variation -i will not ask for the money and ruin myself; i will <rob> the old skinflint." xix few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> it were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> dawson's landing was comfortably finishing its season of dull repose and waiting patiently for the duel. count luigi was waiting, too; but not patiently, rumor said. sunday came, and luigi insisted on having his challenge conveyed. wilson carried it. judge driscoll declined to fight with an assassin -"that is," he added significantly, "in the field of honor." elsewhere, of course, he would be ready. wilson tried to convince him that if he had been present himself when angelo told about the homicide committed by luigi, he would not have considered the act discreditable to luigi; but the obstinate old man was not to be moved. wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure of his mission. luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be that the old gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his trifling nephew's evidence and inferences to be of more value than wilson's. but wilson laughed, and said - "that is quite simple; that is easily explicable. i am not his doll -his baby -his infatuation: his nephew is. the judge and his late wife never had any children. the judge and his wife were past middle age when this treasure fell into their lap. one must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. it is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can't tell mud-cat from shad. a devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin. tom is this old man's angel; he is infatuated with him. tom can persuade him into things which other people can 't -not all things; i don't mean that, but a good many -particularly one class of things: the things that create or abolish personal partialities or prejudices in the old man's mind. the old man liked both of you. tom conceived a hatred for you. that was enough; it turned the old man around at once. the oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground when one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it." "it 's a curious philosophy," said luigi. "it ain't a philosophy at all -it 's a fact. and there is something pathetic and beautiful about it, too. i think there is nothing more pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless couples taking a menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their hearts; and then adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a jackass-voiced macaw; and next a couple of hundred screeching song-birds, and presently some fetid guinea-pigs and rabbits, and a howling colony of cats. it is all a groping and ignorant effort to construct out of base metal and brass filings, so to speak, something to take the place of that golden treasure denied them by nature, a child. but this is a digression. the unwritten law of this region requires you to kill judge driscoll on sight, and he and the community will expect that attention at your hands -though of course your own death by his bullet will answer every purpose. look out for him! are you heeled -that is, fixed?" "yes; he shall have his opportunity. if he attacks me i will respond." as wilson was leaving, he said - "the judge is still a little used up by his campaign work, and will not get out for a day or so; but when he does get out, you want to be on the alert." about eleven at night the twins went out for exercise, and started on a long stroll in the veiled moonlight. tom driscoll had landed at hackett's store, two miles below dawson's, just about half an hour earlier, the only passenger for that lonely spot, and had walked up the shore road and entered judge driscoll's house without having encountered any one either on the road or under the roof. he pulled down his window-blinds and lighted his candle. he laid off his coat and hat and began his preparations. he unlocked his trunk and got his suit of girl's clothes out from under the male attire in it, and laid it by. then he blacked his face with burnt cork and put the cork in his pocket. his plan was, to slip down to his uncle's private sitting-room below, pass into the bed-room, steal the safe-key from the old gentleman's clothes, and then go back and rob the safe. he took up his candle to start. his courage and confidence were high, up to this point, but both began to waver a little, now. suppose he should make a noise, by some accident, and get caught -say, in the act of opening the safe? perhaps it would be well to go armed. he took the indian knife from its hiding-place, and felt a pleasant return of his waning courage. he slipped stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising and his pulses halting at the slightest creak. when he was half-way down, he was disturbed to perceive that the landing below was touched by a faint glow of light. what could that mean? was his uncle still up? no, that was not likely; he must have left his night-taper there when he went to bed. tom crept on down, pausing at every step to listen. he found the door standing open, and glanced in. what he saw pleased him beyond measure. his uncle was asleep on the sofa; on a small table at the head of the sofa a lamp was burning low, and by it stood the old man's small tin cash-box, closed. near the box was a pile of bank-notes and a piece of paper covered with figures in pencil. the safe-door was not open. evidently the sleeper had wearied himself with work upon his finances, and was taking a rest. tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way toward the pile of notes, stooping low as he went. when he was passing his uncle, the old man stirred in his sleep, and tom stopped instantly -stopped, and softly drew the knife from its sheath, with his heart thumping, and his eyes fastened upon his benefactor's face. after a moment or two he ventured forward again -one step -reached for his prize and seized it, dropping the knife-sheath. then he felt the old man's strong grip upon him, and a wild cry of "help! help!" rang in his ear. without hesitation he drove the knife home -and was free. some of the notes escaped from his left hand and fell in the blood on the floor. he dropped the knife and snatched them up and started to fly; transferred them to his left hand, and seized the knife again, in his fright and confusion, but remembered himself and flung it from him, as being a dangerous witness to carry away with him. he jumped for the stair-foot, and closed the door behind him; and as he snatched his candle and fled upward, the stillness of the night was broken by the sound of urgent footsteps approaching the house. in another moment he was in his room and the twins were standing aghast over the body of the murdered man! tom put on his coat, buttoned his hat under it, threw on his suit of girl's clothes, dropped the veil, blew out his light, locked the room door by which he had just entered, taking the key, passed through his other door into the back hall, locked that door and kept the key, then worked his way along in the dark and descended the back stairs. he was not expecting to meet anybody, for all interest was centered in the other part of the house, now; his calculation proved correct. by the time he was passing through the back yard, mrs. pratt, her servants, and a dozen half-dressed neighbors had joined the twins and the dead, and accessions were still arriving at the front door. as tom, quaking as with a palsy, passed out at the gate, three women came flying from the house on the opposite side of the lane. they rushed by him and in at the gate, asking him what the trouble was there, but not waiting for an answer. tom said to himself, "those old maids waited to dress -they did the same thing the night stevens's house burned down next door." in a few minutes he was in the haunted house. he lighted a candle and took off his girl-clothes. there was blood on him all down his left side, and his right hand was red with the stains of the blood-soaked notes which he had crushed in it; but otherwise he was free from this sort of evidence. he cleansed his hand on the straw, and cleaned most of the smut from his face. then he burned his male and female attire to ashes, scattered the ashes, and put on a disguise proper for a tramp. he blew out his light, went below, and was soon loafing down the river road with the intent to borrow and use one of roxy's devices. he found a canoe and paddled off down-stream, setting the canoe adrift as dawn approached, and making his way by land to the next village, where he kept out of sight till a transient steamer came along, and then took deck passage for st. louis. he was ill at ease until dawson's landing was behind him; then he said to himself, "all the detectives on earth could n't trace me now; there 's not a vestige of a clue left in the world; that homicide will take its place with the permanent mysteries, and people won't get done trying to guess out the secret of it for fifty years." in st. louis, next morning, he read this brief telegram in the papers -dated at dawson's landing: judge driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated here about midnight by a profligate italian nobleman or barber on account of a quarrel growing out of the recent election. the assassin will probably be lynched. "one of the twins!" soliloquized tom; "how lucky! it is the knife that has done him this grace. we never know when fortune is trying to favor us. i actually cursed pudd'nhead wilson in my heart for putting it out of my power to sell that knife. i take it back, now." tom was now rich and independent. he arranged with the planter, and mailed to wilson the new bill of sale which sold roxana to herself; then he telegraphed his aunt pratt: have seen the awful news in the papers and am almost prostrated with grief. shall start by packet to-day. try to bear up till i come. when wilson reached the house of mourning and had gathered such details as mrs. pratt and the rest of the crowd could tell him, he took command as mayor, and gave orders that nothing should be touched, but everything left as it was until justice robinson should arrive and take the proper measures as coroner. he cleared everybody out of the room but the twins and himself. the sheriff soon arrived and took the twins away to jail. wilson told them to keep heart, and promised to do his best in their defense when the case should come to trial. justice robinson came presently, and with him constable blake. they examined the room thoroughly. they found the knife and the sheath. wilson noticed that there were finger-prints on the knife-handle. that pleased him, for the twins had required the earliest comers to make a scrutiny of their hands and clothes, and neither these people nor wilson himself had found any blood-stains upon them. could there be a possibility that the twins had spoken the truth when they said they found the man dead when they ran into the house in answer to the cry for help? he thought of that mysterious girl at once. but this was not the sort of work for a girl to be engaged in. no matter; tom driscoll's room must be examined. after the coroner's jury had viewed the body and its surroundings, wilson suggested a search up-stairs, and he went along. the jury forced an entrance to tom's room, but found nothing, of course. the coroner's jury found that the homicide was committed by luigi, and that angelo was accessory to it. the town was bitter against the unfortunates, and for the first few days after the murder they were in constant danger of being lynched. the grand jury presently indicted luigi for murder in the first degree, and angelo as accessory before the fact. the twins were transferred from the city jail to the county prison to await trial. wilson examined the finger-marks on the knife-handle and said to himself, "neither of the twins made those marks." then manifestly there was another person concerned, either in his own interest or as hired assassin. but who could it be? that, he must try to find out. the safe was not open, the cash-box was closed, and had three thousand dollars in it. then robbery was not the motive, and revenge was. where had the murdered man an enemy except luigi? there was but that one person in the world with a deep grudge against him. the mysterious girl! the girl was a great trial to wilson. if the motive had been robbery, the girl might answer; but there was n't any girl that would want to take this old man's life for revenge. he had no quarrels with girls; he was a gentleman. wilson had perfect tracings of the finger-marks of the knife-handle; and among his glass-records he had a great array of the finger-prints of women and girls, collected during the last fifteen or eighteen years, but he scanned them in vain, they successfully withstood every test; among them were no duplicates of the prints on the knife. the presence of the knife on the stage of the murder was a worrying circumstance for wilson. a week previously he had as good as admitted to himself that he believed luigi had possessed such a knife, and that he still possessed it notwithstanding his pretense that it had been stolen. and now here was the knife, and with it the twins. half the town had said the twins were humbugging when they claimed that they had lost their knife, and now these people were joyful, and said, "i told you so!" if their finger-prints had been on the handle -but it was useless to bother any further about that; the finger-prints on the handle were <not> theirs -that he knew perfectly. wilson refused to suspect tom; for first, tom could n't murder anybody -he had n't character enough; secondly, if he could murder a person he would n't select his doting benefactor and nearest relative; thirdly, self-interest was in the way; for while the uncle lived, tom was sure of a free support and a chance to get the destroyed will revived again, but with the uncle gone, that chance was gone, too. it was true the will had really been revived, as was now discovered, but tom could not have been aware of it, or he would have spoken of it, in his native talky, unsecretive way. finally, tom was in st. louis when the murder was done, and got the news out of the morning journals, as was shown by his telegram to his aunt. these speculations were unemphasized sensations rather than articulated thoughts, for wilson would have laughed at the idea of seriously connecting tom with the murder. wilson regarded the case of the twins as desperate -in fact, about hopeless. for he argued that if a confederate was not found, an enlightened missouri jury would hang them, sure; if a confederate was found, that would not improve the matter, but simply furnish one more person for the sheriff to hang. nothing could save the twins but the discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal account -an undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible. still, the person who made the finger-prints must be sought. the twins might have no case <with> him, but they certainly would have none without him. so wilson mooned around, thinking, thinking, guessing, guessing, day and night, and arriving nowhere. whenever he ran across a girl or a woman he was not acquainted with, he got her finger-prints, on one pretext or another; and they always cost him a sigh when he got home, for they never tallied with the finger-marks on the knife-handle. as to the mysterious girl, tom swore he knew no such girl, and did not remember ever seeing a girl wearing a dress like the one described by wilson. he admitted that he did not always lock his room, and that sometimes the servants forgot to lock the house doors; still, in his opinion the girl must have made but few visits or she would have been discovered. when wilson tried to connect her with the stealing-raid, and thought she might have been the old woman's confederate, if not the very thief herself disguised as an old woman, tom seemed struck, and also much interested, and said he would keep a sharp eye out for this person or persons, although he was afraid that she or they would be too smart to venture again into a town where everybody would now be on the watch for a good while to come. everybody was pitying tom, he looked so quiet and sorrowful, and seemed to feel his great loss so deeply. he was playing a part, but it was not all a part. the picture of his alleged uncle, as he had last seen him, was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when he was awake, and called again in his dreams, when he was asleep. he would n't go into the room where the tragedy had happened. this charmed the doting mrs. pratt, who realized now, "as she had never done before," she said, what a sensitive and delicate nature her darling had, and how he adored his poor uncle. xx even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman: if you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the weeks dragged along, no friend visiting the jailed twins but their counsel and aunt patsy cooper, and the day of trial came at last -the heaviest day in wilson's life; for with all his tireless diligence he had discovered no sign or trace of the missing confederate. "confederate" was the term he had long ago privately accepted for that person -not as being unquestionably the right term, but as being at least possibly the right one, though he was never able to understand why the twins did not vanish and escape, as the confederate had done, instead of remaining by the murdered man and getting caught there. the court-house was crowded, of course, and would remain so to the finish, for not only in the town itself, but in the country for miles around, the trial was the one topic of conversation among the people. mrs. pratt, in deep mourning, and tom with a weed on his hat, had seats near pembroke howard, the public prosecutor, and back of them sat a great array of friends of the family. the twins had but one friend present to keep their counsel in countenance, their poor old sorrowing landlady. she sat near wilson, and looked her friendliest. in the "nigger corner" sat chambers; also roxy, with good clothes on, and her bill of sale in her pocket. it was her most precious possession, and she never parted with it, day or night. tom had allowed her thirty-five dollars a month ever since he came into his property, and had said that he and she ought to be grateful to the twins for making them rich; but had roused such a temper in her by this speech that he did not repeat the argument afterward. she said the old judge had treated her child a thousand times better than he deserved, and had never done her an unkindness in his life; so she hated these outlandish devils for killing him, and should n't ever sleep satisfied till she saw them hanged for it. she was here to watch the trial, now, and was going to lift up just one "hooraw" over it if the county judge put her in jail a year for it. she gave her turbaned head a toss and said, "when dat verdic' comes, i 's gwine to lif' dat <roof>, now, i <tell> you." pembroke howard briefly sketched the state's case. he said he would show by a chain of circumstantial evidence without break or fault in it anywhere, that the principal prisoner at the bar committed the murder; that the motive was partly revenge, and partly a desire to take his own life out of jeopardy, and that his brother, by his presence, was a consenting accessory to the crime; a crime which was the basest known to the calendar of human misdeeds -assassination; that it was conceived by the blackest of hearts and consummated by the cowardliest of hands; a crime which had broken a loving sister's heart, blighted the happiness of a young nephew who was as dear as a son, brought inconsolable grief to many friends, and sorrow and loss to the whole community. the utmost penalty of the outraged law would be exacted, and upon the accused, now present at the bar, that penalty would unquestionably be executed. he would reserve further remark until his closing speech. he was strongly moved, and so also was the whole house; mrs. pratt and several other women were weeping when he sat down, and many an eye that was full of hate was riveted upon the unhappy prisoners. witness after witness was called by the state, and questioned at length; but the cross-questioning was brief. wilson knew they could furnish nothing valuable for his side. people were sorry for pudd'nhead; his budding career would get hurt by this trial. several witnesses swore they heard judge driscoll say in his public speech that the twins would be able to find their lost knife again when they needed it to assassinate somebody with. this was not news, but now it was seen to have been sorrowfully prophetic, and a profound sensation quivered through the hushed court-room when those dismal words were repeated. the public prosecutor rose and said that it was within his knowledge, through a conversation held with judge driscoll on the last day of his life, that counsel for the defense had brought him a challenge from the person charged at this bar with murder; that he had refused to fight with a confessed assassin -"that is, on the field of honor," but had added significantly, that he would be ready for him elsewhere. presumably the person here charged with murder was warned that he must kill or be killed the first time he should meet judge driscoll. if counsel for the defense chose to let the statement stand so, he would not call him to the witness stand. mr. wilson said he would offer no denial. [murmurs in the house -"it is getting worse and worse for wilson's case."] mrs. pratt testified that she heard no outcry, and did not know what woke her up, unless it was the sound of rapid footsteps approaching the front door. she jumped up and ran out in the hall just as she was, and heard the footsteps flying up the front steps and then following behind her as she ran to the sitting-room. there she found the accused standing over her murdered brother. [here she broke down and sobbed. sensation in the court.] resuming, she said the persons entering behind her were mr. rogers and mr. buckstone. cross-examined by wilson, she said the twins proclaimed their innocence; declared that they had been taking a walk, and had hurried to the house in response to a cry for help which was so loud and strong that they had heard it at a considerable distance; that they begged her and the gentlemen just mentioned to examine their hands and clothes -which was done, and no blood-stains found. confirmatory evidence followed from rogers and buckstone. the finding of the knife was verified, the advertisement minutely describing it and offering a reward for it was put in evidence, and its exact correspondence with that description proved. then followed a few minor details, and the case for the state was closed. wilson said that he had three witnesses, the misses clarkson, who would testify that they met a veiled young woman leaving judge driscoll's premises by the back gate a few minutes after the cries for help were heard, and that their evidence, taken with certain circumstantial evidence which he would call the court's attention to, would in his opinion convince the court that there was still one person concerned in this crime who had not yet been found, and also that a stay of proceedings ought to be granted, in justice to his clients, until that person should be discovered. as it was late, he would ask leave to defer the examination of his three witnesses until the next morning. the crowd poured out of the place and went flocking away in excited groups and couples, talking the events of the session over with vivacity and consuming interest, and everybody seemed to have had a satisfactory and enjoyable day except the accused, their counsel, and their old-lady friend. there was no cheer among these, and no substantial hope. in parting with the twins aunt patsy did attempt a good-night with a gay pretense of hope and cheer in it, but broke down without finishing. absolutely secure as tom considered himself to be, the opening solemnities of the trial had nevertheless oppressed him with a vague uneasiness, his being a nature sensitive to even the smallest alarms; but from the moment that the poverty and weakness of wilson's case lay exposed to the court, he was comfortable once more, even jubilant. he left the court-room sarcastically sorry for wilson. "the clarksons met an unknown woman in the back lane," he said to himself -"<that> is his case! i 'll give him a century to find her in -a couple of them if he likes. a woman who does n't exist any longer, and the clothes that gave her her sex burnt up and the ashes thrown away -oh, certainly, he 'll find <her> easy enough!" this reflection set him to admiring, for the hundredth time, the shrewd ingenuities by which he had insured himself against detection -more, against even suspicion. "nearly always in cases like this there is some little detail or other overlooked, some wee little track or trace left behind, and detection follows; but here there 's not even the faintest suggestion of a trace left. no more than a bird leaves when it flies through the air -yes, through the night, you may say. the man that can track a bird through the air in the dark and find that bird is the man to track me out and find the judge's assassin -no other need apply. and that is the job that has been laid out for poor pudd'nhead wilson, of all people in the world! lord, it will be pathetically funny to see him grubbing and groping after that woman that don't exist, and the right person sitting under his very nose all the time!" the more he thought the situation over, the more the humor of it struck him. finally he said, "i'll never let him hear the last of that woman. every time i catch him in company, to his dying day, i 'll ask him in the guileless affectionate way that used to gravel him so when i inquired how his unborn law-business was coming along, `got on her track yet -hey, pudd'nhead?'" he wanted to laugh, but that would not have answered; there were people about, and he was mourning for his uncle. he made up his mind that it would be good entertainment to look in on wilson that night and watch him worry over his barren law-case and goad him with an exasperating word or two of sympathy and commiseration now and then. wilson wanted no supper, he had no appetite. he got out all the finger-prints of girls and women in his collection of records and pored gloomily over them an hour or more, trying to convince himself that that troublesome girl's marks were there somewhere and had been overlooked. but it was not so. he drew back his chair, clasped his hands over his head, and gave himself up to dull and arid musings. tom driscoll dropped in, an hour after dark, and said with a pleasant laugh as he took a seat - "hello, we 've gone back to the amusements of our days of neglect and obscurity for consolation, have we?" and he took up one of the glass strips and held it against the light to inspect it. "come, cheer up, old man; there 's no use in losing your grip and going back to this child's-play merely because this big sun-spot is drifting across your shiny new disk. it 'll pass, and you 'll be all right again" -and he laid the glass down. "did you think you could win always?" "oh, no," said wilson, with a sigh, "i did n't expect that, but i can't believe luigi killed your uncle, and i feel very sorry for him. it makes me blue. and you would feel as i do, tom, if you were not prejudiced against those young fellows." "i don't know about that," and tom's countenance darkened, for his memory reverted to his kicking; "i owe them no good will, considering the brunette one's treatment of me that night. prejudice or no prejudice, pudd'nhead, i don't like them, and when they get their deserts you 're not going to find me sitting on the mourner's bench." he took up another strip of glass, and exclaimed - "why, here 's old roxy's label! are you going to ornament the royal palaces with nigger paw-marks, too? by the date here, i was seven months old when this was done, and she was nursing me and her little nigger cub. there 's a line straight across her thumb-print. how comes that?" and tom held out the piece of glass to wilson. "that is common," said the bored man, wearily. "scar of a cut or a scratch, usually" -and he took the strip of glass indifferently, and raised it toward the lamp. all the blood sunk suddenly out of his face; his hand quaked, and he gazed at the polished surface before him with the glassy stare of a corpse. "great heavens, what 's the matter with you, wilson? are you going to faint?" tom sprang for a glass of water and offered it, but wilson shrank shuddering from him and said - "no, no! -take it away!" his breast was rising and falling, and he moved his head about in a dull and wandering way, like a person who has been stunned. presently he said, "i shall feel better when i get to bed; i have been overwrought to-day; yes, and overworked for many days." "then i 'll leave you and let you get to your rest. good-night, old man." but as tom went out he could n't deny himself a small parting gibe: "don't take it so hard; a body can't win every time; you 'll hang somebody yet." wilson muttered to himself, "it is no lie to say i am sorry i have to begin with you, miserable dog though you are!" he braced himself up with a glass of cold whisky, and went to work again. he did not compare the new finger-marks unintentionally left by tom a few minutes before on roxy's glass with the tracings of the marks left on the knife-handle, there being no need of that (for his trained eye), but busied himself with another matter, muttering from time to time, "idiot that i was! -nothing but a <girl> would do me -a man in girl's clothes never occurred to me." first, he hunted out the plate containing the finger-prints made by tom when he was twelve years old, and laid it by itself; then he brought forth the marks made by tom's baby fingers when he was a suckling of seven months, and placed these two plates with the one containing this subject's newly (and unconsciously) made record. "now the series is complete," he said with satisfaction, and sat down to inspect these things and enjoy them. but his enjoyment was brief. he stared a considerable time at the three strips, and seemed stupefied with astonishment. at last he put them down and said, "i can't make it out at all -hang it, the baby's don't tally with the others!" he walked the floor for half an hour puzzling over his enigma, then he hunted out two other glass plates. he sat down and puzzled over these things a good while, but kept muttering, "it 's no use; i can't understand it. they don't tally right, and yet i 'll swear the names and dates are right, and so of course they <ought> to tally. i never labeled one of these things carelessly in my life. there is a most extraordinary mystery here." he was tired out, now, and his brains were beginning to clog. he said he would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do with this riddle. he slept through a troubled and unrestful hour, then unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a sitting posture. "now what was that dream?" he said, trying to recall it; "what was that dream? -it seemed to unravel that puz -" he landed in the middle of the floor at a bound, without finishing the sentence, and ran and turned up his light and seized his "records." he took a single swift glance at them and cried out - "it 's so! heavens, what a revelation! and for twenty-three years no man has ever suspected it!" xxi he is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> <april i.> this is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> wilson put on enough clothes for business purposes and went to work under a high pressure of steam. he was awake all over. all sense of weariness had been swept away by the invigorating refreshment of the great and hopeful discovery which he had made. he made fine and accurate reproductions of a number of his "records," and then enlarged them on a scale of ten to one with his pantograph. he did these pantograph enlargements on sheets of white cardboard, and made each individual line of the bewildering maze of whorls or curves or loops which constituted the "pattern" of a "record" stand out bold and black by reinforcing it with ink. to the untrained eye the collection of delicate originals made by the human finger on the glass plates looked about alike; but when enlarged ten times they resembled the markings of a block of wood that has been sawed across the grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a glance, and at a distance of many feet, that no two of the patterns were alike. when wilson had at last finished his tedious and difficult work, he arranged its results according to a plan in which a progressive order and sequence was a principal feature; then he added to the batch several pantograph enlargements which he had made from time to time in bygone years. the night was spent and the day well advanced, now. by the time he had snatched a trifle of breakfast it was nine o'clock, and the court was ready to begin its sitting. he was in his place twelve minutes later with his "records." tom driscoll caught a slight glimpse of the records, and nudged his nearest friend and said, with a wink, "pudd'n-head's got a rare eye to business -thinks that as long as he can't win his case it 's at least a noble good chance to advertise his palace-window decorations without any expense." wilson was informed that his witnesses had been delayed, but would arrive presently; but he rose and said he should probably not have occasion to make use of their testimony. [an amused murmur ran through the room -"it 's a clean back-down! he gives up without hitting a lick!"] wilson continued -"i have other testimony -and better. [this compelled interest, and evoked murmurs of surprise that had a detectible ingredient of disappointment in them.] if i seem to be springing this evidence upon the court, i offer as my justification for this, that i did not discover its existence until late last night, and have been engaged in examining and classifying it ever since, until half an hour ago. i shall offer it presently; but first i wish to say a few preliminary words. "may it please the court, the claim given the front place, the claim most persistently urged, the claim most strenuously and i may even say aggressively and defiantly insisted upon by the prosecution, is this -that the person whose hand left the blood-stained finger-prints upon the handle of the indian knife is the person who committed the murder." wilson paused, during several moments, to give impressiveness to what he was about to say, and then added tranquilly, <"we grant that claim."> it was an electrical surprise. no one was prepared for such an admission. a buzz of astonishment rose on all sides, and people were heard to intimate that the overworked lawyer had lost his mind. even the veteran judge, accustomed as he was to legal ambushes and masked batteries in criminal procedure, was not sure that his ears were not deceiving him, and asked counsel what it was he had said. howard's impassive face betrayed no sign, but his attitude and bearing lost something of their careless confidence for a moment. wilson resumed: "we not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and strongly endorse it. leaving that matter for the present, we will now proceed to consider other points in the case which we propose to establish by evidence, and shall include that one in the chain in its proper place." he had made up his mind to try a few hardy guesses, in mapping out his theory of the origin and motive of the murder -guesses designed to fill up gaps in it -guesses which could help if they hit, and would probably do no harm if they did n't. "to my mind, certain circumstances of the case before the court seem to suggest a motive for the homicide quite different from the one insisted on by the state. it is my conviction that the motive was not revenge, but robbery. it has been urged that the presence of the accused brothers in that fatal room, just after notification that one of them must take the life of judge driscoll or lose his own the moment the parties should meet, clearly signifies that the natural instinct of self-preservation moved my clients to go there secretly and save count luigi by destroying his adversary. "then why did they stay there, after the deed was done? mrs. pratt had time, although she did not hear the cry for help, but woke up some moments later, to run to that room -and there she found these men standing, and making no effort to escape. if they were guilty, they ought to have been running out of the house at the same time that she was running to that room. if they had had such a strong instinct toward self-preservation as to move them to kill that unarmed man, what had become of it now, when it should have been more alert than ever? would any of us have remained there? let us not slander our intelligence to that degree. "much stress has been laid upon the fact that the accused offered a very large reward for the knife with which this murder was done; that no thief came forward to claim that extraordinary reward; that the latter fact was good circumstantial evidence that the claim that the knife had been stolen was a vanity and a fraud; that these details taken in connection with the memorable and apparently prophetic speech of the deceased concerning that knife, and the final discovery of that very knife in the fatal room where no living person was found present with the slaughtered man but the owner of the knife and his brother, form an indestructible chain of evidence which fixes the crime upon those unfortunate strangers. "but i shall presently ask to be sworn, and shall testify that there was a large reward offered for the <thief>, also; that it was offered secretly and not advertised; that this fact was indiscreetly mentioned -or at least tacitly admitted -in what was supposed to be safe circumstances, but may <not> have been. the thief may have been present himself. [tom driscoll had been looking at the speaker, but dropped his eyes at this point.] in that case he would retain the knife in his possession, not daring to offer it for sale, or for pledge in a pawn-shop. [there was a nodding of heads among the audience by way of admission that this was not a bad stroke.] i shall prove to the satisfaction of the jury that there <was> a person in judge driscoll's room several minutes before the accused entered it. [this produced a strong sensation; the last drowsy-head in the court-room roused up, now, and made preparation to listen.] if it shall seem necessary, i will prove by the misses clarkson that they met a veiled person -ostensibly a woman -coming out of the back gate a few minutes after the cry for help was heard. this person was not a woman, but a man dressed in woman's clothes." another sensation. wilson had his eye on tom when he hazarded this guess, to see what effect it would produce. he was satisfied with the result, and said to himself, "it was a success -he 's hit!" "the object of that person in that house was robbery, not murder. it is true that the safe was not open, but there was an ordinary tin cash-box on the table, with three thousand dollars in it. it is easily supposable that the thief was concealed in the house; that he knew of this box, and of its owner's habit of counting its contents and arranging his accounts at night -if he had that habit, which i do not assert, of course; -that he tried to take the box while its owner slept, but made a noise and was seized, and had to use the knife to save himself from capture; and that he fled without his booty because he heard help coming. "i have now done with my theory, and will proceed to the evidences by which i propose to try to prove its soundness." wilson took up several of his strips of glass. when the audience recognized these familiar mementos of pudd'nhead's old-time childish "puttering" and folly, the tense and funereal interest vanished out of their faces, and the house burst into volleys of relieving and refreshing laughter, and tom chirked up and joined in the fun himself; but wilson was apparently not disturbed. he arranged his records on the table before him, and said - "i beg the indulgence of the court while i make a few remarks in explanation of some evidence which i am about to introduce, and which i shall presently ask to be allowed to verify under oath on the witness stand. every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can always be identified -and that without shade of doubt or question. these marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph cannot be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and the mutations of time. this signature is not his face -age can change that beyond recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also, whereas this signature is each man's very own -there is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe! [the audience were interested once more.] "this autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet. if you will look at the balls of your fingers, -you that have very sharp eyesight, -you will observe that these dainty curving lines lie close together, like those that indicate the borders of oceans in maps, and that they form various clearly defined patterns, such as arches, circles, long curves, whorls, etc., and that these patterns differ on the different fingers. [every man in the room had his hand up to the light, now, and his head canted to one side, and was minutely scrutinizing the balls of his fingers; there were whispered ejaculations of "why, it 's so -i never noticed that before!"] the patterns on the right hand are not the same as those on the left. [ejaculations of "why, that 's so, too!"] taken finger for finger, your patterns differ from your neighbor's. [comparisons were made all over the house -even the judge and jury were absorbed in this curious work.] the patterns of a twin's right hand are not the same as those on his left. one twin's patterns are never the same as his fellow-twin's patterns -the jury will find that the patterns upon the finger-balls of the accused follow this rule. [an examination of the twins' hands was begun at once.] you have often heard of twins who were so exactly alike that when dressed alike their own parents could not tell them apart. yet there was never a twin born into this world that did not carry from birth to death a sure identifier in this mysterious and marvelous natal autograph. that once known to you, his fellow-twin could never personate him and deceive you." wilson stopped and stood silent. inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that. the stillness gives warning that something is coming. all palms and finger-balls went down, now, all slouching forms straightened, all heads came up, all eyes were fastened upon wilson's face. he waited yet one, two, three moments, to let his pause complete and perfect its spell upon the house; then, when through the profound hush he could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, he put out his hand and took the indian knife by the blade and held it aloft where all could see the sinister spots upon its ivory handle; then he said, in a level and passionless voice - "upon this haft stands the assassin's natal autograph, written in the blood of that helpless and unoffending old man who loved you and whom you all loved. there is but one man in the whole earth whose hand can duplicate that crimson sign," -he paused and raised his eyes to the pendulum swinging back and forth, -"and please god we will produce that man in this room before the clock strikes noon!" stunned, distraught, unconscious of its own movement, the house half rose, as if expecting to see the murderer appear at the door, and a breeze of muttered ejaculations swept the place. "order in the court! -sit down!" this from the sheriff. he was obeyed, and quiet reigned again. wilson stole a glance at tom, and said to himself, "he is flying signals of distress, now; even people who despise him are pitying him; they think this is a hard ordeal for a young fellow who has lost his benefactor by so cruel a stroke -and they are right." he resumed his speech: "for more than twenty years i have amused my compulsory leisure with collecting these curious physical signatures in this town. at my house i have hundreds upon hundreds of them. each and every one is labeled with name and date; not labeled the next day or even the next hour, but in the very minute that the impression was taken. when i go upon the witness stand i will repeat under oath the things which i am now saying. i have the finger-prints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury. there is hardly a person in this room, white or black, whose natal signature i cannot produce, and not one of them can so disguise himself that i cannot pick him out from a multitude of his fellow-creatures and unerringly identify him by his hands. and if he and i should live to be a hundred i could still do it! [the interest of the audience was steadily deepening, now.] "i have studied some of these signatures so much that i know them as well as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his oldest customer. while i turn my back now, i beg that several persons will be so good as to pass their fingers through their hair, and then press them upon one of the panes of the window near the jury, and that among them the accused may set <their> finger-marks. also, i beg that these experimenters, or others, will set their finger-marks upon another pane, and add again the marks of the accused, but not placing them in the same order or relation to the other signatures as before -for, by one chance in a million, a person might happen upon the right marks by pure guess-work <once>, therefore i wish to be tested twice." he turned his back, and the two panes were quickly covered with delicately-lined oval spots, but visible only to such persons as could get a dark background for them -the foliage of a tree, outside, for instance. then, upon call, wilson went to the window, made his examination, and said - "this is count luigi's right hand; this one, three signatures below, is his left. here is count angelo's right; down here is his left. now for the other pane: here and here are count luigi's, here and here are his brother's." he faced about. "am i right?" a deafening explosion of applause was the answer. the bench said - "this certainly approaches the miraculous!" wilson turned to the window again and remarked, pointing with his finger - "this is the signature of mr. justice robinson. [applause.] this, of constable blake. [applause.] this, of john mason, juryman. [applause.] this, of the sheriff. [applause.] i cannot name the others, but i have them all at home, named and dated, and could identify them all by my finger-print records." he moved to his place through a storm of applause -which the sheriff stopped, and also made the people sit down, for they were all standing and struggling to see, of course. court, jury, sheriff, and everybody had been too absorbed in observing wilson's performance to attend to the audience earlier. "now, then," said wilson, "i have here the natal autographs of two children -thrown up to ten times the natural size by the pantograph, so that any one who can see at all can tell the markings apart at a glance. we will call the children <a> and <b>. here are <a's> finger-marks, taken at the age of five months. here they are again, taken at seven months. [tom started.] they are alike, you see. here are <b's> at five months, and also at seven months. they, too, exactly copy each other, but the patterns are quite different from <a's>, you observe. i shall refer to these again presently, but we will turn them face down, now. "here, thrown up ten sizes, are the natal autographs of the two persons who are here before you accused of murdering judge driscoll. i made these pantograph copies last night, and will so swear when i go upon the witness stand. i ask the jury to compare them with the finger-marks of the accused upon the window-panes, and tell the court if they are the same." he passed a powerful magnifying-glass to the foreman. one juryman after another took the cardboard and the glass and made the comparison. then the foreman said to the judge - "your honor, we are all agreed that they are identical." wilson said to the foreman - "please turn that cardboard face down, and take this one, and compare it searchingly, by the magnifier, with the fatal signature upon the knife-handle, and report your findings to the court." again the jury made minute examination, and again reported - "we find them to be exactly identical, your honor." wilson turned toward the counsel for the prosecution, and there was a clearly recognizable note of warning in his voice when he said - "may it please the court, the state has claimed, strenuously and persistently, that the blood-stained finger-prints upon that knife-handle were left there by the assassin of judge driscoll. you have heard us grant that claim, and welcome it." he turned to the jury: "compare the finger-prints of the accused with the finger-prints left by the assassin -and report." the comparison began. as it proceeded, all movement and all sound ceased, and the deep silence of an absorbed and waiting suspense settled upon the house; and when at last the words came - <"they do not even resemble,"> a thunder-crash of applause followed and the house sprang to its feet, but was quickly repressed by official force and brought to order again. tom was altering his position every few minutes, now, but none of his changes brought repose nor any small trifle of comfort. when the house's attention was become fixed once more, wilson said gravely, indicating the twins with a gesture - "these men are innocent -i have no further concern with them. [another outbreak of applause began, but was promptly checked.] we will now proceed to find the guilty. [tom's eyes were starting from their sockets -yes, it was a cruel day for the bereaved youth, everybody thought.] we will return to the infant autographs of <a> and <b>. i will ask the jury to take these large pantograph facsimiles of <a's>, marked five months and seven months. do they tally? the foreman responded - "perfectly." "now examine this pantograph, taken at eight months, and also marked <a>. does it tally with the other two?" the surprised response was - <"no> -<they differ widely!"> "you are quite right. now take these two pantographs of <b's> autograph, marked five months and seven months. do they tally with each other?" "yes -perfectly." "take this third pantograph marked <b>, eight months. does it tally with <b's> other two?" <"by no means!"> "do you know how to account for those strange discrepancies? i will tell you. for a purpose unknown to us, but probably a selfish one, somebody changed those children in the cradle." this produced a vast sensation, naturally; roxana was astonished at this admirable guess, but not disturbed by it. to guess the exchange was one thing, to guess who did it quite another. pudd'nhead wilson could do wonderful things, no doubt, but he could n't do impossible ones. safe? she was perfectly safe. she smiled privately. "between the ages of seven months and eight months those children were changed in the cradle" -he made one of his effect-collecting pauses, and added -"and the person who did it is in this house!" roxy's pulses stood still! the house was thrilled as with an electric shock, and the people half rose as if to seek a glimpse of the person who had made that exchange. tom was growing limp; the life seemed oozing out of him. wilson resumed: "<a> was put into <b's> cradle in the nursery; <b> was transferred to the kitchen and became a negro and a slave [sensation -confusion of angry ejaculations] -but within a quarter of an hour he will stand before you white and free! [burst of applause, checked by the officers.] from seven months onward until now, <a> has still been a usurper, and in my finger-records he bears <b's> name. here is his pantograph at the age of twelve. compare it with the assassin's signature upon the knife-handle. do they tally?" the foreman answered - <"to the minutest detail!"> wilson said, solemnly - "the murderer of your friend and mine -york driscoll of the generous hand and the kindly spirit -sits in among you. valet de chambre, negro and slave, -falsely called thomas a becket driscoll, -make upon the window the finger-prints that will hang you!" tom turned his ashen face imploringly toward the speaker, made some impotent movements with his white lips, then slid limp and lifeless to the floor. wilson broke the awed silence with the words - "there is no need. he has confessed." roxy flung herself upon her knees, covered her face with her hands, and out through her sobs the words struggled - "de lord have mercy on me, po' misable sinner dat i is!" the clock struck twelve. the court rose; the new prisoner, hand-cuffed, was removed. conclusion it is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> <october> 12, <the discovery.> it was wonderful to find america, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of the day and swap guesses as to when tom's trial would begin. troop after troop of citizens came to serenade wilson, and require a speech, and shout themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips -for all his sentences were golden, now, all were marvelous. his long fight against hard luck and prejudice was ended; he was a made man for good. and as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away, some remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his voice and say - "and this is the man the likes of us have called a pudd'nhead for more than twenty years. he has resigned from that position, friends." "yes, but it is n't vacant -we 're elected." the twins were heroes of romance, now, and with rehabilitated reputations. but they were weary of western adventure, and straightway retired to europe. roxy's heart was broken. the young fellow upon whom she had inflicted twenty-three years of slavery continued the false heir's pension of thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her hurts were too deep for money to heal; the spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land. in her church and its affairs she found her only solace. the real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most embarrassing situation. he could neither read nor write, and his speech was the basest dialect of the negro quarter. his gait, his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh -all were vulgar and uncouth; his manners were the manners of a slave. money and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them the more glaring and the more pathetic. the poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man's parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the kitchen. the family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter into the solacing refuge of the "nigger gallery" -that was closed to him for good and all. but we cannot follow his curious fate further -that would be a long story. the false heir made a full confession and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. but now a complication came up. the percy driscoll estate was in such a crippled shape when its owner died that it could pay only sixty per cent. of its great indebtedness, and was settled at that rate. but the creditors came forward, now, and complained that inasmuch as through an error for which <they> were in no way to blame the false heir was not inventoried at that time with the rest of the property, great wrong and loss had thereby been inflicted upon them. they rightly claimed that "tom" was lawfully their property and had been so for eight years; that they had already lost sufficiently in being deprived of his services during that long period, and ought not to be required to add anything to that loss; that if he had been delivered up to them in the first place, they would have sold him and he could not have murdered judge driscoll; therefore it was not he that had really committed the murder, the guilt lay with the erroneous inventory. everybody saw that there was reason in this. everybody granted that if "tom" were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him -it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life -that was quite another matter. as soon as the governor understood the case, he pardoned tom at once, and the creditors sold him down the river. . 1876 the adventures of tom sawyer by mark twain dedication dedication to my wife this book is affectionately dedicated preface preface most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. huck finn is drawn from life; tom sawyer also, but not from an individualhe is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom i knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture. the odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the west at the period of this storythat is to say, thirty or forty years ago. although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, i hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. the author. hartford, 1876. chapter 1 tom plays, fights, and hides "tom!" no answer. "tom!" no answer. "what's gone with that boy, i wonder? you tom!" no answer. the old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them, about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. she seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service;she could have seen through a pair of stove lids just as well. she looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear: "well, i lay if i get hold of you i'll-" she did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broomand so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. she resurrected nothing but the cat. "i never did see the beat of that boy!" she went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. no tom. so she lifted up her voice, at an angle calculated for distance, and shouted: "y-o-u-u tom!" there was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. "there! i might 'a' thought of that closet. what you been doing in there?" "nothing." "nothing! look at your hands. and look at your mouth. what is that truck?" "i don't know, aunt." "well, i know. it's jamthat's what it is. forty times i've said if you didn't let that jam alone i'd skin you. hand me that switch." the switch hovered in the airthe peril was desperate "my! look behind you, aunt!" the old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. the lad fled, on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and disappeared over it. his aunt polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle laugh. "hang the boy, can't i never learn anything? ain't he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? but old fools is the biggest fools there is. can't learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. but my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming? he 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before i get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and i can't hit him a lick. i ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the lord's truth, goodness knows. spare the rod and spile the child, as the good book says. i'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both, i know. he's full of the old scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and i ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. every time i let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time i hit him my old heart most breaks. well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the scripture says, and i reckon it's so. he'll play hookey this evening, and i'll just be obleeged to make him work, to-morrow, to punish him. it's mighty hard to make him work saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and i've got to do some of my duty by him, or i'll be the ruination of the child." tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. he got back home barely in season to help jim, the small colored boy, saw next day's wood and split the kindlings, before supperat least he was there in time to tell his adventures to jim while jim did three-fourths of the work. tom's younger brother, (or rather, half-brother) sid, was already through with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy, and had no adventurous, troublesome ways. while tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity offered, aunt polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very deepfor she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. said she: "tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?" "yes'm." "powerful warm, warn't it?" "yes'm." "didn't you want to go in a-swimming, tom?" a bit of a scare shot through toma touch of uncomfortable suspicion. he searched aunt polly's face, but it told him nothing. so he said: "no'mwell, not very much." the old lady reached out her hand and felt tom's shirt, and said: "but you ain't too warm now, though." and it flattered her to reflect that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing that that was what she had in her mind. but in spite of her, tom knew where the wind lay, now. so he forestalled what might be the next move: "some of us pumped on our headsmine's damp yet. see?" aunt polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. then she had a new inspiration: "tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where i sewed it, to pump on your head, did you? unbutton your jacket!" the trouble vanished out of tom's face. he opened his jacket. his shirt collar was securely sewed. "bother! well, go 'long with you. i'd made sure you'd played hookey and been a-swimming. but i forgive ye, tom. i reckon you're a kind of a singed cat, as the saying isbetter'n you look. this time." she was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that tom had stumbled into obedient conduct for once. but sidney said: "well, now, if i didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread, but it's black." "why i did sew it with white! tom!" but tom did not wait for the rest. as he went out at the door he said: "siddy, i'll lick you for that." in a safe place tom examined two large needles which were thrust into the lappels of his jacket, and had thread bound about themone needle carried white thread and the other black. he said: "she'd never noticed, if it hadn't been for sid. consound it! sometimes she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. i wish to geeminy she'd stick to one or t'otheri can't keep the run of 'em. but i bet you i'll lam sid for that. i'll learn him!" he was not the model boy of the village. he knew the model boy very well thoughand loathed him. within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the timejust as men's misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. this new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practice it undisturbed. it consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the musicthe reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. he felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet. no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer. the summer evenings were long. it was not dark, yet. presently tom checked his whistle. a stranger was before hima boy a shade larger than himself. a new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive curiosity in the poor little shabby village of st. peterburg. this boy was well dressed, toowell dressed on a week-day. this was simply astounding. his cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. he had shoes onand yet it was only friday. he even wore a necktie, a bright bit of ribbon. he had a citified air about him that ate into tom's vitals. the more tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his nose at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed to him to grow. neither boy spoke. if one moved, the other movedbut only sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all the time. finally tom said: "i can lick you!" "i'd like to see you try it." "well, i can do it." "no you can't, either." "yes i can." "no you can't." "i can." "you can't." "can." "can't." an uncomfortable pause. then tom said: "what's your name?" "'tisn't any of your business, maybe." "well i 'low i'll make it my business." "well why don't you?" "if you say much i will." "muchmuchmuch. there now." "o, you think you're mighty smart, don't you? i could lick you with one hand tied behind me, if i wanted to." "well why don't you do it? you say you can do it." "well i will, if you fool with me." "o yesi've seen whole families in the same fix." "smarty! you think you're some, now, don't you? o what a hat!" "you can lump that hat if you don't like it. i dare you to knock it offand anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs." "you're a liar!" "you're another." "you're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up." "awtake a walk!" "sayif you gimme much more of your sass i'll take and bounce a rock off'n your head." "o, of course you will." "well i will." "well why don't you do it then? what do you keep saying you will for? why don't you do it? it's because you're afraid." "i ain't afraid." "you are." "i ain't." "you are." another pause, and more eyeing and sidling around each other. presently they were shoulder to shoulder. tom said: "get away from here!" "go away yourself!" "i won't." "i won't either." so they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and both shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with hate. but neither could get an advantage. after struggling till both were hot and flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution, and tom said: "you're a coward and a pup. i'll tell my big brother on you, and he can thrash you with his little finger, and i'll make him do it, too." "what do i care for your big brother? i've got a brother that's bigger than he isand what's more, he can throw him over that fence, too." [both brothers were imaginary.] "that's a lie." "your saying so don't make it so." tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said: "i dare you to step over that, and i'll lick you till you can't stand up. anybody that'll take a dare will steal a sheep." the new boy stepped over promptly, and said: "now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it." "don't you crowd me, now; you better look out." "well you said you'd do itwhy don't you do it?" "by jingo! for two cents i will do it." the new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out with derision. tom struck them to the ground. in an instant both boys were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats; and for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other's hair and clothes, punched and scratched each other's noses, and covered themselves with dust and glory. presently the confusion took form, and through the fog of battle tom appeared, seated astride the new boy and pounding him with his fists. "holler 'nuff!" said he. the boy only struggled to free himself. he was crying,mainly from rage. "holler 'nuff!"and the pounding went on. at last the stranger got out a smothered "nuff!" and tom let him up and said: "now that'll learn you. better look out who you're fooling with, next time." the new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing, snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and threatening what he would do to tom the "next time he caught him out." to which tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw it and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like an antelope. tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he lived. he then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the window and declined. at last the enemy's mother appeared, and called tom a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. so he went away; but he said he "'lowed" to "lay" for that boy. he got home pretty late, that night, and when he climbed cautiously in at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; and when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn his saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in its firmness. chapter 2 a the glorious whitewasher saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. there was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. there was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. the locust trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. cardiff hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a delectable land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting. tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. he surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. thirty yards of board fence, nine feet high. life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing "buffalo gals." bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in tom's eyes, before, but now it did not strike him so. he remembered that there was company at the pump. white, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarreling, fighting, skylarking. and he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, jim never got back with a bucket of water under an hourand even then somebody generally had to go after him. tom said: "say, jim, i'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some." jim shook his head and said: "can't, mars tom. ole missis, she tole me i got to go an' git dis water an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. she say she spec' mars tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' she tole me go 'long an' 'tend to my own businessshe 'lowed she'd 'tend to de whitewashin'." "o, never you mind what she said, jim. that's the way she always talks. gimme the bucketi won't be gone only a minute. she won't ever know." "o, i dasn't, mars tom. ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n me. 'deed she would." "she! she never licks anybodywhacks 'em over the head with her thimbleand who cares for that, i'd like to know. she talks awful, but talk don't hurtanyways it don't if she don't cry. jim, i'll give you a marvel. i'll give you a white alley!" jim began to waver. "white alley, jim! and it's a bully taw." "my! dat's a mighty gay marvel, i tell you! but mars tom i's powerful 'fraid ole missis-" "and besides, if you will i'll show you my sore toe." jim was only humanthis attraction was too much for him. he put down his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound. in another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, tom was whitewashing with vigor, and aunt polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye. but tom's energy did not last. he began to think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. soon the free boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make a world of fun of him for having to workthe very thought of it burnt him like fire. he got out his worldly wealth and examined itbits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom. so he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. at this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration! he took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. ben rogers hove in sight presentlythe very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jumpproof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. he was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. as he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstancefor he was personating the "big missouri," and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. he was boat, and captain, and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them: "stop her, sir! ting-a-ling-ling!" the headway ran almost out and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk. "ship up to back! ting-a-ling-ling!" his arms straightened and stiffened down his sides. "set her back on the stabboard! ting-a-ling-ling! chow! ch-chow-wow! chow!" his right hand, meantime, describing stately circles,for it was representing a forty-foot wheel. "let her go back on the labbord! ting-a-ling-ling! chow-ch-chow-chow!" the left hand began to describe circles. "stop the stabboard! ting-a-ling-ling! stop the labbord! come ahead on the stabboard! stop her! let your outside turn over slow! ting-a-ling-ling! chow-ow-ow! get out that head-line! lively now! comeout with your spring-linewhat're you about there! take a turn round that stump with the bight of it! stand by that stage, nowlet her go! done with the engines, sir! ting-a-ling-ling! sh't! s'h't! sh't!" (trying the gauge-cocks.) tom went on whitewashingpaid no attention to the steamboat. ben stared a moment and then said: "hi-yi! you're up a stump, ain't you!" no answer. tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist; then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. ben ranged up alongside of him. tom's mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. ben said: "hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?" tom wheeled suddenly and said: "why it's you, ben! i warn't noticing." "sayi'm going in a-swimming, i am. don't you wish you could? but of course you'd druther workwouldn't you? 'course you would!" tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: "what do you call work?" "why ain't that work?" tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: "well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. all i know, is, it suits tom sawyer." "o, come, now, you don't mean to let on that you like it?" the brush continued to move. "like it? well i don't see why i oughtn't to like it. does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?" that put the thing in a new light. ben stopped nibbling his apple. tom swept his brush daintily back and forthstepped back to note the effectadded a touch here and therecriticised the effect againben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. presently he said: "say, tom, let me whitewash a little." tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind: "nonoi reckon it wouldn't hardly do, ben. you see, aunt polly's awful particular about this fenceright here on the street, you knowbut if it was the back fence i wouldn't mind and she wouldn't. yes, she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; i reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done." "nois that so? oh come, nowlemme just try. only just a littlei'd let you, if you was me, tom." "ben, i'd like to, honest injun; but aunt pollywell jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him; sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let sid. now don't you see how i'm fixed? if you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it-" "o, shucks, i'll be just as careful. now lemme try. sayi'll give you the core of my apple." "well, hereno, ben, now don't. i'm afeard-" "i'll give you all of it!" tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face but alacrity in his heart. and while the late steamer "big missouri" worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. there was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. by the time ben was fagged out, tom had traded the next chance to billy fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, johnny miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it withand so on, and so on, hour after hour. and when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, tom was literally rolling in wealth. he had beside the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog-collarbut no dogthe handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel, and a dilapidated old window sash. he had had a nice, good, idle time all the whileplenty of companyand the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! if he hadn't run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village. tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. he had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing itnamely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. if he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. and this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a treadmill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing mont blanc is only amusement. there are wealthy gentlemen in england who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign. the boy mused a while over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to report. chapter 3 busy at war and love tom presented himself before aunt polly, who was sitting by an open window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bed-room, breakfast-room, dining-room, and library, combined. the balmy summer air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing murmur of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her knittingfor she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her lap. her spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. she had thought that of course tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at seeing him place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. he said: "mayn't i go and play now, aunt?" "what, a'ready? how much have you done?" "it's all done, aunt." "tom, don't lie to mei can't bear it." "i ain't, aunt; it is all done." aunt polly placed small trust in such evidence. she went out to see for herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent of tom's statement true. when she found the entire fence whitewashed, and not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even a streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable. she said: "well, i never! there's no getting round it, you can work when you're a mind to, tom." and then she diluted the compliment by adding, "but it's powerful seldom you're a mind to, i'm bound to say. well, go 'long and play; but mind you get back sometime in a week, or i'll tan you." she was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort. and while she closed with a happy scriptural flourish, he "hooked" a doughnut. then he skipped out, and saw sid just starting up the outside stairway that led to the back rooms on the second floor. clods were handy and the air was full of them in a twinkling. they raged around sid like a hail-storm; and before aunt polly could collect her surprised faculties and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect and tom was over the fence and gone. there was a gate, but as a general thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. his soul was at peace, now that he had settled with sid for calling attention to his black thread and getting him into trouble. tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by the back of his aunt's cow-stable; he presently got safely beyond the reach of capture and punishment, and hasted toward the public square of the village, where two "military" companies of boys had met for conflict, according to previous appointment. tom was general of one of these armies, joe harper (a bosom friend,) general of the other. these two great commanders did not condescend to fight in personthat being better suited to the still smaller frybut sat together on an eminence and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through aides-de-camp. tom's army won a great victory, after a long and hard-fought battle. then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon and the day for the necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and marched away, and tom turned homeward alone. as he was passing by the house where jeff thatcher lived, he saw a new girl in the gardena lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair plaited into two long tails, white summer frock and embroidered pantalettes. the fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. a certain amy lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a memory of herself behind. he had thought he loved her to distraction, he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor little evanescent partiality. he had been months winning her; she had confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is done. he worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and began to "show off" in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win her admiration. he kept up this grotesque foolishness for some time; but by and by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous gymnastic performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl was wending her way toward the house. tom came up to the fence and leaned on it, grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet a while longer. she halted a moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. tom heaved a great sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. but his face lit up, right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment before she disappeared. the boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as if he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction. presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side, in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. but only for a minuteonly while he could button the flower inside his jacket, next his heartor next his stomach, possibly, for he was not much posted in anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway. he returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, "showing off," as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though tom comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. finally he rode home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions. all through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered "what had got into the child." he took a good scolding about clodding sid, and did not seem to mind it in the least. he tried to steal sugar under his aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. he said: "aunt, you don't whack sid when he takes it." "well, sid don't torment a body the way you do. you'd be always into that sugar if i warn't watching you." presently she stepped into the kitchen, and sid, happy in his immunity, reached for the sugar-bowla sort of glorying over tom which was well-nigh unbearable. but sid's fingers slipped and the bowl dropped and broke. tom was in ecstasies. in such ecstasies that he even controlled his tongue and was silent. he said to himself that he would not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model "catch it." he was so brim-full of exultation that he could hardly hold himself when the old lady came back and stood above the wreck discharging lightnings of wrath from over her spectacles. he said to himself, "now it's coming!" and the next instant he was sprawling on the floor! the potent palm was uplifted to strike again when tom cried out: "hold on, now, what 'er you belting me for?sid broke it!" aunt polly paused, perplexed, and tom looked for healing pity. but when she got her tongue again, she only said: "umf! well, you didn't get a lick amiss, i reckon. you been into some other owdacious mischief when i wasn't around, like enough." then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that. so she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart. tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. he knew that in her heart his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the consciousness of it. he would hang out no signals, he would take notice of none. he knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then, through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. he pictured himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and die with that word unsaid. ah, how would she feel then? and he pictured himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and his poor hands still forever, and his sore heart at rest. how she would throw herself upon him, and how her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray god to give her back her boy and she would never never abuse him any more! but he would lie there cold and white and make no signa poor little sufferer whose griefs were at an end. he so worked upon his feelings with the pathos of these dreams that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to choke; and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he winked, and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. and such a luxury to him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear to have any worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin mary danced in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an age-long visit of one week to the country, he got up and moved in clouds and darkness out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in at the other. he wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit. a log raft in the river invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by nature. then he thought of his flower. he got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal felicity. he wondered if she would pity him if she knew? would she cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms around his neck and comfort him? or would she turn coldly away like all the hollow world? this picture brought such an agony of pleasurable suffering that he worked it over and over again in his mind and set it up in new and varied lights till he wore it threadbare. at last he rose up sighing, and departed in the darkness. about half past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street to where the adored unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell upon his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the curtain of a second-story window. was the sacred presence there? he climbed the fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till he stood under that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion; then he laid him down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon his back, with his hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor wilted flower. and thus he would dieout in the cold world, with no shelter over his homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the death-damps from his brow, no loving face to bend pityingly over him when the great agony came. and thus she would see him when she looked out upon the glad morningand o! would she drop one little tear upon his poor, lifeless form, would she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted, so untimely cut down? the window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains! the strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort, there was a whiz as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the fence and shot away in the gloom. not long after, as tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, sid woke up; but if he had any dim idea of making any "references to allusions," he thought better of it and held his peacefor there was danger in tom's eye. tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and sid made mental note of the omission. chapter 4 showing off in sunday school the sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful village like a benediction. breakfast over, aunt polly had family worship; it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid courses of scriptural quotations welded together with a thin mortar of originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter of the mosaic law, as from sinai. then tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to "get his verses." sid had learned his lesson days before. tom bent all his energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the sermon on the mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter. at the end of half an hour tom had a vague general idea of his lesson, but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. mary took his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through the fog: "blessed are theaa-" "poor" "yespoor; blessed are the pooraa-" "in spirit-" "in spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for theythey-" "theirs-" "for theirs. blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. blessed are they that mourn, for theythey-" "sh-" "for theya-" "s, h, a-" "for they s, h,o i don't know what it is!" "shall!" "o, shall! for they shallfor they shallaashall mournaablessed are they that shallthey thatathey that shall mourn, for they shallashall what? why don't you tell me mary?what do you want to be so mean for?" "o, tom, you poor thick-headed thing, i'm not teasing you. i wouldn't do that. you must go and learn it again. don't you be discouraged, tom, you'll manage itand if you do, i'll give you something ever so nice. there, now, that's a good boy." "all right! what is it, mary, tell me what it is." "never you mind, tom. you know if i say it's nice, it is nice." "you bet you that's so, mary. all right, i'll tackle it again." and he did "tackle it again"and under the double pressure of curiosity and prospective gain, he did it with such spirit that he accomplished a shining success. mary gave him a brand-new "barlow" knife worth twelve and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system shook him to his foundations. true, the knife would not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur in thatthough where the western boys ever got the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury, is an imposing mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. tom contrived to scarify the cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin on the bureau, when he was called off to dress for sunday-school. mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves; poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the kitchen and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the door. but mary removed the towel and said: "now ain't you ashamed, tom. you mustn't be so bad. water won't hurt you." tom was a trifle disconcerted. the basin was refilled, and this time he stood over it a little while, gathering resolution; took in a big breath and began. when he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes shut, and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony of suds and water was dripping from his face. but when he emerged from the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask; below and beyond this line there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in front and backward around his neck. mary took him in hand, and when she was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [he privately smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and his own filled his life with bitterness.] then mary got out a suit of his clothing that had been used only on sundays during two yearsthey were simply called his "other clothes"and so by that we know the size of his wardrobe. the girl "put him to rights" after he had dressed himself, she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his vast shirt collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off and crowned him with his speckled straw hat. he now looked exceedingly improved and uncomfortable. he was fully as uncomfortable as he looked; for there was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. he hoped that mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted; she coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought them out. he lost his temper and said he was always being made to do everything he didn't want to do. but mary said, persuasively: "please, tomthat's a good boy." so he got into the shoes snarling. mary was soon ready, and the three children set out for sunday-schoola place that tom hated with his whole heart; but sid and mary were fond of it. sabbath-school hours were from nine to half past ten; and then church service. two of the children always remained for the sermon, voluntarily, and the other always remained, toofor stronger reasons. the church's high-backed, uncushioned pews would seat about three hundred persons; the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort of pine board tree-box on top of it for a steeple. at the door tom dropped back a step and accosted a sunday-dressed comrade: "say, billy, got a yaller ticket?" "yes." "what'll you take for her?" "what'll you give?" "piece of lickrish and a fish-hook." "less see 'em." tom exhibited. they were satisfactory, and the property changed hands. then tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and some small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. he waylaid other boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten or fifteen minutes longer. he entered the church, now, with a swarm of clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started a quarrel with the first boy that came handy. the teacher, a grave, elderly man, interfered; then turned his back a moment and tom pulled a boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, present, in order to hear him say "ouch!" and got a new reprimand from his teacher. tom's whole class were of a patternrestless, noisy and troublesome. when they came to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses perfectly, but had to be prompted all along. however, they worried through, and each got his rewardin small blue tickets, each with a passage of scripture on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of the recitation. ten blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be exchanged for it; ten red tickets equalled a yellow one: for ten yellow tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound bible, (worth forty cents in those easy times,) to the pupil. how many of my readers would have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even for a dore bible? and yet mary had acquired two bibles in this wayit was the patient work of two yearsand a boy of german parentage had won four or five. he once recited three thousand verses without stopping; but the strain upon his mental faculties was too great, and he was little better than an idiot from that day fortha grievous misfortune for the school, for on great occasions, before company, the superintendent (as tom expressed it) had always made this boy come out and "spread himself." only the older pupils managed to keep their tickets and stick to their tedious work long enough to get a bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy circumstance; the successful pupil was so great and conspicuous for that day that on the spot every scholar's breast was fired with a fresh ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks. it is possible that tom's mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes, but unquestionably his entire being had for many a day longed for the glory and the eclat that came with it. in due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its leaves, and commanded attention. when a sunday-school superintendent makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concertthough why, is a mystery: for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of music is ever referred to by the sufferer. this superintendent was a slim creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair; he wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his ears and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his moutha fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning of the whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped on a spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank note, and had fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the fashion of the day, like sleigh-runnersan effect patiently and laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes pressed against a wall for hours together. mr. walters was very earnest of mien, and very sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred things and places in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly matters, that unconsciously to himself his sunday-school voice had acquired a peculiar intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. he began after this fashion: "now children, i want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty as you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. therethat is it. that is the way good little boys and girls should do. i see one little girl who is looking out of the windowi am afraid she thinks i am out there somewhereperhaps up in one of the trees making a speech to the little birds. [applausive titter.] i want to tell you how good it makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces assembled in a place like this, learning to do right and be good." and so forth and so on. it is not necessary to set down the rest of the oration. it was of a pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar to us all. the latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases of isolated and incorruptible rocks like sid and mary. but now every sound ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of mr. walters's voice, and the conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent gratitude. a good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which was more or less rarethe entrance of visitors; lawyer thatcher, accompanied by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged gentleman with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless the latter's wife. the lady was leading a child. tom had been restless and full of chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, toohe could not meet amy lawrence's eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. but when he saw this small new-comer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in a moment. the next moment he was "showing off" with all his mightcuffing boys, pulling hair, making facesin a word, using every art that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause. his exaltation had but one alloythe memory of his humiliation in this angel's gardenand that record in sand was fast washing out, under the waves of happiness that were sweeping over it now. the visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as mr. walters' speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. the middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personageno less a one than the county judgealtogether the most august creation these children had ever looked uponand they wondered what kind of material he was made ofand they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half afraid he might, too. he was from constantinople, twelve miles awayso he had traveled, and seen the worldthese very eyes had looked upon the county court housewhich was said to have a tin roof. the awe which these reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence and the ranks of staring eyes. this was the great judge thatcher, brother of their own lawyer. jeff thatcher immediately went forward, to be familiar with the great man and be envied by the school. it would have been music to his soul to hear the whisperings: "look at him, jim! he's a-going up there. saylook! he's a-going to shake hands with himhe is shaking hands with him! by jings, don't you wish you was jeff?" mr. walters fell to "showing off", with all sorts of official bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a target. the librarian "showed off"running hither and thither with his arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that insect authority delights in. the young lady teachers "showed off"bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly. the young gentlemen teachers "showed off" with small scoldings and other little displays of authority and fine attention to disciplineand most of the teachers, of both sexes, found business up at the library, by the pulpit; and it was business that frequently had to be done over again two or three times, (with much seeming vexation.) the little girls "showed off" in various ways, and the little boys "showed off" with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings. and above it all the great man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself in the sun of his own grandeurfor he was "showing off," too. there was only one thing wanting, to make mr. walters' ecstasy complete, and that was, a chance to deliver a bible-prize and exhibit a prodigy. several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enoughhe had been around among the star pupils inquiring. he would have given worlds, now, to have that german lad back again with a sound mind. and now at this moment, when hope was dead, tom sawyer came forward with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and demanded a bible. this was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. walters was not expecting an application from this source for the next ten years. but there was no getting around ithere were the certified checks, and they were good for their face. tom was therefore elevated to a place with the judge and the other elect, and the great news was announced from head-quarters. it was the most stunning surprise of the decade; and so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero up to the judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to gaze upon in place of one. the boys were all eaten up with envybut those that suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too late that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by trading tickets to tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling whitewashing privileges. these despised themselves, as being the dupes of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass. the prize was delivered to tom with as much effusion as the superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light, perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two thousand sheaves of scriptural wisdom on his premisesa dozen would strain his capacity, without a doubt. amy lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make tom see it in her facebut he wouldn't look. she wondered; then she was just a grain troubled; next a dim suspicion came and wentcame again; she watched; a furtive glance told her worldsand then her heart broke, and she was jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. tom most of all, (she thought.) tom was introduced to the judge; but his tongue was tied, his breath would hardly come, his heart quakedpartly because of the awful greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. he would have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. the judge put his hand on tom's head and called him a fine little man, and asked him what his name was. the boy stammered, gasped, and got it out: "tom." "o, no, not tomit is-" "thomas." "ah, that's it. i thought there was more to it, maybe. that's very well. but you've another one i daresay, and you'll tell it to me, won't you?" "tell the gentleman your other name, thomas," said walters, "and say sir.you mustn't forget your manners." "thomas sawyersir." "that's it! that's a good boy. fine boy. fine, manly little fellow. two thousand verses is a great manyvery, very great many. and you never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; it's what makes great men and good men; you'll be a great man and a good man yourself, someday, thomas, and then you'll look back and say, it's all owing to the precious sunday-school privileges of my boyhoodit's all owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learnit's all owing to the good superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and gave me a beautiful biblea splendid elegant bible, to keep and have it all for my own, alwaysit's all owing to right bringing up! that is what you will say, thomasand you wouldn't take any money for those two thousand verses thenno indeed you wouldn't. and now you wouldn't mind telling me and this lady some of the things you've learnedno, i know you wouldn'tfor we are proud of little boys that learn. now no doubt you know the names of all the twelve disciples. won't you tell us the names of the first two that were appointed?" tom was tugging at a button and looking sheepish. he blushed, now, and his eyes fell. mr. walters's heart sank within him. he said to himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest questionwhy did the judge ask him? yet he felt obliged to speak up and say; "answer the gentleman, thomasdon't be afraid." tom still hung fire. "now i know you'll tell me" said the lady. "the names of the first two disciples were-" "david and goliath!" let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene. chapter 5 the pinch bug and his prey about half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. the sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. aunt polly came, and tom and sid and mary sat with hertom being placed next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. the crowd filed up the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days; the mayor and his wifefor they had a mayor there, among other unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow douglas, fair, smart and forty, a generous, goodhearted soul and well-to-do, her hill mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and much the most lavish in the matter of festivities that st. petersburg could boast; the bent and venerable major and mrs. ward; lawyer riverson, the new notable from a distance; next the belle of the village, followed by a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young heart-breakers; then all the young clerks in town in a bodyfor they had stood in the vestibule sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of oiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gauntlet; and last of all came the model boy, willie mufferson, taking as heedful care of his mother as if she were cut glass. he always brought his mother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons. the boys all hated him, he was so good. and besides, he had been "thrown up to them" so much. his white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as usual on sundaysaccidentally. tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boys who had, as snobs. the congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more, to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the choir in the gallery. the choir always tittered and whispered all through service. there was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but i have forgotten where it was, now. it was a great many years ago, and i can scarcely remember anything about it, but i think it was in some foreign country. the minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in a peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country. his voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost word and then plunged down as if from a spring-board: shall i be car-ri-ed to the skies, on flow'ry beds of ease, whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' blood -y seas? he was regarded as a wonderful reader. at church "sociables" he was always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps, and "wall" their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, "words cannot express it; it is too beautiful, too beautiful for this mortal earth." after the hymn had been sung, the rev. mr. sprague turned himself into a bulletin board and read off "notices" of meetings and societies and things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of dooma queer custom which is still kept up in america, even in cities, away here in this age of abundant newspapers. often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. and now the minister prayed. a good, generous prayer, it was, and went into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the state; for the state officers; for the united states; for the churches of the united states; for congress; for the president; for the officers of the government; for poor sailors, tossed by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of european monarchies and oriental despotisms; for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful harvest of good. amen. there was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down. the boy whose history this book relates, did not enjoy the prayer, he only endured itif he even did that much. he was restive, all through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciouslyfor he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman's regular route over itand when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. in the midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of him and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together; embracing its head with its arms and polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat tails; going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly safe. as indeed it was; for as sorely as tom's hands itched to grab for it they did not darehe believed his soul would be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing while the prayer was going on. but with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and the instant the "amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. his aunt detected the act and made him let it go. the minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nodand yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving. tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse. however, this time he was really interested for a little while. the minister made a grand and moving picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a little child should lead them. but the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of the principal character before the on-looking nations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion. now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. it was a large black beetle with formidable jawsa "pinch-bug," he called it. it was in a percussion-cap box. the first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. a natural fillip followed, the beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth. the beetle lay there working its helpless legs, unable to turn over. tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out of his reach. other people uninterested in the sermon, found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. he spied the beetle; the drooping tail lifted and wagged. he surveyed the prize; walked around it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent and absent-minded. his head nodded, and little by little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. there was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. the neighboring spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and handkerchiefs, and tom was entirely happy. the dog looked foolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a craving for revenge. so he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his forepaws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again. but he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself with a fly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it! then there was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of light. at last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance. by this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead stand-still. the discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had said a rarely facetious thing. it was a genuine relief to the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced. tom sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety in it. he had but one marring thought; he was willing that the dog should play with his pinch-bug, but he did not think it was upright in him to carry it off. chapter 6 tom meets becky monday morning found tom sawyer miserable. monday morning always found him sobecause it began another week's slow suffering in school. he generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious. tom lay thinking. presently it occurred to him that he wished he was sick; then he could stay home from school. here was a vague possibility. he canvassed his system. no ailment was found, and he investigated again. this time he thought he could detect colicky symptoms, and he began to encourage them with considerable hope. but they soon grew feeble, and presently died wholly away. he reflected further. suddenly he discovered something. one of his upper front teeth was loose. this was lucky; he was about to begin to groan, as a "starter," as he called it, when it occured to him that if he came into court with that argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that would hurt. so he thought he would hold the tooth in reserve for the present, and seek further. nothing offered for some little time, and then he remembered hearing the doctor tell about a certain thing that laid up a patient for two or three weeks and threatened to make him lose a finger. so the boy eagerly drew his sore toe from under the sheet and held it up for inspection. but now he did not know the necessary symptoms. however, it seemed well worth while to chance it, so he fell to groaning with considerable spirit. but sid slept on unconscious. tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe. no result from sid. tom was panting with his exertions by this time. he took a rest and then swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans. sid snored on. tom was aggravated. he said, "sid, sid!" and shook him. this course worked well, and tom began to groan again. sid yawned, stretched, then brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at tom. tom went on groaning. sid said: "tom! say, tom!" [no response.] "here, tom! tom! what is the matter, tom?" and he shook him, and looked in his face anxiously. tom moaned out: "o don't, sid. don't joggle me." "why what's the matter, tom? i must call auntie." "nonever mind. it'll be over by and by, maybe. don't call anybody." "but i must! don't groan so, tom, it's awful. how long you been this way?" "hours. ouch! o don't stir so, sid, you'll kill me." "tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? o, tom, don't! it makes my flesh crawl to hear you. tom, what is the matter?" "i forgive you everything, sid. [groan.] everything you've ever done to me. when i'm gone-" "o, tom, you ain't dying, are you? don't, tomo, don't. maybe-" "i forgive everybody, sid. [groan.] tell 'em so, sid. and sid, you give my window-sash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that's come to town, and tell her-" but sid had snatched his clothes and gone. tom was suffering in reality, now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his groans had gathered quite a genuine tone. sid flew down stairs and said: "o, aunt polly, come! tom's dying!" "dying." "yes'm. don't waitcome quick!" "rubbage! i don't believe it!" but she fled up stairs, nevertheless, with sid and mary at her heels. and her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. when she reached the bedside she gasped out: "you tom! tom, what's the matter with you?" "o, auntie, i'm-" "what's the matter with youwhat is the matter with you, child!" "o, auntie, my sore toe's mortified!" the old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a little, then did both together. this restored her and she said: "tom, what a turn you did give me. now you shut up that nonsense and climb out of this." the groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. the boy felt a little foolish, and he said: "aunt polly it seemed mortified, and it hurt so i never minded my tooth at all." "your tooth, indeed! what's the matter with your tooth?" "one of them's loose, and it aches perfectly awful." "there, there, now, don't begin that groaning again. open your mouth. wellyour tooth is loose, but you're not going to die about that. mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen." tom said: "o, please auntie, don't pull it out. it don't hurt any more. i wish i may never stir if it does. please don't, auntie. i don't want to stay home from school." "oh, you don't, don't you? so all this row was because you thought you'd get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? tom, tom, i love you so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your outrageousness." by this time the dental instruments were ready. the old lady made one end of the silk thread fast to tom's tooth with a loop and tied the other to the bedpost. then she seized the chunk of fire and suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. the tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. but all trials bring their compensations. as tom wended to school after breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable way. he gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition; and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent, and shorn of his glory. his heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain which he did not feel, that it wasn't anything to spit like tom sawyer; but another boy said "sour grapes!" and he wandered away a dismantled hero. shortly tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, huckleberry finn, son of the town drunkard. huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town because he was idle, and lawless, and vulgar and badand because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him. tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. so he played with him every time he got a chance. huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. his hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat, when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing; the fringed legs dragged in the dirt when not rolled up. huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. he slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. in a word, everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had. so thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in st. petersburg. tom hailed the romantic outcast: "hello, huckleberry!" "hello yourself, and see how you like it." "what's that you got?" "dead cat." "lemme see him, huck. my, he's pretty stiff. where'd you get him?" "bought him off'n a boy." "what did you give?" "i give a blue ticket and a bladder that i got at the slaughter house." "where'd you get the blue ticket?" "bought it off'n ben rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick." "saywhat is dead cats good for, huck?" "good for? cure warts with." "no! is that so? i know something that's better." "i bet you don't. what is it?" "why, spunk-water." "spunk-water! i wouldn't give a dem for spunk-water." "you wouldn't, wouldn't you? d'you ever try it?" "no, i hain't. but bob tanner did." "who told you so!" "why he told jeff thatcher, and jeff told johnny baker, and johnny told jim hollis, and jim told ben rogers, and ben told a nigger, and the nigger told me. there, now!" "well, what of it? they'll all lie. leastways all but the nigger. i don't know him. but i never see a nigger that wouldn't lie. shucks! now you tell me how bob tanner done it, huck." "why he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rain water was." "in the daytime?" "cert'nly." "with his face to the stump?" "yes. least i reckon so." "did he say anything?" "i don't reckon he did. i don't know." "aha! talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool way as that! why that ain't a-going to do any good. you got to go all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the stump and jam your hand in and say: "barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts;" and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody. because if you speak the charm's busted." "well that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way bob tanner done." "no, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work spunk-water. i've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way, huck. i play with frogs so much that i've always got considerable many warts. sometimes i take 'em off with a bean." "yes, bean's good. i've done that." "have you? what's your way?" "you take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the cross-roads in the dark of the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. you see that piece that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the wart, and pretty soon off she comes." "yes, that's it, huckthat's it; though when you're burying it, if you say 'down bean; off, wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better. that's the way joe harper does, and he's been nearly to constantinople and most everywheres. but sayhow do you cure 'em with dead cats?" "why you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard 'long about midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk; and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em and say 'devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, i'm done with ye!' that'll fetch any wart." "sounds right. d'you ever try it, huck?" "no, but old mother hopkins told me." "well i reckon it's so, then. becuz they say she's a witch." "say! why tom i know she is. she witched pap. pap says so his own self. he come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so he took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. well that very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a-layin' drunk, and broke his arm." "why that's awful. how did he know she was a-witching him." "lord, pap can tell, easy. pap says when they keep looking at you right stiddy, they're a-witching you. specially if they mumble. becuz when they mumble they're a-saying the lord's prayer back'ards." "say, huck, when you going to try the cat?" "to-night. i reckon they'll come after old hoss williams to-night." "but they buried him saturday, huck. didn't they get him saturday night?" "why how you talk! how could their charms work till midnight?and then it's sunday. devils don't slosh around much of a sunday, i don't reckon." "i never thought of that. that's so. lemme go with you?" "of courseif you ain't afeard." "afeard! 'tain't likely. will you meow?" "yesand you meow back, if you get a chance. last time, you kep' me a-meowing around till old hays went to throwing rocks at me and says 'dem that cat!' and so i hove a brick through his windowbut don't you tell." "i won't. i couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching me, but i'll meow this time. say, huck, what's that?" "nothing but a tick." "where'd you get him?" "out in the woods." "what'll you take for him?" "i don't know. i don't want to sell him." "all right. it's a mighty small tick, anyway." "o, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. i'm satisfied with it. it's a good enough tick for me." "sho, there's ticks a plenty. i could have a thousand of 'em if i wanted to." "well why don't you? becuz you know mighty well you can't. this is a pretty early tick, i reckon. it's the first one i've seen this year." "say hucki'll give you my tooth for him." "less see it." tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. huckleberry viewed it wistfully. the temptation was very strong. at last he said: "is it genuwyne?" tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. "well, all right," said huckleberry, "it's a trade." tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinch-bug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before. when tom reached the little isolated frame school-house, he strode in briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed. he hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with business-like alacrity. the master, throned on high in his great splint-bottom arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study. the interruption roused him. "thomas sawyer!" tom knew that when his name was pronounced in full, it meant trouble. "sir!" "come up here. now sir, why are you late again, as usual?" tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric sympathy of love; and by that form was the only vacant place on the girl's side of the school-house. he instantly said: "i stopped to talk with huckleberry finn!" the master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. the buzz of study ceased. the pupils wondered if this fool-hardy boy had lost his mind. the master said: "youyou did what?" "stopped to talk with huckleberry finn." there was no mistaking the words. "thomas sawyer, this is the most astounding confession i have ever listened to. no mere ferule will answer for this offense. take off your jacket." the master's arm performed until it was tired and the stock of switches notably diminished. then the order followed: "now sir, go and sit with the girls! and let this be a warning to you." the titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe of his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good fortune. he sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl hitched herself away from him with a toss of her head. nudges and winks and whispers traversed the room, but tom sat still, with his arms upon the long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book. by and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur rose upon the dull air once more. presently the boy began to steal furtive glances at the girl. she observed it, "made a mouth" at him and gave him the back of her head for the space of a minute. when she cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. she thrust it away. tom gently put it back. she thrust it away, again, but with less animosity. tom patiently returned it to its place. then she let it remain. tom scrawled on his slate, "please take iti got more." the girl glanced at the words, but made no sign. now the boy began to draw something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. for a time the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began to manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. the boy worked on, apparently unconscious. the girl made a sort of non-committal attempt to see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. at last she gave in and hesitatingly whispered: "let me see it." tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable ends to it and a cork-screw of smoke issuing from the chimneys. then the girl's interest began to fasten itself upon the work and she forgot everything else. when it was finished, she gazed a moment, then whispered: "it's nicemake a man." the artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick. he could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not hypercritical; she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered: "it's a beautiful mannow make me coming along." tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan. the girl said: "it's ever so nicei wish i could draw." "it's easy," whispered tom, "i'll learn you." "o, will you? when?" "at noon. do you go home to dinner?" "i'll stay, if you will." "good,that's a whack. what's your name?" "becky thatcher. what's yours? oh, know. it's thomas sawyer." "that's the name they lick me by. i'm tom, when i'm good. you call me tom, will you?" "yes." now tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from the girl. but she was not backward this time. she begged to see. tom said: "oh it ain't anything." "yes it is." "no it ain't. you don't want to see." "yes i do, indeed i do. please let me." "you'll tell." "no i won'tdeed and deed and double deed i won't." "you won't tell anybody at all?ever, as long as you live?" "no i won't ever tell anybody. now let me." "oh, you don't want to see!" "now that you treat me so, i will see." and she put her small hand upon his and a little scuffle ensued, tom pretending to resist in earnest but letting his hand slip by degrees till these words were revealed: "i love you." "o, you bad thing!" and she hit his hand a smart rap, but reddened and looked pleased, nevertheless. just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his ear, and a steady, lifting impulse. in that vise he was borne across the house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles from the whole school. then the master stood over him during a few awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a word. but although tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant. as the school quieted down tom made an honest effort to study, but the turmoil within him was too great. in turn he took his place in the reading class and made a botch of it; then in the geography class and turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and got "turned down," by a succession of mere baby words till he brought up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with ostentation for months. chapter 7 tick-running and heartbreak the harder tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas wandered. so at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. it seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. the air was utterly dead. there was not a breath stirring. it was the sleepiest of sleepy days. the drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. away off in the flaming sunshine, cardiff hill lifted its soft green sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep. tom's heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time. his hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. he released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. the creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction. tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as tom had been, and now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an instant. this bosom friend was joe harper. the two boys were sworn friends all the week, and embattled enemies on saturdays. joe took a pin out of his lappel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. the sport grew in interest momently. soon tom said that they were interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of the tick. so he put joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the middle of it from top to bottom. "now," said he, "as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and i'll let him alone; but if you let him get away and get on my side, you're to leave him alone as long as i can keep him from crossing over." "all rightgo aheadstart him up." the tick escaped from tom, presently, and crossed the equator. joe harassed him a while, and then he got away and crossed back again. this change of base occurred often. while one boy was worrying the tick with absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, the two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to all things else. at last luck seemed to settle and abide with joe. the tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and tom's fingers would be twitching to begin, joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep possession. at last tom could stand it no longer. the temptation was too strong. so he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. joe was angry in a moment. said he: "tom, you let him alone." "i only just want to stir him up a little, joe." "no, sir, it ain't fair; you just let him alone." "blame it, i ain't going to stir him much." "let him alone, i tell you!" "i won't!" "you shallhe's on my side of the line." "look here, joe harper, whose is that tick?" "i don't care whose tick he ishe's on my side of the line, and you shan't touch him." "well i'll just bet i will, though. he's my tick and i'll do what i blame please with him, or die!" a tremendous whack came down on tom's shoulders, and its duplicate on joe's; and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. the boys had been too absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school a while before when the master came tip-toeing down the room and stood over them. he had contemplated a good part of the performance before he contributed his bit of variety to it. when school broke up at noon, tom flew to becky thatcher, and whispered in her ear: "put on your bonnet and let on you're going home; and when you get to the corner, give the rest of 'em the slip, and turn down through the lane and come back. i'll go the other way and come it over 'em the same way." so the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with another. in a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. then they sat together, with a slate before them, and tom gave becky the pencil and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising house. when the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking. tom was swimming in bliss. he said: "do you love rats?" "no! i hate them!" "well, i do toolive ones. but i mean dead ones, to swing round your head with a string." "no, i don't care for rats much, anyway. what i like, is chewing-gum." "o, i should say so! i wish i had some now." "do you? i've got some. i'll let you chew it a while, but you must give it back to me." that was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs against the bench in excess of contentment. "was you ever at a circus?" said tom. "yes, and my pa's going to take me again some time, if i'm good." "i been to the circus three or four timeslots of times. church ain't shucks to a circus. there's things going on at a circus all the time. i'm going to be a clown in a circus when i grow up." "o, are you! that will be nice. they're so lovely, all spotted up." "yes, that's so. and they get slathers of moneymost a dollar a day, ben rogers says. say, becky, was you ever engaged?" "what's that?" "why, engaged to be married." "no." "would you like to?" "i reckon so. i don't know. what is it like?" "like? why it ain't like anything. you only just tell a boy you won't ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's all. anybody can do it." "kiss? what do you kiss for?" "why that, you know, is towell, they always do that." "everybody." "why yes, everybody that's in love with each other. do you remember what i wrote on the slate?" "yeyes." "what was it?" "i shan't tell you." "shall i tell you?" "yeyesbut some other time." "no, now." "no, not nowto-morrow." "o, no, now. please beckyi'll whisper it, i'll whisper it ever so easy." becky hesitating, tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm about her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth close to her ear. and then he added: "now you whisper it to mejust the same." she resisted, for a while, and then said: "you turn your face away so you can't see, and then i will. but you mustn't ever tell anybodywill you, tom? now you won't, will you?" "no, indeed indeed i won't. now becky." he turned his face away. she bent timidly around till her breath stirred his curls and whispered, "iloveyou!" then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches, with tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her little white apron to her face. tom clasped her about her neck and pleaded: "now becky, it's all doneall over but the kiss. don't you be afraid of thatit ain't anything at all. please, becky."and he tugged at her apron and the hands. by and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing with the struggle, came up and submitted. tom kissed the red lips and said: "now it's all done, becky. and always after this, you know, you ain't ever to love anybody but me, and you ain't ever to marry anybody but me, never never and forever. will you?" "no, i'll never love anybody but you, tom, and i'll never marry anybody but youand you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either." "certainly. of course. that's part of it. and always coming to school or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't anybody lookingand you choose me and i choose you at parties, because that's the way you do when you're engaged." "it's so nice. i never heard of it before." "o it's ever so gay! why me and amy lawrence" the big eyes told tom his blunder and he stopped, confused. "o, tom! then i ain't the first you've ever been engaged to!" the child began to cry. tom said: "o don't cry, becky, i don't care for her any more." "yes you do, tom,you know you do." tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. tom tried again, with soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. then his pride was up, and he strode away and went outside. he stood about, restless and uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping she would repent and come to find him. but she did not. then he began to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. it was a hard struggle with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and entered. she was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with her face to the wall. tom's heart smote him. he went to her and stood a moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. then he said hesitatingly: "becky, ii don't care for anybody but you." no replybut sobs. "becky,"pleadingly. "becky, won't you say something?" more sobs. tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said: "please, becky, won't you take it?" she struck it to the floor. then tom marched out of the house and over the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. presently becky began to suspect. she ran to the door; he was not in sight; she flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. then she called: "tom! come back, tom!" she listened intently, but there was no answer. she had no companions but silence and loneliness. so she sat down to cry again and upbraid herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers about her to exchange sorrows with. chapter 8 a pirate bold to be tom dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. he crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. half an hour later he was disappearing behind the douglas mansion on the summit of cardiff hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him. he entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. there was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. the boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. he sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. it seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half envied jimmy hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. if he only had a clean sunday-school record he could be willing to go, and be done with it all. now as to this girl. what had he done? nothing. he had meant the best in the world, and been treated like a doglike a very dog. she would be sorry some daymaybe when it was too late. ah, if he could only die temporarily! but the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time. tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. what if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? what if he went awayever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seasand never came back any more! how would she feel then! the idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. for frivolity, and jokes, and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic. no, he would be a soldier, and return, after long years, all war-worn and illustrious. nobetter still, he would join the indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on the war-path in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the far west, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eye-balls of all his companions with unappeasable envy. but no, there was something gaudier even than this. he would be a pirate! that was it! now his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. how his name would fill the world, and make people shudder! how gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the "spirit of the storm," with his grisly flag flying at the fore! and at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk into church, all brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull and cross-bones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings, "it's tom sawyer the pirate!the black avenger of the spanish main!" yes, it was settled; his career was determined. he would run away from home and enter upon it. he would start the very next morning. therefore he must now begin to get ready. he would collect his resources together. he went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under one end of it with his barlow knife. he soon struck wood that sounded hollow. he put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively: "what hasn't come here, come! what's here, stay here!" then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. he took it up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides were of shingles. in it lay a marble. tom's astonishment was boundless! he scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said: "well, that beats anything!" then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. the truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. if you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated. but now, this thing had actually and unquestionably failed. tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. he had many a time heard of this thing succeeding, but never of its failing before. it did not occur to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never find the hiding places afterwards. he puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. he thought he would satisfy himself on that point; so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. he laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and called: "doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what i want to know! doodle-bug, doodle-bug tell me what i want to know!" the sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a second and then darted under again in a fright. "he dasn't tell! so it was a witch that done it. i just knowed it." he well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up discouraged. but it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. but he could not find it. now he went back to his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying: "brother go find your brother!" he watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. but it must have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. the last repetition was successful. the two marbles lay within a foot of each other. just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green aisles of the forest. tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log, disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and in a moment had seized these things and bounded away, bare-legged, with fluttering shirt. he presently halted under a great elm, blew an answering blast, and then began to tip-toe and look warily out, this way and that. he said cautiouslyto an imaginary company: "hold, my merry men! keep hid till i blow." now appeared joe harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as tom. tom called: "hold! who comes here into sherwood forest without my pass?" "guy of guisborne wants no man's pass. who art thou thatthat-" -"dares to hold such language," said tom, promptingfor they talked "by the book," from memory. "who art thou that dares to hold such language?" "i, indeed! i am robin hood, as thy caitiff carcass soon shall know." "then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? right gladly will i dispute with thee the passes of the merry wood. have at thee!" they took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground, struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful combat, "two up and two down." presently tom said: "now if you've got the hang, go it lively!" so they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. by and by tom shouted: "fall! fall! why don't you fall?" "i shan't! why don't you fall yourself.? you're getting the worst of it." "why that ain't anything. i can't fall; that ain't the way it is in the book. the book says 'then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor guy of guisborne.' you're to turn around and let me hit you in the back." there was no getting around the authorities, so joe turned, received the whack and fell. "now," said joegetting up, "you got to let me kill you. that's fair." "why i can't do that, it ain't in the book." "well it's blamed mean,that's all." "well, say, joe, you can be friar tuck or much the miller's son and lam me with a quarter-staff; or i'll be the sheriff of nottingham and you be robin hood a little while and kill me." this was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. then tom became robin hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. and at last joe, representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth, gave his bow into his feeble hands, and tom said, "where this arrow falls, there bury poor robin hood under the greenwood tree." then he shot the arrow and fell back and would have died but he lit on a nettle and sprang up too gaily for a corpse. the boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss. they said they would rather be outlaws a year in sherwood forest than president of the united states forever. chapter 9 tragedy in the grave yard at half past nine, that night, tom and sid were sent to bed, as usual. they said their prayers, and sid was soon asleep. tom lay awake and waited, in restless impatience. when it seemed to him that it must be nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! this was despair. he would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was afraid he might wake sid. so he lay still, and stared up into the dark. everything was dismally still. by and by, out of the stillness little scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. the ticking of the clock began to bring itself into notice. old beams began to crack mysteriously. the stairs creaked faintly. evidently spirits were abroad. a measured, muffled snore issued from aunt polly's chamber. and now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate, began. next the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the bed's head made tom shudderit meant that somebody's days were numbered. then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air and was answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. tom was in an agony. at last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity begun; he began to doze, in spite of himself, the clock chimed eleven but he did not hear it. and then there came mingling with his half-formed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. the raising of a neighboring window disturbed him. a cry of "scat! you devil!" and the crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt's woodshed brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and out of the window and creeping along the roof of the "ell" on all fours. he "meow'd" with caution once or twice, as he went; then jumped to the roof of the woodshed and thence to the ground. huckleberry finn was there, with his dead cat. the boys moved off and disappeared in the gloom. at the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard. it was a graveyard of the old-fashioned western kind. it was on a hill, about a mile and a half from the village. it had a crazy board fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the time, but stood upright nowhere. grass and weeds grew rank over the whole cemetery. all the old graves were sunken in. there was not a tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over the graves, leaning for support and finding none. "sacred to the memory of" so-and-so had been painted on them once, but it could no longer have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light. a faint wind moaned through the trees, and tom feared it might be the spirits of the dead complaining at being disturbed. the boys talked little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. they found the sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet of the grave. then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. the hooting of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. tom's reflections grew oppressive. he must force some talk. so he said in a whisper: "hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?" huckleberry whispered: "i wisht i knowed. it's awful solemn like, ain't it?" "i bet it is." there was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter inwardly. then tom whispered: "say, huckydo you reckon hoss williams hears us talking?" "o' course he does. least his sperrit does." tom, after a pause: "i wish i'd said mister williams. but i never meant any harm. everybody calls him hoss." "a body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead people, tom." this was a damper, and conversation died again, presently tom seized his comrade's arm and said: "sh!" "what is it, tom?" and the two clung together with beating hearts. "sh! there 'tis again! didn't you hear it?" "i-" "there! now you hear it." "lord, tom they're coming! they're coming, sure. what'll we do?" "i dono. think they'll see us?" "o, tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. i wisht i hadn't come." "o, don't be afeard. i don't believe they'll bother us. we ain't doing any harm. if we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us at all." "i'll try to, tom, but lord i'm all of a shiver." "listen!" the boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. a muffled sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard. "look! see there!" whispered tom. "what is it?" "it's devil-fire. o, tom, this is awful." some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable little spangles of light. presently huckleberry whispered with a shudder: "it's the devils sure enough. three of 'em! lordy, tom, we're goners! can you pray?" "i'll try, but don't you be afeard. they ain't going to hurt us. now i lay me down to sleep, i-" "sh!" "what is it, huck?" "they're humans! one of 'em is, anyway. one of 'em's old muff potter's voice." "no'tain't so, is it?" "i bet i know it. don't you stir nor budge. he ain't sharp enough to notice us. drunk, same as usual, likelyblamed old rip!" "all right, i'll keep still. now they're stuck. can't find it. here they come again. now they're hot. cold again. hot again. red hot! they're p'inted right, this time. say huck, i know another o' them voices; it's injun joe." "that's sothat murderin' half-breed! i'd druther they was devils, a dem sight. what kin they be up to?" the whispers died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hiding-place. "here it is," said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern up and revealed the face of young dr. robinson. potter and injun joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple of shovels on it. they cast down their load and began to open the grave. the doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. he was so close the boys could have touched him. "hurry, men!" he said in a low voice; "the moon might come out at any moment." they growled a response and went on digging. for some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. it was very monotonous. finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. they pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. the moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. the barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said: "now the cussed thing's ready, sawbones, and you'll just out with another five, or here she stays." "that's the talk!" said injun joe. "look here, what does this mean?" said the doctor. "you required your pay in advance, and i've paid you." "yes, and you done more than that," said injun joe, approaching the doctor, who was now standing. "five year ago you drove me away from your father's kitchen one night, when i come to ask for something to eat, and you said i warn't there for any good; and when i swore i'd get even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for a vagrant. did you think i'd forget? the injun blood ain't in me for nothing. and now i've got you, and you got to settle, you know!" he was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this time. the doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the ground. potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed: "here, now, don't you hit my pard!" and the next moment he had grappled with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and main, trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels. injun joe sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched up potter's knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and round about the combatants, seeking an opportunity. all at once the doctor flung himself free, seized the heavy head-board of williams' grave and felled potter to the earth with itand in the same instant the half-breed saw his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the young man's breast. he reeled and fell partly upon potter, flooding him with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the dreadful spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in the dark. presently, when the moon emerged again, injun joe was standing over the two forms, contemplating them. the doctor murmured inarticulately, gave a long gasp or two and was still. the half-breed muttered: "that score is settleddamn you." then he robbed the body. after which he put the fatal knife in potter's open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. threefourfive minutes passed, and then potter began to stir and moan. his hand closed upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it fall, with a shudder. then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and gazed at it, and then around him, confusedly. his eyes met joe's. "lord, how is this, joe?" he said. "it's a dirty business," said joe, without moving. "what did you do it for?" "i! i never done it!" "look here! that kind of talk won't wash." potter trembled and grew white. "i thought i'd got sober. i'd no business to drink to-night. but it's in my head yetworse'n when we started here. i'm all in a muddle; can't recollect anything of it hardly. tell me, joehonest, now, old fellerdid i do it? joe, i never meant to'pon my soul and honor i never meant to, joe. tell me how it was, joe. o, it's awfuland him so young and promising." "why you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering, like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched you another awful clipand here you've laid, as dead as a wedge till now." "o, i didn't know what i was a-doing. i wish i may die this minute if i did. it was all on account of the whisky; and the excitement, i reckon. i never used a weepon in my life before, joe. i've fought, but never with weepons. they'll all say that. joe, don't tell! say you won't tell, joethat's a good feller. i always liked you joe, and stood up for you, too. don't you remember? you won't tell, will you joe?" and the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid murderer, and clasped his appealing hands. "no, you've always been fair and square with me, muff potter, and i won't go back on you.there, now, that's as fair as a man can say." "o, joe, you're an angel. i'll bless you for this the longest day i live." and potter began to cry. "come, now, that's enough of that. this ain't any time for blubbering. you be off yonder way and i'll go this. move, now, and don't leave any tracks behind you." potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. the halfbreed stood looking after him. he muttered: "if he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he had the look of being, he won't think of the knife till he's gone so far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by himselfchicken-heart!" two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the lidless coffin and the open grave were under no inspection but the moon's. the stillness was complete again, too. chapter 10 dire prophecy of the howling dog the two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with horror. they glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time, apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. every stump that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give wings to their feet. "if we can only get to the old tannery, before we break down!" whispered tom, in short catches between breaths, "i can't stand it much longer." huckleberry's hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it. they gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast they burst through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering shadows beyond. by and by their pulses slowed down, and tom whispered: "huckleberry, what do you reckon 'll come of this?" "if dr. robinson dies, i reckon hanging 'll come of it." "do you though?" "why i know it, tom." tom thought a while, then he said: "who'll tell? we?" "what are you talking about? s'pose something happened and injun joe didn't hang? why he'd kill us some time or other, just as dead sure as we're a-laying here." "that's just what i was thinking to myself, huck." "if anybody tells, let muff potter do it, if he's fool enough. he's generally drunk enough." tom said nothingwent on thinking. presently he whispered: "huck, muff potter don't know it. how can he tell?" "what's the reason he don't know it?" "because he'd just got that whack when injun joe done it. d' you reckon he could see anything? d' you reckon he knowed anything?" "by hokey, that's so tom!" "and besides, look-a-heremaybe that whack done for him!" "no, 'tain't likely tom. he had liquor in him; i could see that; and besides, he always has. well when pap's full, you might take and belt him over the head with a church and you couldn't phase him. he says so, his own self. so it's the same with muff potter, of course. but if a man was dead sober, i reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; i dono." after another reflective silence, tom said: "hucky, you sure you can keep mum?" "tom, we got to keep mum. you know that. that injun devil wouldn't make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak 'bout this and they didn't hang him. now look-a-here, tom, less take and swear to one anotherthat's what we got to doswear to keep mum." "i'm agreed, huck. it's the best thing. would you just hold hands and swear that we-" "o, no, that wouldn't do for this. that's good enough for little rubbishy common thingsspecially with gals, cuz they go back on you anyway, and blab if they get in a huffbut there orter be writing 'bout a big thing like this. and blood." tom's whole being applauded this idea. it was deep, and dark, and awful; the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it. he picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moonlight, took a little fragment of "red keel" out of his pocket, got the moon on his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up the pressure on the up-strokes: (see illustration.) huckleberry was filled with admiration of tom's facility in writing, and the sublimity of his language. he at once took a pin from his lappel and was going to prick his flesh, but tom said: "hold on! don't do that. a pin's brass. it might have verdigrease on it." "what's verdigrease?" "it's p'ison. that's what it is. you just swaller some of it onceyou'll see." so tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. in time, after many squeezes, tom managed to sign his initials, using the ball of his little finger for a pen. then he showed huckleberry how to make an h and an f, and the oath was complete. they buried the shingle close to the wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and the fetters that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and the key thrown away. a figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the ruined building, now, but they did not notice it. "tom," whispered huckleberry, "does this keep us from ever tellingalways?" "of course it does. it don't make any difference what happens, we got to keep mum. we'd drop down deaddon't you know that?" "yes, i reckon that's so." they continued to whisper for some little time. presently a dog set up a long, lugubrious howl just outsidewithin ten feet of them. the boys clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright. "which of us does he mean?" gasped huckleberry. "i donopeep through the crack. quick!" "no, you, tom!" "i canti can't do it, huck!" "please, tom. there 'tis again!" "o, lordy, i'm thankful!" whispered tom. "i know his voice. it's bull harbison." "o, that's goodi tell you, tom, i was most scared to death; i'd a bet anything it was a stray dog." the dog howled again. the boys' hearts sank once more. "o, my! that ain't no bull harbison!" whispered huckleberry. "do, tom!" tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. his whisper was hardly audible when he said: "o, huck, it's a stray dog!" "quick, tom, quick! who does he mean?" "huck, he must mean us bothwe're right together." "o, tom, i reckon we're goners. i reckon there ain't no mistake 'bout where i'll go to. i been so wicked." "dad fetch it! this comes of playing hookey and doing everything a feller's told not to do. i might a been good, like sid, if i'd a triedbut no, i wouldn't, of course. but if ever i get off this time, i lay i'll just waller in sunday-schools!" and tom began to snuffle a little. "you bad!" and huckleberry began to snuffle, too. "consound it, tom sawyer, you're just old pie, 'longside o'what i am. o, lordy, lordy, lordy, i wisht i only had half your chance." tom choked off and whispered: "look, hucky, look! he's got his back to us!" hucky looked, with joy in his heart. "well he has, by jingoes! did he before?" "yes, he did. but i, like a fool, never thought. o, this is bully, you know. now, who can he mean?" the howling stopped. tom pricked up his ears. "sh! what's that?" he whispered. "sounds likelike hogs grunting. noit's somebody snoring, tom." "that is it? where 'bouts is it, huck?" "i bleeve it's down at t'other end. sounds so, anyway. pap used to sleep there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he just lifts things when he snores. besides, i reckon he ain't ever coming back to this town any more." the spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more. "hucky do you das't to go if i lead?" "i don't like to, much. tom, s'pose it's injun joe!" tom quailed. but presently the temptation rose up strong again and the boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to their heels if the snoring stopped. so they went tip-toeing stealthily down, the one behind the other. when they had got to within five steps of the snorer, tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap. the man moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight. it was muff potter. the boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. they tip-toed out, through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little distance to exchange a parting word. that long, lugubrious howl rose on the night air again! they turned and saw the strange dog standing within a few feet of where potter was lying, and facing potter, with his nose pointing heavenward. "o, geeminy it's him!" exclaimed both boys, in a breath. "say, tomthey say a stray dog come howling around johnny miller's house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come in and lit on the bannisters and sung, the very same evening; and there ain't anybody dead there yet." "well i know that. and suppose there ain't. didn't gracie miller fall in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next saturday?" "yes, but she ain't dead. and what's more, she's getting better, too." "all right, you wait and see. she's a goner, just as dead sure as muff potter's a goner. that's what the niggers say, and they know all about these kind of things, huck." then they separated, cogitating. when tom crept in at his bedroom window, the night was almost spent. he undressed with excessive caution, and fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his escapade. he was not aware that the gently-snoring sid was awake, and had been so for an hour. when tom awoke, sid was dressed and gone. there was a late look in the light, a late sense in the atmosphere. he was startled. why had he not been calledpersecuted till he was up, as usual? the thought filled him with bodings. within five minutes he was dressed and down stairs, feeling sore and drowsy. the family were still at table, but they had finished breakfast. there was no voice of rebuke; but there were averted eyes; there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a chill to the culprit's heart. he sat down and tried to seem gay, but it was up-hill work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into silence and let his heart sink down to the depths. after breakfast his aunt took him aside, and tom almost brightened in the hope that he was going to be flogged; but it was not so. his aunt wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so; and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any more. this was worse than a thousand whippings, and tom's heart was sorer now than his body. he cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised reform over and over again and then received his dismissal, feeling that he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a feeble confidence. he left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward sid; and so the latter's prompt retreat through the back gate was unnecessary. he moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging, along with joe harper, for playing hooky the day before, with the air of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to trifles. then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his desk and his jaws in his hands and stared at the wall with the stony stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go. his elbow was pressing against some hard substance. after a long time he slowly and sadly changed his position, and took up this object with a sigh. it was in a paper. he unrolled it. a long, lingering, colossal sigh followed, and his heart broke. it was his brass andiron knob! this final feather broke the camel's back. chapter 11 conscience racks torn close upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified with the ghastly news. no need of the as yet undreamed-of telegraph; the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to house, with little less than telegraphic speed. of course the schoolmaster gave holiday for that afternoon; the town would have thought strangely of him if he had not. a gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been recognized by somebody as belonging to muff potterso the story ran. and it was said that a belated citizen had come upon potter washing himself in the "branch" about one or two o'clock in the morning, and that potter had at once sneaked offsuspicious circumstances, especially the washing, which was not a habit with potter. it was also said that the town had been ransacked for this "murderer" (the public are not slow in the matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a verdict) but that he could not be found. horsemen had departed down all the roads in every direction, and the sheriff "was confident" that he would be captured before night. all the town was drifting toward the graveyard. tom's heart-break vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not a thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful, unaccountable fascination drew him on. arrived at the dreadful place, he wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal spectacle. it seemed to him an age since he was there before. somebody pinched his arm. he turned, and his eyes met huckleberry's. then both looked elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything in their mutual glance. but everybody was talking, and intent upon the grisly spectacle before them. "poor fellow!" "poor young fellow!" "this ought to be a lesson to grave-robbers!" "muff potter'll hang for this if they catch him!" this was the drift of remark; and the minister said, "it was a judgment; his hand is here." now tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye fell upon the stolid face of injun joe. at this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle, and voices shouted, "it's him! it's him! he's coming himself!" "who? who?" from twenty voices. "muff potter!" "hallo, he's stopped!look out, he's turning! don't let him get away!" people in the branches of the trees over tom's head, said he wasn't trying to get awayhe only looked doubtful and perplexed. "infernal impudence!" said a bystander; "wanted to come and take a quiet look at his work, i reckondidn't expect any company." the crowd fell apart, now, and the sheriff came through, ostentatiously leading potter by the arm. the poor fellow's face was haggard, and his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. when he stood before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face in his hands and burst into tears. "i didn't do it, friends," he sobbed; "'pon my word and honor i never done it." "who's accused you?" shouted a voice. this shot seemed to carry home. potter lifted his face and looked around him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. he saw injun joe, and exclaimed: "o, injun joe, you promised me you'd never-" "is that your knife?" and it was thrust before him by the sheriff. potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to the ground. then he said: "something told me 't if i didn't come back and get-" he shuddered; then waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture and said, "tell 'em, joe, tell 'emit ain't any use any more." then huckleberry and tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every moment that the clear sky would deliver god's lightnings upon his head, and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed. and when he had finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to satan and it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that. "why didn't you leave? what did you want to come here for?" somebody said. "i couldn't help iti couldn't help it," potter moaned. "i wanted to run away, but i couldn't seem to come anywhere but here." and he fell to sobbing again. injun joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that joe had sold himself to the devil. he was now become, to them, the most balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could not take their fascinated eyes from his face. they inwardly resolved to watch him, nights, when opportunity should offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master. injun joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd that the wound bled a little! the boys thought that this happy circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were disappointed, for more than one villager remarked: "it was within three feet of muff potter when it done it." tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as much as a week after this; and at breakfast one morning sid said: "tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me awake about half the time." tom blanched and dropped his eyes. "it's a bad sign," said aunt polly, gravely. "what you got on your mind, tom?" "nothing. nothing 't i know of." but the boy's hand shook so that he spilled his coffee. "and you do talk such stuff," sid said. "last night you said 'it's blood, it's blood, that's what it is!' you said that over and over. and you said, 'don't torment me soi'll tell!' tell what? what is it you'll tell?" everything was swimming before tom. there is no telling what might have happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of aunt polly's face and she came to tom's relief without knowing it. she said: "sho! it's that dreadful murder. i dream about it most every night myself. sometimes i dream it's me that done it." mary said she had been affected much the same way. sid seemed satisfied. tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could, and after that he complained of toothache for a week and tied up his jaws every night. he never knew that sid lay nightly watching, and frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place again. tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and the toothache grew irksome and was discarded. if sid really managed to make anything out of tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself. it seemed to tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his mind. sid noticed that tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries, though it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises; he noticed, too, that tom never acted as a witness,and that was strange; and sid did not overlook the fact that tom even showed a marked aversion to these inquests, and always avoided them when he could. sid marveled, but said nothing. however, even inquests went out of vogue at last, and ceased to torture tom's conscience. every day or two, during this time of sorrow, tom watched his opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such small comforts through to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. the jail was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge of the village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed it was seldom occupied. these offerings greatly helped to ease tom's conscience. the villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather injun joe and ride him on a rail, for body-snatching, but so formidable was his character that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead in the matter, so it was dropped. he had been careful to begin both of his inquest-statements with the fight, without confessing the grave-robbery that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not to try the case in the courts at present. chapter 12 the cat and the painkiller one of the reasons why tom's mind had drifted away from its secret troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest itself about. becky thatcher had stopped coming to school. tom had struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to "whistle her down the wind," but failed. he began to find himself hanging around her father's house, nights, and feeling very miserable. she was ill. what if she should die! there was distraction in the thought. he no longer took an interest in war, nor even in piracy. the charm of life was gone; there was nothing but dreariness left. he put his hoop away, and his bat; there was no joy in them any more. his aunt was concerned. she began to try all manner of remedies on him. she was one of those people who are infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or mending it. she was an inveterate experimenter in these things. when something fresh in this line came out she was in a fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that came handy. she was a subscriber for all the "health" periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. all the "rot" they contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up, and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing to wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her health-journals of the current month customarily upset everything they had recommended the month before. she was as simple-hearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. she gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with "hell following after." but she never suspected that she was not an angel of healing and the balm of gilead in disguise, to the suffering neighbors. the water treatment was new, now, and tom's low condition was a windfall to her. she had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up in the woodshed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then she scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; then she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she sweated his soul clean and "the yellow stains of it came through his pores"as tom said. yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and pale and dejected. she added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths and plunges. the boy remained as dismal as a hearse. she began to assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister plasters. she calculated his capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every day with quack cure-alls. tom had become indifferent to persecution, by this time. this phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation. this indifference must be broken up at any cost. now she heard of pain-killer for the first time. she ordered a lot at once. she tasted it and was filled with gratitude. it was simply fire in a liquid form. she dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to pain-killer. she gave tom a tea-spoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the "indifference" was broken up. the boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest, if she had build a fire under him. tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. so he thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit upon that of professing to be fond of pain-killer. he asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. if it had been sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. she found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it. one day tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, puffing, eyeing the tea-spoon avariciously, and begging for a taste. tom said: "don't ask for it unless you want it, peter." but peter signified that he did want it. "you better make sure." peter was sure. "now you've asked for it, and i'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you musn't blame anybody but your own self." peter was agreeable. so tom pried his mouth open and poured down the pain-killer. peter sprang a couple of yards into the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots and making general havoc. next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. aunt polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. the old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter. "tom, what on earth ails that cat?" "i don't know, aunt," gasped the boy. "why i never see anything like it. what did make him act so?" "deed i don't know aunt polly; cats always act so when they're having a good time." "they do, do they?" there was something in the tone that made tom apprehensive. "yes'm. that is, i believe they do." "you do?" "yes'm." the old lady was bending down, tom watching, with interest emphasized by anxiety. too late he divined her "drift." the handle of the tell-tale tea-spoon was visible under the bed-valance. aunt polly took it, held it up. tom winced, and dropped his eyes. aunt polly raised him by the usual handlehis earand cracked his head soundly with her thimble. "now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?" "i done it out of pity for himbecause he hadn't any aunt." "hadn't any aunt!you numscull. what has that got to do with it?" "heaps. because if he'd a had one she'd a burnt him out herself! she'd a roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a human!" aunt polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. this was putting the thing in a new light; what was cruelty to a cat might be cruelty to a boy, too. she began to soften; she felt sorry. her eyes watered a little, and she put her hand on tom's head and said gently: "i was meaning for the best, tom. and tom, it did do you good." tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping through his gravity: "i know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was i with peter. it done him good, too. i never see him get around so since-" "o, go 'long with you, tom, before you aggravate me again. and you try and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take any more medicine." tom reached school ahead of time. it was noticed that this strange thing had been occurring every day latterly. and now, as usual of late, he hung about the gate of the school-yard instead of playing with his comrades. he was sick, he said, and he looked it. he tried to seem to be looking everywhere but whither he really was lookingdown the road. presently jeff thatcher hove in sight, and tom's face lighted; he gazed a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. when jeff arrived, tom accosted him, and "led up" warily to opportunities for remark about becky, but the giddy lad never could see the bait. tom watched and watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. at last frocks ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered the empty school-house and sat down to suffer. then one more frock passed in at the gate, and tom's heart gave a great bound. the next instant he was out, and "going on" like an indian; yelling, laughing, chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing hand-springs, standing on his headdoing all the heroic things he could conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if becky thatcher was noticing. but she seemed to be unconscious of it all; she never looked. could it be possible that she was not aware that he was there? he carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came war-whooping around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the school-house, broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every direction, and fell sprawling, himself, under becky's nose, almost upsetting herand she turned, with her nose in the air, and he heard her say. "mf! some people think they're mighty smartalways showing off!" tom's cheeks burned. he gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed and crestfallen. chapter 13 the pirate crew set sail tom's mind was made up now. he was gloomy and desperate. he was a forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found out what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had tried to do right and get along, but they would not let him; since nothing would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them blame him for the consequenceswhy shouldn't they? what right had the friendless to complain? yes, they had forced him to it at last: he would lead a life of crime. there was no choice. by this time he was far down meadow lane, and the bell for school to "take up" tinkled faintly upon his ear. he sobbed, now, to think he should never, never hear that old familiar sound any moreit was very hard, but it was forced on him; since he was driven out into the cold world, he must submitbut he forgave them. then the sobs came thick and fast. just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, hoe harperhard-eyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his heart. plainly here were "two souls with but a single thought." tom, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about a resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by roaming abroad into the great world never to return; and ended by hoping that joe would not forget him. but it transpired that this was a request which joe had just been going to make of tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. his mother had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never tasted and knew nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him and wished him to go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for him to do but succumb; he hoped she would be happy, and never regret having driven her poor boy out into the unfeeling world to suffer and die. as the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death relieved them of their troubles. then they began to lay their plans. joe was for being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and dying, some time, of cold, and want, and grief; but after listening to tom, he conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a life of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate. three miles below st. petersburg, at a point where the mississippi river was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded island, with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as a rendezvous. it was not inhabited; it lay far over toward the further shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. so jackson's island was chosen. who were to be the subjects of their piracies, was a matter that did not occur to them. then they hunted up huckleberry finn, and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him; he was indifferent. they presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on the river bank two miles above the village at the favorite hourwhich was midnight. there was a small log raft there which they meant to capture. each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he could steal in the most dark and mysterious wayas became outlaws. and before the afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet glory of spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would "hear something." all who got this vague hint were cautioned to "be mum and wait." about midnight tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles, and stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the meeting-place. it was starlight, and very still. the mighty river lay like an ocean at rest. tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the quiet. then he gave a low, distinct whistle. it was answered from under the bluff. tom whistled twice more; these signals were answered in the same way. then a guarded voice said: "who goes there?" "tom sawyer, the black avenger of the spanish main. name your names." "huck finn the red-handed, and joe harper the terror of the seas." tom had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature. "'tis well. give the countersign." two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to the brooding night: "blood!" then tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it, tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. there was an easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it lacked the advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate. the terror of the seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn himself out with getting it there. finn the red-handed had stolen a skillet, and a quantity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought a few corn-cobs to make pipes with. but none of the pirates smoked or "chewed" but himself. the black avenger of the spanish main said it would never do to start without some fire. that was a wise thought; matches were hardly known there in that day. they saw a fire smouldering upon a great raft a hundred yards above, and they went stealthily thither and helped themselves to a chunk. they made an imposing adventure of it, saying "hist!" every now and then and suddenly halting with finger on lip; moving with hands on imaginary dagger-hilts; and giving orders in dismal whispers that if "the foe" stirred, to "let him have it to the hilt," because "dead men tell no tales." they knew well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the village laying in stores or having a spree, but still that was no excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way. they shoved off, presently, tom in command, huck at the after oar and joe at the forward. tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper: "luff, and bring her to the wind!" "aye-aye, sir!" "steady, stead-y-y-y!" "steady it is, sir!" "let her go off a point!" "point it is, sir!" as the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward midstream, it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for "style," and were not intended to mean anything in particular. "what sail's she carrying?" "courses, tops'ls and flying-jib, sir." "send the r'yals up! lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of ye,foretopmast-stuns'l! lively, now!" "aye-aye, sir!" "shake out that maintogalans'l! sheets and braces! now, my hearties!" "aye-aye, sir!" "hellum-a-leehard a port! stand by to meet her when she comes! port, port! now, men! with a will! stead-y-y-y!" "steady it is, sir!" the raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her head right, and then lay on their oars. the river was not high, so there was not more than a twoor three-mile current. hardly a word was said during the next three-quarters of an hour. now the raft was passing before the distant town. two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening. the black avenger stood, still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing "she" could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. it was but a small strain on his imagination to remove jackson's island beyond eye-shot of the village, and so he "looked his last" with a broken and satisfied heart. the other pirates were looking their last, too; and they all looked so long that they came near letting the current drift them out of the range of the island. but they discovered the danger in time, and made shift to avert it. about two o'clock in the morning the raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the head of the island, and they waded back and forth until they had landed their freight. part of the little rafts belongings consisted of an old sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to shelter their provisions; but they themselves would sleep in the open air in good weather, as became outlaws. they built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone" stock they had brought. it seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to civilization. the climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree trunks of their forest temple, and upon the varnished foliage and festooning vines. when the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass, filled with contentment. they could have found a cooler place, but they would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting camp-fire. "ain't it gay?" said joe. "it's nuts!" said tom. "what would the boys say if they could see us?" "say? well they'd just die to be herehey hucky?" "i reckon so," said huckleberry; "anyways i'm suited. i don't want nothing better'n this. i don't ever get enough to eat, gen'allyand here they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so." "it's just the life for me," said tom. "you don't have to get up, mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that blame foolishness. you see a pirate don't have to do anything, joe, when he's ashore, but a hermit he has to be praying considerable, and then he don't have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way." "o yes, that's so," said joe, "but i hadn't thought much about it, you know. i'd a good deal ruther be a pirate, now that i've tried it." "you see," said tom, "people don't go much on hermits, now-a-days, like they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. and a hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put sack-cloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and-" "what does he put sack-cloth and ashes on his head for?" inquired huck. "i dono. but they've got to do it. hermits always do. you'd have to do that if you was a hermit." "dern'd if i would," said huck. "well what would you do?" "i dono. but i wouldn't do that." "why huck, you'd have to. how'd you get around it?" "why i just wouldn't stand it. i'd run away." "run away! well you would be a nice old slouch of a hermit. you'd be a disgrace." the red-handed made no response, being better employed. he had finished gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded it with tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a cloud of fragrant smokehe was in the full bloom of luxurious contentment. the other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and secretly resolved to acquire it shortly. presently huck said: "what does pirates have to do?" tom said: "o they have just a bully timetake ships, and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the shipsmake 'em walk a plank." "and they carry the women to the island," said joe; "they don't kill the women." "no," assented tom, "they don't kill the womenthey're too noble. and the women's always beautiful, too." "and don't they wear the bulliest clothes! oh, no! all gold and silver and di'monds," said joe, with enthusiasm. "who?" said huck. "why the pirates." huck scanned his own clothing forlornly. "i reckon i ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said he, with a regretful pathos in his voice; "but i ain't got none but these." but the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough, after they should have begun their adventures. they made him understand that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary for wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe. gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the eyelids of the little waifs. the pipe dropped from the fingers of the red-handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary. the terror of the seas and the black avenger of the spanish main had more difficulty in getting to sleep. they said their prayers inwardly, and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority to make them kneel and recite aloud; in truth they had a mind not to say them at all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as that, lest they might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from heaven. then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleepbut an intruder came, now, that would not "down." it was conscience. they began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then the real torture came. they tried to argue it away by reminding conscience that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of times; but conscience was not to be appeased by such thin plausibilities. it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only "hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealingand there was a command against that in the bible. so they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing. then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep. chapter 14 happy camp of the freebooters when tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. he sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked around. then he comprehended. it was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great nature's meditation. beaded dew-drops stood upon the leaves and grasses. a white layer of ashes covered the fire, and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. joe and huck still slept. now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. gradually the cool dim gray of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life manifested itself. the marvel of nature shaking off sleep and going to work unfolded itself to the musing boy. a little green worm came crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air from time to time and "sniffing around," then proceeding againfor he was measuring, tom said; and when the worm approached him, of its own accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling, by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful moment with its curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon tom's leg and began a journey over him, his whole heart was gladfor that meant that he was going to have a new suit of clotheswithout the shadow of a doubt a gaudy piratical uniform. now a procession of ants appeared, from nowhere in particular, and went about their labors; one struggled manfully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms, and lugged it straight up a tree-trunk. a brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass-blade, and tom bent down close to it and said, "lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about itwhich did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations and he had practiced upon its simplicity more than once. a tumble-bug came next, heaving sturdily at its ball, and tom touched the creature, to see it shut its legs against its body and pretend to be dead. the birds were fairly rioting by this time. a cat-bird, the northern mocker, lit in a tree over tom's head, and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one side and eyed the strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came kurrying along, sitting up at intervals to inspect and chatter at the boys, for the wild things had probably never seen a human being before and scarcely knew whether to be afraid or not. all nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene. tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with a shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and tumbling over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white sand-bar. they felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the distance beyond the majestic waste of water. a vagrant current or a slight rise in the river had carried off their raft, but this only gratified them, since its going was something like burning the bridge between them and civilization. they came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again. huck found a spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad oak or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a wild-wood charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee. while joe was slicing bacon for breakfast, tom and huck asked him to hold on a minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river bank and threw in their lines; almost immediately they had reward. joe had not had time to get impatient before they were back again with some handsome bass, a couple of sun-perch and a small catfishprovision enough for quite a family. they fried the fish with the bacon and were astonished; for no fish had ever seemed so delicious before. they did not know that the quicker a fresh water fish is on the fire after he is caught the better he is; and they reflected little upon what a sauce open air sleeping, open air exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient of hunger makes, too. they lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while huck had a smoke, and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. they tramped gaily along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush, among solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the ground with a drooping regalia of grape-vines. now and then they came upon snug nooks carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers. they found plenty of things to be delighted with but nothing to be astonished at. they discovered that the island was about three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to was only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards wide. they took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the middle of the afternoon when they got back to camp. they were too hungry to stop to fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and then threw themselves down in the shade to talk. but the talk soon began to drag, and then died. the stillness, the solemnity that brooded in the woods, and the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the spirits of the boys. they fell to thinking. a sort of undefined longing crept upon them. this took dim shape, presentlyit was budding homesickness. even finn the red-handed was dreaming of his door-steps and empty hogsheads. but they were all ashamed of their weakness, and none was brave enough to speak his thought. for some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a clock which he takes no distinct note of. but now this mysterious sound became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. the boys started, glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. there was a long silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen boom came floating down out of the distance. "what is it!" exclaimed joe, under his breath. "i wonder," said tom in a whisper. "'tain't thunder," said huckleberry, in an awed tone, "becuz thunder-" "hark!" said tom. "listendon't talk." they waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom troubled the solemn hush. "let's go and see." they sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town. they parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. the little steam ferry boat was about a mile below the village, drifting with the current. her broad deck seemed crowded with people. there were a great many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the neighborhood of the ferry boat, but the boys could not determine what the men in them were doing. presently a great jet of white smoke burst from the ferry boat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud, that same dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again. "i know now!" exclaimed tom; "somebody's drownded!" "that's it!" said huck; "they done that last summer, when bill turner got drownded; they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes him come up to the top. yes, and they take loaves of bread and put quicksilver in 'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody that's drownded, they'll float right there and stop." "yes, i've heard about that," said joe. "i wonder what makes the bread do that." "o it ain't the bread, so much," said tom; "i reckon it's mostly what they say over it before they start it out." "but they don't say anything over it," said huck. "i've seen 'em and they don't." "well that's funny", said tom. "but maybe they say it to themselves. of course they do. anybody might know that." the other boys agreed that there was reason in what tom said, because an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not be expected to act very intelligently when sent upon an errand of such gravity. "by jings i wish i was over there, now," said joe. "i do too," said huck. "i'd give heaps to know who it is." the boys still listened and watched. presently a revealing thought flashed through tom's mind, and he exclaimed: "boys, i know who's drowndedit's us!" they felt like heroes in an instant. here was a gorgeous triumph; they were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account; tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindnesses to these poor lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town, and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was concerned. this was fine. it was worth while to be a pirate, after all. as twilight drew on, the ferry boat went back to her accustomed business and the skiffs disappeared. the pirates returned to camp. they were jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious trouble they were making. they caught fish, cooked supper and ate it, and then fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying about them; and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their account were gratifying to look uponfrom their point of view. but when the shadows of night closed them in, they gradually ceased to talk, and sat gazing into the fire, with their minds evidently wandering elsewhere. the excitement was gone, now, and tom and joe could not keep back thoughts of certain persons at home who were not enjoying this fine frolic as much as they were. misgivings came; they grew troubled and unhappy; a sigh or two escaped, unawares. by and by joe timidly ventured upon a roundabout "feeler" as to how the others might look upon a return to civilizationnot right now, but tom withered him with derision! huck, being uncommitted, as yet, joined in with tom, and the waverer quickly "explained," and was glad to get out of the scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted homesickness clinging to his garments as he could. mutiny was effectually laid to rest for the moment. as the night deepened, huck began to nod, and presently to snore. joe followed next. tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time, watching the two intently. at last he got up cautiously, on his knees, and went searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung by the camp-fire. he picked up and inspected several large semi-cylinders of the thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose two which seemed to suit him. then he knelt by the fire and painfully wrote something upon each of these with his "red keel;" one he rolled up and put in his jacket pocket, and the other he put in joe's hat and removed it to a little distance from the owner. and he also put into the hat certain schoolboy treasures of almost inestimable valueamong them a lump of chalk, an india rubber ball, three fish-hooks, and one of that kind of marbles known as a "sure 'nough crystal." then he tip-toed his way cautiously among the trees till he felt that he was out of hearing, and straightway broke into a keen run in the direction of the sand-bar. chapter 15 tom's stealthy visit home a few minutes later tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading toward the illinois shore. before the depth reached his middle he was half way over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he struck out confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. he swam quartering up stream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he had expected. however, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along till he found a low place and drew himself out. he put his hand on his jacket pocket, found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through the woods, following the shore, with streaming garments. shortly before ten o'clock he came out into an open place opposite the village, and saw the ferry boat lying in the shadow of the trees and the high bank. everything was quiet under the blinking stars. he crept down the bank, watching with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four strokes and climbed into the skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's stern. he laid himself down under the thwarts and waited, panting. presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to "cast off." a minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up, against the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. tom felt happy in his success, for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. at the end of a long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and tom slipped overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards down stream, out of danger of possible stragglers. he flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his aunt's back fence. he climbed over, approached the "ell" and looked in at the sitting-room window, for a light was burning there. there sat aunt polly, sid, mary, and joe harper's mother, grouped together, talking. they were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the door. tom went to the door and began to softly lift the latch; then he pressed gently and the door yielded a crack; he continued pushing cautiously, and quaking every time it creaked, till he judged he might squeeze through on his knees; and so he put his head through and began, warily. "what makes the candle blow so?" said aunt polly. tom hurried up. "why that door's open, i believe. why of course it is. no end of strange things now. go 'long and shut it, sid." tom disappeared under the bed just in time. he lay and "breathed" himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his aunt's foot. "but as i was saying," said aunt polly, "he warn't bad, so to sayonly mischeevous. only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. he warn't any more responsible than a colt. he never meant any harm, and he was the best-hearted boy that ever was"and she began to cry. "it was just so with my joealways full of his devilment, and up to every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he could beand laws bless me, to think i went and whipped him for taking that cream, never once recollecting that i throwed it out myself because it was sour, and i never to see him again in this world, never, never, poor abused boy!" and mrs. harper sobbed as if her heart would break. "i hope tom's better off where he is," said sid, "but if he'd been better in some ways-" "sid!" tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not see it. "not a word against my tom, now that he's gone! god'll take care of himnever you trouble yourself, sir! oh, mrs. harper, i don't know how to give him up, i don't know how to give him up! he was such a comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most." "the lord giveth and the lord hath taken away. blessed be the name of the lord! but it's so hardo, it's so hard! only last saturday my joe busted a fire-cracker right under my nose and i knocked him sprawling. little did i know then, how soono, if it was to do over again i'd hug him and bless him for it." "yes, yes, yes, i know just how you feel, mrs. harper, i know just exactly how you feel. no longer ago than yesterday noon, my tom took and filled the cat full of pain-killer, and i did think the cretur would tear the house down. and god forgive me, i cracked tom's head with my thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. but he's out of all his troubles now. and the last words i ever heard him say was to reproach-" but this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely down. tom was snuffling, now, himselfand more in pity of himself than anybody else. he could hear mary crying, and putting in a kindly word for him from time to time. he began to have a nobler opinion of himself than ever before. still he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's grief to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with joyand the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to his nature, too, but he resisted and lay still. he went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim; then the small raft had been missed; next, certain boys said the missing lads had promised that the village should "hear something" soon; the wise-heads had "put this and that together" and decided that the lads had gone off on that raft and would turn up at the next town below, presently; but toward noon the raft had been found, lodged against the missouri shore some five or six miles below the village,and then hope perished; they must be drowned, else hunger would have driven them home by nightfall if not sooner. it was believed that the search for the bodies had been a fruitless effort merely because the drowning must have occurred in mid-channel, since the boys, being good swimmers, would otherwise have escaped to shore. this was wednesday night. if the bodies continued missing until sunday, all hope would be given over, and the funerals would be preached on that morning. tom shuddered. mrs. harper gave a sobbing good-night and turned to go. then with a mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each other's arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted. aunt polly was tender far beyond her wont, in her good-night to sid and mary. sid snuffled a bit and mary went off crying with all her heart. aunt polly knelt down and prayed for tom so touchingly, so appealingly, and with such measureless love in her words and her old trembling voice, that he was weltering in tears again, long before she was through. he had to keep still long after she went to bed, for she kept making broken-hearted ejaculations from time to time, tossing unrestfully, and turning over. but at last she was still, only moaning a little in her sleep. now the boy stole out, rose gradually by the bedside, shaded the candle-light with his hand, and stood regarding her. his heart was full of pity for her. he took out his sycamore scroll and placed it by the candle. but something occurred to him, and he lingered, considering. his face lighted with a happy solution of his thought; he put the bark hastily in his pocket. then he bent over and kissed the faded lips, and straightway made his stealthy exit, latching the door behind him. he threaded his way back to the ferry landing, found nobody at large there, and walked boldly on board the boat, for he knew she was tenantless except that there was a watchman, who always turned in and slept like a graven image. he untied the skiff at the stern, slipped into it, and was soon rowing cautiously up stream. when he had pulled a mile above the village, he started quartering across and bent himself stoutly to his work. he hit the landing on the other side neatly, for this was a familiar bit of work to him. he was moved to capture the skiff, arguing that it might be considered a ship and therefore legitimate prey for a pirate, but he knew a thorough search would be made for it and that might end in revelations. so he stepped ashore and entered the wood. he sat down and took a long rest, torturing himself meantime to keep awake, and then started wearily down the home-stretch. the night was far spent. it was broad daylight before he found himself fairly abreast the island bar. he rested again until the sun was well up and gilding the great river with its splendor, and then he plunged into the stream. a little later he paused, dripping, upon the threshold of the camp, and heard joe say: "no, tom's true-blue, huck, and he'll come back. he won't desert. he knows that would be a disgrace to a pirate, and tom's too proud for that sort of thing. he's up to something or other. now i wonder what?" "well, the things is ours, anyway, ain't they?" "pretty near, but not yet, huck. the writing says they are if he ain't back here to breakfast." "which he is!" exclaimed tom, with fine dramatic effect, stepping grandly into camp. a sumptuous breakfast of bacon and fish was shortly provided, and as the boys set to work upon it, tom recounted (and adorned) his adventures. they were a vain and boastful company of heroes when the tale was done. then tom hid himself away in a shady nook to sleep till noon, and the other pirates got ready to fish and explore. chapter 16 first pipes"i've lost my knife" after dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the bar. they went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a soft place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands. sometimes they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. they were perfectly round white things a trifle smaller than an english walnut. they had a famous fried-egg feast that night, and another on friday morning. after breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. and now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays and finally gripping and struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing and gasping for breath at one and the same time. when they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the dry, hot sand, and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by and by break for the water again and go through the original performance once more. finally it occurred to them that their naked skin represented flesh-colored "tights" very fairly; so they drew a ring in the sand and had a circuswith three clowns in it, for none would yield this proudest post to his neighbor. next they got their marbles and played "knucks" and "ring-taw" and "keeps" till that amusement grew stale. then joe and huck had another swim, but tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the protection of this mysterious charm. he did not venture again until he had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to rest. they gradually wandered apart, dropped into the "dumps," and fell to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay drowsing in the sun. tom found himself writing "becky" in the sand with his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his weakness. but he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it. he erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving the other boys together and joining them. but joe's spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. he was so homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. the tears lay very near the surface. huck was melancholy, too. tom was downhearted, but tried hard not to show it. he had a secret which he was not ready to tell, yet, but if this mutinous depression was not broken up soon, he would have to bring it out. he said, with a great show of cheerfulness: "i bet there's been pirates on this island before, boys. we'll explore it again. they've hid treasures here somewhere. how'd you feel to light on a rotten chest full of gold and silverhey?" but it roused only a faint enthusiasm, which faded out, with no reply. tom tried one or two other seductions; but they failed, too. it was discouraging work. joe sat poking up the sand with a stick and looking very gloomy. finally he said: "o, boys, let's give it up. i want to go home. it's so lonesome." "o, no, joe, you'll feel better by and by," said tom. "just think of the fishing that's here." "i don't care for fishing. i want to go home." "but joe, there ain't such another swimming place anywhere." "swimming's no good. i don't seem to care for it, somehow, when there ain't anybody to say i shan't go in. i mean to go home." "o, shucks! baby! you want to see your mother, i reckon." "yes, i do want to see my motherand you would too, if you had one. i ain't any more baby than you are." and joe snuffled a little. "well, we'll let the cry-baby go home to his mother, won't we huck? poor thingdoes it want to see its mother? and so it shall. you like it here, don't you huck? we'll stay, won't we?" huck said "y-e-s"without any heart in it. "i'll never speak to you again as long as i live," said joe, rising. "there now!" and he moved moodily away and began to dress himself. "who cares!" said tom. "nobody wants you to. go 'long home and get laughed at. o, you're a nice pirate. huck and me ain't cry-babies. we'll stay, won't we huck? let him go if he wants to. i reckon we can get along without him, per'aps." but tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and was alarmed to see joe go sullenly on with his dressing. and then it was discomforting to see huck eyeing joe's preparations so wistfully, and keeping up such an ominous silence. presently, without a parting word, joe began to wade off toward the illinois shore. tom's heart began to sink. he glanced at huck. huck could not bear the look, and dropped his eyes. then he said: "i want to go, too, tom. it was getting so lonesome anyway, and now it'll be worse. let's us go too, tom." "i won't! you can all go, if you want to. i mean to stay." "tom, i better go." "well go 'longwho's hendering you." huck began to pick up his scattered clothes. he said: "tom, i wisht you'd come too. now you think it over. we'll wait for you when we get to shore." "well you'll wait a blame long time, that's all." huck started sorrowfully away, and tom stood looking after him, with a strong desire tugging at his heart to yield his pride and go along too. he hoped the boys would stop, but they still waded slowly on. it suddenly dawned on tom that it was become very lonely and still. he made one final struggle with his pride, and then darted after his comrades, yelling: "wait! wait! i want to tell you something!" they presently stopped and turned around. when he got to where they were, he began unfolding his secret, and they listened moodily till at last they saw the "point" he was driving at, and then they set up a war-whoop of applause and said it was "splendid!" and said if he had told them at first, they wouldn't have started away. he made a plausible excuse; but his real reason had been the fear that not even the secret would keep them with him any very great length of time, and so he had meant to hold it in reserve as a last seduction. the lads came gaily back and went at their sports again with a will, chattering all the time about tom's stupendous plan and admiring the genius of it. after a dainty egg and fish dinner, tom said he wanted to learn to smoke, now. joe caught at the idea and said he would like to try, too. so huck made pipes and filled them. these novices had never smoked anything before but cigars made of grape-vine and they "bit" the tongue and were not considered manly, anyway. now they stretched themselves out on their elbows and began to puff, charily, and with slender confidence. the smoke had an unpleasant taste, and they gagged a little, but tom said: "why it's just as easy! if i'd a knowed this was all, i'd a learnt long ago." "so would i," said joe. "it's just nothing." "why many a time i've looked at people smoking, and thought well i wish i could do that; but i never thought i could," said tom. "that's just the way with me, hain't it huck? you've heard me talk just that wayhaven't you huck? i'll leave it to huck if i haven't." "yesheaps of times," said huck. "well i have too," said tom; "o, hundreds of times. once down there by the slaughter-house. don't you remember, huck? bob tanner was there, and johnny miller, and jeff thatcher, when i said it. don't you remember huck, 'bout me saying that?" "yes, that's so," said huck. "that was the day after i lost a white alley. no, 'twas the day before." "therei told you so," said tom. "huck recollects it." "i bleeve i could smoke this pipe all day," said joe. "i don't feel sick." "neither do i," said tom. "i could smoke it all day. but i bet you jeff thatcher couldn't." "jeff thatcher! why he'd keel over just with two draws. just let him try it once. he'd see!" "i bet he would. and johnny milleri wish i could see johnny miller tackle it once." "o, don't i" said joe, "why i bet you johnny miller couldn't any more do this than nothing. just one little snifter would fetch him." "'deed it would, joe. sayi wish the boys could see us now." "so do i." "sayboys, don't say anything about it, and some time when they're around, i'll come up to you and say 'joe, got a pipe? i want a smoke.' and you'll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll say, 'yes, i got my old pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain't very good.' i'll say, 'o, that's all right, if it's strong enough.' and then you'll out with the pipes, and we'll light up just as ca'm, and then just see 'em look!" "by jings that'll be gay, tom! i wish it was now!" "so do i! and when we tell 'em we learned when we was off pirating, won't they wish they'd been along?" "o, i reckon not! i'll just bet they will!" so the talk ran on. but presently it began to flag a trifle, and grow disjointed. the silences widened; the expectoration marvelously increased. every pore inside the boys' cheeks became a spouting fountain; they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their tongues fast enough to prevent an inundation; little overflowings down their throats occurred in spite of all they could do, and sudden retchings followed every time. both boys were looking very pale and miserable, now. joe's pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers. tom's followed. both fountains were going furiously and both pumps bailing with might and main. joe said feebly: "i've lost my knife. i reckon i better go and find it." tom said, with quivering lip and halting utterance: "i'll help you. you go over that way and i'll hunt around by the spring. no, you needn't come, huckwe can find it." so huck sat down again, and waited an hour. then he found it lonesome, and went to find his comrades. they were wide apart in the woods, both very pale, both fast asleep. but something informed him that if they had had any trouble they had got rid of it. they were not talkative at supper that night. they had a humble look, and when huck prepared his pipe after the meal and was going to prepare theirs, they said no, they were not feeling very wellsomething they ate at dinner had disagreed with them. about midnight joe awoke, and called the boys. there was a brooding oppressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. the boys huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was stifling. they sat still, intent and waiting. the solemn hush continued. beyond the light of the fire everything was swallowed up in the blackness of darkness. presently there came a quivering glow that vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. by and by another came, a little stronger. then another. then a faint moan came sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered with the fancy that the spirit of the night had gone by. there was a pause. now a weird flash turned night into day and showed every little grass-blade, separate and distinct, that grew about their feet. and it showed three white, startled faces, too. a deep peal of thunder went rolling and tumbling down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. a sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. another fierce glare lit up the forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the tree-tops right over the boys' heads. they clung together in terror, in the thick gloom that followed. a few big rain-drops fell pattering upon the leaves. "quick! boys, go for the tent!" exclaimed tom. they sprang away, stumbling over roots and among vines in the dark, no two plunging in the same direction. a furious blast roared through the trees, making everything sing as it went. one blinding flash after another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. and now a drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets along the ground. the boys cried out to each other, but the roaring wind and the booming thunder-blasts drowned their voices utterly. however, one by one they straggled in at last and took shelter under the tent, cold scared, and streaming with water; but to have company in misery seemed something to be grateful for. they could not talk, the old sail flapped so furiously, even if the other noises would have allowed them. the tempest rose higher and higher, and presently the sail tore loose from its fastenings and went winging away on the blast. the boys seized each others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and bruises, to the shelter of a great oak that stood upon the river bank. now the battle was at its highest. under the ceaseless conflagration of lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the drifting cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain. every little while some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing through the younger growth; and the unflagging thunder-peals came now in ear-splitting explosive bursts, keen and sharp, and unspeakably appalling. the storm culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the tree-tops, blow it away, and deafen every creature in it, all at one and the same moment. it was a wild night for homeless young heads to be out in. but at last the battle was done, and the forces retired with weaker and weaker threatenings and grumblings, and peace resumed her sway. the boys went back to camp, a good deal awed; but they found there was still something to be thankful for, because the great sycamore, the shelter of their beds, was a ruin now, blasted by the lightnings, and they were not under it when the catastrophe happened. everything in camp was drenched, the camp-fire as well; for they were but heedless lads, like their generation, and had made no provision against rain. here was matter for dismay, for they were soaked through and chilled. they were eloquent in their distress; but they presently discovered that the fire had eaten so far up under the great log it had been built against, (where it curved upward and separated itself from the ground,) that a hand-breadth or so of it had escaped wetting; so they patiently wrought until, with shreds and bark gathered from the under sides of sheltered logs, they coaxed the fire to burn again. then they piled on great dead boughs till they had a roaring furnace and were glad-hearted once more. they dried their boiled ham and had a feast, and after that they sat by the fire and expanded and glorified their midnight adventure until morning, for there was not a dry spot to sleep on, anywhere around. as the sun began to steal in upon the boys, drowsiness came over them and they went out on the sand-bar and lay down to sleep. they got scorched out by and by, and drearily set about getting breakfast. after the meal they felt rusty, and stiff-jointed, and a little homesick once more. tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as he could. but they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming, or anything. he reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray of cheer. while it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. this was to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be indians for a change. they were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before they were stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like so many zebras,all of them chiefs, of courseand then they went tearing through the woods to attack an english settlement. by and by they separated into three hostile tribes, and darted upon each other from ambush with dreadful war-whoops, and killed and scalped each other by thousands. it was a gory day. consequently it was an extremely satisfactory one. they assembled in camp toward supper time, hungry and happy; but now a difficulty arosehostile indians could not break the bread of hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. there was no other process that ever they had heard of. two of the savages almost wished they had remained pirates. however, there was no other way: so with such show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the pipe and took their whiff as it passed, in due form. and behold they were glad they had gone into savagery, for they had gained something; they found that they could now smoke a little without having to go and hunt for a lost knife; they did not get sick enough to be seriously uncomfortable. they were not likely to fool away this high promise for lack of effort. no, they practiced cautiously, after supper, with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening. they were prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would have been in the scalping and skinning of the six nations. we will leave them to smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use for them at present. chapter 17 pirates at their own funeral but there was no hilarity in the little town that same tranquil saturday afternoon. the harpers, and aunt polly's family, were being put into mourning, with great grief and many tears. an unusual quiet possessed the village, although it was ordinarily quiet enough, in all conscience. the villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air, and talked little; but they sighed often. the saturday holiday seemed a burden to the children. they had no heart in their sports, and gradually gave them up. in the afternoon becky thatcher found herself moping about the deserted school-house yard, and feeling very melancholy. but she found nothing there to comfort her. she soliloquised: "o, if i only had his brass andiron-knob again! but i haven't got anything now to remember him by." and she choked back a little sob. presently she stopped, and said to herself: "it was right here. o, if it was to do over again, i wouldn't say thati wouldn't say it for the whole world. but he's gone now; i'll never never never see him any more." this thought broke her down and she wandered away, with the tears rolling down her cheeks. then quite a group of boys and girls,playmates of tom's and joe'scame by, and stood looking over the paling fence and talking in reverent tones of how tom did so-and-so, the last time they saw him, and how joe said this and that small trifle (pregnant with awful prophecy, as they could easily see now!)and each speaker pointed out the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and then added something like "and i was a-standing just sojust as i am now, and as if you was himi was as close as thatand he smiled, just this wayand then something seemed to go all over me, like,awful, you knowand i never thought what it meant, of course, but i can see now!" then there was a dispute about who saw the dead boys last in life, and many claimed that dismal distinction, and offered evidences, more or less tampered with by the witness; and when it was ultimately decided who did see the departed last, and exchanged the last words with them, the lucky parties took upon themselves a sort of sacred importance, and were gaped at and envied by all the rest. one poor chap, who had no other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the remembrance: "well, tom sawyer he licked me once." but that bid for glory was a failure. most of the boys could say that, and so that cheapened the distinction too much. the group loitered away, still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices. when the sunday-school hour was finished, the next morning, the bell began to toll, instead of ringing in the usual way. it was a very still sabbath, and the mournful sound seemed in keeping with the musing hush that lay upon nature. the villagers began to gather, loitering a moment in the vestibule to converse in whispers about the sad event. but there was no whispering in the house; only the funereal rustling of dresses as the women gathered to their seats disturbed the silence there. none could remember when the little church had been so full before. there was finally a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then aunt polly entered, followed by sid and mary, and they by the harper family, all in deep black, and the whole congregation, the old minister as well, rose reverently and stood, until the mourners were seated in the front pew. there was another communing silence, broken at intervals by muffled sobs, and then the minister spread his hands abroad and prayed. a moving hymn was sung, and the text followed: "i am the resurrection, and the life." as the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the graces, the winning ways and the rare promise of the lost lads, that every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang in remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them, always before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the poor boys. the minister related many a touching incident in the lives of the departed, too, which illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the people could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those episodes were, and remembered with grief that at the time they occurred they had seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide. the congregation became more and more moved, as the pathetic tale went on, till at last the whole company broke down and joined the weeping mourners in a chorus of anguished sobs, the preacher himself giving way to his feelings, and crying in the pulpit. there was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody noticed; a moment later the church door creaked; the minister raised his streaming eyes above his handkerchief, and stood transfixed! first one and then another pair of eyes followed the minister's, and then almost with one impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came marching up the aisle, tom in the lead, joe next, and huck, a ruin of drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear! they had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon! aunt polly, mary and the harpers threw themselves upon their restored ones, smothered them with kisses and poured out thanksgivings, while poor huck stood abashed and uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what to do or where to hide from so many unwelcoming eyes. he wavered, and started to slink-away, but tom seized him and said: "aunt polly, it ain't fair. somebody's got to be glad to see huck." "and so they shall. i'm glad to see him, poor motherless thing!" and the loving attentions aunt polly lavished upon him were the one thing capable of making him more uncomfortable than he was before. suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice: "praise god from whom all blessings flowsing!and put your hearts in it!" and they did. old hundred swelled up with a triumphant burst, and while it shook the rafters tom sawyer the pirate looked around upon the envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was the proudest moment of his life. as the "sold" congregation trooped out they said they would almost be willing to be made ridiculous again to hear old hundred sung like that once more. tom got more cuffs and kisses that dayaccording to aunt polly's varying moodsthan he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew which expressed the most gratefulness to god and affection for himself. chapter 18 tom reveals his dream secret that was tom's great secretthe scheme to return home with his brother pirates and attend their own funerals. they had paddled over to the missouri shore on a log, at dusk on saturday, landing five or six miles below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of the town till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and alleys and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a chaos of invalided benches. at breakfast monday morning, aunt polly and mary were very loving to tom, and very attentive to his wants. there was an unusual amount of talk. in the course of it aunt polly said: "well, i don't say it wasn't a fine joke, tom, to keep everybody suffering 'most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. if you could come over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give me a hint some way that you warn't dead, but only run off." "yes, you could have done that, tom," said mary; "and i believe you would if you had thought of it." "would you tom?" said aunt polly, her face lighting wistfully. "say, now, would you, if you'd thought of it?" "iwell i don't know. 'twould a spoiled everything." "tom, i hoped you loved me that much," said aunt polly, with a grieved tone that discomforted the boy. "it would been something if you'd cared enough to think of it, even if you didn't do it." "now auntie, that ain't any harm," pleaded mary; "it's only tom's giddy wayhe is always in such a rush that he never thinks of anything." "more's the pity. sid would have thought. and sid would have come and done it, too. tom, you'll look back, some day, when it's too late, and wish you'd cared a little more for me when it would have cost you so little." "now auntie, you know i do care for you," said tom. "i'd know it better if you acted more like it." "i wish now i'd thought," said tom, with a repentant tone; "but i dreamed about you anyway. that's something, ain't it?" "it ain't mucha cat does that muchbut it's better than nothing. what did you dream?" "why wednesday night i dreamt that you was sitting over there by the bed, and sid was sitting by the wood-box, and mary next to him." "well, so we did. so we always do. i'm glad your dreams could take even that much trouble about us." "and i dreamt that joe harper's mother was here." "why, she was here! did you dream any more?" "o, lots. but it's so dim, now." "well, try to recollectcan't you?" "somehow it seems to me that the windthe wind blowed thethe-" "try harder, tom! the wind did blow something. come!" tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious minute, and then said: "i've got it now! i've got it now! it blowed the candle!" "mercy on us! go on, tomgo on!" "and it seems to me that you said, 'why i believe that that door-'" "go on, tom!" "just let me study a momentjust a moment. o, yesyou said you believed the door was open." "as i'm a-sitting here, i did! didn't i, mary? go on!" "and thenand thenwell i won't be certain, but it seems like as if you made sid go andand-" "well? well? what did i make him do, tom? what did i make him do?" "you made himyouo, you made him shut it." "well for the land's sake! i never heard the beat of that in all my days! don't tell me there ain't anything in dreams, any more. sereny harper shall know of this before i'm an hour older. i'd like to see her get around this with her rubbage 'bout superstition. go on, tom!" "o, it's all getting just as bright as day, now. next you said i warn't bad, only mischeevous and harum-scarum, and not any more responsible thanthani think it was a colt, or something." "and so it was! well, goodness gracious! go on, tom!" "and then you began to cry." "so i did. so i did. not the first time, neither. and then-" "then mrs. harper she began to cry, and said joe was just the same and she wished she hadn't whipped him for taking cream when she'd throwed it out her own self-" "tom! the sperrit was upon you! you was a-prophecyingthat's what you was doing! land alive, go on, tom!" "then sid he saidhe said-" "i don't think i said anything," said sid. "yes you did, sid," said mary. "shut your heads and let tom go on! what did he say, tom?" "he saidi think he said he hoped i was better off where i was gone to, but if i'd been better sometimes-" "there, d'you hear that! it was his very words!" "and you shut him up sharp." "i lay i did! there must a been an angel there. there was an angel there, somewheres!" "and mrs. harper told about joe scaring her with a fire-cracker, and you told about peter and the pain-killer-" "just as true as i live!" "and then there was a whole lot of talk 'bout dragging the river for us, and 'bout having the funeral sunday, and then you and old miss harper hugged and cried, and she went." "it happened just so! it happened just so, as sure as i'm a-sitting in these very tracks. tom you couldn't told it more like, if you'd a seen it! and then what? go on, tom?" "then i thought you prayed for meand i could see you and hear every word you said. and you went to bed, and i was so sorry, that i took and wrote on a piece of sycamore bark, 'we ain't deadwe are only off being pirates,' and put it on the table by the candle; and then you looked so good, laying there asleep, that i thought i went and leaned over and kissed you on the lips." "did you, tom, did you! i just forgive you everything for that!" and she seized the boy in a crushing embrace that made him feel like the guiltiest of villains. "it was very kind, even though it was only adream," sid soliloquised just audibly. "shut up sid! a body does just the same in a dream as he'd do if he was awake. here's a big milum apple i've been saving for you tom, if you was ever found againnow go 'long to school. i'm thankful to the good god and father of us all i've got you back, that's long-suffering and merciful to them that believe on him and keep his word, though goodness knows i'm unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got his blessings and had his hand to help them over the rough places, there's few enough would smile here or ever enter into his rest when the long night comes. go 'long sid, mary, tomtake yourselves offyou've hendered me long enough." the children left for school, and the old lady to call on mrs. harper and vanquish her realism with tom's marvelous dream. sid had better judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the house. it was this: "pretty thinas long a dream as that, without any mistakes in it!" what a hero tom was become, now! he did not go skipping and prancing, but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the public eye was on him. and indeed it was; he tried not to seem to see the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food and drink to him. smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as proud to be seen with him and tolerated by him, as if he had been the drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie into town. boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away at all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. they would have given anything to have that swarthy sun-tanned skin of his, and his glittering notoriety; and tom would not have parted with either for a circus. at school the children made so much of him and of joe, and delivered such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were not long in becoming insufferably "stuck-up." they began to tell their adventures to hungry listenersbut they only began; it was not a thing likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish material. and finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached. tom decided that he could be independent of becky thatcher now. glory was sufficient. he would live for glory. now that he was distinguished, maybe she would be wanting to "make up." well, let hershe should see that he could be as indifferent as some other people. presently she arrived. tom pretended not to see her. he moved away and joined a group of boys and girls and began to talk. soon he observed that she was tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes, pretending to be busy chasing school-mates, and screaming with laughter when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye in his direction at such times, too. it gratified all the vicious vanity that was in him; and so, instead of winning him it only "set him up" the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that he knew she was about. presently she gave over skylarking, and moved irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and wistfully toward tom. then she observed that now tom was talking more particularly to amy lawrence than to any one else. she felt a sharp pang and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. she tried to go away, but her feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. she said to a girl almost at tom's elbowwith sham vivacity: "why mary austin! you bad girl, why didn't you come to sunday-school?" "i did comedidn't you see me?" "why no! did you? where did you sit?" "i was in miss peter's class, where i always go. i saw you." "did you? why it's funny i didn't see you. i wanted to tell you about the picnic." "o, that's jolly. who's going to give it?" "my ma's going to let me have one." "o, goody; i hope she'll let me come." "well she will. the picnic's for me. she'll let anybody come that i want, and i want you." "that's ever so nice. when is it going to be?" "by and by. maybe about vacation." "o, won't it be fun! you going to have all the girls and boys?" "yes, every one that's friends to meor wants to be;" and she glanced ever so furtively at tom, but he talked right along to amy lawrence about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the great sycamore tree "all to flinders" while he was "standing within three feet of it." "o, may i come?" said gracie miller. "yes." "and me?" said sally rogers. "yes." "and me, too?" said susy harper. "and joe?" "yes." and so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged for invitations but tom and amy. then tom turned coolly away, still talking, and took amy with him. becky's lips trembled and the tears came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and had what her sex call "a good cry." then she sat moody, with wounded pride till the bell rang. she roused up, now, with a vindictive cast in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what she'd do. at recess tom continued his flirtation with amy with jubilant self-satisfaction. and he kept drifting about to find becky and lacerate her with the performance. at last he spied her, but there was a sudden falling of his mercury. she was sitting cosily on a little bench behind the school-house looking at a picture book with alfred templeand so absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world beside. jealousy ran red hot through tom's veins. he began to hate himself for throwing away the chance becky had offered for a reconciliation. he called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. he wanted to cry with vexation. amy chatted happily along, as they walked, for her heart was singing, but tom's tongue had lost its function. he did not hear what amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as otherwise. he kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and again, to sear his eye-balls with the hateful spectacle there. he could not help it. and it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that becky thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the living. but she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered. amy's happy prattle became intolerable. tom hinted at things he had to attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. but in vainthe girl chirped on. tom thought, "o hang her, ain't i ever going to get rid of her?" at last he must be attending to those things; and she said artlessly that she would be "around" when school let out. and he hastened away, hating her for it. "any other boy!" tom thought, grating his teeth. "any boy in the whole town but that saint louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is aristocracy! o, all right, i licked you the first day you ever saw this town, mister, and i'll lick you again! you just wait till i catch you out! i'll just take and-" and he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boypummeling the air, and kicking and gouging. "o, you do, do you? you holler 'nough, do you? now, then, let that learn you!" and so the imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction. tom fled home at noon. his conscience could not endure any more of amy's grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the other distress. becky resumed her picture-inspections with alfred, but as the minutes dragged along and no tom came to suffer, her triumph began to cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absent-mindedness followed, and then melancholy; two or three times she pricked up her ear at a footstep, but it was a false hope; no tom came. at last she grew entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. when poor alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, and kept exclaiming: "o here's a jolly one! look at this!" she lost patience at last, and said, "o, don't bother me! i don't care for them!" and burst into tears, and got up and walked away. alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she said: "go away and leave me alone, can't you! i hate you!" so the boy halted, wondering what he could have donefor she had said she would look at pictures all through the nooningand she walked on, crying. then alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. he was humiliated and angry. he easily guessed his way to the truththe girl had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon tom sawyer. he was far from hating tom the less when this thought occurred to him. he wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much risk to himself. tom's spelling book fell under his eye. here was his opportunity. he gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and poured ink upon the page. becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act, and moved on, without discovering herself. she started homeward, now, intending to find tom and tell him; tom would be thankful and their troubles would be healed. before she was half way home, however, she had changed her mind. the thought of tom's treatment of her when she was talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with shame. she resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged spelling-book's account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain. chapter 19 the cruelty of "i didn't think" tom arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an unpromising market: "tom, i've a notion to skin you alive!" "auntie, what have i done?" "well, you've done enough. here i go over to sereny harper, like an old softy, expecting i'm going to make her believe all that rubbage about that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from joe that you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. tom i don't know what is to become of a boy that will act like that. it makes me feel so bad to think you could let me go to sereny harper and make such a fool of myself and never say a word." this was a new aspect of the thing. his smartness of the morning had seemed to tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. it merely looked mean and shabby now. he hung his head and could not think of anything to say for a moment. then he said: "auntie, i wish i hadn't done itbut i didn't think." "o, child you never think. you never think of anything but your own selfishness. you could think to come all the way over here from jackson's island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever think to pity us and save us from sorrow." "auntie, i know now it was mean, but i didn't mean to be mean. i didn't, honest. and besides i didn't come over here to laugh at you that night." "what did you come for, then?" "it was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn't got drownded." "tom, tom, i would be the thankfullest soul in this world if i could believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never didand i know it, tom." "indeed and 'deed i did, auntiei wish i may never stir if i didn't." "o, tom, don't liedon't do it. it only makes things a hundred times worse." "it ain't a lie, auntie, it's the truth. i wanted to keep you from grievingthat was all that made me come." "i'd give the whole world to believe thatit would cover up a power of sins, tom. i'd most be glad you'd run off and acted so bad. but it ain't reasonable; because, why didn't you tell me, child?" "why, you see, auntie, when you got to talking about the funeral, i just got all full of the idea of our coming and hiding in the church, and i couldn't somehow bear to spoil it. so i just put the bark back in my pocket and kept mum." "what bark?" "the bark i had wrote on to tell you we'd gone pirating. i wish, now, you'd waked up when i kissed youi do, honest." the hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sudden tenderness dawned in her eyes. "did you kiss me, tom?" "why yes i did." "are you sure you did, tom?" "why yes i did, auntiecertain sure." "what did you kiss me for, tom?" "because i loved you so, and you laid there moaning and i was so sorry." the words sounded like truth. the old lady could not hide a tremor in her voice when she said: "kiss me again, tom!and be off with you to school, now, and don't bother me any more." the moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and got out the ruin of a jacket which tom had gone pirating in. then she stopped, with it in her hand, and said to herself. "no, i don't dare. poor boy, i reckon he's lied about itbut it's a blessed, blessed lie, there's such comfort come from it. i hope the lordi know the lord will forgive him, because it was such good-heartedness in him to tell it. but i don't want to find out it's a lie. i won't look." she put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. twice she put out her hand to take the garment again, and twice she refrained. once more she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with the thought: "it's a good lieit's a good liei won't let it grieve me." so she sought the jacket pocket. a moment later she was reading tom's piece of bark through flowing tears and saying: "i could forgive the boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!" chapter 20 tom takes becky's punishment there was something about aunt polly's manner, when she kissed tom, that swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and happy again. he started to school and had the luck of coming upon becky thatcher at the head of meadow lane. his mood always determined his manner. without a moment's hesitation he ran to her and said: "i acted mighty mean to-day, becky, and i'm so sorry. i won't ever, ever do that way again, as long as ever i liveplease make up, won't you?" the girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face: "i'll thank you to keep yourself to yourself, mr. thomas sawyer. i'll never speak to you again." she tossed her head and passed on. tom was so stunned that he had not even presence of mind enough to say "who cares, miss smarty?" until the right time to say it had gone by. so he said nothing. but he was in a fine rage, nevertheless. he moped into the school-yard wishing she were a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. he presently encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. she hurled one in return, and the angry breach was complete. it seemed to becky, in her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to "take in," she was so impatient to see tom flogged for the injured spelling-book. if she had had lingering notion of exposing alfred temple, tom's offensive fling had driven it entirely away. poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself. the master, mr. dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied ambition. the darling of his desires was to be a doctor, but poverty had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village schoolmaster. every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk and absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. he kept that book under lock and key. there was not an urchin in school but was perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. every boy and girl had a theory about the nature of that book; but no two theories were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in the case. now, as becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the door, she noticed that the key was in the lock! it was a precious moment. she glanced around; found herself alone, and the next instant she had the book in her hands. the title pageprofessor somebody's "anatomy"carried no information to her mind; so she began to turn the leaves. she came at once upon a handsomely engraved and colored frontispiecea human figure, stark naked. at that moment a shadow fell on the page and tom sawyer stepped in at the door, and caught a glimpse of the picture. becky snatched at the book to close it, and had the hard luck to tear the pictured page half down the middle. she thrust the volume into the desk, turned the key, and burst out crying with shame and vexation. "tom sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a person and look at what they're looking at." "how could i know you was looking at anything?" "you ought to be ashamed of yourself tom sawyer; you know you're going to tell on me, and o, what shall i do, what shall i do! i'll be whipped, and i never was whipped in school." then she stamped her little foot and said: "be so mean if you want to! i know something that's going to happen. you just wait and you'll see! hateful, hateful, hateful!"and she flung out of the house with a new explosion of crying. tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. presently he said to himself. "what a curious kind of a fool a girl is. never been licked in school! shucks, what's a licking! that's just like a girlthey're so thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. well, of course i ain't going to tell old dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of getting even on her, that ain't so mean; but what of it? old dobbins will ask who it was tore his book. nobody'll answer. then he'll do just the way he always doesask first one and then t'other, and when he comes to the right girl he'll know it, without any telling. girls' faces always tell on them. they ain't got any backbone. she'll get licked. well, it's a kind of a tight place for becky thatcher, because there ain't any way out of it." tom conned the thing a moment longer and then added: "all right, though; she'd like to see me in just such a fixlet her sweat it out!" tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. in a few moments the master arrived and school "took in." tom did not feel a strong interest in his studies. every time he stole a glance at the girls' side of the room becky's face troubled him. considering all things, he did not want to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to help it. he could get up no exultation that was really worthy the name. presently the spelling-book discovery was made, and tom's mind was entirely full of his own matters for a while after that. becky roused up from her lethargy of distress and showed good interest in the proceedings. she did not expect that tom could get out of his trouble by denying that he spilt the ink on the book himself, and she was right. the denial only seemed to make the thing worse for tom. becky supposed she would be glad of that, and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she found she was not certain. when the worst came to the worst, she had an impulse to get up and tell on alfred temple, but she made an effort and forced herself to keep stillbecause, said she to herself, "he'll tell about me tearing the picture, sure. i wouldn't say a word, not to save his life!" tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all brokenhearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bouthe had denied it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had stuck to the denial from principle. a whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in his throne, the air was drowsy with the hum of study. by and by, mr. dobbins straightened himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book, but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it. most of the pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them that watched his movements with intent eyes. mr. dobbins fingered his book absently for a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair to read! tom shot a glance at becky. he had seen a hunted and helpless rabbit look as she did, with a gun leveled at its head. instantly he forgot his quarrel with her. quicksomething must be done! done in a flash, too! but the very imminence of the emergency paralyzed his invention. good!he had an inspiration! he would run and snatch the book, spring through the door and fly. but his resolution shook for one little instant, and the chance was lostthe master opened the volume. if tom only had the wasted opportunity back again! too late; there was no help for becky now, he said. the next moment the master faced the school. every eye sunk under his gaze. there was that in it which smote even the innocent with fear. there was silence while one might count ten; the master was gathering his wrath. then he spoke: "who tore this book?" there was not a sound. one could have heard a pin drop. the stillness continued; the master searched face after face for signs of guilt. "benjamin rogers, did you tear this book?" a denial. another pause. "joseph harper, did you?" another denial. tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under the slow torture of these proceedings. the master scanned the ranks of boysconsidered a while, then turned to the girls: "amy lawrence?" a shake of the head. "gracie miller?" the same sign. "susan harper, did you do this?" another negative. the next girl was becky thatcher. tom was trembling from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the hopelessness of the situation. "rebecca thatcher," (tom glanced at her faceit was white with terror,)"did you tearno, look me in the face"(her hands rose in appeal)"did you tear this book?" a thought shot like lightning through tom's brain. he sprang to his feet and shouted "i done it!" the school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. tom stood a moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the adoration that shone upon him out of poor becky's eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred floggings. inspired by the splendor of his own act, he took without an outcry the most merciless flaying that even mr. dobbins had ever administered; and also received with indifference the added cruelty of a command to remain two hours after school should be dismissedfor he knew who would wait for him outside till his captivity was done, and not count the tedious time as loss, either. tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against alfred temple; for with shame and repentance becky had told him all, not forgetting her own treachery; but even the longing for vengeance had to give way, soon, to pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last, with becky's latest words lingering dreamily in his ear "tom, how could you be so noble!" chapter 21 eloquenceand the master's gilded dome vacation was approaching. the schoolmaster, always sever, grew severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a good showing on "examination" day. his rod and his ferule were seldom idle nowat least among the smaller pupils. only the biggest boys, and young ladies of eighteen and twenty escaped lashing. mr. dobbins's lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle age and there was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. as the great day approached, all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface; he seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in punishing the least shortcomings. the consequence was, that the smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and their nights in plotting revenge. they threw away no opportunity to do the master a mischief. but he kept ahead all the time. the retribution that followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that the boys always retired from the field badly worsted. at last they conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling victory. they swore-in the sign-painter's boy, told him the scheme, and asked his help. he had his own reasons for being delighted, for the master boarded in his father's family and had given the boy ample cause to hate him. the master's wife would go on a visit to the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to interfere with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the sign-painter's boy said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on examination evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried away to school. in the fullness of time the interesting occasion arrived. at eight in the evening the school-house was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. the master sat throned in his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him. he was looking tolerably mellow. three rows of benches on each side and six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town and by the parents of the pupils. to his left, back of the rows of citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort; rows of gawky big boys; snow-banks of girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and the flowers in their hair. all the rest of the house was filled with nonparticipating scholars. the exercises began. a very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited, "you'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage, etc"accompanying himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic gestures which a machine might have usedsupposing the machine to be a trifle out of order. but he got through safely, though cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his manufactured bow and retired. a little shame-faced girl lisped "mary had a little lamb, etc.," performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and sat down flushed and happy. tom sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into the unquenchable and indestructible "give me liberty or give me death" speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the middle of it. a ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under him and he was like to choke. true, he had the manifest sympathy of the housebut he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than its sympathy. the master frowned, and this completed the disaster. tom struggled a while and then retired, utterly defeated. there was a weak attempt at applause, but it died early. "the boy stood on the burning deck" followed; also "the assyrian came down," and other declaratory gems. then there were reading exercises, and a spelling fight. the meager latin class recited with honor. the prime feature of the evening was in order, noworiginal "compositions" by the young ladies. each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of the platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to "expression" and punctuation. the themes were the same that had been illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers before them, their grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line clear back to the crusades. "friendship" was one; "memories of other days;" "religion in history;" "dream land;" "the advantages of culture;" "forms of political government compared and contrasted;" "melancholy;" "filial love;" "heart longings," etc., etc. a prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine language;" another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of them. no matter what the subject might be, a brainracking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification. the glaring insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient to-day; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. there is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their compositions with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the most frivolous and least religious girl in the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly pious. but enough of this. homely truth is unpalatable. let us return to the "examination." the first composition that was read was one entitled "is this, then, life?" perhaps the reader can endure an extract from it: in the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity! imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. in fancy, the voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, "the observed of all observers." her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly. in such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into the elysian world, of which she has had such bright dreams. how fairy-like does every thing appear to her enchanted vision! each new scene is more charming than the last. but after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity: the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its charms; and with wasted health and embittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul! and so forth and so on. there was a buzz of gratification from time to time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of "how sweet!" "how eloquent!" "so true!" etc., and after the thing had closed with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic. then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting" paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." two stanzas of it will do: a missouri maiden's farewell to alabama alabama, good-bye! i love thee well! but yet for awhile do i leave thee now! sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell, and burning recollections throng my brow! for i have wandered through thy flowery woods; have roamed and read near tallapoosa's stream; have listened to tallassee's warring floods, and wooed on coosa's side aurora's beam. yet shame i not to bear an o'er-full heart, nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes; 'tis from no stranger land i now must part, 'tis to no strangers left i yield these sighs. welcome and home were mine within this state, whose vales i leavewhose spires fade fast from me; and cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete, when, dear alabama! they turn cold on thee! there were very few there who knew what "tete" meant, but the poem was very satisfactory, nevertheless. next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and began to read in a measured, solemn tone. a vision dark and tempestuous was night. around the throne on high not a single star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning revelled in angry mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming to scorn the power exerted over its terror by the illustrious franklin! even the boisterous winds unanimously came forth from their mystic homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by their aid the wildness of the scene. at such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human sympathy my very spirit sighed; but instead thereof, "my dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide my joy in grief, my second bliss in joy," came to my side. she moved like one of those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks of fancy's eden by the romantic and young, a queen of beauty unadorned save by her own transcendent loveliness. so soft was her step, it failed to make even a sound, and but for the magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided away unperceivedunsought. a strange sadness rested upon her features, like icy tears upon the robe of december, as she pointed to the contending elements without, and bade me contemplate the two beings presented. this nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-presbyterians that it took the first prize. this composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening. the mayor of the village, in delivering the prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that daniel webster himself might well be proud of it. it may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in which the word "beauteous" was over-fondled, and human experience referred to as "life's page," was up to the usual average. now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of america on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. but he made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered titter rippled over the house. he knew what the matter was and set himself to right it. he sponged out lines and re-made them; but he only distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. he threw his entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not to be put down by the mirth. he felt that all eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it even manifestly increased. and well it might. there was a garret above, pierced with a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle came a cat, suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag tied about her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly descended she curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung downward and clawed at the intangible air. the tittering rose higher and higherthe cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher's headdown, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy still in her possession! and how the light did blaze abroad from the master's bald patefor the sign-painter's boy had gilded it! that broke up the meeting. the boys were avenged. vacation had come. chapter 22 huck finn quotes scripture tom joined the new order of cadets of temperance, being attracted by the showy character of their "regalia." he promised to abstain from smoking, chewing and profanity as long as he remained a member. now he found out a new thingnamely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing from the order. fourth of july was coming; but he soon gave that upgave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty-eight hoursand fixed his hopes upon old judge frazer, justice of the peace, who was apparently on his death-bed and would have a big public funeral, since he was so high an official. during three days tom was deeply concerned about the judge's condition and hungry for news of it. sometimes his hopes ran highso high that he would venture to get out his regalia and practice before the looking-glass. but the judge had a most discouraging way of fluctuating. at last he was pronounced upon the mendand then convalescent. tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of injury, too. he handed in his resignation at onceand that night the judge suffered a relapse and died. tom resolved that he would never trust a man like that again. the funeral was a fine thing. the cadets paraded in a style calculated to kill the late member with envy. tom was a free boy again, howeverthere was something in that. he could drink and swear, nowbut found to his surprise that he did not want to. the simple fact that he could, took the desire away, and the charm of it. tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning to hang a little heavily on his hands. he attempted a diarybut nothing happened during three days, and so he abandoned it. the first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a sensation. tom and joe harper got up a band of performers and were happy for two days. even the glorious fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man in the world (as tom supposed) mr. benton, an actual united states senator, proved an overwhelming disappointmentfor he was not twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it. a circus came. the boys played circus for three days afterward in tents made of rag carpetingadmission, three pins for boys, two for girlsand then circusing was abandoned. a phrenologist and a mesmerizer cameand went again and left the village duller and drearier than ever. there were some boys-and-girls' parties, but they were so few and so delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder. becky thatcher was gone to her constantinople home to stay with her parents during vacationso there was no bright side to life anywhere. the dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. it was a very cancer for permanency and pain. then came the measles. during two long weeks tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its happenings. he was very ill, he was interested in nothing. when he got upon his feet at last and moved feebly down town, a melancholy change had come over everything and every creature. there had been a "revival," and everybody had "got religion"; not only the adults, but even the boys and girls. tom went about, hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere. he found joe harper studying a testament, and turned sadly away from the depressing spectacle. he sought ben rogers, and found him visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. he hunted up jim hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning. every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of huckleberry finn and was received with a scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town was lost, forever and forever. and that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. he covered his head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was about him. he believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above to the extremity of endurance and that this was the result. it might have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf from under an insect like himself. by and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its object. the boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. his second was to waitfor there might not be any more storms. the next day the doctors were back; tom had relapsed. the three weeks he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. when he got abroad at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. he drifted listlessly down the street and found jim hollis acting as judge in a juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her victim, a bird. he found joe harper and huck finn up an alley eating a stolen melon. poor lads! theylike tomhad suffered a relapse. chapter 23 the salvation of muff potter at last the sleepy atmosphere was stirredand vigorously: the murder trial came on in the court. it became the absorbing topic of village talk immediately. tom could not get away from it. every reference to the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his hearing as "feelers"; he did not see how he could be suspected of knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be comfortable in the midst of this gossip. it kept him in a cold shiver all the time. he took huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him. it would be some relief to unseal his tongue for a little while; to divide his burden of distress with another sufferer. moreover, he wanted to assure himself that huck had remained discreet. "huck, have you ever told anybody aboutthat?" "'bout what?" "you know what." "o'course i haven't." "never a word?" "never a solitary word, so help me. what makes you ask?" "well, i was afeard." "why tom sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found out. you know that." tom felt more comfortable. after a pause: "huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?" "get me to tell? why if i wanted that half-breed devil to drownd me they could get me to tell. they ain't no different way." "well, that's all right, then. i reckon we're safe as long as we keep mum. but let's swear again, anyway. it's more surer." "i'm agreed." so they swore again with dread solemnities. "what is the talk around, huck? i've heard a power of it." "talk? well, it's just muff potter, muff potter, muff potter all the time. it keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's i want to hide som'ers." "that's just the same way they go on round me. i reckon he's a goner. don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?" "most alwaysmost always. he ain't no account; but then he hain't ever done anything to hurt anybody. just fishes a little, to get money to get drunk onand loafs around considerable; but lord we all do thatleastways most of us,preachers and such like. but he's kind of goodhe give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two; and lots of times he's kind of stood by me when i was out of luck." "well, he's mended kites for me, huck, and knitted hooks on to my line. i wish we could get him out of there." "my! we couldn't get him out tom. and besides, it wouldn't do any good; they'd ketch him again." "yesso they would. but i hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the dickens when he never donethat." "i do too, tom. lord, i hear 'em say he's the bloodiest-looking villain in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before." "yes, they talk like that, all the time. i've heard 'em say that if he was to get free they'd lynch him." "and they'd do it, too." the boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. as the twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. but nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in this luckless captive. the boys did as they had often done beforewent to the cell grating and gave potter some tobacco and matches. he was on the ground floor and there were no guards. his gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences beforeit cut deeper than ever, this time. they felt cowardly and treacherous to the last degree when potter said: "you've ben mighty good to me, boysbetter'n anybody else in this town. and i don't forget it, i don't. often i says to myself, says i, 'i used to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em where the good fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what i could, and now they've all forgot old muff when he's in trouble; but tom don't, and huck don'tthey don't forget him,' says i, 'and i don't forget them.' well, boys, i done an awful thingdrunk and crazy at the timethat's the only way i account for itand now i got to swing for it, and it's right. right, and best, too i reckonhope so, anyway. well, we won't talk about that. i don't want to make you feel bad; you've befriended me. but what i want to say, is, don't you ever get drunkthen you won't ever get here. stand a little furder westsothat's it; it's a prime comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck of trouble, and there don't none come here but yourn. good friendly facesgood friendly faces. git up on one another's backs and let me touch 'em. that's it. shake handsyourn'll come through the bars, but mine's too big. little hands, and weakbut they've helped muff potter a power, and they'd help him more if they could." tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of horrors. the next day and the day after, he hung about the court room, drawn by an almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing himself to stay out. huck was having the same experience. they studiously avoided each other. each wandered away, from time to time, but the same dismal fascination always brought them back presently. tom kept his ears open when idlers sauntered out of the courtroom, but invariably heard distressing newsthe toils were closing more and more relentlessly around poor potter. at the end of the second day the village talk was to the effect that injun joe's evidence stood firm and unshaken, and that there was not the slightest question as to what the jury's verdict would be. tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. he was in a tremendous state of excitement. it was hours before he got to sleep. all the village flocked to the courthouse the next morning, for this was to be the great day. both sexes were about equally represented in the packed audience. after a long wait the jury filed in and took their places; shortly afterward, potter, pale and haggard, timid and hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated where all the curious eyes could stare at him; no less conspicuous was injun joe, stolid as ever. there was another pause, and then the judge arrived and the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. the usual whisperings among the lawyers and gathering together of papers followed. these details and accompanying delays worked up an atmosphere of preparation that was as impressive as it was fascinating. now a witness was called who testified that he found muff potter washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. after some further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said "take the witness." the prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when his own counsel said "i have no questions to ask him." the next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse. counsel for the prosecution said: "take the witness." "i have no questions to ask him." potter's lawyer replied. a third witness swore he had often seen the knife in potter's possession. "take the witness." counsel for potter declined to question him. the faces of the audience began to betray annoyance. did this attorney mean to throw away his client's life without an effort? several witnesses deposed concerning potter's guilty behavior when brought to the scene of the murder. they were allowed to leave the stand without being cross-questioned. every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well, was brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were cross-examined by potter's lawyer. the perplexity and dissatisfaction of the house expressed itself in murmurs and provoked a reproof from the bench. counsel for the prosecution now said: "by the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we have fastened this awful crime beyond all possibility of question, upon the unhappy prisoner at the bar. we rest our case here." a groan escaped from poor potter, and he put his face in his hands and rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned in the courtroom. many men were moved, and many women's compassion testified itself in tears. counsel for the defense rose and said: "your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful deed while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium produced by drink. we have changed our mind. we shall not offer that plea." [then to the clerk]: "call thomas sawyer!" a puzzled amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even excepting potter's. every eye fastened itself with wondering interest upon tom as he rose and took his place upon the stand. the boy looked wild enough, for he was badly scared. the oath was administered. "thomas sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of june, about the hour of midnight?" tom glanced at injun joe's iron face and his tongue failed him. the audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. after a few moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and managed to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house hear: "in the graveyard!" "a little bit louder, please. don't be afraid. you were-" "in the graveyard." a contemptuous smile flitted across injun joe's face. "were you anywhere near horse williams's grave?" "yes, sir." "speak upjust a trifle louder. how near were you?" "near as i am to you." "were you hidden, or not?" "i was hid." "where?" "behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave." injun joe gave a barely perceptible start. "any one with you?" "yes, sir. i went there with-" "waitwait a moment. never mind mentioning your companion's name. we will produce him at the proper time. did you carry anything there with you?" tom hesitated and looked confused. "speak out my boydon't be diffident. the truth is always respectable. what did you take there?" "only aadead cat." there was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked. "we will produce the skeleton of that cat. now my boy, tell us everything that occurredtell it in your own waydon't skip anything, and don't be afraid." tom beganhesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his subject his words flowed more and more easily; in a little while every sound ceased but his own voice; every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale. the strain upon pent emotion reached its climax when the boy said "-and as the doctor fetched the board around and muff potter fell, injun joe jumped with the knife and-" crash! quick as lightning the half-breed sprang for a window, tore his way through all opposers, and was gone! chapter 24 splendid days and fearsome nights tom was a glittering hero once morethe pet of the old, the envy of the young. his name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. there were some that believed he would be president, yet, if he escaped hanging. as usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took muff potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. but that sort of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it. tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his nights were seasons of horror. injun joe infested all his dreams, and always with doom in his eye. hardly any temptation could persuade the boy to stir abroad after nightfall. poor huck was in the same state of wretchedness and terror, for tom had told the whole story to the lawyer the night before the great day of the trial, and huck was sore afraid that his share in the business might leak out, yet, notwithstanding injun joe's flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court. the poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy, but what of that? since tom's harassed conscience had managed to drive him to the lawyer's house by night and wring a dread tale from lips that had been sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, huck's confidence in the human race was well-nigh obliterated. daily muff potter's gratitude made tom glad he had spoken; but nightly he wished he had sealed up his tongue. half the time tom was afraid injun joe would never be captured; the other half he was afraid he would be. he felt sure he never could draw a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse. rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no injun joe was found. one of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels, a detective, came up from st. louis, moused around, shook his head, looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of that craft usually achieve. that is to say he "found a clue." but you can't hang a "clue" for murder and so after that detective had got through and gone home, tom felt just as insecure as he was before. the slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly lightened weight of apprehension. chapter 25 seeking the buried treasure there comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. this desire suddenly came upon tom one day. he sallied out to find joe harper, but failed of success. next he sought ben rogers; he had gone fishing. presently he stumbled upon huck finn the red-handed. huck would answer. tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to him confidentially. huck was willing. huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is not money. "where'll we dig?" said huck. "o, most anywhere." "why, is it hid all around?" "no indeed it ain't. it's hid in mighty particular places, hucksometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses." "who hides it?" "why robbers, of coursewho'd you reckon? sunday-school sup'rintendents?" "i don't know. if 'twas mine i wouldn't hide it; i'd spend it and have a good time." "so would i. but robbers don't do that way. they always hide it and leave it there." "don't they come after it any more?" "no, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or else they die. anyway it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the marksa paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's mostly signs and hy'rogliphics." "hyrowhich?" "hy'rogliphicspictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean anything." "have you got one of them papers, tom?" "no." "well then, how you going to find the marks?" "i don't want any marks. they always bury it under a ha'nted house or on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. well, we've tried jackson's island a little, and we can try it again some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the still-house branch, and there's lots of dead-limb treesdead loads of 'em." "is it under all of them?" "how you talk! no!" "then how you going to know which one to go for?" "go for all of 'em!" "why tom, it'll take all summer." "well, what of that? suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred dollars in it, all rusty and gray, or a rotten chest full of di'monds. how's that?" huck's eyes glowed. "that's bully. plenty bully enough for me. just you gimme the hundred dollars and i don't want no di'monds." "all right. but i bet you i ain't going to throw off on di'monds. some of 'em's worth twenty dollars apiecethere ain't any, hardly, but's worth six bits or a dollar." "no! is that so?" "cert'nlyanybody'll tell you so. hain't you ever seen one, huck?" "not as i remember." "o, kings have slathers of them." "well, i don't know no kings, tom." "i reckon you don't. but if you was to go to europe you'd see a raft of 'em hopping around." "do they hop?" "hop?you granny! no!" "well what did you say they did, for?" "shucks, i only meant you'd see 'emnot hopping, of coursewhat do they want to hop for?but i mean you'd just see 'emscattered around, you know, in a kind of a general way. like that old hump-backed richard." "richard? what's his other name?" "he didn't have any other name. kings don't have any but a given name." "no?" "but they don't." "well, if they like it, tom, all right; but i don't want to be a king and have only just a given name, like a nigger. but saywhere you going to dig first?" "well, i don't know. s'pose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the hill t'other side of still-house branch?" so they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their three-mile tramp. they arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke. "i like this," said tom. "so do i." "say, huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your share?" "well i'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and i'll go to every circus that comes along. i bet i'll have a gay time." "well ain't you going to save any of it?" "save it? what for?" "why so as to have something to live on, by and by." "o, that ain't any use. pap would come back to thish-yer town some day and get his claws on it if i didn't hurry up, and i tell you he'd clean it out pretty quick. what you going to do with yourn, tom?" "i'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure-'nough sword, and a red neck-tie and a bull pup, and get married." "married!" "that's it." "tom, youwhy you ain't in your right mind." "waityou'll see." "well that's the foolishest thing you could do, tom. look at pap and my mother. fight? why they used to fight all the time. i remember, mighty well." "that ain't anything. the girl i'm going to marry won't fight." "tom, i reckon they're all alike. they'll all comb a body. now you better think 'bout this a while. i tell you you better. what's the name of the gal?" "it ain't a gal at allit's a girl." "it's all the same, i reckon; some says gal, some says girlboth's right, like enough. anyway, what's her name, tom?" "i'll tell you some timenot now." "all rightthat'll do. only if you get married i'll be more lonesomer than ever." "no you won't. you'll come and live with me. now stir out of this and we'll go to digging." they worked and sweated for half an hour. no result. they toiled another half-hour. still no result. huck said: "do they always bury it as deep as this?" "sometimesnot always. not generally. i reckon we haven't got the right place." so they chose a new spot and began again. the labor dragged a little, but still they made progress. they pegged away in silence for some time. finally huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from his brow with his sleeve, and said: "where you going to dig next, after we get this one?" "i reckon maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on cardiff hill back of the widow's." "i reckon that'll be a good one. but won't the widow take it away from us, tom? it's on her land." "she take it away! maybe she'd like to try it once. whoever finds one of these hid treasures, it belongs to him. it don't make any difference whose land it's on." that was satisfactory. the work went on. by and by huck said: "blame it, we must be in the wrong place again. what do you think?" "it is mighty curious huck. i don't understand it. sometimes witches interfere. i reckon maybe that's what's the trouble now." "shucks, witches ain't got no power in the daytime." "well, that's so. i didn't think of that. oh, i know what the matter is! what a blamed lot of fools we are! you got to find out where the shadow of the limb falls at midnight, and that's where you dig!" "then consound it, we've fooled away all this work for nothing. now hang it all, we got to come back in the night. it's an awful long way. can you get out?" "i bet i will. we've got to do it to-night, too, because if somebody sees these holes they'll know in a minute what's here and they'll go for it." "well, i'll come around and meow to night." "all right. let's hide the tools in the bushes." the boys were there that night, about the appointed time. they sat in the shadow waiting. it was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by old traditions. spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. the boys were subdued by these solemnities, and talked little. by and by they judged that twelve had come; they marked where the shadow fell, and began to dig. their hopes commenced to rise. their interest grew stronger, and their industry kept pace with it. the hole deepened and still deepened, but every time their hearts jumped to hear the pick strike upon something, they only suffered a new disappointment. it was only a stone or a chunk. at last tom said: "it ain't any use, huck, we're wrong again." "well but we can't be wrong. we spotted the shadder to a dot." "i know it, but then there's another thing." "what's that?" "why we only guessed at the time. like enough it was too late or too early." huck dropped his shovel. "that's it," said he. "that's the very trouble. we got to give this one up. we can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of thing's too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts a-fluttering around so. i feel as if something's behind me all the time; and i'm afeard to turn around, becuz maybe there's others in front a-waiting for a chance. i been creeping all over, ever since i got here." "well, i've been pretty much so, too, huck. they most always put in a dead man when they bury a treasure under a tree, to look out for it." "lordy!" "yes, they do. i've always heard that." "tom i don't like to fool around much where there's dead people. a body's bound to get into trouble with 'em, sure." "i don't like to stir 'em up, either, huck. s'pose this one here was to stick his skull out and say something!" "don't, tom! it's awful." "well it just is. huck, i don't feel comfortable a bit." "say, tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else." "all right, i reckon we better." "what'll it be?" tom considered a while; and then said "the ha'nted house. that's it!" "blame it, i don't like ha'nted houses, tom. why they're a dem sight worse'n dead people. dead people might talk, maybe, but they don't come sliding around in a shroud, when you ain't noticing, and peep over your shoulder all of a sudden and grit their teeth, the way a ghost does. i couldn't stand such a thing as that, tomnobody could." "yes, but huck, ghosts don't travel around only at night. they won't hender us from digging there in the daytime." "well that's so. but you know mighty well people don't go about that ha'nted house in the day nor the night." "well, that's mostly because they don't like to go where a man's been murdered, anywaybut nothing's ever been seen around that house except in the nightjust some blue lights slipping by the windowsno regular ghosts." "well where you see one of them blue lights flickering around, tom, you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it. it stands to reason. becuz you know that they don't anybody but ghosts use 'em." "yes, that's so. but anyway they don't come around in the daytime, so what's the use of our being afeared?" "well, all right. we'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say sobut i reckon it's taking chances." they had started down the hill by this time. there in the middle of the moonlit valley below them stood the "ha'nted" house, utterly isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very doorsteps, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a corner of the roof caved in. the boys gazed a while, half expecting to see a blue light flit past a window; then talking in a low tone, as befitted the time and the circumstances, they struck far off to the right, to give the haunted house a wide berth, and took their way homeward through the woods that adorned the rearward side of cardiff hill. chapter 26 real robbers seize the box of gold about noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree; they had come for their tools. tom was impatient to go to the haunted house; huck was measurably so, alsobut suddenly said "looky-here, tom, do you know what day it is?" tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly lifted his eyes with a startled look in them "my! i never once thought of it, huck!" "well i didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was friday." "blame it, a body can't be too careful, huck. we might a got into an awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a friday." "might! better say we would! there's some lucky days, maybe, but friday ain't." "any fool knows that. i don't reckon you was the first that found it out, huck." "well, i never said i was, did i? and friday ain't all, neither. i had a rotten bad dream last nightdreampt about rats." "no! sure sign of trouble. did they fight?" "no." "well that's good, huck. when they don't fight it's only a sign that there's trouble around, you know. all we got to do is to look mighty sharp and keep out of it. we'll drop this thing for to-day, and play. do you know robin hood, huck?" "no. who's robin hood?" "why he was one of the greatest men that was ever in englandand the best. he was a robber." "cracky, i wisht i was. who did he rob?" "only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and such like. but he never bothered the poor. he loved 'em. he always divided up with 'em perfectly square." "well, he must 'a' ben a brick." "i bet you he was, huck. oh, he was the noblest man that ever was. they ain't any such men now, i can tell you. he could lick any man in england, with one hand tied behind him; and he could take his yew bow and plug a ten-cent piece every time, a mile and a half." "what's a yew bow?" "i don't know. it's some kind of a bow, of course. and if he hit that dime only on the edge he would set down and cryand curse. but we'll play robin hoodit's noble fun. i'll learn you." "i'm agreed." so they played robin hood all the afternoon, now and then casting a yearning eye down upon the haunted house and passing a remark about the morrow's prospects and possibilities there. as the sun began to sink into the west they took their way homeward athwart the long shadows of the trees and soon were buried from sight in the forests of cardiff hill. on saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again. they had a smoke and a chat in the shade, and then dug a little in their last hole, not with great hope, but merely because tom said there were so many cases where people had given up a treasure after getting down within six inches of it, and then somebody else had come along and turned it up with a single thrust of a shovel. the thing failed this time, however, so the boys shouldered their tools and went away feeling that they had not trifled with fortune but had fulfilled all the requirements that belong to the business of treasure-hunting. when they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun, and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. then they crept to the door and took a trembling peep. they saw a weed grown, floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows, a ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere, hung ragged and abandoned cobwebs. they presently entered, softly, with quickened pulses; talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound, and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat. in a little while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own boldness, and wondering at it, too. next they wanted to look upstairs. this was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring each other, and of course there could be but one resultthey threw their tools into a corner and made the ascent. up there were the same signs of decay. in one corner they found a closet that promised mystery, but the promise was a fraudthere was nothing in it. their courage was up now and well in hand. they were about to go down and begin work when "sh!" said tom. "what is it?" whispered huck, blanching with fright. "sh!....... there!...... hear it?" "yes!..... o, my! let's run!" "keep still! don't you budge! they're coming right toward the door." the boys stretched themselves upon the floor with their eyes to knot holes in the planking, and lay waiting, in a misery of fear. "they've stopped...... nocoming...... here they are. don't whisper another word, huck. my goodness, i wish i was out of this!" two men entered. each boy said to himself. "there's the old deaf and dumb spaniard that's been about town once or twice latelynever saw t'other man before." "t'other" was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant in his face. the spaniard was wrapped in a serape; he had bushy white whiskers; long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he wore green goggles. when they came in, "t'other" was talking in a low voice; they sat down on the ground, facing the door, with their backs to the wall, and the speaker continued his remarks. his manner became less guarded and his words more distinct as he proceeded: "no," said he, "i've thought it all over, and i don't like it. it's dangerous." "dangerous!" grunted the "deaf and dumb" spaniard,to the vast surprise of the boys. "milksop!" this voice made the boys gasp and quake. it was injun joe's! there was silence for some time. then joe said: "what's any more dangerous than that job up yonderbut nothing's come of it." "that's different. away up the river so, and not another house about. 'twon't ever be known that we tried, anyway, long as we didn't succeed." "well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the day time?anybody would suspicion us that saw us." "i know that. but there warn't any other place as handy after that fool of a job. i want to quit this shanty. i wanted to yesterday, only it warn't any use trying to stir out of here, with those infernal boys playing over there on the hill right in full view." "those infernal boys," quaked again under the inspiration of this remark, and thought how lucky it was that they had remembered it was friday and concluded to wait a day. they wished in their hearts they had waited a year. the two men got out some food and made a luncheon. after a long and thoughtful silence, injun joe said: "look here, ladyou go back up the river where you belong. wait there till you hear from me. i'll take the chances on dropping into this town just once more, for a look. we'll do that 'dangerous' job after i've spied around a little and think things look well for it. then for texas! we'll leg it together!" this was satisfactory. both men presently fell to yawning, and injun joe said: "i'm dead for sleep! it's your turn to watch." he curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. his comrade stirred him once or twice and he became quiet. presently the watcher began to nod; his head drooped lower and lower, both men began to snore now. the boys drew a long, grateful breath. tom whispered "now's our chancecome!" huck said: "i canti'd die if they was to wake." tom urgedhuck held back. at last tom rose slowly and softly, and started alone. but the first step he made wrung such a hideous creak from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with fright. he never made a second attempt. the boys lay there counting the dragging moments till it seemed to them that time must be done and eternity growing gray; and then they were grateful to note that at last the sun was setting. now one snore ceased. injun joe sat up, stared aroundsmiled grimly upon his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his kneesstirred him up with his foot and said "here! you're a watchman, ain't you! all right, though-nothing's happened." "my! have i been asleep?" "o, partly, partly. nearly time for us to be moving, pard. what'll we do with what little swag we've got left?" "i don't knowleave it here as we've always done, i reckon. no use to take it away till we start south. six hundred and fifty in silver's something to carry." "wellall rightit won't matter to come here once more." "nobut i'd say come in the night as we used to doit's better." "yes; but look here; it may be a good while before i get the right chance at that job; accidents might happen; 'tain't in such a very good place; we'll just regularly bury itand bury it deep." "good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down, raised one of the rearward hearthstones and took out a bag that jingled pleasantly. he subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for himself and as much for injun joe and passed the bag to the latter, who was on his knees in the corner, now, digging with his bowie knife. the boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant. with gloating eyes they watched every movement. luck!the splendor of it was beyond all imagination! six hundred dollars was money enough to make half a dozen boys rich! here was treasure-hunting under the happiest auspicesthere would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to where to dig. they nudged each other every momenteloquent nudges and easily understood, for they simply meant"o, but ain't you glad now we're here!" joe's knife struck upon something. "hello!" said he. "what is it?" said his comrade. "half-rotten plankno it's a box, i believe. herebear a hand and we'll see what it's here for. never mind, i've broke a hole." he reached his hand in and drew it out "man, it's money!" the two men examined the handful of coins. they were gold. the boys above were as excited as themselves, and as delighted. joe's comrade said "we'll make quick work of this. there's an old rusty pick over amongst the weeds in the corner the other side of the fire-placei saw it a minute ago." he ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. injun joe took the pick, looked it over critically, shook his head, muttered something to himself, and then began to use it. the box was soon unearthed. it was not very large; it was iron bound and had been very strong before the slow years had injured it. the men contemplated the treasure a while in blissful silence. "pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said injun joe. "'twas always said that murrel's gang used around here one summer," the stranger observed. "i know it," said injun joe; "and this looks like it, i should say." "now you won't need to do that job." the half-breed frowned. said he "you don't know me. least you don't know all about that thing. 'tain't robbery altogetherit's revenge!" and a wicked light flamed in his eyes. "i'll need your help in it. when it's finishedthen texas. go home to your nance, and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me." "wellif you say so, what'll we do with thisbury it again?" "yes." [ravishing delight overhead.] "no! by the great sachem, no!" [profound distress overhead.] "i'd nearly forgot. that pick had fresh earth on it!" [the boys were sick with terror in a moment.] "what business has a pick and a shovel here? what business with fresh earth on them? who brought them hereand where are they gone? have you heard anybody?seen anybody? what! bury it again and leave them to come and see the ground disturbed? not exactlynot exactly. we'll take it to my den." "why of course! might have thought of that before. you mean number one?" "nonumber twounder the cross. the other place is badtoo common." "all right. it's nearly dark enough to start." injun joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously peeping out. presently he said: "who could have brought those tools here? do you reckon they can be upstairs?" the boys' breath forsook them. injun joe put his hand on his knife, halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. the boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. the steps came creaking up the stairsthe intolerable distress of the situation woke the stricken resolution of the ladsthey were about to spring for the closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and injun joe landed on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. he gathered himself up cursing, and his comrade said: "now what's the use of all that? if it's anybody, and they're up there, let them stay therewho cares? if they want to jump down, now, and get into trouble, who objects? it will be dark in fifteen minutesand then let them follow us if they want to. i'm willing. in my opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or devils or something. i'll bet they're running yet." joe grumbled a while; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving. shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box. tom and huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them through the chinks between the logs of the house. follow? not they. they were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take the townward track over the hill. they did not talk much. they were too much absorbed in hating themselveshating the ill luck that made them take the spade and the pick there. but for that, injun joe never would have suspected. he would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait there till his "revenge" was satisfied, and then he would have had the misfortune to find that money turn up missing. bitter, bitter luck that the tools were ever brought there! they resolved to keep a lookout for that spaniard when he should come to town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him to "number two," wherever that might be. then a ghastly thought occurred to tom: "revenge? what if he means us, huck!" "o, don't!" said huck, nearly fainting. they talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to believe that he might possibly mean somebody elseat least that he might at least mean nobody but tom, since only tom had testified. very, very small comfort it was to tom to be alone in danger! company would be a palpable improvement, he thought. chapter 27 trembling on the trail the adventure of the day mightily tormented tom's dreams that night. four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times it wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. as he lay in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far awaysomewhat as if they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. then it occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! there was one very strong argument in favor of this ideanamely, that the quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. he had never seen as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys of his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references to "hundreds" and "thousands" were mere fanciful forms of speech, and that no such sums really existed in the world. he never had supposed for a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found in actual money in anyone's possession. if his notions of hidden treasure had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a handful of real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable dollars. but the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a dream, after all. this uncertainty must be swept away. he would snatch a hurried breakfast and go and find huck. huck was sitting on the gunwale of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his feet in the water and looking very melancholy. tom concluded to let huck lead up to the subject. if he did not do it, then the adventure would be proved to have been only a dream. "hello, huck!" "hello, yourself." [silence, for a minute.] "tom, if we'd a left the blame tools at the dead tree, we'd 'a' got the money. o, ain't it awful!" "'tain't a dream, then, 'tain't a dream! somehow i most wish it was. dog'd if i don't, huck." "what ain't a dream?" "o, that thing yesterday. i been half thinking it was." "dream! if them stairs hadn't broke down you'd 'a' seen how much dream it was! i've had dreams enough all nightwith that patch-eyed spanish devil going for me all through 'emrot him!" "no, not rot him. find him! track the money!" "tom, we'll never find him. a feller don't have only one chance for such a pileand that one's lost. i'd feel mighty shaky if i was to see him, anyway." "well, so'd i; but i'd like to see him, anywayand track him outto his number two." "number twoyes, that's it. i ben thinking 'bout that. but i can't make nothing out of it. what do you reckon it is?" "i dono. it's too deep. say, huckmaybe it's the number of a house!" "goody!...... no, tom, that ain't it. if it is, it ain't in this onehorse town. they ain't no numbers here." "well, that's so. lemme think a minute. hereit's the number of a roomin a tavern, you know!" "o, that's the trick! they ain't only two taverns. we can find out quick." "you stay here, huck, till i come." tom was off at once. he did not care to have huck's company in public places. he was gone half an hour. he found that in the best tavern, no. 2 had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was still so occupied. in the less ostentatious house no. 2 was a mystery. the tavern-keeper's young son said it was kept locked all the time, and he never saw anybody go into it or come out of it except at night; he did not know any particular reason for this state of things; had had some little curiosity, but it was rather feeble; had made the most of the mystery by entertaining himself with the idea that that room was "ha'nted"; had noticed that there was a light in there the night before. "that's what i've found out, huck. i reckon that's the very no. 2 we're after." "i reckon it is, tom. now what you going to do?" "lemme think." tom thought a long time. then he said: "i'll tell you. the back door of that no. 2 is the door that comes out into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle-trap of a brick store. now you get hold of all the door-keys you can find, and i'll nip all of auntie's and the first dark night we'll go there and try 'em. and mind you keep a lookout for injun joe, because he said he was going to drop into town and spy around once more for a chance to get his revenge. if you see him, you just follow him; and if he don't go to that no. 2, that ain't the place." "lordy i don't want to foller him by myself!" "why it'll be night, sure. he mightn't ever see youand if he did, maybe he'd never think anything." "well, if it's pretty dark i reckon i'll track him. i donoi dono. i'll try." "you bet i'll follow him, if it's dark, huck. why he might 'a' found out he couldn't get his revenge, and be going right after that money." "it's so, tom, it's so. i'll foller him; i will, by jingoes!" "now you're talking! don't you ever weaken, huck, and i won't." chapter 28 in the lair of injun joe that night tom and huck were ready for their adventure. they hung about the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the alley at a distance and the other the tavern door. nobody entered the alley or left it; nobody resembling the spaniard entered or left the tavern door. the night promised to be a fair one; so tom went home with the understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on, huck was to come and "meow," whereupon he would slip out and try the keys. but the night remained clear, and huck closed his watch and retired to bed in an empty sugar-hogshead about twelve. tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. also wednesday. but thursday night promised better. tom slipped out in good season with his aunt's old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. he hid the lantern in huck's sugar-hogshead and the watch began. an hour before midnight the tavern closed up and its lights (the only ones thereabouts) were put out. no spaniard had been seen. nobody had entered or left the alley. everything was auspicious. the blackness of darkness reigned, the perfect stillness was interrupted only by occasional mutterings of distant thunder. tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in the towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern. huck stood sentry and tom felt his way into the alley. then there was a season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon huck's spirits like a mountain. he began to wish he could see a flash from the lanternit would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that tom was alive yet. it seemed hours since tom had disappeared. surely he must have fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst under terror and excitement. in his uneasiness huck found himself drawing closer and closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away his breath. there was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the way it was beating. suddenly there was a flash of light and tom came tearing by him: "run!" said he; "run, for your life!" he needn't have repeated it; once was enough; huck was making thirty or forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. the boys never stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house at the lower end of the village. just as they got within its shelter the storm burst and the rain poured down. as soon as tom got his breath he said: "huck, it was awful! i tried two of the keys, just as soft as i could; but they seemed to make such a power of racket that i couldn't hardly get my breath i was so scared. they wouldn't turn in the lock, either. well, without noticing what i was doing, i took hold of the knob, and open comes the door! it warn't locked! i hopped in, and shook off the towel, and, great caesar's ghost!" "what!what'd you see, tom!" "huck, i most stepped onto injun joe's hand!" "no!" "yes! he was laying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old patch on his eye and his arms spread out." "lordy, what did you do? did he wake up?" "no, never budged. drunk, i reckon. i just grabbed that towel and started!" "i'd never 'a' thought of the towel, i bet!" "well, i would. my aunt would make me mighty sick if i lost it." "say, tom, did you see that box?" "huck, i didn't wait to look around. i didn't see the box, i didn't see the cross. i didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the floor by injun joe; yes, and i saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the room. don't you see, now, what's the matter with that ha'nted room?" "how?" "why it's with whisky! maybe all the temperance taverns have got a ha'nted room, hey huck?" "well i reckon maybe that's so. who'd 'a' thought such a thing? but say, tom, now's a mighty good time to get that box, if injun joe's drunk." "it is, that! you try it!" huck shuddered. "well, noi reckon not." "and i reckon not, huck. only one bottle alongside of injun joe ain't enough. if there'd been three, he'd be drunk enough and i'd do it." there was a long pause for reflection, and then tom said: "looky-here, huck, less not try that thing any more till we know injun joe's not in there. it's too scary. now if we watch every night, we'll be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then we'll snatch that box quicker'n lightning." "well, i'm agreed, i'll watch the whole night long, and i'll do it every night, too, if you'll do the other part of the job." "all right, i will. all you got to do is to trot up hooper street a block and meowand if i'm asleep, you throw some gravel at the window and that'll fetch me." "agreed, and good as wheat!" "now huck, the storm's over, and i'll go home. it'll begin to be daylight in a couple of hours. you go back and watch that long, will you?" "i said i would, tom, and i will. i'll ha'nt that tavern every night for a year! i'll sleep all day and i'll stand watch all night." "that's all right. now where you going to sleep?" "in ben rogers's hayloft. he let's me, and so does his pap's nigger man, uncle jake. i tote water for uncle jake whenever he wants me to, and anytime i ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can spare it. that's a mighty good nigger, tom. he likes me, becuz i don't ever act as if i was above him. sometimes i've set right down and eat with him. but you needn't tell that. a body's got to do things when he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing." "well, if i don't want you in the daytime, huck, i'll let you sleep. i won't come bothering around. any time you see something's up, in the night, just skip right around and meow." chapter 29 huck saves the widow the first thing tom heard on friday morning was a glad piece of newsjudge thatcher's family had come back to town the night before. both injun joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance for a moment, and becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. he saw her and they had an exhausting good time playing "hi-spy" and "gully-keeper" with a crowd of their schoolmates. the day was completed and crowned in a peculiarly satisfactory way: becky teased her mother to appoint the next day for the long-promised and long-delayed picnic, and she consented. the child's delight was boundless; and tom's not more moderate. the invitations were sent out before sunset, and straightway the young folks of the village were thrown into a fever of preparation and pleasurable anticipation. tom's excitement enabled him to keep awake until a pretty late hour, and he had good hopes of hearing huck's "meow," and of having his treasure to astonish becky and the picnickers with, next day; but he was disappointed. no signal came that night. morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and rollicking company were gathered at judge thatcher's, and everything was ready for a start. it was not the custom for elderly people to mar picnics with their presence. the children were considered safe enough under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few young gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. the old steam ferry boat was chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed up the main street laden with provision baskets. sid was sick and had to miss the fun; mary remained at home to entertain him. the last thing mrs. thatcher said to becky, was "you'll not get back till late. perhaps you'd better stay all night with some of the girls that live near the ferry landing, child." "then i'll stay with susy harper, mamma." "very well. and mind and behave yourself and don't be any trouble." presently, as they tripped along, tom said to becky: "sayi'll tell you what we'll do. 'stead of going to joe harper's we'll climb right up the hill and stop at the widow douglas's. she'll have ice cream! she has it 'most every daydead loads of it. and she'll be awful glad to have us." "o, that will be fun!" then becky reflected a moment and said: "but what will mamma say?" "how'll she ever know?" the girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said reluctantly: "i reckon it's wrongbut-" "but shucks! your mother won't know, and so what's the harm? all she wants is that you'll be safe; and i bet you she'd 'a' said go there if she'd 'a' thought of it. i know she would!" the widow douglas's splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. it and tom's persuasions presently carried the day. so it was decided to say nothing to anybody about the night's programme. presently it occurred to tom that maybe huck might come this very night and give the signal. the thought took a deal of the spirit out of his anticipations. still he could not bear to give up the fun at widow douglas's. and why should he give it up, he reasonedthe signal did not come the night before, so why should it be any more likely to come to-night? the sure fun of the evening outweighed the uncertain treasure; and boy like, he determined to yield to the stronger inclination and not allow himself to think of the box of money another time that day. three miles below town the ferry boat stopped at the mouth of a woody hollow and tied up. the crowd swarmed ashore and soon the forest distances and craggy heights echoed far and near with shoutings and laughter. all the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone through with, and by and by the rovers straggled back to camp fortified with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of the good things began. after the feast there was a refreshing season of rest and chat in the shade of spreading oaks. by and by somebody shouted "who's ready for the cave?" everybody was. bundles of candles were produced, and straightway there was a general scamper up the hill. the mouth of the cave was up the hillsidean opening shaped like a letter a. its massive oaken door stood unbarred. within was a small chamber, chilly as an ice-house, and walled by nature with solid limestone that was dewy with a cold sweat. it was romantic and mysterious to stand here in the deep gloom and look out upon the green valley shining in the sun. but the impressiveness of the situation quickly wore off, and the romping began again. the moment a candle was lighted there was a general rush upon the owner of it; a struggle and a gallant defense followed, but the candle was soon knocked down or blown out, and then there was a glad clamor of laughter and a new chase. but all things have an end. by and by the procession went filing down the steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering rank of lights dimly revealing the lofty walls of rock almost to their point of junction sixty feet overhead. this main avenue was not more than eight or ten feet wide. every few steps other lofty and still narrower crevices branched from it on either handfor mcdougal's cave was but a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and out again and led nowhere. it was said that one might wander days and nights together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms, and never find the end of the cave; and that he might go down, and down, and still down, into the earth, and it was just the samelabyrinth underneath labyrinth, and no end to any of them. no man "knew" the cave. that was an impossible thing. most of the young men knew a portion of it, and it was not customary to venture much beyond this known portion. tom sawyer knew as much of the cave as any one. the procession moved along the main avenue some three-quarters of a mile, and then groups and couples began to slip aside into branch avenues, fly along the dismal corridors, and take each other by surprise at points where the corridors joined again. parties were able to elude each other for the space of half an hour without going beyond the "known" ground. by and by, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success of the day. then they were astonished to find that they had been taking no note of time and that night was about at hand. the clanging bell had been calling for half an hour. however, this sort of close to the day's adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory. when the ferry boat with her wild freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence for the wasted time but the captain of the craft. huck was already upon his watch when the ferry boat's lights went glinting past the wharf. he heard no noise on board, for the young people were as subdued and still as people usually are who are nearly tired to death. he wondered what boat it was, and why she did not stop at the wharfand then he dropped her out of his mind and put his attention upon his business. the night was growing cloudy and dark. ten o'clock came, and the noise of vehicles ceased, scattered lights began to wink out, all straggling foot passengers disappeared, the village betook itself to its slumbers and left the small watcher alone with the silence and the ghosts. eleven o'clock came, and the tavern lights were put out; darkness everywhere, now. huck waited what seemed a weary long time, but nothing happened. his faith was weakening. was there any use? was there really any use? why not give it up and turn in? a noise fell upon his ear. he was all attention in an instant. the alley door closed softly. he sprang to the corner of the brick store. the next moment two men brushed by him, and one seemed to have something under his arm. it must be that box! so they were going to remove the treasure. why call tom now? it would be absurdthe men would get away with the box and never be found again. no, he would stick to their wake and follow them; he would trust to the darkness for security from discovery. so communing with himself, huck stepped out and glided along behind the men, cat-like, with bare feet, allowing them to keep just far enough ahead not to be invisible. they moved up the river street three blocks, then turned to the left up a cross street. they went straight ahead, then, until they came to the path that led up cardiff hill; this they took. they passed by the old welchman's house, half way up the hill without hesitating, and still climbed upward. good, thought huck, they will bury it in the old quarry. but they never stopped at the quarry. they passed on, up the summit. they plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach bushes, and were at once hidden in the gloom. huck closed up and shortened his distance, now, for they would never be able to see him. he trotted along a while; then slackened his pace, fearing he was gaining too fast; moved on a piece, then stopped altogether; listened; no sound; none, save that he seemed to hear the beating of his own heart. the hooting of an owl came from over the hillominous sound! but no footsteps. heavens, was everything lost! he was about to spring with winged feet, when a man cleared his throat not four feet from him! huck's heart shot into his throat, but he swallowed it again; and then he stood there shaking as if a dozen agues had taken charge of him at once, and so weak that he thought he must surely fall to the ground. he knew where he was. he knew he was within five steps of the stile leading into widow douglas's grounds. very well, he thought, let them bury it there; it won't be hard to find. now there was a voicea very low voiceinjun joe's: "damn her, maybe she's got companythere's lights, late as it is." "i can't see any." this was that stranger's voicethe stranger of the haunted house. a deadly chill went to huck's heartthis, then, was the "revenge" job! his thought was, to fly. then he remembered that the widow douglas had been kind to him more than once, and maybe these men were going to murder her. he wished he dared venture to warn her; but he knew he didn't darethey might come and catch him. he thought all this and more in the moment that elapsed between the stranger's remark and injun joe's nextwhich was "because the bush is in your way. nowthis waynow you see, don't you?" "yes. well there is company there, i reckon. better give it up." "give it up, and i just leaving this country forever! give it up and maybe never have another chance. i tell you again, as i've told you before, i don't care for her swagyou may have it. but her husband was rough on memany times he was rough on meand mainly he was the justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. and that ain't all. it ain't a millionth part of it! he had me horsewhipped!horsewhipped in front of the jail, like a nigger!with all the town looking on! horsewhipped!do you understand? he took advantage of me and died. but i'll take it out of her." "o, don't kill her! don't do that!" "kill? who said anything about killing? i would kill him if he was here; but not her. when you want to get revenge on a woman you don't kill herbosh! you go for her looks. you slit her nostrilsyou notch her ears like a sow's!" "by god, that's-" "keep your opinion to yourself! it will be safest for you. i'll tie her to the bed. if she bleeds to death, is that my fault? i'll not cry, if she does. my friend, you'll help in this thingfor my sakethat's why you're herei mightn't be able alone. if you flinch, i'll kill you. do you understand that? and if i have to kill you, i'll kill herand then i reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this business." "well, if it's got to be done, let's get at it. the quicker the betteri'm all in a shiver." "do it now? and company there? look herei'll get suspicious of you, first thing you know. nowe'll wait till the lights are outthere's no hurry." huck felt that a silence was going to ensuea thing still more awful than any amount of murderous talk; so he held his breath and stepped gingerly back; planted his foot carefully and firmly, after balancing, one-legged, in a precarious way and almost toppling over, first on one side and then on the other. he took another step back, with the same elaboration and the same risks; then another and another, anda twig snapped under his foot! his breath stopped and he listened. there was no soundthe stillness was perfect. his gratitude was measureless. now he turned in his tracks, between the walls of sumach bushesturned himself as carefully as if he were a shipand then stepped quickly but cautiously along. when he emerged at the quarry he felt secure, and so he picked up his nimble heels and flew. down, down he sped, till he reached the welchman's. he banged at the door, and presently the heads of the old man and his two stalwart sons were thrust from windows. "what's the row there? who's banging? what do you want?" "let me inquick! i'll tell everything." "why who are you?" "huckleberry finnquick, let me in!" "huckleberry finn, indeed! it ain't a name to open many doors, i judge! but let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble." "please don't ever tell i told you," were huck's first words when he got in. "please donti'd be killed, surebut the widow's been good friends to me sometimes, and i want to telli will tell if you'll promise you won't ever say it was me." "by george he has got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!" exclaimed the old man; "out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad." three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the hill, and just entering the sumach path on tip-toe, their weapons in their hands. huck accompanied them no further. he hid behind a great boulder and fell to listening. there was a lagging, anxious silence, and then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry. huck waited for no particulars. he sprang away and sped down the hill as fast as his legs could carry him. chapter 30 tom and becky in the cave the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on sunday morning, huck came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old welchman's door. the inmates were asleep but it was a sleep that was set on a hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. a call came from a window "who's there!" huck's scared voice answered in a low tone: "please let me in! it's only huck finn!" "it's a name that can open this door night or day, lad!and welcome!" these were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the pleasantest he had ever heard. he could not recollect that the closing word had ever been applied in his case before. the door was quickly locked, and he entered. huck was given a seat and the old man and his brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves. "now my boy i hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, toomake yourself easy about that! i and the boys hoped you'd turn up and stop here last night." "i was awful scared," said huck, "and i run. i took out when the pistols went off, and i didn't stop for three mile. i've come now becuz i wanted to know about it, you know; and i come before daylight becuz i didn't want to run acrost them devils, even if they was dead." "well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of itbut there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. no, they ain't dead, ladwe are sorry enough for that. you see we knew right where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept along on tip-toe till we got within fifteen feet of themdark as a cellar that sumach path wasand just then i found i was going to sneeze. it was the meanest kind of luck! i tried to keep it back, but no use'twas bound to come, and it did come! i was in the lead with my pistol raised, and when the sneeze started those scoundrels a-rustling to get out of the path, i sung out, 'fire, boys!' and blazed away at the place where the rustling was. so did the boys. but they were off in a jiffy, those villains, and we after them, down through the woods. i judge we never touched them. they fired a shot apiece as they started, but their bullets whizzed by and didn't do us any harm. as soon as we lost the sound of their feet we quit chasing, and went down and stirred up the constables. they got a posse together, and went off to guard the river bank, and as soon as it is light the sheriff and a gang are going to beat up the woods. my boys will be with them presently. i wish we had some sort of description of those rascals'twould help a good deal. but you couldn't see what they were like, in the dark, lad, i suppose?" "o, yes, i saw them down town and follered them." "splendid! describe themdescribe them, my boy!" "one's the old deaf and dumb spaniard that's ben around here once or twice, and t'other's a mean looking ragged-" "that's enough, lad, we know the men! happened on them in the woods back of the widow's one day, and they slunk away. off with you, boys, and tell the sheriffget your breakfast to-morrow morning!" the welchman's sons departed at once. as they were leaving the room huck sprang up and exclaimed: "o, please don't tell anybody it was me that blowed on them! o, please!" "all right if you say it, huck, but you ought to have the credit of what you did." "o, no, no! please don't tell!" when the young men were gone, the old welchman said "they won't telland i won't. but why don't you want it known?" huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he knew anything against him for the whole worldhe would be killed for knowing it, sure. the old man promised secrecy once more, and said: "how did you come to follow these fellows, lad? were they looking suspicious?" huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. then he said: "well, you see, i'm a kind of a hard lot,least everybody says so, and i don't see nothing agin itand sometimes i can't sleep much, on accounts of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a new way of doing. that was the way of it last night. i couldn't sleep, and so i come along up street 'bout midnight, a-turning it all over, and when i got to that old shackly brick store by the temperance tavern, i backed up agin the wall to have another think. well, just then along comes these two chaps slipping along close by me, with something under their arm and i reckoned they'd stole it. one was a-smoking, and t'other one wanted a light; so they stopped right before me and the cigars lit up their faces and i see that the big one was the deaf and dumb spaniard, by his white whiskers and the patch on his eye, and t'other one was a rusty, ragged looking devil." "could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?" this staggered huck for a moment. then he said: "well, i don't knowbut somehow it seems as if i did." "then they went on, and you-" "follered 'emyes. that was it. i wanted to see what was upthey sneaked along so. i dogged 'em to the widder's stile, and stood in the dark and heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the spaniard swear he'd spile her looks just as i told you and your two-" "what! the deaf and dumb man said all that!" huck had made another terrible mistake! he was trying his best to keep the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the spaniard might be, and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in spite of all he could do. he made several efforts to creep out of his scrape, but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder after blunder. presently the welchman said: "my boy, don't be afraid of me. i wouldn't hurt a hair of your head for all the world. noi'd protect youi'd protect you. this spaniard is not deaf and dumb; you've let that slip without intending it; you can't cover that up now. you know something about that spaniard that you want to keep dark. now trust metell me what it is, and trust mei won't betray you." huck looked into the old man's honest eyes a moment, then bent over and whispered in his ear "'tain't a spaniardit's injun joe!" the welchman almost jumped out of his chair. in a moment he said: "it's all plain enough, now. when you talked about notching ears and slitting noses i judged that that was your own embellishment, because white men don't take that sort of revenge. but an injun! that's a different matter altogether." during breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old man said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before going to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its vicinity for marks of blood. they found none, but captured a bulky bundle of "of what?" if the words had been lightning they could not have leaped with a more stunning suddenness from huck's blanched lips. his eyes were staring wide, now, and his breath suspendedwaiting for the answer. the welchman startedstared in returnthree secondsfive secondstenthen replied "of burglar's tools. why what's the matter with you?" huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. the welchman eyed him gravely, curiouslyand presently said "yes, burglar's tools. that appears to relieve you a good deal. but what did give you that turn? what were you expecting we'd found?" huck was in a close placethe inquiring eye was upon himhe would have given anything for material for a plausible answernothing suggested itselfthe inquiring eye was boring deeper and deepera senseless reply offeredthere was no time to weigh it, so at a venture he uttered itfeebly: "sunday-school books, maybe." poor huck was too distressed to smile, butthe old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a man's pocket, because it cut down the doctor's bills like everything. then he added: "poor old chap, you're white and jadedyou ain't well a bitno wonder you're a little flighty and off your balance. but you'll come out of it. rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, i hope." huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed such a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the parcel brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had heard the talk at the widow's stile. he had only thought it was not the treasure, howeverhe had not known that it wasn'tand so the suggestion of a captured bundle was too much for his self-possession. but on the whole he felt glad the little episode had happened, for now he knew beyond all question that that bundle was not the bundle, and so his mind was at rest and exceedingly comfortable. in fact everything seemed to be drifting just in the right direction, now; the treasure must be still in no. 2, the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and tom could seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of interruption. just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door. huck jumped for a hiding place, for he had no mind to be connected even remotely with the late event. the welchman admitted several ladies and gentlemen, among them the widow douglas, and noticed that groups of citizens were climbing up the hillto stare at the stile. so the news had spread. the welchman had to tell the story of the night to the visitors. the widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken. "don't say a word about it, madam. there's another that you're more beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't allow me to tell his name. we wouldn't have been there but for him." of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled the main matterbut the welchman allowed it to eat into the vitals of his visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for he refused to part with his secret. when all else had been learned, the widow said: "i went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all that noise. why didn't you come and wake me?" "we judged it warn't worth while. those fellows warn't likely to come againthey hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was the use of waking you up and scaring you to death? my three negro men stood guard at your house all the rest of the night. they've just come back." more visitors came, and the story had to be told and re-told for a couple of hours more. there was no sabbath-school during day-school vacation, but everybody was early at church. the stirring event was well canvassed. news came that not a sign of the two villains had been yet discovered. when the sermon was finished, judge thatcher's wife dropped alongside of mrs. harper as she moved down the aisle with the crowd and said: "is my becky going to sleep all day? i just expected she would be tired to death." "your becky?" "yes,"with a startled look,"didn't she stay with you last night?" "why, no." mrs. thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as aunt polly, talking briskly with a friend, passed by. aunt polly said: "good morning, mrs. thatcher. good morning, mrs. harper. i've got a boy that's turned up missing. i reckon my tom staid at your house last nightone of you. and now he's afraid to come to church. i've got to settle with him." mrs. thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever. "he didn't stay with us," said mrs. harper, beginning to look uneasy. a marked anxiety came into aunt polly's face. "joe harper, have you seen my tom this morning?" "no'm." "when did you see him last?" joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. the people had stopped moving out of church. whispers passed along, and a boding uneasiness took possession of every countenance. children were anxiously questioned, and young teachers. they all said they had not noticed whether tom and becky were on board the ferry boat on the homeward trip; it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one was missing. one young man finally blurted out his fear that they were still in the cave! mrs. thatcher swooned away; aunt polly fell to crying and wringing her hands. the alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street to street, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and the whole town was up! the cardiff hill episode sank into instant insignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled, skiffs were manned, the ferry boat ordered out, and before the horror was half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down high-road and river toward the cave. all the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. many women visited aunt polly and mrs. thatcher and tried to comfort them. they cried with them, too, and that was still better than words. all the tedious night the town waited for news; but when the morning dawned at last, all the word that came was, "send more candlesand send food." mrs. thatcher was almost crazed; and aunt polly also. judge thatcher sent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but they conveyed no real cheer. the old welchman came home toward daylight, spattered with candle grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. he found huck still in the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious with fever. the physicians were all at the cave, so the widow douglas came and took charge of the patient. she said she would do her best by him, because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the lord's, and nothing that was the lord's was a thing to be neglected. the welchman said huck had good spots in him, and the widow said "you can depend on it. that's the lord's mark. he don't leave it off. he never does. puts it somewhere on every creature that comes from his hands." early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into the village, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching. all the news that could be gained was that remotenesses of the cavern were being ransacked that had never been visited before; that every corner and crevice was going to be thoroughly searched; that wherever one wandered through the maze of passages, lights were to be seen flitting hither and thither in the distance, and shoutings and pistol shots sent their hollow reverberations to the ear down the somber aisles. in one place, far from the section usually traversed by tourists, the names "becky & tom" had been found traced upon the rocky wall with candle smoke, and near at hand a grease-soiled bit of ribbon. mrs. thatcher recognized the ribbon and cried over it. she said it was the last relic she should ever have of her child; and that no other memorial of her could ever be so precious, because this one parted latest from the living body before the awful death came. some said that now and then, in the cave, a far-away speck of light would glimmer, and then a glorious shout would burst forth and a score of men go trooping down the echoing aisleand then a sickening disappointment always followed; the children were not there; it was only a searcher's light. three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along, and the village sank into a hopeless stupor. no one had heart for anything. the accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor of the temperance tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely fluttered the public pulse, tremendous as the fact was. in a lucid interval, huck feebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally askeddimly dreading the worstif anything had been discovered at the temperance tavern since he had been ill? "yes." said the widow. huck started up in bed, wild-eyed: "what! what was it?" "liquor!and the place has been shut up. lie down, childwhat a turn you did give me!" "only tell me just one thingonly just oneplease! was it tom sawyer that found it?" the widow burst into tears. "hush, hush, child, hush! i've told you before, you must not talk. you are very, very sick!" then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a great powwow if it had been the gold. so the treasure was gone forevergone forever! but what could she be crying about? curious that she should cry. these thoughts worked their dim way through huck's mind, and under the weariness they gave him he fell asleep. the widow said to herself: "therehe's asleep, poor wreck. tom sawyer find it! pity but somebody could find tom sawyer! ah, there aint many left, now, that's got hope enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching." chapter 31 found and lost again now to return to tom and becky's share in the picnic. they tripped along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the familiar wonders of the cavewonders dubbed with rather over-descriptive names, such as "the drawing-room," "the cathedral," "aladdin's palace," and so on. presently the hide-and-seek frolicking began, and tom and becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of names, dates, post-office addresses and mottoes with which the rocky walls had been frescoed (in candle smoke). still drifting along and talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave whose walls were not frescoed. they smoked their own names under an overhanging shelf and moved on. presently they came to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. tom squeezed his small body behind it in order to illuminate it for becky's gratification. he found that it curtained a sort of steep natural stairway which was enclosed between narrow walls, and at once the ambition to be a discoverer seized him. becky responded to his call, and they made a smoke-mark for future guidance, and started upon their quest. they wound this way and that, far down into the secret depths of the cave, made another mark, and branched off in search of novelties to tell the upper world about. in one place they found a spacious cavern, from whose ceiling depended a multitude of shining stalactites of the length and circumference of a man's leg; they walked all about it, wondering and admiring, and presently left it by one of the numerous passages that opened into it. this shortly brought them to a bewitching spring, whose basin was encrusted with a frost work of glittering crystals; it was in the midst of a cavern whose walls were supported by many fantastic pillars which had been formed by the joining of great stalactites and stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless water-drip of centuries. under the roof vast knots of bats had packed themselves together, thousands in a bunch; the lights disturbed the creatures and they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and darting furiously at the candles. tom knew their ways and the danger of this sort of conduct. he seized becky's hand and hurried her into the first corridor that offered; and none too soon, for a bat struck becky's light out with its wing while she was passing out of the cavern. the bats chased the children a good distance; but the fugitives plunged into every new passage that offered, and at last got rid of the perilous things. tom found a subterranean lake, shortly, which stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the shadows. he wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would be best to sit down and rest a while, first. now, for the first time, the deep stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the children. becky said "why, i didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since i heard any of the others." "come to think, becky, we are away down below themand i don't know how far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. we couldn't hear them here." becky grew apprehensive. "i wonder how long we've been down here, tom. we better start back." "yes, i reckon we better. p'raps we better." "can you find the way, tom? it's all a mixed-up crookedness to me." "i reckon i could find itbut then the bats. if they put both our candles out it will be an awful fix. let's try some other way, so as not to go through there." "well. but i hope we won't get lost. it would be so awful!" and the girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities. they started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything familiar about the look of it; but they were all strange. every time tom made an examination, becky would watch his face for an encouraging sign, and he would say cheerily "o, it's all right. this ain't the one, but we'll come to it right away!" but he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in the desperate hope of finding the one that was wanted. he still said it was "all right," but there was such a leaden dread at his heart, that the words had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said, "all is lost!" becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep back the tears, but they would come. at last she said: "o, tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! we seem to get worse and worse off all the time." tom stopped. "listen!" said he. profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were conspicuous in the hush. tom shouted. the call went echoing down the empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that resembled a ripple of mocking laughter. "o, don't do it again, tom, it is too horrid," said becky. "it is horrid, but i better, becky; they might hear us, you know;" and he shouted again. the "might" was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it so confessed a perishing hope. the children stood still and listened; but there was no result. tom turned upon the back track at once, and hurried his steps. it was but a little while before a certain indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to beckyhe could not find his way back! "o, tom, you didn't make any marks!" "becky i was such a fool! such a fool! i never thought we might want to come back! noi can't find the way. it's all mixed up." "tom, tom, we're lost! we're lost! we never can get out of this awful place! o, why did we ever leave the others!" she sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that tom was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. he sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in his bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. tom begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. he fell to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable situation; this had a better effect. she said she would try to hope again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he would not talk like that any more. for he was no more to blame than she, she said. so they moved on, againaimlesslysimply at randomall they could do was to move, keep moving. for a little while, hope made a show of revivingnot with any reason to back it, but only because it is its nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age and familiarity with failure. by and by tom took becky's candle and blew it out. this economy meant so much! words were not needed. becky understood, and her hope died again. she knew that tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in his pocketsyet he must economize. by and by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to pay no attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when time was grown to be so precious; moving, in some direction, in any direction, was at least progress and might bear fruit; but to sit down was to invite death and shorten its pursuit. at last becky's frail limbs refused to carry her farther. she sat down. tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends there, and the comfortable beds and above all, the light! becky cried, and tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like sarcasms. fatigue bore so heavily upon becky that she drowsed off to sleep. tom was grateful. he sat looking into her drawn face and saw it grow smooth and natural under the influence of pleasant dreams; and by and by a smile dawned and rested there. the peaceful face reflected somewhat of peace and healing into his own spirit, and his thoughts wandered away to bygone times and dreamy memories. while he was deep in his musings, becky woke up with a breezy little laughbut it was stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it. "o, how could i sleep! i wish i never never had waked! no! no, i don't, tom! don't look so! i won't say it again." "i'm glad you've slept, becky; you'll feel rested, now, and we'll find the way out." "we can try, tom; but i've seen such a beautiful country in my dream. i reckon we are going there." "maybe not, maybe not. cheer up, becky, and let's go on trying." they rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. they tried to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not be, for their candles were not gone yet. a long time after thisthey could not tell how longtom said they must go softly and listen for dripping waterthey must find a spring. they found one presently, and tom said it was time to rest again. both were cruelly tired, yet becky said she thought she could go on a little farther. she was surprised to hear tom dissent. she could not understand it. they sat down, and tom fastened his candle to the wall in front of them with some clay. thought was soon busy; nothing was said for some time. then becky broke the silence: "tom, i am so hungry!" tom took something out of his pocket. "do you remember this?" said he. becky almost smiled. "it's our wedding cake, tom." "yesi wish it was as big as a barrel, for it's all we've got." "i saved it from the picnic for us to dream on, tom, the way grown-up people do with wedding cakebut it'll be our-" she dropped the sentence where it was. tom divided the cake and becky ate with good appetite, while tom nibbled at his moiety. there was abundance of cold water to finish the feast with. by and by becky suggested that they move on again. tom was silent a moment. then he said: "becky, can you bear it if i tell you something?" becky's face paled, but she said she thought she could. "well then, becky, we must stay here, where there's water to drink. that little piece is our last candle!" becky gave loose to tears and wailings. tom did what he could to comfort her but with little effect. at length becky said: "tom!" "well, becky?" "they'll, miss us and hunt for us!" "yes they will! certainly they will!" "maybe they're hunting for us now, tom?" "why i reckon maybe they are. i hope they are." "when would they miss us, tom?" "when they get back to the boat, reckon." "tom, it might be dark, thenwould they notice we hadn't come?" "i don't know. but anyway, your mother would miss you as soon as they got home." a frightened look in becky's face brought tom to his senses and he saw that he had made a blunder. becky was not to have gone home that night! the children became silent and thoughtful. in a moment a new burst of grief from becky showed tom that the thing in his mind had struck hers alsothat the sabbath morning might be half spent before mrs. thatcher discovered that becky was not at mrs. harper's. the children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched it melt slowly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of wick stand alone at last; saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin column of smoke, linger at its top a moment, and thenthe horror of utter darkness reigned! how long afterward it was that becky came to a slow consciousness that she was crying in tom's arms, neither could tell. all that they knew was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both awoke out of a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once more. tom said it might be sunday, nowmaybe monday. he tried to get becky to talk, but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone. tom said that they must have been missed long ago, and no doubt the search was going on. he would shout and maybe some one would come. he tried it; but in the darkness the distant echoes sounded so hideously that he tried it no more. the hours wasted away, and hunger came to torment the captives again. a portion of tom's half of the cake was left; they divided and ate it. but they seemed hungrier than before. the poor morsel of food only whetted desire. by and by tom said: "sh! did you hear that?" both held their breath and listened. there was a sound like the faintest, far-off shout. instantly tom answered it, and leading becky by the hand, started groping down the corridor in its direction. presently he listened again; again the sound was heard, and apparently a little nearer. "it's them!" said tom; "they're coming! come along, beckywe're all right now!" the joy of the prisoners was almost overwhelming. their speed was slow, however, because pitfalls were somewhat common, and had to be guarded against. they shortly came to one and had to stop. it might be three feet deep, it might be a hundredthere was no passing it, at any rate. tom got down on his breast and reached as far down as he could. no bottom. they must stay there and wait until the searchers came. they listened; evidently the distant shoutings were growing more distant! a moment or two more and they had gone altogether. the heartsinking misery of it! tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was of no use. he talked hopefully to becky; but an age of anxious waiting passed and no sounds came again. the children groped their way back to the spring. the weary time dragged on; they slept again, and awoke famished and woe-stricken. tom believed it must be tuesday by this time. now an idea struck him. there were some side passages near at hand. it would be better to explore some of these than bear the weight of the heavy time in idleness. he took a kite-line from his pocket, tied it to a projection, and he and becky started, tom in the lead, unwinding the line as he groped along. at the end of twenty steps the corridor ended in a "jumping-off place." tom got down on his knees and felt below, and then as far around the corner as he could reach with his hands conveniently; he made an effort to stretch yet a little further to the right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a human hand, holding a candle, appeared from behind a rock! tom lifted up a glorious shout, and instantly that hand was followed by the body it belonged toinjun joe's! tom was paralyzed; he could not move. he was vastly gratified, the next moment, to see the "spaniard" take to his heels and get himself out of sight. tom wondered that joe had not recognized his voice and come over and killed him for testifying in court. but the echoes must have disguised the voice. without doubt, that was it, he reasoned. tom's fright weakened every muscle in his body. he said to himself that if he had strength enough to get back to the spring he would stay there, and nothing should tempt him to run the risk of meeting injun joe again. he was careful to keep from becky what it was he had seen. he told her he had only shouted "for luck." but hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long run. another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought changes. the children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. tom believed that it must be wednesday or thursday or even friday or saturday, now, and that the search had been given over. he proposed to explore another passage. he felt willing to risk injun joe and all other terrors. but becky was very weak. she had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be roused. she said she would wait, now, where she was, and dieit would not be long. she told tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak to her; and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he would stay by her and hold her hand until all was over. tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a show of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the cave; then he took the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one of the passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick with bodings of coming doom. chapter 32 "turn out! they're found!" tuesday afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. the village of st. petersburg still mourned. the lost children had not been found. public prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private prayer that had the petitioner's whole heart in it; but still no good news came from the cave. the majority of the searchers had given up the quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain the children could never be found. mrs. thatcher was very ill, and a great part of the time delirious. people said it was heart-breaking to hear her call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a moan. aunt polly had drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost white. the village went to its rest on tuesday night, sad and forlorn. away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic half-clad people, who shouted, "turn out! turn out! they're found! they're found!" tin pans and horns were added to the din, the population massed itself and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open carriage drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its homeward march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring huzzah after huzzah! the village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the greatest night the little town had ever seen. during the first half hour a procession of villagers filed through judge thatcher's house, seized the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed mrs. thatcher's hand, tried to speak but couldn'tand drifted out raining tears all over the place. aunt polly's happiness was complete, and mrs. thatcher's nearly so. it would be complete, however, as soon as the messenger dispatched with the great news to the cave should get the word to her husband. tom lay upon a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the history of the wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions to adorn it withal; and closed with a description of how he left becky and went on an exploring expedition; how he followed two avenues as far as his kite-line would reach; how he followed a third to the fullest stretch of the kite-line, and was about to turn back when he glimpsed a far-off speck that looked like daylight; dropped the line and groped toward it, pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole and saw the broad mississippi rolling by! and if it had only happened to be night he would not have seen that speck of daylight and would not have explored that passage any more! he told how he went back for becky and broke the good news and she told him not to fret her with such stuff, for she was tired, and knew she was going to die, and wanted to. he described how he labored with her and convinced her; and how she almost died for joy when she had groped to where she actually saw the blue speck of daylight; how he pushed his way out at the hole and then helped her out; how they sat there and cried for gladness; how some men came along in a skiff and tom hailed them and told them their situation and their famished condition; how the men didn't believe the wild tale at first, "because," said they, "you are five miles down the river below the valley the cave is in"then took them aboard, rowed to a house, gave them supper, made them rest till two or three hours, after dark and then brought them home. before day-dawn, judge thatcher and the handful of searchers with him were tracked out, in the cave, by the twine clues they had strung behind them, and informed of the great news. three days and nights of toil and hunger in the cave were not to be shaken off at once, as tom and becky soon discovered. they were bedridden all of wednesday and thursday, and seemed to grow more and more tired and worn, all the time. tom got about, a little, on thursday, was downtown friday, and nearly as whole as ever saturday; but becky did not leave her room until sunday, and then she looked as if she had passed through a wasting illness. tom learned of huck's sickness and went to see him on friday, but could not be admitted to the bedroom; neither could he on saturday or sunday. he was admitted daily after that, but was warned to keep still about his adventure and introduce no exciting topic. the widow douglas stayed by to see that he obeyed. at home tom learned of the cardiff hill event; also that the "ragged man's" body had eventually been found in the river near the ferry landing; he had been drowned while trying to escape, perhaps. about a fortnight after tom's rescue from the cave, he started off to visit huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear exciting talk, and tom had some that would interest him, he thought. judge thatcher's house was on tom's way, and he stopped to see becky. the judge and some friends set tom to talking, and some one asked him ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again. tom said yes, he thought he wouldn't mind it. the judge said: "well, there are others just like you, tom, i've not the least doubt. but we have taken care of that. nobody will get lost in that cave any more." "why?" "because i had its big door sheathed with boiler iron two weeks ago, and triple-lockedand i've got the keys." tom turned as white as a sheet. "what's the matter, boy! here, run, somebody! fetch a glass of water!" the water was brought and thrown into tom's face. "ah, now you're all right. what was the matter with you, tom?" "o, judge, injun joe's in the cave!" chapter 33 the fate of injun joe within a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen were on their way to mcdougal's cave, at, well filled with passengers, soon followed. tom sawyer was in the skiff that bore judge thatcher. when the cave door was unlocked a sorrowful sight presented itself in the dim twilight of the place. injun joe lay stretched upon the ground, dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer of the free world outside. tom was touched, for he knew by his own experience how this wretch had suffered. his pity was moved, but nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now, which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast. injun joe's bowie knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. the great foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through, with tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had wrought no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. but if there had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been useless still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away injun joe could not have squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. so he had only hacked that place in order to be doing somethingin order to pass the weary timein order to employ his tortured faculties. ordinarily one could find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices of this vestibule, left there by tourists; but there were none now. the prisoner had searched them out and eaten them. he had also contrived to catch a few bats, and these, also, he had eaten, leaving only their claws. the poor unfortunate had starved to death. in one place near at hand, a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, builded by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead. the captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock-ticka dessert spoonful once in four and twenty hours. that drop was falling when the pyramids were new; when troy fell; when the foundations of rome were laid; when christ was crucified; when the conqueror created the british empire; when columbus sailed; when the massacre at lexington was "news." it is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. has everything a purpose and a mission? did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? and has it another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come? no matter. it is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that pathetic stone and that slow dropping water when he comes to see the wonders of mcdougal's cave. injun joe's cup stands first in the list of the cavern's marvels; even "aladdin's palace" cannot rival it. injun joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and all sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the hanging. this funeral stopped the further growth of one thingthe petition to the governor for injun joe's pardon. the petition had been largely signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the governor and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty under foot. injun joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the village, but what of that? if he had been satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky water-works. the morning after the funeral tom took huck to a private place to have an important talk. huck had learned all about tom's adventure from the welchman and the widow douglas, by this time, but tom said he reckoned there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was what he wanted to talk about now. huck's face saddened. he said: "i know what it is. you got into no. 2 and never found anything but whisky. nobody told me it was you; but i just knowed it must 'a' ben you, soon as i heard 'bout that whisky business; and i knowed you hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other and told me even if you was mum to everybody else. tom, something's always told me we'd never get holt of that swag." "why huck, i never told on that tavern-keeper. you know his you know his tavern was all right the saturday i went to the picnic. don't you remember you was to watch there that night?" "o, yes! why it seems 'bout a year ago. it was that very night that i follered injun joe to the widder's." "you followed him?" "yesbut you keep mum. i reckon injun joe's left friends behind him, and i don't want souring on me and doing me mean tricks. if it hadn't ben for me he'd be down in texas now, all right." then huck told his entire adventure in confidence to tom, who had only heard of the welchman's part of it before. "well," said huck, presently, coming back to the main question, "whoever nipped the whisky in no. 2, nipped the money too, i reckonanyways it's a goner for us, tom." "huck, that money wasn't ever in no. 2!" "what!" huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "tom, have you got on the track of that money again?" "huck, it's in the cave!" huck's eyes blazed. "say it again, tom!" "the money's in the cave!" "tom,honest injun, nowis it fun, or earnest?" "earnest, huckjust as earnest as ever i was in my life. will you go in there with me and help get it out?" "i bet i will! i will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not get lost." "huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the world." "good as wheat! what makes you think the money's-" "huck, you just wait till we get in there. if we don't find it i'll agree to give you my drum and everything i've got in the world. i will, by jings." "all rightit's a whiz. when do you say?" "right now, if you say it. are you strong enough?" "is it far in the cave? i ben on my pins a little, three or four days, now, but i can't walk more'n a mile, tomleast i don't think i could." "it's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me know about. huck, i'll take you right to it in a skiff. i'll float the skiff down there, and i'll pull it back again all by myself. you needn't ever turn your hand over." "less start right off, tom." "all right. we want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these newfangled things they call lucifer matches. i tell you many's the time i wished i had some when i was in there before." a trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who was absent, and got under way at once. when they were several miles below "cave hollow," tom said: "now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the cave hollowno houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. but do you see that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? well that's one of my marks. we'll get ashore, now." they landed. "now huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole i got out of with a fishing-pole. see if you can find it." huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. tom proudly marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said "here you are! look at it, huck; it's the snuggest hole in this country. you just keep mum about it. all along i've been wanting to be a robber, but i knew i'd got to have a thing like this, and where to run across it was the bother. we've got it now, and we'll keep it quiet, only we'll let joe harper and ben rogers inbecause of course there's got to be a gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. tom sawyer's gangit sounds splendid, don't it, huck?" "well it just does, tom. and who'll we rob?" "o, most anybody. waylay peoplethat's mostly the way." "and kill them?" "nonot always. hide them in the cave till they raise a ransom." "what's a ransom?" "money. you make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them. that's the general way. only you don't kill the women. you shut up the women, but you don't kill them. they're always beautiful and rich, and awfully scared. you take their watches and things, but you always take your hat off and talk polite. they ain't anybody as polite as robbersyou'll see that in any book. well the women get to loving you, and after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn't get them to leave. if you drove them out they'd turn right around and come back. it's so in all the books." "why it's real bully, tom. i b'lieve it's better'n to be a pirate." "yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and circuses and all that." by this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, tom in the lead. they toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel, then made their spliced kite-strings fast and moved on. a few steps brought them to the spring and tom felt a shudder quiver all through him. he showed huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of clay against the wall, and described how he and becky had watched the flame struggle and expire. the boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. they went on, and presently entered and followed tom's other corridor until they reached the "jumping-off place." the candles revealed the fact that it was not really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet high. tom whispered "now i'll show you something, huck." he held his candle aloft and said "look as far around the corner as you can. do you see that? thereon the big rock over yonderdone with candle smoke." "tom, it's a cross!" "now where's your number two? 'under the cross,' hey? right yonder's where i saw injun joe poke up his candle, huck!" huck stared at the mystic sign a while, and then said with a shaky voice "tom, less git out of here!" "what! and leave the treasure?" "yesleave it. injun joe's ghost is round about there, certain." "no it ain't, huck, no it ain't. it would ha'nt the place where he diedaway out at the mouth of the cavefive mile from here." "no, tom, it wouldn't. it would hang round the money. i know the ways of ghosts, and so do you." tom began to fear that huck was right. misgivings gathered in his mind. but presently an idea occurred to him "looky-here huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! injun joe's ghost ain't a-going to come around where there's a cross!" the point was well taken. it had its effect. "tom i didn't think of that. but that's so. it's luck for us, that cross is. i reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box." tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended. huck followed. four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the great rock stood in. the boys examined three of them with no result. they found a small recess in the one nearest the base of the rock, with a pallet of blankets spread down in it; also an old suspender, some bacon rind, and the well gnawed bones of two or three fowls. but there was no money box. the lads searched and re-searched this place, but in vain. tom said: "he said under the cross. well, this comes nearest to being under the cross. it can't be under the rock itself, because that sets solid on the ground." they searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged. huck could suggest nothing. by and by tom said: "looky-here, huck, there's foot-prints and some candle grease on the clay about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. now what's that for? i bet you the money is under the rock. i'm going to dig in the clay." "that ain't no bad notion, tom!" said huck with animation. tom's "real barlow" was out at once, and he had not dug four inches before he struck wood. "hey, huck!you hear that?" huck began to dig and scratch now. some boards were soon uncovered and removed. they had concealed a natural chasm which led under the rock. tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as he could, but said he could not see to the end of the rift. he proposed to explore. he stooped and passed under; the narrow way descended gradually. he followed its winding course, first to the right, then to the left, huck at his heels. tom turned a short curve, by and by, and exclaimed "my goodness, huck, looky-here!" it was the treasure box, sure enough, occupying a snug little cavern, along with an empty powder keg, a couple of guns in leather cases, two or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish well soaked with the water-drip. "got it at last!" said huck, plowing among the tarnished coins with his hand. "my, but we're rich, tom!" "huck, i always reckoned we'd get it. it's just too good to believe, but we have got it, sure! saylet's not fool around here. let's snake it out. lemme see if i can lift the box." it weighed about fifty pounds. tom could lift it, after an awkward fashion, but could not carry it conveniently. "i thought so," he said; "they carried it like it was heavy, that day at the ha'nted house. i noticed that. i reckon i was right to think of fetching the little bags along." the money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the cross-rock. "now less fetch the guns and things," said huck. "no, huckleave them there. they're just the tricks to have when we go to robbing. we'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our orgies there, too. it's an awful snug place for orgies." "what's orgies?" "i dono. but robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to have them, too. come along, huck, we've been in here a long time. it's getting late, i reckon. i'm hungry, too. we'll eat and smoke when we get to the skiff." they presently emerged into the clump of sumach bushes, looked warily out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and smoking in the skiff. as the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed out and got under way. tom skimmed up the shore through the long twilight, chatting cheerily with huck, and landed shortly after dark. "now huck," said tom, "we'll hide the money in the loft of the widow's wood-shed, and i'll come up in the morning and we'll count it and divide, and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for it where it will be safe. just you lay quiet here and watch the stuff till i run and hook benny taylor's little wagon; i won't be gone a minute." he disappeared, and presently returned with the wagon, put the two small sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started off, dragging his cargo behind him. when the boys reached the welchman's house, they stopped to rest. just as they were about to move on, the welchman stepped out and said: "hallo, who's that?" "huck and tom sawyer." "good! come along with me, boys, you keeping everybody waiting. herehurry up, trot aheadi'll haul the wagon for you. why, it's not as light as it might be. got bricks in it?or old metal?" "old metal," said tom. "i judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool away more time, hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the foundry than they would to make twice the money at regular work. but that's human naturehurry along, hurry along!" the boys wanted to know what the hurry was about. "never mind; you'll see, when we get to the widow douglas's." huck said with some apprehensionfor he was long used to being falsely accused "mr. jones, we haven't been doing nothing." the welchman laughed. "well, i don't know, huck, my boy. i don't know about that. ain't you and the widow good friends?" "yes. well, she's ben good friends to me, any ways." "all right, then. what do you want to be afraid for?" this question was not entirely answered in huck's slow mind before he found himself pushed, along with tom, into mrs. douglas's drawing-room. mr. jones left the wagon near the door and followed. the place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any consequence in the village was there. the thatchers were there, the harpers, the rogerses, aunt polly, sid, mary, the minister, the editor, and a great many more, and all dressed in their best. the widow received the boys as heartily as any one could well receive two such looking beings. they were covered with clay and candle grease. aunt polly blushed crimson with humiliation, and frowned and shook her head at tom. nobody suffered half as much as the two boys did, however. mr. jones said: "tom wasn't at home, yet, so i gave him up; but i stumbled on him and huck right at my door, and so i just brought them along in a hurry." "and you did just right," said the widow:"come with me, boys." she took them to a bed chamber and said: "now wash and dress yourselves. here are two new suits of clothesshirts, socks, everything complete. they're huck'sno, no thanks, huckmr. jones bought one and i the other. but they'll fit both of you. get into them. we'll waitcome down when you are slicked up enough." then she left. chapter 34 floods of gold huck said: "tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. the window ain't high from the ground." "shucks, what do you want to slope for?" "well i ain't used to that kind of a crowd. i can't stand it. i ain't going down there, tom." "o, bother! it ain't anything. i don't mind it a bit. i'll take care of you." sid appeared. "tom," said he, "auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon. mary got your sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been fretting about you. sayain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?" "now mr. siddy, you just 'tend to your own business. what's all this blow-out about, anyway?" "it's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. this time it's for the welchman and his sons, on account of that scrape they helped her out of the other night. and sayi can tell you something, if you want to know." "well, what?" "why old mr. jones is going to try to spring something on the people here to-night, but i overheard him tell auntie to-day about it, as a secret, but i reckon it's not much of a secret now. everybody knowsthe widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. oh, mr. jones was bound huck should be herecouldn't get along with his grand secret without huck, you know!" "secret about what, sid?" "about huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. i reckon mr. jones was going to make a grand time over his surprise, but i bet you it will drop pretty flat." sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way. "sid, was it you that told?" "o, never mind who it was. somebody toldthat's enough." "sid, there's only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and that's you. if you had been in huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked down the hill and never told anybody on the robbers. you can't do any but mean things, and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones. thereno thanks, as the widow says"and tom cuffed sid's ears and helped him to the door with several kicks. "now go and tell auntie if you dareand to-morrow you'll catch it!" some minutes later the widow's guests were at the supper table, and a dozen children were propped up at little side tables in the same room, after the fashion of that country and that day. at the proper time mr. jones made his little speech, in which he thanked the widow for the honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that there was another person whose modesty and so forth and so on. he sprung his secret about huck's share in the adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but the surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and effusive as it might have been under happier circumstances. however, the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment, and heaped so many compliments and so much gratitude upon huck that he almost forgot the nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely intolerable discomfort of being set up as a target for everybody's gaze and everybody's laudations. the widow said she meant to give huck a home under her roof and have him educated; and that when she could spare the money she would start him in business in a modest way. tom's chance was come. he said: "huck don't need it. huck's rich!" nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept back the due and proper complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. but the silence was a little awkward. tom broke it "huck's got money. maybe you don't believe it, but he's got lots of it. o, you needn't smilei reckon i can show you. you just wait a minute." tom ran out of doors. the company looked at each other with a perplexed interestand inquiringly at huck, who was tongue-tied. "sid, what ails tom?" said aunt polly. "hewell, there ain't ever any making of that boy out. i never-" tom entered, struggling with the weight of his sacks, and aunt polly did not finish her sentence. tom poured the mass of yellow coin upon the table and said "therewhat did i tell you? half of it's huck's and half of it's mine!" the spectacle took the general breath away. all gazed, nobody spoke for a moment. then there was a unanimous call for an explanation. tom said he could furnish it, and he did. the tale was long, but brim full of interest. there was scarcely an interruption from anyone to break the charm of its flow. when he had finished, mr. jones said "i thought i had fixed up a little surprise for this occasion, but it don't amount to anything now. this one makes it sing mighty small, i'm willing to allow." the money was counted. the sum amounted to a little over twelve thousand dollars. it was more than any one present had ever seen at one time before, though several persons were there who were worth considerably more than that in property. chapter 35 respectable huck joins the gang the reader may rest satisfied that tom's and huck's windfall made a mighty stir in the poor little village of st. petersburg. so vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. it was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. every "haunted" house in st. petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasureand not by boys, but menpretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them. wherever tom and huck appeared they were courted, admired, stared at. the boys were not able to remember that their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings were treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and saying commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. the village paper published biographical sketches of the boys. the widow douglas put huck's money out at six per cent, and judge thatcher did the same with tom's at aunt polly's request. each lad had an income, now, that was simply prodigiousa dollar for every week-day in the year and half of the sundays. it was just what the minister gotno, it was what he was promisedhe generally couldn't collect it. a dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge and school a boy in those old simple daysand clothe him and wash him, too, for that matter. judge thatcher had conceived a great opinion of tom. he said that no commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. when becky told her father, in strict confidence, how tom had taken her whipping at school, the judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded grace for the mighty lie which tom had told in order to shift that whipping from her shoulders to his own, the judge said with a fine outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous liea lie that was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to breast with george washington's lauded truth about the hatchet! becky thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. she went straight off and told tom about it. judge thatcher hoped to see tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some day. he said he meant to look to it that tom should be admitted to the national military academy and afterwards trained in the best law school in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or both. huck finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the widow douglas's protection, introduced him into societyno, dragged him into it, hurled him into itand his sufferings were almost more then he could bear. the widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had not one little spot or stain which he could press to his heart and know for a friend. he had to eat with knife and fork; he had to use napkin, cup and plate; he had to learn his book, he had to go to church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in his mouth; whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot. he bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up missing. for forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in great distress. the public were profoundly concerned; they searched high and low, they dragged the river for his body. early the third morning tom sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads down behind the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found the refugee. huck had slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort with his pipe. he was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was free and happy. tom routed him out, told him the trouble he had been causing, and urged him to go home. huck's face lost its tranquil content, and took a melancholy cast. he said: "don't talk about it, tom. i've tried it, and it don't work; it don't work, tom. it ain't for me; i ain't used to it. the widder's good to me, and friendly; but i can't stand them ways. she makes me git up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the wood-shed; i got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, tom; they don't seem to any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that i can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; i hain't slid on a cellar-door forwell, it 'pears to be years; i got to go to church and sweat and sweati hate them ornery sermons! i can't ketch a fly in there, i can't chaw, i got to wear shoes all sunday. the widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a belleverything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it." "well, everybody does that way, huck." "tom, it don't make no difference. i ain't everybody, and i can't stand it. it's awful to be tied up so. and grub comes too easyi don't take no interest in vittles, that way. i got to ask, to go a-fishing; i got to ask, to go in a-swimmingdern'd if i hain't got to ask to do everything. well, i'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comforti'd got to go up in the attic and rip out a while, every day, to git a taste in my mouth, or i'd a died, tom. the widder wouldn't let me smoke; she wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape, nor stretch, nor scratch, before folks-" [then with a spasm of special irritation and injury],"and dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! i never see such a woman! i had to shove, tomi just had to. and besides, that school's going to open, and i'd a had to go to itwell, i wouldn't stand that, tom. looky-here, tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. it's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time. now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and i ain't ever going to shake 'em any more. tom, i wouldn't ever got into all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money; now you just take my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimesnot many times, becuz i don't give a dem for a thing 'thout it's tollable hard to gitand you go and beg off for me with the widder." "o, huck, you know i can't do that. 'tain't fair; and besides if you'll try this thing just a while longer you'll come to like it." "like it! yesthe way i'd like a hot stove if i was to set on it long enough. no, tom, i won't be rich, and i won't live in them cussed smothery houses. i like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and i'll stick to 'em, too. blame it all! just as we'd got guns, and a cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this dem foolishness has got to come up and spile it all!" tom saw his opportunity "looky-here, huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning robber." "no! o, good-licks, are you in real dead-wood earnest, tom?" "just as dead earnest as i'm a-sitting here. but huck, we can't let you into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know." huck's joy was quenched. "can't let me in, tom? didn't you let me go for a pirate?" "yes, but that's different. a robber is more high-toned than what a pirate isas a general thing. in most countries they're awful high up in the nobilitydukes and such." "now tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? you wouldn't shet me out, would you, tom? you wouldn't do that, now, would you, tom?" "huck, i wouldn't want to, and i don't want tobut what would people say? why they'd say, 'mph! tom sawyer's gang! pretty low characters in it!' they'd mean you, huck. you wouldn't like that, and i wouldn't." huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. finally he said: "well, i'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if i can come to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, tom." "all right, huck, it's a whiz! come along, old chap, and i'll ask the widow to let up on you a little, huck." "will you tomnow will you? that's good. if she'll let up on some of the roughest things, i'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd through or bust. when you going to start the gang and turn robbers?" "o, right off. we'll get the boys together and have the initiation to-night, maybe." "have the which?" "have the initiation." "what's that?" "it's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and all his family that hurts one of the gang." "that's gaythat's mighty gay, tom, i tell you." "well i bet it is. and all that swearing's got to be done at midnight, in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can finda ha'nted house is the best, but they're all ripped up now." "well, midnight's good, anyway, tom." "yes, so it is. and you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with blood." "now that's something like! why it's a million times bullier than pirating. i'll stick to the widder till i rot, tom; and if i git to be a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, i reckon she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet." conclusion conclusion. so endeth this chronicle. it being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man. when one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stopthat is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can. most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and happy. some day it may seem worth while to take up the story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that part of their lives at present. the end . 1881 the prince and the pauper a tale for young people of all ages by mark twain preface preface i will set down a tale as it was told to me by one who had it of his father, which latter had it of his father, this last having in like manner had it of his fatherand so on, back and still back, three hundred years and more, the fathers transmitting it to the sons and so preserving it. it may be history, it may be only legend, a tradition. it may have happened, it may not have happened: but it could have happened. it may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old days; it may be that only the unlearned and the simple loved it and credited it. hugh latimer, bishop of worcester, to lord cromwell, on the birth of the prince of wales (afterward edward vi). [from the national manuscripts preserved by the british government] ryght honorable, salutem in christo jesu, and syr here ys no lesse joynge and rejossynge in thes partees for the byrth of our prynce, hoom we hungurde for so longe, then ther was (i trow), inter vicinos att the byrth of s. i. baptyste, as thys berer, master erance, can telle you. gode gyffe us alle grace, to yelde dew thankes to our lorde gode, gode of inglonde, for verely he hathe shoyd hym selff gode of inglond, or rather an inglyssh gode, yf we consydyr and pondyr welle alle hys procedynges with us from tyme to tyme. he hath overcumme alle our yllness with hys excedynge goodnesse, so that we ar now moor then compelled to serve hym, seke hys glory, promott hys wurde, yf the devylle of alle devylles be natt in us. we have now the stoppe of vayne trustes ande the stey of vayne expectations; lett us alle pray for hys preservation. and i for my partt wylle wyssh that hys grace allways have, and evyn now from the begynynge, governares, instructores and offyceres of ryght jugmente, ne optimum ingenium non optima educatione depravetur. butt whatt a grett fowlle am i! so, whatt devotione shoyth many tymys butt lytelle dyscretione! ande thus the gode of inglonde be ever with you in alle your procedynges. the 19 of october. yours h. l. b. of wurcestere, now att hartlebury. yf you wolde excytt thys berere to be moore hartye ayen the abuse of ymagry or mor forwarde to promotte the veryte, ytt myght doo goode. natt that ytt came of me butt of your selffe, &c. the quality of mercy... is twice bless'd; it blesseth him that gives, and him that takes 'tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. merchant of venice chapter i the birth of the prince and the pauper in the ancient city of london, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of canty, who did not want him. on the same day another english child was born to a rich family of the name of tudor, who did want him. all england wanted him too. england had so longed for him, and hoped for him, and prayed god for him, that, now that he was really come, the people went nearly mad for joy. mere acquaintances hugged and kissed each other and cried. everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich and poor, feasted and danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they kept this up for days and nights together. by day, london was a sight to see, with gay banners waving from every balcony and housetop, and splendid pageants marching along. by night, it was again a sight to see, with its great bonfires at every corner, and its troops of revelers making merry around them. there was no talk in all england but of the new baby, edward tudor, prince of wales, who lay lapped in silks and satins, unconscious of all this fuss, and not knowing that great lords and ladies were tending him and watching over himand not caring, either. but there was no talk about the other baby, tom canty, lapped in his poor rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had just come to trouble with his presence. chapter ii tom's early life let us skip a number of years. london was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great townfor that day. it had a hundred thousand inhabitantssome think double as many. the streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part where tom canty lived, which was not far from london bridge. the houses were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the third sticking its elbows out beyond the second. the higher the houses grew, the broader they grew. they were skeletons of strong crisscross beams, with solid material between, coated with plaster. the beams were painted red or blue or black, according to the owner's taste, and this gave the houses a very picturesque look. the windows were small, glazed with little diamond-shaped panes, and they opened outward, on hinges, like doors. the house which tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called offal court, out of pudding lane. it was small, decayed, and rickety, but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. canty's tribe occupied a room on the third floor. the mother and father had a sort of bedstead in the corner; but tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters, bet and nan, were not restrictedthey had all the floor to themselves, and might sleep where they chose. there were the remains of a blanket or two, and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw, but these could not rightly be called beds, for they were not organized; they were kicked into a general pile mornings, and selections made from the mass at night, for service. bet and nan were fifteen years oldtwins. they were good-hearted girls, unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant. their mother was like them. but the father and the grandmother were a couple of fiends. they got drunk whenever they could; then they fought each other or anybody else who came in the way; they cursed and swore always, drunk or sober; john canty was a thief, and his mother a beggar. they made beggars of the children, but failed to make thieves of them. among, but not of, the dreadful rabble that inhabited the house, was a good old priest whom the king had turned out of house and home with a pension of a few farthings, and he used to get the children aside and teach them right ways secretly. father andrew also taught tom a little latin, and how to read and write; and would have done the same for the girls, but they were afraid of the jeers of their friends, who could not have endured such a queer accomplishment in them. all offal court was just such another hive as canty's house. drunkenness, riot, and brawling were the order there, every night and nearly all night long. broken heads were as common as hunger in that place. yet little tom was not unhappy. he had a hard time of it, but did not know it. it was the sort of time that all the offal court boys had, therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing. when he came home empty-handed at night, he knew his father would curse him and thrash him first, and that when he was done the awful grandmother would do it all over again and improve on it; and that away in the night his starving mother would slip to him stealthily with any miserable scrap of crust she had been able to save for him by going hungry herself, notwithstanding she was often caught in that sort of treason and soundly beaten for it by her husband. no, tom's life went along well enough, especially in summer. he only begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against mendicancy were stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of his time listening to good father andrew's charming old tales and legends about giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles, and gorgeous kings and princes. his head grew to be full of these wonderful things, and many a night as he lay in the dark on his scant and offensive straw, tired, hungry, and smarting from a thrashing, he unleashed his imagination and soon forgot his aches and pains in delicious picturings to himself of the charmed life of a petted prince in a regal palace. one desire came in time to haunt him day and night; it was to see a real prince, with his own eyes. he spoke of it once to some of his offal court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so unmercifully that he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that. he often read the priest's old books and got him to explain and enlarge upon them. his dreamings and readings worked certain changes in him by and by. his dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament his shabby clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better clad. he went on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it, too; but instead of splashing around in the thames solely for the fun of it, he began to find an added value in it because of the washings and cleansings it afforded. tom could always find something going on around the maypole in cheapside, and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of london had a chance to see a military parade when some famous unfortunate was carried prisoner to the tower, by land or boat. one summer's day he saw poor anne askew and three men burned at the stake in smithfield, and heard an ex-bishop preach a sermon to them which did not interest him. yes, tom's life was varied and pleasant enough, on the whole. by and by tom's reading and dreaming about princely life wrought such a strong effect upon him that he began to act the prince, unconsciously. his speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the vast admiration and amusement of his intimates. but tom's influence among these young people began to grow now, day by day; and in time he came to be looked up to by them with a sort of wondering awe, as a superior being. he seemed to know so much! and he could do such marvellous things! and withal, he was so deep and wise! tom's remarks and tom's performances were reported by the boys to their elders; and these, also, presently began to discuss tom canty, and to regard him as a most gifted and extraordinary creature. full-grown people brought their perplexities to tom for solution, and were often astonished at the wit and wisdom of his decisions. in fact, he was become a hero to all who knew him except his own familythese only saw nothing in him. privately, after a while, tom organized a royal court! he was the prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries, lords and ladies in waiting, and the royal family. daily the mock prince was received with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by tom from his romantic readings; daily the great affairs of the mimic kingdom were discussed in the royal council, and daily his mimic highness issued decrees to his imaginary armies, navies, and viceroyalties. after which he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings, eat his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then stretch himself upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty grandeurs in his dreams. and still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in the flesh, grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at last it absorbed all other desires, and became the one passion of his life. one january day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped despondently up and down the region round about mincing lane and little east cheap, hour after hour, barefooted and cold, looking in at cook-shop windows and longing for the dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed therefor to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is, judging by the smell, they werefor it had never been his good luck to own and eat one. there was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was murky; it was a melancholy day. at night tom reached home so wet and tired and hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother to observe his forlorn condition and not be movedafter their fashion; wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed. for a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting going on in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted away to far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jeweled and gilded princelings who lived in vast palaces, and had servants salaaming before them or flying to execute their orders. and then, as usual, he dreamed that he was a princeling himself. all night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes, drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of the glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a smile, and there a nod of his princely head. and when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effectit had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold. then came bitterness, and heartbreak, and tears. chapter iii tom's meeting with the prince tom got up hungry, and sauntered hungry away, but with his thoughts busy with the shadowy splendors of his night's dreams. he wandered here and there in the city, hardly noticing where he was going, or what was happening around him. people jostled him and some gave him rough speech; but it was all lost on the musing boy. by and by he found himself at temple bar, the farthest from home he had ever traveled in that direction. he stopped and considered a moment, then fell into his imaginings again, and passed on outside the walls of london. the strand had ceased to be a country-road then, and regarded itself as a street, but by a strained construction; for, though there was a tolerably compact row of houses on one side of it, there were only some scattering great buildings on the other, these being palaces of rich nobles, with ample and beautiful grounds stretching to the rivergrounds that are now closely packed with grim acres of brick and stone. tom discovered charing village presently, and rested himself at the beautiful cross built there by a bereaved king of earlier days; then idled down a quiet, lovely road, past the great cardinal's stately palace, toward a far more mighty and majestic palace beyondwestminster. tom stared in glad wonder at the vast pile of masonry, the wide-spreading wings, the frowning bastions and turrets, the huge stone gateways, with its gilded bars and its magnificent array of colossal granite lions, and the other signs and symbols of english royalty. was the desire of his soul to be satisfied at last? here, indeed, was a king's palace. might he not hope to see a prince nowa prince of flesh and blood, if heaven were willing? at each side of the gilded gate stood a living statue, that is to say, an erect and stately and motionless man-at-arms, clad from head to heel in shining steel armor. at a respectful distance were many country-folk, and people from the city, waiting for any chance glimpse of royalty that might offer. splendid carriages, with splendid people in them and splendid servants outside, were arriving and departing by several other noble gateways that pierced the royal inclosure. poor little tom, in his rags, approached, and was moving slowly and timidly past the sentinels, with a beating heart and a rising hope, when all at once he caught sight through the golden bars of a spectacle that almost made him shout for joy. within was a comely boy, tanned and brown with sturdy outdoors sports and exercises, whose clothing was all of lovely silks and satins, shining with jewels; at his hip a little jeweled sword and dagger; dainty buskins on his feet, with red heels; and on his head a jaunty crimson cap, with drooping plumes fastened with a great sparkling gem. several gorgeous gentlemen stood nearhis servants, without a doubt. oh! he was a princea prince, a living prince, a real princewithout the shadow of a question; and the prayer of the pauper boy's heart was answered at last. tom's breath came quick and short with excitement, and his eyes grew big with wonder and delight. everything gave way in his mind instantly to one desire: that was to get close to the prince, and have a good, devouring look at him. before he knew what he was about, he had his face against the gate-bars. the next instant one of the soldiers snatched him rudely away, and sent him spinning among the gaping crowd of country gawks and london idlers. the soldier said: 'mind thy manners, thou young beggar!' the crowd jeered and laughed; but the young prince sprang to the gate with his face flushed, and his eyes flashing with indignation, and cried out: 'how dar'st thou use a poor lad like that! how dar'st thou use the king my father's meanest subject so! open the gates, and let him in!' you should have seen that fickle crowd snatch off their hats then. you should have heard them cheer, and shout, 'long live the prince of wales!' the soldiers presented arms with their halberds, opened the gates, and presented again as the little prince of poverty passed in, in his fluttering rags, to join hands with the prince of limitless plenty. edward tudor said: 'thou lookest tired and hungry; thou'st been treated ill. come with me.' half a dozen attendants sprang forward toi don't know what; interfere, no doubt. but they were waved aside with a right royal gesture, and they stopped stock still where they were like so many statues. edward took tom to a rich apartment in the palace, which he called his cabinet. by his command a repast was brought such as tom had never encountered before except in books. the prince, with princely delicacy and breeding, sent away the servants, so that his humble guest might not be embarrassed by their critical presence; then he sat near by, and asked questions while tom ate. 'what is thy name, lad?' 'tom canty, an it please thee, sir.' ''tis an odd one. where dost live?' 'in the city, please thee, sir. offal court, out of pudding lane.' 'offal court! truly, 'tis another odd one. hast parents?' 'parents have i, sir, and a grandam likewise that is but indifferently precious to me, god forgive me if it be offense to say italso twin sisters, nan and bet.' 'then is thy grandam not overkind to thee, i take it.' 'neither to any other is she, so please your worship. she hath a wicked heart, and worketh evil all her days.' 'doth she mistreat thee?' 'there be times that she stayeth her hand, being asleep or overcome with drink; but when she hath her judgment clear again, she maketh it up to me with goodly beatings.' a fierce look came into the little prince's eyes, and he cried out: 'what! beatings?' 'o, indeed, yes, please you, sir.' 'beatings!and thou so frail and little. hark ye: before the night come, she shall hie her to the tower. the king my father-' 'in sooth, you forget, sir, her low degree. the tower is for the great alone.' 'true, indeed. i had not thought of that. i will consider of her punishment. is thy father kind to thee?' 'not more than gammer canty, sir.' 'fathers be alike, mayhap. mine hath not a doll's temper. he smiteth with a heavy hand, yet spareth me; he spareth me not always with his tongue, though, sooth to say. how doth thy mother use thee?' 'she is good, sir, and giveth me neither sorrow nor pain of any sort. and nan and bet are like to her in this.' 'how old be these?' 'fifteen, an it please you, sir.' 'the lady elizabeth, my sister, is fourteen and the lady jane grey, my cousin, is of mine own age, and comely and gracious withal; but my sister the lady mary, with her gloomy mien andlook you: do thy sisters forbid their servants to smile, lest the sin destroy their souls?' 'they? oh, dost think, sir, that they have servants?' the little prince contemplated the little pauper gravely a moment, then said: 'and prithee, why not? who helpeth them undress at night? who attireth them when they rise?' 'none, sir. wouldst have them take off their garment, and sleep withoutlike the beasts?' 'their garment! have they but one?' 'ah, good your worship, what would they do with more? truly, they have not two bodies each.' 'it is a quaint and marvelous thought! thy pardon, i had not meant to laugh. but thy good nan and thy bet shall have raiment and lackeys enow, and that soon, too: my cofferer shall look to it. no, thank me not; 'tis nothing. thou speakest well; thou hast an easy grace in it. art learned?' 'i know not if i am or not, sir. the good priest that is called father andrew taught me, of his kindness, from his books.' 'know'st thou the latin?' 'but scantily, sir, i doubt.' 'learn it, lad: 'tis hard only at first. the greek is harder; but neither these nor any tongues else, i think, are hard to the lady elizabeth and my cousin. thou shouldst hear those damsels at it! but tell me of thy offal court. hast thou a pleasant life there?' 'in truth, yes, so please you, sir, save when one is hungry. there be punch-and-judy shows, and monkeysoh, such antic creatures! and so bravely dressed!and there be plays wherein they that play do shout and fight till all are slain, and 'tis so fine to see, and costeth but a farthingalbeit 'tis main hard to get the farthing, please your worship.' 'tell me more.' 'we lads of offal court do strive against each other with the cudgel, like to the fashion of the 'prentices, sometimes.' the prince's eyes flashed. said he: 'marry, that would i not mislike. tell me more.' 'we strive in races, sir, to see who of us shall be fleetest.' 'that would i like also. speak on.' 'in summer, sir, we wade and swim in the canals and in the river, and each doth duck his neighbor, and spatter him with water, and dive and shout and tumble and-' ''twould be worth my father's kingdom but to enjoy it once! prithee go on.' 'we dance and sing about the maypole in cheapside; we play in the sand, each covering his neighbor up; and times we make mud pastryoh, the lovely mud, it hath not its like for delightfulness in all the world!we do fairly wallow in the mud, sir, saving your worship's presence.' 'oh, prithee, say no more, 'tis glorious! if that i could but clothe me in raiment like to thine, and strip my feet, and revel in the mud once, just once, with none to rebuke me or forbid, meseemeth i could forego the crown!' 'and if that i could clothe me once, sweet sir, as thou art cladjust once-' 'oho, wouldst like it? then so shall it be. doff thy rags, and don these splendors, lad! it is a brief happiness, but will be not less keen for that. we will have it while we may, and change again before any come to molest.' a few minutes later the little prince of wales was garlanded with tom's fluttering odds and ends, and the little prince of pauperdom was tricked out in the gaudy plumage of royalty. the two went and stood side by side before a great mirror, and lo, a miracle: there did not seem to have been any change made! they stared at each other, then at the glass, then at each other again. at last the puzzled princeling said: 'what dost thou make of this?' 'ah, good your worship, require me not to answer. it is not meet that one of my degree should utter the thing.' 'then will i utter it. thou hast the same hair, the same eyes, the same voice and manner, the same form and stature, the same face and countenance, that i bear. fared we forth naked, there is none could say which was you, and which the prince of wales. and, now that i am clothed as thou wert clothed, it seemeth i should be able the more nearly to feel as thou didst when the brute soldierhark ye, is not this a bruise upon your hand?' 'yes; but it is a slight thing, and your worship knoweth that the poor man-at-arms-' 'peace! it was a shameful thing and a cruel!' cried the little prince, stamping his bare foot. 'if the kingstir not a step till i come again! it is a command!' in a moment he had snatched up and put away an article of national importance that lay upon a table, and was out at the door and flying through the palace grounds in his bannered rags, with a hot face and glowing eyes. as soon as he reached the great gate, he seized the bars, and tried to shake them, shouting: 'open! unbar the gates!' the soldier that had maltreated tom obeyed promptly; and as the prince burst through the portal, half smothered with royal wrath, the soldier fetched him a sounding box on the ear that sent him whirling to the roadway, and said: 'take that, thou beggar's spawn for what thou got'st me from his highness!' the crowd roared with laughter. the prince picked himself out of the mud, and made fiercely at the sentry, shouting: 'i am the prince of wales, my person is sacred; and thou shalt hang for laying thy hand upon me!' the soldier brought his halberd to a present-arms and said mockingly: 'i salute your gracious highness.' then angrily, 'be off, thou crazy rubbish!' here the jeering crowd closed around the poor little prince, and hustled him far down the road, hooting him, and shouting. 'way for his royal highness! way for the prince of wales!' chapter iv the prince's troubles begin after hours of persistent pursuit and persecution, the little prince was at last deserted by the rabble and left to himself. as long as he had been able to rage against the mob, and threaten it royally, and royally utter commands that were good stuff to laugh at, he was very entertaining; but when weariness finally forced him to be silent, he was no longer of use to his tormentors, and they sought amusement elsewhere. he looked about him now, but could not recognize the locality. he was within the city of londonthat was all he knew. he moved on, aimlessly, and in a little while the houses thinned, and the passers-by were infrequent. he bathed his bleeding feet in the brook which flowed then where farringdon street now is; rested a few moments, then passed on, and presently came upon a great space with only a few scattered houses in it, and a prodigious church. he recognized this church. scaffoldings were about, everywhere, and swarms of workmen; for it was undergoing elaborate repairs. the prince took heart at oncehe felt that his troubles were at an end now. he said to himself, 'it is the ancient grey friars' church, which the king my father hath taken from the monks and given for a home forever for poor and forsaken children, and new-named it christ's church. right gladly will they serve the son of him who hath done so generously by themand the more that that son is himself as poor and as forlorn as any that be sheltered here this day, or ever shall be.' he was soon in the midst of a crowd of boys who were running, jumping, playing at ball and leap-frog and otherwise disporting themselves, and right noisily, too. they were all dressed alike, and in the fashion which in that day prevailed among serving-men and 'prentices'*that is to say, each had on the crown of his head a flat black cap about the size of a saucer, which was not useful as a covering, it being of such scanty dimensions, neither was it ornamental; from beneath it the hair fell, unparted, to the middle of the forehead, and was cropped straight around; a clerical band at the neck; a blue gown that fitted closely and hung as low as the knees or lower; full sleeves; a broad red belt; bright yellow stockings, gartered above the knees; low shoes with large metal buckles. it was a sufficiently ugly costume. the boys stopped their play and flocked about the prince, who said with native dignity: 'good lads, say to your master that edward prince of wales desireth speech with him.' a great shout went up at this, and one rude fellow said: 'marry, art thou his grace's messenger, beggar?' the prince's face flushed with anger, and his ready hand flew to his hip, but there was nothing there. there was a storm of laughter, and one boy said: 'didst mark that? he fancied he had a swordbelike he is the prince himself.' this sally brought more laughter. poor edward drew himself up proudly and said: 'i am the prince; and it ill beseemeth you that feed upon the king my father's bounty to use me so.' this was vastly enjoyed, as the laughter testified. the youth who had first spoken shouted to his comrades: 'ho, swine, slaves, pensioners of his grace's princely father, where be your manners? down on your marrow bones, all of ye, and do reverence to his kingly port and royal rags!' with boisterous mirth they dropped upon their knees in a body and did mock homage to their prey. the prince spurned the nearest boy with his foot, and said fiercely: 'take thou that, till the morrow come and i build thee a gibbet!' ah, but this was not a jokethis was going beyond fun. the laughter ceased on the instant and fury took its place. a dozen shouted: 'hale him forth! to the horse-pond, to the horse-pond! where be the dogs? ho, there, lion! ho, fangs!' then followed such a thing as england had never seen beforethe sacred person of the heir to the throne rudely buffeted by plebeian hands, and set upon and torn by dogs. as night drew to a close that day, the prince found himself far down in the close-built portion of the city. his body was bruised, his hands were bleeding, and his rags were all besmirched with mud. he wandered on and on, and grew more and more bewildered, and so tired and faint he could hardly drag one foot after the other. he had ceased to ask questions of any one, since they brought him only insult instead of information. he kept muttering to himself, 'offal courtthat is the name; if i can but find it before my strength is wholly spent and i drop, then am i savedfor his people will take me to the palace and prove that i am none of theirs, but the true prince, and i shall have mine own again.' and now and then his mind reverted to his treatment by those rude christ's hospital boys, and he said, 'when i am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart. i will keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day's lesson be not lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.'*(2) the lights began to twinkle, it came on to rain, the wind rose, and a raw and gusty night set in. the houseless prince, the homeless heir to the throne of england, still moved on, drifting deeper into the maze of squalid alleys where the swarming hives of poverty and misery were massed together. suddenly a great drunken ruffian collared him and said: 'out to this time of night again, and hast not brought a farthing home, i warrant me! if it be so, an i do not break all the bones in thy lean body, then am i not john canty, but some other.' the prince twisted himself loose, unconsciously brushed his profaned shoulder, and eagerly said: 'oh, art his father, truly? sweet heaven grant it be sothen wilt thou fetch him away and restore me!' 'his father? i know not what thou mean'st; i but know i am thy father, as thou shalt soon have cause to-' 'oh, jest not, palter not, delay not!i am worn, i am wounded, i can bear no more. take me to the king my father, and he will make thee rich beyond thy wildest dreams. believe me, man, believe me! i speak no lie, but only the truth!put forth thy hand and save me! i am indeed the prince of wales!' the man stared down, stupefied, upon the lad, then shook his head and muttered: 'gone stark mad as any tom o' bedlam!'then collared him once more, and said with a coarse laugh and an oath, 'but mad or no mad, i and thy gammer canty will soon find where the soft places in thy bones lie, or i'm no true man!' with this he dragged the frantic and struggling prince away, and disappeared up a front court followed by a delighted and noisy swarm of human vermin. chapter v tom as a patrician tom canty, left alone in the prince's cabinet, made good use of his opportunity. he turned himself this way and that before the great mirror, admiring his finery; then walked away, imitating the prince's high-bred carriage, and still observing results in the glass. next he drew the beautiful sword, and bowed, kissing the blade, and laying it across his breast, as he had seen a noble knight do, by way of salute to the lieutenant of the tower, five or six weeks before, when delivering the great lords of norfolk and surrey into his hands for captivity. tom played with the jeweled dagger that hung upon his thigh; he examined the costly and exquisite ornaments of the room; he tried each of the sumptuous chairs, and thought how proud he would be if the offal court herd could only peep in and see him in his grandeur. he wondered if they would believe the marvelous tale he should tell when he got home, or if they would shake their heads, and say his overtaxed imagination had at last upset his reason. at the end of half an hour it suddenly occurred to him that the prince was gone a long time; then right away he began to feel lonely; very soon he fell to listening and longing, and ceased to toy with the pretty things about him; he grew uneasy, then restless, then distressed. suppose some one should come, and catch him in the prince's clothes, and the prince not there to explain. might they not hang him at once, and inquire into his case afterward? he had heard that the great were prompt about small matters. his fears rose higher and higher; and trembling he softly opened the door to the ante-chamber, resolved to fly and seek the prince, and through him, protection and release. six gorgeous gentlemen-servants and two young pages of high degree, clothed like butterflies, sprung to their feet, and bowed low before him. he stepped quickly back, and shut the door. he said: 'oh, they mock at me! they will go and tell. oh! why came i here to cast away my life?' he walked up and down the floor, filled with nameless fears, listening, starting at every trifling sound. presently the door swung open, and a silken page said: 'the lady jane grey.' the door closed, and a sweet young girl, richly clad, bounded toward him. but she stopped suddenly, and said in a distressed voice: 'oh, what aileth thee, my lord?' tom's breath was nearly failing him; but he made shift to stammer out: 'ah, be merciful, thou! in sooth i am no lord, but only poor tom canty of offal court in the city. prithee let me see the prince, and he will of his grace restore to me my rags, and let me hence unhurt. oh, be thou merciful, and save me!' by this time the boy was on his knees, and supplicating with his eyes and uplifted hands as well as with his tongue. the young girl seemed horror-stricken. she cried out: 'oh, my lord, on thy knees? and to me!' then she fled away in fright; and tom, smitten with despair, sank down, murmuring: 'there is no help, there is no hope. now will they come and take me.' whilst he lay there benumbed with terror, dreadful tidings were speeding through the palace. the whisper, for it was whispered always, flew from menial to menial, from lord to lady, down all the long corridors, from story to story, from saloon to saloon, 'the prince hath gone mad, the prince hath gone mad!' soon every saloon, every marble hall, had its groups of glittering lords and ladies, and other groups of dazzling lesser folk, talking earnestly together in whispers, and every face had in it dismay. presently a splendid official came marching by these groups, making solemn proclamation: 'in the name of the king let none list to this false and foolish matter, upon pain of death, nor discuss the same, nor carry it abroad. in the name of the king!' the whisperings ceased as suddenly as if the whisperers had been stricken dumb. soon there was a general buzz along the corridors, of 'the prince! see, the prince comes!' poor tom came slowly walking past the low-bowing groups, trying to bow in return, and meekly gazing upon his strange surroundings with bewildered and pathetic eyes. great nobles walked upon each side of him, making him lean upon them, and so steady his steps. behind him followed the court physicians and some servants. presently tom found himself in a noble apartment of the palace, and heard the door close behind him. around him stood those who had come with him. before him, at a little distance, reclined a very large and very fat man, with a wide, pulpy face, and a stern expression. his large head was very gray; and his whiskers, which he wore only around his face, like a frame, were gray also. his clothing was of rich stuff, but old, and slightly frayed in places. one of his swollen legs had a pillow under it, and was wrapped in bandages. there was silence now; and there was no head there but was bent in reverence, except this man's. this stern-countenanced invalid was the dread henry viii. he saidand his face grew gentle as he began to speak: 'how now, my lord edward, my prince? hast been minded to cozen me, the good king thy father, who loveth thee, and kindly useth thee, with a sorry jest?' poor tom was listening, as well as his dazed faculties would let him, to the beginning of this speech; but when the words 'me the good king' fell upon his ear, his face blanched, and he dropped as instantly upon his knees as if a shot had brought him there. lifting up his hands, he exclaimed: 'thou the king? then am i undone indeed!' this speech seemed to stun the king. his eyes wandered from face to face aimlessly, then rested, bewildered, upon the boy before him. then he said in a tone of deep disappointment: 'alack, i had believed the rumor disproportioned to the truth; but i fear me 'tis not so.' he breathed a heavy sigh, and said in a gentle voice, 'come to thy father, child; thou art not well.' tom was assisted to his feet, and approached the majesty of england, humble and trembling. the king took the frightened face between his hands, and gazed earnestly and lovingly into it awhile, as if seeking some grateful sign of returning reason there, then pressed the curly head against his breast, and patted it tenderly. presently he said: 'dost thou know thy father, child? break not mine old heart; say thou know'st me. thou dost know me, dost thou not?' 'yea; thou art my dread lord the king, whom god preserve.' 'true, truethat is wellbe comforted, tremble not so; there is none here who would hurt thee; there is none here but loves thee. thou art better now; thy ill dream passethis't not so? and thou knowest thyself now alsois't not so? thou wilt not miscall thyself again, as they say thou didst a little while agone?' 'i pray thee of thy grace believe me, i did but speak the truth, most dread lord; for i am the meanest among thy subjects, being a pauper born, and 'tis by a sore mischance and accident i am here, albeit i was therein nothing blameful. i am but young to die, and thou canst save me with one little word. oh, speak it, sir!' 'die? talk not so, sweet princepeace, peace, to thy troubled heartthou shalt not die!' tom dropped upon his knees with a glad cry: 'god requite thy mercy, oh my king, and save thee long to bless thy land!' then springing up, he turned a joyful face toward the two lords in waiting, and exclaimed, 'thou heard'st it! i am not to die: the king hath said it!' there was no movement, save that all bowed with grave respect; but no one spoke. he hesitated, a little confused, then turned timidly toward the king, saying, 'i may go now?' 'go? surely, if thou desirest. but why not tarry yet a little? whither wouldst go?' tom dropped his eyes, and answered humbly: 'peradventure i mistook; but i did think me free, and so was i moved to seek again the kennel where i was born and bred to misery, yet which harboreth my mother and my sisters, and so is home to me; whereas these pomps and splendors whereunto i am not usedoh, please you, sir, to let me go!' the king was silent and thoughtful awhile, and his face betrayed a growing distress and uneasiness. presently he said, with something of hope in his voice: 'perchance he is but mad upon this one strain and hath his wits unmarred as toucheth other matter. god send it may be so! we will make trial.' then he asked tom a question in latin, and tom answered him lamely in the same tongue. the king was delighted, and showed it. the lords and doctors manifested their gratification also. the king said: ''twas not according to his schooling and ability, but sheweth that his mind is but diseased, not stricken fatally. how say you, sir?' the physician addressed bowed low, and replied: 'it jumpeth with mine own conviction, sire, that thou hast divined aright.' the king looked pleased with this encouragement, coming as it did from so excellent authority, and continued with good heart: 'now mark ye all: we will try him further.' he put a question to tom in french. tom stood silent a moment, embarrassed by having so many eyes centered upon him, then said diffidently: 'i have no knowledge of this tongue, so please your majesty.' the king fell back upon his couch. the attendants flew to his assistance; but he put them aside, and said: 'trouble me notit is nothing but a scurvy faintness. raise me! there, 'tis sufficient. come hither, child; there, rest thy poor troubled head upon thy father's heart, and be at peace. thou'lt soon be well; 'tis but a passing fantasy. fear thou not; thou'lt soon be well.' then he turned toward the company; his gentle manner changed, and baleful lightnings began to play from his eyes. he said: 'list ye all! this my son is mad; but it is not permanent. overstudy hath done this, and somewhat too much of confinement. away with his books and teachers! see ye to it. pleasure him with sports, beguile him in wholesome ways, so that his health come again.' he raised himself higher still and went on with energy. 'he is mad; but he is my son, and england's heir; and, mad or sane, still shall he reign! and hear ye further, and proclaim it; whoso speaketh of this his distemper worketh against the peace and order of these realms, and shall to the gallows!... give me to drinki burn: this sorrow sappeth my strength.... there, take away the cup.... support me. there, that is well. mad, is he? were he a thousand times mad, yet is he prince of wales, and i the king will confirm it. this very morrow shall he be installed in his princely dignity in due and ancient form. take instant order for it, my lord hertford.' one of the nobles knelt at the royal couch, and said: 'the king's majesty knoweth that the hereditary great marshal of england lieth attainted in the tower. it were not meet that one attainted-' 'peace! insult not mine ears with his hated name. is this man to live forever? am i to be balked of my will? is the prince to tarry uninstalled, because, forsooth, the realm lacketh an earl marshal free of treasonable taint to invest him with his honors? no, by the splendor of god! warn my parliament to bring me norfolk's doom before the sun rise again, else shall they answer for it grievously!*(3) lord hertford said: 'the king's will is law'; and, rising, returned to his former place. gradually the wrath faded out of the old king's face, and he said: 'kiss me, my prince. there... what fearest thou? am i not thy loving father?' 'thou art good to me that am unworthy, o mighty and gracious lord; that in truth i know. butbutit grieveth me to think of him that is to die, and-' 'ah, 'tis like thee, 'tis like thee! i know thy heart is still the same, even though thy mind hath suffered hurt, for thou wert ever of a gentle spirit. but this duke standeth between thee and thine honors: i will have another in his stead that shall bring no taint to his great office. comfort thee, my prince: trouble not thy poor head with this matter.' 'but is it not i that speed him hence, my liege? how long might he not live, but for me?' 'take no thought of him, my prince: he is not worthy. kiss me once again, and go to thy trifles and amusements; for my malady distresseth me. i am aweary, and would rest. go with thine uncle hertford and thy people, and come again when my body is refreshed.' tom, heavy-hearted, was conducted from the presence, for this last sentence was a death-blow to the hope he had cherished that now he would be set free. once more he heard the buzz of low voices exclaiming, 'the prince, the prince comes!' his spirits sank lower and lower as he moved between the glittering files of bowing courtiers; for he recognized that he was indeed a captive now, and might remain forever shut up in this gilded cage, a forlorn and friendless prince, except god in his mercy take pity on him and set him free. and, turn where he would, he seemed to see floating in the air the severed head and the remembered face of the great duke of norfolk, the eyes fixed on him reproachfully. his old dreams had been so pleasant; but this reality was so dreary! chapter vi tom recieves instructions tom was conducted to the principal apartment of a noble suite, and made to sit downa thing which he was loath to do, since there were elderly men and men of high degree about him. he begged them to be seated, also, but they only bowed their thanks or murmured them, and remained standing. he would have insisted, but his 'uncle,' the earl of hertford, whispered in his ear: 'prithee, insist not, my lord; it is not meet that they sit in thy presence.' the lord st. john was announced, and, after making obeisance to tom, he said: 'i come upon the king's errand, concerning a matter which requireth privacy. will it please your royal highness to dismiss all that attend you here, save my lord the earl of hertford?' observing that tom did not seem to know how to proceed, hertford whispered him to make a sign with his hand and not trouble himself to speak unless he chose. when the waiting gentlemen had retired, lord st. john said: 'his majesty commandeth, that for due and weighty reasons of state, the prince's grace shall hide his infirmity in all ways that be within his power, till it be passed and he be as he was before. to wit, that he shall deny to none that he is the true prince, and heir to england's greatness; that he shall uphold his princely dignity, and shall receive, without word or sign of protest, that reverence and observance which unto it do appertain of right and ancient usage; that he shall cease to speak to any of that lowly birth and life his malady hath conjured out of the unwholesome imaginings of o'erwrought fancy; that he shall strive with diligence to bring unto his memory again those faces which he was wont to knowand where he faileth he shall hold his peace, neither betraying by semblance of surprise, or other sign, that he hath forgot; that upon occasions of state, whensoever any matter shall perplex him as to the thing he should do or the utterance he should make, he shall show naught of unrest to the curious that look on, but take advice in that matter of the lord hertford, or my humble self, which are commanded of the king to be upon this service and close at call, till this commandment be dissolved. thus saith the king's majesty, who sendeth greeting to your royal highness and prayeth that god will of his mercy quickly heal you and have you now and ever in his holy keeping.' the lord st. john made reverence and stood aside. tom replied, resignedly: 'the king hath said it. none may palter with the king's command, or fit it to his ease, where it doth chafe, with deft evasions. the king shall be obeyed.' lord hertford said: 'touching the king's majesty's ordainment concerning books and such like serious matters, it may peradventure please your highness to ease your time with lightsome entertainment, lest you go wearied to the banquet and suffer harm thereby.' tom's face showed inquiring surprise; and a blush followed when he saw lord st. john's eyes bent sorrowfully upon him. his lordship said: 'thy memory still wrongeth thee, and thou hast shown surprisebut suffer it not to trouble thee, for 'tis a matter that will not bide, but depart with thy mending malady. my lord of hertford speaketh of the city's banquet which the king's majesty did promise two months flown, your highness should attend. thou recallest it now?' 'it grieves me to confess it had indeed escaped me,' said tom, in a hesitating voice; and blushed again. at that moment the lady elizabeth and the lady jane grey were announced. the two lords exchanged significant glances, and hertford stepped quickly toward the door. as the young girls passed him, he said in a low voice: 'i pray ye, ladies, seem not to observe his humors, nor show surprise when his memory doth lapseit will grieve you to note how it doth stick at every trifle.' meanwhile lord st. john was saying in tom's ear: 'please you, sir, keep diligently in mind his majesty's desire. remember all thou canstseem to remember all else. let them not perceive that thou art much changed from thy wont, for thou knowest how tenderly thy old playfellows bear thee in their hearts and how 'twould grieve them. art willing, sir, that i remain?and thine uncle?' tom signified assent with a gesture and a murmured word, for he was already learning, and in his simple heart was resolved to acquit himself as best he might according to the king's command. in spite of every precaution, the conversation among the young people became a little embarrassing at times. more than once, in truth, tom was near to breaking down and confessing himself unequal to his tremendous part; but the tact of the princess elizabeth saved him, or a word from one or the other of the vigilant lords, thrown in apparently by chance, had the same happy effect. once the little lady jane turned to tom and dismayed him with this question: 'hast paid thy duty to the queen's majesty today, my lord?' tom hesitated, looked distressed, and was about to stammer out something at hazard when lord st. john took the word and answered for him with the easy grace of a courtier accustomed to encounter delicate difficulties and to be ready for them: 'he hath indeed, madam, and she did greatly hearten him, as touching his majesty's condition; is it not so, your highness?' tom mumbled something that stood for assent, but felt that he was getting upon dangerous ground. somewhat later it was mentioned that tom was to study no more at present, whereupon her little ladyship exclaimed: ''tis a pity, 'tis such a pity! thou were proceeding bravely. but bide thy time in patience; it will not be for long. thou'lt yet be graced with learning like thy father, and make thy tongue master of as many languages as his, good my prince.' 'my father!' cried tom, off his guard for the moment. 'i trow he cannot speak his own so that any but the swine that wallow in the sties may tell his meaning; and as for learning of any sort soever-' he looked up and encountered a solemn warning in my lord st. john's eyes. he stopped, blushed, then continued low and sadly: 'ah, my malady persecuteth me again, and my mind wandereth. i meant the king's grace no irreverence.' 'we know it, sir,' said the princess elizabeth, taking her 'brother's' hand between her two palms, respectfully but caressingly; 'trouble not thyself as to that. the fault is none of thine, but thy distemper's.' 'thou'rt a gentle comforter, sweet lady,' said tom, gratefully, 'and my heart moveth me to thank thee for't, an i may be so bold.' once the giddy little lady jane fired a simple greek phrase at tom. the princess elizabeth's quick eye saw by the serene blankness of the target's front that the shaft was overshot; so she tranquilly delivered a return volley of sounding greek on tom's behalf, and then straightway changed the talk to other matters. time wore on pleasantly, and likewise smoothly, on the whole. snags and sand-bars grew less and less frequent, and tom grew more and more at his ease, seeing that all were so lovingly bent upon helping him and overlooking his mistakes. when it came out that the little ladies were to accompany him to the lord mayor's banquet in the evening, his heart gave a bound of relief and delight, for he felt that he should not be friendless now, among that multitude of strangers, whereas, an hour earlier, the idea of their going with him would have been an insupportable terror to him. tom's guardian angels, the two lords, had had less comfort in the interview than the other parties to it. they felt much as if they were piloting a great ship through a dangerous channel; they were on the alert constantly, and found their office no child's play. wherefore, at last, when the ladies' visit was drawing to a close and the lord guilford dudley was announced, they not only felt that their charge had been sufficiently taxed for the present, but also that they themselves were not in the best condition to take their ship back and make their anxious voyage all over again. so they respectfully advised tom to excuse himself, which he was very glad to do, although a slight shade of disappointment might have been observed upon my lady jane's face when she heard the splendid stripling denied admittance. there was a pause now, a sort of waiting silence which tom could not understand. he glanced at lord hertford, who gave him a signbut he failed to understand that also. the ready elizabeth came to the rescue with her usual easy grace. she made reverence and said: 'have we leave of the prince's grace my brother to go?' tom said: 'indeed, your ladyships can have whatsoever of me they will, for the asking; yet would i rather give them any other thing that in my poor power lieth, than leave to take the light and blessing of their presence hence. give ye good den, and god be with ye!' then he smiled inwardly at the thought, ''tis not for naught i have dwelt but among princes in my reading, and taught my tongue some slight trick of their broidered and gracious speech withal!' when the illustrious maidens were gone, tom turned wearily to his keepers and said: 'may it please your lordships to grant me leave to go into some corner and rest me!' lord hertford said: 'so please your highness, it is for you to command, it is for us to obey. that thou shouldst rest, is indeed a needful thing, since thou must journey to the city presently.' he touched a bell and a page appeared, who was ordered to desire the presence of sir william herbert. this gentleman came straightway, and conducted tom to an inner apartment. tom's first movement there was to reach for a cup of water; but a silk-and-velvet servitor seized it, dropped upon one knee, and offered it to him on a golden salver. next, the tired captive sat down and was going to take off his buskins, timidly asking leave with his eye, but another silk-and-velvet discomforter went down upon his knees and took the office from him. he made two or three further efforts to help himself, but being promptly forestalled each time, he finally gave up, with a sigh of resignation and a murmured 'beshrew me, but i marvel they do not require to breathe for me also!' slippered, and wrapped in a sumptuous robe, he laid himself down at last to rest, but not to sleep, for his head was too full of thoughts and the room too full of people. he could not dismiss the former, so they stayed; he did not know enough to dismiss the latter, so they stayed also, to his vast regretand theirs. tom's departure had left his two noble guardians alone. they mused awhile, with much headshaking and walking the floor, then lord st. john said: 'plainly, what dost thou think?' 'plainly, then, this. the king is near his end, my nephew is mad, mad will mount the throne, and mad remain. god protect england, since she will need it!' 'verily it promiseth so, indeed. but... have you no misgivings as to... as to...' the speaker hesitated, and finally stopped. he evidently felt that he was upon delicate ground. lord hertford stopped before him, looked into his face with a clear, frank eye, and said: 'speak onthere is none to hear but me. misgivings as to what?' 'i am loath to word the thing that is in my mind, and thou so near to him in blood, my lord. but craving pardon if i do offend, seemeth it not strange that madness could so change his port and manner!not but that his port and speech are princely still, but that they differ in one unweighty trifle or another, from what his custom was aforetime. seemeth it not strange that madness should filch from his memory his father's very lineaments; the customs and observances that are his due from such as be about him; and, leaving him his latin, strip him of his greek and french? my lord, be not offended, but ease my mind of its disquiet and receive my grateful thanks. it haunteth me, his saying he was not the prince, and so-' 'peace, my lord, thou utterest treason! hast forgot the king's command? remember i am party to thy crime, if i but listen.' st. john paled, and hastened to say: 'i was in fault, i do confess it. betray me not, grant me this grace out of thy courtesy, and i will neither think nor speak of this thing more. deal not hardly with me, sir, else am i ruined.' 'i am content, my lord. so thou offend not again, here or in the ears of others, it shall be as though thou hadst not spoken. but thou needst not have misgivings. he is my sister's son; are not his voice, his face, his form, familiar to me from his cradle? madness can do all the odd conflicting things thou seest in him, and more. dost not recall how that the old baron marley, being mad, forgot the favor of his own countenance that he had known for sixty years, and held it was another's; nay, even claimed he was the son of mary magdalene, and that his head was made of spanish glass; and sooth to say, he suffered none to touch it, lest by mischance some heedless hand might shiver it. give thy misgivings easement, good my lord. this is the very prince, i know him welland soon will be thy king; it may advantage thee to bear this in mind and more dwell upon it than the other.' after some further talk, in which the lord st. john covered up his mistake as well as he could by repeated protests that his faith was thoroughly grounded now, and could not be assailed by doubts again, the lord hertford relieved his fellow-keeper, and sat down to keep watch and ward alone. he was soon deep in meditation. and evidently the longer he thought, the more he was bothered. by and by he began to pace the floor and mutter. 'tush, he must be the prince! will any he in all the land maintain there can be two, not of one blood and birth, so marvelously twinned? and even were it so, 'twere yet a stranger miracle that chance should cast the one into the other's place. nay, 'tis folly, folly, folly!' presently he said: 'now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you that would be natural; that would be reasonable. but lived ever an impostor yet, who, being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by all, denied his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation? no! by the soul of st. swithin, no! this is the true prince, gone mad!' chapter vii tom's first royal dinner somewhat after one in the afternoon, tom resignedly underwent the ordeal of being dressed for dinner. he found himself as finely clothed as before, but everything different, everything changed, from his ruff to his stockings. he was presently conducted with much state to a spacious and ornate apartment, where a table was already set for one. its furniture was all of massy gold, and beautified with designs which well-nigh made it priceless, since they were the work of benvenuto. the room was half filled with noble servitors. a chaplain said grace, and tom was about to fall to, for hunger had long been constitutional with him, but was interrupted by my lord the earl of berkeley, who fastened a napkin about his neck; for the great post of diaperers to the prince of wales was hereditary in this nobleman's family. tom's cupbearer was present, and forestalled all his attempts to help himself to wine. the taster to his highness the prince of wales was there also, prepared to taste any suspicious dish upon requirement, and run the risk of being poisoned. he was only an ornamental appendage at this time, and was seldom called to exercise his function; but there had been times, not many generations past, when the office of taster had its perils, and was not a grandeur to be desired. why they did not use a dog or a plumber seems strange; but all the ways of royalty are strange. my lord d'arcy, first groom of the chamber, was there, to do goodness knows what; but there he waslet that suffice. the lord chief butler was there, and stood behind tom's chair overseeing the solemnities, under command of the lord great steward and the lord head cook, who stood near. tom had three hundred and eighty-four servants besides these; but they were not all in that room, of course, nor the quarter of them; neither was tom aware yet that they existed. all those that were present had been well drilled within the hour to remember that the prince was temporarily out of his head, and to be careful to show no surprise at his vagaries. these 'vagaries' were soon on exhibition before them; but they only moved their compassion and their sorrow, not their mirth. it was a heavy affliction to them to see the beloved prince so stricken. poor tom ate with his fingers mainly; but no one smiled at it, or even seemed to observe it. he inspected his napkin curiously and with deep interest, for it was of a very dainty and beautiful fabric, then said with simplicity: 'prithee, take it away, lest in mine unheedfulness it be soiled.' the hereditary diaperer took it away with reverent manner, and without word or protest of any sort. tom examined the turnips and the lettuce with interest, and asked what they were, and if they were to be eaten; for it was only recently that men had begun to raise these things in england in place of importing them as luxuries from holland.*(4) his question was answered with grave respect, and no surprise manifested. when he had finished his dessert, he filled his pockets with nuts; but nobody appeared to be aware of it, or disturbed by it. but the next moment he was himself disturbed by it, and showed discomposure; for this was the only service he had been permitted to do with his own hands during the meal, and he did not doubt that he had done a most improper and unprincely thing. at that moment the muscles of his nose began to twitch, and the end of that organ to lift and wrinkle. this continued, and tom began to evince a growing distress. he looked appealingly, first at one and then another of the lords about him, and tears came into his eyes. they sprang forward with dismay in their faces, and begged to know his trouble. tom said with genuine anguish: 'i crave your indulgence; my nose itcheth cruelly. what is the custom and usage in this emergence? prithee speed, for 'tis but a little time that i can bear it.' none smiled; but all were sore perplexed, and looked one to the other in deep tribulation for counsel. but, behold, here was a dead wall, and nothing in english history to tell how to get over it. the master of ceremonies was not present; there was no one who felt safe to venture upon this uncharted sea, or risk the attempt to solve this solemn problem. alas! there was no hereditary scratcher. meantime the tears had overflowed their banks, and begun to trickle down tom's cheeks. his twitching nose was pleading more urgently than ever for relief. at last nature broke down the barriers of etiquette; tom lifted up an inward prayer for pardon if he was doing wrong, and brought relief to the burdened hearts of his court by scratching his nose himself. his meal being ended, a lord came and held before him a broad, shallow, golden dish with fragrant rose-water in it, to cleanse his mouth and fingers with; and my lord the hereditary diaperer stood by with a napkin for his use. tom gazed at the dish a puzzled moment or two, then raised it to his lips, and gravely took a draught. then he returned it to the waiting lord, and said: 'nay, it likes me not, my lord; it hath a pretty flavor, but it wanteth strength.' this new eccentricity of the prince's ruined mind made all the hearts about him ache; but the sad sight moved none to merriment. tom's next unconscious blunder was to get up and leave the table just when the chaplain had taken his stand behind his chair and with uplifted hands and closed uplifted eyes, was in the act of beginning the blessing. still nobody seemed to perceive that the prince had done a thing unusual. by his own request, our small friend was now conducted to his private cabinet, and left there alone to his own devices. hanging upon hooks in the oaken wainscoting were the several pieces of a suit of shining steel armor, covered all over with beautiful designs exquisitely inlaid in gold. this martial panoply belonged to the true princea recent present from madam parr, the queen. tom put on the greaves, the gauntlets, the plumed helmet, and such other pieces as he could don without assistance, and for a while was minded to call for help and complete the matter, but bethought him of the nuts he had brought away from dinner, and the joy it would be to eat them with no crowd to eye him, and no grand hereditaries to pester him with undesired services; so he restored the pretty things to their several places, and soon was cracking nuts, and feeling almost naturally happy for the first time since god for his sins had made him a prince. when the nuts were all gone, he stumbled upon some inviting books in a closet, among them one about the etiquette of the english court. this was a prize. he lay down upon a sumptuous divan, and proceeded to instruct himself with honest zeal. let us leave him there for the present. chapter viii the question of the seal about five o'clock henry viii awoke out of an unrefreshing nap, and muttered to himself, 'troublous dreams, troublous dreams! mine end is now at hand; so say these warnings, and my failing pulses do confirm it.' presently a wicked light flamed up in his eye, and he muttered, 'yet will not i die till he go before.' his attendants perceiving that he was awake, one of them asked his pleasure concerning the lord chancellor, who was waiting without. 'admit him, admit him!' exclaimed the king eagerly. the lord chancellor entered, and knelt by the king's couch, saying: 'i have given order, and, according to the king's command, the peers of the realm, in their robes, do now stand at the bar of the house, where, having confirmed the duke of norfolk's doom, they humbly wait his majesty's further pleasure in the matter.' the king's face lit up with a fierce joy. said he: 'lift me up! in mine own person will i go before my parliament, and with mine own hand will i seal the warrant that rids me of-' his voice failed; an ashen pallor swept the flush from his cheeks; and the attendants eased him back upon his pillows, and hurriedly assisted him with restoratives. presently he said sorrowfully: 'alack, how have i longed for this sweet hour! and lo, too late it cometh, and i am robbed of this so coveted chance. but speed ye, speed ye! let others do this happy office sith 'tis denied to me. i put my great seal in commission: choose thou the lords that shall compose it, and get ye to your work. speed ye, man! before the sun shall rise and set again, bring me his head that i may see it.' 'according to the king's command, so shall it be. will't please your majesty to order that the seal be now restored to me, so that i may forth upon the business?' 'the seal! who keepeth the seal but thou?' 'please your majesty, you did take it from me two days since, saying it should no more do its office till your own royal hand should use it upon the duke of norfolk's warrant.' 'why, so in sooth i did; i do remember it.... what did i with it!... i am very feeble.... so oft these days doth my memory play the traitor with me.... 'tis strange, strange-' the king dropped into inarticulate mumblings, shaking his gray head weakly from time to time, and gropingly trying to recollect what he had done with the seal. at last my lord hertford ventured to kneel and offer information 'sire, if that i may be so bold, here be several that do remember with me how that you gave the great seal into the hands of his highness the prince of wales to keep against the day that-' 'true, most true!' interrupted the king. 'fetch it! go: time flieth!' lord hertford flew to tom, but returned to the king before very long, troubled and empty-handed. he delivered himself to this effect: 'it grieveth me, my lord the king, to bear so heavy and unwelcome tidings; but it is the will of god that the prince's affliction abideth still, and he cannot recall to mind that he received the seal. so came i quickly to report, thinking it were waste of precious time, and little worth withal, that any should attempt to search the long array of chambers and saloons that belong unto his royal high-' a groan from the king interrupted my lord at this point. after a while his majesty said, with a deep sadness in his tone: 'trouble him no more, poor child. the hand of god lieth heavy upon him, and my heart goeth out in loving compassion for him, and sorrow that i may not bear his burden on mine own old trouble-weighted shoulders, and so bring him peace.' he closed his eyes, fell to mumbling, and presently was silent. after a time he opened his eyes again, and gazed vacantly around until his glance rested upon the kneeling lord chancellor. instantly his face flushed with wrath: 'what, thou here yet! by the glory of god, an thou gettest not about that traitor's business, thy miter shall have holiday the morrow for lack of a head to grace withal!' the trembling chancellor answered: 'good your majesty, i cry you mercy! i but waited for the seal.' 'man, hast lost thy wits? the small seal which aforetime i was wont to take with me abroad lieth in my treasury. and, since the great seal hath flown away, shall not it suffice? hast lost thy wits? begone! and hark yecome no more till thou do bring his head.' the poor chancellor was not long in removing himself from this dangerous vicinity; nor did the commission waste time in giving the royal assent to the work of the slavish parliament, and appointing the morrow for the beheading of the premier peer of england, the luckless duke of norfolk.*(5) chapter ix the river pageant at nine in the evening the whole vast river-front of the palace was blazing with light. the river itself, as far as the eye could reach cityward, was so thickly covered with watermen's boats and with pleasure barges, all fringed with colored lanterns, and gently agitated by the waves, that it resembled a glowing and limitless garden of flowers stirred to soft motion by summer winds. the grand terrace of stone steps leading down to the water, spacious enough to mass the army of a german principality upon, was a picture to see, with its ranks of royal halberdiers in polished armor, and its troops of brilliantly costumed servitors flitting up and down, and to and fro, in the hurry of preparation. presently a command was given, and immediately all living creatures vanished from the steps. now the air was heavy with the hush of suspense and expectancy. as far as one's vision could carry, he might see the myriads of people in the boats rise up, and shade their eyes from the glare of lanterns and torches, and gaze toward the palace. a file of forty or fifty state barges drew up to the steps. they were richly gilt, and their lofty prows and sterns were elaborately carved. some of them were decorated with banners and streamers; some with cloth-of-gold and arras embroidered with coats of arms; others with silken flags that had numberless little silver bells fastened to them, which shook out tiny showers of joyous music whenever the breezes fluttered them; others of yet higher pretensions, since they belonged to nobles in the prince's immediate service, had their sides picturesquely fenced with shields gorgeously emblazoned with armorial bearings. each state barge was towed by a tender. besides the rowers, these tenders carried each a number of men-at-arms in glossy helmet and breastplate, and a company of musicians. the advance-guard of the expected procession now appeared in the great gateway, a troop of halberdiers. 'they were dressed in striped hose of black and tawny, velvet caps graced at the sides with silver roses, and doublets of murrey and blue cloth, embroidered on the front and back with the three feathers, the prince's blazon, woven in gold. their halberd staves were covered with crimson velvet, fastened with gilt nails, and ornamented with gold tassels. filing off on the right and left, they formed two long lines, extending from the gateway of the palace to the water's edge. a thick, rayed cloth or carpet was then unfolded, and laid down between them by attendants in the gold-and-crimson liveries of the prince. this done, a flourish of trumpets resounded from within. a lively prelude arose from the musicians on the water; and two ushers with white wands marched with a slow and stately pace from the portal. they were followed by an officer bearing the civic mace, after whom came another carrying the city's sword; then several sergeants of the city guard, in their full accoutrements, and with badges on their sleeves; then the garter king-at-arms, in his tabard; then several knights of the bath, each with a white lace on his sleeve; then their esquires; then the judges, in their robes of scarlet and coifs; then the lord high chancellor of england, in a robe of scarlet, open before, and purfled with minever; then a deputation of aldermen, in their scarlet cloaks; and then the heads of the different civic companies, in their robes of state. now came twelve french gentlemen, in splendid habiliments, consisting of pourpoints of white damask barred with gold, short mantles of crimson velvet lined with violet taffeta, and carnation-colored hauts-de-chausses, and took their way down the steps. they were of the suite of the french ambassador, and were followed by twelve cavaliers of the suite of the spanish ambassador, clothed in black velvet, unrelieved by any ornament. following these came several great english nobles with their attendants.' there was a flourish of trumpets within; and the prince's uncle, the future great duke of somerset, emerged from the gateway, arrayed in a 'doublet of black cloth-of-gold, and a cloak of crimson satin flowered with gold, and ribanded with nets of silver.' he turned, doffed his plumed cap, bent his body in a low reverence, and began to step backward, bowing at each step. a prolonged trumpet-blast followed, and a proclamation, 'way for the high and mighty, the lord edward, prince of wales!' high aloft on the palace walls a long line of red tongues of flame leaped forth with a thunder-crash; the massed world on the river burst into a mighty roar of welcome; and tom canty, the cause and hero of it all, stepped into view, and slightly bowed his princely head. he was 'magnificently habited in a doublet of white satin, with a front-piece of purple cloth-of-tissue, powdered with diamonds, and edged with ermine. over this he wore a mantle of white cloth-of-gold, pounced with the triple-feather crest, lined with blue satin, set with pearls and precious stones, and fastened with a clasp of brilliants. about his neck hung the order of the garter, and several princely foreign orders'; and wherever light fell upon him jewels responded with a blinding flash. o, tom canty, born in a hovel, bred in the gutters of london, familiar with rags and dirt and misery, what a spectacle is this! chapter x the prince in the toils we left john canty dragging the rightful prince into offal court, with a noisy and delighted mob at his heels. there was but one person in it who offered a pleading word for the captive, and he was not heeded; he was hardly even heard, so great was the turmoil. the prince continued to struggle for freedom, and to rage against the treatment he was suffering, until john canty lost what little patience was left in him, and raised his oaken cudgel in a sudden fury over the prince's head. the single pleader for the lad sprang to stop the man's arm, and the blow descended upon his own wrist. canty roared out: 'thou'lt meddle, wilt thou? then have thy reward.' his cudgel crashed down upon the meddler's head; there was a groan, a dim form sank to the ground among the feet of the crowd, and the next moment it lay there in the dark alone. the mob pressed on, their enjoyment nothing disturbed by this episode. presently the prince found himself in john canty's abode, with the door closed against the outsiders. by the vague light of a tallow candle which was thrust into a bottle, he made out the main features of the loathsome den, and also of the occupants of it. two frowsy girls and a middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one corner, with the aspect of animals habituated to harsh usage, and expecting and dreading it now. from another corner stole a withered hag with streaming gray hair and malignant eyes. john canty said to this one: 'tarry! there's fine mummeries here. mar them not till thou'st enjoyed them; then let thy hand be heavy as thou wilt. stand forth, lad. now say thy foolery again, an thou'st not forget it. name thy name. who art thou?' the insulted blood mounted to the little prince's cheek once more, and he lifted a steady and indignant gaze to the man's face, and said: ''tis but ill-breeding in such as thou to command me to speak. i tell thee now, as i told thee before, i am edward, prince of wales, and none other.' the stunning surprise of this reply nailed the hag's feet to the floor where she stood, and almost took her breath. she stared at the prince in stupid amazement, which so amused her ruffianly son that he burst into a roar of laughter. but the effect upon tom canty's mother and sisters was different. their dread of bodily injury gave way at once to distress of a different sort. they ran forward with woe and dismay in their faces, exclaiming: 'oh, poor tom, poor lad!' the mother fell on her knees before the prince, put her hands upon his shoulders, and gazed yearningly into his face through her rising tears. then she said: 'oh, my poor boy! thy foolish reading hath wrought its woeful work at last, and ta'en thy wit away. ah! why didst thou cleave to it when i so warned thee 'gainst it? thou'st broke thy mother's heart.' the prince looked into her face, and said gently: 'thy son is well and hath not lost his wits, good dame. comfort thee; let me to the palace where he is, and straightway will the king my father restore him to thee.' 'the king thy father! oh, my child! unsay these words that be freighted with death for thee, and ruin for all that be near to thee. shake off this gruesome dream. call back thy poor wandering memory. look upon me. am not i thy mother that bore thee, and loveth thee?' the prince shook his head, and reluctantly said: 'god knoweth i am loath to grieve thy heart; but truly have i never looked upon thy face before.' the woman sank back to a sitting posture on the floor, and, covering her eyes with her hands, gave way to heartbroken sobs and wailings. 'let the show go on!' shouted canty. 'what, nan! what, bet! mannerless wenches! will ye stand in the prince's presence? upon your knees, ye pauper scum, and do him reverence!' he followed this with another horse-laugh. the girls began to plead timidly for their brother; and nan said: 'an thou wilt but let him to bed, father, rest and sleep will heal his madness; prithee, do.' 'do, father,' said bet; 'he is more worn than is his wont. to-morrow will he be himself again, and will beg with diligence, and come not empty home again.' this remark sobered the father's joviality, and brought his mind to business. he turned angrily upon the prince, and said: 'the morrow must we pay two pennies to him that owns this hole; two pennies mark yeall this money for a half-year's rent, else out of this we go. show what thou'st gathered with thy lazy begging.' the prince said: 'offend me not with thy sordid matters. i tell thee again i am the king's son.' a sounding blow upon the prince's shoulder from canty's broad palm sent him staggering into good-wife canty's arms, who clasped him to her breast, and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps by interposing her own person. the frightened girls retreated to their corner; but the grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son. the prince sprang away from mrs. canty, exclaiming: 'thou shalt not suffer for me, madam. let these swine do their will upon me alone.' this speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set about their work without waste of time. between them they belabored the boy right soundly, and then gave the girls and their mother a beating for showing sympathy for the victim. 'now,' said canty, 'to bed, all of ye. the entertainment has tired me.' the light was put out, and the family retired. as soon as the snorings of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were asleep, the young girls crept to where the prince lay, and covered him tenderly from the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept to him also, and stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering broken words of comfort and compassion in his ear the while. she had saved a morsel for him to eat also; but the boy's pains had swept away all appetiteat least for black and tasteless crusts. he was touched by her brave and costly defense of him, and by her commiseration; and he thanked her in very noble and princely words, and begged her to go to sleep and try to forget her sorrows. and he added that the king his father would not let her loyal kindness and devotion go unrewarded. this return to his 'madness' broke her heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again and again and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed. as she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was lacking in tom canty, mad or sane. she could not describe it, she could not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to detect it and perceive it. what if the boy were really not her son, after all? oh, absurd! she almost smiled at the idea, spite of her griefs and troubles. no matter, she found that it was an idea that would not 'down', but persisted in haunting her. it pursued her, it harassed her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored. at last she perceived that there was not going to be any peace for her until she should devise a test that should prove, dearly and without question, whether this lad was her son or not, and so banish these wearing and worrying doubts. ah, yes, this was plainly the right way out of the difficulty; therefore, she set her wits to work at once to contrive that test. but it was an easier thing to propose than to accomplish. she turned over in her mind one promising test after another, but was obliged to relinquish them allnone of them were absolutely sure, absolutely perfect; and an imperfect one could not satisfy her. evidently she was racking her head in vainit seemed manifest that she must give the matter up. while this depressing thought was passing through her mind, her ear caught the regular breathing of the boy, and she knew he had fallen asleep. and while she listened, the measured breathing was broken by a soft, startled cry, such as one utters in a troubled dream. this chance occurrence furnished her instantly with a plan worth all her labored tests combined. she at once set herself feverishly, but noiselessly, to work to relight her candle, muttering to herself, 'had i but seen him then, i should have known! since that day, when he was little, that the powder burst in his face, he hath never been startled of a sudden out of his dreams or out of his thinkings, but he hath cast his hand before his eyes, even as he did that day, and not as others would do it, with the palm inward, but always with the palm turned outwardi have seen it a hundred times, and it hath never varied nor ever failed. yes, i shall soon know now!' by this time she had crept to the slumbering boy's side, with the candle shaded in her hand. she bent heedfully and warily over him, scarcely breathing, in her suppressed excitement, and suddenly flashed the light in his face and struck the floor by his ear with her knuckles. the sleeper's eyes sprung wide open, and he cast a startled stare about himbut he made no special movement with his hands. the poor woman was smitten almost helpless with surprise and grief; but she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep again; then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon the disastrous result of her experiment. she tried to believe that her tom's madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do it. 'no,' she said, 'his hands are not mad, they could not unlearn so old a habit in so brief a time. oh, this is a heavy day for me!' still, hope was as stubborn now as doubt had been before; she could not bring herself to accept the verdict of the test; she must try the thing againthe failure must have been only an accident; so she startled the boy out of his sleep a second and a third time, at intervalswith the same result which had marked the first testthen she dragged herself to bed, and fell sorrowfully asleep, saying, 'but i cannot give him upoh, no, i cannothe must be my boy!' the poor mother's interruptions having ceased, and the prince's pains having gradually lost their power to disturb him, utter weariness at last sealed his eyes in a profound and restful sleep. hour after hour slipped away, and still he slept like the dead. thus four or five hours passed. then his stupor began to lighten. presently, while half asleep and half awake, he murmured: 'sir william!' after a moment: 'ho, sir william herbert! hie thee hither, and list to the strangest dream that ever.... sir william! dost hear? man, i did think me changed to a pauper, and... ho there! guards! sir william! what! is there no groom of the chamber in waiting? alack it shall go hard with-' 'what aileth thee?' asked a whisper near him. 'who art thou calling?' 'sir william herbert. who art thou?' 'i? who should i be, but thy sister nan? oh, tom, i had forgot! tbou'rt mad yetpoor lad thou'rt mad yet, would i had never woke to know it again! but, prithee, master thy tongue, lest we be all beaten till we die!' the startled prince sprang partly up, but a sharp reminder from his stiffened bruises brought him to himself, and he sunk back among his foul straw with a moan and the ejaculation: 'alas, it was no dream, then!' in a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished were upon him again, and he realized that he was no longer a petted prince in a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but a pauper, an outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for beasts, and consorting with beggars and thieves. in the midst of his grief he began to be conscious of hilarious noises and shoutings, apparently but a block or two away. the next moment there were several sharp raps at the door; john canty ceased from snoring and said: 'who knocketh? what wilt thou?' a voice answered: 'know'st thou who it was thou laid thy cudgel on?' 'no. neither know i, nor care.' 'belike thou'lt change thy note eftsoons. an thou would save thy neck, nothing but flight may stead thee. the man is this moment delivering up the ghost. 'tis the priest, father andrew!' 'god-a-mercy!' exclaimed canty. he roused his family, and hoarsely commanded, 'up with ye all and flyor bide where ye are and perish!' scarcely five minutes later the canty household were in the street and flying for their lives. john canty held the prince by the wrist, and hurried him along the dark way, giving him this caution in a low voice: 'mind thy tongue, thou mad fool, and speak not our name. i will choose me a new name, speedily, to throw the law's dogs off the scent. mind thy tongue, i tell thee!' he growled these words to the rest of the family: 'if it so chance that we be separated, let each make for london bridge; whoso findeth himself as far as the last linen-draper's shop on the bridge, let him tarry there till the others be come, then will we flee into southwark together.' at this moment the party burst suddenly out of darkness into light; and not only into light, but into the midst of a multitude of singing, dancing, and shouting people, massed together on the river-frontage. there was a line of bonfires stretching as far as one could see, up and down the thames; london bridge was illuminated; southwark bridge likewise; the entire river was aglow with the flash and sheen of colored lights, and constant explosions of fireworks filled the skies with an intricate commingling of shooting splendors and a thick rain of dazzling sparks that almost turned night into day; everywhere were crowds of revelers; all london seemed to be at large. john canty delivered himself of a furious curse and commanded a retreat; but it was too late. he and his tribe were swallowed up in that swarming hive of humanity, and hopelessly separated from each other in an instant. we are not considering that the prince was one of his tribe; canty still kept his grip upon him. the prince's heart was beating high with hopes of escape now. a burly waterman, considerably exalted with liquor, found himself rudely shoved by canty in his efforts to plow through the crowd; he laid his great hand on canty's shoulder and said: 'nay, whither so fast, friend? dost canker thy soul with sordid business when all that be leal men and true make holiday?' 'mine affairs are mine own, they concern thee not,' answered canty, roughly; 'take away thy hand and let me pass.' 'sith that is thy humor, thou'lt not pass till thou'st drunk to the prince of wales, i tell thee that,' said the waterman, barring the way resolutely. 'give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed.' other revelers were interested by this time. they cried out: 'the loving-cup, the loving-cup! make the sour knave drink the loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes.' so a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman, grasping it by one of its handles, and with his other hand bearing up the end of an imaginary napkin, presented it in due and ancient form to canty, who had to grasp the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off the lid with the other, according to ancient custom.*(6) this left the prince hand-free for a second, of course. he wasted no time, but dived among the forest of legs about him and disappeared. in another moment he could not have been harder to find, under that tossing sea of life, if its billows had been the atlantic's and he a lost sixpence. he very soon realized this fact, and straightway busied himself about his own affairs without further thought of john canty. he quickly realized another thing, too. to wit, that a spurious prince of wales was being feasted by the city in his stead. he easily concluded that the pauper lad, tom canty, had deliberately taken advantage of his stupendous opportunity and become a usurper. therefore there was but one course to pursuefind his way to the guildhall, make himself known, and denounce the impostor. he also made up his mind that tom should be allowed a reasonable time for spiritual preparation, and then be hanged, drawn, and quartered, according to the law and usage of the day, in cases of high treason. chapter xi at guildhall the royal barge, attended by its gorgeous fleet, took its stately way down the thames through the wilderness of illuminated boats. the air was laden with music; the river-banks were beruffled with joyflames; the distant city lay in a soft luminous glow from its countless invisible bonfires; above it rose many a slender spire into the sky, incrusted with sparkling lights, wherefore in their remoteness they seemed like jeweled lances thrust aloft; as the fleet swept along, it was greeted from the banks with a continuous hoarse roar of cheers and the ceaseless flash and boom of artillery. to tom canty, half buried in his silken cushions, these sounds and this spectacle were a wonder unspeakably sublime and astonishing. to his little friends at his side, the princess elizabeth and the lady jane grey, they were nothing. arrived at the dowgate, the fleet was towed up the limpid walbrook (whose channel has now been for two centuries buried out of sight under acres of buildings) to bucklersbury, past houses and under bridges populous with merry-makers and brilliantly lighted, and at last came to a halt in a basin where now is barge yard, in the center of the ancient city of london. tom disembarked, and he and his gallant procession crossed cheapside and made a short march through the old jewry and basinghall street to the guildhall. tom and his little ladies were received with due ceremony by the lord mayor and the fathers of the city, in their gold chains and scarlet robes of state, and conducted to a rich canopy of state at the head of the great hall, preceded by heralds making proclamation, and by the mace and the city sword. the lords and ladies who were to attend upon tom and his two small friends took their places behind their chairs. at a lower table the court grandees and other guests of noble degree were seated, with the magnates of the city; the commoners took places at a multitude of tables on the main floor of the hall. from their lofty vantage-ground, the giants gog and magog, the ancient guardians of the city, contemplated the spectacle below them with eyes grown familar to it in forgotten generations. there was a bugle-blast and a proclamation, and a fat butler appeared in a high perch in the leftward wall, followed by his servitors bearing with impressive solemnity a royal baron of beef, smoking hot and ready for the knife. after grace, tom (being instructed) roseand the whole house with himand drank from a portly golden loving-cup with the princess elizabeth; from her it passed to the lady jane, and then traversed the general assemblage. so the banquet began. by midnight the revelry was at its height. now came one of those picturesque spectacles so admired in that old day. a description of it is still extant in the quaint wording of a chronicler who witnessed it: 'space being made, presently entered a baron and an earl appareled after the turkish fashion in long robes of bawdkin powdered with gold; hats on their heads of crimson velvet, with great rolls of gold, girded with two swords, called simitars, hanging by great bawdricks of gold. next came yet another baron and another earl, in two long gowns of yellow satin, traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of crimson satin, after the fashion of russia, with furred hats of gray on their heads; either of them having an hatchet in their hands, and boots with pykes' (points a foot long), 'turned up. and after them came a knight, then the lord high admiral, and with him five nobles, in doublets of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the cannel-bone, laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and, over that, short cloaks of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after the dancers' fashion, with pheasants' feather in them. these were appareled after the fashion of prussia. the torch-bearers, which were about an hundred, were appareled in crimson satin and green, like moors, their faces black. next came in a mommarye. then the minstrels, which were disguised, danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also, that it was a pleasure to behold.' and while tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this 'wild' dancing, lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colors which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the ragged but real little prince of wales was proclaiming his rights and his wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamoring for admission at the gates of guildhall! the crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously, and pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter. presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him into a higher and still more entertaining fury. tears of mortification sprung to his eyes, but he stood his ground and defied the mob right royally. other taunts followed, added mockings stung him, and he exclaimed: 'i tell ye again, you pack of unmannerly curs, i am the prince of wales! and all forlorn and friendless as i be, with none to give me word of grace or help me in my need, yet will not i be driven from my ground, but will maintain it!' 'though thou be prince or no prince 'tis all one, thou be'st a gallant lad, and not friendless neither! here stand i by thy side to prove it; and mind i tell thee thou might'st have a worser friend than miles hendon and yet not tire thy legs with seeking. rest thy small jaw, my child, i talk the language of these base kennel-rats like to a very native.' the speaker was a sort of don caesar de bazan in dress, aspect, and bearing. he was tall, trim-built, muscular. his doublet and trunks were of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the camp. the speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion of jeers and laughter. some cried, ''tis another prince in disguise!' ''ware thy tongue, friend, belike he is dangerous!' 'marry, he looketh itmark his eye!' 'pluck the lad from himto the horse-pond wi' the cub!' instantly a hand was laid upon the prince, under the impulse of this happy thought; as instantly the stranger's long sword was out and the meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it. the next moment a score of voices shouted 'kill the dog! kill him! kill him!' and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a madman. his victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with undiminished fury. his moments seemed numbered, his destruction certain, when suddenly a trumpet-blast sounded, a voice shouted, 'way for the king's messenger!' and a troop of horsemen came charging down upon the mob, who fled out of harm's reach as fast as their legs could carry them. the bold stranger caught up the prince in his arms, and was soon far away from danger and the multitude. return we within the guildhall. suddenly, high above the jubilant roar and thunder of the revel, broke the clear peal of a bugle-note. there was instant silencea deep hush; then a single voice rosethat of the messenger from the palaceand began to pipe forth a proclamation, the whole multitude standing, listening. the closing words, solemnly pronounced were: 'the king is dead!' the great assemblage bent their heads upon their breasts with one accord; remained so, in profound silence, a few moments, then all sunk upon their knees in a body, stretched out their hands towards tom, and a mighty shout burst forth that seemed to shake the building: 'long live the king!' poor tom's dazed eyes wandered abroad over this stupefying spectacle, and finally rested dreamily upon the kneeling princesses beside him a moment, then upon the earl of hertford. a sudden purpose dawned in his face. he said, in a low tone, at lord hertford's ear: 'answer me truly, on thy faith and honor! uttered i here a command, the which none but a king might hold privilege and prerogative to utter, would such commandment be obeyed, and none rise up to say me nay?' 'none, my liege, in all these realms. in thy person bides the majesty of england. thou art the kingthy word is law.' tom responded, in a strong, earnest voice, and with great animation: 'then shall the king's law be law of mercy, from this day, and never more be law of blood! up from thy knees and away! to the tower and say the king decrees the duke of norfolk shall not die!'*(7) the words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and wide over the hall, and as hertford hurried from the presence, another prodigious shout burst forth: 'the reign of blood is ended! long live edward king of england!' chapter xii the prince and his deliverer as soon as miles hendon and the little prince were clear of the mob, they struck down through back lanes and alleys toward the river. their way was unobstructed until they approached london bridge; then they plowed into the multitude again, hendon keeping a fast grip upon the prince'sno, the king'swrist. the tremendous news was already abroad, and the boy learned it from a thousand voices at once'the king is dead!' the tidings struck a chill to the heart of the poor little waif, and sent a shudder through his frame. he realized the greatness of his loss, and was filled with a bitter grief; for the grim tyrant who had been such a terror to others had always been gentle with him. the tears sprung to his eyes and blurred all objects. for an instant he felt himself the most forlorn, outcast, and forsaken of god's creaturesthen another cry shook the night with its far-reaching thunders: 'long live king edward the sixth!' and this made his eyes kindle, and thrilled him with pride to his fingers' ends. 'ah,' he thought, 'how grand and strange it seemsi am king!' our friends threaded their way slowly through the throngs upon the bridge. this structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and had been a noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious affair, for a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family quarters overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of the river to the other. the bridge was a sort of town to itself; it had its inn, its beerhouses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food markets, its manufacturing industries, and even its church. it looked upon the two neighbors which it linked togetherlondon and southwarkas being well enough, as suburbs, but not otherwise particularly important. it was a close corporation, so to speak; it was a narrow town, of a single street a fifth of a mile long, its population was but a village population, and everybody in it knew all his fellow-townsmen intimately, and had known their fathers and mothers before themand all their little family affairs into the bargain. it had its aristocracy, of courseits fine old families of butchers, and bakers, and what not, who had occupied the same old premises for five or six hundred years, and knew the great history of the bridge from beginning to end, and all its strange legends; and who always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied in a long, level, direct, substantial bridgy way. it was just the sort of population to be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. children were born on the bridge, were reared there, grew to old age and finally died without ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but london bridge alone. such people would naturally imagine that the mighty and interminable procession which moved through its street night and day, with its confused roar of shouts and cries, its neighings and bellowings and bleatings and its muffled thunder-tramp, was the one great thing in this world, and themselves somehow the proprietors of it. and so they were in effectat least they could exhibit it from their windows, and didfor a considerationwhenever a returning king or hero gave it a fleeting splendor, for there was no place like it for affording a long, straight, uninterrupted view of marching columns. men born and reared upon the bridge found life unendurably dull and inane elsewhere. history tells of one of these who left the bridge at the age of seventy-one and retired to the country. but he could only fret and toss in his bed; he could not go to sleep, the deep stillness was so painful, so awful, so oppressive. when he was worn out with it, at last, he fled back to his old home, a lean and haggard specter, and fell peacefully to rest and pleasant dreams under the lulling music of the lashing waters and the boom and crash and thunder of london bridge. in the times of which we are writing, the bridge furnished 'object lessons' in english history, for its childrennamely, the livid and decaying heads of renowned men impaled upon iron spikes atop of its gateways. but we digress. hendon's lodgings were in the little inn on the bridge. as he neared the door with his small friend, a rough voice said: 'so, thou'rt come at last! thou'lt not escape again. i warrant thee; and if pounding thy bones to a pudding can teach thee somewhat, thou'lt not keep us waiting another time, mayhap'and john canty put out his hand to seize the boy. miles hendon stepped in the way, and said: 'not too fast, friend. thou art needlessly rough, methinks. what is the lad to thee?' 'if it be any business of thine to make and meddle in others' affairs, he is my son.' ''tis a lie!' cried the little king, hotly. 'boldly said, and i believe thee, whether thy small head-piece be sound or cracked, my boy. but whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father or no, 'tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse, according to his threat, so thou prefer to abide with me.' 'i do, i doi know him not, i loathe him, and will die before i will go with him.' 'then 'tis settled, and there is naught more to say.' 'we will see, as to that!' exclaimed john canty, striding past hendon to get at the boy; 'by force shall he-' 'if thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, i will spit thee like a goose!' said hendon, barring the way and laying his hand upon his sword-hilt. canty drew back. 'now mark ye,' continued hendon, 'i took this lad under my protection when a mob such as thou would have mishandled him, mayhap killed him; dost imagine i will desert him now to a worser fate?for whether thou art his father or noand sooth to say, i think it is a liea decent swift death were better for such a lad than life in such brute hands as thine. so go thy ways, and set quick about it, for i like not much bandying of words, being not overpatient in my nature.' john canty moved off, muttering threats and curses, and was swallowed from sight in the crowd. hendon ascended three flights of stairs to his room, with his charge, after ordering a meal to be sent thither. it was a poor apartment, with a shabby bed and some odds and ends of old furniture in it, and was vaguely lighted by a couple of sickly candles. the little king dragged himself to the bed and lay down upon it, almost exhausted with hunger and fatigue. he had been on his feet a good part of a day and a night, for it was now two or three o'clock in the morning, and had eaten nothing meantime. he murmured drowsily: 'prithee, call me when the table is spread,' and sunk into a deep sleep immediately. a smile twinkled in hendon's eye, and he said to himself: 'by the mass, the little beggar takes to one's quarters and usurps one's bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned themwith never a by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort. in his diseased ravings he called himself the prince of wales, and bravely doth he keep up the character. poor little friendless rat, doubtless his mind has been disordered with ill usage. well, i will be his friend; i have saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already i love the bold-tongued little rascal. how soldierlike he faced the smutty rabble and flung back his high defiance! and what a comely, sweet and gentle face he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its griefs. i will teach him, i will cure his malady; yea, i will be his elder brother, and care for him and watch over him; and who so would shame him or do him hurt, may order his shroud, for though i be burnt for it he shall need it!' he bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest, tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls with his great brown hand. a slight shiver passed over the boy's form. hendon muttered: 'see, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill his body with deadly rheums. now what shall i do? 'twill wake him to take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep.' he looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet and wrapped the lad in it, saying, 'i am used to nipping air and scant apparel, 'tis little i shall mind the cold'then walked up and down the room to keep his blood in motion, soliloquizing as before. 'his injured mind persuades him he is prince of wales; 'twill be odd to have a prince of wales still with us, now that he that was the prince is prince no more, but kingfor this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy, and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince and call itself the king.... if my father liveth still, after these seven years that i have heard naught from home in my foreign dungeon, he will welcome the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so will my good elder brother, arthur; my other brother, hughbut i will crack his crown, an he interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned animal! yes, thither will we fareand straightway, too.' a servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap lodgers as these to wait upon themselves. the door slammed after him, and the noise woke the boy, who sprung to a sitting posture, and shot a glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, 'alack, it was but a dream. woe is me.' next he noticed miles hendon's doubletglanced from that to hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said, gently: 'thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me. take it and put it oni shall not need it more.' then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner, and stood there waiting. hendon said in a cheery voice: 'we'll have a right hearty sup and bite now, for everything is savory and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little man again, never fear!' the boy made no answer, but bent a steady look, that was filled with grave surprise, and also somewhat touched with impatience, upon the tall knight of the sword. hendon was puzzled, and said: 'what's amiss?' 'good sir, i would wash me.' 'oh, is that all! ask no permission of miles hendon for aught thou cravest. make thyself perfectly free here and welcome, with all that are his belongings.' still the boy stood, and moved not; more, he tapped the floor once or twice with his small impatient foot. hendon was wholly perplexed. said he: 'bless us, what is it?' 'prithee, pour the water, and make not so many words!' hendon, suppressing a horse-laugh, and saying to himself, 'by all the saints, but this is admirable!' stepped briskly forward and did the small insolent's bidding; then stood by, in a sort of stupefaction, until the command, 'comethe towel!' woke him sharply up. he took up a towel from under the boy's nose and handed it to him, without comment. he now proceeded to comfort his own face with a wash, and while he was at it his adopted child seated himself at the table and prepared to fall to. hendon despatched his ablutions with alacrity, then drew back the other chair and was about to place himself at table, when the boy said, indignantly: 'forbear! wouldst sit in the presence of the king?' this blow staggered hendon to his foundations. he muttered to himself, 'lo, the poor thing's madness is up with the time! it hath changed with the great change that is come to the realm, and now in fancy is he king! good lack, i must humor the conceit, toothere is no other wayfaith, he would order me to the tower, else!' and pleased with this jest, he removed the chair from the table, took his stand behind the king, and proceeded to wait upon him in the courtliest way he was capable of. when the king ate, the rigor of his royal dignity relaxed a little, and with his growing contentment came a desire to talk. he said: 'i think thou callest thyself miles hendon, if i heard thee aright?' 'yes, sire,' miles replied then observed to himself, 'if i must humor the poor lad's madness, i must sire him, i must majesty him, i must not go by halves, i must stick at nothing that belongeth to the part i play, else shall i play it ill and work evil to this charitable and kindly cause.' the king warmed his heart with a second glass of wine, and said: 'i would know theetell me thy story. thou hast a gallant way with thee, and a nobleart nobly born?' 'we are of the tail of the nobility, good your majesty. my father is a baronetone of the smaller lords, by knight service*(8)sir richard hendon, of hendon hall, by monk's holm in kent.' 'the name has escaped my memory. go ontell me thy story.' ''tis not much, your majesty, yet perchance it may beguile a short half-hour for want of a better. my father, sir richard, is very rich, and of a most generous nature. my mother died whilst i was yet a boy. i have two brothers: arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father's; and hugh, younger than i, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious, underhandeda reptile. such was he from the cradle; such was he ten years past, when i last saw hima ripe rascal at nineteen, i being twenty then, and arthur twenty-two. there is none other of us but the lady edith, my cousinshe was sixteen, thenbeautiful, gentle, good, the daughter of an earl, the last of her race, heiress of a great fortune and a lapsed title. my father was her guardian. i loved her and she loved me; but she was betrothed to arthur from the cradle, and sir richard would not suffer the contract to be broken. arthur loved another maid, and bade us be of good cheer and hold fast to the hope that delay and luck together would some day give success to our several causes. hugh loved the lady edith's fortune, though in truth he said it was herself he lovedbut then 'twas his way, alway, to say one thing and mean the other. but he lost his arts upon the girl; he could deceive my father, but none else. my father loved him best of us all, and trusted and believed him; for he was the youngest child and others hated himthese qualities being in all ages sufficient to win a parent's dearest love; and he had a smooth persuasive tongue, with an admirable gift of lyingand these be qualities which do mightily assist a blind affection to cozen itself. i was wildin troth i might go yet farther and say very wild, though 'twas a wildness of an innocent sort, since it hurt none but me, brought shame to none, nor loss, nor had in it any taint of crime or baseness, or what might not beseem mine honorable degree. 'yet did my brother hugh turn these faults to good accounthe seeing that our brother arthur's health was but indifferent, and hoping the worst might work him profit were i swept out of the pathsobut 'twere a long tale, good my liege, and little worth the telling. briefly, then, this brother did deftly magnify my faults and make them crimes; ending his base work with finding a silken ladder in mine apartmentsconveyed thither by his own meansand did convince my father by this, and suborned evidence of servants and other lying knaves, that i was minded to carry off my edith and marry with her, in rank defiance of his will. 'three years of banishment from home and england might make a soldier and a man of me, my father said, and teach me some degree of wisdom. i fought out my long probation in the continental wars, tasting sumptuously of hard knocks, privation, and adventure; but in my last battle i was taken captive, and during the seven years that have waxed and waned since then, a foreign dungeon hath harbored me. through wit and courage i won to the free air at last, and fled hither straight; and am but just arrived, right poor in purse and raiment, and poorer still in knowledge of what these dull seven years have wrought at hendon hall, its people and belongings. so please you, sir, my meager tale is told.' 'thou hast been shamefully abused!' said the little king, with a flashing eye. 'but i will right theeby the cross will i! the king hath said it.' then, fired by the story of miles's wrongs, he loosed his tongue and poured the history of his own recent misfortunes into the ears of his astonished listener. when he had finished, miles said to himself. 'lo, what an imagination he hath! verily this is no common mind; else, crazed or sane, it could not weave so straight and gaudy a tale as this out of the airy nothings wherewith it hath wrought this curious romaunt. poor ruined little head, it shall not lack friend or shelter whilst i bide with the living. he shall never leave my side; he shall be my pet, my little comrade. and he shall be cured!aye, made whole and soundthen will he make himself a nameand proud shall i be to say, "yes, he is minei took him, a homeless little ragamuffin, but i saw what was in him, and i said his name would be heard some daybehold him, observe himwas i right?"' the king spokein a thoughtful, measured voice: 'thou didst save me injury and shame, perchance my life, and so my crown. such service demandeth rich reward. name thy desire, and so it be within the compass of my royal power, it is thine.' this fantastic suggestion startled hendon out of his reverie. he was about to thank the king and put the matter aside with saying he bad only done his duty and desired no reward, but a wiser thought came into his head, and he asked leave to be silent a few moments and consider the gracious offeran idea which the king gravely approved, remarking that it was best to be not too hasty with a thing of such great import. miles reflected during some moments, then said to himself, 'yes, that is the thing to doby any other means it were impossible to get at itand certes, this hour's experience has taught me 'twould be most wearing and inconvenient to continue it as it is. yes, i will propose it; 'twas a happy accident that i did not throw the chance away.' then he dropped upon one knee and said: 'my poor service went not beyond the limit of a subject's simple duty, and therefore hath no merit; but since your majesty is pleased to hold it worthy some reward, i take heart of grace to make petition to this effect. near four hundred years ago, as your grace knoweth, there being ill blood betwixt john, king of england, and the king of france, it was decreed that two champions should fight together in the lists, and so settle the dispute by what is called the arbitrament of god. these two kings, and the spanish king, being assembled to witness and judge the conflict, the french champion appeared; but so redoubtable was he that our english knights refused to measure weapons with him. so the matter, which was a weighty one, was like to go against the english monarch by default. now in the tower lay the lord de courcy, the mightiest arm in england, stripped of his honors and possessions, and wasting with long captivity. appeal was made to him; he gave assent, and came forth arrayed for battle; but no sooner did the frenchman glimpse his huge frame and hear his famous name but he fled away, and the french king's cause was lost. king john restored de courcy's titles and possessions, and said, "name thy wish and thou shalt have it, though it cost me half my kingdom"; whereat de courcy, kneeling, as i do now, made answerer, "this, then, i ask, my liege; that i and my successors may have and hold the privilege of remaining covered in the presence of the kings of england, henceforth while the throne shall last." the boon was granted, as your majesty knoweth; and there hath been no time, these four hundred years, that that line has failed of an heir; and so, even unto this day, the head of that ancient house still weareth his hat or helm before the king's majesty, without let or hindrance, and this none other may do.*(9) invoking this precedent in aid of my prayer, i beseech the king to grant to me but this one grace and privilegeto my more than sufficient rewardand none other, to wit: that i and my heirs, forever, may sit in the presence of the majesty of england!' 'rise, sir miles hendon, knight,' said the king, gravelygiving the accolade with hendon's sword'rise, and seat thyself. thy petition is granted. while england remains, and the crown continues, the privilege shall not lapse.' his majesty walked apart, musing, and hendon dropped into a chair at table, observing to himself, ''twas a brave thought, and hath wrought me a mighty deliverance; my legs are grievously wearied. an i had not thought of that, i must have had to stand for weeks, till my poor lad's wits are cured.' after a little he went on, 'and so i am become a knight of the kingdom of dreams and shadows! a most odd and strange position, truly, for one so matter-of-fact as i. i will not laughno, god forbid, for this thing which is so substanceless to me is real to him. and to me, also, in one way, it is not a falsity, for it reflects with truth the sweet and generous spirit that is in him.' after a pause: 'ah, what if he should call me by my fine title before folk!there'd be a merry contrast betwixt my glory and my raiment! but no matter; let him call me what he will, so it please him; i shall be content.' chapter xiii the dissappearance of the prince a heavy drowsiness presently fell upon the two comrades. the king said: 'remove these rags'meaning his clothing. hendon disappareled the boy without dissent or remark, tucked him up in bed, then glanced about the room, saying to himself, ruefully, 'he hath taken my bed again, as beforemarry, what shall i do?' the little king observed his perplexity, and dissipated it with a word. he said, sleepily: 'thou wilt sleep athwart the door, and guard it.' in a moment more he was out of his troubles, in a deep slumber. 'dear heart, he should have been born a king!' muttered hendon, admiringly, 'he playeth the part to a marvel.' then he stretched himself across the door, on the floor, saying contentedly: 'i have lodged worse for seven years; 'twould be but ill gratitude to him above to find fault with this.' he dropped asleep as the dawn appeared. toward noon he rose, uncovered his unconscious warda section at a timeand took his measure with a string. the king awoke, just as he had completed his work, complained of the cold, and asked what he was doing. ''tis done now, my liege,' said hendon; 'i have a bit of business outside, but will presently return; sleep thou againthou needest it. therelet me cover thy head alsothou'lt be warm the sooner.' the king was back in dreamland before this speech was ended. miles slipped softly out, and slipped as softly in again, in the course of thirty or forty minutes, with a complete second-hand suit of boy's clothing, of cheap material, and showing signs of wear; but tidy, and suited to the season of the year. he seated himself and began to overhaul his purchase, mumbling to himself: 'a longer purse would have got a better sort, but when one has not the long purse one must be content with what a short one may do '"there was a woman in our town, in our town did dwell" 'he stirred, methinksi must sing in a less thunderous key; 'tis not good to mar his sleep, with this journey before him and he so wearied out, poorchap.... this garment'tis well enougha stitch here and another one there will set it aright. this other is better, albeit a stitch or two will not come amiss in it, likewise.... these be very good and sound, and will keep his small feet warm and dryan odd new thing to him, belike, since he has doubtless been used to foot it bare, winters and summers the same.... would thread were bread, seeing one getteth a year's sufficiency for a farthing, and such a brave big needle without cost, for mere love. now shall i have the demon's own time to thread it!' and so he had. he did as men have always done, and probably always will do, to the end of timeheld the needle still, and tried to thrust the thread through the eye, which is the opposite of a woman's way. time and time again the thread missed the mark, going sometimes on one side of the needle, sometimes on the other, sometimes doubling up against the shaft; but he was patient, having been through these experiences before, when he was soldiering. he succeeded at last, and took up the garment that had lain waiting, meantime, across his lap, and began his work. 'the inn is paidthe breakfast that is to come, includedand there is wherewithal left to buy a couple of donkeys and meet our little costs for the two or three days betwixt this and the plenty that awaits us at hendon hall '"she loved her hus" 'body o' me! i have driven the needle under my nail!... it matters little'tis not a noveltyyet 'tis not a convenience, neither.... we shall be merry there, little one, never doubt it! thy troubles will vanish there, and likewise thy sad distemper '"she loved her husband dearilee, but another man" 'these be noble large stitches!'holding the garment up and viewing it admiringly'they have a grandeur and a majesty that do cause these small stingy ones of the tailor-man to look mighty paltry and plebeian '"she loved her husband dearilee, but another man he loved she," 'marry, 'tis donea goodly piece of work, too, and wrought with expedition. now will i wake him, apparel him, pour for him, feed him, and then will we hie us to the mart by the tabard inn in southwark andbe pleased to rise, my liege!he answereth notwhat ho, my liege!of a truth must i profane his sacred person with a touch, sith his slumber is deaf to speech. what!' he threw back the coversthe boy was gone! he stared about him in speechless astonishment for a moment; noticed for the first time that his ward's ragged raiment was also missing, then he began to rage and storm, and shout for the inn-keeper. at that moment a servant entered with the breakfast. 'explain, thou limb of satan, or thy time is come! 'roared the man of war, and made so savage a spring toward the waiter that this latter could not find his tongue, for the instant, for fright and surprise. 'where is the boy?' in disjointed and trembling syllables the man gave the information desired. 'you were hardly gone from the place, your worship, when a youth came running and said it was your worship's will that the boy come to you straight, at the bridge-end on the southwark side. i brought him thither; and when he woke the lad and gave his message, the lad did grumble some little for being disturbed 'so early,' as he called it, but straightway trussed on his rags and went with the youth, only saying it had been better manners that your worship came yourself, not sent a strangerand so-' 'and so thou'rt a fool!a fool, and easily cozenedhang all thy breed! yet mayhap no hurt is done. possibly no harm is meant the boy. i will go fetch him. make the table ready. stay! the coverings of the bed were disposed as if one lay beneath themhappened that by accident?' 'i know not, good your worship. i saw the youth meddle with themhe that came for the boy.' 'thousand deaths! 'twas done to deceive me'tis plain 'twas done to gain time. hark ye! was that youth alone?' 'all alone, your worship.' 'art sure?' 'sure, your worship.' 'collect thy scattered witsbethink theetake time, man.' after a moment's thought, the servant said: 'when he came, none came with him; but now i remember me that as the two stepped into the throng of the bridge, a ruffian-looking man plunged out from some near place; and just as he was joining them-' 'what then?out with it!' thundered the impatient hendon, interrupting. 'just then the crowd lapped them up and closed them in, and i saw no more, being called by my master, who was in a rage because a joint that the scrivener had ordered was forgot, though i take all the saints to witness that to blame me for that miscarriage were like holding the unborn babe to judgment for sins com-' 'out of my sight, idiot! thy prating drives me mad! hold! whither art flying? canst not bide still an instant? went they toward southwark?' 'even so, your worshipfor, as i said before, as to that detestable joint, the babe unborn is no whit more blameless than-' 'art here yet! and prating still? vanish, lest i throttle thee!' the servitor vanished. hendon followed after him, passed him, and plunged down the stairs two steps at a stride, muttering, ''tis that scurvy villain that claimed he was his son. i have lost thee, my poor little mad masterit is a bitter thoughtand i had come to love thee so! no! by book and bell, not lost! not lost, for i will ransack the land till i find thee again. poor child, yonder is his breakfastand mine, but i have no hunger nowso, let the rats have itspeed, speed! that is the word!' as he wormed his swift way through the noisy multitudes upon the bridge, he several times said to himselfclinging to the thought as if it were a particularly pleasing one: 'he grumbled but he wenthe went, yes, because he thought miles hendon asked it, sweet ladhe would ne'er have done it for another, i know it well!' chapter xiv 'le roi est mort vive le roi' toward daylight of the same morning, tom canty stirred out of a heavy sleep and opened his eyes in the dark. he lay silent a few moments, trying to analyze his confused thoughts and impressions, and get some sort of meaning out of them, then suddenly he burst out in a rapturous but guarded voice: 'i see it all, i see it all! now god be thanked, i am, indeed, awake at last! come, joy! vanish, sorrow! ho, nan! bet! kick off your straw and hie ye hither to my side, till i do pour into your unbelieving ears the wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to astonish the soul of man withal!... ho, nan, i say! bet!'... a dim form appeared at his side, and a voice said: 'wilt deign to deliver thy commands?' 'commands?... oh, woe is me, i know thy voice! speak, thouwho am i?' 'thou? in sooth, yesternight wert thou the prince of wales, to-day art thou my most gracious liege, edward, king of england.' tom buried his head among his pillows, murmuring plaintively: 'alack, it was no dream! go to thy rest, sweet sirleave me to my sorrows.' tom slept again, and after a time he had this pleasant dream. he thought it was summer and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow called goodman's fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red whiskers and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, 'dig, by that stump.' he did so, and found twelve bright new pennieswonderful riches! yet this was not the best of it; for the dwarf said: 'i know thee. thou art a good lad and deserving; thy distresses shall end, for the day of thy reward is come. dig here every seventh day, and thou shalt find always the same treasure, twelve bright new pennies. tell nonekeep the secret.' then the dwarf vanished, and tom flew to offal court with his prize, saying to himself, 'every night will i give my father a penny; he will think i begged it, it will glad his heart, and i shall no more be beaten. one penny every week the good priest that teacheth me shall have; mother, nan, and bet the other four. we be done with hunger and rags now, done with fears and frets and savage usage.' in his dream he reached his sordid home all out of breath, but with eyes dancing with grateful enthusiasm; cast four of his pennies into his mother's lap and cried out: 'they are for thee!all of them, every one!for thee and nan and betand honestly come by, not begged nor stolen!' the happy and astonished mother strained him to her breast and exclaimed: 'it waxeth latemay it please your majesty to rise?' ah, that was not the answer he was expecting. the dream had snapped asunderhe was awake. he opened his eyesthe richly clad first lord of the bedchamber was kneeling by his couch. the gladness of the lying dream faded awaythe poor boy recognized that he was still a captive and a king. the room was filled with courtiers clothed in purple mantlesthe mourning colorand with noble servants of the monarch. tom sat up in bed and gazed out from the heavy silken curtains upon this fine company. the weighty business of dressing began, and one courtier after another knelt and paid his court and offered to the little king his condolences upon his heavy loss, while the dressing proceeded. in the beginning, a shirt was taken up by the chief equerry in waiting, who passed it to the first lord of the buckhounds, who passed it to the second gentleman of the bedchamber, who passed it to the head ranger of windsor forest, who passed it to the third groom of the stole, who passed it to the chancellor royal of the duchy of lancaster, who passed it to the master of the wardrobe, who passed it to norroy king-at-arms, who passed it to the constable of the tower, who passed it to the chief steward of the household, who passed it to the hereditary grand diaperer, who passed it to the lord high admiral of england, who passed it to the archbishop of canterbury, who passed it to the first lord of the bedchamber, who took what was left of it and put it on tom. poor little wondering chap, it reminded him of passing buckets at a fire. each garment in its turn had to go through this slow and solemn process; consequently tom grew very weary of the ceremony; so weary that he felt an almost gushing gratefulness when he at last saw his long silken hose begin the journey down the line and knew that the end of the matter was drawing near. but he exulted too soon. the first lord of the bedchamber received the hose and was about to encase tom's legs in them, when a sudden flush invaded his face and he hurriedly hustled the things back into the hands of the archbishop of canterbury with an astounded look and a whispered, 'see, my lord!'pointing to a something connected with the hose. the archbishop paled, then flushed, and passed the hose to the lord high admiral, whispering 'see, my lord!' the admiral passed the hose to the hereditary grand diaperer, and had hardly breath enough in his body to ejaculate, 'see, my lord!' the hose drifted backward along the line, to the chief steward of the household, the constable of the tower, norroy king-at-arms, the master of the wardrobe, the chancellor royal of the duchy of lancaster, the third groom of the stole, the head ranger of windsor forest, the second gentleman of the bedchamber, the first lord of the buckhoundsaccompanied always with that amazed and frightened 'see! see!'till they finally reached the hands of the chief equerry in waiting, who gazed a moment, with a pallid face, upon what had caused all this dismay, then hoarsely whispered 'body of my life, a tag gone from a truss point!to the tower with the head keeper of the king's hose!'after which he leaned upon the shoulder of the first lord of the buckhounds to regather his vanished strength while fresh hose, without any damaged strings to them, were brought. but all things must have an end, and so in time tom canty was in a condition to get out of bed. the proper official poured water, the proper official engineered the washing, the proper official stood by with a towel, and by and by tom got safely through the purifying stage and was ready for the services of the hairdresser-royal. when he at length emerged from his master's hands, he was a gracious figure and as pretty as a girl, in his mantle and trunks of purple satin, and purple-plumed cap. he now moved in state toward his breakfast-room, through the midst of the courtly assemblage; and as he passed, these fell back, leaving his way free, and dropped upon their knees. after breakfast he was conducted, with regal ceremony, attended by his great officers and his guard of fifty gentlemen pensioners bearing gilt battle-axes, to the throne-room, where he proceeded to transact business of state. his 'uncle' lord hertford, took his stand by the throne, to assist he royal mind with wise counsel. the body of illustrious men named by the late king as his executors, appeared, to ask tom's approval of certain acts of theirsrather a form, and yet not wholly a form, since there was no protector as yet. the archbishop of canterbury made report of the decree of the council of executors concerning the obsequies of his late most illustrious majesty, and finished by reading the signatures of the executors, to wit: the archbishop of canterbury; the lord chancellor of england; william lord st. john; john lord russell; edward earl of hertford; john viscount lisle; cuthbert bishop of durham tom was not listeningan earlier clause of the document was puzzling him. at this point he turned and whispered to lord hertford: 'what day did he say the burial hath been appointed for?' 'the 16th of the coming month, my liege.' ''tis a strange folly. will he keep?' poor chap, he was still new to the customs of royalty; he was used to seeing the forlorn dead of offal court hustled out of the way with a very different sort of expedition. however, the lord hertford set his mind at rest with a word or two. a secretary of state presented an order of the council appointing the morrow at eleven for the reception of the foreign ambassadors, and desired the king's assent. tom turned an inquiring look toward hertford, who whispered: 'your majesty will signify consent. they come to testify their royal masters' sense of the heavy calamity which hath visited your grace and the realm of england.' tom did as he was bidden. another secretary began to read a preamble concerning the expenses of the late king's household, which had amounted to l28,000 during the preceding six monthsa sum so vast that it made tom canty gasp; he gasped again when the fact appeared that l20,000 of this money were still owing and unpaid;*(10) and once more when it appeared that the king's coffers were about empty, and his twelve hundred servants much embarrassed for lack of the wages due them. tom spoke out, with lively apprehension. 'we be going to the dogs, 'tis plain. 'tis meet and necessary that we take a smaller house and set the servants at large, sith they be of no value but to make delay, and trouble one with offices that harass the spirit and shame the soul, they misbecoming any but a doll, that hath nor brains nor hands to help itself withal. i remember me of a small house that standeth over against the fish-market, by billingsgate-' a sharp pressure upon tom's arm stopped his foolish tongue and sent a blush to his face; but no countenance there betrayed any sign that this strange speech had been remarked or given concern. a secretary made report that forasmuch as the late king had provided in his will for conferring the ducal degree upon the earl of hertford and raising his brother, sir thomas seymour, to the peerage, and likewise hertford's son to an earldom, together similar aggrandizements to other great servants of the crown, the council had resolved to hold a sitting on the 16th february for the delivering and confirming of these honors; and that meantime the late king not having granted, in writing, estates suitable to the support of these dignities, the council, knowing his private wishes in that regard, had thought proper to grant to seymour '500 pound lands' and to hertford's son '800 pound lands, and 300 pound of the next bishop's lands which should fall vacant,'his present majesty being willing.*(11) tom was about to blurt out something about the propriety of paying the late king's debts first before squandering all his money; but a timely touch upon his arm, from the thoughtful hertford, saved him this indiscretion; wherefore he gave the royal assent, without spoken comment, but with much inward discomfort. while he sat reflecting a moment over the ease with which he was doing strange and glittering miracles, a happy thought shot into his mind: why not make his mother duchess of offal court and give her an estate? but a sorrowful thought swept it instantly away; he was only a king in name, these grave veterans and great nobles were his masters; to them his mother was only the creature of a diseased mind; they would simply listen to his project with unbelieving ears, then send for the doctor. the dull work went tediously on. petitions were read, and proclamations, patents, and all manner of wordy, repetitious and wearisome papers relating to the public business; and at last tom sighed pathetically and murmured to himself, 'in what have i offended, that the good god should take me away from the fields and the free air and the sunshine, to shut me up here and make me a king and afflict me so?' then his poor muddled head nodded awhile, and presently dropped to his shoulder; and the business of the empire came to a standstill for want of that august factor, the ratifying power. silence ensued around the slumbering child, and the sages of the realm ceased from their deliberations. during the forenoon, tom had an enjoyable hour, by permission of his keepers, hertford and st. john, with the lady elizabeth and the little lady jane grey; though the spirits of the princesses were rather subdued by the mighty stroke that had fallen upon the royal house; and at the end of the visit his 'elder sister'afterward the 'bloody mary' of historychilled him with a solemn interview which had but one merit in his eyes, its brevity. he had a few moments to himself, and then a slim lad of about twelve years of age was admitted to his presence, whose clothing, except his snowy ruff and the laces about his wrists, was of blackdoublet, hose and all. he bore no badge of mourning but a knot of purple ribbon on his shoulder. he advanced hesitatingly, with head bowed and bare, and dropped upon one knee in front of tom. tom sat still and contemplated him soberly for a moment. then he said: 'rise, lad. who art thou? what wouldst have?' the boy rose, and stood at graceful ease, but with an aspect of concern in his face. he said: 'of a surety thou must remember me, my lord. i am thy whipping-boy. 'my whipping-boy?' 'the same, your grace, i am humphreyhumphrey marlow.' tom perceived that here was some one whom his keepers ought to have posted him about. the situation was delicate. what should he do?pretend he knew this lad, and then betray, by his every utterance, that he had never heard of him before? no, that would not do. an idea came to his relief: accidents like this might be likely to happen with some frequency, now that business urgencies would often call hertford and st. john from his side, they being members of the council of executors; therefore perhaps it would be well to strike out a plan himself to meet the requirements of such emergencies. yes, that would be a wise coursehe would practise on this boy, and see what sort of success he might achieve. so he stroked his brow, perplexedly, a moment or two, and presently said: 'now i seem to remember thee somewhatbut my wit is clogged and dim with suffering-' 'alack, my poor master!' ejaculated the whipping-boy, with feeling; adding, to himself, 'in truth 'tis as they saidhis mind is gonealas, poor soul! but misfortune catch me, how am i forgetting! they said one must not seem to observe that aught is wrong with him.' ''tis strange how my memory doth wanton with me these days,' said tom. 'but mind it noti mend apacea little clue doth often serve to bring me back again the things and names which had escaped me. (and not they, only, forsooth, but e'en such as i ne'er heard beforeas this lad shall see.) give thy business speech.' ''tis matter of small weight, my liege, yet will i touch upon it, an it please your grace. two days gone by, when your majesty faulted thrice in your greekin the morning lessonsdost remember it?' 'ye-e-smethinks i do. (it is not much of a liean i had meddled with the greek at all, i had not faulted simply thrice, but forty times). yes, i do recall it nowgo on.' -'the master, being wroth with what he termed such slovenly and doltish work, did promise that he would soundly whip me for itand-' 'whip thee!' said tom, astonished out of his presence of mind. 'why should he whip thee for faults of mine?' 'ah, your grace forgetteth again. he always scourgeth me, when thou dost fail in thy lessons.' 'true, truei had forgot. thou teachest me in privatethen if i fail, he argueth that thy office was lamely done, and-' 'oh, my liege, what words are these? i, the humblest of thy servants, presume to teach thee!' 'then where is thy blame? what riddle is this? am i in truth gone mad, or is it thou? explainspeak out.' 'but, good your majesty, there's naught that needeth simplifying. none may visit the sacred person of the prince of wales with blows; wherefore when he faulteth, 'tis i that take them; and meet it is and right, for that it is mine office and my livelihood.'*(12) tom stared at the tranquil boy, observing to himself, 'lo, it is a wonderful thinga most strange and curious trade; i marvel they have not hired a boy to take my combings and my dressings for mewould heaven they would!an they will do this thing, i will take my lashings in mine own person, giving thanks to god for the change.' then he said aloud: 'and hast thou been beaten, poor friend, according to the promise?' 'no, good your majesty, my punishment was appointed for this day, and peradventure it may be annulled, as unbefitting the season of mourning that is come upon us; i know not, and so have made bold to come hither and remind your grace about your gracious promise to intercede in my behalf-' 'with the master? to save thee thy whipping?' 'ah, thou dost remember!' 'my memory mendeth, thou seest. set thy mind at easethy back shall go unscathedi will see to it.' 'oh, thanks, my good lord!' cried the boy, dropping upon his knee again. 'mayhap i have ventured far enow; and yet'.... seeing master humphrey hesitate, tom encouraged him to go on, saying he was 'in the granting mood.' 'then will i speak it out, for it lieth near my heart. sith thou art no more prince of wales but king, thou canst order matters as thou wilt, with none to say thee nay; wherefore it is not in reason that thou wilt longer vex thyself with dreary studies, but wilt burn thy books and turn thy mind to things less irksome. then am i ruined, and mine orphan sisters with me!' 'ruined? prithee, how?' 'my back is my bread, o my gracious liege! if it go idle, i starve. an thou cease from study, mine office is gone, thou'lt need no whipping-boy. do not turn me away!' tom was touched with this pathetic distress. he said, with a right royal burst of generosity: 'discomfort thyself no further, lad. thine office shall be permanent in thee and thy line, forever.' then he struck the boy a light blow on the shoulder with the flat of his sword, exclaiming, 'rise, humphrey marlow, hereditary grand whipping-boy to the royal house of england! banish sorrowi will betake me to my books again, and study so ill that they must in justice treble thy wage, so mightily shall the business of thine office be augmented.' the grateful humphrey responded fervidly: 'thanks, oh, most noble master, this princely lavishness doth far surpass my most distempered dreams of fortune. now shall i be happy all my days, and all the house of marlow after me.' tom had wit enough to perceive that here was a lad who could be useful to him. he encouraged humphrey to talk, and he was nothing loath. he was delighted to believe that he was helping in tom's 'cure'; for always, as soon as he had finished calling back to tom's diseased mind the various particulars of his experiences and adventures in the royal schoolroom and elsewhere about the palace, he noticed that tom was then able to 'recall' the circumstances quite clearly. at the end of an hour tom found himself well freighted with very valuable information concerning personages and matters pertaining to the court; so he resolved to draw instruction from this source daily; and to this end he would give order to admit humphrey to the royal closet whenever he might come, provided the majesty of england was not engaged with other people. humphrey had hardly been dismissed when my lord hertford arrived with more trouble for tom. he said that the lords of the council, fearing that some overwrought report of the king's damaged health might have leaked out and got abroad, they deemed it wise and best that his majesty should begin to dine in public after a day or twohis wholesome complexion and vigorous step, assisted by a carefully guarded repose of manner and ease and grace of demeanor, would more surely quiet the general pulsein case any evil rumors had gone aboutthan any other scheme that could be devised. then the earl proceeded, very delicately, to instruct tom as to the observances proper to the stately occasion, under the rather thin disguise of 'reminding' him concerning things already known to him; but to his vast gratification it turned out that tom needed very little help in this linehe had been making use of humphrey in that direction, for humphrey had mentioned that within a few days he was to begin to dine in public; having gathered it from the swift-winged gossip of the court. tom kept these facts to himself, however. seeing the royal memory so improved, the earl ventured to apply a few tests to it, in an apparently casual way, to find out how far its amendment had progressed. the results were happy, here and there, in spotsspots where humphrey's tracks remainedand, on the whole, my lord was greatly pleased and encouraged. so encouraged was he, indeed, that he spoke up and said in a quite hopeful voice: 'now am i persuaded that if your majesty will but tax your memory yet a little further, it will resolve the puzzle of the great seala loss which was of moment yesterday, although of none to-day, since its term of service ended with our late lord's life. may it please your grace to make the trial?' tom was at seaa great seal was a something which he was totally unacquainted with. after a moment's hesitation he looked up innocently and asked: 'what was it like, my lord?' the earl started, almost imperceptibly, muttering to himself, 'alack, his wits are flown again!it was ill wisdom to lead him on to strain them-' then he deftly turned the talk to other matters, with the purpose of sweeping the unlucky seal out of tom's thoughtsa purpose which easily succeeded. chapter xv tom as king the next day the foreign ambassadors came, with their gorgeous trains; and tom, throned in awful state, received them. the splendors of the scene delighted his eye and fired his imagination at first, but the audience was long and dreary, and so were most of the addresseswherefore, what began as a pleasure, grew into weariness and homesickness by and by. tom said the words which hertford put into his mouth from time to time, and tried hard to acquit himself satisfactorily, but he was too new to such things, and too ill at ease to accomplish more than a tolerable success. he looked sufficiently like a king, but he was ill able to feel like one. he was cordially glad when the ceremony was ended. the larger part of his day was 'wasted'as he termed it, in his own mindin labors pertaining to his royal office. even the two hours devoted to certain princely pastimes and recreations were rather a burden to him than otherwise, they were so fettered by restrictions and ceremonious observances. however, he had a private hour with his whipping-boy which he counted clear gain, since he got both entertainment and needful information out of it. the third day of tom canty's kingship came and went much as the others had done, but there was a lifting of his cloud in one wayhe felt less uncomfortable than at first; he was getting a little used to his circumstances and surroundings; his chains still galled, but not all the time; he found that the presence and homage of the great afflicted and embarrassed him less and less sharply with every hour that drifted over his head. but for one single dread, he could have seen the fourth day approach without serious distressthe dining in public; it was to begin that day. there were greater matters in the programfor on that day he would have to preside at a council which would take his views and commands concerning the policy to be pursued toward various foreign nations scattered far and near over the great globe; on that day, too, hertford would be formally chosen to the grand office of lord protector; other things of note were appointed for that fourth day also, but to tom they were all insignificant compared with the ordeal of dining all by himself with a multitude of curious eyes fastened upon him and a multitude of mouths whispering comments upon his performanceand upon his mistakes, if he should be so unlucky as to make any. still, nothing could stop that fourth day, and so it came. it found poor tom low-spirited and absent-minded, and this mood continued; he could not shake it off. the ordinary duties of the morning dragged upon his hands, and wearied him. once more he felt the sense of captivity heavy upon him. late in the forenoon he was in a large audience chamber, conversing with the earl of hertford and duly awaiting the striking of the hour appointed for a visit of ceremony from a considerable number of great officials and courtiers. after a little while tom, who had wandered to a window and become interested in the life and movement of the great highway beyond the palace gatesand not idly interested, but longing with all his heart to take part in person in its stir and freedomsaw the van of a hooting and shouting mob of disorderly men, women, and children of the lowest and poorest degree approaching from up the road. 'i would i knew what 'tis about!' he exclaimed, with all a boy's curiosity in such happenings. 'thou art the king!' solemnly responded the earl, with a reverence. 'have i your grace's leave to act?' 'oh, blithely, yes! oh, gladly, yes!' exclaimed tom, excitedly, adding to himself with a lively sense of satisfaction, 'in truth, being a king is not all drearinessit hath its compensations and conveniences.' the earl called a page, and sent him to the captain of the guard with the order: 'let the mob be halted, and inquiry made concerning, the occasion of its movement. by the king's command!' a few seconds later a long rank of the royal guards, cased in flashing steel, filed out at the gates and formed across the highway in front of the multitude. a messenger returned, to report that the crowd were following a man, a woman, and a young girl to execution for crimes committed against the peace and dignity of the realm. deathand a violent deathfor these poor unfortunates! the thought wrung tom's heartstrings. the spirit of compassion took control of him, to the exclusion of all other considerations; he never thought of the offended laws, or of the grief or loss which these three criminals had inflicted upon their victims, he could think of nothing but the scaffold and the grisly fate hanging over the heads of the condemned. his concern made him even forget, for the moment, that he was but the false shadow of a king, not the substance; and before he knew it he had blurted out the command: 'bring them here!' then he blushed scarlet, and a sort of apology sprung to his lips; but observing that his order had wrought no sort of surprise in the earl or the waiting page, he suppressed the words he was about to utter. the page, in the most matter-of-course way, made a profound obeisance and retired backward out of the room to deliver the command. tom experienced a glow of pride and a renewed sense of the compensating advantages of the kingly office. he said to himself, 'truly it is like what i used to feel when i read the old priest's tales, and did imagine mine own self a prince, giving law and command to all, saying, " do this, do that," while none durst offer let or hindrance to my will.' now the doors swung open; one high-sounding title after another was announced, the personages owning them followed, and the place was quickly half filled with noble folk and finery. but tom was hardly conscious of the presence of these people, so wrought up was he and so intensely absorbed in that other and more interesting matter. he seated himself, absently, in his chair of state, and turned his eyes upon the door with manifestations of impatient expectancy; seeing which, the company forbore to trouble him, and fell to chatting a mixture of public business and court gossip one with another. in a little while the measured tread of military men was heard approaching, and the culprits entered the presence in charge of an under-sheriff and escorted by a detail of the king's guard. the civil officer knelt before tom, then stood aside; the three doomed persons knelt also, and remained so; the guard took position behind tom's chair. tom scanned the prisoners curiously. something about the dress or appearance of the man had stirred a vague memory in him. 'methinks i have seen this man ere now... but the when or the where fail me'such was tom's thought. just then the man glanced quickly up, and quickly dropped his face again, not being able to endure the awful port of sovereignty; but the one full glimpse of the face, which tom got, was sufficient. he said to himself: 'now is the matter clear; this is the stranger that plucked giles witt out of the thames, and saved his life that windy, bitter first day of the new yeara brave, good deedpity he hath been doing baser ones and got himself in this sad case... i have not forgot the day, neither the hour; by reason that an hour after, upon the stroke of eleven, i did get a hiding by the hand of gammer canty which was of so goodly and admired severity that all that went before or followed after it were but fondlings and caresses by comparison.' tom now ordered that the woman and the girl be removed from the presence for a little time; then addressed himself to the under-sheriff, saying: 'good sir, what is this man's offense?' the officer knelt, and answered: 'so please your majesty, he hath taken the life of a subject by poison.' tom's compassion for the prisoner, and admiration of him as the daring rescuer of a drowning boy, experienced a most damaging shock. 'the thing was proven upon him?' he asked. 'most clearly, sire.' tom sighed, and said: 'take him awayhe hath earned his death. 'tis a pity, for he was a brave heartnana, i mean he hath the look of it!' the prisoner clasped his hands together with sudden energy, and wrung them despairingly, at the same time appealing imploringly to the 'king' in broken and terrified phrases: 'oh, my lord the king, an thou canst pity the lost, have pity upon me! i am innocentneither hath that wherewith i am charged been more than but lamely provedyet i speak not of that; the judgment is gone forth against me and may not suffer alteration; yet in mine extremity i beg a boon, for my doom is more than i can bear. a grace, a grace, my lord the king! in thy royal compassion grant my prayergive commandment that i be hanged!' tom was amazed. this was not the outcome he had looked for. 'odds my life, a strange boon! was it not the fate intended thee?' 'oh, good my liege, not so! it is ordered that i be boiled alive!' the hideous surprise of these words almost made tom spring from his chair. as soon as he could recover his wits he cried out: 'have thy wish, poor soul! an thou had poisoned a hundred men thou shouldst not suffer so miserable a death.' the prisoner bowed his face to the ground and burst into passionate expressions of gratitudeending with: 'if ever thou shouldst know misfortunewhich god forbid!may thy goodness to me this day be remembered and requited!' tom turned to the earl of hertford, and said: 'my lord, is it believable that there was warrant for this man's ferocious doom?' 'it is the law, your gracefor poisoners. in germany coiners be boiled to death in oilnot cast in of a sudden, but by a rope let down into the oil by degrees, and slowly; first the feet, then the legs, then-' 'oh, prithee, no more, my lord, i cannot bear it!' cried tom, covering his eyes with his hands to shut out the picture. 'i beseech your good lordship that order be taken to change this lawoh, let no more poor creatures be visited with its tortures.' the earl's face showed profound ratification, for he was a man of merciful and generous impulsesa thing not very common with his class in that fierce age. he said: 'these your grace's noble words have sealed its doom. history will remember it to the honor of your royal house.' the under-sheriff was about to remove his prisoner; tom gave him a sign to wait; then he said: 'good sir, i would look into this matter further. the man has said his deed was but lamely proved. tell me what thou knowest.' 'if the king's grace please, it did appear upon the trial, that this man entered into a house in the hamlet of islington where one lay sickthree witnesses say it was at ten of the clock in the morning and two say it was some minutes laterthe sick man being alone at the time, and sleepingand presently the man came forth again, and went his way. the sick man died within the hour, being torn with spasm and retchings.' 'did any see the poison given? was poison found?' 'marry, no, my liege.' 'then how doth one know there was poison given at all?' 'please your majesty, the doctors testified that none die with such symptoms but by poison.' weighty evidence, thisin that simple age. tom recognized its formidable nature, and said: 'the doctor knoweth his tradebelike they were right. the matter hath an ill look for this poor man.' 'yet was not this all, your majesty; there is more and worse. many testified that a witch, since gone from the village, none know whither, did foretell, and speak it privately in their ears, that the sick man would die by poisonand more, that a stranger would give ita stranger with brown hair and clothed in a worn and common garb; and surely this prisoner doth answer woundily to the bill. please, your majesty, to give the circumstance that solemn weight which is its due, seeing it was foretold.' this was an argument of tremendous force, in that superstitious day. tom felt that the thing was settled; if evidence was worth anything, this poor fellow's guilt was proved. still he offered the prisoner a chance, saying: 'if thou canst say aught in thy behalf, speak.' 'naught that will avail, my king. i am innocent, yet cannot i make it appear. i have no friends, else might i show that i was not in islington that day; so also might i show that at that hour they name i was above a league away, seeing i was at wapping old stairs; yea more, my king, for i could show, that while they say i was taking life, i was saving it. a drowning boy-' 'peace! sheriff, name the day the deed was done!' 'at ten in the morning, or some minutes later, the first day of the new year, most illustrious-' 'let the prisoner go freeit is the king's will!' another blush followed this unregal outburst, and he covered his indecorum as well as he could by adding: 'it enrageth me that a man should be hanged upon such idle, hare-brained evidence!' a low buzz of admiration swept through the assemblage. it was not admiration of the decree that had been delivered by tom, for the propriety or expediency of pardoning a convicted poisoner was a thing which few there would have felt justified in either admitting or admiringno, the admiration was for the intelligence and spirit which tom had displayed. some of the low-voiced remarks were to this effect: 'this is no mad kinghe hath his wits sound.' 'how sanely he put his questionshow like his former natural self was this abrupt, imperious disposal of the matter!' 'god be thanked his infirmity is spent! this is no weakling, but a king. he hath borne himself like to his own father.' the air being filled with applause, tom's ear necessarily caught a little of it. the effect which this had upon him was to put him greatly at his ease, and also to charge his system with very gratifying sensations. however, his juvenile curiosity soon rose superior to these pleasant thoughts and feelings; he was eager to know what sort of deadly mischief the woman and the little girl could have been about; so, by his command the two terrified and sobbing creatures were brought before him. 'what is it that these have done?' he inquired of the sheriff. 'please your majesty, a black crime is charged upon them, and clearly proven; wherefore the judges have decreed, according to the law, that they be hanged. they sold themselves to the devilsuch is their crime.' tom shuddered. he had been taught to abhor people who did this wicked thing. still, he was not going to deny himself the pleasure of feeding his curiosity, for all that; so he asked: 'where was this done?and when?' 'on a midnight, in decemberin a ruined church, your majesty.' tom shuddered again. 'who was there present?' 'only these two, your graceand that other.' 'have these confessed?' 'nay, not so, sirethey do deny it.' 'then, prithee, how was it known?' 'certain witnesses did see them wending thither, good your majesty; this bred the suspicion, and dire effects have since confirmed and justified it. in particular, it is in evidence that through the wicked power so obtained, they did invoke and bring about a storm that wasted all the region round about. above forty witnesses have proved the storm; and sooth one might have had a thousand, for all had reason to remember it, sith all had suffered by it.' 'certes this is a serious matter.' tom turned this dark piece of scoundrelism over in his mind awhile, then asked: 'suffered the woman, also, by the storm?' several old heads among the assemblage nodded their recognition of the wisdom of this question. the sheriff, however, saw nothing consequential in the inquiry; he answered, with simple directness. 'indeed, she did, your majesty, and most righteously, as all aver. her habitation was swept away, and herself and child left shelterless.' 'methinks the power to do herself so ill a turn was dearly bought. she had been cheated, had she paid but a farthing for it; that she paid her soul, and her child's, argueth that she is mad; if she is mad she knoweth not what she doth, therefore sinneth not.' the elderly heads nodded recognition of tom's wisdom once more, and one individual murmured, 'an the king be mad himself, according to report, then it is a madness of a sort that would improve the sanity of some i wot of, if by the gentle providence of god they could but catch it.' 'what age hath the child?' asked tom. 'nine years, please your majesty.' 'by the law of england may a child enter into covenant and sell itself, my lord?' asked tom, turning to a learned judge. 'the law doth not permit a child to make or meddle in any weighty matter, good my liege, holding that its callow wit unfitteth it to cope with the riper wit and evil schemings of them that are its elders. the devil may buy a child, if he so choose, and the child agree thereto, but not an englishmanin this latter case the contract would be null and void.' 'it seemeth a rude unchristian thing, and ill contrived, that english law denieth privileges to englishmen, to waste them on the devil!' cried tom, with honest heat. this novel view of the matter excited many smiles, and was stored away in many heads to be repeated about the court as evidence of tom's originality as well as progress toward mental health. the elder culprit had ceased from sobbing, and was hanging upon tom's words with an excited interest and a growing hope. tom noticed this, and it strongly inclined his sympathies toward her in her perilous and unfriended situation. presently he asked: 'how wrought they, to bring the storm?' 'by pulling off their stockings, sire.' this astonished tom, and also fired his curiosity to fever heat. he said eagerly: 'it is wonderful! hath it always this dread effect?' 'always, my liegeat least if the woman desire it, and utter the needful words, either in her mind or with her tongue.' tom turned to the woman, and said with impetuous zeal: 'exert thy poweri would see a storm.' there was a sudden paling of cheeks in the superstitious assemblage, and a general, though unexpressed, desire to get out of the placeall of which was lost upon tom, who was dead to everything but the proposed cataclysm. seeing a puzzled and astonished look in the woman's face, he added, excitedly: 'never fearthou shalt be blameless. morethou shalt go freenone shall touch thee. exert thy power.' 'o, my lord the king, i have it noti have been falsely accused.' 'thy fears stay thee. be of good heart, thou shalt suffer no harm. make a stormit mattereth not how small a onei require naught great or harmful, but indeed prefer the oppositedo this and thy life is sparedthou shalt go out free, with thy child, bearing the king's pardon, and safe from hurt or malice from any in the realm.' the woman prostrated herself, and protested, with tears, that she had no power to do the miracle, else she would gladly win her child's life alone, and be content to lose her own, if by obedience to the king's command so precious a grace might be acquired. tom urgedthe woman still adhered to her declarations. finally, he said: 'i think the woman hath said true. an my mother were in her place and gifted with the devil's functions, she had not stayed a moment to call her storms and lay the whole land in ruins, if the saving of my forfeit life were the price she got! it is argument that other mothers are made in like mold. thou art free, good wifethou and thy childfor i do think thee innocent. now thou'st naught to fear, being pardonedpull off thy stockings!an thou canst make me a storm, thou shalt be rich!' the redeemed creature was loud in her gratitude, and proceeded to obey, while tom looked on with eager expectancy, a little marred by apprehension; the courtiers at the same time manifesting decided discomfort and uneasiness. the woman stripped her own feet and her little girl's also, and plainly did her best to reward the king's generosity with an earthquake, but it was all a failure and a disappointment. tom sighed and said: 'there, good soul, trouble thyself no further, thy power is departed out of thee. go thy way in peace; and if it return to thee at any time, forget me not, but fetch me a storm.'*(13) chapter xvi the state dinner the dinner-hour drew nearyet, strangely enough, the thought brought but slight discomfort to tom, and hardly any terror. the morning's experiences had wonderfully built up his confidence; the poor little ash-cat was already more wonted to his strange garret, after four days' habit, than a mature person could have become in a full month. a child's facility in accommodating itself to circumstances was never more strikingly illustrated. let us privileged ones hurry to the great banqueting-room and have a glance at matters there while tom is being made ready for the imposing occasion. it is a spacious apartment, with gilded pillars and pilasters, and pictured walls and ceilings. at the door stand tall guards, as rigid as statues, dressed in rich and picturesque costumes, and bearing halberds. in a high gallery which runs all around the place is a band of musicians and a packed company of citizens of both sexes, in brilliant attire. in the center of the room, upon a raised platform, is tom's table. now let the ancient chronicler speak: 'a gentleman enters the room bearing a rod, and along with him another bearing a table-cloth, which, after they have both kneeled three times with the utmost veneration, he spreads upon the table, and after kneeling again they both retire; then come two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; when they have kneeled as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they too retire with the same ceremonies performed by the first; at last come two nobles richly clothed, one bearing a tasting-knife, who, after prostrating themselves in the most graceful manner, approach and rub the table with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the king had been present.'*(14) so end the solemn preliminaries. now, far down the echoing corridors we hear a bugle-blast, and the indistinct cry, 'place for the king! way for the king's most excellent majesty!' these sounds are momently repeatedthey grow nearer and nearerand presently, almost in our faces, the martial note peals and the cry rings out, 'way for the king!' at this instant the shining pageant appears, and files in at the door, with a measured march. let the chronicler speak again: 'first come gentlemen, barons, earls, knights of the garter, all richly dressed and bareheaded; next comes the chancellor, between two, one of which carries the royal scepter, the other the sword of state in a red scabbard, studded with golden fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards; next comes the king himselfwhom, upon his appearing, twelve trumpets and many drums salute with a great burst of welcome, whilst all in the galleries rise in their places, crying "god save the king!" after him come nobles attached to his person, and on his right and left march his guard of honor, his fifty gentlemen pensioners, with gilt battle-axes.' this was all fine and pleasant. tom's pulse beat high and a glad light was in his eye. he bore himself right gracefully, and all the more so because he was not thinking of how he was doing it, his mind being charmed and occupied with the blithe sights and sounds about himand besides, nobody can be very ungraceful in nicely fitting beautiful clothes after he has grown a little used to themespecially if he is for the moment unconscious of them. tom remembered his instructions, and acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of his plumed head, and a courteous 'i thank ye, my good people.' he seated himself at table without removing his cap; and did it without the least embarrassment; for to eat with one's cap on was the one solitary royal custom upon which the kings and the cantys met upon common ground, neither party having any advantage over the other in the matter of old familiarity with it. the pageant broke up and grouped itself picturesquely, and remained bareheaded. now, to the sound of gay music, the yeomen of the guard entered'the tallest and mightiest men in england, they being selected in this regard'but we will let the chronicler tell about it: 'the yeomen of the guard entered bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with golden roses upon their backs; and these went and came, bringing in each turn a course of dishes, served in plate. these dishes were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the taster gave to each guard a mouthful to eat of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of any poison.' tom made a good dinner, notwithstanding he was conscious that hundreds of eyes followed each morsel to his mouth and watched him eat it with an interest which could not have been more intense if it had been a deadly explosive and was expected to blow him up and scatter him all over the place. he was careful not to hurry, and equally careful not to do anything whatever for himself, but wait till the proper official knelt down and did it for him. he got through without a mistakeflawless and precious triumph. when the meal was over at last and he marched away in the midst of his bright pageant, with the happy noises in his ears of blaring bugles, rolling drums, and thundering acclamations, he felt that if he had seen the worst of dining in public, it was an ordeal which he would be glad to endure several times a day if by that means he could but buy himself free from some of the more formidable requirements of his royal office. chapter xvii foo-foo the first miles hendon hurried along toward the southwark end of the bridge, keeping a sharp lookout for the persons he sought, and hoping and expecting to overtake them presently. he was disappointed in this, however. by asking questions, he was enabled to track them part of the way through southwark; then all traces ceased, and he was perplexed as to how to proceed. still, he continued his efforts as best he could during the rest of the day. nightfall found him leg-weary, half famished, and his desire as far from accomplishment as ever; so he supped at the tabard inn and went to bed, resolved to make an early start in the morning, and give the town an exhaustive search. as he lay thinking and planning, he presently began to reason thus: the boy would escape from the ruffian, his reputed father, if possible; would he go back to london and seek his former haunts? no, he would not do that, he would avoid recapture. what, then, would he do? never having had a friend in the world, or a protector, until he met miles hendon, he would naturally try to find that friend again, provided the effort did not require him to go toward london and danger. he would strike for hendon hall, that is what he would do, for he knew hendon was homeward bound, and there he might expect to find him. yes, the case was plain to hendonhe must lose no more time in southwark, but move at once through kent, toward monk's holm, searching the wood and inquiring as he went. let us return to the vanished little king now. the ruffian, whom the waiter at the inn on the bridge saw 'about to join' the youth and the king, did not exactly join them, but fell in close behind them and followed their steps. he said nothing. his left arm was in a sling, and he wore a large green patch over his left eye; he limped slightly, and used an oaken staff as a support. the youth led the king a crooked course through southwark, and by and by struck into the highroad beyond. the king was irritated now, and said he would stop hereit was hendon's place to come to him, not his to go to hendon. he would not endure such insolence; he would stop where he was. the youth said: 'thou'lt tarry here, and thy friend lying wounded in the wood yonder? so be it, then.' the king's manner changed at once. he cried out: 'wounded? and who hath dared to do it? but that is apart; lead on, lead on! faster, sirrah! art shod with lead? wounded, is he? now though the doer of it be a duke's son, he shall rue it!' it was some distance to the wood, but the space was speedily traversed. the youth looked about him, discovered a bough sticking in the ground, with a small bit of rag tied to it, then led the way into the forest, watching for similar boughs and finding them at intervals; they were evidently guides to the point he was aiming at. by and by an open place was reached, where were the charred remains of a farmhouse, and near them a barn which was falling to ruin and decay. there was no sign of life anywhere, and utter silence prevailed. the youth entered the barn, the king following eagerly upon his heels. no one there! the king shot a surprised and suspicious glance at the youth, and asked: 'where is he?' a mocking laugh was his answer. the king was in a rage in a moment; he seized a billet of wood and was in the act of charging upon the youth when another mocking laugh fell upon his ear. it was from the lame ruffian, who had been following at a distance. the king turned and said angrily: 'who art thou? what is thy business here?' 'leave thy foolery,' said the man, 'and quiet thyself. my disguise is none so good that thou canst pretend thou knowest not thy father through it.' 'thou art not my father. i know thee not. i am the king. if thou hast hid my servant, find him for me, or thou shalt sup sorrow for what thou hast done.' john canty replied, in a stern and measured voice: 'it is plain thou art mad, and i am loath to punish thee; but if thou provoke me, i must. thy prating doth no harm here, where there are no ears that need to mind thy follies, yet is it well to practise thy tongue to wary speech, that it may do no hurt when our quarters change. i have done a murder, and may not tarry at homeneither shalt thou, seeing i need thy service. my name is changed, for wise reasons; it is hobbsjohn hobbs; thine is jackcharge thy memory accordingly. now, then, speak. where is thy mother? where are thy sisters? they came not to the place appointedknowest thou whither they went?' the king answered, sullenly: 'trouble me not with these riddles. my mother is dead; my sisters are in the palace.' the youth near by burst into a derisive laugh, and the king would have assaulted him, but cantyor hobbs, as he now called himselfprevented him, and said: 'peace, hugo, vex him not; his mind is astray, and thy ways fret him. sit thee down, jack, and quiet thyself; thou shalt have a morsel to eat, anon.' hobbs and hugo fell to talking together, in low voices, and the king removed himself as far as he could from their disagreeable company. he withdrew into the twilight of the farther end of the barn, where he found the earthen floor bedded a foot deep with straw. he lay down here, drew straw over himself in lieu of blankets, and was soon absorbed in thinking. he had many griefs, but the minor ones were swept almost into forgetfulness by the supreme one, the loss of his father. to the rest of the world the name of henry viii brought a shiver, and suggested an ogre whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand dealt scourgings and death; but to this boy the name brought only sensations of pleasure, the figure it invoked wore a countenance that was all gentleness and affection. he called to mind a long succession of loving passages between his father and himself, and dwelt fondly upon them, his unstinted tears attesting how deep and real was the grief that possessed his heart. as the afternoon wasted away, the lad, wearied with his troubles, sunk gradually into a tranquil and healing slumber. after a considerable timehe could not tell how longhis senses struggled to a half-consciousness, and as he lay with closed eyes vaguely wondering where he was and what had been happening, he noted a murmurous sound, the sullen beating of rain upon the roof. a snug sense of comfort stole over him, which was rudely broken, the next moment, by a chorus of piping cackles and coarse laughter. it startled him disagreeably, and he unmuffled his head to see whence this interruption proceeded. a grim and unsightly picture met his eye. a bright fire was burning in the middle of the floor, at the other end of the barn; and around it, and lit weirdly up by the red glare, lolled and sprawled the motliest company of tattered gutter-scum and ruffians, of both sexes, he had ever read or dreamed of. there were huge, stalwart men, brown with exposure, long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there were middle-sized youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly clad; there were blind medicants, with patched or bandaged eyes; crippled ones, with wooden legs and crutches; there was a villain-looking peddler with his pack; a knife-grinder, a tinker, and a barber-surgeon, with the implements of their trades; some of the females were hardly grown girls, some were at prime, some were old and wrinkled hags, and all were loud, brazen, foul-mouthed; and all soiled and slatternly; there were three sore-faced babies; there were a couple of starveling curs, with strings around their necks, whose office was to lead the blind. the night was come, the gang had just finished feasting, an orgy was beginning, the can of liquor was passing from mouth to mouth. a general cry broke forth: 'a song! a song from the bat and dick dot-and-go-one!' one of the blind men got up, and made ready by casting aside the patches that sheltered his excellent eyes, and the pathetic placard which recited the cause of his calamity. dot-and-go-one disencumbered himself of his timber leg and took his place, upon sound and healthy limbs, beside his fellow-rascal; then they roared out a rollicking ditty, and were reinforced by the whole crew, at the end of each stanza, in a rousing chorus. by the time the last stanza was reached, the half-drunken enthusiasm had risen to such a pitch that everybody joined in and sang it clear through from the beginning, producing a volume of villainous sound that made the rafters quake. these were the inspiring words: 'bien darkmans then, bouse mort and ken, the bien coves bings awast, on chates to trine by rome coves dine for his long lib at last. bing'd out bien morts and toure, and toure, bing out of the rome vile bine, and toure the cove that cloy'd your duds, upon upon the chates to trine.'*(15) conversation followed; not in the thieves' dialect of the song, for that was only used in talk when unfriendly ears might be listening. in the course of it it appeared that 'john hobbs' was not altogether a new recruit, but had trained in the gang at some former time. his later history was called for, and when he said he had 'accidentally' killed a man, considerable satisfaction was expressed; when he added that the man was a priest, he was roundly applauded, and had to take a drink with everybody. old acquaintances welcomed him joyously, and new ones were proud to shake him by the hand. he was asked why he had 'tarried away so many months.' he answered: 'london is better than the country, and safer these late years, the laws be so bitter and so diligently enforced. an i had not had that accident, i had stayed there. i had resolved to stay, and nevermore venture countrywardsbut the accident had ended that.' he inquired how many persons the gang numbered now. the 'ruffler,' or chief, answered: 'five and twenty sturdy budges, bulks, files, clapperdogeons and maunders, counting the dells and doxies and other morts.*(16) most are here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay. we follow at dawn.' 'i do not see the wen among the honest folk about me. where may he be?' 'poor lad, his diet is brimstone now, and over hot for a delicate taste. he was killed in a brawl, somewhere about midsummer.' 'i sorrow to hear that; the wen was a capable man, and brave.' 'that was he, truly. black bess, his dell, is of us yet, but absent on the eastward tramp; a fine lass, of nice ways and orderly conduct, none ever seeing her drunk above four days in the seven.' 'she was ever stricti remember it wella goodly wench and worthy all commendation. her mother was more free and less particular; a troublesome and ugly-tempered beldame, but furnished with a wit above the common.' 'we lost her through it. her gift of palmistry and other sorts of fortune-telling begot for her at last a witch's name and fame. the law roasted her to death at a slow fire. it did touch me to a sort of tenderness to see the gallant way she met her lotcursing and reviling all the crowd that gaped and gazed around her, whilst the flames licked upward toward her face and catched her thin locks and crackled about her old gray headcursing them, said i?cursing them! why an thou shouldst live a thousand years thou'dst never hear so masterful a cursing. alack, her art died with her. there be base and weakling imitations left, but no true blasphemy.' the ruffler sighed; the listeners sighed in sympathy; a general depression fell upon the company for a moment, for even hardened outcasts like these are not wholly dead to sentiment, but are able to feel a fleeting sense of loss and affliction at wide intervals and under peculiarly favoring circumstancesas in cases like to this, for instance, when genius and culture depart and leave no heir. however, a deep drink all round soon restored the spirits of the mourners. 'have any other of our friends fared hardly?' asked hobbs. 'someyes. particularly new-comerssuch as small husbandmen turned shiftless and hungry upon the world because their farms were taken from them to be changed to sheep-ranges. they begged, and were whipped at the cart's tail, naked from the girdle up, till the blood ran; then set in the stocks to be pelted; they begged again, were whipped again, and deprived of an ear; they begged a third timepoor devils, what else could they do?and were branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, then sold for slaves; they ran away, were hunted down, and hanged. 'tis a brief tale, and quickly told. others of us have fared less hardly. stand forth, yokel, burns, and hodgeshow your adornments!' these stood up and stripped away some of their rags, exposing their backs, crisscrossed with ropy old welts left by the lash; one turned up his hair and showed the place where a left ear had once been; another showed a brand upon his shoulderthe letter v and a mutilated ear; the third said: 'i am yokel, once a farmer and prosperous, with loving wife and kidsnow am i somewhat different in estate and calling; and the wife and kids are gone; mayhap they are in heaven, mayhap inin the other placebut the kindly god be thanked, they bide no more in england! my good old blameless mother strove to earn bread by nursing the sick; one of these died, the doctors knew not how, so my mother was burned for a witch, whilst my babes looked on and wailed. english law!up, all with your cups!now all together and with a cheer!drink to the merciful english law that delivered her from the english hell! thank you, mates, one and all. i begged, from house to housei and the wifebearing with us the hungry kidsbut it was a crime to be hungry in englandso they stripped us and lashed us through three towns. drink ye all again to the merciful english law!for its lash drank deep of my mary's blood and its blessed deliverance came quick. she lies there, in the potter's field, safe from all harms. and the kidswell, whilst the law lashed me from town to town, they starved. drink ladsonly a dropa drop to the poor kids, that never did any creature harm. i begged againbegged for a crust, and got the stocks and lost an earsee, here bides the stump; i begged again, and here is the stump of the other to keep me minded of it. and still i begged again, and was sold for a slavehere on my cheek under this stain, if i washed it off, ye might see the red s the branding iron left there! a slave! do ye understand that word! an english slave!that is he that stands before ye. i have run from my master, and when i am foundthe heavy curse of heaven fall on the law of the land that hath commanded it!i shall hang!'*(17) a ringing voice came through the murky air: 'thou shalt not!and this day the end of that law is come!' all turned, and saw the fantastic figure of the little king approaching hurriedly; as it emerged into the light and was clearly revealed, a general explosion of inquiries broke out: 'who is it ? what is it? who art thou, manikin?' the boy stood unconfused in the midst of all those surprised and questioning eyes, and answered with princely dignity: 'i am edward, king of england.' a wild burst of laughter followed, partly of derision and partly of delight in the excellence of the joke. the king was stung. he said sharply: 'ye mannerless vagrants, is this your recognition of the royal boon i have promised?' he said more, with angry voice and excited gesture, but it was lost in a whirlwind of laughter and mocking exclamations. 'john hobbs' made several attempts to make himself heard above the din, and at last succeededsaying: 'mates, he is my son, a dreamer, a fool, and stark madmind him nothe thinketh he is the king.' 'i am the king,' said edward, turning toward him, 'as thou shalt know to thy cost, in good time. thou hast confessed a murderthou shalt swing for it.' 'thou'lt betray me!thou? an i get my hands upon thee-' 'tut-tut!' said the burly ruffler, interposing in time to save the king, and emphasizing this service by knocking hobbs down with his fist, 'hast respect for neither kings nor rufflers? an thou insult my presence so again, i'll hang thee up myself.' then he said to his majesty, 'thou must make no threats against thy mates, lad; and thou must guard thy tongue from saying evil of them elsewhere. be king, if it please thy mad humor, but be not harmful in it. sink the title thou hast uttered'tis treason; we be bad men, in some few trifling ways, but none among us is so base as to be traitor to his king; we be loving and loyal hearts, in that regard. note if i speak truth. now-all together: "long live edward, king of england!"' 'long live edward, king of england!' the response came with such a thunder-gust from the motley crew that the crazy building vibrated to the sound. the little king's face lighted with pleasure for an instant, and he slightly inclined his head and said with grave simplicity: 'i thank you, my good people.' this unexpected result threw the company into convulsions of merriment. when something like quiet was presently come again, the ruffler said, firmly, but with an accent of good nature: 'drop it, boy, 'tis not wise, nor well. humor thy fancy, if thou must, but choose some other title.' a tinker shrieked out a suggestion: 'foo-foo the first, king of the mooncalves!' the title 'took' at once, every throat responded, and a roaring shout sent up, of: 'long live foo-foo the first, king of the mooncalves!' followed by hootings, cat-calls, and peals of laughter. 'hale him forth, and crown him!' 'robe him!' 'scepter him!' 'throne him!' these and twenty other cries broke out at once; and almost before the poor little victim could draw a breath he was crowned with a tin basin, robed in a tattered blanket, throned upon a barrel, and sceptered with tinker's soldering-iron. then all flung themselves upon their knees about him and sent up a chorus of ironical wailings, and mocking supplications, while they swabbed their eyes with their soiled and ragged sleeves and aprons: 'be gracious to us, o sweet king!' 'trample not upon thy beseeching worms, o noble majesty!' 'pity thy slaves, and comfort them with a royal kick!' 'cheer us and warm us with thy gracious rays, o flaming sun of sovereignty!' 'sanctify the ground with the touch of thy foot, that we may eat the dirt and be ennobled!' 'deign to spit upon us, o sire, that our children's children may tell of thy princely condescension, and be proud and happy forever!' but the humorous tinker made the 'hit' of the evening and carried off the honors. kneeling, he pretended to kiss the king's foot, and was indignantly spurned; whereupon he went about begging for a rag to paste over the place upon his face which had been touched by the foot, saying it must be preserved from contact with the vulgar air, and that he should make his fortune by going on the highway and exposing it to view at the rate of a hundred shillings a sight. he made himself so killingly funny that he was the envy and admiration of the whole mangy rabble. tears of shame and indignation stood in the little monarch's eyes; and the thought in his heart was, 'had i offered them a deep wrong they could not be more cruelyet have i proffered naught but to do them a kindnessand it is thus they use me for it!' chapter xviii the prince with the tramps the troop of vagabonds turned out at early dawn, and set forward on their march. there was a lowering sky overhead, sloppy ground under foot, and a winter chill in the air. all gaiety was gone from the company; some were sullen and silent, some were irritable and petulant, none were gentle-humored, all were thirsty. the ruffler put 'jack' in hugo's charge, with some brief instructions, and commanded john canty to keep away from him and let him alone; he also warned hugo not to be too rough with the lad. after a while the weather grew milder, and the clouds lifted somewhat. the troop ceased to shiver, and their spirits began to improve. they grew more and more cheerful, and finally began to chaff each other and insult passengers along the highway. this showed that they were awaking to an appreciation of life and its joys once more. the dread in which their sort was held was apparent in the fact that everybody gave them the road, and took their ribald insolences meekly, without venturing to talk back. they snatched linen from the hedges, occasionally, in full view of the owners, who made no protest, but only seemed grateful that they did not take the hedges, too. by and by they invaded a small farmhouse and made themselves at home while the trembling farmer and his people swept the larder clean to furnish a breakfast for them. they chucked the housewife and her daughters under the chin while receiving the food from their hands, and made coarse jests about them, accompanied with insulting epithets and bursts of horse-laughter. they threw bones and vegetables at the farmer and his sons, kept them dodging all the time, and applauded uproariously when a good hit was made. they ended by buttering the head of one of the daughters who resented some of their familiarities. when they took their leave they threatened to come back and burn the house over the heads of the family if any report of their doings got to the ears of the authorities. about noon, after a long and weary tramp, the gang came to a halt behind a hedge on the outskirts of a considerable village. an hour was allowed for rest, then the crew scattered themselves abroad to enter the village at different points to ply their various trades. 'jack' was sent with hugo. they wandered hither and thither for some time, hugo watching for opportunities to do a stroke of business but finding noneso he finally said: 'i see naught to steal; it is a paltry place. wherefore we will beg.' 'we, forsooth! follow thy tradeit befits thee. but i will not beg.' 'thou'lt not beg!' exclaimed hugo, eying the king with surprise. 'prithee, since when hast thou reformed?' 'what dost thou mean?' 'mean? hast thou not begged the streets of london all thy life?' 'i? thou idiot!' 'spare thy complimentsthy stock will last longer. thy father says thou hast begged all thy days. mayhap he lied. peradventure you will even make so bold as to say he lied,' scoffed hugo. 'him you call my father? yes, he lied.' 'come, play not thy merry game of madman so far, mate; use it for thy amusement, not thy hurt. an i tell him this, he will scorch thee finely for it.' 'save thyself the trouble. i will tell him.' 'i like thy spirit, i do in truth; but i do not admire thy judgment. bone-rackings and bastings be plenty enow in this life, without going out of one's way to invite them. but a truce to these matters; i believe your father. i doubt not he can lie; i doubt not he doth lie, upon occasion, for the best of us do that; but there is no occasion here. a wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught. but come; sith it is thy humor to give over begging, wherewithal shall we busy ourselves? with robbing kitchens?' the king said, impatiently: 'have done with this follyyou weary me!' hugo replied, with temper: 'now harkee, mate; you will not beg, you will not rob; so be it. but i will tell you what you will do. you will play decoy whilst i beg. refuse, an you think you may venture!' the king was about to reply contemptuously, when hugo said, interrupting: 'peace! here comes one with a kindly face. now will i fall down in a fit. when the stranger runs to me, set you up a wail, and fall upon your knees, seeming to weep; then cry out as if all the devils of misery were in your belly, and say, "oh, sir, it is my poor afflicted brother, and we be friendless; o' god's name cast through your merciful eyes one pitiful look upon a sick, forsaken, and most miserable wretch; bestow one little penny out of thy riches upon one smitten of god and ready to perish!"and mind you, keep you on wailing, and abate not till we bilk him of his penny, else shall you rue it.' then immediately hugo began to moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in the dirt, in seeming agony. 'o dear, o dear!' cried the benevolent stranger. 'oh, poor soul, poor soul, how he doth suffer! therelet me help thee up.' 'o, noble sir, forbear, and god love you for a princely gentlemanbut it giveth me cruel pain to touch me when i am taken so. my brother there will tell your worship how i am racked with anguish when these fits be upon me. a penny, dear sir, a penny, to buy a little food; then leave me to my sorrows.' 'a penny! thou shalt have three, thou hapless creature'and he fumbled in his pocket with nervous haste and got them out. 'there, poor lad, take them, and most welcome. now come hither, my boy, and help me carry thy stricken brother to yon house, where-' 'i am not his brother,' said the king, interrupting. 'what! not his brother?' 'oh, hear him!' groaned hugo, then privately ground his teeth. 'he denies his own brotherand he with one foot in the grave!' 'boy, thou art indeed hard of heart, if this is thy brother. for shame!and he scarce able to move hand or foot. if he is not thy brother, who is he, then?' 'a beggar and a thief! he has got your money and has picked your pocket likewise. an thou wouldst do a healing miracle, lay thy staff over his shoulders and trust providence for the rest.' but hugo did not tarry for the miracle. in a moment he was up and off like the wind, the gentleman following after and raising the hue and cry lustily as he went. the king, breathing deep gratitude to heaven for his own release, fled in the opposite direction and did not slacken his pace until he was out of harm's reach. he took the first road that offered, and soon put the village behind him. he hurried along, as briskly as he could, during several hours, keeping a nervous watch over his shoulder for pursuit; but his fears left him at last, and a grateful sense of security took their place. he recognized now that he was hungry; and also very tired. so he halted at a farmhouse; but when he was about to speak, he was cut short and driven rudely away. his clothes were against him. he wandered on, wounded and indignant, and was resolved to put himself in the way of light treatment no more. but hunger is pride's master; so as the evening drew near, he made an attempt at another farmhouse; but here he fared worse than before; for he was called hard names and was promised arrest as a vagrant except he moved on promptly. the night came on, chilly and overcast; and still the footsore monarch labored slowly on. he was obliged to keep moving, for every time he sat down to rest he was soon penetrated to the bone with the cold. all his sensations and experiences, as he moved through the solemn gloom and the empty vastness of the night, were new and strange to him. at intervals he heard voices approach, pass by, and fade into silence; and as he saw nothing more of the bodies they belonged to than a sort of formless drifting blur, there was something spectral and uncanny about it all that made him shudder. occasionally he caught the twinkle of a lightalways far away, apparentlyalmost in another world; if he heard the tinkle of a sheep's bell, it was vague, distant, indistinct; the muffled lowing of the herds floated to him on the night wind in vanishing cadences, a mournful sound; now and then came the complaining howl of a dog over viewless expanses of field and forest; all sounds were remote; they made the little king feel that all life and activity were far removed from him, and that he stood solitary, companionless, in the center of a measureless solitude. he stumbled along, through the gruesome fascinations of this new experience, startled occasionally by the soft rustling of the dry leaves overhead, so like human whispers they seemed to sound; and by and by he came suddenly upon the freckled light of a tin lantern near at hand. he stepped back into the shadows and waited. the lantern stood by the open door of a barn. the king waited some timethere was no sound, and nobody stirring. he got so cold, standing still, and the hospitable barn looked so enticing, that at last he resolved to risk everything and enter. he started swiftly and stealthily, and just as he was crossing the threshold he heard voices behind him. he darted behind a cask, within the barn, and stooped down. two farm laborers came in, bringing the lantern with them, and fell to work, talking meanwhile. whilst they moved about with the light, the king made good use of his eyes and took the bearings of what seemed to be a good-sized stall at the further end of the place, purposing to grope his way to it when he should be left to himself. he also noted the position of a pile of horse-blankets, midway of the route, with the intent to levy upon them for the service of the crown of england for one night. by and by the men finished and went away, fastening the door behind them and taking the lantern with them. the shivering king made for the blankets, with as good speed as the darkness would allow; gathered them up and then groped his way safely to the stall. of two of the blankets he made a bed, then covered himself with the remaining two. he was a glad monarch now, though the blankets were old and thin, and not quite warm enough; and besides gave out a pungent horsy odor that was almost suffocatingly powerful. although the king was hungry and chilly, he was also so tired and so drowsy that these latter influences soon began to get the advantage of the former, and he presently dozed off into a state of semi-consciousness. then, just as he was on the point of losing himself wholly, he distinctly felt something touch him. he was broad awake in a moment, and gasping for breath. the cold horror of that mysterious touch in the dark almost made his heart stand still. he lay motionless, and listened, scarcely breathing. but nothing stirred, and there was no sound. he continued to listen, and wait, during what seemed a long time, but still nothing stirred, and there was no sound. so he began to drop into a drowse once more at last; and all at once he felt that mysterious touch again! it was a grisly thing, this light touch from this noiseless and invisible presence; it made the boy sick with ghostly fears. what should he do? that was the question; but he did not know how to answer it. should he leave these reasonably comfortable quarters and fly from this inscrutable horror? but fly whither? he could not get out of the barn; and the idea of scurrying blindly hither and thither in the dark, within the captivity of the four walls, with this phantom gliding after him, and visiting him with that soft hideous touch upon cheek or shoulder at every turn, was intolerable. but to stay where he was, and endure this living death all nightwas that better? no. what, then, was there left to do? ah, there was but one course; he knew it wellhe must put out his hand and find that thing! it was easy to think this; but it was hard to brace himself up to try it. three times he stretched his hand a little way out into the dark gingerly; and snatched it suddenly back, with a gaspnot because it had encountered anything, but because he had felt so sure it was just going to. but the fourth time he groped a little further, and his hand lightly swept against something soft and warm. this petrified him nearly with frighthis mind was in such a state that he could imagine the thing to be nothing else than a corpse, newly dead and still warm. he thought he would rather die than touch it again. but he thought this false thought because he did not know the immortal strength of human curiosity. in no long time his hand was tremblingly groping againagainst his judgment, and without his consentbut groping persistently on, just the same. it encountered a bunch of long hair; he shuddered, but followed up the hair and found what seemed to be a warm rope; followed up the rope and found an innocent calf; for the rope was not a rope at all, but the calf's tail. the king was cordially ashamed of himself for having gotten all that fright and misery out of so paltry a matter as a slumbering calf; but he need not have felt so about it, for it was not the calf that frightened him but a dreadful non-existent something which the calf stood for; and any other boy, in those old superstitous times, would have acted and suffered just as he had done. the king was not only delighted to find that the creature was only a calf, but delighted to have the calf's company; for he had been feeling so lonesome and friendless that the company and comradeship of even this humble animal was welcome. and he had been so buffeted, so rudely entreated by his own kind, that it was a real comfort to him to feel that he was at last in the society of a fellow-creature that had at least a soft heart and a gentle spirit, whatever loftier attributes might be lacking. so he resolved to waive rank and make friends with the calf. while stroking its sleek, warm backfor it lay near him and within easy reachit occurred to him that this calf might be utilized in more ways than one. whereupon he rearranged his bed, spreading it down close to the calf; then he cuddled himself up to the calf's back, drew the covers up over himself and his friend, and in a minute or two was as warm and comfortable as he had ever been in the downy couches of the regal palace of westminster. pleasant thoughts came at once; life took on a cheerfuler seeming. he was free of the bonds of servitude and crime, free of the companionship of base and brutal outlaws; he was warm, he was sheltered; in a word, he was happy. the night wind was rising; it swept by in fitful gusts that made the old barn quake and rattle, then its forces died down at intervals, and went moaning and wailing around corners and projectionsbut it was all music to the king, now that he was snug and comfortable; let it blow and rage, let it batter and bang, let it moan and wail, he minded it not, he only enjoyed it. he merely snuggled the closer to his friend, in a luxury of warm contentment, and drifted blissfully out of consciousness into a deep and dreamless sleep that was full of serenity and peace. the distant dogs howled, the melancholy kine complained; and the winds went on raging, whilst furious sheets of rain drove along the roof; but the majesty of england slept on undisturbed, and the calf did the same, it being a simple creature and not easily troubled by storms or embarrassed by sleeping with a king. chapter xix the prince with the peasants when the king awoke in the early morning, he found that a wet but thoughtful rat had crept into the place during the night and made a cozy bed for itself in his bosom. being disturbed now, it scampered away. the boy smiled, and said, 'poor fool, why so fearful? i am as forlorn as thou. 'twould be a shame in me to hurt the helpless, who am myself so helpless. moreover, i owe you thanks for a good omen; for when a king has fallen so low that the very rats do make a bed of him, it surely meaneth that his fortunes be upon the turn, since it is plain he can no lower go.' he got up and stepped out of the stall, and just then he heard the sound of children's voices. the barn door opened and a couple of little girls came in. as soon as they saw him their talking and laughing ceased, and they stopped and stood still, gazing at him with strong curiosity; they presently began to whisper together, then they approached nearer, and stopped again to gaze and whisper. by and by they gathered courage and began to discuss him aloud. one said: 'he hath a comely face.' the other added: 'and pretty hair.' 'but is ill clothed enow.' 'and how starved he looketh.' they came still nearer, sidling shyly around and about him, examining him minutely from all points, as if he were some strange new kind of animal; but warily and watchfully the while, as if they half feared he might be a sort of animal that would bite, upon occasion. finally they halted before him, holding each other's hands for protection, and took a good satisfying stare with their innocent eyes; then one of them plucked up all her courage and inquired with honest directness: 'who art thou, boy?' 'i am the king,' was the grave answer. the children gave a little start, and their eyes spread themselves wide open and remained so during a speechless half-minute. then curiosity broke the silence: 'the king? what king?' 'the king of england.' the children looked at each otherthen at himthen at each other againwonderingly, perplexedlythen one said: 'didst hear him, margery?he saith he is the king. can that be true?' 'how can it be else but true, prissy? would he say a lie? for look you, prissy, an it were not true, it would be a lie. it surely would be. now think on't. for all things that be not true, be liesthou canst make naught else out of it.' it was a good, tight argument, without a leak in it anywhere; and it left prissy's half-doubts not a leg to stand on. she considered a moment, then put the king upon his honor with the simple remark: 'if thou art truly the king, then i believe thee.' 'i am truly the king.' this settled the matter. his majesty's royalty was accepted without further question or discussion, and the two little girls began at once to inquire into how he came to be where he was, and how he came to be so unroyally clad, and whither he was bound, and all about his affairs. it was a mighty relief to him to pour out his troubles where they would not be scoffed at or doubted; so he told his tale with feeling, forgetting even his hunger for the time; and it was received with the deepest and tenderest sympathy by the gentle little maids. but when he got down to his latest experiences and they learned how long he had been without food, they cut him short and hurried him away to the farmhouse to find a breakfast for him. the king was cheerful and happy now, and said to himself, 'when i am come to mine own again, i will always honor little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed in me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.' the children's mother received the king kindly, and was full of pity; for his forlorn condition and apparently crazed intellect touched her womanly heart. she was a widow, and rather poor; consequently she had seen trouble enough to enable her to feel for the unfortunate. she imagined that the demented boy had wandered away from his friends or keepers; so she tried to find out whence he had come, in order that she might take measures to return him; but all her references to neighbouring towns and villages, and all her inquiries in the same line, went for nothingthe boy's face, and his answers, too, showed that the things she was talking of were not familiar to him. he spoke earnestly and simply about court matters; and broke down, more than once, when speaking of the late king 'his father'; but whenever the conversation changed to baser topics, he lost interest and became silent. the woman was mightily puzzled; but she did not give up. as she proceeded with her cooking, she set herself to contriving devices to surprise the boy into betraying his real secret. she talked about cattlehe showed no concern; then about sheepthe same resultso her guess that he had been a shepherd boy was an error; she talked about mills; and about weavers, tinkers, smiths, trades and tradesmen of all sorts; and about bedlam, and jails, and charitable retreats; but no matter, she was baffled at all points. not altogether, either; for she argued that she had narrowed the thing down to domestic service. yes, she was sure she was on the right track nowhe must have been a house-servant. so she led up to that. but the result was discouraging. the subject of sweeping appeared to weary him; fire-building failed to stir him; scrubbing and scouring awoke no enthusiasm. then the goodwife touched, with a perishing hope, and rather as a matter of form, upon the subject of cooking. to her surprise, and her vast delight, the king's face lighted at once! ah, she had hunted him down at last, she thought; and she was right proud, too, of the devious shrewdness and tact which had accomplished it. her tired tongue got a chance to rest now; for the king's, inspired by gnawing hunger and the fragrant smells that came from the sputtering pots and pans, turned itself loose and delivered itself up to such an eloquent dissertation upon certain toothsome dishes, that within three minutes the woman said to herself, 'of a truth i was righthe hath holpen in a kitchen!' then he broadened his bill of fare, and discussed it with such appreciation and animation, that the goodwife said to herself, 'good lack! how can he know so many dishes, and so fine ones withal? for these belong only upon the tables of the rich and great. ah, now i see! ragged outcast as he is, he must have served in the palace before his reason went astray; yes, he must have helped in the very kitchen of the king himself! i will test him.' full of eagerness to prove her sagacity, she told the king to mind the cooking a momenthinting that he might manufacture and add a dish or two, if he chosethen she went out of the room and gave her children a sign to follow after. the king muttered: 'another english king had a commission like to this, in a bygone timeit is nothing against my dignity to undertake an office which the great alfred stooped to assume. but i will try to better serve my trust than he; for he let the cakes burn.' the intent was good, but the performance was not answerable to it; for this king, like the other one, soon fell into deep thinkings concerning his vast affairs, and the same calamity resultedthe cookery got burned. the woman returned in time to save the breakfast from entire destruction; and she promptly brought the king out of his dreams with a brisk and cordial tongue-lashing. then, seeing how troubled he was over his violated trust, she softened at once and was all goodness and gentleness toward him. the boy made a hearty and satisfying meal, and was greatly refreshed and gladdened by it. it was a meal which was distinguished by this curious feature, that rank was waived on both sides; yet neither recipient of the favor was aware that it had been extended. the goodwife had intended to feed this young tramp with broken victuals in a corner, like any other tramp, or like a dog; but she was so remorseful for the scolding she had given him, that she did what she could to atone for it by allowing him to sit at the family table and eat with his betters, on ostensible terms of equality with them; and the king, on his side, was so remorseful for having broken his trust, after the family had been so kind to him, that he forced himself to atone for it by humbling himself to the family level, instead of requiring the woman and her children to stand and wait upon him while he occupied their table in the solitary state due his birth and dignity. it does us all good to unbend sometimes. this good woman was made happy all the day long by the applauses she got out of herself for her magnanimous condescension to a tramp; and the king was just as self-complacent over his gracious humility toward a humble peasant woman. when breakfast was over, the housewife told the king to wash up the dishes. this command was a staggerer for a moment, and the king came near rebelling; but then he said to himself, 'alfred the great watched the cakes; doubtless he would have washed the dishes, tootherefore will i essay it.' he made a sufficiently poor job of it; and to his surprise, too, for the cleaning of wooden spoons and trenchers had seemed an easy thing to do. it was a tedious and troublesome piece of work, but he finished it at last. he was becoming impatient to get away on his journey now; however he was not to lose this thrifty dame's society so easily. she furnished him some little odds and ends of employment, which he got through with after a fair fashion and with some credit. then she set him and the little girls to paring some winter apples; but he was so awkward at this service that she retired him from it and gave him a butcher-knife to grind. afterward she kept him carding wool until he began to think he had laid the good king alfred about far enough in the shade for the present, in the matter of showy menial heroisms that would read picturesquely in story-books and histories, and so he was half minded to resign. and when, just after the noonday dinner, the goodwife gave him a basket of kittens to drown, he did resign. at least he was just going to resignfor he felt that he must draw the line somewhere, and it seemed to him that to draw it at kitten-drowning was about the right thingwhen there was an interruption. the interruption was john cantywith a peddler's pack on his backand hugo! the king discovered these rascals approaching the front gate before they had had a chance to see him; so he said nothing about drawing the line, but took up his basket of kittens and stepped quietly out the back way, without a word. he left the creatures in an outhouse, and hurried on into a narrow lane at the rear. chapter xx the prince and the hermit the high hedge hid him from the house now; and so, under the impulse of a deadly fright, he let out all his forces and sped toward a wood in the distance. he never looked back until he had almost gained the shelter of the forest; then he turned and descried two figures in the distance. that was sufficient; he did not wait to scan them critically, but hurried on, and never abated his pace till he was far within the twilight depths of the wood. then he stopped; being persuaded that he was now tolerably safe. he listened intently, but the stillness was profound and solemnawful, even, and depressing to the spirits. at wide intervals his straining ear did detect sounds, but they were so remote, and hollow, and mysterious, that they seemed not to be real sounds, but only the moaning and complaining ghosts of departed ones. so the sounds were yet more dreary than the silence which they interrupted. it was his purpose, in the beginning, to stay where he was, the rest of the day; but a chill soon invaded his perspiring body, and he was at last obliged to resume movement in order to get warm. he struck straight through the forest, hoping to pierce to a road presently, but he was disappointed in this. he traveled on and on; but the farther he went, the denser the wood became, apparently. the gloom began to thicken, by and by, and the king realized that the night was coming on. it made him shudder to think of spending it in such an uncanny place; so he tried to hurry faster, but he only made the less speed, for he could not now see well enough to choose his steps judiciously; consequently he kept tripping over roots and tangling himself in vines and briers. and how glad he was when at last he caught the glimmer of a light! he approached it warily, stopping often to look about him and listen. it came from an unglazed window-opening in a little hut. he heard a voice now, and felt a disposition to run and hide; but he changed his mind at once, for his voice was praying, evidently. he glided to the one window of the hut, raised himself on tiptoe, and stole a glance within. the room was small; its floor was the natural earth, beaten hard by use; in a corner was a bed of rushes and a ragged blanket or two; near it was a pail, a cup, a basin, and two or three pots and pans; there was a short bench and a three-legged stool; on the hearth the remains of a fagot fire were smoldering; before a shrine, which was lighted by a single candle, knelt an aged man, and on an old wooden box at his side lay an open book and a human skull. the man was of large, bony frame; his hair and whiskers were very long and snowy white; he was clothed in a robe of sheepskins which reached from his neck to his heels. 'a holy hermit!' said the king to himself; 'now am i indeed fortunate.' the hermit rose from his knees; the king knocked. a deep voice responded: 'enter!but leave sin behind, for the ground whereon thou shalt stand is holy!' the king entered, and paused. the hermit turned a pair of gleaming, unrestful eyes upon him, and said: 'who art thou?' 'i am the king,' came the answer, with placid simplicity. 'welcome, king!' cried the hermit, with enthusiasm. then, bustling about with feverish activity, and constantly saying 'welcome, welcome,' he arranged his bench, seated the king on it, by the hearth, threw some fagots on the fire, and finally fell to pacing the floor, with a nervous stride. 'welcome! many have sought sanctuary here, but they were not worthy, and were turned away. but a king who casts his crown away, and despises the vain splendors of his office, and clothes his body in rags, to devote his life to holiness and the mortification of the fleshhe is worthy, he is welcome!here shall he abide all his days till death come.' the king hastened to interrupt and explain, but the hermit paid no attention to himdid not even hear him apparently, but went right on with his talk, with a raised voice and a growing energy. 'and thou shalt be at peace here. none shall find out thy refuge to disquiet thee with supplications to return to that empty and foolish life which god hath moved thee to abandon. thou shalt pray here; thou shalt study the book; thou shalt meditate upon the follies and delusions of this world, and upon the sublimities of the world to come; thou shalt feed upon crusts and herbs, and scourge thy body with whips daily, to the purifying of thy soul. thou shalt wear a hair shirt next thy skin; thou shalt drink water only; and thou shalt be at peace; yes, wholly at peace; for whoso comes to seek thee shall go his way again baffled; he shall not find thee, he shall not molest thee.' the old man, still pacing back and forth, ceased to speak aloud, and began to mutter. the king seized this opportunity to state his case; and he did it with an eloquence inspired by uneasiness and apprehension. but the hermit went on muttering, and gave no heed. and still muttering, he approached the king and said, impressively: ''sh! i will tell you a secret!' he bent down to impart it, but checked himself, and assumed a listening attitude. after a moment or two he went on tiptoe to the window-opening, put his head out and peered around in the gloaming, then came tiptoeing back again, put his face close down to the king's and whispered: 'i am an archangel!' the king started violently, and said to himself, 'would god i were with the outlaws again; for lo, now am i the prisoner of a madman!' his apprehensions were heightened, and they showed plainly in his face. in a low, excited voice, the hermit continued: 'i see you feel my atmosphere! there's awe in your face! none may be in this atmosphere and not be thus affected; for it is the very atmosphere of heaven. i go thither and return, in the twinkling of an eye. i was made an archangel on this very spot, it is five years ago, by angels sent from heaven to confer that awful dignity. their presence filled this place with an intolerable brightness. and they knelt to me, king! yes, they knelt to me! for i was greater than they. i have walked in the courts of heaven, and held speech with the patriarchs. touch my handbe not afraidtouch it. therenow thou hast touched a hand which has been clasped by abraham, and isaac, and jacob! for i have walked in the golden courts, i have seen the deity face to face!' he paused, to give this speech effect; then his face suddenly changed, and he started to his feet again, saying, with angry energy, 'yes, i am an archangel; a mere archangel!i that might have been pope! it is verily true. i was told it from heaven in a dream, twenty years ago; ah, yes, i was to be pope!and i should have been pope, for heaven had said itbut the king dissolved my religious house, and i, poor obscure unfriended monk, was cast homeless upon the world, robbed of my mighty destiny!' here he began to mumble again, and beat his forehead in futile rage, with his fist; now and then articulating a venomous curse, and now and then a pathetic 'wherefore i am naught but an archangeli that should have been pope!' so he went on for an hour, while the poor little king sat and suffered. then all at once the old man's frenzy departed, and he became all gentleness. his voice softened, he came down out of his clouds, and fell to prattling along so simply and so humanely, that he soon won the king's heart completely. the old devotee moved the boy nearer to the fire and made him comfortable; doctored his small bruises and abrasions with a deft and tender hand; and then set about preparing and cooking a supperchatting pleasantly all the time, and occasionally stroking the lad's cheek or patting his head, in such a gently caressing way that in a little while all the fear and repulsion inspired by the archangel were changed to reverence and affection for the man. this happy state of things continued while the two ate the supper; then, after a prayer before the shrine, the hermit put the boy to bed, in a small adjoining room, tucking him in as snugly and lovingly as a mother might; and so, with a parting caress, left him and sat down by the fire, and began to poke the brands about in an absent and aimless way. presently he paused; then tapped his forehead several times with his fingers, as if trying to recall some thought which had escaped from his mind. apparently he was unsuccessful. now he started quickly up, and entered his guest's room, and said: 'thou art king?' 'yes,' was the response, drowsily uttered. 'what king?' 'of england.' 'of england. then henry is gone!' 'alack, it is so. i am his son.' a black frown settled down upon the hermit's face, and he clenched his bony hands with a vindictive energy. he stood a few moments, breathing fast and swallowing repeatedly, then said in a husky voice: 'dost know it was he that turned us out into the world houseless and homeless?' there was no response. the old man bent down and scanned the boy's reposeful face and listened to his placid breathing. 'he sleepssleeps soundly'; and the frown vanished away and gave place to an expression of evil satisfaction. a smile flitted across the dreaming boy's features. the hermit muttered, 'sohis heart is happy'; and he turned away. he went stealthily about the place, seeking here and there for something; now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around and casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always mumbling to himself. at last he found what he seemed to wanta rusty old butcher-knife and a whetstone. then he crept to his place by the fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone, still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating. the winds sighed around the lonely place, the mysterious voices of the night floated by out of the distances. the shining eyes of venturesome mice and rats peered out at the old man from cracks and coverts, but he went on with his work, rapt, absorbed, and noted none of these things. at long intervals he drew his thumb along the edge of his knife, and nodded his head with satisfaction. 'it grows sharper,' he said; 'yes, it grows sharper.' he took no note of the flight of time, but worked tranquilly on, entertaining himself with his thoughts, which broke out occasionally in articulate speech: 'his father wrought us evil, he destroyed usand is gone down into the eternal fires! yes, down into the eternal fires! he escaped usbut it was god's will, yes it was god's will, we must not repine. but he hath not escaped the fires! no, he hath not escaped the fires, the consuming, unpitying, remorseless firesand they are everlasting!' and so he wrought; and still wrought; mumblingchuckling a low rasping chuckle at timesand at times breaking again into words: 'it was his father that did it all. i am but an archangelbut for him, i should be pope!' the king stirred. the hermit sprang noiselessly to the bedside, and went down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife uplifted. the boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more. the hermit watched and listened for a time, keeping his position and scarcely breathing; then he slowly lowered his arm, and presently crept away, saying: 'it is long past midnightit is not best that he should cry out, lest by accident some one be passing.' he glided about his hovel, gathering a rag here, a thong there, and another one yonder; then he returned, and by careful and gentle handling he managed to tie the king's ankles together without waking him. next he essayed to tie the wrists; he made several attempts to cross them, but the boy always drew one hand or the other away, just as the cord was ready to be applied; but at last, when the archangel was almost ready to despair, the boy crossed his hands himself, and the next moment they were bound. now a bandage was passed under the sleeper's chin and brought up over his head and tied fastand so softly, so gradually, and so deftly were the knots drawn together and compacted, that the boy slept peacefully through it all without stirring. chapter xxi hendon to the rescue the old man glided away, stooping, stealthily, catlike, and brought the low bench. he seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there, heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay bound and helpless in his web. after a long while, the old man, who was still gazingyet not seeing, his mind having settled into a dreamy abstractionobserved on a sudden that the boy's eyes were openwide open and staring!staring up in frozen horror at the knife. the smile of a gratified devil crept over the old man's face, and he said, without changing his attitude or occupation: 'son of henry the eighth, hast thou prayed?' the boy struggled helplessly in his bonds; and at the same time forced a smothered sound through his closed jaws, which the hermit chose to interpret as an affirmative answer to his question. 'then pray again. pray the prayer for the dying!' a shudder shook the boy's frame, and his face blenched. then he struggled again to free himselfturning and twisting himself this way and that; tugging frantically, fiercely, desperatelybut uselesslyto burst his fetters; and all the while the old ogre smiled down upon him, and nodded his head, and placidly whetted his knife, mumbling, from time to time, 'the moments are precious, they are few and preciouspray the prayer for the dying!' the boy uttered a despairing groan, and ceased from his struggles, panting. the tears came, then, and trickled, one after the other, down his face; but this piteous sight wrought no softening effect upon the savage old man. the dawn was coming now; the hermit observed it, and spoke up sharply, with a touch of nervous apprehension in his voice: 'i may not indulge this ecstasy longer! the night is already gone. it seems but a momentonly a moment; would it had endured a year! seed of the church's spoiler, close thy perishing eyes, an thou fearest to look upon...' the rest was lost in inarticulate mutterings. the old man sank upon his knees, his knife in his hand, and bent himself over the moaning boy hark! there was a sound of voices near the cabinthe knife dropped from the hermit's hand; he cast a sheepskin over the boy and started up, trembling. the sounds increased, and presently the voices became rough and angry; then came blows, and cries for help; then a clatter of swift footsteps retreating. immediately came a succession of thundering knocks upon the cabin door, followed by: 'hullo-o-o! open! and despatch, in the name of all the devils!' oh, this was the blessedest sound that had ever made music in the king's ears; for it was miles hendon's voice! the hermit, grinding his teeth in impotent rage, moved swiftly out of the bedchamber, closing the door behind him; and straightway the king heard a talk, to this effect, proceeding from the 'chapel': 'homage and greeting, reverend sir! where is the boymy boy?' 'what boy, friend?' 'what boy! lie me no lies, sir priest, play me no deceptions! i am not in the humor for it. near to this place i caught the scoundrels who i judged did steal him from me, and i made them confess; they said he was at large again, and they had tracked him to your door. they showed me his very footprints. now palter no more; for look you, holy sir, an thou produce him notwhere is the boy?' 'oh, good sir, peradventure you mean the ragged regal vagrant that tarried here the night. if such as you take interest in such as he, know, then, that i have sent him of an errand. he will be back anon.' 'how soon? how soon? come, waste not the timecannot i overtake him? how soon will he be back?' 'thou needst not stir; he will return quickly.' 'so be it then. i will try to wait. but stop!you sent him of an errand?you! verily, this is a liehe would not go. he would pull thy old beard, an thou didst offer him such an insolence. thou hast lied, friend; thou hast surely lied! he would not go for thee nor for any man.' 'for any manno; haply not. but i am not a man.' 'what! now o' god's name what art thou, then?' 'it is a secretmark thou reveal it not. i am an archangel!' there was a tremendous ejaculation from miles hendonnot altogether unprofanefollowed by: 'this doth well and truly account for his complaisance! right well i knew he would budge nor hand nor foot in the menial service of any mortal; but lord, even a king must obey when an archangel gives the word o' command! let me'sh! what noise was that?' all this while the king had been yonder, alternately quaking with terror and trembling with hope; and all the while, too, he had thrown all the strength he could into his anguished moanings, constantly expecting them to reach hendon's ear, but always realizing, with bitterness, that they failed, or at least made no impression. so this last remark of his servant came as comes a reviving breath from fresh fields to the dying; and he exerted himself once more, and with all his energy, just as the hermit was saying: 'noise? i heard only the wind.' 'mayhap it was. yes, doubtless that was it. i have been hearing it faintly all thethere it is again! it is not the wind! what an odd sound! come, we will hunt it out!' now, the king's joy was nearly insupportable. his tired lungs did their utmostand hopefully, toobut the sealed jaws and the muffling sheepskin sadly crippled the effort. then the poor fellow's heart sank, to hear the hermit say: 'ah, it came from withouti think from the copse yonder. come, i will lead the way.' the king heard the two pass out talking; heard their footsteps die quickly awaythen he was alone with a boding, brooding, awful silence. it seemed an age till he heard the steps and voices approaching againand this time he heard an added soundthe trampling of hoofs, apparently. then he heard hendon say: 'i will not wait longer. i cannot wait longer. he has lost his way in this thick wood. which direction took he? quickpoint it out to me.' 'hebut wait; i will go with thee.' 'goodgood! why, truly thou art better than thy looks. marry, i do think there's not another archangel with so right a heart as thine. wilt ride? wilt take the wee donkey that's for my boy, or wilt thou fork thy holy legs over this ill-conditioned slave of a mule that i have provided for myself?and had been cheated in, too, had he cost but the indifferent sum of a month's usury on a brass farthing let to a tinker out of work.' 'noride thy mule, and lead thine ass; i am surer on mine own feet, and will walk.' 'then, prithee, mind the little beast for me while i take my life in my hands and make what success i may toward mounting the big one.' then followed a confusion of kicks, cuffs, tramplings and plungings, accompanied by a thunderous intermingling of volleyed curses, and finally a bitter apostrophe to the mule, which must have broken its spirit, for hostilities seemed to cease from that moment. with unutterable misery the fettered little king heard the voices and footsteps fade away and die out. all hope forsook him now for the moment, and a dull despair settled down upon his heart. 'my only friend is deceived and got rid of,' he said; 'the hermit will return and-' he finished with a gasp; and at once fell to struggling so frantically with his bonds again, that he shook off the smothering sheepskin. and now he heard the door open! the sound chilled him to the marrowalready he seemed to feel the knife at his throat. horror made him close his eyes; horror made him open them againand before him stood john canty and hugo! he would have said 'thank god!' if his jaws had been free. a moment or two later his limbs were at liberty, and his captors, each gripping him by an arm, were hurrying him with all speed through the forest. chapter xxii a victim of treachery once more 'king foo-foo the first' was roving with the tramps and outlaws, a butt for their coarse jests and dull-witted railleries, and sometimes the victim of small spitefulnesses at the hands of canty and hugo when the ruffler's back was turned. none but canty and hugo really disliked him. some of the others liked him, and all admired his pluck and spirit. during two or three days, hugo, in whose ward and charge the king was, did what he covertly could to make the boy uncomfortable; and at night, during the customary orgies, he amused the company by putting small indignities upon himalways as if by accident. twice he stepped upon the king's toesaccidentallyand the king, as became his royalty, was contemptuously unconscious of it and indifferent to it; but the third time hugo entertained himself in that way, the king felled him to the ground with a cudgel, to the prodigious delight of the tribe. hugo, consumed with anger and shame, sprang up, seized a cudgel, and came at his small adversary in a fury. instantly a ring was formed around the gladiators, and the betting and cheering began. but poor hugo stood no chance whatever. his frantic and lubberly 'prentice-work found but a poor market for itself when pitted against an arm which had been trained by the first masters of europe in single-stick, quarter-staff, and every art and trick of swordsmanship. the little king stood, alert but at graceful ease, and caught and turned aside the thick rain of blows with a facility and precision which set the motley onlookers wild with admiration; and every now and then, when his practised eye detected an opening, and a lightning-swift rap upon hugo's head followed as a result, the storm of cheers and laughter that swept the place was something wonderful to hear. at the end of fifteen minutes, hugo, all battered, bruised, and the target for a pitiless bombardment of ridicule, slunk from the field; and the unscathed hero of the fight was seized and borne aloft upon the shoulders of the joyous rabble to the place of honor beside the ruffler, where with vast ceremony he was crowned king of the game-cocks; his meaner title being at the same time solemnly canceled and annulled, and a decree of banishment from the gang pronounced against any who should henceforth utter it. all attempts to make the king serviceable to the troop had failed. he had stubbornly refused to act; moreover, he was always trying to escape. he had been thrust into an unwatched kitchen, the first day of his return; he not only came forth empty-handed, but tried to rouse the housemates. he was sent out with a tinker to help him at his work; he would not work; moreover, he threatened the tinker with his own soldering-iron; and finally both hugo and the tinker found their hands full with the mere matter of keeping him from getting away. he delivered the thunders of his royalty upon the heads of all who hampered his liberties or tried to force him to service. he was sent out, in hugo's charge, in company with a slatternly woman and a diseased baby, to beg; but the result was not encouraginghe declined to plead for the mendicants, or be a party to their cause in any way. thus several days went by; and the miseries of this tramping life, and the weariness and sordidness and meanness and vulgarity of it, became gradually and steadily so intolerable to the captive that he began at last to feel that his release from the hermit's knife must prove only a temporary respite from death, at best. but at night, in his dreams, these things were forgotten, and he was on his throne, and master again. this, of course, intensified the sufferings of the awakeningso the mortifications of each succeeding morning of the few that passed between his return to bondage and the combat with hugo, grew bitterer, and harder and harder to bear. the morning after that combat, hugo got up with a heart filled with vengeful purposes against the king. he had two plans in particular. one was to inflict upon the lad what would be, to his proud spirit and 'imagined' royalty, a peculiar humiliation; and if he failed to accomplish this, his other plan was to put a crime of some kind upon the king and then betray him into the implacable clutches of the law. in pursuance of the first plan, he proposed to put a 'clime' upon the king's leg, rightly judging that that would mortify him to the last and perfect degree; and as soon as the clime should operate, he meant to get canty's help, and force the king to expose his leg in the highway and beg for alms. 'clime' was the cant term for a sore, artificially created. to make a clime, the operator made a paste or poultice of unslaked lime, soap, and the rust of old iron, and spread it upon a piece of leather, which was then bound tightly upon the leg. this would presently fret off the skin, and make the flesh raw and angry-looking; blood was then rubbed upon the limb, which, being fully dried, took on a dark and repulsive color. then a bandage of soiled rags was put on in a cleverly careless way which would allow the hideous ulcer to be seen and move the compassion of the passer-by.*(18) hugo got the help of the tinker whom the king had cowed with the soldering-iron; they took the boy out on a tinkering tramp, and as soon as they were out of sight of the camp they threw him down and the tinker held him while hugo bound the poultice tight and fast upon his leg. the king raged and stormed, and promised to hang the two the moment the scepter was in his hand again; but they kept a firm grip upon him and enjoyed his impotent struggling and jeered at his threats. this continued until the poultice began to bite; and in no long time its work would have been perfected, if there had been no interruption. but there was; for about this time the 'slave' who had made the speech denouncing england's laws, appeared on the scene and put an end to the enterprise, and stripped off the poultice and bandage. the king wanted to borrow his deliverer's cudgel and warm the jackets of the two rascals on the spot; but the man said no, it would bring troubleleave the matter till night; the whole, tribe being together, then, the outside world would not venture to interfere or interrupt. he marched the party back to camp and reported the affair to the ruffler, who listened, pondered, and then decided that the king should not be again detailed to beg, since it was plain he was worthy of something higher and betterwherefore, on the spot he promoted him from the mendicant rank and appointed him to steal! hugo was overjoyed. he had already tried to make the king steal, and failed; but there would be no more trouble of that sort now, for, of course, the king would not dream of defying a distinct command delivered directly from headquarters. so he planned a raid for that very afternoon, purposing to get the king in the law's grip in the course of it; and to do it, too, with such ingenious strategy, that it should seem to be accidental and unintentional; for the king of the game-cocks was popular now, and the gang might not deal over-gently with an unpopular member who played so serious a treachery upon him as the delivering him over to the common enemy, the law. very well. all in good time hugo strolled off to a neighboring village with his prey; and the two drifted slowly up and down one street after another, the one watching sharply for a sure chance to achieve his evil purpose, and the other watching as sharply for a chance to dart away and get free of his infamous captivity forever. both threw away some tolerably fair-looking opportunities; for both, in their secret hearts, were resolved to make absolutely sure work this time, and neither meant to allow his fevered desires to seduce him into any venture that had much uncertainty about it. hugo's chance came first. for at last a woman approached who carried a fat package of some sort in a basket. hugo's eyes sparkled with sinful pleasure as he said to himself, 'breath o' my life, an i can but put that upon him, 'tis good-den and god keep thee, king of the game-cocks!' he waited and watchedoutwardly patient, but inwardly consuming with excitementtill the woman had passed by, and the time was ripe; then said, in a low voice; 'tarry here till i come again,' and darted stealthily after the prey. the king's heart was filled with joyhe could make his escape now, if hugo's quest only carried him far enough away. but he was to have no such luck. hugo crept behind the woman, snatched the package, and came running back, wrapping it in an old piece of blanket which he carried on his arm. the hue and cry was raised in a moment by the woman, who knew her loss by the lightening of her burden, although she had not seen the pilfering done. hugo thrust the bundle into the king's hands without halting, saying: 'now speed ye after me with the rest, and cry "stop thief!" but mind ye lead them astray.' the next moment hugo turned a corner and darted down a crooked alleyand in another moment or two he lounged into view again, looking innocent and indifferent, and took up a position behind a post to watch results. the insulted king threw the bundle on the ground; and the blanket fell away from it just as the woman arrived, with an augmenting crowd at her heels; she seized the king's wrist with one hand, snatched up her bundle with the other, and began to pour out a tirade of abuse upon the boy while he struggled, without success, to free himself from her grip. hugo had seen enoughhis enemy was captured and the law would get him nowso he slipped away, jubilant and chuckling and wended campward, framing a judicious version of the matter to give to the ruffler's crew as he strode along. the king continued to struggle in the woman's grasp, and now and then cried out, in vexation: 'unhand me, thou foolish creature; it was not i that bereaved thee of thy paltry goods.' the crowd closed around, threatening the king and calling him names; a brawny blacksmith in leather apron, and sleeves rolled to his elbows, made a reach for him, saying he would trounce him well, for a lesson; but just then a long sword flashed in the air and fell with convincing force upon the man's arm, flat-side down, the fantastic owner of it remarking, pleasantly at the same time: 'marry, good souls, let us proceed gently, not with ill blood and uncharitable words. this is matter for the law's consideration, not private and unofficial handling. loose thy hold from the boy, goodwife.' the blacksmith averaged the stalwart soldier with a glance, then went muttering away, rubbing his arm; the woman released the boy's wrist reluctantly; the crowd eyed the stranger unlovingly, but prudently closed their mouths. the king sprang to his deliverer's side, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes exclaiming: 'thou hast lagged sorely, but thou comest in good season now, sir miles; carve me this rabble to rags!' chapter xxiii the prince a prisoner hendon forced back a smile, and bent down and whispered in the king's ear: 'softly, softly my prince, wag thy tongue warilynay, suffer it not to wag at all. trust in meall shall go well in the end.' then he added, to himself: 'sir miles! bless me, i had totally forgot i was a knight! lord how marvelous a thing it is, the grip his memory doth take upon his quaint and crazy fancies!... an empty and foolish title is mine, and yet it is something to have deserved it, for i think it is more honor to be held worthy to be a specter-knight in his kingdom of dreams and shadows, than to be held base enough to be an earl in some of the real kingdoms of this world.' the crowd fell apart to admit a constable, who approached and was about to lay his hand upon the king's shoulder, when hendon said: 'gently, good friend, withhold your handhe shall go peaceably; i am responsible for that. lead on, we will follow.' the officer led, with the woman and her bundle; miles and the king followed after, with the crowd at their heels. the king was inclined to rebel; but hendon said to him in a low voice: 'reflect, sireyour laws are the wholesome breath of your own royalty; shall their source reject them, yet require the branches to respect them? apparently, one of these laws has been broken; when the king is on his throne again, can it ever grieve him to remember that when he was seemingly a private person he loyally sunk the king in the citizen and submitted to its authority?' 'thou art right; say no more; thou shalt see that whatsoever the king of england requires a subject to suffer under the law, he will himself suffer while he holdeth the station of a subject.' when the woman was called upon to testify before the justice of the peace, she swore that the small prisoner at the bar was the person who had committed the theft; there was none able to show the contrary, so the king stood convicted. the bundle was now unrolled, and when the contents proved to be a plump little dressed pig, the judge looked troubled, while hendon turned pale, and his body was thrilled with an electric shiver of dismay; but the king remained unmoved, protected by his ignorance. the judge meditated, during an ominous pause, then turned to the woman, with question: 'what dost thou hold this property to be worth?' the woman courtesied and replied: 'three shillings and eightpence, your worshipi could not abate a penny and set forth the value honestly.' the justice glanced around uncomfortably upon the crowd, then nodded to the constable and said: 'clear the court and close the doors.' it was done. none remained but the two officials, the accused, the accuser, and miles hendon. this latter was rigid and colorless, and on his forehead big drops of cold sweat gathered, broke and blended together, and trickled down his face. the judge turned to the woman again, and said, in a compassionate voice: ''tis a poor ignorant lad, and mayhap was driven hard by hunger, for these be grievous times for the unfortunate; mark you, he hath not an evil facebut when hunger drivethgood woman! dost know that when one steals a thing above the value of thirteen pence ha'penny the law saith he shall hang for it?' the little king started, wide-eyed with consternation, but controlled himself and held his peace; but not so the woman. she sprang to her feet, shaking with fright and cried out: 'oh, good lack, what have i done! god-a-mercy, i would not hang the poor thing for the whole world! ah, save me from this, your worshipwhat shall i do, what can i do?' the justice maintained his judicial composure, and simply said: 'doubtless it is allowable to revise the value, since it is not yet writ upon the record.' 'then in god's name call the pig eightpence, and heaven bless the day that freed my conscience of this awesome thing!' miles hendon forgot all decorum in his delight; and surprised the king and wounded his dignity by throwing his arms around him and hugging him. the woman made her grateful adieux and started away with her pig; and when the constable opened the door for her, he followed her out into the narrow hall. the justice proceeded to write in his record-book. hendon, always alert, thought he would like to know why the officer followed the woman out; so he slipped softly into the dusky hall and listened. he heard a conversation to this effect: 'it is a fat pig, and promises good eating; i will buy it of thee; here is the eightpence.' 'eightpence, indeed! thou'lt do no such thing. it cost me three shillings and eightpence, good honest coin of the last reign, that old harry that's just dead ne'er touched nor tampered with. a fig for thy eightpence!' 'stands the wind in that quarter? thou wast under oath, and so swore falsely when thou saidst the value was but eightpence. come straightway back with me before his worship, and answer for the crime!and then the lad will hang.' 'there, there, dear heart, say no more, i am content. give me the eightpence, and hold thy peace about the matter.' the woman went off crying; hendon slipped back into the courtroom, and the constable presently followed, after hiding his prize in some convenient place. the justice wrote a while longer, then read the king a wise and kindly lecture, and sentenced him to a short imprisonment in the common jail, to be followed by a public flogging. the astounded king opened his mouth and was probably going to order the good judge to be beheaded on the spot; but he caught a warning sign from hendon, and succeeded in closing his mouth again before he lost anything out of it. hendon took him by the hand, now made reverence to the justice, and the two departed in the wake of the constable toward the jail. the moment the street was reached, the inflamed monarch halted, snatched away his hand, and exclaimed: 'idiot, dost imagine i will enter a common jail alive?' hendon bent down and said, somewhat sharply: 'will you trust in me? peace! and forbear to worsen our chances with dangerous speech. what god wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it, thou canst not alter it; therefore wait; and be patient'twill be time enow to rail or rejoice when what is to happen has happened.'*(19) chapter xxiv the escape the short winter day was nearly ended. the streets were deserted, save for a few random stragglers, and these hurried straight along, with the intent look of people who were only anxious to accomplish their errands as quickly as possible and then snugly house themselves from the rising wind and the gathering twilight. they looked neither to the right nor to the left; they paid no attention to our party, they did not even seem to see them. edward the sixth wondered if the spectacle of a king on his way to jail had ever encountered such marvelous indifference before. by and by the constable arrived at a deserted market-square and proceeded to cross it. when he had reached the middle of it, hendon laid his hand upon his arm, and said in a low voice: 'bide a moment, good sir, there is none in hearing, and i would say a word to thee.' 'my duty forbids it, sir; prithee, hinder me not, the night comes on.' 'stay, nevertheless, for the matter concerns thee nearly. turn thy back moment and seem not to see; let this poor lad escape.' 'this to me, sir! i arrest thee in-' 'nay, be not too hasty. see thou be careful and commit no foolish error'then he shut his voice down to a whisper, and said in the man's ear'the pig thou hast purchased for eightpence may cost thee thy neck, man!' the poor constable, taken by surprise, was speechless at first, then found his tongue and fell to blustering and threatening; but hendon was tranquil, and waited with patience till his breath was spent; then said: 'i have a liking to thee, friend, and would not willingly see thee come to harm. observe, i heard it allevery word. i will prove it to thee.' then he repeated the conversation which the officer and the woman had had together in the hall, word for word, and ended with: 'therehave i set it forth correctly? should not i be able to set it forth correctly before the judge, if occasion required?' the man was dumb with fear and distress for a moment; then he rallied and said with forced lightness: ''tis making a mighty matter indeed, out of a jest; i but plagued the woman for mine amusement.' 'kept you the woman's pig for amusement?' the man answered sharply: 'naught else, good siri tell thee 'twas but a jest.' 'i do begin to believe thee,' said hendon, with a perplexing mixture of mockery and half-conviction in his tone; 'tarry thou here a moment whilst i run and ask his worshipfor nathless, he being a man experienced in law, in jests, in-' he was moving away, still talking; the constable hesitated, fidgeted, spat an oath or two, then cried out: 'hold, hold, good sirprithee, wait a littlethe judge! why man, he hath no more sympathy with a jest than hath a dead corpse!come, and we will speak further. ods body! i seem to be in evil caseand all for an innocent and thoughtless pleasantry. i am a man of family; and my wife and little oneslist to reason, good your worship; what wouldst thou of me?' 'only that thou be blind and dumb and paralytic whilst one may count a hundred thousandcounting slowly,' said hendon, with the expression of a man who asks but a reasonable favor, and that a very little one. 'it is my destruction!' said the constable despairingly. 'ah, be reasonable, good sir; only look at this matter, on all its sides, and see how mere a jest it ishow manifestly and how plainly it is so. and even if one granted it were not a jest, it is a fault so small that e'en the grimmest penalty it could call forth would be but a rebuke and warning from the judge's lips.' hendon replied with a solemnity which chilled the air about him: 'this jest of thine hath a name in lawwot you what it is?' 'i knew it not! peradventure i have been unwise. i never dreamed it had a nameah, sweet heaven, i thought it was original.' 'yes, it hath a name. in the law this crime is called non compos mentis lex talionis sic transit gloria mundi.' 'ah, my god!' 'and the penalty is death!' 'god be merciful to me, a sinner!' 'by advantage taken of one in fault, in dire peril, and at thy mercy, thou hast seized goods worth above thirteen pence ha'penny, paying but a trifle for the same; and this, in the eye of the law, is constructive barratry, misprision of treason, malfeasance in office, ad hominem expurgatis in statu quoand the penalty is death by the halter, without ransom, commutation, or benefit of clergy.' 'bear me up, bear me up, sweet sir, my legs do fail me! be thou mercifulspare me this doom, and i will turn my back and see naught that shall happen.' 'good! now thou'rt wise and reasonable. and thou'lt restore the pig?' 'i will, i will, indeednor ever touch another, though heaven send it and archangel fetch it. goi am blind for thy sakei see nothing. i will say thou didst break in and wrest the prisoner from my hands by force. it is but a crazy, ancient doori will batter it down myself betwixt midnight and the morning.' 'do it, good soul, no harm will come of it; the judge hath a loving charity for this poor lad, and will shed no tears and break no jailer's bones for his escape.' chapter xxv hendon hall as soon as hendon and the king were out of sight of the constable, his majesty was instructed to hurry to a certain place outside the town, and wait there, whilst hendon should go to the inn and settle his account. half an hour later the two friends were blithely jogging eastward on hendon's sorry steeds. the king was warm and comfortable now, for he had cast his rags and clothed himself in the second-hand suit which hendon had bought on london bridge. hendon wished to guard against over-fatiguing the boy; he judged that hard journeys, irregular meals, and illiberal measures of sleep would be bad for his crazed mind, while rest, regularity, and moderate exercise would be pretty sure to hasten its cure; he longed to see the stricken intellect made well again and its diseased visions driven out of the tormented little head; therefore he resolved to move by easy stages toward the home whence he had so long been banished, instead of obeying the impulse of his impatience and hurrying along night and day. when he and the king had journeyed about ten miles, they reached a considerable village, and halted there for the night, at a good inn. the former relations were resumed; hendon stood behind the king's chair while he dined, and waited upon him; undressed him when he was ready for bed; then took the floor for his own quarters, and slept athwart the door, rolled up in a blanket. the next day, and the next day after, they jogged lazily along talking over the adventures they had met since their separation, and mightily enjoying each other's narratives. hendon detailed all his wide wanderings in search of the king, and described how the archangel had led him a fool's journey all over the forest, and taken him back to the hut finally, when he found he could not get rid of him. thenhe saidthe old man went into the bed-chamber and came staggering back looking broken-hearted, and saying he had expected to find that the boy had returned and lain down in there to rest, but it was not so. hendon had waited at the hut all day; hope of the king's return died out then, and he departed upon the quest again. 'and old sanctum sanctorum was truly sorry your highness came not back,' said hendon; 'i saw it in his face.' 'marry, i will never doubt that!' said the kingand then told his own story; after which hendon was sorry he had not destroyed the archangel. during the last day of the trip, hendon's spirits were soaring. his tongue ran constantly. he talked about his old father, and his brother arthur, and told of many things which illustrated their high and generous characters; he went into loving frenzies over his edith, and was so glad-hearted that he was even able to say some gentle and brotherly things about hugh. he dwelt a deal on the coming meeting at hendon hall; what a surprise it would be to everybody, and what an outburst of thanksgiving and delight there would be. it was a fair region, dotted with cottages and orchards, and the road led through broad pasture-lands whose receding expanses, marked with gentle elevations and depressions, suggested the swelling and subsiding undulations of the sea. in the afternoon the returning prodigal made constant deflections from his course to see if by ascending some hillock he might not pierce the distance and catch a glimpse of his home. at last he was successful, and cried out excitedly: 'there is the village, my prince, and there is the hall close by! you may see the towers from here; and that wood therethat is my father's park. ah, now thou'lt know what state and grandeur be! a house with seventy roomsthink of that!and seven and twenty servants! a brave lodging for such as we, is it not so? come, let us speedmy impatience will not brook further delay.' all possible hurry was made; still, it was after three o'clock before the village was reached. the travelers scampered through it, hendon's tongue going all the time. 'here is the churchcovered with the same ivynone gone, none added.' 'yonder is the inn, the old red lionand yonder is the market-place.' 'here is the maypole, and here the pumpnothing is altered; nothing but the people, at any rate; ten years make a change in people; some of these i seem to know, but none know me.' so his chat ran on. the end of the village was soon reached; then the travelers struck into a crooked, narrow road, walled in with tall hedges, and hurried briskly along it for a half-mile, then passed into a vast flower-garden through an imposing gateway whose huge stone pillars bore sculptured armorial devices. a noble mansion was before them. 'welcome to hendon hall, my king!' exclaimed miles. 'ah, 'tis a great day! my father and my brother and the lady edith will be so mad with joy that they will have eyes and tongue for none but me in the first transports of the meeting, and so thou'lt seem but coldly welcomedbut mind it not; 'twill soon seem otherwise; for when i say thou art my ward, and tell them how costly is my love for thee, thou'lt see them take thee to their breasts for miles hendon's sake, and make their house and hearts thy home forever after!' the next moment hendon sprang to the ground before the great door, helped the king down, then took him by the hand and rushed within. a few steps brought him to a spacious apartment; he entered, seated the king with more hurry than ceremony, then ran toward a young man who sat at a writing-table in front of a generous fire of logs. 'embrace me, hugh,' he cried, 'and say thou'rt glad i am come again! and call our father, for home is not home till i shall touch his hand, and see his face, and hear his voice once more!' but hugh only drew back, after betraying a momentary surprise, and bent a grave stare upon the intrudera stare which indicated somewhat of offended dignity at first, then changed, in response to some inward thought or purpose, to an expression of marveling curiosity, mixed with a real or assumed compassion. presently he said, in a mild voice: 'thy wits seem touched, poor stranger; doubtless thou hast suffered privations and rude buffetings at the world's hands; thy looks and dress betoken it. whom dost thou take me to be?' 'take thee? prithee, for whom else than whom thou art? i take thee to be hugh hendon,' said miles, sharply. the other continued, in the same soft tone: 'and whom dost thou imagine thyself to be?' 'imagination hath naught to do with it! dost thou pretend thou knowest me not for thy brother miles hendon?' an expression of pleased surprise flitted across hugh's face, and he exclaimed: 'what! thou art not jesting! can the dead come to life? god be praised if it be so! our poor lost boy restored to our arms after all these cruel years! ah, it seems too good to be true, it is too good to be truei charge thee, have pity, do not trifle with me! quickcome to the lightlet me scan thee well!' he seized miles by the arm, dragged him to the window, and began to devour him from head to foot with his eyes, turning him this way and that, and stepping briskly around him and about him to prove him from all points of view; whilst the returned prodigal, all aglow with gladness, smiled, laughed, and kept nodding his head and saying: 'go on, brother, go on, and fear not; thou'lt find nor limb nor feature that cannot bide the test. scour and scan me to thy content, my dear old hughi am indeed thy old miles, thy same old miles, thy lost brother, is't not so? ah, 'tis a great dayi said 'twas a great day! give me thy hand, give me thy cheeklord, i am like to die of very joy!' he was about to throw himself upon his brother; but hugh put up his hand in dissent, then dropped his chin mournfully upon his breast, saying with emotion: 'ah, god of his mercy give me strength to bear this grievous disappointment!' miles, amazed, could not speak for a moment; then he found his tongue, and cried out: 'what disappointment? am i not thy brother?' hugh shook his head sadly, and said: 'i pray heaven it may prove so, and that other eyes may find the resemblances that are hid from mine. alack, i fear me the letter spoke but too truly.' 'what letter?' 'one that came from oversea, some six or seven years ago. it said my brother died in battle.' 'it was a lie! call thy fatherhe will know me.' 'one may not call the dead.' 'dead?' miles's voice was subdued, and his lips trembled. 'my father dead!oh, this is heavy news. half my new joy is withered now. prithee, let me see my brother arthurhe will know me; he will know me and console me.' 'he, also, is dead.' 'god be merciful to me, a stricken man! goneboth gonethe worthy taken and the worthless spared in me! ah! i crave your mercy!do not say the lady edith-' 'is dead? no, she lives.' 'then god be praised, my joy is whole again! speed thee, brotherlet her come to me! an she say i am not myselfbut she will not; no, no, she will know me, i were a fool to doubt it. bring herbring the old servants; they, too, will know me.' 'all are gone but fivepeter, halsey, david, bernard, and margaret.' so saying, hugh left the room. miles stood musing awhile, then began to walk the floor, muttering: 'the five arch villains have survived the two-and-twenty leal and honest'tis an odd thing.' he continued walking back and forth, muttering to himself; he had forgotten the king entirely. by and by his majesty said gravely, and with a touch of genuine compassion, though the words themselves were capable of being interpreted ironically: 'mind not thy mischance, good man; there be others in the world whose identity is denied, and whose claims are derided. thou hast company.' 'ah, my king,' cried hendon, coloring slightly, 'do not thou condemn mewait, and thou shalt see. i am no impostorshe will say it; you shall hear it from the sweetest lips in england. i an impostor? why i know this old hall, these pictures of my ancestors, and all these things that are about us, as a child knoweth its own nursery. here was i born and bred, my lord; i speak the truth; i would not deceive thee; and should none else believe, i pray thee do not thou doubt mei could not bear it.' 'i do not doubt thee,' said the king, with a childlike simplicity and faith. 'i thank thee out of my heart!' exclaimed hendon, with a fervency which showed that he was touched. the king added, with the same gentle simplicity: 'dost thou doubt me?' a guilty confusion seized upon hendon, and he was grateful that the door opened to admit hugh, at that moment, and saved him the necessity of replying. a beautiful lady, richly clothed, followed hugh, and after her came several liveried servants. the lady walked slowly, with her head bowed and her eyes fixed upon the floor. the face was unspeakably sad. miles hendon sprang forward, crying out: 'oh, my edith, my darling-' but hugh waved him back, gravely, and said to the lady: 'look upon him. do you know him?' at the sound of miles's voice the woman had started slightly, and her cheeks had flushed; she was trembling now. she stood still, during an impressive pause of several moments; then slowly lifted up her head and looked into hendon's eyes with a stony and frightened gaze; the blood sank out of her face, drop by drop, till nothing remained but the gray pallor of death; then she said, in a voice as dead as the face, 'i know him not!' and turned, with a moan and stifled sob, and tottered out of the room. miles hendon sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. after a pause, his brother said to the servants: 'you have observed him. do you know him?' they shook their heads; then the master said: 'the servants know you not, sir. i fear there is some mistake. you have seen that my wife knew you not.' 'thy wife!' in an instant hugh was pinned to the wall, with an iron grip about his throat. 'oh, thou fox-hearted slave, i see it all! thou'st writ the lying letter thyself, and my stolen bride and goods are its fruit. therenow get thee gone, lest i shame mine honorable soldiership with the slaying of so pitiful a manikin!' hugh, red-faced and almost suffocated, reeled to the nearest chair, and commanded the servants to seize and bind the murderous stranger. they hesitated, and one of them said: 'he is armed, sir hugh, and we are weaponless.' 'armed? what of it, and ye so many? upon him, i say!' but miles warned them to be careful what they did, and added: 'ye know me of oldi have not changed; come oh, an it like you.' this reminder did not hearten the servants much; they still held back. 'then go, ye paltry cowards, and arm yourselves and guard the doors, while i send one to fetch the watch,' said hugh. he turned, at the threshold, and said to miles, 'you'll find it to your advantage to offend not with useless endeavours at escape.' 'escape? spare thyself discomfort, an that is all that troubles thee. for miles hendon is master of hendon hall and all its belongings. he will remaindoubt it not.' chapter xxvi disowned the king sat musing a few moments, then looked up and said: ''tis strangemost strange. i cannot account for it.' 'no, it is not strange, my liege. i know him, and this conduct is but natural. he was a rascal from his birth.' 'oh, i spake not of him, sir miles.' 'not of him? then of what? what is it that is strange?' 'that the king is not missed.' 'how? which? i doubt i do not understand.' 'indeed! doth it not strike you as being passing strange that the land is not filled with couriers and proclamations describing my person and making search for me? is it no matter for commotion and distress that the head of the state is gone?that i am vanished away and lost?' 'most true, my king, i had forgot.' then hendon sighed, and muttered to himself. 'poor ruined mindstill busy with its pathetic dream.' 'but i have a plan that shall right us both. i will write a paper, in three tongueslatin, greek, and englishand thou shall haste away with it to london in the morning. give it to none but my uncle, the lord hertford; when he shall see it, he will know and say i wrote it. then he will send for me.' 'might it not be best, my prince, that we wait here until i prove myself and make my rights secure to my domains? i should be so much the better able then to-' the king interrupted him imperiously: 'peace! what are thy paltry domains, thy trivial interests, contrasted with matters which concern the weal of a nation and the integrity of a throne!' then he added, in a gentle voice, as if he were sorry for his severity, 'obey and have no fear; i will right thee, i will make thee wholeyes, more than whole. i shall remember, and requite.' so saying, he took the pen, and set himself to work. hendon contemplated him lovingly awhile, then said to himself: 'an it were dark, i should think it was a king that spoke; there's no denying it, when the humor's upon him he doth thunder and lighten like your true kingnow where got he that trick? see him scribble and scratch away contentedly at his meaningless pot-hooks, fancying them to be latin and greekand except my wit shall serve me with a lucky device for diverting him from his purpose, i shall be forced to pretend to post away to-morrow on this wild errand which he hath invented for me.' the next moment sir miles's thoughts had gone back to the recent episode. so absorbed was he in his musings, that when the king presently handed him the paper which he had been writing, he received it and pocketed it without being conscious of the act. 'how marvelous strange she acted,' he muttered. 'i think she knew meand i think she did not know me. these opinions do conflict, i perceive it plainly; i cannot reconcile them, neither can i, by argument, dismiss either of the two, or even persuade one to outweigh the other. the matter standeth simply thus: she must have known my face, my figure, my voice, for how could it be otherwise? yet she said she knew me not, and that is proof perfect, for she cannot lie. but stopi think i begin to see. peradventure he hath influenced hercommanded her-compelled her to lie. that is the solution! the riddle is unriddled. she seemed dead with fearyes, she was under his compulsion. i will seek her; i will find her; now that he is away, she will speak her true mind. she will remember the old times when we were little playfellows together, and this will soften her heart, and she will no more betray me, but will confess me. there is no treacherous blood in herno, she was always honest and true. she has loved me in those old daysthis is my security; for whom one has loved, one cannot betray.' he stepped eagerly toward the door; at that moment it opened, and the lady edith entered. she was very pale, but she walked with a firm step, and her carriage was full of grace and gentle dignity. her face was as sad as before. miles sprang forward, with a happy confidence, to meet her, but she checked him with a hardly perceptible gesture, and he stopped where he was. she seated herself, and asked him to do likewise. thus simply did she take the sense of old-comradeship out of him, and transform him into a stranger and a guest. the surprise of it, the bewildering unexpectedness of it, made him begin to question, for a moment, if he was the person he was pretending to be, after all. the lady edith said: 'sir, i have come to warn you. the mad cannot be persuaded out of their delusions, perchance; but doubtless they may be persuaded to avoid perils. i think this dream of yours hath the seeming of honest truth to you, and therefore is not criminalbut do not tarry here with it; for here it is dangerous.' she looked steadily into miles's face a moment, then added, impressively, 'it is the more dangerous for that you are much like what our lost lad must have grown to be, if he had lived.' 'heavens, madam, but i am he!' 'i truly think you think it, sir. i question not your honesty in thati but warn you, that is all. my husband is master in this region; his power hath hardly any limit; the people prosper or starve, as he wills. if you resembled not the man whom you profess to be, my husband might bid you pleasure yourself with your dream in peace; but trust me, i know him well, i know what he will do; he will say to all that you are but a mad impostor, and straightway all will echo him.' she bent upon miles that same steady look once more, and added: 'if you were miles hendon, and he knew it and all the region knew itconsider what i am saying, weigh it wellyou would stand in the same peril, your punishment would be no less sure; he would deny you and denounce you, and none would be bold enough to give you countenance.' 'most truly i believe it,' said miles, bitterly. 'the power that can command one lifelong friend to betray and disown another, and be obeyed, may well look to be obeyed in quarters where bread and life are on the stake and no cobweb ties of loyalty and honor are concerned.' a faint tinge appeared for a moment in the lady's cheek, and she dropped her eyes to the floor; but her voice betrayed no emotion when she proceeded: 'i have warned you, i must still warn you, to go hence. this man will destroy you else. he is a tyrant who knows no pity. i, who am his fettered slave, know this. poor miles, and arthur, and my dear guardian, sir richard, are free of him, and at restbetter that you were with them than that you bide here in the clutches of this miscreant. your pretensions are a menace to his title and possessions; you have assaulted him in his own houseyou are ruined if you stay. godo not hesitate. if you lack money, take this purse, i beg of you, and bribe the servants to let you pass. oh, be warned, poor soul, and escape while you may.' miles declined the purse with a gesture, and rose up and stood before her. 'grant me one thing,' he said. 'let your eyes rest upon mine, so that i may see if they be steady. therenow answer me. am i miles hendon?' 'no. i know you not.' 'swear it!' the answer was low, but distinct: 'i swear.' 'oh, this passes belief!' 'fly! why will you waste the precious time? fly and save yourself.' at that moment the officers burst into the room and a violent struggle began; but hendon was soon overpowered and dragged away. the king was taken also, and both were bound and led to prison. chapter xxvii in prison the cells were all crowded; so the two friends were chained in a large room where persons charged with trifling offenses were commonly kept. they had company, for there were some twenty manacled or fettered prisoners here, of both sexes and of varying agesan obscene and noisy gang. the king chafed bitterly over the stupendous indignity thus put upon his royalty, but hendon was moody and taciturn. he was pretty thoroughly bewildered. he had come home, a jubilant prodigal, expecting to find everybody wild with joy over his return; and instead had got the cold shoulder and a jail. the promise and the fulfilment differed so widely, that the effect was stunning; he could not decide whether it was most tragic or most grotesque. he felt much as a man might who had danced blithely out to enjoy a rainbow, and got struck by lightning. but gradually his confused and tormenting thoughts settled down into some sort of order, and then his mind centered itself upon edith. he turned her conduct over, and examined it in all lights, but he could not make anything satisfactory out of it. did she know him?or didn't she know him? it was a perplexing puzzle, and occupied him a long time; but he ended, finally, with the conviction that she did know him, and had repudiated him for interested reasons. he wanted to load her name with curses now; but this name had so long been sacred to him that he found he could not bring his tongue to profane it. wrapped in prison blankets of a soiled and tattered condition, hendon and the king passed a troubled night. for a bribe the jailer had furnished liquor to some of the prisoners; singing of ribald songs, fighting, shouting, and carousing, was the natural consequence. at last, awhile after midnight, a man attacked a woman and nearly killed her by beating her over the head with his manacles before the jailer could come to the rescue. the jailer restored peace by giving the man a sound clubbing about the head and shouldersthen the carousing ceased; and after that, all had an opportunity to sleep who did not mind the annoyance of the moanings and groanings of the two wounded people. during the ensuing week, the days and nights were of a monotonous sameness, as to events; men whose faces hendon remembered more or less distinctly came, by day, to gaze at the 'impostor' and repudiate and insult him; and by night the carousing and brawling went on, with symmetrical regularity. however, there was a change of incident at last. the jailer brought in an old man, and said to him: 'the villain is in this roomcast thy old eyes about and see if thou canst say which is he.' hendon glanced up, and experienced a pleasant sensation for the first time since he had been in the jail. he said to himself, 'this is blake andrews, a servant all his life in my father's familya good honest soul, with a right heart in his breast. that is, formerly. but none are true now; all are liars. this man will know meand will deny me, too, like the rest.' the old man gazed around the room, glanced at each face in turn, and finally said: 'i see none here but paltry knaves, scum o' the streets. which is he?' the jailer laughed. 'here,' he said; 'scan this big animal, and grant me an opinion.' the old man approached, and looked hendon over, long and earnestly, then shook his head and said: 'marry, this is no hendonnor ever was!' 'right! thy old eyes are sound yet. an i were sir hugh, i would take the shabby carle and-' the jailer finished by lifting himself a-tiptoe with an imaginary halter, at the same time making a gurgling noise in his throat suggestive of suffocation. the old man said, vindictively: 'let him bless god an he fare no worse. an i had the handling o' the villain, he should roast, or i am no true man!' the jailer laughed a pleasant hyena laugh, and said: 'give him a piece of thy mind, old manthey all do it. thou'lt find it good diversion.' then he sauntered toward his anteroom and disappeared. the old man dropped upon his knees and whispered: 'god be thanked, thou'rt come again, my master! i believed thou wert dead these seven years, and lo, here thou art alive! i knew thee the moment i saw thee; and main hard work it was to keep a stony countenance and seem to see none here but tuppenny knaves and rubbish o' the streets. i am old and poor, sir miles; but say the word and i will go forth and proclaim the truth though i be strangled for it.' 'no,' said hendon, 'thou shalt not. it would ruin thee, and yet help but little in my cause. but i thank thee; for thou hast given me back somewhat of my lost faith in my kind.' the old servant became very valuable to hendon and the king; for he dropped in several times a day to 'abuse' the former, and always smuggled in a few delicacies to help out the prison bill of fare; he also furnished the current news. hendon reserved the dainties for the king; without them his majesty might not have survived, for he was not able to eat the coarse and wretched food provided by the jailer. andrews was obliged to confine himself to brief visits, in order to avoid suspicion; but he managed to impart a fair degree of information each timeinformation delivered in a low voice, for hendon's benefit, and interlarded with insulting epithets delivered in a louder voice, for the benefit of other hearers. so, little by little, the story of the family came out. arthur had been dead six years. this loss, with the absence of news from hendon, impaired his father's health; he believed he was going to die, and he wished to see hugh and edith settled in life before he passed away; but edith begged hard for delay, hoping for miles's return; then the letter came which brought the news of miles's death; the shock prostrated sir richard; he believed his end was very near, and he and hugh insisted upon the marriage; edith begged for and obtained a month's respite; then another, and finally a third; the marriage then took place, by the death-bed of sir richard. it had not proved a happy one. it was whispered about the country that shortly after the nuptials the bride found among her husband's papers several rough and incomplete drafts of the fatal letter, and had accused him of precipitating the marriageand sir richard's death, tooby a wicked forgery. tales of cruelty to the lady edith and the servants were to be heard on all hands; and since the father's death sir hugh had thrown off all soft disguises and become a pitiless master toward all who in any way depended upon him and his domains for bread. there was a bit of andrews's gossip which the king listened to with a lively interest: 'there is rumor that the king is mad. but in charity forbear to say i mentioned it, for 'tis death to speak of it, they say.' his majesty glared at the old man and said: 'the king is not mad, good manand thou'lt find it to thy advantage to busy thyself with matters that nearer concern thee than this seditious prattle.' 'what doth the lad mean?' said andrews, surprised at this brisk assault from such an unexpected quarter. hendon gave him a sign, and he did not pursue his question, but went on with his budget: 'the late king is to be buried at windsor in a day or twothe sixteenth of the monthand the new king will be crowned at westminster the twentieth.' 'methinks they must needs find him first,' muttered his majesty; then added, confidently, 'but they will look to thatand so also shall i.' 'in the name of-' but the old man got no furthera warning sign from hendon checked his remark. he resumed the thread of his gossip. 'sir hugh goeth to the coronationand with grand hopes. he confidently looketh to come back a peer, for he is high in favor with the lord protector.' 'what lord protector?' asked his majesty. 'his grace the duke of somerset.' 'what duke of somerset?' 'marry, there is but oneseymour, earl of hertford.' the king asked sharply: 'since when is he a duke, and lord protector?' 'since the last day of january.' 'and, prithee, who made him so?' 'himself and the great councilwith the help of the king.' his majesty started violently. 'the king!' he cried. 'what king, good sir?' 'what king, indeed! (god-a-mercy, what aileth the boy?) sith we have but one, 'tis not difficult to answerhis most sacred majesty king edward the sixthwhom god preserve! yea, and a dear and gracious little urchin is he, too; and whether he be mad or noand they say he mendeth dailyhis praises are on all men's lips; and all bless him likewise, and offer prayers that he may be spared to reign long in england; for he began humanely, with saving the old duke of norfolk's life, and now is he bent on destroying the cruelest of the laws that harry and oppress the people.' this news struck his majesty dumb with amazement, and plunged him into so deep and dismal a reverie that he heard no more of the old man's gossip. he wondered if the 'little urchin' was the beggar-boy whom he left dressed in his own garments in the palace. it did not seem possible that this could be, for surely his manners and speech would betray him if he pretended to be the prince of walesthen he would be driven out, and search made for the true prince. could it be that the court had set up some sprig of the nobility in his place? no, for his uncle would not allow thathe was all-powerful and could and would crush such a movement, of course. the boy's musings profited him nothing; the more he tried to unriddle the mystery the more perplexed he became, the more his head ached, and the worse he slept. his impatience to get to london grew hourly, and his captivity became almost unendurable. hendon's arts all failed with the kinghe could not be comforted, but a couple of women who were chained near him, succeeded better. under their gentle ministrations he found peace and learned a degree of patience. he was very grateful, and came to love them dearly and to delight in the sweet and soothing influence of their presence. he asked them why they were in prison, and when they said they were baptists, he smiled, and inquired: 'is that a crime to be shut up for in a prison? now i grieve, for i shall lose yethey will not keep ye long for such a little thing.' they did not answer; and something in their faces made him uneasy. he said, eagerly: 'you do not speakbe good to me, and tell methere will be no other punishment? prithee, tell me there is no fear of that.' they tried to change the topic, but his fears were aroused, and he pursued it: 'will they scourge thee? no, no, they would not be so cruel! say they would not. come, they will not, will they?' the women betrayed confusion and distress, but there was no avoiding an answer, so one of them said, in a voice choked with emotion: 'oh, thou'lt break our hearts, thou gentle spirit! god will help us to bear our-' 'it is a confession!' the king broke in. 'then they will scourge thee, the stony-hearted wretches! but oh, thou must not weep, i cannot bear it. keep up thy couragei shall come to my own in time to save thee from this bitter thing, and i will do it!' when the king awoke in the morning, the women were gone. 'they are saved!' he said, joyfully; then added, despondently, 'but woe is me!for they were my comforters.' each of them had left a shred of ribbon pinned to his clothing, in token of remembrance. he said he would keep these things always; and that soon he would seek out these dear good friends of his and take them under his protection. just then the jailer came in with some subordinates and commanded that the prisoners be conducted to the jail-yard. the king was overjoyedit would be a blessed thing to see the blue sky and breathe the fresh air once more. he fretted and chafed at the slowness of the officers, but his turn came at last and he was released from his staple and ordered to follow the other prisoners, with hendon. the court, or quadrangle, was stone-paved, and open to the sky. the prisoners entered it through a massive archway of masonry, and were placed in file, standing, with their backs against the wall. a rope was stretched in front of them, and they were also guarded by their officers. it was a chill and lowering morning, and a light snow which had fallen during the night whitened the great empty space and added to the general dismalness of its aspect. now and then a wintry wind shivered through the place and sent the snow eddying hither and thither. in the center of the court stood two women, chained to posts. a glance showed the king that these were his good friends. he shuddered, and said to himself, 'alack, they are not gone free, as i had thought. to think that such as these should know the lash!in england! ay, there's the shame of itnot in heathenesse, but christian england! they will be scourged; and i, whom they have comforted and kindly entreated, must look on and see the great wrong done; it is strange, so strange! that i, the very source of power in this broad realm, am helpless to protect them. but let these miscreants look well to themselves, for there is a day coming when i will require of them a heavy reckoning for this work. for every blow they strike now they shall feel a hundred then.' a great gate swung open and a crowd of citizens poured in. they flocked around the two women, and hid them from the king's view. a clergyman entered and passed through the crowd, and he also was hidden. the king now heard talking, back and forth, as if questions were being asked and answered, but he could not make out what was said. next there was a deal of bustle and preparation, and much passing and repassing of officials through that part of the crowd that stood on the further side of the women; and while this proceeded a deep hush gradually fell upon the people. now, by command, the masses parted and fell aside, and the king saw a spectacle that froze the marrow in his bones. fagots had been piled about the two women, and a kneeling man was lighting them! the women bowed their heads, and covered their faces with their hands; the yellow flames began to climb upward among the snapping and crackling fagots, and wreaths of blue smoke to stream away on the wind; the clergyman lifted his hands and began a prayerjust then two young girls came flying through the great gate, uttering piercing screams, and threw themselves upon the women at the stake. instantly they were torn away by the officers, and one of them was kept in a tight grip, but the other broke loose, saying she would die with her mother; and before she could be stopped she had flung her arms about her mother's neck again. she was torn away once more, and with her gown on fire. two or three men held her, and the burning portion of her gown was snatched off and thrown flaming aside, she struggling all the while to free herself, and saying she would be alone in the world now, and begging to be allowed to die with her mother. both the girls screamed continually, and fought for freedom; but suddenly this tumult was drowned under a volley of heart-piercing shrieks of mortal agony. the king glanced from the frantic girls to the stake, then turned away and leaned his ashen face against the wall, and looked no more. he said, 'that which i have seen, in that one little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will abide there; and i shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights, till i die. would god i had been blind!' hendon was watching the king. he said to himself, with satisfaction, 'his disorder mendeth; he hath changed, and groweth gentler. if he had followed his wont, he would have stormed at these varlets, and said he was king, and commanded that the women be turned loose unscathed. soon his delusion will pass away and be forgotten, and his poor mind will be whole again. god speed the day!' that same day several prisoners were brought in to remain overnight, who were being conveyed, under guard, to various places in the kingdom, to undergo punishment for crimes committed. the king conversed with thesehe had made it a point, from the beginning, to instruct himself for the kingly office by questioning prisoners whenever the opportunity offeredand the tale of their woes wrung his heart. one of them was a poor half-witted woman who had stolen a yard or two of cloth from a weavershe was to be hanged for it. another was a man who had been accused of stealing a horse; he said the proof had failed, and he had imagined that he was safe from the halter; but nohe was hardly free before he was arraigned for killing a deer in the king's park; this was proved against him, and now he was on his way to the gallows. there was a tradesman's apprentice whose case particularly distressed the king; this youth said he found a hawk one evening that had escaped from its owner, and he took it home with him, imagining himself entitled to it; but the court convicted him of stealing it, and sentenced him to death. the king was furious over these inhumanities, and wanted hendon to break jail and fly with him to westminster, so that he could mount his throne and hold out his scepter in mercy over these unfortunate people and save their lives. 'poor child,' sighed hendon, 'these woeful tales have brought his malady upon him againalack, but for this evil hap, he would have been well in a little time.' among these prisoners was an old lawyera man with a strong face and a dauntless mien, three years past, he had written a pamphlet against the lord chancellor, accusing him of injustice, and had been punished for it by the loss of his ears in the pillory and degradation from the bar, and in addition had been fined l3,000 and sentenced to imprisonment for life. lately he had repeated his offense; and in consequence was now under sentence to lose what remained of his ears, pay a fine of l5,000, be branded on both cheeks, and remain in prison for life. 'these be honorable scars,' he said, and turned back his gray hair and showed the mutilated stubs of what had once been his ears. the king's eye burned with passion. he said: 'none believe in meneither wilt thou. but no matterwithin the compass of a month thou shalt be free; and more, the laws that have dishonored thee, and shamed the english name, shall be swept from the statute-books. the world is made wrong, kings should go to school to their own laws at times, and so learn mercy.'*(20) chapter xxviii the sacrifice meantime miles was growing sufficiently tired of confinment and inaction. but now his trial came on, to his great gratification, and he thought he could welcome any sentence provided a further imprisonment should not be a part of it. but he was mistaken about that. he was in a fine fury when he found himself described as a 'sturdy vagabond' and sentenced to sit two hours in the pillory for bearing that character and for assaulting the master of hendon hall. his pretensions as to brothership with his prosecutor, and rightful heirship to the hendon honors and estates, were left contemptuously unnoticed, as being not even worth examination. he raged and threatened on his way to punishment, but it did no good; he was snatched roughly along by the officers, and got an occasional cuff, besides, for his unreverent conduct. the king could not pierce through the rabble that swarmed behind; so he was obliged to follow in the rear, remote from his good friend and servant. the king had been nearly condemned to the stocks himself, for being in such bad company, but had been let off with a lecture and a warning, in consideration of his youth. when the crowd at last halted, he flitted feverishly from point to point around its outer rim, hunting a place to get through; and at last, after a deal of difficulty and delay, succeeded. there sat his poor henchman in the degrading stocks, the sport and butt of a dirty mobhe, the body servant of the king of england! edward had heard the sentence pronounced, but he had not realized the half that it meant. his anger began to rise as the sense of this new indignity which had been put upon him sank home; it jumped to summer heat the next moment, when he saw an egg sail through the air and crush itself against hendon's cheek, and heard the crowd roar its enjoyment of the episode. he sprang across the open circle and confronted the officer in charge, crying: 'for shame! this is my servantset him free! i am the-' 'oh, peace!' exclaimed hendon, in a panic, 'thou'lt destroy thyself. mind him not, officer, he is mad.' 'give thyself no trouble as to the matter of minding him, good man, i have small mind to mind him; but as to teaching him somewhat, to that i am well inclined.' he turned to a subordinate and said, 'give the little fool a taste or two of the lash, to mend his manners.' 'half a dozen will better serve his turn,' suggested sir hugh, who had ridden up a moment before to take a passing glance at the proceedings. the king was seized. he did not even struggle, so paralyzed was he with the mere thought of the monstrous outrage that was proposed to be inflicted upon his sacred person. history was already defiled with the record of the scourging of an english king with whipsit was an intolerable reflection that he must furnish a duplicate of that shameful page. he was in the toils, there was no help for him; he must either take this punishment or beg for its remission. hard conditions; he would take the stripesa king might do that, but a king could not beg. but meantime, miles hendon was resolving the difficulty. 'let the child go,' said he; 'ye heartless dogs, do ye not see how young and frail he is? let him goi will take his lashes.' 'marry, a good thoughtand thanks for it,' said sir hugh, his face lighting with a sardonic satisfaction. 'let the little beggar go, and give this fellow a dozen in his placean honest dozen, well laid on.' the king was in the act of entering a fierce protest, but sir hugh silenced him with the potent remark, 'yes, speak up, do, and free thy mindonly, mark ye, that for each word you utter he shall get six strokes the more.' hendon was removed from the stocks, and his back laid bare; and while the lash was applied the poor little king turned away his face and allowed unroyal tears to channel his cheeks unchecked. 'ah, brave good heart,' he said to himself, 'this loyal deed shall never perish out of my memory. i will not forget itand neither shall they!' he added, with passion. while he mused, his appreciation of hendon's magnanimous conduct grew to greater and still greater dimensions in his mind, and so also did his gratefulness for it. presently he said to himself, 'who saves his prince from wounds and possible deathand this he did for meperforms high service; but it is littleit is nothing! -oh, less than nothing!when 'tis weighed against the act of him who saves his prince from shame!' hendon made no outcry under the scourge, but bore the heavy blows with soldierly fortitude. this, together with his redeeming the boy by taking his stripes for him, compelled the respect of even that forlorn and degraded mob that was gathered there; and its gibes and hootings died away, and no sound remained but the sound of the falling blows. the stillness that pervaded the place when hendon found himself once more in the stocks, was in strong contrast with the insulting clamour which had prevailed there so little a while before. the king came softly to hendon's side, and whispered in his ear: 'kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for one who is higher than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility to men.' he picked up the scourge from the ground, touched hendon's bleeding shoulders lightly with it, and whispered, 'edward of england dubs thee earl!' hendon was touched. the water welled to his eyes, yet at the same time the grisly humor of the situation and circumstances so undermined his gravity that it was all he could do to keep some sign of his inward mirth from showing outside. to be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory, from the common stocks to the alpine altitude and splendor of an earldom, seemed to him the last possibility in the line of the grotesque. he said to himself, 'now am i finely tinseled, indeed! the specter-knight of the kingdom of dreams and shadows is become a specter-earl!a dizzy flight for a callow wing! an this go on, i shall presently be hung like a very may-pole with fantastic gauds and make-believe honors. but i shall value them, all valueless as they are, for the love that doth bestow them. better these poor mock dignities of mine, that come unasked from a clean hand and a right spirit, than real ones bought by servility from grudging and interested power.' the dreaded sir hugh wheeled his horse about, and, as he spurred away, the living wall divided silently to let him pass, and as silently closed together again. and so remained; nobody went so far as to venture a remark in favor of the prisoner, or in compliment to him; but no matter, the absence of abuse was a sufficient homage in itself. a late comer who was not posted as to the present circumstances, and who delivered a sneer at the 'impostor' and was in the act of following it with a dead cat, was promptly knocked down and kicked out, without any words, and then the deep quiet resumed sway once more. chapter xxix to london when hendon's term of service in the stocks was finished, he was released and ordered to quit the region and come back no more. his sword was restored to him, and also his mule and his donkey. he mounted and rode off, followed by the king, the crowd opening with quiet respectfulness to let them pass, and then dispersing when they were gone. hendon was soon absorbed in thought. there were questions of high import to be answered. what should he do? whither should he go? powerful help must be found somewhere, or he must relinquish his inheritance and remain under the imputation of being an impostor besides. where could he hope to find this powerful help? where, indeed! it was a knotty question. by and by a thought occurred to him which pointed to a possibilitythe slenderest of slender possibilities, certainly, but still worth considering, for lack of any other that promised anything at all. he remembered what old andrews had said about the young king's goodness and his generous championship of the wronged and unfortunate. why not go and try to get speech of him and beg for justice? ah, yes, but could so fantastic a pauper get admission to the august presence of a monarch? never mindlet that matter take care of itself; it was a bridge that would not need to be crossed till he should come to it. he was an old campaigner, and used to inventing shifts and expedients; no doubt he would be able to find a way. yes, he would strike for the capital. maybe his father's old friend, sir humphrey marlow, would help him'good old sir humphrey, head lieutenant of the late king's kitchen, or stables, or something'miles could not remember just what or which. now that he had something to turn his energies to, a distinctly defined object to accomplish, the fog of humiliation and depression that had settled down upon his spirits lifted and blew away, and he raised his head and looked about him. he was surprised to see how far he had come; the village was away behind him. the king was jogging along in his wake, with his head bowed; for he, too, was deep in plans and thinkings. a sorrowful misgiving clouded hendon's newborn cheerfulness; would the boy be willing to go again to a city where, during all his brief life, he had never known anything but ill usage and pinching want? but the question must be asked; it could not be avoided; so hendon reined up, and called out: 'i had forgotten to inquire whither we are bound. thy commands, my liege?' 'to london!' hendon moved on again, mightily contented with the answerbut astonished at it, too. the whole journey was made without an adventure of importance. but it ended with one. about ten o'clock on the night of the night of the 19th of february, they stepped upon london bridge, in the midst of a writhing, struggling jam of howling and hurrahing people, whose beer-jolly faces stood out strongly in the glare from manifold torchesand at that instant the decaying head of some former duke or other grandee tumbled down between them, striking hendon on the elbow and then bounding off among the hurrying confusion of feet. so evanescent and unstable are men's works in this world!the late good king is but three weeks dead and three days in his grave, and already the adornments which he took such pains to select from prominent people for his noble bridge are falling. a citizen stumbled over that head, and drove his own head into the back of somebody in front of him, who turned and knocked down the first person that came handy, and was promptly laid out himself by that person's friend. it was the right ripe time for a free fight, for the festivities of the morrowcoronation daywere already beginning; everybody was full of strong drink and patriotism; within five minutes the free fight was occupying a good deal of ground; within ten or twelve it covered an acre or so, and was become a riot. by this time hendon and the king were hopelessly separated from each other and lost in the rush and turmoil of the roaring masses of humanity. and so we leave them. chapter xxx tom's progress whilst the true king wandered about the land, poorly clad, poorly fed, cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all impartially, the mock king tom canty enjoyed a quite different experience. when we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side for him. this bright side went on brightening more and more every day; in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and delightfulness. he lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died; his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident bearing. he worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit. he ordered my lady elizabeth and my lady jane grey into his presence when he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with them, with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances. it no longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at parting. he came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. it came to be a proud pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. he liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the distant voices responding, 'way for the king!' he even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and seeming to be something more than the lord protector's mouthpiece. he liked to receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen to the affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who called him 'brother.' oh, happy tom canty, late of offal court! he enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more; he found his four hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. the adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears. he remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws; yet upon occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and give him a look that would make him tremble. once, when his royal 'sister,' the grimly holy lady mary, set herself to reason with him against the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that their august late father's prisons had sometimes contained as high as sixty thousand convicts at one time, and that during his admirable reign he had delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers over to death by the executioner,*(21) the boy was filled with generous indignation, and commanded her to go to her closet, and beseech god to take away the stone that was in her breast, and give her a human heart. did tom canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to avenge him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace gate? yes; his first royal days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts about the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return and happy restoration to his native rights and splendors. but as time wore on, and the prince did not come, tom's mind became more and more occupied with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome specter, for he made tom feel guilty and ashamed. tom's poor mother and sisters traveled the same road out of his mind. at first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them; but later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty place and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums, made him shudder. at last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost wholly. and he was content, even glad; for, whenever their mournful and accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more despicable than the worms that crawl. at midnight of the 19th of february, tom canty was sinking to sleep in his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for to-morrow was the day appointed for his solemn crowning as king of england. at that same hour, edward, the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with travel, and clothed in rags and shredshis share of the results of the riotwas wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of westminster abbey, busy as ants; they were making the last preparation for the royal coronation. chapter xxxi the recognition procession when tom canty awoke the next morning, the air was heavy with a thunderous murmur; all the distances were charged with it. it was music to him; for it meant that the english world was out in its strength to give loyal welcome to the great day. presently tom found himself once more the chief figure in a wonderful floating pageant on the thames; for by ancient custom the 'recognition procession' through london must start from the tower, and he was bound thither. when he arrived there, the sides of the venerable fortress seemed suddenly rent in a thousand places, and from every rent leaped a red tongue of flame and a white gush of smoke; a deafening explosion followed, which drowned the shoutings of the multitude, and made the ground tremble; the flame-jets, the smoke, and the explosions were repeated over and over again with marvelous celerity, so that in a few moments the old tower disappeared in the vast fog of its own smoke, all but the very top of the tall pile called the white tower; this, with its banners, stood out above the dense bank of vapor as a mountain peak projects above a cloud-rack. tom canty, splendidly arrayed, mounted a prancing war-steed, whose rich trappings almost reached to the ground; his 'uncle,' the lord protector somerset, similarly mounted, took place in his rear; the king's guard formed in single ranks on either side, clad in burnished armor; after the protector followed a seemingly interminable procession of resplendent nobles attended by their vassals; after these came the lord mayor and the aldermanic body, in crimson velvet robes, and with their gold chains across their breasts; and after these the officers and members of all the guilds of london, in rich raiment, and bearing the showy banners of the several corporations. also in the procession, as a special guard of honor through the city, was the ancient and honorable artillery companyan organization already three hundred years old at that time, and the only military body in england possessing the privilege (which it still possesses in our day) of holding itself independent of the commands of parliament. it was a brilliant spectacle, and was hailed with acclamations all along the line, as it took its stately way through the packed multitudes of citizens. the chronicler says, 'the king, as he entered the city, was received by the people with prayers, welcomings, cries, and tender words, and all signs which argue an earnest love of subjects toward their sovereign; and the king, by holding up his glad countenance to such as stood afar off, and most tender language to those that stood nigh his grace, showed himself no less thankful to receive the people's good will than they to offer it. to all that wished him well, he gave thanks. to such as bade "god save his grace," he said in return, "god save you all!" and added that "he thanked them with all his heart." wonderfully transported were the people with the loving answers and gestures of their king.' in fenchurch street a 'fair child, in costly apparel,' stood on a stage to welcome his majesty to the city. the last verse of his greeting was in these words: welcome, o king! as much as hearts can think; welcome again, as much as tongue can tell welcome to joyous tongues, and hearts that will not shrink; god thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well. the people burst forth in a glad shout, repeating with one voice what the child had said. tom canty gazed abroad over the surging sea of eager faces, and his heart swelled with exultation; and he felt that the one thing worth living for in this world was to be a king, and a nation's idol. presently he caught sight, at a distance, of a couple of his ragged offal court comradesone of them the lord high admiral in his late mimic court, the other the first lord of the bedchamber in the same pretentious fiction; and his pride swelled higher than ever. oh, if they could only recognize him now! what unspeakable glory it would be, if they could recognize him, and realize that the derided mock king of the slums and back alleys was become a real king, with illustrious dukes and princes for his humble menials, and the english world at his feet! but he had to deny himself, and choke down his desire, for such a recognition might cost more than it would come to; so he turned away his head, and left the two soiled lads to go on with their shoutings and glad adulations, unsuspicious of whom it was they were lavishing them upon. every now and then rose the cry, 'a largess! a largess!' and tom responded by scattering a handful of bright new coins abroad for the multitude to scramble for. the chronicler says, 'at the upper end of gracechurch street, before the sign of the eagle, the city had erected a gorgeous arch, beneath which was a stage, which stretched from one side of the street to the other. this was a historical pageant, representing the king's immediate progenitors. there sat elizabeth of york in the midst of an immense white rose, whose petals formed elaborate furbelows around her; by her side was henry vii, issuing out of a vast red rose, disposed in the same manner; the hands of the royal pair were locked together, and the wedding-ring ostentatiously displayed. from the red and white roses proceeded a stem, which reached up to a second stage, occupied by henry viii, issuing from a red-and-white rose, with the effigy of the new king's mother, jane seymour, represented by his side. one branch sprang from this pair, which mounted to a third stage, where sat the effigy of edward vi himself, enthroned in royal majesty; and the whole pageant was framed with wreaths of roses, red and white.' this quaint and gaudy spectacle so wrought upon the rejoicing people, that their acclamations utterly smothered the small voice of the child whose business it was to explain the thing in eulogistic rhymes. but tom canty was not sorry; for this loyal uproar was sweeter music to him than any poetry, no matter what its quality might be. whithersoever tom turned his happy young face, the people recognized the exactness of his effigy's likeness to himself, the flesh-and-blood counterpart; and new whirlwinds of applause burst forth. the great pageant moved on, and still on, under one triumphal arch after another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or merit, of the little king's. 'throughout the whole of cheapside, from every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streetsspecimens of the great wealth of the stores within; and the splendor of this thoroughfare was equaled in the other streets, and in some even surpassed.' 'and all these wonders and these marvels are to welcome meme!' murmured tom canty. the mock king's cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes were flashing, his senses swam in a delirium of pleasure. at this point, just as he was raising his hand to fling another rich largess, he caught sight of a pale, astounded face which was strained forward out of the second rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted upon him, a sickening consternation struck through him; he recognized his mother! and up flew his hand, palm outward, before his eyesthat old involuntary gesture, born of a forgotten episode, and perpetuated by habit. in an instant more she had torn her way out of the press, and past the guards, and was at his side. she embraced his leg, she covered it with kisses, she cried, 'o, my child, my darling!' lifting toward him a face that was transfigured with joy and love. the same instant an officer of the king's guard snatched her away with a curse, and sent her reeling back whence she came with a vigorous impulse from his strong arm. the words 'i do not know you, woman!' were falling from tom canty's lips when this piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the heart to see her treated so; and as she turned for a last glimpse of him, whilst the crowd was swallowing her from his sight, she seemed so wounded, so broken-hearted, that a shame fell upon him which consumed his pride to ashes, and withered his stolen royalty. his grandeurs were stricken valueless; they seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags. the procession moved on, and still on, through ever-augmenting splendors and ever-augmenting tempests of welcome; but to tom canty they were as if they had not been. he neither saw nor heard. royalty had lost its grace and sweetness; its pomps were become a reproach. remorse was eating his heart out. he said, 'would god i were free of my captivity!' he had unconsciously dropped back into the phraseology of the first days of his compulsory greatness. the shining pageant still went winding like a radiant and interminable serpent down the crooked lanes of the quaint old city, and through the huzzaing hosts; but still the king rode with bowed head and vacant eyes, seeing only his mother's face and that wounded look in it. 'largess, largess!' the cry fell upon an unheeding ear. 'long live edward of england!' it seemed as if the earth shook with the explosion; but there was no response from the king. he heard it only as one hears the thunder of the surf when it is blown to the ear out of a great distance, for it was smothered under another sound which was still nearer, in his own breast, in his accusing consciencea voice which kept repeating those shameful words, 'i do not know you, woman!' the words smote upon the king's soul as the strokes of a funeral bell smite upon the soul of a surviving friend when they remind him of secret treacheries suffered at his hands by him that is gone. new glories were unfolded at every turning; new wonders, new marvels, sprung into view; the pent clamors of waiting batteries were released; new raptures poured from the throats of the waiting multitudes; but the king gave no sign, and the accusing voice that went moaning through his comfortless breast was all the sound he heard. by and by the gladness in the faces of the populace changed a little, and became touched with a something like solicitude or anxiety; an abatement in the volume of applause was observable too. the lord protector was quick to notice these things; he was as quick to detect the cause. he spurred to the king's side, bent low in his saddle, uncovered, and said: 'my liege, it is an ill time for dreaming. the people observe thy downcast head, thy clouded mien, and they take it for an omen. be advised; unveil the sun of royalty, and let it shine upon these boding vapors, and disperse them. lift up thy face, and smile upon the people.' so saying, the duke scattered a handful of coins to right and left, then retired to his place. the mock king did mechanically as he had been bidden. his smile had no heart in it, but few eyes were near enough or sharp enough to detect that. the noddings of his plumed head as he saluted his subjects were full of grace and graciousness; the largess which he delivered from his hand was royally liberal; so the people's anxiety vanished, and the acclamations burst forth again in as mighty a volume as before. still once more, a little before the progress was ended, the duke was obliged to ride forward, and make remonstrance. he whispered: 'o dread sovereign! shake off these fatal humors; the eyes of the world are upon thee.' then he added with sharp annoyance, 'perdition catch that crazy pauper! 'twas she that hath disturbed your highness.' the gorgeous figure turned a lusterless eye upon the duke, and said in a dead voice: 'she was my mother!' 'my god!' groaned the protector as he reined his horse backward to his post, 'the omen was pregnant with prophecy. he is gone mad again!' chapter xxxii coronation day let us go backward a few hours, and place ourselves in westminster abbey, at four o'clock in the morning of this memorable coronation day. we are not without company; for although it is still night, we find the torch-lighted galleries already filling up with people who are well content to sit still and wait seven or eight hours till the time shall come for them to see what they may not hope to see twice in their livesthe coronation of a king. yes, london and westminster have been astir ever since the warning guns boomed at three o'clock, and already crowds of untitled rich folk who have bought the privilege of trying to find sitting-room in the galleries are flocking in at the entrances reserved for their sort. the hours drag along, tediously enough. all stir has ceased for some time, for every gallery has long ago been packed. we may sit now, and look and think at our leisure. we have glimpses here and there and yonder, through the dim cathedral twilight, of portions of many galleries and balconies, wedged full with people, the other portions of these galleries and balconies being cut off from sight by intervening pillars and architectural projections. we have in view the whole of the great north transeptempty, and waiting for england's privileged ones. we see also the ample area or platform, carpeted with rich stuffs, whereon the throne stands. the throne occupies the center of the platform, and is raised above it upon an elevation of four steps. within the seat of the throne is inclosed a rough flat rockthe stone of sconewhich many generations of scottish kings sat on to be crowned, and so it in time became holy enough to answer a like purpose for english monarchs. both the throne and its footstool are covered with cloth-of-gold. stillness reigns, the torches blink dully, the time drags heavily. but at last the lagging daylight asserts itself, the torches are extinguished, and a mellow radiance suffuses the great spaces. all features of the noble building are distinct now, but soft and dreamy, for the sun is lightly veiled with clouds. at seven o'clock the first break in the drowsy monotony occurs; for on the stroke of this hour the first peeress enters the transept, clothed like solomon for splendor, and is conducted to her appointed place by an official clad in satins and velvets, whilst a duplicate of him gathers up the lady's long train, follows after, and, when the lady is seated, arranges the train across her lap for her. he then places her footstool according to her desire, after which he puts her coronet where it will be convenient to her hand when the time for the simultaneous coroneting of the nobles shall arrive. by this time the peeresses are flowing in in a glittering stream, and satin-clad officials are flitting and glinting everywhere, seating them and making them comfortable. the scene is animated enough now. there is stir and life, and shifting color everywhere. after a time, quiet reigns again; for the peeresses are all come, and are all in their placesa solid acre, or such a matter, of human flowers, resplendent in variegated colors, and frosted like a milky way with diamonds. there are all ages here: brown, wrinkled, white-haired dowagers who are able to go back, and still back, down the stream of time, and recall the crowning of richard iii and the troublous days of that old forgotten age; and there are handsome middle-aged dames; and lovely and gracious young matrons; and gentle and beautiful young girls, with beaming eyes and fresh complexions, who may possibly put on their jeweled coronets awkwardly when the great time comes; for the matter will be new to them, and their excitement will be a sore hindrance. still, this may not happen, for the hair of all these ladies has been arranged with a special view to the swift and successful lodging of the crown in its place when the signal comes. we have seen that this massed array of peeresses is sown thick with diamonds, and we also see that it is a marvelous spectaclebut now we are about to be astonished in earnest. about nine, the clouds suddenly break away and a shaft of sunshine cleaves the mellow atmosphere, and drifts slowly along the ranks of ladies; and every rank it touches flames into a dazzling splendor of many-colored fires, and we tingle to our finger-tips with the electric thrill that is shot through us by the surprise and the beauty of the spectacle! presently a special envoy from some distant corner of the orient, marching with the general body of foreign ambassadors, crosses this bar of sunshine, and we catch our breath, the glory that streams and flashes and palpitates about him is so overpowering; for he is crusted from head to heels with gems, and his slightest movement showers a dancing radiance all around him. let us change the tense for convenience. the time drifted alongone hourtwo hourstwo hours and a half; then the deep booming of artillery told that the king and his grand procession had arrived at last; so the waiting multitude rejoiced. all knew that a further delay must follow, for the king must be prepared and robed for the solemn ceremony; but this delay would be pleasantly occupied by the assembling of the peers of the realm in their stately robes. these were conducted ceremoniously to their seats, and their coronets placed conveniently at hand; and meanwhile the multitude in the galleries were alive with interest, for most of them were beholding for the first time, dukes, earls, and barons, whose names had been historical for five hundred years. when all were finally seated, the spectacle from the galleries and all coigns of vantage was complete; a gorgeous one to look upon and to remember. now the robed and mitered great heads of the church, and their attendants, filed in upon the platform and took their appointed places; these were followed by the lord protector and other great officials, and these again by a steel-clad detachment of the guard. there was a waiting pause; then, at a signal, a triumphant peal of music burst forth, and tom canty, dothed in a long robe of cloth-of-gold, appeared at a door, and stepped upon the platform. the entire multitude rose, and the ceremony of the recognition ensued. then a noble anthem swept the abbey with its rich waves of sound; and thus heralded and welcomed, tom canty was conducted to the throne. the ancient ceremonies went on with impressive solemnity, whilst the audience gazed; and as they drew nearer and nearer to completion, tom canty grew pale, and still paler, and a deep and steadily deepening woe and despondency settled down upon his spirits and upon his remorseful heart. at last the final act was at hand. the archbishop of canterbury lifted up the crown of england from its cushion and held it out over the trembling mock king's head. in the same instant a rainbow radiance flashed along the spacious transept; for with one impulse every individual in the great concourse of nobles lifted a coronet and poised it over his or her headand paused in that attitude. a deep hush pervaded the abbey. at this impressive moment, a startling apparition intruded upon the scenean apparition observed by none in the absorbed multitude, until it suddenly appeared, moving up the great central aisle. it was a boy, bareheaded, ill shod, and clothed in coarse plebeian garments that were falling to rags. he raised his hand with a solemnity which ill comported with his soiled and sorry aspect, and delivered this note of warning: 'i forbid you to set the crown of england upon that forfeited head. i am the king!' in an instant several indignant hands were laid upon the boy; but in the same instant tom canty, in his regal vestments, made a swift step forward and cried out in a ringing voice: 'loose him and forbear! he is the king!' a sort of panic of astonishment swept the assemblage, and they partly rose in their places and stared in a bewildered way at one another and at the chief figures in this scene, like persons who wondered whether they were awake and in their senses, or asleep and dreaming. the lord protector was as amazed as the rest, but quickly recovered himself and exclaimed in a voice of authority: 'mind not his majesty, his malady is upon him againseize the vagabond!' he would have been obeyed, but the mock king stamped his foot and cried out: 'on your peril! touch him not, he is the king!' the hands were withheld; a paralysis fell upon the house, no one moved, no one spoke; indeed, no one knew how to act or what to say, in so strange and surprising an emergency. while all minds were struggling to right themselves, the boy still moved steadily forward, with high port and confident mien; he had never halted from the beginning; and while the tangled minds still floundered helplessly, he stepped upon the platform, and the mock king ran with a glad face to meet him; and fell on his knees before him and said: 'oh, my lord the king, let poor tom canty be first to swear fealty to thee, and say " put on thy crown and enter into thine own again!"' the lord protector's eye fell sternly upon the new-comer's face; but straightway the sternness vanished away, and gave place to an expression of wondering surprise. this thing happened also to the other great officers. they glanced at each other, and retreated a step by a common and unconscious impulse. the thought in each mind was the same: 'what a strange resemblance!' the lord protector reflected a moment or two in perplexity, then he said, with grave respectfulness: 'by your favor, sir, i desire to ask certain questions which-' 'i will answer them, my lord.' the duke asked him many questions about the court, the late king, the prince, the princesses. the boy answered them correctly and without hesitating. he described the rooms of state in the palace, the late king's apartments, and those of the prince of wales. it was strange; it was wonderful; yes, it was unaccountableso all said that heard it. the tide was beginning to turn, and tom canty's hopes to run high, when the lord protector shook his head and said: 'it is true it is most wonderfulbut it is no more than our lord the king likewise can do.' this remark, and this reference to himself, as still the king, saddened tom canty, and he felt his hopes crumbling from under him. 'these are not proofs,' added the protector. the tide was turning very fast now, very fast, indeedbut in the wrong direction; it was leaving poor tom canty stranded on the throne, and sweeping the other out to sea. the lord protector communed with himselfshook his headthe thought forced itself upon him, 'it is perilous to the state and to us all, to entertain so fateful a riddle as this; it could divide the nation and undermine the throne.' he turned and said, 'sir thomas, arrest thisno, hold!' his face lighted, and he confronted the ragged candidate with this question: 'where lieth the great seal? answer me this truly, and the riddle is unriddled; for only he that was prince of wales can so answer! on so trivial a thing hang a throne and a dynasty!' it was a lucky thought, a happy thought. that it was so considered by the great officials was manifested by the silent applause that shot from eye to eye around their circle in the form of bright approving glances. yes, none but the true prince could dissolve the stubborn mystery of the vanished great sealthis forlorn little impostor had been taught his lesson well, but here his teachings must fail, for his teacher himself could not answer that questionah, very good, very good indeed; now we shall be rid of this troublesome and perilous business in short order! and so they nodded invisibly and smiled inwardly with satisfaction, and looked to see this foolish lad stricken with a palsy of guilty confusion. how surprised they were, then, to see nothing of the sort happenhow they marveled to hear him answer up promptly, in a confident and untroubled voice, and say: 'there is naught in this riddle that is difficult.' then, without so much as a by-your-leave to anybody, he turned and gave this command, with the easy manner of one accustomed to doing such things: 'my lord st. john, go you to my private cabinet in the palacefor none knoweth the place better than youand, close down to the floor, in the left corner remotest from the door that opens from the antechamber, you shall find in the wall a brazen nail-head; press upon it and a little jewel closet will fly open which not even you do know ofno, nor any soul else in all the world but me and the trusty artisan that did contrive it for me. the first thing that falleth under your eye will be the great sealfetch it hither.' all the company wondered at this speech, and wondered still more to see the little mendicant pick out this peer without hesitancy or apparent fear of mistake, and call him by name with such a placidly convincing air of having known him all his life. the peer was almost surprised into obeying. he even made a movement as if to go, but quickly recovered his tranquil attitude and confessed his blunder with a blush. tom canty turned upon him and said, sharply: 'why dost thou hesitate? hast not heard the king's command? go!' the lord st. john made a deep obeisanceand it was observed that it was a significantly cautious and non-committal one, it not being delivered at either of the kings, but at the neutral ground about half-way between the twoand took his leave. now began a movement of the gorgeous particles of that official group which was slow, scarcely perceptible, and yet steady and persistenta movement such as is observed in a kaleidoscope that is turned slowly, whereby the components of one splendid cluster fall away and join themselves to anothera movement which, little by little, in the present case, dissolved the glittering crowd that stood about tom canty and clustered it together again in the neighborhood of the new-comer. tom canty stood almost alone. now ensued a brief season of deep suspense and waitingduring which even the few faint-hearts still remaining near tom canty gradually scraped together courage enough to glide, one by one, over to the majority. so at last tom canty, in his royal robes and jewels, stood wholly alone and isolated from the world, a conspicuous figure, occupying an eloquent vacancy. now the lord st. john was seen returning. as he advanced up the mid-aisle the interest was so intense that the low murmur of conversation in the great assemblage died out and was succeeded by a profound hush, a breathless stillness, through which his footfalls pulsed with a dull and distant sound. every eye was fastened upon him as he moved along. he reached the platform, paused a moment, then moved toward tom canty with a deep obeisance, and said: 'sire, the seal is not there!' a mob does not melt away from the presence of a plague-patient with more haste than the band of pallid and terrified courtiers melted away from the presence of the shabby little claimant of the crown. in a moment he stood all alone, without a friend or supporter, a target upon which was concentrated a bitter fire of scornful and angry looks. the lord protector called out fiercely: 'cast the beggar into the street, and scourge him through the townthe paltry knave is worth no more consideration!' officers of the guard sprang forward to obey, but tom canty waved them off and said: 'back! whoso touches him perils his life!' the lord protector was perplexed in the last degree. he said to the lord st. john: 'searched you well?but it boots not to ask that. it doth seem passing strange. little things, trifles, slip out of one's ken, and one does not think it matter for surprise; but how a so bulky thing as the seal of england can vanish away and no man be able to get track of it againa massy golden disk-' tom canty, with beaming eyes, sprang forward and shouted: 'hold, that is enough! was it round?and thick?and had it letters and devices graved upon it?yes? oh, now i know what this great seal is that there's been such worry and pother about! an ye had described it to me, ye could have had it three weeks ago. right well i know where it lies; but it was not i that put it therefirst.' 'who, then, my liege?' asked the lord protector. 'he that stands therethe rightful king of england. and he shall tell you himself where it liesthen you will believe he knew it of his own knowledge. bethink thee, my kingspur thy memoryit was the last, the very last thing thou didst that day before thou didst rush forth from the palace, clothed in my rags, to punish the soldier that insulted me.' a silence ensued, undisturbed by a movement or a whisper, and all eyes were fixed upon the new-comer, who stood, with bent head and corrugated brow, groping in his memory among a thronging multitude of valueless recollections for one single little elusive fact, which found, would seat him upon a throneunfound, would leave him as he was, for good and alla pauper and an outcast. moment after moment passedthe moments built themselves into minutesstill the boy struggled silently on, and gave no sign. but at last he heaved a sigh, shook his head slowly, and said, with a trembling lip and in a despondent voice: 'i call the scene backall of itbut the seal hath no place in it.' he paused, then looked up, and said with gentle dignity, 'my lords and gentlemen, if ye will rob your rightful sovereign of his own for lack of this evidence which he is not able to furnish, i may not stay ye, being powerless. but-' 'o folly, o madness, my king!' cried tom canty, in a panic, 'wait!think! do not give up!the cause is not lost! nor shall be, neither! list to what i sayfollow every wordi am going to bring that morning back again, every hap just as it happened. we talkedi told you of my sisters, nan and betah, yes, you remember that; and about mine old grandamand the rough games of the lads of offal courtyes, you remember these things also; very well, follow me still, you shall recall everything. you gave me food and drink, and did with princely courtesy send away the servants, so that my low breeding might not shame me before themah, yes, this also you remember.' as tom checked off his details, and the other boy nodded his head in recognition of them, the great audience and the officials stared in puzzled wonderment; the tale sounded like true history, yet how could this impossible conjunction between a prince and a beggar boy have come about? never was a company of people so perplexed, so interested, and so stupefied, before. 'for a jest, my prince, we did exchange garments. then we stood before a mirror; and so alike were we that both said it seemed as if there had been no change madeyes, you remember that. then you noticed that the soldier had hurt my handlook! here it is, i cannot yet even write with it, the fingers are so stiff. at this your highness sprang up, vowing vengeance upon that soldier, and ran toward the dooryou passed a tablethat thing you call the seal lay on that tableyou snatched it up and looked eagerly about, as if for a place to hide ityour eye caught sight of-' 'there, 'tis sufficient!and the dear god be thanked!' exclaimed the ragged claimant, in a mighty excitement. 'go, my good st. johnin an arm-piece of the milanese armor that hangs on the wall, thou'lt find the seal!' 'right, my king! right!' cried tom canty; 'now the scepter of england is thine own; and it were better for him that would dispute it that he had been born dumb! go, my lord st. john, give thy feet wings!' the whole assemblage was on its feet now, and well-nigh out of its mind with uneasiness, apprehension, and consuming excitement. on the floor and on the platform a deafening buzz of frantic conversation burst forth, and for some time nobody knew anything or heard anything or was interested in anything but what his neighbor was shouting into his ear, or he was shouting into his neighbor's ear. timenobody knew how much of itswept by unheeded and unnoted. at last a sudden hush fell upon the house, and in the same moment st. john appeared upon the platform and held the great seal aloft in his hand. then such a shout went up! 'long live the true king!' for five minutes the air quaked with shouts and the crash of musical instruments, and was white with a storm of waving handkerchiefs; and through it all a ragged lad, the most conspicuous figure in england, stood, flushed and happy and proud, in the center of the spacious platform, with the great vassals of the kingdom kneeling around him. then all rose, and tom canty cried out: 'now, o my king, take these regal garments back, and give poor tom, thy servant, his shreds and remnants again.' the lord protector spoke up: 'let the small varlet be stripped and flung into the tower.' but the new king, the true king, said: 'i will not have it so. but for him i had not got my crown againnone shall lay a hand upon him to harm him. and as for thee, my good uncle, my lord protector, this conduct of thine is not grateful toward this poor lad, for i hear he hath made thee a duke'the protector blushed-' yet he was not a king; wherefore, what is thy fine title worth now? to-morrow you shall sue to me, through him, for its confirmation, else no duke, but a simple earl, shalt thou remain.' under this rebuke, his grace the duke of somerset retired a little from the front for the moment. the king turned to tom, and said, kindly: 'my poor boy, how was it that you could remember where i hid the seal when i could not remember it myself?' 'ah, my king, that was easy, since i used it divers days.' 'used ityet could not explain where it was?' 'i did not know it was that they wanted. they did not describe it, your majesty.' 'then how used you it?' the red blood began to steal up into tom's cheeks, and he dropped his eyes and was silent. 'speak up, good lad, and fear nothing,' said the king. 'how used you the great seal of england?' tom stammered a moment, in a pathetic confusion, then got it out: 'to crack nuts with!' poor child, the avalanche of laughter that greeted this, nearly swept him off his feet. but if a doubt remained in any mind that tom canty was not the king of england and familiar with the august appurtenances of royalty, this reply disposed of it utterly. meantime the sumptuous robe of state had been removed from tom's shoulders to the king's, whose rags were effectively hidden from sight under it. then the coronation ceremonies were resumed; the true king was anointed and the crown set upon his head, whilst cannon thundered the news to the city, and all london seemed to rock with applause. chapter xxxiii edward as king miles hendon was picturesque enough before he got into the riot on london bridgehe was more so when he got out of it. he had but little money when he got in, none at all when he got out. the pickpockets had stripped him of his last farthing. but no matter, so he found his boy. being a soldier, he did not go at his task in a random way, but set to work, first of all, to arrange his campaign. what would the boy naturally do? where would he naturally go? wellargued mileshe would naturally go to his former haunts, for that is the instinct of unsound minds, when homeless and forsaken, as well as of sound ones. whereabouts were his former haunts? his rags, taken together with the low villain who seemed to know him and who even claimed to be his father, indicated that his home was in one or other of the poorest and meanest districts of london. would the search for him be difficult, or long? no, it was likely to be easy and brief. he would not hunt for the boy, he would hunt for a crowd; in the center of a big crowd or a little one, sooner or later he should find his poor little friend, sure; and the mangy mob would be entertaining itself with pestering and aggravating the boy, who would be proclaiming himself king, as usual. then miles hendon would cripple some of those people, and carry off his little ward, and comfort and cheer him with loving words, and the two would never be separated any more. so miles started on his quest. hour after hour he tramped through back alleys and squalid streets, seeking groups and crowds, and finding no end of them, but never any sign of the boy. this greatly surprised him, but did not discourage him. to his notion, there was nothing the matter with his plan of campaign; the only miscalculation about it was that the campaign was becoming a lengthy one, whereas he had expected it to be short. when daylight arrived at last, he had made many a mile, and canvassed many a crowd, but the only result was that he was tolerably tired, rather hungry, and very sleepy. he wanted some breakfast, but there was no way to get it. to beg for it did not occur to him; as to pawning his sword, he would as soon have thought of parting with his honor; he could spare some of his clothesyes, but one could as easily find a customer for a disease as for such clothes. at noon he was still trampingamong the rabble which followed after the royal procession now; for he argued that this regal display would attract his little lunatic powerfully. he followed the pageant through all its devious windings about london, and all the way to westminster and the abbey. he drifted here and there among the multitudes that were massed in the vicinity for a weary long time, baffled and perplexed, and finally wandered off thinking, and trying to contrive some way to better his plan of campaign. by and by, when he came to himself out of his musings, he discovered that the town was far behind him and that the day was growing old. he was near the river, and in the country; it was a region of fine rural seatsnot the sort of district to welcome clothes like his. it was not at all cold; so he stretched himself on the ground in the lee of a hedge to rest and think. drowsiness presently began to settle upon his senses; the faint and far-off boom of cannon was wafted to his ear, and he said to himself, 'the new king is crowned,' and straightway fell asleep. he had not slept or rested, before, for more than thirty hours. he did not wake again until near the middle of the next morning. he got up, lame, stiff, and half famished, washed himself in the river, stayed his stomach with a pint or two of water, and trudged off toward westminster grumbling at himself for having wasted so much time. hunger helped him to a new plan now; he would try to get speech with old sir humphrey marlow and borrow a few marks, andbut that was enough of a plan for the present; it would be time enough to enlarge it when this first stage should be accomplished. toward eleven o'clock he approached the palace; and although a host of showy people were about him, moving in the same direction, he was not inconspicuoushis costume took care of that. he watched these people's faces narrowly, hoping to find a charitable one whose possessor might be willing to carry his name to the old lieutenantas to trying to get into the palace himself, that was simply out of the question. presently our whipping-boy passed him, then wheeled about and scanned his figure well, saying to himself, 'an that is not the very vagabond his majesty is in such a worry about, then am i an assthough belike i was that before. he answereth the description to a ragthat god should make two such, would be to cheapen miracles, by wasteful repetition. i would i could contrive an excuse to speak with him.' miles hendon saved him the trouble; for he turned about, then, as a man generally will when somebody mesmerizes him by gazing hard at him from behind; and observing a strong interest in the boy's eyes, he stepped toward him and said: 'you have just come out from the palace; do you belong there?' 'yes, your worship.' 'know you sir humphrey marlow?' the boy started, and said to himself, 'lord! mine old departed father!' then he answered, aloud, 'right well, your worship.' 'goodis he within?' 'yes,' said the boy; and added, to himself, 'within his grave.' might i crave your favor to carry my name to him, and say i beg to say a word in his ear?' 'i will despatch the business right willingly, fair sir.' 'then say miles hendon, son of sir richard, is here withouti shall be greatly bounden to you, my good lad.' the boy looked disappointed'the king did not name him so,' he said to himself'but it mattereth not, this is his twin brother, and can give his majesty news of t'other sir-odds-and-ends, i warrant.' so he said to miles, 'step in there a moment, good sir, and wait till i bring you word.' hendon retired to the place indicatedit was a recess sunk in the palace wall, with a stone bench in ita shelter for sentinels in bad weather. he had hardly seated himself when some halberdiers, in charge of an officer, passed by. the officer saw him, halted his men, and commanded hendon to come forth. he obeyed, and was promptly arrested as a suspicious character prowling within the precincts of the palace. things began to look ugly. poor miles was going to explain, but the officer roughly silenced him, and ordered his men to disarm him and search him. 'god of his mercy grant that they find somewhat,' said poor miles; 'i have searched enow, and failed, yet is my need greater than theirs.' nothing was found but a document. the officer tore it open, and hendon smiled when he recognized the 'pot-hooks' made by his lost little friend that black day at hendon hall. the officer's face grew dark as he read the english paragraph, and miles blenched to the opposite color as he listened. 'another new claimant of the crown!' cried the officer. 'verily they breed like rabbits to-day. seize the rascal, men, and see ye keep him fast while i convey this precious paper within and send it to the king. he hurried away, leaving the prisoner in the grip of the halberdiers. 'now is my evil luck ended at last,' muttered hendon, 'for i shall dangle at a rope's end for a certainty, by reason of that bit of writing. and what will become of my poor lad!ah, only the good god knoweth.' by and by he saw the officer coming again, in a great hurry; so he plucked his courage together, purposing to meet his trouble as became a man. the officer ordered the men to loose the prisoner and return his sword to him; then bowed respectfully, and said: 'please you, sir, to follow me.' hendon followed, saying to himself, 'an i were not travelling to death and judgment, and so must needs economize in sin, i would throttle this knave for his mock courtesy.' the two traversed a populous court, and arrived at the grand entrance of the palace, where the officer, with another bow, delivered hendon into the hands of a gorgeous official, who received him with profound respect and led him forward through a great hall, lined on both sides with rows of splendid flunkies (who made reverential obeisance as the two passed along, but fell into death-throes of silent laughter at our stately scarecrow the moment his back was turned), and up a broad staircase, among flocks of fine folk, and finally conducted him to a vast room, clove a passage for him through the assembled nobility of england, then made a bow, reminded him to take his hat off, and left him standing in the middle of the room, a mark for all eyes, for plenty of indignant frowns, and for a sufficiency of amused and derisive smiles. miles hendon was entirely bewildered. there sat the young king, under a canopy of state, five steps away, with his head bent down and aside, speaking with a sort of human bird of paradisea duke, maybe; hendon observed to himself that it was hard enough to be sentenced to death in the full vigor of life, without having this peculiarly public humiliation added. he wished the king would hurry about itsome of the gaudy people near by were becoming pretty offensive. at this moment the king raised his head slightly and hendon caught a good view of his face. the sight nearly took his breath away! he stood gazing at the fair young face like one transfixed; then presently ejaculated: 'lo, the lord of the kingdom of dreams and shadows on his throne!' he muttered some broken sentences, still gazing and marveling; then turned his eyes around and about, scanning the gorgeous throng and the splendid saloon, murmuring, 'but these are realverily these are realsurely it is not a dream.' he stared at the king againand thought, 'is it a dream?... or is he the veritable sovereign of england, and not the friendless poor tom o' bedlam i took him forwho shall solve me this riddle?' a sudden idea flashed in his eye, and he strode to the wall, gathered up a chair, brought it back, planted it on the floor, and sat down in it! a buzz of indignation broke out, a rough hand was laid upon him, and a voice exclaimed: 'up, thou mannerless clown!wouldst sit in the presence of the king?' the disturbance attracted his majesty's attention, who stretched forth his hand and cried out: 'touch him not, it is his right!' the throng fell back, stupefied. the king went on: 'learn ye all, ladies, lords and gentlemen, that this is my trusty and well-beloved servant, miles hendon, who interposed his good sword and saved his prince from bodily harm and possible deathand for this he is a knight, by the king's voice. also learn, that for a higher service, in that he saved his sovereign stripes and shame, taking these upon himself, he is a peer of england, earl of kent, and shall have gold and lands meet for the dignity. morethe privilege which he hath just exercised is his by royal grant; for we have ordained that the chiefs of his line shall have and hold the right to sit in the presence of the majesty of england henceforth, age after age, so long as the crown shall endure. molest him not.' two persons, who, through delay, had only arrived from the country during this morning, and had now been in this room only five minutes, stood listening to these words and looking at the king, then at the scarecrow, then at the king again, in a sort of torpid bewilderment. these were sir hugh and the lady edith. but the new earl did not see them. he was still staring at the monarch, in a dazed way, and muttering: 'oh, body o' me! this my pauper! this my lunatic! this is he whom i would show what grandeur was, in my house of seventy rooms and seven and twenty servants! this is he who had never known aught but rags for raiment, kicks for comfort, and offal for diet! this is he whom i adopted and would make respectable! would god i had a bag to hide my head in!' then his manners suddenly came back to him, and he dropped upon his knees, with his hands between the king's, and swore allegiance and did homage for his lands and titles. then he rose and stood respectfully aside, a mark still for all eyesand much envy, too. now the king discovered sir hugh, and spoke out, with wrathful voice and kindling eye: 'strip this robber of his false show and stolen estates, and put him under lock and key till i have need of him.' the late sir hugh was led away. there was a stir at the other end of the room now; the assemblage fell apart, and tom canty, quaintly but richly clothed, marched down, between these living walls, preceded by an usher. he knelt before the king, who said: 'i have learned the story of these past few weeks, and am well pleased with thee. thou hast governed the realm with right royal gentleness and mercy. thou hast found thy mother and thy sisters again? good; they shall be cared forand thy father shall hang, if thou desire it and the law consent. know, all ye that hear my voice, that from this day, they that abide in the shelter of christ's hospital and share the king's bounty, shall have their minds and hearts fed, as well as their baser parts; and this boy shall dwell there, and hold the chief place in its honorable body of governors, during life. and for that he hath been a king, it is meet that other than common observance shall be his due; wherefore, note this his dress of state, for by it he shall be known, and none shall copy it; and wheresoever he shall come, it shall remind the people that he hath been royal, in his time, and none shall deny him his due of reverence or fail to give him salutation. he hath the throne's protection, he hath the crown's support, he shall be known and called by the honorable title of the king's ward.' the proud and happy tom canty rose and kissed the king's hand, and was conducted from the presence. he did not waste any time, but flew to his mother, to tell her and nan and bet all about it and get them to help him enjoy the great news.*(22) conclusion conclusion justice and retribution when the mysteries were all cleared up, it came out, by confession of hugh hendon, that his wife had repudiated miles by his command that day at hendon halla command assisted and supported by the perfectly trustworthy promise that if she did not deny that he was miles hendon, and stand firmly to it, he would have her life; whereupon she said take it, she did not value itand she would not repudiate miles; then her husband said he would spare her life, but have miles assassinated! this was a different matter; so she gave her word and kept it. hugh was not prosecuted for his threats or for stealing his brother's estates and title, because the wife and brother would not testify against himand the former would not have been allowed to do it, even if she had wanted to. hugh deserted his wife and went over to the continent, where he presently died; and by and by the earl of kent married his relict. there were grand times and rejoicings at hendon village when the couple paid their first visit to the hall. tom canty's father was never heard of again. the king sought out the farmer who had been branded and sold as a slave, and reclaimed him from his evil life with the ruffler's gang, and put him in the way of a comfortable livelihood. he also took that old lawyer out of prison and remitted his fine. he provided good homes for the daughters of the two baptist women whom he saw burned at the stake, and roundly punished the official who laid the undeserved stripes upon miles hendon's back. he saved from the gallows the boy who had captured the stray falcon, and also the woman who had stolen the remnant of cloth from a weaver; but he was too late to save the man who had been convicted of killing a deer in the royal forest. he showed favor to the justice who had pitied him when he was supposed to have stolen a pig, and he had the gratification of seeing him grow in the public esteem and become a great and honored man. as long as the king lived he was fond of telling the story of his adventures, all through, from the hour that the sentinel cuffed him away from the palace gate till the final midnight when he deftly mixed himself into a gang of hurrying workmen and so slipped into the abbey and climbed up and hid himself in the confessor's tomb, and then slept so long, next day, that he came within one of missing the coronation altogether. he said that the frequent rehearsing of the precious lesson kept him strong in his purpose to make its teachings yield benefits to his people; and so, while his life was spared he should continue to tell the story, and thus keep its sorrowful spectacles fresh in his memory and the springs of pity replenished in his heart. miles hendon and tom canty were favorites of the king, all through his brief reign, and his sincere mourners when he died. the good earl of kent had too much good sense to abuse his peculiar privilege; but he exercised it twice after the instance we have seen of it before he was called from the world; once at the accession of queen mary, and once at the accession of queen elizabeth. a descendant of his exercised it at the accession of james i. before this one's son chose to use the privilege, near a quarter of a century had elapsed, and the 'privilege of the kents' had faded out of most people's memories; so, when the kent of that day appeared before charles i and his court and sat down in the sovereign's presence to assert and perpetuate the right of his house, there was a fine stir, indeed! but the matter was soon explained and the right confirmed. the last earl of the line fell in the wars of the commonwealth fighting for the king, and the odd privilege ended with him. tom canty lived to be a very old man, a handsome, white-haired old fellow, of grave and benignant aspect. as long as he lasted he was honored; and he was also reverenced, for his striking and peculiar costume kept the people reminded that 'in his time he had been royal'; so, wherever he appeared the crowd fell apart, making way for him, and whispering, one to another, 'doff thy hat, it is the king's ward!'and so they saluted, and got his kindly smile in returnand they valued it, too, for his was an honorable history. yes, king edward vi lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them worthily. more than once, when some great dignitary, some gilded vassal of the crown, made argument against his leniency, and urged that some law which he was bent upon amending was gentle enough for its purpose, and wrought no suffering or oppression which any one need mightily mind, the young king turned the mournful eloquence of his great compassionate eyes upon him and answered: 'what dost thou know of suffering and oppression! i and my people know, but not thou.' the reign of edward vi was a singularly merciful one for those harsh times. now that we are taking leave of him let us try to keep this in our minds, to his credit. notes notes * christ's hospital costume. it is most reasonable to regard the dress as copied from the costume of the citizens of london of that period, when long blue coats were the common habit of apprentices and serving-men, and yellow stockings were generally worn; the coat fits closely to the body, but has loose sleeves, and beneath is worn a sleeveless yellow undercoat; around the waist is a red leathern girdle; a clerical band around the neck, and a small flat black cap, about the size of a saucer, completes the costume.timbs's 'curiosities of london.' *(2) it appears that christ's hospital was not originally founded as a school; its object was to rescue children from the streets, to shelter, feed, clothe them, etc.timb's 'curiosities of london.' *(3) the duke of norfolk's condemnation commanded. the king was now approaching fast toward his end; and fearing lest norfolk should escape him, he sent a message to the commons, by which he desired them to hasten the bill, on pretense that norfolk enjoyed the dignity of earl marshal, and it was necessary to appoint another, who might officiate at the ensuing ceremony of installing his son prince of wales.hume, vol. iii, p. 307 *(4) it was not till the end of this reign (henry viii) that any salads, carrots, turnips, or other edible roots were produced in england. the little of these vegetables that was used was formerly imported from holland and flanders. queen catherine, when she wanted a salad, was obliged to despatch a messenger thither on purpose.hume's history of england, vol. iii, p. 314. *(5) attainder of norfolk. the house of peers, without examining the prisoner, without trial or evidence, passed a bill of attainder against him and sent it down to the commons.... the obsequious commons obeyed his (the king's) directions; and the king, having affixed the royal assent to the bill by commissioners, issued orders for the execution of norfolk on the morning of the twenty-ninth of january (the next day).hume's england, vol. iii, p. 306. *(6) the loving-cup. the loving-cup, and the peculiar ceremonies observed in drinking from it, are older than english history. it is thought that both are danish importations. as far back as knowledge goes, the loving-cup has always been drunk at english banquets. tradition explains the ceremonies in this way: in the rude ancient times it was deemed a wise precaution to have both hands of both drinkers employed, lest while the pledger pledged his love and fidelity to the pledgee the pledgee take that opportunity to slip a dirk into him! *(7) the duke of norfolks narrow escape. had henry viii survived a few hours longer, his order for the duke's execution would have been carried into effect. 'but news being carried to the tower that the king himself had expired that night, the lieutenant deferred obeying the warrant; and it was not thought advisable by the council to begin a new reign by the death of the greatest nobleman in the kingdom, who had been condemned by a sentence so unjust and tyrannical.'hume's england, vol. iii, p 307. *(8) he refers to the order of baronets, or baronettesthe barones minor, as distinct from the parliamentary barons;not, it need hardly be said, the baronets of later creation. *(9) the lords of kingsale, descendants of de courcy, still enjoy this curious privilege. *(10) hume. *(11) hume. *(12) the whipping-boy. james i and charles ii had whipping-boys when they were little fellows, to take their punishment for them when they fell short in their lessons; so i have ventured to furnish my small prince with one, for my own purposes. *(13) character of hertford. the young king discovered an extreme attachment to his uncle, who was, in the main, a man of moderation and probity.hume's england, vol. iii, p. 324. but if he (the protector) gave offense by assuming too much state, he deserves great praise on account of the laws passed this session, by which the rigor of former statutes was much mitigated, and some security given to the freedom of the constitution. all laws were repealed which extended the crime of treason beyond the statute of the twenty-fifth of edward iii; all laws enacted during the late reign extending the crime of felony; all the former laws against lollardy or heresy, together with the statute of the six articles. none were to be accused for words, but within a month after they were spoken. by these repeals several of the most rigorous laws that ever had passed in england were annulled; and some dawn, both of civil and religious liberty, began to appear to the people. a repeal also passed of that law, the destruction of all laws, by which the king's proclamation was made of equal force with a statute.ibid., vol. iii, p. 339. boiling to death. in the reign of henry viii, poisoners were, by act of parliament condemned to be boiled to death. this act was repealed in the following reign. in germany, even in the 17th century, this horrible punishment was inflicted on coiners and counterfeiters. taylor, the water poet, describes an execution he witnessed in hamburg, in 1616. the judgement pronounced against a coiner of false money was that he should 'be boiled to death in oil: not thrown into the vessel at once, but with a pulley or rope to be hanged under the armpits, and then let down into the oil by degrees; first the feet, and next the legs, and so to boil his flesh from his bones alive.'dr. j. hammond trumbull's 'blue laws, true and false,' p. 13. the famous stocking case. a woman and her daughter, nine years old, were hanged in huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off their stockings!ibid., p. 20. *(14) leigh hunt's the town, p. 408, quotation from an early tourist. *(15) from 'the english rogue': london, 1665. *(16) canting terms for various kinds of thieves, beggars and vagabonds, and their female companions. *(17) enslaving. so young a king, and so ignorant a peasant were likely to make mistakesand this is an instance in point. this peasant was suffering from this law by anticipation; the king was venting his indignation against a law which was not yet in existence: for this hideous statute was to have birth in this little king's own reign. however, we know, from the humanity of his character, that it could never have been suggested by him. *(18) from 'the english rogue': london, 1665. *(19) death for trifling larcenies. when connecticut and new haven were framing their first codes, larceny above the value of twelve pence was a capital crime in england, as it had been since the time of henry i.dr. j. hammond trumbull's 'blue laws, true and false.' p. 17. the curious old book called the english rogue makes the limit thirteen pence ha'penny; death being the portion of any who steal a thing 'above the value of thirteen pence ha'penny.' *(20) from many descriptions of larceny, the law expressly took away the benefit of clergy; to steal a horse, or a hawk, or woolen cloth from the weaver, was a hanging matter. so it was to kill a deer from the king's forest, or to export sheep from the kingdom.dr. j. hammond trumbull's 'blue laws, true and false,' p. 13. william prynne, a learned barrister, was sentenced(long after edward the sixth's time)to lose both his ears in the pillory; to degradation from the bar; a fine of l3,000, and imprisonment for life. three years afterward, he gave new offense to laud, by publishing a pamphlet against the hierarchy. he was again prosecuted, and was sentenced to lose what remained of his ears; to pay a fine of l5,000; to be branded on both his cheeks with the letters s. l. (for seditious libeler), and to remain in prison for life. the severity of this sentence was equaled by the savage rigor of its execution.ibid., p. 12. *(21) hume's england. *(22) christ's hospital or blue coat scbool, 'the noblest institution in the world.' the ground on which the priory of the grey friars stood was conferred by henry the eighth on the corporation of london (who caused the institution there of a home for poor boys and girls). subsequently, edward the sixth caused the old priory to be properly repaired, and founded within it that noble establishment called the blue coat school, or christ's hospital, for the education and maintenance of orphans and the children of indigent persons.... edward would not let him (bishop ridley) depart till the letter was written (to the lord mayor), and then charged him to deliver it himself, and signify his special request and commandment that no time might be lost in proposing what was convenient, and apprising him of the proceedings. the work was zealously undertaken, ridley himself engaging in it; and the result was, the founding of christ's hospital for the education of poor children. (the king endowed several other charities at the same time.) 'lord god,' said he, 'i yield thee most hearty thanks that thou hast given me life thus long, to finish this work to the glory of thy name!' that innocent and most exemplary life was drawing rapidly to its close, and in a few days he rendered up his spirit to his creator, praying god to defend the realm from papistry.j. heneage jesse's 'london,its celebrated characters and places.' in the great hall hangs a large picture of king edward vi seated on his throne, in a scarlet and ermined robe, holding the scepter in his left hand, presenting with the other the charter to the kneeling lord mayor. by his side stands the chancellor, holding the seals, and next to him are other officers of state. bishop ridley kneels before him with uplifted hands, as if supplicating a blessing on the event; while the aldermen, etc, with the lord mayor, kneel on both sides, occupying the middle ground of the picture; and lastly, in front, are a double row of boys on one side, and girls on the other, from the master and matron down to the boy and girl who have stepped forward from their respective rows, and kneel with raised hands before the king.timbs's 'curiosities of london,' p. 98. christ's hospital, by ancient custom, possesses the privilege of addressing the sovereign on the occasion of his or her coming into the city to partake of the hospitality of the corporation of london.ibid. the dining-hall, with its lobby and organ-gallery, occupies the entire story, which is 187 feet long, 51 feet wide, and 47 feet high; it is lit by nine large windows, filled with stained glass on the south side; that is, next to westminster hall, the noblest room in the metropolis. here the boys, now about 800 in number, dine; and here are held the 'suppings in public,' to which visitors are admitted by tickets, issued by the treasurer and by the governors of christ's hospital. the tables are laid with cheese in wooden bowls; beer in wooden piggins, poured from leathern jacks; and bread brought in large baskets. the official company enter; the lord mayor, or president, takes his seat in a state chair, made of oak from st. catherine's church by the tower; a hymn is sung, accompanied by the organ; a 'grecian,' or head boy, reads the prayers from the pulpit, silence being enforced by three drops of a wooden hammer. after prayer the supper commences, and the visitors walk between the tables. at its close, the 'trade-boys' take up the baskets, bowls, jacks, piggins, and candlesticks, and pass in procession, the bowing to the governors being curiously formal. this spectacle was witnessed by queen victoria and prince albert in 1845. among the more eminent blue coat boys are joshua bames, editor of anacreon and euripides; jeremiah markland, the eminent critic, particularly in greek literature; camden, the antiquary; bishop stillingfleet; samuel richardson, the novelist; thomas mitchell, the translator of aristophanes; thomas barnes, many years editor of the london times; coleridge, charles lamb, and leigh hunt. no boy is admitted before he is seven years old, or after he is nine; and no boy can remain in the school after he is fifteen, king's boys and 'grecians' alone excepted. there are about 500 governors, at the head of whom are the sovereign and the prince of wales. the qualification for a governor is payment of l500.ibid. general note one hears much about the 'hideous blue-laws of connecticut,' and is accustomed to shudder piously when they are mentioned. there are people in americaand even in england!who imagine that they were a very monument of malignity, pitilessness, and inhumanity; whereas, in reality they were about the first sweeping departure from judicial atrocity which the 'civilized' world had seen. this humane and kindly blue-law code, of two hundred and forty years ago, stands all by itself, with ages of bloody law on the further side of it, and a century and three-quarters of bloody english law on this side of it. there has never been a timeunder the blue-laws or any otherwhen above fourteen crimes were punishable by death in connecticut. but in england, within the memory of men who are still hale in body and mind, two hundred and twenty-three crimes were punishable by death!* these facts are worth knowingand worth thinking about, too. * see dr. j. hammond trumbull's blue laws, true and false, p. 11. the end . 1906 mark twain's speeches by mark twain preface preface. from the preface to the english edition of "mark twain's sketches." if i were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and he, instead of sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious intervals, should eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse me for making him sick, i would say that he deserved to be made sick for not knowing any better how to utilize the blessings this world affords. and if i sell to the reader this volume of nonsense, and he, instead of seasoning his graver reading with a chapter of it now and then, when his mind demands such relaxation, unwisely overdoses himself with several chapters of it at a single sitting, he will deserve to be nauseated, and he will have nobody to blame but himself if he is. there is no more sin in publishing an entire volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a candy-store with no hardware in it. it lies wholly with the customer whether he will injure himself by means of either, or will derive from them the benefits which they will afford him if he uses their possibilities judiciously. respectfully submitted, the author. the story of a speech. an address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine years later. the original speech was delivered at a dinner given by the publishers of the atlantic monthly in honor of the seventieth anniversary of the birth of john greenleaf whittier, at the hotel brunswick, boston, december 17, 1877. this is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore i will drop lightly into history myself. standing here on the shore of the atlantic and contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, i am reminded of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when i had just succeeded in stirring up a little nevadian literary puddle myself, whose spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly californiaward. i started an inspection tramp through the southern mines of california. i was callow and conceited, and i resolved to try the virtue of my nom de guerre. i very soon had an opportunity. i knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin in the foot-hills of the sierras just at nightfall. it was snowing at the time. a jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door to me. when he heard my nom de guerre he looked more dejected than before. he let me inpretty reluctantly, i thoughtand after the customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whiskey, i took a pipe. this sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. now he spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering, "you're the fourthi'm going to move." "the fourth what?" said i. "the fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hoursi'm going to move." "you don't tell me!" said i; "who were the others?" "mr. longfellow, mr. emerson, and mr. oliver wendell holmesconsound the lot!" you can easily believe i was interested. i supplicatedthree hot whiskeys did the restand finally the melancholy miner began. said he: "they came here just at dark yesterday evening, and i let them in of course. said they were going to the yosemite. they were a rough lot, but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. mr. emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. mr. holmes was as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundred, and had double chins all the way down to his stomach. mr. longfellow was built like a prize-fighter. his head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig made of hair-brushes. his nose lay straight down his face, like a finger with the end joint tilted up. they had been drinking, i could see that. and what queer talk they used! mr. holmes inspected this cabin, then he took me by the buttonhole, and says he: "'through the deep caves of thought i hear a voice that sings, build thee more stately mansions, o my soul!' "says i, 'i can't afford it, mr. holmes, and moreover i don't want to.' blamed if i liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger, that way. however, i started to get out my bacon and beans, when mr. emerson came and looked on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the buttonhole and says: "'give me agates for my meat; give me cantharids to eat; from air and ocean bring me foods, from all zones and altitudes.' "says i, 'mr. emerson, if you'll excuse me, this ain't no hotel.' you see it sort of riled mei warn't used to the ways of littery swells. but i went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes mr. longfellow and buttonholes me, and interrupts me. says he: "'honor be to mudjekeewis! you shall hear how pau-puk-keewis-' "but i broke in, and says i, 'beg your pardon, mr. longfellow, if you'll be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and let me get this grub ready, you'll do me proud.' well, sir, after they'd filled up i set out the jug. mr. holmes looks at it, and then he fires up all of a sudden and yells: "'flash out a stream of blood-red wine! for i would drink to other days.' "by george, i was getting kind of worked up. i don't deny it, i was getting kind of worked up. i turns to mr. holmes, and says i, 'looky here, my fat friend, i'm a-running this shanty, and if the court knows herself, you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry.' them's the very words i said to him. now i don't want to sass such famous littery people, but you see they kind of forced me. there ain't nothing unreasonable 'bout me; i don't mind a passel of guests a-treadin' on my tail three or four times, but when it comes to standing on it it's different, 'and if the court knows herself,' i says, 'you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry.' well, between drinks they'd swell around the cabin and strike attitudes and spout; and pretty soon they got out a greasy old deck and went to playing euchre at ten cents a corneron trust. i began to notice some pretty suspicious things. mr. emerson dealt, looked at his hand, shook his head, says: "'i am the doubter and the doubt-' and ca'mly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new layout. says he: "'they reckon ill who leave me out; they know not well the subtle ways i keep. i pass and deal again!' "hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! oh, he was a cool one! well, in about a minute things were running pretty tight, but all of a sudden i see by mr. emerson's eye he judged he had 'em. he had already corralled two tricks, and each of the others one. so now he kind of lifts a little in his chair and says: "'i tire of globes and aces! too long the game is played!' and down he fetched a right bower. mr. longfellow smiles as sweet as pie and says: "'thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, for the lesson thou hast taught,' and blamed if he didn't down with another right bower! emerson claps his hand on his bowie, longfellow claps his on his revolver, and i went under a bunk. there was going to be trouble; but that monstrous holmes rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'order, gentlemen; the first man that draws, i'll lay down on him and smother him!' all quiet on the potomac, you bet! "they were pretty how-come-you-so by now, and they begun to blow. emerson says, 'the nobbiest thing i ever wrote was "barbara frietchie."' says longfellow, 'it don't begin with my "biglow papers."' says holmes, 'my "thanatopis" lays over 'em both.' they mighty near ended in a fight. then they wished they had some more companyand mr. emerson pointed to me and says: "'is yonder squalid peasant all that this proud nursery could breed?' "he was a-whetting his bowie on his bootso i let it pass. well, sir, next they took it into their heads that they would like some music; so they made me stand up and sing "when johnny comes marching home" till i droppedat thirteen minutes past four this morning. that's what i've been through, my friend. when i woke at seven, they were leaving, thank goodness, and mr. longfellow had my only boots on, and his'n under his arm. says i, 'hold on, there, evangeline, what are you going to do with them?' he says, 'going to make tracks with 'em; because: "'lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime; and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.' as i said, mr. twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hoursand i'm going to move; i ain't suited to a littery atmosphere." i said to the miner, "why, my dear sir, these were not the gracious singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage; these were impostors." the miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he, "ah! impostors, were they? are you?" i did not pursue the subject, and since then i have not travelled on my nom de guerre enough to hurt. such was the reminiscence i was moved to contribute, mr. chairman. in my enthusiasm i may have exaggerated the details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since i believe it is the first time i have ever deflected from perpendicular fact on an occasion like this. from mark twain's autobiography. january 11, 1906. answer to a letter received this morning: dear mrs. h.,i am forever your debtor for reminding me of that curious passage in my life. during the first year or two after it happened, i could not bear to think of it. my pain and shame were so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled, established and confirmed, that i drove the episode entirely from my mindand so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years i have lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse, vulgar, and destitute of humor. but your suggestion that you and your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to look into the matter. so i commissioned a boston typewriter to delve among the boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy of it. it came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it i am not able to discover it. if it isn't innocently and ridiculously funny, i am no judge. i will see to it that you get a copy. what i have said to mrs. h. is true. i did suffer during a year or two from the deep humiliations of that episode. but at last, in 1888, in venice, my wife and i came across mr. and mrs. a. p. c., of concord, massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing but death terminates. the c.'s were very bright people and in every way charming and companionable. we were together a month or two in venice and several months in rome, afterward, and one day that lamented break of mine was mentioned. and when i was on the point of lathering those people for bringing it to my mind when i had gotten the memory of it almost squelched, i perceived with joy that the c.'s were indignant about the way that my performance had been received in boston. they poured out their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty attitude of the people who were present at that performance, and about the boston newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the matter. that position was that i had been irreverent beyond belief, beyond imagination. very well; i had accepted that as a fact for a year or two, and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever i thought of itwhich was not frequently, if i could help it. whenever i thought of it i wondered how i ever could have been inspired to do so unholy a thing. well, the c.'s comforted me, but they did not persuade me to continue to think about the unhappy episode. i resisted that. i tried to get it out of my mind, and let it die, and i succeeded. until mrs. h.'s letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years since i had thought of that matter; and when she said that the thing was funny i wondered if possibly she might be right. at any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and i wrote to boston and got the whole thing copied, as above set forth. i vaguely remember some of the details of that gatheringdimly i can see a hundred people no, perhaps fiftyshadowy figures sitting at tables feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore. i don't know who they were, but i can very distinctly see, seated at the grand table and facing the rest of us, mr. emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling? mr. whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his face; mr. longfellow, with his silken white hair and his benignant face; dr. oliver wendell holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are being turned toward the light first one way and then anothera charming man, and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting still (what he would call still, but what would be more or less motion to other people). i can see those figures with entire distinctness across this abyss of time. one other feature is clearwillie winter (for these past thousand years dramatic editor of the new york tribune, and still occupying that high post in his old age) was there. he was much younger then than he is now, and he showed it. it was always a pleasure to me to see willie winter at a banquet. during a matter of twenty years i was seldom at a banquet where willie winter was not also present, and where he did not read a charming poem written for the occasion. he did it this time, and it was up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen to as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of heart and brain. now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable celebration of mr. whittier's seventieth birthdaybecause i got up at that point and followed winter, with what i have no doubt i supposed would be the gem of the eveningthe gay oration above quoted from the boston paper. i had written it all out the day before and had perfectly memorized it, and i stood up there at my genial and happy and self-satisfied ease, and begin to deliver it. those majestic guests, that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened, as did everybody else in the house, with attentive interest. well, i delivered myself ofwe'll say the first two hundred words of my speech. i was expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the case as regarded the rest of it. i arrived now at the dialogue: "the old miner said, 'you are the fourth, i'm going to move.' 'the fourth what?' said i. he answered, 'the fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours. i am going to move.' 'why, you don't tell me,' said i. 'who were the others?' 'mr. longfellow, mr. emerson, mr. oliver wendell holmes, consound the lot-'" now, then, the house's attention continued, but the expression of interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. i wondered what the trouble was. i didn't know. i went on, but with difficultyi struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description of the bogus emerson, the bogus holmes, the bogus longfellow, always hopingbut with a gradually perishing hopethat somebody would laugh, or that somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. i didn't know enough to give it up and sit down, i was too new to public speaking, and so i went on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through to the end, in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with horror. it was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if i had been making these remarks about the deity and the rest of the trinity; there is no milder way in which to describe the petrified condition and the ghastly expression of those people. when i sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat. i shall never be as dead again as i was then. i shall never be as miserable again as i was then. i speak now as one who doesn't know what the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one i shall never be as wretched again as i was then. howells, who was near me, tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp. there was no usehe understood the whole size of the disaster. he had good intentions, but the words froze before they could get out. it was an atmosphere that would freeze anything. if benvenuto cellini's salamander had been in that place he would not have survived to be put into cellini's autobiography. there was a frightful pause. there was an awful silence, a desolating silence. then the next man on the list had to get upthere was no help for it. that was bishopbishop had just burst handsomely upon the world with a most acceptable novel, which had appeared in the atlantic monthly, a place which would make any novel respectable and any author noteworthy. in this case the novel itself was recognized as being, without extraneous help, respectable. bishop was away up in the public favor, and he was an object of high interest, consequently there was a sort of national expectancy in the air; we may say our american millions were standing, from maine to texas and from alaska to florida, holding their breath, their lips parted, their hands ready to applaud, when bishop should get up on that occasion, and for the first time in his life speak in public. it was under these damaging conditions that he got up to "make good," as the vulgar say. i had spoken several times before, and that is the reason why i was able to go on without dying in my tracks, as i ought to have donebut bishop had had no experience. he was up facing those awful deitiesfacing those other people, those strangersfacing human beings for the first time in his life, with a speech to utter. no doubt it was well packed away in his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until i had been heard from. i suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head like the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there wasn't any fog left. he didn't go onhe didn't last long. it was not many sentences after his first before he began to hesitate, and break, and lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down in a limp and mushy pile. well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than one-third finished, but it ended there. nobody rose. the next man hadn't strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupefied, paralyzed, it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or even try. nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. howells mournfully, and without words, hitched himself to bishop and me and supported us out of the room. it was very kindhe was most generous. he towed us tottering away into some room in that building, and we sat down there. i don't know what my remark was now, but i know the nature of it. it was the kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in the world can help your case. but howells was honesthe had to say the heart-breaking things he did say: that there was no help for this calamity, this shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most disastrous thing that had ever happened in anybody's historyand then he added, "that is, for youand consider what you have done for bishop. it is bad enough in your case, you deserve to suffer. you have committed this crime, and you deserve to have all you are going to get. but here is an innocent man. bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you have done to him. he can never hold his head up again. the world can never look upon bishop as being a live person. he is a corpse." that is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two whenever it forced its way into my mind. now then, i take that speech up and examine it. as i said, it arrived this morning, from boston. i have read it twice, and unless i am an idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to the last. it is just as good as good can be. it is smart; it is saturated with humor. there isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it anywhere. what could have been the matter with that house? it is amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout with laughter, and those deities the loudest of them all. could the fault have been with me? did i lose courage when i saw those great men up there whom i was going to describe in such a strange fashion? if that happened, if i showed doubt, that can account for it, for you can't be successfully funny if you show that you are afraid of it. well, i can't account for it, but if i had those beloved and revered old literary immortals back here now on the platform at carnegie hall i would take that same old speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them till they'd run all over that stage. oh, the fault must have been with me, it is not in the speech at all. plymouth rock and the pilgrims. address at the first annual dinner, n. e. society, philadelphia, december 22, 1881. on calling upon mr. clemens to make response, president rollins said: "this sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly born in new england, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors. he is not technically, therefore, of new england descent. under the painful circumstances in which he has found himself, however, he has done the best he couldhe has had all his children born there, and has made of himself a new england ancestor. he is a self-made man. more than this, and better even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of new england ascent. to ascend there in anything that's reasonable is difficult, forconfidentially, with the door shutwe all know that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly land who never leave it, and it is among and above them that mr. twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascentbecome a man of mark." i rise to protest. i have kept still for years, but really i think there is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. what do you want to celebrate those people for?those ancestors of yours of 1620the mayflower tribe, i mean. what do you want to celebrate them for? your pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that you are not celebrating the pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the pilgrims at plymouth rock on the 22d of december. so you are celebrating their landing. why, the other pretext was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever; the other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf. celebrating their landing! what was there remarkable about it, i would like to know? what can you be thinking of? why, those pilgrims had been at sea three or four months. it was the very middle of winter: it was as cold as death off cape cod there. why shouldn't they come ashore? if they hadn't landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact. it would have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which the world would not willingly let die. if it had been you, gentlemen, you probably wouldn't have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be celebrating, in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise, but only transmitted. why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the pilgrimsto be trying to make out that this most natural and simple and customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstancea circumstance to be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and glorified, at orgies like this for two hundred and sixty yearshang it, a horse would have known enough to land; a horsepardon again; the gentleman on my right assures me that it was not merely the landing of the pilgrims that we are celebrating, but the pilgrims themselves. so we have struck an inconsistency hereone says it was the landing, the other says it was the pilgrims. it is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable and disputatious tribe, for you never agree about anything but boston. well, then, what do you want to celebrate those pilgrims for? they were a mighty hard lotyou know it. i grant you, without the slightest unwillingness, that they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just than were the people of europe of that day; i grant you that they are better than their predecessors. but what of that?that is nothing. people always progress. you are better than your fathers and grandfathers were (this is the first time i have ever aimed a measureless slander at the departed, for i consider such things improper). yes, those among you who have not been in the penitentiary, if such there be, are better than your fathers and grandfathers were; but is that any sufficient reason for getting up annual dinners and celebrating you? no, by no meansby no means. well, i repeat, those pilgrims were a hard lot. they took good care of themselves, but they abolished everybody else's ancestors. i am a border-ruffian from the state of missouri. i am a connecticut yankee by adoption. in me, you have missouri morals, connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man. but where are my ancestors? whom shall i celebrate? where shall i find the raw material? my first american ancestor, gentlemen, was an indianan early indian. your ancestors skinned him alive, and i am an orphan. not one drop of my blood flows in that indian's veins today. i stand here, lone and forlorn, without an ancestor. they skinned him! i do not object to that, if they needed his fur; but alive, gentlemenalive! they skinned him aliveand before company! that is what rankles. think how he must have felt; for he was a sensitive person and easily embarrassed. if he had been a bird, it would have been all right, and no violence done to his feelings, because he would have been considered "dressed." but he was not a bird, gentlemen, he was a man, and probably one of the most undressed men that ever was. i ask you to put yourselves in his place. i ask it as a favor; i ask it as a tardy act of justice; i ask it in the interest of fidelity to the traditions of your ancestors; i ask it that the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle which the true new england society ought to present. cease to come to these annual orgies in this hollow modern mockerythe surplusage of raiment. come in character; come in the summer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity, come in the free and joyous costume which your sainted ancestors provided for mine. later ancestors of mine were the quakers william robinson, marmaduke stevenson, et al. your tribe chased them out of the country for their religion's sake; promised them death if they came back; for your ancestors had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the perils of the sea, the implacable climate, and the savage wilderness, to acquire that highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man on this broad continent to worship according to the dictates of his own conscienceand they were not going to allow a lot of pestiferous quakers to interfere with it. your ancestors broke forever the chains of political slavery, and gave the vote to every man in this wide land, excluding none!none except those who did not belong to the orthodox church. your ancestorsyes, they were a hard lot; but, nevertheless, they gave us religious liberty to worship as they required us to worship, and political liberty to vote as the church required; and so i the bereft one, i the forlorn one, am here to do my best to help you celebrate them right. the quaker woman elizabeth hooton was an ancestress of mine. your people were pretty severe with heryou will confess that. but, poor thing! i believe they changed her opinions before she died, and took her into their fold; and so we have every reason to presume that when she died she went to the same place which your ancestors went to. it is a great pity, for she was a good woman. roger williams was an ancestor of mine. i don't really remember what your people did with him. but they banished him to rhode island, anyway. and then, i believe, recognizing that this was really carrying harshness to an unjustifiable extreme, they took pity on him and burned him. they were a hard lot! all those salem witches were ancestors of mine! your people made it tropical for them. yes, they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal with them that there hasn't been a witch and hardly a halter in our family from that day to this, and that is one hundred and eighty-nine years. the first slave brought into new england out of africa by your progenitors was an ancestor of minefor i am of a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite mongrel. i'm not one of your sham meerschaums that you can color in a week. no, my complexion is the patient art of eight generations. well, in my own time, i had acquired a lot of my kinby purchase, and swapping around, and one way and anotherand was getting along very well. then, with the inborn perversity of your lineage, you got up a war, and took them all away from me. and so, again am i bereft, again am i forlorn; no drop of my blood flows in the veins of any living being who is marketable. o my friends, hear me and reform! i seek your good, not mine. you have heard the speeches. disband these new england societiesnurseries of a system of steadily augmenting laudation and hosannaing, which, if persisted in uncurbed, may some day in the remote future beguile you into prevaricating and bragging. oh, stop, stop, while you are still temperate in your appreciation of your ancestors! hear me, i beseech you; get up an auction and sell plymouth rock! the pilgrims were a simple and ignorant race. they never had seen any good rocks before, or at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this one. but you, gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened; you know that in the rich land of your nativity, opulent new england, overflowing with rocks, this one isn't worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five cents. therefore, sell it, before it is injured by exposure, or at least throw it open to the patent-medicine advertisements, and let it earn its taxes. yes, hear your true friendyour only true friendlist to his voice. disband these societies, hotbeds of vice, of moral decayperpetuators of ancestral superstition. here on this board i see water, i see milk, i see the wild and deadly lemonade. these are but steps upon the downward path. next we shall see tea, then chocolate, then coffeehotel coffee. a few more yearsall too few, i fearmark my words, we shall have cider! gentlemen, pause ere it be too late. you are on the broad road which leads to dissipation, physical ruin, moral decay, gory crime and the gallows! i beseech you, i implore you, in the name of your anxious friends, in the name of your suffering families, in the name of your impending widows and orphans, stop ere it be too late. disband these new england societies, renounce these soul-blistering saturnalia, cease from varnishing the rusty reputations of your long-vanished ancestorsthe super-high-moral old iron-clads of cape cod, the pious buccaneers of plymouth rockgo home, and try to learn to behave! however, chaff and nonsense aside, i think i honor and appreciate your pilgrim stock as much as you do yourselves, perhaps; and i endorse and adopt a sentiment uttered by a grandfather of mine oncea man of sturdy opinions, of sincere make of mind, and not given to flattery. he said: "people may talk as they like about that pilgrim stock, but, after all's said and done, it would be pretty hard to improve on those people; and, as for me, i don't mind coming out flat-footed and saying there ain't any way to improve on themexcept having them born in missouri!" compliments and degrees. delivered at the lotos club, january 11, 1908. in introducing mr. clemens, frank r. lawrence, the president of the lotos club, recalled the fact that the first club dinner in the present club-house, some fourteen years ago, was in honor of mark twain. i wish to begin this time at the beginning, lest i forget it altogether; that is to say, i wish to thank you for this welcome that you are giving, and the welcome which you gave me seven years ago, and which i forgot to thank you for at that time. i also wish to thank you for the welcome you gave me fourteen years ago, which i also forgot to thank you for at the time. i hope you will continue this custom to give me a dinner every seven years before i join the hosts in the other worldi do not know which world. mr. lawrence and mr. porter have paid me many compliments. it is very difficult to take compliments. i do not care whether you deserve the compliments or not, it is just as difficult to take them. the other night i was at the engineers' club, and enjoyed the sufferings of mr. carnegie. they were complimenting him there; there it was all compliments, and none of them deserved. they say that you cannot live by bread alone, but i can live on compliments. i do not make any pretence that i dislike compliments. the stronger the better, and i can manage to digest them. i think i have lost so much by not making a collection of compliments, to put them away and take them out again once in a while. when in england i said that i would start to collect compliments, and i began there and i have brought some of them along. the first one of these liesi wrote them down and preserved themi think they are mighty good and extremely just. it is one of hamilton mabie's compliments. he said that la salle was the first one to make a voyage of the mississippi, but mark twain was the first to chart, light, and navigate it for the whole world. if that had been published at the time that i issued that book [life on the mississippi], it would have been money in my pocket. i tell you, it is a talent by itself to pay compliments gracefully and have them ring true. it's an art by itself. here is another compliment by albert bigelow paine, my biographer. he is writing four octavo volumes about me, and he has been at my elbow two and one-half years. i just suppose that he does not know me, but says he knows me. he says "mark twain is not merely a great writer, a great philosopher, a great man; he is the supreme expression of the human being, with his strength and his weakness." what a talent for compression! it takes a genius in compression to compact as many facts as that. w. d. howells spoke of me as first of hartford, and ultimately of the solar system, not to say of the universe. you know how modest howells is. if it can be proved that my fame reaches to neptune and saturn, that will satisfy even me. you know how modest and retiring howells seems to be, but deep down he is as vain as i am. mr. howells had been granted a degree at oxford, whose gown was red. he had been invited to an exercise at columbia, and upon inquiry had been told that it was usual to wear the black gown. later he had found that three other men wore bright gowns, and he had lamented that he had been one of the black mass, and not a red torch. edison wrote: "the average american loves his family. if he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects mark twain." now here's the compliment of a little montana girl which came to me indirectly. she was in a room in which there was a large photograph of me. after gazing at it steadily for a time, she said: "we've got a john the baptist like that." she also said: "only ours has more trimmings." i suppose she meant the halo. now here is a gold-miner's compliment. it is forty-two years old. it was my introduction to an audience to which i lectured in a log school-house. there were no ladies there. i wasn't famous then. they didn't know me. only the miners were there, with their breeches tucked into their boot-tops and with clay all over them. they wanted some one to introduce me, and they selected a miner, who protested, saying: "i don't know anything about this man. anyhow, i only know two things about him. one is, he has never been in jail, and the other is, i don't know why." there's one thing i want to say about that english trip. i knew his majesty the king of england long years ago, and i didn't meet him for the first time then. one thing that i regret was that some newspapers said i talked with the queen of england with my hat on. i don't do that with any woman. i did not put it on until she asked me to. then she told me to put it on, and it's a command there. i thought i had carried my american democracy far enough. so i put it on. i have no use for a hat, and never did have. who was it who said that the police of london knew me? why, the police know me everywhere. there never was a day over there when a policeman did not salute me, and then put up his hand and stop the traffic of the world. they treated me as though i were a duchess. the happiest experience i had in england was at a dinner given in the building of the punch publication, a humorous paper which is appreciated by all englishmen. it was the greatest privilege ever allowed a foreigner. i entered the dining-room of the building, where those men get together who have been running the paper for over fifty years. we were about to begin dinner when the toastmaster said: "just a minute; there ought to be a little ceremony." then there was that meditating silence for a while, and out of a closet there came a beautiful little girl dressed in pink, holding in her hand a copy of the previous week's paper, which had in it my cartoon. it broke me all up. i could not even say "thank you." that was the prettiest incident of the dinner, the delight of all that wonderful table. when she was about to go, i said, "my child, you are not going to leave me; i have hardly got acquainted with you." she replied, "you know i've got to go; they never let me come in here before, and they never will again." that is one of the beautiful incidents that i cherish. [at the conclusion of his speech, and while the diners were still cheering him, colonel porter brought forward the red-and-gray gown of the oxford "doctor," and mr. clemens was made to don it. the diners rose to their feet in their enthusiasm. with the mortar-board on his head, and looking down admiringly at himself, mr. twain said:] i like that gown. i always did like red. the redder it is the better i like it. i was born for a savage. now, whoever saw any red like this? there is no red outside the arteries of an archangel that could compare with this. i know you all envy me. i am going to have luncheon shortly with ladiesjust ladies. i will be the only lady of my sex present, and i shall put on this gown and make those ladies look dim. books, authors, and hats. address at the pilgrims' club luncheon, given in honor of mr. clemens at the savoy hotel, london, june 25, 1907. mr. birrell, m.p., chief-secretary for ireland, in introducing mr. clemens said: "we all love mark twain, and we are here to tell him so. one more pointall the world knows it, and that is why it is dangerous to omit itour guest is a distinguished citizen of the great republic beyond the seas. in america his huckleberry finn and his tom sawyer are what robinson crusoe and tom brown's school days have been to us. they are racy of the soil. they are books to which it is impossible to place any period of termination. i will not speak of the classicsreminiscences of much evil in our early lives. we do not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and depreciations, our two-penny little prefaces or our forewords. i am not going to say what the world a thousand years hence will think of mark twain. posterity will take care of itself, will read what it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to forget, and will pay no attention whatsoever to our critical mumblings and jumblings. let us therefore be content to say to our friend and guest that we are here speaking for ourselves and for our children, to say what he has been to us. i remember in liverpool, in 1867, first buying the copy, which i still preserve, of the celebrated jumping frog. it had a few words of preface which reminded me then that our guest in those days was called 'the wild humorist of the pacific slope,' and a few lines later down, 'the moralist of the main.' that was some forty years ago. here he is, still the humorist, still the moralist. his humor enlivens and enlightens his morality, and his morality is all the better for his humor. that is one of the reasons why we love him. i am not here to mention any book of histhat is a subject of dispute in my family circle, which is the best and which is the next bestbut i must put in a word, lest i should not be true to myselfa terrible thingfor his joan of arc, a book of chivalry, of nobility, and of manly sincerity for which i take this opportunity of thanking him. but you can all drink this toast, each one of you with his own intention. you can get into it what meaning you like. mark twain is a man whom english and americans do well to honor. he is the true consolidator of nations. his delightful humor is of the kind which dissipates and destroys national prejudices. his truth and his honor, his love of truth, and his love of honor, overflow all boundaries. he has made the world better by his presence. we rejoice to see him here. long may he live to reap the plentiful harvest of hearty, honest human affection!" pilgrims, i desire first to thank those undergraduates of oxford. when a man has grown so old as i am, when he has reached the verge of seventy-two years, there is nothing that carries him back to the dreamland of his life, to his boyhood, like recognition of those young hearts up yonder. and so i thank them out of my heart. i desire to thank the pilgrims of new york also for their kind notice and message which they have cabled over here. mr. birrell says he does not know how he got here. but he will be able to get away all righthe has not drunk anything since he came here. i am glad to know about those friends of his, otway and chattertonfresh, new names to me. i am glad of the disposition he has shown to rescue them from the evils of poverty, and if they are still in london, i hope to have a talk with them. for a while i thought he was going to tell us the effect which my book had upon his growing manhood. i thought he was going to tell us how much that effect amounted to, and whether it really made him what he now is, but with the discretion born of parliamentary experience he dodged that, and we do not know now whether he read the book or not. he did that very neatly. i could not do it any better myself. my books have had effects, and very good ones, too, here and there, and some others not so good. there is no doubt about that. but i remember one monumental instance of it years and years ago. professor norton, of harvard, was over here, and when he came back to boston i went out with howells to call on him. norton was allied in some way by marriage with darwin. mr. norton was very gentle in what he had to say, and almost delicate, and he said: "mr. clemens, i have been spending some time with mr. darwin in england, and i should like to tell you something connected with that visit. you were the object of it, and i myself would have been very proud of it, but you may not be proud of it. at any rate, i am going to tell you what it was, and to leave to you to regard it as you please. mr. darwin took me up to his bedroom and pointed out certain things therepitcher-plants, and so on, that he was measuring and watching from day to dayand he said: 'the chambermaid is permitted to do what she pleases in this room, but she must never touch those plants and never touch those books on that table by that candle. with those books i read myself to sleep every night.' those were your own books." i said: "there is no question to my mind as to whether i should regard that as a compliment or not. i do regard it as a very great compliment and a very high honor that that great mind, laboring for the whole human race, should rest itself on my books. i am proud that he should read himself to sleep with them." now, i could not keep that to myselfi was so proud of it. as soon as i got home to hartford i called up my oldest friendand dearest enemy on occasionthe rev. joseph twichell, my pastor, and i told him about that, and, of course, he was full of interest and venom. those people who get no compliments like that feel like that. he went off. he did not issue any applause of any kind, and i did not hear of that subject for some time. but when mr. darwin passed away from this life, and some time after darwin's life and letters came out, the rev. mr. twichell procured an early copy of that work and found something in it which he considered applied to me. he came over to my houseit was snowing, raining, sleeting, but that did not make any difference to twichell. he produced the book, and turned over and over, until he came to a certain place, when he said: "here, look at this letter from mr. darwin to sir joseph hooker." what mr. darwin saidi give you the idea and not the very wordswas this: i do not know whether i ought to have devoted my whole life to these drudgeries in natural history and the other sciences or not, for while i may have gained in one way i have lost in another. once i had a fine perception and appreciation of high literature, but in me that quality is atrophied. "that was the reason," said mr. twichell, "he was reading your books." mr. birrell has touched lightlyvery lightly, but in not an uncomplimentary wayon my position in this world as a moralist. i am glad to have that recognition, too, because i have suffered since i have been in this town; in the first place, right away, when i came here, from a newsman going around with a great red, highly displayed placard in the place of an apron. he was selling newspapers, and there were two sentences on that placard which would have been all right if they had been punctuated; but they ran those two sentences together without a comma or anything, and that would naturally create a wrong impression, because it said, "mark twain arrives ascot cup stolen." no doubt many a person was misled by those sentences joined together in that unkind way. i have no doubt my character has suffered from it. i suppose i ought to defend my character, but how can i defend it? i can say here and nowand anybody can see by my face that i am sincere, that i speak the truththat i have never seen that cup. i have not got the cupi did not have a chance to get it. i have always had a good character in that way. i have hardly ever stolen anything, and if i did steal anything i had discretion enough to know about the value of it first. i do not steal things that are likely to get myself into trouble. i do not think any of us do that. i know we all take thingsthat is to be expectedbut really, i have never taken anything, certainly in england, that amounts to any great thing. i do confess that when i was here seven years ago i stole a hat, but that did not amount to anything. it was not a good hat, and was only a clergyman's hat, anyway. i was at a luncheon party, and archdeacon wilberforce was there also. i dare say he is archdeacon nowhe was a canon thenand he was serving in the westminster battery, if that is the proper termi do not know, as you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so much. he left the luncheon table before i did. he began this. i did steal his hat, but he began by taking mine. i make that interjection because i would not accuse archdeacon wilberforce of stealing my hati should not think of it. i confine that phrase to myself. he merely took my hat. and with good judgment, tooit was a better hat than his. he came out before the luncheon was over, and sorted the hats in the hall, and selected one which suited. it happened to be mine. he went off with it. when i came out by-and-by there was no hat there which would go on my head except his, which was left behind. my head was not the customary size just at that time. i had been receiving a good many very nice and complimentary attentions, and my head was a couple of sizes larger than usual, and his hat just suited me. the bumps and corners were all right intellectually. there were results pleasing to mepossibly so to him. he found out whose hat it was, and wrote me saying it was pleasant that all the way home, whenever he met anybody his gravities, his solemnities, his deep thoughts, his eloquent remarks were all snatched up by the people he met, and mistaken for brilliant humorisms. i had another experience. it was not unpleasing. i was received with a deference which was entirely foreign to my experience by everybody whom i met, so that before i got home i had a much higher opinion of myself than i have ever had before or since. and there is in that very connection an incident which i remember at that old date which is rather melancholy to me, because it shows how a person can deteriorate in a mere seven years. it is seven years ago. i have not that hat now. i was going down pall-mall, or some other of your big streets, and i recognized that that hat needed ironing. i went into a big shop and passed in my hat, and asked that it might be ironed. they were courteous, very courteous, even courtly. they brought that hat back to me presently very sleek and nice, and i asked how much there was to pay. they replied that they did not charge the clergy anything. i have cherished the delight of that moment from that day to this. it was the first thing i did the other day to go and hunt up that shop and hand in my hat to have it ironed. i said when it came back, "how much to pay?" they said, "ninepence." in seven years i have acquired all that worldliness, and i am sorry to be back where i was seven years ago. but now i am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing here, and i hope you will forgive me for that; but when a man stands on the verge of seventy-two you know perfectly well that he never reached that place without knowing what this life isheartbreaking bereavement. and so our reverence is for our dead. we do not forget them; but our duty is toward the living; and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit, cheerful in speech and in hope, that is a benefit to those who are around us. my own history includes an incident which will always connect me with england in a pathetic way, for when i arrived here seven years ago with my wife and my daughterwe had gone around the globe lecturing to raise money to clear off a debtmy wife and one of my daughters started across the ocean to bring to england our eldest daughter. she was twenty-four years of age and in the bloom of young womanhood, and we were unsuspecting. when my wife and daughterand my wife has passed from this life sincewhen they had reached mid-atlantic, a cablegramone of those heartbreaking cablegrams which we all in our days have to experiencewas put into my hand. it stated that that daughter of ours had gone to her long sleep. and so, as i say, i cannot always be cheerful, and i cannot always be chaffing; i must sometimes lay the cap and bells aside, and recognize that i am of the human race like the rest, and must have my cares and griefs. and therefore i noticed what mr. birrell saidi was so glad to hear him say itsomething that was in the nature of these verses here at the top of this: "he lit our life with shafts of sun and vanquished pain. thus two great nations stand as one in honoring twain." i am very glad to have those verses. i am very glad and very grateful for what mr. birrell said in that connection. i have received since i have been here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all conditions of people in englandmen, women, and childrenand there is in them compliment, praise, and, above all and better than all, there is in them a note of affection. praise is well, compliment is well, but affectionthat is the last and final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement, and i am very grateful to have that reward. all these letters make me feel that here in englandas in americawhen i stand under the english flag, i am not a stranger. i am not an alien, but at home. dedication speech. at the dedication of the college of the city of new york, may 14, 1908. mr. clemens wore his gown as doctor of laws, oxford university. ambassador bryce and mr. choate had made the formal addresses. how difficult indeed, is the higher education. mr. choate needs a little of it. he is not only short as a statistician of new york, but he is off, far off, in his mathematics. the four thousand citizens of greater new york, indeed! but i don't think it was wise or judicious on the part of mr. choate to show this higher education he has obtained. he sat in the lap of that great education (i was there at the time), and see the resultthe lamentable result. maybe if he had had a sandwich here to sustain him the result would not have been so serious. for seventy-two years i have been striving to acquire that higher education which stands for modesty and diffidence, and it doesn't work. and then look at ambassador bryce, who referred to his alma mater, oxford. he might just as well have included me. well, i am a later production. if i am the latest graduate, i really and sincerely hope i am not the final flower of its seven centuries; i hope it may go on for seven ages longer. die schrecken der deutschen sprache address to the vienna press club, november 21, 1897, as delivered in german es hat mich tief geruhrt, meine herren, hier so gastfreundlich empfangen zu werden, von kollegen aus meinem eigenen berufe, in diesem von meiner eigenen heimath so weit entferntem lande. mein herz ist voller dankbarkeit, aber meine armuth an deutschen worten zwingt mich zu groszer sparzamkeit des ausdruckes. entschuldigen sie, meine herren, dasz ich verlese, was ich ihnen sagen will. (er las aber nicht, anm. d. ref.) die deutsche sprache spreche ich nicht gut, doch haben mehrere sachverstandige mich versichert, dasz ich sie schreibe wie ein engel. mag seinich weisz nicht. habe bis jetzt keine bekanntschaften mit engeln gehabt. das kommt spaterwenn's dem lieben gott gefalltes hat keine eile. seit lange, meine herren, habe ich die leidenschaftliche sehnsucht gehegt, eine rede auf deutsch zu halten, aber man hat mir's nie erlauben wollen. leute, die kein gefuhl fur die kunst hatten, legten mir immer hindernisse in den weg und vereitelten meinen wunschzuweilen durch vorwande, haufig durch gewalt. immer sagten diese leute zu mir: "schweigen sie, ew. hochwohlgeboren! ruhe, um gotteswillen! suche eine andere art und weise, dich lastig zu machen." im jetzigen fall, wie gewohnlich, ist es mir schwierig geworden, mir die erlaubnisz zu verschaffen. das comite bedauerte sehr, aber es konnte mir die erlaubnisz nicht bewilligen wegen eines gesetzes, das von der concordia verlangt, sie soll die deutsche sprache schnutzen. du liebe zeit! wieso hatte man mir das sagen konnenmogendurfensollen? ich bin ja der treueste freund der deutschen spracheund nicht nur jetzt, sondern von lange herja vor zwanzig jahren schon. und nie habe ich das verlangen gehabt, der edlen sprache zu schaden, im gegentheil, nur gewunscht, sie zu verbessern; ich wollte sie blos reformiren. es ist der traum meines lebens gewesen. ich habe schon besuche bei den verschiedenen deutschen regierungen abgestattet und um kontrakte gebeten. ich bin jetzt nach oesterreich in demselben auftrag gekommen. ich wurde nur einige aenderungen anstreben. ich wurde blos die sprachmethodedie uppige, weitschweifige konstruktionzusammenrucken; die ewige parenthese unterdrucken, abschaffen, vernichten; die einfuhrung von mehr als dreizehn subjekten in einen satz verbieten; das zeitwort so weit nach vorne rucken, bis man es ohne fernrohr entdecken kann. mit einem wort, meine herren, ich mochte ihre geliebte sprache vereinfachen, auf dasz, meine herren, wenn sie sie zum gebet brauchen, man sie dort oben versteht. ich flehe sie an, von mir sich berathen zu lassen, fuhren sie diese erwahnten reformen aus. dann werden sie eine prachtvolle sprache besitzen und nachher, wenn sie etwas sagen wollen, werden sie wenigstens selber verstehen, was sie gesagt haben. aber ofters heutzutage, wenn sie einen meilen-langen satz von sich gegeben und sie sich etwas angelehnt haben, um auszuruhen, dann mussen sie eine ruhrende neugierde empfinden, selbst herauszubringen, was sie eigentlich gesprochen haben. vor mehreren tagen hat der korrespondent einer hiesigen zeitung einen satz zustande gebracht welcher hundertundzwolf worte enthielt und darin waren sieben parenthese eingeschachtelt und es wurde das subjekt siebenmal gewechselt. denken sie nur, meine herren, im laufe der reise eines einzigen satzes musz das arme, verfolgte, ermudete subjekt siebenmal umsteigen. nun, wenn wir die erwahnten reformen ausfuhren, wird's nicht mehre so arg sein. doch noch eins. ich mochte gern das trennbare zeitwort auch ein bischen reformiren. ich mochte niemand thun lassen, was schiller gethan: der hat die ganze geschichte des dreizigjahrigen krieges zwischen die zwei glieder eines trennbaren zeitwortes eingezwangt. das hat sogar deutschland selbst emport; und man hat schiller die erlaubnisz verweigert, die geschichte des hundert jahrigen krieges zu verfassengott sei's gedankt. nachdem alle diese reformen festgestellt sein werden, wird die deutsche sprache die edelste und die schonste auf der welt sein. da ihnen jetzt, meine herren, der charackter meiner mission bekannt ist, bitte ich sie, so freundlich zu sein und mir ihre werthvolle hilfe zu schenken. herr potzl hat das publikum glauben machen wollen, dasz ich nach wien gekommen bin, um die brucken zu verstopfen und den verkehr zu hindern, wahrend ich beobachtungen sammle und aufzeichne. lassen sie sich aber nicht von ihm anfuhren. meine haufige anwesenheit auf den brucken hat einen ganz unschuldigen grund. dort giebt's den nothigen raum. dort kann man einen edlen, langen, deutschen satz ausdehnen, die bruckengelander entlang, und seinen ganzen inhalt mit einem blick ubersehen. auf das eine ende des gelanders klebe ich das erste glied eines trennbaren zeitwortes und das schluszglied klebe ich an's andere endedann breite ich den leib des satzes dazwischen aus. gewohnlich sind fur meinen zweck die brucken der stadt lang genug: wenn ich aber potzl's schriften studiren will, fahre ich hinaus und benutze die herrliche unendliche reichsbrucke. aber das ist eine verleumdung. potzl schreibt das schonste deutsch. vielleicht nicht so biegsam wie das meinige, aber in manchen kleinigkeiten viel besser. entschuldigen sie diese schmeicheleien. die sind wohl verdient. nun bringe ich meine rede umneinich wollte sagen, ich bringe sie zum schlusz. ich bin ein fremderaber hier, unter ihnen, habe ich es ganz vergessen. und so, wieder, und noch wiederbiete ich ihnen meinen herzlichsten dank! horrors of the german language. address to the vienna press club, november 21, 1897 [a literal translation]. it has me deeply touched, my gentlemen, here so hospitably received to be. from colleagues out of my own profession, in this from my own home so far distant land. my heart is full of gratitude, but my poverty of german words forces me to greater economy of expression. excuse you, my gentlemen, that i read off, what i you say will. [but he didn't read]. the german language speak i not good, but have numerous connoisseurs me assured that i her write like an angel. maybemaybei know not. have till now no acquaintance with the angels had. that comes laterwhen it the dear god pleaseit has no hurry. since long, my gentlemen, have i the passionate longing nursed a speech on german to hold, but one has me not permitted. men, who no feeling for the art had, laid me ever hindrance in the way and made naught my desiresometimes by excuses, often by force. always said these men to me: "keep you still, your highness! silence! for god's sake seek another way and means yourself obnoxious to make." in the present case, as usual it is me difficult become, for me the permission to obtain. the committee sorrowed deeply, but could me the permission not grant on account of a law which from the concordia demands she shall the german language protect. du liebe zeit! how so had one to me this say couldmightdaredshould? i am indeed the truest friend of the german languageand not only now, but from long sinceyes, before twenty years already. and never have i the desire had the noble language to hurt; to the contrary, only wished she to improvei would her only reform. it is the dream of my life been. i have already visits by the various german governments paid and for contracts prayed. i am now to austria in the same task come. i would only some changes effect. i would only the language methodthe luxurious, elaborate construction compress, the eternal parenthesis suppress, do away with, annihilate; the introduction of more than thirteen subjects in one sentence forbid; the verb so far to the front pull that one it without a telescope discover can. with one word, my gentlemen, i would your beloved language simplify so that, my gentlemen, when you her for prayer need, one her yonder-up understands. i beseech you, from me yourself counsel to let, execute these mentioned reforms. then will you an elegant language possess, and afterward, when you some thing say will, will you at least yourself understand what you said had. but often nowadays, when you a mile-long sentence from you given and you yourself somewhat have rested, then must you have a touching inquisitiveness have yourself to determine what you actually spoken have. before several days has the correspondent of a local paper a sentence constructed which hundred and twelve words contain, and therein were seven parentheses smuggled in, and the subject seven times changed. think you only, my gentlemen, in the course of the voyage of a single sentence must the poor, persecuted, fatigued subject seven times change position! now, when we the mentioned reforms execute, will it no longer so bad be. doch noch eins. i might gladly the separable verb also a little bit reform. i might none do let what schiller did: he has the whole history of the thirty years' war between the two members of a separable verb in-pushed. that has even germany itself aroused, and one has schiller the permission refused the history of the hundred years' war to composegod be it thanked! after all these reforms established be will, will the german language the noblest and the prettiest on the world be. since to you now, my gentlemen, the character of my mission known is, beseech i you so friendly to be and to me your valuable help grant. mr. potzl has the public believed make would that i to vienna come am in order the bridges to clog up and the traffic to hinder, while i observations gather and note. allow you yourselves but not from him deceived. my frequent presence on the bridges has an entirely innocent ground. yonder gives it the necessary space, yonder can one a noble long german sentence elaborate, the bridge-railing along, and his whole contents with one glance overlook. on the one end of the railing pasted i the first member of a separable verb and the final member cleave i to the other endthen spread the body of the sentence between it out! usually are for my purposes the bridges of the city long enough; when i but potzl's writings study will i ride out and use the glorious endless imperial bridge. but this is a calumny; potzl writes the prettiest german. perhaps not so pliable as the mine, but in many details much better. excuse you these flatteries. these are well deserved. now i my speech executeno, i would say i bring her to the close. i am a foreignerbut here, under you, have i it entirely forgotten. and so again and yet again proffer i you my heartiest thanks. german for the hungarians. address at the jubilee celebration of the emancipation of the hungarian press, march 26, 1899. the ministry and members of parliament were present. the subject was the "ausgleich"i. e., the arrangement for the apportionment of the taxes between hungary and austria. paragraph 14 of the ausgleich fixes the proportion each country must pay to the support of the army. it is the paragraph which caused the trouble and prevented its renewal. now that we are all here together, i think it will be a good idea to arrange the ausgleich. if you will act for hungary i shall be quite willing to act for austria, and this is the very time for it. there couldn't be a better, for we are all feeling friendly, fair-minded, and hospitable now, and full of admiration for each other, full of confidence in each other, full of the spirit of welcome, full of the grace of forgiveness, and the disposition to let bygones be bygones. let us not waste this golden, this beneficent, this providential opportunity. i am willing to make any concession you want, just so we get it settled. i am not only willing to let grain come in free, i am willing to pay the freight on it, and you may send delegates to the reichsrath if you like. all i require is that they shall be quiet, peaceable people like your own deputies, and not disturb our proceedings. if you want the gegenseitigengeldbeitragendenverhaltnismassigkeiten rearranged and readjusted i am ready for that. i will let you off at twenty-eight per cent.twenty-seveneven twenty-five if you insist, for there is nothing illiberal about me when i am out on a diplomatic debauch. now, in return for these concessions, i am willing to take anything in reason, and i think we may consider the business settled and the ausgleich ausgegloschen at last for ten solid years, and we will sign the papers in blank, and do it here and now. well, i am unspeakably glad to have that ausgleich off my hands. it has kept me awake nights for anderthalbjahr. but i never could settle it before, because always when i called at the foreign office in vienna to talk about it, there wasn't anybody at home, and that is not a place where you can go in and see for yourself whether it is a mistake or not, because the person who takes care of the front door there is of a size that discourages liberty of action and the free spirit of investigation. to think the ausgleich is abgemacht at last! it is a grand and beautiful consummation, and i am glad i came. the way i feel now i do honestly believe i would rather be just my own humble self at this moment than paragraph 14. a new german word. to aid a local charity mr. clemens appeared before a fashionable audience in vienna, march 10, 1899, reading his sketch "the lucerne girl," and describing how he had been interviewed and ridiculed. he said in part: i have not sufficiently mastered german to allow my using it with impunity. my collection of fourteen-syllable german words is still incomplete. but i have just added to that collection a jewela veritable jewel. i found it in a telegram from linz, and it contains ninety-five letters: personaleinkommensteuerschatzungskommissionsmitgliedsreisekostenrechnungserganzungsrevisionsfund if i could get a similar word engraved upon my tombstone i should sleep beneath it in peace. unconscious plagiarism. delivered at the dinner given by the publishers of "the atlantic monthly" to oliver wendell holmes in honor of his seventieth birthday, august 29, 1879. i would have travelled a much greater distance than i have come to witness the paying of honors to doctor holmes; for my feeling toward him has always been one of peculiar warmth. when one receives a letter from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. you never can receive letters enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one, or dim the memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it gave you. lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap. well, the first great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guestoliver wendell holmes. he was also the first great literary man i ever stole anything fromand that is how i came to write to him and he to me. when my first book was new, a friend of mine said to me, "the dedication is very neat." yes, i said, i thought it was. my friend said, "i always admired it, even before i saw it in the innocents abroad." i naturally said: "what do you mean? where did you ever see it before?" "well, i saw it first some years ago as doctor holmes's dedication to his songs in many keys." of course, my first impulse was to prepare this man's remains for burial, but upon reflection i said i would reprieve him for a moment or two and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. we stepped into a book-store, and he did prove it. i had really stolen that dedication, almost word for word. i could not imagine how this curious thing had happened; for i knew one thingthat a certain amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's ideas. that is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a manand admirers had often told me i had nearly a basketfulthough they were rather reserved as to the size of the basket. however, i thought the thing out, and solved the mystery. two years before, i had been laid up a couple of weeks in the sandwich islands, and had read and re-read doctor holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was filled up with them to the brim. the dedication lay on the top, and handy, so, by-and-by, i unconsciously stole it. perhaps i unconsciously stole the rest of the volume, too, for many people have told me that my book was pretty poetical, in one way or another. well, of course, i wrote doctor holmes and told him i hadn't meant to steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way that it was all right and no harm done; and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with ourselves. he stated a truth, and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved over my sore spot so gently and so healingly, that i was rather glad i had committed the crime, for the sake of the letter. i afterward called on him and told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine that struck him as being good protoplasm for poetry. he could see by that that there wasn't anything mean about me; so we got along right from the start. i have not met doctor holmes many times since; and lately he saidhowever, i am wandering wildly away from the one thing which i got on my feet to do; that is, to make my compliments to you, my fellow-teachers of the great public, and likewise to say that i am right glad to see that doctor holmes is still in his prime and full of generous life; and as age is not determined by years, but by trouble and infirmities of mind and body, i hope it may be a very long time yet before any one can truthfully say, "he is growing old." the weather. address at the new england society's seventy-first annual dinner, new york city. the next toast was: "the oldest inhabitantthe weather of new england." who can lose it and forget it? who can have it and regret it? "be interposer 'twixt us twain." -merchant of venice. i reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in new england but the weather. i don't know who makes that, but i think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in new england, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. there is a sumptuous variety about the new england weather that compels the stranger's admirationand regret. the weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. but it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. in the spring i have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours. it was i that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvellous collection of weather on exhibition at the centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. he was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes. i said, "don't you do it; you come to new england on a favorable spring day." i told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. well, he came and he made his collection in four days. as to variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. and as to quantitywell, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. the people of new england are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about "beautiful spring." these are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. and so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by. old probabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. you take up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on the pacific, down south, in the middle states, in the wisconsin region. see him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to new england, and then see his tail drop. he doesn't know what the weather is going to be in new england. well, he mulls over it, and by-and-by he gets out something about like this: probably northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning. then he jots down his postscript from his wandering mind, to cover accidents. "but it is possible that the programme may be wholly changed in the mean time." yes, one of the brightest gems in the new england weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. there is only one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of ita perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the procession is going to move first. you fix up for the drought; you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned. you make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you get struck by lightning. these are great disappointments; but they can't be helped. the lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whetherwell, you'd think it was something valuable, and a congressman had been there. and the thunder. when the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, "why, what awful thunder you have here!" but when the baton is raised and the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with his head in the ash-barrel. now as to the size of the weather in new englandlengthways, i mean. it is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little country. half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that new england weather sticking out beyond the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring states. she can't hold a tenth part of her weather. you can see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying to do it. i could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the new england weather, but i will give but a single specimen. i like to hear rain on a tin roof. so i covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? no, sir; skips it every time. mind, in this speech i have been trying merely to do honor to the new england weatherno language could do it justice. but, after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather (or, if you please, effects produced by it) which we residents would not like to part with. if we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagariesthe ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the topice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the shah of persia's diamond plume. then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to goldthe tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. one cannot make the words too strong. the babies. delivered at the banquet, in chicago, given by the army of the tennessee to their first commander general u. s. grant, november, 1879. the fifteenth regular toast was "the babies.as they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities." i like that. we have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. we have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground. it is a shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything. if you will stop and think a minuteif you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and recontemplate your first babyyou will remember that he amounted to a good deal, and even something over. you soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your resignation. he took entire command. you became his lackey, his mere body-servant, and you had to stand around too. he was not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. you had to execute his order whether it was possible or not. and there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. he treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. you could face the death-storm at donelson and vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it. when the thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the chance, too. when he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any side-remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? no. you got up and got it. when he ordered his pap bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? not you. you went to work and warmed it. you even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was rightthree parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccoughs. i can taste that stuff yet. and how many things you learned as you went along! sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are whispering to him. very pretty, but too thinsimply wind on the stomach, my friends. if the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark, with a mental addition which would not improve a sunday-school book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!rock-a-by baby in the tree-top, for instance. what a spectacle for an army of the tennessee! and what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at three in the morning. and when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? you simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. the idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. one baby can furnish more business than you and your whole interior department can attend to. he is enterprising, irrepressible,. brimful of lawless activities. do what you please, you can't make him stay on the reservation. sufficient unto the day is one baby. as long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. twins amount to a permanent riot. and there ain't any real difference between triplets and an insurrection. yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of the babies. think what is in store for the present crop! fifty years from now we shall all be dead, i trust, and then this flag, if it still survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a republic numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our increase. our present schooner of state will have grown into a political leviathana great eastern. the cradled babies of to-day will be on deck. let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract on their hands. among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are. in one of these cradles the unconscious farragut of the future is at this moment teethingthink of it!and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly justifiable profanity over it, too. in another the future renowned astronomer is blinking at the shining milky way with but a languid interestpoor little chap!and wondering what has become of that other one they call the wet-nurse. in another the future great historian is lyingand doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. in another the future president is busying himself with no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some 60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to grapple with that same old problem a second time. and in still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief of the american armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouthan achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded. our children and great discoveries. delivered at the authors' club, new york. our childrenyours-and-mine. they seem like little things to talk aboutour children, but little things often make up the sum of human lifethat's a good sentence. i repeat it, little things often produce great things. now, to illustrate, take sir isaac newtoni presume some of you have heard of mr. newton. well, once when sir isaac newtona mere ladgot over into the man's apple orchardi don't know what he was doing therei didn't come all the way from hartford to q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n mr. newton's honestybut when he was therein the main orchardhe saw an apple fall and he was a-t-t-racted toward it, and that led to the discoverynot of mr. newtonbut of the great law of attraction and gravitation. and there was once another great discovereri've forgotten his name, and i don't remember what he discovered, but i know it was something very important, and i hope you will all tell your children about it when you get home. well, when the great discoverer was once loafin' around down in virginia, and a-puttin' in his time flirting with pocahontasoh! captain john smith, that was the man's nameand while he and poca were sitting in mr. powhatan's garden, he accidentally put his arm around her and picked somethinga simple weed, which proved to be tobaccoand now we find it in every christian family, shedding its civilizing influence broadcast throughout the whole religious community. now there was another great man, i can't think of his name either, who used to loaf around and watch the great chandelier in the cathedral at pisa, which set him to thinking about the great law of gunpowder, and eventually led to the discovery of the cotton-gin. now, i don't say this as an inducement for our young men to loaf around like mr. newton and mr. galileo and captain smith, but they were once little babies two days old, and they show what little things have sometimes accomplished. educating theatre-goers. the children of the educational alliance gave a performance of "the prince and the pauper" on the afternoon of april 14, 1907, in the theatre of the alliance building in east broadway. the audience was composed of nearly one thousand children of the neighborhood. mr. clemens, mr. howells, and mr. daniel frohman were among the invited guests. i have not enjoyed a play so much, so heartily, and so thoroughly since i played miles hendon twenty-two years ago. i used to play in this piece ("the prince and the pauper") with my children, who, twenty-two years ago, were little youngsters. one of my daughters was the prince, and a neighbor's daughter was the pauper, and the children of other neighbors played other parts. but we never gave such a performance as we have seen here to-day. it would have been beyond us. my late wife was the dramatist and stage-manager. our coachman was the stage-manager, second in command. we used to play it in this simple way, and the one who used to bring in the crown on a cushionhe was a little fellow thenis now a clergyman way up highsix or seven feet highand growing higher all the time. we played it well, but not as well as you see it here, for you see it done by practically trained professionals. i was especially interested in the scene which we have just had, for miles hendon was my part. i did it as well as a person could who never remembered his part. the children all knew their parts. they did not mind if i did not know mine. i could thread a needle nearly as well as the player did whom you saw to-day. the words of my part i could supply on the spot. the words of the song that miles hendon sang here i did not catch. but i was great in that song. [then mr. clemens hummed a bit of doggerel that the reporter made out as this: "there was a woman in her town, she loved her husband well, but another man just twice as well." "how is that?" demanded mr. clemens. then resuming:] it was so fresh and enjoyable to make up a new set of words each time that i played the part. if i had a thousand citizens in front of me, i would like to give them information, but you children already know all that i have found out about the educational alliance. it's like a man living within thirty miles of vesuvius and never knowing about a volcano. it's like living for a lifetime in buffalo, eighteen miles from niagara, and never going to see the falls. so i had lived in new york and knew nothing about the educational alliance. this theatre is a part of the work, and furnishes pure and clean plays. this theatre is an influence. everything in the world is accomplished by influences which train and educate. when you get to be seventy-one and a half, as i am, you may think that your education is over, but it isn't. if we had forty theatres of this kind in this city of four millions, how they would educate and elevate! we should have a body of educated theatre-goers. it would make better citizens, honest citizens. one of the best gifts a millionaire could make would be a theatre here and a theatre there. it would make of you a real republic, and bring about an educational level. the educational theatre. on november 19, 1907, mr. clemens entertained a party of six or seven hundred of his friends, inviting them to witness the representation of "the prince and the pauper," played by boys and girls of the east side at the children's educational theatre, new york. just a word or two to let you know how deeply i appreciate the honor which the children who are the actors and frequenters of this cozy playhouse have conferred upon me. they have asked me to be their ambassador to invite the hearts and brains of new york to come down here and see the work they are doing. i consider it a grand distinction to be chosen as their intermediary. between the children and myself there is an indissoluble bond of friendship. i am proud of this theatre and this performanceproud, because i am naturally vainvain of myself and proud of the children. i wish we could reach more children at one time. i am glad to see that the children of the east side have turned their backs on the bowery theatres to come to see the pure entertainments presented here. this children's theatre is a great educational institution. i hope the time will come when it will be part of every public school in the land. i may be pardoned in being vain. i was born vain, i guess. [at this point the stage-manager's whistle interrupted mr. clemens.] that settles it; there's my cue to stop. i was to talk until the whistle blew, but it blew before i got started. it takes me longer to get started than most people. i guess i was born at slow speed. my time is up, and if you'll keep quiet for two minutes i'll tell you something about miss herts, the woman who conceived this splendid idea. she is the originator and the creator of this theatre. educationally, this institution coins the gold of young hearts into external good. [on april 23, 1908, he spoke again at the same place] i will be strictly honest with you; i am only fit to be honorary president. it is not to be expected that i should be useful as a real president. but when it comes to things ornamental i, of course, have no objection. there is, of course, no competition. i take it as a very real compliment because there are thousands of children who have had a part in this request. it is promotion in truth. it is a thing worth doing that is done here. you have seen the children play. you saw how little sally reformed her burglar. she could reform any burglar. she could reform me. this is the only school in which can be taught the highest and most difficult lessonsmorals. in other schools the way of teaching morals is revolting. here the children who come in thousands live through each part. they are terribly anxious for the villain to get his bullet, and that i take to be a humane and proper sentiment. they spend freely the ten cents that is not saved without a struggle. it comes out of the candy money, and the money that goes for chewing-gum and other necessaries of life. they make the sacrifice freely. this is the only school which they are sorry to leave. poets as policemen. mr. clemens was one of the speakers at the lotos club dinner to governor odell, march 24, 1900. the police problem was referred to at length. let us abolish policemen who carry clubs and revolvers, and put in a squad of poets armed to the teeth with poems on spring and love. i would be very glad to serve as commissioner, not because i think i am especially qualified, but because i am too tired to work and would like to take a rest. howells would go well as my deputy. he is tired too, and needs a rest badly. i would start in at once to elevate, purify, and depopulate the red-light district. i would assign the most soulful poets to that district, all heavily armed with their poems. take chauncey depew as a sample. i would station them on the corners after they had rounded up all the depraved people of the district so they could not escape, and then have them read from their poems to the poor unfortunates. the plan would be very effective in causing an emigration of the depraved element. pudd'nhead wilson dramatized. when mr. clemens arrived from europe in 1895 one of the first things he did was to see the dramatization of pudd'nhead wilson. the audience becoming aware of the fact that mr. clemens was in the house called upon him for a speech. never in my life have i been able to make a speech without preparation, and i assure you that this position in which i find myself is one totally unexpected. i have been hemmed in all day by william dean howells and other frivolous persons, and i have been talking about everything in the world except that of which speeches are constructed. then, too, seven days on the water is not conducive to speech-making. i will only say that i congratulate mr. mayhew; he has certainly made a delightful play out of my rubbish. his is a charming gift. confidentially i have always had an idea that i was well equipped to write plays, but i have never encountered a manager who has agreed with me. daly theatre. address at a dinner after the one hundredth performance of "the taming of the shrew." mr. clemens made the following speech, which he incorporated afterward in following the equator. i am glad to be here. this is the hardest theatre in new york to get into, even at the front door. i never got in without hard work. i am glad we have got so far in at last. two or three years ago i had an appointment to meet mr. daly on the stage of this theatre at eight o'clock in the evening. well, i got on a train at hartford to come to new york and keep the appointment. all i had to do was to come to the back door of the theatre on sixth avenue. i did not believe that; i did not believe it could be on sixth avenue, but that is what daly's note saidcome to that door, walk right in, and keep the appointment. it looked very easy. it looked easy enough, but i had not much confidence in the sixth avenue door. well, i was kind of bored on the train, and i bought some newspapersnew haven newspapersand there was not much news in them, so i read the advertisements. there was one advertisement of a bench-show. i had heard of bench-shows, and i often wondered what there was about them to interest people. i had seen bench-showslectured to bench-shows, in factbut i didn't want to advertise them or to brag about them. well, i read on a little, and learned that a bench-show was not a bench-showbut dogs, not benches at allonly dogs. i began to be interested, and as there was nothing else to do i read every bit of the advertisement, and learned that the biggest thing in this show was a st. bernard dog that weighed one hundred and forty-five pounds. before i got to new york i was so interested in the bench-shows that i made up my mind to go to one the first chance i got. down on sixth avenue, near where that back door might be, i began to take things leisurely. i did not like to be in too much of a hurry. there was not anything in sight that looked like a back door. the nearest approach to it was a cigar store. so i went in and bought a cigar, not too expensive, but it cost enough to pay for any information i might get and leave the dealer a fair profit. well, i did not like to be too abrupt, to make the man think me crazy, by asking him if that was the way to daly's theatre, so i started gradually to lead up to the subject, asking him first if that was the way to castle garden. when i got to the real question, and he said he would show me the way, i was astonished. he sent me through a long hallway, and i found myself in a back yard. then i went through a long passageway and into a little room, and there before my eyes was a big st. bernard dog lying on a bench. there was another door beyond and i went there, and was met by a big, fierce man with a fur cap on and coat off, who remarked, "phwat do yez want?" i told him i wanted to see mr. daly. "yez can't see mr. daly this time of night," he responded. i urged that i had an appointment with mr. daly, and gave him my card, which did not seem to impress him much. "yez can't get in and yez can't shmoke here. throw away that cigar. if yez want to see mr. daly, yez'll have to be after going to the front door and buy a ticket, and then if yez have luck and he's around that way yez may see him." i was getting discouraged, but i had one resource left that had been of good service in similar emergencies. firmly but kindly i told him my name was mark twain, and i awaited results. there was none. he was not fazed a bit. "phwere's your order to see mr. daly?" he asked. i handed him the note, and he examined it intently. "my friend," i remarked, "you can read that better if you hold it the other side up." but he took no notice of the suggestion, and finally asked: "where's mr. daly's name?" "there it is," i told him, "on the top of the page." "that's all right," he said, "that's where he always puts it; but i don't see the 'w' in his name," and he eyed me distrustfully. finally he asked, "phwat do yez want to see mr. daly for?" "business." "business?" "yes." it was my only hope. "pwhat kindtheatres?" that was too much. "no." "what kind of shows, then?" "bench-shows." it was risky, but i was desperate. "bench-shows, is itwhere?" the big man's face changed, and he began to look interested. "new haven." "new haven, it is? ah, that's going to be a fine show. i'm glad to see you. did you see a big dog in the other room?" "yes." "how much do you think that dog weighs?" "one hundred and forty-five pounds." "look at that, now! he's a good judge of dogs, and no mistake. he weighs all of one hundred and thirty-eight. sit down and shmokego on and shmoke your cigar, i'll tell mr. daly you are here." in a few minutes i was on the stage shaking hands with mr. daly, and the big man standing around glowing with satisfaction. "come around in front," said mr. daly, "and see the performance. i will put you into my own box." and as i moved away i heard my honest friend mutter, "well, he desarves it." the dress of civilized woman. a large part of the daughter of civilization is her dressas it should be. some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress, and some would lose all of it. the daughter of modern civilization dressed at her utmost best is a marvel of exquisite and beautiful art and expense. all the lands, all the climes, and all the arts are laid under tribute to furnish her forth. her linen is from belfast, her robe is from paris, her lace is from venice, or spain, or france, her feathers are from the remote regions of southern africa, her furs from the remoter region of the iceberg and the aurora, her fan from japan, her diamonds from brazil, her bracelets from california, her pearls from ceylon, her cameos from rome. she has gems and trinkets from buried pompeii, and others that graced comely egyptian forms that have been dust and ashes now for forty centuries. her watch is from geneva, her card-case is from china, her hair is fromfromi don't know where her hair is from; i never could find out; that is, her other hairher public hair, her sunday hair; i don't mean the hair she goes to bed with.... and that reminds me of a trifle. any time you want to you can glance around the carpet of a pullman car, and go and pick up a hair-pin; but not to save your life can you get any woman in that car to acknowledge that hair-pin. now, isn't that strange? but it's true. the woman who has never swerved from cast-iron veracity and fidelity in her whole life will, when confronted with this crucial test, deny her hair-pin. she will deny that hair-pin before a hundred witnesses. i have stupidly got into more trouble and more hot water trying to hunt up the owner of a hair-pin in a pullman than by any other indiscretion of my life. dress reform and copyright. when the present copyright law was under discussion, mr. clemens appeared before the committee. he had sent speaker cannon the following letter: "dear uncle joseph,please get me the thanks of congress, not next week but right away. it is very necessary. do accomplish this for your affectionate old friend right awayby persuasion if you can, by violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that i get on the floor of the house for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in behalf of support, encouragement, and protection of one of the nation's most valuable assets and industriesits literature. i have arguments with mealso a barrel with liquid in it. "give me a chance. get me the thanks of congress. don't wait for othersthere isn't time; furnish them to me yourself and let congress ratify later. i have stayed away and let congress alone for seventy-one years and am entitled to the thanks. congress knows this perfectly well, and i have long felt hurt that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the house and never publicly uttered. "send me an order on the sergeant-at-arms quick. when shall i come? "with love and a benediction, "mark twain." while waiting to appear before the committee, mr. clemens talked to the reporters: why don't you ask why i am wearing such apparently unseasonable clothes? i'll tell you. i have found that when a man reaches the advanced age of seventy-one years, as i have, the continual sight of dark clothing is likely to have a depressing effect upon him. light-colored clothing is more pleasing to the eye and enlivens the spirit. now, of course, i cannot compel every one to wear such clothing just for my especial benefit, so i do the next best thing and wear it myself. of course, before a man reaches my years the fear of criticism might prevent him from indulging his fancy. i am not afraid of that. i am decidedly for pleasing color combinations in dress. i like to see the women's clothes, say, at the opera. what can be more depressing than the sombre black which custom requires men to wear upon state occasions? a group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just about as inspiring. after all, what is the purpose of clothing? are not clothes intended primarily to preserve dignity and also to afford comfort to their wearer? now i know of nothing more uncomfortable than the present-day clothes of men. the finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this. the best-dressed man i have ever seen, however, was a native of the sandwich islands who attracted my attention thirty years ago. now, when that man wanted to don especial dress to honor a public occasion or a holiday, why, he occasionally put on a pair of spectacles. otherwise the clothing with which god had provided him sufficed. of course, i have ideas of dress reform. for one thing, why not adopt some of the women's styles? goodness knows, they adopt enough of ours. take the peek-a-boo waist, for instance. it has the obvious advantages of being cool and comfortable, and in addition it is almost always made up in pleasing colors which cheer and do not depress. it is true that i dressed the connecticut yankee at king arthur's court in a plug-hat, but, let's see, that was twenty-five years ago. then no man was considered fully dressed until he donned a plug-hat. nowadays i think that no man is dressed until he leaves it home. why, when i left home yesterday they trotted out a plug-hat for me to wear. "you must wear it," they told me; "why, just think of going to washington without a plug-hat!" but i said no; i would wear a derby or nothing. why, i believe i could walk along the streets of new yorki never dobut still i think i couldand i should never see a well-dressed man wearing a plug-hat. if i did i should suspect him of something. i don't know just what, but i would suspect him. why, when i got up on the second story of that pennsylvania ferry-boat coming down here yesterday i saw howells coming along. he was the only man on the boat with a plug-hat, and i tell you he felt ashamed of himself. he said he had been persuaded to wear it against his better sense. but just think of a man nearly seventy years old who has not a mind of his own on such matters! "are you doing any work now?" the youngest and most serious reporter asked. work? i retired from work on my seventieth birthday. since then i have been putting in merely twenty-six hours a day dictating my autobiography, which, as john phoenix said in regard to his autograph, may be relied upon as authentic, as it is written exclusively by me. but it is not to be published in full until i am thoroughly dead. i have made it as caustic, fiendish, and devilish as possible. it will fill many volumes, and i shall continue writing it until the time comes for me to join the angels. it is going to be a terrible autobiography. it will make the hair of some folks curl. but it cannot be published until i am dead, and the persons mentioned in it and their children and grand-children are dead. it is something awful! "can you tell us the names of some of the notables that are here to see you off?" i don't know. i am so shy. my shyness takes a peculiar phase. i never look a person in the face. the reason is that i am afraid they may know me and that i may not know them, which makes it very embarrassing for both of us. i always wait for the other person to speak. i know lots of people, but i don't know who they are. it is all a matter of ability to observe things. i never observe anything now. i gave up the habit years ago. you should keep a habit up if you want to become proficient in it. for instance, i was a pilot once, but i gave it up, and i do not believe the captain of the minneapolis would let me navigate his ship to london. still, if i think that he is not on the job i may go up on the bridge and offer him a few suggestions. college girls. five hundred undergraduates, under the auspices of the woman's university club, new york, welcomed mr. clemens as their guest, april 3, 1906, and gave him the freedom of the club, which the chairman explained was freedom to talk individually to any girl present. i've worked for the public good thirty years, so for the rest of my life i shall work for my personal contentment. i am glad miss neron has fed me, for there is no telling what iniquity i might wander into on an empty stomachi mean, an empty mind. i am going to tell you a practical story about how once upon a time i was blinda story i should have been using all these months, but i never thought about telling it until the other night, and now it is too late, for on the nineteenth of this month i hope to take formal leave of the platform forever at carnegie hallthat is, take leave so far as talking for money and for people who have paid money to hear me talk. i shall continue to infest the platform on these conditionsthat there is nobody in the house who has paid to hear me, that i am not paid to be heard, and that there will be none but young women students in the audience. [here mr. clemens told the story of how he took a girl to the theatre while he was wearing tight boots, which appears elsewhere in this volume, and ended by saying: "and now let this be a lesson to youi don't know what kind of a lesson; i'll let you think it out."] girls girls. in my capacity of publisher i recently received a manuscript from a teacher which embodied a number of answers given by her pupils to questions propounded. these answers show that the children had nothing but the sound to go bythe sense was perfectly empty. here are some of their answers to words they were asked to define: auriferouspertaining to an orifice; ammoniathe food of the gods; equestrianone who asks questions; parasitea kind of umbrella; ipecaca man who likes a good dinner. and here is the definition of an ancient word honored by a great party: republicana sinner mentioned in the bible. and here is an innocent deliverance of a zoological kind: "there are a good many donkeys in the theological gardens." here also is a definition which really isn't very bad in its way: demagoguea vessel containing beer and other liquids. here, too, is a sample of a boy's composition on girls, which, i must say, i rather like: "girls are very stuckup and dignified in their manner and behaveyour. they think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and rags. they cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of guns. they stay at home all the time and go to church every sunday. they are al-ways sick. they are al-ways funy and making fun of boys hands and they say how dirty. they cant play marbles. i pity them poor things. they make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. i don't belave they ever killed a cat or anything. they look out every nite and say, 'oh, a'nt the moon lovely!' thir is one thing i have not told and that is they al-ways now their lessons bettern boys." the ladies. delivered at the anniversary festival, 1872, of the scottish corporation of london mr. clemens replied to the toast "the ladies." i am proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to this especial toast, to "the ladies," or to women if you please, for that is the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore the more entitled to reverence. i have noticed that the bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous characteristic of the scriptures, is always particular to never refer to even the illustrious mother of all mankind as a "lady," but speaks of her as a woman. it is odd, but you will find it is so. i am peculiarly proud of this honor, because i think that the toast to women is one which, by right and by every rule of gallantry, should take precedence of all othersof the army, of the navy, of even royalty itselfperhaps, though the latter is not necessary in this day and in this land, for the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad general health to all good women when you drink the health of the queen of england and the princess of wales. i have in mind a poem just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody. and what an inspiration that was, and how instantly the present toast recalls the verses to all our minds when the most noble, the most gracious, the purest, and sweetest of all poets says: "woman! o woman!er wom-" however, you remember the lines; and you remember how feelingly, how daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman; and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into worship of the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere breath, mere words. and you call to mind now, as i speak, how the poet, with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this beautiful child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows that must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how the pathetic story culminates in that apostropheso wild, so regretful, so full of mournful retrospection. the lines run thus: "alas!alas!aalas! --alas!---alas!" and so on. i do not remember the rest; but, taken together, it seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that human genius has ever brought forthand i feel that if i were to talk hours i could not do my great theme completer or more graceful justice than i have now done in simply quoting that poet's matchless words. the phases of the womanly nature are infinite in their variety. take any type of woman, and you shall find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love. and you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. who was more patriotic than joan of arc? who was braver? who has given us a grander instance of self-sacrificing devotion? ah! you remember, you remember well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over us all when joan of arc fell at waterloo. who does not sorrow for the loss of sappho, the sweet. singer of israel? who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening influences, the humble piety of lucretia borgia? who can join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when he can look back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother eve arrayed in her modification of the highland costume? sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been poets. as long as language lives the name of cleopatra will live. and not because she conquered george iii.but because she wrote those divine lines: "let dogs delight to bark and bite, for god hath made them so." the story of the world is adorned with the names of illustrious ones of our own sexsome of them sons of st. andrew, tooscott, bruce, burns, the warrior wallace, ben nevisthe gifted ben lomond, and the great new scotchman, ben disraeli.* out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain ranges of sublime womenthe queen of sheba, josephine, semiramis, sairey gamp; the list is endlessbut i will not call the mighty roll, the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion, luminous with the glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving worship of the good and the true of all epochs and all climes. suffice it for our pride and our honor that we in our day have added to it such names as those of grace darling and florence nightingale. woman is all that she should begentle, patient, long-suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous impulses. it is her blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift the fallen, befriend the friendlessin a word, afford the healing of her sympathies and a home in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted children of misfortune that knock at its hospitable door. and when i say, god bless her, there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother but in his heart will say, amen! * mr. benjamin disraeli, at that time prime minister of england, had just been elected lord rector of glasgow university, and had made a speech which gave rise to a world of discussion. woman's press club. on october 27, 1900, the new york woman's press club gave a tea in carnegie hall. mr. clemens was the guest of honor. if i were asked an opinion i would call this an ungrammatical nation. there is no such thing as perfect grammar, and i don't always speak good grammar myself. but i have been foregathering for the past few days with professors of american universities, and i've heard them all say things like this: "he don't like to do it." [there was a stir.] oh, you'll hear that to-night if you listen, or, "he would have liked to have done it." you'll catch some educated americans saying that. when these men take pen in hand they write with as good grammar as any. but the moment they throw the pen aside they throw grammatical morals aside with it. to illustrate the desirability and possibility of concentration, i must tell you a story of my little six-year-old daughter. the governess had been teaching her about the reindeer, and, as the custom was, she related it to the family. she reduced the history of that reindeer to two or three sentences when the governess could not have put it into a page. she said: "the reindeer is a very swift animal. a reindeer once drew a sled four hundred miles in two hours." she appended the comment: "this was regarded as extraordinary." and concluded: "when that reindeer was done drawing that sled four hundred miles in two hours it died." as a final instance of the force of limitations in the development of concentration, i must mention that beautiful creature, helen keller, whom i have known for these many years. i am filled with the wonder of her knowledge, acquired because shut out from all distraction. if i could have been deaf, dumb, and blind i also might have arrived at something. votes for women. at the annual meeting of the hebrew technical school for girls, held in the temple emmanuel, january 20, 1901 mr. clemens was introduced by president meyer, who said: "in one of mr. clemens's works he expressed his opinion of men, saying he had no choice between hebrew and gentile, black men or white; to him all men were alike. but i never could find that he expressed his opinion of women; perhaps that opinion was so exalted that he could not express it. we shall now be called to hear what he thinks of women." ladies and gentlemen,it is a small help that i can afford, but it is just such help that one can give as coming from the heart through the mouth. the report of mr. meyer was admirable, and i was as interested in it as you have been. why, i'm twice as old as he, and i've had so much experience that i would say to him, when he makes his appeal for help: "don't make it for to-day or to-morrow, but collect the money on the spot." we are all creatures of sudden impulse. we must be worked up by steam, as it were. get them to write their wills now, or it may be too late by-and-by. fifteen or twenty years ago i had an experience i shall never forget. i got into a church which was crowded by a sweltering and panting multitude. the city missionary of our townhartfordmade a telling appeal for help. he told of personal experiences among the poor in cellars and top lofts requiring instances of devotion and help. the poor are always good to the poor. when a person with his millions gives a hundred thousand dollars it makes a great noise in the world, but he does not miss it; it's the widow's mite that makes no noise but does the best work. i remember on that occasion in the hartford church the collection was being taken up. the appeal had so stirred me that i could hardly wait for the hat or plate to come my way. i had four hundred dollars in my pocket, and i was anxious to drop it in the plate and wanted to borrow more. but the plate was so long in coming my way that the fever-heat of beneficence was going down lower and lowergoing down at the rate of a hundred dollars a minute. the plate was passed too late. when it finally came to me, my enthusiasm had gone down so much that i kept my four hundred dollarsand stole a dime from the plate. so, you see, time sometimes leads to crime. oh, many a time have i thought of that and regretted it, and i adjure you all to give while the fever is on you. referring to woman's sphere in life, i'll say that woman is always right. for twenty-five years i've been a woman's rights man. i have always believed, long before my mother died, that, with her gray hairs and admirable intellect, perhaps she knew as much as i did. perhaps she knew as much about voting as i. i should like to see the time come when women shall help to make the laws. i should like to see that whip-lash, the ballot, in the hands of women. as for this city's government, i don't want to say much, except that it is a shamea shame; but if i should live twenty-five years longerand there is no reason why i shouldn'ti think i'll see women handle the ballot. if women had the ballot to-day, the state of things in this town would not exist. if all the women in this town had a vote to-day they would elect a mayor at the next election, and they would rise in their might and change the awful state of things now existing here. womanan opinion. address at an early banquet of the washington correspondents' club. the twelfth toast was as follows: "womanthe pride of any profession, and the jewel of ours." mr. president,i do not know why i should be singled out to receive the greatest distinction of the eveningfor so the office of replying to the toast of woman has been regarded in every age. i do not know why i have received this distinction, unless it be that i am a trifle less homely than the other members of the club. but be this as it may, mr. president, i am proud of the position, and you could not have chosen any one who would have accepted it more gladly, or labored with a heartier good-will to do the subject justice than ibecause, sir, i love the sex. i love all the women, irrespective of age or color. human intellect cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir. she sews on our buttons; she mends our clothes; she ropes us in at the church fairs; she confides in us she tells us whatever she can find out about the little private affairs of the neighbors; she gives us good advice, and plenty of it; she soothes our aching brows; she bears our childrenours as a general thing. in all relations of life, sir, it is but a just and graceful tribute to woman to say of her that she is a brick. wheresoever you place woman, sirin whatever position or estateshe is an ornament to the place she occupies, and a treasure to the world. [here mr. clemens paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers, and remarked that the applause should come in at this point. it came in. he resumed his eulogy.] look at cleopatra!look at desdemona!look at florence nightingale!look at joan of arc!look at lucretia borgia! [disapprobation expressed.] well [said mr. clemens, scratching his head, doubtfully], suppose we let lucretia slide. look at joyce heth!look at mother eve! you need not look at her unless you want to, but [said mr. clemens, reflectively, after a pause] eve was ornamental, sirparticularly before the fashions changed. i repeat, sir, look at the illustrious names of history. look at the widow machree!look at lucy stone!look at elizabeth cady stanton!look at george francis train! and, sir, i say it with bowed head and deepest venerationlook at the mother of washington! she raised a boy that could not tell a liecould not tell a lie! but he never had any chance. it might have been different if he had belonged to the washington newspaper correspondents' club. i repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. as a sweetheart, she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet-nurse, she has no equal among men. what, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? they would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce. then let us cherish her; let us protect her; let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy, ourselvesif we get a chance. but, jesting aside, mr. president, woman is lovable, gracious, kind of heart, beautifulworthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference. not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially in this bumper of wine, for each and every one has personally known, and loved, and honored the very best one of them allhis own mother. advice to girls. in 1907 a young girl whom mr. clemens met on the steamer minnehaha called him "grandpa," and he called her his granddaughter. she was attending st. timothy's school, at catonsville, maryland, and mr. clemens promised her to see her graduate. he accordingly made the journey from new york on june 10, 1909, and delivered a short address. i don't know what to tell you girls to do. mr. martin has told you everything you ought to do, and now i must give you some don'ts. there are three things which come to my mind which i consider excellent advice: first, girls, don't smokethat is, don't smoke to excess. i am seventy-three and a half years old, and have been smoking seventy-three of them. but i never smoke to excessthat is, i smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time. second, don't drinkthat is, don't drink to excess. third, don't marryi mean, to excess. honesty is the best policy. that is an old proverb; but you don't want ever to forget it in your journey through life. taxes and morals. address delivered in new york, january 22, 1906. at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of tuskeegee institute by booker t. washington, mr. choate presided, and in introducing mr. clemens made fun of him because he made play his work, and that when he worked hardest he did so lying in bed. i came here in the responsible capacity of policeman to watch mr. choate. this is an occasion of grave and serious importance, and it seems necessary for me to be present, so that if he tried to work off any statement that required correction, reduction, refutation, or exposure, there would be a tried friend of the public to protect the house. he has not made one statement whose veracity fails to tally exactly with my own standard. i have never seen a person improve so. this makes me thankful and proud of a country that can produce such mentwo such men. and all in the same country. we can't be with you always; we are passing away, and thenwell, everything will have to stop, i reckon. it is a sad thought. but in spirit i shall still be with you. choate, tooif he can. every born american among the eighty millions, let his creed or destitution of creed be what it may, is indisputably a christian to this degreethat his moral constitution is christian. there are two kinds of christian morals, one private and the other public. these two are so distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more akin to each other than are archangels and politicians. during three hundred and sixty-three days in the year the american citizen is true to his christian private morals, and keeps undefiled the nation's character at its best and highest; then in the other two days of the year he leaves his christian private morals at home and carries his christian public morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work. without a blush he will vote for an unclean boss if that boss is his party's moses, without compunction he will vote against the best man in the whole land if he is on the other ticket. every year in a number of cities and states he helps put corrupt men in office, whereas if he would but throw away his christian public morals, and carry his christian private morals to the polls, he could promptly purify the public service and make the possession of office a high and honorable distinction. once a year he lays aside his christian private morals and hires a ferry-boat and piles up his bonds in a warehouse in new jersey for three days, and gets out his christian public morals and goes to the tax office and holds up his hands and swears he wishes he may nevernever if he's got a cent in the world, so help him. the next day the list appears in the papersa column and a quarter of names, in fine print, and every man in the list a billionaire and member of a couple of churches. i know all those people. i have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them. they never miss a sermon when they are so's to be around, and they never miss swearing-off day, whether they are so's to be around or not. i used to be an honest man. i am crumbling. noi have crumbled. when they assessed me at $75,000 a fortnight ago i went out and tried to borrow the money, and couldn't; then when i found they were letting a whole crop of millionaires live in new york at a third of the price they were charging me i was hurt, i was indignant, and said: "this is the last feather. i am not going to run this town all by myself." in that momentin that memorable momenti began to crumble. in fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. in fifteen minutes i had become just a mere moral sand-pile; and i lifted up my hand along with those seasoned and experienced deacons and swore off every rag of personal property i've got in the world, clear down to cork leg, glass eye, and what is left of my wig. those tax officers were moved; they were profoundly moved. they had long been accustomed to seeing hardened old grafters act like that, and they could endure the spectacle; but they were expecting better things of me, a chartered, professional moralist, and they were saddened. i fell visibly in their respect and esteem, and i should have fallen in my own, except that i had already struck bottom, and there wasn't any place to fall to. at tuskeegee they will jump to misleading conclusions from insufficient evidence, along with doctor parkhurst, and they will deceive the student with the superstition that no gentleman ever swears. look at those good millionaires; aren't they gentlemen? well, they swear. only once in a year, maybe, but there's enough, bulk to it to make up for the lost time. and do they lose anything by it? no, they don't; they save enough in three minutes to support the family seven years. when they swear, do we shudder? nounless they say "damn!" then we do. it shrivels us all up. yet we ought not to feel so about it, because we all sweareverybody. including the ladies. including doctor parkhurst, that strong and brave and excellent citizen, but superficially educated. for it is not the word that is the sin, it is the spirit back of the word. when an irritated lady says "oh!" the spirit back of it is "damn!" and that is the way it is going to be recorded against her. it always makes me so sorry when i hear a lady swear like that. but if she says "damn," and says it in an amiable, nice way, it isn't going to be recorded at all. the idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong; he can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way. the historian, john fiske, whom i knew well and loved, was a spotless and most noble and upright christian gentleman, and yet he swore once. not exactly that, maybe; still, hebut i will tell you about it. one day, when he was deeply immersed in his work, his wife came in, much moved and profoundly distressed, and said: "i am sorry to disturb you, john, but i must, for this is a serious matter, and needs to be attended to at once." then, lamenting, she brought a grave accusation against their little son. she said: "he has been saying his aunt mary is a fool and his aunt martha is a damned fool." mr. fiske reflected upon the matter a minute, then said: "oh, well, it's about the distinction i should make between them myself." mr. washington, i beg you to convey these teachings to your great and prosperous and most beneficent educational institution, and add them to the prodigal mental and moral riches wherewith you equip your fortunate proteges for the struggle of life. tammany and croker. mr. clemens made his debut as a campaign orator on october 7, 1901, advocating the election of seth low for mayor, not as a republican, but as a member of the "acorns," which he described as a "third party having no political affiliation, but was concerned only in the selection of the best candidates and the best member." great britain had a tammany and a croker a good while ago. this tammany was in india, and it began its career with the spread of the english dominion after the battle of plassey. its first boss was clive, a sufficiently crooked person sometimes, but straight as a yardstick when compared with the corkscrew crookedness of the second boss, warren hastings. that old-time tammany was the east india company's government, and had its headquarters at calcutta. ostensibly it consisted of a great council of four persons, of whom one was the governor-general, warren hastings; really it consisted of one personwarren hastings; for by usurpation he concentrated all authority in himself and governed the country like an autocrat. ostensibly the court of directors, sitting in london and representing the vast interests of the stockholders, was supreme in authority over the calcutta great council, whose membership it appointed and removed at pleasure, whose policies it dictated, and to whom it conveyed its will in the form of sovereign commands; but whenever it suited hastings, he ignored even that august body's authority and conducted the mighty affairs of the british empire in india to suit his own notions. at his mercy was the daily bread of every official, every trader, every clerk, every civil servant, big and little, in the whole huge india company's machine, and the man who hazarded his bread by any failure of subserviency to the boss lost it. now then, let the supreme masters of british india, the giant corporation of the india company of london, stand for the voters of the city of new york; let the great council of calcutta stand for tammany; let the corrupt and money-grubbing great hive of serfs which served under the indian tammany's rod stand for new york tammany's serfs; let warren hastings stand for richard croker, and it seems to me that the parallel is exact and complete. and so let us be properly grateful and thank god and our good luck that we didn't invent tammany. edmund burke, regarded by many as the greatest orator of all times, conducted the case against warren hastings in that renowned trial which lasted years, and which promises to keep its renown for centuries to come. i wish to quote some of the things he said. i wish to imagine him arrainging mr. croker and tammany before the voters of new york city and pleading with them for the overthrow of that combined iniquity of the 5th of november, and will substitute for "my lords," read "fellow-citizens"; for "kingdom," read "city"; for "parliamentary process," read "political campaign"; for "two houses," read "two parties," and so it reads: "fellow-citizens, i must look upon it as an auspicious circumstance to this cause, in which the honor of the city is involved, that from the first commencement of our political campaign to this the hour of solemn trial not the smallest difference of opinion has arisen between the two parties. "you will see, in the progress of this cause, that there is not only a long, connected, systematic series of misdemeanors, but an equally connected system of maxims and principles invented to justify them. upon both of these you must judge. "it is not only the interest of the city of new york, now the most considerable part of the city of the americans, which is concerned, but the credit and honor of the nation itself will be decided by this decision." at a later meeting of the acorn club, mr. clemens said: tammany is dead, and there's no use in blackguarding a corpse. the election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. he had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, "where is the best place to go to?" he was undecided about it. so the minister. told him that each place had its advantagesheaven for climate, and hell for society. municipal corruption. address at the city club dinner, january 4, 1901. bishop potter told how an alleged representative of tammany hall asked him in effect if he would cease his warfare upon the police department if a certain captain and inspector were dismissed. he replied that he would never be satisfied until the "man at the top" and the "system" which permitted evils in the police department were crushed. the bishop has just spoken of a condition of things which none of us can deny, and which ought not to exist; that is, the lust of gaina lust which does not stop short of the penitentiary or the jail to accomplish its ends. but we may be sure of one thing, and that is that this sort of thing is not universal. if it were, this country would not be. you may put this down as a fact: that out of every fifty men, forty-nine are clean. then why is it, you may ask, that the forty-nine don't have things the way they want them? i'll tell you why it is. a good deal has been said here to-night about what is to be accomplished by organization. that's just the thing. it's because the fiftieth fellow and his pals are organized and the other forty-nine are not that the dirty one rubs it into the clean fellows every time. you may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much organization that it will interfere with the work to be done. the bishop here had an experience of that sort, and told all about it down-town the other night. he was painting a barnit was his own barnand yet he was informed that his work must stop; he was a non-union painter, and couldn't continue at that sort of job. now, all these conditions of which you complain should be remedied, and i am here to tell you just how to do it. i've been a statesman without salary for many years, and i have accomplished great and widespread good. i don't know that it has benefited anybody very much, even if it was good; but i do know that it hasn't harmed me very much, and is hasn't made me any richer. we hold the balance of power. put up your best men for office, and we shall support the better one. with the election of the best man for mayor would follow the selection of the best man for police commissioner and chief of police. my first lesson in the craft of statesmanship was taken at an early age. fifty-one years ago i was fourteen years old, and we had a society in the town i lived in, patterned after the free-masons, or the ancient order of united farmers, or some such thingjust what it was patterned after doesn't matter. it had an inside guard and an outside guard, and a past-grand warden, and a lot of such things, so as to give dignity to the organization and offices to the members. generally speaking it was a pretty good sort of organization, and some of the very best boys in the village, includingbut i mustn't get personal on an occasion like thisand the society would have got along pretty well had it not been for the fact that there were a certain number of the members who could be bought. they got to be an infernal nuisance. every time we had an election the candidates had to go around and see the purchasable members. the price per vote was paid in doughnuts, and it depended somewhat on the appetites of the individuals as to the price of the votes. this thing ran along until some of us, the really very best boys in the organization, decided that these corrupt practices must stop, and for the purpose of stopping them we organized a third party. we had a name, but we were never known by that name. those who didn't like us called us the anti-doughnut party, but we didn't mind that. we said: "call us what you please; the name doesn't matter. we are organized for a principle." by-and-by the election came around, and we made a big mistake. we were triumphantly beaten. that taught us a lesson. then and there we decided never again to nominate anybody for anything. we decided simply to force the other two parties in the society to nominate their very best men. although we were organized for a principle, we didn't care much about that. principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election-time. after that you hang them up to let them season. the next time we had an election we told both the other parties that we'd beat any candidates put up by any one of them of whom we didn't approve. in that election we did business. we got the man we wanted. i suppose they called us the anti-doughnut party because they couldn't buy us with their doughnuts. they didn't have enough of them. most reformers arrive at their price sooner or later, and i suppose we would have had our price; but our opponents weren't offering anything but doughnuts, and those we spurned. now it seems to me that an anti-doughnut party is just what is wanted in the present emergency. i would have the anti-doughnuts felt in every city and hamlet and school district in this state and in the united states. i was an anti-doughnut in my boyhood, and i'm an anti-doughnut still. the modern designation is mugwump. there used to be quite a number of us mugwumps, but i think i'm the only one left. i had a vote this fall, and i began to make some inquiries as to what i had better do with it. i don't know anything about finance, and i never did, but i know some pretty shrewd financiers, and they told me that mr. bryan wasn't safe on any financial question. i said to myself, then, that it wouldn't do for me to vote for bryan, and i rather thoughti know nowthat mckinley wasn't just right on this philippine question, and so i just didn't vote for anybody. i've got that vote yet, and i've kept it clean, ready to deposit at some other election. it wasn't cast for any wildcat financial theories, and it wasn't cast to support the man who sends our boys as volunteers out into the philippines to get shot down under a polluted flag. municipal government. address at the annual dinner of the st. nicholas society, new york, december 6, 1900. doctor mackay, in his response to the toast "st. nicholas," referred to mr. clemens, saying: "mark twain is as true a preacher of true righteousness as any bishop, priest, or minister of any church to-day, because he moves men to forget their faults by cheerful well-doing instead of making them sour and morbid by everlastingly bending their attention to the seamy and sober side of life." mr. chairman and gentlemen of the st. nicholas society,these are, indeed, prosperous days for me. night before last, in a speech, the bishop of the diocese of new york complimented me for my contribution to theology, and to-night the reverend doctor mackay has elected me to the ministry. i thanked bishop potter then for his compliment, and i thank doctor mackay now for that promotion. i think that both have discerned in me what i long ago discerned, but what i was afraid the world would never learn to recognize. in this absence of nine years i find a great improvement in the city of new york. i am glad to speak on that as a toast"the city of new york." some say it has improved because i have been away. others, and i agree with them, say it has improved because i have come back. we must judge of a city, as of a man, by its external appearances and by its inward character. in externals the foreigner coming to these shores is more impressed at first by our sky-scrapers. they are new to him. he has not done anything of the sort since he built the tower of babel. the foreigner is shocked by them. in the daylight they are ugly. they arewell, too chimneyfied and too snaggylike a mouth that needs attention from a dentist; like a cemetery that is all monuments and no gravestones. but at night, seen from the river where they are columns towering against the sky, all sparkling with light, they are fairylike; they are beauty more satisfactory to the soul and more enchanting than anything that man has dreamed of since the arabian nights. we can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go. when your foreigner makes disagreeable comments on new york by daylight, float him down the river at night. what has made these sky-scrapers possible is the elevator. the cigar-box which the european calls a "lift" needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. the lift stops to reflect between floors. that is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. the american elevator acts like the man's patent purgeit worked. as the inventor said, "this purge doesn't waste any time fooling around; it attends strictly to business." that new-yorkers have the cleanest, quickest, and most admirable system of street railways in the world has been forced upon you by the abnormal appreciation you have of your hackman. we ought always to be grateful to him for that service. nobody else would have brought such a system into existence for us. we ought to build him a monument. we owe him one as much as we owe one to anybody. let it be a tall one. nothing permanent, of course; build it of plaster, say. then gaze at it and realize how grateful we arefor the time beingand then pull it down and throw it on the ash-heap. that's the way to honor your public heroes. as to our streets, i find them cleaner than they used to be. i miss those dear old landmarks, the symmetrical mountain ranges of dust and dirt that used to be piled up along the streets for the wind and rain to tear down at their pleasure. yes, new york is cleaner than bombay. i realize that i have been in bombay, that i now am in new york; that it is not my duty to flatter bombay, but rather to flatter new york. compared with the wretched attempts of london to light that city, new york may fairly be said to be a well-lighted city. why, london's attempt at good lighting is almost as bad as london's attempt at rapid transit. there is just one good system of rapid transit in londonthe "tube," and that, of course, had been put in by americans. perhaps, after a while, those americans will come back and give new york also a good underground system. perhaps they have already begun. i have been so busy since i came back that i haven't had time as yet to go down cellar. but it is by the laws of the city, it is by the manners of the city, it is by the ideals of the city, it is by the customs of the city and by the municipal government which all these elements correct, support, and foster, by which the foreigner judges the city. it is by these that he realizes that new york may, indeed, hold her head high among the cities of the world. it is by these standards that he knows whether to class the city higher or lower than the other municipalities of the world. gentlemen, you have the best municipal government in the worldthe purest and the most fragrant. the very angels envy you, and wish they could establish a government like it in heaven. you got it by a noble fidelity to civic duty. you got it by stern and ever-watchful exertion of the great powers with which you are charged by the rights which were handed down to you by your forefathers, by your manly refusal to let base men invade the high places of your government, and by instant retaliation when any public officer has insulted you in the city's name by swerving in the slightest from the upright and full performance of his duty. it is you who have made this city the envy of the cities of the world. god will bless you for itgod will bless you for it. why, when you approach the final resting-place the angels of heaven will gather at the gates and cry out: "here they come! show them to the archangel's box, and turn the lime-light on them!" china and the philippines. at a dinner given in the waldorf-astoria hotel, december, 1900. winston spencer churchill was introduced by mr. clemens for years i've been a self-appointed missionary to bring about the union of america and the motherland. they ought to be united. behold america, the refuge of the oppressed from everywhere (who can pay fifty dollars' admission)any one except a chinamanstanding up for human rights everywhere, even helping china let people in free when she wants to collect fifty dollars upon them. and how unselfishly england has wrought for the open door for all! and how piously america has wrought for that open door in all cases where it was not her own! yes, as a missionary i've sung my songs of praise. and yet i think that england sinned when she got herself into a war in south africa which she could have avoided, just as we sinned in getting into a similar war in the philippines. mr. churchill, by his father, is an englishman; by his mother he is an americanno doubt a blend that makes the perfect man. england and america; yes, we are kin. and now that we are also kin in sin, there is nothing more to be desired. the harmony is complete, the blend is perfect. theoretical and practical morals. the new vagabonds club of london, made up of the leading younger literary men of the day, gave a dinner in honor of mr. and mrs. clemens, july 8, 1899. it has always been difficultleave that word difficultnot exceedingly difficult, but just difficult, nothing more than that, not the slightest shade to add to thatjust difficultto respond properly, in the right phraseology, when compliments are paid to me; but it is more than difficult when the compliments are paid to a better than imy wife. and while i am not here to testify against myselfi can't be expected to do so, a prisoner in your own country is not admitted to do soas to which member of the family wrote my books, i could say in general that really i wrote the books myself. my wife puts the facts in, and they make it respectable. my modesty won't suffer while compliments are being paid to literature, and through literature to my family. i can't get enough of them. i am curiously situated to-night. it so rarely happens that i am introduced by a humorist; i am generally introduced by a person of grave walk and carriage. that makes the proper background of gravity for brightness. i am going to alter to suit, and haply i may say some humorous things. when you start with a blaze of sunshine and upburst of humor, when you begin with that, the proper office of humor is to reflect, to put you into that pensive mood of deep thought, to make you think of your sins, if you wish half an hour to fly. humor makes me reflect now to-night, it sets the thinking machinery in motion. always, when i am thinking, there come suggestions of what i am, and what we all are, and what we are coming to. a sermon comes from my lips always when i listen to a humorous speech. i seize the opportunity to throw away frivolities, to say something to plant the seed, and make all better than when i came. in mr. grossmith's remarks there was a subtle something suggesting my favorite theory of the difference between theoretical morals and practical morals. i try to instil practical morals in the place of theatricali mean theoretical; but as an addenduman annexsomething added to theoretical morals. when your chairman said it was the first time he had ever taken the chair, he did not mean that he had not taken lots of other things; he attended my first lecture and took notes. this indicated the man's disposition. there was nothing else flying round, so he took notes; he would have taken anything he could get. i can bring a moral to bear here which shows the difference between theoretical morals and practical morals. theoretical morals are the sort you get on your mother's knee, in good books, and from the pulpit. you gather them in your head, and not in your heart; they are theory without practice. without the assistance of practice to perfect them, it is difficult to teach a child to "be honest, don't steal." i will teach you how it should be done, lead you into temptation, teach you how to steal, so that you may recognize when you have stolen and feel the proper pangs. it is no good going round and bragging you have never taken the chair. as by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime, you learn real morals. commit all the crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to it, commit two or three every day, and by-and-by you will be proof against them. when you are through you will be proof against all sins and morally perfect. you will be vaccinated against every possible commission of them. this is the only way. i will read you a written statement upon the subject that i wrote three years ago to read to the sabbath-schools. [here the lecturer turned his pockets out, but without success.] no! i have left it at home. still, it was a mere statement of fact, illustrating the value of practical morals produced by the commission of crime. it was in my boyhoodjust a statement of fact, reading is only more formal, merely facts, merely pathetic facts, which i can state so as to be understood. it relates to the first time i ever stole a watermelon; that is, i think it was the first time; anyway, it was right along there somewhere. i stole it out of a farmer's wagon while he was waiting on another customer. "stole" is a harsh term. i withdrewi retired that watermelon. i carried it to a secluded corner of a lumber-yard. i broke it open. it was greenthe greenest watermelon raised in the valley that year. the minute i saw it was green i was sorry, and began to reflectreflection is the beginning of reform. if you don't reflect when you commit a crime then that crime is of no use; it might just as well have been committed by some one else. you must reflect or the value is lost; you are not vaccinated against committing it again. i began to reflect. i said to myself: "what ought a boy to do who has stolen a green watermelon? what would george washington do, the father of his country, the only american who could not tell a lie? what would he do? there is only one right, high, noble thing for any boy to do who has stolen a watermelon of that class: he must make restitution; he must restore that stolen property to its rightful owner." i said i would do it when i made that good resolution. i felt it to be a noble, uplifting obligation. i rose up spiritually stronger and refreshed. i carried that watermelon backwhat was left of itand restored it to the farmer, and made him give me a ripe one in its place. now you see that this constant impact of crime upon crime protects you against further commission of crime. it builds you up. a man can't become morally perfect by stealing one or a thousand green watermelons, but every little helps. i was at a great school yesterday (st. paul's), where for four hundred years they have been busy with brains, and building up england by producing pepys, miltons, and marlboroughs. six hundred boys left to nothing in the world but theoretical morality. i wanted to become the professor of practical morality, but the high master was away, so i suppose i shall have to go on making my livingthe same old wayby adding practical to theoretical morality. what are the glory that was greece, the grandeur that was rome, compared to the glory and grandeur and majesty of a perfected morality such as you see before you? the new vagabonds are old vagabonds (undergoing the old sort of reform). you drank my health; i hope i have not been unuseful. take this system of morality to your hearts. take it home to your neighbors and your graves, and i hope that it will be a long time before you arrive there. layman's sermon. the young men's christian association asked mr. clemens to deliver a lay sermon at the majestic theatre, new york, march 4, 1906. more than five thousand young men tried to get into the theatre, and in a short time traffic was practically stopped in the adjacent streets. the police reserves had to be called out to thin the crowd. doctor fagnani had said something before about the police episode, and mr. clemens took it up. i have been listening to what was said here, and there is in it a lesson of citizenship. you created the police, and you are responsible for them. one must pause, therefore, before criticising them too harshly. they are citizens, just as we are. a little of citizenship ought to be taught at the mother's knee and in the nursery. citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. what keeps a republic on its legs is good citizenship. organization is necessary in all things. it is even necessary in reform. i was an organization myself oncefor twelve hours. i was in chicago a few years ago about to depart for new york. there were with me mr. osgood, a publisher, and a stenographer. i picked out a state-room on a train, the principal feature of which was that it contained the privilege of smoking. the train had started but a short time when the conductor came in and said that there had been a mistake made, and asked that we vacate the apartment. i refused, but when i went out on the platform osgood and the stenographer agreed to accept a section. they were too modest. now, i am not modest. i was born modest, but it didn't last. i asserted myself, insisted upon my rights, and finally the pullman conductor and the train conductor capitulated, and i was left in possession. i went into the dining-car the next morning for breakfast. ordinarily i only care for coffee and rolls, but this particular morning i espied an important-looking man on the other side of the car eating broiled chicken. i asked for broiled chicken, and i was told by the waiter and later by the dining-car conductor that there was no broiled chicken. there must have been an argument, for the pullman conductor came in and remarked: "if he wants broiled chicken, give it to him. if you haven't got it on the train, stop somewhere. it will be better for all concerned!" i got the chicken. it is from experiences such as these that you get your education of life, and you string them into jewels or into tinware, as you may choose. i have received recently several letters asking my counsel or advice. the principal request is for some incident that may prove helpful to the young. there were a lot of incidents in my career to help me alongsometimes they helped me along faster than i wanted to go. here is such a request. it is a telegram from joplin, missouri, and it reads: "in what one of your works can we find the definition of a gentleman?" i have not answered that telegram, either; i couldn't. it seems to me that if any man has just merciful and kindly instincts he would be a gentleman, for he would need nothing else in the world. i received the other day a letter from my old friend, william dean howellshowells, the head of american literature. no one is able to stand with him. he is an old, old friend of mine, and he writes me, "to-morrow i shall be sixty-nine years old." why, i am surprised at howells writing that! i have known him longer than that. i'm sorry to see a man trying to appear so young. let's see. howells says now, "i see you have been burying patrick. i suppose he was old, too." no, he was never oldpatrick. he came to us thirty-six years ago. he was my coachman on the morning that i drove my young bride to our new home. he was a young irishman, slender, tall, lithe, honest, truthful, and he never changed in all his life. he really was with us but twenty-five years, for he did not go with us to europe, but he never regarded that as separation. as the children grew up he was their guide. he was all honor, honesty, and affection. he was with us in new hampshire, with us last summer, and his hair was just as black, his eyes were just as blue, his form just as straight, and his heart just as good as on the day we first met. in all the long years patrick never made a mistake. he never needed an order, he never received a command. he knew. i have been asked for my idea of an ideal gentleman, and i give it to youpatrick mcaleer. university settlement society. after the serious addresses were made, seth low introduced mr. clemens at the settlement house, february 2, 1901. the older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes. ten days ago i did not know anything about the university settlement except what i'd read in the pamphlets sent me. now, after being here and hearing mrs. hewitt and mrs. thomas, it seems to me i know of nothing like it at all. it's a charity that carries no humiliation with it. marvellous it is, to think of schools where you don't have to drive the children in but drive them out. it was not so in my day. down-stairs just now i saw a dancing lesson going on. you must pay a cent for a lesson. you can't get it for nothing. that's the reason i never learned to dance. but it was the pawnbroker's shop you have here that interested me mightily. i've known something about pawnbrokers' shops in my time, but here you have a wonderful plan. the ordinary pawnbroker charges, thirty-six per cent; a year for a loan, and i've paid more myself, but here a man or woman in distress can obtain a loan. for one per cent. a month! it's wonderful! i've been interested in all i've heard to-day, especially in the romances recounted by mrs. thomas, which reminds me that i have a romance of my own in my autobiography, which i am building for the instruction of the world. in san francisco, many years ago, when i was a newspaper reporter (perhaps i should say i had been and was willing to be), a pawnbroker was taking care of what property i had. there was a friend of mine, a poet, out of a job, and he was having a hard time of it, too. there was passage in it, but i guess i've got to keep that for the autobiography. well, my friend the poet thought his life was a failure, and i told him i thought it was, and then he said he thought he ought to commit suicide, and i said "all right," which was disinterested advice to a friend in trouble; but, like all such advice, there was just a little bit of self-interest back of it, for if i could get a "scoop" on the other newspapers i could get a job. the poet could be spared, and so, largely for his own good and partly for mine, i kept the thing in his mind, which was necessary, as would-be suicides are very changeable and hard to hold to their purpose. he had a preference for a pistol, which was an extravagance, for we hadn't enough between us to hire a pistol. a fork would have been easier. and so he concluded to drown himself, and i said it was an excellent ideathe only trouble being that he was so good a swimmer. so we went down to the beach. i went along to see that the thing was done right. then something most romantic happened. there came in on the sea something that had been on its way for three years. it rolled in across the broad pacific with a message that was full of meaning to that poor poet and cast itself at his feet. it was a life-preserver! this was a complication. and then i had an ideahe never had any, especially when he was going to write poetry; i suggested that we pawn the life-preserver and get a revolver. the pawnbroker gave us an old derringer with a bullet as big as a hickory nut. when he heard that it was only a poet that was going to kill himself he did not quibble. well, we succeeded in sending a bullet right through his head. it was a terrible moment when he placed that pistol against his forehead and stood for an instant. i said, "oh, pull the trigger!" and he did, and cleaned out all the gray matter in his brains. it carried the poetic faculty away, and now he's a useful member of society. now, therefore, i realize that there's no more beneficent institution than this penny fund of yours, and i want all the poets to know this. i did think about writing you a check, but now i think i'll send you a few copies of what one of your little members called strawberry finn. public education association. address at a meeting of the berkeley lyceum, new york, november 23, 1900. i don't suppose that i am called here as an expert on education, for that would show a lack of foresight on your part and a deliberate intention to remind me of my shortcomings. as i sat here looking around for an idea it struck me that i was called for two reasons. one was to do good to me, a poor unfortunate traveller on the world's wide ocean, by giving me a knowledge of the nature and scope of your society and letting me know that others beside myself have been of some use in the world. the other reason that i can see is that you have called me to show by way of contrast what education can accomplish if administered in the right sort of doses. your worthy president said that the school pictures, which have received the admiration of the world at the paris exposition, have been sent to russia, and this was a compliment from that governmentwhich is very surprising to me. why, it is only an hour since i read a cablegram in the newspapers beginning "russia proposes to retrench." i was not expecting such a thunderbolt, and i thought what a happy thing it will be for russians when the retrenchment will bring home the thirty thousand russian troops now in manchuria, to live in peaceful pursuits. i thought this was what germany should do also without delay, and that france and all the other nations in china should follow suit. why should not china be free from the foreigners, who are only making trouble on her soil? if they would only all go home, what a pleasant place china would be for the chinese! we do not allow chinamen to come here, and i say in all seriousness that it would be a graceful thing to let china decide who shall go there. china never wanted foreigners any more than foreigners wanted chinamen, and on this question i am with the boxers every time. the boxer is a patriot. he loved his country better than he does the countries of other people. i wish him success. the boxer believes in driving us out of his country. i am a boxer too, for i believe in driving him out of our country. when i read the russian despatch further my dream of world peace vanished. it said that the vast expense of maintaining the army had made it necessary to retrench, and so the government had decided that to support the army it would be necessary to withdraw the appropriation from the public schools. this is a monstrous idea to us. we believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation. it is curious to reflect how history repeats itself the world over. why, i remember the same thing was done when i was a boy on the mississippi river. there was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. an old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. it's like feeding a dog on his own tail. he'll never get fat. i believe it is better to support schools than jails. the work of your association is better and shows more wisdom than the czar of russia and all his people. this is not much of a compliment, but it's the best i've got in stock. education and citizenship. on the evening of may 14, 1908, the alumni of the college of the city of new york celebrated the opening of the new college buildings at a banquet in the waldorf-astoria. mr. clemens followed mayor mcclellan. i agreed when the mayor said that there was not a man within hearing who did not agree that citizenship should be placed above everything else, even learning. have you ever thought about this? is there a college in the whole country where there is a chair of good citizenship? there is a kind of bad citizenship which is taught in the schools, but no real good citizenship taught. there are some which teach insane citizenship, bastard citizenship, but that is all. patriotism! yes; but patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. he is the man who talks the loudest. you can begin that chair of citizenship in the college of the city of new york. you can place it above mathematics and literature, and that is where it belongs. we used to trust in god. i think it was in 1863 that some genius suggested that it be put upon the gold and silver coins which circulated among the rich. they didn't put it on the nickels and coppers because they didn't think the poor folks had any trust in god. good citizenship would teach accuracy of thinking and accuracy of statement. now, that motto on the coin is an overstatement. those congressmen had no right to commit this whole country to a theological doctrine. but since they did, congress ought to state what our creed should be. there was never a nation in the world that put its whole trust in god. it is a statement made on insufficient evidence. leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in god after a fashion. but, after all, it is an overstatement. if the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in the health board of the city of new york. i read in the papers within the last day or two of a poor young girl who they said was a leper. did the people in that populous section of the country where she wasdid they put their trust in god? the girl was afflicted with the leprosy, a disease which cannot be communicated from one person to another. yet, instead of putting their trust in god, they harried that poor creature, shelterless and friendless, from place to place, exactly as they did in the middle ages, when they made lepers wear bells, so that people could be warned of their approach and avoid them. perhaps those people in the middle ages thought they were putting their trust in god. the president ordered the removal of that motto from the coin, and i thought that it was well. i thought that overstatement should not stay there. but i think it would better read, "within certain judicious limitations we trust in god," and if there isn't enough room on the coin for this, why, enlarge the coin. now i want to tell a story about jumping at conclusions. it was told to me by bram stoker, and it concerns a christening. there was a little clergyman who was prone to jump at conclusions sometimes. one day he was invited to officiate at a christening. he went. there sat the relativesintelligent-looking relatives they were. the little clergyman's instinct came to him to make a great speech. he was given to flights of oratory that waya very dangerous thing, for often the wings which take one into clouds of oratorical enthusiasm are wax and melt up there, and down you come. but the little clergyman couldn't resist. he took the child in his arms, and, holding it, looked at it a moment. it wasn't much of a child. it was little, like a sweet-potato. then the little clergyman waited impressively, and then: "i see in your countenances," he said, "disappointment of him. i see you are disappointed with this baby. why? because he is so little. my friends, if you had but the power of looking into the future you might see that great things may come of little things. there is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. there are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of stars. oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might become the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world has ever known, greater than caesar, than hannibal, thanerer" (turning to the father)"what's his name?" the father hesitated, then whispered back: "his name? well, his name is mary ann." courage courage. at a beefsteak dinner, given by artists, caricaturists, and humorists of new york city, april 18, 1908, mr. clemens, mr. h. h. rogers, and mr. patrick mccarren were the guests of honor. each wore a white apron, and each made a short speech. in the matter of courage we all have our limits. there never was a hero who did not have his bounds. i suppose it may be said of nelson and all the others whose courage has been advertised that there came times in their lives when their bravery knew it had come to its limit. i have found mine a good many times. sometimes this was expectedoften it was unexpected. i know a man who is not afraid to sleep with a rattlesnake, but you could not get him to sleep with a safety-razor. i never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room i should be at the end of the room facing all the audience. if i attempt to talk across a room i find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate periods i have part of the audience behind me. you ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do. i'll sit down. the dinner to mr. choate. at a dinner given in honor of ambassador joseph h. choate at the lotos club, november 24, 1901. the speakers, among others, were: senator depew, william henry white, speaker thomas reed, and mr. choate. mr. clemens spoke, in part, as follows: the greatness of this country rests on two anecdotes. the first one is that of washington and his hatchet, representing the foundation of true speaking, which is the characteristic of our people. the second one is an old one, and i've been waiting to hear it to-night, but as nobody has told it yet, i will tell it. you've heard it before, and you'll hear it many, many times more. it is an anecdote of our guest, of the time when he was engaged as a young man with a gentle hebrew, in the process of skinning the client. the main part in that business is the collection of the bill for services in skinning the man. "services" is the term used in that craft for the operation of that kinddiplomatic in its nature. choate'sco-respondentmade out a bill for $500 for his services, so called. but choate told him he had better leave the matter to him, and the next day he collected the bill for the services and handed the hebrew $5000, saying, "that's your half of the loot," and inducing that memorable response: "almost thou persuadest me to be a christian.' the deep-thinkers didn't merely laugh when that happened. they stopped to think, and said: "there's a rising man. he must be rescued from the law and consecrated to diplomacy. the commercial advantages of a great nation lie there in that man's keeping. we no longer require a man to take care of our moral character before the world. washington and his anecdote have done that. we require a man to take care of our commercial prosperity." mr. choate has carried that trait with him, and, as mr. carnegie has said, he has worked like a mole underground. we see the result when american railroad iron is sold so cheap in england that the poorest family can have it. he has so beguiled that cabinet of england. he has been spreading the commerce of this nation, and has depressed english commerce in the same ratio. this was the principle underlying that anecdote, and the wise men saw it; the principle of give and takegive one and take tenthe principle of diplomacy. on stanley and livingstone. mr. clemens was entertained at dinner by the white-friars' club, london, at the mitre tavern, on the evening of august 6, 1872. in reply to the toast in his honor he said: gentlemen,i thank you very heartily indeed for this expression of kindness toward me. what i have done for england and civilization in the arduous affairs which i have engaged in (that is good: that is so smooth that i will say it again and again)what i have done for england and civilization in the arduous part i have performed i have done with a single-hearted devotion and with no hope of reward. i am proud, i am very proud, that it was reserved for me to find doctor livingstone and for mr. stanley to get all the credit. i hunted for that man in africa all over seventy-five or one hundred parishes, thousands and thousands of miles in the wilds and deserts all over the place, sometimes riding negroes and sometimes travelling by rail. i didn't mind the rail or anything else, so that i didn't come in for the tar and feathers. i found that man at ujijia place you may remember if you have ever been thereand it was a very great satisfaction that i found him just in the nick of time. i found that poor old man deserted by his niggers and by his geographers, deserted by all of his kind except the gorillasdejected, miserable, famishing, absolutely famishingbut he was eloquent. just as i found him he had eaten his last elephant, and he said to me: "god knows where i shall get another." he had nothing to wear except his venerable and honorable naval suit, and nothing to eat but his diary. but i said to him: "it is all right; i have discovered you, and stanley will be here by the four-o'clock train and will discover you officially, and then we will turn to and have a reg'lar good time." i said: "cheer up, for stanley has got corn, ammunition, glass beads, hymn-books, whiskey, and everything which the human heart can desire; he has got all kinds of valuables, including telegraph-poles and a few cart-loads of money. by this time communication has been made with the land of bibles and civilization, and property will advance." and then we surveyed all that country, from ujiji, through unanogo and other places, to unyanyembe. i mention these names simply for your edification, nothing moredo not expect itparticularly as intelligence to the royal geographical society. and then, having filled up the old man, we were all too full for utterance and departed. we have since then feasted on honors. stanley has received a snuff-box and i have received considerable snuff; he has got to write a book and gather in the rest of the credit, and i am going to levy on the copyright and to collect the money. nothing comes amiss to mecash or credit; but, seriously, i do feel that stanley is the chief man and an illustrious one, and i do applaud him with all my heart. whether he is an american or a welshman by birth, or one, or both, matter's not to me. so far as i am personally concerned, i am simply here to stay a few months, and to see english people and to learn english manners and customs, and to enjoy myself; so the simplest thing i can do is to thank you for the toast you have honored me with and for the remarks you have made, and to wish health and prosperity to the white-friar's' club, and to sink down to my accustomed level. henry m. stanley. address delivered in boston, november, 1886. mr. clemens introduced mr. stanley. ladies and gentlemen, if any should ask, why is it that you are here as introducer of the lecturer? i should answer that i happened to be around and was asked to perform this function. i was quite willing to do so, and, as there was no sort of need of an introduction, anyway, it could be necessary only that some person come forward for a moment and do an unnecessary thing, and this is quite in my line. now, to introduce so illustrious a name as henry m. stanley by any detail of what the man has done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. when i contrast what i have achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the cellar. when you compare these achievements of his with the achievements of really great men who exist in history, the comparison, i believe, is in his favor. i am not here to disparage columbus. no, i won't do that; but when you come to regard the achievements of these two men, columbus and stanley, from the standpoint of the difficulties their encountered, the advantage is with stanley and against columbus. now, columbus started out to discover america. well, he didn't need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and hold his grip and sail straight on, and america would discover itself. here it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the south american continent, and he couldn't get by it. he'd got to discover it. but stanley started out to find doctor livingstone, who was scattered abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of africa as big as the united states. it was a blind kind of search. he was the worst scattered of men. but i will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar feature of mr. stanley's character, and that is his indestructible americanisman americanism which he is proud of. and in this day and time, when it is the custom to ape and imitate english methods and fashion, it is like a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence of this untainted american citizen who has been caressed and complimented by half of the crowned heads of europe, who could clothe his body from his head to his heels with the orders and decorations lavished upon him. and yet, when the untitled myriads of his own country put out their hands in welcome to him and greet him, "well done," through the congress of the united states, that is the crown that is worth all the rest to him. he is a product of institutions which exist in no other country on earthinstitutions that bring out all that is best and most heroic in a man. i introduce henry m. stanley. dinner to mr. jerome. a dinner to express their confidence in the integrity and good judgment of district-attorney jerome was given as delmonico's by over three hundred of his admirers on the evening of may 7, 1909. indeed, that is very sudden. i was not informed that the verdict was going to depend upon my judgment, but that makes not the least difference in the world when you already know all about it. it is not any matter when you are called upon to express it; you can get up and do it, and my verdict has already been recorded in my heart and in my head as regards mr. jerome and his administration of the criminal affairs of this county. i agree with everything mr. choate has said in his letter regarding mr. jerome; i agree with everything mr. shepard has said; and i agree with everything mr. jerome has said in his own commendation. and i thought mr. jerome was modest in that. if he had been talking about another officer of this county, he could have painted the joys and sorrows of office and his victories in even stronger language than he did. i voted for mr. jerome in those old days, and i should like to vote for him again if he runs for any office. i moved out of new york, and that is the reason, i suppose, i cannot vote for him again. there may be some way, but i have not found it out. but now i am a farmera farmer up in connecticut, and winning laurels. those people already speak with such high favor, admiration, of my farming, and they say that i am the only man that has ever come to that region who could make two blades of grass grow where only three grew before. well, i cannot vote for him. you see that. as it stands now, i cannot. i am crippled in that way and to that extent, for i would ever so much like to do it. i am not a congress, and i cannot distribute pensions, and i don't know any other legitimate way to buy a vote. but if i should think of any legitimate way, i shall make use of it, and then i shall vote for mr. jerome. henry irving. the dramatic and literary society of london gave a welcome-home dinner to sir henry irving at the savoy hotel, london, june 9, 1900. in proposing the toast of "the drama" mr. clemens said: i find my task a very easy one. i have been a dramatist for thirty years. i have had an ambition in all that time to overdo the work of the spaniard who said he left behind him four hundred dramas when he died. i leave behind me four hundred and fifteen, and am not yet dead. the greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. it is a most difficult thing. it requires the highest talent possible and the rarest gifts. no, there is another talent that ranks with itfor anybody can write a dramai had four hundred of thembut to get one accepted requires real ability. and i have never had that felicity yet. but human nature is so constructed, we are so persistent, that when we know that we are born to a thing we do not care what the world thinks about it. we go on exploiting that talent year after year, as i have done. i shall go on writing dramas, and some day the impossible may happen, but i am not looking for it. in writing plays the chief thing is novelty. the world grows tired of solid forms in all the arts. i struck a new idea myself years ago. i was not surprised at it. i was always expecting it would happen. a person who has suffered disappointment for many years loses confidence, and i thought i had better make inquiries before i exploited my new idea of doing a drama in the form of a dream, so i wrote to a great authority on knowledge of all kinds, and asked him whether it was new. i could depend upon him. he lived in my dear home in americathat dear home, dearer to me through taxes. he sent me a list of plays in which that old device had been used, and he said that there was also a modern lot. he travelled back to china and to a play dated two thousand six hundred years before the christian era. he said he would follow it up with a list of the previous plays of the kind, and in his innocence would have carried them back to the flood. that is the most discouraging thing that has ever happened to me in my dramatic career. i have done a world of good in a silent and private way, and have furnished sir henry irving with plays and plays and plays. what has he achieved through that influence? see where he stands nowon the summit of his art in two worldsand it was i who put him therethat partly put him there. i need not enlarge upon the influence the drama has exerted upon civilization. it has made good morals entertaining. i am to be followed by mr. pinero. i conceive that we stand at the head of the profession. he has not written as many plays as i have, but he has had that god-given talent, which i lack, of working them off on the manager. i couple his name with this toast, and add the hope that his influence will be supported in exercising his masterly handicraft in that great gift, and that he will long live to continue his fine work. dinner to hamilton w. mabie. address delivered april 29, 1901. in introducing mr. clemens, doctor van dyke said: "the longer the speaking goes on to-night the more i wonder how i got this job, and the only explanation i can give for it is that it is the same kind of compensation for the number of articles i have sent to the outlook, to be rejected by hamilton w. mabie. there is one man here to-night that has a job cut out for him that none of you would have hada man whose humor has put a girdle of light around the globe, and whose sense of humor has been an example for all five continents. he is going to speak to you. gentlemen, you know him best as mark twain." mr. chairman and gentlemen,this man knows now how it feels to be the chief guest, and if he has enjoyed it he is the first man i have ever seen in that position that did enjoy it. and i know, by side-remarks which he made to me before his ordeal came upon him, that he was feeling as some of the rest of us have felt under the same circumstances. he was afraid that he would not do himself justice; but he didto my surprise. it is a most serious thing to be a chief guest on an occasion like this, and it is admirable, it is fine. it is a great compliment to a man that he shall come out of it so gloriously as mr. mabie came out of it to-nightto my surprise. he did it well. he appears to be editor of the outlook, and notwithstanding that, i have every admiration, because when everything is said concerning the outlook, after all one must admit that it is frank in its delinquencies, that it is outspoken in its departures from fact, that it is vigorous in its mistaken criticisms of men like me. i have lived in this world a long, long time, and i know you must not judge a man by the editorials that he puts in his paper. a man is always better than his printed opinions. a man always reserves to himself on the inside a purity and an honesty and a justice that are a credit to him, whereas the things that he prints are just the reverse. oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he writes in his paper. even in an ordinary secular paper a man must observe some care about it; he must be better than the principles which he puts in print. and that is the case with mr. mabie. why, to see what he writes about me and the missionaries you would think he did not have any principles. but that is mr. mabie in his public capacity. mr. mabie in his private capacity is just as clean a man as i am. in this very room, a month or two ago, some people admired that portrait; some admired this, but the great majority fastened on that, and said, "there is a portrait that is a beautiful piece of art." when that portrait is a hundred years old it will suggest what were the manners and customs in our time. just as they talk about mr. mabie to-night, in that enthusiastic way, pointing out the various virtues of the man and the grace of his spirit, and all that, so was that portrait talked about. they were enthusiastic, just as we men have been over the character and the work of mr. mabie. and when they were through they said that portrait, fine as it is, that work, beautiful as it is, that piece of humanity on that canvas, gracious and fine as it is, does not rise to those perfections that exist in the man himself. come up, mr. alexander. [the reference was to james w. alexander, who happened to be sitting beneath the portrait of himself on the wall.] now, i should come up and show myself. but he cannot do it, he cannot do it. he was born that way, he was reared in that way. let his modesty be an example, and i wish some of you had it, too. but that is just what i have been sayingthat portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the man it represents, and all the things that have been said about mr. mabie, and certainly they have been very nobly worded and beautiful, still fall short of the real mabie. introducing nye and riley. james whitcomb riley and edgar wilson nye (bill nye) were to give readings in tremont temple, boston, november, 1888. mr. clemens was induced to introduce messrs. riley and nye. his appearance on the platform was a surprise to the audience, and when they recognized him there was a tremendous demonstration. i am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the same time get acquainted with them myself. i have seen them more than once for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them personally as intimately as i wanted to. i saw them first, a great many years ago, when mr. barnum had them, and they were just fresh from siam. the ligature was their best hold then, the literature became their best hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff. in that old former time this one was chang, that one was eng. the sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested; when one slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped the usufruct. this independent and yet dependent action was observable in all the details of their daily lifei mean this quaint and arbitrary distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the twobetween, i may say, this dynamo and the other always motor, or, in other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other always the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within certain well-defined zones of activity the one was always dynamo and the other always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these positions became exactly reversed. for instance, in moral matters mr. chang riley was always dynamo, mr. eng nye was always motor; for while mr. chang riley had a highin fact, an abnormally high and finemoral sense, he had no machinery to work it with; whereas, mr. eng nye, who hadn't any moral sense at all, and hasn't yet, was equipped with all the necessary plant for putting a noble deed through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable terms outside. in intellectual matters, on the other hand, mr. eng nye was always dynamo, mr. chang riley was always motor; mr. eng nye had a stately intellect, but couldn't make it go; mr. chang riley hadn't, but could. that is to say, that while mr. chang riley couldn't think things himself, he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and weaving them together when his pal furnished the raw material. thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. it has remained so to this day: they must travel together, hoe, and plant, and plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there's no result. i have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so to speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers understandingly. when mr. eng nye's deep and broad and limpid philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn't his water; it's the other man's, and he is only working the pump. and when mr. chang riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetryas sweet and as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about his other friends, the woods and the flowersyou will remember, while placing justice where justice is due, that it isn't his music, but the other man'she is only turning the crank. i beseech for these visitors a fair field, a single-minded, one-eyed umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn itand i judge they will and hope they will. mr. james whitcomb chang riley will now go to the bat. dinner to whitelaw reid. address at the dinner in honor of ambassador reid, given by the pilgrims' club of new york on february 19, 1908. i am very proud to respond to this toast, as it recalls the proudest day of my life. the delightful hospitality shown me at the time of my visit to oxford i shall cherish until i die. in that long and distinguished career of mine i value that degree above all other honors. when the ship landed even the stevedores gathered on the shore and gave an english cheer. nothing could surpass in my life the pleasure of those four weeks. no one could pass by me without taking my hand, even the policemen. i've been in all the principal capitals of christendom in my life, and have always been an object of interest to policemen. sometimes there was suspicion in their eyes, but not always. with their puissant hand they would hold up the commerce of the world to let me pass. i noticed in the papers this afternoon a despatch from washington, saying that congress would immediately pass a bill restoring to our gold coinage the motto "in god we trust." i'm glad of that; i'm glad of that. i was troubled when that motto was removed. sure enough, the prosperities of the whole nation went down in a heap when we ceased to trust in god in that conspicuously advertised way. i knew there would be trouble. and if pierpont morgan hadn't stepped inbishop lawrence may now add to his message to the old country that we are now trusting in god again. so we can discharge mr. morgan from his office with honor. mr. reid said an hour or so ago something about my ruining my activities last summer. they are not ruined, they are renewed. i am stronger nowmuch stronger. i suppose that the spiritual uplift i received increased my physical power more than anything i ever had before. i was dancing last night at 12.30 o'clock. mr. choate has mentioned mr. reid's predecessors. mr. choate's head is full of history, and some of it is true, too. i enjoyed hearing him tell about the list of the men who had the place before he did. he mentioned a long list of those predecessors, people i never heard of before, and elected five of them to the presidency by his own vote. i'm glad and proud to find mr. reid in that high position, because he didn't look it when i knew him forty years ago. i was talking to reid the other day, and he showed me my autograph on an old paper twenty years old. i didn't know i had an autograph twenty years ago. nobody ever asked me for it. i remember a dinner i had long ago with whitelaw reid and john hay at reid's expense. i had another last summer when i was in london at the embassy that choate blackguards so. i'd like to live there. some people say they couldn't live on the salary, but i could live on the salary and the nation together. some of us don't appreciate what this country can do. there's john hay, reid, choate, and me. this is the only country in the world where youth, talent, and energy can reach such heights. it shows what we could do without means, and what people can do with talent and energy when they find it in people like us. when i first came to new york they were all struggling young men, and i am glad to see that they have got on in the world. i knew john hay when i had no white hairs in my head and more hair than reid has now. those were days of joy and hope. reid and hay were on the staff of the tribune. i went there once in that old building, and i looked all around, and i finally found a door ajar and looked in. it wasn't reid or hay there, but it was horace greeley. those were in the days when horace greeley was a king. that was the first time i ever saw him and the last. i was admiring him when he stopped and seemed to realize that there was a fine presence there somewhere. he tried to smile, but he was out of smiles. he looked at me a moment, and said: "what in hdo you want?" he began with that word "h." that's a long word and a profane word. i don't remember what the word was now, but i recognized the power of it. i had never used that language myself, but at that moment i was converted. it has been a great refuge for me in time of trouble. if a man doesn't know that language he can't express himself on strenuous occasions. when you have that word at your command let trouble come. but later hay rose, and you know what summit whitelaw reid has reached, and you see me. those two men have regulated troubles of nations and conferred peace upon mankind. and in my humble way, of which i am quite vain, i was the principal moral force in all those great international movements. these great men illustrated what i say. look at us great peoplewe all come from the dregs of society. that's what can be done in this country. that's what this country does for you. choate herehe hasn't got anything to say, but he says it just the same, and he can do it so felicitously, too. i said long ago he was the handsomest man america ever produced. may the progress of civilization always rest on such distinguished men as it has in the past! rogers and railroads. at a banquet given mr. h. h. rogers by the business men of norfolk, va., celebrating the opening of the virginian railway, april, 3, 1909. toastmaster: "i have often thought that when the time comes, which must come to all of us, when we reach that great way in the great beyond, and the question is propounded, 'what have you done to gain admission into this great realm?' if the answer could be sincerely made, 'i have made men laugh,' it would be the surest passport to a welcome entrance. we have here to-night one who has made millions laughnot the loud laughter that bespeaks the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps the human heart and the human mind. i refer, of course, to doctor clemens. i was going to say mark twain, his literary title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of any other man, and you know him best by that dear old title." i thank you, mr. toastmaster, for the compliment which you have paid me, and i am sure i would rather have made people laugh than cry, yet in my time i have made some of them cry; and before i stop entirely i hope to make some more of them cry. i like compliments. i deal in them myself. i have listened with the greatest pleasure to the compliments which the chairman has paid to mr. rogers and that road of his to-night, and i hope some of them are deserved. it is no small distinction to a man like that to sit here before an intelligent crowd like this and to be classed with napoleon and caesar. why didn't he say that this was the proudest day of his life? napoleon and caesar are dead, and they can't be here to defend themselves. but i'm here! the chairman said, and very truly, that the most lasting thing in the hands of man are the roads which caesar built, and it is true that he built a lot of them; and they are there yet. yes, caesar built a lot of roads in england, and you can find them. but rogers has only built one road, and he hasn't finished that yet. i like to hear my old friend complimented, but i don't like to hear it overdone. i didn't go around to-day with the others to see what he is doing. i will do that in a quiet time, when there is not anything going on, and when i shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate compliments on a railroad in which i own no stock. they proposed that i go along with the committee and help inspect that dump down yonder. i didn't go. i saw that dump. i saw that thing when i was coming in on the steamer, and i didn't go because i was diffident, sentimentally diffident, about going and looking at that thing againthat great, long, bony thing; it looked just like mr. rogers's foot. the chairman says mr. rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is. it is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very competent financier. maybe he is now, but it was not always so. i know lots of private things in his life which people don't know, and i know how he started; and it was not a very good start. i could have done better myself. the first time he crossed the atlantic he had just made the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to ask questions. he did not like to appear ignorant. to this day he don't like to appear ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as anybody. on board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. he did not like to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than be ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in bed he could not sleep. he wondered if he could afford that outlay in case he lost. he kept wondering over it, and said to himself: "a king's crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000." he could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off. i like to hear mr. rogers complimented. i am not stingy in compliments to him myself. why, i did it to-day when i sent his wife a telegram to comfort her. that is the kind of person i am. i knew she would be uneasy about him. i knew she would be solicitous about what he might do down here, so i did it to quiet her and to comfort her. i said he was doing well for a person out of practice. there is nothing like it. he is like i used to be. there were times when i was carelesscareless in my dress when i got older. you know how uncomfortable your wife can get when you are going away without her superintendence. once when my wife could not go with me (she always went with me when she couldi always did meet that kind of luck), i was going to washington once, a long time ago, in mr. cleveland's first administration, and she could not go; but, in her anxiety that i should not desecrate the house, she made preparation. she knew that there was to be a reception of those authors at the white house at seven o'clock in the evening. she said, "if i should tell you now what i want to ask of you, you would forget it before you get to washington, and, therefore, i have written it on a card, and you will find it in your dress-vest pocket when you are dressing at the arlingtonwhen you are dressing to see the president." i never thought of it again until i was dressing, and i felt in that pocket and took it out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, "don't wear your arctics in the white house." you complimented mr. rogers on his energy, his foresightedness, complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments, although i say it myself; and i enjoy them all. there is one side of mr. rogers that has not been mentioned. if you will leave that to me i will touch upon that. there was a note in an editorial in one of the norfolk papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side of mr. rogers, where it spoke of helen keller and her affection for mr. rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book. and she has a right to feel that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it, he rescued, if i may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine years of age. she is the most marvellous person of her sex that has existed on this earth since joan of arc. that is not all mr. rogers has done; but you never see that side of his character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand daily out of that generous heart of his. you never hear of it. he is supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. but the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not god. i would take this opportunity to tell something that i have never been allowed to tell by mr. rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if i don't look at him i can tell it now. in 1893, when the publishing company of charles l. webster, of which i was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. if you will remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and i was on my back; my books were not worth anything at all, and i could not give away my copyrights. mr. rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "your books have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support you again," and that was a correct proposition. he saved my copyrights, and saved me from financial ruin. he it was who arranged with my creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end of four years i would pay dollar for dollar. that arrangement was made; otherwise i would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a borrowed one at that. you see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is always trying to look like mei don't blame him for that). these are only emblematic of his character, and that is all. i say, without exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man i have ever known. the old-fashioned printer. address at the typothetae dinner given at delmonico's, january 18, 1886, commemorating the birthday of benjamin franklin. mr. clemens responded to the toast "the compositor." the chairman's historical reminiscences of gutenberg have caused me to fall into reminiscences, for i myself am something of an antiquity. all things change in the procession of years, and it may be that i am among strangers. it may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer of thirty-five years ago. i was no stranger to him. i knew him well. i built his fire for him in the winter mornings; i brought his water from the village pump; i swept out his office; i picked up his type from under his stand; and, if he were there to see, i put the good type in his case and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't there to see, i dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stonefor that was the furtive fashion of the cub, and i was a cub. i wetted down the paper saturdays, i turned it sundaysfor this was a country weekly; i rolled, i washed the rollers, i washed the forms, i folded the papers, i carried them around at dawn thursday mornings. the carrier was then an object of interest to all the dogs in town. if i had saved up all the bites i ever received, i could keep m. pasteur busy for a year. i enveloped the papers that were for the mailwe had a hundred town subscribers and three hundred and fifty country ones; the town subscribers paid in groceries and the country ones in cabbages and cord-woodwhen they paid at all, which was merely sometimes, and then we always stated the fact in the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we forgot it they stopped the paper. every man on the town list helped edit the thingthat is, he gave orders as to how it was to be edited; dictated its opinions, marked out its course for it, and every time the boss failed to connect he stopped his paper. we were just infested with critics, and we tried to satisfy them all over. we had one subscriber who paid cash, and he was more trouble than all the rest. he bought us once a year, body and soul, for two dollars. he used to modify our politics every which way, and he made us change our religion four times in five years. if we ever tried to reason with him, he would threaten to stop his paper, and, of course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction. that man used to write articles a column and a half long, leaded long primer, and sign them "junius," or "veritas," or "vox populi," or some other high-sounding rot; and then, after it was set up, he would come in and say he had changed his mindwhich was a gilded figure of speech, because he hadn't anyand order it to be left out. we couldn't afford "bogus" in that office, so we always took the leads out, altered the signature, credited the article to the rival paper in the next village, and put it in. well, we did have one or two kinds of "bogus." whenever there was a barbecue, or a circus, or a baptizing, we knocked off for half a day, and then to make up for short matter we would "turn over ads"turn over the whole page and duplicate it. the other "bogus" was deep philosophical stuff, which we judged nobody ever read; so we kept a galley of it standing, and kept on slapping the same old batches of it in, every now and then, till it got dangerous. also, in the early days of the telegraph we used to economize on the news. we picked out the items that were pointless and barren of information and stood them on a galley, and changed the dates and localities, and used them over and over again till the public interest in them was worn to the bone. we marked the ads, but we seldom paid any attention to the marks afterward; so the life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad was equally eternal. i have seen a "td" notice of a sheriffs sale still booming serenely along two years after the sale was over, the sheriff dead, and the whole circumstance become ancient history. most of the yearly ads were patent-medicine stereotypes, and we used to fence with them. i can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse bills on the walls, its "d" boxes clogged with tallow, because we always stood the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was not considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and symbols that marked the establishment of that kind in the mississippi valley; and i can see, also, the tramping "jour," who flitted by in the summer and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a hatful of handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do a temperance lecture. his way of life was simple, his needs not complex; all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he was satisfied. but it may be, as i have said, that i am among strangers, and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so i will "make even" and stop. society of american authors. on november 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to mr. clemens, who came with his wife and daughter. so many members surrounded the guests that mr. clemens asked: "is this genuine popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme?" chairman, ladies and gentlemen,it seems a most difficult thing for any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary. i don't know what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it. if this thing keeps on it will make me believe that i am what these kind chairmen say of me. in introducing me, judge ransom spoke of my modesty as if he was envious of me. i would like to have one man come out flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it were true. i thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking, that i had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by saying complimentary things. i am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well as any other fool, but i do like to have the other side presented. and there is another side. i have a wicked side. estimable friends who know all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you things that i have done, and things further that i have not repented. the real life that i live, and the real life that i suppose all of you live, is a life of interior sin. that is what makes life valuable and pleasant. to lead a life of undiscovered sin! that is true joy. judge ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. but, oh my! if you could throw an x-ray through him. we are a pair. i have made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think i am. everybody believes that i am a monument of all the virtues, but it is nothing of the sort. i am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy. some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits of mine, and then he will make a speech. i have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as the two put together. when that fearless and forgetful chairman is found there will be another story told. at the press club recently i thought that i had found him. he started in in the way that i knew i should be painted with all sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but when he said that he never read a book of mine i knew at once that he was a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence with which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis. i like compliments. i like to go home and tell them all over again to the members of my family. they don't believe them, but i like to tell them in the home circle, all the same. i like to dream of them if i can. i thank everybody for their compliments, but i don't think that i am praised any more than i am entitled to be. reading-room opening. on october 13, 1900. mr. clemens made his last address preceding his departure for america at kensal rise, london. i formally declare this reading-room open, and i think that the legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the community so desires. if the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand in its pocket and bring out the penny tax. i think it a proof of the healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it taxes itself for its mental food. a reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. what would we do without newspapers? look at the rapid manner in which the news of the galveston disaster was made known to the entire world. this reminds me of an episode which occurred fifteen years ago when i was at church in hartford, connecticut. the clergyman decided to make a collection for the survivors, if any. he did not include me among the leading citizens who took the plates around for collection. i complained to the governor of his lack of financial trust in me, and he replied: "i would trust you myselfif you had a bell-punch." you have paid me many compliments, and i like to listen to compliments. i indorse all your chairman has said to you about the union of england and america. he also alluded to my name, of which i am rather fond. a little girl wrote me from new zealand in a letter i received yesterday, stating that her father said my proper name was not mark twain but samuel clemens, but that she knew better, because clemens was the name of the man who sold the patent medicine, and his name was not mark. she was sure it was mark twain, because mark is in the bible and twain is in the bible. i was very glad to get that expression of confidence in my origin, and as i now know my name to be a scriptural one, i am not without hopes of making it worthy. literature literature. address at the royal literary fund banquet, london, may 4, 1900. anthony hope introduced mr. clemens to make the response to the toast "literature." mr. hope has been able to deal adequately with this toast without assistance from me. still, i was born generous. if he had advanced any theories that needed refutation or correction i would have attended to them, and if he had made any statements stronger than those which he is in the habit of making i would have dealt with them. in fact, i was surprised at the mildness of his statements. i could not have made such statements if i had preferred to, because to exaggerate is the only way i can approximate to the truth. you cannot have a theory without principles. principles is another name for prejudices. i have no prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or anything else. i am now on my way to my own country to run for the presidency because there are not yet enough candidates in the field, and those who have entered are too much hampered by their own principles, which are prejudices. i propose to go there to purify the political atmosphere. i am in favor of everything everybody is in favor of. what you should do is to satisfy the whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only be half a president. there could not be a broader platform than mine. i am in favor of anything and everythingof temperance and intemperance, morality and qualified immorality, gold standard and free silver. i have tried all sorts of things, and that is why i want to try the great position of ruler of a country. i have been in turn reporter, editor, publisher, author, lawyer, burglar. i have worked my way up, and wish to continue to do so. i read to-day in a magazine article that christendom issued last year fifty-five thousand new books. consider what that means! fifty-five thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand new authors. we are going to have them all on our hands to take care of sooner or later. therefore, double your subscriptions to the literary fund! disappearance of literature. address at the dinner of the nineteenth century club, at sherry's, new york, november 20, 1900. mr. clemens spoke to the toast "the disappearance of literature." doctor gould presided, and in introducing mr. clemens said that he (the speaker), when in germany, had to do a lot of apologizing for a certain literary man who was taking what the germans thought undue liberties with their language. it wasn't necessary for your chairman to apologize for me in germany. it wasn't necessary at all. instead of that he ought to have impressed upon those poor benighted teutons the service i rendered them. their language had needed untangling for a good many years. nobody else seemed to want to take the job, and so i took it, and i flatter myself that i made a pretty good job of it. the germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. it's downright inhuman to split it up. but that's just what those germans do. they take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in german. i maintain that there is no necessity for apologizing for a man who helped in a small way to stop such mutilation. we have heard a discussion to-night on the disappearance of literature. that's no new thing. that's what certain kinds of literature have been doing for several years. the fact is, my friends, that the fashion in literature changes, and the literary tailors have to change their cuts or go out of business. professor winchester here, if i remember fairly correctly what he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels produced to-day would live as long as the novels of walter scott. that may be his notion. maybe he is right; but so far as i am concerned, i don't care if they don't. professor winchester also said something about there being no modern epics like paradise lost. i guess he's right. he talked as if he was pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would suppose that he never had read it. i don't believe any of you have ever read paradise lost, and you don't want to. that's something that you just want to take on trust. it's a classic, just as professor winchester says, and it meets his definition of a classicsomething that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. professor trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of literature. he said that scott would outlive all his critics. i guess that's true. the fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two ages to appreciate scott. when you're eighteen you can read ivanhoe, and you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest. it takes a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic to live ninety years. but as much as these two gentlemen have talked about the disappearance of literature, they didn't say anything about my books. maybe they think they've disappeared. if they do, that just shows their ignorance on the general subject of literature. i am not as young as i was several years ago, and maybe i'm not so fashionable, but i'd be willing to take my chances with mr. scott to-morrow morning in selling a piece of literature to the century publishing company. and i haven't got much of a pull here, either. i often think that the highest compliment ever paid to my poor efforts was paid by darwin through president eliot, of harvard college. at least, eliot said it was a compliment, and i always take the opinion of great men like college presidents on all such subjects as that. i went out to cambridge one day a few years ago and called on president eliot. in the course of the conversation he said that he had just returned from england, and that he was very much touched by what he considered the high compliment darwin was paying to my books, and he went on to tell me something like this: "do you know that there is one room in darwin's house, his bedroom, where the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things? one is a plant he is growing and studying while it grows" (it was one of those insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for the particular delectation of mr. darwin) "and the other some books that lie on the night table at the head of his bed. they are your books, mr. clemens, and mr. darwin reads them every night to lull him to sleep." my friends, i thoroughly appreciated that compliment, and considered it the highest one that was ever paid to me. to be the means of soothing to sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirming things like darwin's was something that i had never hoped for, and now that he is dead i never hope to be able to do it again. the new york press club dinner. at the annual dinner, november 13, 1900. col. william l. brown, the former editor of the daily news, as president of the club, introduced mr. clemens as the principal ornament of american literature. i must say that i have already begun to regret that i left my gun at home. i've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs i will certainly use a gun on that chairman. it is my privilege to compliment him in return. you behold before you a very, very old man. a cursory glance at him would deceive the most penetrating. his features seem to reveal a person dead to all honorable instinctsthey seem to bear the traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for the most part, and now altogether, in the sunday-schoolof a life that may well stand as an example to all generations that have risen or will rizi mean to say, will rise. his private character is altogether suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has not. if you examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features, because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanormere effects of a great spirit upon a weak bodymere accidents of a great career. in his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues, and he practises them allsecretlyalways secretly. you all know him so well that there is no need for him to be introduced here. gentlemen, colonel brown. the alphabet and simplified spelling. address at the dinner given to mr. carnegie at the dedication of the new york engineers' club, december 9, 1907. mr. clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who, quoting from the mark twain autobiography, recalled the day when the distinguished writer came to new york with $3 in small change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in his clothes. it seems to me that i was around here in the neighborhood of the public library about fifty or sixty years ago. i don't deny the circumstance, although i don't see how you got it out of my autobiography, which was not to be printed until i am dead, unless i'm dead now. i had that $3 in change, and i remember well the $10 which was sewed in my coat. i have prospered since. now i have plenty of money and a disposition to squander it, but i can't. one of those trust companies is taking care of it. now, as this is probably the last time that i shall be out after nightfall this winter, i must say that i have come here with a mission, and i would make my errand of value. many compliments have been paid to mr. carnegie to-night. i was expecting them. they are very gratifying to me. i have been a guest of honor myself, and i know what mr. carnegie is experiencing now. it is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of us that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of our condemnation. just look at mr. carnegie's face. it is fairly scintillating with fictitious innocence. you would think, looking at him, that he had never committed a crime in his life. but nolook at his pestiferious simplified spelling. you can't any of you imagine what a crime that has been. torquemada was nothing to mr. carnegie. that old fellow shed some blood in the inquisition, but mr. carnegie has brought destruction to the entire race. i know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was, just the same. he's got us all so we can't spell anything. the trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end. he meant well, but he attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the disease. he ought to have gone to work on the alphabet. there's not a vowel in it with a definite value, and not a consonant that you can hitch anything to. look at the "h's" distributed all around. there's "gherkin." what are you going to do with the "h" in that? what the devil's the use of "h" in gherkin, i'd like to know. it's one thing i admire the english for: they just don't mind anything about them at all. but look at the "pneumatics" and the "pneumonias" and the rest of them. a real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of this present silly alphabet, which i fancy was invented by a drunken thief. why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't spell them! it's like trying to do a st. vitus's dance with wooden legs. now i'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not even the prisoner at the bar. i'd like to hear him try oncebut not in public, for it's too near sunday, when all extravagant histrionic entertainments are barred. i'd like to hear him try in private, and when he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or walked with its wings. the chances are that he would give it tusks and make it lay eggs. let's get mr. carnegie to reform the alphabet, and we'll pray for himif he'll take the risk. if we had adequate, competent vowels, with a system of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul and value, so every shade of that vowel would be shown in its accent, there is not a word in any tongue that we could not spell accurately. that would be competent, adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair punching, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by the name of simplified spelling. if i ask you what b-o-w spells you can't tell me unless you know which b-o-w i mean, and it is the same with r-o-w, b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words which were born out of lawful wedlock and don't know their own origin. now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of inadequate and incompetent, things would be different. spelling reform has only made it bald-headed and unsightly. there is the whole tribe of them, "row" and "read" and "lead"a whole family who don't know who they are. i ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one. if we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of a man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to recall the lady hog and the future ham. it's a rotten alphabet. i appoint mr. carnegie to get after it, and leave simplified spelling alone. simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the san francisco earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never have had if spelling had been left all alone. now, i hope i have soothed mr. carnegie and made him more comfortable than he would have been had he received only compliment after compliment, and i wish to say to him that simplified spelling is all right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far. spelling and pictures. address at the annual dinner of the associated press, at the waldorf-astoria, september 18, 1906. i am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the simplified spelling. i have come here because they cannot all be reached except through you. there are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globeonly twothe sun in the heavens and the associated press down here. i may seem to be flattering the sun, but i do not mean it so; i am meaning only to be just and fair all around. you speak with a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and intellects, as youexcept rudyard kipling, and he cannot do it without your help. if the associated press will adopt and use our simplified forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties are at an end. every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the only pages of the world's countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and angels and devils that can read, are these pages that are built out of associated press despatches. and so i beg you, i beseech youoh, i implore you to spell them in our simplified forms. do this daily, constantly, persistently, for three monthsonly three monthsit is all i ask. the infallible result?victory, victory all down the line. for by that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted to the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged forms will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul. and we shall be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no man addicted to the simple christian life can try to spell and not lose some of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. do not doubt it. we are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it. we do not regret our old, yellow fangs and snags and tushes after we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a while. do i seem to be seeking the good of the world? that is the idea. it is my public attitude; privately i am merely seeking my own profit. we all do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests. in 1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first tried to make a noise, i was indifferent to it; morei even irreverently scoffed at it. what i needed was an object-lesson, you see. it is the only way to teach some people. very well, i got it. at that time i was scrambling along, earning the family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a word, compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present. i was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron contract. one day there came a note from the editor requiring me to write ten pages on this revolting text: "considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects." ten pages of that. each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled railroad train. seven cents a word. i saw starvation staring the family in the face. i went to the editor, and i took a stenographer along so as to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor can ever remember any part of a business talk except the part that's got graft in it for him and the magazine. i said, "read that text, jackson, and let it go on the record; read it out loud." he read it: "considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects." i said, "you want ten pages of those rumbling, great, long, summer thunderpeals, and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal?" he said, "a word's a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you going to do about it?" i said, "jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. what's an average english word?" he said, "six letters." i said, "nothing of the kind; that's french, and includes the spaces between the words; an average english word is four letters and a half. by hard, honest labor i've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. i can put one thousand and two hundred words on your page, and there's not another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. my page is worth eighty-four dollars to me. it takes exactly as long to fill your magazine page with long words as it does with short onesfour hours. now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours. i am careful, i am economical of my time and labor. for the family's sake i've got to be so. so i never write 'metropolis' for seven cents, because i can get the same money for 'city.' i never write 'policeman,' because i can get the same price for 'cop.' and so on and so on. i never write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where i will do a word like that for seven cents; i wouldn't do it for fifteen. examine your obscene text, please, count the words." he counted and said it was twenty-four. i asked him to count the letters. he made it two hundred and three. i said, "now, i hope you see the whole size of your crime. with my vocabulary i would make sixty words out of those two hundred and five letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it; whereas for your inhuman twenty-four i would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents. ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about three hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same labor would pay me eight hundred and forty dollars. i do not wish to work upon this scandalous job by the piece. i want to be hired by the year." he coldly refused. i said: "then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you ought at least to allow me overtime on that word extemporaneousness." again he coldly refused. i seldom say a harsh word to any one, but i was not master of myself then, and i spoke right out and called him an anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous ornithorhyneus, and rotten to the heart with holophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. god forgive me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours. from that day to this i have been a devoted and hard-working member of the heaven-born institution, the international association for the prevention of cruelty to authors, and now i am laboring with carnegie's simplified committee, and with my heart in the work.... now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally, sanelyyes, and calmly, not excitedly. what is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? isn't it merely to convey ideas and emotions? certainly. then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms? but can we? yes. i hold in my hand the proof of it. here is a letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. i think she never saw a spelling-book in her life. the spelling is her own. there isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. it reduces the fonetics to the last gaspit squeezes the surplusage out of every wordthere's no spelling that can begin with it on this planet outside of the white house. and as for the punctuation, there isn't any. it is all one sentence, eagerly and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. the letter is absolutely genuinei have the proofs of that in my possession. i can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter presently and comfort your eyes with it. i will read the letter: "missdear friend i took some close into the armerry and give them to you to send too the suffrers out to california and i hate to truble you but i got to have one of them back it was a black oll wolle shevyott with a jacket to mach trimed kind of fancy no 38 burst measure and passy menterry acrost the front and the color i woodent trubble you but it belonged to my brothers wife and she is mad about it i thoght she was willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to wear it a spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she has got more to do with than i have having a husband to work and slave for her i gess you remember me i am shot and stout and light complected i torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful about that erth quake i shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off seeine general condision of the country is kind of explossive i hate to take that black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round and see if i can get another one if i can i will call to the armerry for it if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your true friend i liked your appearance very much" now you see what simplified spelling can do. it can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions like a sewer. i beg you, i beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print all your despatches in it. now i wish to say just one entirely serious word: i have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. i think i can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little while that i have got to remain here i can get along very well with these old-fashioned forms, and i don't propose to make any trouble about it at all. i shall soon be where they won't care how i spell so long as i keep the sabbath. there are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography, and it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its present condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their literature in the old form. that looks to me to be rather selfish, and we keep the forms as they are while we have got one million people coming in here from foreign countries every year and they have got to struggle with this orthography of ours, and it keeps them back and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn. this is merely sentimental argument. people say it is the spelling of chaucer and spenser and shakespeare and a lot of other people who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it because of its ancient and hallowed associations. now, i don't see that there is any real argument about that. if that argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness for them on account of the associations. why, it is like preserving a cancer in a family because it is a family cancer, and we are bound to it by the test of affection and reverence and old, mouldy antiquity. i think that this declaration to improve this orthography of ours is our family cancer, and i wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut out and let the family cancer go. now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what was once a young person like yourselves. i am exhausted by the heat of the day. i must take what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and carry it away to my home and spread it out there and sleep the sleep of the righteous. there is nothing much left of me but my age and my righteousness, but i leave with you my love and my blessing, and may you always keep your youth. books and burglars. address to the redding (conn.) library association, october 28, 1908. suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks ago, and the burglars who happened along and broke into my housetaking a lot of things they didn't need, and for that matter which i didn't needhad first made entry into this institution. picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the light of their dark-lanterns over some of the books they found, and thus absorbing moral truths and getting a moral uplift. the whole course of their lives would have been changed. as it was, they kept straight on in their immoral way and were sent to jail. for all we know, they may next be sent to congress. and, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them too harshly. now, i have known so many burglarsnot exactly known, but so many of them have come near me in my various dwelling-places, that i am disposed to allow them credit for whatever good qualities they possess. chief among these, and, indeed, the only one i just now think of, is their great care while doing business to avoid disturbing people's sleep. noiseless as they may be while at work, however, the effect of their visitation is to murder sleep later on. now we are prepared for these visitors. all sorts of alarm devices have been put in the house, and the ground for half a mile around it has been electrified. the burglar who steps within this danger zone will set loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our elaborate system of defences. as for the fate of the trespasser, do not seek to know that. he will never be heard of more. authors' club. address at the dinner given in honor of mr. clemens, london, june, 1899. mr. clemens was introduced by sir walter besant. it does not embarrass me to hear my books praised so much. it only pleases and delights me. i have not gone beyond the age when embarrassment is possible, but i have reached the age when i know how to conceal it. it is such a satisfaction to me to hear sir walter besant, who is much more capable than i to judge of my work, deliver a judgment which is such a contentment to my spirit. well, i have thought well of the books myself, but i think more of them now. it charms me also to hear sir spencer walpole deliver a similar judgment, and i shall treasure his remarks also. i shall not discount the praises in any possible way. when i report them to my family they shall lose nothing. there are, however, certain heredities which come down to us which our writings of the present day may be traced to. i, for instance, read the walpole letters when i was a boy. i absorbed them, gathered in their grace, wit, and humor, and put them away to be used by-and-by. one does that so unconsciously with things one really likes. i am reminded now of what use those letters have been to me. they must not claim credit in america for what was really written in another form so long ago. they must only claim that i trimmed this, that, and the other, and so changed their appearance as to make them seem to be original. you now see what modesty i have in stock. but it has taken long practice to get it there. but i must not stand here talking. i merely meant to get up and give my thanks for the pleasant things that preceding speakers have said of me. i wish also to extend my thanks to the authors' club for constituting me a member, at a reasonable price per year, and for giving me the benefit of your legal adviser. i believe you keep a lawyer. i have always kept a lawyer, too, though i have never made anything out of him. it is service to an author to have a lawyer. there is something so disagreeable in having a personal contact with a publisher. so it is better to work through a lawyerand lose your case. i understand that the publishers have been meeting together also like us. i don't know what for, but possibly they are devising new and mysterious ways for remunerating authors. i only wish now to thank you for electing me a member of this clubi believe i have paid my duesand to thank you again for the pleasant things you have said of me. last february, when rudyard kipling was ill in america, the sympathy which was poured out to him was genuine and sincere, and i believe that which cost kipling so much will bring england and america closer together. i have been proud and pleased to see this growing affection and respect between the two countries. i hope it will continue to grow, and, please god, it will continue to grow. i trust we authors will leave to posterity, if we have nothing else to leave, a friendship between england and america that will count for much. i will now confess that i have been engaged for the past eight days in compiling a publication. i have brought it here to lay at your feet. i do not ask your indulgence in presenting it, but for your applause. here it is: "since england and america may be joined together in kipling, may they not be severed in 'twain.'" booksellers booksellers. address at banquet on wednesday evening, may 20, 1908, of the american booksellers' association, which included most of the leading booksellers of america, held at the rooms of the aldine association, new york. this annual gathering of booksellers from all over america comes together ostensibly to eat and drink, but really to discuss business; therefore i am required to talk shop. i am required to furnish a statement of the indebtedness under which i lie to you gentlemen for your help in enabling we to earn my living. for something over forty years i have acquired my bread by print, beginning with the innocents abroad, followed at intervals of a year or so by roughing it, tom sawyer, gilded age, and so on. for thirty-six years my books were sold by subscription. you are not interested in those years, but only in the four which have since followed. the books passed into the hands of my present publishers at the beginning of 1904, and you then became the providers of my diet. i think i may say, without flattering you, that you have done exceedingly well by me. exceedingly well is not too strong a phrase, since the official statistics show that in four years you have sold twice as many volumes of my venerable books as my contract with my publishers bound you and them to sell in five years. to your sorrow you are aware that frequently, much too frequently, when a book gets to be five or ten years old its annual sale shrinks to two or three hundred copies, and after an added ten or twenty years ceases to sell. but you sell thousands of my moss-backed old books every yearthe youngest of them being books that range from fifteen to twenty-seven years old, and the oldest reaching back to thirty-five and forty. by the terms of my contract my publishers had to account to me for 50,000 volumes per year for five years, and pay me for them whether they sold them or not. it is at this point that you gentlemen come in, for it was your business to unload 250,000 volumes upon the public in five years if you possibly could. have you succeeded? yes, you haveand more. for in four years, with a year still to spare, you have sold the 250,000 volumes, and 240,000 besides. your sales have increased each year. in the first year you sold 90,328, in the second year, 104,851; in the third, 133,975; in the fourth yearwhich was last yearyou sold 160,000. the aggregate for the four years is 500,000 volumes lacking 11,000. of the oldest book, the innocents abroad,now forty years oldyou sold upward of 46,000 copies in the four years; of roughing itnow thirty-eight years old, i thinkyou sold 40,334; of tom sawyer, 41,000. and so on. and there is one thing that is peculiarly gratifying to me: the personal recollections of joan of arc is a serious book; i wrote it for love, and never expected it to sell, but you have pleasantly disappointed me in that matter. in youth hands its sale has increased each year. in 1904 you sold 1726 copies; in 1905, 2445; in 1906, 5381; and last year, 6574. "mark twain's first appearance." on october 5, 1906, mr. clemens, following a musical recital by his daughter in norfolk, conn., addressed her audience on the subject of stage-fright. he thanked the people for making things as easy as possible for his daughter's american debut as a contralto, and then told of his first experience before the public. my heart goes out in sympathy to any one who is making his first appearance before an audience of human beings. by a direct process of memory i go back forty years, less one monthfor i'm older than i look. i recall the occasion of my first appearance. san francisco knew me then only as a reporter, and i was to make my bow to san francisco as a lecturer. i knew that nothing short of compulsion would get me to the theatre. so i bound myself by a hard-and-fast contract so that i could not escape. i got to the theatre forty-five minutes before the hour set for the lecture. my knees were shaking so that i didn't know whether i could stand up. if there is an awful, horrible malady in the world, it is stage-frightand sea-sickness. they are a pair. i had stage-fright then for the first and last time. i was only seasick once, too. it was on a little ship on which there were two hundred other passengers. iwassick. i was so sick that there wasn't any left for those other two hundred passengers. it was dark and lonely behind the scenes in that theatre, and i peeked through the little peek-holes they have in theatre curtains and looked into the big auditorium. that was dark and empty, too. by-and-by it lighted up, and the audience began to arrive. i had got a number of friends of mine, stalwart men, to sprinkle themselves through the audience armed with big clubs. every time i said anything they could possibly guess i intended to be funny they were to pound those clubs on the floor. then there was a kind lady in a box up there, also a good friend of mine, the wife of the governor. she was to watch me intently, and whenever i glanced toward her she was going to deliver a gubernatorial laugh that would lead the whole audience into applause. at last i began. i had the manuscript tucked under a united states flag in front of me where i could get at it in case of need. but i managed to get started without it. i walked up and downi was young in those days and needed the exerciseand talked and talked. right in the middle of the speech i had placed a gem. i had put in a moving, pathetic part which was to get at the hearts and souls of my hearers. when i delivered it they did just what i hoped and expected. they sat silent and awed. i had touched them. then i happened to glance up at the box where the governor's wife wasyou know what happened. well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my stage-fright left me, never to return. i know if i was going to be hanged i could get up and make a good showing, and i intend to. but i shall never forget my feelings before the agony left me, and i got up here to thank you for her for helping my daughter, by your kindness, to live through her first appearance. and i want to thank you for your appreciation of her singing, which is, by-the-way, hereditary. morals and memory. mr. clemens was the guest of honor at a reception held at barnard college (columbia university), march 7, 1906, by the barnard union. one of the young ladies presented mr. clemens, and thanked him for his amiability in coming to make them an address. she closed with the expression of the great joy it gave her fellow-collegians, "because we all love you." if any one here loves me, she has my sincere thanks. nay, if any one here is so good as to love mewhy, i'll be a brother to her. she shall have my sincere, warm, unsullied affection. when i was coming up in the car with the very kind young lady who was delegated to show me the way, she asked me what i was going to talk about. and i said i wasn't sure. i said i had some illustrations, and i was going to bring them in. i said i was certain to give those illustrations, but that i hadn't the faintest notion what they were going to illustrate. now, i've been thinking it over in this forest glade [indicating the woods of arcady on the scene setting], and i've decided to work them in with something about morals and the caprices of memory. that seems to me to be a pretty good subject. you see, everybody has a memory and it's pretty sure to have caprices. and, of course, everybody has morals. it's my opinion that every one i know has morals, though i wouldn't like to ask. i know i have. but i'd rather teach them than practice them any day. "give them to others"that's my motto. then you never have any use for them when you're left without. now, speaking of the caprices of memory in general, and of mine in particular, it's strange to think of all the tricks this little mental process plays on us. here we're endowed with a faculty of mind that ought to be more supremely serviceable to us than them all. and what happens? this memory of ours stores up a perfect record of the most useless facts and anecdotes and experiences. and all the things that we ought to knowthat we need to knowthat we'd profit by knowingit casts aside with the careless indifference of a girl refusing her true lover. it's terrible to think of this phenomenon. i tremble in all my members when i consider all the really valuable things that i've forgotten in seventy yearswhen i meditate upon the caprices of my memory. there's a bird out in california that is one perfect symbol of the human memory. i've forgotten the bird's name (just because it would be valuable for me to know itto recall it to your own minds, perhaps). but this fool of a creature goes around collecting the most ridiculous things you can imagine and storing them up. he never selects a thing that could ever prove of the slightest help to him; but he goes about gathering iron forks, and spoons, and tin cans, and broken mouse-trapsall sorts of rubbish that is difficult for him to carry and yet be any use when he gets it. why, that bird will go by a gold watch to bring back one of those patent cake-pans. now, my mind is just like that, and my mind isn't very different from yoursand so our minds are just like that bird. we pass by what would be of inestimable value to us, and pack our memories with the most trivial odds and ends that never by any chance, under any circumstances whatsoever, could be of the slightest use to any one. now, things that i have remembered are constantly popping into my head. and i am repeatedly startled by the vividness with which they recur to me after the lapse of years and their utter uselessness in being remembered at all. i was thinking over some on my way up here. they were the illustrations i spoke about to the young lady on the way up. and i've come to the conclusion, curious though it is, that i can use every one of these freaks of memory to teach you all a lesson. i'm convinced that each one has its moral. and i think it's my duty to hand the moral on to you. now, i recall that when i was a boy i was a good boyi was a very good boy. why, i was the best boy in my school. i was the best boy in that little mississippi town where i lived. the population was only about twenty million. you may not believe it, but i was the best boy in that stateand in the united states, for that matter. but i don't know why i never heard any one say that but myself. i always recognized it. but even those nearest and dearest to me couldn't seem to see it. my mother, especially, seemed to think there was something wrong with that estimate. and she never got over that prejudice. now, when my mother got to be eighty-five years old her memory failed her. she forgot little threads that hold life's patches of meaning together. she was living out west then, and i went on to visit her. i hadn't seen my mother in a year or so. and when i got there she knew my face; knew i was married; knew i had a family, and that i was living, with them. but she couldn't, for the life of her, tell my name or who i was. so i told her i was her boy. "but you don't live with me," she said. "no," said i, "i'm living in rochester." "what are you doing there?" "going to school." "large school?" "very large." "all boys?" "all boys." "and how do you stand?" said my mother. "i'm the best boy in that school," i answered. "well," said my mother, with a return of her old fire, "i'd like to know what the other boys are like." now, one point in this story is the fact that my mother's mind went back to my school days, and remembered my little youthful self-prejudice when she'd forgotten everything else about me. the other point is the moral. there's one there that you will find if you search for it. now, here's something else i remember. it's about the first time i ever stole a watermelon. "stole" is a strong word. stole? stole? no, i don't mean that. it was the first time i ever withdrew a watermelon. it was the first time i ever extracted a watermelon. that is exactly the word i want"extracted." it is definite. it is precise. it perfectly conveys my idea. its use in dentistry connotes the delicate shade of meaning i am looking for. you know we never extract our own teeth. and it was not my watermelon that i extracted. i extracted that watermelon from a farmer's wagon while he was inside negotiating with another customer. i carried that watermelon to one of the secluded recesses of the lumber-yard, and there i broke it open. it was a green watermelon. well, do you know when i saw that i began to feel sorrysorrysorry. it seemed to me that i had done wrong. i reflected deeply. i reflected that i was youngi think i was just eleven. but i knew that though immature i did not lack moral advancement. i knew what a boy ought to do who had extracted a watermelon like that. i considered george washington, and what action he would have taken under similar circumstances. then i knew there was just one thing to make me feel right inside, and that wasrestitution. so i said to myself: "i will do that. i will take that green watermelon back where i got it from." and the minute i had said it i felt that great moral uplift that comes to you when you've made a noble resolution. so i gathered up the biggest fragments, and i carried them back to the farmer's wagon, and i restored the watermelonwhat was left of it. and i made him give me a good one in place of it, too. and i told him he ought to be ashamed of himself going around working off his worthless, old, green watermelons on trusting purchasers who had to rely on him. how could they tell from the outside whether the melons were good or not? that was his business. and if he didn't reform, i told him i'd see that he didn't get my more of my tradenor anybody else's i knew, if i could help it. you know that man was as contrite as a revivalist's last convert. he said be was all broken up to think i'd gotten a green watermelon. he promised me he would never carry another green watermelon if he starved for it. and he drove offa better man. now, do you see what i did for that man? he was on a downward path, and i rescued him. but all i got out of it was a watermelon. yet i'd rather have that memoryjust that memory of the good i did for that depraved farmerthan all the material gain you can think of. look at the lesson he got! i never got anything like that from it. but i ought to be satisfied. i was only eleven years old, but i secured everlasting benefit to other people. the moral in this is perfectly clear, and i think there's one in the next memory i'm going to tell you about. to go back to my childhood, there's another little incident that comes to me from which you can draw even another moral. it's about one of the times i went fishing. you see, in our house there was a sort of family prejudice against going fishing if you hadn't permission. but it would frequently be bad judgment to ask. so i went fishing secretly, as it wereway up the mississippi. it was an exquisitely happy trip, i recall, with a very pleasant sensation. well, while i was away there was a tragedy in our town. a stranger, stopping over on his way east from california, was stabbed to death in an unseemly brawl. now, my father was justice of the peace, and because he was justice of the peace he was coroner; and since he was coroner he was also constable; and being constable he was sheriff; and out of consideration for his holding the office of sheriff he was likewise county clerk and a dozen other officials i don't think of just this minute. i thought he had power of life or death; only he didn't use it over other boys. he was sort of an austere man. somehow i didn't like being round him when i'd done anything he disapproved of. so that's the reason i wasn't often around. well, when this gentleman got knifed they communicated with the proper authority, the coroner, and they laid the corpse out in the coroner's officeour front sitting-roomin preparation for the inquest the next morning. about 9 or 10 o'clock i got back from fishing. it was a little too late for me to be received by my folks, so i took my shoes off and slipped noiselessly up the back way to the sitting-room. i was very tired, and i didn't wish to disturb my people. so i groped my way to the sofa and lay down. now, i didn't know anything of what had happened during my absence. but i was sort of nervous on my own accountafraid of being caught, and rather dubious about the morning affair. and i had been lying there a few moments when my eyes gradually got used to the darkness, and i became aware of something on the other side of the room. it was something foreign to the apartment. it had an uncanny appearance. and i sat up looking very hard, and wondering what in heaven this long, formless, vicious-looking thing might be. first i thought i'd go and see. then i thought, "never mind that." mind you, i had no cowardly sensations whatever, but it didn't seem exactly prudent to investigate. but i somehow couldn't keep my eyes off the thing. and the more i looked at it the more disagreeably it grew on me. but i was resolved to play the man. so i decided to turn over and count a hundred, and let the patch of moonlight creep up and show me what the dickens it was. well, i turned over and tried to count, but i couldn't keep my mind on it. i kept thinking of that grewsome mass. i was losing count all the time, and going back and beginning over again. oh no; i wasn't frightenedjust annoyed. but by the time i'd gotten to the century mark i turned cautiously over and opened my eyes with great fortitude. the moonlight revealed to me a marble-white human hand. well, maybe i wasn't embarrassed! but then that changed to a creepy feeling again, and i thought i'd try the counting again. i don't know how many hours or weeks it was that i lay there counting hard. but the moonlight crept up that white arm, and it showed me a lead face and a terrible wound over the heart. i could scarcely say that i was terror-stricken or anything like that. but somehow his eyes interested me so that i went right out of the window. i didn't need the sash. but it seemed easier to take it than leave it behind. now, let that teach you a lessoni don't know just what it is. but at seventy years old i find that memory of peculiar value to me. i have been unconsciously guided by it all these years. things that seemed pigeon-holed and remote are a perpetual influence. yes, you're taught in so many ways. and you're so felicitously taught when you don't know it. here's something else that taught me a good deal. when i was seventeen i was very bashful, and a sixteen-year-old girl came to stay a week with us. she was a peach, and i was seized with a happiness not of this world. one evening my mother suggested that, to entertain her, i take i take her to the theatre. i didn't really like to, because i was seventeen and sensitive about appearing in the streets with a girl. i couldn't see my way to enjoying my delight in public. but we went. i didn't feel very happy. i couldn't seem to keep my mind on the play. i became unconscious after a while, that that was due less to my lovely company than my boots. they were sweet to look upon, as smooth as skin, but fitted ten times as close. i got oblivious to the play and the girl and the other people and everything but my boots until i hitched one partly off. the sensation was sensuously perfect. i couldn't help it. i had to get the other off, partly. then i was obliged to get them off altogether, except that i kept my feet in the legs so they couldn't get away. from that time i enjoyed the play. but the first thing i knew the curtain came down, like that, without my notice, and i hadn't any boots on. i tugged strenuously. and the people in our row got up and fussed and said things until the peach and i simply had to move on. we movedthe girl on one arm and the boots under the other. we walked home that way, sixteen blocks, with a retinue a mile long. every time we passed a lamp-post death gripped me at the throat. but we got homeand i had on white socks. if i live to be nine hundred and ninety-nine years old i don't suppose i could ever forget that walk. i remember it about as keenly as the chagrin i suffered on another occasion. at one time in our domestic history we had a colored butler who had a failing. he could never remember to ask people who came to the door to state their business. so i used to buffer a good many calls unnecessarily. one morning when i was especially busy he brought me a card engraved with a name i did not know. so i said, "what does he wish to see me for?" and sylvester said, "ah couldn't ask him, sah; he wuz a genlmun." "return instantly," i thundered, "and inquire his mission. ask him what's his game." well, sylvester returned with the announcement that he had lightning-rods to sell. "indeed," said i, "things are coming to a fine pass when lightning-rod agents send up engraved cards." "he has pictures," added sylvester. "pictures, indeed! he may be peddling etchings. has he a russia leather case?" but sylvester was too frightened to remember. i said, "i am going down to make it hot for that upstart!" i went down the stairs, working up my temper all the way. when i got to the parlor i was in a fine frenzy concealed beneath a veneer of frigid courtesy. and when i looked in the door, sure enough he had a russia leather case in his hand. but i didn't happen to notice that it was our russia leather case. and if you'd believe me, that man was sitting with a whole gallery of etchings spread out before him. but i didn't happen to notice that they were our etchings, spread out by some member of my family for some unguessed purpose. very curtly i asked the gentleman his business. with a surprised, timid manner he faltered that he had met my wife and daughter at onteora, and they had asked him to call. fine lie, i thought, and i froze him. he seemed to be kind of nonplussed, and sat there fingering the etchings in the case until i told him he needn't bother, because we had those. that pleased him so much that he leaned over, in an embarrassed way, to pick up another from the floor. but i stopped him. i said, "we've got that, too." he seemed pitifully amazed, but i was congratulating myself on my great success. finally the gentleman asked where mr. winton lived; he'd met him in the mountains, too. so i said i'd show him gladly. and i did on the spot. and when he was gone i felt queer, because there were all his etchings spread out on the floor. well, my wife came in and asked me who had been in. i showed her the card, and told her all exultantly. to my dismay she nearly fainted. she told me he had been a most kind friend to them in the country, and had forgotten to tell me that he was expected our way. and she pushed me out of the door, and commanded me to get over to the wintons in a hurry and get him back. i came into the drawing-room, where mrs. winton was sitting up very stiff in a chair, beating me at my own game. well, i began to put another light on things. before many seconds mrs. winton saw it was time to change her temperature. in five minutes i had asked the man to luncheon, and she to dinner, and so on. we made that fellow change his trip and stay a week, and we gave him the time of his life. why, i don't believe we let him get sober the whole time. i trust that you will carry away some good thought from these lessons i have given you, and that the memory of them will inspire you to higher things, and elevate you to plans far above the oldandand and i tell you one thing, young ladies: i've had a better time with you to-day than with that peach fifty-three years ago. queen victoria. address to the british schools and universities club at delmonico's, monday, may 25, 1908, in honor of queen victoria's birthday. mr. clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it; but a friend of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five yards and attributed the shot to mark twain. the duel did not take place. mr. clemens continued as follows: it also happened that i was the means of stopping the duelling in nevada, for a law was passed sending all duellists to jail for two years, and the governor, hearing of my marksmanship, said that if he got me i should go to prison for the full term. that's why i left nevada, and i have not been there since. you do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me to speak of my country in this commemoration of the birthday of that noble lady whose life was consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and to the promotion of lofty ideals, and was a model upon which many a humbler life was formed and made beautiful while she lived, and upon which many such lives will still be formed in the generations that are to comelife which finds its just image in the star which falls out of its place in the sky and out of existence, but whose light still streams with unfaded lustre across the abysses of space long after its fires have been extinguished at their source. as a woman the queen was all that the most exacting standards could require. as a far-reaching and effective beneficent moral force she had no peer in her time among either monarchs or commoners. as a monarch she was without reproach in her great office. we may not venture, perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any monarch that preceded her upon either her own throne or upon any other. it is a colossal eulogy, but it is justified. in those qualities of the heart which beget affection in all sorts and conditions of men she was rich, surprisingly rich, and for this she will still be remembered and revered in the far-off ages when the political glories of her reign shall have faded from vital history and fallen to a place in that scrap-heap of unverifiable odds and ends which we call tradition. which is to say, in briefer phrase, that her name will live always. and with it her charactera fame rare in the history of thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, since it will not rest upon harvested selfish and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned and freely vouchsafed. she mended broken hearts where she could, but she broke none. what she did for us in america in our time of storm and stress we shall not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always remember the wise and righteous mind that guided her in it and sustained and supported herprince albert's. we need not talk any idle talk here to-night about either possible or impossible war between the two countries; there will be no war while we remain sane and the son of victoria and albert sits upon the throne. in conclusion, i believe i may justly claim to utter the voice of my country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and also in cordially wishing him a long life and a happy reign. joan of arc. address at the dinner of the society of illustrators, given at the aldine association club, december 22, 1905. just before mr. clemens made his speech, a young woman attired as joan of arc, with a page bearing her flag of battle, courtesied reverently and tendered mr. clemens a laurel wreath on a satin pillow. he tried to speak, but his voice failed from excess of emotion. "i thank you!" he finally exclaimed, and, pulling himself together, he began his speech. now there is an illustration [pointing to the retreating joan of arc]. that is exactly what i wantedprecisely what i wantedwhen i was describing to myself joan of arc, after studying her history and her character for twelve years diligently. that was the productnot the conventional joan of arc. wherever you find the conventional joan of arc in history she is an offence to anybody who knows the story of that wonderful girl. why, she wasshe was almost supreme in several details. she had a marvellous intellect; she had a great heart, had a noble spirit, was absolutely pure in her character, her feeling, her language, her words, her everythingshe was only eighteen years old. now put that heart into such a breasteighteen years oldand give it that masterly intellect which showed in the fate, and furnish it with that almost god-like spirit, and what are you going to have? the conventional joan of arc? not by any means. that is impossible. i cannot comprehend any such thing as that. you must have a creature like that young and fair and beautiful girl we just saw. and her spirit must look out of the eyes. the figure should bethe figure should be in harmony with all that, but, oh, what we get in the conventional picture, and it is always the conventional picture! i hope you will allow me to say that your guild, when you take the conventional, you have got it at second-hand. certainly, if you had studied and studied, then you might have something else as a result, but when you have the common convention you stick to that. you cannot prevail upon the artist to do it; he always gives you a joan of arcthat lovely creature that started a great career at thirteen, but whose greatness arrived when she was eighteen; and merely because she was a girl he cannot see the divinity in her, and so he paints a peasant, a coarse and lubberly figurethe figure of a cotton-bale, and he clothes that in the coarsest raiment of the peasant regionjust like a fish-woman, her hair cropped short like a russian peasant, and that face of hers, which should be beautiful and which should radiate all the glories which are in the spirit and in her heartthat expression in that face is always just the fixed expression of a ham. but now mr. beard has intimated a moment ago, and so has sir purdon-clarke also, that the artist, the illustrator, does not often get the idea of the man whose book he is illustrating. here is a very remarkable instance of the other thing in mr. beard, who illustrated a book of mine. you may never have heard of it. i will tell you about it nowa yankee in king arthur's court. now, beard got everything that i put into that book and a little more besides. those pictures of beard's in that bookoh, from the first page to the last is one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the servilities of our poor human race, and also at the professions and the insolence of priest-craft and king-craftthose creatures that make slaves of themselves and have not the manliness to shake it off. beard put it all in that book. i meant it to be there. i put a lot of it there and beard put the rest. that publisher of mine in hartford had an eye for the pennies, and he saved them. he did not waste any on the illustrations. he had a very good artistwilliamswho had never taken a lesson in drawing. everything he did was original. the publisher hired the cheapest wood-engraver he could find, and in my early books you can see a trace of that. you can see that if williams had had a chance he would have made some very good pictures. he had a good heart and good intentions. i had a character in the first book he illustratedthe innocents abroad. that was a boy seventeen or eighteen years oldjack van nostranda new york boy, who, to my mind, was a very remarkable creature. he and i tried to get williams to understand that boy, and make a picture of jack that would be worthy of jack. jack was a most singular combination. he was born and reared in new york here. he was as delicate in his feelings, as clean and pure and refined in his feelings as any lovely girl that ever was, but whenever he expressed a feeling he did it in bowery slang, and it was a most curious combinationthat delicacy of his and that apparent coarseness. there was no coarseness inside of jack at all, and jack, in the course of seventeen or eighteen years, had acquired a capital of ignorance that was marvellousignorance of various things, not of all things. for instance, he did not know anything about the bible. he had never been in sunday-school. jack got more out of the holy land than anybody else, because the others knew what they were expecting, but it was a land of surprises to him. i said in the book that we found him watching a turtle on a log, stoning that turtle, and he was stoning that turtle because he had read that "the song of the turtle was heard in the land," and this turtle wouldn't sing. it sounded absurd, but it was charged on jack as a fact, and as he went along through that country he had a proper foil in an old rebel colonel, who was superintendent and head engineer in a large sunday-school in wheeling, west virginia. that man was full of enthusiasm wherever he went, and would stand and deliver himself of speeches, and jack would listen to those speeches of the colonel and wonder. jack had made a trip as a child almost across this continent in the first overland stage-coach. that man's name who ran that line of stageswell, i declare that name is gone. well, names will go. hallidayah, that's the nameben halliday, your uncle [turning to mr. carnegie]. that was the fellowben hallidayand jack was full of admiration at the prodigious speed that that line of stages madeand it was good speedone hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going day and night, and it was the event of jack's life, and there at the fords of the jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was always making a speech), so he called us up to him. he called up five sinners and three saints. it has been only lately that mr. carnegie beatified me. and he said: "here are the fords of the jordana monumental place. at this very point, when moses brought the children of israel throughhe brought the children of israel from egypt through the desert you see therehe guarded them through that desert patiently, patiently during forty years, and brought them to this spot safe and sound. there you seethere is the scene of what moses did." and jack said: "moses who?" "oh," he says, "jack, you ought not to ask that! moses, the great law-giver! moses, the great patriot! moses, the great warrior! moses, the great guide, who, as i tell you, brought these people through these three hundred miles of sand in forty years, and landed them safe and sound." jack said: "there's nothin' in that three hundred miles in forty years. ben halliday would have snaked 'em through in thirty-six hours." well, i was speaking of jack's innocence, and it was beautiful. jack was not ignorant on all subjects. that boy was a deep student in the history of anglo-saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way through to the marrow. there was a subject that interested him all the time. other subjects were of no concern to jack, but that quaint, inscrutable innocence of his i could not get williams to put into the picture. yes, williams wanted to do it. he said: "i will make him as innocent as a virgin." he thought a moment, and then said, "i will make him as innocent as an unborn virgin," which covered the ground. i was reminded of jack because i came across a letter to-day which is over thirty years old that jack wrote. jack was doomed to consumption. he was very long and slim, poor creature, and in a year or two after he got back from that excursion to the holy land he went on a ride on horseback through colorado, and he did not last but a year or two. he wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of mine, and he said: "i have ridden horseback"this was three years after"i have ridden horseback four hundred miles through a desert country where you never see anything but cattle now and then, and now and then a cattle stationten miles apart, twenty miles apart. now you tell clemens that in all that stretch of four hundred miles i have seen only two booksthe bible and innocents abroad. tell clemens the bible was in a very good condition." i say that he had studied, and he had, the real saxon liberty, the acquirement of our liberty, and jack used to repeat some versesi don't know where they came from, but i thought of them to-day when i saw that letterthat that boy could have been talking of himself in those quoted lines from that unknown poet: "for he had sat at sidney's feet and walked with him in plain apart, and through the centuries heard the beat of freedom's march through cromwell's heart." and he was that kind of a boy. he should have lived, and yet he should not have lived, because he died at that early agehe couldn't have been more than twentyhe had seen all there was to see in the world that was worth the trouble of living in it; he had seen all of this world that is valuable; he had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illusion is the only valuable thing in it. he had arrived at that point where presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the realities of life, and god help the man that has arrived at that point. accident insuranceetc. delivered in hartford, at a dinner to cornelius walford, of london. gentlemen,i am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance centre has extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of brothers working sweetly hand in handthe colt's arms company making the destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life-insurance citizens paying for the victims when they pass away, mr. batterson perpetuating their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades taking care of their hereafter. i am glad to assist in welcoming our guestfirst, because he is an englishman, and i owe a heavy debt of hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he is in sympathy with insurance, and has been the means of making many other men cast their sympathies in the same direction. certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance line of businessespecially accident insurance. ever since i have been a director in an accident-insurance company i have felt that i am a better man. life has seemed more precious. accidents have assumed a kindlier aspect. distressing special providences have lost half their horror. i look upon a cripple now with affectionate interestas an advertisement. i do not seem to care for poetry any more. i do not care for politics even agriculture does not excite me. but to me now there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable. there is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. i have seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. i have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. in all my experience of life, i have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. and i have seen nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg. i will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity which we have named the hartford accident insurance company* is an institution which is peculiarly to be depended upon. a man is bound to prosper who gives it his custom. no man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year is out. now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite left him, he ceased to smilesaid life was but a weariness. three weeks ago i got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit in this landhas a good steady income and a stylish suit of new bandages every day, and travels around on a shutter. * the speaker was a director of the company named. i will say, in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is none the less hearty because i talk so much nonsense, and i know that i can say the same for the rest of the speakers. osteopathy osteopathy. on february 27, 1901, mr. clemens appeared before the assembly committee in albany, new york, in favor of the seymour bill legalizing the practice of osteopathy. mr. chairman and gentlemen,dr. van fleet is the gentleman who gave me the character. i have heard my character discussed a thousand times before you were born, sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did not get more than half of them. i was touched and distressed when they brought that part of a child in here, and proved that you cannot take a child to pieces in that way. what remarkable names those diseases have! it makes me envious of the man that has them all. i have had many diseases, and am thankful for all i have had. one of the gentlemen spoke of the knowledge of something else found in sweden, a treatment which i took. it is, i suppose, a kindred thing. there is apparently no great difference between them. i was a year and a half in london and sweden, in the hands of that grand old man, mr. kildren. i cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the authority to give a certificate if a patient should die, but fortunately they don't. the state stands as a mighty gibraltar clothed with power. it stands between me and my body, and tells me what kind of a doctor i must employ. when my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty is given me by the state. now then, it doesn't seem logical that the state shall depart from this great policy, the health of the soul, and change about and take the other position in the matter of smaller consequencethe health of the body. the bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths out of the state. oh, dear me! when you drive somebody out of the state you create the same condition as prevailed in the garden of eden. you want the thing that you can't have. i didn't care much about the osteopaths, but as soon as i found they were going to drive them out i got in a state of uneasiness, and i can't sleep nights now. i know how adam felt in the garden of eden about the prohibited apple. adam didn't want the apple till he found out he couldn't have it, just as he would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn't have it. whose property is my body? probably mine. i so regard it. if i experiment with it, who must be answerable? i, not the state. if i choose injudiciously, does the state die? oh no. i was the subject of my mother's experiment. she was wise. she made experiments cautiously. she didn't pick out just any child in the flock. no, she chose judiciously. she chose one she could spare, and she couldn't spare the others. i was the choice child of the flock, so i had to take all of the experiments. in 1844 kneipp filled the world with the wonder of the water cure. mother wanted to try it, but on sober second thought she put me through. a bucket of ice-water was poured over to see the effect. then i was rubbed down with flannels, a sheet was dipped in the water, and i was put to bed. i perspired so much that mother put a life-preserver to bed with me. but this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me, and i didn't care for that. when they took off the sheet it was yellow from the output of my conscience, the exudation of sin. it purified me spiritually, and it remains until this day. i have experimented with osteopathy and allopathy. i took a chance at the latter for old times' sake, for, three times, when a boy, mother's new methods got me so near death's door she had to call in the family physician to pull me out. the physicians think they are moved by regard for the best interests of the public. isn't there a little touch of self-interest back of it all? it seems to me there is, and i don't claim to have all the virtuesonly nine or ten of them. i was born in the "banner state," and by "banner state" i mean missouri. osteopathy was born in the same state, and both of us are getting along reasonably well. at a time during my younger days my attention was attracted to a picture of a house which bore the inscription, "christ disputing with the doctors." i could attach no other meaning to it than that christ was actually quarrelling with the doctors. so i asked an old slave, who was a sort of a herb doctor in a small wayunlicensed, of coursewhat the meaning of the picture was. "what has he done?" i asked. and the colored man replied: "humph, he ain't got no license." water-supply. mr. clemens visited albany on february 27 and 28, 1901. the privileges of the floor were granted to him, and he was asked to make a short address to the senate. mr. president and gentlemen,i do not know how to thank you sufficiently for this high honor which you are conferring upon me. i have for the second time now enjoyed this kind of prodigal hospitalityin the other house yesterday, to-day in this one. i am a modest man, and diffident about appearing before legislative bodies, and yet utterly and entirely appreciative of a courtesy like this when it is extended to me, and i thank you very much for it. if i had the privilege, which unfortunately i have not got, of suggesting things to the legislators in my individual capacity, i would so enjoy the opportunity that i would not charge anything for it at all. i would do that without a salary. i would give them the benefit of my wisdom and experience in legislative bodies, and if i could have had the privilege for a few minutes of giving advice to the other house i should have liked to, but of course i could not undertake it, as they did not ask me to do itbut if they had only asked me! now that the house is considering a measure which is to furnish a water-supply to the city of new york, why, permit me to say i live in new york myself. i know all about its ways, its desires, and its residents, andif i had the privilegei should have urged them not to weary themselves over a measure like that to furnish water to the city of new york, for we never drink it. but i will not venture to advise this body, as i only venture to advise bodies who are not present. mistaken identity. address at the annual "ladies' day," papyrus club, boston. ladies and gentlemen,i am perfectly astonisheda-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-dladies and gentlemenastonished at the way history repeats itself. i find myself situated at this moment exactly and precisely as i was once before, years ago, to a jot, to a tittleto a very hair. there isn't a shade of difference. it is the most astonishing coincidence that everbut wait. i will tell you the former instance, and then you will see it for yourself. years ago i arrived one day at salamanca, new york, eastward bound; must change cars there and take the sleeper train. there were crowds of people there, and they were swarming into the long sleeper train and packing it full, and it was a perfect purgatory of dust and confusion and gritting of teeth and soft, sweet, and low profanity. i asked the young man in the ticket-office if i could have a sleeping-section, and he answered "no," with a snarl that shrivelled me up like burned leather. i went off, smarting under this insult to my dignity, and asked another local official, supplicatingly, if i couldn't have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car; but he cut me short with a venomous "no, you can't; every corner is full. now, don't bother me any more"; and he turned his back and walked off. my dignity was in a state now which cannot be described. i was so ruffled thatwell, i said to my companion, "if these people knew who i am they-" but my companion cut me short there"don't talk such folly," he said; "if they did know who you are, do you suppose it would help your high-mightiness to a vacancy in a train which has no vacancies in it?" this did not improve my condition any to speak of, but just then i observed that the colored porter of a sleeping-car had his eye on me. i saw his dark countenance light up. he whispered to the uniformed conductor, punctuating with nods and jerks toward me, and straightway this conductor came forward, oozing politeness from every pore. "can i be of any service to you?" he asked. "will you have a place in the sleeper?" "yes," i said, "and much oblige me, too. give me anythinganything will answer." "we have nothing left but the big family stateroom," he continued, "with two berths and a couple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely at your disposal. here, tom, take these satchels aboard!" then he touched his hat and we and the colored tom moved along. i was bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but i held in and waited. tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apartment, and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles: "now, is dey anything you want, sah? case you kin have jes' anything you wants. it don't make no difference what it is." "can i have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-nightblazing hot?" i asked. "you know about the right temperature for a hot scotch punch?" "yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; i'll get it myself." "good! now, that lamp is hung too high. can i have a big coach candle fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that i can read comfortably?" "yes, sah, you kin; i'll fix her up myself, an' i'll fix her so she'll burn all night. yes, sah; an' you can jes' call for anything you want, and dish yer whole railroad 'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for to get it for you. dat's so." and he disappeared. well, i tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a smile on my companion, and said, gently: "well, what do you say now?" my companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn't. the next moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door, and this speech followed: "laws bless you, sah, i knowed you in a minute. i told de conductah so. laws! i knowed you de minute i sot eyes on you." "is that so, my boy?" (handing him a quadruple fee.) "who am i?" "jenuel mcclellan," and he disappeared again. my companion said, vinegarishly, "well, well! what do you say now?" right there comes in the marvellous coincidence i mentioned a while agoviz., i was speechless, and that is my condition now. perceive it? cats and candy. the following address was delivered at a social meeting of literary men in new york in 1874: when i was fourteen i was living with my parents, who were very poorand correspondently honest. we had a youth living with us by the name of jim wolfe. he was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very diffident. he and i slept togethervirtuously; and one bitter winter's night a cousin maryshe's married now and gonegave what they call a candy-pulling in those days in the west, and they took the saucers of hot candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower that came from the eavesit was a sort of an ell then, all covered with vinesto cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting there. in the mean time we were gone to bed. we were not invited to attend this party; we were too young. the young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and jim and i were in bed. there was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell, and our windows looked out on it, and it was frozen hard. a couple of tom-catsit is possible one might have been of the opposite sexwere assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going on, and we couldn't sleep at all. finally jim said, "for two cents i'd go out and snake them cats off that chimney." so i said, "of course you would." he said, "well, i would; i have a mighty good notion to do it." says i, "of course you have; certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it." i hoped he might try it, but i was afraid he wouldn't. finally i did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short shirt. he went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the chimney where the cats were. in the mean time these young ladies and gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when jim got almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels flew up and he shot down and crashed through those vines, and lit in the midst of the ladies and gentlemen, and sat down in those hot saucers of candy. there was a stampede, of course, and he came up-stairs dropping pieces of chinaware and candy all the way up, and when he got up therenow anybody in the world would have gone into profanity or something calculated to relieve the mind, but he didn't; he scraped the candy off his legs, nursed his blisters a little, and said, "i could have ketched them cats if i had had on a good ready." obituary poetry. address at the actors' fund fair, philadelphia, in 1895. ladies and gentlemen,theerthiserwelcome occasion gives me aneropportunity to make anerexplanation that i have long desired to deliver myself of. i rise to the highest honors before a philadelphia audience. in the course of my checkered career i have, on divers occasions, been chargedermaliciously with a more or less serious offence. it is in reply to one of the moreerimportant of these that i wish to speak. more than once i have been accused of writing obituary poetry in the philadelphia ledger. i wish right here to deny that dreadful assertion. i will admit that once, when a compositor in the ledger establishment, i did set up some of that poetry, but for a worse offence than that no indictment can be found against me. i did not write that poetryat least, not all of it. cigars and tobacco. my friends for some years now have remarked that i am an inveterate consumer of tobacco. that is true, but my habits with regard to tobacco have changed. i have no doubt that you will say, when i have explained to you what my present purpose is, that my taste has deteriorated, but i do not so regard it. whenever i held a smoking-party at my house, i found that my guests had always just taken the pledge. let me tell you briefly the history of my personal relation to tobacco. it began, i think, when i was a lad, and took the form of a quid, which i became expert in tucking under my tongue. afterward i learned the delights of the pipe, and i suppose there was no other youngster of my age who could more deftly cut plug tobacco so as to make it available for pipe-smoking. well, time ran on, and there came a time when i was able to gratify one of my youthful ambitionsi could buy the choicest havana cigars without seriously interfering with my income. i smoked a good many, changing off from the havana cigars to the pipe in the course of a day's smoking. at last it occurred to me that something was lacking in the havana cigar. it did not quite fulfil my youthful anticipations. i experimented. i bought what was called a seed-leaf cigar with a connecticut wrapper. after a while i became satiated of these, and i searched for something else. the pittsburg stogy was recommended to me. it certainly had the merit of cheapness, if that be a merit in tobacco, and i experimented with the stogy. then, once more, i changed off, so that i might acquire the subtler flavor of the wheeling toby. now that palled, and i looked around new york in the hope of finding cigars which would seem to most people vile, but which, i am sure, would be ambrosial to me. i couldn't find any. they put into my hands some of those little things that cost ten cents a box, but they are a delusion. i said to a friend, "i want to know if you can direct me to an honest tobacco merchant who will tell me what is the worst cigar in the new york market, excepting those made for chinese consumptioni want real tobacco. if you will do this and i find the man is as good as his word, i will guarantee him a regular market for a fair amount of his cigars." we found a tobacco dealer who would tell the truthwho, if a cigar was bad, would boldly say so. he produced what he called the very worst cigars he had ever had in his shop. he let me experiment with one then and there. the test was satisfactory. this was, after all, the real thing. i negotiated for a box of them and took them away with me, so that i might be sure of having them handy when i want them. i discovered that the "worst cigars," so called, are the best for me after all. billiards billiards. mr. clemens attended a billiard tourney on the evening of april 24, 1906, and was called on to tell a story. the game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition. once, when i was an underpaid reporter in virginia city, whenever i wished to play billiards i went out to look for an easy mark. one day a stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor. i looked him over casually. when he proposed a game, i answered, "all right." "just knock the balls around a little so that i can get your gait," he said; and when i had done so, he remarked: "i will be perfectly fair with you. i'll play you left-handed." i felt hurt, for he was cross-eyed, freckled, and had red hair, and i determined to teach him a lesson. he won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all i got was the opportunity to chalk my cue. "if you can play like that with your left hand," i said, "i'd like to see you play with your right." "i can't, he said. "i'm left-handed." the union right or wrong? reminiscences of nevada. i can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that nevada had lively newspapers in those days. my great competitor among the reporters was boggs, of the union, an excellent reporter. once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated; but, as a general thing, he was a wary and cautious drinker, although always ready to damp himself a little with the enemy. he had the advantage of me in one thing: he could get the monthly public-school report and i could not, because the principal hated my sheetthe enterprise. one snowy night, when the report was due, i started out, sadly wondering how i was to get it. presently, a few steps up the almost deserted street, i stumbled on boggs, and asked him where he was going. "after the school report." "i'll go along with you." "no, sir. i'll excuse you." "have it your own way." a saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, and boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. he gazed fondly after the boy, and saw him start up the enterprise stairs. i said: "i wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't, i must run up to the union office and see if i can get a proof of it after it's set up, though i don't begin to suppose i can. good night." "hold on a minute. i don't mind getting the report and sitting around with the boys a little while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down to the principal's with me." "now you talk like a human being. come along." we ploughed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the reporta short documentand soon copied it in our office. meantime, boggs helped himself to the punch. i gave the manuscript back to him, and we started back to get an inquest. at four o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were having a relaxing concert as usual (for some of the printers were good singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the accordion), the proprietor of the union strode in and asked if anybody had heard anything of boggs or the school report. we stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent. we found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of "corned" miners on the iniquity of squandering the public money on education "when hundreds and hundreds of honest, hard-working men were literally starving for whiskey." he had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours. we dragged him away, and put him into bed. of course there was no school report in the union, and boggs held me accountable, though i was innocent of any intention or desire to compass its absence from that paper, and was as sorry as any one that the misfortune had occurred. but we were perfectly friendly. the day the next school report was due the proprietor of the tennessee mine furnished us a buggy, and asked us to go down and write something about the propertya very common request, and one always gladly acceded to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure excursions as other people. the "mine" was a hole in the ground ninety feet deep, and no way of getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and being lowered with a windlass. the workmen had just gone off somewhere to dinner. i was not strong enough to lower boggs's bulk, so i took an unlighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the rope, implored boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start of him, and then swung out over the shaft. i reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe. i lit the candle, made an examination of the rock, selected some specimens, and shouted to boggs to hoist away. no answer. presently a head appeared in the circle of daylight away aloft, and a voice came down: "are you all set?" "all sethoist away!" "are you comfortable?" "perfectly." "could you wait a little?" "oh, certainlyno particular hurry." "wellgood-bye." "why, where are you going?" "after the school report!" and he did. i stayed down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when they hauled up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock. i walked home, toofive milesup-hill. we had no school report next morningbut the union had. an ideal french address. extract from "paris notes," in "tom sawyer abroad," etc. i am told that a french sermon is like a french speechit never names an historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in dates, you get left. a french speech is something like this: "comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st january cast off our chains; that the 10th august relieved us of the shameful presence of foreign spies; that the 5th september was its own justification before heaven and humanity; that the 18th brumaire contained the seeds of its own punishment; that the 14th july was the mighty voice of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of france and live; and let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the 2d december, and declare in thunder tones, the native tones of france, that but for him there had been no 17th march in history, no 12th october, no 19th january, no 22d april, no 16th november, no 30th september, no 2d july, no 14th february, no 29th june, no 15th august, no 31st maythat but for him, france, the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant almanac to-day." i have heard of one french sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent way: "my hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th january. the results of the vast crime of the 13th january have been in just proportion to the magnitude of the act itself. but for it there had been no 30th novembersorrowful spectacle! the grisly deed of the 16th june had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th june known existence; to it alone the 3d september was due, also the fatal 12th october. shall we, then, be grateful for the 13th january, with its freight of death for you and me and all that breathe? yes, my friends, for it gave us also that which had never come but for it, and it alonethe blessed 25th december." it may be well enough to explain. the man of the 13th january is adam; the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful spectacle of the 30th november was the expulsion from eden; the grisly deed of the 16th june was the murder of abel; the act of the 3d september was the beginning of the journey to the land of nod; the 12th day of october, the last mountaintops disappeared under the flood. when you go to church in france, you want to take your almanac with youannotated. statistics statistics. extract from "the history of the savage club." during that period of gloom when domestic bereavement had forced mr. clemens and his dear ones to secure the privacy they craved until their wounds should heal, his address was known to only a very few of his closest friends. one old friend in new york, after vain efforts to get his address, wrote him a letter addressed as follows: mark twain, god knows where, try london. the letter found him, and mr. clemens replied to the letter expressing himself surprised and complimented that the person who was credited with knowing his whereabouts should take so much interest in him, adding: "had the letter been addressed to the care of the 'other party,' i would naturally have expected to receive it without delay." his correspondent tried again, and addressed the second letter: mark twain, the devil knows where, try london. this found him also no less promptly. on june 9, 1899, he consented to visit the savage club, london, on condition that there was to be no publicity and no speech was to be expected from him. the toastmaster, in proposing the health of their guest, said that as a scotchman, and therefore as a born expert, he thought mark twain had little or no claim to the title of humorist. mr. clemens had tried to be funny but had failed, and his true role in life was statistics; that he was a master of statistics, and loved them for their own sake, and it would be the easiest task he ever undertook if he would try to count all the real jokes he had ever made. while the toastmaster was speaking, the members saw mr. clemens's eyes begin to sparkle and his cheeks to flush. he jumped up, and made a characteristic speech. perhaps i am not a. humorist, but i am a first-class foola simpleton; for up to this moment i have believed chairman macalister to be a decent person whom i could allow to mix up with my friends and relatives. the exhibition he has just made of himself reveals him to be a scoundrel and a knave of the deepest dye. i have been cruelly deceived, and it serves me right for trusting a scotchman. yes, i do understand figures, and i can count. i have counted the words in macalister's drivel (i certainly cannot call it a speech), and there were exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. i also carefully counted the liesthere were exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. therefore, i leave macalister to his fate. i was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. chaucer is dead, spencer is dead, so is milton, so is shakespeare, and i am not feeling very well myself. galveston orphan bazaar. address at a fair held at the waldorf-astoria, new york, in october, 1900, in aid of the orphans at galveston. i expected that the governor of texas would occupy this place first and would speak to you, and in the course of his remarks would drop a text for me to talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is proverbial with governors, they go back on their duties, and he has not come here, and has not furnished me with a text, and i am here without a text. i have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome faces, andbut i won't continue that, for i could go on forever about attractive faces, beautiful dresses, and other things. but, after all, compliments should be in order in a place like this. i have been in new york two or three days, and have been in a condition of strict diligence night and day, the object of this diligence being to regulate the moral and political situation on this planetput it on a sound basisand when you are regulating the conditions of a planet it requires a great deal of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when you have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also in a position of corking. when i am situated like that, with nothing to say, i feel as though i were a sort of fraud; i seem to be playing a part, and please consider i am playing a part for want of something better, and this is not unfamiliar to me; i have often done this before. when i was here about eight years ago i was coming up in a car of the elevated road. very few people were in that car, and on one end of it there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eyea beautiful eye; and i took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who had a vocation. he had with him a very fine little child of about four or five years. i was watching the affection which existed between those two. i judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. it was really a pretty child, and i was admiring her, and as soon as he saw i was admiring her he began to notice me. i could see his admiration of me in his eye, and i did what everybody else would doadmired the child four times as much, knowing i would get four times as much of his admiration. things went on very pleasantly. i was making my way into his heart. by-and-by, when he almost reached the station where he was to get off, he got up, crossed over, and he said: "now i am going to say something to you which i hope you will regard as a compliment." and then he went on to say: "i have never seen mark twain, but i have seen a portrait of him, and any friend of mine will tell you that when i have once seen a portrait of a man i place it in my eye and store it away in my memory, and i can tell you now that you look enough like mark twain to be his brother. now," he said, "i hope you take this as a compliment. yes, you are a very good imitation; but when i come to look closer, you are probably not that man." i said: "i will be frank with you. in my desire to look like that excellent character i have dressed for the character; i have been playing a part." he said: "that is all right, that is all right; you look very well on the outside, but when it comes to the inside you are not in it with the original." so when i come to a place like this with nothing valuable to say i always play a part. but i will say before i sit down that when it comes to saying anything here i will express myself in this way: i am heartily in sympathy with you in your efforts to help those who were sufferers in this calamity, and in your desire to help those who were rendered homeless, and in saying this i wish to impress on you the fact that i am not playing a part. san francisco earthquake. after the address at the robert fulton fund meeting, june 19, 1906, mr. clemens talked to the assembled reporters about the san francisco earthquake. i haven't been there since 1868, and that great city of san francisco has grown up since my day. when i was there she had one hundred and eighteen thousand people, and of this number eighteen thousand were chinese. i was a reporter on the virginia city enterprise in nevada in 1862, and stayed there, i think, about two years, when i went to san francisco and got a job as a reporter on the call. i was there three or four years. i remember one day i was walking down third street in san francisco. it was a sleepy, dull sunday afternoon, and no one was stirring. suddenly as i looked up the street about three hundred yards the whole side of a house fell out. the street was full of bricks and mortar. at the same time i was knocked against the side of a house, and stood there stunned for a moment. i thought it was an earthquake. nobody else had heard anything about it and no one said earthquake to me afterward, but i saw it and i wrote it. nobody else wrote it, and the house i saw go into the street was the only house in the city that felt it. i've always wondered if it wasn't a little performance gotten up for my especial entertainment by the nether regions. charity and actors. address at the actors' fund fair in the metropolitan opera house, new york, may 6, 1907. mr. clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the fair open. mr. daniel frohman, in introducing mr. clemens, said: "we intend to make this a banner week in the history of the fund, which takes an interest in every one on the stage, be he actor, singer, dancer, or workman. we have spent more than $40,000 during the past year. charity covers a multitude of sins, but it also reveals a multitude of virtues. at the opening of the former fair we had the assistance of edwin booth and joseph jefferson. in their place we have to-day that american institution and apostle of wide humanitymark twain." as mr. frohman has said, charity reveals a multitude of virtues. this is true, and it is to be proved here before the week is over. mr. frohman has told you something of the object and something of the character of the work. he told me he would do thisand he has kept his word! i had expected to hear of it through the newspapers. i wouldn't trust anything between frohman and the newspapersexcept when it's a case of charity! you should all remember that the actor has been your benefactor many and many a year. when you have been weary and downcast he has lifted your heart out of gloom and given you a fresh impulse. you are all under obligation to him. this is your opportunity to be his benefactorto help provide for him in his old age and when he suffers from infirmities. at this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy. if you offer a twenty-dollar bill in payment for a purchase of $1 you will receive $19 in change. there is to be no robbery here. there is to be no creed hereno religion except charity. we want to raise $250,000and that is a great task to attempt. the president has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in washington. now your good wishes are to be transmuted into cash. by virtue of the authority in me vested i declare the fair open. i call the ball game. let the transmuting begin! russian republic. the american auxiliary movement to aid the cause of freedom in russia was launched on the evening of april 11, 1906, at the club a house, 3 fifth avenue, with mr. clemens and maxim gorky as the principal spokesmen. mr. clemens made an introductory address, presenting mr. gorky. if we can build a russian republic to give to the persecuted people of the tsar's domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go ahead and do it. we need not discuss the methods by which that purpose is to be attained. let us hope that fighting will be postponed or averted for a while, but if it must come i am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement, now on foot in russia, to make that country free. i am certain that it will be successful, as it deserves to be. any such movement should have and deserves our earnest and unanimous co-operation, and such a petition for funds as has been explained by mr. hunter, with its just and powerful meaning, should have the utmost support of each and every one of us. anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free ourselves from oppression, must sympathize with those who now are trying to do the same thing in russia. the parallel i have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off. if we keep our hearts in this matter russia will be free. russian sufferers. on december 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the casino for the benefit of the russian sufferers. after the performance mr. clemens spoke. ladies and gentlemen,it seems a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an audience like this our rude english tongue, after we have heard that divine speech flowing in that lucid gallic tongue. it has always been a marvel to methat french language; it has always been a puzzle to me. how beautiful that language is. how expressive it seems to be. how full of grace it is. and when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how liquid it is. and, oh, i am always deceivedi always think i am going to understand it. oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet madame bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her. i have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that is divine; but i have always wanted to know madame bernhardt herselfher fiery self. i have wanted to know that beautiful character. why, she is the youngest person i ever saw, except myselffor i always feel young when i come in the presence of young people. i have a pleasant recollection of an incident so many years agowhen madame bernhardt came to hartford, where i lived, and she was going to play and the tickets were three dollars, and there were two lovely womena widow and her daughterneighbors of ours, highly cultivated ladies they were; their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were very poor, and they said: "well, we must not spend six dollars on a pleasure of the mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must spend it, if it must go at all, to furnish to somebody bread to eat." and so they sorrowed over the fact that they had to give up that great pleasure of seeing madame bernhardt, but there were two neighbors equally highly cultivated and who could not afford bread, and those good-hearted joneses sent that six dollarsdeprived themselves of itand sent it to those poor smiths to buy bread with. and those smiths took it and bought tickets with it to see madame bernhardt. oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence also. now, i was going to make a speechi supposed i was, but i am not. it is late, late; and so i am going to tell a story; and there is this advantage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable thing you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused among those involuted sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but, dear me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone of that story, and you are bound to get itit flashes, it flames, it is the jewel in the toad's headyou don't overlook that. now, if i am going to talk on such a subject as, for instance, the lost opportunityoh, the lost opportunity. anybody in this house who has reached the turn of lifesixty or seventy, or even fifty, or along therewhen he goes back along his history, there he finds it mile-stoned all the way with the lost opportunity, and you know how pathetic that is. you younger ones cannot know the full pathos that lies in those wordsthe lost opportunity; but anybody who is old, who has really lived and felt this life, he knows the pathos of the lost opportunity. now, i will tell you a story whose moral is that, whose lesson is that, whose lament is that. i was in a village which is a suburb of new bedford several years agowell, new bedford is a suburb of fair haven, or perhaps it is the other way; in any case, it took both of those towns to make a great centre of the great whaling industry of the first half of the nineteenth century, and i was up there at fair haven some years ago with a friend of mine. there was a dedication of a great town-hall, a public building, and we were there in the afternoon. this great building was filled, like this great theatre, with rejoicing villagers, and my friend and i started down the centre aisle. he saw a man standing in that aisle, and he said: "now, look at that bronzed veteranat that mahogany-faced man. now, tell me, do you see anything about that man's face that is emotional? do you see anything about it that suggests that inside that man anywhere there are fires that can be started? would you ever imagine that that is a human volcano?" "why, no," i said, "i would not. he looks like a wooden indian in front of a cigar store." "very well," said my friend, "i will show you that there is emotion even in that unpromising place. i will just go to that man and i will just mention in the most casual way an incident in his life. that man is getting along toward ninety years old. he is past eighty. i will mention an incident of fifty or sixty years ago. now, just watch the effect, and it will be so casual that if you don't watch you won't know when i do say that thingbut you just watch the effect." he went on down there and accosted this antiquity, and made a remark or two. i could not catch up. they were so casual i could not recognize which one it was that touched that bottom, for in an instant that old man was literally in eruption and was filling the whole place with profanity of the most exquisite kind. you never heard such accomplished profanity. i never heard it also delivered with such eloquence. i never enjoyed profanity as i enjoyed it thenmore than if i had been uttering it myself. there is nothing like listening to an artistall his passions passing away in lava, smoke, thunder, lightning, and earthquake. then this friend said to me: "now, i will tell you about that. about sixty years ago that man was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had just come home from a three years' whaling voyage. he came into that village of his, happy and proud because now, instead of being chief mate, he was going to be master of a whaleship, and he was proud and happy about it. "then he found that there had been a kind of a cold frost come upon that town and the whole region roundabout; for while he had been away the father mathew temperance excitement had come upon the whole region. therefore, everybody had taken the pledge; there wasn't anybody for miles and miles around that had not taken the pledge. "so you can see what a solitude it was to this young man, who was fond of his grog. and he was just an outcast, because when they found he would not join father mathew's society they ostracized him, and he went about that town three weeks, day and night, in utter lonelinessthe only human being in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had to take it privately. "if you don't know what it is to be ostracized, to be shunned by your fellow-man, may you never know it. then he recognized that there was something more valuable in this life than grog, and that is the fellowship of your fellow-man. and at last he gave it up, and at nine o'clock one night he went down to the father mathew temperance society, and with a broken heart he said: 'put my name down for membership in this society.' "and then he went away crying, and at earliest dawn the next morning they came for him and routed him out, and they said that new ship of his was ready to sail on a three years' voyage. in a minute he was on board that ship and gone. "and he saidwell, he was not out of sight of that town till he began to repent, but he had made up his mind that he would not take a drink, and so that whole voyage of three years was a three years' agony to that man because he saw all the time the mistake he had made. "he felt it all through; he had constant reminders of it, because the crew would pass him with their grog, come out on the deck and take it, and there was the torturous smell of it. "he went through the whole three years of suffering, and at last coming into port it was snowy, it was cold, he was stamping through the snow two feet deep on the deck and longing to get home, and there was his crew torturing him to the last minute with hot grog, but at last he had his reward. he really did get to shore at last, and jumped and ran and bought a jug and rushed to the society's office, and said to the secretary: "'take my name off your membership books, and do it right away! i have got a three years' thirst on.' "and the secretary said: 'it is not necessary. you were blackballed!'" watterson and twain as rebels. address at the celebration of abraham lincoln's 92d birthday anniversary, carnegie hall, february 11, 1901, to raise funds for the lincoln memorial university at cumberland gap, tenn. ladies and gentlemen,the remainder of my duties as presiding chairman here this evening are but twoonly two. one of them is easy, and the other difficult. that is to say, i must introduce the orator, and then keep still and give him a chance. the name of henry watterson carries with it its own explanation. it is like an electric light on top of madison square garden; you touch the button and the light flashes up out of the darkness. you mention the name of henry watterson, and your minds are at once illuminated with the splendid radiance of his fame and achievements. a journalist, a soldier, an orator, a statesman, a rebel. yes, he was a rebel; and, better still, now he is a reconstructed rebel. it is a curious circumstance, a circumstance brought about without any collusion or prearrangement, that he and i, both of whom were rebels related by blood to each other, should be brought here together this evening bearing a tribute in our hands and bowing our heads in reverence to that noble soul who for three years we tried to destroy. i don't know as the fact has ever been mentioned before, but it is a fact, nevertheless. colonel watterson and i were both rebels, and we are blood relations. i was a second lieutenant in a confederate companyfor a whileoh, i could have stayed on if i had wanted to. i made myself felt, i left tracks all around the country. i could have stayed on, but it was such weather. i never saw such weather to be out-of-doors in, in all my life. the colonel commanded a regiment, and did his part, i suppose, to destroy the union. he did not succeed, yet if he had obeyed me he would have done so. i had a plan, and i fully intended to drive general grant into the pacific oceanif i could get transportation. i told colonel watterson about it. i told him what he had to do. what i wanted him to do was to surround the eastern army and wait until i came up. but he was insubordinate; he stuck on some quibble of military etiquette about a second lieutenant giving orders to a colonel or something like that. and what was the consequence? the union was preserved. this is the first time i believe that that secret has ever been revealed. no one outside of the family circle, i think, knew it before; but there the facts are. watterson saved the union; yes, he saved the union. and yet there he sits, and not a step has been taken or a movement made toward granting him a pension. that is the way things are done. it is a case where some blushing ought to be done. you ought to blush, and i ought to blush, and hewell, he's a little out of practice now. robert fulton fund. address made on the evening of april 19, 1906. mr. clemens had been asked to address the association by gen. frederick d. grant, president. he was offered a fee of $1000, but refused it, saying: "i shall be glad to do it, but i must stipulate that you keep the $1000, and add it to the memorial fund as my contribution to erect a monument in new york to the memory of the man who applied steam to navigation." at this meeting mr. clemens made this formal announcement from the platform: "this is my last appearance on the paid platform. i shall not retire from the gratis platform until i am buried, and courtesy will compel me to keep still and not disturb the others. now, since i must, i shall say good-bye. i see many faces in this audience well known to me. they are all my friends, and i feel that those i don't know are my friends, too. i wish to consider that you represent the nation, and that in saying good-bye to you i am saying good-bye to the nation. in the great name of humanity, let me say this final word: i offer an appeal in behalf of that vast, pathetic multitude of fathers, mothers, and helpless little children. they were sheltered and happy two days ago. now they are wandering, forlorn, hopeless, and homeless, the victims of a great disaster. so i beg of you, i beg of you, to open your hearts and open your purses and remember san francisco, the smitten city." i wish to deliver a historical address. i've been studying the history oferalet me seea [then he stopped in confusion, and walked over to gen. fred d. grant, who sat at the head of the platform. he leaned over in a whisper, and then returned to the front of the stage and continued]. oh yes! i've been studying robert fulton. i've been studying a biographical sketch of robert fulton, the inventor oferalet's seeoh yes, the inventor of the electric telegraph and the morse sewing-machine. also, i understand he invented the airdiriapshaw! i have it at lastthe dirigible balloon. yes, the dirigible but it is a difficult word, and i don't see why anybody should marry a couple of words like that when they don't want to be married at all and are likely to quarrel with each other all the time. i should put that couple of words under the ban of the united states supreme court, under its decision of a few days ago, and take 'em out and drown 'em. i used to know fulton. it used to do me good to see him dashing through the town on a wild broncho. and fulton was born in erawell, it doesn't make much difference where he was born, does it? i remember a man who came to interview me once, to get a sketch of my life. i consulted with a frienda practical manbefore he came, to know how i should treat him. "whenever you give the interviewer a fact," he said, "give him another fact that will contradict it. then he'll go away with a jumble that he can't use at all. be gentle, be sweet, smile like an idiotjust be natural." that's what my friend told me to do, and i did it. "where were you born?" asked the interviewer. "wellera," i began, "i was born in alabama, or alaska, or the sandwich islands; i don't know where, but right around there somewhere. and you had better put it down before you forget it." "but you weren't born in all those places," he said. "well, i've offered you three places. take your choice. they're all at the same price." "how old are you?" he asked. "i shall be nineteen in june," i said. "why, there's such a discrepancy between your age and your looks," he said. "oh, that's nothing," i said, "i was born discrepantly." then we got to talking about my brother samuel, and he told me my explanations were confusing. "i suppose he is dead," i said. "some said that he was dead and some said that he wasn't." "did you bury him without knowing whether he was dead or not?" asked the reporter. "there was a mystery," said i. "we were twins, and one day when we were two weeks oldthat is, he was one week old, and i was one week oldwe got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of us drowned. we never could tell which. one of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of his hand. there it is on my hand. this is the one that was drowned. there's no doubt about it." "where's the mystery?" he said. "why, don't you see how stupid it was to bury the wrong twin?" i answered. i didn't explain it any more because he said the explanation confused him. to me it is perfectly plain. but, to get back to fulton. i'm going along like an old man i used to know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather. he had an awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because he switched off into something else. he used to tell about how his grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram. the old man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it up. the ram was observing him, and took the old man's action as an invitation. just as he was going to finish about the ram this friend of mine would recall that his grandfather had a niece who had a glass eye. she used to loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who used it when she received company. the eye didn't fit the friend's face, and it was loose. and whenever she winked it would turn over. then he got on the subject of accidents, and he would tell a story about how he believed accidents never happened. "there was an irishman coming down a ladder with a hod of bricks," he said, "and a dutchman was standing on the ground below. the irishman fell on the dutchman and killed him. accident? never! if the dutchman hadn't been there the irishman would have been killed. why didn't the irishman fall on a dog which was next to the dutchman? because the dog would have seen him coming." then he'd get off from the dutchman to an uncle named reginald wilson. reginald went into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted into the machinery's belt. he went excursioning around the factory until he was properly distributed and was woven into sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet. his wife bought the carpet, and then she erected a monument to his memory. it read: sacred to the memory of sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet containing the mortal remainders of reginald wilson go thou and do likewise and so on he would ramble about telling the story of his grandfather until we never were told whether he found the ten-cent piece or whether something else happened. fulton day, jamestown. address delivered september 23, 1907. lieutenant-governor ellyson, of virginia, in introducing mr. clemens, said: "the people have come here to bring a tribute of affectionate recollection for the man who has contributed so much to the progress of the world and the happiness of mankind." as mr. clemens came down to the platform the applause became louder and louder, until mr. clemens held out his hand for silence. it was a great triumph, and it was almost a minute after the applause ceased before mr. clemens could speak. he attempted it once, and when the audience noticed his emotion, it cheered again loudly. ladies and gentlemen,i am but human, and when you give me a reception like that i am obliged to wait a little while i get my voice. when you appeal to my head, i don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, i do feel it. we are here to celebrate one of the greatest events of american history, and not only in american history, but in the world's history. indeed it wasthe application of steam by robert fulton. it was a world eventthere are not many of them. it is peculiarly an american event, that is true, but the influence was very broad in effect. we should regard this day as a very great american holiday. we have not many that are exclusively american holidays. we have the fourth of july, which we regard as an american holiday, but it is nothing of the kind. i am waiting for a dissenting voice. all great efforts that led up to the fourth of july were made, not by americans, but by english residents of america, subjects of the king of england. they fought all the fighting that was done, they shed and spilt all the blood that was spilt, in securing to us the invaluable liberties which are incorporated in the declaration of independence; but they were not americans. they signed the declaration of independence; no american's name is signed to that document at all. there never was an american such as you and i are until after the revolution, when it had all been fought out and liberty secured, after the adoption of the constitution, and the recognition of the independence of america by all powers. while we revere the fourth of julyand let us always revere it, and the liberties it conferred upon usyet it was not an american event, a great american day. it was an american who applied that steam successfully. there are not a great many world events, and we have our full share. the telegraph, telephone, and the application of steam to navigationthese are great american events. to-day i have been requested, or i have requested myself, not to confine myself to furnishing you with information, but to remind you of things, and to introduce one of the nation's celebrants. admiral harrington here is going to tell you all that i have left untold. i am going to tell you all that i know, and then he will follow up with such rags and remnants as he can find, and tell you what he knows. no doubt you have heard a great deal about robert fulton and the influences that have grown from his invention, but the little steamboat is suffering neglect. you probably do not know a great deal about that boat. it was the most important steamboat in the world. i was there and saw it. admiral harrington was there at the time. it need not surprise you, for he is not as old as he looks. that little boat was interesting in every way. the size of it. the boat was one [consults admiral], he said ten feet long. the breadth of that boat [consults admiral], two hundred feet. you see, the first and most important detail is the length, then the breadth, and then the depth; the depth of that boat was [consults again]the admiral says it was a flat boat. then her tonnageyou know nothing about a boat until you know two more things: her speed and her tonnage. we know the speed she made. she made four milesand sometimes five miles. it was on her initial trip, on august 11, 1807, that she made her initial trip, when she went from [consults admiral] jersey cityto chicago. that's right. she went by way of albany. now comes the tonnage of that boat. tonnage of a boat means the amount of displacement; displacement means the amount of water a vessel can shove in a day. the tonnage of man is estimated by the amount of whiskey he can displace in a day. robert fulton named the clermont in honor of his bride, that is, clermont was the name of the county-seat. i feel that it surprises you that i know so much. in my remarks of welcome of admiral harrington i am not going to give him compliments. compliments always embarrass a man. you do not know anything to say. it does not inspire you with words. there is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. i have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass mei always feel that they have not said enough. the admiral and myself have held public office, and were associated together a great deal in a friendly way in the time of pocahontas. that incident where pocahontas saves the life of smith from her father, powhatan's club, was gotten up by the admiral and myself to advertise jamestown. at that time the admiral and myself did not have the facilities of advertising that you have. i have known admiral harrington in all kinds of situationsin public service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang now and thenbut it was a mistake. a case of mistaken identity. i do not think it is at all a necessity to tell you admiral harrington's public history. you know that it is in the histories. i am not here to tell you anything about his public life, but to expose his private life. i am something of a poet. when the great poet laureate, tennyson, died, and i found that the place was open, i tried to get itbut i did not get it. anybody can write the first line of a poem, but it is a very difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first. when i was down in australia there were two towns named johnswood and par-am. i made this rhyme: "the people of johnswood are pious and good; the people of par-am they don't care a-" i do not want to compliment admiral harrington, but as long as such men as he devote their lives to the public service the credit of the country will never cease. i will say that the same high qualities, the same moral and intellectual attainments, the same graciousness of manner, of conduct, of observation, and expression have caused admiral harrington to be mistaken for meand i have been mistaken for him. a mutual compliment can go no further, and i now have the honor and privilege of introducing to you admiral harrington. lotos club dinner in honor of mark twain. address at the first formal dinner in the new club-house, november 11, 1893. in introducing the guest of the evening, mr. lawrence said: "to-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings. the place where last we met about the table has vanished, and to-night we have our first lotos dinner in a home that is all our own. it is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future that our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters; for the lotos club is ever at its best when paying homage to genius in literature or in art. is there a civilized being who has not heard the name of mark twain? we knew him long years ago, before he came out of the boundless west, brimful of wit and eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad to educate the untutored european in the subtleties of the american joke. the world has looked on and applauded while he has broken many images. he has led us in imagination all over the globe. with him as our guide we have traversed alike the mississippi and the sea of galilee. at his bidding we have laughed at a thousand absurdities. by a laborious process of reasoning he has convinced us that the egyptian mummies are actually dead. he has held us spellbound upon the plain at the foot of the great sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping bitter tears at the tomb of adam. to-night we greet him in the flesh. what name is there in literature that can be likened to his? perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this table can tell us, but i know of none. himself his only parallel!" mr. president, gentlemen, and fellow-members of the lotos club,i have seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously phrased or so well deserved. i return thanks for them from a full heart and an appreciative spirit, and i will say this in self-defence: while i am charged with having no reverence for anything, i wish to say that i have reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and i also have a deep reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice to me. to be the chief guest of such a club is something to be envied, and if i read your countenances rightly i am envied. i am glad to see this club in such palatial quarters. i remember it twenty years ago when it was housed in a stable. now when i was studying for the ministry there were two or three things that struck my attention particularly. at the first banquet mentioned in history that other prodigal son who came back from his travels was invited to stand up and have his say. they were all there, his brethren, david and goliath, and er, and if he had had such experience as i have had he would have waited until those other people got through talking. he got up and testified to all his failings. now if he had waited before telling all about his riotous living until the others had spoken he might not have given himself away as he did, and i think that i would give myself away if i should go on. i think i'd better wait until the others hand in their testimony; then if it is necessary for me to make an explanation, i will get up and explain, and if i cannot do that, i'll deny it happened. later in the evening mr. clemens made another speech, replying to a fire of short speeches by charles dudley warner, charles a. dana, seth low, general porter, and many others, each welcoming the guest of honor. i don't see that i have a great deal to explain. i got off very well, considering the opportunities that these other fellows had. i don't see that mr. low said anything against me, and neither did mr. dana. however, i will say that i never heard so many lies told in one evening as were told by mr. mckelwayand i consider myself very capable; but even in his case, when he got through, i was gratified by finding how much he hadn't found out. by accident he missed the very things that i didn't want to have said, and now, gentlemen, about americanism. i have been on the continent of europe for two and a half years. i have met many americans there, some sojourning for a short time only, others making protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to me to find that nearly all preserved their americanism. i have found they all like to see the flag fly, and that their hearts rise when they see the stars and stripes. i met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her birth and glorified monarchical institutions. i think it is a great thing to say that in two and a half years i met only one person who had fallen a victim to the shamsi think we may call them shamsof nobilities and of heredities. she was entirely lost in them. after i had listened to her for a long time, i said to her: "at least you must admit that we have one merit. we are not like the chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired of the country to leave it. thank god, we don't!" copyright copyright. with mr. howells, edward everett hale, thomas nelson page, and a number of other authors, mr. clemens appeared before the committee december 6, 1906. the new copyright bill contemplated an author's copyright for the term of his life and for fifty years thereafter, applying also for the benefit of artists, musicians, and others, but the authors did most of the talking. f. d. millet made a speech for the artists, and john philip sousa for the musicians. mr. clemens was the last speaker of the day, and its chief feature. he made a speech, the serious, parts of which created a strong impression, and the humorous parts set the senators and representatives in roars of laughter. i have read this bill. at least i have read such portions as i could understand. nobody but a practised legislator can read the bill and thoroughly understand it, and i am not a practised legislator. i am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which concerns my trade. i like that extension of copyright life to the author's life and fifty years afterward. i think that would satisfy any reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. let the grand-children take care of themselves. that would take care of my daughters, and after that i am not particular. i shall then have long been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it. it isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in the united states are protected by the bill. i like that. they are all important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the copyright law i should like to see it done. i should like to see oyster culture added, and anything else. i am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by the constitution of the united states, which sets aside the earlier constitution, which we call the decalogue. the decalogue says you shall not take away from any man his profit. i don't like to be obliged to use the harsh term. what the decalogue really says is, "thou shalt not steal," but i am trying to use more polite language. the laws of england and america do take it away, do select but one class, the people who create the literature of the land. they always talk handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great, monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it. i know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit. i am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the possession of the product of a man's labor. there is no limit to real estate. doctor hale has suggested that a man might just as well, after discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the government step in and take it away. what is the excuse? it is that the author who produced that book has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the government takes a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the 88,000,000 of people. but it doesn't do anything of the kind. it merely takes the author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the publisher double profit. he goes on publishing the book and as many of his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear families in affluence. and they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation after generation forever, for they never die. in a few weeks or months or years i shall be out of it, i hope under a monument. i hope i shall not be entirely forgotten, and i shall subscribe to the monument myself. but i shall not be caring what happens if there are fifty years left of my copyright. my copyright produces annually a good deal more than i can use, but my children can use it. i can get along; i know a lot of trades. but that goes to my daughters, who can't get along as well as i can because i have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know anything and can't do anything. i hope congress will extend to them the charity which they have failed to get from me. why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuousstrenuous about racesuicideshould come to me and try to get me to use my large political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this congress limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, i should try to calm him down. i should reason with him. i should say to him, "leave it alone. leave it alone and it will take care of itself. only one couple a year in the united states can reach that limit. if they have reached that limit let them go right on. let them have all the liberty they want. in restricting that family to twenty-two children you are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year in a nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while." it is the very same with copyright. one author per year produces a book which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that's all. this nation can't produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is demonstrably impossible. all that the limited copyright can do is to take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per year. i made an estimate some years ago, when i appeared before a committee of the house of lords, that we had published in this country since the declaration of independence 220,000 books. they have all gone. they had all perished before they were ten years old. it is only one book in 1000 that can outlive the forty-two-year limit. therefore why put a limit at all? you might as well limit the family to twenty-two children. if you recall the americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books that lived forty-two years you will have to begin with cooper; you can follow with washington irving, harriet beecher stowe, edgar allan poe, and there you have to wait a long time. you come to emerson, and you have to stand still and look further. you find howells and t. b. aldrich, and, then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you question if you can name twenty persons in the united states who in a whole century have written books that would live forty-two years. why, you could take them all and put them on one bench there [pointing]. add the wives and children and you could put the result on two or three more benches. one hundred personsthat is the little, insignificant crowd whose bread-and-butter is to be taken away for what purpose, for what profit to anybody? you turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the profit that should have gone to the wife and children. when i appeared before that committee of the house of lords the chairman asked me what limit i would propose. i said, "perpetuity." i could see some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such thing as property in ideas. i said there was property in ideas before queen anne's time; they had perpetual copyright. he said, "what is a book? a book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be no property in it." i said i wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet that had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas. he said real estate. i put a supposititious case, a dozen englishmen who travel through south africa and camp out, and eleven of them see nothing at all; they are mentally blind. but there is one in the party who knows what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means. to him it means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on that harbor a great city will spring up. that is his idea. and he has another idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of scotch whiskey and his last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and buy a piece of land the size of pennsylvania. that was the value of an idea that the day would come when the cape to cairo railway would be built. every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an idea in somebody's head. the skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which represent ideas. an andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that did not exist before. so if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that is the best argument in the world that it is property, and should not be under any limitation at all. we don't ask for that. fifty years from now we shall ask for it. i hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments. i do seem to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that i have got nothing to do with. it is a part of my generous, liberal nature; i can't help it. i feel the same sort of charity to everybody that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock in the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving, weaving, weaving around. he watched his chance, and by and by when the steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up and got on the portico. and the house went on weaving and weaving and weaving, but he watched the door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. he got to the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the house was so unsteady that he could hardly make his way, but at last he got to the top and raised his foot and put it on the top step. but only the toe hitched on the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom step, with his arm around the newel-post, and he said: "god pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this." in aid of the blind. address at a public meeting of the new york association for promoting the interests of the blind at the waldorf-astoria, march 29, 1906. if you detect any awkwardness in my movements and infelicities in my conduct i will offer the explanation that i never presided at a meeting of any kind before in my life, and that i do find it out of my line. i supposed i could do anything anybody else could, but i recognize that experience helps, and i do feel the lack of that experience. i don't feel as graceful and easy as i ought to be in-order to impress an audience. i shall not pretend that i know how to umpire a meeting like this, and i shall just take the humble place of the essex band. there was a great gathering in a small new england town about twenty-five years ago. i remember that circumstance because there was something that happened at that time. it was a great occasion. they gathered in the militia and orators and everybody from all the towns around. it was an extraordinary occasion. the little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of admiration and tried to do itself proud from beginning to end. it praised the orators, the militia, and all the bands that came from everywhere, and all this in honest country newspaper detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives toward the end. having exhausted his whole magazine of praise and glorification, he found he still had one band left over. he had to say something about it, and he said: "the essex band done the best it could." i am an essex band on this occasion, and i am going to get through as well as inexperience and good intentions will enable me. i have got all the documents here necessary to instruct you in the objects and intentions of this meeting and also of the association which has called the meeting. but they are too voluminous. i could not pack those statistics into my head, and i had to give it up. i shall have to just reduce all that mass of statistics to a few salient facts. there are too many statistics and figures for me. i never could do anything with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only mathematics i know is multiplication, and the minute i get away up in that, as soon as i reach nine times seven [mr. clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment. he was trying to figure out nine times seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned to st. clair mckelway, who sat near him. mr. mckelway whispered the answer, and the speaker resumed:] i've got it now. it's eighty-four. well, i can get that far all right with a little hesitation. after that i am uncertain, and i can't manage a statistic. "this association for the" [mr. clemens was in another dilemma. again he was obliged to turn to mr. mckelway.] oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind. it's a long name. if i could i would write it out for you and let you take it home and study it, but i don't know how to spell it. and mr. carnegie is down in virginia somewhere. well, anyway, the object of that association which has been recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands of very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable people, and they will push it to success very surely, and all the more surely if you will give them a little of your assistance out of your pockets. the intention, the purpose, is to search out all the blind and find work for them to do so that they may earn their own bread. now it is dismal enough to be blindit is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can be largely ameliorated by finding something for these poor blind people to do with their hands. the time passes so heavily that it is never day or night with them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain or employ their minds, it is drearier and drearier. and then the knowledge they have that they must subsist on charity, and so often reluctant charity, it would renew their lives if they could have something to do with their hands and pass their time and at the same time earn their bread, and know the sweetness of the bread which is the result of the labor of one's own hands. they need that cheer and pleasure. it is the only way you can turn their night into day, to give them happy hearts, the only thing you can put in the place of the blessed sun. that you can do in the way i speak of. blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to miss the light. those who have gone blind since they were twenty years oldtheir lives are unendingly dreary. but they can be taught to use their hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries. that association from which this draws its birth in cambridge, massachusetts, has taught its blind to make many things. they make them better than most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes. the goods they make are readily salable. people like them. and so they are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer. they pass their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did. what this association needs and wants is $15,000. the figures are set down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or i would not be here. and they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or some time. then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum. i have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything better than that of getting money out of people who don't want to part with it. it is always for good objects, of course. this is the plan: when you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object, and you think he should furnish about $1000, he disappoints you as like as not. much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is to split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year, or fifty, or whatever the sum may be. let him contribute ten or twenty a year. he doesn't feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him to contribute a large amount. when you get used to it you would rather contribute than borrow money. i tried it in helen keller's case. mr. hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897 when i was in london and said: "the gentleman who has been so liberal in taking care of helen keller has died without making provision for her in his will, and now they don't know what to do." they were proposing to raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of $2400 or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her wonderful teacher, miss sullivan, now mrs. macy. i wrote to mr. hutton and said: "go on, get up your fund. it will be slow, but if you want quick work, i propose this system," the system i speak of, of asking people to contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop out whenever they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any difficulty, people wouldn't feel the burden of it. and he wrote back saying he had raised the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in a single afternoon. we would like to do something just like that to-night. we will take as many checks as you care to give. you can leave your donations in the big room outside. i knew once what it was to be blind. i shall never forget that experience. i have been as blind as anybody ever was for three or four hours, and the sufferings that i endured and the mishaps and the accidents that are burning in my memory make my sympathy rise when i feel for the blind and always shall feel. i once went to heidelberg on an excursion. i took a clergyman along with me, the rev. joseph twichell, of hartford, who is still among the living despite that fact. i always travel with clergymen when i can. it is better for them, it is better for me. and any preacher who goes out with me in stormy weather and without a lightning rod is a good one. the reverend twichell is one of those people filled with patience and endurance, two good ingredients for a man travelling with me, so we got along very well together. in that old town they have not altered a house nor built one in 1500 years. we went to the inn and they placed twichell and me in a most colossal bedroom, the largest i ever saw or heard of. it was as big as this room. i didn't take much notice of the place. i didn't really get my bearings. i noticed twichell got a german bed about two feet wide, the kind in which you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't room to lie on your back, and he was way down south in that big room, and i was way up north at the other end of it, with a regular sahara in between. we went to bed. twichell went to sleep, but then he had his conscience loaded and it was easy for him to get to sleep. i couldn't get to sleep. it was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights when you hear various kinds of noises now and then. a mouse away off in the southwest. you throw things at the mouse. that encourages the mouse. but i couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock i got up and thought i would give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those tinkling fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance. i got out of bed, and i ought to have lit a candle, but i didn't think of it until it was too late. it was the darkest place that ever was. there has never been darkness any thicker than that. it just lay in cakes. i thought that before dressing i would accumulate my clothes. i pawed around in the dark and found everything packed together on the floor except one sock. i couldn't get on the track of that sock. it might have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash. but i didn't think of that. i went excursioning on my hands and knees. presently i thought, "i am never going to find it; i'll go back to bed again." that is what i tried to do during the next three hours. i had lost the bearings of that bed. i was going in the wrong direction all the time. by-and-by i came in collision with a chair and that encouraged me. it seemed to me, as far as i could recollect, there was only a chair here and there and yonder, five or six of them scattered over this territory, and i thought maybe after i found that chair i might find the next one. well, i did. and i found another and another and another. i kept going around on my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions, and finally when i banged into another chair i almost lost my temper. and i raised up, garbed as i was, not for public exhibition, right in front of a mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high. i hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was there. and when i saw myself in the mirror i was frightened out of my wits. i don't allow any ghosts to bite me, and i took up a chair and smashed at it. a million pieces. then i reflected. that's the way i always do, and it's unprofitable unless a man has had much experience that way and has clear judgment. and i had judgment, and i would have had to pay for that mirror if i hadn't recollected to say it was twichell who broke it. then i got down on my hands and knees and went on another exploring expedition. as far as i could remember there were six chairs in that oklahoma, and one table, a great big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your head when rushing madly along. in the course of time i collided with thirty-five chairs and tables enough to stock that dining-room out there. it was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse condition when i got through with it. i went on and on, and at last got to a place where i could feel my way up, and there was a shelf. i knew that wasn't in the middle of the room. up to that time i was afraid i had gotten out of the city. i was very careful and pawed along that shelf, and there was a pitcher of water about a foot high, and it was at the head of twichell's bed, but i didn't know it. i felt that pitcher going and i grabbed at it, but it didn't help any and came right down in twichell's face and nearly drowned him. but it woke him up. i was grateful to have company on any terms. he lit a match, and there i was, way down south when i ought to have been back up yonder. my bed was out of sight it was so far away. you needed a telescope to find it. twichell comforted me and i scrubbed him off and we got sociable. but that night wasn't wasted. i had my pedometer on my leg. twichell and i were in a pedometer match. twichell had longer legs than i. the only way i could keep up was to wear my pedometer to bed. i always walk in my sleep, and on this occasion i gained sixteen miles on him. after all, i never found that sock. i never have seen it from that day to this. but that adventure taught me what it is to be blind. that was one of the most serious occasions of my whole life, yet i never can speak of it without somebody thinking it isn't serious. you try it and see how serious it is to be as the blind are and i was that night. [mr. clemens read several letters of regret. he then introduced joseph h. choate, saying:] it is now my privilege to present to you mr. choate. i don't have to really introduce him. i don't have to praise him, or to flatter him. i could say truly that in the forty-seven years i have been familiarly acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man america has ever produced. and i hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five years more. he has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly. he stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his countrymen, and if i could say one word which would lift him any higher in his countrymen's esteem and affection, i would say that word whether it was true or not. dr. mark twain, farmeopath. address at the annual dinner of the new york post-graduate medical school and hospital, january 21, 1909. the president, dr. george n. miller, in introducing mr. clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars. gentlemen and doctors,i am glad to be among my own kind to-night. i was once a sharpshooter, but now i practise a much higher and equally as deadly a profession. it wasn't so very long ago that i became a member of your cult, and for the time i've been in the business my record is one that can't be scoffed at. as to the burglars, i am perfectly familiar with these people. i have always had a good deal to do with burglarsnot officially, but through their attentions to me. i never suffered anything at the hands of a burglar. they have invaded my house time and time again. they never got anything. then those people who burglarized our house in septemberwe got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and i have been sorry ever since. they did us a great servicethey scared off all the servants in the place. i consider the children's theatre, of which i am president, and the post-graduate medical school as the two greatest institutions in the country. this school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from all parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them back with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of lives which otherwise would have been lost. i have been practising now for seven months. when i settled on my farm in connecticut in june i found the community very thinly settledand since i have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled still. this gratifies me, as indicating that i am making an impression on my community. i suppose it is the same with all of you. i have always felt that i ought to do something for you, and so i organized a redding (connecticut) branch of the post-graduate school. i am only a country farmer up there, but i am doing the best i can. of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country district has its disadvantages, but in my case i am happy in a division of responsibility. i practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a sexton, and an undertaker. the combination is air-tight, and once a man is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him. these four of usthree in the regular profession and the fourth an undertakerare all good men. there is bill ferguson, the redding undertaker. bill is there in every respect. he is a little lukewarm on general practice, and writes his name with a rubber stamp. like my old southern friend, he is one of the finest planters anywhere. then there is jim ruggles, the horse-doctor. ruggles is one of the best men i have got. he also is not much on general medicine, but he is a fine horse-doctor. ferguson doesn't make any money off him. you see, the combination started this way. when i got up to redding and had become a doctor, i looked around to see what my chances were for aiding in the great work. the first thing i did was to determine what manner of doctor i was to be. being a connecticut farmer, i naturally consulted my farmacopia, and at once decided to become a farmeopath. then i got circulating about, and got in touch with ferguson and ruggles. ferguson joined readily in my ideas, but ruggles kept saying that, while it was all right for an undertaker to get aboard, he couldn't see where it helped horses. well, we started to find out what was the trouble with the community, and it didn't take long to find out that there was just one disease, and that was race-suicide. and driving about the country-side i was told by my fellow-farmers that it was the only rational human and valuable disease. but it is cutting into our profits so that we'll either have to stop it or we'll have to move. we've had some funny experiences up there in redding. not long ago a fellow came along with a rolling gait and a distressed face. we asked him what was the matter. we always hold consultations on every case, as there isn't business enough for four. he said he didn't know, but that he was a sailor, and perhaps that might help us to give a diagnosis. we treated him for that, and i never saw a man die more peacefully. that same afternoon my dog tige treed an african gentleman. we chained up the dog, and then the gentleman came down and said he had appendicitis. we asked him if he wanted to be cut open, and he said yes, that he'd like to know if there was anything in it. so we cut him open and found nothing in him but darkness. so we diagnosed his case as infidelity, because he was dark inside. tige is a very clever dog, and aids us greatly. the other day a patient came to me and inquired if i was old doctor clemens as a practitioner i have given a great deal of my attention to bright's disease. i have made some rules for treating it that may be valuable. listen: rule 1. when approaching the bedside of one whom an all-wise presidenti mean an all-wise providencewell, anyway, it's the same thinghas seen fit to afflict with diseasewell, the rule is simple, even if it is old-fashioned. rule 2. i've forgotten just what it is, but rule 3. this is always indispensable: bleed your patient. missouri university speech. address delivered june 4, 1902, at columbia, mo. when the name of samuel l. clemens was called the humorist stepped forward, put his hand to his hair, and apparently hesitated. there was a dead silence for a moment. suddenly the entire audience rose and stood in silence. some one began to spell out the word missouri with an interval between the letters. all joined in. then the house again became silent. mr. clemens broke the spell: as you are all standing [he drawled in his characteristic voice], i guess, i suppose i had better stand too. [then came a laugh and loud cries for a speech. as the great humorist spoke of his recent visit to hannibal, his old home, his voice trembled.] you cannot know what a strain it was on my emotions [he said]. in fact, when i found myself shaking hands with persons i had not seen for fifty years and looking into wrinkled faces that were so young and joyous when i last saw them, i experienced emotions that i had never expected, and did not know were in me. i was profoundly moved and saddened to think that this was the last time, perhaps, that i would ever behold those kind old faces and dear old scenes of childhood. [the humorist then changed to a lighter mood, and for a time the audience was in a continual roar of laughter. he was particularly amused at the eulogy on himself read by gardiner lathrop in conferring the degree.] he has a fine opportunity to distinguish himself [said mr. clemens] by telling the truth about me. i have seen it stated in print that as a boy i had been guilty of stealing peaches, apples, and watermelons. i read a story to this effect very closely not long ago, and i was convinced of one thing, which was that the man who wrote it was of the opinion that it was wrong to steal, and that i had not acted right in doing so. i wish now, however, to make an honest statement, which is that i do not believe, in all my checkered career, i stole a ton of peaches. one night i stolei mean i removeda watermelon from a wagon while the owner was attending to another customer. i crawled off to a secluded spot, where i found that it was green. it was the greenest melon in the mississippi valley. then i began to reflect. i began to be sorry. i wondered what george washington would have done had he been in my place. i thought a long time, and then suddenly felt that strange feeling which comes to a man with a good resolution, and took up that watermelon and took it back to its owner. i handed him the watermelon and told him to reform. he took my lecture much to heart, and, when he gave me a good one in place of the green melon, i forgave him. i told him that i would still be a customer of his, and that i cherished no ill-feeling because of the incidentthat would remain green in my memory. business business. the alumni of eastman college gave their annual banquet, march 30, 1901, at the y. m. c. a. building. mr. james g. cannon, of the fourth national bank, made the first speech of the evening, after which mr. clemens was introduced by mr. bailey as the personal friend of tom sawyer, who was one of the types of successful business men. mr. cannon has furnished me with texts enough to last as slow a speaker as myself all the rest of the night. i took exception to the introducing of mr. cannon as a great financier, as if he were the only great financier present. i am a financier. but my methods are not the same as mr. cannon's. i cannot say that i have turned out the great business man that i thought i was when i began life. but i am comparatively young yet, and may learn. i am rather inclined to believe that what troubled me was that i got the big-head early in the game. i want to explain to you a few points of difference between the principles of business as i see them and those that mr. cannon believes in. he says that the primary rule of business success is loyalty to your employer. that's all rightas a theory. what is the matter with loyalty to yourself? as nearly as i can understand mr. cannon's methods, there is one great drawback to them. he wants you to work a great deal. diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much morerestful. my idea is that the employer should be the busy man, and the employee the idle one. the employer should be the worried man, and the employee the happy one. and why not? he gets the salary. my plan is to get another man to do the work for me. in that there's more repose. what i want is repose first, last, and all the time. mr. cannon says that there are three cardinal rules of business success; they are diligence, honesty, and truthfulness. well, diligence is all right. let it go as a theory. honesty is the best policywhen there is money in it. but truthfulness is one of the most dangerouswhy, this man is misleading you. i had an experience to-day with my wife which illustrates this. i was acknowledging a belated invitation to another dinner for this evening, which seemed to have been sent about ten days ago. it only reached me this morning. i was mortified at the discourtesy into which i had been brought by this delay, and wondered what was being thought of me by my hosts. as i had accepted your invitation, of course i had to send regrets to my other friends. when i started to write this note my wife came up and stood looking over my shoulder. women always want to know what is going on. said she: "should not that read in the third person?" i conceded that it should, put aside what i was writing, and commenced over again. that seemed to satisfy her, and so she sat down and let me proceed. i then finished my first noteand so sent what i intended. i never could have done this if i had let my wife know the truth about it. here is what i wrote: to the ohio society,i have at this moment received a most kind invitation (eleven days old) from mr. southard, president; and a like one (ten days old) from mr. bryant, president of the press club. i thank the society cordially for the compliment of these invitations, although i am booked elsewhere and cannot come. but, oh, i should like to know the name of the lightning express by which they were forwarded; for i owe a friend a dozen chickens, and i believe it will be cheaper to send eggs instead, and let them develop on the road. sincerely yours, mark twain. i want to tell you of some of my experiences in business, and then i will be in a position to lay down one general rule for the guidance of those who want to succeed in business. my first effort was about twenty-five years ago. i took hold of an inventioni don't know now what it was all about, but some one came to me and told me it was a good thing, and that there was lots of money in it. he persuaded me to invest $15,000, and i lived up to my beliefs by engaging a man to develop it. to make a long story short, i sunk $40,000 in it. then i took up the publication of a book. i called in a publisher and said to him: "i want you to publish this book along lines which i shall lay down. i am the employer, and you are the employee. i am going to show them some new kinks in the publishing business. and i want you to draw on me for money as you go along," which he did. he drew on me for $56,000. then i asked him to take the book and call it off. but he refused to do that. my next venture was with a machine for doing something or other. i knew less about that than i did about the invention. but i sunk $170,000 in the business, and i can't for the life of me recollect what it was the machine was to do. i was still undismayed. you see, one of the strong points about my business life was that i never gave up. i undertook to publish general grant's book, and made $140,000 in six months. my axiom is, to succeed in business: avoid my example. carnegie the benefactor. at the dinner given in honor of andrew carnegie by the lotos club, march 17, 1909, mr. clemens appeared in a white suit from head to feet. he wore a white double-breasted coat, white trousers, and white shoes. the only relief was a big black cigar, which he confidentially informed the company was not from his usual stack bought at $3 per barrel. the state of missouri has for its coat of arms a barrel-head with two missourians, one on each side of it, and mark the motto"united we stand, divided we fall." mr. carnegie, this evening, has suffered from compliments. it is interesting to hear what people will say about a man. why, at the banquet given by this club in my honor, mr. carnegie had the inspiration for which the club is now honoring him. if dunfermline contributed so much to the united states in contributing mr. carnegie, what would have happened if all scotland had turned out? these dunfermline folk have acquired advantages in coming to america. doctor mckelway paid the top compliment, the cumulation, when he said of mr. carnegie: "there is a man who wants to pay more taxes than he is charged." richard watson gilder did very well for a poet. he advertised his magazine. he spoke of hiring mr. carnegiethe next thing he will be trying to hire me. if i undertook to pay compliments i would do it stronger than any others have done it, for what mr. carnegie wants are strong compliments. now, the other side of seventy, i have preserved, as my chiefest virtue, modesty. on poetry, veracity, and suicide. address at a dinner of the manhattan dickens fellowship, new york city, february 7, 1906. this dinner was in commemoration of the ninety-fourth anniversary of the birth of charles dickens. on another occasion mr. clemens told the same story with variations and a different conclusion to the university settlement society. i always had taken an interest in young people who wanted to become poets. i remember i was particularly interested in one budding poet when i was a reporter. his name was butter. one day he came to me and said, disconsolately, that he was going to commit suicidehe was tired of life, not being able to express his thoughts in poetic form. butter asked me what i thought of the idea. i said i would; that it was a good idea. "you can do me a friendly turn. you go off in a private place and do it there, and i'll get it all. you do it, and i'll do as much for you some time." at first he determined to drown himself. drowning is so nice and clean, and writes up so well in a newspaper. but things ne'er do go smoothly in weddings, suicides, or courtships. only there at the edge of the water, where butter was to end himself, lay a life-preservera big round canvas one, which would float after the scrap-iron was soaked out of it. butter wouldn't kill himself with the life-preserver in sight, and so i had an idea. i took it to a pawnshop, and soaked it for a revolver. the pawnbroker didn't think much of the exchange, but when i explained the situation he acquiesced. we went up on top of a high building, and this is what happened to the poet: he put the revolver to his forehead and blew a tunnel straight through his head. the tunnel was about the size of your finger. you could look right through it. the job was complete; there was nothing in it. well, after that that man never could write prose, but he could write poetry. he could write it after he had blown his brains out. there is lots of that talent all over the country, but the trouble is they don't develop it. i am suffering now from the fact that i, who have told the truth a good many times in my life, have lately received more letters than anybody else urging me to lead a righteous life. i have more friends who want to see me develop on a high level than anybody else. young john d. rockefeller, two weeks ago, taught his bible class all about veracity, and why it was better that everybody should always keep a plentiful supply on hand. some of the letters i have received suggest that i ought to attend his class and learn, too. why, i know mr. rockefeller, and he is a good fellow. he is competent in many ways to teach a bible class, but when it comes to veracity he is only thirty-five years old. i'm seventy years old. i have been familiar with veracity twice as long as he. and the story about george washington and his little hatchet has also been suggested to me in these lettersin a fugitive way, as if i needed some of george washington and his hatchet in my constitution. why, dear me, they overlook the real point in that story. the point is not the one that is usually suggested, and you can readily see that. the point is not that george said to his father, "yes, father, i cut down the cheery-tree; i can't tell a lie," but that the little boyonly seven years oldshould have his sagacity developed under such circumstances. he was a boy wise beyond his years. his conduct then was a prophecy of later years. yes, i think he was the most remarkable man the country ever producedup to my time, anyway. now then, little george realized that circumstantial evidence was against him. he knew that his father would know from the size of the chips that no full-grown hatchet cut that tree down, and that no man would have haggled it so. he knew that his father would send around the plantation and inquire for a small boy with a hatchet, and he had the wisdom to come out and confess it. now, the idea that his father was overjoyed when he told little george that he would rather have him cut down a thousand cheery-trees than tell a lie is all nonsense. what did he really mean? why, that he was absolutely astonished that he had a son who had the chance to tell a lie and didn't. i admire old georgeif that was his namefor his discernment. he knew when he said that his son couldn't tell a lie that he was stretching it a good deal. he wouldn't have to go to john d. rockefeller's bible class to find that out. the way the old george washington story goes down it doesn't do anybody any good. it only discourages people who cantell a lie. welcome home. address at the dinner in his honor at the lotos club, november 10, 1900. in august, 1895, just before sailing for australia, mr. clemens issued the following statement: "it has been reported that i sacrificed, for the benefit of the creditors, the property of the publishing firm whose financial backer i was, and that i am now lecturing for my own benefit. "this is an error. i intend the lectures, as well as the property, for the creditors. the law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brains, and a merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of insolvency and may start free again for himself. but i am not a business man, and honor is a harder master than the law. it cannot compromise for less than one hundred cents on a dollar, and its debts are never outlawed. "i had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm whose capital i furnished. if the firm had prospered i would have expected to collect two-thirds of the profits. as it is, i expect to pay all the debts. my partner has no resources, and i do not look for assistance to my wife, whose contributions in cash from her own means have nearly equalled the claims of all the creditors combined. she has taken nothing; on the contrary, she has helped and intends to help me to satisfy the obligations due to the rest of the creditors. "it is my intention to ask my creditors to accept that as a legal discharge, and trust to my honor to pay the other fifty per cent. as fast as i can earn it. from my reception thus far on my lecturing tour, i am confident that if i live i can pay off the last debt within four years. "after which, at the age of sixty-four, i can make a fresh and unincumbered start in life. i am going to australia, india, and south africa, and next year i hope to make a tour of the great cities of the united states." i thank you all out of my heart for this fraternal welcome, and it seems almost too fine, almost too magnificent, for a humble missourian such as i am, far from his native haunts on the banks of the mississippi; yet my modesty is in a degree fortified by observing that i am not the only missourian who has been honored here to-night, for i see at this very tablehere is a missourian [indicating mr. mckelway], and there is a missourian [indicating mr. depew], and there is another missourianand hendrix and clemens; and last but not least, the greatest missourian of them allhere he sitstom reed, who has always concealed his birth till now. and since i have been away i know what has been happening in his case: he has deserted politics, and now is leading a creditable life. he has reformed, and god prosper him; and i judge, by a remark which he made up-stairs awhile ago, that he had found a new business that is utterly suited to his make and constitution, and all he is doing now is that he is around raising the average of personal beauty. but i am grateful to the president for the kind words which he has said of me, and it is not for me to say whether these praises were deserved or not. i prefer to accept them just as they stand, without concerning myself with the statistics upon which they have been built, but only with that large matter, that essential matter, the good-fellowship, the kindliness, the magnanimity, and generosity that prompted their utterance. well, many things have happened since i sat here before, and now that i think of it, the president's reference to the debts which were left by the bankrupt firm of charles l. webster & co. gives me an opportunity to say a word which i very much wish to say, not for myself, but for ninety-five men and women whom i shall always hold in high esteem and in pleasant remembrancethe creditors of that firm. they treated me well; they treated me handsomely. there were ninety-six of them, and by not a finger's weight did ninety-five of them add to the burden of that time for me. ninety-five out of the ninety-sixthey didn't indicate by any word or sign that they were anxious about their money. they treated me well, and i shall not forget it; i could not forget it if i wanted to. many of them said, "don't you worry, don't you hurry"; that's what they said. why, if i could have that kind of creditors always, and that experience, i would recognize it as a personal loss to be out of debt. i owe those ninety-five creditors a debt of homage, and i pay it now in such measure as one may pay so fine a debt in mere words. yes, they said that very thing. i was not personally acquainted with ten of them, and yet they said, "don't you worry, and don't you hurry." i know that phrase by heart, and if all the other music should perish out of the world it would still sing to me. i appreciate that; i am glad to say this word; people say so much about me, and they forget those creditors. they were handsomer than i wasor tom reed. oh, you have been doing many things in this time that i have been absent; you have done lots of things, some that are well worth remembering, too. now, we have fought a righteous war since i have gone, and that is rare in historya righteous war is so rare that it is almost unknown in history; but by the grace of that war we set cuba free, and we joined her to those three or four nations that exist on this earth; and we started out to set those poor filipinos free, too, and why, why, why that most righteous purpose of ours has apparently miscarried i suppose i never shall know. but we have made a most creditable record in china in these daysour sound and level-headed administration has made a most creditable record over there, and there are some of the powers that cannot say that by any means. the yellow terror is threatening this world to-day. it is looming vast and ominous on that distant horizon. i do not know what is going to be the result of that yellow terror, but our government has had no hand in evoking it, and let's be happy in that and proud of it. we have nursed free silver, we watched by its cradle; we have done the best we could to raise that child, but those pestiferous republicans havewell, they keep giving it the measles every chance they get, and we never shall raise that child. well, that's no matterthere's plenty of other things to do, and we must think of something else. well, we have tried a president four years, criticised him and found fault with him the whole time, and turned around a day or two ago with votes enough to spare to elect another. o consistency! consistency! thy namei don't know what thy name isthompson will doany name will dobut you see there is the fact, there is the consistency. then we have tried for governor an illustrious rough rider, and we liked him so much in that great office that now we have made him vice-presidentnot in order that that office shall give him distinction, but that he may confer distinction upon that office. and it's needed, tooit's needed. and now, for a while anyway, we shall not be stammering and embarrassed when a stranger asks us, "what is the name of the vice-president?" this one is known; this one is pretty well known, pretty widely known, and in some quarters favorably. i am not accustomed to dealing in these fulsome compliments, and i am probably overdoing it a little; butwell, my old affectionate admiration for governor roosevelt has probably betrayed me into the complimentary excess; but i know him, and you know him; and if you give him rope enoughi mean ifoh yes, he will justify that compliment; leave it just as it is. and now we have put in his place mr. odell, another rough rider, i suppose; all the fat things go to that profession now. why, i could have been a rough rider myself if i had known that this political klondike was going to open up, and i would have been a rough rider if i could have gone to war on an automobilebut not on a horse! no, i know the horse too well; i have known the horse in war and in peace, and there is no place where a horse is comfortable. the horse has too many caprices, and he is too much given to initiative. he invents too many new ideas. no, i don't want anything to do with a horse. and then we have taken chauncey depew out of a useful and active life and made him a senatorembalmed him, corked him up. and i am not grieving. that man has said many a true thing about me in his time, and i always said something would happen to him. look at that [pointing to mr. depew] gilded mummy! he has made my life a sorrow to me at many a banquet on both sides of the ocean, and now he has got it. perish the hand that pulls that cork! all these things have happened, all these things have come to pass, while i have been away, and it just shows how little a mugwump can be missed in a cold, unfeeling world, even when he is the last one that is lefta grand old party all by himself. and there is another thing that has happened, perhaps the most imposing event of them all: the institution called the daughters of the crownthe daughters of the royal crownhas established itself and gone into business. now, there's an american idea for you; there's an idea born of god knows what kind of specialized insanity, but not softening of the brainyou cannot soften a thing that doesn't existthe daughters of the royal crown! nobody eligible but american descendants of charles ii. dear me, how the fancy product of that old harem still holds out! well, i am truly glad to foregather with you again, and partake of the bread and salt of this hospitable house once more. seven years ago, when i was your guest here, when i was old and despondent, you gave me the grip and the word that lift a man up and make him glad to be alive; and now i come back from my exile young again, fresh and alive, and ready to begin life once more, and your welcome puts the finishing touch .upon my restored youth and makes it real to me, and not a gracious dream that must vanish with the morning. i thank you. an undelivered speech. the steamship st. paul was to have been launched from cramp's shipyard in philadelphia on march 25, 1895. after the launching a luncheon was to have been given, at which mr. clemens was to make a speech. just before the final word was given a reporter asked mr. clemens for a copy of his speech to be delivered at the luncheon. to facilitate the work of the reporter he loaned him a typewritten copy of the speech. it happened, however, that when the blocks were knocked away the big ship refused to budge, and no amount of labor could move her an inch. she had stuck fast upon the ways. as a result, the launching was postponed for a week or two; but in the mean time mr. clemens had gone to europe. years after a reporter called on mr. clemens and submitted the manuscript of the speech, which was as follows: day after to-morrow i sail for england in a ship of this line, the paris. it will be my fourteenth crossing in three years and a half. therefore, my presence here, as you see, is quite natural, quite commercial. i am interested in ships. they interest me more now than hotels do. when a new ship is launched i feel a desire to go and see if she will be good quarters for me to live in, particularly if she belongs to this line, for it is by this line that i have done most of my ferrying. people wonder why i go so much. well, i go partly for my health, partly to familiarize myself with the road. i have gone over the same road so many times now that i know all the whales that belong along the route, and latterly it is an embarrassment to me to meet them, for they do not look glad to see me, but annoyed, and they seem to say: "here is this old derelict again." earlier in life this would have pained me and made me ashamed, but i am older now, and when i am behaving myself, and doing right, i do not care for a whale's opinion about me. when we are young we generally estimate an opinion by the size of the person that holds it, but later we find that that is an uncertain rule, for we realize that there are times when a hornet's opinion disturbs us more than an emperor's. i do not mean that i care nothing at all for a whale's opinion, for that would be going to too great a length. of course, it is better to have the good opinion of a whale than his disapproval; but my position is that if you cannot have a whale's good opinion, except at some sacrifice of principle or personal dignity, it is better to try to live without it. that is my idea about whales. yes, i have gone over that same route so often that i know my way without a compass, just by the waves. i know all the large waves and a good many of the small ones. also the sunsets. i know every sunset and where it belongs just by its color. necessarily, then, i do not make the passage now for scenery. that is all gone by. what i prize most is safety, and in the second place swift transit and handiness. these are best furnished by the american line, whose watertight compartments have no passage through them, no doors to be left open, and consequently no way for water to get from one of them to another in time of collision. if you nullify the peril which collisions threaten you with, you nullify the only very serious peril which attends voyages in the great liners of our day, and makes voyaging safer than staying at home. when the paris was half-torn to pieces some years ago, enough of the atlantic ebbed and flowed through one end of her, during her long agony, to sink the fleets of the world if distributed among them; but she floated in perfect safety, and no life was lost. in time of collision the rock of gibraltar is not safer than the paris and other great ships of this line. this seems to be the only great line in the world that takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis without the intervention of tugs and barges or bridgestakes him through without breaking bulk, so to speak. on the english side he lands at a dock; on the dock a special train is waiting; in an hour and three-quarters he is in london. nothing could be handier. if your journey were from a sand-pit on our side to a lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker by other lines, but that is not the case. the journey is from the city of new york to the city of london, and no line can do that journey quicker than this one, nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily. and when the passenger lands on our side he lands on the american side of the river, not in the provinces. as a very learned man said on the last voyage (he is head quartermaster of the new york land garboard streak of the middle watch): "when we land a passenger on the american side there's nothing betwix him and his hotel but hell and the hackman." i am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome the new ship. she is another pride, another consolation, for a great country whose mighty fleets have all vanished, and which has almost forgotten what it is to fly its flag to sea. i am not sure as to which st. paul she is named for. some think it is the one that is on the upper mississippi, but the head quartermaster told me it was the one that killed goliath. but it is not important. no matter which it is, let us give her hearty welcome and godspeed. sixty-seventh birthday. at the metropolitan club, new york, november 28, 1902. address at a dinner given in honor of mr. clemens by colonel harvey, president of harper & brothers. i think i ought to be allowed to talk as long as i want to, for the reason that i have cancelled all my winter's engagements of every kind, for good and sufficient reasons, and am making no new engagements for this winter, and, therefore, this is the only chance i shall have to disembowel my skull for a yearclose the mouth in that portrait for a year. i want to offer thanks and homage to the chairman for this innovation which he has introduced here, which is an improvement, as i consider it, on the old-fashioned style of conducting occasions like this. that was badthat was a bad, bad, bad arrangement. under that old custom the chairman got up and made a speech, he introduced the prisoner at the bar, and covered him all over with compliments, nothing but compliments, not a thing but compliments, never a slur, and sat down and left that man to get up and talk without a text. you cannot talk on compliments; that is not a text. no modest person, and i was born one, can talk on compliments. a man gets up and is filled to the eyes with happy emotions, but his tongue is tied; he has nothing to say; he is in the condition of doctor rice's friend who came home drunk and explained it to his wife, and his wife said to him, "john, when you have drunk all the whiskey you want, you ought to ask for sarsaparilla." he said, "yes, but when i have drunk all the whiskey i want i can't say sarsaparilla." and so i think it is much better to leave a man unmolested until the testimony and pleadings are all in. otherwise he is dumbhe is at the sarsaparilla stage. before i get to the higgledy-piggledy point, as mr. howells suggested i do, i want to thank you, gentlemen, for this very high honor you are doing me, and i am quite competent to estimate it at its value. i see around me captains of all the illustrious industries, most distinguished men; there are more than fifty here, and i believe i know thirty-nine of them well. i could probably borrow money fromfrom the others, anyway. it is a proud thing to me, indeed, to see such a distinguished company gather here on such an occasion as this, when there is no foreign prince to be fatedwhen you have come here not to do honor to hereditary privilege and ancient lineage, but to do reverence to mere moral excellence and elemental veracityand, dear me, how old it seems to make me! i look around me and i see three or four persons i have known so many, many years. i have known mr. secretary hayjohn hay, as the nation and the rest of his friends love to call himi have known john hay and tom reed and the reverend twichell close upon thirty-six years. close upon thirty-six years i have known those venerable men. i have known mr. howells nearly thirty-four years, and i knew chauncey depew before he could walk straight, and before he learned to tell the truth. twenty-seven years ago i heard him make the most noble and eloquent and beautiful speech that has ever fallen from even his capable lips. tom reed said that my principal defect was inaccuracy of statement. well, suppose that that is true. what's the use of telling the truth all the time? i never tell the truth about tom reedbut that is his defect, truth; he speaks the truth always. tom reed has a good heart, and he has a good intellect, but he hasn't any judgment. why, when tom reed was invited to lecture to the ladies' society for the procreation or procrastination, or something, of morals, i don't know what it wasadvancement, i suppose, of pure moralshe had the immortal indiscretion to begin by saying that some of us can't be optimists, but by judiciously utilizing the opportunities that providence puts in our way we can all be bigamists. you perceive his limitations. anything he has in his mind he states, if he thinks it is true. well, that was true, but that was no place to say itso they fired him out. a lot of accounts have been settled here tonight for me; i have held grudges against some of these people, but they have all been wiped out by the very handsome compliments that have been paid me. even wayne macveaghi have had a grudge against him many years. the first time i saw wayne macveagh was at a private dinner-party at charles a. dana's, and when i got there he was clattering along, and i tried to get a word in here and there; but you know what wayne macveagh is when he is started, and i could not get in five words to his oneor one word to his five. i struggled along and struggled along, andwell, i wanted to tell and i was trying to tell a dream i had had the night before, and it was a remarkable dream, a dream worth people's while to listen to, a dream recounting sam jones the revivalist's reception in heaven. i was on a train, and was approaching the celestial way-stationi had a through ticketand i noticed a man sitting alongside of me asleep, and he had his ticket in his hat. he was the remains of the archbishop of canterbury; i recognized him by his photograph. i had nothing against him, so i took his ticket and let him have mine. he didn't objecthe wasn't in a condition to objectand presently when the train stopped at the heavenly stationwell, i got off, and he went on by requestbut there they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them, every one with a torch; they had arranged for a torch-light procession; they were expecting the archbishop, and when i got off they started to raise a shout, but it didn't materialize. i don't know whether they were disappointed. i suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the archbishop and what he should look like, and i didn't fill the bill, and i was trying to explain to saint peter, and was doing it in the german tongue, because i didn't want to be too explicit. well, i found it was no use, i couldn't get along, for wayne macveagh was occupying the whole place, and i said to mr. dana, "what is the matter with that man? who is that man with the long tongue? what's the trouble with him, that long, lank cadaver, old oil-derrick out of a jobwho is that?" "well, now," mr. dana said, "you don't want to meddle with him; you had better keep quiet; just keep quiet, because that's a bad man. talk! he was born to talk. don't let him get out with you; he'll skin you." i said, "i have been skinned, skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing left." he said, "oh, you'll find there is; that man is the very seed and inspiration of that proverb which says, 'no matter how close you skin an onion, a clever man can always peel it again.'" well, i reflected and i quieted down. that would never occur to tom reed. he's got no discretion. well, macveagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed a bit in all those years; he has been peeling mr. mitchell lately. that's the kind of man he is. mr. howellsthat poem of his is admirable; that's the way to treat a person. howells has a peculiar gift for seeing the merits of people, and he has always exhibited them in my favor. howells has never written anything about me that i couldn't read six or seven times a day; he is always just and always fair; he has written more appreciatively of me than any one in this world, and published it in the north american review. he did me the justice to say that my intentionshe italicized thatthat my intentions were always good, that i wounded people's conventions rather than their convictions. now, i wouldn't want anything handsomer than that said of me. i would rather wait, with anything harsh i might have to say, till the convictions become conventions. bangs has traced me all the way down. he can't find that honest man, but i will look for him in the looking-glass when i get home. it was intimated by the colonel that it is new england that makes new york and builds up this country and makes it great, overlooking the fact that there's a lot of people here who came from elsewhere, like john hay from away out west, and howells from ohio, and st. clair mckelway and me from missouri, and we are doing what we can to build up new york a littleelevate it. why, when i was living in that village of hannibal, missouri, on the banks of the mississippi, and hay up in the town of warsaw, also on the banks of the mississippi riverit is an emotional bit of the mississippi, and when it is low water you have to climb up to it on a ladder, and when it floods you have to hunt for it with a deep-sea leadbut it is a great and beautiful country. in that old time it was a paradise for simplicityit was a simple, simple life, cheap but comfortable, and full of sweetness, and there was nothing of this rage of modern civilization there at all. it was a delectable land. i went out there last june, and i met in that town of hannibal a schoolmate of mine, john briggs, whom i had not seen for more than fifty years. i tell you, that was a meeting! that pal whom i had known as a little boy long ago, and knew now as a stately man three or four inches over six feet and browned by exposure to many climes, he was back there to see that old place again. we spent a whole afternoon going about here and there and yonder, and hunting up the scenes and talking of the crimes which we had committed so long ago. it was a heartbreaking delight, full of pathos, laughter, and tears, all mixed together; and we called the roll of the boys and girls that we picnicked and sweethearted with so many years ago, and there were hardly half a dozen of them left; the rest were in their graves; and we went up there on the summit of that hill, a treasured place in my memory, the summit of holiday's hill, and looked out again over that magnificent panorama of the mississippi river, sweeping along league after league, a level green paradise on one side, and retreating capes and promontories as far as you could see on the other, fading away in the soft, rich lights of the remote distance. i recognized then that i was seeing now the most enchanting river view the planet could furnish. i never knew it when i was a boy; it took an educated eye that had travelled over the globe to know and appreciate it; and john said, "can you point out the place where bear creek used to be before the railroad came?" i said, "yes, it ran along yonder." "and can you point out the swimming-hole?" "yes, out there." and he said, "can you point out the place where we stole the skiff?" well, i didn't know which one he meant. such a wilderness of events had intervened since that day, more than fifty years ago, it took me more than five minutes to call back that little incident, and then i did call it back; it was a white skiff, and we painted it red to allay suspicion. and the saddest, saddest man came alonga stranger he wasand he looked that red skiff over so pathetically, and he said: "well, if it weren't for the complexion i'd know whose skiff that was." he said it in that pleading way, you know, that appeals for sympathy and suggestion; we were full of sympathy for him, but we weren't in any condition to offer suggestions. i can see him yet as he turned away with that same sad look on his face and vanished out of history forever. i wonder what became of that man. i know what became of the skiff. well, it was a beautiful life, a lovely life. there was no crime. merely little things like pillaging orchards and watermelon-patches and breaking the sabbathwe didn't break the sabbath often enough to signifyonce a week perhaps. but we were good boys, good presbyterian boys, all presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold. look at john hay and me. there we were in obscurity, and look where we are now. consider the ladder which he has climbed, the illustrious vocations he has servedand vocations is the right word; he has in all those vocations acquitted himself with high credit and honor to his country and to the mother that bore him. scholar, soldier, diplomat, poet, historiannow, see where we are. he is secretary of state and i am a gentleman. it could not happen in any other country. our institutions give men the positions that of right belong to them through merit; all you men have won your places, not by heredities, and not by family influence or extraneous help, but only by the natural gifts god gave you at your birth, made effective by your own energies; this is the country to live in. now, there is one invisible guest here. a part of me is present; the larger part, the better part, is yonder at her home; that is my wife, and she has a good many personal friends here, and i think it won't distress any one of them to know that, although she is going to be confined to that bed for many months to come from that nervous prostration, there is not any danger and she is coming along very welland i think it quite appropriate that i should speak of her. i knew her for the first time just in the same year that i first knew john hay and tom reed and mr. twichellthirty-six years agoand she has been the best friend i have ever had, and that is saying a good deal; she has reared me she and twichell togetherand what i am i owe to them. twichellwhy, it is such a pleasure to look upon twichell's face! for five-and-twenty years i was under the rev. mr. twichell's tuition, i was in his pastorate, occupying a pew in his church, and held him in due reverence. that man is full of all the graces that go to make a person companionable and beloved; and wherever twichell goes to start a church the people flock there to buy the land; they find real estate goes up all around the spot, and the envious and the thoughtful always try to get twichell to move to their neighborhood and start a church; and wherever you see him go you can go and buy land there with confidence, feeling sure that there will be a double price for you before very long. i am not saying this to flatter mr. twichell; it is the fact. many and many a time i have attended the annual sale in his church, and bought up all the pews on a marginand it would have been better for me spiritually and financially if i had stayed under his wing. i have tried to do good in this world, and it is marvellous in how many different ways i have done good, and it is comfortable to reflectnow, there's mr. rogersjust out of the affection i bear that man many a time i have given him points in finance that he had never thought ofand if he could lay aside envy, prejudice, and superstition, and utilize those ideas in his business, it would make a difference in his bank account. well, i like the poetry. i like all the speeches and the poetry, too. i liked doctor van dyke's poem. i wish i could return thanks in proper measure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and violated your feelings to pay me compliments; some were merited and some you overlooked, it is true; and colonel harvey did slander every one of you, and put things into my mouth that i never said, never thought of at all. and now, my wife and i, out of our single heart, return you our deepest and most grateful thanks, andyesterday was her birthday. to the whitefriars. address at the dinner given by the whitefriars club in honor of mr. clemens, london, june 20, 1899. the whitefriars club was founded by dr. samuel johnson, and mr. clemens was made an honorary member in 1874. the members are representative of literary and journalistic london. the toast of "our guest" was proposed by louis f. austin, of the illustrated london news, and in the course of some humorous remarks he referred to the vow and to the imaginary woes of the "friars," as the members of the club style themselves. mr. chairman and brethren of the vowin whatever the vow is; for although i have been a member of this club for five-and-twenty years, i don't know any more about what that vow is than mr. austin seems to. but whatever the vow is, i don't care what it is. i have made a thousand vows. there is no pleasure comparable to making a vow in the presence of one who appreciates that vow, in the presence of men who honor and appreciate you for making the vow, and men who admire you for making the vow. there is only one pleasure higher than that, and that is to get outside and break the vow. a vow is always a pledge of some kind or other for the protection of your own morals and principles or somebody else's, and generally, by the irony of fate, it is for the protection of your own morals. hence we have pledges that make us eschew tobacco or wine, and while you are taking the pledge there is a holy influence about that makes you feel you are reformed, and that you can never be so happy again in this world untilyou get outside and take a drink. i had forgotten that i was a member of this clubit is so long ago. but now i remember that i was here five-and-twenty years ago, and that i was then at a dinner of the whitefriars club, and it was in those old days when you had just made two great finds. all london was talking about nothing else than that they had found livingstone, and that the lost sir roger tichborne had been foundand they were trying him for it. and at the dinner, chairman(i do not know who he was)failed to come to time. the gentleman who had been appointed to pay me the customary compliments and to introduce me forgot the compliments, and did not know what they were. and george augustus sala came in at the last moment, just when i was about to go without compliments altogether. and that man was a gifted man. they just called on him instantaneously, while he was going to sit down, to introduce the stranger, and sala made one of those marvellous speeches which he was capable of making. i think no man talked so fast as sala did. one did not need wine while he was making a speech. the rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk in a minute. an incomparable speech was that, an impromptu speech, and an impromptu speech is a seldom thing, and he did it so well. he went into the whole history of the united states, and made it entirely new to me. he filled it with episodes and incidents that washington never heard of, and he did it so convincingly that although i knew none of it had happened, from that day to this i do not know any history but sala's. i do not know anything so sad as a dinner where you are going to get up and say something by-and-by, and you do not know what it is. you sit and wonder and wonder what the gentleman is going to say who is going to introduce you. you know that if he says something severe, that if he will deride you, or traduce you, or do anything of that kind, he will furnish you with a text, because anybody can get up and talk against that. anybody can get up and straighten out his character. but when a gentleman gets up and merely tells the truth about you, what can you do? mr. austin has done well. he has supplied so many texts that i will have to drop out a lot of them, and that is about as difficult as when you do not have any text at all. now, he made a beautiful and smooth speech without any difficulty at all, and i could have done that if i had gone on with the schooling with which i began. i see here a gentleman on my left who was my master in the art of oratory more than twenty-five years ago. when i look upon the inspiring face of mr. depew, it carries me a long way back. an old and valued friend of mine is he, and i saw his career as it came along, and it has reached pretty well up to now, when he, by another miscarriage of justice, is a united states senator. but those were delightful days when i was taking lessons in oratory. my other masterthe ambassadoris not here yet. under those two gentlemen i learned to make after-dinner speeches, and it was charming. you know the new england dinner is the great occasion on the other side of the water. it is held every year to celebrate the landing of the pilgrims. those pilgrims were a lot of people who were not needed in england, and you know they had great rivalry, and they were persuaded to go elsewhere, and they chartered a ship called mayflower and set sail, and i have heard it said that they pumped the atlantic ocean through that ship sixteen times. they fell in over there with the dutch from rotterdam, amsterdam, and a lot of other places with profane names, and it is from that gang that mr. depew is descended. on the other hand, mr. choate is descended from those puritans who landed on a bitter night in december. every year those people used to meet at a great banquet in new york, and those masters of mind in oratory had to make speeches. it was doctor depew's business to get up there and apologize for the dutch, and mr. choate had to get up later and explain the crimes of the puritans, and grand, beautiful times we used to have. it is curious that after that long lapse of time i meet the whitefriars again, some looking as young and fresh as in the old days, others showing a certain amount of wear and tear, and here, after all this time, i find one of the masters of oratory and the others named in the list. and here we three meet again as exiles on one pretext or another, and you will notice that while we are absent there is a pleasing tranquillity in americaa building up of public confidence. we are doing the best we can for our country. i think we have spent our lives in serving our country, and we never serve it to greater advantage than when we get out of it. but impromptu speakingthat is what i was trying to learn. that is a difficult thing. i used to do it in this way. i used to begin about a week ahead, and write out my impromptu speech and get it by heart. then i brought it to the new england dinner printed on a piece of paper in my pocket, so that i could pass it to the reporters all cut and dried, and in order to do an impromptu speech as it should be done you have to indicate the places for pauses and hesitations. i put them all in it. and then you want the applause in the right places. when i got to the place where it should come in, if it did not come in i did not care, but i had it marked in the paper. and these masters of mind used to wonder why it was my speech came out in the morning in the first person, while theirs went through the butchery of synopsis. i do that kind of speech (i mean an offhand speech), and do it well, and make no mistake in such a way to deceive the audience completely and make that audience believe it is an impromptu speechthat is art. i was frightened out of it at last by an experience of doctor hayes. he was a sort of nansen of that day. he had been to the north pole, and it made him celebrated. he had even seen the polar bear climb the pole. he had made one of those magnificent voyages such as nansen made, and in those days when a man did anything which greatly distinguished him for the moment he had to come on to the lecture platform and tell all about it. doctor hayes was a great, magnificent creature like nansen, superbly built. he was to appear in boston. he wrote his lecture out, and it was his purpose to read it from manuscript; but in an evil hour he concluded that it would be a good thing to preface it with something rather handsome, poetical, and beautiful that he could get off by heart and deliver as if it were the thought of the moment. he had not had my experience, and could not do that. he came on the platform, held his manuscript down, and began with a beautiful piece of oratory. he spoke something like this: "when a lonely human being, a pigmy in the midst of the architecture of nature, stands solitary on those icy waters and looks abroad to the horizon and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal ice raising up their pinnacles tipped by the pencil of the departing sun-" here a man came across the platform and touched him on the shoulder, and said: "one minute." and then to the audience: "is mrs. john smith in the house? her husband has slipped on the ice and broken his leg." and you could see the mrs. john smiths get up everywhere and drift out of the house, and it made great gaps everywhere. then doctor hayes began again: "when a lonely man, a pigmy in the architecture-" the janitor came in again and shouted: "it is not mrs. john smith! it is mrs. john jones!" then all the mrs. jones got up and left. once more the speaker started, and was in the midst of the sentence when he was interrupted again, and the result was that the lecture was not delivered. but the lecturer interviewed the janitor afterward in a private room, and of the fragments of the janitor they took "twelve basketsful." now, i don't want to sit down just in this way. i have been talking with so much levity that i have said no serious thing, and you are really no better or wiser, although robert buchanan has suggested that i am a person who deals in wisdom. i have said nothing which would make you better than when you came here. i should be sorry to sit down without having said one serious word which you can carry home and relate to your children and the old people who are not able to get away. and this is just a little maxim which has saved me from many a difficulty and many a disaster, and in times of tribulation and uncertainty has come to my rescue, as it shall to yours if you observe it as i do day and night. i always use it in an emergency, and you can take it home as a legacy from me, and it is: "when in doubt, tell the truth." the ascot gold cup. the news of mr. clemens's arrival in england in june, 1907, was announced in the papers with big headlines. immediately following the announcement was the newsalso with big headlinesthat the ascot gold cup had been stolen the same day. the combination, mark twain arrivesascot cup stolen, amused the public. the lord mayor of london gave a banquet at the mansion house in honor of mr. clemens. i do assure you that i am not so dishonest as i look. i have been so busy trying to rehabilitate my honor about that ascot cup that i have had no time to prepare a speech. i was not so honest in former days as i am now, but i have always been reasonably honest. well, you know how a man is influenced by his surroundings. once upon a time i went to a public meeting where the oratory of a charitable worker so worked on my feelings that, in common with others, i would have dropped something substantial in the hatif it had come round at that moment. the speaker had the power of putting those vivid pictures before one. we were all affected. that was the moment for the hat. i would have put two hundred dollars in. before he had finished i could have put in four hundred dollars. i felt i could have filled up a blank checkwith somebody else's nameand dropped it in. well, now, another speaker got up, and in fifteen minutes damped my spirit; and during the speech of the third speaker all my enthusiasm went away. when at last the hat came round i dropped in ten centsand took out twenty-five. i came over here to get the honorary degree from oxford, and i would have encompassed the seven seas for an honor like thatthe greatest honor that has ever fallen to my share. i am grateful to oxford for conferring that honor upon me, and i am sure my country appreciates it, because first and foremost it is an honor to my country. and now i am going home again across the sea. i am in spirit young but in the flesh old, so that it is unlikely that when i go away i shall ever see england again. but i shall go with the recollection of the generous and kindly welcome i have had. i suppose i must say "good-bye." i say it not with my lips only, but from the heart. the savage club dinner. a portrait of mr. clemens, signed by all the members of the club attending the dinner, was presented to him, july 6, 1907, and in submitting the toast "the health of mark twain" mr. j. scott stokes recalled the fact that he had read parts of doctor clemens's works to harold frederic during frederic's last illness. mr. chairman and fellow-savages,i am very glad indeed to have that portrait. i think it is the best one that i have ever had, and there have been opportunities before to get a good photograph. i have sat to photographers twenty-two times to-day. those sittings added to those that have preceded them since i have been in europeif we average at that ratemust have numbered one hundred to two hundred sittings. out of all those there ought to be some good photographs. this is the best i have had, and i am glad to have your honored names on it. i did not know harold frederic personally, but i have heard a great deal about him, and nothing that was not pleasant and nothing except such things as lead a man to honor another man and to love him. i consider that it is a misfortune of mine that i have never had the luck to meet him, and if any book of mine read to him in his last hours made those hours easier for him and more comfortable, i am very glad and proud of that. i call to mind such a case many years ago of an english authoress, well known in her day, who wrote such beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in every possible way. in a little biographical sketch of her i found that her last hours were spent partly in reading a book of mine, until she was no longer able to read. that has always remained in my mind, and i have always cherished it as one of the good things of my life. i had read what she had written, and had loved her for what she had done. stanley apparently carried a book of mine feloniously away to africa, and i have not a doubt that it had a noble and uplifting influence there in the wilds of africabecause on his previous journeys he never carried anything to read except shakespeare and the bible. i did not know of that circumstance. i did not know that he had carried a book of mine. i only noticed that when he came back he was a reformed man. i knew stanley very well in those old days. stanley was the first man who ever reported a lecture of mine, and that was in st. louis. when i was down there the next time to give the same lecture i was told to give them something fresh, as they had read that in the papers. i met stanley here when he came back from that first expedition of his which closed with the finding of livingstone. you remember how he would break out at the meetings of the british association, and find fault with what people said, because stanley had notions of his own, and could not contain them. they had to come out or break him upand so he would go round and address geographical societies. he was always on the war-path in those days, and people always had to have stanley contradicting their geography for them and improving it. but he always came back and sat drinking beer with me in the hotel up to two in the morning, and he was then one of the most civilized human beings that ever was. i saw in a newspaper this evening a reference to an interview which appeared in one of the papers the other day, in which the interviewer said that i characterized mr. birrell's speech the other day at the pilgrims' club as "bully." now, if you will excuse me, i never use slang to an interviewer or anybody else. that distresses me. whatever i said about mr. birrell's speech was said in english, as good english as anybody uses. if i could not describe mr. birrell's delightful speech without using slang i would not describe it at all. i would close my mouth and keep it closed, much as it would discomfort me. now that comes of interviewing a man in the first person, which is an altogether wrong way to interview him. it is entirely wrong because none of you, i, or anybody else, could interview a mancould listen to a man talking any length of time and then go off and reproduce that talk in the first person. it can't be done. what results is merely that the interviewer gives the substance of what is said and puts it in his own language and puts it in your mouth. it will always be either better language than you use or worse, and in my case it is always worse. i have a great respect for the english language. i am one of its supporters, its promoters, its elevators. i don't degrade it. a slip of the tongue would be the most that you would get from me. i have always tried hard and faithfully to improve my english and never to degrade it. i always try to use the best english to describe what i think and what i feel, or what i don't feel and what i don't think. i am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts. i don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as too much truth. facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too many of them without damaging your literature. i love all literature, and as long as i am a doctor of literaturei have suggested to you for twenty years i have been diligently trying to improve my own literature, and now, by virtue of the university of oxford, i mean to doctor everybody else's. now i think i ought to apologize for my clothes. at home i venture things that i am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts. i was instructed before i left home and ordered to refrain from white clothes in england. i meant to keep that command fair and clean, and i would have done it if i had been in the habit of obeying instructions, but i can't invent a new process in life right away. i have not had white clothes on since i crossed the ocean until now. in these three or four weeks i have grown so tired of gray and black that you have earned my gratitude in permitting me to come as i have. i wear white clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but i don't go out in the streets in them. i don't go out to attract too much attention. i like to attract some, and always i would like to be dressed so that i may, be more conspicuous than anybody else. if i had been an ancient briton, i would not have contented myself with blue paint, but i would have bankrupted the rainbow. i so enjoy gay clothes in which women clothe themselves that it always grieves me when i go to the opera to see that, while women look like a flower-bed, the men are a few gray stumps among them in their black evening dress. these are two or three reasons why i wish to wear white clothes. when i find myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, i know i possess something that is superior to everybody else's. clothes are never clean. you don't know whether they are clean or not, because you can't see. here or anywhere you must scour your head every two or three days or it is full of grit. your clothes must collect just as much dirt as your hair. if you wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning bill gets so heavy that you have to take care. i am proud to say that i can wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days. if you need any further instruction in the matter of clothes i shall be glad to give it to you. i hope i have convinced some of you that it is just as well to wear white clothes as any other kind. i do not want to boast. i only want to make you understand that you are not clean. as to age, the fact that i am nearly seventy-two years old does not clearly indicate how old i am, because part of every dayit is with me as with youyou try to describe your age, and you cannot do it. sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes you are twenty-five. it is very seldom in a day that i am seventy-two years old. i am older now sometimes than i was when i used to rob orchards; a thing which i would not do todayif the orchards were watched. i am so glad to be here to-night. i am so glad to renew with the savages that now ancient time when i first sat with a company of this club in london in 1872. that is a long time ago. but i did stay with the savages a night in london long ago, and as i had come into a very strange land, and was with friends, as i could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly blessed evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own kind and my own feelings. i am glad to be here, and to see you all again, because it is very likely that i shall not see you again. it is easier than i thought to come across the atlantic. i have been received, as you know, in the most delightfully generous way in england ever since i came here. it keeps me choked up all the time. everybody is so generous, and they do seem to give you such a hearty welcome. nobody in the world, can appreciate it higher than i do. it did not wait till i got to london, but when i came ashore at tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first welcomea good and hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy labor in the world, and save you and me having to do it. they are the men who with their hands build empires and make them prosper. it is because of them that the others are wealthy and can live in luxury. they received me with a "hurrah!" that went to my heart. they are the men that build civilization, and without them no civilization can be built. so i came first to the authors and creators of civilization, and i blessedly end this happy meeting with the savages who destroy it. general miles and the dog. mr. clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the pleiades club at the hotel brevoort, december 22, 1907the toastmaster introduced the guest of the evening with a high tribute to his place in american literature, saying that he was dear to the hearts of all americans. it is hard work to make a speech when you have listened to compliments from the powers in authority. a compliment is a hard text to preach to. when the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says pleasant things about me, i always feel like answering simply that what he says is true; that it is all right; that, as far as i am concerned, the things he said can stand as they are. but you always have to say something, and that is what frightens me. i remember out in sydney once having to respond to some complimentary toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other wormand run for it. i was remembering that occasion at a later date when i had to introduce a speaker. hoping, then, to spur his speech by putting him, in joke, on the defensive, i accused him in my introduction of everything i thought it impossible for him to have committed. when i finished there was an awful calm. i had been telling his life history by mistake. one must keep up one's character. earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one. from the code of morals i have been following and revising and revising for seventy-two years i remember one detail. all my life i have been honestcomparatively honest. i could never use money i had not made honestlyi could only lend it. last spring i met general miles again, and he commented on the fact that we had known each other thirty years. he said it was strange that we had not met years before, when we had both been in washington. at that point i changed the subject, and i changed it with art. but the facts are these: i was then under contract for my innocents abroad, but did not have a cent to live on while i wrote it. so i went to washington to do a little journalism. there i met an equally poor friend, william davidson, who had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a scot to love scotch. together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate, selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter. that $24 a week would have been enough for usif we had not had to support the jug. but there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away$3 at once. that was how i met the general. it doesn't matter now what we wanted so much money at one time for, but that scot and i did occasionally want it. the scot sent me out one day to get it. he had a great belief in providence, that scottish friend of mine. he said: "the lord will provide." i had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel lobby in despair, when i saw a beautiful unfriended dog. the dog saw me, too, and at once we became acquainted. then general miles came in, admired the dog, and asked me to price it. i priced it at $3. he offered me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful animal, but i refused to take more than providence knew i needed. the general carried the dog to his room. then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking around the lobby. "did you lose a dog?" i asked. he said he had. "i think i could find it," i volunteered, "for a small sum." "'how much?'" he asked. and i told him $3. he urged me to accept more, but i did not wish to outdo providence. then i went to the general's room and asked for the dog back. he was very angry, and wanted to know why i had sold him a dog that did not belong to me. "that's a singular question to ask me, sir," i replied. "didn't you ask me to sell him? you started it." and he let me have him. i gave him back his $3 and returned the dog, collect, to its owner. that second $3 i carried home to the scot, and we enjoyed it, but the first $3, the money i got from the general, i would have had to lend. the general seemed not to remember my part in that adventure, and i never had the heart to tell him about it. when in doubt, tell the truth. mark twain's speech at the dinner of the "freundschaft society," march 9, 1906, had as a basis the words of introduction used by toastmaster frank, who, referring to pudd'nhead wilson, used the phrase, "when in doubt, tell the truth." mr. chairman, mr. putzel, and gentlemen of the freundschaft,that maxim i did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me. i did say, "when you are in doubt," but when i am in doubt myself i use more sagacity. mr. grout suggested that if i have anything to say against mr. putzel, or any criticism of his career or his character, i am the last person to come out on account of that maxim and tell the truth. that is altogether a mistake. i do think it is right for other people to be virtuous so that they can be happy hereafter, but if i knew every impropriety that even mr. putzel has committed in his life, i would not mention one of them. my judgment has been maturing for seventy years, and i have got to that point where i know better than that. mr. putzel stands related to me in a very tender way (through the tax office), and it does not behoove me to say anything which could by any possibility militate against that condition of things. now, that wordtaxes, taxes, taxes! i have heard it to-night. i have heard it all night. i wish somebody would change that subject; that is a very sore subject to me. i was so relieved when judge leventritt did find something that was not taxablewhen he said that the commissioner could not tax your patience. and that comforted me. we've got so much taxation. i don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the answer to prayer. on an occasion like this the proprieties require that you merely pay compliments to the guest of the occasion, and i am merely here to pay compliments to the guest of the occasion, not to criticise him in any way, and i can say only complimentary things to him. when i went down to the tax office some time ago, for the first time in new york, i saw mr. putzel sitting in the "seat of perjury." i recognized him right away. i warmed to him on the spot. i didn't know that i had ever seen him before, but just as soon as i saw him i recognized him. i had met him twenty-five years before, and at that time had achieved a knowledge of his abilities and something more than that. i thought: "now, this is the man whom i saw twenty-five years ago." on that occasion i not only went free at his hands, but carried off something more than that. i hoped it would happen again. it was twenty-five years ago when i saw a young clerk in putnam's book-store. i went in there and asked for george haven putnam, and handed him my card, and then the young man said mr. putnam was busy and i couldn't see him. well, i had merely called in a social way, and so it didn't matter. i was going out when i saw a great big, fat, interesting-looking book lying there, and i took it up. it was an account of the invasion of england in the fourteenth century by the preaching friar, and it interested me. i asked him the price of it, and he said four dollars. "well," i said, "what discount do you allow to publishers?" he said: "forty per cent. off." i said: "all right, i am a publisher." he put down the figure, forty per cent. off, on a card. then i said: "what discount do you allow to authors?" he said: "forty per cent. off." "well," i said, "set me down as an author." "now," said i, "what discount do you allow to the clergy?" he said: "forty per cent. off." i said to him that i was only on the road, and that i was studying for the ministry. i asked him wouldn't he knock off twenty per cent. for that. he set down the figure, and he never smiled once. i was working off these humorous brilliancies on him and getting no returnnot a scintillation in his eye, not a spark of recognition of what i was doing there. i was almost in despair. i thought i might try him once more, so i said: "now, i am also a member of the human race. will you let me have the ten per cent. off for that?" he set it down, and never smiled. well, i gave it up. i said: "there is my card with my address on it, but i have not any money with me. will you please send the bill to hartford?" i took up the book and was going away. he said: "wait a minute. there is forty cents coming to you." when i met him in the tax office i thought maybe i could make something again, but i could not. but i had not any idea i could when i came, and as it turned out i did get off entirely free. i put up my hand and made a statement. it gave me a good deal of pain to do that. i was not used to it. i was born and reared in the higher circles of missouri, and there we don't do such thingsdidn't in my time, but we have got that little matter settledgot a sort of tax levied on me. then he touched me. yes, he touched me this time, because he criedcried! he was moved to tears to see that i, a virtuous person only a year before, after immersion for one yearduring one year in the new york moralshad no more conscience than a millionaire. the day we celebrate. address at the fourth-of-july dinner of the american society, london, 1899. i noticed in ambassador choate's speech that he said: "you may be americans or englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time." you responded by applause. consider the effect of a short residence here. i find the ambassador rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a senator, and i come third. what a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country when you place rank above respectability! i was born modest, and if i had not been things like this would force it upon me. i understand it quite well. i am here to see that between them they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not i must do it myself. but i notice they have considered this day merely from one sideits sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. but it has another side. it has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming. it has a historical side. i do not say "an" historical side, because i am speaking the american language. i do not see why our cousins should continue to say "an" hospital, "an" historical fact, "an" horse. it seems to me the congress of women, now in session, should look to it. i think "an" is having a little too much to do with it. it comes of habit, which accounts for many things. yesterday, for example, i was at a luncheon party. at the end of the party a great dignitary of the english established church went away half an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. now, that was an innocent act on his part. he went out first, and of course had the choice of hats. as a rule i try to get out first myself. but i hold that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity. he was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that condition of mind he will take anybody's hat. the result was that the whole afternoon i was under the influence of his clerical hat and could not tell a lie. of course, he was hard at it. it is a compliment to both of us. his hat fitted me exactly; my hat fitted him exactly. so i judge i was born to rise to high dignity in the church some how or other, but i do not know what he was born for. that is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here when they say "an" hospital, "an" european, "an" historical. the business aspects of the fourth of july is not perfect as it stands. see what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. it is not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom, but to the surgeon, the undertaker, the insurance officesand they are working it for all it is worth. i am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time. this coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate. i was a soldier in the southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all through me and fires up the old war spirit. i had in my first engagement three horses shot under me. the next ones went over my head, the next hit me in the back. then i retired to meet an engagement. i thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war profession, in which i distinguished myself, short as my career was. independence day. the american society in london gave a banquet, july 4, 1907, at the hotel cecil. ambassador choate called on mr. clemens to respond to the toast "the day we celebrate." mr. chairman, my lord, and gentlemen,once more it happens, as it has happened so often since i arrived in england a week or two ago, that instead of celebrating the fourth of july properly as has been indicated, i have to first take care of my personal character. sir mortimer durand still remains unconvinced. well, i tried to convince these people from the beginning that i did not take the ascot cup; and as i have failed to convince anybody that i did not take the cup, i might as well confess i did take it and be done with it. i don't see why this uncharitable feeling should follow me everywhere, and why i should have that crime thrown up to me on all occasions. the tears that i have wept over it ought to have created a different feeling than thisand, besides, i don't think it is very right or fair that, considering england has been trying to take a cup of ours for forty yearsi don't see why they should take so much trouble when i tried to go into the business myself. sir mortimer durand, too, has had trouble from going to a dinner here, and he has told you what he suffered in consequence. but what did he suffer? he only missed his train and one night of discomfort, and he remembers it to this day. oh! if you could only think what i have suffered from a similar circumstance. two or three years ago, in new york, with that society there which is made up of people from all british colonies, and from great britain, generally, who were educated in british colleges and british schools, i was there to respond to a toast of some kind or other, and i did then what i have been in the habit of doing, from a selfish motive, for a long time, and that is, i got myself placed no. 3 in the list of speakersthen you get home early. i had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch a particular train or not get there. but see the magnanimity which is born in me, which i have cultivated all my life. a very famous and very great british clergyman came to me presently, and he said: "i am away down in the list; i have got to catch a certain train this saturday night; if i don't catch that train i shall be carried beyond midnight and break the sabbath. won't you change places with me? i said: "certainly i will." i did it at once. now, see what happened. talk about sir mortimer durand's sufferings for a single night! i have suffered ever since. because i saved that gentleman from breaking the sabbathyes, saved him. i took his place, but i lost my train, and it was i who broke the sabbath. up to that time i never had broken the sabbath in my life and from that day to this i never have kept it. oh! i am learning much here to-night. i find i didn't know anything about the american societythat is, i didn't know its chief virtue. i didn't know its chief virtue until his excellency our ambassador revealed iti may say, exposed it. i was intending to go home on the 13th of this month, but i look upon that in a different light now. i am going to stay here until the american society pays my passage. our ambassador has spoken of our fourth of july and the noise it makes. we have got a double fourth of julya daylight fourth and a midnight fourth. during the day in america, as our ambassador has indicated, we keep the fourth of july properly in a reverent spirit. we devote it to teaching our children patriotic thingsreverence for the declaration of independence. we honor the day all through the daylight hour's, and when night comes we dishonor it. presentlybefore longthey are getting nearly ready to begin nowon the atlantic coast, when night shuts down, that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and noiseall night longand there will be more than noisethere will be people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give to irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all sorts of dangerous things. we turn that fourth of july, alas! over to rowdies to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we cripple and kill more people than you would imagine. we probably began to celebrate our fourth-of-july night in that way one hundred and twenty-five years ago, and on every fourth-of-july night since these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in our five thousand towns of america, somebody gets killed or crippled on every fourth-of-july night, besides those cases of sick persons whom we never hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the shock. they cripple and kill more people on the fourth of july in america than they kill and cripple in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for these folk. and, too, we burn houses. really we destroy more property on every fourth-of-july night than the whole of the united states was worth one hundred and twenty-five years ago. really our fourth of july is our day of mourning, our day of sorrow. fifty thousand people who have lost friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that fourth of july, when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained in their families. i have suffered in that way myself. i have had relatives killed in that way. one was in chicago years agoan uncle of mine, just as good an uncle as i have ever had, and i had lots of themyes, uncles to burn, uncles to spare. this poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. before that man could ask for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him all over the forty-five states, andreally, now, this is truei know about it myselftwenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons, recognizable as his, on the atlantic seaboard. a person cannot have a disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. i had another uncle, on an entirely different fourth of july, who was blown up that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. he had hardly a limb left on him anywhere. all we have left now is an expurgated edition of that uncle. but never mind about these things; they are merely passing matters. don't let me make you sad. sir mortimer durand said that you, the english people, gave up your colonies over theregot tired of themand did it with reluctance. now i wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he had his reasons for saying that england did not look upon our revolution as a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by englishmen. our fourth of july which we honor so much, and which we love so much, and which we take so much pride in, is an english institution, not an american one, and it comes of a great ancestry. the first fourth of july in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years. that is the day of the great charterthe magna chartawhich was born at runnymede in the next to the last year of king john, and portions of the liberties secured thus by those hardy barons from that reluctant king john are a part of our declaration of independence, of our fourth of july, of our american liberties. and the second of those fourths of july was not born until four centuries later, in charles the first's time in the bill of rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties. the next one was still english, in new england, where they established that principle which remains with us to this day, and in will continue to remain with usno taxation without-representation. that is always going to stand, and that the english colonies in new england gave us. the fourth of july, and the one which you are celebrating now, born in philadelphia on the 4th of july, 1776that is english, too. it is not american. those were english colonists, subjects of king george iii., englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppressions of the home government. though they proposed to cure those oppressions and remove them, still remaining under the crown, they were not intending a revolution. the revolution was brought about by circumstances which they could not control. the declaration of independence was written by a british subject, every name signed to it was the name of a british subject. there was not the name of a single american attached to the declaration of independencein fact, there was not an american in the country in that day except the indians out on the plains. they were englishmen, all englishmenamericans did not begin until seven years later, when that fourth of july had become seven years old, and then the american republic was established. since then there have been americans. so you see what we owe to england in the matter of liberties. we have, however, one fourth of july which is absolutely our own, and that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great american to whom sir mortimer durand paid that just and beautiful tributeabraham lincoln. lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also. the owner was set free from the burden and offence, that sad condition of things where he was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not want to be. that proclamation set them all free. but even in this matter england suggested it, for england had set her slaves free thirty years before, and we followed her example. we always followed her example, whether it was good or bad. and it was an english judge that issued that other great proclamation, and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon english soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man before the world. we followed the example of 1833, and we freed our slaves as i have said. it is true, then, that all our fourths of july, and we have five of them, england gave to us, except that one that i have mentionedthe emancipation proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that we owe these things to england. let us be able to say to old england, this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our fourths of july that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us the declaration of independence, which is the charter of our rights, you, the venerable mother of liberties, the protector of anglo-saxon freedomyou gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for them. americans and the english. address at a gathering of americans in london, july 4, 1872. mr. chairman and ladies and gentlemen,i thank you for the compliment which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it i will not afflict you with many words. it is pleasant to celebrate in this peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. it has taken nearly a hundred years to bring the english and americans into kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but i believe it has been accomplished at last. it was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were settled by arbitration instead of cannon. it is another great step when england adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the inventionas usual. it was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the other day. and it warmed my heart more than i can tell, yesterday, when i witnessed the spectacle of an englishman ordering an american sherry cobbler of his own free will and accordand not only that but with a great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the strawberries. with a common origin, a common language, a common literature, a common religion, andcommon drinks, what is longer needful to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of brotherhood? this is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. a great and glorious land, tooa land which has developed a washington, a franklin, a wm. m. tweed, a longfellow, a motley, a jay gould, a samuel c. pomeroy, a recent congress which has never had its equal (in some respects), and a united states army which conquered sixty indians in eight months by tiring them outwhich is much better than uncivilized slaughter, god knows. we have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read. and i may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved cain. i think i can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world. i refer with effusion to our railway system, which contents to let us live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. it only destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and unnecessary people at crossings. the companies seriously regretted the killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for some of themvoluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against a railway company. but, thank heaven, the railway companies are generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion. i know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. after an accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative of mine in a basket, with the remark, "please state what figure you hold him atand return the basket." now there couldn't be anything friendlier than that. but i must not stand here and brag all night. however, you won't mind a body bragging a little about his country on the fourth of july. it is a fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. i will say only one more word of bragand a hopeful one. it is this. we have a form of government which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. with us no individual is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in contempt. let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that. and we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the condition of our political morality to-day, england has risen up out of a far fouler since the days when charles i. ennobled courtesans and all political place was a matter of bargain and sale. there is hope for us yet.* * at least the above is the speech which i was going to make, but our minister, general schenck, presided, and after the blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good, sociable time. it is known that in consequence of that remark forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb. the depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many that were there. by that one thoughtless remark general schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in england. more than one said that night: "and this is the sort of person that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire!" about london. address at a dinner given by the savage club, london, september 28, 1872. reported by moncure d. conway in the cincinnati commercial. it affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many of my countrymen. i hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. i am going to the theatre; that will explain these clothes. i have other clothes than these. judging human nature by what i have seen of it, i suppose that the customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the first man that that idea has occurred to. it is a credit to our human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our depravity (and god knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of innocence and simplicity still. when a stranger says to me, with a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing about "twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, i don't try to crush that man into the earthno. i feel like saying: "let me take you by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; i have not heard that pun for weeks." we will deal in palpable puns. we will call parties named king "your majesty," and we will say to the smiths that we think we have heard that name before somewhere. such is human nature. we cannot alter this. it is god that made us so for some good and wise purpose. let us not repine. but though i may seem strange, may seem eccentric, i mean to refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though i could make a very good one if i had time to think about ita week. i cannot express to you what entire enjoyment i find in this first visit to this prodigious metropolis of yours. its wonders seem to me to be limitless. i go about as in a dreamas in a realm of enchantmentwhere many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and marvellous. hour after hour i standi stand spellbound, as it wereand gaze upon the statuary in leicester square. [leicester square being a horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre, the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better condition.] i visit the mortuary effigies of noble old henry viii., and judge jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind which of my ancestors i admire the most. i go to that matchless hyde park and drive all around it, and then i start to enter it at the marble archandam induced to "change my mind." [cabs are not permitted in hyde parknothing less aristocratic than a private carriage.] it is a great benefactionis hyde park. there, in his hansom cab, the invalid can gothe poor, sad child of misfortuneand insert his nose between the railings, and breathe the pure, health-giving air of the country and of heaven. and if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend upon parks for his country air, he can drive insideif he owns his vehicle. i drive round and round hyde park, and the more i see of the edges of it the more grateful i am that the margin is extensive. and i have been to the zoological gardens. what a wonderful place that is! i never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild animals in any garden beforeexcept "mabille." i never believed before there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you can find thereand i don't believe it yet. i have been to the british museum. i would advise you to drop in there some time when you have nothing to do forfive minutesif you have never been there. it seems to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her greatness. i say to her, our greatnessas a nation. true, she has built other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked across the world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and whose prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their monuments shall have crumbled to dusti refer to the wellington and nelson monuments, andthe albert memorial. [sarcasm. the albert memorial is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the existence of as commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of obscurity.] the library at the british museum i find particularly astounding. i have read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it. i revere that library. it is the author's friend. i don't care how mean a book is, it always takes one copy. [a copy of every book printed in great britain must by law be sent to the british museum, a law much complained of by publishers.] and then every day that author goes there to gaze at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work. and what a touching sight it is of a saturday afternoon to see the poor, care-worn clergymen gathered together in that vast reading-room cabbaging sermons for sunday. you will pardon my referring to these things. everything in this monster city interests me, and i cannot keep from talking, even at the risk of being instructive. people here seem always to express distances by parables. to a stranger it is just a little confusing to be so parabolicso to speak. i collar a citizen, and i think i am going to get some valuable information out of him. i ask him how far it is to birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shillings and sixpence. now we know that doesn't help a man who is trying to learn. i find myself down-town somewhere, and i want to get some sort of idea where i ambeing usually lost when aloneand i stop a citizen and say: "how far is it to charing cross?" "shilling fare in a cab," and off he goes. i suppose if i were to ask a londoner how far it is from the sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to express it in coin. but i am trespassing upon your time with these geological statistics and historical reflections. i will not longer keep you from your orgies. 'tis a real pleasure for me to be here, and i thank you for it. the name of the savage club is associated in my mind with the kindly interest and the friendly offices which you lavished upon an old friend of mine who came among you a stranger, and you opened your english hearts to him and gave him welcome and a homeartemus ward. asking that you will join me, i give you his memory. princeton princeton. mr. clemens spent several days in may, 1901, in princeton, new jersey, as the guest of lawrence hutton. he gave a reading one evening before a large audience composed of university students and professors. before the reading mr. clemens said: i feel exceedingly surreptitious in coming down here without an announcement of any kind. i do not want to see any advertisements around, for the reason that i'm not a lecturer any longer. i reformed long ago, and i break over and commit this sin only just one time this yearand that is moderate, i think, for a person of my disposition. it is not my purpose to lecture any more as long as i live. i never intend to stand up on a platform any moreunless by the request of a sheriff or something like that. the st. louis harbor-boat "mark twain". the countess de rochambeau christened the st. louis harbor-boat mark twain in honor of mr. clemens june 6, 19o2. just before the luncheon he acted as pilot. "lower away lead!" boomed out the voice of the pilot. "mark twain, quarter five and one-halfsix feet!" replied the leadsman below. "you are all dead safe as long as i have the wheelbut this is my last time at the wheel." at the luncheon mr. clemens made a short address. first of all, nosecond of alli wish to offer my thanks for the honor done me by naming this last rose of summer of the mississippi valley for me, this boat which represents a perished interest, which i fortified long ago, but did not save its life. and, in the first place, i wish to thank the countess de rochambeau for the honor she has done me in presiding at this christening. i believe that it is peculiarly appropriate that i should be allowed the privilege of joining my voice with the general voice of st. louis and missouri in welcoming to the mississippi valley and this part of the continent these illustrious visitors from france. when la salle came down this river a century and a quarter ago there was nothing on its banks but savages. he opened up this great river, and by his simple act was gathered in this great louisiana territory. i would have done it myself for half the money. seventieth birthday. address at a dinner given by colonel george harvey at delmonico's, december 5, 1905, to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of mr. clemens' birth. mr. howells introduced mr. clemens: "now, ladies and gentlemen, and colonel harvey, i will try not to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the health of our honored and, in view of his great age, our revered guest. i will not say, 'oh king, live forever!' but 'oh king, live as long as you like!'" [amid great applause and waving of napkins all rise and drink to mark twain.] well, if i made that joke, it is the best one i ever made, and it is in the prettiest language, too. i never can get quite to that height. but i appreciate that joke, and i shall remember itand i shall use it when occasion requires. i have had a great many birthdays in my time. i remember the first one very well, and i always think of it with indignation; everything was so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. nothing like this at all. no proper appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. now, for a person born with high and delicate instinctswhy, even the cradle wasn't whitewashednothing ready at all. i hadn't any hair, i hadn't any teeth, i hadn't any clothes, i had to go to my first banquet just like that. well, everybody came swarming in. it was the merest little bit of a villagehardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was anything fresh in my line. why, nothing ever happened in that villageiwhy, i was the only thing that had really happened there for months and months and months; and although i say it myself that shouldn't, i came the nearest to being a real event that had happened in that village in more than two years. well, those people came, they came with that curiosity which is so provincial, with that frankness which also is so provincial, and they examined me all around and gave their opinion. nobody asked them, and i shouldn't have minded if anybody had paid me a compliment, but nobody did. their opinions were all just green with prejudice, and i feel those opinions to this day. well, i stood that as long aswell, you know i was born courteous and i stood it to the limit. i stood it an hour, and then the worm turned. i was the worm; it was my turn to turn, and i turned. i knew very well the strength of my position; i knew that i was the only spotlessly pure and innocent person in that whole town, and i came out and said so. and they could not say a word. it was so true, they blushed; they were embarrassed. well that was the first after-dinner speech i ever made. i think it was after dinner. it's a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one. that was my cradle-song, and this is my swan-song, i suppose. i am used to swan-songs; i have sung them several times. this is my seventieth birthday, and i wonder if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth birthday. the seventieth birthday! it is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teachunrebuked. you can tell the world how you got there. it is what they all do. you shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. you will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. i have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last i have the right. i have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. it sounds like an exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old age. when we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the property of their heirs so long, as mr. choate says, would have put us out of commission ahead of time. i will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: that we can't reach old age by another man's road. i will now teach, offering my way of life to whomsoever desires to commit suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and the hangman for seventy years. some of the details may sound untrue, but they are not. i am not here to deceive; i am here to teach. we have no permanent habits until we are forty. then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. since forty i have been regular about going to bed and getting upand that is one of the main things. i have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and i have made it a rule to get up when i had to. this has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. it has saved me sound, but it would injure another person. in the matter of dietwhich is another main thingi have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. until lately i got the best of it myself. but last spring i stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight; up to then i had always believed it wasn't loaded. for thirty years i have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. eleven hours. that is all right for me, and is wholesome, because i have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. and i wish to urge upon you thiswhich i think is wisdomthat if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. when they take off the pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. i have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. i have no other restriction as regards smoking. i do not know just when i began to smoke, i only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and that i was discreet. he passed from this life early in 1847, when i was a shade past eleven; ever since then i have smoked publicly. as an example to others, and not that i care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. it is a good rule. i mean, for me; but some of you know quite well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to be seventy. i smoke in bed until i have to go to sleep; i wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and i never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. this habit is so old and dear and precious to me that i would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you've gotmeaning the chairmanif you've got one: i am making no charges. i will grant, here, that i have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said i was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds. to-day it is all of sixty years since i began to smoke the limit. i have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. i early found that those were too expensive for me. i have always bought cheap cigarsreasonably cheap, at any rate. sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and i pay seven now. six or seven. seven, i think. yes, it's seven. but that includes the barrel. i often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. i wonder why that is? as for drinking, i have no rule about that. when the others drink i like to help; otherwise i remain dry, by habit and preference. this dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are different. you let it alone. since i was seven years old i have seldom taken a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed one. but up to seven i lived exclusively on allopathic medicines. not that i needed them, for i don't think i did; it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it made cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. we had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. then. i was weaned. the rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things, because i was the pet. i was the first standard oil trust. i had it all. by the time the drug store was exhausted my health was established, and there has never been much the matter with, me since. but you know very well it would be foolish for the average child to start for seventy on that basis. it happened to be just the thing for me, but that was merely an accident; it couldn't happen again in a century. i have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and i never intend to take any. exercise is loathsome. and it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and i was always tired. but let another person try my way, and see where he will come out. i desire now to repeat and emphasize that maxim: we can't reach old age by another man's road. my habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you. i have lived a severely moral life. but it would be a mistake for other people to try that, or for me to recommend it. very few would succeed: you have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals; and you can't get them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing, and put them in your box. morals are an acquirementlike music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysisno man is born. with them. i wasn't myself, i started poor. i hadn't a single moral. there is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than i was then. yes, i started like thatthe world before me, not a moral in the slot. not even an insurance moral. i can remember the first one i ever got. i can remember the landscape, the weather, thei can remember how everything looked. it was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. but if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and chautauquas, and world's fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. when i got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but i worked her hard, i worked her sundays and all. under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. she was a great loss to me. yet not all loss. i sold herah, pathetic skeleton, as she wasi sold her to leopold, the pirate king of belgium; he sold her to our metropolitan museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. well, she looks it. they believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. now you take a sterilized christiani mean, you take the sterilized christian, for there's only one. dear sir, i wish you wouldn't look at me like that. threescore years and ten! it is the scriptural statute of limitations. after that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. you are a time-expired man, to use kipling's military phrase: you have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. you are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, not any bugle-call but "lights out." you pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you preferand without prejudicefor they are not legally collectable. the previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will never need it again. if you shrink at the thought of night and winter, and the late home-coming from the banquet and the lights and the laughter through the deserted streetsa desolation which would not remind you now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them moreif you shrink at thought of these things, you need only reply, "your invitation honors me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but i am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier no. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart. the end . [pg/etext94/beqst10.txt] the $30,000 bequest, by mark twain june, 1994 [etext #142] this text is in the public domain. the $30,000 bequest and other stories by mark twain (samuel l. clemens) the $30,000 bequest a dog's tale was it heaven? or hell? a cure for the blues the enemy conquered; or, love triumphant the californian's tale a helpless situation a telephonic conversation edward mills and george benton: a tale the five boons of life the first writing-machines italian without a master italian with grammar a burlesque biography how to tell a story general washington's negro body-servant wit inspirations of the "two-year-olds" an entertaining article a letter to the secretary of the treasury amended obituaries a momument to adam a humane word from satan introduction to "the new guide of the conversation in portuguese and english" advice to little girls post-mortem poetry the danger of lying in bed portrait of king william iii does the race of man love a lord? extracts from adam's diary eve's diary *** the $30,000 bequest chapter i lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the far west. it had church accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the far west and the south, where everybody is religious, and where each of the protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. rank was unknown in lakeside--unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere. saladin foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only high-salaried man of his profession in lakeside. he was thirty-five years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, and had climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; from that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred--a handsome figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it. his wife, electra, was a capable helpmeet, although--like himself-a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. the first thing she did, after her marriage--child as she was, aged only nineteen-was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for it--twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. saladin had less, by fifteen. she instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year. out of saladin's first year's wage she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank, sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth. his wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth. when she had been married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her garden-acre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. seven years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning its living. earning it by the rise in landed estate; for she had long ago bought another acre or two and sold the most of it at a profit to pleasant people who were willing to build, and would be good neighbors and furnish a general comradeship for herself and her growing family. she had an independent income from safe investments of about a hundred dollars a year; her children were growing in years and grace; and she was a pleased and happy woman. happy in her husband, happy in her children, and the husband and the children were happy in her. it is at this point that this history begins. the youngest girl, clytemnestra--called clytie for short-was eleven; her sister, gwendolen--called gwen for short-was thirteen; nice girls, and comely. the names betray the latent romance-tinge in the parental blood, the parents' names indicate that the tinge was an inheritance. it was an affectionate family, hence all four of its members had pet names, saladin's was a curious and unsexing one--sally; and so was electra's--aleck. all day long sally was a good and diligent book-keeper and salesman; all day long aleck was a good and faithful mother and housewife, and thoughtful and calculating business woman; but in the cozy living-room at night they put the plodding world away, and lived in another and a fairer, reading romances to each other, dreaming dreams, comrading with kings and princes and stately lords and ladies in the flash and stir and splendor of noble palaces and grim and ancient castles. chapter ii now came great news! stunning news--joyous news, in fact. it came from a neighboring state, where the family's only surviving relative lived. it was sally's relative--a sort of vague and indefinite uncle or second or third cousin by the name of tilbury foster, seventy and a bachelor, reputed well off and corresponding sour and crusty. sally had tried to make up to him once, by letter, in a bygone time, and had not made that mistake again. tilbury now wrote to sally, saying he should shortly die, and should leave him thirty thousand dollars, cash; not for love, but because money had given him most of his troubles and exasperations, and he wished to place it where there was good hope that it would continue its malignant work. the bequest would be found in his will, and would be paid over. provided, that sally should be able to prove to the executors that he had taken no notice of the gift by spoken word or by letter, had made no inquiries concerning the moribund's progress toward the everlasting tropics, and had not attended the funeral. as soon as aleck had partially recovered from the tremendous emotions created by the letter, she sent to the relative's habitat and subscribed for the local paper. man and wife entered into a solemn compact, now, to never mention the great news to any one while the relative lived, lest some ignorant person carry the fact to the death-bed and distort it and make it appear that they were disobediently thankful for the bequest, and just the same as confessing it and publishing it, right in the face of the prohibition. for the rest of the day sally made havoc and confusion with his books, and aleck could not keep her mind on her affairs, not even take up a flower-pot or book or a stick of wood without forgetting what she had intended to do with it. for both were dreaming. "thir-ty thousand dollars!" all day long the music of those inspiring words sang through those people's heads. from his marriage-day forth, aleck's grip had been upon the purse, and sally had seldom known what it was to be privileged to squander a dime on non-necessities. "thir-ty thousand dollars!" the song went on and on. a vast sum, an unthinkable sum! all day long aleck was absorbed in planning how to invest it, sally in planning how to spend it. there was no romance-reading that night. the children took themselves away early, for their parents were silent, distraught, and strangely unentertaining. the good-night kisses might as well have been impressed upon vacancy, for all the response they got; the parents were not aware of the kisses, and the children had been gone an hour before their absence was noticed. two pencils had been busy during that hour--note-making; in the way of plans. it was sally who broke the stillness at last. he said, with exultation: "ah, it'll be grand, aleck! out of the first thousand we'll have a horse and a buggy for summer, and a cutter and a skin lap-robe for winter." aleck responded with decision and composure-"out of the capital? nothing of the kind. not if it was a million!" sally was deeply disappointed; the glow went out of his face. "oh, aleck!" he said, reproachfully. "we've always worked so hard and been so scrimped: and now that we are rich, it does seem--" he did not finish, for he saw her eye soften; his supplication had touched her. she said, with gentle persuasiveness: "we must not spend the capital, dear, it would not be wise. out of the income from it--" "that will answer, that will answer, aleck! how dear and good you are! there will be a noble income and if we can spend that--" "not all of it, dear, not all of it, but you can spend a part of it. that is, a reasonable part. but the whole of the capital-every penny of it--must be put right to work, and kept at it. you see the reasonableness of that, don't you?" "why, ye-s. yes, of course. but we'll have to wait so long. six months before the first interest falls due." "yes--maybe longer." "longer, aleck? why? don't they pay half-yearly?" "that kind of an investment--yes; but i sha'n't invest in that way." "what way, then?" "for big returns." "big. that's good. go on, aleck. what is it?" "coal. the new mines. cannel. i mean to put in ten thousand. ground floor. when we organize, we'll get three shares for one." "by george, but it sounds good, aleck! then the shares will be worth-how much? and when?" "about a year. they'll pay ten per cent. half yearly, and be worth thirty thousand. i know all about it; the advertisement is in the cincinnati paper here." "land, thirty thousand for ten--in a year! let's jam in the whole capital and pull out ninety! i'll write and subscribe right now-tomorrow it maybe too late." he was flying to the writing-desk, but aleck stopped him and put him back in his chair. she said: "don't lose your head so. we mustn't subscribe till we've got the money; don't you know that?" sally's excitement went down a degree or two, but he was not wholly appeased. "why, aleck, we'll have it, you know--and so soon, too. he's probably out of his troubles before this; it's a hundred to nothing he's selecting his brimstone-shovel this very minute. now, i think--" aleck shuddered, and said: "how can you, sally! don't talk in that way, it is perfectly scandalous." "oh, well, make it a halo, if you like, _i_ don't care for his outfit, i was only just talking. can't you let a person talk?" "but why should you want to talk in that dreadful way? how would you like to have people talk so about you, and you not cold yet?" "not likely to be, for one while, i reckon, if my last act was giving away money for the sake of doing somebody a harm with it. but never mind about tilbury, aleck, let's talk about something worldly. it does seem to me that that mine is the place for the whole thirty. what's the objection?" "all the eggs in one basket--that's the objection." "all right, if you say so. what about the other twenty? what do you mean to do with that?" "there is no hurry; i am going to look around before i do anything with it." "all right, if your mind's made up," signed sally. he was deep in thought awhile, then he said: "there'll be twenty thousand profit coming from the ten a year from now. we can spend that, can we, aleck?" aleck shook her head. "no, dear," she said, "it won't sell high till we've had the first semi-annual dividend. you can spend part of that." "shucks, only that--and a whole year to wait! confound it, i--" "oh, do be patient! it might even be declared in three months-it's quite within the possibilities." "oh, jolly! oh, thanks!" and sally jumped up and kissed his wife in gratitude. "it'll be three thousand--three whole thousand! how much of it can we spend, aleck? make it liberal!--do, dear, that's a good fellow." aleck was pleased; so pleased that she yielded to the pressure and conceded a sum which her judgment told her was a foolish extravagance-a thousand dollars. sally kissed her half a dozen times and even in that way could not express all his joy and thankfulness. this new access of gratitude and affection carried aleck quite beyond the bounds of prudence, and before she could restrain herself she had made her darling another grant--a couple of thousand out of the fifty or sixty which she meant to clear within a year of the twenty which still remained of the bequest. the happy tears sprang to sally's eyes, and he said: "oh, i want to hug you!" and he did it. then he got his notes and sat down and began to check off, for first purchase, the luxuries which he should earliest wish to secure. "horse--buggy--cutter--lap-robe--patent-leathers--dog--plug-hat-church-pew--stem-winder--new teeth--say, aleck!" "well?" "ciphering away, aren't you? that's right. have you got the twenty thousand invested yet?" "no, there's no hurry about that; i must look around first, and think." "but you are ciphering; what's it about?" "why, i have to find work for the thirty thousand that comes out of the coal, haven't i?" "scott, what a head! i never thought of that. how are you getting along? where have you arrived?" "not very far--two years or three. i've turned it over twice; once in oil and once in wheat." "why, aleck, it's splendid! how does it aggregate?" "i think--well, to be on the safe side, about a hundred and eighty thousand clear, though it will probably be more." "my! isn't it wonderful? by gracious! luck has come our way at last, after all the hard sledding, aleck!" "well?" "i'm going to cash in a whole three hundred on the missionaries-what real right have we care for expenses!" "you couldn't do a nobler thing, dear; and it's just like your generous nature, you unselfish boy." the praise made sally poignantly happy, but he was fair and just enough to say it was rightfully due to aleck rather than to himself, since but for her he should never have had the money. then they went up to bed, and in their delirium of bliss they forgot and left the candle burning in the parlor. they did not remember until they were undressed; then sally was for letting it burn; he said they could afford it, if it was a thousand. but aleck went down and put it out. a good job, too; for on her way back she hit on a scheme that would turn the hundred and eighty thousand into half a million before it had had time to get cold. chapter iii the little newspaper which aleck had subscribed for was a thursday sheet; it would make the trip of five hundred miles from tilbury's village and arrive on saturday. tilbury's letter had started on friday, more than a day too late for the benefactor to die and get into that week's issue, but in plenty of time to make connection for the next output. thus the fosters had to wait almost a complete week to find out whether anything of a satisfactory nature had happened to him or not. it was a long, long week, and the strain was a heavy one. the pair could hardly have borne it if their minds had not had the relief of wholesome diversion. we have seen that they had that. the woman was piling up fortunes right along, the man was spending them-spending all his wife would give him a chance at, at any rate. at last the saturday came, and the weekly sagamore arrived. mrs. eversly bennett was present. she was the presbyterian parson's wife, and was working the fosters for a charity. talk now died a sudden death--on the foster side. mrs. bennett presently discovered that her hosts were not hearing a word she was saying; so she got up, wondering and indignant, and went away. the moment she was out of the house, aleck eagerly tore the wrapper from the paper, and her eyes and sally's swept the columns for the death-notices. disappointment! tilbury was not anywhere mentioned. aleck was a christian from the cradle, and duty and the force of habit required her to go through the motions. she pulled herself together and said, with a pious two-per-cent. trade joyousness: "let us be humbly thankful that he has been spared; and--" "damn his treacherous hide, i wish--" "sally! for shame!" "i don't care!" retorted the angry man. "it's the way you feel, and if you weren't so immorally pious you'd be honest and say so." aleck said, with wounded dignity: "i do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things. there is no such thing as immoral piety." sally felt a pang, but tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt to save his case by changing the form of it--as if changing the form while retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying to placate. he said: "i didn't mean so bad as that, aleck; i didn't really mean immoral piety, i only meant--meant--well, conventional piety, you know; er--shop piety; the--the--why, you know what i mean. aleck--the--well, where you put up that plated article and play it for solid, you know, without intending anything improper, but just out of trade habit, ancient policy, petrified custom, loyalty to--to--hang it, i can't find the right words, but you know what i mean, aleck, and that there isn't any harm in it. i'll try again. you see, it's this way. if a person--" "you have said quite enough," said aleck, coldly; "let the subject be dropped." "i'm willing," fervently responded sally, wiping the sweat from his forehead and looking the thankfulness he had no words for. then, musingly, he apologized to himself. "i certainly held threes-i know it--but i drew and didn't fill. that's where i'm so often weak in the game. if i had stood pat--but i didn't. i never do. i don't know enough." confessedly defeated, he was properly tame now and subdued. aleck forgave him with her eyes. the grand interest, the supreme interest, came instantly to the front again; nothing could keep it in the background many minutes on a stretch. the couple took up the puzzle of the absence of tilbury's death-notice. they discussed it every which way, more or less hopefully, but they had to finish where they began, and concede that the only really sane explanation of the absence of the notice must be--and without doubt was--that tilbury was not dead. there was something sad about it, something even a little unfair, maybe, but there it was, and had to be put up with. they were agreed as to that. to sally it seemed a strangely inscrutable dispensation; more inscrutable than usual, he thought; one of the most unnecessary inscrutable he could call to mind, in fact--and said so, with some feeling; but if he was hoping to draw aleck he failed; she reserved her opinion, if she had one; she had not the habit of taking injudicious risks in any market, worldly or other. the pair must wait for next week's paper--tilbury had evidently postponed. that was their thought and their decision. so they put the subject away and went about their affairs again with as good heart as they could. now, if they had but known it, they had been wronging tilbury all the time. tilbury had kept faith, kept it to the letter; he was dead, he had died to schedule. he was dead more than four days now and used to it; entirely dead, perfectly dead, as dead as any other new person in the cemetery; dead in abundant time to get into that week's sagamore, too, and only shut out by an accident; an accident which could not happen to a metropolitan journal, but which happens easily to a poor little village rag like the sagamore. on this occasion, just as the editorial page was being locked up, a gratis quart of strawberry ice-water arrived from hostetter's ladies and gents ice-cream parlors, and the stickful of rather chilly regret over tilbury's translation got crowded out to make room for the editor's frantic gratitude. on its way to the standing-galley tilbury's notice got pied. otherwise it would have gone into some future edition, for weekly sagamores do not waste "live" matter, and in their galleys "live" matter is immortal, unless a pi accident intervenes. but a thing that gets pied is dead, and for such there is no resurrection; its chance of seeing print is gone, forever and ever. and so, let tilbury like it or not, let him rave in his grave to his fill, no matter--no mention of his death would ever see the light in the weekly sagamore. chapter iv five weeks drifted tediously along. the sagamore arrived regularly on the saturdays, but never once contained a mention of tilbury foster. sally's patience broke down at this point, and he said, resentfully: "damn his livers, he's immortal!" aleck give him a very severe rebuke, and added with icy solemnity: "how would you feel if you were suddenly cut out just after such an awful remark had escaped out of you?" without sufficient reflection sally responded: "i'd feel i was lucky i hadn't got caught with it in me." pride had forced him to say something, and as he could not think of any rational thing to say he flung that out. then he stole a base-as he called it--that is, slipped from the presence, to keep from being brayed in his wife's discussion-mortar. six months came and went. the sagamore was still silent about tilbury. meantime, sally had several times thrown out a feeler--that is, a hint that he would like to know. aleck had ignored the hints. sally now resolved to brace up and risk a frontal attack. so he squarely proposed to disguise himself and go to tilbury's village and surreptitiously find out as to the prospects. aleck put her foot on the dangerous project with energy and decision. she said: "what can you be thinking of? you do keep my hands full! you have to be watched all the time, like a little child, to keep you from walking into the fire. you'll stay right where you are!" "why, aleck, i could do it and not be found out--i'm certain of it." "sally foster, don't you know you would have to inquire around?" "of course, but what of it? nobody would suspect who i was." "oh, listen to the man! some day you've got to prove to the executors that you never inquired. what then?" he had forgotten that detail. he didn't reply; there wasn't anything to say. aleck added: "now then, drop that notion out of your mind, and don't ever meddle with it again. tilbury set that trap for you. don't you know it's a trap? he is on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder into it. well, he is going to be disappointed--at least while i am on deck. sally!" "well?" "as long as you live, if it's a hundred years, don't you ever make an inquiry. promise!" "all right," with a sigh and reluctantly. then aleck softened and said: "don't be impatient. we are prospering; we can wait; there is no hurry. our small dead-certain income increases all the time; and as to futures, i have not made a mistake yet--they are piling up by the thousands and tens of thousands. there is not another family in the state with such prospects as ours. already we are beginning to roll in eventual wealth. you know that, don't you?" "yes, aleck, it's certainly so." "then be grateful for what god is doing for us and stop worrying. you do not believe we could have achieved these prodigious results without his special help and guidance, do you?" hesitatingly, "n-no, i suppose not." then, with feeling and admiration, "and yet, when it comes to judiciousness in watering a stock or putting up a hand to skin wall street i don't give in that you need any outside amateur help, if i do wish i--" "oh, do shut up! i know you do not mean any harm or any irreverence, poor boy, but you can't seem to open your mouth without letting out things to make a person shudder. you keep me in constant dread. for you and for all of us. once i had no fear of the thunder, but now when i hear it i--" her voice broke, and she began to cry, and could not finish. the sight of this smote sally to the heart and he took her in his arms and petted her and comforted her and promised better conduct, and upbraided himself and remorsefully pleaded for forgiveness. and he was in earnest, and sorry for what he had done and ready for any sacrifice that could make up for it. and so, in privacy, he thought long and deeply over the matter, resolving to do what should seem best. it was easy to promise reform; indeed he had already promised it. but would that do any real good, any permanent good? no, it would be but temporary--he knew his weakness, and confessed it to himself with sorrow--he could not keep the promise. something surer and better must be devised; and he devised it. at cost of precious money which he had long been saving up, shilling by shilling, he put a lightning-rod on the house. at a subsequent time he relapsed. what miracles habit can do! and how quickly and how easily habits are acquired--both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us. if by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights in succession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can turn the accident into a habit; and a month's dallying with whiskey-but we all know these commonplace facts. the castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it grows! what a luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment, how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves with their beguiling fantasies--oh yes, and how soon and how easily our dram life and our material life become so intermingled and so fused together that we can't quite tell which is which, any more. by and by aleck subscribed to a chicago daily and for the wall street pointer. with an eye single to finance she studied these as diligently all the week as she studied her bible sundays. sally was lost in admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius and judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of the securities of both the material and spiritual markets. he was proud of her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud of her conservative caution in working her spiritual deals. he noted that she never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courage she often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the line there--she was always long on the others. her policy was quite sane and simple, as she explained it to him: what she put into earthly futures was for speculation, what she put into spiritual futures was for investment; she was willing to go into the one on a margin, and take chances, but in the case of the other, "margin her no margins"--she wanted to cash in a hundred cents per dollar's worth, and have the stock transferred on the books. it took but a very few months to educate aleck's imagination and sally's. each day's training added something to the spread and effectiveness of the two machines. as a consequence, aleck made imaginary money much faster than at first she had dreamed of making it, and sally's competency in spending the overflow of it kept pace with the strain put upon it, right along. in the beginning, aleck had given the coal speculation a twelvemonth in which to materialize, and had been loath to grant that this term might possibly be shortened by nine months. but that was the feeble work, the nursery work, of a financial fancy that had had no teaching, no experience, no practice. these aids soon came, then that nine months vanished, and the imaginary ten-thousand-dollar investment came marching home with three hundred per cent. profit on its back! it was a great day for the pair of fosters. they were speechless for joy. also speechless for another reason: after much watching of the market, aleck had lately, with fear and trembling, made her first flyer on a "margin," using the remaining twenty thousand of the bequest in this risk. in her mind's eye she had seen it climb, point by point--always with a chance that the market would break-until at last her anxieties were too great for further endurance-she being new to the margin business and unhardened, as yet--and she gave her imaginary broker an imaginary order by imaginary telegraph to sell. she said forty thousand dollars' profit was enough. the sale was made on the very day that the coal venture had returned with its rich freight. as i have said, the couple were speechless. they sat dazed and blissful that night, trying to realize that they were actually worth a hundred thousand dollars in clean, imaginary cash. yet so it was. it was the last time that ever aleck was afraid of a margin; at least afraid enough to let it break her sleep and pale her cheek to the extent that this first experience in that line had done. indeed it was a memorable night. gradually the realization that they were rich sank securely home into the souls of the pair, then they began to place the money. if we could have looked out through the eyes of these dreamers, we should have seen their tidy little wooden house disappear, and two-story brick with a cast-iron fence in front of it take its place; we should have seen a three-globed gas-chandelier grow down from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen the homely rag carpet turn to noble brussels, a dollar and a half a yard; we should have seen the plebeian fireplace vanish away and a recherch'e, big base-burner with isinglass windows take position and spread awe around. and we should have seen other things, too; among them the buggy, the lap-robe, the stove-pipe hat, and so on. from that time forth, although the daughters and the neighbors saw only the same old wooden house there, it was a two-story brick to aleck and sally and not a night went by that aleck did not worry about the imaginary gas-bills, and get for all comfort sally's reckless retort: "what of it? we can afford it." before the couple went to bed, that first night that they were rich, they had decided that they must celebrate. they must give a party-that was the idea. but how to explain it--to the daughters and the neighbors? they could not expose the fact that they were rich. sally was willing, even anxious, to do it; but aleck kept her head and would not allow it. she said that although the money was as good as in, it would be as well to wait until it was actually in. on that policy she took her stand, and would not budge. the great secret must be kept, she said--kept from the daughters and everybody else. the pair were puzzled. they must celebrate, they were determined to celebrate, but since the secret must be kept, what could they celebrate? no birthdays were due for three months. tilbury wasn't available, evidently he was going to live forever; what the nation could they celebrate? that was sally's way of putting it; and he was getting impatient, too, and harassed. but at last he hit it--just by sheer inspiration, as it seemed to him-and all their troubles were gone in a moment; they would celebrate the discovery of america. a splendid idea! aleck was almost too proud of sally for words--she said she never would have thought of it. but sally, although he was bursting with delight in the compliment and with wonder at himself, tried not to let on, and said it wasn't really anything, anybody could have done it. whereat aleck, with a prideful toss of her happy head, said: "oh, certainly! anybody could--oh, anybody! hosannah dilkins, for instance! or maybe adelbert peanut--oh, dear--yes! well, i'd like to see them try it, that's all. dear-me-suz, if they could think of the discovery of a forty-acre island it's more than _i_ believe they could; and as for the whole continent, why, sally foster, you know perfectly well it would strain the livers and lights out of them and then they couldn't!" the dear woman, she knew he had talent; and if affection made her over-estimate the size of it a little, surely it was a sweet and gentle crime, and forgivable for its source's sake. chapter v the celebration went off well. the friends were all present, both the young and the old. among the young were flossie and gracie peanut and their brother adelbert, who was a rising young journeyman tinner, also hosannah dilkins, jr., journeyman plasterer, just out of his apprenticeship. for many months adelbert and hosannah had been showing interest in gwendolen and clytemnestra foster, and the parents of the girls had noticed this with private satisfaction. but they suddenly realized now that that feeling had passed. they recognized that the changed financial conditions had raised up a social bar between their daughters and the young mechanics. the daughters could now look higher--and must. yes, must. they need marry nothing below the grade of lawyer or merchant; poppa and momma would take care of this; there must be no m'esalliances. however, these thinkings and projects of their were private, and did not show on the surface, and therefore threw no shadow upon the celebration. what showed upon the surface was a serene and lofty contentment and a dignity of carriage and gravity of deportment which compelled the admiration and likewise the wonder of the company. all noticed it and all commented upon it, but none was able to divine the secret of it. it was a marvel and a mystery. three several persons remarked, without suspecting what clever shots they were making: "it's as if they'd come into property." that was just it, indeed. most mothers would have taken hold of the matrimonial matter in the old regulation way; they would have given the girls a talking to, of a solemn sort and untactful--a lecture calculated to defeat its own purpose, by producing tears and secret rebellion; and the said mothers would have further damaged the business by requesting the young mechanics to discontinue their attentions. but this mother was different. she was practical. she said nothing to any of the young people concerned, nor to any one else except sally. he listened to her and understood; understood and admired. he said: "i get the idea. instead of finding fault with the samples on view, thus hurting feelings and obstructing trade without occasion, you merely offer a higher class of goods for the money, and leave nature to take her course. it's wisdom, aleck, solid wisdom, and sound as a nut. who's your fish? have you nominated him yet?" no, she hadn't. they must look the market over--which they did. to start with, they considered and discussed brandish, rising young lawyer, and fulton, rising young dentist. sally must invite them to dinner. but not right away; there was no hurry, aleck said. keep an eye on the pair, and wait; nothing would be lost by going slowly in so important a matter. it turned out that this was wisdom, too; for inside of three weeks aleck made a wonderful strike which swelled her imaginary hundred thousand to four hundred thousand of the same quality. she and sally were in the clouds that evening. for the first time they introduced champagne at dinner. not real champagne, but plenty real enough for the amount of imagination expended on it. it was sally that did it, and aleck weakly submitted. at bottom both were troubled and ashamed, for he was a high-up son of temperance, and at funerals wore an apron which no dog could look upon and retain his reason and his opinion; and she was a w. c. t. u., with all that that implies of boiler-iron virtue and unendurable holiness. but there is was; the pride of riches was beginning its disintegrating work. they had lived to prove, once more, a sad truth which had been proven many times before in the world: that whereas principle is a great and noble protection against showy and degrading vanities and vices, poverty is worth six of it. more than four hundred thousand dollars to the good. they took up the matrimonial matter again. neither the dentist nor the lawyer was mentioned; there was no occasion, they were out of the running. disqualified. they discussed the son of the pork-packer and the son of the village banker. but finally, as in the previous case, they concluded to wait and think, and go cautiously and sure. luck came their way again. aleck, ever watchful saw a great and risky chance, and took a daring flyer. a time of trembling, of doubt, of awful uneasiness followed, for non-success meant absolute ruin and nothing short of it. then came the result, and aleck, faint with joy, could hardly control her voice when she said: "the suspense is over, sally--and we are worth a cold million!" sally wept for gratitude, and said: "oh, electra, jewel of women, darling of my heart, we are free at last, we roll in wealth, we need never scrimp again. it's a case for veuve cliquot!" and he got out a pint of spruce-beer and made sacrifice, he saying "damn the expense," and she rebuking him gently with reproachful but humid and happy eyes. they shelved the pork-packer's son and the banker's son, and sat down to consider the governor's son and the son of the congressman. chapter vi it were a weariness to follow in detail the leaps and bounds the foster fictitious finances took from this time forth. it was marvelous, it was dizzying, it was dazzling. everything aleck touched turned to fairy gold, and heaped itself glittering toward the firmament. millions upon millions poured in, and still the mighty stream flowed thundering along, still its vast volume increased. five millions-ten millions--twenty--thirty--was there never to be an end? two years swept by in a splendid delirium, the intoxicated fosters scarcely noticing the flight of time. they were now worth three hundred million dollars; they were in every board of directors of every prodigious combine in the country; and still as time drifted along, the millions went on piling up, five at a time, ten at a time, as fast as they could tally them off, almost. the three hundred double itself--then doubled again--and yet again--and yet once more. twenty-four hundred millions! the business was getting a little confused. it was necessary to take an account of stock, and straighten it out. the fosters knew it, they felt it, they realized that it was imperative; but they also knew that to do it properly and perfectly the task must be carried to a finish without a break when once it was begun. a ten-hours' job; and where could they find ten leisure hours in a bunch? sally was selling pins and sugar and calico all day and every day; aleck was cooking and washing dishes and sweeping and making beds all day and every day, with none to help, for the daughters were being saved up for high society. the fosters knew there was one way to get the ten hours, and only one. both were ashamed to name it; each waited for the other to do it. finally sally said: "somebody's got to give in. it's up to me. consider that i've named it--never mind pronouncing it out aloud." aleck colored, but was grateful. without further remark, they fell. fell, and--broke the sabbath. for that was their only free ten-hour stretch. it was but another step in the downward path. others would follow. vast wealth has temptations which fatally and surely undermine the moral structure of persons not habituated to its possession. they pulled down the shades and broke the sabbath. with hard and patient labor they overhauled their holdings and listed them. and a long-drawn procession of formidable names it was! starting with the railway systems, steamer lines, standard oil, ocean cables, diluted telegraph, and all the rest, and winding up with klondike, de beers, tammany graft, and shady privileges in the post-office department. twenty-four hundred millions, and all safely planted in good things, gilt-edged and interest-bearing. income, $120,000,000 a year. aleck fetched a long purr of soft delight, and said: "is it enough?" "it is, aleck." "what shall we do?" "stand pat." "retire from business?" "that's it." "i am agreed. the good work is finished; we will take a long rest and enjoy the money." "good! aleck!" "yes, dear?" "how much of the income can we spend?" "the whole of it." it seemed to her husband that a ton of chains fell from his limbs. he did not say a word; he was happy beyond the power of speech. after that, they broke the sabbaths right along as fast as they turned up. it is the first wrong step that counts. every sunday they put in the whole day, after morning service, on inventions-inventions of ways to spend the money. they got to continuing this delicious dissipation until past midnight; and at every s'eance aleck lavished millions upon great charities and religious enterprises, and sally lavished like sums upon matters to which (at first) he gave definite names. only at first. later the names gradually lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into "sundries," thus becoming entirely--but safely--undescriptive. for sally was crumbling. the placing of these millions added seriously and most uncomfortably to the family expenses--in tallow candles. for a while aleck was worried. then, after a little, she ceased to worry, for the occasion of it was gone. she was pained, she was grieved, she was ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory. sally was taking candles; he was robbing the store. it is ever thus. vast wealth, to the person unaccustomed to it, is a bane; it eats into the flesh and bone of his morals. when the fosters were poor, they could have been trusted with untold candles. but now they--but let us not dwell upon it. from candles to apples is but a step: sally got to taking apples; then soap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; then crockery. how easy it is to go from bad to worse, when once we have started upon a downward course! meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the fosters' splendid financial march. the fictitious brick dwelling had given place to an imaginary granite one with a checker-board mansard roof; in time this one disappeared and gave place to a still grander home--and so on and so on. mansion after mansion, made of air, rose, higher, broader, finer, and each in its turn vanished away; until now in these latter great days, our dreamers were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in a sumptuous vast palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon a noble prospect of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tinted mists-and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palace swarming with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame and power, hailing from all the world's capitals, foreign and domestic. this palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurably remote, astronomically remote, in newport, rhode island, holy land of high society, ineffable domain of the american aristocracy. as a rule they spent a part of every sabbath--after morning service-in this sumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in europe, or in dawdling around in their private yacht. six days of sordid and plodding fact life at home on the ragged edge of lakeside and straitened means, the seventh in fairlyand--such had been their program and their habit. in their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old-plodding, diligent, careful, practical, economical. they stuck loyally to the little presbyterian church, and labored faithfully in its interests and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all their mental and spiritual energies. but in their dream life they obeyed the invitations of their fancies, whatever they might be, and howsoever the fancies might change. aleck's fancies were not very capricious, and not frequent, but sally's scattered a good deal. aleck, in her dream life, went over to the episcopal camp, on account of its large official titles; next she became high-church on account of the candles and shows; and next she naturally changed to rome, where there were cardinals and more candles. but these excursions were a nothing to sally's. his dream life was a glowing and continuous and persistent excitement, and he kept every part of it fresh and sparkling by frequent changes, the religious part along with the rest. he worked his religions hard, and changed them with his shirt. the liberal spendings of the fosters upon their fancies began early in their prosperities, and grew in prodigality step by step with their advancing fortunes. in time they became truly enormous. aleck built a university or two per sunday; also a hospital or two; also a rowton hotel or so; also a batch of churches; now and then a cathedral; and once, with untimely and ill-chosen playfulness, sally said, "it was a cold day when she didn't ship a cargo of missionaries to persuade unreflecting chinamen to trade off twenty-four carat confucianism for counterfeit christianity." this rude and unfeeling language hurt aleck to the heart, and she went from the presence crying. that spectacle went to his own heart, and in his pain and shame he would have given worlds to have those unkind words back. she had uttered no syllable of reproach-and that cut him. not one suggestion that he look at his own record-and she could have made, oh, so many, and such blistering ones! her generous silence brought a swift revenge, for it turned his thoughts upon himself, it summoned before him a spectral procession, a moving vision of his life as he had been leading it these past few years of limitless prosperity, and as he sat there reviewing it his cheeks burned and his soul was steeped in humiliation. look at her life--how fair it was, and tending ever upward; and look at his own--how frivolous, how charged with mean vanities, how selfish, how empty, how ignoble! and its trend--never upward, but downward, ever downward! he instituted comparisons between her record and his own. he had found fault with her--so he mused--he! and what could he say for himself? when she built her first church what was he doing? gathering other blas'e multimillionaires into a poker club; defiling his own palace with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him. when she was building her first university, what was he doing? polluting himself with a gay and dissipated secret life in the company of other fast bloods, multimillionaires in money and paupers in character. when she was building her first foundling asylum, what was he doing? alas! when she was projecting her noble society for the purifying of the sex, what was he doing? ah, what, indeed! when she and the w. c. t. u. and the woman with the hatchet, moving with resistless march, were sweeping the fatal bottle from the land, what was he doing? getting drunk three times a day. when she, builder of a hundred cathedrals, was being gratefully welcomed and blest in papal rome and decorated with the golden rose which she had so honorably earned, what was he doing? breaking the bank at monte carlo. he stopped. he could go no farther; he could not bear the rest. he rose up, with a great resolution upon his lips: this secret life should be revealing, and confessed; no longer would he live it clandestinely, he would go and tell her all. and that is what he did. he told her all; and wept upon her bosom; wept, and moaned, and begged for her forgiveness. it was a profound shock, and she staggered under the blow, but he was her own, the core of her heart, the blessing of her eyes, her all in all, she could deny him nothing, and she forgave him. she felt that he could never again be quite to her what he had been before; she knew that he could only repent, and not reform; yet all morally defaced and decayed as he was, was he not her own, her very own, the idol of her deathless worship? she said she was his serf, his slave, and she opened her yearning heart and took him in. chapter vii one sunday afternoon some time after this they were sailing the summer seas in their dream yacht, and reclining in lazy luxury under the awning of the after-deck. there was silence, for each was busy with his own thoughts. these seasons of silence had insensibly been growing more and more frequent of late; the old nearness and cordiality were waning. sally's terrible revelation had done its work; aleck had tried hard to drive the memory of it out of her mind, but it would not go, and the shame and bitterness of it were poisoning her gracious dream life. she could see now (on sundays) that her husband was becoming a bloated and repulsive thing. she could not close her eyes to this, and in these days she no longer looked at him, sundays, when she could help it. but she--was she herself without blemish? alas, she knew she was not. she was keeping a secret from him, she was acting dishonorably toward him, and many a pang it was costing her. she was breaking the compact, and concealing it from him. under strong temptation she had gone into business again; she had risked their whole fortune in a purchase of all the railway systems and coal and steel companies in the country on a margin, and she was now trembling, every sabbath hour, lest through some chance word of hers he find it out. in her misery and remorse for this treachery she could not keep her heart from going out to him in pity; she was filled with compunctions to see him lying there, drunk and contented, and ever suspecting. never suspecting--trusting her with a perfect and pathetic trust, and she holding over him by a thread a possible calamity of so devastating a-"say--aleck?" the interrupting words brought her suddenly to herself. she was grateful to have that persecuting subject from her thoughts, and she answered, with much of the old-time tenderness in her tone: "yes, dear." "do you know, aleck, i think we are making a mistake--that is, you are. i mean about the marriage business." he sat up, fat and froggy and benevolent, like a bronze buddha, and grew earnest. "consider--it's more than five years. you've continued the same policy from the start: with every rise, always holding on for five points higher. always when i think we are going to have some weddings, you see a bigger thing ahead, and i undergo another disappointment. _i_ think you are too hard to please. some day we'll get left. first, we turned down the dentist and the lawyer. that was all right-it was sound. next, we turned down the banker's son and the pork-butcher's heir--right again, and sound. next, we turned down the congressman's son and the governor's--right as a trivet, i confess it. next the senator's son and the son of the vice-president of the united states--perfectly right, there's no permanency about those little distinctions. then you went for the aristocracy; and i thought we had struck oil at last--yes. we would make a plunge at the four hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage, venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred and fifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod and pelts all of a century ago, and unsmirched by a day's work since, and then! why, then the marriages, of course. but no, along comes a pair a real aristocrats from europe, and straightway you throw over the half-breeds. it was awfully discouraging, aleck! since then, what a procession! you turned down the baronets for a pair of barons; you turned down the barons for a pair of viscounts; the viscounts for a pair of earls; the earls for a pair of marquises; the marquises for a brace of dukes. now, aleck, cash in!-you've played the limit. you've got a job lot of four dukes under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears. they come high, but we can afford it. come, aleck, don't delay any longer, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out, and leave the girls to choose!" aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph with perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes, and she said, as calmly as she could: "sally, what would you say to--royalty?" prodigious! poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. he was dizzy for a moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat down by his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection upon her in floods, out of his bleary eyes. "by george!" he said, fervently, "aleck, you are great--the greatest woman in the whole earth! i can't ever learn the whole size of you. i can't ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. here i've been considering myself qualified to criticize your game. _i!_ why, if i had stopped to think, i'd have known you had a lone hand up your sleeve. now, dear heart, i'm all red-hot impatience--tell me about it!" the flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered a princely name. it made him catch his breath, it lit his face with exultation. "land!" he said, "it's a stunning catch! he's got a gambling-hall, and a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral--all his very own. and all gilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent. stock, every detail of it; the tidiest little property in europe. and that graveyard-it's the selectest in the world: none but suicides admitted; yes, sir, and the free-list suspended, too, all the time. there isn't much land in the principality, but there's enough: eight hundred acres in the graveyard and forty-two outside. it's a sovereignty--that's the main thing; land's nothing. there's plenty land, sahara's drugged with it." aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy. she said: "think of it, sally--it is a family that has never married outside the royal and imperial houses of europe: our grandchildren will sit upon thrones!" "true as you live, aleck--and bear scepters, too; and handle them as naturally and nonchantly as i handle a yardstick. it's a grand catch, aleck. he's corralled, is he? can't get away? you didn't take him on a margin?" "no. trust me for that. he's not a liability, he's an asset. so is the other one." "who is it, aleck?" "his royal highness sigismund-siegfriend-lauenfeld-dinkelspiel-schwartzenberg blutwurst, hereditary grant duke of katzenyammer." "no! you can't mean it!" "it's as true as i'm sitting here, i give you my word," she answered. his cup was full, and he hugged her to his heart with rapture, saying: "how wonderful it all seems, and how beautiful! it's one of the oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient german principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to retain its royal estate when bismarck got done trimming them. i know that farm, i've been there. it's got a rope-walk and a candle-factory and an army. standing army. infantry and cavalry. three soldier and a horse. aleck, it's been a long wait, and full of heartbreak and hope deferred, but god knows i am happy now. happy, and grateful to you, my own, who have done it all. when is it to be?" "next sunday." "good. and we'll want to do these weddings up in the very regalest style that's going. it's properly due to the royal quality of the parties of the first part. now as i understand it, there is only one kind of marriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty: it's the morganatic." "what do they call it that for, sally?" "i don't know; but anyway it's royal, and royal only." "then we will insist upon it. more--i will compel it. it is morganatic marriage or none." "that settles it!" said sally, rubbing his hands with delight. "and it will be the very first in america. aleck, it will make newport sick." then they fell silent, and drifted away upon their dream wings to the far regions of the earth to invite all the crowned heads and their families and provide gratis transportation to them. chapter viii during three days the couple walked upon air, with their heads in the clouds. they were but vaguely conscious of their surroundings; they saw all things dimly, as through a veil; they were steeped in dreams, often they did not hear when they were spoken to; they often did not understand when they heard; they answered confusedly or at random; sally sold molasses by weight, sugar by the yard, and furnished soap when asked for candles, and aleck put the cat in the wash and fed milk to the soiled linen. everybody was stunned and amazed, and went about muttering, "what can be the matter with the fosters?" three days. then came events! things had taken a happy turn, and for forty-eight hours aleck's imaginary corner had been booming. up--up--still up! cost point was passed. still up--and up-and up! cost point was passed. still up--and up--and up! five points above cost--then ten--fifteen--twenty! twenty points cold profit on the vast venture, now, and aleck's imaginary brokers were shouting frantically by imaginary long-distance, "sell! sell! for heaven's sake sell!" she broke the splendid news to sally, and he, too, said, "sell! sell--oh, don't make a blunder, now, you own the earth!-sell, sell!" but she set her iron will and lashed it amidships, and said she would hold on for five points more if she died for it. it was a fatal resolve. the very next day came the historic crash, the record crash, the devastating crash, when the bottom fell out of wall street, and the whole body of gilt-edged stocks dropped ninety-five points in five hours, and the multimillionaire was seen begging his bread in the bowery. aleck sternly held her grip and "put up" ass long as she could, but at last there came a call which she was powerless to meet, and her imaginary brokers sold her out. then, and not till then, the man in her was vanished, and the woman in her resumed sway. she put her arms about her husband's neck and wept, saying: "i am to blame, do not forgive me, i cannot bear it. we are paupers! paupers, and i am so miserable. the weddings will never come off; all that is past; we could not even buy the dentist, now." a bitter reproach was on sally's tongue: "i begged you to sell, but you--" he did not say it; he had not the heart to add a hurt to that broken and repentant spirit. a nobler thought came to him and he said: "bear up, my aleck, all is not lost! you really never invested a penny of my uncle's bequest, but only its unmaterialized future; what we have lost was only the incremented harvest from that future by your incomparable financial judgment and sagacity. cheer up, banish these griefs; we still have the thirty thousand untouched; and with the experience which you have acquired, think what you will be able to do with it in a couple years! the marriages are not off, they are only postponed." these are blessed words. aleck saw how true they were, and their influence was electric; her tears ceased to flow, and her great spirit rose to its full stature again. with flashing eye and grateful heart, and with hand uplifted in pledge and prophecy, she said: "now and here i proclaim--" but she was interrupted by a visitor. it was the editor and proprietor of the sagamore. he had happened into lakeside to pay a duty-call upon an obscure grandmother of his who was nearing the end of her pilgrimage, and with the idea of combining business with grief he had looked up the fosters, who had been so absorbed in other things for the past four years that they neglected to pay up their subscription. six dollars due. no visitor could have been more welcome. he would know all about uncle tilbury and what his chances might be getting to be, cemeterywards. they could, of course, ask no questions, for that would squelch the bequest, but they could nibble around on the edge of the subject and hope for results. the scheme did not work. the obtuse editor did not know he was being nibbled at; but at last, chance accomplished what art had failed in. in illustration of something under discussion which required the help of metaphor, the editor said: "land, it's a tough as tilbury foster!--as we say." it was sudden, and it made the fosters jump. the editor noticed, and said, apologetically: "no harm intended, i assure you. it's just a saying; just a joke, you know--nothing of it. relation of yours?" sally crowded his burning eagerness down, and answered with all the indifference he could assume: "i--well, not that i know of, but we've heard of him." the editor was thankful, and resumed his composure. sally added: "is he-is he--well?" "is he well? why, bless you he's in sheol these five years!" the fosters were trembling with grief, though it felt like joy. sally said, non-committally--and tentatively: "ah, well, such is life, and none can escape--not even the rich are spared." the editor laughed. "if you are including tilbury," said he, "it don't apply. he hadn't a cent; the town had to bury him." the fosters sat petrified for two minutes; petrified and cold. then, white-faced and weak-voiced, sally asked: "is it true? do you know it to be true?" "well, i should say! i was one of the executors. he hadn't anything to leave but a wheelbarrow, and he left that to me. it hadn't any wheel, and wasn't any good. still, it was something, and so, to square up, i scribbled off a sort of a little obituarial send-off for him, but it got crowded out." the fosters were not listening--their cup was full, it could contain no more. they sat with bowed heads, dead to all things but the ache at their hearts. an hour later. still they sat there, bowed, motionless, silent, the visitor long ago gone, they unaware. then they stirred, and lifted their heads wearily, and gazed at each other wistfully, dreamily, dazed; then presently began to twaddle to each other in a wandering and childish way. at intervals they lapsed into silences, leaving a sentence unfinished, seemingly either unaware of it or losing their way. sometimes, when they woke out of these silences they had a dim and transient consciousness that something had happened to their minds; then with a dumb and yearning solicitude they would softly caress each other's hands in mutual compassion and support, as if they would say: "i am near you, i will not forsake you, we will bear it together; somewhere there is release and forgetfulness, somewhere there is a grave and peace; be patient, it will not be long." they lived yet two years, in mental night, always brooding, steeped in vague regrets and melancholy dreams, never speaking; then release came to both on the same day. toward the end the darkness lifted from sally's ruined mind for a moment, and he said: "vast wealth, acquired by sudden and unwholesome means, is a snare. it did us no good, transient were its feverish pleasures; yet for its sake we threw away our sweet and simple and happy life-let others take warning by us." he lay silent awhile, with closed eyes; then as the chill of death crept upward toward his heart, and consciousness was fading from his brain, he muttered: "money had brought him misery, and he took his revenge upon us, who had done him no harm. he had his desire: with base and cunning calculation he left us but thirty thousand, knowing we would try to increase it, and ruin our life and break our hearts. without added expense he could have left us far above desire of increase, far above the temptation to speculate, and a kinder soul would have done it; but in him was no generous spirit, no pity, no--" *** a dog's tale chapter i my father was a st. bernard, my mother was a collie, but i am a presbyterian. this is what my mother told me, i do not know these nice distinctions myself. to me they are only fine large words meaning nothing. my mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and see other dogs look surprised and envious, as wondering how she got so much education. but, indeed, it was not real education; it was only show: she got the words by listening in the dining-room and drawing-room when there was company, and by going with the children to sunday-school and listening there; and whenever she heard a large word she said it over to herself many times, and so was able to keep it until there was a dogmatic gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off, and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, which rewarded her for all her trouble. if there was a stranger he was nearly sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath again he would ask her what it meant. and she always told him. he was never expecting this but thought he would catch her; so when she told him, he was the one that looked ashamed, whereas he had thought it was going to be she. the others were always waiting for this, and glad of it and proud of her, for they knew what was going to happen, because they had had experience. when she told the meaning of a big word they were all so taken up with admiration that it never occurred to any dog to doubt if it was the right one; and that was natural, because, for one thing, she answered up so promptly that it seemed like a dictionary speaking, and for another thing, where could they find out whether it was right or not? for she was the only cultivated dog there was. by and by, when i was older, she brought home the word unintellectual, one time, and worked it pretty hard all the week at different gatherings, making much unhappiness and despondency; and it was at this time that i noticed that during that week she was asked for the meaning at eight different assemblages, and flashed out a fresh definition every time, which showed me that she had more presence of mind than culture, though i said nothing, of course. she had one word which she always kept on hand, and ready, like a life-preserver, a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely to get washed overboard in a sudden way--that was the word synonymous. when she happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day weeks before and its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, if there was a stranger there of course it knocked him groggy for a couple of minutes, then he would come to, and by that time she would be away down wind on another tack, and not expecting anything; so when he'd hail and ask her to cash in, i (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment-but only just a moment--then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "it's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails in unison and their faces transfigured with a holy joy. and it was the same with phrases. she would drag home a whole phrase, if it had a grand sound, and play it six nights and two matinees, and explain it a new way every time--which she had to, for all she cared for was the phrase; she wasn't interested in what it meant, and knew those dogs hadn't wit enough to catch her, anyway. yes, she was a daisy! she got so she wasn't afraid of anything, she had such confidence in the ignorance of those creatures. she even brought anecdotes that she had heard the family and the dinner-guests laugh and shout over; and as a rule she got the nub of one chestnut hitched onto another chestnut, where, of course, it didn't fit and hadn't any point; and when she delivered the nub she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and barked in the most insane way, while i could see that she was wondering to herself why it didn't seem as funny as it did when she first heard it. but no harm was done; the others rolled and barked too, privately ashamed of themselves for not seeing the point, and never suspecting that the fault was not with them and there wasn't any to see. you can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, i think. she had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them; and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us. and she taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way and the surest and the most lasting. why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it--well, you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her; not even a king charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society. so, as you see, there was more to her than her education. chapter ii when i was well grown, at last, i was sold and taken away, and i never saw her again. she was broken-hearted, and so was i, and we cried; but she comforted me as well as she could, and said we were sent into this world for a wise and good purpose, and must do our duties without repining, take our life as we might find it, live it for the best good of others, and never mind about the results; they were not our affair. she said men who did like this would have a noble and beautiful reward by and by in another world, and although we animals would not go there, to do well and right without reward would give to our brief lives a worthiness and dignity which in itself would be a reward. she had gathered these things from time to time when she had gone to the sunday-school with the children, and had laid them up in her memory more carefully than she had done with those other words and phrases; and she had studied them deeply, for her good and ours. one may see by this that she had a wise and thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness and vanity in it. so we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through our tears; and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last to make me remember it the better, i think--was, "in memory of me, when there is a time of danger to another do not think of yourself, think of your mother, and do as she would do." do you think i could forget that? no. chapter iii it was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house, with pictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture, and no gloom anywhere, but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up with flooding sunshine; and the spacious grounds around it, and the great garden--oh, greensward, and noble trees, and flowers, no end! and i was the same as a member of the family; and they loved me, and petted me, and did not give me a new name, but called me by my old one that was dear to me because my mother had given it me-aileen mavoureen. she got it out of a song; and the grays knew that song, and said it was a beautiful name. mrs. gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot imagine it; and sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a darling slender little copy of her, with auburn tails down her back, and short frocks; and the baby was a year old, and plump and dimpled, and fond of me, and never could get enough of hauling on my tail, and hugging me, and laughing out its innocent happiness; and mr. gray was thirty-eight, and tall and slender and handsome, a little bald in front, alert, quick in his movements, business-like, prompt, decided, unsentimental, and with that kind of trim-chiseled face that just seems to glint and sparkle with frosty intellectuality! he was a renowned scientist. i do not know what the word means, but my mother would know how to use it and get effects. she would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a lap-dog look sorry he came. but that is not the best one; the best one was laboratory. my mother could organize a trust on that one that would skin the tax-collars off the whole herd. the laboratory was not a book, or a picture, or a place to wash your hands in, as the college president's dog said--no, that is the lavatory; the laboratory is quite different, and is filled with jars, and bottles, and electrics, and wires, and strange machines; and every week other scientists came there and sat in the place, and used the machines, and discussed, and made what they called experiments and discoveries; and often i came, too, and stood around and listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of my mother, and in loving memory of her, although it was a pain to me, as realizing what she was losing out of her life and i gaining nothing at all; for try as i might, i was never able to make anything out of it at all. other times i lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept, she gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me, for it was a caress; other times i spent an hour in the nursery, and got well tousled and made happy; other times i watched by the crib there, when the baby was asleep and the nurse out for a few minutes on the baby's affairs; other times i romped and raced through the grounds and the garden with sadie till we were tired out, then slumbered on the grass in the shade of a tree while she read her book; other times i went visiting among the neighbor dogs-for there were some most pleasant ones not far away, and one very handsome and courteous and graceful one, a curly-haired irish setter by the name of robin adair, who was a presbyterian like me, and belonged to the scotch minister. the servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me, and so, as you see, mine was a pleasant life. there could not be a happier dog that i was, nor a gratefuler one. i will say this for myself, for it is only the truth: i tried in all ways to do well and right, and honor my mother's memory and her teachings, and earn the happiness that had come to me, as best i could. by and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happiness was perfect. it was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smooth and soft and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws, and such affectionate eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face; and it made me so proud to see how the children and their mother adored it, and fondled it, and exclaimed over every little wonderful thing it did. it did seem to me that life was just too lovely to-then came the winter. one day i was standing a watch in the nursery. that is to say, i was asleep on the bed. the baby was asleep in the crib, which was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace. it was the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy stuff that you can see through. the nurse was out, and we two sleepers were alone. a spark from the wood-fire was shot out, and it lit on the slope of the tent. i suppose a quiet interval followed, then a scream from the baby awoke me, and there was that tent flaming up toward the ceiling! before i could think, i sprang to the floor in my fright, and in a second was half-way to the door; but in the next half-second my mother's farewell was sounding in my ears, and i was back on the bed again., i reached my head through the flames and dragged the baby out by the waist-band, and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in a cloud of smoke; i snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming little creature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall, and was still tugging away, all excited and happy and proud, when the master's voice shouted: "begone you cursed beast!" and i jumped to save myself; but he was furiously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me with his cane, i dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a strong blow fell upon my left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall, for the moment, helpless; the came went up for another blow, but never descended, for the nurse's voice rang wildly out, "the nursery's on fire!" and the master rushed away in that direction, and my other bones were saved. the pain was cruel, but, no matter, i must not lose any time; he might come back at any moment; so i limped on three legs to the other end of the hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading up into a garret where old boxes and such things were kept, as i had heard say, and where people seldom went. i managed to climb up there, then i searched my way through the dark among the piles of things, and hid in the secretest place i could find. it was foolish to be afraid there, yet still i was; so afraid that i held in and hardly even whimpered, though it would have been such a comfort to whimper, because that eases the pain, you know. but i could lick my leg, and that did some good. for half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings, and rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again. quiet for some minutes, and that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears began to go down; and fears are worse than pains--oh, much worse. then came a sound that froze me. they were calling me--calling me by name--hunting for me! it was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of it, and it was the most dreadful sound to me that i had ever heard. it went all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all the rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; then outside, and farther and farther away--then back, and all about the house again, and i thought it would never, never stop. but at last it did, hours and hours after the vague twilight of the garret had long ago been blotted out by black darkness. then in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away, and i was at peace and slept. it was a good rest i had, but i woke before the twilight had come again. i was feeling fairly comfortable, and i could think out a plan now. i made a very good one; which was, to creep down, all the way down the back stairs, and hide behind the cellar door, and slip out and escape when the iceman came at dawn, while he was inside filling the refrigerator; then i would hide all day, and start on my journey when night came; my journey to--well, anywhere where they would not know me and betray me to the master. i was feeling almost cheerful now; then suddenly i thought: why, what would life be without my puppy! that was despair. there was no plan for me; i saw that; i must say where i was; stay, and wait, and take what might come-it was not my affair; that was what life is--my mother had said it. then--well, then the calling began again! all my sorrows came back. i said to myself, the master will never forgive. i did not know what i had done to make him so bitter and so unforgiving, yet i judged it was something a dog could not understand, but which was clear to a man and dreadful. they called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me. so long that the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and i recognized that i was getting very weak. when you are this way you sleep a great deal, and i did. once i woke in an awful fright-it seemed to me that the calling was right there in the garret! and so it was: it was sadie's voice, and she was crying; my name was falling from her lips all broken, poor thing, and i could not believe my ears for the joy of it when i heard her say: "come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so sad without our--" i broke in with such a grateful little yelp, and the next moment sadie was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber and shouting for the family to hear, "she's found, she's found!" the days that followed--well, they were wonderful. the mother and sadie and the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me. they couldn't seem to make me a bed that was fine enough; and as for food, they couldn't be satisfied with anything but game and delicacies that were out of season; and every day the friends and neighbors flocked in to hear about my heroism--that was the name they called it by, and it means agriculture. i remember my mother pulling it on a kennel once, and explaining it in that way, but didn't say what agriculture was, except that it was synonymous with intramural incandescence; and a dozen times a day mrs. gray and sadie would tell the tale to new-comers, and say i risked my life to say the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove it, and then the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about me, and you could see the pride in the eyes of sadie and her mother; and when the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked ashamed and changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted them this way and that way with questions about it, it looked to me as if they were going to cry. and this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came, a whole twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory, and discussed me as if i was a kind of discovery; and some of them said it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct they could call to mind; but the master said, with vehemence, "it's far above instinct; it's reason, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has less of it that this poor silly quadruped that's foreordained to perish"; and then he laughed, and said: "why, look at me--i'm a sarcasm! bless you, with all my grand intelligence, the only think i inferred was that the dog had gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for the beast's intelligence--it's reason, i tell you!--the child would have perished!" they disputed and disputed, and _i_ was the very center of subject of it all, and i wished my mother could know that this grand honor had come to me; it would have made her proud. then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by; and next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in the summer sadie and i had planted seeds--i helped her dig the holes, you know--and after days and days a little shrub or a flower came up there, and it was a wonder how that could happen; but it did, and i wished i could talk--i would have told those people about it and shown then how much i knew, and been all alive with the subject; but i didn't care for the optics; it was dull, and when the came back to it again it bored me, and i went to sleep. pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely, and the sweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy good-by, and went away on a journey and a visit to their kin, and the master wasn't any company for us, but we played together and had good times, and the servants were kind and friendly, so we got along quite happily and counted the days and waited for the family. and one day those men came again, and said, now for the test, and they took the puppy to the laboratory, and i limped three-leggedly along, too, feeling proud, for any attention shown to the puppy was a pleasure to me, of course. they discussed and experimented, and then suddenly the puppy shrieked, and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering around, with his head all bloody, and the master clapped his hands and shouted: "there, i've won--confess it! he's a blind as a bat!" and they all said: "it's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes you a great debt from henceforth," and they crowded around him, and wrung his hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him. but i hardly saw or heard these things, for i ran at once to my little darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked the blood, and it put its head against mine, whimpering softly, and i knew in my heart it was a comfort to it in its pain and trouble to feel its mother's touch, though it could not see me. then it dropped down, presently, and its little velvet nose rested upon the floor, and it was still, and did not move any more. soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman, and said, "bury it in the far corner of the garden," and then went on with the discussion, and i trotted after the footman, very happy and grateful, for i knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it was asleep. we went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and the puppy and i used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and i saw he was going to plant the puppy, and i was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like robin adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so i tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. when the footman had finished and covered little robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: "poor little doggie, you saved his child!" i have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up! this last week a fright has been stealing upon me. i think there is something terrible about this. i do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick, and i cannot eat, though the servants bring me the best of food; and they pet me so, and even come in the night, and cry, and say, "poor doggie--do give it up and come home; don't break our hearts!" and all this terrifies me the more, and makes me sure something has happened. and i am so weak; since yesterday i cannot stand on my feet anymore. and within this hour the servants, looking toward the sun where it was sinking out of sight and the night chill coming on, said things i could not understand, but they carried something cold to my heart. "those poor creatures! they do not suspect. they will come home in the morning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did the brave deed, and who of us will be strong enough to say the truth to them: 'the humble little friend is gone where go the beasts that perish.'" *** was it heaven? or hell? chapter i "you told a lie?" "you confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!" chapter ii the family consisted of four persons: margaret lester, widow, aged thirty six; helen lester, her daughter, aged sixteen; mrs. lester's maiden aunts, hannah and hester gray, twins, aged sixty-seven. waking and sleeping, the three women spent their days and night in adoring the young girl; in watching the movements of her sweet spirit in the mirror of her face; in refreshing their souls with the vision of her bloom and beauty; in listening to the music of her voice; in gratefully recognizing how rich and fair for them was the world with this presence in it; in shuddering to think how desolate it would be with this light gone out of it. by nature--and inside--the aged aunts were utterly dear and lovable and good, but in the matter of morals and conduct their training had been so uncompromisingly strict that it had made them exteriorly austere, not to say stern. their influence was effective in the house; so effective that the mother and the daughter conformed to its moral and religious requirements cheerfully, contentedly, happily, unquestionably. to do this was become second nature to them. and so in this peaceful heaven there were no clashings, no irritations, no fault-finding, no heart-burnings. in it a lie had no place. in it a lie was unthinkable. in it speech was restricted to absolute truth, iron-bound truth, implacable and uncompromising truth, let the resulting consequences be what they might. at last, one day, under stress of circumstances, the darling of the house sullied her lips with a lie--and confessed it, with tears and self-upbraidings. there are not any words that can paint the consternation of the aunts. it was as if the sky had crumpled up and collapsed and the earth had tumbled to ruin with a crash. they sat side by side, white and stern, gazing speechless upon the culprit, who was on her knees before them with her face buried first in one lap and then the other, moaning and sobbing, and appealing for sympathy and forgiveness and getting no response, humbly kissing the hand of the one, then of the other, only to see it withdrawn as suffering defilement by those soiled lips. twice, at intervals, aunt hester said, in frozen amazement: "you told a lie?" twice, at intervals, aunt hannah followed with the muttered and amazed ejaculation: "you confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!" it was all they could say. the situation was new, unheard of, incredible; they could not understand it, they did not know how to take hold of it, it approximately paralyzed speech. at length it was decided that the erring child must be taken to her mother, who was ill, and who ought to know what had happened. helen begged, besought, implored that she might be spared this further disgrace, and that her mother might be spared the grief and pain of it; but this could not be: duty required this sacrifice, duty takes precedence of all things, nothing can absolve one from a duty, with a duty no compromise is possible. helen still begged, and said the sin was her own, her mother had had no hand in it--why must she be made to suffer for it? but the aunts were obdurate in their righteousness, and said the law that visited the sins of the parent upon the child was by all right and reason reversible; and therefore it was but just that the innocent mother of a sinning child should suffer her rightful share of the grief and pain and shame which were the allotted wages of the sin. the three moved toward the sick-room. at this time the doctor was approaching the house. he was still a good distance away, however. he was a good doctor and a good man, and he had a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two years to learn to endure him, three to learn to like him, and four and five to learn to live him. it was a slow and trying education, but it paid. he was of great stature; he had a leonine head, a leonine face, a rough voice, and an eye which was sometimes a pirate's and sometimes a woman's, according to the mood. he knew nothing about etiquette, and cared nothing about it; in speech, manner, carriage, and conduct he was the reverse of conventional. he was frank, to the limit; he had opinions on all subjects; they were always on tap and ready for delivery, and he cared not a farthing whether his listener liked them or didn't. whom he loved he loved, and manifested it; whom he didn't live he hated, and published it from the housetops. in his young days he had been a sailor, and the salt-airs of all the seas blew from him yet. he was a sturdy and loyal christian, and believed he was the best one in the land, and the only one whose christianity was perfectly sound, healthy, full-charged with common sense, and had no decayed places in it. people who had an ax to grind, or people who for any reason wanted wanted to get on the soft side of him, called him the christian-a phrase whose delicate flattery was music to his ears, and whose capital t was such an enchanting and vivid object to him that he could see it when it fell out of a person's mouth even in the dark. many who were fond of him stood on their consciences with both feet and brazenly called him by that large title habitually, because it was a pleasure to them to do anything that would please him; and with eager and cordial malice his extensive and diligently cultivated crop of enemies gilded it, beflowered it, expanded it to "the only christian." of these two titles, the latter had the wider currency; the enemy, being greatly in the majority, attended to that. whatever the doctor believed, he believed with all his heart, and would fight for it whenever he got the chance; and if the intervals between chances grew to be irksomely wide, he would invent ways of shortening them himself. he was severely conscientious, according to his rather independent lights, and whatever he took to be a duty he performed, no matter whether the judgment of the professional moralists agreed with his own or not. at sea, in his young days, he had used profanity freely, but as soon as he was converted he made a rule, which he rigidly stuck to ever afterward, never to use it except on the rarest occasions, and then only when duty commanded. he had been a hard drinker at sea, but after his conversion he became a firm and outspoken teetotaler, in order to be an example to the young, and from that time forth he seldom drank; never, indeed, except when it seemed to him to be a duty-a condition which sometimes occurred a couple of times a year, but never as many as five times. necessarily, such a man is impressionable, impulsive, emotional. this one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took no trouble to exercise it. he carried his soul's prevailing weather in his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went up--figuratively speaking-according to the indications. when the soft light was in his eye it meant approval, and delivered a benediction; when he came with a frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees. he was a well-beloved man in the house of his friends, but sometimes a dreaded one. he had a deep affection for the lester household and its several members returned this feeling with interest. they mourned over his kind of christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; but both parties went on loving each other just the same. he was approaching the house--out of the distance; the aunts and the culprit were moving toward the sick-chamber. chapter iii the three last named stood by the bed; the aunts austere, the transgressor softly sobbing. the mother turned her head on the pillow; her tired eyes flamed up instantly with sympathy and passionate mother-love when they fell upon her child, and she opened the refuge and shelter of her arms. "wait!" said aunt hannah, and put out her hand and stayed the girl from leaping into them. "helen," said the other aunt, impressively, "tell your mother all. purge your soul; leave nothing unconfessed." standing stricken and forlorn before her judges, the young girl mourned her sorrowful tale through the end, then in a passion of appeal cried out: "oh, mother, can't you forgive me? won't you forgive me?--i am so desolate!" "forgive you, my darling? oh, come to my arms!--there, lay your head upon my breast, and be at peace. if you had told a thousand lies--" there was a sound--a warning--the clearing of a throat. the aunts glanced up, and withered in their clothes--there stood the doctor, his face a thunder-cloud. mother and child knew nothing of his presence; they lay locked together, heart to heart, steeped in immeasurable content, dead to all things else. the physician stood many moments glaring and glooming upon the scene before him; studying it, analyzing it, searching out its genesis; then he put up his hand and beckoned to the aunts. they came trembling to him, and stood humbly before him and waited. he bent down and whispered: "didn't i tell you this patient must be protected from all excitement? what the hell have you been doing? clear out of the place?" they obeyed. half an hour later he appeared in the parlor, serene, cheery, clothed in sunshine, conducting helen, with his arm about her waist, petting her, and saying gentle and playful things to her; and she also was her sunny and happy self again. "now, then;" he said, "good-by, dear. go to your room, and keep away from your mother, and behave yourself. but wait--put out your tongue. there, that will do--you're as sound as a nut!" he patted her cheek and added, "run along now; i want to talk to these aunts." she went from the presence. his face clouded over again at once; and as he sat down he said: "you too have been doing a lot of damage--and maybe some good. some good, yes--such as it is. that woman's disease is typhoid! you've brought it to a show-up, i think, with your insanities, and that's a service--such as it is. i hadn't been able to determine what it was before." with one impulse the old ladies sprang to their feet, quaking with terror. "sit down! what are you proposing to do?" "do? we must fly to her. we--" "you'll do nothing of the kind; you've done enough harm for one day. do you want to squander all your capital of crimes and follies on a single deal? sit down, i tell you. i have arranged for her to sleep; she needs it; if you disturb her without my orders, i'll brain you-if you've got the materials for it. they sat down, distressed and indignant, but obedient, under compulsion. he proceeded: "now, then, i want this case explained. they wanted to explain it to me--as if there hadn't been emotion or excitement enough already. you knew my orders; how did you dare to go in there and get up that riot?" hester looked appealing at hannah; hannah returned a beseeching look at hester--neither wanted to dance to this unsympathetic orchestra. the doctor came to their help. he said: "begin, hester." fingering at the fringes of her shawl, and with lowered eyes, hester said, timidly: "we should not have disobeyed for any ordinary cause, but this was vital. this was a duty. with a duty one has no choice; one must put all lighter considerations aside and perform it. we were obliged to arraign her before her mother. she had told a lie." the doctor glowered upon the woman a moment, and seemed to be trying to work up in his mind an understand of a wholly incomprehensible proposition; then he stormed out: "she told a lie! did she? god bless my soul! i tell a million a day! and so does every doctor. and so does everybody--including you-for that matter. and that was the important thing that authorized you to venture to disobey my orders and imperil that woman's life! look here, hester gray, this is pure lunacy; that girl couldn't tell a lie that was intended to injure a person. the thing is impossible-absolutely impossible. you know it yourselves--both of you; you know it perfectly well." hannah came to her sister's rescue: "hester didn't mean that it was that kind of a lie, and it wasn't. but it was a lie." "well, upon my word, i never heard such nonsense! haven't you got sense enough to discriminate between lies! don't you know the difference between a lie that helps and a lie that hurts?" "all lies are sinful," said hannah, setting her lips together like a vise; "all lies are forbidden." the only christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair. he went to attack this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin. finally he made a venture: "hester, wouldn't you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved injury or shame?" "no." "not even a friend?" "no." "not even your dearest friend?" "no. i would not." the doctor struggled in silence awhile with this situation; then he asked: "not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?" "no. not even to save his life." another pause. then: "nor his soul?" there was a hush--a silence which endured a measurable interval-then hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision: "nor his soul?" no one spoke for a while; then the doctor said: "is it with you the same, hannah?" "yes," she answered. "i ask you both--why?" "because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost us the loss of our own souls--would, indeed, if we died without time to repent." "strange . . . strange . . . it is past belief." then he asked, roughly: "is such a soul as that worth saving?" he rose up, mumbling and grumbling, and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. at the threshold he turned and rasped out an admonition: "reform! drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that's got some dignity to it! risk your souls! risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care? reform!" the good old gentlewomen sat paralyzed, pulverized, outraged, insulted, and brooded in bitterness and indignation over these blasphemies. they were hurt to the heart, poor old ladies, and said they could never forgive these injuries. "reform!" they kept repeating that word resentfully. "reform--and learn to tell lies!" time slipped along, and in due course a change came over their spirits. they had completed the human being's first duty--which is to think about himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people. this changes the complexion of his spirits--generally wholesomely. the minds of the two old ladies reverted to their beloved niece and the fearful disease which had smitten her; instantly they forgot the hurts their self-love had received, and a passionate desire rose in their hearts to go to the help of the sufferer and comfort her with their love, and minister to her, and labor for her the best they could with their weak hands, and joyfully and affectionately wear out their poor old bodies in her dear service if only they might have the privilege. "and we shall have it!" said hester, with the tears running down her face. "there are no nurses comparable to us, for there are no others that will stand their watch by that bed till they drop and die, and god knows we would do that." "amen," said hannah, smiling approval and endorsement through the mist of moisture that blurred her glasses. "the doctor knows us, and knows we will not disobey again; and he will call no others. he will not dare!" "dare?" said hester, with temper, and dashing the water from her eyes; "he will dare anything--that christian devil! but it will do no good for him to try it this time--but, laws! hannah! after all's said and done, he is gifted and wise and good, and he would not think of such a thing. . . . it is surely time for one of us to go to that room. what is keeping him? why doesn't he come and say so?" they caught the sound of his approaching step. he entered, sat down, and began to talk. "margaret is a sick woman," he said. "she is still sleeping, but she will wake presently; then one of you must go to her. she will be worse before she is better. pretty soon a night-and-day watch must be set. how much of it can you two undertake?" "all of it!" burst from both ladies at once. the doctor's eyes flashed, and he said, with energy: "you do ring true, you brave old relics! and you shall do all of the nursing you can, for there's none to match you in that divine office in this town; but you can't do all of it, and it would be a crime to let you." it was grand praise, golden praise, coming from such a source, and it took nearly all the resentment out of the aged twin's hearts. "your tilly and my old nancy shall do the rest--good nurses both, white souls with black skins, watchful, loving, tender--just perfect nurses!--and competent liars from the cradle. . . . look you! keep a little watch on helen; she is sick, and is going to be sicker." the ladies looked a little surprised, and not credulous; and hester said: "how is that? it isn't an hour since you said she was as sound as a nut." the doctor answered, tranquilly: "it was a lie." the ladies turned upon him indignantly, and hannah said: "how can you make an odious confession like that, in so indifferent a tone, when you know how we feel about all forms of--" "hush! you are as ignorant as cats, both of you, and you don't know what you are talking about. you are like all the rest of the moral moles; you lie from morning till night, but because you don't do it with your mouths, but only with your lying eyes, your lying inflections, your deceptively misplaced emphasis, and your misleading gestures, you turn up your complacent noses and parade before god and the world as saintly and unsmirched truth-speakers, in whose cold-storage souls a lie would freeze to death if it got there! why will you humbug yourselves with that foolish notion that no lie is a lie except a spoken one? what is the difference between lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth? there is none; and if you would reflect a moment you would see that it is so. there isn't a human being that doesn't tell a gross of lies every day of his life; and you--why, between you, you tell thirty thousand; yet you flare up here in a lurid hypocritical horror because i tell that child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from her imagination, which would get to work and warm up her blood to a fever in an hour, if i were disloyal enough to my duty to let it. which i should probably do if i were interested in saving my soul by such disreputable means. "come, let us reason together. let us examine details. when you two were in the sick-room raising that riot, what would you have done if you had known i was coming?" "well, what?" "you would have slipped out and carried helen with you--wouldn't you?" the ladies were silent. "what would be your object and intention?" "well, what?" "to keep me from finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that margaret's excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you. in a word, to tell me a lie--a silent lie. moreover, a possibly harmful one." the twins colored, but did not speak. "you not only tell myriads of silent lies, but you tell lies with your mouths--you two." "that is not so!" "it is so. but only harmless ones. you never dream of uttering a harmful one. do you know that that is a concession--and a confession?" "how do you mean?" "it is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal; it is a confession that you constantly make that discrimination. for instance, you declined old mrs. foster's invitation last week to meet those odious higbies at supper--in a polite note in which you expressed regret and said you were very sorry you could not go. it was a lie. it was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered. deny it, hester--with another lie." hester replied with a toss of her head. "that will not do. answer. was it a lie, or wasn't it?" the color stole into the cheeks of both women, and with a struggle and an effort they got out their confession: "it was a lie." "good--the reform is beginning; there is hope for you yet; you will not tell a lie to save your dearest friend's soul, but you will spew out one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort of telling an unpleasant truth." he rose. hester, speaking for both, said; coldly: "we have lied; we perceive it; it will occur no more. to lie is a sin. we shall never tell another one of any kind whatsoever, even lies of courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang or a sorrow decreed for him by god." "ah, how soon you will fall! in fact, you have fallen already; for what you have just uttered is a lie. good-by. reform! one of you go to the sick-room now." chapter iv twelve days later. mother and child were lingering in the grip of the hideous disease. of hope for either there was little. the aged sisters looked white and worn, but they would not give up their posts. their hearts were breaking, poor old things, but their grit was steadfast and indestructible. all the twelve days the mother had pined for the child, and the child for the mother, but both knew that the prayer of these longings could not be granted. when the mother was told-on the first day--that her disease was typhoid, she was frightened, and asked if there was danger that helen could have contracted it the day before, when she was in the sick-chamber on that confession visit. hester told her the doctor had poo-pooed the idea. it troubled hester to say it, although it was true, for she had not believed the doctor; but when she saw the mother's joy in the news, the pain in her conscience lost something of its force--a result which made her ashamed of the constructive deception which she had practiced, though not ashamed enough to make her distinctly and definitely wish she had refrained from it. from that moment the sick woman understood that her daughter must remain away, and she said she would reconcile herself to the separation the best she could, for she would rather suffer death than have her child's health imperiled. that afternoon helen had to take to her bed, ill. she grew worse during the night. in the morning her mother asked after her: "is she well?" hester turned cold; she opened her lips, but the words refused to come. the mother lay languidly looking, musing, waiting; suddenly she turned white and gasped out: "oh, my god! what is it? is she sick?" then the poor aunt's tortured heart rose in rebellion, and words came: "no--be comforted; she is well." the sick woman put all her happy heart in her gratitude: "thank god for those dear words! kiss me. how i worship you for saying them!" hester told this incident to hannah, who received it with a rebuking look, and said, coldly: "sister, it was a lie." hester's lips trembled piteously; she choked down a sob, and said: "oh, hannah, it was a sin, but i could not help it. i could not endure the fright and the misery that were in her face." "no matter. it was a lie. god will hold you to account for it." "oh, i know it, i know it," cried hester, wringing her hands, "but even if it were now, i could not help it. i know i should do it again." "then take my place with helen in the morning. i will make the report myself." hester clung to her sister, begging and imploring. "don't, hannah, oh, don't--you will kill her." "i will at least speak the truth." in the morning she had a cruel report to bear to the mother, and she braced herself for the trial. when she returned from her mission, hester was waiting, pale and trembling, in the hall. she whispered: "oh, how did she take it--that poor, desolate mother?" hannah's eyes were swimming in tears. she said: "god forgive me, i told her the child was well!" hester gathered her to her heart, with a grateful "god bless you, hannah!" and poured out her thankfulness in an inundation of worshiping praises. after that, the two knew the limit of their strength, and accepted their fate. they surrendered humbly, and abandoned themselves to the hard requirements of the situation. daily they told the morning lie, and confessed their sin in prayer; not asking forgiveness, as not being worthy of it, but only wishing to make record that they realized their wickedness and were not desiring to hide it or excuse it. daily, as the fair young idol of the house sank lower and lower, the sorrowful old aunts painted her glowing bloom and her fresh young beauty to the wan mother, and winced under the stabs her ecstasies of joy and gratitude gave them. in the first days, while the child had strength to hold a pencil, she wrote fond little love-notes to her mother, in which she concealed her illness; and these the mother read and reread through happy eyes wet with thankful tears, and kissed them over and over again, and treasured them as precious things under her pillow. then came a day when the strength was gone from the hand, and the mind wandered, and the tongue babbled pathetic incoherences. this was a sore dilemma for the poor aunts. there were no love-notes for the mother. they did not know what to do. hester began a carefully studied and plausible explanation, but lost the track of it and grew confused; suspicion began to show in the mother's face, then alarm. hester saw it, recognized the imminence of the danger, and descended to the emergency, pulling herself resolutely together and plucking victor from the open jaws of defeat. in a placid and convincing voice she said: "i thought it might distress you to know it, but helen spent the night at the sloanes'. there was a little party there, and, although she did not want to go, and you so sick, we persuaded her, she being young and needing the innocent pastimes of youth, and we believing you would approve. be sure she will write the moment she comes." "how good you are, and how dear and thoughtful for us both! approve? why, i thank you with all my heart. my poor little exile! tell her i want her to have every pleasure she can--i would not rob her of one. only let her keep her health, that is all i ask. don't let that suffer; i could not bear it. how thankful i am that she escaped this infection--and what a narrow risk she ran, aunt hester! think of that lovely face all dulled and burned with fever. i can't bear the thought of it. keep her health. keep her bloom! i can see her now, the dainty creature--with the big, blue, earnest eyes; and sweet, oh, so sweet and gentle and winning! is she as beautiful as ever, dear aunt hester?" "oh, more beautiful and bright and charming than ever she was before, if such a thing can be"--and hester turned away and fumbled with the medicine-bottles, to hide her shame and grief. chapter v after a little, both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling work in helen's chamber. patiently and earnestly, with their stiff old fingers, they were trying to forge the required note. they made failure after failure, but they improved little by little all the time. the pity of it all, the pathetic humor of it, there was none to see; they themselves were unconscious of it. often their tears fell upon the notes and spoiled them; sometimes a single misformed word made a note risky which could have been ventured but for that; but at last hannah produced one whose script was a good enough imitation of helen's to pass any but a suspicious eye, and bountifully enriched it with the petting phrases and loving nicknames that had been familiar on the child's lips from her nursery days. she carried it to the mother, who took it with avidity, and kissed it, and fondled it, reading its precious words over and over again, and dwelling with deep contentment upon its closing paragraph: "mousie darling, if i could only see you, and kiss your eyes, and feel your arms about me! i am so glad my practicing does not disturb you. get well soon. everybody is good to me, but i am so lonesome without you, dear mamma." "the poor child, i know just how she feels. she cannot be quite happy without me; and i--oh, i live in the light of her eyes! tell her she must practice all she pleases; and, aunt hannah-tell her i can't hear the piano this far, nor hear dear voice when she sings: god knows i wish i could. no one knows how sweet that voice is to me; and to think--some day it will be silent! what are you crying for? "only because--because--it was just a memory. when i came away she was singing, 'loch lomond.' the pathos of it! it always moves me so when she sings that." "and me, too. how heartbreakingly beautiful it is when some youthful sorrow is brooding in her breast and she sings it for the mystic healing it brings. . . . aunt hannah?" "dear margaret?" "i am very ill. sometimes it comes over me that i shall never hear that dear voice again." "oh, don't--don't, margaret! i can't bear it!" margaret was moved and distressed, and said, gently: "there--there--let me put my arms around you. don't cry. there--put your cheek to mine. be comforted. i wish to live. i will live if i can. ah, what could she do without me! . . . does she often speak of me?--but i know she does." "oh, all the time--all the time!" "my sweet child! she wrote the note the moment she came home?" "yes--the first moment. she would not wait to take off her things." "i knew it. it is her dear, impulsive, affectionate way. i knew it without asking, but i wanted to hear you say it. the petted wife knows she is loved, but she makes her husband tell her so every day, just for the joy of hearing it. . . . she used the pen this time. that is better; the pencil-marks could rub out, and i should grieve for that. did you suggest that she use the pen?" "y--no--she--it was her own idea. the mother looked her pleasure, and said: "i was hoping you would say that. there was never such a dear and thoughtful child! . . . aunt hannah?" "dear margaret?" "go and tell her i think of her all the time, and worship her. why--you are crying again. don't be so worried about me, dear; i think there is nothing to fear, yet." the grieving messenger carried her message, and piously delivered it to unheeding ears. the girl babbled on unaware; looking up at her with wondering and startled eyes flaming with fever, eyes in which was no light of recognition: "are you--no, you are not my mother. i want her--oh, i want her! she was here a minute ago--i did not see her go. will she come? will she come quickly? will she come now? . . . there are so many houses . . . and they oppress me so . . . and everything whirls and turns and whirls . . . oh, my head, my head!"--and so she wandered on and on, in her pain, flitting from one torturing fancy to another, and tossing her arms about in a weary and ceaseless persecution of unrest. poor old hannah wetted the parched lips and softly stroked the hot brow, murmuring endearing and pitying words, and thanking the father of all that the mother was happy and did not know. chapter vi daily the child sank lower and steadily lower towards the grave, and daily the sorrowing old watchers carried gilded tidings of her radiant health and loveliness to the happy mother, whose pilgrimage was also now nearing its end. and daily they forged loving and cheery notes in the child's hand, and stood by with remorseful consciences and bleeding hearts, and wept to see the grateful mother devour them and adore them and treasure them away as things beyond price, because of their sweet source, and sacred because her child's hand had touched them. at last came that kindly friend who brings healing and peace to all. the lights were burning low. in the solemn hush which precedes the dawn vague figures flitted soundless along the dim hall and gathered silent and awed in helen's chamber, and grouped themselves about her bed, for a warning had gone forth, and they knew. the dying girl lay with closed lids, and unconscious, the drapery upon her breast faintly rising and falling as her wasting life ebbed away. at intervals a sigh or a muffled sob broke upon the stillness. the same haunting thought was in all minds there: the pity of this death, the going out into the great darkness, and the mother not here to help and hearten and bless. helen stirred; her hands began to grope wistfully about as if they sought something--she had been blind some hours. the end was come; all knew it. with a great sob hester gathered her to her breast, crying, "oh, my child, my darling!" a rapturous light broke in the dying girl's face, for it was mercifully vouchsafed her to mistake those sheltering arms for another's; and she went to her rest murmuring, "oh, mamma, i am so happy--i longed for you--now i can die." two hours later hester made her report. the mother asked: "how is it with the child?" "she is well." chapter vii a sheaf of white crape and black was hung upon the door of the house, and there it swayed and rustled in the wind and whispered its tidings. at noon the preparation of the dead was finished, and in the coffin lay the fair young form, beautiful, and in the sweet face a great peace. two mourners sat by it, grieving and worshipping-hannah and the black woman tilly. hester came, and she was trembling, for a great trouble was upon her spirit. she said: "she asks for a note." hannah's face blanched. she had not thought of this; it had seemed that that pathetic service was ended. but she realized now that that could not be. for a little while the two women stood looking into each other's face, with vacant eyes; then hannah said: "there is no way out of it--she must have it; she will suspect, else." "and she would find out." "yes. it would break her heart." she looked at the dead face, and her eyes filled. "i will write it," she said. hester carried it. the closing line said: "darling mousie, dear sweet mother, we shall soon be together again. is not that good news? and it is true; they all say it is true." the mother mourned, saying: "poor child, how will she bear it when she knows? i shall never see her again in life. it is hard, so hard. she does not suspect? you guard her from that?" "she thinks you will soon be well." "how good you are, and careful, dear aunt hester! none goes near herr who could carry the infection?" "it would be a crime." "but you see her?" "with a distance between--yes." "that is so good. others one could not trust; but you two guardian angels--steel is not so true as you. others would be unfaithful; and many would deceive, and lie." hester's eyes fell, and her poor old lips trembled. "let me kiss you for her, aunt hester; and when i am gone, and the danger is past, place the kiss upon her dear lips some day, and say her mother sent it, and all her mother's broken heart is in it." within the hour, hester, raining tears upon the dead face, performed her pathetic mission. chapter viii another day dawned, and grew, and spread its sunshine in the earth. aunt hannah brought comforting news to the failing mother, and a happy note, which said again, "we have but a little time to wait, darling mother, then se shall be together." the deep note of a bell came moaning down the wind. "aunt hannah, it is tolling. some poor soul is at rest. as i shall be soon. you will not let her forget me?" "oh, god knows she never will!" "do not you hear strange noises, aunt hannah? it sounds like the shuffling of many feet." "we hoped you would not hear it, dear. it is a little company gathering, for--for helen's sake, poor little prisoner. there will be music--and she loves it so. we thought you would not mind." "mind? oh no, no--oh, give her everything her dear heart can desire. how good you two are to her, and how good to me! god bless you both always!" after a listening pause: "how lovely! it is her organ. is she playing it herself, do you think?" faint and rich and inspiring the chords floating to her ears on the still air. "yes, it is her touch, dear heart, i recognize it. they are singing. why--it is a hymn! and the sacredest of all, the most touching, the most consoling. . . . it seems to open the gates of paradise to me. . . . if i could die now. . . ." faint and far the words rose out of the stillness: nearer, my god, to thee, nearer to thee, e'en though it be a cross that raiseth me. with the closing of the hymn another soul passed to its rest, and they that had been one in life were not sundered in death. the sisters, mourning and rejoicing, said: "how blessed it was that she never knew!" chapter ix at midnight they sat together, grieving, and the angel of the lord appeared in the midst transfigured with a radiance not of earth; and speaking, said: "for liars a place is appointed. there they burn in the fires of hell from everlasting unto everlasting. repent!" the bereaved fell upon their knees before him and clasped their hands and bowed their gray heads, adoring. but their tongues clove to the roof of their mouths, and they were dumb. "speak! that i may bear the message to the chancery of heaven and bring again the decree from which there is no appeal." then they bowed their heads yet lower, and one said: "our sin is great, and we suffer shame; but only perfect and final repentance can make us whole; and we are poor creatures who have learned our human weakness, and we know that if we were in those hard straits again our hearts would fail again, and we should sin as before. the strong could prevail, and so be saved, but we are lost." they lifted their heads in supplication. the angel was gone. while they marveled and wept he came again; and bending low, he whispered the decree. chapter x was it heaven? or hell? *** a cure for the blues by courtesy of mr. cable i came into possession of a singular book eight or ten years ago. it is likely that mine is now the only copy in existence. its title-page, unabbreviated, reads as follows: "the enemy conquered; or, love triumphant. by g. ragsdale mcclintock, [1] author of 'an address,' etc., delivered at sunflower hill, south carolina, and member of the yale law school. new haven: published by t. h. pease, 83 chapel street, 1845." no one can take up this book and lay it down again unread. whoever reads one line of it is caught, is chained; he has become the contented slave of its fascinations; and he will read and read, devour and devour, and will not let it go out of his hand till it is finished to the last line, though the house be on fire over his head. and after a first reading he will not throw it aside, but will keep it by him, with his shakespeare and his homer, and will take it up many and many a time, when the world is dark and his spirits are low, and be straightway cheered and refreshed. yet this work has been allowed to lie wholly neglected, unmentioned, and apparently unregretted, for nearly half a century. the reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, excellence of form, purity of style, perfection of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of statement, humanly possible situations, humanly possible people, fluent narrative, connected sequence of events-or philosophy, or logic, or sense. no; the rich, deep, beguiling charm of the book lies in the total and miraculous absence from it of all these qualities--a charm which is completed and perfected by the evident fact that the author, whose naive innocence easily and surely wins our regard, and almost our worship, does not know that they are absent, does not even suspect that they are absent. when read by the light of these helps to an understanding of the situation, the book is delicious--profoundly and satisfyingly delicious. i call it a book because the author calls it a book, i call it a work because he calls it a work; but, in truth, it is merely a duodecimo pamphlet of thirty-one pages. it was written for fame and money, as the author very frankly--yes, and very hopefully, too, poor fellow-says in his preface. the money never came--no penny of it ever came; and how long, how pathetically long, the fame has been deferred-forty-seven years! he was young then, it would have been so much to him then; but will he care for it now? as time is measured in america, mcclintock's epoch is antiquity. in his long-vanished day the southern author had a passion for "eloquence"; it was his pet, his darling. he would be eloquent, or perish. and he recognized only one kind of eloquence--the lurid, the tempestuous, the volcanic. he liked words--big words, fine words, grand words, rumbling, thundering, reverberating words; with sense attaching if it could be got in without marring the sound, but not otherwise. he loved to stand up before a dazed world, and pour forth flame and smoke and lava and pumice-stone into the skies, and work his subterranean thunders, and shake himself with earthquakes, and stench himself with sulphur fumes. if he consumed his own fields and vineyards, that was a pity, yes; but he would have his eruption at any cost. mr. mcclintock's eloquence-and he is always eloquent, his crater is always spouting--is of the pattern common to his day, but he departs from the custom of the time in one respect: his brethren allowed sense to intrude when it did not mar the sound, but he does not allow it to intrude at all. for example, consider this figure, which he used in the village "address" referred to with such candid complacency in the title-page above quoted--"like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower." please read it again; contemplate it; measure it; walk around it; climb up it; try to get at an approximate realization of the size of it. is the fellow to that to be found in literature, ancient or modern, foreign or domestic, living or dead, drunk or sober? one notices how fine and grand it sounds. we know that if it was loftily uttered, it got a noble burst of applause from the villagers; yet there isn't a ray of sense in it, or meaning to it. mcclintock finished his education at yale in 1843, and came to hartford on a visit that same year. i have talked with men who at that time talked with him, and felt of him, and knew he was real. one needs to remember that fact and to keep fast hold of it; it is the only way to keep mcclintock's book from undermining one's faith in mcclintock's actuality. as to the book. the first four pages are devoted to an inflamed eulogy of woman--simply woman in general, or perhaps as an institution-wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a unique one to her voice. he says it "fills the breast with fond alarms, echoed by every rill." it sounds well enough, but it is not true. after the eulogy he takes up his real work and the novel begins. it begins in the woods, near the village of sunflower hill. brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the thick forest, to guide the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried friend. it seems a general remark, but it is not general; the hero mentioned is the to-be hero of the book; and in this abrupt fashion, and without name or description, he is shoveled into the tale. "with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name" is merely a phrase flung in for the sake of the sound--let it not mislead the reader. no one is trying to tarnish this person; no one has thought of it. the rest of the sentence is also merely a phrase; the man has no friend as yet, and of course has had no chance to try him, or win back his admiration, or disturb him in any other way. the hero climbs up over "sawney's mountain," and down the other side, making for an old indian "castle"--which becomes "the red man's hut" in the next sentence; and when he gets there at last, he "surveys with wonder and astonishment" the invisible structure, "which time has buried in the dust, and thought to himself his happiness was not yet complete." one doesn't know why it wasn't, nor how near it came to being complete, nor what was still wanting to round it up and make it so. maybe it was the indian; but the book does not say. at this point we have an episode: beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind. this of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him friends in whatever condition of his life he might be placed. the traveler observed that he was a well-built figure which showed strength and grace in every movement. he accordingly addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way to the village. after he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "are you not major elfonzo, the great musician [2]--the champion of a noble cause-the modern achilles, who gained so many victories in the florida war?" "i bear that name," said the major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the major, "you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, i should like to make you my confidant and learn your address." the youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, and began: "my name is roswell. i have been recently admitted to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future success in that honorable profession; but i trust, sir, like the eagle, i shall look down from the lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be called from its buried greatness." the major grasped him by the hand, and exclaimed: "o! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame of burning prosperity, may the heaven-directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems to impede your progress!" there is a strange sort of originality about mcclintock; he imitates other people's styles, but nobody can imitate his, not even an idiot. other people can be windy, but mcclintock blows a gale; other people can blubber sentiment, but mcclintock spews it; other people can mishandle metaphors, but only mcclintock knows how to make a business of it. mcclintock is always mcclintock, he is always consistent, his style is always his own style. he does not make the mistake of being relevant on one page and irrelevant on another; he is irrelevant on all of them. he does not make the mistake of being lucid in one place and obscure in another; he is obscure all the time. he does not make the mistake of slipping in a name here and there that is out of character with his work; he always uses names that exactly and fantastically fit his lunatics. in the matter of undeviating consistency he stands alone in authorship. it is this that makes his style unique, and entitles it to a name of its own--mcclintockian. it is this that protects it from being mistaken for anybody else's. uncredited quotations from other writers often leave a reader in doubt as to their authorship, but mcclintock is safe from that accident; an uncredited quotation from him would always be recognizable. when a boy nineteen years old, who had just been admitted to the bar, says, "i trust, sir, like the eagle, i shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man," we know who is speaking through that boy; we should recognize that note anywhere. there be myriads of instruments in this world's literary orchestra, and a multitudinous confusion of sounds that they make, wherein fiddles are drowned, and guitars smothered, and one sort of drum mistaken for another sort; but whensoever the brazen note of the mcclintockian trombone breaks through that fog of music, that note is recognizable, and about it there can be no blur of doubt. the novel now arrives at the point where the major goes home to see his father. when mcclintock wrote this interview he probably believed it was pathetic. the road which led to the town presented many attractions elfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was now wending his way to the dreaming spot of his fondness. the south winds whistled through the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the pent furnace roars. this brought him to remember while alone, that he quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized. but as he journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had often looked sadly on the ground, when tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eyes. elfonzo had been somewhat a dutiful son; yet fond of the amusements of life-had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the pleasure of the world, and had frequently returned to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. in this condition, he would frequently say to his father, "have i offended you, that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging looks? will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? if i have trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness around your expectations, send me back into the world, where no heart beats for me--where the foot of man had never yet trod; but give me at least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of thy winter-worn locks." "forbid it, heaven, that i should be angry with thee," answered the father, "my son, and yet i send thee back to the children of the world--to the cold charity of the combat, and to a land of victory. i read another destiny in thy countenance--i learn thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a strange sensation. it will seek thee, my dear elfonzo, it will find thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have foretold against thee. i once thought not so. once, i was blind; but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet, elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds-struggle with the civilized world and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground--let the night-owl send forth its screams from the stubborn oak--let the sea sport upon the beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these, elfonzo, thy doom, and thy hiding-place. our most innocent as well as our most lawful desires must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them to a higher will." remembering such admonitions with gratitude, elfonzo was immediately urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving. mcclintock has a fine gift in the matter of surprises; but as a rule they are not pleasant ones, they jar upon the feelings. his closing sentence in the last quotation is of that sort. it brings one down out of the tinted clouds in too sudden and collapsed a fashion. it incenses one against the author for a moment. it makes the reader want to take him by this winter-worn locks, and trample on his veneration, and deliver him over to the cold charity of combat, and blot him out with his own lighted torch. but the feeling does not last. the master takes again in his hand that concord of sweet sounds of his, and one is reconciled, pacified. his steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the piny woods, dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little village of repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry. his close attention to every important object--his modest questions about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into respectable notice. one mild winter day, as he walked along the streets toward the academy, which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth-some venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous-all seemed inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. he entered its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners. the artfulness of this man! none knows so well as he how to pique the curiosity of the reader--and how to disappoint it. he raises the hope, here, that he is going to tell all about how one enters a classic wall in the usual mode of southern manners; but does he? no; he smiles in his sleeve, and turns aside to other matters. the principal of the institution begged him to be seated and listen to the recitations that were going on. he accordingly obeyed the request, and seemed to be much pleased. after the school was dismissed, and the young hearts regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening, laughing at the anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others tittered at the actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a tone that indicated a resolution-with an undaunted mind. he said he had determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation. "sir," said he, "i have spent much time in the world. i have traveled among the uncivilized inhabitants of america. i have met with friends, and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide what is to be my destiny. i see the learned world have an influence with the voice of the people themselves. the despoilers of the remotest kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons. this the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you will receive me as i am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided opinions, i will give you my honor, sir, that i will never disgrace the institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station." the instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an unfeeling community. he looked at him earnestly, and said: "be of good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain. remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure, the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize." from wonder to wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. a strange nature bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of hidden treasures opened to his view. all this, so vividly described, seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy. it seems to me that this situation is new in romance. i feel sure it has not been attempted before. military celebrities have been disguised and set at lowly occupations for dramatic effect, but i think mcclintock is the first to send one of them to school. thus, in this book, you pass from wonder to wonder, through gardens of hidden treasure, where giant streams bloom before you, and behind you, and all around, and you feel as happy, and groggy, and satisfied with your quart of mixed metaphor aboard as you would if it had been mixed in a sample-room and delivered from a jug. now we come upon some more mcclintockian surprise--a sweetheart who is sprung upon us without any preparation, along with a name for her which is even a little more of a surprise than she herself is. in 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the english and latin departments. indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten the pictured saint of his affections. the fresh wreaths of the pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of heaven upon the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under its boughs. he was aware of the pleasure that he had seen there. so one evening ,as he was returning from his reading, he concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot. little did he think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it might be so. he continued sauntering by the roadside, meditating on the past. the nearer he approached the spot, the more anxious he became. at that moment a tall female figure flitted across his path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck. nothing was wanting to complete her beauty. the tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates. in ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded-one that never was conquered. ambulinia! it can hardly be matched in fiction. the full name is ambulinia valeer. marriage will presently round it out and perfect it. then it will be mrs. ambulinia valeer elfonzo. it takes the chromo. her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely bound, because he sought the hand of no other. elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie. his books no longer were his inseparable companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage him to the field of victory. he endeavored to speak to his supposed ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words. no, his effort was a stream of fire, that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his senses away captive. ambulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of his duty. as she walked speedily away through the piny woods, she calmly echoed: "o! elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams. thou shalt now walk in a new path--perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear not, the stars foretell happiness." to mcclintock that jingling jumble of fine words meant something, no doubt, or seemed to mean something; but it is useless for us to try to divine what it was. ambulinia comes--we don't know whence nor why; she mysteriously intimates--we don't know what; and then she goes echoing away--we don't know whither; and down comes the curtain. mcclintock's art is subtle; mcclintock's art is deep. not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. the bells were tolling, when elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers, holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music-his eye continually searching for ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him, as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to branch. nothing could be more striking than the difference between the two. nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous to ambulinia. a deep feeling spoke from the eyes of elfonzo-such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the same with sincerity of heart. he was a few years older than ambulinia: she had turned a little into her seventeenth. he had almost grown up in the cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the natives. but little intimacy had existed between them until the year forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet reverence. but as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and treat the unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and perseverance. all this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return where he had before only worshiped. at last we begin to get the major's measure. we are able to put this and that casual fact together, and build the man up before our eyes, and look at him. and after we have got him built, we find him worth the trouble. by the above comparison between his age and ambulinia's, we guess the war-worn veteran to be twenty-two; and the other facts stand thus: he had grown up in the cherokee country with the same equal proportions as one of the natives-how flowing and graceful the language, and yet how tantalizing as to meaning!--he had been turned adrift by his father, to whom he had been "somewhat of a dutiful son"; he wandered in distant lands; came back frequently "to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life," in order to get into the presence of his father's winter-worn locks, and spread a humid veil of darkness around his expectations; but he was always promptly sent back to the cold charity of the combat again; he learned to play the fiddle, and made a name for himself in that line; he had dwelt among the wild tribes; he had philosophized about the despoilers of the kingdoms of the earth, and found out--the cunning creature-that they refer their differences to the learned for settlement; he had achieved a vast fame as a military chieftain, the achilles of the florida campaigns, and then had got him a spelling-book and started to school; he had fallen in love with ambulinia valeer while she was teething, but had kept it to himself awhile, out of the reverential awe which he felt for the child; but now at last, like the unyielding deity who follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves to shake off his embarrassment, and to return where before he had only worshiped. the major, indeed, has made up his mind to rise up and shake his faculties together, and to see if he can't do that thing himself. this is not clear. but no matter about that: there stands the hero, compact and visible; and he is no mean structure, considering that his creator had never structure, considering that his creator had never created anything before, and hadn't anything but rags and wind to build with this time. it seems to me that no one can contemplate this odd creature, this quaint and curious blatherskite, without admiring mcclintock, or, at any rate, loving him and feeling grateful to him; for mcclintock made him, he gave him to us; without mcclintock we could not have had him, and would now be poor. but we must come to the feast again. here is a courtship scene, down there in the romantic glades among the raccoons, alligators, and things, that has merit, peculiar literary merit. see how achilles woos. dwell upon the second sentence (particularly the close of it) and the beginning of the third. never mind the new personage, leos, who is intruded upon us unheralded and unexplained. that is mcclintock's way; it is his habit; it is a part of his genius; he cannot help it; he never interrupts the rush of his narrative to make introductions. it could not escape ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. after many efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the major approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in a field of battle. "lady ambulinia," said he, trembling, "i have long desired a moment like this. i dare not let it escape. i fear the consequences; yet i hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition. can you not anticipate what i would say, and what i am about to express? will not you, like minerva, who sprung from the brain of jupiter, release me from thy winding chains or cure me--" "say no more, elfonzo," answered ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; "another lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter coldness. i know not the little arts of my sex. i care but little for the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as ashamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is not gold that glitters'; so be no rash in your resolution. it is better to repent now, than to do it in a more solemn hour. yes, i know what you would say. i know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man can make-your heart! you should not offer it to one so unworthy. heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. notwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart-allow me to say in the fullness of my hopes that i anticipate better days. the bird may stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. from your confession and indicative looks, i must be that person; if so deceive not yourself." elfonzo replied, "pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. i have loved you from my earliest days--everything grand and beautiful hath borne the image of ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded me, your guardian angel stood and beckoned me away from the deep abyss. in every trial, in every misfortune, i have met with your helping hand; yet i never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love, till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory. i saw how leos worshiped thee. i felt my own unworthiness. i began to know jealously, a strong guest--indeed, in my bosom,-yet i could see if i gained your admiration leos was to be my rival. i was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent and regular tranquillity; yet i have determined by your permission to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my drooping spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak i shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like olympus shakes. and though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may forget his dashing steed, yet i am assured that it is only to arm me with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried intention." "return to yourself, elfonzo," said ambulinia, pleasantly: "a dream of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere, dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. i entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all. when homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with the delusions of our passions. you have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination an angel in human form. let her remain such to you, let her continue to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure. think not that i would allure you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know i respect the conscience of others, as i would die for my own. elfonzo, if i am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between us. go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time, as the sun set in the tigris." as she spake these words she grasped the hand of elfonzo, saying at the same time--"peace and prosperity attend you, my hero; be up and doing!" closing her remarks with this expression, she walked slowly away, leaving elfonzo astonished and amazed. he ventured not to follow or detain her. here he stood alone, gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood. yes; there he stood. there seems to be no doubt about that. nearly half of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader. it seems a pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis. pity! it is more than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize mcclintock is to reduce a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to reduce barbaric splendor to ragged poverty. mcclintock never wrote a line that was not precious; he never wrote one that could be spared; he never framed one from which a word could be removed without damage. every sentence that this master has produced may be likened to a perfect set of teeth, white, uniform, beautiful. if you pull one, the charm is gone. still, it is now necessary to begin to pull, and to keep it up; for lack of space requires us to synopsize. we left elfonzo standing there amazed. at what, we do not know. not at the girl's speech. no; we ourselves should have been amazed at it, of course, for none of us has ever heard anything resembling it; but elfonzo was used to speeches made up of noise and vacancy, and could listen to them with undaunted mind like the "topmost topaz of an ancient tower"; he was used to making them himself; he--but let it go, it cannot be guessed out; we shall never know what it was that astonished him. he stood there awhile; then he said, "alas! am i now grief's disappointed son at last?" he did not stop to examine his mind, and to try to find out what he probably meant by that, because, for one reason, "a mixture of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart," and started him for the village. he resumed his bench in school, "and reasonably progressed in his education." his heart was heavy, but he went into society, and sought surcease of sorrow in its light distractions. he made himself popular with his violin, "which seemed to have a thousand chords--more symphonious than the muses of apollo, and more enchanting than the ghost of the hills." this is obscure, but let it go. during this interval leos did some unencouraged courting, but at last, "choked by his undertaking," he desisted. presently "elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and new-built village." he goes to the house of his beloved; she opens the door herself. to my surprise--for ambulinia's heart had still seemed free at the time of their last interview--love beamed from the girl's eyes. one sees that elfonzo was surprised, too; for when he caught that light, "a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein." a neat figure--a very neat figure, indeed! then he kissed her. "the scene was overwhelming." they went into the parlor. the girl said it was safe, for her parents were abed, and would never know. then we have this fine picture--flung upon the canvas with hardly an effort, as you will notice. advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; her robe hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess confessed before him. there is nothing of interest in the couple's interview. now at this point the girl invites elfonzo to a village show, where jealousy is the motive of the play, for she wants to teach him a wholesome lesson, if he is a jealous person. but this is a sham, and pretty shallow. mcclintock merely wants a pretext to drag in a plagiarism of his upon a scene or two in "othello." the lovers went to the play. elfonzo was one of the fiddlers. he and ambulinia must not been seen together, lest trouble follow with the girl's malignant father; we are made to understand that clearly. so the two sit together in the orchestra, in the midst of the musicians. this does not seem to be good art. in the first place, the girl would be in the way, for orchestras are always packed closely together, and there is no room to spare for people's girls; in the next place, one cannot conceal a girl in an orchestra without everybody taking notice of it. there can be no doubt, it seems to me, that this is bad art. leos is present. of course, one of the first things that catches his eye is the maddening spectacle of ambulinia "leaning upon elfonzo's chair." this poor girl does not seem to understand even the rudiments of concealment. but she is "in her seventeenth," as the author phrases it, and that is her justification. leos meditates, constructs a plan--with personal violence as a basis, of course. it was their way down there. it is a good plain plan, without any imagination in it. he will go out and stand at the front door, and when these two come out he will "arrest ambulinia from the hands of the insolent elfonzo," and thus make for himself a "more prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed by omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist imagined." but, dear me, while he is waiting there the couple climb out at the back window and scurry home! this is romantic enough, but there is a lack of dignity in the situation. at this point mcclintock puts in the whole of his curious play-which we skip. some correspondence follows now. the bitter father and the distressed lovers write the letters. elopements are attempted. they are idiotically planned, and they fail. then we have several pages of romantic powwow and confusion dignifying nothing. another elopement is planned; it is to take place on sunday, when everybody is at church. but the "hero" cannot keep the secret; he tells everybody. another author would have found another instrument when he decided to defeat this elopement; but that is not mcclintock's way. he uses the person that is nearest at hand. the evasion failed, of course. ambulinia, in her flight, takes refuge in a neighbor's house. her father drags her home. the villagers gather, attracted by the racket. elfonzo was moved at this sight. the people followed on to see what was going to become of ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at a distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father, thrusting her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary apartment, when she exclaimed, "elfonzo! elfonzo! oh, elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief. ride on the wings of the wind! turn thy force loose like a tempest, and roll on thy army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and confusion. oh friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts throng upon the green hills, and come to the relief of ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing but innocent love." elfonzo called out with a loud voice, "my god, can i stand this! arouse up, i beseech you, and put an end to this tyranny. come, my brave boys," said he, "are you ready to go forth to your duty?" they stood around him. "who," said he, "will call us to arms? where are my thunderbolts of war? speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! who will go forward with me in this ocean of grievous temptation? if there is one who desires to go, let him come and shake hands upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be a hero; yes, a hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud for a speedy remedy." "mine be the deed," said a young lawyer, "and mine alone; venus alone shall quit her station before i will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; what is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not to win a victory? i love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; nor would i give it over till the blood of my enemies should wreak with that of my own. but god forbid that our fame should soar on the blood of the slumberer." mr. valeer stands at his door with the frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous weapon [3] ready to strike the first man who should enter his door. "who will arise and go forward through blood and carnage to the rescue of my ambulinia?" said elfonzo. "all," exclaimed the multitude; and onward they went, with their implements of battle. others, of a more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the result of the contest. it will hardly be believed that after all this thunder and lightning not a drop of rain fell; but such is the fact. elfonzo and his gang stood up and black-guarded mr. valeer with vigor all night, getting their outlay back with interest; then in the early morning the army and its general retired from the field, leaving the victory with their solitary adversary and his crowbar. this is the first time this has happened in romantic literature. the invention is original. everything in this book is original; there is nothing hackneyed about it anywhere. always, in other romances, when you find the author leading up to a climax, you know what is going to happen. but in this book it is different; the thing which seems inevitable and unavoidable never happens; it is circumvented by the art of the author every time. another elopement was attempted. it failed. we have now arrived at the end. but it is not exciting. mcclintock thinks it is; but it isn't. one day elfonzo sent ambulinia another note--a note proposing elopement no. 16. this time the plan is admirable; admirable, sagacious, ingenious, imaginative, deep-oh, everything, and perfectly easy. one wonders why it was never thought of before. this is the scheme. ambulinia is to leave the breakfast-table, ostensibly to "attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have been done a week ago"--artificial ones, of course; the others wouldn't keep so long--and then, instead of fixing the flowers, she is to walk out to the grove, and go off with elfonzo. the invention of this plan overstrained the author that is plain, for he straightway shows failing powers. the details of the plan are not many or elaborate. the author shall state them himself-this good soul, whose intentions are always better than his english: "you walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find me with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights." last scene of all, which the author, now much enfeebled, tries to smarten up and make acceptable to his spectacular heart by introducing some new properties--silver bow, golden harp, olive branch--things that can all come good in an elopement, no doubt, yet are not to be compared to an umbrella for real handiness and reliability in an excursion of that kind. and away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with glittering pearls, that indicated her coming. elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his golden harp. the meet--ambulinia's countenance brightens-elfonzo leads up the winged steed. "mount," said he, "ye true-hearted, ye fearless soul--the day is ours." she sprang upon the back of the young thunderbolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch. "lend thy aid, ye strong winds," they exclaimed, "ye moon, ye sun, and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered." "hold," said elfonzo, "thy dashing steed." "ride on," said ambulinia, "the voice of thunder is behind us." and onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon arrived at rural retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with all the solemnities that usually attended such divine operations. there is but one homer, there is but one shakespeare, there is but one mcclintock--and his immortal book is before you. homer could not have written this book, shakespeare could not have written it, i could not have done it myself. there is nothing just like it in the literature of any country or of any epoch. it stands alone; it is monumental. it adds g. ragsdale mcclintock's to the sum of the republic's imperishable names. 1. the name here given is a substitute for the one actually attached to the pamphlet. 2. further on it will be seen that he is a country expert on the fiddle, and has a three-township fame. 3. it is a crowbar. *** the curious book complete [the foregoing review of the great work of g. ragsdale mcclintock is liberally illuminated with sample extracts, but these cannot appease the appetite. only the complete book, unabridged, can do that. therefore it is here printed.--m.t.] the enemy conquered; or, love triumphant sweet girl, thy smiles are full of charms, thy voice is sweeter still, it fills the breast with fond alarms, echoed by every rill. i begin this little work with an eulogy upon woman, who has ever been distinguished for her perseverance, her constancy, and her devoted attention to those upon whom she has been pleased to place her affections. many have been the themes upon which writers and public speakers have dwelt with intense and increasing interest. among these delightful themes stands that of woman, the balm to all our sighs and disappointments, and the most pre-eminent of all other topics. here the poet and orator have stood and gazed with wonder and with admiration; they have dwelt upon her innocence, the ornament of all her virtues. first viewing her external charms, such as set forth in her form and benevolent countenance, and then passing to the deep hidden springs of loveliness and disinterested devotion. in every clime, and in every age, she has been the pride of her nation. her watchfulness is untiring; she who guarded the sepulcher was the first to approach it, and the last to depart from its awful yet sublime scene. even here, in this highly favored land, we look to her for the security of our institutions, and for our future greatness as a nation. but, strange as it may appear, woman's charms and virtues are but slightly appreciated by thousands. those who should raise the standard of female worth, and paint her value with her virtues, in living colors, upon the banners that are fanned by the zephyrs of heaven, and hand them down to posterity as emblematical of a rich inheritance, do not properly estimate them. man is not sensible, at all times, of the nature and the emotions which bear that name; he does not understand, he will not comprehend; his intelligence has not expanded to that degree of glory which drinks in the vast revolution of humanity, its end, its mighty destination, and the causes which operated, and are still operating, to produce a more elevated station, and the objects which energize and enliven its consummation. this he is a stranger to; he is not aware that woman is the recipient of celestial love, and that man is dependent upon her to perfect his character; that without her, philosophically and truly speaking, the brightest of his intelligence is but the coldness of a winter moon, whose beams can produce no fruit, whose solar light is not its own, but borrowed from the great dispenser of effulgent beauty. we have no disposition in the world to flatter the fair sex, we would raise them above those dastardly principles which only exist in little souls, contracted hearts, and a distracted brain. often does she unfold herself in all her fascinating loveliness, presenting the most captivating charms; yet we find man frequently treats such purity of purpose with indifference. why does he do it? why does he baffle that which is inevitably the source of his better days? is he so much of a stranger to those excellent qualities as not to appreciate woman, as not to have respect to her dignity? since her art and beauty first captivated man, she has been his delight and his comfort; she has shared alike in his misfortunes and in his prosperity. whenever the billows of adversity and the tumultuous waves of trouble beat high, her smiles subdue their fury. should the tear of sorrow and the mournful sigh of grief interrupt the peace of his mind, her voice removes them all, and she bends from her circle to encourage him onward. when darkness would obscure his mind, and a thick cloud of gloom would bewilder its operations, her intelligent eye darts a ray of streaming light into his heart. mighty and charming is that disinterested devotion which she is ever ready to exercise toward man, not waiting till the last moment of his danger, but seeks to relieve him in his early afflictions. it gushes forth from the expansive fullness of a tender and devoted heart, where the noblest, the purest, and the most elevated and refined feelings are matured and developed in those may kind offices which invariably make her character. in the room of sorrow and sickness, this unequaled characteristic may always been seen, in the performance of the most charitable acts; nothing that she can do to promote the happiness of him who she claims to be her protector will be omitted; all is invigorated by the animating sunbeams which awaken the heart to songs of gaiety. leaving this point, to notice another prominent consideration, which is generally one of great moment and of vital importance. invariably she is firm and steady in all her pursuits and aims. there is required a combination of forces and extreme opposition to drive her from her position; she takes her stand, not to be moved by the sound of apollo's lyre or the curved bow of pleasure. firm and true to what she undertakes, and that which she requires by her own aggrandizement, and regards as being within the strict rules of propriety, she will remain stable and unflinching to the last. a more genuine principle is not to be found in the most determined, resolute heart of man. for this she deserves to be held in the highest commendation, for this she deserves the purest of all other blessings, and for this she deserves the most laudable reward of all others. it is a noble characteristic and is worthy of imitation of any age. and when we look at it in one particular aspect, it is still magnified, and grows brighter and brighter the more we reflect upon its eternal duration. what will she not do, when her word as well as her affections and love are pledged to her lover? everything that is dear to her on earth, all the hospitalities of kind and loving parents, all the sincerity and loveliness of sisters, and the benevolent devotion of brothers, who have surrounded her with every comfort; she will forsake them all, quit the harmony and sweet sound of the lute and the harp, and throw herself upon the affections of some devoted admirer, in whom she fondly hopes to find more than she has left behind, which is not often realized by many. truth and virtue all combined! how deserving our admiration and love! ah cruel would it be in man, after she has thus manifested such an unshaken confidence in him, and said by her determination to abandon all the endearments and blandishments of home, to act a villainous part, and prove a traitor in the revolution of his mission, and then turn hector over the innocent victim whom he swore to protect, in the presence of heaven, recorded by the pen of an angel. striking as this train may unfold itself in her character, and as pre-eminent as it may stand among the fair display of her other qualities, yet there is another, which struggles into existence, and adds an additional luster to what she already possesses. i mean that disposition in woman which enables her, in sorrow, in grief, and in distress, to bear all with enduring patience. this she has done, and can and will do, amid the din of war and clash of arms. scenes and occurrences which, to every appearance, are calculated to rend the heart with the profoundest emotions of trouble, do not fetter that exalted principle imbued in her very nature. it is true, her tender and feeling heart may often be moved (as she is thus constituted), but she is not conquered, she has not given up to the harlequin of disappointments, her energies have not become clouded in the last movement of misfortune, but she is continually invigorated by the archetype of her affections. she may bury her face in her hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she may promenade the delightful walks of some garden, decorated with all the flowers of nature, or she may steal out along some gently rippling stream, and there, as the silver waters uninterruptedly move forward, shed her silent tears; they mingle with the waves, and take a last farewell of their agitated home, to seek a peaceful dwelling among the rolling floods; yet there is a voice rushing from her breast, that proclaims victory along the whole line and battlement of her affections. that voice is the voice of patience and resignation; that voice is one that bears everything calmly and dispassionately, amid the most distressing scenes; when the fates are arrayed against her peace, and apparently plotting for her destruction, still she is resigned. woman's affections are deep, consequently her troubles may be made to sink deep. although you may not be able to mark the traces of her grief and the furrowings of her anguish upon her winning countenance, yet be assured they are nevertheless preying upon her inward person, sapping the very foundation of that heart which alone was made for the weal and not the woe of man. the deep recesses of the soul are fields for their operation. but they are not destined simply to take the regions of the heart for their dominion, they are not satisfied merely with interrupting her better feelings; but after a while you may see the blooming cheek beginning to droop and fade, her intelligent eye no longer sparkles with the starry light of heaven, her vibrating pulse long since changed its regular motion, and her palpitating bosom beats once more for the midday of her glory. anxiety and care ultimately throw her into the arms of the haggard and grim monster death. but, oh, how patient, under every pining influence! let us view the matter in bolder colors; see her when the dearest object of her affections recklessly seeks every bacchanalian pleasure, contents himself with the last rubbish of creation. with what solicitude she awaits his return! sleep fails to perform its office--she weeps while the nocturnal shades of the night triumph in the stillness. bending over some favorite book, whilst the author throws before her mind the most beautiful imagery, she startles at every sound. the midnight silence is broken by the solemn announcement of the return of another morning. he is still absent; she listens for that voice which has so often been greeted by the melodies of her own; but, alas! stern silence is all that she receives for her vigilance. mark her unwearied watchfulness, as the night passes away. at last, brutalized by the accursed thing, he staggers along with rage, and, shivering with cold, he makes his appearance. not a murmur is heard from her lips. on the contrary, she meets him with a smile--she caresses him with tender arms, with all the gentleness and softness of her sex. here, then, is seen her disposition, beautifully arrayed. woman, thou art more to be admired than the spicy gales of arabia, and more sought for than the gold of golconda. we believe that woman should associate freely with man, and we believe that it is for the preservation of her rights. she should become acquainted with the metaphysical designs of those who condescended to sing the siren song of flattery. this, we think, should be according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon every innocent heart. the precepts of prudery are often steeped in the guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of better moments. truth, and beautiful dreams--loveliness, and delicacy of character, with cherished affections of the ideal woman-gentle hopes and aspirations, are enough to uphold her in the storms of darkness, without the transferred colorings of a stained sufferer. how often have we seen it in our public prints, that woman occupies a false station in the world! and some have gone so far as to say it was an unnatural one. so long has she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and illiterate--they have looked upon her as an insufficient actress on the great stage of human life--a mere puppet, to fill up the drama of human existence--a thoughtless, inactive being-that she has too often come to the same conclusion herself, and has sometimes forgotten her high destination, in the meridian of her glory. we have but little sympathy or patience for those who treat her as a mere rosy melindi--who are always fishing for pretty complements-who are satisfied by the gossamer of romance, and who can be allured by the verbosity of high-flown words, rich in language, but poor and barren in sentiment. beset, as she has been, by the intellectual vulgar, the selfish, the designing, the cunning, the hidden, and the artful--no wonder she has sometimes folded her wings in despair, and forgotten her heavenly mission in the delirium of imagination; no wonder she searches out some wild desert, to find a peaceful home. but this cannot always continue. a new era is moving gently onward, old things are rapidly passing away; old superstitions, old prejudices, and old notions are now bidding farewell to their old associates and companions, and giving way to one whose wings are plumed with the light of heaven and tinged by the dews of the morning. there is a remnant of blessedness that clings to her in spite of all evil influence, there is enough of the divine master left to accomplish the noblest work ever achieved under the canopy of the vaulted skies; and that time is fast approaching, when the picture of the true woman will shine from its frame of glory, to captivate, to win back, to restore, and to call into being once more, the object of her mission. star of the brave! thy glory shed, o'er all the earth, thy army led-bold meteor of immortal birth! why come from heaven to dwell on earth? mighty and glorious are the days of youth; happy the moments of the lover, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand. a bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the cherokee country. brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the the thick forest, to guide the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried friend. he endeavored to make his way through sawney's mountain, where many meet to catch the gales that are continually blowing for the refreshment of the stranger and the traveler. surrounded as he was by hills on every side, naked rocks dared the efforts of his energies. soon the sky became overcast, the sun buried itself in the clouds, and the fair day gave place to gloomy twilight, which lay heavily on the indian plains. he remembered an old indian castle, that once stood at the foot of the mountain. he thought if he could make his way to this, he would rest contented for a short time. the mountain air breathed fragrance--a rosy tinge rested on the glassy waters that murmured at its base. his resolution soon brought him to the remains of the red man's hut: he surveyed with wonder and astonishment the decayed building, which time had buried in the dust, and thought to himself, his happiness was not yet complete. beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind. this of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him friends in whatever condition of life he might be placed. the traveler observed that he was a well-built figure, which showed strength and grace in every movement. he accordingly addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way to the village. after he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "are you not major elfonzo, the great musician--the champion of a noble cause-the modern achilles, who gained so many victories in the florida war?" "i bear that name," said the major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the major, "you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, i should like to make you my confidant and learn your address." the youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, and began: "my name is roswell. i have been recently admitted to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future success in that honorable profession; but i trust, sir, like the eagle, i shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be called from its buried greatness." the major grasped him by the hand, and exclaimed: "o! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame of burning prosperity, may the heaven-directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems to impede your progress!" the road which led to the town presented many attractions. elfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was not wending his way to the dreaming spot of his fondness. the south winds whistled through the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the pent furnace roars. this brought him to remember while alone, that he quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized. but as he journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had often looked sadly on the ground when tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eye. elfonzo had been somewhat of a dutiful son; yet fond of the amusements of life--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the pleasure of the world and had frequently returned to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. in this condition, he would frequently say to his father, "have i offended you, that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging looks? will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? if i have trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness around your expectations, send me back into the world where no heart beats for me--where the foot of man has never yet trod; but give me at least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of thy winter-worn locks." "forbid it, heaven, that i should be angry with thee," answered the father, "my son, and yet i send thee back to the children of the world-to the cold charity of the combat, and to a land of victory. i read another destiny in thy countenance--i learn thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a stranger sensation. it will seek thee, my dear elfonzo, it will find thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have foretold against thee. i once thought not so. once, i was blind; but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds--struggle with the civilized world, and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground-let the night-owl send forth its screams from the stubborn oak-let the sea sport upon the beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these, elfonzo, thy doom, and thy hiding-place. our most innocent as well as our most lawful desires must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them to a higher will." remembering such admonitions with gratitude, elfonzo was immediately urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving. his steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the piny woods, dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little village or repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry. his close attention to every important object--his modest questions about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into respectable notice. one mild winter day as he walked along the streets toward the academy, which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth-some venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous-all seemed inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. he entered its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners. the principal of the institution begged him to be seated and listen to the recitations that were going on. he accordingly obeyed the request, and seemed to be much pleased. after the school was dismissed, and the young hearts regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening, laughing at the anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others tittered at the actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a tone that indicated a resolution-with an undaunted mind. he said he had determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation. "sir," said he, "i have spent much time in the world. i have traveled among the uncivilized inhabitants of america. i have met with friends, and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide what is to be my destiny. i see the learned would have an influence with the voice of the people themselves. the despoilers of the remotest kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons. this the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you will receive me as i am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided opinions, i will give you my honor, sir, that i will never disgrace the institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station." the instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an unfeeling community. he looked at him earnestly, and said: "be of good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain. remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure, the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize." from wonder to wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. a stranger nature bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of hidden treasures opened to his view. all this, so vividly described, seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy. in 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the english and latin departments. indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten the pictured saint of his affections. the fresh wreaths of the pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of heavens upon the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under its boughs. he was aware of the pleasure that he had seen there. so one evening, as he was returning from his reading, he concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot. little did he think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it might be so. he continued sauntering by the roadside, meditating on the past. the nearer he approached the spot, the more anxious he became. at the moment a tall female figure flitted across his path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck. nothing was wanting to complete her beauty. the tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates.. in ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded-one that never was conquered. her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely bound ,because he sought the hand of no other. elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie. his books no longer were his inseparable companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage him in the field of victory. he endeavored to speak to his supposed ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words. no, his effort was a stream of fire, that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his senses away captive. ambulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of his duty. as she walked speedily away through the piny woods she calmly echoed: "o! elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams. thou shalt now walk in a new path-perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear not, the stars foretell happiness." not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. the bells were tolling when elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers, holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music-his eye continually searching for ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him, as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to branch. nothing could be more striking than the difference between the two. nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous to ambulinia. a deep feeling spoke from the eyes of elfonzo-such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the same with sincerity of heart. he was a few years older than ambulinia: she had turned a little into her seventeenth. he had almost grown up in the cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the natives. but little intimacy had existed between them until the year forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet reverence. but as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and treat unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and perseverance. all this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return where he had before only worshiped. it could not escape ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. after many efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the major approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in a field of battle. "lady ambulinia," said he, trembling, "i have long desired a moment like this. i dare not let it escape. i fear the consequences; yet i hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition. can you not anticipate what i would say, and what i am about to express? will not you, like minerva, who sprung from the brain of jupiter, release me from thy winding chains or cure me--" "say no more, elfonzo," answered ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; "another lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter coldness. i know not the little arts of my sex. i care but little for the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as shamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is not gold that glitters'; so be not rash in your resolution. it is better to repent now than to do it in a more solemn hour. yes, i know what you would say. i know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man can make-your heart! you should not offer it to one so unworthy. heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. notwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart; allow me to say in the fullness of my hopes that i anticipate better days. the bird may stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. from your confession and indicative looks, i must be that person; if so, deceive not yourself." elfonzo replied, "pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. i have loved you from my earliest days; everything grand and beautiful hath borne the image of ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded me, your guardian angel stood and beckoned me away from the deep abyss. in every trial, in every misfortune, i have met with your helping hand; yet i never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory. i saw how leos worshipped thee. i felt my own unworthiness. i began to know jealousy--a strong guest, indeed, in my bosom-yet i could see if i gained your admiration leos was to be my rival. i was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent and regular tranquillity; yet i have determined by your permission to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my dropping spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak i shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like olympus shakes. and though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may forget his dashing steed, yet i am assured that it is only to arm me with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried intention." "return to your self, elfonzo," said ambulinia, pleasantly; "a dream of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere, dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. i entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all. when homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with the delusions of our passions. you have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination an angel in human form. let her remain such to you, let her continue to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure. think not that i would allure you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know i respect the conscience of others, as i would die for my own. elfonzo, if i am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between us. go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time as the sun set in the tigris." as she spake these words she grasped the hand of elfonzo, saying at the same time, "peace and prosperity attend you, my hero: be up and doing!' closing her remarks with this expression, she walked slowly away, leaving elfonzo astonished and amazed. he ventured not to follow or detain her. here he stood alone, gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood. the rippling stream rolled on at his feet. twilight had already begun to draw her sable mantle over the earth, and now and then the fiery smoke would ascend from the little town which lay spread out before him. the citizens seemed to be full of life and good-humor; but poor elfonzo saw not a brilliant scene. no; his future life stood before him, stripped of the hopes that once adorned all his sanguine desires. "alas!" said he, "am i now grief's disappointed son at last." ambulinia's image rose before his fancy. a mixture of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart, and encouraged him to bear all his crosses with the patience of a job, notwithstanding he had to encounter with so many obstacles. he still endeavored to prosecute his studies, and reasonable progressed in his education. still, he was not content; there was something yet to be done before his happiness was complete. he would visit his friends and acquaintances. they would invite him to social parties, insisting that he should partake of the amusements that were going on. this he enjoyed tolerably well. the ladies and gentlemen were generally well pleased with the major; as he delighted all with his violin, which seemed to have a thousand chords-more symphonious than the muses of apollo and more enchanting than the ghost of the hills. he passed some days in the country. during that time leos had made many calls upon ambulinia, who was generally received with a great deal of courtesy by the family. they thought him to be a young man worthy of attention, though he had but little in his soul to attract the attention or even win the affections of her whose graceful manners had almost made him a slave to every bewitching look that fell from her eyes. leos made several attempts to tell her of his fair prospects-how much he loved her, and how much it would add to his bliss if he could but think she would be willing to share these blessings with him; but, choked by his undertaking, he made himself more like an inactive drone than he did like one who bowed at beauty's shrine. elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and new-built village. he now determines to see the end of the prophesy which had been foretold to him. the clouds burst from his sight; he believes if he can but see his ambulinia, he can open to her view the bloody altars that have been misrepresented to stigmatize his name. he knows that her breast is transfixed with the sword of reason, and ready at all times to detect the hidden villainy of her enemies. he resolves to see her in her own home, with the consoling theme: "'i can but perish if i go.' let the consequences be what they may," said he, "if i die, it shall be contending and struggling for my own rights." night had almost overtaken him when he arrived in town. colonel elder, a noble-hearted, high-minded, and independent man, met him at his door as usual, and seized him by the hand. "well, elfonzo," said the colonel, "how does the world use you in your efforts?" "i have no objection to the world," said elfonzo, "but the people are rather singular in some of their opinions." "aye, well," said the colonel, "you must remember that creation is made up of many mysteries; just take things by the right handle; be always sure you know which is the smooth side before you attempt your polish; be reconciled to your fate, be it what it may; and never find fault with your condition, unless your complaining will benefit it. perseverance is a principle that should be commendable in those who have judgment to govern it. i should never had been so successful in my hunting excursions had i waited till the deer, by some magic dream, had been drawn to the muzzle of the gun before i made an attempt to fire at the game that dared my boldness in the wild forest. the great mystery in hunting seems to be--a good marksman, a resolute mind, a fixed determination, and my world for it, you will never return home without sounding your horn with the breath of a new victory. and so with every other undertaking. be confident that your ammunition is of the right kind--always pull your trigger with a steady hand, and so soon as you perceive a calm, touch her off, and the spoils are yours." this filled him with redoubled vigor, and he set out with a stronger anxiety than ever to the home of ambulinia. a few short steps soon brought him to the door, half out of breath. he rapped gently. ambulinia, who sat in the parlor alone, suspecting elfonzo was near, ventured to the door, opened it, and beheld the hero, who stood in an humble attitude, bowed gracefully, and as they caught each other's looks the light of peace beamed from the eyes of ambulinia. elfonzo caught the expression; a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein, and for the first time he dared to impress a kiss upon her cheek. the scene was overwhelming; had the temptation been less animating, he would not have ventured to have acted so contrary to the desired wish of his ambulinia; but who could have withstood the irrestistable temptation! what society condemns the practice but a cold, heartless, uncivilized people that know nothing of the warm attachments of refined society? here the dead was raised to his long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found. here all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion; sectional differences no longer disunited their opinions; like the freed bird from the cage, sportive claps its rustling wings, wheels about to heaven in a joyful strain, and raises its notes to the upper sky. ambulinia insisted upon elfonzo to be seated, and give her a history of his unnecessary absence; assuring him the family had retired, consequently they would ever remain ignorant of his visit. advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; her robe hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess confessed before him. "it does seem to me, my dear sir," said ambulinia, "that you have been gone an age. oh, the restless hours i have spent since i last saw you, in yon beautiful grove. there is where i trifled with your feelings for the express purpose of trying your attachment for me. i now find you are devoted; but ah! i trust you live not unguarded by the powers of heaven. though oft did i refuse to join my hand with thine, and as oft did i cruelly mock thy entreaties with borrowed shapes: yes, i feared to answer thee by terms, in words sincere and undissembled. o! could i pursue, and you have leisure to hear the annals of my woes, the evening star would shut heaven's gates upon the impending day before my tale would be finished, and this night would find me soliciting your forgiveness." "dismiss thy fears and thy doubts," replied elfonzo. "look, o! look: that angelic look of thine--bathe not thy visage in tears; banish those floods that are gathering; let my confession and my presence being thee some relief." "then, indeed, i will be cheerful," said ambulinia, "and i think if we will go to the exhibition this evening, we certainly will see something worthy of our attention. one of the most tragical scenes is to be acted that has ever been witnessed, and one that every jealous-hearted person should learn a lesson from. it cannot fail to have a good effect, as it will be performed by those who are young and vigorous, and learned as well as enticing. you are aware, major elfonzo, who are to appear on the stage, and what the characters are to represent." "i am acquainted with the circumstances," replied elfonzo, "and as i am to be one of the musicians upon that interesting occasion, i should be much gratified if you would favor me with your company during the hours of the exercises." "what strange notions are in your mind?" inquired ambulinia. "now i know you have something in view, and i desire you to tell me why it is that you are so anxious that i should continue with you while the exercises are going on; though if you think i can add to your happiness and predilections, i have no particular objection to acquiesce in your request. oh, i think i foresee, now, what you anticipate." "and will you have the goodness to tell me what you think it will be?" inquired elfonzo. "by all means," answered ambulinia; "a rival, sir, you would fancy in your own mind; but let me say for you, fear not! fear not! i will be one of the last persons to disgrace my sex by thus encouraging every one who may feel disposed to visit me, who may honor me with their graceful bows and their choicest compliments. it is true that young men too often mistake civil politeness for the finer emotions of the heart, which is tantamount to courtship; but, ah! how often are they deceived, when they come to test the weight of sunbeams with those on whose strength hangs the future happiness of an untried life." the people were now rushing to the academy with impatient anxiety; the band of music was closely followed by the students; then the parents and guardians; nothing interrupted the glow of spirits which ran through every bosom, tinged with the songs of a virgil and the tide of a homer. elfonzo and ambulinia soon repaired to the scene, and fortunately for them both the house was so crowded that they took their seats together in the music department, which was not in view of the auditory. this fortuitous circumstances added more the bliss of the major than a thousand such exhibitions would have done. he forgot that he was man; music had lost its charms for him; whenever he attempted to carry his part, the string of the instrument would break, the bow became stubborn, and refused to obey the loud calls of the audience. here, he said, was the paradise of his home, the long-sought-for opportunity; he felt as though he could send a million supplications to the throne of heaven for such an exalted privilege. poor leos, who was somewhere in the crowd, looking as attentively as if he was searching for a needle in a haystack; here is stood, wondering to himself why ambulinia was not there. "where can she be? oh! if she was only here, how i could relish the scene! elfonzo is certainly not in town; but what if he is? i have got the wealth, if i have not the dignity, and i am sure that the squire and his lady have always been particular friends of mine, and i think with this assurance i shall be able to get upon the blind side of the rest of the family and make the heaven-born ambulinia the mistress of all i possess." then, again, he would drop his head, as if attempting to solve the most difficult problem in euclid. while he was thus conjecturing in his own mind, a very interesting part of the exhibition was going on, which called the attention of all present. the curtains of the stage waved continually by the repelled forces that were given to them, which caused leos to behold ambulinia leaning upon the chair of elfonzo. her lofty beauty, seen by the glimmering of the chandelier, filled his heart with rapture, he knew not how to contain himself; to go where they were would expose him to ridicule; to continue where he was, with such an object before him, without being allowed an explanation in that trying hour, would be to the great injury of his mental as well as of his physical powers; and, in the name of high heaven, what must he do? finally, he resolved to contain himself as well as he conveniently could, until the scene was over, and then he would plant himself at the door, to arrest ambulinia from the hands of the insolent elfonzo, and thus make for himself a more prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed by omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist imagined. accordingly he made himself sentinel, immediately after the performance of the evening-retained his position apparently in defiance of all the world; he waited, he gazed at every lady, his whole frame trembled; here he stood, until everything like human shape had disappeared from the institution, and he had done nothing; he had failed to accomplish that which he so eagerly sought for. poor, unfortunate creature! he had not the eyes of an argus, or he might have seen his juno and elfonzo, assisted by his friend sigma, make their escape from the window, and, with the rapidity of a race-horse, hurry through the blast of the storm to the residence of her father, without being recognized. he did not tarry long, but assured ambulinia the endless chain of their existence was more closely connected than ever, since he had seen the virtuous, innocent, imploring, and the constant amelia murdered by the jealous-hearted farcillo, the accursed of the land. the following is the tragical scene, which is only introduced to show the subject-matter that enabled elfonzo to come to such a determinate resolution that nothing of the kind should ever dispossess him of his true character, should he be so fortunate as to succeed in his present undertaking. amelia was the wife of farcillo, and a virtuous woman; gracia, a young lady, was her particular friend and confidant. farcillo grew jealous of amelia, murders her, finds out that he was deceived, and stabs himself. amelia appears alone, talking to herself. a. hail, ye solitary ruins of antiquity, ye sacred tombs and silent walks! it is your aid i invoke; it is to you, my soul, wrapt in deep mediating, pours forth its prayer. here i wander upon the stage of mortality, since the world hath turned against me. those whom i believed to be my friends, alas! are now my enemies, planting thorns in all my paths, poisoning all my pleasures, and turning the past to pain. what a lingering catalogue of sighs and tears lies just before me, crowding my aching bosom with the fleeting dream of humanity, which must shortly terminate. and to what purpose will all this bustle of life, these agitations and emotions of the heart have conduced, if it leave behind it nothing of utility, if it leave no traces of improvement? can it be that i am deceived in my conclusions? no, i see that i have nothing to hope for, but everything for fear, which tends to drive me from the walks of time. oh! in this dead night, if loud winds arise, to lash the surge and bluster in the skies, may the west its furious rage display, toss me with storms in the watery way. (enter gracia.) g. oh, amelia, is it you, the object of grief, the daughter of opulence, of wisdom and philosophy, that thus complaineth? it cannot be you are the child of misfortune, speaking of the monuments of former ages, which were allotted not for the reflection of the distressed, but for the fearless and bold. a. not the child of poverty, gracia, or the heir of glory and peace, but of fate. remember, i have wealth more than wit can number; i have had power more than kings could emcompass; yet the world seems a desert; all nature appears an afflictive spectacle of warring passions. this blind fatality, that capriciously sports with the rules and lives of mortals, tells me that the mountains will never again send forth the water of their springs to my thirst. oh, that i might be freed and set at liberty from wretchedness! but i fear, i fear this will never be. g. why, amelia, this untimely grief? what has caused the sorrows that bespeak better and happier days, to those lavish out such heaps of misery? you are aware that your instructive lessons embellish the mind with holy truths, by wedding its attention to none but great and noble affections. a. this, of course, is some consolation. i will ever love my own species with feelings of a fond recollection, and while i am studying to advance the universal philanthropy, and the spotless name of my own sex, i will try to build my own upon the pleasing belief that i have accelerated the advancement of one who whispers of departed confidence. and i, like some poor peasant fated to reside remote from friends, in a forest wide. oh, see what woman's woes and human wants require, since that great day hath spread the seed of sinful fire. g. look up, thou poor disconsolate; you speak of quitting earthly enjoyments. unfold thy bosom to a friend, who would be willing to sacrifice every enjoyment for the restoration of the dignity and gentleness of mind which used to grace your walks, and which is so natural to yourself; not only that, but your paths were strewed with flowers of every hue and of every order. with verdant green the mountains glow, for thee, for thee, the lilies grow; far stretched beneath the tented hills, a fairer flower the valley fills. a. oh, would to heaven i could give you a short narrative of my former prospects for happiness, since you have acknowledged to be an unchangeable confidant--the richest of all other blessings. oh, ye names forever glorious, ye celebrated scenes, ye renowned spot of my hymeneal moments; how replete is your chart with sublime reflections! how many profound vows, decorated with immaculate deeds, are written upon the surface of that precious spot of earth where i yielded up my life of celibacy, bade youth with all its beauties a final adieu, took a last farewell of the laurels that had accompanied me up the hill of my juvenile career. it was then i began to descend toward the valley of disappointment and sorrow; it was then i cast my little bark upon a mysterious ocean of wedlock, with him who then smiled and caressed me, but, alas! now frowns with bitterness, and has grown jealous and cold toward me, because the ring he gave me is misplaced or lost. oh, bear me, ye flowers of memory, softly through the eventful history of past times; and ye places that have witnessed the progression of man in the circle of so many societies, and, of, aid my recollection, while i endeavor to trace the vicissitudes of a life devoted in endeavoring to comfort him that i claim as the object of my wishes. ah! ye mysterious men, of all the world, how few act just to heaven and to your promise true! but he who guides the stars with a watchful eye, the deeds of men lay open without disguise; oh, this alone will avenge the wrongs i bear, for all the oppressed are his peculiar care. (f. makes a slight noise.) a. who is there--farcillo? g. then i must gone. heaven protect you. oh, amelia, farewell, be of good cheer. may you stand like olympus' towers, against earth and all jealous powers! may you, with loud shouts ascend on high swift as an eagle in the upper sky. a. why so cold and distant tonight, farcillo? come, let us each other greet, and forget all the past, and give security for the future. f. security! talk to me about giving security for the future-what an insulting requisition! have you said your prayers tonight, madam amelia? a. farcillo, we sometimes forget our duty, particularly when we expect to be caressed by others. f. if you bethink yourself of any crime, or of any fault, that is yet concealed from the courts of heaven and the thrones of grace, i bid you ask and solicit forgiveness for it now. a. oh, be kind, farcillo, don't treat me so. what do you mean by all this? f. be kind, you say; you, madam, have forgot that kindness you owe to me, and bestowed it upon another; you shall suffer for your conduct when you make your peace with your god. i would not slay thy unprotected spirit. i call to heaven to be my guard and my watch-i would not kill thy soul, in which all once seemed just, right, and perfect; but i must be brief, woman. a. what, talk you of killing? oh, farcillo, farcillo, what is the matter? f. aye, i do, without doubt; mark what i say, amelia. a. then, o god, o heaven, and angels, be propitious, and have mercy upon me. f. amen to that, madam, with all my heart, and with all my soul. a. farcillo, listen to me one moment; i hope you will not kill me. f. kill you, aye, that i will; attest it, ye fair host of light, record it, ye dark imps of hell! a. oh, i fear you--you are fatal when darkness covers your brow; yet i know not why i should fear, since i never wronged you in all my life. i stand, sir, guiltless before you. f. you pretend to say you are guiltless! think of thy sins, amelia; think, oh, think, hidden woman. a. wherein have i not been true to you? that death is unkind, cruel, and unnatural, that kills for living. f. peace, and be still while i unfold to thee. a. i will, farcillo, and while i am thus silent, tell me the cause of such cruel coldness in an hour like this. f. that ring, oh, that ring i so loved, and gave thee as the ring of my heart; the allegiance you took to be faithful, when it was presented; the kisses and smiles with which you honored it. you became tired of the donor, despised it as a plague, and finally gave it to malos, the hidden, the vile traitor. a. no, upon my word and honor, i never did; i appeal to the most high to bear me out in this matter. send for malos, and ask him. f. send for malos, aye! malos you wish to see; i thought so. i knew you could not keep his name concealed. amelia, sweet amelia, take heed, take heed of perjury; you are on the stage of death, to suffer for your sins. a. what, not to die i hope, my farcillo, my ever beloved. f. yes, madam, to die a traitor's death. shortly your spirit shall take its exit; therefore confess freely thy sins, for to deny tends only to make me groan under the bitter cup thou hast made for me. thou art to die with the name of traitor on thy brow! a. then, o lord, have mercy upon me; give me courage, give me grace and fortitude to stand this hour of trial. f. amen, i say, with all my heart. a. and, oh, farcillo, will you have mercy, too? i never intentionally offended you in all my life, never loved malos, never gave him cause to think so, as the high court of justice will acquit me before its tribunal. f. oh, false, perjured woman, thou didst chill my blood, and makest me a demon like thyself. i saw the ring. a. he found it, then, or got it clandestinely; send for him, and let him confess the truth; let his confession be sifted. f. and you still with to see him! i tell you, madam, he hath already confessed, and thou knowest the darkness of thy heart. a. what, my deceived farcillo, that i gave him the ring, in which all my affections were concentrated? oh, surely not. f. aye, he did. ask thy conscience, and it will speak with a voice of thunder to thy soul. a. he will not say so, he dare not, he cannot. f. no, he will not say so now, because his mouth, i trust, is hushed in death, and his body stretched to the four winds of heaven, to be torn to pieces by carnivorous birds. a. what, he is dead, and gone to the world of spirits with that declaration in his mouth? oh, unhappy man! oh, insupportable hour! f. yes, and had all his sighs and looks and tears been lives, my great revenge could have slain them all, without the least condemnation. a. alas! he is ushered into eternity without testing the matter for which i am abused and sentenced and condemned to die. f. cursed, infernal woman! weepest thou for him to my face? he that hath robbed me of my peace, my energy, the whole love of my life? could i call the fabled hydra, i would have him live and perish, survive and die, until the sun itself would grow dim with age. i would make him have the thirst of a tantalus, and roll the wheel of an ixion, until the stars of heaven should quit their brilliant stations. a. oh, invincible god, save me! oh, unsupportable moment! oh, heavy hour! banish me,, farcillo--send me where no eye can ever see me, where no sound shall ever great my ear; but, oh, slay me not, farcillo; vent thy rage and thy spite upon this emaciated frame of mine, only spare my life. f. your petitions avail nothing, cruel amelia. a. oh, farcillo, perpetrate the dark deed tomorrow; let me live till then, for my past kindness to you, and it may be some kind angel will show to you that i am not only the object of innocence, but one who never loved another but your noble self. f. amelia, the decree has gone forth, it is to be done, and that quickly; thou art to die, madam. a. but half an hour allow me, to see my father and my only child, to tell her the treachery and vanity of this world. f. there is no alternative, there is no pause: my daughter shall not see its deceptive mother die; your father shall not know that his daughter fell disgraced, despised by all but her enchanting malos. a. oh, farcillo, put up thy threatening dagger into its scabbard; let it rest and be still, just while i say one prayer for thee and for my child. f. it is too late, thy doom is fixed, thou hast not confessed to heaven or to me, my child's protector--thou art to die. ye powers of earth and heaven, protect and defend me in this alone. (stabs her while imploring for mercy.) a. oh, farcillo, farcillo, a guiltless death i die. f. die! die! die! (gracia enters running, falls on her knees weeping, and kisses amelia.) g. oh, farcillo, farcillo! oh, farcillo! f. i am here, the genius of the age, and the avenger of my wrongs. g. oh, lady, speak once more; sweet amelia, on, speak again. gone, gone--yes, forever gone! farcillo, oh, cold-hearted farcillo, some evil fiend hath urged you to do this, farcillo. f. say not so again, or you shall receive the same fate. i did the glorious deed, madam--beware, then, how you talk. g. i fear not your implements of war; i will let you know you have not the power to do me harm. if you have a heart of triple brass, it shall be reached and melted, and thy blood shall chill thy veins and grow stiff in thy arteries. here is the ring of the virtuous and innocent murdered amelia; i obtained it from malos, who yet lives, in hopes that he will survive the wound given him, and says he got it clandestinely--declares amelia to be the princess of truth and virtue, invulnerable to anything like forgetting her first devotion to thee. the world has heard of your conduct and your jealousy, and with one universal voice declares her to be the best of all in piety; that she is the star of this great universe, and a more virtuous woman never lived since the wheels of time began. oh, had you waited till tomorrow, or until i had returned, some kind window would have been opened to her relief. but, alas! she is gone--yes, forever gone, to try the realities of an unknown world! (farcillo leaning over the body of amelia.) f. malos not dead, and here is my ring! oh, amelia! falsely murdered! oh, bloody deed! oh, wretch that i am! oh, angels forgive me! oh, god, withhold thy vengeance! oh, amelia! if heaven would make a thousand worlds like this, set with diamonds, and all of one perfect chrysolite, i would not have done this for them all, i would not have frowned and cursed as i did. oh, she was heavenly true, nursed in the very lap of bright angels! cursed slave that i am! jealousy, oh! thou infernal demon! lost, lost to every sense of honor! oh! amelia-heaven-born amelia--dead, dead! oh! oh! oh!--then let me die with thee. farewell! farewell! ye world that deceived me! (stabs himself.) soon after the excitement of this tragical scene was over, and the enlisted feeling for amelia had grown more buoyant with elfonzo and ambulinia, he determined to visit his retired home, and make the necessary improvements to enjoy a better day; consequently he conveyed the following lines to ambulinia: go tell the world that hope is glowing, go bid the rocks their silence break, go tell the stars that love is glowing, then bid the hero his lover take. in the region where scarcely the foot of man hath ever trod, where the woodman hath not found his way, lies a blooming grove, seen only by the sun when he mounts his lofty throne, visited only by the light of the stars, to whom are entrusted the guardianship of earth, before the sun sinks to rest in his rosy bed. high cliffs of rocks surround the romantic place, and in the small cavity of the rocky wall grows the daffodil clear and pure; and as the wind blows along the enchanting little mountain which surrounds the lonely spot, it nourishes the flowers with the dew-drops of heaven. here is the seat of elfonzo; darkness claims but little victory over this dominion, and in vain does she spread out her gloomy wings. here the waters flow perpetually, and the trees lash their tops together to bid the welcome visitor a happy muse. elfonzo, during his short stay in the country, had fully persuaded himself that it was his duty to bring this solemn matter to an issue. a duty that he individually owed, as a gentleman, to the parents of ambulinia, a duty in itself involving not only his own happiness and his own standing in society, but one that called aloud the act of the parties to make it perfect and complete. how he should communicate his intentions to get a favorable reply, he was at a loss to know; he knew not whether to address esq. valeer in prose or in poetry, in a jocular or an argumentative manner, or whether he should use moral suasion, legal injunction, or seizure and take by reprisal; if it was to do the latter, he would have no difficulty in deciding in his own mind, but his gentlemanly honor was at stake; so he concluded to address the following letter to the father and mother of ambulinia, as his address in person he knew would only aggravate the old gentleman, and perhaps his lady. cumming, ga., january 22, 1844 mr. and mrs. valeer-again i resume the pleasing task of addressing you, and once more beg an immediate answer to my many salutations. from every circumstance that has taken place, i feel in duty bound to comply with my obligations; to forfeit my word would be more than i dare do; to break my pledge, and my vows that have been witnessed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of an unseen deity, would be disgraceful on my part, as well as ruinous to ambulinia. i wish no longer to be kept in suspense about this matter. i wish to act gentlemanly in every particular. it is true, the promises i have made are unknown to any but ambulinia, and i think it unnecessary to here enumerate them, as they who promise the most generally perform the least. can you for a moment doubt my sincerity or my character? my only wish is, sir, that you may calmly and dispassionately look at the situation of the case, and if your better judgment should dictate otherwise, my obligations may induce me to pluck the flower that you so diametrically opposed. we have sword by the saints--by the gods of battle, and by that faith whereby just men are made perfect--to be united. i hope, my dear sir, you will find it convenient as well as agreeable to give me a favorable answer, with the signature of mrs. valeer, as well as yourself. with very great esteem, your humble servant, j. i. elfonzo. the moon and stars had grown pale when ambulinia had retired to rest. a crowd of unpleasant thoughts passed through her bosom. solitude dwelt in her chamber--no sound from the neighboring world penetrated its stillness; it appeared a temple of silence, of repose, and of mystery. at that moment she heard a still voice calling her father. in an instant, like the flash of lightning, a thought ran through her mind that it must be the bearer of elfonzo's communication. "it is not a dream!" she said, "no, i cannot read dreams. oh! i would to heaven i was near that glowing eloquence--that poetical language--it charms the mind in an inexpressible manner, and warms the coldest heart." while consoling herself with this strain, her father rushed into her room almost frantic with rage, exclaiming: "oh, ambulinia! ambulinia!! undutiful, ungrateful daughter! what does this mean? why does this letter bear such heart-rending intelligence? will you quit a father's house with this debased wretch, without a place to lay his distracted head; going up and down the country, with every novel object that many chance to wander through this region. he is a pretty man to make love known to his superiors, and you, ambulinia, have done but little credit to yourself by honoring his visits. oh, wretchedness! can it be that my hopes of happiness are forever blasted! will you not listen to a father's entreaties, and pay some regard to a mother's tears. i know, and i do pray that god will give me fortitude to bear with this sea of troubles, and rescue my daughter, my ambulinia, as a brand from the eternal burning." "forgive me, father, oh! forgive thy child," replied ambulinia. "my heart is ready to break, when i see you in this grieved state of agitation. oh! think not so meanly of me, as that i mourn for my own danger. father, i am only woman. mother, i am only the templement of thy youthful years, but will suffer courageously whatever punishment you think proper to inflict upon me, if you will but allow me to comply with my most sacred promises--if you will but give me my personal right and my personal liberty. oh, father! if your generosity will but give me these, i ask nothing more. when elfonzo offered me his heart, i gave him my hand, never to forsake him, and now may the mighty god banish me before i leave him in adversity. what a heart must i have to rejoice in prosperity with him whose offers i have accepted, and then, when poverty comes, haggard as it may be, for me to trifle with the oracles of heaven, and change with every fluctuation that may interrupt our happiness-like the politician who runs the political gantlet for office one day, and the next day, because the horizon is darkened a little, he is seen running for his life, for fear he might perish in its ruins. where is the philosophy, where is the consistency, where is the charity, in conduct like this? be happy then, my beloved father, and forget me; let the sorrow of parting break down the wall of separation and make us equal in our feeling; let me now say how ardently i love you; let me kiss that age-worn cheek, and should my tears bedew thy face, i will wipe them away. oh, i never can forget you; no, never, never!" "weep not," said the father, "ambulinia. i will forbid elfonzo my house, and desire that you may keep retired a few days. i will let him know that my friendship for my family is not linked together by cankered chains; and if he ever enters upon my premises again, i will send him to his long home." "oh, father! let me entreat you to be calm upon this occasion, and though elfonzo may be the sport of the clouds and winds, yet i feel assured that no fate will send him to the silent tomb until the god of the universe calls him hence with a triumphant voice." here the father turned away, exclaiming: "i will answer his letter in a very few words, and you, madam, will have the goodness to stay at home with your mother; and remember, i am determined to protect you from the consuming fire that looks so fair to your view." cumming, january 22, 1844. sir--in regard to your request, i am as i ever have been, utterly opposed to your marrying into my family; and if you have any regard for yourself, or any gentlemanly feeling, i hope you will mention it to me no more; but seek some other one who is not so far superior to you in standing. w. w. valeer. when elfonzo read the above letter, he became so much depressed in spirits that many of his friends thought it advisable to use other means to bring about the happy union. "strange," said he, "that the contents of this diminutive letter should cause me to have such depressed feelings; but there is a nobler theme than this. i know not why my military title is not as great as that of squire valeer. for my life i cannot see that my ancestors are inferior to those who are so bitterly opposed to my marriage with ambulinia. i know i have seen huge mountains before me, yet, when i think that i know gentlemen will insult me upon this delicate matter, should i become angry at fools and babblers, who pride themselves in their impudence and ignorance? no. my equals! i know not where to find them. my inferiors! i think it beneath me; and my superiors! i think it presumption; therefore, if this youthful heart is protected by any of the divine rights, i never will betray my trust." he was aware that ambulinia had a confidence that was, indeed, as firm and as resolute as she was beautiful and interesting. he hastened to the cottage of louisa, who received him in her usual mode of pleasantness, and informed him that ambulinia had just that moment left. "is it possible?" said elfonzo. "oh, murdered hours! why did she not remain and be the guardian of my secrets? but hasten and tell me how she has stood this trying scene, and what are her future determinations." "you know," said louisa, "major elfonzo, that you have ambulinia's first love, which is of no small consequence. she came here about twilight, and shed many precious tears in consequence of her own fate with yours. we walked silently in yon little valley you see, where we spent a momentary repose. she seemed to be quite as determined as ever, and before we left that beautiful spot she offered up a prayer to heaven for thee." "i will see her then," replied elfonzo, "though legions of enemies may oppose. she is mine by foreordination-she is mine by prophesy--she is mine by her own free will, and i will rescue her from the hands of her oppressors. will you not, miss louisa, assist me in my capture?" "i will certainly, by the aid of divine providence," answered louisa, "endeavor to break those slavish chains that bind the richest of prizes; though allow me, major, to entreat you to use no harsh means on this important occasion; take a decided stand, and write freely to ambulinia upon this subject, and i will see that no intervening cause hinders its passage to her. god alone will save a mourning people. now is the day and now is the hour to obey a command of such valuable worth." the major felt himself grow stronger after this short interview with louisa. he felt as if he could whip his weight in wildcats-he knew he was master of his own feelings, and could now write a letter that would bring this litigation to an issue. cumming, january 24, 1844. dear ambulinia-we have now reached the most trying moment of our lives; we are pledged not to forsake our trust; we have waited for a favorable hour to come, thinking your friends would settle the matter agreeably among themselves, and finally be reconciled to our marriage; but as i have waited in vain, and looked in vain, i have determined in my own mind to make a proposition to you, though you may think it not in accord with your station, or compatible with your rank; yet, "sub loc signo vinces." you know i cannot resume my visits, in consequence of the utter hostility that your father has to me; therefore the consummation of our union will have to be sought for in a more sublime sphere, at the residence of a respectable friend of this village. you cannot have an scruples upon this mode of proceeding, if you will but remember it emanates from one who loves you better than his own life--who is more than anxious to bid you welcome to a new and happy home. your warmest associates say come; the talented, the learned, the wise, and the experienced say come;--all these with their friends say, come. viewing these, with many other inducements, i flatter myself that you will come to the embraces of your elfonzo; for now is the time of your acceptance of the day of your liberation. you cannot be ignorant, ambulinia, that thou art the desire of my heart; its thoughts are too noble, and too pure, to conceal themselves from you. i shall wait for your answer to this impatiently, expecting that you will set the time to make your departure, and to be in readiness at a moment's warning to share the joys of a more preferable life. this will be handed to you by louisa, who will take a pleasure in communicating anything to you that may relieve your dejected spirits, and will assure you that i now stand ready, willing, and waiting to make good my vows. i am, dear ambulinia, your truly, and forever, j. i. elfonzo. louisa made it convenient to visit mr. valeer's, though they did not suspect her in the least the bearer of love epistles; consequently, she was invited in the room to console ambulinia, where they were left alone. ambulinia was seated by a small table-her head resting on her hand--her brilliant eyes were bathed in tears. louisa handed her the letter of elfonzo, when another spirit animated her features--the spirit of renewed confidence that never fails to strengthen the female character in an hour of grief and sorrow like this, and as she pronounced the last accent of his name, she exclaimed, "and does he love me yet! i never will forget your generosity, louisa. oh, unhappy and yet blessed louisa! may you never feel what i have felt--may you never know the pangs of love. had i never loved, i never would have been unhappy; but i turn to him who can save, and if his wisdom does not will my expected union, i know he will give me strength to bear my lot. amuse yourself with this little book, and take it as an apology for my silence," said ambulinia, "while i attempt to answer this volume of consolation." "thank you," said louisa, "you are excusable upon this occasion; but i pray you, ambulinia, to be expert upon this momentous subject, that there may be nothing mistrustful upon my part." "i will," said ambulinia, and immediately resumed her seat and addressed the following to elfonzo: cumming, ga., january 28, 1844. devoted elfonzo-i hail your letter as a welcome messenger of faith, and can now say truly and firmly that my feelings correspond with yours. nothing shall be wanting on my part to make my obedience your fidelity. courage and perseverance will accomplish success. receive this as my oath, that while i grasp your hand in my own imagination, we stand united before a higher tribunal than any on earth. all the powers of my life, soul, and body, i devote to thee. whatever dangers may threaten me, i fear not to encounter them. perhaps i have determined upon my own destruction, by leaving the house of the best of parents; be it so; i flee to you; i share your destiny, faithful to the end. the day that i have concluded upon for this task is sabbath next, when the family with the citizens are generally at church. for heaven's sake let not that day pass unimproved: trust not till tomorrow, it is the cheat of life-the future that never comes--the grave of many noble births-the cavern of ruined enterprise: which like the lightning's flash is born, and dies, and perishes, ere the voice of him who sees can cry, behold! behold!! you may trust to what i say, no power shall tempt me to betray confidence. suffer me to add one word more. i will soothe thee, in all thy grief, beside the gloomy river; and though thy love may yet be brief; mine is fixed forever. receive the deepest emotions of my heart for thy constant love, and may the power of inspiration by thy guide, thy portion, and thy all. in great haste, yours faithfully, ambulinia. "i now take my leave of you, sweet girl," said louisa, "sincerely wishing you success on sabbath next." when ambulinia's letter was handed to elfonzo, he perused it without doubting its contents. louisa charged him to make but few confidants; but like most young men who happened to win the heart of a beautiful girl, he was so elated with the idea that he felt as a commanding general on parade, who had confidence in all, consequently gave orders to all. the appointed sabbath, with a delicious breeze and cloudless sky, made its appearance. the people gathered in crowds to the church-the streets were filled with neighboring citizens, all marching to the house of worship. it is entirely useless for me to attempt to describe the feelings of elfonzo and ambulinia, who were silently watching the movements of the multitude, apparently counting them as then entered the house of god, looking for the last one to darken the door. the impatience and anxiety with which they waited, and the bliss they anticipated on the eventful day, is altogether indescribable. those that have been so fortunate as to embark in such a noble enterprise know all its realities; and those who have not had this inestimable privilege will have to taste its sweets before they can tell to others its joys, its comforts, and its heaven-born worth. immediately after ambulinia had assisted the family off to church, she took advantage of that opportunity to make good her promises. she left a home of enjoyment to be wedded to one whose love had been justifiable. a few short steps brought her to the presence of louisa, who urged her to make good use of her time, and not to delay a moment, but to go with her to her brother's house, where elfonzo would forever make her happy. with lively speed, and yet a graceful air, she entered the door and found herself protected by the champion of her confidence. the necessary arrangements were fast making to have the two lovers united-everything was in readiness except the parson; and as they are generally very sanctimonious on such occasions, the news got to the parents of ambulinia before the everlasting knot was tied, and they both came running, with uplifted hands and injured feelings, to arrest their daughter from an unguarded and hasty resolution. elfonzo desired to maintain his ground, but ambulinia thought it best for him to leave, to prepare for a greater contest. he accordingly obeyed, as it would have been a vain endeavor for him to have battled against a man who was armed with deadly weapons; and besides, he could not resist the request of such a pure heart. ambulinia concealed herself in the upper story of the house, fearing the rebuke of her father; the door was locked, and no chastisement was now expected. esquire valeer, whose pride was already touched, resolved to preserve the dignity of his family. he entered the house almost exhausted, looking wildly for ambulinia. "amazed and astonished indeed i am," said he, "at a people who call themselves civilized, to allow such behavior as this. ambulinia, ambulinia!" he cried, "come to the calls of your first, your best, and your only friend. i appeal to you, sir," turning to the gentleman of the house, "to know where ambulinia has gone, or where is she?" "do you mean to insult me, sir, in my own house?" inquired the gentleman. "i will burst," said mr. v., "asunder every door in your dwelling, in search of my daughter, if you do not speak quickly, and tell me where she is. i care nothing about that outcast rubbish of creation, that mean, low-lived elfonzo, if i can but obtain ambulinia. are you not going to open this door?" said he. "by the eternal that made heaven and earth! i will go about the work instantly, if this is not done!" the confused citizens gathered from all parts of the village, to know the cause of this commotion. some rushed into the house; the door that was locked flew open, and there stood ambulinia, weeping. "father, be still," said she, "and i will follow thee home." but the agitated man seized her, and bore her off through the gazing multitude. "father!" she exclaimed, "i humbly beg your pardon--i will be dutiful--i will obey thy commands. let the sixteen years i have lived in obedience to thee by my future security." "i don't like to be always giving credit, when the old score is not paid up, madam," said the father. the mother followed almost in a state of derangement, crying and imploring her to think beforehand, and ask advice from experienced persons, and they would tell her it was a rash undertaking. "oh!" said she, "ambulinia, my daughter, did you know what i have suffered-did you know how many nights i have whiled away in agony, in pain, and in fear, you would pity the sorrows of a heartbroken mother." "well, mother," replied ambulinia, "i know i have been disobedient; i am aware that what i have done might have been done much better; but oh! what shall i do with my honor? it is so dear to me; i am pledged to elfonzo. his high moral worth is certainly worth some attention; moreover, my vows, i have no doubt, are recorded in the book of life, and must i give these all up? must my fair hopes be forever blasted? forbid it, father; oh! forbid it, mother; forbid it, heaven." "i have seen so many beautiful skies overclouded," replied the mother, "so many blossoms nipped by the frost, that i am afraid to trust you to the care of those fair days, which may be interrupted by thundering and tempestuous nights. you no doubt think as i did--life's devious ways were strewn with sweet-scented flowers, but ah! how long they have lingered around me and took their flight in the vivid hope that laughs at the drooping victims it has murdered." elfonzo was moved at this sight. the people followed on to see what was going to become of ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at a distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father, thrusting her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary apartment, when she exclaimed, "elfonzo! elfonzo! oh, elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief. ride on the wings of the wind! turn thy force loose like a tempest, and roll on thy army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and confusion. oh, friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts throng upon the green hills, and come to the relief of ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing but innocent love." elfonzo called out with a loud voice, "my god, can i stand this! arise up, i beseech you, and put an end to this tyranny. come, my brave boys," said he, "are you ready to go forth to your duty?" they stood around him. "who," said he, "will call us to arms? where are my thunderbolts of war? speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! who will go forward with me in this ocean of grievous temptation? if there is one who desires to go, let him come and shake hands upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be a hero; yes, a hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud for a speedy remedy." "mine be the deed," said a young lawyer, "and mine alone; venus alone shall quit her station before i will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; what is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not to win a victory? i love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; nor would i give it over till the blood of my enemies should wreak with that of my own. but god forbid that our fame should soar on the blood of the slumberer." mr. valeer stands at his door with the frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous weapon ready to strike the first man who should enter his door. "who will arise and go forward through blood and carnage to the rescue of my ambulinia?" said elfonzo. "all," exclaimed the multitude; and onward they went, with their implements of battle. others, of a more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the result of the contest. elfonzo took the lead of his band. night arose in clouds; darkness concealed the heavens; but the blazing hopes that stimulated them gleamed in every bosom. all approached the anxious spot; they rushed to the front of the house and, with one exclamation, demanded ambulinia. "away, begone, and disturb my peace no more," said mr. valeer. "you are a set of base, insolent, and infernal rascals. go, the northern star points your path through the dim twilight of the night; go, and vent your spite upon the lonely hills; pour forth your love, you poor, weak-minded wretch, upon your idleness and upon your guitar, and your fiddle; they are fit subjects for your admiration, for let me assure you, though this sword and iron lever are cankered, yet they frown in sleep, and let one of you dare to enter my house this night and you shall have the contents and the weight of these instruments." "never yet did base dishonor blur my name," said elfonzo; "mine is a cause of renown; here are my warriors; fear and tremble, for this night, though hell itself should oppose, i will endeavor to avenge her whom thou hast banished in solitude. the voice of ambulinia shall be heard from that dark dungeon." at that moment ambulinia appeared at the window above, and with a tremulous voice said, "live, elfonzo! oh! live to raise my stone of moss! why should such language enter your heart? why should thy voice rend the air with such agitation? i bid thee live, once more remembering these tears of mine are shed alone for thee, in this dark and gloomy vault, and should i perish under this load of trouble, join the song of thrilling accents with the raven above my grave, and lay this tattered frame beside the banks of the chattahoochee or the stream of sawney's brook; sweet will be the song of death to your ambulinia. my ghost shall visit you in the smiles of paradise, and tell your high fame to the minds of that region, which is far more preferable than this lonely cell. my heart shall speak for thee till the latest hour; i know faint and broken are the sounds of sorrow, yet our souls, elfonzo, shall hear the peaceful songs together. one bright name shall be ours on high, if we are not permitted to be united here; bear in mind that i still cherish my old sentiments, and the poet will mingle the names of elfonzo and ambulinia in the tide of other days." "fly, elfonzo, " said the voices of his united band, "to the wounded heart of your beloved. all enemies shall fall beneath thy sword. fly through the clefts, and the dim spark shall sleep in death." elfonzo rushes forward and strikes his shield against the door, which was barricaded, to prevent any intercourse. his brave sons throng around him. the people pour along the streets, both male and female, to prevent or witness the melancholy scene. "to arms, to arms!" cried elfonzo; "here is a victory to be won, a prize to be gained that is more to me that the whole world beside." "it cannot be done tonight," said mr. valeer. "i bear the clang of death; my strength and armor shall prevail. my ambulinia shall rest in this hall until the break of another day, and if we fall, we fall together. if we die, we die clinging to our tattered rights, and our blood alone shall tell the mournful tale of a murdered daughter and a ruined father." sure enough, he kept watch all night, and was successful in defending his house and family. the bright morning gleamed upon the hills, night vanished away, the major and his associates felt somewhat ashamed that they had not been as fortunate as they expected to have been; however, they still leaned upon their arms in dispersed groups; some were walking the streets, others were talking in the major's behalf. many of the citizen suspended business, as the town presented nothing but consternation. a novelty that might end in the destruction of some worthy and respectable citizens. mr. valeer ventured in the streets, though not without being well armed. some of his friends congratulated him on the decided stand he had taken, and hoped he would settle the matter amicably with elfonzo, without any serious injury. "me," he replied, "what, me, condescend to fellowship with a coward, and a low-lived, lazy, undermining villain? no, gentlemen, this cannot be; i had rather be borne off, like the bubble upon the dark blue ocean, with ambulinia by my side, than to have him in the ascending or descending line of relationship. gentlemen," continued he, "if elfonzo is so much of a distinguished character, and is so learned in the fine arts, why do you not patronize such men? why not introduce him into your families, as a gentleman of taste and of unequaled magnanimity? why are you so very anxious that he should become a relative of mine? oh, gentlemen, i fear you yet are tainted with the curiosity of our first parents, who were beguiled by the poisonous kiss of an old ugly serpent, and who, for one apple, damned all mankind. i wish to divest myself, as far as possible, of that untutored custom. i have long since learned that the perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy, is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambition to our capacities; we will then be a happy and a virtuous people." ambulinia was sent off to prepare for a long and tedious journey. her new acquaintances had been instructed by her father how to treat her, and in what manner, and to keep the anticipated visit entirely secret. elfonzo was watching the movements of everybody; some friends had told him of the plot that was laid to carry off ambulinia. at night, he rallied some two or three of his forces, and went silently along to the stately mansion; a faint and glimmering light showed through the windows; lightly he steps to the door; there were many voices rallying fresh in fancy's eye; he tapped the shutter; it was opened instantly, and he beheld once more, seated beside several ladies, the hope of all his toils; he rushed toward her, she rose from her seat, rejoicing; he made one mighty grasp, when ambulinia exclaimed, "huzza for major elfonzo! i will defend myself and you, too, with this conquering instrument i hold in my hand; huzza, i say, i now invoke time's broad wing to shed around us some dewdrops of verdant spring." but the hour had not come for this joyous reunion; her friends struggled with elfonzo for some time, and finally succeeded in arresting her from his hands. he dared not injure them, because they were matrons whose courage needed no spur; she was snatched from the arms of elfonzo, with so much eagerness, and yet with such expressive signification, that he calmly withdrew from this lovely enterprise, with an ardent hope that he should be lulled to repose by the zephyrs which whispered peace to his soul. several long days and night passed unmolested, all seemed to have grounded their arms of rebellion, and no callidity appeared to be going on with any of the parties. other arrangements were made by ambulinia; she feigned herself to be entirely the votary of a mother's care, and she, by her graceful smiles, that manhood might claim his stern dominion in some other region, where such boisterous love was not so prevalent. this gave the parents a confidence that yielded some hours of sober joy; they believed that ambulinia would now cease to love elfonzo, and that her stolen affections would now expire with her misguided opinions. they therefore declined the idea of sending her to a distant land. but oh! they dreamed not of the rapture that dazzled the fancy of ambulinia, who would say, when alone, youth should not fly away on his rosy pinions, and leave her to grapple in the conflict with unknown admirers. no frowning age shall control the constant current of my soul, nor a tear from pity's eye shall check my sympathetic sigh. with this resolution fixed in her mind, one dark and dreary night, when the winds whistled and the tempest roared, she received intelligence that elfonzo was then waiting, and every preparation was then ready, at the residence of dr. tully, and for her to make a quick escape while the family was reposing. accordingly she gathered her books, went the wardrobe supplied with a variety of ornamental dressing, and ventured alone in the streets to make her way to elfonzo, who was near at hand, impatiently looking and watching her arrival. "what forms," said she, "are those rising before me? what is that dark spot on the clouds? i do wonder what frightful ghost that is, gleaming on the red tempest? oh, be merciful and tell me what region you are from. oh, tell me, ye strong spirits, or ye dark and fleeting clouds, that i yet have a friend." "a friend," said a low, whispering voice. "i am thy unchanging, thy aged, and thy disappointed mother. why brandish in that hand of thine a javelin of pointed steel? why suffer that lip i have kissed a thousand times to equivocate? my daughter, let these tears sink deep into thy soul, and no longer persist in that which may be your destruction and ruin. come, my dear child, retract your steps, and bear me company to your welcome home." without one retorting word, or frown from her brow, she yielded to the entreaties of her mother, and with all the mildness of her former character she went along with the silver lamp of age, to the home of candor and benevolence. her father received her cold and formal politeness--"where has ambulinia been, this blustering evening, mrs. valeer?" inquired he. "oh, she and i have been taking a solitary walk," said the mother; "all things, i presume, are now working for the best." elfonzo heard this news shortly after it happened. "what," said he, "has heaven and earth turned against me? i have been disappointed times without number. shall i despair?--must i give it over? heaven's decrees will not fade; i will write again--i will try again; and if it traverses a gory field, i pray forgiveness at the altar of justice." desolate hill, cumming, geo., 1844. unconquered and beloved ambulinia-i have only time to say to you, not to despair; thy fame shall not perish; my visions are brightening before me. the whirlwind's rage is past, and we now shall subdue our enemies without doubt. on monday morning, when your friends are at breakfast, they will not suspect your departure, or even mistrust me being in town, as it has been reported advantageously that i have left for the west. you walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find me with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights. fail not to do this--think not of the tedious relations of our wrongs-be invincible. you alone occupy all my ambition, and i alone will make you my happy spouse, with the same unimpeached veracity. i remain, forever, your devoted friend and admirer, j. l. elfonzo. the appointed day ushered in undisturbed by any clouds; nothing disturbed ambulinia's soft beauty. with serenity and loveliness she obeys the request of elfonzo. the moment the family seated themselves at the table--"excuse my absence for a short time," said she, "while i attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have been done a week ago." and away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with glittering pearls, that indicated her coming. elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his golden harp. they meet-ambulinia's countenance brightens--elfonzo leads up his winged steed. "mount," said he, "ye true-hearted, ye fearless soul--the day is ours." she sprang upon the back of the young thunder bolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch. "lend thy aid, ye strong winds," they exclaimed, "ye moon, ye sun, and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered." "hold," said elfonzo, "thy dashing steed." "ride on," said ambulinia, "the voice of thunder is behind us." and onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon arrived at rural retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with all the solemnities that usually attend such divine operations. they passed the day in thanksgiving and great rejoicing, and on that evening they visited their uncle, where many of their friends and acquaintances had gathered to congratulate them in the field of untainted bliss. the kind old gentleman met them in the yard: "well," said he, "i wish i may die, elfonzo, if you and ambulinia haven't tied a knot with your tongue that you can't untie with your teeth. but come in, come in, never mind, all is right--the world still moves on, and no one has fallen in this great battle." happy now is there lot! unmoved by misfortune, they live among the fair beauties of the south. heaven spreads their peace and fame upon the arch of the rainbow, and smiles propitiously at their triumph, through the tears of the storm. *** the californian's tale thirty-five years ago i was out prospecting on the stanislaus, tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a rich strike, and never doing it. it was a lovely reason, woodsy, balmy, delicious, and had once been populous, long years before, but now the people had vanished and the charming paradise was a solitude. they went away when the surface diggings gave out. in one place, where a busy little city with banks and newspapers and fire companies and a mayor and aldermen had been, was nothing but a wide expanse of emerald turf, with not even the faintest sign that human life had ever been present there. this was down toward tuttletown. in the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away. now and then, half an hour apart, one came across solitary log cabins of the earliest mining days, built by the first gold-miners, the predecessors of the cottage-builders. in some few cases these cabins were still occupied; and when this was so, you could depend upon it that the occupant was the very pioneer who had built the cabin; and you could depend on another thing, too--that he was there because he had once had his opportunity to go home to the states rich, and had not done it; had rather lost his wealth, and had then in his humiliation resolved to sever all communication with his home relatives and friends, and be to them thenceforth as one dead. round about california in that day were scattered a host of these living dead men-pride-smitten poor fellows, grizzled and old at forty, whose secret thoughts were made all of regrets and longings--regrets for their wasted lives, and longings to be out of the struggle and done with it all. it was a lonesome land! not a sound in all those peaceful expanses of grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad to be alive. and so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon, when i caught sight of a human creature, i felt a most grateful uplift. this person was a man about forty-five years old, and he was standing at the gate of one of those cozy little rose-clad cottages of the sort already referred to. however, this one hadn't a deserted look; it had the look of being lived in and petted and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard, which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing. i was invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home-it was the custom of the country.. it was delightful to be in such a place, after long weeks of daily and nightly familiarity with miners' cabins--with all which this implies of dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups, bacon and beans and black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war pictures from the eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls. that was all hard, cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment. i could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so, and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul in wall-paper and framed lithographs, and bright-colored tidies and lamp-mats, and windsor chairs, and varnished what-nots, with sea-shells and books and china vases on them, and the score of little unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes about a home, which one sees without knowing he sees them, yet would miss in a moment if they were taken away. the delight that was in my heart showed in my face, and the man saw it and was pleased; saw it so plainly that he answered it as if it had been spoken. "all her work," he said, caressingly; "she did it all herself-every bit," and he took the room in with a glance which was full of affectionate worship. one of those soft japanese fabrics with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a picture-frame was out of adjustment. he noticed it, and rearranged it with cautious pains, stepping back several times to gauge the effect before he got it to suit him. then he gave it a light finishing pat or two with his hand, and said: "she always does that. you can't tell just what it lacks, but it does lack something until you've done that--you can see it yourself after it's done, but that is all you know; you can't find out the law of it. it's like the finishing pats a mother gives the child's hair after she's got it combed and brushed, i reckon. i've seen her fix all these things so much that i can do them all just her way, though i don't know the law of any of them. but she knows the law. she knows the why and the how both; but i don't know the why; i only know the how." he took me into a bedroom so that i might wash my hands; such a bedroom as i had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows, carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand, with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, and on a rack more than a dozen towels--towels too clean and white for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation. so my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words: "all her work; she did it all herself--every bit. nothing here that hasn't felt the touch of her hand. now you would think-but i mustn't talk so much." by this time i was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place, where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; and i became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover for myself. i knew it perfectly, and i knew he was trying to help me by furtive indications with his eye, so i tried hard to get on the right track, being eager to gratify him. i failed several times, as i could see out of the corner of my eye without being told; but at last i knew i must be looking straight at the thing--knew it from the pleasure issuing in invisible waves from him. he broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his hands together, and cried out: "that's it! you've found it. i knew you would. it's her picture." i went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall, and did find there what i had not yet noticed--a daguerreotype-case. it contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful, as it seemed to me, that i had ever seen. the man drank the admiration from my face, and was fully satisfied. "nineteen her last birthday," he said, as he put the picture back; "and that was the day we were married. when you see her--ah, just wait till you see her!" "where is she? when will she be in?" "oh, she's away now. she's gone to see her people. they live forty or fifty miles from here. she's been gone two weeks today." "when do you expect her back?" "this is wednesday. she'll be back saturday, in the evening-about nine o'clock, likely." i felt a sharp sense of disappointment. "i'm sorry, because i'll be gone then," i said, regretfully. "gone? no--why should you go? don't go. she'll be disappointed." she would be disappointed--that beautiful creature! if she had said the words herself they could hardly have blessed me more. i was feeling a deep, strong longing to see her--a longing so supplicating, so insistent, that it made me afraid. i said to myself: "i will go straight away from this place, for my peace of mind's sake." "you see, she likes to have people come and stop with us-people who know things, and can talk--people like you. she delights in it; for she knows--oh, she knows nearly everything herself, and can talk, oh, like a bird--and the books she reads, why, you would be astonished. don't go; it's only a little while, you know, and she'll be so disappointed." i heard the words, but hardly noticed them, i was so deep in my thinkings and strugglings. he left me, but i didn't know. presently he was back, with the picture case in his hand, and he held it open before me and said: "there, now, tell her to her face you could have stayed to see her, and you wouldn't." that second glimpse broke down my good resolution. i would stay and take the risk. that night we smoked the tranquil pipe, and talked till late about various things, but mainly about her; and certainly i had had no such pleasant and restful time for many a day. the thursday followed and slipped comfortably away. toward twilight a big miner from three miles away came--one of the grizzled, stranded pioneers--and gave us warm salutation, clothed in grave and sober speech. then he said: "i only just dropped over to ask about the little madam, and when is she coming home. any news from her?" "oh, yes, a letter. would you like to hear it, tom?" "well, i should think i would, if you don't mind, henry!" henry got the letter out of his wallet, and said he would skip some of the private phrases, if we were willing; then he went on and read the bulk of it--a loving, sedate, and altogether charming and gracious piece of handiwork, with a postscript full of affectionate regards and messages to tom, and joe, and charley, and other close friends and neighbors. as the reader finished, he glanced at tom, and cried out: "oho, you're at it again! take your hands away, and let me see your eyes. you always do that when i read a letter from her. i will write and tell her." "oh no, you mustn't, henry. i'm getting old, you know, and any little disappointment makes me want to cry. i thought she'd be here herself, and now you've got only a letter." "well, now, what put that in your head? i thought everybody knew she wasn't coming till saturday." "saturday! why, come to think, i did know it. i wonder what's the matter with me lately? certainly i knew it. ain't we all getting ready for her? well, i must be going now. but i'll be on hand when she comes, old man!" late friday afternoon another gray veteran tramped over from his cabin a mile or so away, and said the boys wanted to have a little gaiety and a good time saturday night, if henry thought she wouldn't be too tired after her journey to be kept up. "tired? she tired! oh, hear the man! joe, you know she'd sit up six weeks to please any one of you!" when joe heard that there was a letter, he asked to have it read, and the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up; but he said he was such an old wreck that that would happen to him if she only just mentioned his name. "lord, we miss her so!" he said. saturday afternoon i found i was taking out my watch pretty often. henry noticed it, and said, with a startled look: "you don't think she ought to be here soon, do you?" i felt caught, and a little embarrassed; but i laughed, and said it was a habit of mine when i was in a state of expenctancy. but he didn't seem quite satisfied; and from that time on he began to show uneasiness. four times he walked me up the road to a point whence we could see a long distance; and there he would stand, shading his eyes with his hand, and looking. several times he said: "i'm getting worried, i'm getting right down worried. i know she's not due till about nine o'clock, and yet something seems to be trying to warn me that something's happened. you don't think anything has happened, do you?" i began to get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness; and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another time, i lost my patience for the moment, and spoke pretty brutally to him. it seemed to shrivel him up and cow him; and he looked so wounded and so humble after that, that i detested myself for having done the cruel and unnecessary thing. and so i was glad when charley, another veteran, arrived toward the edge of the evening, and nestled up to henry to hear the letter read, and talked over the preparations for the welcome. charley fetched out one hearty speech after another, and did his best to drive away his friend's bodings and apprehensions. "anything happened to her? henry, that's pure nonsense. there isn't anything going to happen to her; just make your mind easy as to that. what did the letter say? said she was well, didn't it? and said she'd be here by nine o'clock, didn't it? did you ever know her to fail of her word? why, you know you never did. well, then, don't you fret; she'll be here, and that's absolutely certain, and as sure as you are born. come, now, let's get to decorating-not much time left." pretty soon tom and joe arrived, and then all hands set about adoring the house with flowers. toward nine the three miners said that as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up, for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for a good, old-fashioned break-down. a fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet-these were the instruments. the trio took their places side by side, and began to play some rattling dance-music, and beat time with their big boots. it was getting very close to nine. henry was standing in the door with his eyes directed up the road, his body swaying to the torture of his mental distress. he had been made to drink his wife's health and safety several times, and now tom shouted: "all hands stand by! one more drink, and she's here!" joe brought the glasses on a waiter, and served the party. i reached for one of the two remaining glasses, but joe growled under his breath: "drop that! take the other." which i did. henry was served last. he had hardly swallowed his drink when the clock began to strike. he listened till it finished, his face growing pale and paler; then he said: "boys, i'm sick with fear. help me--i want to lie down!" they helped him to the sofa. he began to nestle and drowse, but presently spoke like one talking in his sleep, and said: "did i hear horses' feet? have they come?" one of the veterans answered, close to his ear: "it was jimmy parish come to say the party got delayed, but they're right up the road a piece, and coming along. her horse is lame, but she'll be here in half an hour." "oh, i'm so thankful nothing has happened!" he was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth. in a moment those handy men had his clothes off, and had tucked him into his bed in the chamber where i had washed my hands. they closed the door and came back. then they seemed preparing to leave; but i said: "please don't go, gentlemen. she won't know me; i am a stranger." they glanced at each other. then joe said: "she? poor thing, she's been dead nineteen years!" "dead?" "that or worse. she went to see her folks half a year after she was married, and on her way back, on a saturday evening, the indians captured her within five miles of this place, and she's never been heard of since." "and he lost his mind in consequence?" "never has been sane an hour since. but he only gets bad when that time of year comes round. then we begin to drop in here, three days before she's due, to encourage him up, and ask if he's heard from her, and saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers, and get everything ready for a dance. we've done it every year for nineteen years. the first saturday there was twenty-seven of us, without counting the girls; there's only three of us now, and the girls are gone. we drug him to sleep, or he would go wild; then he's all right for another year--thinks she's with him till the last three or four days come round; then he begins to look for her, and gets out his poor old letter, and we come and ask him to read it to us. lord, she was a darling!" *** a helpless situation once or twice a year i get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance, yet i cannot get used to that letter--it always astonishes me. it affects me as the locomotive always affects me: i saw to myself, "i have seen you a thousand times, you always look the same way, yet you are always a wonder, and you are always impossible; to contrive you is clearly beyond human genius--you can't exist, you don't exist, yet here you are!" i have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one. i yearn to print it, and where is the harm? the writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt, and if i conceal her name and address--her this-world address-i am sure her shade will not mind. and with it i wish to print the answer which i wrote at the time but probably did not send. if it went--which is not likely--it went in the form of a copy, for i find the original still here, pigeonholed with the said letter. to that kind of letters we all write answers which we do not send, fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt; i have done it many a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort. the letter x------, california, june 3, 1879. mr. s. l. clemens, hartford, conn.: dear sir,--you will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed to write and ask a favor of you. let your memory go back to your days in the humboldt mines--'62-'63. you will remember, you and clagett and oliver and the old blacksmith tillou lived in a lean-to which was half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp-strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the desert to where the last claim was, at the divide. the lean-to you lived in was the one with a canvas roof that the cow fell down through one night, as told about by you in roughing it--my uncle simmons remembers it very well. he lived in the principal cabin, half-way up the divide, along with dixon and parker and smith. it had two rooms, one for kitchen and the other for bunks, and was the only one that had. you and your party were there on the great night, the time they had dried-apple-pie, uncle simmons often speaks of it. it seems curious that dried-apple-pie should have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far humboldt was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim the regular bill of fare was. sixteen years ago--it is a long time. i was a little girl then, only fourteen. i never saw you, i lived in washoe. but uncle simmons ran across you every now and then, all during those weeks that you and party were there working your claim which was like the rest. the camp played out long and long ago, there wasn't silver enough in it to make a button. you never saw my husband, but he was there after you left, and lived in that very lean-to, a bachelor then but married to me now. he often wishes there had been a photographer there in those days, he would have taken the lean-to. he got hurt in the old hal clayton claim that was abandoned like the others, putting in a blast and not climbing out quick enough, though he scrambled the best he could. it landed him clear down on the train and hit a piute. for weeks they thought he would not get over it but he did, and is all right, now. has been ever since. this is a long introduction but it is the only way i can make myself known. the favor i ask i feel assured your generous heart will grant: give me some advice about a book i have written. i do not claim anything for it only it is mostly true and as interesting as most of the books of the times. i am unknown in the literary world and you know what that means unless one has some one of influence (like yourself) to help you by speaking a good word for you. i would like to place the book on royalty basis plan with any one you would suggest. this is a secret from my husband and family. i intend it as a surprise in case i get it published. feeling you will take an interest in this and if possible write me a letter to some publisher, or, better still, if you could see them for me and then let me hear. i appeal to you to grant me this favor. with deepest gratitude i think you for your attention. one knows, without inquiring, that the twin of that embarrassing letter is forever and ever flying in this and that and the other direction across the continent in the mails, daily, nightly, hourly, unceasingly, unrestingly. it goes to every well-known merchant, and railway official, and manufacturer, and capitalist, and mayor, and congressman, and governor, and editor, and publisher, and author, and broker, and banker--in a word, to every person who is supposed to have "influence." it always follows the one pattern: "you do not know me, but you once knew a relative of mine," etc., etc. we should all like to help the applicants, we should all be glad to do it, we should all like to return the sort of answer that is desired, but--well, there is not a thing we can do that would be a help, for not in any instance does that latter ever come from anyone who can be helped. the struggler whom you could help does his own helping; it would not occur to him to apply to you, stranger. he has talent and knows it, and he goes into his fight eagerly and with energy and determination--all alone, preferring to be alone. that pathetic letter which comes to you from the incapable, the unhelpable--how do you who are familiar with it answer it? what do you find to say? you do not want to inflict a wound; you hunt ways to avoid that. what do you find? how do you get out of your hard place with a contend conscience? do you try to explain? the old reply of mine to such a letter shows that i tried that once. was i satisfied with the result? possibly; and possibly not; probably not; almost certainly not. i have long ago forgotten all about it. but, anyway, i append my effort: the reply i know mr. h., and i will go to him, dear madam, if upon reflection you find you still desire it. there will be a conversation. i know the form it will take. it will be like this: mr. h. how do her books strike you? mr. clemens. i am not acquainted with them. h. who has been her publisher? c. i don't know. h. she has one, i suppose? c. i--i think not. h. ah. you think this is her first book? c. yes--i suppose so. i think so. h. what is it about? what is the character of it? c. i believe i do not know. h. have you seen it? c. well--no, i haven't. h. ah-h. how long have you known her? c. i don't know her. h. don't know her? c. no. h. ah-h. how did you come to be interested in her book, then? c. well, she--she wrote and asked me to find a publisher for her, and mentioned you. h. why should she apply to you instead of me? c. she wished me to use my influence. h. dear me, what has influence to do with such a matter? c. well, i think she thought you would be more likely to examine her book if you were influenced. h. why, what we are here for is to examine books--anybody's book that comes along. it's our business. why should we turn away a book unexamined because it's a stranger's? it would be foolish. no publisher does it. on what ground did she request your influence, since you do not know her? she must have thought you knew her literature and could speak for it. is that it? c. no; she knew i didn't. h. well, what then? she had a reason of some sort for believing you competent to recommend her literature, and also under obligations to do it? c. yes, i--i knew her uncle. h. knew her uncle? c. yes. h. upon my word! so, you knew her uncle; her uncle knows her literature; he endorses it to you; the chain is complete, nothing further needed; you are satisfied, and therefore-c. no, that isn't all, there are other ties. i know the cabin her uncle lived in, in the mines; i knew his partners, too; also i came near knowing her husband before she married him, and i did know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an indian in the back with almost fatal consequences. h. to him, or to the indian? c. she didn't say which it was. h. (with a sigh). it certainly beats the band! you don't know her, you don't know her literature, you don't know who got hurt when the blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build an estimate of her book upon, so far as i-c. i knew her uncle. you are forgetting her uncle. h. oh, what use is he? did you know him long? how long was it? c. well, i don't know that i really knew him, but i must have met him, anyway. i think it was that way; you can't tell about these things, you know, except when they are recent. h. recent? when was all this? c. sixteen years ago. h. what a basis to judge a book upon! as first you said you knew him, and not you don't know whether you did or not. c. oh yes, i know him; anyway, i think i thought i did; i'm perfectly certain of it. h. what makes you think you thought you knew him? c. why, she says i did, herself. h. she says so! c. yes, she does, and i did know him, too, though i don't remember it now. h. come--how can you know it when you don't remember it. c. _i_ don't know. that is, i don't know the process, but i do know lots of things that i don't remember, and remember lots of things that i don't know. it's so with every educated person. h. (after a pause). is your time valuable? c. no--well, not very. h. mine is. so i came away then, because he was looking tired. overwork, i reckon; i never do that; i have seen the evil effects of it. my mother was always afraid i work overwork myself, but i never did. dear madam, you see how it would happen if i went there. he would ask me those questions, and i would try to answer them to suit him, and he would hunt me here and there and yonder and get me embarrassed more and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on account of overwork, and there it would end and nothing done. i wish i could be useful to you, but, you see, they do not care for uncles or any of those things; it doesn't move them, it doesn't have the least effect, they don't care for anything but the literature itself, and they as good as despise influence. but they do care for books, and are eager to get them and examine them, no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen. if you will send yours to a publisher--any publisher--he will certainly examine it, i can assure you of that. *** a telephonic conversation consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply siting by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest curiosities of modern life. yesterday i was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the room. i notice that one can always write best when somebody is talking through a telephone close by. well, the thing began in this way. a member of our household came in and asked me to have our house put into communication with mr. bagley's downtown. i have observed, in many cities, that the sex always shrink from calling up the central office themselves. i don't know why, but they do. so i touched the bell, and this talk ensued: central office. (gruffy.) hello! i. is it the central office? c. o. of course it is. what do you want? i. will you switch me on to the bagleys, please? c. o. all right. just keep your ear to the telephone. then i heard k-look, k-look, k'look--klook-klook-klook-look-look! then a horrible "gritting" of teeth, and finally a piping female voice: y-e-s? (rising inflection.) did you wish to speak to me? without answering, i handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down. then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world-a conversation with only one end of it. you hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer. you hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return. you have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. you can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says. well, i heard the following remarkable series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted-for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone: yes? why, how did that happen? pause. what did you say? pause. oh no, i don't think it was. pause. no! oh no, i didn't mean that. i meant, put it in while it is still boiling--or just before it comes to a boil. pause. what? pause. i turned it over with a backstitch on the selvage edge. pause. yes, i like that way, too; but i think it's better to baste it on with valenciennes or bombazine, or something of that sort. it gives it such an air--and attracts so much noise. pause. it's forty-ninth deuteronomy, sixty-forth to ninety-seventh inclusive. i think we ought all to read it often. pause. perhaps so; i generally use a hair pin. pause. what did you say? (aside.) children, do be quiet! pause oh! b flat! dear me, i thought you said it was the cat! pause. since when? pause. why, _i_ never heard of it. pause. you astound me! it seems utterly impossible! pause. who did? pause. good-ness gracious! pause. well, what is this world coming to? was it right in church? pause. and was her mother there? pause. why, mrs. bagley, i should have died of humiliation! what did they do? long pause. i can't be perfectly sure, because i haven't the notes by me; but i think it goes something like this: te-rolly-loll-loll, loll lolly-loll-loll, o tolly-loll-loll-lee-ly-li-i-do! and then repeat, you know. pause. yes, i think it is very sweet--and very solemn and impressive, if you get the andantino and the pianissimo right. pause. oh, gum-drops, gum-drops! but i never allow them to eat striped candy. and of course they can't, till they get their teeth, anyway. pause. what? pause. oh, not in the least--go right on. he's here writing--it doesn't bother him. pause. very well, i'll come if i can. (aside.) dear me, how it does tire a person's arm to hold this thing up so long! i wish she'd-pause. oh no, not at all; i like to talk--but i'm afraid i'm keeping you from your affairs. pause. visitors? pause. no, we never use butter on them. pause. yes, that is a very good way; but all the cook-books say they are very unhealthy when they are out of season. and he doesn't like them, anyway--especially canned. pause. oh, i think that is too high for them; we have never paid over fifty cents a bunch. pause. must you go? well, good-by. pause. yes, i think so. good-by. pause. four o'clock, then--i'll be ready. good-by. pause. thank you ever so much. good-by. pause. oh, not at all!--just as fresh--which? oh, i'm glad to hear you say that. good-by. (hangs up the telephone and says, "oh, it does tire a person's arm so!") a man delivers a single brutal "good-by," and that is the end of it. not so with the gentle sex--i say it in their praise; they cannot abide abruptness. *** edward mills and george benton: a tale these two were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins, or something of that sort. while still babies they became orphans, and were adopted by the brants, a childless couple, who quickly grew very fond of them. the brants were always saying: "be pure, honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success in life is assured." the children heard this repeated some thousands of times before they understood it; they could repeat it themselves long before they could say the lord's prayer; it was painted over the nursery door, and was about the first thing they learned to read. it was destined to be the unswerving rule of edward mills's life. sometimes the brants changed the wording a little, and said: "be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never lack friends." baby mills was a comfort to everybody about him. when he wanted candy and could not have it, he listened to reason, and contented himself without it. when baby benton wanted candy, he cried for it until he got it. baby mills took care of his toys; baby benton always destroyed his in a very brief time, and then made himself to insistently disagreeable that, in order to have peace in the house, little edward was persuaded to yield up his play-things to him. when the children were a little older, georgie became a heavy expense in one respect: he took no care of his clothes; consequently, he shone frequently in new ones, with was not the case with eddie. the boys grew apace. eddie was an increasing comfort, georgie an increasing solicitude. it was always sufficient to say, in answer to eddie's petitions, "i would rather you would not do it"-meaning swimming, skating, picnicking, berrying, circusing, and all sorts of things which boys delight in. but no answer was sufficient for georgie; he had to be humored in his desires, or he would carry them with a high hand. naturally, no boy got more swimming skating, berrying, and so forth than he; no body ever had a better time. the good brants did not allow the boys to play out after nine in summer evenings; they were sent to bed at that hour; eddie honorably remained, but georgie usually slipped out of the window toward ten, and enjoyed himself until midnight. it seemed impossible to break georgie of this bad habit, but the brants managed it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles, to stay in. the good brants gave all their time and attention to vain endeavors to regulate georgie; they said, with grateful tears in their eyes, that eddie needed no efforts of theirs, he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so perfect. by and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprenticed to a trade: edward went voluntarily; george was coaxed and bribed. edward worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the good brants; they praised him, so did his master; but george ran away, and it cost mr. brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get him back. by and by he ran away again--more money and more trouble. he ran away a third time--and stole a few things to carry with him. trouble and expense for mr. brant once more; and, besides, it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master to let the youth go unprosecuted for the theft. edward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner in his master's business. george did not improve; he kept the loving hearts of his aged benefactors full of trouble, and their hands full of inventive activities to protect him from ruin. edward, as a boy, had interested himself in sunday-schools, debating societies, penny missionary affairs, anti-tobacco organizations, anti-profanity associations, and all such things; as a man, he was a quiet but steady and reliable helper in the church, the temperance societies, and in all movements looking to the aiding and uplifting of men. this excited no remark, attracted no attention--for it was his "natural bent." finally, the old people died. the will testified their loving pride in edward, and left their little property to george-because he "needed it"; whereas, "owing to a bountiful providence," such was not the case with edward. the property was left to george conditionally: he must buy out edward's partner with it; else it must go to a benevolent organization called the prisoner's friend society. the old people left a letter, in which they begged their dear son edward to take their place and watch over george, and help and shield him as they had done. edward dutifully acquiesced, and george became his partner in the business. he was not a valuable partner: he had been meddling with drink before; he soon developed into a constant tippler now, and his flesh and eyes showed the fact unpleasantly. edward had been courting a sweet and kindly spirited girl for some time. they loved each other dearly, and--but about this period george began to haunt her tearfully and imploringly, and at last she went crying to edward, and said her high and holy duty was plain before her-she must not let her own selfish desires interfere with it: she must marry "poor george" and "reform him." it would break her heart, she knew it would, and so on; but duty was duty. so she married george, and edward's heart came very near breaking, as well as her own. however, edward recovered, and married another girl-a very excellent one she was, too. children came to both families. mary did her honest best to reform her husband, but the contract was too large. george went on drinking, and by and by he fell to misusing her and the little ones sadly. a great many good people strove with george--they were always at it, in fact--but he calmly took such efforts as his due and their duty, and did not mend his ways. he added a vice, presently--that of secret gambling. he got deeply in debt; he borrowed money on the firm's credit, as quietly as he could, and carried this system so far and so successfully that one morning the sheriff took possession of the establishment, and the two cousins found themselves penniless. times were hard, now, and they grew worse. edward moved his family into a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work. he begged for it, but in was really not to be had. he was astonished to see how soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had had in him faded out and disappeared. still, he must get work; so he swallowed his chagrin, and toiled on in search of it. at last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod, and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that nobody knew him or cared anything about him. he was not able to keep up his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged, and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under the disgrace of suspension. but the faster edward died out of public knowledge and interest, the faster george rose in them. he was found lying, ragged and drunk, in the gutter one morning. a member of the ladies' temperance refuge fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him, kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him. an account of it was published. general attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great many people came forward and helped him toward reform with their countenance and encouragement. he did not drink a drop for two months, and meantime was the pet of the good. then he fell--in the gutter; and there was general sorrow and lamentation. but the noble sisterhood rescued him again. they cleaned him up, they fed him, they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got him his situation again. an account of this, also, was published, and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl. a grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: "we are not about to call for signers; and i think there is a spectacle in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view with dry eyes." there was an eloquent pause, and then george benton, escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the ladies of the refuge, stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge. the air was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy. everybody wrung the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero. an account of it was published. george benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were found for him. finally, he was taken around the country lecturing, as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense amount of good. he was so popular at home, and so trusted--during his sober intervals-that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get a large sum of money at the bank. a mighty pressure was brought to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it was partially successful--he was "sent up" for only two years. when, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent were crowned with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary with a pardon in his pocket, the prisoner's friend society met him at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice, encouragement and help. edward mills had once applied to the prisoner's friend society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question, "have you been a prisoner?" made brief work of his case. while all these things were going on, edward mills had been quietly making head against adversity. he was still poor, but was in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected and trusted cashier of a bank. george benton never came near him, and was never heard to inquire about him. george got to indulging in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him, but nothing definite. one winter's night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank, and found edward mills there alone. they commanded him to reveal the "combination," so that they could get into the safe. he refused. they threatened his life. he said his employers trusted him, and he could not be traitor to that trust. he could die, if he must, but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up the "combination." the burglars killed him. the detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved to be george benton. a wide sympathy was felt for the widow and orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family, now bereft of support. the result was a mass of solid cash amounting to upward of five hundred dollars--an average of nearly three-eights of a cent for each bank in the union. the cashier's own bank testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but humiliatingly failed in it) that the peerless servant's accounts were not square, and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon to escape detection and punishment. george benton was arraigned for trial. then everybody seemed to forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor george. everything that money and influence could do was done to save him, but it all failed; he was sentenced to death. straightway the governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon; they were brought by tearful young girls; by sorrowful old maids; by deputations of pathetic widows; by shoals of impressive orphans. but no, the governor--for once--would not yield. now george benton experienced religion. the glad news flew all around. from that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing, and thanksgiving, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption, except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments. this sort of thing continued up to the very gallows, and george benton went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce. his grave had fresh flowers on it every day, for a while, and the head-stone bore these words, under a hand pointing aloft: "he has fought the good fight." the brave cashier's head-stone has this inscription: "be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never--" nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was so given. the cashier's family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said; but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded, have collected forty-two thousand dollars--and built a memorial church with it. *** the five boons of life chapter i in the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said: "here are gifts. take one, leave the others. and be wary, chose wisely; oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable." the gifts were five: fame, love, riches, pleasure, death. the youth said, eagerly: "there is no need to consider"; and he chose pleasure. he went out into the world and sought out the pleasures that youth delights in. but each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing, vain and empty; and each, departing, mocked him. in the end he said: "these years i have wasted. if i could but choose again, i would choose wisely. chapter ii the fairy appeared, and said: "four of the gifts remain. choose once more; and oh, remember-time is flying, and only one of them is precious." the man considered long, then chose love; and did not mark the tears that rose in the fairy's eyes. after many, many years the man sat by a coffin, in an empty home. and he communed with himself, saying: "one by one they have gone away and left me; and now she lies here, the dearest and the last. desolation after desolation has swept over me; for each hour of happiness the treacherous trader, love, as sold me i have paid a thousand hours of grief. out of my heart of hearts i curse him." chapter iii "choose again." it was the fairy speaking. "the years have taught you wisdom--surely it must be so. three gifts remain. only one of them has any worth--remember it, and choose warily." the man reflected long, then chose fame; and the fairy, sighing, went her way. years went by and she came again, and stood behind the man where he sat solitary in the fading day, thinking. and she knew his thought: "my name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it seemed well with me for a little while. how little a while it was! then came envy; then detraction; then calumny; then hate; then persecution. then derision, which is the beginning of the end. and last of all came pity, which is the funeral of fame. oh, the bitterness and misery of renown! target for mud in its prime, for contempt and compassion in its decay." chapter iv "chose yet again." it was the fairy's voice. "two gifts remain. and do not despair. in the beginning there was but one that was precious, and it is still here." "wealth--which is power! how blind i was!" said the man. "now, at last, life will be worth the living. i will spend, squander, dazzle. these mockers and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me, and i will feed my hungry heart with their envy. i will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of the spirit, all contentments of the body that man holds dear. i will buy, buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every pinchbeck grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth. i have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass; i was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so." three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling: "curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies! and miscalled, every one. they are not gifts, but merely lendings. pleasure, love, fame, riches: they are but temporary disguises for lasting realities--pain, grief, shame, poverty. the fairy said true; in all her store there was but one gift which was precious, only one that was not valueless. how poor and cheap and mean i know those others now to be, compared with that inestimable one, that dear and sweet and kindly one, that steeps in dreamless and enduring sleep the pains that persecute the body, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind and heart. bring it! i am weary, i would rest." chapter v the fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but death was wanting. she said: "i gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. it was ignorant, but trusted me, asking me to choose for it. you did not ask me to choose." "oh, miserable me! what is left for me?" "what not even you have deserved: the wanton insult of old age." *** the first writing-machines from my unpublished autobiography some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet, faded by age, containing the following letter over the signature of mark twain: "hartford, march 10, 1875. "please do not use my name in any way. please do not even divulge that fact that i own a machine. i have entirely stopped using the typewriter, for the reason that i never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that i would not only describe the machine, but state what progress i had made in the use of it, etc., etc. i don't like to write letters, and so i don't want people to know i own this curiosity-breeding little joker." a note was sent to mr. clemens asking him if the letter was genuine and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that. mr. clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter from his unpublished autobiography: 1904. villa quarto, florence, january. dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me, but it goes very well, and is going to save time and "language"-the kind of language that soothes vexation. i have dictated to a typewriter before--but not autobiography. between that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap-more than thirty years! it is sort of lifetime. in that wide interval much has happened--to the type-machine as well as to the rest of us. at the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity. the person who owned one was a curiosity, too. but now it is the other way about: the person who doesn't own one is a curiosity. i saw a type-machine for the first time in--what year? i suppose it was 1873--because nasby was with me at the time, and it was in boston. we must have been lecturing, or we could not have been in boston, i take it. i quitted the platform that season. but never mind about that, it is no matter. nasby and i saw the machine through a window, and went in to look at it. the salesman explained it to us, showed us samples of its work, and said it could do fifty-seven words a minute--a statement which we frankly confessed that we did not believe. so he put his type-girl to work, and we timed her by the watch. she actually did the fifty-seven in sixty seconds. we were partly convinced, but said it probably couldn't happen again. but it did. we timed the girl over and over again--with the same result always: she won out. she did her work on narrow slips of paper, and we pocketed them as fast as she turned them out, to show as curiosities. the price of the machine was one hundred and twenty-five dollars. i bought one, and we went away very much excited. at the hotel we got out our slips and were a little disappointed to find that they contained the same words. the girl had economized time and labor by using a formula which she knew by heart. however, we argued--safely enough--that the first type-girl must naturally take rank with the first billiard-player: neither of them could be expected to get out of the game any more than a third or a half of what was in it. if the machine survived--if it survived-experts would come to the front, by and by, who would double the girl's output without a doubt. they would do one hundred words a minute-my talking speed on the platform. that score has long ago been beaten. at home i played with the toy, repeated and repeating and repeated "the boy stood on the burning deck," until i could turn that boy's adventure out at the rate of twelve words a minute; then i resumed the pen, for business, and only worked the machine to astonish inquiring visitors. they carried off many reams of the boy and his burning deck. by and by i hired a young woman, and did my first dictating (letters, merely), and my last until now. the machine did not do both capitals and lower case (as now), but only capitals. gothic capitals they were, and sufficiently ugly. i remember the first letter i dictated. it was to edward bok, who was a boy then. i was not acquainted with him at that time. his present enterprising spirit is not new-he had it in that early day. he was accumulating autographs, and was not content with mere signatures, he wanted a whole autograph letter. i furnished it--in type-written capitals, signature and all. it was long; it was a sermon; it contained advice; also reproaches. i said writing was my trade, my bread-and-butter; i said it was not fair to ask a man to give away samples of his trade; would he ask the blacksmith for a horseshoe? would he ask the doctor for a corpse? now i come to an important matter--as i regard it. in the year '74 the young woman copied a considerable part of a book of mine on the machine. in a previous chapter of this autobiography i have claimed that i was the first person in the world that ever had a telephone in the house for practical purposes; i will now claim-until dispossess--that i was the first person in the world to apply the type-machine to literature. that book must have been the adventures of tom sawyer. i wrote the first half of it in '72, the rest of it in '74. my machinist type-copied a book for me in '74, so i concluded it was that one. that early machine was full of caprices, full of defects--devilish ones. it had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. after a year or two i found that it was degrading my character, so i thought i would give it to howells. he was reluctant, for he was suspicious of novelties and unfriendly toward them, and he remains so to this day. but i persuaded him. he had great confidence in me, and i got him to believe things about the machine that i did not believe myself. he took it home to boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered. he kept it six months, and then returned it to me. i gave it away twice after that, but it wouldn't stay; it came back. then i gave it to our coachman, patrick mcaleer, who was very grateful, because he did not know the animal, and thought i was trying to make him wiser and better. as soon as he got wiser and better he traded it to a heretic for a side-saddle which he could not use, and there my knowledge of its history ends. *** italian without a master it is almost a fortnight now that i am domiciled in a medieval villa in the country, a mile or two from florence. i cannot speak the language; i am too old not to learn how, also too busy when i am busy, and too indolent when i am not; wherefore some will imagine that i am having a dull time of it. but it is not so. the "help" are all natives; they talk italian to me, i answer in english; i do not understand them, they do not understand me, consequently no harm is done, and everybody is satisfied. in order to be just and fair, i throw in an italian word when i have one, and this has a good influence. i get the word out of the morning paper. i have to use it while it is fresh, for i find that italian words do not keep in this climate. they fade toward night, and next morning they are gone. but it is no matter; i get a new one out of the paper before breakfast, and thrill the domestics with it while it lasts. i have no dictionary, and i do not want one; i can select words by the sound, or by orthographic aspect. many of them have french or german or english look, and these are the ones i enslave for the day's service. that is, as a rule. not always. if i find a learnable phrase that has an imposing look and warbles musically along i do not care to know the meaning of it; i pay it out to the first applicant, knowing that if i pronounce it carefully he will understand it, and that's enough. yesterday's word was avanti. it sounds shakespearian, and probably means avaunt and quit my sight. today i have a whole phrase: sono dispiacentissimo. i do not know what it means, but it seems to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction. although as a rule my words and phrases are good for one day and train only, i have several that stay by me all the time, for some unknown reason, and these come very handy when i get into a long conversation and need things to fire up with in monotonous stretches. one of the best ones is dov' `e il gatto. it nearly always produces a pleasant surprise, therefore i save it up for places where i want to express applause or admiration. the fourth word has a french sound, and i think the phrase means "that takes the cake." during my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy and flowery place i was without news of the outside world, and was well content without it. it has been four weeks since i had seen a newspaper, and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace, and to saturate it with a feeling verging upon actual delight. then came a change that was to be expected: the appetite for news began to rise again, after this invigorating rest. i had to feed it, but i was not willing to let it make me its helpless slave again; i determined to put it on a diet, and a strict and limited one. so i examined an italian paper, with the idea of feeding it on that, and on that exclusively. on that exclusively, and without help of a dictionary. in this way i should surely be well protected against overloading and indigestion. a glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement. there were no scare-heads. that was good--supremely good. but there were headings--one-liners and two-liners--and that was good too; for without these, one must do as one does with a german paper--pay our precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover, in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you. the headline is a valuable thing. necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them, as a rule. now the trouble with an american paper is that it has no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage, and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit. by habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to take no vital interest in it--indeed, you almost get tired of it. as a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only-people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles, ten thousand miles from where you are. why, when you come to think of it, who cares what becomes of those people? i would not give the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those others. and, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole sodom and gomorrah of outlanders gone rotten. give me the home product every time. very well. i saw at a glance that the florentine paper would suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local; they were adventures of one's very neighbors, one might almost say one's friends. in the matter of world news there was not too much, but just about enough. i subscribed. i have had no occasion to regret it. every morning i get all the news i need for the day; sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text. i have never had to call for a dictionary yet. i read the paper with ease. often i do not quite understand, often some of the details escape me, but no matter, i get the idea. i will cut out a passage or two, then you see how limpid the language is: il ritorno dei beati d'italia elargizione del re all' ospedale italiano the first line means that the italian sovereigns are coming back-they have been to england. the second line seems to mean that they enlarged the king at the italian hospital. with a banquet, i suppose. an english banquet has that effect. further: il ritorno dei sovrani a roma roma, 24, ore 22,50.--i sovrani e le principessine reali si attendono a roma domani alle ore 15,51. return of the sovereigns to rome, you see. date of the telegram, rome, november 24, ten minutes before twenty-three o'clock. the telegram seems to say, "the sovereigns and the royal children expect themselves at rome tomorrow at fifty-one minutes after fifteen o'clock." i do not know about italian time, but i judge it begins at midnight and runs through the twenty-four hours without breaking bulk. in the following ad, the theaters open at half-past twenty. if these are not matinees, 20.30 must mean 8.30 p.m., by my reckoning. spettacolli del di 25 teatro della pergola--(ore 20,30)--opera. boh`eme. teatro alfieri.--compagnia drammatica drago--(ore 20,30)--la legge. alhambra--(ore 20,30)--spettacolo variato. sala edison-grandiosoo spettacolo cinematografico: quo vadis?--inaugurazione della chiesa russa--in coda al direttissimo--vedute di firenze con gran movimeno--america: transporto tronchi giganteschi--i ladri in casa del diavolo--scene comiche. cinematografo--via brunelleschi n. 4.--programma straordinario, don chisciotte--prezzi populari. the whole of that is intelligible to me--and sane and rational, too-except the remark about the inauguration of a russian chinese. that one oversizes my hand. give me five cards. this is a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes, disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world--thanks be! today i find only a single importation of the off-color sort: una principessa che fugge con un cocchiere parigi, 24.--il matin ha da berlino che la principessa schovenbare-waldenbure scomparve il 9 novembre. sarebbe partita col suo cocchiere. la principassa ha 27 anni. twenty-seven years old, and scomparve--scampered--on the 9th november. you see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman. i hope sarebbe has not made a mistake, but i am afraid the chances are that she has. sono dispiacentissimo. there are several fires: also a couple of accidents. this is one of them: grave disgrazia sul ponte vecchio stammattina, circe le 7,30, mentre giuseppe sciatti, di anni 55, di casellina e torri, passava dal ponte vecchio, stando seduto sopra un barroccio carico di verdura, perse l' equilibrio e cadde al suolo, rimanendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo. lo sciatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni cittadini, che, per mezzo della pubblica vettura n. 365, lo transporto a san giovanni di dio. ivi il medico di guardia gli riscontro la frattura della gamba destra e alcune lievi escoriazioni giudicandolo guaribile in 50 giorni salvo complicazioni. what it seems to say is this: "serious disgrace on the old old bridge. this morning about 7.30, mr. joseph sciatti, aged 55, of casellina and torri, while standing up in a sitting posture on top of a carico barrow of vedure (foliage? hay? vegetables?), lost his equilibrium and fell on himself, arriving with his left leg under one of the wheels of the vehicle. "said sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens, who by means of public cab no. 365 transported to st. john of god." paragraph no. 3 is a little obscure, but i think it says that the medico set the broken left leg--right enough, since there was nothing the matter with the other one--and that several are encouraged to hope that fifty days well fetch him around in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if no complications intervene. i am sure i hope so myself. there is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a language which you are not acquainted with--the charm that always goes with the mysterious and the uncertain. you can never be absolutely sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances; you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt. a dictionary would spoil it. sometimes a single word of doubtful purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar and commonplace but for that benefaction. would you be wise to draw a dictionary on that gracious word? would you be properly grateful? after a couple of days' rest i now come back to my subject and seek a case in point. i find it without trouble, in the morning paper; a cablegram from chicago and indiana by way of paris. all the words save one are guessable by a person ignorant of italian: revolverate in teatro parigi, 27.--la patrie ha da chicago: il guardiano del teatro dell'opera di walace (indiana), avendo voluto espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety, questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella. il guardiano ripose. nacque una scarica generale. grande panico tra gli spettatori. nessun ferito. translation.--"revolveration in theater. paris, 27th. la patrie has from chicago: the cop of the theater of the opera of wallace, indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke in spite of the prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends, tir'o (fr. tir'e, anglice pulled) manifold revolver-shots; great panic among the spectators. nobody hurt." it is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera of wallace, indiana, excited not a person in europe but me, and so came near to not being worth cabling to florence by way of france. but it does excite me. it excites me because i cannot make out, for sure, what it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer. i was gliding along smoothly and without obstruction or accident, until i came to that word "spalleggiato," then the bottom fell out. you notice what a rich gloom, what a somber and pervading mystery, that word sheds all over the whole wallachian tragedy. that is the charm of the thing, that is the delight of it. this is where you begin, this is where you revel. you can guess and guess, and have all the fun you like; you need not be afraid there will be an end to it; none is possible, for no amount of guessing will ever furnish you a meaning for that word that you can be sure is the right one. all the other words give you hints, by their form, their sound, or their spelling--this one doesn't, this one throws out no hints, this one keeps its secret. if there is even the slightest slight shadow of a hint anywhere, it lies in the very meagerly suggestive fact that "spalleggiato" carries our word "egg" in its stomach. well, make the most out of it, and then where are you at? you conjecture that the spectator which was smoking in spite of the prohibition and become reprohibited by the guardians, was "egged on" by his friends, and that was owing to that evil influence that he initiated the revolveration in theater that has galloped under the sea and come crashing through the european press without exciting anybody but me. but are you sure, are you dead sure, that that was the way of it? no. then the uncertainty remains, the mystery abides, and with it the charm. guess again. if i had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort i would study it, and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings, but there is no such work on the market. the existing phrase-books are inadequate. they are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say. *** italian with grammar i found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but i presently found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times. it is because, if he does not know the were's and the was's and the maybe's and the has-beens's apart, confusions and uncertainties can arise. he can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last. even more previously, sometimes. examination and inquiry showed me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the verb that mixed the hands, it was the verb that lacked stability, it was the verb that had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the verb that was always dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble. further examination, further inquiry, further reflection, confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the fact that the verb was the storm-center. this discovery made plain the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper was daily endeavoring to convey to me: i must catch a verb and tame it. i must find out its ways, i must spot its eccentricities, i must penetrate its disguises, i must intelligently foresee and forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try upon a stranger in given circumstances, i must get in on its main shifts and head them off, i must learn its game and play the limit. i had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred in families, and that the members of each family have certain features or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it from the other families--the other kin, the cousins and what not. i had noticed that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair, so to speak, but the tail--the termination--and that these tails are quite definitely differentiated; insomuch that an expert can tell a pluperfect from a subjunctive by its tail as easily and as certainly as a cowboy can tell a cow from a horse by the like process, the result of observation and culture. i should explain that i am speaking of legitimate verbs, those verbs which in the slang of the grammar are called regular. there are other--i am not meaning to conceal this; others called irregulars, born out of wedlock, of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tails included. but of these pathetic outcasts i have nothing to say. i do not approve of them, i do not encourage them; i am prudishly delicate and sensitive, and i do not allow them to be used in my presence. but, as i have said, i decided to catch one of the others and break it into harness. one is enough. once familiar with its assortment of tails, you are immune; after that, no regular verb can conceal its specialty from you and make you think it is working the past or the future or the conditional or the unconditional when it is engaged in some other line of business--its tail will give it away. i found out all these things by myself, without a teacher. i selected the verb amare, to love. not for any personal reason, for i am indifferent about verbs; i care no more for one verb than for another, and have little or no respect for any of them; but in foreign languages you always begin with that one. why, i don't know. it is merely habit, i suppose; the first teacher chose it, adam was satisfied, and there hasn't been a successor since with originality enough to start a fresh one. for they are a pretty limited lot, you will admit that? originality is not in their line; they can't think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and "go" into it, and charm and grace and picturesqueness. i knew i must look after those details myself; therefore i thought them out and wrote them down, and set for the facchino and explained them to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together a good stock company among the contadini, and design the costumes, and distribute the parts; and drill the troupe, and be ready in three days to begin on this verb in a shipshape and workman-like manner. i told him to put each grand division of it under a foreman, and each subdivision under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant or corporal or something like that, and to have a different uniform for each squad, so that i could tell a pluperfect from a compound future without looking at the book; the whole battery to be under his own special and particular command, with the rank of brigadier, and i to pay the freight. i then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected verb, and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being chambered for fifty-seven rounds--fifty-seven ways of saying i love without reloading; and yet none of them likely to convince a girl that was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks. it seemed to me that with my inexperience it would be foolish to go into action with this mitrailleuse, so i ordered it to the rear and told the facchino to provide something a little more primitive to start with, something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned flint-lock, smooth-bore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple at two hundred yards and kill at forty--an arrangement suitable for a beginner who could be satisfied with moderate results on the offstart and did not wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign. but in vain. he was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being of the same build, all gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery, fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half. but he said the auxiliary verb avere, to have, was a tidy thing, and easy to handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in going about than some of the others; so, upon his recommendation i chose that one, and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom and break out its spinnaker and get it ready for business. i will explain that a facchino is a general-utility domestic. mine was a horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one. at the end of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready. i was also ready, with a stenographer. we were in a room called the rope-walk. this is a formidably long room, as is indicated by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. at 9:30 the f.-d.-b. took his place near me and gave the word of command; the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on. down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality: first the present tense in mediterranean blue and old gold, then the past definite in scarlet and black, then the imperfect in green and yellow, then the indicative future in the stars and stripes, then the old red sandstone subjunctive in purple and silver-and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned and non-commissioned officers; certainly one of the most fiery and dazzling and eloquent sights i have ever beheld. i could not keep back the tears. presently: "halt!" commanded the brigadier. "front--face!" "right dress!" "stand at ease!" "one--two--three. in unison--recite!" it was fine. in one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven haves in the italian language burst forth in an exalting and splendid confusion. then came commands: "about--face! eyes--front! helm alee--hard aport! forward--march!" and the drums let go again. when the last termination had disappeared, the commander said the instruction drill would now begin, and asked for suggestions. i said: "they say i have, thou hast, he has, and so on, but they don't say what. it will be better, and more definite, if they have something to have; just an object, you know, a something--anything will do; anything that will give the listener a sort of personal as well as grammatical interest in their joys and complaints, you see." he said: "it is a good point. would a dog do?" i said i did not know, but we could try a dog and see. so he sent out an aide-de-camp to give the order to add the dog. the six privates of the present tense now filed in, in charge of sergeant avere (to have), and displaying their banner. they formed in line of battle, and recited, one at a time, thus: "io ho un cane, i have a dog." "tu hai un cane, thou hast a dog." "egli ha un cane, he has a dog." "noi abbiamo un cane, we have a dog." "voi avete un cane, you have a dog." "eglino hanno un cane, they have a dog." no comment followed. they returned to camp, and i reflected a while. the commander said: "i fear you are disappointed." "yes," i said; "they are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive; they have no expression, no elocution. it isn't natural; it could never happen in real life. a person who had just acquired a dog is either blame' glad or blame' sorry. he is not on the fence. i never saw a case. what the nation do you suppose is the matter with these people?" he thought maybe the trouble was with the dog. he said: "these are contadini, you know, and they have a prejudice against dogs-that is, against marimane. marimana dogs stand guard over people's vines and olives, you know, and are very savage, and thereby a grief and an inconvenience to persons who want other people's things at night. in my judgment they have taken this dog for a marimana, and have soured on him." i saw that the dog was a mistake, and not functionable: we must try something else; something, if possible, that could evoke sentiment, interest, feeling. "what is cat, in italian?" i asked. "gatto." "is it a gentleman cat, or a lady?" "gentleman cat." "how are these people as regards that animal?" "we-ll, they--they--" "you hesitate: that is enough. how are they about chickens?" he tilted his eyes toward heaven in mute ecstasy. i understood. "what is chicken, in italian?" i asked. "pollo, podere." (podere is italian for master. it is a title of courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.) "pollo is one chicken by itself; when there are enough present to constitute a plural, it is polli." "very well, polli will do. which squad is detailed for duty next?" "the past definite." "send out and order it to the front--with chickens. and let them understand that we don't want any more of this cold indifference." he gave the order to an aide, adding, with a haunting tenderness in his tone and a watering mouth in his aspect: "convey to them the conception that these are unprotected chickens." he turned to me, saluting with his hand to his temple, and explained, "it will inflame their interest in the poultry, sire." a few minutes elapsed. then the squad marched in and formed up, their faces glowing with enthusiasm, and the file-leader shouted: "ebbi polli, i had chickens!" "good!" i said. "go on, the next." "avest polli, thou hadst chickens!" "fine! next!" "ebbe polli, he had chickens!" "moltimoltissimo! go on, the next!" "avemmo polli, we had chickens!" "basta-basta aspettatto avanti--last man--charge!" "ebbero polli, they had chickens!" then they formed in echelon, by columns of fours, refused the left, and retired in great style on the double-quick. i was enchanted, and said: "now, doctor, that is something like! chickens are the ticket, there is no doubt about it. what is the next squad?" "the imperfect." "how does it go?" "io avena, i had, tu avevi, thou hadst, egli avena, he had, noi av--" wait--we've just had the hads. what are you giving me?" "but this is another breed." "what do we want of another breed? isn't one breed enough? had is had, and your tricking it out in a fresh way of spelling isn't going to make it any hadder than it was before; now you know that yourself." "but there is a distinction--they are not just the same hads." "how do you make it out?" "well, you use that first had when you are referring to something that happened at a named and sharp and perfectly definite moment; you use the other when the thing happened at a vaguely defined time and in a more prolonged and indefinitely continuous way." 'why, doctor, it is pure nonsense; you know it yourself. look here: if i have had a had, or have wanted to have had a had, or was in a position right then and there to have had a had that hadn't had any chance to go out hadding on account of this foolish discrimination which lets one had go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather but restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions, and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing, why--why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive hospital-bird of a had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing. these finical refinements revolt me; it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism to keep in office a had that is so delicate it can't come out when the wind's in the nor'west--i won't have this dude on the payroll. cancel his exequator; and look here--" "but you miss the point. it is like this. you see--" "never mind explaining, i don't care anything about it. six hads is enough for me; anybody that needs twelve, let him subscribe; i don't want any stock in a had trust. knock out the prolonged and indefinitely continuous; four-fifths of it is water, anyway." "but i beg you, podere! it is often quite indispensable in cases where--" "pipe the next squad to the assault!" but it was not to be; for at that moment the dull boom of the noon gun floated up out of far-off florence, followed by the usual softened jangle of church-bells, florentine and suburban, that bursts out in murmurous response; by labor-union law the colazione [1] must stop; stop promptly, stop instantly, stop definitely, like the chosen and best of the breed of hads. 1. colazione is italian for a collection, a meeting, a seance, a sitting.--m.t. *** a burlesque biography two or three persons having at different times intimated that if i would write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure, i yield at last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tender my history. ours is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity. the earliest ancestor the twains have any record of was a friend of the family by the name of higgins. this was in the eleventh century, when our people were living in aberdeen, county of cork, england. why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir. it is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone. all the old families do that way. arthour twain was a man of considerable note--a solicitor on the highway in william rufus's time. at about the age of thirty he went to one of those fine old english places of resort called newgate, to see about something, and never returned again. while there he died suddenly. augustus twain seems to have made something of a stir about the year 1160. he was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old saber and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night, and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. he was a born humorist. but he got to going too far with it; and the first time he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on temple bar, where it could contemplate the people and have a good time. he never liked any situation so much or stuck to it so long. then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle singing, right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, right ahead of it. this is a scathing rebuke to old dead froissart's poor witticism that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer. early in the fifteenth century we have beau twain, called "the scholar." he wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. and he could imitate anybody's hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off to see it. he had infinite sport with his talent. but by and by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work spoiled his hand. still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two years. in fact, he died in harness. during all those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a week till the government gave him another. he was a perfect pet. and he was always a favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous member of their benevolent secret society, called the chain gang. he always wore his hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by the government. he was a sore loss to his country. for he was so regular. some years later we have the illustrious john morgan twain. he came over to this country with columbus in 1492 as a passenger. he appears to have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. he complained of the food all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless there was a change. he wanted fresh shad. hardly a day passed over his head that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air, sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe columbus knew where he was going to or had ever been there before. the memorable cry of "land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his. he gazed awhile through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water, and then said: "land be hanged--it's a raft!" when this questionable passenger came on board the ship, be brought nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked "b. g.," one cotton sock marked "l. w. c.," one woolen one marked "d. f.," and a night-shirt marked "o. m. r." and yet during the voyage he worried more about his "trunk," and gave himself more airs about it, than all the rest of the passengers put together. if the ship was "down by the head," and would not steer, he would go and move his "trunk" further aft, and then watch the effect. if the ship was "by the stern," he would suggest to columbus to detail some men to "shift that baggage." in storms he had to be gagged, because his wailings about his "trunk" made it impossible for the men to hear the orders. the man does not appear to have been openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted in the ship's log as a "curious circumstance" that albeit he brought his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he took it ashore in four trunks, a queensware crate, and a couple of champagne baskets. but when he came back insinuating, in an insolent, swaggering way, that some of this things were missing, and was going to search the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they threw him overboard. they watched long and wonderingly for him to come up, but not even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide. but while every one was most absorbed in gazing over the side, and the interest was momentarily increasing, it was observed with consternation that the vessel was adrift and the anchor-cable hanging limp from the bow. then in the ship's dimmed and ancient log we find this quaint note: "in time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde gone downe and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to ye dam sauvages from ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, ye sonne of a ghun!" yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pride that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person who ever interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing our indians. he built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and to his dying day he claimed with satisfaction that he had had a more restraining and elevating influence on the indians than any other reformer that ever labored among them. at this point the chronicle becomes less frank and chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in america, and while there received injuries which terminated in his death. the great-grandson of the "reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred and something, and was known in our annals as "the old admiral," though in history he had other titles. he was long in command of fleets of swift vessels, well armed and manned, and did great service in hurrying up merchantmen. vessels which he followed and kept his eagle eye on, always made good fair time across the ocean. but if a ship still loitered in spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer-and then he would take that ship home where he lived and keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did. and he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and a bath. he called it "walking a plank." all the pupils liked it. at any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it. when the owners were late coming for their ships, the admiral always burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost. at last this fine old tar was cut down in the fullness of his years and honors. and to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed that if he had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have been resuscitated. charles henry twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary. he converted sixteen thousand south sea islanders, and taught them that a dog-tooth necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough clothing to come to divine service in. his poor flock loved him very, very dearly; and when his funeral was over, they got up in a body (and came out of the restaurant) with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, that he was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more of him. pah-go-to-wah-wah-pukketekeewis (mighty-hunter-with-a-hog-eye-twain) adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided general braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor washington. it was this ancestor who fired seventeen times at our washington from behind a tree. so far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story-books is correct; but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that that man was being reserved by the great spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift his sacrilegious rifle against him again, the narrative seriously impairs the integrity of history. what he did say was: "it ain't no (hic) no use. 'at man's so drunk he can't stan' still long enough for a man to hit him. i (hic) i can't 'ford to fool away any more am'nition on him." that was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good, plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself to us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it. i also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but i felt a marring misgiving that every indian at braddock's defeat who fired at a soldier a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), and missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the great spirit was reserving that soldier for some grand mission; and so i somehow feared that the only reason why washington's case is remembered and the others forgotten is, that in his the prophecy came true, and in that of the others it didn't. there are not books enough on earth to contain the record of the prophecies indians and other unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled. i will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are so thoroughly well-known in history by their aliases, that i have not felt it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the order of their birth. among these may be mentioned richard brinsley twain, alias guy fawkes; john wentworth twain, alias sixteen-string jack; william hogarth twain, alias jack sheppard; ananias twain, alias baron munchausen; john george twain, alias captain kydd; and then there are george francis twain, tom pepper, nebuchadnezzar, and baalam's ass--they all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distinctly removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral branch, whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for, they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged. it is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which i now do. i was born without teeth--and there richard iii. had the advantage of me; but i was born without a humpback, likewise, and there i had the advantage of him. my parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest. but now a thought occurs to me. my own history would really seem so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave it unwritten until i am hanged. if some other biographies i have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public. how does it strike you? *** how to tell a story the humorous story an american development.--its difference from comic and witty stories i do not claim that i can tell a story as it ought to be told. i only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for i have been almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years. there are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind-the humorous. i will talk mainly about that one. the humorous story is american, the comic story is english, the witty story is french. the humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter. the humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. the humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst. the humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art-and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it. the art of telling a humorous story--understand, i mean by word of mouth, not print-was created in america, and has remained at home. the humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. and sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the "nub" of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again. it is a pathetic thing to see. very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way, with the pretense that he does not know it is a nub. artemus ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. dan setchell used it before him, nye and riley and others use it today. but the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you--every time. and when he prints it, in england, france, germany, and italy, he italicizes it, puts some whopping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. all of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life. let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years. the teller tells it in this way: the wounded soldier in the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear, informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained; whereupon the generous son of mars, shouldering the unfortunate, proceeded to carry out his desire. the bullets and cannon-balls were flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter took the wounded man's head off--without, however, his deliverer being aware of it. in no long time he was hailed by an officer, who said: "where are you going with that carcass?" "to the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!" "his leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean his head, you booby." whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood looking down upon it in great perplexity. at length he said: "it is true, sir, just as you have said." then after a pause he added, "but he told me it was his leg!!!!!" here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gasping and shriekings and suffocatings. it takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form; and isn't worth the telling, after all. put into the humorous-story form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing i have ever listened to--as james whitcomb riley tells it. he tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor. but he can't remember it; so he gets all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round, putting in tedious details that don't belong in the tale and only retard it; taking them out conscientiously and putting in others that are just as useless; making minor mistakes now and then and stopping to correct them and explain how he came to make them; remembering things which he forgot to put in in their proper place and going back to put them in there; stopping his narrative a good while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier that was hurt, and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not mentioned, and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance, anyway-better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after all-and so on, and so on, and so on. the teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep from laughing outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles; and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their faces. the simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of the old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious. this is art--and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it; but a machine could tell the other story. to string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the american art, if my position is correct. another feature is the slurring of the point. a third is the dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it, as if one where thinking aloud. the fourth and last is the pause. artemus ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. he would begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently absent-minded pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; and that was the remark intended to explode the mine--and it did. for instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, "i once knew a man in new zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head"--here his animation would die out; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he would say dreamily, and as if to himself, "and yet that man could beat a drum better than any man i ever saw." the pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, and a frequently recurring feature, too. it is a dainty thing, and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must be exactly the right length--no more and no less--or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble. if the pause is too short the impressive point is passed, and the audience have had time to divine that a surprise is intended--and then you can't surprise them, of course. on the platform i used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important thing in the whole story. if i got it the right length precisely, i could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make some impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out of her seat--and that was what i was after. this story was called "the golden arm," and was told in this fashion. you can practice with it yourself--and mind you look out for the pause and get it right. the golden arm once 'pon a time dey wuz a momsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. en bimeby she died, en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her. well, she had a golden arm--all solid gold, fum de shoulder down. he wuz pow'ful mean--pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep, caze he want dat golden arm so bad. when it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up, he did, en tuck his lantern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her up en got de golden arm; en he bent his head down 'gin de 'win, en plowed en plowed en plowed thoo de snow. den all on a sudden he stop (make a considerable pause here, and look startled, and take a listening attitude) en say: "my lan', what's dat?" en he listen--en listen--en de win' say (set your teeth together and imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind), "bzzz-z-zzz"--en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear a voice!--he hear a voice all mix' up in de win'--can't hardly tell 'em 'part--"bzzz--zzz--w-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n arm?" (you must begin to shiver violently now.) en he begin to shiver en shake, en say, "oh, my! oh, my lan'!" en de win' blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos' choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep toward home mos' dead, he so sk'yerd--en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us comin after him! "bzzz--zzz--zzz w-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n--arm?" when he git to de pasture he hear it agin--closter now, en a-comin'!--a-comin' back dah in de dark en de storm--(repeat the wind and the voice). when he git to de house he rush upstairs en jump in de bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay da shiverin' en shakin'--en den way out dah he hear it agin!--en a-comin'! en bimeby he hear (pause--awed, listening attitude)--pat--pat--pat hit's a-comin' upstairs! den he hear de latch, en he know it's in de room! den pooty soon he know it's a-stannin' by de bed! (pause.) den-he know it's a-bendin' down over him--en he cain't skasely git his breath! den--den--he seem to feel someth'n' c-o-l-d, right down 'most agin his head! (pause.) den de voice say, right at his year--"w-h-o--g-o-t--m-y g-o-l-d-e-n arm?" (you must wail it out very plaintively and accusingly; then you stare steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone auditor-a girl, preferably--and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build itself in the deep hush. when it has reached exactly the right length, jump suddenly at that girl and yell, "you've got it!" if you've got the pause right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and spring right out of her shoes. but you must get the pause right; and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and uncertain thing you ever undertook. *** general washington's negro body-servant a biographical sketch the stirring part of this celebrated colored man's life properly began with his death--that is to say, the notable features of his biography began with the first time he died. he had been little heard of up to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him; we have never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals. his was a most remarkable career, and i have thought that its history would make a valuable addition to our biographical literature. therefore, i have carefully collated the materials for such a work, from authentic sources, and here present them to the public. i have rigidly excluded from these pages everything of a doubtful character, with the object in view of introducing my work into the schools for the instruction of the youth of my country. the name of the famous body-servant of general washington was george. after serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century, and enjoying throughout his long term his high regard and confidence, it became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master to rest in his peaceful grave by the potomac. ten years afterward-in 1809--full of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all who knew him. the boston gazette of that date thus refers to the event: george, the favorite body-servant of the lamented washington, died in richmond, va., last tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years. his intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to within a few minutes of his decease. he was present at the second installation of washington as president, and also at his funeral, and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with those noted events. from this period we hear no more of the favorite body-servant of general washington until may, 1825, at which time he died again. a philadelphia paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence: at macon, ga., last week, a colored man named george, who was the favorite body-servant of general washington, died at the advanced age of 95 years. up to within a few hours of his dissolution he was in full possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly recollect the second installation of washington, his death and burial, the surrender of cornwallis, the battle of trenton, the griefs and hardships of valley forge, etc. deceased was followed to the grave by the entire population of macon. on the fourth of july, 1830, and also of 1834 and 1836, the subject of this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum of the orator of the day, and in november of 1840 he died again. the st. louis republican of the 25th of that month spoke as follows: "another relic of the revolution gone. "george, once the favorite body-servant of general washington, died yesterday at the house of mr. john leavenworth in this city, at the venerable age of 95 years. he was in the full possession of his faculties up to the hour of his death, and distinctly recollected the first and second installations and death of president washington, the surrender of cornwallis, the battles of trenton and monmouth, the sufferings of the patriot army at valley forge, the proclamation of the declaration of independence, the speech of patrick henry in the virginia house of delegates, and many other old-time reminiscences of stirring interest. few white men die lamented as was this aged negro. the funeral was very largely attended." during the next ten or eleven years the subject of this sketch appeared at intervals at fourth-of-july celebrations in various parts of the country, and was exhibited upon the rostrum with flattering success. but in the fall of 1855 he died again. the california papers thus speak of the event: another old hero gone died, at dutch flat, on the 7th of march, george (once the confidential body-servant of general washington), at the great age of 95 years. his memory, which did not fail him till the last, was a wonderful storehouse of interesting reminiscences. he could distinctly recollect the first and second installations and death of president washington, the surrender of cornwallis, the battles of trenton and monmouth, and bunker hill, the proclamation of the declaration of independence, and braddock's defeat. george was greatly respected in dutch flat, and it is estimated that there were 10,000 people present at his funeral. the last time the subject of this sketch died was in june, 1864; and until we learn the contrary, it is just to presume that he died permanently this time. the michigan papers thus refer to the sorrowful event: another cherished remnant of the revolution gone george, a colored man, and once the favorite body-servant of george washington, died in detroit last week, at the patriarchal age of 95 years. to the moment of his death his intellect was unclouded, and he could distinctly remember the first and second installations and death of washington, the surrender of cornwallis, the battles of trenton and monmouth, and bunker hill, the proclamation of the declaration of independence, braddock's defeat, the throwing over of the tea in boston harbor, and the landing of the pilgrims. he died greatly respected, and was followed to the grave by a vast concourse of people. the faithful old servant is gone! we shall never see him more until he turns up again. he has closed his long and splendid career of dissolution, for the present, and sleeps peacefully, as only they sleep who have earned their rest. he was in all respects a remarkable man. he held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history; and the longer he lived the stronger and longer his memory grew. if he lives to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery of america. the above r'esum'e of his biography i believe to be substantially correct, although it is possible that he may have died once or twice in obscure places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety. one fault i find in all the notices of his death i have quoted, and this ought to be correct. in them he uniformly and impartially died at the age of 95. this could not have been. he might have done that once, or maybe twice, but he could not have continued it indefinitely. allowing that when he first died, he died at the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died last, in 1864. but his age did not keep pace with his recollections. when he died the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the pilgrims, which took place in 1620. he must have been about twenty years old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert that the body-servant of general washington was in the neighborhood of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this life finally. having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, i now publish his biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation. p.s.--i see by the papers that this imfamous old fraud has just died again, in arkansas. this makes six times that he is known to have died, and always in a new place. the death of washington's body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; it's charm is gone; the people are tired of it; let it cease. this well-meaning but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them. let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time, publish to the world that general washington's favorite colored body-servant has died again. *** wit inspirations of the "two-year-olds" all infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion nowadays of saying "smart" things on most occasions that offer, and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything at all. judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings, the rising generation of children are little better than idiots. and the parents must surely be but little better than the children, for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. i may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite; and i do admit that it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these days, and remember that i seldom said anything smart when i was a child. i tried it once or twice, but it was not popular. the family were not expecting brilliant remarks from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes and spanked me the rest. but it makes my flesh creep and my blood run cold to think what might have happened to me if i had dared to utter some of the smart things of this generation's "four-year-olds" where my father could hear me. to have simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end would have seemed to him criminal leniency toward one so sinning. he was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all forms of precocity. if i had said some of the things i have referred to, and said them in his hearing, he would have destroyed me. he would, indeed. he would, provided the opportunity remained with him. but it would not, for i would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward. the fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun. my father overheard that, and he hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life. if i had been full-grown, of course he would have been right; but, child as i was, i could not know how wicked a thing i had done. i made one of those remarks ordinarily called "smart things" before that, but it was not a pun. still, it came near causing a serious rupture between my father and myself. my father and mother, my uncle ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present, and the conversation turned on a name for me. i was lying there trying some india-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring to make a selection, for i was tired of trying to cut my teeth on people's fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable me to hurry the thing through and get something else. did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse's finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe? and did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in jerico long before you got them half cut? to me it seems as if these things happened yesterday. and they did, to some children. but i digress. i was lying there trying the india-rubber rings. i remember looking at the clock and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes i would be two weeks old, and thinking how little i had done to merit the blessings that were so unsparingly lavished upon me. my father said: "abraham is a good name. my grandfather was named abraham." my mother said: "abraham is a good name. very well. let us have abraham for one of his names." i said: "abraham suits the subscriber." my father frowned, my mother looked pleased; my aunt said: "what a little darling it is!" my father said: "isaac is a good name, and jacob is a good name." my mother assented, and said: "no names are better. let us add isaac and jacob to his names." i said: "all right. isaac and jacob are good enough for yours truly. pass me that rattle, if you please. i can't chew india-rubber rings all day." not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication. i saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost. so far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children when developing intellectually, i was now furiously scowled upon by my father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe i had gone too far. i took a vicious bite out of an india-rubber ring, and covertly broke the rattle over the kitten's head, but said nothing. presently my father said: "samuel is a very excellent name." i saw that trouble was coming. nothing could prevent it. i laid down my rattle; over the side of the cradle i dropped my uncle's silver watch, the clothes-brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier, the nutmeg-grater, and other matters which i was accustomed to examine, and meditate upon and make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter and break when i needed wholesome entertainment. then i put on my little frock and my little bonnet, and took my pygmy shoes in one hand and my licorice in the other, and climbed out on the floor. i said to myself, now, if the worse comes to worst, i am ready. then i said aloud, in a firm voice: "father, i cannot, cannot wear the name of samuel." "my son!" "father, i mean it. i cannot." "why?" "father, i have an invincible antipathy to that name." "my son, this is unreasonable. many great and good men have been named samuel." "sir, i have yet to hear of the first instance." "what! there was samuel the prophet. was not he great and good?" "not so very." "my son! with his own voice the lord called him." "yes, sir, and had to call him a couple times before he could come!" and then i sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after me. he overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview was over i had acquired the name of samuel, and a thrashing, and other useful information; and by means of this compromise my father's wrath was appeased and a misunderstanding bridged over which might have become a permanent rupture if i had chosen to be unreasonable. but just judging by this episode, what would my father have done to me if i had ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat, sickly things these "two-years-olds" say in print nowadays? in my opinion there would have been a case of infanticide in our family. *** an entertaining article i take the following paragraph from an article in the boston advertiser: an english critic on mark twain perhaps the most successful flights of humor of mark twain have been descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all. we have become familiar with the californians who were thrilled with terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter's way of telling a story, and we have heard of the pennsylvania clergyman who sadly returned his innocents abroad to the book-agent with the remark that "the man who could shed tears over the tomb of adam must be an idiot." but mark twain may now add a much more glorious instance to his string of trophies. the saturday review, in its number of october 8th, reviews his book of travels, which has been republished in england, and reviews it seriously. we can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading this tribute to his power; and indeed it is so amusing in itself that he can hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his next monthly memoranda. (publishing the above paragraph thus, gives me a sort of authority for reproducing the saturday review's article in full in these pages. i dearly wanted to do it, for i cannot write anything half so delicious myself. if i had a cast-iron dog that could read this english criticism and preserve his austerity, i would drive him off the door-step.) (from the london "saturday review.") reviews of new books the innocents abroad. a book of travels. by mark twain. london: hotten, publisher. 1870. lord macaulay died too soon. we never felt this so deeply as when we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work. macaulay died too soon--for none but he could mete out complete and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impertinence, the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance of this author. to say that the innocents abroad is a curious book, would be to use the faintest language--would be to speak of the matterhorn as a neat elevation or of niagara as being "nice" or "pretty." "curious" is too tame a word wherewith to describe the imposing insanity of this work. there is no word that is large enough or long enough. let us, therefore, photograph a passing glimpse of book and author, and trust the rest to the reader. let the cultivated english student of human nature picture to himself this mark twain as a person capable of doing the following-described things--and not only doing them, but with incredible innocence printing them calmly and tranquilly in a book. for instance: he states that he entered a hair-dresser's in paris to get shaved, and the first "rake" the barber gave him with his razor it loosened his "hide" and lifted him out of the chair. this is unquestionably exaggerated. in florence he was so annoyed by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a frantic spirit of revenge. there is, of course, no truth in this. he gives at full length a theatrical program seventeen or eighteen hundred years old, which he professes to have found in the ruins of the coliseum, among the dirt and mold and rubbish. it is a sufficient comment upon this statement to remark that even a cast-iron program would not have lasted so long under such circumstances. in greece he plainly betrays both fright and flight upon one occasion, but with frozen effrontery puts the latter in this falsely tamed form: "we sidled toward the piraeus." "sidled," indeed! he does not hesitate to intimate that at ephesus, when his mule strayed from the proper course, he got down, took him under his arm, carried him to the road again, pointed him right, remounted, and went to sleep contentedly till it was time to restore the beast to the path once more. he states that a growing youth among his ship's passengers was in the constant habit of appeasing his hunger with soap and oakum between meals. in palestine he tells of ants that came eleven miles to spend the summer in the desert and brought their provisions with them; yet he shows by his description of the country that the feat was an impossibility. he mentions, as if it were the most commonplace of matters, that he cut a moslem in two in broad daylight in jerusalem, with godfrey de bouillon's sword, and would have shed more blood if he had had a graveyard of his own. these statements are unworthy a moment's attention. mr. twain or any other foreigner who did such a thing in jerusalem would be mobbed, and would infallibly lose his life. but why go on? why repeat more of his audacious and exasperating falsehoods? let us close fittingly with this one: he affirms that "in the mosque of st. sophia at constantinople i got my feet so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime, and general impurity, that i wore out more than two thousand pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that night, and even then some christian hide peeled off with them." it is monstrous. such statements are simply lies--there is no other name for them. will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that pervades the american nation when we tell him that we are informed upon perfectly good authority that this extravagant compilation of falsehoods, this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this innocents abroad, has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of several of the states as a text-book! but if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and his ignorance are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author. in one place he was so appalled at the sudden spectacle of a murdered man, unveiled by the moonlight, that he jumped out of the window, going through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike simplicity that he "was not scared, but was considerably agitated." it puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely unconscious that lucrezia borgia ever existed off the stage. he is vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough to criticize, the italians' use of their own tongue. he says they spell the name of their great painter "vinci, but pronounce it vinchy"-and then adds with a na:ivet'e possible only to helpless ignorance, "foreigners always spell better than they pronounce." in another place he commits the bald absurdity of putting the phrase "tare an ouns" into an italian's mouth. in rome he unhesitatingly believes the legend that st. philip neri's heart was so inflamed with divine love that it burst his ribs--believes it wholly because an author with a learned list of university degrees strung after his name endorses it--"otherwise," says this gentle idiot, "i should have felt a curiosity to know what philip had for dinner." our author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the grotto del cane on purpose to test its poisoning powers on a dog--got elaborately ready for the experiment, and then discovered that he had no dog. a wiser person would have kept such a thing discreetly to himself, but with this harmless creature everything comes out. he hurts his foot in a rut two thousand years old in exhumed pompeii, and presently, when staring at one of the cinder-like corpses unearthed in the next square, conceives the idea that maybe it is the remains of the ancient street commissioner, and straightway his horror softens down to a sort of chirpy contentment with the condition of things. in damascus he visits the well of ananias, three thousand years old, and is as surprised and delighted as a child to find that the water is "as pure and fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday." in the holy land he gags desperately at the hard arabic and hebrew biblical names, and finally concludes to call them baldwinsville, williamsburgh, and so on, "for convenience of spelling." we have thus spoken freely of this man's stupefying simplicity and innocence, but we cannot deal similarly with his colossal ignorance. we do not know where to begin. and if we knew where to begin, we certainly would not know where to leave off. we will give one specimen, and one only. he did not know, until he got to rome, that michael angelo was dead! and then, instead of crawling away and hiding his shameful ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express a pious, grateful sort of satisfaction that he is gone and out of his troubles! no, the reader may seek out the author's exhibition of his uncultivation for himself. the book is absolutely dangerous, considering the magnitude and variety of its misstatements, and the convincing confidence with which they are made. and yet it is a text-book in the schools of america. the poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the old masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display. but what is the manner of his study? and what is the progress he achieves? to what extent does he familiarize himself with the great pictures of italy, and what degree of appreciation does he arrive at? read: "when we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven, we know that that is st. mark. when we see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know that that is st. matthew. when we see a monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him, and without other baggage, we know that that is st. jerome. because we know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage. when we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are. we do this because we humbly wish to learn." he then enumerates the thousands and thousand of copies of these several pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen "some more" of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually "begin to take an absorbing interest in them"--the vulgar boor. that we have shown this to be a remarkable book, we think no one will deny. that is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the confiding and uniformed, we think we have also shown. that the book is a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent upon every page. having placed our judgment thus upon record, let us close with what charity we can, by remarking that even in this volume there is some good to be found; for whenever the author talks of his own country and lets europe alone, he never fails to make himself interesting, and not only interesting but instructive. no one can read without benefit his occasional chapters and paragraphs, about life in the gold and silver mines of california and nevada; about the indians of the plains and deserts of the west, and their cannibalism; about the raising of vegetables in kegs of gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano; about the moving of small arms from place to place at night in wheelbarrows to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in the humboldt mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at night. these matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing. it is a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind. his book is well written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it just barely escaped being quite valuable also. (one month later) latterly i have received several letters, and see a number of newspaper paragraphs, all upon a certain subject, and all of about the same tenor. i here give honest specimens. one is from a new york paper, one is from a letter from an old friend, and one is from a letter from a new york publisher who is a stranger to me. i humbly endeavor to make these bits toothsome with the remark that the article they are praising (which appeared in the december galaxy, and pretended to be a criticism from the london saturday review on my innocents abroad) was written by myself, every line of it: the herald says the richest thing out is the "serious critique" in the london saturday review, on mark twain's innocents abroad. we thought before we read it that it must be "serious," as everybody said so, and were even ready to shed a few tears; but since perusing it, we are bound to confess that next to mark twain's "jumping frog" it's the finest bit of humor and sarcasm that we've come across in many a day. (i do not get a compliment like that every day.) i used to think that your writings were pretty good, but after reading the criticism in the galaxy from the london review, have discovered what an ass i must have been. if suggestions are in order, mine is, that you put that article in your next edition of the innocents, as an extra chapter, if you are not afraid to put your own humor in competition with it. it is as rich a thing as i ever read. (which is strong commendation from a book publisher.) the london reviewer, my friend, is not the stupid, "serious" creature he pretends to be, _i_ think; but, on the contrary, has a keep appreciation and enjoyment of your book. as i read his article in the galaxy, i could imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh. but he is writing for catholics and established church people, and high-toned, antiquated, conservative gentility, whom it is a delight to him to help you shock, while he pretends to shake his head with owlish density. he is a magnificent humorist himself. (now that is graceful and handsome. i take off my hat to my life-long friend and comrade, and with my feet together and my fingers spread over my heart, i say, in the language of alabama, "you do me proud.") i stand guilty of the authorship of the article, but i did not mean any harm. i saw by an item in the boston advertiser that a solemn, serious critique on the english edition of my book had appeared in the london saturday review, and the idea of such a literary breakfast by a stolid, ponderous british ogre of the quill was too much for a naturally weak virtue, and i went home and burlesqued it-reveled in it, i may say. i never saw a copy of the real saturday review criticism until after my burlesque was written and mailed to the printer. but when i did get hold of a copy, i found it to be vulgar, awkwardly written, ill-natured, and entirely serious and in earnest. the gentleman who wrote the newspaper paragraph above quoted had not been misled as to its character. if any man doubts my word now, i will kill him. no, i will not kill him; i will win his money. i will bet him twenty to one, and let any new york publisher hold the stakes, that the statements i have above made as to the authorship of the article in question are entirely true. perhaps i may get wealthy at this, for i am willing to take all the bets that offer; and if a man wants larger odds, i will give him all he requires. but he ought to find out whether i am betting on what is termed "a sure thing" or not before he ventures his money, and he can do that by going to a public library and examining the london saturday review of october 8th, which contains the real critique. bless me, some people thought that _i_ was the "sold" person! p.s.--i cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savory thing of all--this easy, graceful, philosophical disquisition, with his happy, chirping confidence. it is from the cincinnati enquirer: nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine cigar. nine smokers out of ten would prefer an ordinary domestic article, three for a quarter, to fifty-cent partaga, if kept in ignorance of the cost of the latter. the flavor of the partaga is too delicate for palates that have been accustomed to connecticut seed leaf. so it is with humor. the finer it is in quality, the more danger of its not being recognized at all. even mark twain has been taken in by an english review of his innocents abroad. mark twain is by no means a coarse humorist, but the englishman's humor is so much finer than his, that he mistakes it for solid earnest, and "lafts most consumedly." a man who cannot learn stands in his own light. hereafter, when i write an article which i know to be good, but which i may have reason to fear will not, in some quarters, be considered to amount to much, coming from an american, i will aver that an englishman wrote it and that it is copied from a london journal. and then i will occupy a back seat and enjoy the cordial applause. (still later) mark twain at last sees that the saturday review's criticism of his innocents abroad was not serious, and he is intensely mortified at the thought of having been so badly sold. he takes the only course left him, and in the last galaxy claims that he wrote the criticism himself, and published it in the galaxy to sell the public. this is ingenious, but unfortunately it is not true. if any of our readers will take the trouble to call at this office we sill show them the original article in the saturday review of october 8th, which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in the galaxy. the best thing for mark to do will be to admit that he was sold, and say no more about it. the above is from the cincinnati enquirer, and is a falsehood. come to the proof. if the enquirer people, through any agent, will produce at the galaxy office a london saturday review of october 8th, containing an "article which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in the galaxy, i will pay to that agent five hundred dollars cash. moreover, if at any specified time i fail to produce at the same place a copy of the london saturday review of october 8th, containing a lengthy criticism upon the innocents abroad, entirely different, in every paragraph and sentence, from the one i published in the galaxy, i will pay to the enquirer agent another five hundred dollars cash. i offer sheldon & co., publishers, 500 broadway, new york, as my "backers." any one in new york, authorized by the enquirer, will receive prompt attention. it is an easy and profitable way for the enquirer people to prove that they have not uttered a pitiful, deliberate falsehood in the above paragraphs. will they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to the galaxy office. i think the cincinnati enquirer must be edited by children. *** a letter to the secretary of the treasury riverdale-on-the-hudson, october 15, 1902. the hon. the secretary of the treasury, washington, d. c.: sir,--prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in straitened circumstances, i desire to place with you the following order: forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace, gold 7 per cents., 1864, preferred. twelve tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking. eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866, eligible for kindlings. please deliver with all convenient despatch at my house in riverdale at lowest rates for spot cash, and send bill to your obliged servant, mark twain, who will be very grateful, and will vote right. *** amended obituaries to the editor: sir,--i am approaching seventy; it is in sight; it is only three years away. necessarily, i must go soon. it is but matter-of-course wisdom, then, that i should begin to set my worldly house in order now, so that it may be done calmly and with thoroughness, in place of waiting until the last day, when, as we have often seen, the attempt to set both houses in order at the same time has been marred by the necessity for haste and by the confusion and waste of time arising from the inability of the notary and the ecclesiastic to work together harmoniously, taking turn about and giving each other friendly assistance--not perhaps in fielding, which could hardly be expected, but at least in the minor offices of keeping game and umpiring; by consequence of which conflict of interests and absence of harmonious action a draw has frequently resulted where this ill-fortune could not have happened if the houses had been set in order one at a time and hurry avoided by beginning in season, and giving to each the amount of time fairly and justly proper to it. in setting my earthly house in order i find it of moment that i should attend in person to one or two matters which men in my position have long had the habit of leaving wholly to others, with consequences often most regrettable. i wish to speak of only one of these matters at this time: obituaries. of necessity, an obituary is a thing which cannot be so judiciously edited by any hand as by that of the subject of it. in such a work it is not the facts that are of chief importance, but the light which the obituarist shall throw upon them, the meaning which he shall dress them in, the conclusions which he shall draw from them, and the judgments which he shall deliver upon them. the verdicts, you understand: that is the danger-line. in considering this matter, in view of my approaching change, it has seemed to me wise to take such measures as may be feasible, to acquire, by courtesy of the press, access to my standing obituaries, with the privilege--if this is not asking too much--of editing, not their facts, but their verdicts. this, not for the present profit, further than as concerns my family, but as a favorable influence usable on the other side, where there are some who are not friendly to me. with this explanation of my motives, i will now ask you of your courtesy to make an appeal for me to the public press. it is my desire that such journals and periodicals as have obituaries of me lying in their pigeonholes, with a view to sudden use some day, will not wait longer, but will publish them now, and kindly send me a marked copy. my address is simply new york city--i have no other that is permanent and not transient. i will correct them--not the facts, but the verdicts--striking out such clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the other side, and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character. i should, of course, expect to pay double rates for both the omissions and the substitutions; and i should also expect to pay quadruple rates for all obituaries which proved to be rightly and wisely worded in the originals, thus requiring no emendations at all. it is my desire to leave these amended obituaries neatly bound behind me as a perennial consolation and entertainment to my family, and as an heirloom which shall have a mournful but definite commercial value for my remote posterity. i beg, sir, that you will insert this advertisement (1t-eow, agate, inside), and send the bill to yours very respectfully. mark twain. p.s.--for the best obituary--one suitable for me to read in public, and calculated to inspire regret--i desire to offer a prize, consisting of a portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink without previous instructions. the ink warranted to be the kind used by the very best artists. *** a monument to adam some one has revealed to the tribune that i once suggested to rev. thomas k. beecher, of elmira, new york, that we get up a monument to adam, and that mr. beecher favored the project. there is more to it than that. the matter started as a joke, but it came somewhat near to materializing. it is long ago--thirty years. mr. darwin's descent of man has been in print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals. in tracing the genesis of the human race back to its sources, mr. darwin had left adam out altogether. we had monkeys, and "missing links," and plenty of other kinds of ancestors, but no adam. jesting with mr. beecher and other friends in elmira, i said there seemed to be a likelihood that the world would discard adam and accept the monkey, and that in the course of time adam's very name would be forgotten in the earth; therefore this calamity ought to be averted; a monument would accomplish this, and elmira ought not to waste this honorable opportunity to do adam a favor and herself a credit. then the unexpected happened. two bankers came forward and took hold of the matter--not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they saw in the monument certain commercial advantages for the town. the project had seemed gently humorous before--it was more than that now, with this stern business gravity injected into it. the bankers discussed the monument with me. we met several times. they proposed an indestructible memorial, to cost twenty-five thousand dollars. the insane oddity of a monument set up in a village to preserve a name that would outlast the hills and the rocks without any such help, would advertise elmira to the ends of the earth-and draw custom. it would be the only monument on the planet to adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could never have a rival until somebody should set up a monument to the milky way. people would come from every corner of the globe and stop off to look at it, no tour of the world would be complete that left out adam's monument. elmira would be a mecca; there would be pilgrim ships at pilgrim rates, pilgrim specials on the continent's railways; libraries would be written about the monument, every tourist would kodak it, models of it would be for sale everywhere in the earth, its form would become as familiar as the figure of napoleon. one of the bankers subscribed five thousand dollars, and i think the other one subscribed half as much, but i do not remember with certainty now whether that was the figure or not. we got designs made-some of them came from paris. in the beginning--as a detail of the project when it was yet a joke-i had framed a humble and beseeching and perfervid petition to congress begging the government to built the monument, as a testimony of the great republic's gratitude to the father of the human race and as a token of her loyalty to him in this dark day of humiliation when his older children were doubting and deserting him. it seemed to me that this petition ought to be presented, now--it would be widely and feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would advertise our scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly. so i sent it to general joseph r. hawley, who was then in the house, and he said he would present it. but he did not do it. i think he explained that when he came to read it he was afraid of it: it was too serious, to gushy, too sentimental--the house might take it for earnest. we ought to have carried out our monument scheme; we could have managed it without any great difficulty, and elmira would now be the most celebrated town in the universe. very recently i began to build a book in which one of the minor characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to adam, and now the tribune has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of thirty years ago. apparently mental telegraphy is still in business. it is odd; but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd. *** a humane word from satan [the following letter, signed by satan and purporting to come from him, we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by mark twain.-editor.] to the editor of harper's weekly: dear sir and kinsman,--let us have done with this frivolous talk. the american board accepts contributions from me every year: then why shouldn't it from mr. rockefeller? in all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience-money, as my books will show: then what becomes of the sting when that term is applied to mr. rockefeller's gift? the american board's trade is financed mainly from the graveyards. bequests, you understand. conscience-money. confession of an old crime and deliberate perpetration of a new one; for deceased's contribution is a robbery of his heirs. shall the board decline bequests because they stand for one of these offenses every time and generally for both? allow me to continue. the charge must persistently and resentfully and remorselessly dwelt upon is that mr. rockefeller's contribution is incurably tainted by perjury--perjury proved against him in the courts. it makes us smile--down in my place! because there isn't a rich man in your vast city who doesn't perjure himself every year before the tax board. they are all caked with perjury, many layers thick. iron-clad, so to speak. if there is one that isn't, i desire to acquire him for my museum, and will pay dinosaur rates. will you say it isn't infraction of the law, but only annual evasion of it? comfort yourselves with that nice distinction if you like-for the present. but by and by, when you arrive, i will show you something interesting: a whole hell-full of evaders! sometimes a frank law-breaker turns up elsewhere, but i get those others every time. to return to my muttons. i wish you to remember that my rich perjurers are contributing to the american board with frequency: it is money filched from the sworn-off personal tax; therefore it is the wages of sin; therefore it is my money; therefore it is _i_ that contribute it; and, finally, it is therefore as i have said: since the board daily accepts contributions from me, why should it decline them from mr. rockefeller, who is as good as i am, let the courts say what they may? satan. *** introduction to "the new guide of the conversation in portuguese and english" by pedro carolino in this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the english language lasts. its delicious unconscious ridiculousness, and its enchanting na:ivet'e, as are supreme and unapproachable, in their way, as are shakespeare's sublimities. whatsoever is perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable: nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its immortality is secure. it is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have received such wide attention, and been so much pondered by the grave and learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful, the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish. long notices of it have appeared, from time to time, in the great english reviews, and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly every newspaper and magazine in the english-speaking world. every scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time or another; i had mine fifteen years ago. the book gets out of print, every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season; but presently the nations and near and far colonies of our tongue and lineage call for it once more, and once more it issues from some london or continental or american press, and runs a new course around the globe, wafted on its way by the wind of a world's laughter. many persons have believed that this book's miraculous stupidities were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume carefully through and keep that opinion. it was written in serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew something of the english language, and could impart his knowledge to others. the amplest proof of this crops out somewhere or other upon each and every page. there are sentences in the book which could have been manufactured by a man in his right mind, and with an intelligent and deliberate purposes to seem innocently ignorant; but there are other sentences, and paragraphs, which no mere pretended ignorance could ever achieve-nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance, when unbacked by inspiration. it is not a fraud who speaks in the following paragraph of the author's preface, but a good man, an honest man, a man whose conscience is at rest, a man who believes he has done a high and worthy work for his nation and his generation, and is well pleased with his performance: we expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the youth, at which we dedicate him particularly. one cannot open this book anywhere and not find richness. to prove that this is true, i will open it at random and copy the page i happen to stumble upon. here is the result: dialogue 16 for to see the town anothony, go to accompany they gentilsmen, do they see the town. we won't to see all that is it remarquable here. come with me, if you please. i shall not folget nothing what can to merit your attention. here we are near to cathedral; will you come in there? we will first to see him in oudside, after we shall go in there for to look the interior. admire this master piece gothic architecture's. the chasing of all they figures is astonishing' indeed. the cupola and the nave are not less curious to see. what is this palace how i see yonder? it is the town hall. and this tower here at this side? it is the observatory. the bridge is very fine, it have ten arches, and is constructed of free stone. the streets are very layed out by line and too paved. what is the circuit of this town? two leagues. there is it also hospitals here? it not fail them. what are then the edifices the worthest to have seen? it is the arsnehal, the spectacle's hall, the cusiomhouse, and the purse. we are going too see the others monuments such that the public pawnbroker's office, the plants garden's, the money office's, the library. that it shall be for another day; we are tired. dialogue 17 to inform one'self of a person how is that gentilman who you did speak by and by? is a german. i did think him englishman. he is of the saxony side. he speak the french very well. tough he is german, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish and english, that among the italyans, they believe him italyan, he speak the frenche as the frenches himselves. the spanishesmen believe him spanishing, and the englishes, englishman. it is difficult to enjoy well so much several languages. the last remark contains a general truth; but it ceases to be a truth when one contracts it and apples it to an individual--provided that that individual is the author of this book, sehnor pedro carolino. i am sure i should not find it difficult "to enjoy well so much several languages"--or even a thousand of them--if he did the translating for me from the originals into his ostensible english. *** advice to little girls good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. this retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances. if you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly china one, you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless. and you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it. you ought never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone. in the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. in all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster. if at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud--never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. it is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. you secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots. if your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't. it is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment. you should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your food, and for the privilege of staying home from school when you let on that you are sick. therefore you ought to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims, and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you too much. good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. you ought never to "sass" old people unless they "sass" you first. *** post-mortem poetry [1] in philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant to see adopted throughout the land. it is that of appending to published death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry. any one who is in the habit of reading the daily philadelphia ledger must frequently be touched by these plaintive tributes to extinguished worth. in philadelphia, the departure of a child is a circumstance which is not more surely followed by a burial than by the accustomed solacing poesy in the public ledger. in that city death loses half its terror because the knowledge of its presence comes thus disguised in the sweet drapery of verse. for instance, in a late ledger i find the following (i change the surname): died hawks.--on the 17th inst., clara, the daughter of ephraim and laura hawks, aged 21 months and 2 days. that merry shout no more i hear, no laughing child i see, no little arms are around my neck, no feet upon my knee; no kisses drop upon my cheek, these lips are sealed to me. dear lord, how could i give clara up to any but to thee? a child thus mourned could not die wholly discontented. from the ledger of the same date i make the following extract, merely changing the surname, as before: becket.--on sunday morning, 19th inst., john p., infant son of george and julia becket, aged 1 year, 6 months, and 15 days. that merry shout no more i hear, no laughing child i see, no little arms are round my neck, no feet upon my knee; no kisses drop upon my cheek; these lips are sealed to me. dear lord, how could i give johnnie up to any but to thee? the similarity of the emotions as produced in the mourners in these two instances is remarkably evidenced by the singular similarity of thought which they experienced, and the surprising coincidence of language used by them to give it expression. in the same journal, of the same date, i find the following (surname suppressed, as before): wagner.--on the 10th inst., ferguson g., the son of william l. and martha theresa wagner, aged 4 weeks and 1 day. that merry shout no more i hear, no laughing child i see, no little arms are round my neck, no feet upon my knee; no kisses drop upon my cheek, these lips are sealed to me. dear lord, how could i give ferguson up to any but to thee? it is strange what power the reiteration of an essentially poetical thought has upon one's feelings. when we take up the ledger and read the poetry about little clara, we feel an unaccountable depression of the spirits. when we drift further down the column and read the poetry about little johnnie, the depression and spirits acquires and added emphasis, and we experience tangible suffering. when we saunter along down the column further still and read the poetry about little ferguson, the word torture but vaguely suggests the anguish that rends us. in the ledger (same copy referred to above) i find the following (i alter surname, as usual): welch.--on the 5th inst., mary c. welch, wife of william b. welch, and daughter of catharine and george w. markland, in the 29th year of her age. a mother dear, a mother kind, has gone and left us all behind. cease to weep, for tears are vain, mother dear is out of pain. farewell, husband, children dear, serve thy god with filial fear, and meet me in the land above, where all is peace, and joy, and love. what could be sweeter than that? no collection of salient facts (without reduction to tabular form) could be more succinctly stated than is done in the first stanza by the surviving relatives, and no more concise and comprehensive program of farewells, post-mortuary general orders, etc., could be framed in any form than is done in verse by deceased in the last stanza. these things insensibly make us wiser and tenderer, and better. another extract: ball.--on the morning of the 15th inst., mary e., daughter of john and sarah f. ball. 'tis sweet to rest in lively hope that when my change shall come angels will hover round my bed, to waft my spirit home. the following is apparently the customary form for heads of families: burns.--on the 20th inst., michael burns, aged 40 years. dearest father, thou hast left us, hear thy loss we deeply feel; but 'tis god that has bereft us, he can all our sorrows heal. funeral at 2 o'clock sharp. there is something very simple and pleasant about the following, which, in philadelphia, seems to be the usual form for consumptives of long standing. (it deplores four distinct cases in the single copy of the ledger which lies on the memoranda editorial table): bromley.--on the 29th inst., of consumption, philip bromley, in the 50th year of his age. affliction sore long time he bore, physicians were in vain-till god at last did hear him mourn, and eased him of his pain. that friend whom death from us has torn, we did not think so soon to part; an anxious care now sinks the thorn still deeper in our bleeding heart. this beautiful creation loses nothing by repetition. on the contrary, the oftener one sees it in the ledger, the more grand and awe-inspiring it seems. with one more extract i will close: doble.--on the 4th inst., samuel pervil worthington doble, aged 4 days. our little sammy's gone, his tiny spirit's fled; our little boy we loved so dear lies sleeping with the dead. a tear within a father's eye, a mother's aching heart, can only tell the agony how hard it is to part. could anything be more plaintive than that, without requiring further concessions of grammar? could anything be likely to do more toward reconciling deceased to circumstances, and making him willing to go? perhaps not. the power of song can hardly be estimated. there is an element about some poetry which is able to make even physical suffering and death cheerful things to contemplate and consummations to be desired. this element is present in the mortuary poetry of philadelphia degree of development. the custom i have been treating of is one that should be adopted in all the cities of the land. it is said that once a man of small consequence died, and the rev. t. k. beecher was asked to preach the funeral sermon-a man who abhors the lauding of people, either dead or alive, except in dignified and simple language, and then only for merits which they actually possessed or possess, not merits which they merely ought to have possessed. the friends of the deceased got up a stately funeral. they must have had misgivings that the corpse might not be praised strongly enough, for they prepared some manuscript headings and notes in which nothing was left unsaid on that subject that a fervid imagination and an unabridged dictionary could compile, and these they handed to the minister as he entered the pulpit. they were merely intended as suggestions, and so the friends were filled with consternation when the minister stood in the pulpit and proceeded to read off the curious odds and ends in ghastly detail and in a loud voice! and their consternation solidified to petrification when he paused at the end, contemplated the multitude reflectively, and then said, impressively: "the man would be a fool who tried to add anything to that. let us pray!" and with the same strict adhesion to truth it can be said that the man would be a fool who tried to add anything to the following transcendent obituary poem. there is something so innocent, so guileless, so complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied about this peerless "hog-wash," that the man must be made of stone who can read it without a dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone and quivering in his marrow. there is no need to say that this poem is genuine and in earnest, for its proofs are written all over its face. an ingenious scribbler might imitate it after a fashion, but shakespeare himself could not counterfeit it. it is noticeable that the country editor who published it did not know that it was a treasure and the most perfect thing of its kind that the storehouses and museums of literature could show. he did not dare to say no to the dread poet--for such a poet must have been something of an apparition--but he just shoveled it into his paper anywhere that came handy, and felt ashamed, and put that disgusted "published by request" over it, and hoped that his subscribers would overlook it or not feel an impulse to read it: (published by request lines composed on the death of samuel and catharine belknap's children by m. a. glaze friends and neighbors all draw near, and listen to what i have to say; and never leave your children dear when they are small, and go away. but always think of that sad fate, that happened in year of '63; four children with a house did burn, think of their awful agony. their mother she had gone away, and left them there alone to stay; the house took fire and down did burn; before their mother did return. their piteous cry the neighbors heard, and then the cry of fire was given; but, ah! before they could them reach, their little spirits had flown to heaven. their father he to war had gone, and on the battle-field was slain; but little did he think when he went away, but what on earth they would meet again. the neighbors often told his wife not to leave his children there, unless she got some one to stay, and of the little ones take care. the oldest he was years not six, and the youngest only eleven months old, but often she had left them there alone, as, by the neighbors, i have been told. how can she bear to see the place. where she so oft has left them there, without a single one to look to them, or of the little ones to take good care. oh, can she look upon the spot, whereunder their little burnt bones lay, but what she thinks she hears them say, ''twas god had pity, and took us on high.' and there may she kneel down and pray, and ask god her to forgive; and she may lead a different life while she on earth remains to live. her husband and her children too, god has took from pain and woe. may she reform and mend her ways, that she may also to them go. and when it is god's holy will, o, may she be prepared to meet her god and friends in peace, and leave this world of care. 1. written in 1870. *** the danger of lying in bed the man in the ticket-office said: "have an accident insurance ticket, also?" "no," i said, after studying the matter over a little. "no, i believe not; i am going to be traveling by rail all day today. however, tomorrow i don't travel. give me one for tomorrow." the man looked puzzled. he said: "but it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel by rail--" "if i am going to travel by rail i sha'n't need it. lying at home in bed is the thing _i_ am afraid of." i had been looking into this matter. last year i traveled twenty thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, i traveled over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail; and the year before that i traveled in the neighborhood of ten thousand miles, exclusively by rail. i suppose if i put in all the little odd journeys here and there, i may say i have traveled sixty thousand miles during the three years i have mentioned. and never an accident. for a good while i said to myself every morning: "now i have escaped thus far, and so the chances are just that much increased that i shall catch it this time. i will be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket." and to a dead moral certainty i drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started or a bone splintered. i got tired of that sort of daily bother, and fell to buying accident tickets that were good for a month. i said to myself, "a man can't buy thirty blanks in one bundle." but i was mistaken. there was never a prize in the the lot. i could read of railway accidents every day--the newspaper atmosphere was foggy with them; but somehow they never came my way. i found i had spent a good deal of money in the accident business, and had nothing to show for it. my suspicions were aroused, and i began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery. i found plenty of people who had invested, but not an individual that had ever had an accident or made a cent. i stopped buying accident tickets and went to ciphering. the result was astounding. the peril lay not in traveling, but in staying at home. i hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all the glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters, less than three hundred people had really lost their lives by those disasters in the preceding twelve months. the erie road was set down as the most murderous in the list. it had killed forty-six-or twenty-six, i do not exactly remember which, but i know the number was double that of any other road. but the fact straightway suggested itself that the erie was an immensely long road, and did more business than any other line in the country; so the double number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise. by further figuring, it appeared that between new york and rochester the erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day--16 altogether; and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. that is about a million in six months--the population of new york city. well, the erie kills from 13 to 23 persons of its million in six months; and in the same time 13,000 of new york's million die in their beds! my flesh crept, my hair stood on end. "this is appalling!" i said. "the danger isn't in traveling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds. i will never sleep in a bed again." i had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of the erie road. it was plain that the entire road must transport at least eleven or twelve thousand people every day. there are many short roads running out of boston that do fully half as much; a great many such roads. there are many roads scattered about the union that do a prodigious passenger business. therefore it was fair to presume that an average of 2,500 passengers a day for each road in the country would be almost correct. there are 846 railway lines in our country, and 846 times 2,500 are 2,115,000. so the railways of america move more than two millions of people every day; six hundred and fifty millions of people a year, without counting the sundays. they do that, too--there is no question about it; though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the jurisdiction of my arithmetic; for i have hunted the census through and through, and i find that there are not that many people in the united states, by a matter of six hundred and ten millions at the very least. they must use some of the same people over again, likely. san francisco is one-eighth as populous as new york; there are 60 deaths a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter--if they have luck. that is 3,120 deaths a year in san francisco, and eight times as many in new york--say about 25,000 or 26,000. the health of the two places is the same. so we will let it stand as a fair presumption that this will hold good all over the country, and that consequently 25,000 out of every million of people we have must die every year. that amounts to one-fortieth of our total population. one million of us, then, die annually. out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way, such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations, getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops, breaking through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines, or committing suicide in other forms. the erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! you will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. the railroads are good enough for me. and my advice to all people is, don't stay at home any more than you can help; but when you have got to stay at home a while, buy a package of those insurance tickets and sit up nights. you cannot be too cautious. [one can see now why i answered that ticket-agent in the manner recorded at the top of this sketch.] the moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumble more than is fair about railroad management in the united states. when we consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen thousand railway-trains of various kinds, freighted with life and armed with death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is, not that they kill three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth, but that they do not kill three hundred times three hundred! *** portrait of king william iii i never can look at those periodical portraits in the galaxy magazine without feeling a wild, tempestuous ambition to be an artist. i have seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time-acres of them here and leagues of them in the galleries of europe-but never any that moved me as these portraits do. there is a portrait of monsignore capel in the november number, now could anything be sweeter than that? and there was bismarck's, in the october number; who can look at that without being purer and stronger and nobler for it? and thurlow and weed's picture in the september number; i would not have died without seeing that, no, not for anything this world can give. but looks back still further and recall my own likeness as printed in the august number; if i had been in my grave a thousand years when that appeared, i would have got up and visited the artist. i sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night, so that i can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning. i know them all as thoroughly as if i had made them myself; i know every line and mark about them. sometimes when company are present i shuffle the portraits all up together, and then pick them out one by one and call their names, without referring to the printing on the bottom. i seldom make a mistake--never, when i am calm. i have had the portraits framed for a long time, waiting till my aunt gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor. but first one thing and then another interferes, and so the thing is delayed. once she said they would have more of the peculiar kind of light they needed in the attic. the old simpleton! it is as dark as a tomb up there. but she does not know anything about art, and so she has no reverence for it. when i showed her my "map of the fortifications of paris," she said it was rubbish. well, from nursing those portraits so long, i have come at last to have a perfect infatuation for art. i have a teacher now, and my enthusiasm continually and tumultuously grows, as i learn to use with more and more facility the pencil, brush, and graver. i am studying under de mellville, the house and portrait painter. [his name was smith when he lived in the west.] he does any kind of artist work a body wants, having a genius that is universal, like michael angelo. resembles that great artist, in fact. the back of his head is like this, and he wears his hat-brim tilted down on his nose to expose it. i have been studying under de mellville several months now. the first month i painted fences, and gave general satisfaction. the next month i white-washed a barn. the third, i was doing tin roofs; the forth, common signs; the fifth, statuary to stand before cigar shops. this present month is only the sixth, and i am already in portraits! the humble offering which accompanies these remarks [see figure]-the portrait of his majesty william iii., king of prussia-is my fifth attempt in portraits, and my greatest success. it has received unbounded praise from all classes of the community, but that which gratifies me most is the frequent and cordial verdict that it resembles the galaxy portraits. those were my first love, my earliest admiration, the original source and incentive of my art-ambition. whatever i am in art today, i owe to these portraits. i ask no credit for myself--i deserve none. and i never take any, either. many a stranger has come to my exhibition (for i have had my portrait of king william on exhibition at one dollar a ticket), and would have gone away blessing me, if i had let him, but i never did. i always stated where i got the idea. king william wears large bushy side-whiskers, and some critics have thought that this portrait would be more complete if they were added. but it was not possible. there was not room for side-whiskers and epaulets both, and so i let the whiskers go, and put in the epaulets, for the sake of style. that thing on his hat is an eagle. the prussian eagle--it is a national emblem. when i saw hat i mean helmet; but it seems impossible to make a picture of a helmet that a body can have confidence in. i wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my endeavor to attract a little attention to the galaxy portraits. i feel persuaded it can be accomplished, if the course to be pursued be chosen with judgment. i write for that magazine all the time, and so do many abler men, and if i can get these portraits into universal favor, it is all i ask; the reading-matter will take care of itself. commendations of the portrait there is nothing like it in the vatican. pius ix. it has none of that vagueness, that dreamy spirituality about it, which many of the first critics of arkansas have objected to in the murillo school of art. ruskin. the expression is very interesting. j.w. titian. (keeps a macaroni store in venice, at the old family stand.) it is the neatest thing in still life i have seen for years. rosa bonheur. the smile may be almost called unique. bismarck. i never saw such character portrayed in a picture face before. de mellville. there is a benignant simplicity about the execution of this work which warms the heart toward it as much, full as much, as it fascinates the eye. landseer. one cannot see it without longing to contemplate the artist. frederick william. send me the entire edition--together with the plate and the original portrait--and name your own price. and--would you like to come over and stay awhile with napoleon at wilhelmsh:ohe? it shall not cost you a cent. william iii. *** does the race of man love a lord? often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period. the day after the arrival of prince henry i met an english friend, and he rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged to the brim with joy--joy that was evidently a pleasant salve to an old sore place: "many a time i've had to listen without retort to an old saying that is irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance for a return jibe: 'an englishman does dearly love a lord'; but after this i shall talk back, and say, 'how about the americans?'" it is a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get. the man that first says it thinks he has made a discovery. the man he says it to, thinks the same. it departs on its travels, is received everywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as a piece of rare and acute observation, but as being exhaustively true and profoundly wise; and so it presently takes its place in the world's list of recognized and established wisdoms, and after that no one thinks of examining it to see whether it is really entitled to its high honors or not. i call to mind instances of this in two well-established proverbs, whose dullness is not surpassed by the one about the englishman and his love for a lord: one of them records the american's adoration of the almighty dollar, the other the american millionaire-girl's ambition to trade cash for a title, with a husband thrown in. it isn't merely the american that adores the almighty dollar, it is the human race. the human race has always adored the hatful of shells, or the bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings, or the handful of steel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives, or the zareba full of cattle, or the two-score camels and asses, or the factory, or the farm, or the block of buildings, or the railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or the hoarded cash, or-anything that stands for wealth and consideration and independence, and can secure to the possessor that most precious of all things, another man's envy. it was a dull person that invented the idea that the american's devotion to the dollar is more strenuous than another's. rich american girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea; it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before america was discovered. european girls still exploit it as briskly as ever; and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy the husband without it. they must put up the "dot," or there is no trade. the commercialization of brides is substantially universal, except in america. it exists with us, to some little extent, but in no degree approaching a custom. "the englishman dearly loves a lord." what is the soul and source of this love? i think the thing could be more correctly worded: "the human race dearly envies a lord." that is to say, it envies the lord's place. why? on two accounts, i think: its power and its conspicuousness. where conspicuousness carries with it a power which, by the light of our own observation and experience, we are able to measure and comprehend, i think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as passionate as is that of any other nation. no one can care less for a lord than the backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact with lords and has seldom heard them spoken of; but i will not allow that any englishman has a profounder envy of a lord than has the average american who has lived long years in a european capital and fully learned how immense is the position the lord occupies. of any ten thousand americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience, to get a glimpse of prince henry, all but a couple of hundred will be there out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up with desire to see a personage who is so much talked about. they envy him; but it is conspicuousness they envy mainly, not the power that is lodged in his royal quality and position, for they have but a vague and spectral knowledge and appreciation of that; though their environment and associations they have been accustomed to regard such things lightly, and as not being very real; consequently, they are not able to value them enough to consumingly envy them. but, whenever an american (or other human being) is in the presence, for the first time, of a combination of great power and conspicuousness which he thoroughly understands and appreciates, his eager curiosity and pleasure will be well-sodden with that other passion--envy-whether he suspects it or not. at any time, on any day, in any part of america, you can confer a happiness upon any passing stranger by calling his attention to any other passing stranger and saying: "do you see that gentleman going along there? it is mr. rockefeller." watch his eye. it is a combination of power and conspicuousness which the man understands. when we understand rank, we always like to rub against it. when a man is conspicuous, we always want to see him. also, if he will pay us an attention we will manage to remember it. also, we will mention it now and then, casually; sometimes to a friend, or if a friend is not handy, we will make out with a stranger. well, then, what is rank, and what is conspicuousness? at once we think of kings and aristocracies, and of world-wide celebrities in soldierships, the arts, letters, etc., and we stop there. but that is a mistake. rank holds its court and receives its homage on every round of the ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher; and distinction, also, exists on every round of the ladder, and commands its due of deference and envy. to worship rank and distinction is the dear and valued privilege of all the human race, and it is freely and joyfully exercised in democracies as well as in monarchies--and even, to some extent, among those creatures whom we impertinently call the lower animals. for even they have some poor little vanities and foibles, though in this matter they are paupers as compared to us. a chinese emperor has the worship of his four hundred millions of subjects, but the rest of the world is indifferent to him. a christian emperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large part of the christian world outside of his domains; but he is a matter of indifference to all china. a king, class a, has an extensive worship; a king, class b, has a less extensive worship; class c, class d, class e get a steadily diminishing share of worship; class l (sultan of zanzibar), class p (sultan of sulu), and class w (half-king of samoa), get no worship at all outside their own little patch of sovereignty. take the distinguished people along down. each has his group of homage-payers. in the navy, there are many groups; they start with the secretary and the admiral, and go down to the quartermaster-and below; for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of these groups will have a tar who is distinguished for his battles, or his strength, or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired and envied by his group. the same with the army; the same with the literary and journalistic craft; the publishing craft; the cod-fishery craft; standard oil; u. s. steel; the class a hotel-and the rest of the alphabet in that line; the class a prize-fighter-and the rest of the alphabet in his line--clear down to the lowest and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, with its one boy that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of samoa, bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent admiration and envy. there is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this human race's fondness for contact with power and distinction, and for the reflected glory it gets out of it. the king, class a, is happy in the state banquet and the military show which the emperor provides for him, and he goes home and gathers the queen and the princelings around him in the privacy of the spare room, and tells them all about it, and says: "his imperial majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most friendly way--just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can't imagine it!-and everybody seeing him do it; charming, perfectly charming!" the king, class g, is happy in the cold collation and the police parade provided for him by the king, class b, and goes home and tells the family all about it, and says: "and his majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a smoke and a chat, and there we sat just as sociable, and talking away and laughing and chatting, just the same as if we had been born in the same bunk; and all the servants in the anteroom could see us doing it! oh, it was too lovely for anything!" the king, class q, is happy in the modest entertainment furnished him by the king, class m, and goes home and tells the household about it, and is as grateful and joyful over it as were his predecessors in the gaudier attentions that had fallen to their larger lot. emperors, kings, artisans, peasants, big people, little people--at the bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside, and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which. we are unanimous in the pride we take in good and genuine compliments paid us, and distinctions conferred upon us, in attentions shown. there is not one of us, from the emperor down,, but is made like that. do i mean attentions shown us by the guest? no, i mean simply flattering attentions, let them come whence they may. we despise no source that can pay us a pleasing attention--there is no source that is humble enough for that. you have heard a dear little girl say to a frowzy and disreputable dog: "he came right to me and let me pat him on the head, and he wouldn't let the others touch him!" and you have seen her eyes dance with pride in that high distinction. you have often seen that. if the child were a princess, would that random dog be able to confer the like glory upon her with his pretty compliment? yes; and even in her mature life and seated upon a throne, she would still remember it, still recall it, still speak of it with frank satisfaction. that charming and lovable german princess and poet, carmen sylva, queen of roumania, remembers yet that the flowers of the woods and fields "talked to her" when she was a girl, and she sets it down in her latest book; and that the squirrels conferred upon her and her father the valued compliment of not being afraid of them; and "once one of them, holding a nut between its sharp little teeth, ran right up against my father"--it has the very note of "he came right to me and let me pat him on the head"--"and when it saw itself reflected in his boot it was very much surprised, and stopped for a long time to contemplate itself in the polished leather"--then it went its way. and the birds! she still remembers with pride that "they came boldly into my room," when she had neglected her "duty" and put no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all the wild birds, and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember with pride that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personal friends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship to her injury: "never have i been stung by a wasp or a bee." and here is that proud note again that sings in that little child's elation in being singled out, among all the company of children, for the random dog's honor-conferring attentions. "even in the very worst summer for wasps, when, in lunching out of doors, our table was covered with them and every one else was stung, they never hurt me." when a queen whose qualities of mind and heart and character are able to add distinction to so distinguished a place as a throne, remembers with grateful exultation, after thirty years, honors and distinctions conferred upon her by the humble, wild creatures of the forest, we are helped to realize that complimentary attentions, homage, distinctions, are of no caste, but are above all cast-that they are a nobility-conferring power apart. we all like these things. when the gate-guard at the railway-station passes me through unchallenged and examines other people's tickets, i feel as the king, class a, felt when the emperor put the imperial hand on his shoulder, "everybody seeing him do it"; and as the child felt when the random dog allowed her to pat his head and ostracized the others; and as the princess felt when the wasps spared her and stung the rest; and i felt just so, four years ago in vienna (and remember it yet), when the helmeted police shut me off, with fifty others, from a street which the emperor was to pass through, and the captain of the squad turned and saw the situation and said indignantly to that guard: "can't you see it is the herr mark twain? let him through!" it was four years ago; but it will be four hundred before i forget the wind of self-complacency that rose in me, and strained my buttons when i marked the deference for me evoked in the faces of my fellow-rabble, and noted, mingled with it, a puzzled and resentful expression which said, as plainly as speech could have worded it: "and who in the nation is the herr mark twain um gotteswillen?" how many times in your life have you heard this boastful remark: "i stood as close to him as i am to you; i could have put out my hand and touched him." we have all heard it many and many a time. it was a proud distinction to be able to say those words. it brought envy to the speaker, a kind of glory; and he basked in it and was happy through all his veins. and who was it he stood so close to? the answer would cover all the grades. sometimes it was a king; sometimes it was a renowned highwayman; sometimes it was an unknown man killed in an extraordinary way and made suddenly famous by it; always it was a person who was for the moment the subject of public interest of a village. "i was there, and i saw it myself." that is a common and envy-compelling remark. it can refer to a battle; to a handing; to a coronation; to the killing of jumbo by the railway-train; to the arrival of jenny lind at the battery; to the meeting of the president and prince henry; to the chase of a murderous maniac; to the disaster in the tunnel; to the explosion in the subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning. it will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in america who has seen prince henry do anything, or try to. the man who was absent and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. it is his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, to be different from other americans, and better. as his opinion of his superior americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle the distinction of those that saw the prince do things, and will spoil their pleasure in it if he can. my life has been embittered by that kind of persons. if you are able to tell of a special distinction that has fallen to your lot, it gravels them; they cannot bear it; and they try to make believe that the thing you took for a special distinction was nothing of the kind and was meant in quite another way. once i was received in private audience by an emperor. last week i was telling a jealous person about it, and i could see him wince under it, see him bite, see him suffer. i revealed the whole episode to him with considerable elaboration and nice attention to detail. when i was through, he asked me what had impressed me most. i said: "his majesty's delicacy. they told me to be sure and back out from the presence, and find the door-knob as best i could; it was not allowable to face around. now the emperor knew it would be a difficult ordeal for me, because of lack of practice; and so, when it was time to part, he turned, with exceeding delicacy, and pretended to fumble with things on his desk, so i could get out in my own way, without his seeing me." it went home! it was vitriol! i saw the envy and disgruntlement rise in the man's face; he couldn't keep it down. i saw him try to fix up something in his mind to take the bloom off that distinction. i enjoyed that, for i judged that he had his work cut out for him. he struggled along inwardly for quite a while; then he said, with a manner of a person who has to say something and hasn't anything relevant to say: "you said he had a handful of special-brand cigars on the table?" "yes; _i_ never said anything to match them." i had him again. he had to fumble around in his mind as much as another minute before he could play; then he said in as mean a way as i ever heard a person say anything: "he could have been counting the cigars, you know." i cannot endure a man like that. it is nothing to him how unkind he is, so long as he takes the bloom off. it is all he cares for. "an englishman (or other human being) does dearly love a lord," (or other conspicuous person.) it includes us all. we love to be noticed by the conspicuous person; we love to be associated with such, or with a conspicuous event, even in a seventh-rate fashion, even in the forty-seventh, if we cannot do better. this accounts for some of our curious tastes in mementos. it accounts for the large private trade in the prince of wales's hair, which chambermaids were able to drive in that article of commerce when the prince made the tour of the world in the long ago--hair which probably did not always come from his brush, since enough of it was marketed to refurnish a bald comet; it accounts for the fact that the rope which lynches a negro in the presence of ten thousand christian spectators is salable five minutes later at two dollars and inch; it accounts for the mournful fact that a royal personage does not venture to wear buttons on his coat in public. we do love a lord--and by that term i mean any person whose situation is higher than our own. the lord of the group, for instance: a group of peers, a group of millionaires, a group of hoodlums, a group of sailors, a group of newsboys, a group of saloon politicians, a group of college girls. no royal person has ever been the object of a more delirious loyalty and slavish adoration than is paid by the vast tammany herd to its squalid idol in wantage. there is not a bifurcated animal in that menagerie that would not be proud to appear in a newspaper picture in his company. at the same time, there are some in that organization who would scoff at the people who have been daily pictured in company with prince henry, and would say vigorously that they would not consent to be photographed with him--a statement which would not be true in any instance. there are hundreds of people in america who would frankly say to you that they would not be proud to be photographed in a group with the prince, if invited; and some of these unthinking people would believe it when they said it; yet in no instance would it be true. we have a large population, but we have not a large enough one, by several millions, to furnish that man. he has not yet been begotten, and in fact he is not begettable. you may take any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person in the dim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it is a crowd of ten thousand--ten thousand proud, untamed democrats, horny-handed sons of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle-there isn't one who is trying to keep out of range, there isn't one who isn't plainly meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning, with the intention of hunting himself out in the picture and of framing and keeping it if he shall find so much of his person in it as his starboard ear. we all love to get some of the drippings of conspicuousness, and we will put up with a single, humble drip, if we can't get any more. we may pretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can't pretend it to ourselves privately--and we don't. we do confess in public that we are the noblest work of god, being moved to it by long habit, and teaching, and superstition; but deep down in the secret places of our souls we recognize that, if we are the noblest work, the less said about it the better. we of the north poke fun at the south for its fondness of titles-a fondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they are genuine or pinchbeck. we forget that whatever a southerner likes the rest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of predilection lodged in one people that is absent from another people. there is no variety in the human race. we are all children, all children of the one adam, and we love toys. we can soon acquire that southern disease if some one will give it a start. it already has a start, in fact. i have been personally acquainted with over eighty-four thousand persons who, at one time or another in their lives, have served for a year or two on the staffs of our multitudinous governors, and through that fatality have been generals temporarily, and colonels temporarily, and judge-advocates temporarily; but i have known only nine among them who could be hired to let the title go when it ceased to be legitimate. i know thousands and thousands of governors who ceased to be governors away back in the last century; but i am acquainted with only three who would answer your letter if you failed to call them "governor" in it. i know acres and acres of men who have done time in a legislature in prehistoric days, but among them is not half an acre whose resentment you would not raise if you addressed them as "mr." instead of "hon." the first thing a legislature does is to convene in an impressive legislative attitude, and get itself photographed. each member frames his copy and takes it to the woods and hangs it up in the most aggressively conspicuous place in his house; and if you visit the house and fail to inquire what that accumulation is, the conversation will be brought around to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show you a figure in it which in the course of years he has almost obliterated with the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, "it's me!" have you ever seen a country congressman enter the hotel breakfast-room in washington with his letters?--and sit at his table and let on to read them?--and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like?-keeping a furtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see if he is being observed and admired?--those same old letters which he fetches in every morning? have you seen it? have you seen him show off? it is the sight of the national capital. except one; a pathetic one. that is the ex-congressman: the poor fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-year taste of glory and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded, and ought to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tear himself away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so he lingers, and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes snubbed, ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look otherwise; dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and gaiety, hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed, the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates. have you seen him? he clings piteously to the one little shred that is left of his departed distinction--the "privilege of the floor"; and works it hard and gets what he can out of it. that is the saddest figure i know of. yes, we do so love our little distinctions! and then we loftily scoff at a prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we only had his chance--ah! "senator" is not a legitimate title. a senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you or i; but, in the several state capitals and in washington, there are five thousand senators who take very kindly to that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call them by it-which you may do quite unrebuked. then those same senators smile at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of the south! indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may. and we work them for all they are worth. in prayer we call ourselves "worms of the dust," but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par. we-worms of the dust! oh, no, we are not that. except in fact; and we do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves. as a race, we do certainly love a lord--let him be croker, or a duke, or a prize-fighter, or whatever other personage shall chance to be the head of our group. many years ago, i saw a greasy youth in overalls standing by the herald office, with an expectant look in his face. soon a large man passed out, and gave him a pat on the shoulder. that was what the boy was waiting for--the large man's notice. the pat made him proud and happy, and the exultation inside of him shone out through his eyes; and his mates were there to see the pat and envy it and wish they could have that glory. the boy belonged down cellar in the press-room, the large man was king of the upper floors, foreman of the composing-room. the light in the boy's face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head of his group. the pat was an accolade. it was as precious to the boy as it would have been if he had been an aristocrat's son and the accolade had been delivered by his sovereign with a sword. the quintessence of the honor was all there; there was no difference in values; in truth there was no difference present except an artificial one-clothes. all the human race loves a lord--that is, loves to look upon or be noticed by the possessor of power or conspicuousness; and sometimes animals, born to better things and higher ideals, descend to man's level in this matter. in the jardin des plantes i have see a cat that was so vain of being the personal friend of an elephant that i was ashamed of her. *** extracts from adam's diary monday.--this new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. it is always hanging around and following me about. i don't like this; i am not used to company. i wish it would stay with the other animals. . . . cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain. . . . we? where did i get that word-the new creature uses it. tuesday.--been examining the great waterfall. it is the finest thing on the estate, i think. the new creature calls it niagara falls-why, i am sure i do not know. says it looks like niagara falls. that is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. i get no chance to name anything myself. the new creature names everything that comes along, before i can get in a protest. and always that same pretext is offered--it looks like the thing. there is a dodo, for instance. says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo." it will have to keep that name, no doubt. it wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway. dodo! it looks no more like a dodo than i do. wednesday.--built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to myself in peace. the new creature intruded. when i tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress. i wish it would not talk; it is always talking. that sounds like a cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but i do not mean it so. i have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. and this new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear, first on one side and then on the other, and i am used only to sounds that are more or less distant from me. friday. the naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything i can do. i had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty-garden of eden. privately, i continue to call it that, but not any longer publicly. the new creature says it is all woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a park. consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named niagara falls park. this is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. and already there is a sign up: keep off the grass my life is not as happy as it was. saturday.--the new creature eats too much fruit. we are going to run short, most likely. "we" again--that is its word; mine, too, now, from hearing it so much. good deal of fog this morning. i do not go out in the fog myself. this new creature does. it goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet. and talks. it used to be so pleasant and quiet here. sunday.--pulled through. this day is getting to be more and more trying. it was selected and set apart last november as a day of rest. i had already six of them per week before. this morning found the new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree. monday.--the new creature says its name is eve. that is all right, i have no objections. says it is to call it by, when i want it to come. i said it was superfluous, then. the word evidently raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word and will bear repetition. it says it is not an it, it is a she. this is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me if she would but go by herself and not talk. tuesday.--she has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive signs: this way to the whirlpool this way to goat island cave of the winds this way she says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was any custom for it. summer resort--another invention of hers-just words, without any meaning. what is a summer resort? but it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining. friday.--she has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the falls. what harm does it do? says it makes her shudder. i wonder why; i have always done it--always liked the plunge, and coolness. i supposed it was what the falls were for. they have no other use that i can see, and they must have been made for something. she says they were only made for scenery--like the rhinoceros and the mastodon. i went over the falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her. went over in a tub--still not satisfactory. swam the whirlpool and the rapids in a fig-leaf suit. it got much damaged. hence, tedious complaints about my extravagance. i am too much hampered here. what i need is a change of scene. saturday.--i escaped last tuesday night, and traveled two days, and built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks as well as i could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with. i was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again when occasion offers. she engages herself in many foolish things; among others; to study out why the animals called lions and tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each other. this is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each other, and that would introduce what, as i understand, is called "death"; and death, as i have been told, has not yet entered the park. which is a pity, on some accounts. sunday.--pulled through. monday.--i believe i see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest up from the weariness of sunday. it seems a good idea. . . . she has been climbing that tree again. clodded her out of it. she said nobody was looking. seems to consider that a sufficient justification for chancing any dangerous thing. told her that. the word justification moved her admiration--and envy, too, i thought. it is a good word. tuesday.--she told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. this is at least doubtful, if not more than that. i have not missed any rib. . . . she is in much trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. the buzzard must get along the best it can with what is provided. we cannot overturn the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard. saturday.--she fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at herself in it, which she is always doing. she nearly strangled, and said it was most uncomfortable. this made her sorry for the creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to her, she is such a numbskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but i have noticed them now and then all day and i don't see that they are any happier there then they were before, only quieter. when night comes i shall throw them outdoors. i will not sleep with them again, for i find them clammy and unpleasant to lie among when a person hasn't anything on. sunday.--pulled through. tuesday.--she has taken up with a snake now. the other animals are glad, for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and i am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest. friday.--she says the snake advises her to try the fruit of the tree, and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. i told her there would be another result, too--it would introduce death into the world. that was a mistake--it had been better to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea--she could save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent lions and tigers. i advised her to keep away from the tree. she said she wouldn't. i foresee trouble. will emigrate. wednesday.--i have had a variegated time. i escaped last night, and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear of the park and hide in some other country before the trouble should begin; but it was not to be. about an hour after sun-up, as i was riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion and every beast was destroying its neighbor. i knew what it meant-eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world. . . . the tigers ate my house, paying no attention when i ordered them to desist, and they would have eaten me if i had stayed-which i didn't, but went away in much haste. . . . i found this place, outside the park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she has found me out. found me out, and has named the place tonawanda-says it looks like that. in fact i was not sorry she came, for there are but meager pickings here, and she brought some of those apples. i was obliged to eat them, i was so hungry. it was against my principles, but i find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed. . . . she came curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when i asked her what she meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she tittered and blushed. i had never seen a person titter and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. she said i would soon know how it was myself. this was correct. hungry as i was, i laid down the apple half-eaten--certainly the best one i ever saw, considering the lateness of the season-and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not make a spectacle or herself. she did it, and after this we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected some skins, and i made her patch together a couple of suits proper for public occasions. they are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes. . . . i find she is a good deal of a companion. i see i should be lonesome and depressed without her, now that i have lost my property. another thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter. she will be useful. i will superintend. ten days later.--she accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! she says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. i said i was innocent, then, for i had not eaten any chestnuts. she said the serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term meaning an aged and moldy joke. i turned pale at that, for i have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort, though i had honestly supposed that they were new when i made them. she asked me if i had made one just at the time of the catastrophe. i was obliged to admit that i had made one to myself, though not aloud. it was this. i was thinking about the falls, and i said to myself, "how wonderful it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!" then in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and i let it fly, saying, "it would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up there!"--and i was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature broke loose in war and death and i had to flee for my life. "there," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the first chestnut, and said it was coeval with the creation." alas, i am indeed to blame. would that i were not witty; oh, that i had never had that radiant thought! next year.--we have named it cain. she caught it while i was up country trapping on the north shore of the erie; caught it in the timber a couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four, she isn't certain which. it resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation. that is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment. the difference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps, though when i put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the experiment to determine the matter. i still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have it to try. i do not understand this. the coming of the creature seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable about experiments. she thinks more of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is not able to explain why. her mind is disordered--everything shows it. sometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to the water. at such times the water comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. i have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. she used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them, before we lost our property, but it was only play; she never took on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them. sunday.--she doesn't work, sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh. i have not seen a fish before that could laugh. this makes me doubt. . . . i have come to like sunday myself. superintending all the week tires a body so. there ought to be more sundays. in the old days they were tough, but now they come handy. wednesday.--it isn't a fish. i cannot quite make out what it is. it makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo" when it is. it is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; i feel sure it is not a fish, though i cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. it merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. i have not seen any other animal do that before. i said i believed it was an enigma; but she only admired the word without understanding it. in my judgment it is either an enigma or some king of a bug. if it dies, i will take it apart and see what its arrangements are. i never had a thing perplex me so. three months later.--the perplexity augments instead of diminishing. i sleep but little. it has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs now. yet it differs from the other four legged animals, in that its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air, and this is not attractive. it is built much as we are, but its method of traveling shows that it is not of our breed. the short front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is a of the kangaroo family, but it is a marked variation of that species, since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does. still it is a curious and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued before. as i discovered it, i have felt justified in securing the credit of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called it kangaroorum adamiensis. . . . it must have been a young one when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. it must be five times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented it is able to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made at first. coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary effect. for this reason i discontinued the system. she reconciles it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously told me she wouldn't give it. as already observed, i was not at home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods. it seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so, for i have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another one to add to my collection, and for this to play with; for surely then it would be quieter and we could tame it more easily. but i find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no tracks. it has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself; therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? i have set a dozen traps, but they do no good. i catch all small animals except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of curiosity, i think, to see what the milk is there for. they never drink it. three months later.--the kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and perplexing. i never knew one to be so long getting its growth. it has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of being black is red. i am like to lose my mind over the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. if i could catch another one--but that is hopeless; it is a new variety, and the only sample; this is plain. but i caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among friends; but it was a mistake--it went into such fits at the sight of the kangaroo that i was convinced it had never seen one before. i pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing i can do to make it happy. if i could tame it--but that is out of the question; the more i try the worse i seem to make it. it grieves me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and passion. i wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. that seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right. it might be lonelier than ever; for since i cannot find another one, how could it? five months later.--it is not a kangaroo. no, for it supports itself by holding to her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then falls down. it is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has no tail--as yet--and no fur, except upon its head. it still keeps on growing--that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their growth earlier than this. bears are dangerous-since our catastrophe--and i shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle on. i have offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no good--she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks, i think. she was not like this before she lost her mind. a fortnight later.--i examined its mouth. there is no danger yet: it has only one tooth. it has no tail yet. it makes more noise now than it ever did before--and mainly at night. i have moved out. but i shall go over, mornings, to breakfast, and see if it has more teeth. if it gets a mouthful of teeth it will be time for it to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be dangerous. four months later.--i have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that she calls buffalo; i don't know why, unless it is because there are not any buffaloes there. meantime the bear has learned to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa" and "momma." it is certainly a new species. this resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do. this imitation of speech, taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. the further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. meantime i will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the north and make an exhaustive search. there must certainly be another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company of its own species. i will go straightway; but i will muzzle this one first. three months later.--it has been a weary, weary hunt, yet i have had no success. in the mean time, without stirring from the home estate, she has caught another one! i never saw such luck. i might have hunted these woods a hundred years, i never would have run across that thing. next day.--i have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is perfectly plain that they are of the same breed. i was going to stuff one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so i have relinquished the idea, though i think it is a mistake. it would be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away. the old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like a parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree. i shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; and yet i ought not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it could think of since those first days when it was a fish. the new one is as ugly as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. she calls it abel. ten years later.--they are boys; we found it out long ago. it was their coming in that small immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. there are some girls now. abel is a good boy, but if cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him. after all these years, i see that i was mistaken about eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the garden with her than inside it without her. at first i thought she talked too much; but now i should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit! *** eve's diary translated from the original saturday.--i am almost a whole day old, now. i arrived yesterday. that is as it seems to me. and it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday i was not there when it happened, or i should remember it. it could be, of course, that it did happen, and that i was not noticing. very well; i will be very watchful now, and if any day-before-yesterdays happen i will make a note of it. it will be best to start right and not let the record get confused, for some instinct tells me that these details are going to be important to the historian some day. for i feel like an experiment, i feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than i do, and so i am coming to feel convinced that that is what i am--an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more. then if i am an experiment, am i the whole of it? no, i think not; i think the rest of it is part of it. i am the main part of it, but i think the rest of it has its share in the matter. is my position assured, or do i have to watch it and take care of it? the latter, perhaps. some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance is the price of supremacy. [that is a good phrase, i think, for one so young.] everything looks better today than it did yesterday. in the rush of finishing up yesterday, the mountains were left in a ragged condition, and some of the plains were so cluttered with rubbish and remnants that the aspects were quite distressing. noble and beautiful works of art should not be subjected to haste; and this majestic new world is indeed a most noble and beautiful work. and certainly marvelously near to being perfect, notwithstanding the shortness of the time. there are too many stars in some places and not enough in others, but that can be remedied presently, no doubt. the moon got loose last night, and slid down and fell out of the scheme-a very great loss; it breaks my heart to think of it. there isn't another thing among the ornaments and decorations that is comparable to it for beauty and finish. it should have been fastened better. if we can only get it back again-but of course there is no telling where it went to. and besides, whoever gets it will hide it; i know it because i would do it myself. i believe i can be honest in all other matters, but i already begin to realize that the core and center of my nature is love of the beautiful, a passion for the beautiful, and that it would not be safe to trust me with a moon that belonged to another person and that person didn't know i had it. i could give up a moon that i found in the daytime, because i should be afraid some one was looking; but if i found it in the dark, i am sure i should find some kind of an excuse for not saying anything about it. for i do love moons, they are so pretty and so romantic. i wish we had five or six; i would never go to bed; i should never get tired lying on the moss-bank and looking up at them. stars are good, too. i wish i could get some to put in my hair. but i suppose i never can. you would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. when they first showed, last night, i tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn't reach, which astonished me; then i tried clods till i was all tired out, but i never got one. it was because i am left-handed and cannot throw good. even when i aimed at the one i wasn't after i couldn't hit the other one, though i did make some close shots, for i saw the black blot of the clod sail right into the midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if i could have held out a little longer maybe i could have got one. so i cried a little, which was natural, i suppose, for one of my age, and after i was rested i got a basket and started for a place on the extreme rim of the circle, where the stars were close to the ground and i could get them with my hands, which would be better, anyway, because i could gather them tenderly then, and not break them. but it was farther than i thought, and at last i had go give it up; i was so tired i couldn't drag my feet another step; and besides, they were sore and hurt me very much. i couldn't get back home; it was too far and turning cold; but i found some tigers and nestled in among them and was most adorably comfortable, and their breath was sweet and pleasant, because they live on strawberries. i had never seen a tiger before, but i knew them in a minute by the stripes. if i could have one of those skins, it would make a lovely gown. today i am getting better ideas about distances. i was so eager to get hold of every pretty thing that i giddily grabbed for it, sometimes when it was too far off, and sometimes when it was but six inches away but seemed a foot--alas, with thorns between! i learned a lesson; also i made an axiom, all out of my own head-my very first one; the scratched experiment shuns the thorn. i think it is a very good one for one so young. i followed the other experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a distance, to see what it might be for, if i could. but i was not able to make out. i think it is a man. i had never seen a man, but it looked like one, and i feel sure that that is what it is. i realize that i feel more curiosity about it than about any of the other reptiles. if it is a reptile, and i suppose it is; for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile. it has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so i think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture. i was afraid of it at first, and started to run every time it turned around, for i thought it was going to chase me; but by and by i found it was only trying to get away, so after that i was not timid any more, but tracked it along, several hours, about twenty yards behind, which made it nervous and unhappy. at last it was a good deal worried, and climbed a tree. i waited a good while, then gave it up and went home. today the same thing over. i've got it up the tree again. sunday.--it is up there yet. resting, apparently. but that is a subterfuge: sunday isn't the day of rest; saturday is appointed for that. it looks to me like a creature that is more interested in resting than it anything else. it would tire me to rest so much. it tires me just to sit around and watch the tree. i do wonder what it is for; i never see it do anything. they returned the moon last night, and i was so happy! i think it is very honest of them. it slid down and fell off again, but i was not distressed; there is no need to worry when one has that kind of neighbors; they will fetch it back. i wish i could do something to show my appreciation. i would like to send them some stars, for we have more than we can use. i mean i, not we, for i can see that the reptile cares nothing for such things. it has low tastes, and is not kind. when i went there yesterday evening in the gloaming it had crept down and was trying to catch the little speckled fishes that play in the pool, and i had to clod it to make it go up the tree again and let them alone. i wonder if that is what it is for? hasn't it any heart? hasn't it any compassion for those little creature? can it be that it was designed and manufactured for such ungentle work? it has the look of it. one of the clods took it back of the ear, and it used language. it gave me a thrill, for it was the first time i had ever heard speech, except my own. i did not understand the words, but they seemed expressive. when i found it could talk i felt a new interest in it, for i love to talk; i talk, all day, and in my sleep, too, and i am very interesting, but if i had another to talk to i could be twice as interesting, and would never stop, if desired. if this reptile is a man, it isn't an it, is it? that wouldn't be grammatical, would it? i think it would be he. i think so. in that case one would parse it thus: nominative, he; dative, him; possessive, his'n. well, i will consider it a man and call it he until it turns out to be something else. this will be handier than having so many uncertainties. next week sunday.--all the week i tagged around after him and tried to get acquainted. i had to do the talking, because he was shy, but i didn't mind it. he seemed pleased to have me around, and i used the sociable "we" a good deal, because it seemed to flatter him to be included. wednesday.--we are getting along very well indeed, now, and getting better and better acquainted. he does not try to avoid me any more, which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him. that pleases me, and i study to be useful to him in every way i can, so as to increase his regard. during the last day or two i have taken all the work of naming things off his hands, and this has been a great relief to him, for he has no gift in that line, and is evidently very grateful. he can't think of a rational name to save him, but i do not let him see that i am aware of his defect. whenever a new creature comes along i name it before he has time to expose himself by an awkward silence. in this way i have saved him many embarrassments. i have no defect like this. the minute i set eyes on an animal i know what it is. i don't have to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly, just as if it were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for i am sure it wasn't in me half a minute before. i seem to know just by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal it is. when the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--i saw it in his eye. but i saved him. and i was careful not to do it in a way that could hurt his pride. i just spoke up in a quite natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if i was dreaming of conveying information, and said, "well, i do declare, if there isn't the dodo!" i explained--without seeming to be explaining-how i know it for a dodo, and although i thought maybe he was a little piqued that i knew the creature when he didn't, it was quite evident that he admired me. that was very agreeable, and i thought of it more than once with gratification before i slept. how little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it! thursday.--my first sorrow. yesterday he avoided me and seemed to wish i would not talk to him. i could not believe it, and thought there was some mistake, for i loved to be with him, and loved to hear him talk, and so how could it be that he could feel unkind toward me when i had not done anything? but at last it seemed true, so i went away and sat lonely in the place where i first saw him the morning that we were made and i did not know what he was and was indifferent about him; but now it was a mournful place, and every little think spoke of him, and my heart was very sore. i did not know why very clearly, for it was a new feeling; i had not experienced it before, and it was all a mystery, and i could not make it out. but when night came i could not bear the lonesomeness, and went to the new shelter which he has built, to ask him what i had done that was wrong and how i could mend it and get back his kindness again; but he put me out in the rain, and it was my first sorrow. sunday.--it is pleasant again, now, and i am happy; but those were heavy days; i do not think of them when i can help it. i tried to get him some of those apples, but i cannot learn to throw straight. i failed, but i think the good intention pleased him. they are forbidden, and he says i shall come to harm; but so i come to harm through pleasing him, why shall i care for that harm? monday.--this morning i told him my name, hoping it would interest him. but he did not care for it. it is strange. if he should tell me his name, i would care. i think it would be pleasanter in my ears than any other sound. he talks very little. perhaps it is because he is not bright, and is sensitive about it and wishes to conceal it. it is such a pity that he should feel so, for brightness is nothing; it is in the heart that the values lie. i wish i could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches, and riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty. although he talks so little, he has quite a considerable vocabulary. this morning he used a surprisingly good word. he evidently recognized, himself, that it was a good one, for he worked in in twice afterward, casually. it was good casual art, still it showed that he possesses a certain quality of perception. without a doubt that seed can be made to grow, if cultivated. where did he get that word? i do not think i have ever used it. no, he took no interest in my name. i tried to hide my disappointment, but i suppose i did not succeed. i went away and sat on the moss-bank with my feet in the water. it is where i go when i hunger for companionship, some one to look at, some one to talk to. it is not enough--that lovely white body painted there in the pool-but it is something, and something is better than utter loneliness. it talks when i talk; it is sad when i am sad; it comforts me with its sympathy; it says, "do not be downhearted, you poor friendless girl; i will be your friend." it is a good friend to me, and my only one; it is my sister. that first time that she forsook me! ah, i shall never forget that-never, never. my heart was lead in my body! i said, "she was all i had, and now she is gone!" in my despair i said, "break, my heart; i cannot bear my life any more!" and hid my face in my hands, and there was no solace for me. and when i took them away, after a little, there she was again, white and shining and beautiful, and i sprang into her arms! that was perfect happiness; i had known happiness before, but it was not like this, which was ecstasy. i never doubted her afterward. sometimes she stayed away--maybe an hour, maybe almost the whole day, but i waited and did not doubt; i said, "she is busy, or she is gone on a journey, but she will come." and it was so: she always did. at night she would not come if it was dark, for she was a timid little thing; but if there was a moon she would come. i am not afraid of the dark, but she is younger than i am; she was born after i was. many and many are the visits i have paid her; she is my comfort and my refuge when my life is hard--and it is mainly that. tuesday.--all the morning i was at work improving the estate; and i purposely kept away from him in the hope that he would get lonely and come. but he did not. at noon i stopped for the day and took my recreation by flitting all about with the bees and the butterflies and reveling in the flowers, those beautiful creatures that catch the smile of god out of the sky and preserve it! i gathered them, and made them into wreaths and garlands and clothed myself in them while i ate my luncheon-apples, of course; then i sat in the shade and wished and waited. but he did not come. but no matter. nothing would have come of it, for he does not care for flowers. he called them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that. he does not care for me, he does not care for flowers, he does not care for the painted sky at eventide--is there anything he does care for, except building shacks to coop himself up in from the good clean rain, and thumping the melons, and sampling the grapes, and fingering the fruit on the trees, to see how those properties are coming along? i laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it with another one, in order to carry out a scheme that i had, and soon i got an awful fright. a thin, transparent bluish film rose out of the hole, and i dropped everything and ran! i thought it was a spirit, and i was so frightened! but i looked back, and it was not coming; so i leaned against a rock and rested and panted, and let my limps go on trembling until they got steady again; then i crept warily back, alert, watching, and ready to fly if there was occasion; and when i was come near, i parted the branches of a rose-bush and peeped through--wishing the man was about, i was looking so cunning and pretty--but the sprite was gone. i went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole. i put my finger in, to feel it, and said ouch! and took it out again. it was a cruel pain. i put my finger in my mouth; and by standing first on one foot and then the other, and grunting, i presently eased my misery; then i was full of interest, and began to examine. i was curious to know what the pink dust was. suddenly the name of it occurred to me, though i had never heard of it before. it was fire! i was as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world. so without hesitation i named it that--fire. i had created something that didn't exist before; i had added a new thing to the world's uncountable properties; i realized this, and was proud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him and tell him about it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem-but i reflected, and did not do it. no--he would not care for it. he would ask what it was good for, and what could i answer? for if it was not good for something, but only beautiful, merely beautiful-so i sighed, and did not go. for it wasn't good for anything; it could not build a shack, it could not improve melons, it could not hurry a fruit crop; it was useless, it was a foolishness and a vanity; he would despise it and say cutting words. but to me it was not despicable; i said, "oh, you fire, i love you, you dainty pink creature, for you are beautiful--and that is enough!" and was going to gather it to my breast. but refrained. then i made another maxim out of my head, though it was so nearly like the first one that i was afraid it was only a plagiarism: "the burnt experiment shuns the fire." i wrought again; and when i had made a good deal of fire-dust i emptied it into a handful of dry brown grass, intending to carry it home and keep it always and play with it; but the wind struck it and it sprayed up and spat out at me fiercely, and i dropped it and ran. when i looked back the blue spirit was towering up and stretching and rolling away like a cloud, and instantly i thought of the name of it--smoke!--though, upon my word, i had never heard of smoke before. soon brilliant yellow and red flares shot up through the smoke, and i named them in an instant--flames--and i was right, too, though these were the very first flames that had ever been in the world. they climbed the trees, then flashed splendidly in and out of the vast and increasing volume of tumbling smoke, and i had to clap my hands and laugh and dance in my rapture, it was so new and strange and so wonderful and so beautiful! he came running, and stopped and gazed, and said not a word for many minutes. then he asked what it was. ah, it was too bad that he should ask such a direct question. i had to answer it, of course, and i did. i said it was fire. if it annoyed him that i should know and he must ask; that was not my fault; i had no desire to annoy him. after a pause he asked: "how did it come?" another direct question, and it also had to have a direct answer. "i made it." the fire was traveling farther and farther off. he went to the edge of the burned place and stood looking down, and said: "what are these?" "fire-coals." he picked up one to examine it, but changed his mind and put it down again. then he went away. nothing interests him. but i was interested. there were ashes, gray and soft and delicate and pretty--i knew what they were at once. and the embers; i knew the embers, too. i found my apples, and raked them out, and was glad; for i am very young and my appetite is active. but i was disappointed; they were all burst open and spoiled. spoiled apparently; but it was not so; they were better than raw ones. fire is beautiful; some day it will be useful, i think. friday.--i saw him again, for a moment, last monday at nightfall, but only for a moment. i was hoping he would praise me for trying to improve the estate, for i had meant well and had worked hard. but he was not pleased, and turned away and left me. he was also displeased on another account: i tried once more to persuade him to stop going over the falls. that was because the fire had revealed to me a new passion--quite new, and distinctly different from love, grief, and those others which i had already discovered--fear. and it is horrible!--i wish i had never discovered it; it gives me dark moments, it spoils my happiness, it makes me shiver and tremble and shudder. but i could not persuade him, for he has not discovered fear yet, and so he could not understand me. extract from adam's diary perhaps i ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances. she is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. and she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the wastes of space--none of them is of any practical value, so far as i can see, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them. if she could quiet down and keep still a couple minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. in that case i think i could enjoy looking at her; indeed i am sure i could, for i am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature-lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, i recognized that she was beautiful. monday noon.--if there is anything on the planet that she is not interested in it is not in my list. there are animals that i am indifferent to, but it is not so with her. she has no discrimination, she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures, every new one is welcome. when the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded it as an acquisition, i considered it a calamity; that is a good sample of the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things. she wanted to domesticate it, i wanted to make it a present of the homestead and move out. she believed it could be tamed by kind treatment and would be a good pet; i said a pet twenty-one feet high and eight-four feet long would be no proper thing to have about the place, because, even with the best intentions and without meaning any harm, it could sit down on the house and mash it, for any one could see by the look of its eye that it was absent-minded. still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she couldn't give it up. she thought we could start a dairy with it, and wanted me to help milk it; but i wouldn't; it was too risky. the sex wasn't right, and we hadn't any ladder anyway. then she wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery. thirty or forty feet of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken; when she got to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would have hurt herself but for me. was she satisfied now? no. nothing ever satisfies her but demonstration; untested theories are not in her line, and she won't have them. it is the right spirit, i concede it; it attracts me; i feel the influence of it; if i were with her more i think i should take it up myself. well, she had one theory remaining about this colossus: she thought that if we could tame it and make him friendly we could stand in the river and use him for a bridge. it turned out that he was already plenty tame enough--at least as far as she was concerned-so she tried her theory, but it failed: every time she got him properly placed in the river and went ashore to cross over him, he came out and followed her around like a pet mountain. like the other animals. they all do that. friday.--tuesday--wednesday--thursday--and today: all without seeing him. it is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone than unwelcome. i had to have company--i was made for it, i think--so i made friends with the animals. they are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose. i think they are perfect gentlemen. all these days we have had such good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for me, ever. lonesome! no, i should say not. why, there's always a swarm of them around-sometimes as much as four or five acres--you can't count them; and when you stand on a rock in the midst and look out over the furry expanse it is so mottled and splashed and gay with color and frisking sheen and sun-flash, and so rippled with stripes, that you might think it was a lake, only you know it isn't; and there's storms of sociable birds, and hurricanes of whirring wings; and when the sun strikes all that feathery commotion, you have a blazing up of all the colors you can think of, enough to put your eyes out. we have made long excursions, and i have see a great deal of the world; almost all of it, i think; and so i am the first traveler, and the only one. when we are on the march, it is an imposing sight-there's nothing like it anywhere. for comfort i ride a tiger or a leopard, because it is soft and has a round back that fits me, and because they are such pretty animals; but for long distance or for scenery i ride the elephant. he hoists me up with his trunk, but i can get off myself; when we are ready to camp, he sits and i slide down the back way. the birds and animals are all friendly to each other, and there are no disputes about anything. they all talk, and they all talk to me, but it must be a foreign language, for i cannot make out a word they say; yet they often understand me when i talk back, particularly the dog and the elephant. it makes me ashamed. it shows that they are brighter than i am, for i want to be the principal experiment myself--and i intend to be, too. i have learned a number of things, and am educated, now, but i wasn't at first. i was ignorant at first. at first it used to vex me because, with all my watching, i was never smart enough to be around when the water was running uphill; but now i do not mind it. i have experimented and experimented until now i know it never does run uphill, except in the dark. i know it does in the dark, because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course, if the water didn't come back in the night. it is best to prove things by actual experiment; then you know; whereas if you depend on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get educated. some things you can't find out; but you will never know you can't by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can't find out. and it is delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. if there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out, and i don't know but more so. the secret of the water was a treasure until i got it; then the excitement all went away, and i recognized a sense of loss. by experiment i know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers, and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply knowing it, for there isn't any way to prove it--up to now. but i shall find a way--then that excitement will go. such things make me sad; because by and by when i have found out everything there won't be any more excitements, and i do love excitements so! the other night i couldn't sleep for thinking about it. at first i couldn't make out what i was made for, but now i think it was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy and thank the giver of it all for devising it. i think there are many things to learn yet--i hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying too fast i think they will last weeks and weeks. i hope so. when you cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw up a clod and it doesn't. it comes down, every time. i have tried it and tried it, and it is always so. i wonder why it is? of course it doesn't come down, but why should it seem to? i suppose it is an optical illusion. i mean, one of them is. i don't know which one. it may be the feather, it may be the clod; i can't prove which it is, i can only demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a person take his choice. by watching, i know that the stars are not going to last. i have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky. since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same night. that sorrow will come--i know it. i mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as i can keep awake; and i will impress those sparkling fields on my memory, so that by and by when they are taken away i can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again, and double them by the blur of my tears. after the fall when i look back, the garden is a dream to me. it was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and i shall not see it any more. the garden is lost, but i have found him, and am content. he loves me as well as he can; i love him with all the strength of my passionate nature, and this, i think, is proper to my youth and sex. if i ask myself why i love him, i find i do not know, and do not really much care to know; so i suppose that this kind of love is not a product of reasoning and statistics, like one's love for other reptiles and animals. i think that this must be so. i love certain birds because of their song; but i do not love adam on account of his singing--no, it is not that; the more he sings the more i do not get reconciled to it. yet i ask him to sing, because i wish to learn to like everything he is interested in. i am sure i can learn, because at first i could not stand it, but now i can. it sours the milk, but it doesn't matter; i can get used to that kind of milk. it is not on account of his brightness that i love him--no, it is not that. he is not to blame for his brightness, such as it is, for he did not make it himself; he is as god make him, and that is sufficient. there was a wise purpose in it, that i know. in time it will develop, though i think it will not be sudden; and besides, there is no hurry; he is well enough just as he is. it is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and his delicacy that i love him. no, he has lacks in this regard, but he is well enough just so, and is improving. it is not on account of his industry that i love him--no, it is not that. i think he has it in him, and i do not know why he conceals it from me. it is my only pain. otherwise he is frank and open with me, now. i am sure he keeps nothing from me but this. it grieves me that he should have a secret from me, and sometimes it spoils my sleep, thinking of it, but i will put it out of my mind; it shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full to overflowing. it is not on account of his education that i love him--no, it is not that. he is self-educated, and does really know a multitude of things, but they are not so. it is not on account of his chivalry that i love him--no, it is not that. he told on me, but i do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex, i think, and he did not make his sex. of course i would not have told on him, i would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity of sex, too, and i do not take credit for it, for i did not make my sex. then why is it that i love him? merely because he is masculine, i think. at bottom he is good, and i love him for that, but i could love him without it. if he should beat me and abuse me, i should go on loving him. i know it. it is a matter of sex, i think. he is strong and handsome, and i love him for that, and i admire him and am proud of him, but i could love him without those qualities. he he were plain, i should love him; if he were a wreck, i should love him; and i would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him, and watch by his bedside until i died. yes, i think i love him merely because he is mine and is masculine. there is no other reason, i suppose. and so i think it is as i first said: that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. it just comes--none knows whence--and cannot explain itself. and doesn't need to. it is what i think. but i am only a girl, the first that has examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience i have not got it right. forty years later it is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together--a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name. but if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be i; for he is strong, i am weak, i am not so necessary to him as he is to me--life without him would not be life; now could i endure it? this prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues. i am the first wife; and in the last wife i shall be repeated. at eve's grave adam: wheresoever she was, there was eden. *** [end.] . [pg/etext93/wman10.txt] what is man by mark twain june, 1993 [etext #70] what is man? and other essays of mark twain (samuel langhorne clemens, 1835-1910) contents what is man? the death of jean the turning-point of my life how to make history dates stick the memorable assassination a scrap of curious history switzerland, the cradle of liberty at the shrine of st. wagner william dean howells english as she is taught a simplified alphabet as concerns interpreting the deity concerning tobacco taming the bicycle is shakespeare dead? ---------------------------------------------------------------- what is man? i a. man the machine. b. personal merit [the old man and the young man had been conversing. the old man had asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. the young man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his reasons for his position.] old man. what are the materials of which a steam-engine is made? young man. iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on. o.m. where are these found? y.m. in the rocks. o.m. in a pure state? y.m. no--in ores. o.m. are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores? y.m. no--it is the patient work of countless ages. o.m. you could make the engine out of the rocks themselves? y.m. yes, a brittle one and not valuable. o.m. you would not require much, of such an engine as that? y.m. no--substantially nothing. o.m. to make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed? y.m. drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore; crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the bessemer process and make steel of it. mine and treat and combine several metals of which brass is made. o.m. then? y.m. out of the perfected result, build the fine engine. o.m. you would require much of this one? y.m. oh, indeed yes. o.m. it could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a word all the cunning machines of a great factory? y.m. it could. o.m. what could the stone engine do? y.m. drive a sewing-machine, possibly--nothing more, perhaps. o.m. men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it? y.m. yes. o.m. but not the stone one? y.m. no. o.m. the merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the stone one? y.m. of course. o.m. personal merits? y.m. personal merits? how do you mean? o.m. it would be personally entitled to the credit of its own performance? y.m. the engine? certainly not. o.m. why not? y.m. because its performance is not personal. it is the result of the law of construction. it is not a merit that it does the things which it is set to do--it can't help doing them. o.m. and it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does so little? y.m. certainly not. it does no more and no less than the law of its make permits and compels it to do. there is nothing personal about it; it cannot choose. in this process of "working up to the matter" is it your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are about the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the performance of either? o.m. yes--but do not be offended; i am meaning no offense. what makes the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? shall we call it training, education? shall we call the stone engine a savage and the steel one a civilized man? the original rock contained the stuff of which the steel one was built--but along with a lot of sulphur and stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old geologic ages--prejudices, let us call them. prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove. will you take note of that phrase? y.m. yes. i have written it down; "prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove." go on. o.m. prejudices must be removed by outside influences or not at all. put that down. y.m. very well; "must be removed by outside influences or not at all." go on. o.m. the iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock. to make it more exact, the iron's absolute indifference as to whether the rock be removed or not. then comes the outside influence and grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. the iron in the ore is still captive. an outside influence smelts it free of the clogging ore. the iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further progress. an outside influence beguiles it into the bessemer furnace and refines it into steel of the first quality. it is educated, now --its training is complete. and it has reached its limit. by no possible process can it be educated into gold. will you set that down? y.m. yes. "everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into gold." o.m. there are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden mean, and steel men, and so on--and each has the limitations of his nature, his heredities, his training, and his environment. you can build engines out of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you must not require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones. in each case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its obstructing prejudicial ones by education--smelting, refining, and so forth. y.m. you have arrived at man, now? o.m. yes. man the machine--man the impersonal engine. whatsoever a man is, is due to his make, and to the influences brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. he is moved, directed, commanded, by exterior influences--solely. he originates nothing, not even a thought. y.m. oh, come! where did i get my opinion that this which you are talking is all foolishness? o.m. it is a quite natural opinion--indeed an inevitable opinion--but you did not create the materials out of which it is formed. they are odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. personally you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even the slender merit of putting the borrowed materials together. that was done automatically--by your mental machinery, in strict accordance with the law of that machinery's construction. and you not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have not even any command over it. y.m. this is too much. you think i could have formed no opinion but that one? o.m. spontaneously? no. and you did not form that one; your machinery did it for you--automatically and instantly, without reflection or the need of it. y.m. suppose i had reflected? how then? o.m. suppose you try? y.m. (after a quarter of an hour.) i have reflected. o.m. you mean you have tried to change your opinion--as an experiment? y.m. yes. o.m. with success? y.m. no. it remains the same; it is impossible to change it. o.m. i am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a machine, nothing more. you have no command over it, it has no command over itself--it is worked solely from the outside. that is the law of its make; it is the law of all machines. y.m. can't i ever change one of these automatic opinions? o.m. no. you can't yourself, but exterior influences can do it. y.m. and exterior ones only? o.m. yes--exterior ones only. y.m. that position is untenable--i may say ludicrously untenable. o.m. what makes you think so? y.m. i don't merely think it, i know it. suppose i resolve to enter upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose i succeed. that is not the work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal; for i originated the project. o.m. not a shred of it. it grew out of this talk with me. but for that it would not have occurred to you. no man ever originates anything. all his thoughts, all his impulses, come from the outside. y.m. it's an exasperating subject. the first man had original thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw from. o.m. it is a mistake. adam's thoughts came to him from the outside. you have a fear of death. you did not invent that--you got it from outside, from talking and teaching. adam had no fear of death--none in the world. y.m. yes, he had. o.m. when he was created? y.m. no. o.m. when, then? y.m. when he was threatened with it. o.m. then it came from outside. adam is quite big enough; let us not try to make a god of him. none but gods have ever had a thought which did not come from the outside. adam probably had a good head, but it was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up from the outside. he was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. he had not a shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil--he had to get the idea from the outside. neither he nor eve was able to originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came in with the apple from the outside. a man's brain is so constructed that it can originate nothing whatsoever. it can only use material obtained outside. it is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will-power. it has no command over itself, its owner has no command over it. y.m. well, never mind adam: but certainly shakespeare's creations-o.m. no, you mean shakespeare's imitations. shakespeare created nothing. he correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. he exactly portrayed people whom god had created; but he created none himself. let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. shakespeare could not create. he was a machine, and machines do not create. y.m. where was his excellence, then? o.m. in this. he was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a gobelin loom. the threads and the colors came into him from the outside; outside influences, suggestions, experiences (reading, seeing plays, playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and it automatically turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still compels the astonishment of the world. if shakespeare had been born and bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect would have had no outside material to work with, and could have invented none; and no outside influences, teachings, moldings, persuasions, inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have invented none; and so shakespeare would have produced nothing. in turkey he would have produced something--something up to the highest limit of turkish influences, associations, and training. in france he would have produced something better--something up to the highest limit of the french influences and training. in england he rose to the highest limit attainable through the outside helps afforded by that land's ideals, influences, and training. you and i are but sewing-machines. we must turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us for not turning out gobelins. y.m. and so we are mere machines! and machines may not boast, nor feel proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor applause and praise. it is an infamous doctrine. o.m. it isn't a doctrine, it is merely a fact. y.m. i suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in being a coward? o.m. personal merit? no. a brave man does not create his bravery. he is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. it is born to him. a baby born with a billion dollars--where is the personal merit in that? a baby born with nothing--where is the personal demerit in that? the one is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected and despised-where is the sense in it? y.m. sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his cowardice and becoming brave--and succeeds. what do you say to that? o.m. that it shows the value of training in right directions over training in wrong ones. inestimably valuable is training, influence, education, in right directions--training one's self-approbation to elevate its ideals. y.m. but as to merit--the personal merit of the victorious coward's project and achievement? o.m. there isn't any. in the world's view he is a worthier man than he was before, but he didn't achieve the change--the merit of it is not his. y.m. whose, then? o.m. his make, and the influences which wrought upon it from the outside. y.m. his make? o.m. to start with, he was not utterly and completely a coward, or the influences would have had nothing to work upon. he was not afraid of a cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a man. there was something to build upon. there was a seed. no seed, no plant. did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him? it was no merit of his that the seed was there. y.m. well, anyway, the idea of cultivating it, the resolution to cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that. o.m. he did nothing of the kind. it came whence all impulses, good or bad, come--from outside. if that timid man had lived all his life in a community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express envy of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea of bravery than adam had of modesty, and it could never by any possibility have occurred to him to resolve to become brave. he could not originate the idea--it had to come to him from the outside. and so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. he was ashamed. perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "i am told that you are a coward!" it was not he that turned over the new leaf--she did it for him. he must not strut around in the merit of it--it is not his. y.m. but, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed. o.m. no. outside influences reared it. at the command-and trembling--he marched out into the field--with other soldiers and in the daytime, not alone and in the dark. he had the influence of example, he drew courage from his comrades' courage; he was afraid, and wanted to run, but he did not dare; he was afraid to run, with all those soldiers looking on. he was progressing, you see--the moral fear of shame had risen superior to the physical fear of harm. by the end of the campaign experience will have taught him that not all who go into battle get hurt--an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and he will also have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and be huzza'd at with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches past the worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating. after that he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army--and there will not be a shade nor suggestion of personal merit in it anywhere; it will all have come from the outside. the victoria cross breeds more heroes than-y.m. hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get no credit for it? o.m. your question will answer itself presently. it involves an important detail of man's make which we have not yet touched upon. y.m. what detail is that? o.m. the impulse which moves a person to do things--the only impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing. y.m. the only one! is there but one? o.m. that is all. there is only one. y.m. well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. what is the sole impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing? o.m. the impulse to content his own spirit--the necessity of contenting his own spirit and winning its approval. y.m. oh, come, that won't do! o.m. why won't it? y.m. because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing solely for another person's good when it is a positive disadvantage to himself. o.m. it is a mistake. the act must do him good, first; otherwise he will not do it. he may think he is doing it solely for the other person's sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit first--the other's person's benefit has to always take second place. y.m. what a fantastic idea! what becomes of selfsacrifice? please answer me that. o.m. what is self-sacrifice? y.m. the doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of benefit to one's self can result from it. ii man's sole impulse--the securing of his own approval old man. there have been instances of it--you think? young man. instances? millions of them! o.m. you have not jumped to conclusions? you have examined them--critically? y.m. they don't need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse back of them. o.m. for instance? y.m. well, then, for instance. take the case in the book here. the man lives three miles up-town. it is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight. he is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue from hunger and death. the man finds that he has a quarter in his pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home through the storm. there--it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest. o.m. what makes you think that? y.m. pray what else could i think? do you imagine that there is some other way of looking at it? o.m. can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he felt and what he thought? y.m. easily. the sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous heart with a sharp pain. he could not bear it. he could endure the three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old creature to perish. he would not have been able to sleep, for thinking of it. o.m. what was his state of mind on his way home? y.m. it was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. his heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm. o.m. he felt well? y.m. one cannot doubt it. o.m. very well. now let us add up the details and see how much he got for his twenty-five cents. let us try to find out the real why of his making the investment. in the first place he couldn't bear the pain which the old suffering face gave him. so he was thinking of his pain--this good man. he must buy a salve for it. if he did not succor the old woman his conscience would torture him all the way home. thinking of his pain again. he must buy relief for that. if he didn't relieve the old woman he would not get any sleep. he must buy some sleep--still thinking of himself, you see. thus, to sum up, he bought himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's sleep--all for twenty-five cents! it should make wall street ashamed of itself. on his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang--profit on top of profit! the impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was--first--to content his own spirit; secondly to relieve her sufferings. is it your opinion that men's acts proceed from one central and unchanging and inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses? y.m. from a variety, of course--some high and fine and noble, others not. what is your opinion? o.m. then there is but one law, one source. y.m. that both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one source? o.m. yes. y.m. will you put that law into words? o.m. yes. this is the law, keep it in your mind. from his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object but one--to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself. y.m. come! he never does anything for any one else's comfort, spiritual or physical? o.m. no. except on those distinct terms--that it shall first secure his own spiritual comfort. otherwise he will not do it. y.m. it will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition. o.m. for instance? y.m. take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. a man who loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold, wounds, and death. is that seeking spiritual comfort? o.m. he loves peace and dreads pain? y.m. yes. o.m. then perhaps there is something that he loves more than he loves peace--the approval of his neighbors and the public. and perhaps there is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain--the disapproval of his neighbors and the public. if he is sensitive to shame he will go to the field--not because his spirit will be entirely comfortable there, but because it will be more comfortable there than it would be if he remained at home. he will always do the thing which will bring him the most mental comfort--for that is the sole law of his life. he leaves the weeping family behind; he is sorry to make them uncomfortable, but not sorry enough to sacrifice his own comfort to secure theirs. y.m. do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid and peaceful man to-o.m. go to war? yes--public opinion can force some men to do anything. y.m. anything? o.m. yes--anything. y.m. i don't believe that. can it force a right-principled man to do a wrong thing? o.m. yes. y.m. can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing? o.m. yes. y.m. give an instance. o.m. alexander hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man. he regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of religion--but in deference to public opinion he fought a duel. he deeply loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously deserted them and threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to lifelong sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world. in the then condition of the public standards of honor he could not have been comfortable with the stigma upon him of having refused to fight. the teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his kindness of heart, his high principles, all went for nothing when they stood in the way of his spiritual comfort. a man will do anything, no matter what it is, to secure his spiritual comfort; and he can neither be forced nor persuaded to any act which has not that goal for its object. hamilton's act was compelled by the inborn necessity of contenting his own spirit; in this it was like all the other acts of his life, and like all the acts of all men's lives. do you see where the kernel of the matter lies? a man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. he will secure the largest share possible of that, at all costs, all sacrifices. y.m. a minute ago you said hamilton fought that duel to get public approval. o.m. i did. by refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his family's approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together--in the earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the most comfort of mind, the most selfapproval; so he sacrificed all other values to get it. y.m. some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully braved the public contempt. o.m. they acted according to their make. they valued their principles and the approval of their families above the public approval. they took the thing they valued most and let the rest go. they took what would give them the largest share of personal contentment and approval--a man always does. public opinion cannot force that kind of men to go to the wars. when they go it is for other reasons. other spirit-contenting reasons. y.m. always spirit-contenting reasons? o.m. there are no others. y.m. when a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a burning building, what do you call that? o.m. when he does it, it is the law of his make. he can't bear to see the child in that peril (a man of a different make could), and so he tries to save the child, and loses his life. but he has got what he was after--his own approval. y.m. what do you call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, magnanimity, forgiveness? o.m. different results of the one master impulse: the necessity of securing one's self approval. they wear diverse clothes and are subject to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the same person all the time. to change the figure, the compulsion that moves a man--and there is but the one--is the necessity of securing the contentment of his own spirit. when it stops, the man is dead. y.m. that is foolishness. love-o.m. why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising form. it will squander life and everything else on its object. not primarily for the object's sake, but for its own. when its object is happy it is happy--and that is what it is unconsciously after. y.m. you do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of mother-love? o.m. no, it is the absolute slave of that law. the mother will go naked to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food; suffer torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. she takes a living pleasure in making these sacrifices. she does it for that reward--that self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort. she would do it for your child if she could get the same pay. y.m. this is an infernal philosophy of yours. o.m. it isn't a philosophy, it is a fact. y.m. of course you must admit that there are some acts which-o.m. no. there is no act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs from any motive but the one--the necessity of appeasing and contenting one's own spirit. y.m. the world's philanthropists-o.m. i honor them, i uncover my head to them--from habit and training; and they could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they did not work and spend for the unfortunate. it makes them happy to see others happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are after--happiness, self-approval. why don't miners do the same thing? because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by not doing it. there is no other reason. they follow the law of their make. y.m. what do you say of duty for duty's sake? o.m. that is does not exist. duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. a man performs but one duty--the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself. if he can most satisfyingly perform this sole and only duty by helping his neighbor, he will do it; if he can most satisfyingly perform it by swindling his neighbor, he will do it. but he always looks out for number one--first; the effects upon others are a secondary matter. men pretend to self-sacrifices, but this is a thing which, in the ordinary value of the phrase, does not exist and has not existed. a man often honestly thinks he is sacrificing himself merely and solely for some one else, but he is deceived; his bottom impulse is to content a requirement of his nature and training, and thus acquire peace for his soul. y.m. apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their lives to contenting their consciences. o.m. yes. that is a good enough name for it: conscience-that independent sovereign, that insolent absolute monarch inside of a man who is the man's master. there are all kinds of consciences, because there are all kinds of men. you satisfy an assassin's conscience in one way, a philanthropist's in another, a miser's in another, a burglar's in still another. as a guide or incentive to any authoritatively prescribed line of morals or conduct (leaving training out of the account), a man's conscience is totally valueless. i know a kind-hearted kentuckian whose self-approval was lacking--whose conscience was troubling him, to phrase it with exactness--because he had neglected to kill a certain man--a man whom he had never seen. the stranger had killed this man's friend in a fight, this man's kentucky training made it a duty to kill the stranger for it. he neglected his duty--kept dodging it, shirking it, putting it off, and his unrelenting conscience kept persecuting him for this conduct. at last, to get ease of mind, comfort, self-approval, he hunted up the stranger and took his life. it was an immense act of selfsacrifice (as per the usual definition), for he did not want to do it, and he never would have done it if he could have bought a contented spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost. but we are so made that we will pay anything for that contentment--even another man's life. y.m. you spoke a moment ago of trained consciences. you mean that we are not born with consciences competent to guide us aright? o.m. if we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and not have to be taught it. y.m. but consciences can be trained? o.m. yes. y.m. of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books. o.m. yes--they do their share; they do what they can. y.m. and the rest is done by-o.m. oh, a million unnoticed influences--for good or bad: influences which work without rest during every waking moment of a man's life, from cradle to grave. y.m. you have tabulated these? o.m. many of them--yes. y.m. will you read me the result? o.m. another time, yes. it would take an hour. y.m. a conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good? o.m. yes. y.m. but will it for spirit-contenting reasons only? o.m. it can't be trained to do a thing for any other reason. the thing is impossible. y.m. there must be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act recorded in human history somewhere. o.m. you are young. you have many years before you. search one out. y.m. it does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling in the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him-o.m. wait. describe the man. describe the fellow-being. state if there is an audience present; or if they are alone. y.m. what have these things to do with the splendid act? o.m. very much. shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are alone, in a solitary place, at midnight? y.m. if you choose. o.m. and that the fellow-being is the man's daughter? y.m. well, n-no--make it someone else. o.m. a filthy, drunken ruffian, then? y.m. i see. circumstances alter cases. i suppose that if there was no audience to observe the act, the man wouldn't perform it. o.m. but there is here and there a man who would. people, for instance, like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from the fire; and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five cents and walked home in the storm--there are here and there men like that who would do it. and why? because they couldn't bear to see a fellow-being struggling in the water and not jump in and help. it would give them pain. they would save the fellow-being on that account. they wouldn't do it otherwise. they strictly obey the law which i have been insisting upon. you must remember and always distinguish the people who can't bear things from people who can. it will throw light upon a number of apparently "self-sacrificing" cases. y.m. oh, dear, it's all so disgusting. o.m. yes. and so true. y.m. come--take the good boy who does things he doesn't want to do, in order to gratify his mother. o.m. he does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies him to gratify his mother. throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the good boy would not do the act. he must obey the iron law. none can escape it. y.m. well, take the case of a bad boy who-o.m. you needn't mention it, it is a waste of time. it is no matter about the bad boy's act. whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting reason for it. otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn't do it. y.m. it is very exasperating. a while ago you said that man's conscience is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be taught and trained. now i think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy, but i don't think it can go wrong; if you wake it up-a little story o.m. i will tell you a little story: once upon a time an infidel was guest in the house of a christian widow whose little boy was ill and near to death. the infidel often watched by the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature--that desire which is in us all to better other people's condition by having them think as we think. he was successful. but the dying boy, in his last moments, reproached him and said: "i believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and my comfort. now i have nothing left, and i die miserable; for the things which you have told me do not take the place of that which i have lost." and the mother, also, reproached the infidel, and said: "my child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. how could you do this cruel thing? we have done you no harm, but only kindness; we made our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our reward." the heart of the infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done, and he said: "it was wrong--i see it now; but i was only trying to do him good. in my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth." then the mother said: "i had taught him, all his little life, what i believed to be the truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. now he is dead,--and lost; and i am miserable. our faith came down to us through centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to disturb it? where was your honor, where was your shame?" y.m. he was a miscreant, and deserved death! o.m. he thought so himself, and said so. y.m. ah--you see, his conscience was awakened1! o.m. yes, his self-disapproval was. it pained him to see the mother suffer. he was sorry he had done a thing which brought him pain. it did not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the boy, for he was absorbed in providing pleasure for himself, then. providing it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty. y.m. call it what you please, it is to me a case of awakened conscience. that awakened conscience could never get itself into that species of trouble again. a cure like that is a permanent cure. o.m. pardon--i had not finished the story. we are creatures of outside influences--we originate nothing within. whenever we take a new line of thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse is always suggested from the outside. remorse so preyed upon the infidel that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's religion and made him come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the boy's sake and the mother's. finally he found himself examining it. from that moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. he became a believing christian. and now his remorse for having robbed the dying boy of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. it gave him no rest, no peace. he must have rest and peace--it is the law of nature. there seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself to saving imperiled souls. he became a missionary. he landed in a pagan country ill and helpless. a native widow took him into her humble home and nursed him back to convalescence. then her young boy was taken hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. here was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the other boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his foolish faith in his false gods. he was successful. but the dying boy in his last moments reproached him and said: "i believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and my comfort. now i have nothing left, and i die miserable; for the things which you have told me do not take the place of that which i have lost." and the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said: "my child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. how could you do this cruel thing? we had done you no harm, but only kindness; we made our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our reward." the heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done, and he said: "it was wrong--i see it now; but i was only trying to do him good. in my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth." then the mother said: "i had taught him, all his little life, what i believed to be the truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. now he is dead--and lost; and i am miserable. our faith came down to us through centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to disturb it? where was your honor, where was your shame?" the missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as bitter and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the former case. the story is finished. what is your comment? y.m. the man's conscience is a fool! it was morbid. it didn't know right from wrong. o.m. i am not sorry to hear you say that. if you grant that one man's conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there are others like it. this single admission pulls down the whole doctrine of infallibility of judgment in consciences. meantime there is one thing which i ask you to notice. y.m. what is that? o.m. that in both cases the man's act gave him no spiritual discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out of it. but afterward when it resulted in pain to him, he was sorry. sorry it had inflicted pain upon the others, but for no reason under the sun except that their pain gave him pain. our consciences take no notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to us. in all cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another person's pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. many an infidel would not have been troubled by that christian mother's distress. don't you believe that? y.m. yes. you might almost say it of the average infidel, i think. o.m. and many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty, would not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress--jesuit missionaries in canada in the early french times, for instance; see episodes quoted by parkman. y.m. well, let us adjourn. where have we arrived? o.m. at this. that we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number of qualities to which we have given misleading names. love, hate, charity, compassion, avarice, benevolence, and so on. i mean we attach misleading meanings to the names. they are all forms of self-contentment, self-gratification, but the names so disguise them that they distract our attention from the fact. also we have smuggled a word into the dictionary which ought not to be there at all--self-sacrifice. it describes a thing which does not exist. but worst of all, we ignore and never mention the sole impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs. to it we owe all that we are. it is our breath, our heart, our blood. it is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our only impelling power; we have no other. without it we should be mere inert images, corpses; no one would do anything, there would be no progress, the world would stand still. we ought to stand reverently uncovered when the name of that stupendous power is uttered. y.m. i am not convinced. o.m. you will be when you think. iii instances in point old man. have you given thought to the gospel of selfapproval since we talked? young man. i have. o.m. it was i that moved you to it. that is to say an outside influence moved you to it--not one that originated in your head. will you try to keep that in mind and not forget it? y.m. yes. why? o.m. because by and by in one of our talks, i wish to further impress upon you that neither you, nor i, nor any man ever originates a thought in his own head. the utterer of a thought always utters a second-hand one. y.m. oh, now-o.m. wait. reserve your remark till we get to that part of our discussion--tomorrow or next day, say. now, then, have you been considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a self-contenting impulse--(primarily). you have sought. what have you found? y.m. i have not been very fortunate. i have examined many fine and apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but-o.m. under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice disappeared? it naturally would. y.m. but here in this novel is one which seems to promise. in the adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps who is of noble character and deeply religious. an earnest and practical laborer in the new york slums comes up there on vacation--he is leader of a section of the university settlement. holme, the lumberman, is fired with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and go down and save souls on the east side. he counts it happiness to make this sacrifice for the glory of god and for the cause of christ. he resigns his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the east side and preaches christ and him crucified every day and every night to little groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who scoff at him. but he rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the great cause of christ. you have so filled my mind with suspicions that i was constantly expecting to find a hidden questionable impulse back of all this, but i am thankful to say i have failed. this man saw his duty, and for duty's sake he sacrificed self and assumed the burden it imposed. o.m. is that as far as you have read? y.m. yes. o.m. let us read further, presently. meantime, in sacrificing himself--not for the glory of god, primarily, as he imagined, but first to content that exacting and inflexible master within him--did he sacrifice anybody else? y.m. how do you mean? o.m. he relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in place of it. had he dependents? y.m. well--yes. o.m. in what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect them? y.m. he was the support of a superannuated father. he had a young sister with a remarkable voice--he was giving her a musical education, so that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified. he was furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer. o.m. the old father's comforts were now curtailed? y.m. quite seriously. yes. o.m. the sister's music-lessens had to stop? y.m. yes. o.m. the young brother's education--well, an extinguishing blight fell upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to support the old father, or something like that? y.m. it is about what happened. yes. o.m. what a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! it seems to me that he sacrificed everybody except himself. haven't i told you that no man ever sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon record anywhere; and that when a man's interior monarch requires a thing of its slave for either its momentary or its permanent contentment, that thing must and will be furnished and that command obeyed, no matter who may stand in the way and suffer disaster by it? that man ruined his family to please and content his interior monarch-y.m. and help christ's cause. o.m. yes--secondly. not firstly. he thought it was firstly. y.m. very well, have it so, if you will. but it could be that he argued that if he saved a hundred souls in new york-o.m. the sacrifice of the family would be justified by that great profit upon the--the--what shall we call it? y.m. investment? o.m. hardly. how would speculation do? how would gamble do? not a solitary soul-capture was sure. he played for a possible thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit. it was gambling-with his family for "chips." however let us see how the game came out. maybe we can get on the track of the secret original impulse, the real impulse, that moved him to so nobly selfsacrifice his family in the savior's cause under the superstition that he was sacrificing himself. i will read a chapter or so. . . . here we have it! it was bound to expose itself sooner or later. he preached to the east-side rabble a season, then went back to his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps "hurt to the heart, his pride humbled." why? were not his efforts acceptable to the savior, for whom alone they were made? dear me, that detail is lost sight of, is not even referred to, the fact that it started out as a motive is entirely forgotten! then what is the trouble? the authoress quite innocently and unconsciously gives the whole business away. the trouble was this: this man merely preached to the poor; that is not the university settlement's way; it deals in larger and better things than that, and it did not enthuse over that crude salvation-army eloquence. it was courteous to holme--but cool. it did not pet him, did not take him to its bosom. "perished were all his dreams of distinction, the praise and grateful approval--" of whom? the savior? no; the savior is not mentioned. of whom, then? of "his fellow-workers." why did he want that? because the master inside of him wanted it, and would not be content without it. that emphasized sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been seeking, the original impulse, the real impulse, which moved the obscure and unappreciated adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on that crusade to the east side--which said original impulse was this, to wit: without knowing it he went there to show a neglected world the large talent that was in him, and rise to distinction. as i have warned you before, no act springs from any but the one law, the one motive. but i pray you, do not accept this law upon my sayso; but diligently examine for yourself. whenever you read of a self-sacrificing act or hear of one, or of a duty done for duty's sake, take it to pieces and look for the real motive. it is always there. y.m. i do it every day. i cannot help it, now that i have gotten started upon the degrading and exasperating quest. for it is hatefully interesting!--in fact, fascinating is the word. as soon as i come across a golden deed in a book i have to stop and take it apart and examine it, i cannot help myself. o.m. have you ever found one that defeated the rule? y.m. no--at least, not yet. but take the case of servanttipping in europe. you pay the hotel for service; you owe the servants nothing, yet you pay them besides. doesn't that defeat it? o.m. in what way? y.m. you are not obliged to do it, therefore its source is compassion for their ill-paid condition, and-o.m. has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you? y.m. well, yes. o.m. still you succumbed to it? y.m. of course. o.m. why of course? y.m. well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted to--everybody recognizes it as a duty. o.m. then you pay for the irritating tax for duty's sake? y.m. i suppose it amounts to that. o.m. then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not all compassion, charity, benevolence? y.m. well--perhaps not. o.m. is any of it? y.m. i--perhaps i was too hasty in locating its source. o.m. perhaps so. in case you ignored the custom would you get prompt and effective service from the servants? y.m. oh, hear yourself talk! those european servants? why, you wouldn't get any of all, to speak of. o.m. couldn't that work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax? y.m. i am not denying it. o.m. apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty's-sake with a little self-interest added? y.m. yes, it has the look of it. but here is a point: we pay that tax knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing, and more than the right thing, the generous thing. i think it will be difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse. o.m. i wonder why you should think so. when you find service charged in the hotel bill does it annoy you? y.m. no. o.m. do you ever complain of the amount of it? y.m. no, it would not occur to me. o.m. the expense, then, is not the annoying detail. it is a fixed charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. when you came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and maids had a fixed charge? y.m. like it? i should rejoice! o.m. even if the fixed tax were a shade more than you had been in the habit of paying in the form of tips? y.m. indeed, yes! o.m. very well, then. as i understand it, it isn't really compassion nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn't the amount of the tax that annoys you. yet something annoys you. what is it? y.m. well, the trouble is, you never know what to pay, the tax varies so, all over europe. o.m. so you have to guess? y.m. there is no other way. so you go on thinking and thinking, and calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught in the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you are only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being worried and miserable. o.m. and all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have to pay unless you want to! strange. what is the purpose of the guessing? y.m. to guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any of them. o.m. it has quite a noble look--taking so much pains and using up so much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to whom you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid. y.m. i think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it it will be hard to find. o.m. how do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly? y.m. why, he is silent; does not thank you. sometimes he gives you a look that makes you ashamed. you are too proud to rectify your mistake there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and wishing you had done it. my, the shame and the pain of it! sometimes you see, by the signs, that you have it just right, and you go away mightily satisfied. sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you have given him a good deal more than was necessary. o.m. necessary? necessary for what? y.m. to content him. o.m. how do you feel then? y.m. repentant. o.m. it is my belief that you have not been concerning yourself in guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would content him. and i think you have a self-deluding reason for that. y.m. what was it? o.m. if you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would get a look which would shame you before folk. that would give you pain. you--for you are only working for yourself, not him. if you gave him too much you would be ashamed of yourself for it, and that would give you pain--another case of thinking of yourself, protecting yourself, saving yourself from discomfort. you never think of the servant once--except to guess out how to get his approval. if you get that, you get your own approval, and that is the sole and only thing you are after. the master inside of you is then satisfied, contented, comfortable; there was no other thing at stake, as a matter of first interest, anywhere in the transaction. further instances y.m. well, to think of it; self-sacrifice for others, the grandest thing in man, ruled out! non-existent! o.m. are you accusing me of saying that? y.m. why, certainly. o.m. i haven't said it. y.m. what did you say, then? o.m. that no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of that phrase--which is, self-sacrifice for another alone. men make daily sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake first. the act must content their own spirit first. the other beneficiaries come second. y.m. and the same with duty for duty's sake? o.m. yes. no man performs a duty for mere duty's sake; the act must content his spirit first. he must feel better for doing the duty than he would for shirking it. otherwise he will not do it. y.m. take the case of the berkeley castle. o.m. it was a noble duty, greatly performed. take it to pieces and examine it, if you like. y.m. a british troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and children. she struck a rock and began to sink. there was room in the boats for the women and children only. the colonel lined up his regiment on the deck and said "it is our duty to die, that they may be saved." there was no murmur, no protest. the boats carried away the women and children. when the death-moment was come, the colonel and his officers took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and so, as on dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating, they went down, a sacrifice to duty for duty's sake. can you view it as other than that? o.m. it was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. could you have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that unflinching way? y.m. could i? no, i could not. o.m. think. imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping higher and higher around you. y.m. i can imagine it. i feel all the horror of it. i could not have endured it, i could not have remained in my place. i know it. o.m. why? y.m. there is no why about it: i know myself, and i know i couldn't do it. o.m. but it would be your duty to do it. y.m. yes, i know--but i couldn't. o.m. it was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. some of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that great duty for duty's sake, why not you? don't you know that you could go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them on that deck and ask them to die for duty's sake, and not two dozen of them would stay in the ranks to the end? y.m. yes, i know that. o.m. but your train them, and put them through a campaign or two; then they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier's pride, a soldier's self-respect, a soldier's ideals. they would have to content a soldier's spirit then, not a clerk's, not a mechanic's. they could not content that spirit by shirking a soldier's duty, could they? y.m. i suppose not. o.m. then they would do the duty not for the duty's sake, but for their own sake--primarily. the duty was just the same, and just as imperative, when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they wouldn't perform it for that. as clerks and mechanics they had other ideals, another spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it. they had to; it is the law. training is potent. training toward higher and higher, and ever higher ideals is worth any man's thought and labor and diligence. y.m. consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake rather than be recreant to it. o.m. it is his make and his training. he has to content the spirit that is in him, though it cost him his life. another man, just as sincerely religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must content the spirit that is in him--he cannot help it. he could not perform that duty for duty's sake, for that would not content his spirit, and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to first. it takes precedence of all other duties. y.m. take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes for a thief for public office, on his own party's ticket, and against an honest man on the other ticket. o.m. he has to content his spirit. he has no public morals; he has no private ones, where his party's prosperity is at stake. he will always be true to his make and training. iv training young man. you keep using that word--training. by it do you particularly mean-old man. study, instruction, lectures, sermons? that is a part of it--but not a large part. i mean all the outside influences. there are a million of them. from the cradle to the grave, during all his waking hours, the human being is under training. in the very first rank of his trainers stands association. it is his human environment which influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets him on his road and keeps him in it. if he leave that road he will find himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems, and whose approval he most values. he is a chameleon; by the law of his nature he takes the color of his place of resort. the influences about him create his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his morals, his religion. he creates none of these things for himself. he thinks he does, but that is because he has not examined into the matter. you have seen presbyterians? y.m. many. o.m. how did they happen to be presbyterians and not congregationalists? and why were the congregationalists not baptists, and the baptists roman catholics, and the roman catholics buddhists, and the buddhists quakers, and the quakers episcopalians, and the episcopalians millerites and the millerites hindus, and the hindus atheists, and the atheists spiritualists, and the spiritualists agnostics, and the agnostics methodists, and the methodists confucians, and the confucians unitarians, and the unitarians mohammedans, and the mohammedans salvation warriors, and the salvation warriors zoroastrians, and the zoroastrians christian scientists, and the christian scientists mormons--and so on? y.m. you may answer your question yourself. o.m. that list of sects is not a record of studies, searchings, seekings after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what association can do. if you know a man's nationality you can come within a split hair of guessing the complexion of his religion: english--protestant; american-ditto; spaniard, frenchman, irishman, italian, south american-roman catholic; russian--greek catholic; turk--mohammedan; and so on. and when you know the man's religious complexion, you know what sort of religious books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he avoids, lest by accident he get more light than he wants. in america if you know which partycollar a voter wears, you know what his associations are, and how he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he reads to get light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed of mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden his political knowledge, and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn't attend, except to refute its doctrines with brickbats. we are always hearing of people who are around seeking after truth. i have never seen a (permanent) specimen. i think he had never lived. but i have seen several entirely sincere people who thought they were (permanent) seekers after truth. they sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the truth. that was the end of the search. the man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his truth from the weather. if he was seeking after political truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the only true religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on the market. in any case, when he found the truth he sought no further; but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors. there have been innumerable temporary seekers of truth--have you ever heard of a permanent one? in the very nature of man such a person is impossible. however, to drop back to the text-training: all training is one from or another of outside influence, and association is the largest part of it. a man is never anything but what his outside influences have made him. they train him downward or they train him upward--but they train him; they are at work upon him all the time. y.m. then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed there is no help for him, according to your notions--he must train downward. o.m. no help for him? no help for this chameleon? it is a mistake. it is in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. he has only to change his habitat--his associations. but the impulse to do it must come from the outside--he cannot originate it himself, with that purpose in view. sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea. the chance remark of a sweetheart, "i hear that you are a coward," may water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing a surprising fruitage--in the fields of war. the history of man is full of such accidents. the accident of a broken leg brought a profane and ribald soldier under religious influences and furnished him a new ideal. from that accident sprang the order of the jesuits, and it has been shaking thrones, changing policies, and doing other tremendous work for two hundred years--and will go on. the chance reading of a book or of a paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a new track and make him renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are in sympathy with his new ideal: and the result, for that man, can be an entire change of his way of life. y.m. are you hinting at a scheme of procedure? o.m. not a new one--an old one. one as mankind. y.m. what is it? o.m. merely the laying of traps for people. traps baited with initiatory impulses toward high ideals. it is what the tract-distributor does. it is what the missionary does. it is what governments ought to do. y.m. don't they? o.m. in one way they do, in another they don't. they separate the smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime they put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick. that is to say, they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. this would be well if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn't, and so association makes the beginners worse than they were when they went into captivity. it is putting a very severe punishment upon the comparatively innocent at times. they hang a man--which is a trifling punishment; this breaks the hearts of his family--which is a heavy one. they comfortably jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent wife and family to starve. y.m. do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an intuitive perception of good and evil? o.m. adam hadn't it. y.m. but has man acquired it since? o.m. no. i think he has no intuitions of any kind. he gets all his ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. i keep repeating this, in the hope that i may impress it upon you that you will be interested to observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false. y.m. where did you get your own aggravating notions? o.m. from the outside. i did not invent them. they are gathered from a thousand unknown sources. mainly unconsciously gathered. y.m. don't you believe that god could make an inherently honest man? o.m. yes, i know he could. i also know that he never did make one. y.m. a wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that "an honest man's the noblest work of god." o.m. he didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity. it is windy, and sounds well, but it is not true. god makes a man with honest and dishonest possibilities in him and stops there. the man's associations develop the possibilities--the one set or the other. the result is accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one. y.m. and the honest one is not entitled to-o.m. praise? no. how often must i tell you that? he is not the architect of his honesty. y.m. now then, i will ask you where there is any sense in training people to lead virtuous lives. what is gained by it? o.m. the man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the main thing--to him. he is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a damage to them--and so they get an advantage out of his virtues. that is the main thing to them. it can make this life comparatively comfortable to the parties concerned; the neglect of this training can make this life a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned. y.m. you have said that training is everything; that training is the man himself, for it makes him what he is. o.m. i said training and another thing. let that other thing pass, for the moment. what were you going to say? y.m. we have an old servant. she has been with us twentytwo years. her service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful. we are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold her for her remissnesses, but at times i do--i can't seem to control myself. don't i try? i do try. now, then, when i was ready to dress, this morning, no clean clothes had been put out. i lost my temper; i lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. i rang; and immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful and speak gently. i safe-guarded myself most carefully. i even chose the very word i would use: "you've forgotten the clean clothes, jane." when she appeared in the door i opened my mouth to say that phrase--and out of it, moved by an instant surge of passion which i was not expecting and hadn't time to put under control, came the hot rebuke, "you've forgotten them again!" you say a man always does the thing which will best please his interior master. whence came the impulse to make careful preparation to save the girl the humiliation of a rebuke? did that come from the master, who is always primarily concerned about himself? o.m. unquestionably. there is no other source for any impulse. secondarily you made preparation to save the girl, but primarily its object was to save yourself, by contenting the master. y.m. how do you mean? o.m. has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper and not fly out at the girl? y.m. yes. my mother. o.m. you love her? y.m. oh, more than that! o.m. you would always do anything in your power to please her? y.m. it is a delight to me to do anything to please her! o.m. why? you would do it for pay, solely--for profit. what profit would you expect and certainly receive from the investment? y.m. personally? none. to please her is enough. o.m. it appears, then, that your object, primarily, wasn't to save the girl a humiliation, but to please your mother. it also appears that to please your mother gives you a strong pleasure. is not that the profit which you get out of the investment? isn't that the real profits and first profit? y.m. oh, well? go on. o.m. in all transactions, the interior master looks to it that you get the first profit. otherwise there is no transaction. y.m. well, then, if i was so anxious to get that profit and so intent upon it, why did i threw it away by losing my temper? o.m. in order to get another profit which suddenly superseded it in value. y.m. where was it? o.m. ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance. your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and for the moment its influence was more powerful than your mother's, and abolished it. in that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke and enjoy it. you did enjoy it, didn't you? y.m. for--for a quarter of a second. yes--i did. o.m. very well, it is as i have said: the thing which will give you the most pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or fraction of a moment, is the thing you will always do. you must content the master's latest whim, whatever it may be. y.m. but when the tears came into the old servant's eyes i could have cut my hand off for what i had done. o.m. right. you had humiliated yourself, you see, you had given yourself pain. nothing is of first importance to a man except results which damage him or profit him--all the rest is secondary. your master was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. he required a prompt repentance; you obeyed again; you had to--there is never any escape from his commands. he is a hard master and fickle; he changes his mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to obey, and you will obey, always. if he requires repentance, you content him, you will always furnish it. he must be nursed, petted, coddled, and kept contented, let the terms be what they may. y.m. training! oh, what's the use of it? didn't i, and didn't my mother try to train me up to where i would no longer fly out at that girl? o.m. have you never managed to keep back a scolding? y.m. oh, certainly--many times. o.m. more times this year than last? y.m. yes, a good many more. o.m. more times last year than the year before? y.m. yes. o.m. there is a large improvement, then, in the two years? y.m. yes, undoubtedly. o.m. then your question is answered. you see there is use in training. keep on. keeping faithfully on. you are doing well. y.m. will my reform reach perfection? o.m. it will. up to your limit. y.m. my limit? what do you mean by that? o.m. you remember that you said that i said training was everything. i corrected you, and said "training and another thing." that other thing is temperament--that is, the disposition you were born with. you can't eradicate your disposition nor any rag of it--you can only put a pressure on it and keep it down and quiet. you have a warm temper? y.m. yes. o.m. you will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it down nearly all the time. its presence is your limit. your reform will never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then, but you come near enough. you have made valuable progress and can make more. there is use in training. immense use. presently you will reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will proceed on a simpler basis, anyway. y.m. explain. o.m. you keep back your scoldings now, to please yourself by pleasing your mother; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your mother confers upon you now. you will then labor for yourself directly and at first hand, not by the roundabout way through your mother. it simplifies the matter, and it also strengthens the impulse. y.m. ah, dear! but i sha'n't ever reach the point where i will spare the girl for her sake primarily, not mine? o.m. why--yes. in heaven. y.m. (after a reflective pause) temperament. well, i see one must allow for temperament. it is a large factor, sure enough. my mother is thoughtful, and not hot-tempered. when i was dressed i went to her room; she was not there; i called, she answered from the bathroom. i heard the water running. i inquired. she answered, without temper, that jane had forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. i offered to ring, but she said, "no, don't do that; it would only distress her to be confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke; she doesn't deserve that--she is not to blame for the tricks her memory serves her." i say--has my mother an interior master?--and where was he? o.m. he was there. there, and looking out for his own peace and pleasure and contentment. the girl's distress would have pained your mother. otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all. i know women who would have gotten a no. 1 pleasure out of ringing jane up--and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed the law of their make and training, which are the servants of their interior masters. it is quite likely that a part of your mother's forbearance came from training. the good kind of training--whose best and highest function is to see to it that every time it confers a satisfaction upon its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon others. y.m. if you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the general betterment of the race's condition, how would you word it? admonition o.m. diligently train your ideals upward and still upward toward a summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and the community. y.m. is that a new gospel? o.m. no. y.m. it has been taught before? o.m. for ten thousand years. y.m. by whom? o.m. all the great religions--all the great gospels. y.m. then there is nothing new about it? o.m. oh yes, there is. it is candidly stated, this time. that has not been done before. y.m. how do you mean? o.m. haven't i put you first, and your neighbor and the community afterward? y.m. well, yes, that is a difference, it is true. o.m. the difference between straight speaking and crooked; the difference between frankness and shuffling. y.m. explain. o.m. the others offer your a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding that the master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first, and that you will do nothing at first hand but for his sake; then they turn square around and require you to do good for other's sake chiefly; and to do your duty for duty's sake, chiefly; and to do acts of self-sacrifice. thus at the outset we all stand upon the same ground--recognition of the supreme and absolute monarch that resides in man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then those others dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and inconsistently and illogically change the form of their appeal and direct its persuasions to man's second-place powers and to powers which have no existence in him, thus advancing them to first place; whereas in my admonition i stick logically and consistently to the original position: i place the interior master's requirements first, and keep them there. y.m. if we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the other schemes aim at and produce the same result-right living--has yours an advantage over the others? o.m. one, yes--a large one. it has no concealments, no deceptions. when a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as to the real chief motive which impels him to it--in those other cases he is. y.m. is that an advantage? is it an advantage to live a lofty life for a mean reason? in the other cases he lives the lofty life under the impression that he is living for a lofty reason. is not that an advantage? o.m. perhaps so. the same advantage he might get out of thinking himself a duke, and living a duke's life and parading in ducal fuss and feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he would only examine the herald's records. y.m. but anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand in his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand, and that benefits the community. o.m. he could do that without being a duke. y.m. but would he? o.m. don't you see where you are arriving? y.m. where? o.m. at the standpoint of the other schemes: that it is good morals to let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride's sake, a pretty low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up his purse and cease to be good? y.m. but isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he thinks he is doing good for others' sake? o.m. perhaps so. it is the position of the other schemes. they think humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and handsome conduct. y.m. it is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good deed for his own sake first-off, instead of first for the good deed's sake, no man would ever do one. o.m. have you committed a benevolence lately? y.m. yes. this morning. o.m. give the particulars. y.m. the cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when i was a child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned last night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money to build another one. o.m. you furnished it? y.m. certainly. o.m. you were glad you had the money? y.m. money? i hadn't. i sold my horse. o.m. you were glad you had the horse? y.m. of course i was; for if i hadn't had the horse i should have been incapable, and my mother would have captured the chance to set old sally up. o.m. you were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable? y.m. oh, i just was! o.m. now, then-y.m. stop where you are! i know your whole catalog of questions, and i could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask them; but i will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: i did the charity knowing it was because the act would give me a splendid pleasure, and because old sally's moving gratitude and delight would give me another one; and because the reflection that she would be happy now and out of her trouble would fill me full of happiness. i did the whole thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that i was looking out for my share of the profits first. now then, i have confessed. go on. o.m. i haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground. can you have been any more strongly moved to help sally out of her trouble--could you have done the deed any more eagerly--if you had been under the delusion that you were doing it for her sake and profit only? y.m. no! nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. i played the limit! o.m. very well. you begin to suspect--and i claim to know --that when a man is a shade more strongly moved to do one of two things or of two dozen things than he is to do any one of the others, he will infallibly do that one thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be good, not all the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the strength of the impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort and contentment he will get out of the act. y.m. then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in men's hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that good deeds are done primarily for the sake of no. 2 instead of for the sake of no. 1? o.m. that is what i fully believe. y.m. doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed? o.m. if there is dignity in falsity, it does. it removes that. y.m. what is left for the moralists to do? o.m. teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his mouth and takes back with the other: do right for your own sake, and be happy in knowing that your neighbor will certainly share in the benefits resulting. y.m. repeat your admonition. o.m. diligently train your ideals upward and still upward toward a summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and the community. y.m. one's every act proceeds from exterior influences, you think? o.m. yes. y.m. if i conclude to rob a person, i am not the originator of the idea, but it comes in from the outside? i see him handling money--for instance--and that moves me to the crime? o.m. that, by itself? oh, certainly not. it is merely the latest outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching back over a period of years. no single outside influence can make a man do a thing which is at war with his training. the most it can do is to start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of new influences--as in the case of ignatius loyola. in time these influences can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new character to yield to the final influence and do that thing. i will put the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, i think. here are two ingots of virgin gold. they shall represent a couple of characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by years of diligent right training. suppose you wanted to break down these strong and well-compacted characters--what influence would you bring to bear upon the ingots? y.m. work it out yourself. proceed. o.m. suppose i turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long succession of hours. will there be a result? y.m. none that i know of. o.m. why? y.m. a steam-jet cannot break down such a substance. o.m. very well. the steam is an outside influence, but it is ineffective because the gold takes no interest in it. the ingot remains as it was. suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a vaporized condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an instantaneous result? y.m. no. o.m. the quicksilver is an outside influence which gold (by its peculiar nature--say temperament, disposition) cannot be indifferent to. it stirs up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive it; but a single application of the influence works no damage. let us continue the application in a steady stream, and call each minute a year. by the end of ten or twenty minutes--ten or twenty years--the little ingot is sodden with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its character is degraded. at last it is ready to yield to a temptation which it would have taken no notice of, ten or twenty years ago. we will apply that temptation in the form of a pressure of my finger. you note the result? y.m. yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. i understand, now. it is not the single outside influence that does the work, but only the last one of a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. i see, now, how my single impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it, but only the last one of a preparatory series. you might illustrate with a parable. a parable o.m. i will. there was once a pair of new england boys-twins. they were alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal appearance. they were the models of the sundayschool. at fifteen george had the opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed away for the pacific. henry remained at home in the village. at eighteen george was a sailor before the mast, and henry was teacher of the advanced bible class. at twenty-two george, through fighting-habits and drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of the european and oriental ports, was a common rough in hong-kong, and out of a job; and henry was superintendent of the sunday-school. at twenty-six george was a wanderer, a tramp, and henry was pastor of the village church. then george came home, and was henry's guest. one evening a man passed by and turned down the lane, and henry said, with a pathetic smile, "without intending me a discomfort, that man is always keeping me reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of money about him, and goes by here every evening of his life." that outside influence--that remark--was enough for george, but it was not the one that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely represented the eleven years' accumulation of such influences, and gave birth to the act for which their long gestation had made preparation. it had never entered the head of henry to rob the man--his ingot had been subjected to clean steam only; but george's had been subjected to vaporized quicksilver. v more about the machine note.--when mrs. w. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she has answered her question herself. her feeling for the poor shows that she has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the millionaire's privilege of having a standard; since she evidently requires him to adopt her standard, she is by that act requiring herself to adopt his. the human being always looks down when he is examining another person's standard; he never find one that he has to examine by looking up. the man-machine again young man. you really think man is a mere machine? old man. i do. y.m. and that his mind works automatically and is independent of his control--carries on thought on its own hook? o.m. yes. it is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every waking moment. have you never tossed about all night, imploring, beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you tell it to stop. when it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still for an instant. the brightest man would not be able to supply it with subjects if he had to hunt them up. if it needed the man's help it would wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning. y.m. maybe it does. o.m. no, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to give it a suggestion. he may go to sleep saying, "the moment i wake i will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail. his mind will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough awake to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon another subject. make the experiment and see. y.m. at any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to. o.m. not if it find another that suits it better. as a rule it will listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. it refuses all persuasion. the dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. you cannot keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you. after an interval of days o.m. now, dreams--but we will examine that later. meantime, did you try commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any thinking on its own hook? y.m. yes, i commanded it to stand ready to take orders when i should wake in the morning. o.m. did it obey? y.m. no. it went to thinking of something of its own initiation, without waiting for me. also--as you suggested--at night i appointed a theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on that one and no other. o.m. did it obey? y.m. no. o.m. how many times did you try the experiment? y.m. ten. o.m. how many successes did you score? y.m. not one. o.m. it is as i have said: the mind is independent of the man. he has no control over it; it does as it pleases. it will take up a subject in spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside in spite of him. it is entirely independent of him. y.m. go on. illustrate. o.m. do you know chess? y.m. i learned it a week ago. o.m. did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night? y.m. don't mention it! o.m. it was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some sleep? y.m. yes. it wouldn't listen; it played right along. it wore me out and i got up haggard and wretched in the morning. o.m. at some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous rhyme-jingle? y.m. indeed, yes! "i saw esau kissing kate, and she saw i saw esau; i saw esau, he saw kate, and she saw--" and so on. my mind went mad with joy over it. it repeated it all day and all night for a week in spite of all i could do to stop it, and it seemed to me that i must surely go crazy. o.m. and the new popular song? y.m. oh yes! "in the swee-eet by and by"; etc. yes, the new popular song with the taking melody sings through one's head day and night, asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. there is no getting the mind to let it alone. o.m. yes, asleep as well as awake. the mind is quite independent. it is master. you have nothing to do with it. it is so apart from you that it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. it has no use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either, whether you be asleep or awake. you have imagined that you could originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you could do it. y.m. yes, i have had that idea. o.m. yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and get it accepted? y.m. no. o.m. and you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a dream-thought for itself? y.m. no. no one can do it. do you think the waking mind and the dream mind are the same machine? o.m. there is argument for it. we have wild and fantastic day-thoughts? things that are dream-like? y.m. yes--like mr. wells's man who invented a drug that made him invisible; and like the arabian tales of the thousand nights. o.m. and there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and unfantastic? y.m. yes. i have dreams that are like that. dreams that are just like real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly differentiated characters--inventions of my mind and yet strangers to me: a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. they talk in character, each preserves his own characteristics. there are vivid fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is exactly like real life. o.m. your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably through--all without help or suggestion from you? y.m. yes. o.m. it is argument that it could do the like awake without help or suggestion from you--and i think it does. it is argument that it is the same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. i think the mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic machine. have you tried the other experiment which i suggested to you? y.m. which one? o.m. the one which was to determine how much influence you have over your mind--if any. y.m. yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. i did as you ordered: i placed two texts before my eyes--one a dull one and barren of interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot with it. i commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one. o.m. did it obey? y.m. well, no, it didn't. it busied itself with the other one. o.m. did you try hard to make it obey? y.m. yes, i did my honest best. o.m. what was the text which it refused to be interested in or think about? y.m. it was this question: if a owes b a dollar and a half, and b owes c two and three-quarter, and c owes a thirtyfive cents, and d and a together owe e and b three-sixteenths of --of--i don't remember the rest, now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and i could not force my mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to the other text. o.m. what was the other text? y.m. it is no matter about that. o.m. but what was it? y.m. a photograph. o.m. your own? y.m. no. it was hers. o.m. you really made an honest good test. did you make a second trial? y.m. yes. i commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's report of the pork-market, and at the same time i reminded it of an experience of mine of sixteen years ago. it refused to consider the pork and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident. o.m. what was the incident? y.m. an armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty spectators. it makes me wild and murderous every time i think of it. o.m. good tests, both; very good tests. did you try my other suggestion? y.m. the one which was to prove to me that if i would leave my mind to its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine, set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it could be if it were in some one else's skull. is that the one? o.m. yes. y.m. i tried it. i was shaving. i had slept well, and my mind was very lively, even gay and frisky. it was reveling in a fantastic and joyful episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my memory--moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way carefully along the top of the garden wall. the color of this cat brought the bygone cat before me, and i saw her walking along the side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall down, helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. i saw it all. the sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a sadder scene--in terra del fuego--and with darwin's eyes i saw a naked great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling fault; saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her breast and weep, uttering no word. did my mind stop to mourn with that nude black sister of mine? no--it was far away from that scene in an instant, and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of mine. in this dream i always find myself, stripped to my shirt, cringing and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room throng of finely dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how i got there. and so on and so on, picture after picture, incident after incident, a drifting panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind without any help from me--why, it would take me two hours to merely name the multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in fifteen minutes, let alone describe them to you. o.m. a man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. but there is one way whereby he can get its help when he desires it. y.m. what is that way? o.m. when your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that matter--or--take your pen and use that. it will interest your mind and concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. it will take full charge, and furnish the words itself. y.m. but don't i tell it what to say? o.m. there are certainly occasions when you haven't time. the words leap out before you know what is coming. y.m. for instance? o.m. well, take a "flash of wit"--repartee. flash is the right word. it is out instantly. there is no time to arrange the words. there is no thinking, no reflecting. where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic in its action and needs no help. where the whit-mechanism is lacking, no amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product. y.m. you really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing. the thinking-process o.m. i do. men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine the things perceived. that is all. y.m. the steam-engine? o.m. it takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. one meaning of invent is discover. i use the word in that sense. little by little they discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect engine. watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the lid of the teapot. he didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. from the teapot he evolved the cylinder--from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. to attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple matter--crank and wheel. and so there was a working engine. [1] one by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not their creating powers--for they hadn't any--and now, after a hundred years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner. y.m. a shakespearean play? o.m. the process is the same. the first actor was a savage. he reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalpdances, and so on, incidents which he had seen in real life. a more advanced civilization produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller borrowed them. and so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage. it is made up of the facts of life, not creations. it took centuries to develop the greek drama. it borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the ages that came after. men observe and combine, that is all. so does a rat. y.m. how? o.m. he observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. the astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet, seeks it and finds it. the rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble; infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no more. the astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud of his. yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit belongs to their maker. they are entitled to no honors, no praises, no monuments when they die, no remembrance. one is a complex and elaborate machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a personal superiority or a personal dignity above the other. y.m. in earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat? o.m. his brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. neither of them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows of necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself (personally created) superiorities over his brother. y.m. are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? would you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by collated facts and instances? o.m. i have been a humble, earnest, and sincere truth-seeker. y.m. very well? o.m. the humble, earnest, and sincere truth-seeker is always convertible by such means. y.m. i am thankful to god to hear you say this, for now i know that your conversion-o.m. wait. you misunderstand. i said i have been a truth-seeker. y.m. well? o.m. i am not that now. have your forgotten? i told you that there are none but temporary truth-seekers; that a permanent one is a human impossibility; that as soon as the seeker finds what he is thoroughly convinced is the truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and make it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. hence the presbyterian remains a presbyterian, the mohammedan a mohammedan, the spiritualist a spiritualist, the democrat a democrat, the republican a republican, the monarchist a monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and sincere seeker after truth should find it in the proposition that the moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the laws of his construction. y.m. after so-o.m. having found the truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but one moving impulse--the contenting of his own spirit-and is merely a machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is not humanly possible for me to seek further. the rest of my days will be spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my priceless possession and in looking the other way when an imploring argument or a damaging fact approaches. ----1. the marquess of worcester had done all of this more than a century earlier. vi instinct and thought young man. it is odious. those drunken theories of yours, advanced a while ago--concerning the rat and all that--strip man bare of all his dignities, grandeurs, sublimities. old man. he hasn't any to strip--they are shams, stolen clothes. he claims credits which belong solely to his maker. y.m. but you have no right to put him on a level with a rat. o.m. i don't--morally. that would not be fair to the rat. the rat is well above him, there. y.m. are you joking? o.m. no, i am not. y.m. then what do you mean? o.m. that comes under the head of the moral sense. it is a large question. let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it up. y.m. very well. you have seemed to concede that you place man and the rat on a level. what is it? the intellectual? o.m. in form--not a degree. y.m. explain. o.m. i think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the same machine, but of unequal capacities--like yours and edison's; like the african pygmy's and homer's; like the bushman's and bismarck's. y.m. how are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason? o.m. what is instinct? y.m. it is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited habit. o.m. what originated the habit? y.m. the first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it. o.m. how did the first one come to start it? y.m. i don't know; but it didn't think it out. o.m. how do you know it didn't? y.m. well--i have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway. o.m. i don't believe you have. what is thought? y.m. i know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference from them. o.m. very good. now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that it is merely petrified thought; solidified and made inanimate by habit; thought which was once alive and awake, but it become unconscious--walks in its sleep, so to speak. y.m. illustrate it. o.m. take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. their heads are all turned in one direction. they do that instinctively; they gain nothing by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. it is an inherited habit which was originally thought--that is to say, observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from that observation and confirmed by experience. the original wild ox noticed that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time to escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose to the wind. that is the process which man calls reasoning. man's thought-machine works just like the other animals', but it is a better one and more edisonian. man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both front and rear. y.m. did you stay the term instinct is meaningless? o.m. i think it is a bastard word. i think it confuses us; for as a rule it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits which can hardly claim a thought-origin. y.m. give an instance. o.m. well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg first--never the other one. there is no advantage in that, and no sense in it. all men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set purpose, i imagine. but it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt, and will continue to be transmitted. y.m. can you prove that the habit exists? o.m. you can prove it, if you doubt. if you will take a man to a clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will see. y.m. the cow illustration is not-o.m. sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just the same as a man's and its reasoning processes the same? i will illustrate further. if you should hand mr. edison a box which you caused to fly open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt for it and find it. now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to get into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take the corn. i got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that i had heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed. these persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so i hid myself and watched the gate. presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and went in. nobody taught him that; he had observed--then thought it out for himself. his process did not differ from edison's; he put this and that together and drew an inference--and the peg, too; but i made him sweat for it. y.m. it has something of the seeming of thought about it. still it is not very elaborate. enlarge. o.m. suppose mr. edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities. he comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. he infers that his host has moved. a while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire. here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. the scene is a scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated. this particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept on doing this almost daily, thereafter. but, once the gull was away on a journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant. its friends had removed to a village three miles distant. several months later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily guest again. gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them edisonially. y.m. yet it was not an edison and couldn't be developed into one. o.m. perhaps not. could you? y.m. that is neither here nor there. go on. o.m. if edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address. here is a case of a bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. an englishman saw a bird flying around about his dog's head, down in the grounds, and uttering cries of distress. he went there to see about it. the dog had a young bird in his mouth--unhurt. the gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush and brought the dog away. early the next morning the mother bird came for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds--flying a little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on; and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way across lots. the distance covered was four hundred yards. the same dog was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had to give it up. now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would do it again; she knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with confidence. her mental processes were what edison's would have been. she put this and that together--and that is all that thought is--and out of them built her logical arrangement of inferences. edison couldn't have done it any better himself. y.m. do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think? o.m. yes--the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. the elephant whose mate fell into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with the reasoning quality. i conceive that all animals that can learn things through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this and that together and draw an inference--the process of thinking. could you teach an idiot of manuals of arms, and to advance, retreat, and go through complex field maneuvers at the word of command? y.m. not if he were a thorough idiot. o.m. well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all sorts of wonderful things. they must surely be able to notice, and to put things together, and say to themselves, "i get the idea, now: when i do so and so, as per order, i am praised and fed; when i do differently i am punished." fleas can be taught nearly anything that a congressman can. y.m. granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? is there one that is well up toward man? o.m. yes. as a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized! y.m. oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which separates man and beast. o.m. i beg your pardon. one cannot abolish what does not exist. y.m. you are not in earnest, i hope. you cannot mean to seriously say there is no such frontier. o.m. i do say it seriously. the instances of the horse, the gull, the mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this's and thats together just as edison would have done it and drew the same inferences that he would have drawn. their mental machinery was just like his, also its manner of working. their equipment was as inferior to the strasburg clock, but that is the only difference--there is no frontier. y.m. it looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. it elevates the dumb beasts to--to-o.m. let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the unrevealed creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb beast. y.m. on what grounds do you make that assertion? o.m. on quite simple ones. "dumb" beast suggests an animal that has no thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating what is in its mind. we know that a hen has speech. we cannot understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her phrases. we know when she is saying, "i have laid an egg"; we know when she is saying to the chicks, "run here, dears, i've found a worm"; we know what she is saying when she voices a warning: "quick! hurry! gather yourselves under mamma, there's a hawk coming!" we understand the cat when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment and lifts up a soft voice and says, "come, kitties, supper's ready"; we understand her when she goes mourning about and says, "where can they be? they are lost. won't you help me hunt for them?" and we understand the disreputable tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, "you come over here, you product of immoral commerce, and i'll make your fur fly!" we understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn to understand a few of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we domesticate and observe. the clearness and exactness of the few of the hen's speeches which we understand is argument that she can communicate to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend--in a word, that she can converse. and this argument is also applicable in the case of others of the great army of the unrevealed. it is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. now as to the ant-y.m. yes, go back to the ant, the creature that--as you seem to think--sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between man and the unrevealed. o.m. that is what she surely does. in all his history the aboriginal australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. the ant is an amazing architect. she is a wee little creature, but she builds a strong and enduring house eight feet high--a house which is as large in proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the world compared to man's size. no savage race has produced architects who could approach the air in genius or culture. no civilized race has produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed than can hers. her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for convenience and adaptability. y.m. that could be mere instinct. o.m. it would elevate the savage if he had it. but let us look further before we decide. the ant has soldiers--battalions, regiments, armies; and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to battle. y.m. that could be instinct, too. o.m. we will look still further. the ant has a system of government; it is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on. y.m. instinct again. o.m. she has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of forced labor. y.m. instinct. o.m. she has cows, and milks them. y.m. instinct, of course. o.m. in texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away. y.m. instinct, all the same. o.m. the ant discriminates between friend and stranger. sir john lubbock took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and laid them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. ants from the nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. sir john repeated the experiment a number of times. for a time the sober ants did as they had done at first--carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. but finally they lost patience, seeing that their reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and strangers overboard. come--is this instinct, or is it thoughtful and intelligent discussion of a thing new-absolutely new--to their experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment executed? is it instinct?--thought petrified by ages of habit--or isn't it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new circumstances? y.m. i have to concede it. it was not a result of habit; it has all the look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you phrase it. i believe it was thought. o.m. i will give you another instance of thought. franklin had a cup of sugar on a table in his room. the ants got at it. he tried several preventives; and ants rose superior to them. finally he contrived one which shut off access--probably set the table's legs in pans of water, or drew a circle of tar around the cup, i don't remember. at any rate, he watched to see what they would do. they tried various schemes--failures, every one. the ants were badly puzzled. finally they held a consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision--and this time they beat that great philosopher. they formed in procession, cross the floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into it! was that instinct--thought petrified by ages of inherited habit? y.m. no, i don't believe it was. i believe it was a newly reasoned scheme to meet a new emergency. o.m. very well. you have conceded the reasoning power in two instances. i come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior of any human being. sir john lubbock proved by many experiments that an ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the stranger is disguised --with paint. also he proved that an ant knows every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand souls. also, after a year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway recognize the returned absentee and grace the recognition with a affectionate welcome. how are these recognitions made? not by color, for painted ants were recognized. not by smell, for ants that had been dipped in chloroform were recognized. not by speech and not by antennae signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless ants were recognized and the friend discriminated from the stranger. the ants were all of the same species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and feature-friends who formed part of a hive of five hundred thousand! has any man a memory for form and feature approaching that? y.m. certainly not. o.m. franklin's ants and lubbuck's ants show fine capacities of putting this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting smart conclusions from the combinations--a man's mental process exactly. with memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings, reflects upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by stage, to far results--from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound's complex engine; from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to palace; from the capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from nomadic life to stable government and concentrated authority; from incoherent hordes to massed armies. the ant has observation, the reasoning faculty, and the preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's development and the essential features of his civilization, and you call it all instinct! y.m. perhaps i lacked the reasoning faculty myself. o.m. well, don't tell anybody, and don't do it again. y.m. we have come a good way. as a result--as i understand it-i am required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier separating man and the unrevealed creatures? o.m. that is what you are required to concede. there is no such frontier--there is no way to get around that. man has a finer and more capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and works in the same way. and neither he nor those others can command the machine--it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it pleases, and when it doesn't please, it can't be forced. y.m. then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental machinery, and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude between them, except in quality, not in kind. o.m. that is about the state of it--intellectuality. there are pronounced limitations on both sides. we can't learn to understand much of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a very great deal of ours. to that extent they are our superiors. on the other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them. y.m. very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is still a wall, and a lofty one. they haven't got the moral sense; we have it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them. o.m. what makes you think that? y.m. now look here--let's call a halt. i have stood the other infamies and insanities and that is enough; i am not going to have man and the other animals put on the same level morally. o.m. i wasn't going to hoist man up to that. y.m. this is too much! i think it is not right to jest about such things. o.m. i am not jesting, i am merely reflecting a plain and simple truth--and without uncharitableness. the fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot. it is my belief that this position is not assailable. free will y.m. what is your opinion regarding free will? o.m. that there is no such thing. did the man possess it who gave the old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm? y.m. he had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her to suffer. isn't it so? o.m. yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. the body made a strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the spirit made a counter appeal. a choice had to be made between the two appeals, and was made. who or what determined that choice? y.m. any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in doing it he exercised free will. o.m. we are constantly assured that every man is endowed with free will, and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice between good conduct and less-good conduct. yet we clearly saw that in that man's case he really had no free will: his temperament, his training, and the daily influences which had molded him and made him what he was, compelled him to rescue the old woman and thus save himself--save himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness. he did not make the choice, it was made for him by forces which he could not control. free will has always existed in words, but it stops there, i think--stops short of fact. i would not use those words--free will--but others. y.m. what others? o.m. free choice. y.m. what is the difference? o.m. the one implies untrammeled power to act as you please, the other implies nothing beyond a mere mental process: the critical ability to determine which of two things is nearest right and just. y.m. make the difference clear, please. o.m. the mind can freely select, choose, point out the right and just one--its function stops there. it can go no further in the matter. it has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the wrong one discarded. that authority is in other hands. y.m. the man's? o.m. in the machine which stands for him. in his born disposition and the character which has been built around it by training and environment. y.m. it will act upon the right one of the two? o.m. it will do as it pleases in the matter. george washington's machine would act upon the right one; pizarro would act upon the wrong one. y.m. then as i understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and judicially points out which of two things is right and just-o.m. yes, and his moral machinery will freely act upon the other or the other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the mind's feeling concerning the matter--that is, would be, if the mind had any feelings; which it hasn't. it is merely a thermometer: it registers the heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either. y.m. then we must not claim that if a man knows which of two things is right he is absolutely bound to do that thing? o.m. his temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the mater. wasn't it right for david to go out and slay goliath? y.m. yes. o.m. then it would have been equally right for any one else to do it? y.m. certainly. o.m. then it would have been right for a born coward to attempt it? y.m. it would--yes. o.m. you know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't you? y.m. yes. o.m. you know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't you? y.m. yes, i know it. o.m. he clearly perceives that it would be right to try it? y.m. yes. o.m. his mind has free choice in determining that it would be right to try it? y.m. yes. o.m. then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can not essay it, what becomes of his free will? where is his free will? why claim that he has free will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? why content that because he and david see the right alike, both must act alike? why impose the same laws upon goat and lion? y.m. there is really no such thing as free will? o.m. it is what i think. there is will. but it has nothing to do with intellectual perceptions of right and wrong, and is not under their command. david's temperament and training had will, and it was a compulsory force; david had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. the coward's temperament and training possess will, and it is compulsory; it commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. but neither the davids nor the cowards possess free will--will that may do the right or do the wrong, as their mental verdict shall decide. not two values, but only one y.m. there is one thing which bothers me: i can't tell where you draw the line between material covetousness and spiritual covetousness. o.m. i don't draw any. y.m. how do you mean? o.m. there is no such thing as material covetousness. all covetousness is spiritual y.m. all longings, desires, ambitions spiritual, never material? o.m. yes. the master in you requires that in all cases you shall content his spirit--that alone. he never requires anything else, he never interests himself in any other matter. y.m. ah, come! when he covets somebody's money--isn't that rather distinctly material and gross? o.m. no. the money is merely a symbol--it represents in visible and concrete form a spiritual desire. any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment. y.m. please particularize. o.m. very well. maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. you get it and your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. suppose your friends deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it again. y.m. i think i see. go on. o.m. it is the same hat, isn't it? it is in no way altered. but it wasn't the hat you wanted, but only what it stood for--a something to please and content your spirit. when it failed of that, the whole of its value was gone. there are no material values; there are only spiritual ones. you will hunt in vain for a material value that is actual, real--there is no such thing. the only value it possesses, for even a moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and it is at once worthless--like the hat. y.m. can you extend that to money? o.m. yes. it is merely a symbol, it has no material value; you think you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. you desire it for the spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that its value is gone. there is that pathetic tale of the man who labored like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a fortune, and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week a pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him desolate. his money's value was gone. he realized that his joy in it came not from the money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his family's enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it lavished upon them. money has no material value; if you remove its spiritual value nothing is left but dross. it is so with all things, little or big, majestic or trivial--there are no exceptions. crowns, scepters, pennies, paste jewels, village notoriety, world-wide fame--they are all the same, they have no material value: while they content the spirit they are precious, when this fails they are worthless. a difficult question y.m. you keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive terminology. sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and responsibilities of its own, and when he is in that condition i can't grasp it. now when _i_ speak of a man, he is the whole thing in one, and easy to hold and contemplate. o.m. that is pleasant and convenient, if true. when you speak of "my body" who is the "my"? y.m. it is the "me." o.m. the body is a property then, and the me owns it. who is the me? y.m. the me is the whole thing; it is a common property; an undivided ownership, vested in the whole entity. o.m. if the me admires a rainbow, is it the whole me that admires it, including the hair, hands, heels, and all? y.m. certainly not. it is my mind that admires it. o.m. so you divide the me yourself. everybody does; everybody must. what, then, definitely, is the me? y.m. i think it must consist of just those two parts-the body and the mind. o.m. you think so? if you say "i believe the world is round," who is the "i" that is speaking? y.m. the mind. o.m. if you say "i grieve for the loss of my father," who is the "i"? y.m. the mind. o.m. is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines and accepts the evidence that the world is round? y.m. yes. o.m. is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the loss of your father? y.m. that is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of feeling. o.m. then its source is not in your mind, but in your moral territory? y.m. i have to grant it. o.m. is your mind a part of your physical equipment? y.m. no. it is independent of it; it is spiritual. o.m. being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences? y.m. no. o.m. does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk? y.m. well--no. o.m. there is a physical effect present, then? y.m. it looks like it. o.m. a cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. why should it happen if the mind is spiritual, and independent of physical influences? y.m. well--i don't know. o.m. when you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it? y.m. i feel it. o.m. but you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain. yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not? y.m. i think so. o.m. but isn't spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the outskirts without the help of the physical messenger? you perceive that the question of who or what the me is, is not a simple one at all. you say "i admire the rainbow," and "i believe the world is round," and in these cases we find that the me is not speaking, but only the mental part. you say, "i grieve," and again the me is not all speaking, but only the moral part. you say the mind is wholly spiritual; then you say "i have a pain" and find that this time the me is mental and spiritual combined. we all use the "i" in this indeterminate fashion, there is no help for it. we imagine a master and king over what you call the whole thing, and we speak of him as "i," but when we try to define him we find we cannot do it. the intellect and the feelings can act quite independently of each other; we recognize that, and we look around for a ruler who is master over both, and can serve as a definite and indisputable "i," and enable us to know what we mean and who or what we are talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give it up and confess that we cannot find him. to me, man is a machine, made up of many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in accordance with the impulses of an interior master who is built out of born-temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences and trainings; a machine whose one function is to secure the spiritual contentment of the master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine whose will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always is obeyed. y.m. maybe the me is the soul? o.m. maybe it is. what is the soul? y.m. i don't know. o.m. neither does any one else. the master passion y.m. what is the master?--or, in common speech, the conscience? explain it. o.m. it is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the man to content its desires. it may be called the master passion--the hunger for self-approval. y.m. where is its seat? o.m. in man's moral constitution. y.m. are its commands for the man's good? o.m. it is indifferent to the man's good; it never concerns itself about anything but the satisfying of its own desires. it can be trained to prefer things which will be for the man's good, but it will prefer them only because they will content it better than other things would. y.m. then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking out for its own contentment, and not for the man's good. o.m. true. trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man's good, and never concerns itself about it. y.m. it seems to be an immoral force seated in the man's moral constitution. o.m. it is a colorless force seated in the man's moral constitution. let us call it an instinct--a blind, unreasoning instinct, which cannot and does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares nothing for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured; and it will always secure that. y.m. it seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an advantage for the man? o.m. it is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor office, nor any other material advantage. in all cases it seeks a spiritual contentment, let the means be what they may. its desires are determined by the man's temperament-and it is lord over that. temperament, conscience, susceptibility, spiritual appetite, are, in fact, the same thing. have you ever heard of a person who cared nothing for money? y.m. yes. a scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to take a place in a business house at a large salary. o.m. he had to satisfy his master--that is to say, his temperament, his spiritual appetite--and it preferred books to money. are there other cases? y.m. yes, the hermit. o.m. it is a good instance. the hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold, and manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things, and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that money can buy. are there others? y.m. yes. the artist, the poet, the scientist. o.m. their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations, either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any price. you realize that the master passion--the contentment of the spirit--concerns itself with many things besides so-called material advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that? y.m. i think i must concede it. o.m. i believe you must. there are perhaps as many temperaments that would refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public office as there are that hunger after them. the one set of temperaments seek the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly the case with the other set. neither set seeks anything but the contentment of the spirit. if the one is sordid, both are sordid; and equally so, since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases. and in both cases temperament decides the preference--and temperament is born, not made. conclusion o.m. you have been taking a holiday? y.m. yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. are you ready to talk? o.m. quite ready. what shall we begin with? y.m. well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, i have thought over all these talks, and passed them carefully in review. with this result: that . . . that . . . are you intending to publish your notions about man some day? o.m. now and then, in these past twenty years, the master inside of me has half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them. do i have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you explain so simply a thing without my help? y.m. by your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences moved your interior master to give the order; stronger outside influences deterred him. without the outside influences, neither of these impulses could ever have been born, since a person's brain is incapable or originating an idea within itself. o.m. correct. go on. y.m. the matter of publishing or withholding is still in your master's hands. if some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish, he will give the order, and it will be obeyed. o.m. that is correct. well? y.m. upon reflection i have arrived at the conviction that the publication of your doctrines would be harmful. do you pardon me? o.m. pardon you? you have done nothing. you are an instrument--a speaking-trumpet. speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is said through them. outside influences-in the form of lifelong teachings, trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand importations--have persuaded the master within you that the publication of these doctrines would be harmful. very well, this is quite natural, and was to be expected; in fact, was inevitable. go on; for the sake of ease and convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and tell me what your master thinks about it. y.m. well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring, enthusing, uplifting. it takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole and piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according to his make, outside impulses doing the rest. o.m. it is correctly stated. tell me--what do men admire most in each other? y.m. intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance, charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and--and-o.m. i would not go any further. these are elementals. virtue, fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals-these, and all the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are made of the elementals, by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the elementals, just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and makes several shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red. there are several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of them we manufacture and name fifty shades of them. you have named the elementals of the human rainbow, and also one blend--heroism, which is made out of courage and magnanimity. very well, then; which of these elements does the possessor of it manufacture for himself? is it intellect? y.m. no. o.m. why? y.m. he is born with it. o.m. is it courage? y.m. no. he is born with it. o.m. is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance? y.m. no. they are birthrights. o.m. take those others--the elemental moral qualities-charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold blends and combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all born in him? y.m. born in him. o.m. who manufactures them, then? y.m. god. o.m. where does the credit of it belong? y.m. to god. o.m. and the glory of which you spoke, and the applause? y.m. to god. o.m. then it is you who degrade man. you make him claim glory, praise, flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses-borrowed finery, the whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail of it produced by his own labor. you make man a humbug; have i done worse by him? y.m. you have made a machine of him. o.m. who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man's hand? y.m. god. o.m. who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a piano an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is thinking about something else, or talking to a friend? y.m. god. o.m. who devised the blood? who devised the wonderful machinery which automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man? who devised the man's mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? god devised all these things. _i_ have not made man a machine, god made him a machine. i am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more. is it wrong to call attention to the fact? is it a crime? y.m. i think it is wrong to expose a fact when harm can come of it. o.m. go on. y.m. look at the matter as it stands now. man has been taught that he is the supreme marvel of the creation; he believes it; in all the ages he has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in purple and fine linen, and civilized. this has made his heart buoyant, his life cheery. his pride in himself, his sincere admiration of himself, his joy in what he supposed were his own and unassisted achievements, and his exultation over the praise and applause which they evoked--these have exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to higher and higher flights; in a word, made his life worth the living. but by your scheme, all this is abolished; he is degraded to a machine, he is a nobody, his noble prides wither to mere vanities; let him strive as he may, he can never be any better than his humblest and stupidest neighbor; he would never be cheerful again, his life would not be worth the living. o.m. you really think that? y.m. i certainly do. o.m. have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy. y.m. no. o.m. well, _i_ believe these things. why have they not made me unhappy? y.m. oh, well--temperament, of course! you never let that escape from your scheme. o.m. that is correct. if a man is born with an unhappy temperament, nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament, nothing can make him unhappy. y.m. what--not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs? o.m. beliefs? mere beliefs? mere convictions? they are powerless. they strive in vain against inborn temperament. y.m. i can't believe that, and i don't. o.m. now you are speaking hastily. it shows that you have not studiously examined the facts. of all your intimates, which one is the happiest? isn't it burgess? y.m. easily. o.m. and which one is the unhappiest? henry adams? y.m. without a question! o.m. i know them well. they are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments are as opposite as the poles. their life-histories are about alike--but look at the results! their ages are about the same--about around fifty. burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; adams has always been cheerless, hopeless, despondent. as young fellows both tried country journalism--and failed. burgess didn't seem to mind it; adams couldn't smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so instead of so and so--then he would have succeeded. they tried the law-and failed. burgess remained happy--because he couldn't help it. adams was wretched--because he couldn't help it. from that day to this, those two men have gone on trying things and failing: burgess has come out happy and cheerful every time; adams the reverse. and we do absolutely know that these men's inborn temperaments have remained unchanged through all the vicissitudes of their material affairs. let us see how it is with their immaterials. both have been zealous democrats; both have been zealous republicans; both have been zealous mugwumps. burgess has always found happiness and adams unhappiness in these several political beliefs and in their migrations out of them. both of these men have been presbyterians, universalists, methodists, catholics--then presbyterians again, then methodists again. burgess has always found rest in these excursions, and adams unrest. they are trying christian science, now, with the customary result, the inevitable result. no political or religious belief can make burgess unhappy or the other man happy. i assure you it is purely a matter of temperament. beliefs are acquirements, temperaments are born; beliefs are subject to change, nothing whatever can change temperament. y.m. you have instanced extreme temperaments. o.m. yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes. but the law is the same. where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the proportions. the vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to learn to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer them. nations do not think, they only feel. they get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. a nation can be brought-by force of circumstances, not argument--to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later, it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them. as instances, you have all history: the greeks, the romans, the persians, the egyptians, the russians, the germans, the french, the english, the spaniards, the americans, the south americans, the japanese, the chinese, the hindus, the turks--a thousand wild and tame religions, every kind of government that can be thought of, from tiger to house-cat, each nation knowing it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it, each proud of its fancied supremacy, each perfectly sure it is the pet of god, each without undoubting confidence summoning him to take command in time of war, each surprised when he goes over to the enemy, but by habit able to excuse it and resume compliments--in a word, the whole human race content, always content, persistently content, indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, no matter what its religion is, nor whether its master be tiger or house-cat. am i stating facts? you know i am. is the human race cheerful? you know it is. considering what it can stand, and be happy, you do me too much honor when you think that _i_ can place before it a system of plain cold facts that can take the cheerfulness out of it. nothing can do that. everything has been tried. without success. i beg you not to be troubled. ---------------------------------------------------------------- the death of jean the death of jean clemens occurred early in the morning of december 24, 1909. mr. clemens was in great stress of mind when i first saw him, but a few hours later i found him writing steadily. "i am setting it down," he said, "everything. it is a relief to me to write it. it furnishes me an excuse for thinking." at intervals during that day and the next i looked in, and usually found him writing. then on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that jean had been laid to rest in elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand. "i have finished it," he said; "read it. i can form no opinion of it myself. if you think it worthy, some day--at the proper time--it can end my autobiography. it is the final chapter." four months later--almost to the day--(april 21st) he was with jean. albert bigelow paine. stormfield, christmas eve, 11 a.m., 1909. jean is dead! has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings connected with a dear one--happenings of the twentyfour hours preceding the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? would a book contain them? would two books contain them? i think not. they pour into the mind in a flood. they are little things that have been always happening every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable before--but now! now, how different! how precious they are, now dear, how unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity! last night jean, all flushed with splendid health, and i the same, from the wholesome effects of my bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned, and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)--until nine--which is late for us--then went upstairs, jean's friendly german dog following. at my door jean said, "i can't kiss you good night, father: i have a cold, and you could catch it." i bent and kissed her hand. she was moved--i saw it in her eyes--and she impulsively kissed my hand in return. then with the usual gay "sleep well, dear!" from both, we parted. at half past seven this morning i woke, and heard voices outside my door. i said to myself, "jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to the station for the mail." then katy [1] entered, stood quaking and gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue: "miss jean is dead!" possibly i know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart. in her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor and covered with a sheet. and looking so placid, so natural, and as if asleep. we knew what had happened. she was an epileptic: she had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. the doctor had to come several miles. his efforts, like our previous ones, failed to bring her back to life. it is noon, now. how lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! it is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that lies there so still. in england, thirteen years ago, my wife and i were stabbed to the heart with a cablegram which said, "susy was mercifully released today." i had to send a like shot to clara, in berlin, this morning. with the peremptory addition, "you must not come home." clara and her husband sailed from here on the 11th of this month. how will clara bear it? jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of clara. four days ago i came back from a month's holiday in bermuda in perfected health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this. day before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends and strangers which indicated that i was supposed to be dangerously ill. yesterday jean begged me to explain my case through the associated press. i said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and said i must think of clara. clara would see the report in the german papers, and as she had been nursing her husband day and night for four months [2] and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous. there was reason in that; so i sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the associated press denying the "charge" that i was "dying," and saying "i would not do such a thing at my time of life." jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter so lightly; but i said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing serious about it. this morning i sent the sorrowful facts of this day's irremediable disaster to the associated press. will both appear in this evening's papers?-the one so blithe, the other so tragic? i lost susy thirteen years ago; i lost her mother--her incomparable mother!--five and a half years ago; clara has gone away to live in europe; and now i have lost jean. how poor i am, who was once so rich! seven months ago mr. roger died--one of the best friends i ever had, and the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, i have yet met among my race; within the last six weeks gilder has passed away, and laffan--old, old friends of mine. jean lies yonder, i sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was forever, we never suspecting it. she lies there, and i sit here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. how dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! it is like a mockery. seventy-four years ago twenty-four days ago. seventy-four years old yesterday. who can estimate my age today? i have looked upon her again. i wonder i can bear it. she looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead in that florentine villa so long ago. the sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep. i saw her mother buried. i said i would never endure that horror again; that i would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. i have kept to that. they will take jean from this house tomorrow, and bear her to elmira, new york, where lie those of us that have been released, but i shall not follow. jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. she was at the door, beaming a welcome, when i reached this house the next evening. we played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called "mark twain." we sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making christmas preparations. she said she would finish them in the morning, and then her little french friend would arrive from new york--the surprise would follow; the surprise she had been working over for days. while she was out for a moment i disloyally stole a look. the loggia floor was clothed with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted surprise was there: in the form of a christmas tree that was drenched with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was prodigal profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today. what desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise from that place? not mine, surely. all these little matters have happened in the last four days. "little." yes--then. but not now. nothing she said or thought or did is little now. and all the lavish humor!--what is become of it? it is pathos, now. pathos, and the thought of it brings tears. all these little things happened such a few hours ago--and now she lies yonder. lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more. strange--marvelous--incredible! i have had this experience before; but it would still be incredible if i had had it a thousand times. "miss jean is dead!" that is what katy said. when i heard the door open behind the bed's head without a preliminary knock, i supposed it was jean coming to kiss me good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without formalities. and so-i have been to jean's parlor. such a turmoil of christmas presents for servants and friends! they are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the floor--everything is occupied, and overoccupied. it is many and many a year since i have seen the like. in that ancient day mrs. clemens and i used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on christmas eve and look the array of presents over. the children were little then. and now here is jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. the presents are not labeled--the hands are forever idle that would have labeled them today. jean's mother always worked herself down with her christmas preparations. jean did the same yesterday and the preceding days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. the fatigue caused the convulsion that attacked her this morning. she had had no attack for months. jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly is danger of overtaxing her strength. every morning she was in the saddle by half past seven, and off to the station for her mail. she examined the letters and i distributed them: some to her, some to mr. paine, the others to the stenographer and myself. she dispatched her share and then mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm and her poultry the rest of the day. sometimes she played billiards with me after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went early to bed. yesterday afternoon i told her about some plans i had been devising while absent in bermuda, to lighten her burdens. we would get a housekeeper; also we would put her share of the secretary-work into mr. paine's hands. no--she wasn't willing. she had been making plans herself. the matter ended in a compromise, i submitted. i always did. she wouldn't audit the bills and let paine fill out the checks-she would continue to attend to that herself. also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and let katy assist. also, she would continue to answer the letters of personal friends for me. such was the compromise. both of us called it by that name, though i was not able to see where my formidable change had been made. however, jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. she was proud of being my secretary, and i was never able to persuade her to give up any part of her share in that unlovely work. in the talk last night i said i found everything going so smoothly that if she were willing i would go back to bermuda in february and get blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. she was urgent that i should do it, and said that if i would put off the trip until march she would take katy and go with me. we struck hands upon that, and said it was settled. i had a mind to write to bermuda by tomorrow's ship and secure a furnished house and servants. i meant to write the letter this morning. but it will never be written, now. for she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that. night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the sky-line of the hills. i have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and dearer to me every day. i was getting acquainted with jean in these last nine months. she had been long an exile from home when she came to us three-quarters of a year ago. she had been shut up in sanitariums, many miles from us. how eloquent glad and grateful she was to cross her father's threshold again! would i bring her back to life if i could do it? i would not. if a word would do it, i would beg for strength to withhold the word. and i would have the strength; i am sure of it. in her loss i am almost bankrupt, and my life is a bitterness, but i am content: for she has been enriched with the most precious of all gifts--that gift which makes all other gifts mean and poor-death. i have never wanted any released friend of mine restored to life since i reached manhood. i felt in this way when susy passed away; and later my wife, and later mr. rogers. when clara met me at the station in new york and told me mr. rogers had died suddenly that morning, my thought was, oh, favorite of fortune-fortunate all his long and lovely life--fortunate to his latest moment! the reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes. true--but they were for me, not for him. he had suffered no loss. all the fortunes he had ever made before were poverty compared with this one. why did i build this house, two years ago? to shelter this vast emptiness? how foolish i was! but i shall stay in it. the spirits of the dead hallow a house, for me. it was not so with other members of the family. susy died in the house we built in hartford. mrs. clemens would never enter it again. but it made the house dearer to me. i have entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but to me it was a holy place and beautiful. it seemed to me that the spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and welcome me if they could: livy, and susy, and george, and henry robinson, and charles dudley warner. how good and kind they were, and how lovable their lives! in fancy i could see them all again, i could call the children back and hear them romp again with george--that peerless black ex-slave and children's idol who came one day--a flitting stranger--to wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. until he died. clara and jean would never enter again the new york hotel which their mother had frequented in earlier days. they could not bear it. but i shall stay in this house. it is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. jean's spirit will make it beautiful for me always. her lonely and tragic death--but i will not think of that now. jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to christmas shopping, and was always physically exhausted when christmas eve came. jean was her very own child--she wore herself out presenthunting in new york these latter days. paine has just found on her desk a long list of names--fifty, he thinks--people to whom she sent presents last night. apparently she forgot no one. and katy found there a roll of bank-notes, for the servants. her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and forlorn. i have seen him from the windows. she got him from germany. he has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. he was educated in germany, and knows no language but the german. jean gave him no orders save in that tongue. and so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is french and knows no german, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. jean wrote me, to bermuda, about the incident. it was the last letter i was ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. the dog will not be neglected. there was never a kinder heart than jean's. from her childhood up she always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind or another. after she became secretary and had her income doubled she spent her money upon these things with a free hand. mine too, i am glad and grateful to say. she was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds, beasts, and everything--even snakes--an inheritance from me. she knew all the birds; she was high up in that lore. she became a member of various humane societies when she was still a little girl--both here and abroad--and she remained an active member to the last. she founded two or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in europe. she was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out of the waste-basket and answered the letters. she thought all letters deserved the courtesy of an answer. her mother brought her up in that kindly error. she could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. she had but an indifferent ear music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy facility. she never allowed her italian, french, and german to get rusty through neglect. the telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just as they did in italy five years and a half ago, when this child's mother laid down her blameless life. they cannot heal the hurt, but they take away some of the pain. when jean and i kissed hands and parted at my door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the telegraph would be bringing words like these: "from the bottom of our hearts we send out sympathy, dearest of friends." for many and many a day to come, wherever i go in this house, remembrancers of jean will mutely speak to me of her. who can count the number of them? she was in exile two years with the hope of healing her malady--epilepsy. there are no words to express how grateful i am that she did not meet her fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving shelter of her own home. "miss jean is dead!" it is true. jean is dead. a month ago i was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines yet to appear, and now i am writing--this. christmas day. noon.--last night i went to jean's room at intervals, and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in florence so long ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when i crept downstairs so many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this one--jean's mother's face--and kissed a brow that was just like this one. and last night i saw again what i had seen then--that strange and lovely miracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by the gracious hand of death! when jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of the face, and i was looking again upon it as i had known and worshipped it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before. about three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep silences, as one dies in times like these, when there is a dumb sense that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, i came upon jean's dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not spring to greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and sorrowfully; also i remembered that he had not visited jean's apartment since the tragedy. poor fellow, did he know? i think so. always when jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. her parlor was his bedroom. whenever i happened upon him on the ground floor he always followed me about, and when i went upstairs he went too--in a tumultuous gallop. but now it was different: after patting him a little i went to the library--he remained behind; when i went upstairs he did not follow me, save with his wistful eyes. he has wonderful eyes--big, and kind, and eloquent. he can talk with them. he is a beautiful creature, and is of the breed of the new york police-dogs. i do not like dogs, because they bark when there is no occasion for it; but i have liked this one from the beginning, because he belonged to jean, and because he never barks except when there is occasion-which is not oftener than twice a week. in my wanderings i visited jean's parlor. on a shelf i found a pile of my books, and i knew what it meant. she was waiting for me to come home from bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. if i only knew whom she intended them for! but i shall never know. i will keep them. her hand has touched them--it is an accolade--they are noble, now. and in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me--a thing i have often wished i owned: a noble big globe. i couldn't see it for the tears. she will never know the pride i take in it, and the pleasure. today the mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old kind words she loved so well, "merry christmas to jean!" if she could only have lived one day longer! at last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. so she sent to one of those new york homes for poor girls all the clothes she could spare--and more, most likely. christmas night.--this afternoon they took her away from her room. as soon as i might, i went down to the library, and there she lay, in her coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at the other end of the same room on the 6th of october last, as clara's chief bridesmaid. her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of god upon it. they told me the first mourner to come was the dog. he came uninvited, and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle, and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went his way as silently as he had come. he knows. at mid-afternoon it began to snow. the pity of it--that jean could not see it! she so loved the snow. the snow continued to fall. at six o'clock the hearse drew up to the door to bear away its pathetic burden. as they lifted the casket, paine began playing on the orchestrelle schubert's "impromptu," which was jean's favorite. then he played the intermezzo; that was for susy; then he played the largo; that was for their mother. he did this at my request. elsewhere in my autobiography i have told how the intermezzo and the largo came to be associated in my heart with susy and livy in their last hours in this life. from my windows i saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently disappear. jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any more. jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies together--he and her beloved old katy--were conducting her to her distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more, in the company of susy and langdon. december 26th. the dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning. he was very affectionate, poor orphan! my room will be his quarters hereafter. the storm raged all night. it has raged all the morning. the snow drives across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and jean not here to see. 2:30 p.m.--it is the time appointed. the funeral has begun. four hundred miles away, but i can see it all, just as if i were there. the scene is the library in the langdon homestead. jean's coffin stands where her mother and i stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time. five o'clock.--it is all over. when clara went away two weeks ago to live in europe, it was hard, but i could bear it, for i had jean left. i said we would be a family. we said we would be close comrades and happy--just we two. that fair dream was in my mind when jean met me at the steamer last monday; it was in my mind when she received me at the door last tuesday evening. we were together; we were a family! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true, contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days. and now? now jean is in her grave! in the grave--if i can believe it. god rest her sweet spirit! ----1. katy leary, who had been in the service of the clemens family for twenty-nine years. 2. mr. gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis. ----------------------------------------------------------------the turning-point of my life i if i understand the idea, the bazar invites several of us to write upon the above text. it means the change in my life's course which introduced what must be regarded by me as the most important condition of my career. but it also implies--without intention, perhaps--that that turning-point itself was the creator of the new condition. this gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. it is only the last link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought about some other result. it know we have a fashion of saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but we shouldn't say it. we should merely grant that its place as last link in the chain makes it the most conspicuous link; in real importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors. perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the crossing of the rubicon. suetonius says: coming up with his troops on the banks of the rubicon, he halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "we may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms." this was a stupendously important moment. and all the incidents, big and little, of caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage by stage, link by link. this was the last link--merely the last one, and no bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of neptune. you, the reader, have a personal interest in that link, and so have i; so has the rest of the human race. it was one of the links in your life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. we may wait, now, with baited breath, while caesar reflects. your fate and mine are involved in his decision. while he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. a person remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe. when not only the shepherds, but a number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side. upon this, caesar exclaimed: "let us go whither the omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call up. the die is cast." so he crossed--and changed the future of the whole human race, for all time. but that stranger was a link in caesar's life-chain, too; and a necessary one. we don't know his name, we never hear of him again; he was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was there by compulsion of his life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast that was to make up caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping down the aisles of history forever. if the stranger hadn't been there! but he was. and caesar crossed. with such results! such vast events--each a link in the human race's life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next one, and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire; the breaking up of the empire; the rise of christianity upon its ruins; the spread of the religion to other lands--and so on; link by link took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of america being one of them; our revolution another; the inflow of english and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among them) another; the settlement of certain of them in missouri, which resulted in me. for i was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing of the rubicon. if the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which he couldn't, for he was the appointed link) caesar would not have crossed. what would have happened, in that case, we can never guess. we only know that the things that did happen would not have happened. they might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but their nature and results are beyond our guessing. but the matter that interests me personally is that i would not be here now, but somewhere else; and probably black--there is no telling. very well, i am glad he crossed. and very really and thankfully glad, too, though i never cared anything about it before. ii to me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. i have been professionally literary something more than forty years. there have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the link in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most conspicuous link in that chain. because it was the last one. it was not any more important than its predecessors. all the other links have an inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the rubicon; but as factors in making me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing of the rubicon included. i know how i came to be literary, and i will tell the steps that lead up to it and brought it about. the crossing of the rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a recent one; i should have to go back ages before caesar's day to find the first one. to save space i will go back only a couple of generations and start with an incident of my boyhood. when i was twelve and a half years old, my father died. it was in the spring. the summer came, and brought with it an epidemic of measles. for a time a child died almost every day. the village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair. children that were not smitten with the disease were imprisoned in their homes to save them from the infection. in the homes there were no cheerful faces, there was no music, there was no singing but of solemn hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no noise, no laughter, the family moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush. i was a prisoner. my soul was steeped in this awful dreariness--and in fear. at some time or other every day and every night a sudden shiver shook me to the marrow, and i said to myself, "there, i've got it! and i shall die." life on these miserable terms was not worth living, and at last i made up my mind to get the disease and have it over, one way or the other. i escaped from the house and went to the house of a neighbor where a playmate of mine was very ill with the malady. when the chance offered i crept into his room and got into bed with him. i was discovered by his mother and sent back into captivity. but i had the disease; they could not take that from me. i came near to dying. the whole village was interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day; and not only once a day, but several times. everybody believed i would die; but on the fourteenth day a change came for the worse and they were disappointed. this was a turning-point of my life. (link number one.) for when i got well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer. she was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure of the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than hers. i became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain which was to lead me into the literary profession. a long road, but i could not know that; and as i did not know what its goal was, or even that it had one, i was indifferent. also contented. a young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work; and seeking again, when necessity commands. n. b. necessity is a circumstance; circumstance is man's master--and when circumstance commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter--that is his privilege, just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the attraction of gravitation--but it won't do any good, he must obey. i wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of iowa, where i worked several months. among the books that interested me in those days was one about the amazon. the traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage up the great river from para to the sources of the madeira, through the heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a romantic land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the museum varieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and the monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the zoo. also, he told an astonishing tale about coca, a vegetable product of miraculous powers, asserting that it was so nourishing and so strength-giving that the native of the mountains of the madeira region would tramp up hill and down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other sustenance. i was fired with a longing to ascend the amazon. also with a longing to open up a trade in coca with all the world. during months i dreamed that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to para and spring that splendid enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. but all in vain. a person may plan as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician circumstance steps in and takes the matter off his hands. at last circumstance came to my help. it was in this way. circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose a fifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it. i advertised the find, and left for the amazon the same day. this was another turning-point, another link. could circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fiftydollar basis and been obeyed? no, i was the only one. there were other fools there--shoals and shoals of them--but they were not of my kind. i was the only one of my kind. circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a partner. its partner is man's temperament--his natural disposition. his temperament is not his invention, it is born in him, and he has no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. he cannot change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it--except temporarily. but it won't stay modified. it is permanent, like the color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears. blue eyes are gray in certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when that stress is removed. a circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of a different temperament. if circumstance had thrown the bank-note in caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the amazon. his temperament would have compelled him to do something with the money, but not that. it might have made him advertise the note--and wait. we can't tell. also, it might have made him go to new york and buy into the government, with results that would leave tweed nothing to learn when it came his turn. very well, circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me what to do with it. sometimes a temperament is an ass. when that is the case of the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one. training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be mistaken. artificially he is a mule, for the time being, but at bottom he is an ass yet, and will remain one. by temperament i was the kind of person that does things. does them, and reflects afterward. so i started for the amazon without reflecting and without asking any questions. that was more than fifty years ago. in all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. i have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; i still do the thing commanded by circumstance and temperament, and reflect afterward. always violently. when i am reflecting, on these occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think. i went by the way of cincinnati, and down the ohio and mississippi. my idea was to take ship, at new orleans, for para. in new orleans i inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for para. also, that there never had been one leaving for para. i reflected. a policeman came and asked me what i was doing, and i told him. he made me move on, and said if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me in. after a few days i was out of money. then circumstance arrived, with another turning-point of my life--a new link. on my way down, i had made the acquaintance of a pilot. i begged him to teach me the river, and he consented. i became a pilot. by and by circumstance came again--introducing the civil war, this time, in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary profession. the boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone. circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh link. my brother was appointed secretary to the new territory of nevada, and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. i accepted. in nevada, circumstance furnished me the silver fever and i went into the mines to make a fortune, as i supposed; but that was not the idea. the idea was to advance me another step toward literature. for amusement i scribbled things for the virginia city enterprise. one isn't a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and learning--unconsciously at first, consciously later--to discriminate between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is unconsciously acquiring what is called a "style." one of my efforts attracted attention, and the enterprise sent for me and put me on its staff. and so i became a journalist--another link. by and by circumstance and the sacramento union sent me to the sandwich islands for five or six months, to write up sugar. i did it; and threw in a good deal of extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar. but it was this extraneous matter that helped me to another link. it made me notorious, and san francisco invited me to lecture. which i did. and profitably. i had long had a desire to travel and see the world, and now circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me upon the platform and furnished me the means. so i joined the "quaker city excursion." when i returned to america, circumstance was waiting on the pier-with the last link--the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link: i was asked to write a book, and i did it, and called it the innocents abroad. thus i became at last a member of the literary guild. that was forty-two years ago, and i have been a member ever since. leaving the rubicon incident away back where it belongs, i can say with truth that the reason i am in the literary profession is because i had the measles when i was twelve years old. iii now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of them was planned by me, i was the author of none of them. circumstance, working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled them all. i often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it was rejected--as a rule, uncourteously. i could never plan a thing and get it to come out the way i planned it. it came out some other way--some way i had not counted upon. and so i do not admire the human being--as an intellectual marvel--as much as i did when i was young, and got him out of books, and did not know him personally. when i used to read that such and such a general did a certain brilliant thing, i believed it. whereas it was not so. circumstance did it by help of his temperament. the circumstances would have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might see the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or too quick or too doubtful. once general grant was asked a question about a matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers; he answered the question without any hesitancy. "general, who planned the the march through georgia?" "the enemy!" he added that the enemy usually makes your plans for you. he meant that the enemy by neglect or through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see your chance and take advantage of it. circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our temperaments. i see no great difference between a man and a watch, except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man tries to plan things and the watch doesn't. the watch doesn't wind itself and doesn't regulate itself--these things are done exteriorly. outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the man and regulate him. left to himself, he wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he would keep would not be valuable. some rare men are wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men are only simple and sweet and humble waterburys. i am a waterbury. a waterbury of that kind, some say. a nation is only an individual multiplied. it makes plans and circumstances comes and upsets them--or enlarges them. some patriots throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a bastille. the plans stop there; then circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and turns these modest riots into a revolution. and there was poor columbus. he elaborated a deep plan to find a new route to an old country. circumstance revised his plan for him, and he found a new world. and he gets the credit of it to this day. he hadn't anything to do with it. necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours) was the garden of eden. it was there that the first link was forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the literary guild. adam's temperament was the first command the deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. and it was the only command adam would never be able to disobey. it said, "be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable." the latter command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. not by adam himself, but by his temperament--which he did not create and had no authority over. for the temperament is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named man is merely its shadow, nothing more. the law of the tiger's temperament is, thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is thou shalt not kill. to issue later commands requiring the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands can't be obeyed. they would invite to violations of the law of temperament, which is supreme, and take precedence of all other authorities. i cannot help feeling disappointed in adam and eve. that is, in their temperaments. not in them, poor helpless young creatures-afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with fire and be melted. what i cannot help wishing is, that adam had been postponed, and martin luther and joan of arc put in their place--that splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. by neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could satan have beguiled them to eat the apple. there would have been results! indeed, yes. the apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; there would be no you; there would be no me. and the old, old creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have been defeated. -----------------------------------------------------------------how to make history dates stick these chapters are for children, and i shall try to make the words large enough to command respect. in the hope that you are listening, and that you have confidence in me, i will proceed. dates are difficult things to acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep them in the head. but they are very valuable. they are like the cattle-pens of a ranch--they shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within its own fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. pictures are the thing. pictures can make dates stick. they can make nearly anything stick--particularly if you make the pictures yourself. indeed, that is the great point--make the pictures yourself. i know about this from experience. thirty years ago i was delivering a memorized lecture every night, and every night i had to help myself with a page of notes to keep from getting myself mixed. the notes consisted of beginnings of sentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something like this: "in that region the weather--" "at that time it was a custom--" "but in california one never heard--" eleven of them. they initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and protected me against skipping. but they all looked about alike on the page; they formed no picture; i had them by heart, but i could never with certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore i always had to keep those notes by me and look at them every little while. once i mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors of that evening. i now saw that i must invent some other protection. so i got ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order--i, a, b, and so on--and i went on the platform the next night with these marked in ink on my ten finger-nails. but it didn't answer. i kept track of the figures for a while; then i lost it, and after that i was never quite sure which finger i had used last. i couldn't lick off a letter after using it, for while that would have made success certain it also would have provoked too much curiosity. there was curiosity enough without that. to the audience i seemed more interested in my fingernails than i was in my subject; one or two persons asked me afterward what was the matter with my hands. it was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles passed away. in two minutes i made six pictures with a pen, and they did the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly. i threw the pictures away as soon as they were made, for i was sure i could shut my eyes and see them any time. that was a quarter of a century ago; the lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but i would rewrite it from the pictures--for they remain. here are three of them: (fig. 1). the first one is a haystack--below it a rattlesnake--and it told me where to begin to talk ranch-life in carson valley. the second one told me where to begin the talk about a strange and violent wind that used to burst upon carson city from the sierra nevadas every afternoon at two o'clock and try to blow the town away. the third picture, as you easily perceive, is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time to begin to talk about san francisco weather, where there is no lightning--nor thunder, either--and it never failed me. i will give you a valuable hint. when a man is making a speech and you are to follow him don't jot down notes to speak from, jot down pictures. it is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to notes; and besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and non-coherent; but you can tear up your pictures as soon as you have made them--they will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order and sequence in which you scratched them down. and many will admire to see what a good memory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory is not any better than mine. sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess was trying to hammer some primer histories into their heads. part of this fun--if you like to call it that--consisted in the memorizing of the accession dates of the thirty-seven personages who had ruled england from the conqueror down. these little people found it a bitter, hard contract. it was all dates, and all looked alike, and they wouldn't stick. day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the kings held the fort; the children couldn't conquer any six of them. with my lecture experience in mind i was aware that i could invent some way out of the trouble with pictures, but i hoped a way could be found which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the kings. i found it, and they mastered all the monarchs in a day or two. the idea was to make them see the reigns with their eyes; that would be a large help. we were at the farm then. from the house-porch the grounds sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right to the high ground where my small work-den stood. a carriage-road wound through the grounds and up the hill. i staked it out with the english monarchs, beginning with the conqueror, and you could stand on the porch and clearly see every reign and its length, from the conquest down to victoria, then in the forty-sixth year of her reign--eight hundred and seventeen years of english history under your eye at once! english history was an unusually live topic in america just then. the world had suddenly realized that while it was not noticing the queen had passed henry viii., passed henry vi. and elizabeth, and gaining in length every day. her reign had entered the list of the long ones; everybody was interested now-it was watching a race. would she pass the long edward? there was a possibility of it. would she pass the long henry? doubtful, most people said. the long george? impossible! everybody said it. but we have lived to see her leave him two years behind. i measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and at the beginning and end of each reign i drove a three-foot white-pine stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it. abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers--i can't think of their name. the vase of william the conqueror. we put his name on it and his accession date, 1066. we started from that and measured off twenty-one feet of the road, and drove william rufus's state; then thirteen feet and drove the first henry's stake; then thirty-five feet and drove stephen's; then nineteen feet, which brought us just past the summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five, ten, and seventeen for the second henry and richard and john; turned the curve and entered upon just what was needed for henry iii.--a level, straight stretch of fifty-six feet of road without a crinkle in it. and it lay exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. there couldn't have been a better place for that long reign; you could stand on the porch and see those two wide-apart stakes almost with your eyes shut. (fig. 2.) that isn't the shape of the road--i have bunched it up like that to save room. the road had some great curves in it, but their gradual sweep was such that they were no mar to history. no, in our road one could tell at a glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakes--with locality to help, of course. although i am away off here in a swedish village [1] and those stakes did not stand till the snow came, i can see them today as plainly as ever; and whenever i think of an english monarch his stakes rise before me of their own accord and i notice the large or small space which he takes up on our road. are your kings spaced off in your mind? when you think of richard iii. and of james ii. do the durations of their reigns seem about alike to you? it isn't so to me; i always notice that there's a foot's difference. when you think of henry iii. do you see a great long stretch of straight road? i do; and just at the end where it joins on to edward i. i always see a small pear-bush with its green fruit hanging down. when i think of the commonwealth i see a shady little group of these small saplings which we called the oak parlor; when i think of george iii. i see him stretching up the hill, part of him occupied by a flight of stone steps; and i can locate stephen to an inch when he comes into my mind, for he just filled the stretch which went by the summer-house. victoria's reign reached almost to my study door on the first little summit; there's sixteen feet to be added now; i believe that that would carry it to a big pine-tree that was shattered by some lightning one summer when it was trying to hit me. we got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too. we trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children calling out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the stakes, going a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when we came upon people like mary and edward vi., and the short stuart and plantagenet, to give time to get in the statistics. i offered prizes, too--apples. i threw one as far as i could send it, and the child that first shouted the reign it fell in got the apple. the children were encouraged to stop locating things as being "over by the arbor," or "in the oak parlor," or "up at the stone steps," and say instead that the things were in stephen, or in the commonwealth, or in george iii. they got the habit without trouble. to have the long road mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for i had the habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time and failure; but now i could name the reign i left them in, and send the children. next i thought i would measure off the french reigns, and peg them alongside the english ones, so that we could always have contemporaneous french history under our eyes as we went our english rounds. we pegged them down to the hundred years' war, then threw the idea aside, i do not now remember why. after that we made the english pegs fence in european and american history as well as english, and that answered very well. english and alien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues, cataclysms, revolutions--we shoveled them all into the english fences according to their dates. do you understand? we gave washington's birth to george ii.'s pegs and his death to george iii.'s; george ii. got the lisbon earthquake and george iii. the declaration of independence. goethe, shakespeare, napoleon, savonarola, joan of arc, the french revolution, the edict of nantes, clive, wellington, waterloo, plassey, patay, cowpens, saratoga, the battle of the boyne, the invention of the logarithms, the microscope, the steam-engine, the telegraph-anything and everything all over the world--we dumped it all in among the english pegs according to it date and regardless of its nationality. if the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded i should have lodged the kings in the children's heads by means of pictures-that is, i should have tried. it might have failed, for the pictures could only be effective when made by the pupil; not the master, for it is the work put upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and my children were too little to make drawings at that time. and, besides, they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they are like me. but i will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able to use it. it will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and one cannot go outside and peg a road. let us imagine that the kings are a procession, and that they have come out of the ark and down ararat for exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road. this will bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will represent the length of a king's reign. and so on. you will have plenty of space, for by my project you will use the parlor wall. you do not mark on the wall; that would cause trouble. you only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks. these will leave no mark. take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two inches square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the conqueror's reign. on each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and term of service. we choose the whale for several reasons: its name and william's begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and william is the most conspicuous figure in english history in the way of a landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw. by the time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written "william i.--1066-1087--twenty-one years" twenty-one times, those details will be your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything but dynamite. i will make a sample for you to copy: (fig. 3). i have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking for harold. it may be that a whale hasn't that fin up there on his back, but i do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best to err on the safe side. he looks better, anyway, than he would without it. be very careful and attentive while you are drawing your first whale from my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that you will not need to copy the sample any more. compare your copy with the sample; examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and can shut your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures, then turn the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from memory; and also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from memory until you have finished the whole twenty-one. this will take you twenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find that you can make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person can make a sardine; also, up to the time you die you will always be able to furnish william's dates to any ignorant person that inquires after them. you will now take thirteen pieces of blue paper, each two inches square, and do william ii. (fig. 4.) make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the eye. otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other william, and that would be confusing and a damage. it is quite right to make him small; he was only about a no. 11 whale, or along there somewhere; there wasn't room in him for his father's great spirit. the barb of that harpoon ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the whale and ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb were removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock into the whale. it is best to leave the barb the way it is, then every one will know it is a harpoon and attending to business. remember--draw from the copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription from memory. now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the details will stay with you and be hard to forget. after that, if you like, you may make merely the whale's head and water-spout for the conqueror till you end his reign, each time saying the inscription in place of writing it; and in the case of william ii. make the harpoon alone, and say over the inscription each time you do it. you see, it will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it will to do the second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in length of the two reigns. next do henry i. on thirty-five squares of red paper. (fig. 5.) that is a hen, and suggests henry by furnishing the first syllable. when you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are perfectly sure of them, draw merely the hen's head the rest of the thirty-five times, saying over the inscription each time. thus: (fig. 6). you begin to understand how how this procession is going to look when it is on the wall. first there will be the conqueror's twenty-one whales and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares joined to one another and making a white stripe three and onehalf feet long; the thirteen blue squares of william ii. will be joined to that--a blue stripe two feet, two inches long, followed by henry's red stripe five feet, ten inches long, and so on. the colored divisions will smartly show to the eye the difference in the length of the reigns and impress the proportions on the memory and the understanding. (fig. 7.) stephen of blois comes next. he requires nineteen two-inch squares of yellow paper. (fig. 8.) that is a steer. the sound suggests the beginning of stephen's name. i choose it for that reason. i can make a better steer than that when i am not excited. but this one will do. it is a good-enough steer for history. the tail is defective, but it only wants straightening out. next comes henry ii. give him thirty-five squares of red paper. these hens must face west, like the former ones. (fig. 9.) this hen differs from the other one. he is on his way to inquire what has been happening in canterbury. how we arrive at richard i., called richard of the lionheart because he was a brave fighter and was never so contented as when he was leading crusades in palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. give him ten squares of white paper. (fig. 10). that is a lion. his office is to remind you of the lionhearted richard. there is something the matter with his legs, but i do not quite know what it is, they do not seem right. i think the hind ones are the most unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it would be better if they were rights and lefts. next comes king john, and he was a poor circumstance. he was called lackland. he gave his realm to the pope. let him have seventeen squares of yellow paper. (fig. 11.) that creature is a jamboree. it looks like a trademark, but that is only an accident and not intentional. it is prehistoric and extinct. it used to roam the earth in the old silurian times, and lay eggs and catch fish and climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed breed, which was the fashion then. it was very fierce, and the old silurians were afraid of it, but this is a tame one. physically it has no representative now, but its mind has been transmitted. first i drew it sitting down, but have turned it the other way now because i think it looks more attractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping. i love to think that in this attitude it gives us a pleasant idea of john coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons have been arranging for him at runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve over it. we now come to henry iii.; red squares again, of course-fifty-six of them. we must make all the henrys the same color; it will make their long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. among all the eight henrys there were but two short ones. a lucky name, as far as longevity goes. the reigns of six of the henrys cover 227 years. it might have been well to name all the royal princes henry, but this was overlooked until it was too late. (fig. 12.) this is the best one yet. he is on his way (1265) to have a look at the first house of commons in english history. it was a monumental event, the situation in the house, and was the second great liberty landmark which the century had set up. i have made henry looking glad, but this was not intentional. edward i. comes next; light-brown paper, thirty-five squares. (fig. 13.) that is an editor. he is trying to think of a word. he props his feet on a chair, which is the editor's way; then he can think better. i do not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor suggests the sound of edward, and he will do. i could make him better if i had a model, but i made this one from memory. but is no particular matter; they all look alike, anyway. they are conceited and troublesome, and don't pay enough. edward was the first really english king that had yet occupied the throne. the editor in the picture probably looks just as edward looked when it was first borne in upon him that this was so. his whole attitude expressed gratification and pride mixed with stupefaction and astonishment. edward ii. now; twenty blue squares. (fig. 14.) another editor. that thing behind his ear is his pencil. whenever he finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that. that does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is doing in the picture. this one has just been striking out a smart thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating. they are full of envy and malice, editors are. this picture will serve to remind you that edward ii. was the first english king who was deposed. upon demand, he signed his deposition himself. he had found kingship a most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can see by the look of him that he is glad he resigned. he has put his blue pencil up for good now. he had struck out many a good thing with it in his time. edward iii. next; fifty red squares. (fig. 15.) this editor is a critic. he has pulled out his carvingknife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast. this one's arms are put on wrong. i did not notice it at first, but i see it now. somehow he has got his right arm on his left shoulder, and his left arm on his right shoulder, and this shows us the back of his hands in both instances. it makes him left-handed all around, which is a thing which has never happened before, except perhaps in a museum. that is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not suspecting that your genius is beginning to work and swell and strain in secret, and all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out something astonishing. this is called inspiration. it is an accident; you never know when it is coming. i might have tried as much as a year to think of such a strange thing as an all-around left-handed man and i could not have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the more it eludes you; but it can't elude inspiration; you have only to bait with inspiration and you will get it every time. look at botticelli's "spring." those snaky women were unthinkable, but inspiration secured them for us, thanks to goodness. it is too late to reorganize this editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. he will serve to remind us. richard ii. next; twenty-two white squares. (fig. 16.) we use the lion again because this is another richard. like edward ii., he was deposed. he is taking a last sad look at his crown before they take it away. there was not room enough and i have made it too small; but it never fitted him, anyway. now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchs--the lancastrian kings. henry iv.; fourteen squares of yellow paper. (fig. 17.) this hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the magnitude of the event. she is giving notice in the usual way. you notice i am improving in the construction of hens. at first i made them too much like other animals, but this one is orthodox. i mention this to encourage you. you will find that the more you practice the more accurate you will become. i could always draw animals, but before i was educated i could not tell what kind they were when i got them done, but now i can. keep up your courage; it will be the same with you, although you may not think it. this henry died the year after joan of arc was born. henry v.; nine blue squares. (fig. 18) there you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records the amazing figures of the battle of agincourt. french history says 20,000 englishmen routed 80,000 frenchmen there; and english historians say that the french loss, in killed and wounded, was 60,000. henry vi.; thirty-nine red squares. (fig. 19) this is poor henry vi., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes and humiliations. also two great disasters: he lost france to joan of arc and he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which henry iv. had started in business with such good prospects. in the picture we see him sad and weary and downcast, with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp. it is a pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor. edward iv.; twenty-two light-brown squares. (fig. 20.) that is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy. that flower which he is wearing in his buttonhole is a rose--a white rose, a york rose--and will serve to remind us of the war of the roses, and that the white one was the winning color when edward got the throne and dispossessed the lancastrian dynasty. edward v.; one-third of a black square. (fig. 21.) his uncle richard had him murdered in the tower. when you get the reigns displayed upon the wall this one will be conspicuous and easily remembered. it is the shortest one in english history except lady jane grey's, which was only nine days. she is never officially recognized as a monarch of england, but if you or i should ever occupy a throne we should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost our lives besides. richard iii.; two white squares. (fig. 22.) that is not a very good lion, but richard was not a very good king. you would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is only a shadow. there would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was not light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting sun-glimpses now and then. richard had a humped back and a hard heart, and fell at the battle of bosworth. i do not know the name of that flower in the pot, but we will use it as richard's trade-mark, for it is said that it grows in only one place in the world--bosworth field--and tradition says it never grew there until richard's royal blood warmed its hidden seed to life and made it grow. henry vii.; twenty-four blue squares. (fig. 23.) henry vii. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace and quiet and the general prosperity which such conditions create. he liked to sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as the nation's, and hatch them out and count up their result. when he died he left his heir 2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a king to possess in those days. columbus's great achievement gave him the discovery-fever, and he sent sebastian cabot to the new world to search out some foreign territory for england. that is cabot's ship up there in the corner. this was the first time that england went far abroad to enlarge her estate--but not the last. henry viii.; thirty-eight red squares. (fig. 24.) that is henry viii. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion. edward vi.; six squares of yellow paper. (fig. 25.) he is the last edward to date. it is indicated by that thing over his head, which is a last--shoemaker's last. mary; five squares of black paper. (fig. 26.) the picture represents a burning martyr. he is in back of the smoke. the first three letters of mary's name and the first three of the word martyr are the same. martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were becoming scarcer, but she made several. for this reason she is sometimes called bloody mary. this brings us to the reign of elizabeth, after passing through a period of nearly five hundred years of england's history--492 to be exact. i think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without further lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. you have the scheme now, and something in the ruler's name or career will suggest the pictorial symbol. the effort of inventing such things will not only help your memory, but will develop originality in art. see what it has done for me. if you do not find the parlor wall big enough for all of england's history, continue it into the diningroom and into other rooms. this will make the walls interesting and instructive and really worth something instead of being just flat things to hold the house together. ----1. summer of 1899. ----------------------------------------------------------------the memorable assassination note.--the assassination of the empress of austria at geneva, september 10, 1898, occurred during mark twain's austrian residence. the news came to him at kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out of vienna. to his friend, the rev. jos. h. twichell, he wrote: "that good and unoffending lady, the empress, is killed by a madman, and i am living in the midst of world-history again. the queen's jubilee last year, the invasion of the reichsrath by the police, and now this murder, which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand a thousand years from now. to have a personal friend of the wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say, in a voice broken with tears, 'my god! the empress is murdered,' and fly toward her home before we can utter a question--why, it brings the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it and personally interested; it is as if your neighbor, antony, should come flying and say, 'caesar is butchered--the head of the world is fallen!' "of course there is no talk but of this. the mourning is universal and genuine, the consternation is stupefying. the austrian empire is being draped with black. vienna will be a spectacle to see by next saturday, when the funeral cort`ege marches." he was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to write concerning it. he prepared the article which follows, but did not offer it for publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the court circles at the moment prohibited this personal utterance. there appears no such reason for withholding its publication now. a. b. p. the more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposing and tremendous the event becomes. the destruction of a city is a large event, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand years; the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine is a large event, but it has happened several times in history; the murder of a king is a large event, but it has been frequent. the murder of an empress is the largest of all events. one must go back about two thousand years to find an instance to put with this one. the oldest family of unchallenged descent in christendom lives in rome and traces its line back seventeen hundred years, but no member of it has been present in the earth when an empress was murdered, until now. many a time during these seventeen centuries members of that family have been startled with the news of extraordinary events--the destruction of cities, the fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the wreck of dynasties, the extinction of religions, the birth of new systems of government; and their descendants have been by to hear of it and talk about it when all these things were repeated once, twice, or a dozen times--but to even that family has come news at last which is not staled by use, has no duplicates in the long reach of its memory. it is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every individual now living in the world: he has stood alive and breathing in the presence of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any traceable or untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries, and it is not likely to fall within the experience of any descendant of his for twenty more. time has made some great changes since the roman days. the murder of an empress then--even the assassination of caesar himself--could not electrify the world as this murder has electrified it. for one reason, there was then not much of a world to electrify; it was a small world, as to known bulk, and it had rather a thin population, besides; and for another reason, the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous initial thrill wasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey, and by the time it reached the remoter regions there was but little of it left. it was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far past; it was not properly news, it was history. but the world is enormous now, and prodigiously populated--that is one change; and another is the lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and bad. "the empress is murdered!" when those amazing words struck upon my ear in this austrian village last saturday, three hours after the disaster, i knew that it was already old news in london, paris, berlin, new york, san francisco, japan, china, melbourne, cape town, bombay, madras, calcutta, and that the entire globe with a single voice, was cursing the perpetrator of it. since the telegraph first began to stretch itself wider and wider about the earth, larger and increasingly larger areas of the world have, as time went on, received simultaneously the shock of a great calamity; but this is the first time in history that the entire surface of the globe has been swept in a single instant with the thrill of so gigantic an event. and who is the miracle-worker who has furnished to the world this spectacle? all the ironies are compacted in the answer. he is at the bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimates of degree and value go: a soiled and patched young loafer, without gifts, without talents, without education, without morals, without character, without any born charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts; without a single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an incompetent stonecutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive, empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, human polecat. and it was within the privileges and powers of this sarcasm upon the human race to reach up--up--up--and strike from its far summit in the social skies the world's accepted ideal of glory and might and splendor and sacredness! it realizes to us what sorry shows and shadows we are. without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams. at our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but only candles; and any bummer can blow us out. and now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often forget--or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one way or another all men are mad. many are mad for money. when this madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane; but when it develops powerfully and takes possession of the man, it can make him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. love is a madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of despair and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like rudolph, throw away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life. all the whole list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions, passions, cares, griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and ready to grow, spread, and consume, when the occasion comes. there are no healthy minds, and nothing saves any man but accident--the accident of not having his malady put to the supreme test. one of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed. perhaps it is not merely common, but universal. in its mildest form it doubtless is universal. every child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering talk. this common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety in one, for fame in another. it is this madness for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and napoleons. anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city, or the state, or the nation, or the planet shouting, "look--there he goes--that is the man!" and in five minutes' time, at no cost of brain, or labor, or genius this mangy italian tramp has beaten them all, transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and kings and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! oh, if it were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be! she was so blameless, the empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart, in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification of its creation; would be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her down re-establishes the doubt. in her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages respect, esteem, affection, and homage. her tastes, her instincts, and her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. she had had bitter griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. she knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. an english fisherman's wife said, "when a body was in trouble she didn't send her help, she brought it herself." crowns have adorned others, but she adorned her crowns. it was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. and it is marked by some curious contrasts. at noon last, saturday there was no one in the world who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom grades of officialdom. three hours later he was the one subject of conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and governors were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had put aside their other interests to talk about him. and wherever there was a man, at the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance had at some time or other come across that creature, he remembered it with a secret satisfaction, and mentioned it--for it was a distinction, now! it brings human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quite realizable--but it is perfectly true. if there is a king who can remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent way, some dozens of times during the past week. for a king is merely human; the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person; and it is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal way connected with amazing events. we are all privately vain of such a thing; we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the rest of us are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all made out of the same clay, and it is a sufficient poor quality. below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; i know it well as if i were hearing them: the commander: "he was in my army." the general: "he was in my corps." the colonel: "he was in my regiment. a brute. i remember him well." the captain: "he was in my company. a troublesome scoundrel. i remember him well." the sergeant: "did i know him? as well as i know you. why, every morning i used to--" etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring ears. the landlady: "many's the time he boarded with me. i can show you his very room, and the very bed he slept in. and the charcoal mark there on the wall--he made that. my little johnny saw him do it with his own eyes. didn't you, johnny?" it is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables and the jailer treasure up the assassin's daily remarks and doings as precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful distinction. the interviewer, too; he tried to let on that he is not vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more keep his vanity corked in than could you or i. some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal militarism which is impoverishing europe and driving the starving poor mad. that has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, i think. one may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any kind. when he saw his photograph and said, "i shall be celebrated," he laid bare the impulse that prompted him. it was a mere hunger for notoriety. there is another confessed case of the kind which is as old as history--the burning of the temple of ephesus. among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must concede high rank to the many which have described it as a "peculiarly brutal crime" and then added that it was "ordained from above." i think this verdict will not be popular "above." if the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the genevan court cannot condemn him without manifestly committing a crime. logic is logic, and by disregarding its laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be beguiled into preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods. i witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the windows of the krantz, vienna's sumptuous new hotel. we came into town in the middle of the forenoon, and i went on foot from the station. black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were sunday-like; the crowds on the sidewalks were quiet and moved slowly; very few people were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were in black as a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and coachmen in black clothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were closed; in many windows were pictures of the empress: as a beautiful young bride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with added years; and finally in deep black and without ornaments--the costume she always wore after the tragic death of her son nine years ago, for her heart broke then, and life lost almost all its value for her. the people stood grouped before these pictures, and now and then one saw women and girls turn away wiping the tears from their eyes. in front of the krantz is an open square; over the way was the church where the funeral services would be held. it is small and old and severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with no ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above that a small black flag. but in its crypt lie several of the great dead of the house of habsburg, among them maria theresa and napoleon's son, the duke of reichstadt. hereabouts was a roman camp, once, and in it the emperor marcus aurelius died a thousand years before the first habsburg ruled in vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more. the little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses, and the windows of them were full of people. behind the vast plate-glass windows of the upper floors of the house on the corner one glimpsed terraced masses of fine-clothed men and women, dim and shimmery, like people under water. under us the square was noiseless, but it was full of citizens; officials in fine uniforms were flitting about on errands, and in a doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty, the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty, he was, and through the field-glass one could see that he was tearing apart and munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. blazing uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling contrast with his drooping ruin of moldy rags, but he took not notice; he was not there to grieve for a nation's disaster; he had his own cares, and deeper. from two directions two long files of infantry came plowing through the pack and press in silence; there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished, the square save the sidewalks was empty, the private mourner was gone. another order, the soldiers fell apart and enclosed the square in a double-ranked human fence. it was all so swift, noiseless, exact--like a beautifully ordered machine. it was noon, now. two hours of stillness and waiting followed. then carriages began to flow past and deliver the two and three hundred court personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. then the square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers in showy and beautiful uniforms. they filled it compactly, leaving only a narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilian among them. and it was better so; dull clothes would have marred the radiant spectacle. in the jam in front of the church, on its steps, and on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch of color--intense red, gold, and white--which dimmed the brilliancies around them; and opposite them on the other side of the path was a bunch of cascaded bright-green plumes above pale-blue shoulders which made another splotch of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings. it was a sea of flashing color all about, but these two groups were the high notes. the green plumes were worn by forty or fifty austrian generals, the group opposite them were chiefly knights of malta and knights of a german order. the mass of heads in the square were covered by gilt helmets and by military caps roofed with a mirror-like gaze, and the movements of the wearers caused these things to catch the sun-rays, and the effect was fine to see--the square was like a garden of richly colored flowers with a multitude of blinding and flashing little suns distributed over it. think of it--it was by command of that italian loafer yonder on his imperial throne in the geneva prison that this splendid multitude was assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the church from a side street were there by his will. it is so strange, so unrealizable. at three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by in single file. at three-five a cardinal arrives with his attendants; later some bishops; then a number of archdeacons--all in striking colors that add to the show. at three-ten a procession of priests passed along, with crucifix. another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at three-fifty another one--very long, with many crosses, gold-embroidered robes, and much white lace; also great pictured banners, at intervals, receding into the distance. a hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. at three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. presently a long procession of gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is near to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the sidewalk, and the white shirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very conspicuous where so much warm color is all about. a waiting pause. at four-twelve the head of the funeral procession comes into view at last. first, a body of cavalry, four abreast, to widen the path. next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. next, three six-horse mourningcoaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with cocked hats and white wigs. next, troops in splendid uniforms, red, gold, and white, exceedingly showy. now the multitude uncover. the soldiers present arms; there is a low rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a walk by eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich feathers; the coffin is borne into the church, the doors are closed. the multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves by; first the hungarian guard in their indescribably brilliant and picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric splendor, and after them other mounted forces, a long and showy array. then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow, and melted away in radiant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slum-girls in austria were capering about in the spacious vacancy. it was a day of contrasts. twice the empress entered vienna in state. the first time was in 1854, when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rode in measureless pomp and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags and decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of shouting and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last wednesday, when she entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in the dead of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls again; but everywhere was a deep stillness, now--a stillness emphasized, rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbing of gray-headed women who had witnessed the first entry forty-four years before, when she and they were young--and unaware! a character in baron von berger's recent fairy drama "habsburg" tells about the first coming of the girlish empressqueen, and in his history draws a fine picture: i cannot make a close translation of it, but will try to convey the spirit of the verses: i saw the stately pageant pass: in her high place i saw the empress-queen: i could not take my eyes away from that fair vision, spirit-like and pure, that rose serene, sublime, and figured to my sense a noble alp far lighted in the blue, that in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloud and stands a dream of glory to the gaze of them that in the valley toil and plod. -----------------------------------------------------------------a scrap of curious history marion city, on the mississippi river, in the state of missouri--a village; time, 1845. la bourboule-les-bains, france --a village; time, the end of june, 1894. i was in the one village in that early time; i am in the other now. these times and places are sufficiently wide apart, yet today i have the strange sense of being thrust back into that missourian village and of reliving certain stirring days that i lived there so long ago. last saturday night the life of the president of the french republic was taken by an italian assassin. last night a mob surrounded our hotel, shouting, howling, singing the "marseillaise," and pelting our windows with sticks and stones; for we have italian waiters, and the mob demanded that they be turned out of the house instantly--to be drubbed, and then driven out of the village. everybody in the hotel remained up until far into the night, and experienced the several kinds of terror which one reads about in books which tell of nigh attacks by italians and by french mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd; the arrival, with rain of stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal to rearrange plans--followed by a silence ominous, threatening, and harder to bear than even the active siege and the noise. the landlord and the two village policemen stood their ground, and at last the mob was persuaded to go away and leave our italians in peace. today four of the ringleaders have been sentenced to heavy punishment of a public sort--and are become local heroes, by consequence. that is the very mistake which was at first made in the missourian village half a century ago. the mistake was repeated and repeated--just as france is doing in these later months. in our village we had our ravochals, our henrys, our vaillants; and in a humble way our cesario--i hope i have spelled this name wrong. fifty years ago we passed through, in all essentials, what france has been passing through during the past two or three years, in the matter of periodical frights, horrors, and shudderings. in several details the parallels are quaintly exact. in that day, for a man to speak out openly and proclaim himself an enemy of negro slavery was simply to proclaim himself a madman. for he was blaspheming against the holiest thing known to a missourian, and could not be in his right mind. for a man to proclaim himself an anarchist in france, three years ago, was to proclaim himself a madman--he could not be in his right mind. now the original first blasphemer against any institution profoundly venerated by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his followers and imitators may be humbugs and selfseekers, but he himself is sincere--his heart is in his protest. robert hardy was our first abolitionist--awful name! he was a journeyman cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the great pork-packing establishment which was marion city's chief pride and sole source of prosperity. he was a newenglander, a stranger. and, being a stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person--for that has been human nature from adam down--and of course, also, he was made to feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the other animals. hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, given to reverie and reading. he was reserved, and seemed to prefer the isolation which had fallen to his lot. he was treated to many side remarks by his fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided that he was a coward. all of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist-straight out and publicly! he said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy. for a moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a fury of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch hardy. but the methodist minister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their hands. he proved to them that hardy was insane and not responsible for his words; that no man could be sane and utter such words. so hardy was saved. being insane, he was allowed to go on talking. he was found to be good entertainment. several nights running he made abolition speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and laugh. he implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity on the poor slaves, and take measurements for the restoration of their stolen rights, or in no long time blood would flow--blood, blood, rivers of blood! it was great fun. but all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. a slave came flying from palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back, and was about to escape in a canoe to illinois and freedom in the dull twilight of the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized him. hardy happened along and tried to rescue the negro; there was a struggle, and the constable did not come out of it alive. hardly crossed the river with the negro, and then came back to give himself up. all this took time, for the mississippi is not a french brook, like the seine, the loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly a mile wide. the town was on hand in force by now, but the methodist preacher and the sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest of order; so hardy was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed to the village calaboose in spite of all the effort of the mob to get hold of him. the reader will have begun to perceive that this methodist minister was a prompt man; a prompt man, with active hands and a good headpiece. williams was his name--damon williams; damon williams in public, damnation williams in private, because he was so powerful on that theme and so frequent. the excitement was prodigious. the constable was the first man who had ever been killed in the town. the event was by long odds the most imposing in the town's history. it lifted the humble village into sudden importance; its name was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles around. and so was the name of robert hardy--robert hardy, the stranger, the despised. in a day he was become the person of most consequence in the region, the only person talked about. as to those other coopers, they found their position curiously changed--they were important people, or unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how small had been their intercourse with the new celebrity. the two or three who had really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found themselves objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their shopmates. the village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. the new man was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy. he issued an extra. then he put up posters promising to devote his whole paper to matters connected with the great event--there would be a full and intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a portrait of him. he was as good as his word. he carved the portrait himself, on the back of a wooden type--and a terror it was to look at. it made a great commotion, for this was the first time the village paper had ever contained a picture. the village was very proud. the output of the paper was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet every copy was sold. when the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from hannibal, and quincy, and even from keokuk; and the court-house could hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. the trial was published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying pictures of the accused. hardy was convicted, and hanged--a mistake. people came from miles around to see the hanging; they brought cakes and cider, also the women and children, and made a picnic of the matter. it was the largest crowd the village had ever seen. the rope that hanged hardy was eagerly bought up, in inch samples, for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable event. martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations. within one week afterward four young lightweights in the village proclaimed themselves abolitionists! in life hardy had not been able to make a convert; everybody laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. the four swaggered around with their slouch-hats pulled down over their faces, and hinted darkly at awful possibilities. the people were troubled and afraid, and showed it. and they were stunned, too; they could not understand it. "abolitionist" had always been a term of shame and horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. respectable young men they were, too--of good families, and brought up in the church. ed smith, the printer's apprentice, nineteen, had been the head sunday-school boy, and had once recited three thousand bible verses without making a break. dick savage, twenty, the baker's apprentice; will joyce, twenty-two, journeyman blacksmith; and henry taylor, twenty-four, tobacco-stemmer--were the other three. they were all of a sentimental cast; they were all romance-readers; they all wrote poetry, such as it was; they were all vain and foolish; but they had never before been suspected of having anything bad in them. they withdrew from society, and grew more and more mysterious and dreadful. they presently achieved the distinction of being denounced by names from the pulpit--which made an immense stir! this was grandeur, this was fame. they were envied by all the other young fellows now. this was natural. their company grew--grew alarmingly. they took a name. it was a secret name, and was divulged to no outsider; publicly they were simply the abolitionists. they had pass-words, grips, and signs; they had secret meetings; their initiations were conducted with gloomy pomps and ceremonies, at midnight. they always spoke of hardy as "the martyr," and every little while they moved through the principal street in procession--at midnight, black-robed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemn drum--on pilgrimage to the martyr's grave, where they went through with some majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his murderers. they gave previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and warned everybody to keep indoors and darken all houses along the route, and leave the road empty. these warnings were obeyed, for there was a skull and crossbones at the top of the poster. when this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks, a quite natural thing happened. a few men of character and grit woke up out of the nightmare of fear which had been stupefying their faculties, and began to discharge scorn and scoffings at themselves and the community for enduring this child's-play; and at the same time they proposed to end it straightway. everybody felt an uplift; life was breathed into their dead spirits; their courage rose and they began to feel like men again. this was on a saturday. all day the new feeling grew and strengthened; it grew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with it. midnight saw a united community, full of zeal and pluck, and with a clearly defined and welcome piece of work in front of it. the best organizer and strongest and bitterest talker on that great saturday was the presbyterian clergyman who had denounced the original four from his pulpit--rev. hiram fletcher--and he promised to use his pulpit in the public interest again now. on the morrow he had revelations to make, he said--secrets of the dreadful society. but the revelations were never made. at half past two in the morning the dead silence of the village was broken by a crashing explosion, and the town patrol saw the preacher's house spring in a wreck of whirling fragments into the sky. the preacher was killed, together with a negro woman, his only slave and servant. the town was paralyzed again, and with reason. to struggle against a visible enemy is a thing worth while, and there is a plenty of men who stand always ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an invisible one--an invisible one who sneaks in and does his awful work in the dark and leaves no trace--that is another matter. that is a thing to make the bravest tremble and hold back. the cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. the man who was to have had a packed church to hear him expose and denounce the common enemy had but a handful to see him buried. the coroner's jury had brought in a verdict of "death by the visitation of god," for no witness came forward; if any existed they prudently kept out of the way. nobody seemed sorry. nobody wanted to see the terrible secret society provoked into the commission of further outrages. everybody wanted the tragedy hushed up, ignored, forgotten, if possible. and so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when will joyce, the blacksmith's journeyman, came out and proclaimed himself the assassin! plainly he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. he made his proclamation, and stuck to it. stuck to it, and insisted upon a trial. here was an ominous thing; here was a new and peculiarly formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could not hope to deal with successfully--vanity, thirst for notoriety. if men were going to kill for notoriety's sake, and to win the glory of newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible invention of man could discourage or deter them? the town was in a sort of panic; it did not know what to do. however, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter--it had no choice. it brought in a true bill, and presently the case went to the county court. the trial was a fine sensation. the prisoner was the principal witness for the prosecution. he gave a full account of the assassination; he furnished even the minutest particulars: how he deposited his keg of powder and laid his train--from the house to such-and-such a spot; how george ronalds and henry hart came along just then, smoking, and he borrowed hart's cigar and fired the train with it, shouting, "down with all slave-tyrants!" and how hart and ronalds made no effort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come forward to testify yet. but they had to testify now, and they did--and pitiful it was to see how reluctant they were, and how scared. the crowded house listened to joyce's fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a deep hush which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding, with a roaring repetition of his "death to all slave-tyrants!"--which came so unexpectedly and so startlingly that it made everyone present catch his breath and gasp. the trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait, with other slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition sold beyond imagination. the execution of joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. it drew a vast crowd. good places in trees and seats on rail fences sold for half a dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-stands had great prosperity. joyce recited a furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the scaffold which had imposing passages of school-boy eloquence in it, and gave him a reputation on the spot as an orator, and his name, later, in the society's records, of the "martyr orator." he went to his death breathing slaughter and charging his society to "avenge his murder." if he knew anything of human nature he knew that to plenty of young fellows present in that great crowd he was a grand hero--and enviably situated. he was hanged. it was a mistake. within a month from his death the society which he had honored had twenty new members, some of them earnest, determined men. they did not court distinction in the same way, but they celebrated his martyrdom. the crime which had been obscure and despised had become lofty and glorified. such things were happening all over the country. wildbrained martyrdom was succeeded by uprising and organization. then, in natural order, followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. it was bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way. it has been the manner of reform since the beginning of the world. -----------------------------------------------------------------switzerland, the cradle of liberty interlaken, switzerland, 1891. it is a good many years since i was in switzerland last. in that remote time there was only one ladder railway in the country. that state of things is all changed. there isn't a mountain in switzerland now that hasn't a ladder railroad or two up its back like suspenders; indeed, some mountains are latticed with them, and two years hence all will be. in that day the peasant of the high altitudes will have to carry a lantern when he goes visiting in the night to keep from stumbling over railroads that have been built since his last round. and also in that day, if there shall remain a high-altitude peasant whose potato-patch hasn't a railroad through it, it would make him as conspicuous as william tell. however, there are only two best ways to travel through switzerland. the first best is afloat. the second best is by open two-horse carriage. one can come from lucerne to interlaken over the brunig by ladder railroad in an hour or so now, but you can glide smoothly in a carriage in ten, and have two hours for luncheon at noon--for luncheon, not for rest. there is no fatigue connected with the trip. one arrives fresh in spirit and in person in the evening--no fret in his heart, no grime on his face, no grit in his hair, not a cinder in his eye. this is the right condition of mind and body, the right and due preparation for the solemn event which closed the day--stepping with metaphorically uncovered head into the presence of the most impressive mountain mass that the globe can show--the jungfrau. the stranger's first feeling, when suddenly confronted by that towering and awful apparition wrapped in its shroud of snow, is breath-taking astonishment. it is as if heaven's gates had swung open and exposed the throne. it is peaceful here and pleasant at interlaken. nothing going on--at least nothing but brilliant life-giving sunshine. there are floods and floods of that. one may properly speak of it as "going on," for it is full of the suggestion of activity; the light pours down with energy, with visible enthusiasm. this is a good atmosphere to be in, morally as well as physically. after trying the political atmosphere of the neighboring monarchies, it is healing and refreshing to breathe air that has known no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to come among a people whose political history is great and fine, and worthy to be taught in all schools and studied by all races and peoples. for the struggle here throughout the centuries has not been in the interest of any private family, or any church, but in the interest of the whole body of the nation, and for shelter and protection of all forms of belief. this fact is colossal. if one would realize how colossal it is, and of what dignity and majesty, let him contrast it with the purposes and objects of the crusades, the siege of york, the war of the roses, and other historic comedies of that sort and size. last week i was beating around the lake of four cantons, and i saw rutli and altorf. rutli is a remote little patch of meadow, but i do not know how any piece of ground could be holier or better worth crossing oceans and continents to see, since it was there that the great trinity of switzerland joined hands six centuries ago and swore the oath which set their enslaved and insulted country forever free; and altorf is also honorable ground and worshipful, since it was there that william, surnamed tell (which interpreted means "the foolish talker"--that is to say, the too-daring talker), refused to bow to gessler's hat. of late years the prying student of history has been delighting himself beyond measure over a wonderful find which he has made-to wit, that tell did not shoot the apple from his son's head. to hear the students jubilate, one would suppose that the question of whether tell shot the apple or didn't was an important matter; whereas it ranks in importance exactly with the question of whether washington chopped down the cherry-tree or didn't. the deeds of washington, the patriot, are the essential thing; the cherry-tree incident is of no consequence. to prove that tell did shoot the apple from his son's head would merely prove that he had better nerve than most men and was skillful with a bow as a million others who preceded and followed him, but not one whit more so. but tell was more and better than a mere marksman, more and better than a mere cool head; he was a type; he stands for swiss patriotism; in his person was represented a whole people; his spirit was their spirit--the spirit which would bow to none but god, the spirit which said this in words and confirmed it with deeds. there have always been tells in switzerland--people who would not bow. there was a sufficiency of them at rutli; there were plenty of them at murten; plenty at grandson; there are plenty today. and the first of them all--the very first, earliest banner-bearer of human freedom in this world--was not a man, but a woman--stauffacher's wife. there she looms dim and great, through the haze of the centuries, delivering into her husband's ear that gospel of revolt which was to bear fruit in the conspiracy of rutli and the birth of the first free government the world had ever seen. from this victoria hotel one looks straight across a flat of trifling width to a lofty mountain barrier, which has a gateway in it shaped like an inverted pyramid. beyond this gateway arises the vast bulk of the jungfrau, a spotless mass of gleaming snow, into the sky. the gateway, in the dark-colored barrier, makes a strong frame for the great picture. the somber frame and the glowing snow-pile are startlingly contrasted. it is this frame which concentrates and emphasizes the glory of the jungfrau and makes it the most engaging and beguiling and fascinating spectacle that exists on the earth. there are many mountains of snow that are as lofty as the jungfrau and as nobly proportioned, but they lack the fame. they stand at large; they are intruded upon and elbowed by neighboring domes and summits, and their grandeur is diminished and fails of effect. it is a good name, jungfrau--virgin. nothing could be whiter; nothing could be purer; nothing could be saintlier of aspect. at six yesterday evening the great intervening barrier seen through a faint bluish haze seemed made of air and substanceless, so soft and rich it was, so shimmering where the wandering lights touched it and so dim where the shadows lay. apparently it was a dream stuff, a work of the imagination, nothing real about it. the tint was green, slightly varying shades of it, but mainly very dark. the sun was down--as far as that barrier was concerned, but not for the jungfrau, towering into the heavens beyond the gateway. she was a roaring conflagration of blinding white. it is said the fridolin (the old fridolin), a new saint, but formerly a missionary, gave the mountain its gracious name. he was an irishman, son of an irish king--there were thirty thousand kings reigning in county cork alone in his time, fifteen hundred years ago. it got so that they could not make a living, there was so much competition and wages got cut so. some of them were out of work months at a time, with wife and little children to feed, and not a crust in the place. at last a particularly severe winter fell upon the country, and hundreds of them were reduced to mendicancy and were to be seen day after day in the bitterest weather, standing barefoot in the snow, holding out their crowns for alms. indeed, they would have been obliged to emigrate or starve but for a fortunate idea of prince fridolin's, who started a labor-union, the first one in history, and got the great bulk of them to join it. he thus won the general gratitude, and they wanted to make him emperor--emperor over them all--emperor of county cork, but he said, no, walking delegate was good enough for him. for behold! he was modest beyond his years, and keen as a whip. to this day in germany and switzerland, where st. fridolin is revered and honored, the peasantry speak of him affectionately as the first walking delegate. the first walk he took was into france and germany, missionarying--for missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. all you had to do was to cure the savage's sick daughter by a "miracle"--a miracle like the miracle of lourdes in our day, for instance--and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convert's enthusiasm. you could sit down and make yourself easy, now. he would take an ax and convert the rest of the nation himself. charlemagne was that kind of a walking delegate. yes, there were great missionaries in those days, for the methods were sure and the rewards great. we have no such missionaries now, and no such methods. but to continue the history of the first walking delegate, if you are interested. i am interested myself because i have seen his relics in sackingen, and also the very spot where he worked his great miracle--the one which won him his sainthood in the papal court a few centuries later. to have seen these things makes me feel very near to him, almost like a member of the family, in fact. while wandering about the continent he arrived at the spot on the rhine which is now occupied by sackingen, and proposed to settle there, but the people warned him off. he appealed to the king of the franks, who made him a present of the whole region, people and all. he built a great cloister there for women and proceeded to teach in it and accumulate more land. there were two wealthy brothers in the neighborhood, urso and landulph. urso died and fridolin claimed his estates. landulph asked for documents and papers. fridolin had none to show. he said the bequest had been made to him by word of mouth. landulph suggested that he produce a witness and said it in a way which he thought was very witty, very sarcastic. this shows that he did not know the walking delegate. fridolin was not disturbed. he said: "appoint your court. i will bring a witness." the court thus created consisted of fifteen counts and barons. a day was appointed for the trial of the case. on that day the judges took their seats in state, and proclamation was made that the court was ready for business. five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and yet no fridolin appeared. landulph rose, and was in the act of claiming judgment by default when a strange clacking sound was heard coming up the stairs. in another moment fridolin entered at the door and came walking in a deep hush down the middle aisle, with a tall skeleton stalking in his rear. amazement and terror sat upon every countenance, for everybody suspected that the skeleton was urso's. it stopped before the chief judge and raised its bony arm aloft and began to speak, while all the assembled shuddered, for they could see the words leak out between its ribs. it said: "brother, why dost thou disturb my blessed rest and withhold by robbery the gift which i gave thee for the honor of god?" it seems a strange thing and most irregular, but the verdict was actually given against landulph on the testimony of this wandering rack-heap of unidentified bones. in our day a skeleton would not be allowed to testify at all, for a skeleton has no moral responsibility, and its word could not be believed on oath, and this was probably one of them. however, the incident is valuable as preserving to us a curious sample of the quaint laws of evidence of that remote time--a time so remote, so far back toward the beginning of original idiocy, that the difference between a bench of judges and a basket of vegetables was as yet so slight that we may say with all confidence that it didn't really exist. during several afternoons i have been engaged in an interesting, maybe useful, piece of work--that is to say, i have been trying to make the mighty jungfrau earn her living--earn it in a most humble sphere, but on a prodigious scale, on a prodigious scale of necessity, for she couldn't do anything in a small way with her size and style. i have been trying to make her do service on a stupendous dial and check off the hours as they glide along her pallid face up there against the sky, and tell the time of day to the populations lying within fifty miles of her and to the people in the moon, if they have a good telescope there. until late in the afternoon the jungfrau's aspect is that of a spotless desert of snow set upon edge against the sky. but by mid-afternoon some elevations which rise out of the western border of the desert, whose presence you perhaps had not detected or suspected up to that time, began to cast black shadows eastward across the gleaming surface. at first there is only one shadow; later there are two. toward 4 p.m. the other day i was gazing and worshiping as usual when i chanced to notice that shadow no. 1 was beginning to take itself something of the shape of the human profile. by four the back of the head was good, the military cap was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper lip sharp, but not pretty, and there was a great goatee that shot straight aggressively forward from the chin. at four-thirty the nose had changed its shape considerably, and the altered slant of the sun had revealed and made conspicuous a huge buttress or barrier of naked rock which was so located as to answer very well for a shoulder or coat-collar to this swarthy and indiscreet sweetheart who had stolen out there right before everybody to pillow his head on the virgin's white breast and whisper soft sentimentalities to her in the sensuous music of the crashing ice-domes and the boom and thunder of the passing avalanche--music very familiar to his ear, for he had heard it every afternoon at this hour since the day he first came courting this child of the earth, who lives in the sky, and that day is far, yes--for he was at this pleasant sport before the middle ages drifted by him in the valley; before the romans marched past, and before the antique and recordless barbarians fished and hunted here and wondered who he might be, and were probably afraid of him; and before primeval man himself, just emerged from his four-footed estate, stepped out upon this plain, first sample of his race, a thousand centuries ago, and cast a glad eye up there, judging he had found a brother human being and consequently something to kill; and before the big saurians wallowed here, still some eons earlier. oh yes, a day so far back that the eternal son was present to see that first visit; a day so far back that neither tradition nor history was born yet and a whole weary eternity must come and go before the restless little creature, of whose face this stupendous shadow face was the prophecy, would arrive in the earth and begin his shabby career and think of a big thing. oh, indeed yes; when you talk about your poor roman and egyptian day-before-yesterday antiquities, you should choose a time when the hoary shadow face of the jungfrau is not by. it antedates all antiquities known or imaginable; for it was here the world itself created the theater of future antiquities. and it is the only witness with a human face that was there to see the marvel, and remains to us a memorial of it. by 4:40 p.m. the nose of the shadow is perfect and is beautiful. it is black and is powerfully marked against the upright canvas of glowing snow, and covers hundreds of acres of that resplendent surface. meantime shadow no. 2 has been creeping out well to the rear of the face west of it--and at five o'clock has assumed a shape that has rather a poor and rude semblance of a shoe. meantime, also, the great shadow face has been gradually changing for twenty minutes, and now, 5 p.m., it is becoming a quite fair portrait of roscoe conkling. the likeness is there, and is unmistakable. the goatee is shortened, now, and has an end; formerly it hadn't any, but ran off eastward and arrived nowhere. by 6 p.m. the face has dissolved and gone, and the goatee has become what looks like the shadow of a tower with a pointed roof, and the shoe had turned into what the printers call a "fist" with a finger pointing. if i were now imprisoned on a mountain summit a hundred miles northward of this point, and was denied a timepiece, i could get along well enough from four till six on clear days, for i could keep trace of the time by the changing shapes of these mighty shadows of the virgin's front, the most stupendous dial i am acquainted with, the oldest clock in the world by a couple of million years. i suppose i should not have noticed the forms of the shadows if i hadn't the habit of hunting for faces in the clouds and in mountain crags--a sort of amusement which is very entertaining even when you don't find any, and brilliantly satisfying when you do. i have searched through several bushels of photographs of the jungfrau here, but found only one with the face in it, and in this case it was not strictly recognizable as a face, which was evidence that the picture was taken before four o'clock in the afternoon, and also evidence that all the photographers have persistently overlooked one of the most fascinating features of the jungfrau show. i say fascinating, because if you once detect a human face produced on a great plan by unconscious nature, you never get tired of watching it. at first you can't make another person see it at all, but after he has made it out once he can't see anything else afterward. the king of greece is a man who goes around quietly enough when off duty. one day this summer he was traveling in an ordinary first-class compartment, just in his other suit, the one which he works the realm in when he is at home, and so he was not looking like anybody in particular, but a good deal like everybody in general. by and by a hearty and healthy germanamerican got in and opened up a frank and interesting and sympathetic conversation with him, and asked him a couple of thousand questions about himself, which the king answered goodnaturedly, but in a more or less indefinite way as to private particulars. "where do you live when you are at home?" "in greece." "greece! well, now, that is just astonishing! born there?" "no." "do you speak greek?" "yes." "now, ain't that strange! i never expected to live to see that. what is your trade? i mean how do you get your living? what is your line of business?" "well, i hardly know how to answer. i am only a kind of foreman, on a salary; and the business--well, is a very general kind of business." "yes, i understand--general jobbing--little of everything-anything that there's money in." "that's about it, yes." "are you traveling for the house now?" "well, partly; but not entirely. of course i do a stroke of business if it falls in the way--" "good! i like that in you! that's me every time. go on." "i was only going to say i am off on my vacation now." "well that's all right. no harm in that. a man works all the better for a little let-up now and then. not that i've been used to having it myself; for i haven't. i reckon this is my first. i was born in germany, and when i was a couple of weeks old shipped to america, and i've been there ever since, and that's sixty-four years by the watch. i'm an american in principle and a german at heart, and it's the boss combination. well, how do you get along, as a rule--pretty fair?" "i've a rather large family--" "there, that's it--big family and trying to raise them on a salary. now, what did you go to do that for?" "well, i thought--" "of course you did. you were young and confident and thought you could branch out and make things go with a whirl, and here you are, you see! but never mind about that. i'm not trying to discourage you. dear me! i've been just where you are myself! you've got good grit; there's good stuff in you, i can see that. you got a wrong start, that's the whole trouble. but you hold your grip, and we'll see what can be done. your case ain't half as bad as it might be. you are going to come out all right--i'm bail for that. boys and girls?" "my family? yes, some of them are boys--" "and the rest girls. it's just as i expected. but that's all right, and it's better so, anyway. what are the boys doing-learning a trade?" "well, no--i thought--" "it's a big mistake. it's the biggest mistake you ever made. you see that in your own case. a man ought always to have a trade to fall back on. now, i was harness-maker at first. did that prevent me from becoming one of the biggest brewers in america? oh no. i always had the harness trick to fall back on in rough weather. now, if you had learned how to make harness-however, it's too late now; too late. but it's no good plan to cry over spilt milk. but as to the boys, you see--what's to become of them if anything happens to you?" "it has been my idea to let the eldest one succeed me--" "oh, come! suppose the firm don't want him?" "i hadn't thought of that, but--" "now, look here; you want to get right down to business and stop dreaming. you are capable of immense things--man. you can make a perfect success in life. all you want is somebody to steady you and boost you along on the right road. do you own anything in the business?" "no--not exactly; but if i continue to give satisfaction, i suppose i can keep my--" "keep your place--yes. well, don't you depend on anything of the kind. they'll bounce you the minute you get a little old and worked out; they'll do it sure. can't you manage somehow to get into the firm? that's the great thing, you know." "i think it is doubtful; very doubtful." "um--that's bad--yes, and unfair, too. do you suppose that if i should go there and have a talk with your people- look here--do you think you could run a brewery?" "i have never tried, but i think i could do it after a little familiarity with the business." the german was silent for some time. he did a good deal of thinking, and the king waited curiously to see what the result was going to be. finally the german said: "my mind's made up. you leave that crowd--you'll never amount to anything there. in these old countries they never give a fellow a show. yes, you come over to america--come to my place in rochester; bring the family along. you shall have a show in the business and the foremanship, besides. george--you said your name was george?--i'll make a man of you. i give you my word. you've never had a chance here, but that's all going to change. by gracious! i'll give you a lift that'll make your hair curl!" -----------------------------------------------------------------at the shrine of st. wagner bayreuth, aug. 2d, 1891 it was at nuremberg that we struck the inundation of musicmad strangers that was rolling down upon bayreuth. it had been long since we had seen such multitudes of excited and struggling people. it took a good half-hour to pack them and pair them into the train--and it was the longest train we have yet seen in europe. nuremberg had been witnessing this sort of experience a couple of times a day for about two weeks. it gives one an impressive sense of the magnitude of this biennial pilgrimage. for a pilgrimage is what it is. the devotees come from the very ends of the earth to worship their prophet in his own kaaba in his own mecca. if you are living in new york or san francisco or chicago or anywhere else in america, and you conclude, by the middle of may, that you would like to attend the bayreuth opera two months and a half later, you must use the cable and get about it immediately or you will get no seats, and you must cable for lodgings, too. then if you are lucky you will get seats in the last row and lodgings in the fringe of the town. if you stop to write you will get nothing. there were plenty of people in nuremberg when we passed through who had come on pilgrimage without first securing seats and lodgings. they had found neither in bayreuth; they had walked bayreuth streets a while in sorrow, then had gone to nuremberg and found neither beds nor standing room, and had walked those quaint streets all night, waiting for the hotels to open and empty their guests into trains, and so make room for these, their defeated brethren and sisters in the faith. they had endured from thirty to forty hours' railroading on the continent of europe--with all which that implies of worry, fatigue, and financial impoverishment--and all they had got and all they were to get for it was handiness and accuracy in kicking themselves, acquired by practice in the back streets of the two towns when other people were in bed; for back they must go over that unspeakable journey with their pious mission unfulfilled. these humiliated outcasts had the frowsy and unbrushed and apologetic look of wet cats, and their eyes were glazed with drowsiness, their bodies were adroop from crown to sole, and all kind-hearted people refrained from asking them if they had been to bayreuth and failed to connect, as knowing they would lie. we reached here (bayreuth) about mid-afternoon of a rainy saturday. we were of the wise, and had secured lodgings and opera seats months in advance. i am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about the operas and deliver judgment upon their merits. the little children of bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader intelligence than i. i only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the operas, pilgrims able to appreciate them and enjoy them. what i write about the performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the public as merely a cat's view of a king, and not of didactic value. next day, which was sunday, we left for the opera-house-that is to say, the wagner temple--a little after the middle of the afternoon. the great building stands all by itself, grand and lonely, on a high ground outside the town. we were warned that if we arrived after four o'clock we should be obliged to pay two dollars and a half extra by way of fine. we saved that; and it may be remarked here that this is the only opportunity that europe offers of saving money. there was a big crowd in the grounds about the building, and the ladies' dresses took the sun with fine effect. i do not mean to intimate that the ladies were in full dress, for that was not so. the dresses were pretty, but neither sex was in evening dress. the interior of the building is simple--severely so; but there is no occasion for color and decoration, since the people sit in the dark. the auditorium has the shape of a keystone, with the stage at the narrow end. there is an aisle on each side, but no aisle in the body of the house. each row of seats extends in an unbroken curve from one side of the house to the other. there are seven entrance doors on each side of the theater and four at the butt, eighteen doors to admit and emit 1,650 persons. the number of the particular door by which you are to enter the house or leave it is printed on your ticket, and you can use no door but that one. thus, crowding and confusion are impossible. not so many as a hundred people use any one door. this is better than having the usual (and useless) elaborate fireproof arrangements. it is the model theater of the world. it can be emptied while the second hand of a watch makes its circuit. it would be entirely safe, even if it were built of lucifer matches. if your seat is near the center of a row and you enter late you must work your way along a rank of about twenty-five ladies and gentlemen to get to it. yet this causes no trouble, for everybody stands up until all the seats are full, and the filling is accomplished in a very few minutes. then all sit down, and you have a solid mass of fifteen hundred heads, making a steep cellar-door slant from the rear of the house down to the stage. all the lights were turned low, so low that the congregation sat in a deep and solemn gloom. the funereal rustling of dresses and the low buzz of conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently not the ghost of a sound was left. this profound and increasingly impressive stillness endured for some time--the best preparation for music, spectacle, or speech conceivable. i should think our show people would have invented or imported that simple and impressive device for securing and solidifying the attention of an audience long ago; instead of which there continue to this day to open a performance against a deadly competition in the form of noise, confusion, and a scattered interest. finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to weave his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his enchantments. there was something strangely impressive in the fancy which kept intruding itself that the composer was conscious in his grave of what was going on here, and that these divine souls were the clothing of thoughts which were at this moment passing through his brain, and not recognized and familiar ones which had issued from it at some former time. the entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with the curtain down. it was exquisite; it was delicious. but straightway thereafter, or course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that nothing can make a wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to the untutored but to leave out the vocal parts. i wish i could see a wagner opera done in pantomime once. then one would have the lovely orchestration unvexed to listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the bewildering beautiful scenery to intoxicate his eyes with, and the dumb acting couldn't mar these pleasures, because there isn't often anything in the wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting; as a rule all you would see would be a couple of silent people, one of them standing still, the other catching flies. of course i do not really mean that he would be catching flies; i only mean that the usual operatic gestures which consist in reaching first one hand out into the air and then the other might suggest the sport i speak of if the operator attended strictly to business and uttered no sound. this present opera was "parsifal." madame wagner does not permit its representation anywhere but in bayreuth. the first act of the three occupied two hours, and i enjoyed that in spite of the singing. i trust that i know as well as anybody that singing is one of the most entrancing and bewitching and moving and eloquent of all the vehicles invented by man for the conveying of feeling; but it seems to me that the chief virtue in song is melody, air, tune, rhythm, or what you please to call it, and that when this feature is absent what remains is a picture with the color left out. i was not able to detect in the vocal parts of "parsifal" anything that might with confidence be called rhythm or tune or melody; one person performed at a time--and a long time, too-often in a noble, and always in a high-toned, voice; but he only pulled out long notes, then some short ones, then another long one, then a sharp, quick, peremptory bark or two--and so on and so on; and when he was done you saw that the information which he had conveyed had not compensated for the disturbance. not always, but pretty often. if two of them would but put in a duet occasionally and blend the voices; but no, they don't do that. the great master, who knew so well how to make a hundred instruments rejoice in unison and pour out their souls in mingled and melodious tides of delicious sound, deals only in barren solos when he puts in the vocal parts. it may be that he was deep, and only added the singing to his operas for the sake of the contrast it would make with the music. singing! it does seem the wrong name to apply to it. strictly described, it is a practicing of difficult and unpleasant intervals, mainly. an ignorant person gets tired of listening to gymnastic intervals in the long run, no matter how pleasant they may be. in "parsifal" there is a hermit named gurnemanz who stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the hour, while first one and then another character of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires to die. during the evening there was an intermission of threequarters of an hour after the first act and one an hour long after the second. in both instances the theater was totally emptied. people who had previously engaged tables in the one sole eating-house were able to put in their time very satisfactorily; the other thousand went hungry. the opera was concluded at ten in the evening or a little later. when we reached home we had been gone more than seven hours. seven hours at five dollars a ticket is almost too much for the money. while browsing about the front yard among the crowd between the acts i encountered twelve or fifteen friends from different parts of america, and those of them who were most familiar with wagner said that "parsifal" seldom pleased at first, but that after one had heard it several times it was almost sure to become a favorite. it seemed impossible, but it was true, for the statement came from people whose word was not to be doubted. and i gathered some further information. on the ground i found part of a german musical magazine, and in it a letter written by uhlic thirty-three years ago, in which he defends the scorned and abused wagner against people like me, who found fault with the comprehensive absence of what our kind regards as singing. uhlic says wagner despised "jene plapperude music," and therefore "runs, trills, and schnorkel are discarded by him." i don't know what a schnorkel is, but now that i know it has been left out of these operas i never have missed so much in my life. and uhlic further says that wagner's song is true: that it is "simply emphasized intoned speech." that certainly describes it --in "parsifal" and some of the operas; and if i understand uhlic's elaborate german he apologizes for the beautiful airs in "tannh:auser." very well; now that wagner and i understand each other, perhaps we shall get along better, and i shall stop calling waggner, on the american plan, and thereafter call him waggner as per german custom, for i feel entirely friendly now. the minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless puctilios and pronounce his name right! of course i came home wondering why people should come from all corners of america to hear these operas, when we have lately had a season or two of them in new york with these same singers in the several parts, and possibly this same orchestra. i resolved to think that out at all hazards. tuesday.--yesterday they played the only operatic favorite i have ever had--an opera which has always driven me mad with ignorant delight whenever i have heard it--"tannh:auser." i heard it first when i was a youth; i heard it last in the last german season in new york. i was busy yesterday and i did not intend to go, knowing i should have another "tannh:auser" opportunity in a few days; but after five o'clock i found myself free and walked out to the opera-house and arrived about the beginning of the second act. my opera ticket admitted me to the grounds in front, past the policeman and the chain, and i thought i would take a rest on a bench for an hour and two and wait for the third act. in a moment or so the first bugles blew, and the multitude began to crumble apart and melt into the theater. i will explain that this bugle-call is one of the pretty features here. you see, the theater is empty, and hundreds of the audience are a good way off in the feeding-house; the first bugle-call is blown about a quarter of an hour before time for the curtain to rise. this company of buglers, in uniform, march out with military step and send out over the landscape a few bars of the theme of the approaching act, piercing the distances with the gracious notes; then they march to the other entrance and repeat. presently they do this over again. yesterday only about two hundred people were still left in front of the house when the second call was blown; in another half-minute they would have been in the house, but then a thing happened which delayed them--the only solitary thing in this world which could be relied on with certainty to accomplish it, i suppose--an imperial princess appeared in the balcony above them. they stopped dead in their tracks and began to gaze in a stupor of gratitude and satisfaction. the lady presently saw that she must disappear or the doors would be closed upon these worshipers, so she returned to her box. this daughter-in-law of an emperor was pretty; she had a kind face; she was without airs; she is known to be full of common human sympathies. there are many kinds of princesses, but this kind is the most harmful of all, for wherever they go they reconcile people to monarchy and set back the clock of progress. the valuable princes, the desirable princes, are the czars and their sort. by their mere dumb presence in the world they cover with derision every argument that can be invented in favor of royalty by the most ingenious casuist. in his time the husband of this princess was valuable. he led a degraded life, he ended it with his own hand in circumstances and surroundings of a hideous sort, and was buried like a god. in the opera-house there is a long loft back of the audience, a kind of open gallery, in which princes are displayed. it is sacred to them; it is the holy of holies. as soon as the filling of the house is about complete the standing multitude turn and fix their eyes upon the princely layout and gaze mutely and longingly and adoringly and regretfully like sinners looking into heaven. they become rapt, unconscious, steeped in worship. there is no spectacle anywhere that is more pathetic than this. it is worth crossing many oceans to see. it is somehow not the same gaze that people rivet upon a victor hugo, or niagara, or the bones of the mastodon, or the guillotine of the revolution, or the great pyramid, or distant vesuvius smoking in the sky, or any man long celebrated to you by his genius and achievements, or thing long celebrated to you by the praises of books and pictures--no, that gaze is only the gaze of intense curiosity, interest, wonder, engaged in drinking delicious deep draughts that taste good all the way down and appease and satisfy the thirst of a lifetime. satisfy it--that is the word. hugo and the mastodon will still have a degree of intense interest thereafter when encountered, but never anything approaching the ecstasy of that first view. the interest of a prince is different. it may be envy, it may be worship, doubtless it is a mixture of both--and it does not satisfy its thirst with one view, or even noticeably diminish it. perhaps the essence of the thing is the value which men attach to a valuable something which has come by luck and not been earned. a dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety-and-nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same way. a prince picks up grandeur, power, and a permanent holiday and gratis support by a pure accident, the accident of birth, and he stands always before the grieved eye of poverty and obscurity a monumental representative of luck. and then--supremest value of all-his is the only high fortune on the earth which is secure. the commercial millionaire may become a beggar; the illustrious statesman can make a vital mistake and be dropped and forgotten; the illustrious general can lose a decisive battle and with it the consideration of men; but once a prince always a prince--that is to say, an imitation god, and neither hard fortune nor an infamous character nor an addled brain nor the speech of an ass can undeify him. by common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved. it follows without doubt or question, then, that the most desirable position possible is that of a prince. and i think it also follows that the so-called usurpations with which history is littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men have committed. to usurp a usurpation--that is all it amounts to, isn't it? a prince is not to us what he is to a european, of course. we have not been taught to regard him as a god, and so one good look at him is likely to so nearly appease our curiosity as to make him an object of no greater interest the next time. we want a fresh one. but it is not so with the european. i am quite sure of it. the same old one will answer; he never stales. eighteen years ago i was in london and i called at an englishman's house on a bleak and foggy and dismal december afternoon to visit his wife and married daughter by appointment. i waited half an hour and then they arrived, frozen. they explained that they had been delayed by an unlooked-for circumstance: while passing in the neighborhood of marlborough house they saw a crowd gathering and were told that the prince of wales was about to drive out, so they stopped to get a sight of him. they had waited half an hour on the sidewalk, freezing with the crowd, but were disappointed at last--the prince had changed his mind. i said, with a good deal of surprise, "is it possible that you two have lived in london all your lives and have never seen the prince of wales?" apparently it was their turn to be surprised, for they exclaimed: "what an idea! why, we have seen him hundreds of times." they had seem him hundreds of times, yet they had waited half an hour in the gloom and the bitter cold, in the midst of a jam of patients from the same asylum, on the chance of seeing him again. it was a stupefying statement, but one is obliged to believe the english, even when they say a thing like that. i fumbled around for a remark, and got out this one: "i can't understand it at all. if i had never seen general grant i doubt if i would do that even to get a sight of him." with a slight emphasis on the last word. their blank faces showed that they wondered where the parallel came in. then they said, blankly: "of course not. he is only a president." it is doubtless a fact that a prince is a permanent interest, an interest not subject to deterioration. the general who was never defeated, the general who never held a council of war, the only general who ever commanded a connected battle-front twelve hundred miles long, the smith who welded together the broken parts of a great republic and re-established it where it is quite likely to outlast all the monarchies present and to come, was really a person of no serious consequence to these people. to them, with their training, my general was only a man, after all, while their prince was clearly much more than that--a being of a wholly unsimilar construction and constitution, and being of no more blood and kinship with men than are the serene eternal lights of the firmament with the poor dull tallow candles of commerce that sputter and die and leave nothing behind but a pinch of ashes and a stink. i saw the last act of "tannh:auser." i sat in the gloom and the deep stillness, waiting--one minute, two minutes, i do not know exactly how long--then the soft music of the hidden orchestra began to breathe its rich, long sighs out from under the distant stage, and by and by the drop-curtain parted in the middle and was drawn softly aside, disclosing the twilighted wood and a wayside shrine, with a white-robed girl praying and a man standing near. presently that noble chorus of men's voices was heard approaching, and from that moment until the closing of the curtain it was music, just music--music to make one drunk with pleasure, music to make one take scrip and staff and beg his way round the globe to hear it. to such as are intending to come here in the wagner season next year i wish to say, bring your dinner-pail with you. if you do, you will never cease to be thankful. if you do not, you will find it a hard fight to save yourself from famishing in bayreuth. bayreuth is merely a large village, and has no very large hotels or eating-houses. the principal inns are the golden anchor and the sun. at either of these places you can get an excellent meal--no, i mean you can go there and see other people get it. there is no charge for this. the town is littered with restaurants, but they are small and bad, and they are overdriven with custom. you must secure a table hours beforehand, and often when you arrive you will find somebody occupying it. we have had this experience. we have had a daily scramble for life; and when i say we, i include shoals of people. i have the impression that the only people who do not have to scramble are the veterans--the disciples who have been here before and know the ropes. i think they arrive about a week before the first opera, and engage all the tables for the season. my tribe had tried all kinds of places--some outside of the town, a mile or two--and have captured only nibblings and odds and ends, never in any instance a complete and satisfying meal. digestible? no, the reverse. these odds and ends are going to serve as souvenirs of bayreuth, and in that regard their value is not to be overestimated. photographs fade, bric-a-brac gets lost, busts of wagner get broken, but once you absorb a bayreuth-restaurant meal it is your possession and your property until the time comes to embalm the rest of you. some of these pilgrims here become, in effect, cabinets; cabinets of souvenirs of bayreuth. it is believed among scientists that you could examine the crop of a dead bayreuth pilgrim anywhere in the earth and tell where he came from. but i like this ballast. i think a "hermitage" scrap-up at eight in the evening, when all the famine-breeders have been there and laid in their mementoes and gone, is the quietest thing you can lay on your keelson except gravel. thursday.--they keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief roles, and one of these is composed of the most renowned artists in the world, with materna and alvary in the lead. i suppose a double team is necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week, for all the plays last from four in the afternoon till ten at night. nearly all the labor falls upon the half-dozen head singers, and apparently they are required to furnish all the noise they can for the money. if they feel a soft, whispery, mysterious feeling they are required to open out and let the public know it. operas are given only on sundays, mondays, wednesdays, and thursdays, with three days of ostensible rest per week, and two teams to do the four operas; but the ostensible rest is devoted largely to rehearsing. it is said that the off days are devoted to rehearsing from some time in the morning till ten at night. are there two orchestras also? it is quite likely, since there are one hundred and ten names in the orchestra list. yesterday the opera was "tristan and isolde." i have seen all sorts of audiences--at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, sermons, funerals--but none which was twin to the wagner audience of bayreuth for fixed and reverential attention. absolute attention and petrified retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning of it. you detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders. you seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. you know that they are being stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are times when they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation, and times when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a relief to free their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet you hear not one utterance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains have slowly faded out and died; then the dead rise with one impulse and shake the building with their applause. every seat is full in the first act; there is not a vacant one in the last. if a man would be conspicuous, let him come here and retire from the house in the midst of an act. it would make him celebrated. this audience reminds me of nothing i have ever seen and of nothing i have read about except the city in the arabian tale where all the inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after centuries mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which they last knew in life. here the wagner audience dress as they please, and sit in the dark and worship in silence. at the metropolitan in new york they sit in a glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum airs, they squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the time. in some of the boxes the conversation and laughter are so loud as to divide the attention of the house with the stage. in large measure the metropolitan is a show-case for rich fashionables who are not trained in wagnerian music and have no reverence for it, but who like to promote art and show their clothes. can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this music produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity? manifestly, no. then, perhaps the temporary expatriation, the tedious traversing of seas and continents, the pilgrimage to bayreuth stands explained. these devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion. it is only here that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any worldly pollution. in this remote village there are no sights to see, there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world, there is nothing going on, it is always sunday. the pilgrim wends to his temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of tremendous emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service. this opera of "tristan and isolde" last night broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and i know of some who have heard of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. i feel strongly out of place here. sometimes i feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes i feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, i feel like a heretic in heaven. but by no means do i ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. i have never seen anything like this before. i have never seen anything so great and fine and real as this devotion. friday.--yesterday's opera was "parsifal" again. the others went and they show marked advance in appreciation; but i went hunting for relics and reminders of the margravine wilhelmina, she of the imperishable "memoirs." i am properly grateful to her for her (unconscious) satire upon monarchy and nobility, and therefore nothing which her hand touched or her eye looked upon is indifferent to me. i am her pilgrim; the rest of this multitude here are wagner's. tuesday.--i have seen my last two operas; my season is ended, and we cross over into bohemia this afternoon. i was supposing that my musical regeneration was accomplished and perfected, because i enjoyed both of these operas, singing and all, and, moreover, one of them was "parsifal," but the experts have disenchanted me. they say: "singing! that wasn't singing; that was the wailing, screeching of third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the interest of economy." well, i ought to have recognized the sign--the old, sure sign that has never failed me in matters of art. whenever i enjoy anything in art it means that it is mighty poor. the private knowledge of this fact has saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of many and many a chromo. however, my base instinct does bring me profit sometimes; i was the only man out of thirty-two hundred who got his money back on those two operas. william dean howells is it true that the sun of a man's mentality touches noon at forty and then begins to wane toward setting? doctor osler is charged with saying so. maybe he said it, maybe he didn't; i don't know which it is. but if he said it, i can point him to a case which proves his rule. proves it by being an exception to it. to this place i nominate mr. howells. i read his venetian days about forty years ago. i compare it with his paper on machiavelli in a late number of harper, and i cannot find that his english has suffered any impairment. for forty years his english has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. in the sustained exhibition of certain great qualities--clearness, compression, verbal exactness, and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of phrasing--he is, in my belief, without his peer in the english-writing world. sustained. i entrench myself behind that protecting word. there are others who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he does, but only by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches of veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas howells's moon sails cloudless skies all night and all the nights. in the matter of verbal exactness mr. howells has no superior, i suppose. he seems to be almost always able to find that elusive and shifty grain of gold, the right word. others have to put up with approximations, more or less frequently; he has better luck. to me, the others are miners working with the gold-pan--of necessity some of the gold washes over and escapes; whereas, in my fancy, he is quicksilver raiding down a riffle--no grain of the metal stands much chance of eluding him. a powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is done in a well-enough fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when the right one blazes out on us. whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry. one has no time to examine the word and vote upon its rank and standing, the automatic recognition of its supremacy is so immediate. there is a plenty of acceptable literature which deals largely in approximations, but it may be likened to a fine landscape seen through the rain; the right word would dismiss the rain, then you would see it better. it doesn't rain when howells is at work. and where does he get the easy and effortless flow of his speech? and its cadenced and undulating rhythm? and its architectural felicities of construction, its graces of expression, its pemmican quality of compression, and all that? born to him, no doubt. all in shining good order in the beginning, all extraordinary; and all just as shining, just as extraordinary today, after forty years of diligent wear and tear and use. he passed his fortieth year long and long ago; but i think his english of today--his perfect english, i wish to say -can throw down the glove before his english of that antique time and not be afraid. i will got back to the paper on machiavelli now, and ask the reader to examine this passage from it which i append. i do not mean examine it in a bird's-eye way; i mean search it, study it. and, of course, read it aloud. i may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get out of finely wrought literature all that is in it by reading it mutely: mr. dyer is rather of the opinion, first luminously suggested by macaulay, that machiavelli was in earnest, but must not be judged as a political moralist of our time and race would be judged. he thinks that machiavelli was in earnest, as none but an idealist can be, and he is the first to imagine him an idealist immersed in realities, who involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary issues of reverie. the machiavelli whom he depicts does not cease to be politically a republican and socially a just man because he holds up an atrocious despot like caesar borgia as a mirror for rulers. what machiavelli beheld round him in italy was a civic disorder in which there was oppression without statecraft, and revolt without patriotism. when a miscreant like borgia appeared upon the scene and reduced both tyrants and rebels to an apparent quiescence, he might very well seem to such a dreamer the savior of society whom a certain sort of dreamers are always looking for. machiavelli was no less honest when he honored the diabolical force than carlyle was when at different times he extolled the strong man who destroys liberty in creating order. but carlyle has only just ceased to be mistaken for a reformer, while it is still machiavelli's hard fate to be so trammeled in his material that his name stands for whatever is most malevolent and perfidious in human nature. you see how easy and flowing it is; how unvexed by ruggednesses, clumsinesses, broken meters; how simple and--so far as you or i can make out--unstudied; how clear, how limpid, how understandable, how unconfused by cross-currents, eddies, undertows; how seemingly unadorned, yet is all adornment, like the lily-of-the-valley; and how compressed, how compact, without a complacency-signal hung out anywhere to call attention to it. there are twenty-three lines in the quoted passage. after reading it several times aloud, one perceives that a good deal of matter is crowded into that small space. i think it is a model of compactness. when i take its materials apart and work them over and put them together in my way, i find i cannot crowd the result back into the same hole, there not being room enough. i find it a case of a woman packing a man's trunk: he can get the things out, but he can't ever get them back again. the proffered paragraph is a just and fair sample; the rest of the article is as compact as it is; there are no waste words. the sample is just in other ways: limpid, fluent, graceful, and rhythmical as it is, it holds no superiority in these respects over the rest of the essay. also, the choice phrasing noticeable in the sample is not lonely; there is a plenty of its kin distributed through the other paragraphs. this is claiming much when that kin must face the challenge of a phrase like the one in the middle sentence: "an idealist immersed in realities who involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary issues of reverie." with a hundred words to do it with, the literary artisan could catch that airy thought and tie it down and reduce it to a concrete condition, visible, substantial, understandable and all right, like a cabbage; but the artist does it with twenty, and the result is a flower. the quoted phrase, like a thousand others that have come from the same source, has the quality of certain scraps of verse which take hold of us and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all the words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so they all seem inconspicuous, therefore we wonder what it is about them that makes their message take hold. the mossy marbles rest on the lips that he has prest in their bloom, and the names he loved to hear have been carved for many a year on the tomb. it is like a dreamy strain of moving music, with no sharp notes in it. the words are all "right" words, and all the same size. we do not notice it at first. we get the effect, it goes straight home to us, but we do not know why. it is when the right words are conspicuous that they thunder: the glory that was greece and the grandeur that was rome! when i got back from howells old to howells young i find him arranging and clustering english words well, but not any better than now. he is not more felicitous in concreting abstractions now than he was in translating, then, the visions of the eyes of flesh into words that reproduced their forms and colors: in venetian streets they give the fallen snow no rest. it is at once shoveled into the canals by hundreds of half-naked facchini; and now in st. mark's place the music of innumerable shovels smote upon my ear; and i saw the shivering legion of poverty as it engaged the elements in a struggle for the possession of the piazza. but the snow continued to fall, and through the twilight of the descending flakes all this toil and encountered looked like that weary kind of effort in dreams, when the most determined industry seems only to renew the task. the lofty crest of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling snow, and i could no longer see the golden angel upon its summit. but looked at across the piazza, the beautiful outline of st. mark's church was perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the snowfall were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around the structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic loveliness to be anything but the creation of magic. the tender snow had compassionated the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the hand of the builder--or, better said, just from the brain of the architect. there was marvelous freshness in the colors of the mosaics in the great arches of the facade, and all that gracious harmony into which the temple rises, or marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred times etherealized by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. the snow lay lightly on the golden gloves that tremble like peacocks-crests above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it danced over all its works, as if exulting in its beauty--beauty which filled me with subtle, selfish yearning to keep such evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer of my whole life, and with despair to think that even the poor lifeless shadow of it could never be fairly reflected in picture or poem. through the wavering snowfall, the saint theodore upon one of the granite pillars of the piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so gentle and mild he looked by the tender light of the storm. the towers of the island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in the rigging of the ships that lay in the basin wrought like phantoms among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost palpable, lay upon the mutest city in the world. the spirit of venice is there: of a city where age and decay, fagged with distributing damage and repulsiveness among the other cities of the planet in accordance with the policy and business of their profession, come for rest and play between seasons, and treat themselves to the luxury and relaxation of sinking the shop and inventing and squandering charms all about, instead of abolishing such as they find, as it their habit when not on vacation. in the working season they do business in boston sometimes, and a character in the undiscovered country takes accurate note of pathetic effects wrought by them upon the aspects of a street of once dignified and elegant homes whose occupants have moved away and left them a prey to neglect and gradual ruin and progressive degradation; a descent which reaches bottom at last, when the street becomes a roost for humble professionals of the faith-cure and fortune-telling sort. what a queer, melancholy house, what a queer, melancholy street! i don't think i was ever in a street before when quite so many professional ladies, with english surnames, preferred madam to mrs. on their door-plates. and the poor old place has such a desperately conscious air of going to the deuce. every house seems to wince as you go by, and button itself up to the chin for fear you should find out it had no shirt on--so to speak. i don't know what's the reason, but these material tokens of a social decay afflict me terribly; a tipsy woman isn't dreadfuler than a haggard old house, that's once been a home, in a street like this. mr. howells's pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate photographs; they are photographs with feeling in them, and sentiment, photographs taken in a dream, one might say. as concerns his humor, i will not try to say anything, yet i would try, if i had the words that might approximately reach up to its high place. i do not think any one else can play with humorous fancies so gracefully and delicately and deliciously as he does, nor has so many to play with, nor can come so near making them look as if they were doing the playing themselves and he was not aware that they were at it. for they are unobtrusive, and quiet in their ways, and well conducted. his is a humor which flows softly all around about and over and through the mesh of the page, pervasive, refreshing, health-giving, and makes no more show and no more noise than does the circulation of the blood. there is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in mr. howells's books. that is his "stage directions"--those artifices which authors employ to throw a kind of human naturalness around a scene and a conversation, and help the reader to see the one and get at meanings in the other which might not be perceived if entrusted unexplained to the bare words of the talk. some authors overdo the stage directions, they elaborate them quite beyond necessity; they spend so much time and take up so much room in telling us how a person said a thing and how he looked and acted when he said it that we get tired and vexed and wish he hadn't said it all. other authors' directions are brief enough, but it is seldom that the brevity contains either wit or information. writers of this school go in rags, in the matter of state directions; the majority of them having nothing in stock but a cigar, a laugh, a blush, and a bursting into tears. in their poverty they work these sorry things to the bone. they say: ". . . replied alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar." (this explains nothing; it only wastes space.) ". . . responded richard, with a laugh." (there was nothing to laugh about; there never is. the writer puts it in from habit--automatically; he is paying no attention to his work; or he would see that there is nothing to laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly flat and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by enlarging the stage direction and making richard break into "frenzies of uncontrollable laughter." this makes the reader sad.) ". . . murmured gladys, blushing." (this poor old shop-worn blush is a tiresome thing. we get so we would rather gladys would fall out of the book and break her neck than do it again. she is always doing it, and usually irrelevantly. whenever it is her turn to murmur she hangs out her blush; it is the only thing she's got. in a little while we hate her, just as we do richard.) ". . . repeated evelyn, bursting into tears." (this kind keep a book damp all the time. they can't say a thing without crying. they cry so much about nothing that by and by when they have something to cry about they have gone dry; they sob, and fetch nothing; we are not moved. we are only glad.) they gavel me, these stale and overworked stage directions, these carbon films that got burnt out long ago and cannot now carry any faintest thread of light. it would be well if they could be relieved from duty and flung out in the literary back yard to rot and disappear along with the discarded and forgotten "steeds" and "halidomes" and similar stage-properties once so dear to our grandfathers. but i am friendly to mr. howells's stage directions; more friendly to them than to any one else's, i think. they are done with a competent and discriminating art, and are faithful to the requirements of a state direction's proper and lawful office, which is to inform. sometimes they convey a scene and its conditions so well that i believe i could see the scene and get the spirit and meaning of the accompanying dialogue if some one would read merely the stage directions to me and leave out the talk. for instance, a scene like this, from the undiscovered country: ". . . and she laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on her father's shoulder." ". . . she answered, following his gesture with a glance." ". . . she said, laughing nervously." ". . . she asked, turning swiftly upon him that strange, searching glance." ". . . she answered, vaguely." ". . . she reluctantly admitted." ". . . but her voice died wearily away, and she stood looking into his face with puzzled entreaty." mr. howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can invent fresh ones without limit. it is mainly the repetition over and over again, by the third-rates, of worn and commonplace and juiceless forms that makes their novels such a weariness and vexation to us, i think. we do not mind one or two deliveries of their wares, but as we turn the pages over and keep on meeting them we presently get tired of them and wish they would do other things for a change. ". . . replied alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar." ". . . responded richard, with a laugh." ". . . murmured gladys, blushing." ". . . repeated evelyn, bursting into tears." ". . . replied the earl, flipping the ash from his cigar." ". . . responded the undertaker, with a laugh." ". . . murmured the chambermaid, blushing." ". . . repeated the burglar, bursting into tears." ". . . replied the conductor, flipping the ash from his cigar." ". . . responded arkwright, with a laugh." ". . . murmured the chief of police, blushing." ". . . repeated the house-cat, bursting into tears." and so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. i always notice stage directions, because they fret me and keep me trying to get out of their way, just as the automobiles do. at first; then by and by they become monotonous and i get run over. mr. howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as beautiful as the make of it. i have held him in admiration and affection so many years that i know by the number of those years that he is old now; but his heart isn't, nor his pen; and years do not count. let him have plenty of them; there is profit in them for us. ------------------------------------------------------------------english as she is taught in the appendix to croker's boswell's johnson one finds this anecdote: cato's soliloquy.--one day mrs. gastrel set a little girl to repeat to him [dr. samuel johnson] cato's soliloquy, which she went through very correctly. the doctor, after a pause, asked the child: "what was to bring cato to an end?" she said it was a knife. "no, my dear, it was not so." "my aunt polly said it was a knife." "why, aunt polly's knife may do, but it was a dagger, my dear." he then asked her the meaning of "bane and antidote," which she was unable to give. mrs. gastrel said: "you cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such words." he then said: "my dear, how many pence are there in sixpence?" "i cannot tell, sir," was the half-terrified reply. on this, addressing himself to mrs. gastrel, he said: "now, my dear lady, can anything be more ridiculous than to teach a child cato's soliloquy, who does not know how many pence there are in a sixpence?" in a lecture before the royal geographical society professor ravenstein quoted the following list of frantic questions, and said that they had been asked in an examination: mention all names of places in the world derived from julius caesar or augustus caesar. where are the following rivers: pisuerga, sakaria, guadalete, jalon, mulde? all you know of the following: machacha, pilmo, schebulos, crivoscia, basces, mancikert, taxhem, citeaux, meloria, zutphen. the highest peaks of the karakorum range. the number of universities in prussia. why are the tops of mountains continually covered with snow [sic]? name the length and breadth of the streams of lava which issued from the skaptar jokul in the eruption of 1783. that list would oversize nearly anybody's geographical knowledge. isn't it reasonably possible that in our schools many of the questions in all studies are several miles ahead of where the pupil is?--that he is set to struggle with things that are ludicrously beyond his present reach, hopelessly beyond his present strength? this remark in passing, and by way of text; now i come to what i was going to say. i have just now fallen upon a darling literary curiosity. it is a little book, a manuscript compilation, and the compiler sent it to me with the request that i say whether i think it ought to be published or not. i said, yes; but as i slowly grow wise i briskly grow cautious; and so, now that the publication is imminent, it has seemed to me that i should feel more comfortable if i could divide up this responsibility with the public by adding them to the court. therefore i will print some extracts from the book, in the hope that they may make converts to my judgment that the volume has merit which entitles it to publication. as to its character. every one has sampled "english as she is spoke" and "english as she is wrote"; this little volume furnishes us an instructive array of examples of "english as she is taught"--in the public schools of--well, this country. the collection is made by a teacher in those schools, and all the examples in it are genuine; none of them have been tampered with, or doctored in any way. from time to time, during several years, whenever a pupil has delivered himself of anything peculiarly quaint or toothsome in the course of his recitations, this teacher and her associates have privately set that thing down in a memorandum-book; strictly following the original, as to grammar, construction, spelling, and all; and the result is this literary curiosity. the contents of the book consist mainly of answers given by the boys and girls to questions, said answers being given sometimes verbally, sometimes in writing. the subjects touched upon are fifteen in number: i. etymology; ii. grammar; iii. mathematics; iv. geography; v. "original"; vi. analysis; vii. history; viii. "intellectual"; ix. philosophy; x. physiology; xi. astronomy; xii. politics; xiii. music; xiv. oratory; xv. metaphysics. you perceive that the poor little young idea has taken a shot at a good many kinds of game in the course of the book. now as to results. here are some quaint definitions of words. it will be noticed that in all of these instances the sound of the word, or the look of it on paper, has misled the child: aborigines, a system of mountains. alias, a good man in the bible. amenable, anything that is mean. ammonia, the food of the gods. assiduity, state of being an acid. auriferous, pertaining to an orifice. capillary, a little caterpillar. corniferous, rocks in which fossil corn is found. emolument, a headstone to a grave. equestrian, one who asks questions. eucharist, one who plays euchre. franchise, anything belonging to the french. idolater, a very idle person. ipecac, a man who likes a good dinner. irrigate, to make fun of. mendacious, what can be mended. mercenary, one who feels for another. parasite, a kind of umbrella. parasite, the murder of an infant. publican, a man who does his prayers in public. tenacious, ten acres of land. here is one where the phrase "publicans and sinners" has got mixed up in the child's mind with politics, and the result is a definition which takes one in a sudden and unexpected way: republican, a sinner mentioned in the bible. also in democratic newspapers now and then. here are two where the mistake has resulted from sound assisted by remote fact: plagiarist, a writer of plays. demagogue, a vessel containing beer and other liquids. i cannot quite make out what it was that misled the pupil in the following instances; it would not seem to have been the sound of the word, nor the look of it in print: asphyxia, a grumbling, fussy temper. quarternions, a bird with a flat beak and no bill, living in new zealand. quarternions, the name given to a style of art practiced by the phoenicians. quarternions, a religious convention held every hundred years. sibilant, the state of being idiotic. crosier, a staff carried by the deity. in the following sentences the pupil's ear has been deceiving him again: the marriage was illegible. he was totally dismasted with the whole performance. he enjoys riding on a philosopher. she was very quick at repertoire. he prayed for the waters to subsidize. the leopard is watching his sheep. they had a strawberry vestibule. here is one which--well, now, how often we do slam right into the truth without ever suspecting it: the men employed by the gas company go around and speculate the meter. indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many's the time you will notice it in the gas bill. in the following sentences the little people have some information to convey, every time; but in my case they fail to connect: the light always went out on the keystone word: the coercion of some things is remarkable; as bread and molasses. her hat is contiguous because she wears it on one side. he preached to an egregious congregation. the captain eliminated a bullet through the man's heart. you should take caution and be precarious. the supercilious girl acted with vicissitude when the perennial time came. the last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to know what it means, and yet he knows all the time that he doesn't. here is an odd (but entirely proper) use of a word, and a most sudden descent from a lofty philosophical altitude to a very practical and homely illustration: we should endeavor to avoid extremes--like those of wasps and bees. and here--with "zoological" and "geological" in his mind, but not ready to his tongue--the small scholar has innocently gone and let out a couple of secrets which ought never to have been divulged in any circumstances: there are a good many donkeys in theological gardens. some of the best fossils are found in theological gardens. under the head of "grammar" the little scholars furnish the following information: gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex. a verb is something to eat. adverbs should always be used as adjectives and adjectives as adverbs. every sentence and name of god must begin with a caterpillar. "caterpillar" is well enough, but capital letter would have been stricter. the following is a brave attempt at a solution, but it failed to liquify: when they are going to say some prose or poetry before they say the poetry or prose they must put a semicolon just after the introduction of the prose or poetry. the chapter on "mathematics" is full of fruit. from it i take a few samples--mainly in an unripe state: a straight line is any distance between two places. parallel lines are lines that can never meet until they run together. a circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle. things which are equal to each other are equal to anything else. to find the number of square feet in a room you multiply the room by the number of the feet. the product is the result. right you are. in the matter of geography this little book is unspeakably rich. the questions do not appear to have applied the microscope to the subject, as did those quoted by professor ravenstein; still, they proved plenty difficult enough without that. these pupils did not hunt with a microscope, they hunted with a shot-gun; this is shown by the crippled condition of the game they brought in: america is divided into the passiffic slope and the mississippi valey. north america is separated by spain. america consists from north to south about five hundred miles. the united states is quite a small country compared with some other countrys, but it about as industrious. the capital of the united states is long island. the five seaports of the u.s. are newfunlan and sanfrancisco. the principal products of the u.s. is earthquakes and volcanoes. the alaginnies are mountains in philadelphia. the rocky mountains are on the western side of philadelphia. cape hateras is a vast body of water surrounded by land and flowing into the gulf of mexico. mason and dixon's line is the equator. one of the leading industries of the united states is mollasses, book-covers, numbers, gas, teaching, lumber, manufacturers, paper-making, publishers, coal. in austria the principal occupation is gathering austrich feathers. gibraltar is an island built on a rock. russia is very cold and tyrannical. sicily is one of the sandwich islands. hindoostan flows through the ganges and empties into the mediterranean sea. ireland is called the emigrant isle because it is so beautiful and green. the width of the different zones europe lies in depend upon the surrounding country. the imports of a country are the things that are paid for, the exports are the things that are not. climate lasts all the time and weather only a few days. the two most famous volcanoes of europe are sodom and gomorrah. the chapter headed "analysis" shows us that the pupils in our public schools are not merely loaded up with those showy facts about geography, mathematics, and so on, and left in that incomplete state; no, there's machinery for clarifying and expanding their minds. they are required to take poems and analyze them, dig out their common sense, reduce them to statistics, and reproduce them in a luminous prose translation which shall tell you at a glance what the poet was trying to get at. one sample will do. here is a stanza from "the lady of the lake," followed by the pupil's impressive explanation of it: alone, but with unbated zeal, the horseman plied with scourge and steel; for jaded now and spent with toil, embossed with foam and dark with soil, while every gasp with sobs he drew, the laboring stag strained full in view. the man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full or sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight. i see, now, that i never understood that poem before. i have had glimpses of its meaning, it moments when i was not as ignorant with weariness as usual, but this is the first time the whole spacious idea of it ever filtered in sight. if i were a public-school pupil i would put those other studies aside and stick to analysis; for, after all, it is the thing to spread your mind. we come now to historical matters, historical remains, one might say. as one turns the pages he is impressed with the depth to which one date has been driven into the american child's head --1492. the date is there, and it is there to stay. and it is always at hand, always deliverable at a moment's notice. but the fact that belongs with it? that is quite another matter. only the date itself is familiar and sure: its vast fact has failed of lodgment. it would appear that whenever you ask a publicschool pupil when a thing--anything, no matter what--happened, and he is in doubt, he always rips out his 1492. he applies it to everything, from the landing of the ark to the introduction of the horse-car. well, after all, it is our first date, and so it is right enough to honor it, and pay the public schools to teach our children to honor it: george washington was born in 1492. washington wrote the declaration of independence in 1492. st. bartholemew was massacred in 1492. the brittains were the saxons who entered england in 1492 under julius caesar. the earth is 1492 miles in circumference. to proceed with "history" christopher columbus was called the father of his country. queen isabella of spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so that columbus could discover america. the indian wars were very desecrating to the country. the indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then scalping them. captain john smith has been styled the father of his country. his life was saved by his daughter pochahantas. the puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of america. the stamp act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be null and void. washington died in spain almost broken-hearted. his remains were taken to the cathedral in havana. gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas. john brown was a very good insane man who tried to get fugitives slaves into virginia. he captured all the inhabitants, but was finally conquered and condemned to his death. the confederasy was formed by the fugitive slaves. alfred the great reigned 872 years. he was distinguished for letting some buckwheat cakes burn, and the lady scolded him. henry eight was famous for being a great widower haveing lost several wives. lady jane grey studied greek and latin and was beheaded after a few days. john bright is noted for an incurable disease. lord james gordon bennet instigated the gordon riots. the middle ages come in between antiquity and posterity. luther introduced christianity into england a good many thousand years ago. his birthday was november 1883. he was once a pope. he lived at the time of the rebellion of worms. julius caesar is noted for his famous telegram dispatch i came i saw i conquered. julius caesar was really a very great man. he was a very great soldier and wrote a book for beginners in the latin. cleopatra was caused by the death of an asp which she dissolved in a wine cup. the only form of government in greece was a limited monkey. the persian war lasted about 500 years. greece had only 7 wise men. socrates . . . destroyed some statues and had to drink shamrock. here is a fact correctly stated; and yet it is phrased with such ingenious infelicity that it can be depended upon to convey misinformation every time it is uncarefully unread: by the salic law no woman or descendant of a woman could occupy the throne. to show how far a child can travel in history with judicious and diligent boosting in the public school, we select the following mosaic: abraham lincoln was born in wales in 1599. in the chapter headed "intellectual" i find a great number of most interesting statements. a sample or two may be found not amiss: bracebridge hall was written by henry irving. show bound was written by peter cooper. the house of the seven gables was written by lord bryant. edgar a. poe was a very curdling writer. cotton mather was a writer who invented the cotten gin and wrote histories. beowulf wrote the scriptures. ben johnson survived shakspeare in some respects. in the canterbury tale it gives account of king alfred on his way to the shrine of thomas bucket. chaucer was the father of english pottery. chaucer was a bland verse writer of the third century. chaucer was succeeded by h. wads. longfellow an american writer. his writings were chiefly prose and nearly one hundred years elapsed. shakspere translated the scriptures and it was called st. james because he did it. in the middle of the chapter i find many pages of information concerning shakespeare's plays, milton's works, and those of bacon, addison, samuel johnson, fielding, richardson, sterne, smollett, de foe, locke, pope, swift, goldsmith, burns, cowper, wordsworth, gibbon, byron, coleridge, hood, scott, macaulay, george eliot, dickens, bulwer, thackeray, browning, mrs. browning, tennyson, and disraeli--a fact which shows that into the restricted stomach of the public-school pupil is shoveled every year the blood, bone, and viscera of a gigantic literature, and the same is there digested and disposed of in a most successful and characteristic and gratifying public-school way. i have space for but a trifling few of the results: lord byron was the son of an heiress and a drunken man. wm. wordsworth wrote the barefoot boy and imitations on immortality. gibbon wrote a history of his travels in italy. this was original. george eliot left a wife and children who mourned greatly for his genius. george eliot miss mary evans mrs. cross mrs. lewis was the greatest female poet unless george sands is made an exception of. bulwell is considered a good writer. sir walter scott charles bronte alfred the great and johnson were the first great novelists. thomas babington makorlay graduated at harvard and then studied law, he was raised to the peerage as baron in 1557 and died in 1776. here are two or three miscellaneous facts that may be of value, if taken in moderation: homer's writings are homer's essays virgil the aenid and paradise lost some people say that these poems were not written by homer but by another man of the same name. a sort of sadness kind of shone in bryant's poems. holmes is a very profligate and amusing writer. when the public-school pupil wrestles with the political features of the great republic, they throw him sometimes: a bill becomes a law when the president vetoes it. the three departments of the government is the president rules the world, the governor rules the state, the mayor rules the city. the first conscientious congress met in philadelphia. the constitution of the united states was established to ensure domestic hostility. truth crushed to earth will rise again. as follows: the constitution of the united states is that part of the book at the end which nobody reads. and here she rises once more and untimely. there should be a limit to public-school instruction; it cannot be wise or well to let the young find out everything: congress is divided into civilized half civilized and savage. here are some results of study in music and oratory: an interval in music is the distance on the keyboard from one piano to the next. a rest means you are not to sing it. emphasis is putting more distress on one word than another. the chapter on "physiology" contains much that ought not to be lost to science: physillogigy is to study about your bones stummick and vertebry. occupations which are injurious to health are cabolic acid gas which is impure blood. we have an upper and lower skin. the lower skin moves all the time and the upper skin moves when we do. the body is mostly composed of water and about one half is avaricious tissue. the stomach is a small pear-shaped bone situated in the body. the gastric juice keeps the bones from creaking. the chyle flows up the middle of the backbone and reaches the heart where it meets the oxygen and is purified. the salivary glands are used to salivate the body. in the stomach starch is changed to cane sugar and cane sugar to sugar cane. the olfactory nerve enters the cavity of the orbit and is developed into the special sense of hearing. the growth of a tooth begins in the back of the mouth and extends to the stomach. if we were on a railroad track and a train was coming the train would deafen our ears so that we couldn't see to get off the track. if, up to this point, none of my quotations have added flavor to the johnsonian anecdote at the head of this article, let us make another attempt: the theory that intuitive truths are discovered by the light of nature originated from st. john's interpretation of a passage in the gospel of plato. the weight of the earth is found by comparing a mass of known lead with that of a mass of unknown lead. to find the weight of the earth take the length of a degree on a meridian and multiply by 6 1/2 pounds. the spheres are to each other as the squares of their homologous sides. a body will go just as far in the first second as the body will go plus the force of gravity and that's equal to twice what the body will go. specific gravity is the weight to be compared weight of an equal volume of or that is the weight of a body compared with the weight of an equal volume. the law of fluid pressure divide the different forms of organized bodies by the form of attraction and the number increased will be the form. inertia is that property of bodies by virtue of which it cannot change its own condition of rest or motion. in other words it is the negative quality of passiveness either in recoverable latency or insipient latescence. if a laugh is fair here, not the struggling child, nor the unintelligent teacher--or rather the unintelligent boards, committees, and trustees--are the proper target for it. all through this little book one detects the signs of a certain probable fact--that a large part of the pupil's "instruction" consists in cramming him with obscure and wordy "rules" which he does not understand and has no time to understand. it would be as useful to cram him with brickbats; they would at least stay. in a town in the interior of new york, a few years ago, a gentleman set forth a mathematical problem and proposed to give a prize to every public-school pupil who should furnish the correct solution of it. twenty-two of the brightest boys in the public schools entered the contest. the problem was not a very difficult one for pupils of their mathematical rank and standing, yet they all failed--by a hair--through one trifling mistake or another. some searching questions were asked, when it turned out that these lads were as glib as parrots with the "rules," but could not reason out a single rule or explain the principle underlying it. their memories had been stocked, but not their understandings. it was a case of brickbat culture, pure and simple. there are several curious "compositions" in the little book, and we must make room for one. it is full of naivete, brutal truth, and unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy's composition i think i have ever seen: on girls girls are very stuck up and dignefied in their maner and be have your. they think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and rags. they cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of guns. they stay at home all the time and go to church on sunday. they are al-ways sick. they are always funy and making fun of boy's hands and they say how dirty. they cant play marbels. i pity them poor things. they make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. i dont beleave they ever kiled a cat or anything. they look out every nite and say oh ant the moon lovely. thir is one thing i have not told and that is they al-ways now their lessons bettern boys. from mr. edward channing's recent article in science: the marked difference between the books now being produced by french, english, and american travelers, on the one hand, and german explorers, on the other, is too great to escape attention. that difference is due entirely to the fact that in school and university the german is taught, in the first place to see, and in the second place to understand what he does see. -----------------------------------------------------------------a simplified alphabet (this article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last writing done by mark twain on any impersonal subject.) i have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling toward simplified spelling, from the beginning of the movement three years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that. it seemed to me to merely propose to substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of patching and plugging poor old dental relics with cement and gold and porcelain paste; what was really needed was a new set of teeth. that is to say, a new alphabet. the heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. it doesn't know how to spell, and can't be taught. in this it is like all other alphabets except one--the phonographic. this is the only competent alphabet in the world. it can spell and correctly pronounce any word in our language. that admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired alphabet, can be learned in an hour or two. in a week the student can learn to write it with some little facility, and to read it with considerable ease. i know, for i saw it tried in a public school in nevada forty-five years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that it has remained in my memory ever since. i wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed) character. i mean simply the alphabet; simply the consonants and the vowels--i don't mean any reductions or abbreviations of them, such as the shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and speed. no, i would spell every word out. i will insert the alphabet here as i find it in burnz's phonic shorthand. [figure 1] it is arranged on the basis of isaac pitman's phonography. isaac pitman was the originator and father of scientific phonography. it is used throughout the globe. it was a memorable invention. he made it public seventythree years ago. the firm of isaac pitman & sons, new york, still exists, and they continue the master's work. what should we gain? first of all, we could spell definitely--and correctly--any word you please, just by the sound of it. we can't do that with our present alphabet. for instance, take a simple, every-day word phthisis. if we tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it tysis, and be laughed at by every educated person. secondly, we should gain in reduction of labor in writing. simplified spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several hundred words, but the new spelling must be learned. you can't spell them by the sound; you must get them out of the book. but even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language, the phonographic alphabet would still beat the simplified speller "hands down" in the important matter of economy of labor. i will illustrate: present form: through, laugh, highland. simplified form: thru, laff, hyland. phonographic form: [figure 2] to write the word "through," the pen has to make twenty-one strokes. to write the word "thru," then pen has to make twelve strokes-a good saving. to write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only three strokes. to write the word "laugh," the pen has to make fourteen strokes. to write "laff," the pen has to make the same number of strokes--no labor is saved to the penman. to write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only three strokes. to write the word "highland," the pen has to make twenty-two strokes. to write "hyland," the pen has to make eighteen strokes. to write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only five strokes. [figure 3] to write the words "phonographic alphabet," the pen has to make fifty-three strokes. to write "fonografic alfabet," the pen has to make fifty strokes. to the penman, the saving in labor is insignificant. to write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only seventeen strokes. without the vowels, only thirteen strokes. [figure 4] the vowels are hardly necessary, this time. we make five pen-strokes in writing an m. thus: [figure 5] a stroke down; a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final stroke down. total, five. the phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m with a single stroke--a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home drunk and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody that goes along will see him and say, alas! when our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located, it has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. but never mind about the connecting strokes--let them go. without counting them, the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty pen-strokes for their construction--about three pen-strokes per letter. it is three times the number required by the phonographic alphabet. it requires but one stroke for each letter. my writing-gait is--well, i don't know what it is, but i will time myself and see. result: it is twenty-four words per minute. i don't mean composing; i mean copying. there isn't any definite composing-gait. very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour--say 1,500. if i could use the phonographic character with facility i could do the 1,500 in twenty minutes. i could do nine hours' copying in three hours; i could do three years' copying in one year. also, if i had a typewriting machine with the phonographic alphabet on it--oh, the miracles i could do! i am not pretending to write that character well. i have never had a lesson, and i am copying the letters from the book. but i can accomplish my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a good and clear idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could discard our present alphabet and put this better one in its place--using it in books, newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen. [figure 6] --man dog horse. i think it is graceful and would look comely in print. and consider--once more, i beg--what a labor-saver it is! ten pen-strokes with the one system to convey those three words above, and thirty-three by the other! [figure 6] i mean, in some ways, not in all. i suppose i might go so far as to say in most ways, and be within the facts, but never mind; let it go at some. one of the ways in which it exercises this birthright is--as i think--continuing to use our laughable alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a rational one at hand, to be had for the taking. it has taken five hundred years to simplify some of chaucer's rotten spelling--if i may be allowed to use to frank a term as that--and it will take five hundred years more to get our exasperating new simplified corruptions accepted and running smoothly. and we sha'n't be any better off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have the privilege the simplifiers are exercising now: anybody can change the spelling that wants to. but you can't change the phonographic spelling; there isn't any way. it will always follow the sound. if you want to change the spelling, you have to change the sound first. mind, i myself am a simplified speller; i belong to that unhappy guild that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old alphabet by reducing his whiskey. well, it will improve him. when they get through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will be only half drunk. above that condition their system can never lift him. there is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but to take away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with pitman's wholesome and undiseased alphabet. one great drawback to simplified spelling is, that in print a simplified word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a whole squadron of the simplified together the spectacle is very nearly unendurable. the da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled to the bezair asspekt of the simplified kombynashuns, but--if i may be allowed the expression--is it worth the wasted time? [figure 7] to see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed offends the eye, and also takes the expression out of the words. la on, makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf! it doesn't thrill you as it used to do. the simplifications have sucked the thrill all out of it. but a written character with which we are not acquainted does not offend us--greek, hebrew, russian, arabic, and the others--they have an interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. and this is true of hieroglyphics, as well. there is something pleasant and engaging about the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. the mystery hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can't come across a printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we could read it. very well, what i am offering for acceptance and adopting is not shorthand, but longhand, written with the shorthand alphabet unreached. you can write three times as many words in a minute with it as you can write with our alphabet. and so, in a way, it is properly a shorthand. it has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting look. i will write something in it, in my rude and untaught way: [figure 8] even when _i_ do it it comes out prettier than it does in simplified spelling. yes, and in the simplified it costs one hundred and twenty-three pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it costs only twenty-nine. [figure 9] is probably [figure 10]. let us hope so, anyway. as concerns interpreting the deity i this line of hieroglyphics was for fourteen years the despair of all the scholars who labored over the mysteries of the rosetta stone: [figure 1] after five years of study champollion translated it thus: therefore let the worship of epiphanes be maintained in all the temples, this upon pain of death. that was the twenty-forth translation that had been furnished by scholars. for a time it stood. but only for a time. then doubts began to assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors. three years of patient work produced eleven new translations; among them, this, by gr:unfeldt, was received with considerable favor: the horse of epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this upon pain of death. but the following rendering, by gospodin, was received by the learned world with yet greater favor: the priest shall explain the wisdom of epiphanes to all these people, and these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of death. seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely varying renderings were scored--none of them quite convincing. but now, at last, came rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation which was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct version, and his name became famous in a day. so famous, indeed, that even the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the achievement itself make that not even the noise of the monumental political event of that same year--the flight from elba--was able to smother it to silence. rawlinson's version reads as follows: therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of epiphanes, but turn and follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple's peace, and soften for thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death. here is another difficult text: [figure 2] it is demotic--a style of egyptian writing and a phase of the language which has perished from the knowledge of all men twenty-five hundred years before the christian era. our red indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon our crags and boulders. it has taken our most gifted and painstaking students two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures; yet there are still two little lines of hieroglyphics among the figures grouped upon the dighton rocks which they have not succeeds in interpreting to their satisfaction. these: [figure 3] the suggested solutions are practically innumerable; they would fill a book. thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover the secret of god that our difficulties disappear. it was always so. in antique roman times it was the custom of the deity to try to conceal his intentions in the entrails of birds, and this was patiently and hopefully continued century after century, although the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded instance. the augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child can read coarse print. roman history is full of the marvels of interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. these strange and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our admiration. those men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery instantly. if the rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it would have defeated them, but entrails had no embarrassments for them. entrails have gone out, now--entrails and dreams. it was at last found out that as hiding-places for the divine intentions they were inadequate. a part of the wall of valletri in former times been struck with thunder, the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town would some time or other arrive at supreme power.-bohn's suetonius, p. 138. "some time or other." it looks indefinite, but no matter, it happened, all the same; one needed only to wait, and be patient, and keep watch, then he would find out that the thunderstroke had caesar augustus in mind, and had come to give notice. there were other advance-advertisements. one of them appeared just before caesar augustus was born, and was most poetic and touching and romantic in its feelings and aspects. it was a dream. it was dreamed by caesar augustus's mother, and interpreted at the usual rates: atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to the stars and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and earth.--suetonius, p. 139. that was in the augur's line, and furnished him no difficulties, but it would have taken rawlinson and champollion fourteen years to make sure of what it meant, because they would have been surprised and dizzy. it would have been too late to be valuable, then, and the bill for service would have been barred by the statute of limitation. in those old roman days a gentleman's education was not complete until he had taken a theological course at the seminary and learned how to translate entrails. caesar augustus's education received this final polish. all through his life, whenever he had poultry on the menu he saved the interiors and kept himself informed of the deity's plans by exercising upon those interiors the arts of augury. in his first consulship, while he was observing the auguries, twelve vultures presented themselves, as they had done to romulus. and when he offered sacrifice, the livers of all the victims were folded inward in the lower part; a circumstance which was regarded by those present who had skill in things of that nature, as an indubitable prognostic of great and wonderful fortune.--suetonius, p. 141. "indubitable" is a strong word, but no doubt it was justified, if the livers were really turned that way. in those days chicken livers were strangely and delicately sensitive to coming events, no matter how far off they might be; and they could never keep still, but would curl and squirm like that, particularly when vultures came and showed interest in that approaching great event and in breakfast. ii we may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years, which brings us down to enlightened christian times and the troubled days of king stephen of england. the augur has had his day and has been long ago forgotten; the priest had fallen heir to his trade. king henry is dead; stephen, that bold and outrageous person, comes flying over from normandy to steal the throne from henry's daughter. he accomplished his crime, and henry of huntington, a priest of high degree, mourns over it in his chronicle. the archbishop of canterbury consecrated stephen: "wherefore the lord visited the archbishop with the same judgment which he had inflicted upon him who struck jeremiah the great priest: he died with a year." stephen's was the greater offense, but stephen could wait; not so the archbishop, apparently. the kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress, horror, and woe rose in every quarter. that was the result of stephen's crime. these unspeakable conditions continued during nineteen years. then stephen died as comfortably as any man ever did, and was honorably buried. it makes one pity the poor archbishop, and with that he, too, could have been let off as leniently. how did henry of huntington know that the archbishop was sent to his grave by judgment of god for consecrating stephen? he does not explain. neither does he explain why stephen was awarded a pleasanter death than he was entitled to, while the aged king henry, his predecessor, who had ruled england thirty-five years to the people's strongly worded satisfaction, was condemned to close his life in circumstances most distinctly unpleasant, inconvenient, and disagreeable. his was probably the most uninspiring funeral that is set down in history. there is not a detail about it that is attractive. it seems to have been just the funeral for stephen, and even at this far-distant day it is matter of just regret that by an indiscretion the wrong man got it. whenever god punishes a man, henry of huntington knows why it was done, and tells us; and his pen is eloquent with admiration; but when a man has earned punishment, and escapes, he does not explain. he is evidently puzzled, but he does not say anything. i think it is often apparent that he is pained by these discrepancies, but loyally tries his best not to show it. when he cannot praise, he delivers himself of a silence so marked that a suspicious person could mistake it for suppressed criticism. however, he has plenty of opportunities to feel contented with the way things go--his book is full of them. king david of scotland . . . under color of religion caused his followers to deal most barbarously with the english. they ripped open women, tossed children on the points of spears, butchered priests at the altars, and, cutting off the heads from the images on crucifixes, placed them on the bodies of the slain, while in exchange they fixed on the crucifixes the heads of their victims. wherever the scots came, there was the same scene of horror and cruelty: women shrieking, old men lamenting, amid the groans of the dying and the despair of the living. but the english got the victory. then the chief of the men of lothian fell, pierced by an arrow, and all his followers were put to flight. for the almighty was offended at them and their strength was rent like a cobweb. offended at them for what? for committing those fearful butcheries? no, for that was the common custom on both sides, and not open to criticism. then was it for doing the butcheries "under cover of religion"? no, that was not it; religious feeling was often expressed in that fervent way all through those old centuries. the truth is, he was not offended at "them" at all; he was only offended at their king, who had been false to an oath. then why did not he put the punishment upon the king instead of upon "them"? it is a difficult question. one can see by the chronicle that the "judgments" fell rather customarily upon the wrong person, but henry of huntington does not explain why. here is one that went true; the chronicler's satisfaction in it is not hidden: in the month of august, providence displayed its justice in a remarkable manner; for two of the nobles who had converted monasteries into fortifications, expelling the monks, their sin being the same, met with a similar punishment. robert marmion was one, godfrey de mandeville the other. robert marmion, issuing forth against the enemy, was slain under the walls of the monastery, being the only one who fell, though he was surrounded by his troops. dying excommunicated, he became subject to death everlasting. in like manner earl godfrey was singled out among his followers, and shot with an arrow by a common foot-soldier. he made light of the wound, but he died of it in a few days, under excommunication. see here the like judgment of god, memorable through all ages! the exaltation jars upon me; not because of the death of the men, for they deserved that, but because it is death eternal, in white-hot fire and flame. it makes my flesh crawl. i have not known more than three men, or perhaps four, in my whole lifetime, *whom i would rejoice to see writhing in those fires for even a year, let alone forever. i believe i would relent before the year was up, and get them out if i could. i think that in the long run, if a man's wife and babies, who had not harmed me, should come crying and pleading, i couldn't stand it; i know i should forgive him and let him go, even if he had violated a monastery. henry of huntington has been watching godfrey and marmion for nearly seven hundred and fifty years, now, but i couldn't do it, i know i couldn't. i am soft and gentle in my nature, and i should have forgiven them seventy-and-seven times, long ago. and i think god has; but this is only an opinion, and not authoritative, like henry of huntington's interpretations. i could learn to interpret, but i have never tried; i get so little time. all through his book henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions of god, and with the reasons for his intentions. sometimes--very often, in fact--the act follows the intention after such a wide interval of time that one wonders how henry could fit one act out of a hundred to one intention out of a hundred and get the thing right every time when there was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. sometimes a man offends the deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years later; meantime he was committed a million other crimes: no matter, henry can pick out the one that brought the worms. worms were generally used in those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people. this has gone out, now, but in old times it was a favorite. it always indicated a case of "wrath." for instance: . . . the just god avenging robert fitzhilderbrand's perfidy, a worm grew in his vitals, which gradually gnawing its way through his intestines fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment brought to his end. --(p. 400.) it was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it was a particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. some authorities think it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt. however, one thing we do know; and that is that that worm had been due years and years. robert f. had violated a monastery once; he had committed unprintable crimes since, and they had been permitted--under disapproval--but the ravishment of the monastery had not been forgotten nor forgiven, and the worm came at last. why were these reforms put off in this strange way? what was to be gained by it? did henry of huntington really know his facts, or was he only guessing? sometimes i am half persuaded that he is only a guesser, and not a good one. the divine wisdom must surely be of the better quality than he makes it out to be. five hundred years before henry's time some forecasts of the lord's purposes were furnished by a pope, who perceived, by certain perfectly trustworthy signs furnished by the deity for the information of his familiars, that the end of the world was . . . about to come. but as this end of the world draws near many things are at hand which have not before happened, as changes in the air, terrible signs in the heavens, tempests out of the common order of the seasons, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places; all which will not happen in our days, but after our days all will come to pass. still, the end was so near that these signs were "sent before that we may be careful for our souls and be found prepared to meet the impending judgment." that was thirteen hundred years ago. this is really no improvement on the work of the roman augurs. ------------------------------------------------------------------concerning tobacco as concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. and the chiefest is this--that there is a standard governing the matter, whereas there is nothing of the kind. each man's own preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him. a congress of all the tobacco-lovers in the world could not elect a standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would even much influence us. the next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. he hasn't. he thinks he has, but he hasn't. he thinks he can tell what he regards as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one--but he can't. he goes by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. one may palm off the worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears his brand he will smoke it contentedly and never suspect. children of twenty-five, who have seven years experience, try to tell me what is a good cigar and what isn't. me, who never learned to smoke, but always smoked; me, who came into the world asking for a light. no one can tell me what is a good cigar--for me. i am the only judge. people who claim to know say that i smoke the worst cigars in the world. they bring their own cigars when they come to my house. they betray an unmanly terror when i offer them a cigar; they tell lies and hurry away to meet engagements which they have not made when they are threatened with the hospitalities of my box. now then, observe what superstition, assisted by a man's reputation, can do. i was to have twelve personal friends to supper one night. one of them was as notorious for costly and elegant cigars as i was for cheap and devilish ones. i called at his house and when no one was looking borrowed a double handful of his very choicest; cigars which cost him forty cents apiece and bore red-and-gold labels in sign of their nobility. i removed the labels and put the cigars into a box with my favorite brand on it--a brand which those people all knew, and which cowed them as men are cowed by an epidemic. they took these cigars when offered at the end of the supper, and lit them and sternly struggled with them--in dreary silence, for hilarity died when the fell brand came into view and started around--but their fortitude held for a short time only; then they made excuses and filed out, treading on one another's heels with indecent eagerness; and in the morning when i went out to observe results the cigars lay all between the front door and the gate. all except one--that one lay in the plate of the man from whom i had cabbaged the lot. one or two whiffs was all he could stand. he told me afterward that some day i would get shot for giving people that kind of cigars to smoke. am i certain of my own standard? perfectly; yes, absolutely --unless somebody fools me by putting my brand on some other kind of cigar; for no doubt i am like the rest, and know my cigar by the brand instead of by the flavor. however, my standard is a pretty wide one and covers a good deal of territory. to me, almost any cigar is good that nobody else will smoke, and to me almost all cigars are bad that other people consider good. nearly any cigar will do me, except a havana. people think they hurt my feelings when then come to my house with their life preservers on--i mean, with their own cigars in their pockets. it is an error; i take care of myself in a similar way. when i go into danger--that is, into rich people's houses, where, in the nature of things, they will have high-tariff cigars, red-and-gilt girded and nested in a rosewood box along with a damp sponge, cigars which develop a dismal black ash and burn down the side and smell, and will grow hot to the fingers, and will go on growing hotter and hotter, and go on smelling more and more infamously and unendurably the deeper the fire tunnels down inside below the thimbleful of honest tobacco that is in the front end, the furnisher of it praising it all the time and telling you how much the deadly thing cost--yes, when i go into that sort of peril i carry my own defense along; i carry my own brand--twenty-seven cents a barrel--and i live to see my family again. i may seem to light his red-gartered cigar, but that is only for courtesy's sake; i smuggle it into my pocket for the poor, of whom i know many, and light one of my own; and while he praises it i join in, but when he says it cost forty-five cents i say nothing, for i know better. however, to say true, my tastes are so catholic that i have never seen any cigars that i really could not smoke, except those that cost a dollar apiece. i have examined those and know that they are made of dog-hair, and not good dog-hair at that. i have a thoroughly satisfactory time in europe, for all over the continent one finds cigars which not even the most hardened newsboys in new york would smoke. i brought cigars with me, the last time; i will not do that any more. in italy, as in france, the government is the only cigar-peddler. italy has three or four domestic brands: the minghetti, the trabuco, the virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification of the virginia. the minghettis are large and comely, and cost three dollars and sixty cents a hundred; i can smoke a hundred in seven days and enjoy every one of them. the trabucos suit me, too; i don't remember the price. but one has to learn to like the virginia, nobody is born friendly to it. it looks like a rattail file, but smokes better, some think. it has a straw through it; you pull this out, and it leaves a flue, otherwise there would be no draught, not even as much as there is to a nail. some prefer a nail at first. however, i like all the french, swiss, german, and italian domestic cigars, and have never cared to inquire what they are made of; and nobody would know, anyhow, perhaps. there is even a brand of european smoking-tobacco that i like. it is a brand used by the italian peasants. it is loose and dry and black, and looks like tea-grounds. when the fire is applied it expands, and climbs up and towers above the pipe, and presently tumbles off inside of one's vest. the tobacco itself is cheap, but it raises the insurance. it is as i remarked in the beginning--the taste for tobacco is a matter of superstition. there are no standards--no real standards. each man's preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him. -----------------------------------------------------------------the bee it was maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee. i mean, in the psychical and in the poetical way. i had had a business introduction earlier. it was when i was a boy. it is strange that i should remember a formality like that so long; it must be nearly sixty years. bee scientists always speak of the bee as she. it is because all the important bees are of that sex. in the hive there is one married bee, called the queen; she has fifty thousand children; of these, about one hundred are sons; the rest are daughters. some of the daughters are young maids, some are old maids, and all are virgins and remain so. every spring the queen comes out of the hive and flies away with one of her sons and marries him. the honeymoon lasts only an hour or two; then the queen divorces her husband and returns home competent to lay two million eggs. this will be enough to last the year, but not more than enough, because hundreds of bees are drowned every day, and other hundreds are eaten by birds, and it is the queen's business to keep the population up to standard --say, fifty thousand. she must always have that many children on hand and efficient during the busy season, which is summer, or winter would catch the community short of food. she lays from two thousand to three thousand eggs a day, according to the demand; and she must exercise judgment, and not lay more than are needed in a slim flower-harvest, nor fewer than are required in a prodigal one, or the board of directors will dethrone her and elect a queen that has more sense. there are always a few royal heirs in stock and ready to take her place--ready and more than anxious to do it, although she is their own mother. these girls are kept by themselves, and are regally fed and tended from birth. no other bees get such fine food as they get, or live such a high and luxurious life. by consequence they are larger and longer and sleeker than their working sisters. and they have a curved sting, shaped like a scimitar, while the others have a straight one. a common bee will sting any one or anybody, but a royalty stings royalties only. a common bee will sting and kill another common bee, for cause, but when it is necessary to kill the queen other ways are employed. when a queen has grown old and slack and does not lay eggs enough one of her royal daughters is allowed to come to attack her, the rest of the bees looking on at the duel and seeing fair play. it is a duel with the curved stings. if one of the fighters gets hard pressed and gives it up and runs, she is brought back and must try again--once, maybe twice; then, if she runs yet once more for her life, judicial death is her portion; her children pack themselves into a ball around her person and hold her in that compact grip two or three days, until she starves to death or is suffocated. meantime the victor bee is receiving royal honors and performing the one royal function--laying eggs. as regards the ethics of the judicial assassination of the queen, that is a matter of politics, and will be discussed later, in its proper place. during substantially the whole of her short life of five or six years the queen lives in egyptian darkness and stately seclusion of the royal apartments, with none about her but plebeian servants, who give her empty lip-affection in place of the love which her heart hungers for; who spy upon her in the interest of her waiting heirs, and report and exaggerate her defects and deficiencies to them; who fawn upon her and flatter her to her face and slander her behind her back; who grovel before her in the day of her power and forsake her in her age and weakness. there she sits, friendless, upon her throne through the long night of her life, cut off from the consoling sympathies and sweet companionship and loving endearments which she craves, by the gilded barriers of her awful rank; a forlorn exile in her own house and home, weary object of formal ceremonies and machine-made worship, winged child of the sun, native to the free air and the blue skies and the flowery fields, doomed by the splendid accident of her birth to trade this priceless heritage for a black captivity, a tinsel grandeur, and a loveless life, with shame and insult at the end and a cruel death--and condemned by the human instinct in her to hold the bargain valuable! huber, lubbock, maeterlinck--in fact, all the great authorities--are agreed in denying that the bee is a member of the human family. i do not know why they have done this, but i think it is from dishonest motives. why, the innumerable facts brought to light by their own painstaking and exhaustive experiments prove that if there is a master fool in the world, it is the bee. that seems to settle it. but that is the way of the scientist. he will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy in his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all--that his accumulation proves an entirely different thing. when you point out this miscarriage to him he does not answer your letters; when you call to convince him, the servant prevaricates and you do not get in. scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them. to be strictly fair, i will concede that now and then one of them will answer your letter, but when they do they avoid the issue--you cannot pin them down. when i discovered that the bee was human i wrote about it to all those scientists whom i have just mentioned. for evasions, i have seen nothing to equal the answers i got. after the queen, the personage next in importance in the hive is the virgin. the virgins are fifty thousand or one hundred thousand in number, and they are the workers, the laborers. no work is done, in the hive or out of it, save by them. the males do not work, the queen does no work, unless laying eggs is work, but it does not seem so to me. there are only two million of them, anyway, and all of five months to finish the contract in. the distribution of work in a hive is as cleverly and elaborately specialized as it is in a vast american machine-shop or factory. a bee that has been trained to one of the many and various industries of the concern doesn't know how to exercise any other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in anything outside of her profession. she is as human as a cook; and if you should ask the cook to wait on the table, you know what will happen. cooks will play the piano if you like, but they draw the line there. in my time i have asked a cook to chop wood, and i know about these things. even the hired girl has her frontiers; true, they are vague, they are ill-defined, even flexible, but they are there. this is not conjecture; it is founded on the absolute. and then the butler. you ask the butler to wash the dog. it is just as i say; there is much to be learned in these ways, without going to books. books are very well, but books do not cover the whole domain of esthetic human culture. pride of profession is one of the boniest bones in existence, if not the boniest. without doubt it is so in the hive. taming the bicycle in the early eighties mark twain learned to ride one of the old high-wheel bicycles of that period. he wrote an account of his experience, but did not offer it for publication. the form of bicycle he rode long ago became antiquated, but in the humor of his pleasantry is a quality which does not grow old. a. b. p. i i thought the matter over, and concluded i could do it. so i went down a bought a barrel of pond's extract and a bicycle. the expert came home with me to instruct me. we chose the back yard, for the sake of privacy, and went to work. mine was not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt--a fifty-inch, with the pedals shortened up to forty-eight--and skittish, like any other colt. the expert explained the thing's points briefly, then he got on its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. he said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and so we would leave that to the last. but he was in error there. he found, to his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to get me on to the machine and stand out of the way; i could get off, myself. although i was wholly inexperienced, i dismounted in the best time on record. he was on that side, shoving up the machine; we all came down with a crash, he at the bottom, i next, and the machine on top. we examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. this was hardly believable. yet the expert assured me that it was true; in fact, the examination proved it. i was partly to realize, then, how admirably these things are constructed. we applied some pond's extract, and resumed. the expert got on the other side to shove up this time, but i dismounted on that side; so the result was as before. the machine was not hurt. we oiled ourselves again, and resumed. this time the expert took up a sheltered position behind, but somehow or other we landed on him again. he was full of admiration; said it was abnormal. she was all right, not a scratch on her, not a timber started anywhere. i said it was wonderful, while we were greasing up, but he said that when i came to know these steel spider-webs i would realize that nothing but dynamite could cripple them. then he limped out to position, and we resumed once more. this time the expert took up the position of short-stop, and got a man to shove up behind. we got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a brick, and i went out over the top of the tiller and landed, head down, on the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in the air between me and the sun. it was well it came down on us, for that broke the fall, and it was not injured. five days later i got out and was carried down to the hospital, and found the expert doing pretty fairly. in a few more days i was quite sound. i attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on something soft. some recommend a feather bed, but i think an expert is better. the expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. it was a good idea. these four held the graceful cobweb upright while i climbed into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either side of me while the expert pushed behind; all hands assisted at the dismount. the bicycle had what is called the "wabbles," and had them very badly. in order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me, and in every instance the thing required was against nature. that is to say, that whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and breeding moved me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and unsuspected law of physics required that it be done in just the other way. i perceived by this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been the life-long education of my body and members. they were steeped in ignorance; they knew nothing--nothing which it could profit them to know. for instance, if i found myself falling to the right, i put the tiller hard down the other way, by a quite natural impulse, and so violated a law, and kept on going down. the law required the opposite thing--the big wheel must be turned in the direction in which you are falling. it is hard to believe this, when you are told it. and not merely hard to believe it, but impossible; it is opposed to all your notions. and it is just as hard to do it, after you do come to believe it. believing it, and knowing by the most convincing proof that it is true, does not help it: you can't any more do it than you could before; you can neither force nor persuade yourself to do it at first. the intellect has to come to the front, now. it has to teach the limbs to discard their old education and adopt the new. the steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. at the end of each lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what that something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. it is not like studying german, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. no--and i see now, plainly enough, that the great pity about the german language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. there is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. but i also see, by what i have learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn german is by the bicycling method. that is to say, take a grip on one villainy of it at a time, leaving that one half learned. when you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next task--how to mount it. you do it in this way: you hop along behind it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the tiller with your hands. at the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off. you get up and do it again; and once more; and then several times. by this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (i say tiller because it is a tiller; "handle-bar" is a lamely descriptive phrase). so you steer along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then that, and down you go again. but you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are getting to light on one foot or the other with considerable certainty. six more attempts and six more falls make you perfect. you land in the saddle comfortably, next time, and stay there--that is, if you can be content to let your legs dangle, and leave the pedals alone a while; but if you grab at once for the pedals, you are gone again. you soon learn to wait a little and perfect your balance before reaching for the pedals; then the mounting-art is acquired, is complete, and a little practice will make it simple and easy to you, though spectators ought to keep off a rod or two to one side, along at first, if you have nothing against them. and now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind first of all. it is quite easy to tell one how to do the voluntary dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently undifficult; let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you would from a horse. it certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn't. i don't know why it isn't but it isn't. try as you may, you don't get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. you make a spectacle of yourself every time. ii during the eight days i took a daily lesson an hour and a half. at the end of this twelve working-hours' appreticeship i was graduated--in the rough. i was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without outside help. it seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement. it takes considerably longer than that to learn horseback-riding in the rough. now it is true that i could have learned without a teacher, but it would have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. the self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done. there are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life--life's "experiences"--are in some way useful to us. i wish i could find out how. i never knew one of them to happen twice. they always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side. if personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it wouldn't seem likely that you could trip methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more that likely that one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. now the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody whether it was a good thing to take hold of. but that would not suit him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that go by experience; he would want to examine for himself. and he would find, for his instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it would be useful to him, too, and would leave his education in quite a complete and rounded-out condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it. but we wander from the point. however, get a teacher; it saves much time and pond's extract. before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and i was able to inform him that i hadn't any. he said that that was a defect which would make up-hill wheeling pretty difficult for me at first; but he also said the bicycle would soon remove it. the contrast between his muscles and mine was quite marked. he wanted to test mine, so i offered my biceps--which was my best. it almost made him smile. he said, "it is pulpy, and soft, and yielding, and rounded; it evades pressure, and glides from under the fingers; in the dark a body might think it was an oyster in a rag." perhaps this made me look grieved, for he added, briskly: "oh, that's all right, you needn't worry about that; in a little while you can't tell it from a petrified kidney. just go right along with your practice; you're all right." then he left me, and i started out alone to seek adventures. you don't really have to seek them--that is nothing but a phrase --they come to you. i chose a reposeful sabbath-day sort of a back street which was about thirty yards wide between the curbstones. i knew it was not wide enough; still, i thought that by keeping strict watch and wasting no space unnecessarily i could crowd through. of course i had trouble mounting the machine, entirely on my own responsibility, with no encouraging moral support from the outside, no sympathetic instructor to say, "good! now you're doing well--good again--don't hurry--there, now, you're all right --brace up, go ahead." in place of this i had some other support. this was a boy, who was perched on a gate-post munching a hunk of maple sugar. he was full of interest and comment. the first time i failed and went down he said that if he was me he would dress up in pillows, that's what he would do. the next time i went down he advised me to go and learn to ride a tricycle first. the third time i collapsed he said he didn't believe i could stay on a horse-car. but the next time i succeeded, and got clumsily under way in a weaving, tottering, uncertain fashion, and occupying pretty much all of the street. my slow and lumbering gait filled the boy to the chin with scorn, and he sung out, "my, but don't he rip along!" then he got down from his post and loafed along the sidewalk, still observing and occasionally commenting. presently he dropped into my wake and followed along behind. a little girl passed by, balancing a wash-board on her head, and giggled, and seemed about to make a remark, but the boy said, rebukingly, "let him alone, he's going to a funeral." i have been familiar with that street for years, and had always supposed it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now informed me, to my surprise. the bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and acute as a spirit-level in the detecting the delicate and vanishing shades of difference in these matters. it notices a rise where your untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline which water will run down. i was toiling up a slight rise, but was not aware of it. it made me tug and pant and perspire; and still, labor as i might, the machine came almost to a standstill every little while. at such times the boy would say: "that's it! take a rest-there ain't no hurry. they can't hold the funeral without you." stones were a bother to me. even the smallest ones gave me a panic when i went over them. i could hit any kind of a stone, no matter how small, if i tried to miss it; and of course at first i couldn't help trying to do that. it is but natural. it is part of the ass that is put in us all, for some inscrutable reason. it was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to round to. this is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to succeed. your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind--your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go, and there are but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. and now is the desperate moment, the last chance to save yourself; of course all your instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your wheel away from the curb instead of toward it, and so you go sprawling on that granite-bound inhospitable shore. that was my luck; that was my experience. i dragged myself out from under the indestructible bicycle and sat down on the curb to examine. i started on the return trip. it was now that i saw a farmer's wagon poking along down toward me, loaded with cabbages. if i needed anything to perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. the farmer was occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving barely fourteen or fifteen yards of space on either side. i couldn't shout at him--a beginner can't shout; if he opens his mouth he is gone; he must keep all his attention on his business. but in this grisly emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once i had to be grateful to him. he kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying impulses and inspirations of my bicycle, and shouted to the man accordingly: "to the left! turn to the left, or this jackass 'll run over you!" the man started to do it. "no, to the right, to the right! hold on! that won't do!--to the left!--to the right!--to the left--right! left--ri- stay where you are, or you're a goner!" and just then i caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a pile. i said, "hang it! couldn't you see i was coming?" "yes, i see you was coming, but i couldn't tell which way you was coming. nobody could--now, could they? you couldn't yourself--now, could you? so what could _i_ do? there was something in that, and so i had the magnanimity to say so. i said i was no doubt as much to blame as he was. within the next five days i achieved so much progress that the boy couldn't keep up with me. he had to go back to his gatepost, and content himself with watching me fall at long range. there was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a measured yard apart. even after i got so i could steer pretty fairly i was so afraid of those stones that i always hit them. they gave me the worst falls i ever got in that street, except those which i got from dogs. i have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. i think that that may be true: but i think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. i did not try to run over any dog. but i ran over every dog that came along. i think it makes a great deal of difference. if you try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate, and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. it was always so in my experience. even when i could not hit a wagon i could hit a dog that came to see me practice. they all liked to see me practice, and they all came, for there was very little going on in our neighborhood to entertain a dog. it took time to learn to miss a dog, but i achieved even that. i can steer as well as i want to, now, and i will catch that boy one of these days and run over him if he doesn't reform. get a bicycle. you will not regret it, if you live. is shakespeare dead? (from my autobiography) scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which constitute this formidable autobiography and diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with "claimants"--claimants historically notorious: satan, claimant; the golden calf, claimant; the veiled prophet of khorassan, claimant; louis xvii., claimant; william shakespeare, claimant; arthur orton, claimant; mary baker g. eddy, claimant--and the rest of them. eminent claimants, successful claimants, defeated claimants, royal claimants, pleb claimants, showy claimants, shabby claimants, revered claimants, despised claimants, twinkle star-like here and there and yonder through the mists of history and legend and tradition--and, oh, all the darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. it has always been so with the human race. there was never a claimant that couldn't get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. arthur orton's claim that he was the lost tichborne baronet come to life again was as flimsy as mrs. eddy's that she wrote science and health from the direct dictation of the deity; yet in england nearly forty years ago orton had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and today mrs. eddy's following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm. orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, mrs. eddy has had the like among hers from the beginning. her church is as well equipped in those particulars as is any other church. claimants can always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether they come with documents or without. it was always so. down out of the longvanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you listen, you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for perkin warbeck and lambert simnel. a friend has sent me a new book, from england--the shakespeare problem restated--well restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty years' interest in that matter--asleep for the last three years--is excited once more. it is an interest which was born of delia bacon's book--away back in the ancient day--1857, or maybe 1856. about a year later my pilot-master, bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the pennsylvania, and placed me under the orders and instructions of george ealer--dead now, these many, many years. i steered for him a good many months--as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and correction of the master. he was a prime chess-player and an idolater of shakespeare. he would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity something to do that. also--quite uninvited--he would read shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was his watch and i was steering. he read well, but not profitably for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. that broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up--to that degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were shakespeare's and which were ealer's. for instance: what man dare, _i_ dare! approach thou what are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off! rugged russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the there she goes! meet her, meet her! didn't you know she'd smell the reef if you crowded in like that? hyrcan tiger; take any ship but that and my firm nerves she'll be in the woods the first you know! stop he starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard! . . . now then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert damnation can't you keep away from that greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling i inhabit then, lay in the leads!--no, only with the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl. hence horrible shadow! eight bells--that watchman's asleep again, i reckon, go down and call brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence! he certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because i have never since been able to read shakespeare in a calm and sane way. i cannot rid it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant, "what in hell are you up to now! pull her down! more! more!--there now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his mouth. when i read shakespeare now i can hear them as plainly as i did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years ago. i never regarded ealer's readings as educational. indeed, they were a detriment to me. his contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail he was a good reader; i can say that much for him. he did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his shakespeare as well as euclid ever knew his multiplication table. did he have something to say--this shakespeare-adoring mississippi pilot--anent delia bacon's book? yes. and he said it; said it all the time, for months--in the morning watch, the middle watch, and dog watch; and probably kept it going in his sleep. he bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed in every thirty-five days--the time required by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. we discussed, and discussed, and discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate, he did, and i got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and there was a vacancy. he did his arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and i did mine with the reverse and moderation of a subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house and is perched forty feet above the water. he was fiercely loyal to shakespeare and cordially scornful of bacon and of all the pretensions of the baconians. so was i--at first. and at first he was glad that that was my attitude. there were even indications that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay between the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a compliment--compliment coming down from about the snow-line and not well thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire, not even a cub-pilot's selfconceit; still a detectable complement, and precious. naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to shakespeare-if possible--than i was before, and more prejudiced against bacon--if possible--that i was before. and so we discussed and discussed, both on the same side, and were happy. for a while. only for a while. only for a very little while, a very, very, very little while. then the atmosphere began to change; began to cool off. a brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than i did, perhaps, but i saw it early enough for all practical purposes. you see, he was of an argumentative disposition. therefore it took him but a little time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said and consequently never furnished him a provocative to flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing reasoning. that was his name for it. it has been applied since, with complacency, as many as several times, in the bacon-shakespeare scuffle. on the shakespeare side. then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: i let principle go, and went over to the other side. not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. that is to say, i took this attitude--to wit, i only believed bacon wrote shakespeare, whereas i knew shakespeare didn't. ealer was satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. study, practice, experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled me to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully, devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. after that i was welded to my faith, i was theoretically ready to die for it, and i looked down with compassion not unmixed with scorn upon everybody else's faith that didn't tally with mine. that faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in that ancient day, remains my faith today, and in it i find comfort, solace, peace, and never-failing joy. you see how curiously theological it is. the "rice christian" of the orient goes through the very same steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after him; he goes for rice, and remains to worship. ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"--not to say substantially all of it. the slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it by that large name. we others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any name at all. they show for themselves what they are, and we can with tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them with a title of its own choosing. now and then when ealer had to stop to cough, i pulled my induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead myself: always getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine, sometimes even quarter-less-twain--as _i_ believed; but always "no bottom," as he said. i got the best of him only once. i prepared myself. i wrote out a passage from shakespeare--it may have been the very one i quoted awhile ago, i don't remember--and riddled it with his wild steamboatful interlardings. when an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known as hell's half acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the pennsylvania triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and the a. t. lacey had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling good, i showed it to him. it amused him. i asked him to fire it off-read it; read it, i diplomatically added, as only he could read dramatic poetry. the compliment touched him where he lived. he did read it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read again; for he know how to put the right music into those thunderous interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as if they were bursting from shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed and magnificent whole. i waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until he brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet position, my pet argument, the one which i was fondest of, the one which i prized far above all others in my ammunition-wagon-to wit, that shakespeare couldn't have written shakespeare's words, for the reason that the man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways--and if shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely divided star-dust that constituted this vast wealth, how did he get it, and where and when? "from books." from books! that was always the idea. i answered as my readings of the champions of my side of the great controversy had taught me to answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and successfully the argot of a trade at which he has not personally served. he will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common tradeform, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer hasn't. ealer would not be convinced; he said a man could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and freemasonries of any trade by careful reading and studying. but when i got him to read again the passage from shakespeare with the interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a student a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly and perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not immediately discover. it was a triumph for me. he was silent awhile, and i knew what was happening--he was losing his temper. and i knew he would presently close the session with the same old argument that was always his stay and his support in time of need; the same old argument, the one i couldn't answer, because i dasn't--the argument that i was an ass, and better shut up. he delivered it, and i obeyed. o dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! and here am i, old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone, arranging to get that argument out of somebody again. when a man has a passion for shakespeare, it goes without saying that he keeps company with other standard authors. ealer always had several high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. he played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. so did i. he had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you took it apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the breastboard. when the pennsylvania blew up and became a drifting rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother henry among them), pilot brown had the watch below, and was probably asleep and never knew what killed him; but ealer escaped unhurt. he and his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and ealer sank through the ragged cavern where the hurricane-deck and the boiler-deck had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scald and deadly steam. but not for long. he did not lose his head--long familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all emergencies. he held his coat-lapels to his nose with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till he found the joints of his flute, then he took measures to save himself alive, and was successful. i was not on board. i had been put ashore in new orleans by captain klinenfelter. the reason--however, i have told all about it in the book called old times on the mississippi, and it isn't important, anyway, it is so long ago. ii when i was a sunday-school scholar, something more than sixty years ago, i became interested in satan, and wanted to find out all i could about him. i began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, mr. barclay, the stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. i was anxious to be praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects when there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a thing. i was greatly interested in the incident of eve and the serpent, and thought eve's calmness was perfectly noble. i asked mr. barclay if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpeant, would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber. he did not answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age and comprehension. i will say for mr. barclay that he was willing to tell me the facts of satan's history, but he stopped there: he wouldn't allow any discussion of them. in the course of time we exhausted the facts. there were only five or six of them; you could set them all down on a visiting-card. i was disappointed. i had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find that there were no materials. i said as much, with the tears running down. mr. barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused, for he was a most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the head and cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials! i can still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me. then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and joy. like this: it was "conjectured"--though not established--that satan was originally an angel in heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. also, "we have reason to believe" that later he did so and so; that "we are warranted in supposing" that at a subsequent time he traveled extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries afterward, "as tradition instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by and by, "as the probabilities seem to indicate," he may have done certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must have done still other things. and so on and so on. we set down the five known facts by themselves on a piece of paper, and numbered it "page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions," and "maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and guesses," and "probabilities," and "likelihoods," and "we are permitted to thinks," and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have beens," and "could have beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionablys," and "without a shadow of doubt"--and behold! materials? why, we had enough to build a biography of shakespeare! yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of satan. why? because, as he said, he had suspicions--suspicions that my attitude in the matter was not reverent, and that a person must be reverent when writing about the sacred characters. he said any one who spoke flippantly of satan would be frowned upon by the religious world and also be brought to account. i assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly misconceived my attitude; that i had the highest respect for satan, and that my reverence for him equaled, and possibly even exceeded, that of any member of the church. i said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his words that he thought i would make fun of satan, and deride him, laugh at him, scoff at him; whereas in truth i had never thought of such a thing, but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at them. "what others? "why, the supposers, the perhapsers, the might-have-beeners, the could-have-beeners, the must-have-beeners, the without-a-shadow-of-doubters, the we-are-warranted-in-believingers, and all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a conjectural satan thirty miles high." what did mr. barclay do then? was he disarmed? was he silenced? no. he was shocked. he was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. he said the satanic traditioners and perhapsers and conjecturers were themselves sacred! as sacred as their work. so sacred that whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of their work, could not afterward enter any respectable house, even by the back door. how true were his words, and how wise! how fortunate it would have been for me if i had heeded them. but i was young, i was but seven years of age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. i wrote the biography, and have never been in a respectable house since. iii how curious and interesting is the parallel--as far as poverty of biographical details is concerned--between satan and shakespeare. it is wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing resembling it in history, nothing resembling it in romance, nothing approaching it even in tradition. how sublime is their position, and how over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme--the two great unknowns, the two illustrious conjecturabilities! they are the best-known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet. for the instruction of the ignorant i will make a list, now, of those details of shakespeare's history which are facts-verified facts, established facts, undisputed facts. facts he was born on the 23d of april, 1564. of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could not sign their names. at stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean, and densely illiterate. of the nineteen important men charged with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in attesting important documents, because they could not write their names. of the first eighteen years of his life nothing is known. they are a blank. on the 27th of november (1582) william shakespeare took out a license to marry anne whateley. next day william shakespeare took out a license to marry anne hathaway. she was eight years his senior. william shakespeare married anne hathaway. in a hurry. by grace of a reluctantly granted dispensation there was but one publication of the banns. within six months the first child was born. about two (blank) years followed, during which period nothing at all happened to shakespeare, so far as anybody knows. then came twins--1585. february. two blank years follow. then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to london, leaving the family behind. five blank years follow. during this period nothing happened to him, as far as anybody actually knows. then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor. next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players. next year--1594--he played before the queen. a detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every year of the fortyfive of her reign. and remained obscure. three pretty full years follow. full of play-acting. then* in 1597 he bought new place, stratford. thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated money, and also reputation as actor and manager. meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) author of the same. some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no protest. then--1610-11--he returned to stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common, and did not succeed. he lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated pursuits. then he made a will, and signed each of its three pages with his name. a thoroughgoing business man's will. it named in minute detail every item of property he owned in the world--houses, lands, sword, silver-gilt bowl, and so on--all the way down to his "second-best bed" and its furniture. it carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members of his family, overlooking no individual of it. not even his wife: the wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a special dispensation before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left husbandless so many years; the wife who had had to borrow forty-one shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of the prosperous husband, but died at last with the money still lacking. no, even this wife was remembered in shakespeare's will. he left her that "second-best bed." and not another thing; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood with. it was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's. it mentioned not a single book. books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned one he gave it a high place in his will. the will mentioned not a play, not a poem, not an unfinished literary work, not a scrap of manuscript of any kind. many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has died this poor; the others all left literary remains behind. also a book. maybe two. if shakespeare had owned a dog--but we not go into that: we know he would have mentioned it in his will. if a good dog, susanna would have got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a downer interest in it. i wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business way. he signed the will in three places. in earlier years he signed two other official documents. these five signatures still exist. there are no other specimens of his penmanship in existence. not a line. was he prejudiced against the art? his granddaughter, whom he loved, was eight years old when he died, yet she had had no teaching, he left no provision for her education, although he was rich, and in her mature womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript from anybody else's--she thought it was shakespeare's. when shakespeare died in stratford, it was not an event. it made no more stir in england than the death of any other forgotten theater-actor would have made. nobody came down from london; there were no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and nothing more. a striking contrast with what happened when ben jonson, and francis bacon, and spenser, and raleigh, and the other distinguished literary folk of shakespeare's time passed from life! no praiseful voice was lifted for the lost bard of avon; even ben jonson waited seven years before he lifted his. so far as anybody actually knows and can prove, shakespeare of stratford-on-avon never wrote a play in his life. so far as any one knows, he received only one letter during his life. so far as any one knows and can prove, shakespeare of stratford wrote only one poem during his life. this one is authentic. he did write that one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote the whole of it out of his own head. he commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. there it abides to this day. this is it: good friend for iesus sake forbeare to digg the dust encloased heare: blest be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones. in the list as above set down will be found every positively known fact of shakespeare's life, lean and meager as the invoice is. beyond these details we know not a thing about him. all the rest of his vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an eiffel tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts. iv conjectures the historians "suppose" that shakespeare attended the free school in stratford from the time he was seven years old till he was thirteen. there is no evidence in existence that he ever went to school at all. the historians "infer" that he got his latin in that school --the school which they "suppose" he attended. they "suppose" his father's declining fortunes made it necessary for him to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to work and help support his parents and their ten children. but there is no evidence that he ever entered or returned from the school they suppose he attended. they "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; and that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do fullgrown butchering, but only slaughtering calves. also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a high-flown speech over it. this supposition rests upon the testimony of a man who wasn't there at the time; a man who got it from a man who could have been there, but did not say whether he was nor not; and neither of them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and decades, and two more decades after shakespeare's death (until old age and mental decay had refreshed and vivified their memories). they hadn't two facts in stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but only just the one: he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory while he was at it. curious. they had only one fact, yet the distinguished citizen had spent twenty-six years in that little town--just half his lifetime. however, rightly viewed, it was the most important fact, indeed almost the only important fact, of shakespeare's life in stratford. rightly viewed. for experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes. rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for "titus andronicus," the only play--ain't it?--that the stratford shakespeare ever wrote; and yet it is the only one everybody tried to chouse him out of, the baconians included. the historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the young shakespeare poached upon sir thomas lucy's deer preserves and got haled before that magistrate for it. but there is no shred of respectworthy evidence that anything of the kind happened. the historians, having argued the thing that might have happened into the thing that did happen, found no trouble in turning sir thomas lucy into mr. justice shallow. they have long ago convinced the world--on surmise and without trustworthy evidence--that shallow is sir thomas. the next addition to the young shakespeare's stratford history comes easy. the historian builds it out of the surmised deer-steeling, and the surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young shakespeare was a wild, wild, wild, oh, such a wild young scamp, and that gratuitous slander is established for all time! it is the very way professor osborn and i built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fiftyseven feet long and sixteen feet high in the natural history museum, the awe and admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on the planet. we had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of plaster of paris. we ran short of plaster of paris, or we'd have built a brontosaur that could sit down beside the stratford shakespeare and none but an expert could tell which was biggest or contained the most plaster. shakespeare pronounced "venus and adonis" "the first heir of his invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary composition. he should not have said it. it has been an embarrassment to his historians these many, many years. they have to make him write that graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem before he escaped from stratford and his family--1586 or '87--age, twenty-two, or along there; because within the next five years he wrote five great plays, and could not have found time to write another line. it is sorely embarrassing. if he began to slaughter calves, and poach deer, and rollick around, and learn english, at the earliest likely moment--say at thirteen, when he was supposably wretched from that school where he was supposably storing up latin for future literary use--he had his youthful hands full, and much more than full. he must have had to put aside his warwickshire dialect, which wouldn't be understood in london, and study english very hard. very hard indeed; incredibly hard, almost, if the result of that labor was to be the smooth and rounded and flexible and letter-perfect english of the "venus and adonis" in the space of ten years; and at the same time learn great and fine and unsurpassable literary form. however, it is "conjectured" that he accomplished all this and more, much more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex procedure of the law-courts; and all about soldiering, and sailoring, and the manners and customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society; and likewise accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the learned then possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the world's great literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by any other man of his time--for he was going to make brilliant and easy and admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the moment he got to london. and according to the surmisers, that is what he did. yes, although there was no one in stratford able to teach him these things, and no library in the little village to dig them out of. his father could not read, and even the surmisers surmise that he did not keep a library. it is surmised by the biographers that the young shakespeare got his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the clerk of a stratford court; just as a bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks of the mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the bering strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercises of that adventure-bristling trade through catching catfish with a "trot-line" sundays. but the surmise is damaged by the fact that there is no evidence--and not even tradition--that the young shakespeare was ever clerk of a law-court. it is further surmised that the young shakespeare accumulated his law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in london, through "amusing himself" by learning book-law in his garret and by picking up lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-courts and listening. but it is only surmise; there is no evidence that he ever did either of those things. they are merely a couple of chunks of plaster of paris. there is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in front of the london theaters, mornings and afternoons. maybe he did. if he did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his recreation-time in the courts. in those very days he was writing great plays, and needed all the time he could get. the horse-holding legend ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's difficulty in accounting for the young shakespeare's erudition--an erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk, every day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day's catch into next day's imperishable drama. he had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his dramas. how did he acquire these rich assets? in the usual way: by surmise. it is surmised that he traveled in italy and germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in french, italian, and spanish on the road; that he went in leicester's expedition to the low countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several months or years--or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his business--and thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and sailor-ways and sailor-talk. maybe he did all these things, but i would like to know who held the horses in the mean time; and who studied the books in the garret; and who frolicked in the law-courts for recreation. also, who did the call-boying and the play-acting. for he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a "vagabond"--the law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in '94 a "regular" and properly and officially listed member of that (in those days) lightly valued and not much respected profession. right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and manager of them. thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. then in a noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem--his only poem, his darling--and laid him down and died: good friend for iesus sake forbeare to digg the dust encloased heare: blest be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones. he was probably dead when he wrote it. still, this is only conjecture. we have only circumstantial evidence. internal evidence. shall i set down the rest of the conjectures which constitute the giant biography of william shakespeare? it would strain the unabridged dictionary to hold them. he is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of paris. v "we may assume" in the assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting business. two of these cults are known as the shakespearites and the baconians, and i am the other one--the brontosaurian. the shakespearite knows that shakespeare wrote shakespeare's works; the baconian knows that francis bacon wrote them; the brontosaurian doesn't really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly sure that shakespeare didn't, and strongly suspects that bacon did. we all have to do a good deal of assuming, but i am fairly certain that in every case i can call to mind the baconian assumers have come out ahead of the shakespearites. both parties handle the same materials, but the baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the shakespearites. the shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an unchanging and immutable law: which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added together, make 165. i believe this to be an error. no matter, you cannot get a habit-sodden shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon any other basis. with the baconian it is different. if you place before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will get just the proper 31. let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and unintelligent. we will suppose a case: take a lapbred, house-fed, uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old tom that's scarred from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of him "all cat-knowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse. lock the three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell. wait half an hour, then open the cell, introduce a shakespearite and a baconian, and let them cipher and assume. the mouse is missing: the question to be decided is, where is it? you can guess both verdicts beforehand. one verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as certainly say the mouse is in the tom-cat. the shakespearite will reason like this--(that is not my word, it is his). he will say the kitten may have been attending school when nobody was noticing; therefore we are warranted in assuming that it did so; also, it could have been training in a court-clerk's office when no one was noticing; since that could have happened, we are justified in assuming that it did happen; it could have studied catology in a garret when no one was noticing--therefore it did; it could have attended cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for recreation, when no one was noticing, and have harvested a knowledge of cat court-forms and cat lawyertalk in that way: it could have done it, therefore without a doubt it did; it could have gone soldiering with a war-tribe when no one was noticing, and learned soldier-wiles and soldier-ways, and what to do with a mouse when opportunity offers; the plain inference, therefore, is that that is what it did. since all these manifold things could have occurred, we have every right to believe they did occur. these patiently and painstakingly accumulated vast acquirements and competences needed but one thing more--opportunity--to convert themselves into triumphal action. the opportunity came, we have the result; beyond shadow of question the mouse is in the kitten. it is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a "we think we may assume," we expect it, under careful watering and fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and weather-defying "there isn't a shadow of a doubt" at last-and it usually happens. we know what the baconian's verdict would be: "there is not a rag of evidence that the kitten has had any training, any education, any experience qualifying it for the present occasion, or is indeed equipped for any achievement above lifting such unclaimed milk as comes its way; but there is abundant evidence-unassailable proof, in fact--that the other animal is equipped, to the last detail, with every qualification necessary for the event. without shadow of doubt the tom-cat contains the mouse." vi when shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to him as author had been before the london world and in high favor for twenty-four years. yet his death was not an event. it made no stir, it attracted no attention. apparently his eminent literary contemporaries did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst. perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not regard him as the author of his works. "we are justified in assuming" this. his death was not even an event in the little town of stratford. does this mean that in stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of any kind? "we are privileged to assume"--no, we are indeed obliged to assume--that such was the case. he had spent the first twentytwo or twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the cats and the horses. he had spent the last five or six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. but not as a celebrity? apparently not. for everybody soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. the dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the same unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with that period of his life they didn't tell about it. would the if they had been asked? it is most likely. were they asked? it is pretty apparent that they were not. why weren't they? it is a very plausible guess that nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know. for seven years after shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been interested in him. then the quarto was published, and ben jonson awoke out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the front of the book. then silence fell again. for sixty years. then inquiries into shakespeare's stratford life began to be made, of stratfordians. of stratfordians who had known shakespeare or had seen him? no. then of stratfordians who had seen people who had known or seen people who had seen shakespeare? no. apparently the inquires were only made of stratfordians who were not stratfordians of shakespeare's day, but later comers; and what they had learned had come to them from persons who had not seen shakespeare; and what they had learned was not claimed as fact, but only as legend-dim and fading and indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth remembering either as history or fiction. has it ever happened before--or since--that a celebrated person who had spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where he was born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that village voiceless and gossipless behind him--utterly voiceless., utterly gossipless? and permanently so? i don't believe it has happened in any case except shakespeare's. and couldn't and wouldn't have happened in his case if he had been regarded as a celebrity at the time of his death. when i examine my own case--but let us do that, and see if it will not be recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite likely to result, most likely to result, indeed substantially sure to result in the case of a celebrated person, a benefactor of the human race. like me. my parents brought me to the village of hannibal, missouri, on the banks of the mississippi, when i was two and a half years old. i entered school at five years of age, and drifted from one school to another in the village during nine and a half years. then my father died, leaving his family in exceedingly straitened circumstances; wherefore my book-education came to a standstill forever, and i became a printer's apprentice, on board and clothes, and when the clothes failed i got a hymn-book in place of them. this for summer wear, probably. i lived in hannibal fifteen and a half years, altogether, then ran away, according to the custom of persons who are intending to become celebrated. i never lived there afterward. four years later i became a "cub" on a mississippi steamboat in the st. louis and new orleans trade, and after a year and a half of hard study and hard work the u.s. inspectors rigorously examined me through a couple of long sittings and decided that i knew every inch of the mississippi--thirteen hundred miles--in the dark and in the day-as well as a baby knows the way to its mother's paps day or night. so they licensed me as a pilot--knighted me, so to speak --and i rose up clothed with authority, a responsible servant of the united states government. now then. shakespeare died young--he was only fifty-two. he had lived in his native village twenty-six years, or about that. he died celebrated (if you believe everything you read in the books). yet when he died nobody there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty years afterward no townsman remembered to say anything about him or about his life in stratford. when the inquirer came at last he got but one fact-no, legend--and got that one at second hand, from a person who had only heard it as a rumor and didn't claim copyright in it as a production of his own. he couldn't, very well, for its date antedated his own birth-date. but necessarily a number of persons were still alive in stratford who, in the days of their youth, had seen shakespeare nearly every day in the last five years of his life, and they would have been able to tell that inquirer some first-hand things about him if he had in those last days been a celebrity and therefore a person of interest to the villagers. why did not the inquirer hunt them up and interview them? wasn't it worth while? wasn't the matter of sufficient consequence? had the inquirer an engagement to see a dog-fight and couldn't spare the time? it all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and manager. now then, i am away along in life--my seventy-third year being already well behind me--yet sixteen of my hannibal schoolmates are still alive today, and can tell--and do tell-inquirers dozens and dozens of incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that happened to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the good days, the dear days, "the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago." most of them creditable to me, too. one child to whom i paid court when she was five years old and i eight still lives in hannibal, and she visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred miles of railroad without damage to her patience or to her old-young vigor. another little lassie to whom i paid attention in hannibal when she was nine years old and i the same, is still alive--in london--and hale and hearty, just as i am. and on the few surviving steamboats--those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets that plied the big river in the beginning of my water-career--which is exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of shakespeare numbers--there are still findable two or three river-pilots who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still night the "six--feet--scant!" that made me shudder, and the "m-a-r-k-twain!" that took the shudder away, and presently the darling "by the d-e-e-p--four!" that lifted me to heaven for joy. [1] they know about me, and can tell. and so do printers, from st. louis to new york; and so do newspaper reporters, from nevada to san francisco. and so do the police. if shakespeare had really been celebrated, like me, stratford could have told things about him; and if my experience goes for anything, they'd have done it. -----1. four fathoms--twenty-four feet. vii if i had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide whether shakespeare wrote shakespeare or not, i believe i would place before the debaters only the one question, was shakespeare ever a practicing lawyer? and leave everything else out. it is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men busy themselves in, but that he could talk about the men and their grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. maybe it is so, but have the experts spoken, or is it only tom, dick, and harry? does the exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing--which is not evidence, and not proof--or upon details, particulars, statistics, illustrations, demonstrations? experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to only one of shakespeare's multifarious craftequipments, so far as my recollections of shakespeare-bacon talk abide with me--his law-equipment. i do not remember that wellington or napoleon ever examined shakespeare's battles and sieges and strategies, and then decided and established for good and all that they were militarily flawless; i do not remember that any nelson, or drake, or cook ever examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate familiarity with that art; i don't remember that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that shakespeare was letter-perfect in his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of aristocracies; i don't remember that any illustrious latinist or grecian or frenchman or spaniard or italian has proclaimed him a past-master in those languages; i don't remember--well, i don't remember that there is testimony--great testimony--imposing testimony-unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of shakespeare's hundred specialties, except one--the law. other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two and find out what their processes and technicalities were in those early days, but with the law it is different: it is mile-stoned and documented all the way back, and the master of that wonderful trade, that complex and intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has competent ways of knowing whether shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shop-talk is the shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a machine-made counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional loiterings in westminster. richard h. dana served two years before the mast, and had every experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our day. his sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the ease and confidence of a person who has lived what he is talking about, not gathered it from books and random listenings. hear him: having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and cat-headed, and the ship under headway. again: the royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all were aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white cloud resting upon a black speck. once more. a race in the pacific: our antagonist was in her best trim. being clear of the point, the breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the rigging of the california; then they were all furled at once, but with orders to our boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose them again at the word. it was my duty to furl the fore-royal; and while standing by to loose it again, i had a fine view of the scene. from where i stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. the california was to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held our own. as soon as it began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. in an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "sheet home the fore-royal!"-"weather sheet's home!"--"lee sheet's home!"--"hoist away, sir!" is bawled from aloft. "overhaul your clew-lines!" shouts the mate. "aye-aye, sir, all clear!"--"taut leech! belay! well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!" and the royals are set. what would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that? he would say, "the man that wrote that didn't learn his trade out of a book, he has been there!" but would this same captain be competent to sit in judgment upon shakespeare's seamanship--considering the changes in ships and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded, unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? it is my conviction that shakespeare's sailor-talk would be choctaw to him. for instance--from "the tempest": master. boatswain! boatswain. here, master; what cheer? master. good, speak to the mariners: fall to 't, yarely, or we run ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir! (enter mariners.) boatswain. heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! take in the topsail. tend to the master's whistle. . . . down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! bring her to try wi' the main course. . . . lay her a-hold, a-hold! set her two courses. off to sea again; lay her off. that will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change. if a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say, "here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the imposing-stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it," i should recognize a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only a printer theoretically, not practically. i have been a quartz miner in the silver regions--a pretty hard life; i know all the palaver of that business: i know all about discovery claims and the subordinate claims; i know all about lodes, ledges, outcroppings, dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels, air-shafts, "horses," clay casings, granite casings; quartz mills and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and how to reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion into pigs; and finally i know how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for something less robust to do, and find it. i know the argot and the quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever bret harte introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners opens his mouth i recognize from his phrasing that harte got the phrasing by listening--like shakespeare--i mean the stratford one--not by experience. no one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse. i have been a surface miner--gold--and i know all its mysteries, and the dialects that belongs with them; and whenever harte introduces that industry into a story i know by the phrasing of his characters that neither he nor they have ever served that trade. i have been a "pocket" miner--a sort of gold mining not findable in any but one little spot in the world, so far as i know. i know how, with horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the ground. i know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that fascinating buried-treasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries to use it without having learned it by the sweat of his brow and the labor of his hands. i know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar to any of them without having learned it at its source i can trap him always before he gets far on his road. and so, as i have already remarked, if i were required to superintend a bacon-shakespeare controversy, i would narrow the matter down to a single question--the only one, so far as the previous controversies have informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable competency have testified: was the author of shakespeare's works a lawyer?--a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? i would put aside the guesses and surmises, and perhapes, and might-have-beens, and could-havebeens, and must-have-beens, and we-are-justified-in-presumings, and the rest of those vague specters and shadows and indefintenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict rendered by the jury upon that single question. if the verdict was yes, i should feel quite convinced that the stratford shakespeare, the actor, manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute of even village consequence, that sixty years afterward no fellow-citizen and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about him, did not write the works. chapter xiii of the shakespeare problem restated bears the heading "shakespeare as a lawyer," and comprises some fifty pages of expert testimony, with comments thereon, and i will copy the first nine, as being sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle the question which i have conceived to be the master-key to the shakespeare-bacon puzzle. viii shakespeare as a lawyer [1] the plays and poems of shakespeare supply ample evidence that their author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law, but that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of members of the inns of court and with legal life generally. "while novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the laws of marriage, of wills, of inheritance, to shakespeare's law, lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of error." such was the testimony borne by one of the most distinguished lawyers of the nineteenth century who was raised to the high office of lord chief justice in 1850, and subsequently became lord chancellor. its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for those who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to discuss legal doctrines. "there is nothing so dangerous," wrote lord campbell, "as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry." a layman is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a lawyer would never employ. mr. sidney lee himself supplies us with an example of this. he writes (p. 164): "on february 15, 1609, shakespeare . . . obtained judgment from a jury against addenbroke for the payment of no. 6, and no. 1, 5s. 0d. costs." now a lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining "judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury not to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to find a verdict on the facts. the error is, indeed, a venial one, but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or "one of the craft." but when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. "let a non-professional man, however acute," writes lord campbell again, "presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable absurdity." and what does the same high authority say about shakespeare? he had "a deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in english jurisprudence." and again: "whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law." of "henry iv.," part 2, he says: "if lord eldon could be supposed to have written the play, i do not see how he could be chargeable with having forgotten any of his law while writing it." charles and mary cowden clarke speak of "the marvelous intimacy which he displays with legal terms, his frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his curiously technical knowledge of their form and force." malone, himself a lawyer, wrote: "his knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical skill." another lawyer and well-known shakespearean, richard grant white, says: "no dramatist of the time, not even beaumont, who was the younger son of a judge of the common pleas, and who after studying in the inns of court abandoned law for the drama, used legal phrases with shakespeare's readiness and exactness. and the significance of this fact is heightened by another, that is only to the language of the law that he exhibits this inclination. the phrases peculiar to other occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of description, comparison, or illustration, generally when something in the scene suggests them, but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel of his thought. take the word 'purchase' for instance, which, in ordinary use, means to acquire by giving value, but applies in law to all legal modes of obtaining property except by inheritance or descent, and in this peculiar sense the word occurs five times in shakespeare's thirty-four plays, and only in one single instance in the fifty-four plays of beaumont and fletcher. it has been suggested that it was in attendance upon the courts in london that he picked up his legal vocabulary. but this supposition not only fails to account for shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that phraseology, it does not even place him in the way of learning those terms his use of which is most remarkable, which are not such as he would have heard at ordinary proceedings at nisi prius, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property, 'fine and recovery,' 'statutes merchant,' 'purchase,' 'indenture,' 'tenure,' 'double voucher,' 'fee simple,' 'fee farm,' 'remainder,' 'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. this conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hanging round the courts of law in london two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title of real property were comparatively rare. and besides, shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his first plays, written in his first london years, as in those produced at a later period. just as exactly, too; for the correctness and propriety with which these terms are introduced have compelled the admiration of a chief justice and a lord chancellor." senator davis wrote: "we seem to have something more than a sciolist's temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar art. no legal solecisms will be found. the abstrusest elements of the common law are impressed into a disciplined service. over and over again, where such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. in the law of real property, its rules of tenure and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries, their vouchers and double vouchers, in the procedure of the courts, the method of bringing writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of pleading, the law of escapes and of contempt of court, in the principles of evidence, both technical and philosophical, in the distinction between the temporal and spiritual tribunals, in the law of attainder and forfeiture, in the requisites of a valid marriage, in the presumption of legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative, in the inalienable character of the crown, this mastership appears with surprising authority." to all this testimony (and there is much more which i have not cited) may now be added that of a great lawyer of our own times, viz.: sir james plaisted wilde, q.c. 1855, created a baron of the exchequer in 1860, promoted to the post of judgeordinary and judge of the courts of probate and divorce in 1863, and better known to the world as lord penzance, to which dignity he was raised in 1869. lord penzance, as all lawyers know, and as the late mr. inderwick, k.c., has testified, was one of the first legal authorities of his day, famous for his "remarkable grasp of legal principles," and "endowed by nature with a remarkable facility for marshaling facts, and for a clear expression of his views." lord penzance speaks of shakespeare's "perfect familiarity with not only the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the technicalities of english law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never incorrect and never at fault. . . . the mode in which this knowledge was pressed into service on all occasions to express his meaning and illustrate his thoughts was quite unexampled. he seems to have had a special pleasure in his complete and ready mastership of it in all its branches. as manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and learning had therefore a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after page of the plays. at every turn and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned first to the law. he seems almost to have thought in legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or illustration. that he should have descanted in lawyer language when he had a forensic subject in hand, such as shylock's bond, was to be expected, but the knowledge of law in 'shakespeare' was exhibited in a far different manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely divergent from forensic subjects." again: "to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the technical terms and phrases not only of the conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and the courts at westminster, nothing short of employment in some career involving constant contact with legal questions and general legal work would be requisite. but a continuous employment involves the element of time, and time was just what the manager of two theaters had not at his disposal. in what portion of shakespeare's (i.e., shakspere's) career would it be possible to point out that time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or offices of practicing lawyers?" stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible explanation of shakespeare's extraordinary knowledge of law, have made the suggestion that shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk in an attorney's office before he came to london. mr. collier wrote to lord campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being true. his answer was as follows: "you require us to believe implicitly a fact, of which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his own handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. not having been actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court at stratford nor of the superior court at westminster would present his name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, but it might reasonably have been expected that there would be deeds or wills witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent search none such can be discovered." upon this lord penzance commends: "it cannot be doubted that lord campbell was right in this. no young man could have been at work in an attorney's office without being called upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and name." there is not a single fact or incident in all that is known of shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports this notion of a clerkship. and after much argument and surmise which has been indulged in on this subject, we may, i think, safely put the notion on one side, for no less an authority than mr. grant white says finally that the idea of his having been clerk to an attorney has been "blown to pieces." it is altogether characteristic of mr. churton collins that he, nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. "that shakespeare was in early life employed as a clerk in an attorney's office may be correct. at stratford there was by royal charter a court of record sitting every fortnight, with six attorneys, besides the town clerk, belonging to it, and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the young shakespeare may have had employment in one of them. there is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have about shakespeare's occupation between the time of leaving school and going to london are so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in them. it is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing calves 'in a high style,' and making speeches over them." this is a charming specimen of stratfordian argument. there is, as we have seen, a very old tradition that shakespeare was a butcher's apprentice. john dowdall, who made a tour of warwickshire in 1693, testifies to it as coming from the old clerk who showed him over the church, and it is unhesitatingly accepted as true by mr. halliwell-phillipps. (vol. i, p. 11, and vol. ii, pp. 71, 72.) mr. sidney lee sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported by aubrey, who must have written his account some time before 1680, when his manuscript was completed. of the attorney's clerk hypothesis, on the other hand, there is not the faintest vestige of a tradition. it has been evolved out of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed stratfordians, seeking for some explanation of the stratford rustic's marvelous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life. but mr. churton collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over the tradition which has the warrant of antiquity and setting up in its stead this ridiculous invention, for which not only is there no shred of positive evidence, but which, as lord campbell and lord penzance pointed out, is really put out of court by the negative evidence, since "no young man could have been at work in an attorney's office without being called upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and name." and as mr. edwards further points out, since the day when lord campbell's book was published (between forty and fifty years ago), "every old deed or will, to say nothing of other legal papers, dated during the period of william shakespeare's youth, has been scrutinized over half a dozen shires, and not one signature of the young man has been found." moreover, if shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney's office it is clear that he must have served for a considerable period in order to have gained (if, indeed, it is credible that he could have so gained) his remarkable knowledge of the law. can we then for a moment believe that, if this had been so, tradition would have been absolutely silent on the matter? that dowdall's old clerk, over eighty years of age, should have never heard of it (though he was sure enough about the butcher's apprentice) and that all the other ancient witnesses should be in similar ignorance! but such are the methods of stratfordian controversy. tradition is to be scouted when it is found inconvenient, but cited as irrefragable truth when it suits the case. shakespeare of stratford was the author of the plays and poems, but the author of the plays and poems could not have been a butcher's apprentice. anyway, therefore, with tradition. but the author of the plays and poems must have had a very large and a very accurate knowledge of the law. therefore, shakespeare of stratford must have been an attorney's clerk! the method is simplicity itself. by similar reasoning shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster, a soldier, a physician, a printer, and a good many other things besides, according to the inclination and the exigencies of the commentator. it would not be in the least surprising to find that he was studying latin as a schoolmaster and law in an attorney's office at the same time. however, we must do mr. collins the justice of saying that he has fully recognized, what is indeed tolerable obvious, that shakespeare must have had a sound legal training. "it may, of course, be urged," he writes, "that shakespeare's knowledge of medicine, and particularly that branch of it which related to morbid psychology, is equally remarkable, and that no one has ever contended that he was a physician. (here mr. collins is wrong; that contention also has been put forward.) it may be urged that his acquaintance with the technicalities of other crafts and callings, notably of marine and military affairs, was also extraordinary, and yet no one has suspected him of being a sailor or a soldier. (wrong again. why, even messrs. garnett and gosse "suspect" that he was a soldier!) this may be conceded, but the concession hardly furnishes an analogy. to these and all other subjects he recurs occasionally, and in season, but with reminiscences of the law his memory, as is abundantly clear, was simply saturated. in season and out of season now in manifest, now in recondite application, he presses it into the service of expression and illustration. at least a third of his myriad metaphors are derived from it. it would indeed be difficult to find a single act in any of his dramas, nay, in some of them, a single scene, the diction and imagery of which are not colored by it. much of his law may have been acquired from three books easily accessible to him--namely, tottell's precedents (1572), pulton's statutes (1578), and fraunce's lawier's logike (1588), works with which he certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of it could only have come from one who had an intimate acquaintance with legal proceedings. we quite agree with mr. castle that shakespeare's legal knowledge is not what could have been picked up in an attorney's office, but could only have been learned by an actual attendance at the courts, at a pleader's chambers, and on circuit, or by associating intimately with members of the bench and bar." this is excellent. but what is mr. collins's explanation? "perhaps the simplest solution of the problem is to accept the hypothesis that in early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he there contracted a love for the law which never left him, that as a young man in london he continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in leisure hours into the courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers. on no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in a subject where no layman who has indulged in such copious and ostentatious display of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in keeping himself from tripping." a lame conclusion. "no other supposition" indeed! yes, there is another, and a very obvious supposition--namely, that shakespeare was himself a lawyer, well versed in his trade, versed in all the ways of the courts, and living in close intimacy with judges and members of the inns of court. one is, of course, thankful that mr. collins has appreciated the fact that shakespeare must have had a sound legal training, but i may be forgiven if i do not attach quite so much importance to his pronouncements on this branch of the subject as to those of malone, lord campbell, judge holmes, mr. castle, k.c., lord penzance, mr. grant white, and other lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on the matter of shakespeare's legal acquirements. . . . here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from lord penzance's book as to the suggestion that shakespeare had somehow or other managed "to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the technical terms and phrases, not only of the conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and the courts at westminster." this, as lord penzance points out, "would require nothing short of employment in some career involving constant contact with legal questions and general legal work." but "in what portion of shakespeare's career would it be possible to point out that time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or offices of practicing lawyers? . . . it is beyond doubt that at an early period he was called upon to abandon his attendance at school and assist his father, and was soon after, at the age of sixteen, bound apprentice to a trade. while under the obligation of this bond he could not have pursued any other employment. then he leaves stratford and comes to london. he has to provide himself with the means of a livelihood, and this he did in some capacity at the theater. no one doubt that. the holding of horses is scouted by many, and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely and certainly unproved; but whatever the nature of his employment was at the theater, there is hardly room for the belief that it could have been other than continuous, for his progress there was so rapid. ere long he had been taken into the company as an actor, and was soon spoken of as a "johannes factotum.' his rapid accumulation of wealth speaks volumes for the constancy and activity of his services. one fails to see when there could be a break in the current of his life at this period of it, giving room or opportunity for legal or indeed any other employment. 'in 1589,' says knight, 'we have undeniable evidence that he had not only a casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as may players were, but was a shareholder in the company of the queen's players with other shareholders below him on the list.' this (1589) would be within two years after his arrival in london, which is placed by white and halliwellphillipps about the year 1587. the difficulty in supposing that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when he is supposed to have come to london, he was induced to enter upon a course of most extended study and mental culture, is almost insuperable. still it was physically possible, provided always that he could have had access to the needful books. but this legal training seems to me to stand on a different footing. it is not only unaccountable and incredible, but it is actually negatived by the known facts of his career." lord penzance then refers to the fact that "by 1592 (according to the best authority, mr. grant white) several of the plays had been written. 'the comedy of errors' in 1589, 'love's labour's lost' in 1589, 'two gentlemen of verona' in 1589 or 1590," and so forth, and then asks, "with this catalogue of dramatic work on hand . . . was it possible that he could have taken a leading part in the management and conduct of two theaters, and if mr. phillipps is to be relied upon, taken his share in the performances of the provincial tours of his company--and at the same time devoted himself to the study of the law in all its branches so efficiently as to make himself complete master of its principles and practice, and saturate his mind with all its most technical terms?" i have cited this passage from lord penzance's book, because it lay before me, and i had already quoted from it on the matter of shakespeare's legal knowledge; but other writers have still better set forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to me, which beset the idea that shakespeare might have found them in some unknown period of early life, amid multifarious other occupations, for the study of classics, literature, and law, to say nothing of languages and a few other matters. lord penzance further asks his readers: "did you ever meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country gave himself up to legal studies and engaged in legal employments, which is the only way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of practice, unless with the view of practicing in that profession? i do not believe that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an instance in which the law has been seriously studied in all its branches, except as a qualification for practice in the legal profession." this testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so's, and might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and musthave-beens, and the rest of that ton of plaster of paris out of which the biographers have built the colossal brontosaur which goes by the stratford actor's name, that it quite convinces me that the man who wrote shakespeare's works knew all about law and lawyers. also, that that man could not have been the stratford shakespeare--and wasn't. who did write these works, then? i wish i knew. ----1. from chapter xiii of the shakespeare problem restated. by george g. greenwood, m.p. john lane company, publishers. ix did francis bacon write shakespeare's works? nobody knows. we cannot say we know a thing when that thing has not been proved. know is too strong a word to use when the evidence is not final and absolutely conclusive. we can infer, if we want to, like those slaves. . . . no, i will not write that word, it is not kind, it is not courteous. the upholders of the stratford-shakespeare superstition call us the hardest names they can think of, and they keep doing it all the time; very well, if they like to descend to that level, let them do it, but i will not so undignify myself as to follow them. i cannot call them harsh names; the most i can do is to indicate them by terms reflecting my disapproval; and this without malice, without venom. to resume. what i was about to say was, those thugs have built their entire superstition upon inferences, not upon known and established facts. it is a weak method, and poor, and i am glad to be able to say our side never resorts to it while there is anything else to resort to. but when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that sort. . . . since the stratford shakespeare couldn't have written the works, we infer that somebody did. who was it, then? this requires some more inferring. ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a tidal wave whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of admiration, delight, and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the authorship. why a dozen, instead of only one or two? one reason is, because there are a dozen that are recognizably competent to do that poem. do you remember "beautiful snow"? do you remember "rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep"? do you remember "backward, turn, backward, o time, in thy flight! make me a child again just for tonight"? i remember them very well. their authorship was claimed by most of the grown-up people who were alive at the time, and every claimant had one plausible argument in his favor, at least--to wit, he could have done the authoring; he was competent. have the works been claimed by a dozen? they haven't. there was good reason. the world knows there was but one man on the planet at the time who was competent--not a dozen, and not two. a long time ago the dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a procession of prodigious footprints stretching across the plain--footprints that were three miles apart, each footprint a third of a mile long and a furlong deep, and with forests and villages mashed to mush in it. was there any doubt as to who made that mighty trail? were there a dozen claimants? where there two? no--the people knew who it was that had been along there: there was only one hercules. there has been only one shakespeare. there couldn't be two; certainly there couldn't be two at the same time. it takes ages to bring forth a shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. this one was not matched before his time; nor during his time; and hasn't been matched since. the prospect of matching him in our time is not bright. the baconians claim that the stratford shakespeare was not qualified to write the works, and that francis bacon was. they claim that bacon possessed the stupendous equipment--both natural and acquired--for the miracle; and that no other englishman of his day possessed the like; or, indeed, anything closely approaching it. macaulay, in his essay, has much to say about the splendor and horizonless magnitude of that equipment. also, he has synopsized bacon's history--a thing which cannot be done for the stratford shakespeare, for he hasn't any history to synopsize. bacon's history is open to the world, from his boyhood to his death in old age--a history consisting of known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; facts, not guesses and conjectures and might-have-beens. whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a lord chancellor for his father, and a mother who was "distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in greek with bishop jewell, and translated his apologia from the latin so correctly that neither he nor archbishop parker could suggest a single alteration." it is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our inclinations and aspirations shall tend. the atmosphere furnished by the parents to the son in this present case was an atmosphere saturated with learning; with thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite culture. it had its natural effect. shakespeare of stratford was reared in a house which had no use for books, since its owners, his parents, were without education. this may have had an effect upon the son, but we do not know, because we have no history of him of an informing sort. there were but few books anywhere, in that day, and only the well-to-do and highly educated possessed them, they being almost confined to the dead languages. "all the valuable books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of europe would hardly have filled a single shelf"--imagine it! the few existing books were in the latin tongue mainly. "a person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all acquaintance--not merely with cicero and virgil, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time"--a literature necessary to the stratford lad, for his fictitious reputation's sake, since the writer of his works would begin to use it wholesale and in a most masterly way before the lad was hardly more than out of his teens and into his twenties. at fifteen bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three years there. thence he went to paris in the train of the english ambassador, and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, the great, and the aristocracy of fashion, during another three years. a total of six years spent at the sources of knowledge; knowledge both of books and of men. the three spent at the university were coeval with the second and last three spent by the little stratford lad at stratford school supposedly, and perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference--with nothing to infer from. the second three of the baconian six were "presumably" spent by the stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. that is, the thugs presume it--on no evidence of any kind. which is their way, when they want a historical fact. fact and presumption are, for business purposes, all the same to them. they know the difference, but they also know how to blink it. they know, too, that while in history-building a fact is better than a presumption, it doesn't take a presumption long to bloom into a fact when they have the handling of it. they know by old experience that when they get hold of a presumptiontadpole he is not going to stay tadpole in their history-tank; no, they know how to develop him into the giant four-legged bullfrog of fact, and make him sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin, and look important and insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. the thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one. i wouldn't be a thug, not even if-but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. if i am better than a thug, is the merit mine? no, it is his. then to him be the praise. that is the right spirit. they "presume" the lad severed his "presumed" connection with the stratford school to become apprentice to a butcher. they also "presume" that the butcher was his father. they don't know. there is no written record of it, nor any other actual evidence. if it would have helped their case any, they would have apprenticed him to thirty butchers, to fifty butchers, to a wilderness of butchers--all by their patented method "presumption." if it will help their case they will do it yet; and if it will further help it, they will "presume" that all those butchers were his father. and the week after, they will say it. why, it is just like being the past tense of the compound reflexive adverbial incandescent hypodermic irregular accusative noun of multitude; which is father to the expression which the grammarians call verb. it is like a whole ancestry, with only one posterity. to resume. next, the young bacon took up the study of law, and mastered that abstruse science. from that day to the end of his life he was daily in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as a casual onlooker in intervals between holding horses in front of a theater, but as a practicing lawyer--a great and successful one, a renowned one, a launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood of the legal table round; he lived in the law's atmosphere thenceforth, all his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its difficult steeps to its supremest summit, the lord-chancellorship, leaving behind him no fellow-craftsman qualified to challenge his divine right to that majestic place. when we read the praises bestowed by lord penzance and the other illustrious experts upon the legal condition and legal aptnesses, brilliances, profundities, and felicities so prodigally displayed in the plays, and try to fit them to the historyless stratford stage-manager, they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but when we put them in the mouth of bacon they do not sound strange, they seem in their natural and rightful place, they seem at home there. please turn back and read them again. attributed to shakespeare of stratford they are meaningless, they are inebriate extravagancies--intemperate admirations of the dark side of the moon, so to speak; attributed to bacon, they are admirations of the golden glories of the moon's front side, the moon at the full--and not intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right, and justified. "at ever turn and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned first to the law; he seems almost to have thought in legal phrases; the commonest legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions, were ever at the end of his pen." that could happen to no one but a person whose trade was the law; it could not happen to a dabbler in it. veteran mariners fill their conversation with sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from the ship and the sea and the storm, but no mere passenger ever does it, be he of stratford or elsewhere; or could do it with anything resembling accuracy, if he were hardy enough to try. please read again what lord campbell and the other great authorities have said about bacon when they thought they were saying it about shakespeare of stratford. x the rest of the equipment the author of the plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind, grace, and majesty of expression. everyone one had said it, no one doubts it. also, he had humor, humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to break out. we have no evidence of any kind that shakespeare of stratford possessed any of these gifts or any of these acquirements. the only lines he ever wrote, so far as we know, are substantially barren of them-barren of all of them. good friend for iesus sake forbeare to digg the dust encloased heare: blest be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones. ben jonson says of bacon, as orator: his language, where he could spare and pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. no man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. no member of his speech but consisted of his (its) own graces. . . . the fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end. from macaulay: he continued to distinguish himself in parliament, particularly by his exertions in favor of one excellent measure on which the king's heart was set--the union of england and scotland. it was not difficult for such an intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor of such a scheme. he conducted the great case of the post nati in the exchequer chamber; and the decision of the judges--a decision the legality of which may be questioned, but the beneficial effect of which must be acknowledged--was in a great measure attributed to his dexterous management. again: while actively engaged in the house of commons and in the courts of law, he still found leisure for letters and philosophy. the noble treatise on the advancement of learning, which at a later period was expanded into the de augmentis, appeared in 1605. the wisdom of the ancients, a work which, if it had proceeded from any other writer, would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit and learning, was printed in 1609. in the mean time the novum organum was slowly proceeding. several distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of that extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest admiration of his genius. even sir thomas bodley, after perusing the cogitata et visa, one of the most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all proposals and plots in that book, bacon showed himself a master workman"; and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with choice conceits of the present state of learning, and with worthy contemplations of the means to procure it." in 1612 a new edition of the essays appeared, with additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality. nor did these pursuits distract bacon's attention from a work the most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his mighty powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," to use his own phrase, "of the laws of england." to serve the exacting and laborious offices of attorney-general and solicitor-general would have satisfied the appetite of any other man for hard work, but bacon had to add the vast literary industries just described, to satisfy his. he was a born worker. the service which he rendered to letters during the last five years of his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase the regret with which we think on the many years which he had wasted, to use the words of sir thomas bodley, "on such study as was not worthy such a student." he commenced a digest of the laws of england, a history of england under the princes of the house of tudor, a body of national history, a philosophical romance. he made extensive and valuable additions to his essays. he published the inestimable treatise de augmentis scientiarum. did these labors of hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and quiet his appetite for work? not entirely: the trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and languor bore the mark of his mind. the best jest-book in the world is that which he dictated from memory, without referring to any book, on a day on which illness had rendered him incapable of serious study. here are some scattered remarks (from macaulay) which throw light upon bacon, and seem to indicate--and maybe demonstrate-that he was competent to write the plays and poems: with great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other human being. the essays contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a court-masque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the whole world of knowledge. his understanding resembled the tent which the fairy paribanou gave to prince ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady; spread it, and the armies of the powerful sultans might repose beneath its shade. the knowledge in which bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of the mutual relations of all departments of knowledge. in a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his uncle, lord burleigh, he said, "i have taken all knowledge to be my province." though bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations of rhetoric. the practical faculty was powerful in bacon; but not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason and to tyrannize over the whole man. there are too many places in the plays where this happens. poor old dying john of gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a pathetic instance of it. "we may assume" that it is bacon's fault, but the stratford shakespeare has to bear the blame. no imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. it stopped at the first check from good sense. in truth, much of bacon's life was passed in a visionary world-amid things as strange as any that are described in the arabian tales . . . amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of aladdin, fountains more wonderful than the golden water of parizade, conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of astolfo, remedies more effacious than the balsam of fierabras. yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild--nothing but what sober reason sanctioned. bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the novum organum. . . . every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. no book ever made so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so may prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. but what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which, without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science--all the past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the coming age. he had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it portable. his eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in literature. it is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed in the plays and poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any other man of his time or of any previous time. he was a genius without a mate, a prodigy not matable. there was only one of him; the planet could not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. he could have written anything that is in the plays and poems. he could have written this: the cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like an insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. we are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. also, he could have written this, but he refrained: good friend for iesus sake forbeare to digg the dust encloased heare: blest be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones. when a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers, he ought not to follow it immediately with good friend for iesus sake forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor prose too violent for comfort. it will give him a shock. you never notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is until you bite into a layer of it in a pie. xi am i trying to convince anybody that shakespeare did not write shakespeare's works? ah, now, what do you take me for? would i be so soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly seventy-four years? it would grieve me to know that any one could think so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. no, no, i am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. i doubt if i could do it myself. we always get at second hand our notions about systems of government; and high tariff and low tariff; and prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the shakespeares and the author ortons and the mrs. eddys. we get them all at second hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. it is the way we are made. it is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't change it. and whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. in morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash. whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. we submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately afraid we should find, upon examination that the jewels are of the sort that are manufactured at north adams, mass. i haven't any idea that shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this side of the year 2209. disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. it took several thousand years to convince our fine race--including every splendid intellect in it--that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken several thousand years to convince the same fine race--including every splendid intellect in it--that there is no such person as satan; it has taken several centuries to remove perdition from the protestant church's program of post-mortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade american presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their scotch brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when shakespeare comes down from his perch. we are the reasoning race. we can't prove it by the above examples, and we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories" built by those stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, if i could think of them. we are the reasoning race, and when we find a vague file of chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of stratford village, we know by our reasoning bowers that hercules has been along there. i feel that our fetish is safe for three centuries yet. the bust, too--there in the stratford church. the precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy mustache, and the putty face, unseamed of care--that face which has looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder. xii irreverence one of the most trying defects which i find in these--these --what shall i call them? for i will not apply injurious epithets to them, the way they do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature and my dignity. the farthest i can go in that direction is to call them by names of limited reverence-names merely descriptive, never unkind, never offensive, never tainted by harsh feeling. if they would do like this, they would feel better in their hearts. very well, then--to proceed. one of the most trying defects which i find in these stratfordolaters, these shakesperiods, these thugs, these bangalores, these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. it is detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. i am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. when a thing is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. i cannot call to mind a single instance where i have ever been irreverent, except towards the things which were sacred to other people. am i in the right? i think so. but i ask no one to take my unsupported word; no, look at the dictionary; let the dictionary decide. here is the definition: irreverence. the quality or condition of irreverence toward god and sacred things. what does the hindu say? he says it is correct. he says irreverence is lack of respect for vishnu, and brahma, and chrishna, and his other gods, and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things within them. he endorses the definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000 hindus or their equivalents back of him. the dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital g it could restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for our deity and our sacred things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea miscarried: for by the simple process of spelling his deities with capitals the hindu confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus making it clearly compulsory upon us to revere his gods and his sacred things, and nobody's else. we can't say a word, for he had our own dictionary at his back, and its decision is final. this law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. whatever is sacred to the christian must be held in reverence by everybody else; 2. whatever is sacred to the hindu must be held in reverence by everybody else; 3. therefore, by consequence, logically, and indisputably, whatever is sacred to me must be held in reverence by everybody else. now then, what aggravates me is that these troglodytes and muscovites and bandoleers and buccaneers are also trying to crowd in and share the benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere their shakespeare and hold him sacred. we can't have that: there's enough of us already. if you go on widening and spreading and inflating the privilege, it will presently come to be conceded that each man's sacred things are the only ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or suffer for it. that can surely happen, and when it happens, the word irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent, and dictatorial word in the language. and people will say, "whose business is it what gods i worship and what things hold sacred? who has the right to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get that right?" we cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. we must save the word from this destruction. there is but one way to do it, and that is to stop the spread of the privilege and strictly confine it to its present limits--that is, to all the christian sects, to all the hindu sects, and me. we do not need any more, the stock is watered enough, just as it is. it would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. i think so because i am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently, kindly, charitably, dispassionately. the other sects lack the quality of self-restraint. the catholic church says the most irreverent things about matters which are sacred to the protestants, and the protestant church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon thomas paine and charge him with irreverence. this is all unfortunate, because it makes it difficult for students equipped with only a low grade of mentality to find out what irreverence really is. it will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating the irreverent and keeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn from all the sects but me. then there will be no more quarreling, no more bandying of disrespectful epithets, no more heartburnings. there will then be nothing sacred involved in this baconshakespeare controversy except what is sacred to me. that will simplify the whole matter, and trouble will cease. there will be irreverence no longer, because i will not allow it. the first time those criminals charge me with irreverence for calling their stratford myth an arthur-orton-mary-baker-thompson-eddy-louisthe-seventeenth-veiled-prophet-of-khorassan will be the last. taught by the methods found effective in extinguishing earlier offenders by the inquisition, of holy memory, i shall know how to quiet them. xiii isn't it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all the celebrated englishmen, irishmen, and scotchmen of modern times, clear back to the first tudors--a list containing five hundred names, shall we say?--and you can go to the histories, biographies, and cyclopedias and learn the particulars of the lives of every one of them. every one of them except one--the most famous, the most renowned--by far the most illustrious of them all--shakespeare! you can get the details of the lives of all the celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians, comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists, historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen, generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates, conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers, explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers, naturalists, claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists, philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers, painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars, highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons--you can get the life-histories of all of them but one. just one--the most extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all-shakespeare! you may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the rest of christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find out the life-histories of all those people, too. you will then have listed fifteen hundred celebrities, and you can trace the authentic life-histories of the whole of them. save one--far and away the most colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation--shakespeare! about him you can find out nothing. nothing of even the slightest importance. nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly commonplace person--a manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was fairly cold in his grave. we can go to the records and find out the life-history of every renowned race-horse of modern times--but not shakespeare's! there are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cart-loads (of guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself--he hadn't any history to record. there is no way of getting around that deadly fact. and no sane way has yet been discovered of getting around its formidable significance. its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (i do not use the term unkindly) is, that shakespeare had no prominence while he lived, and none until he had been dead two or three generations. the plays enjoyed high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a pity the world did not find it out. he ought to have explained that he was the author, and not merely a nom de plume for another man to hide behind. if he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more solicitous about his works, it would have been better for his good name, and a kindness to us. the bones were not important. they will moulder away, they will turn to dust, but the works will endure until the last sun goes down. mark twain. p.s. march 25. about two months ago i was illuminating this autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the bacon-shakespeare controversy, and i then took occasion to air the opinion that the stratford shakespeare was a person of no public consequence or celebrity during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure and unimportant. and not only in great london, but also in the little village where he was born, where he lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was buried. i argued that if he had been a person of any note at all, aged villagers would have had much to tell about him many and many a year after his death, instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact connected with him. i believed, and i still believe, that if he had been famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my native village out in missouri. it is a good argument, a prodigiously strong one, and most formidable one for even the most gifted and ingenious and plausible stratfordolator to get around or explain away. today a hannibal courier-post of recent date has reached me, with an article in it which reinforces my contention that a really celebrated person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixty years. i will make an extract from it: hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but ingratitude is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she has produced, and as the years go by her greatest son, mark twain, or s. l. clemens as a few of the unlettered call him, grows in the estimation and regard of the residents of the town he made famous and the town that made him famous. his name is associated with every old building that is torn down to make way for the modern structures demanded by a rapidly growing city, and with every hill or cave over or through which he might by any possibility have roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove into his stories, such as holiday hill, jackson's island, or mark twain cave, are now monuments to his genius. hannibal is glad of any opportunity to do him honor as he had honored her. so it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school with mark or were with him on some of his usual escapades have been honored with large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came to be a very extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now seen to have been indicative of what was to come. like aunt becky and mrs. clemens, they can now see that mark was hardly appreciated when he lived here and that the things he did as a boy and was whipped for doing were not all bad, after all. so they have been in no hesitancy about drawing out the bad things he did as well as the good in their efforts to get a "mark twain" story, all incidents being viewed in the light of his present fame, until the volume of "twainiana" is already considerable and growing in proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories are retold second and third hand by their descendants. with some seventy-three years and living in a villa instead of a house, he is a fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are some of his "works" that will go swooping up hannibal chimneys as long as graybeards gather about the fires and begin with, "i've heard father tell," or possibly, "once when i." the mrs. clemens referred to is my mother--was my mother. and here is another extract from a hannibal paper, of date twenty days ago: miss becca blankenship died at the home of william dickason, 408 rock street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. the deceased was a sister of "huckleberry finn," one of the famous characters in mark twain's tom sawyer. she had been a member of the dickason family--the housekeeper--for nearly fortyfive years, and was a highly respected lady. for the past eight years she had been an invalid, but was as well cared for by mr. dickason and his family as if she had been a near relative. she was a member of the park methodist church and a christian woman. i remember her well. i have a picture of her in my mind which was graven there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. she was at that time nine years old, and i was about eleven. i remember where she stood, and how she looked; and i can still see her bare feet, her bare head, her brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. she was crying. what it was about i have long ago forgotten. but it was the tears that preserved the picture for me, no doubt. she was a good child, i can say that for her. she knew me nearly seventy years ago. did she forget me, in the course of time? i think not. if she had lived in stratford in shakespeare's time, would she have forgotten him? yes. for he was never famous during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in stratford, and there wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he had been dead a week. "injun joe," "jimmy finn," and "general gaines" were prominent and very intemperate ne'er-do-weels in hannibal two generations ago. plenty of grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them. isn't it curious that two "town drunkards" and one half-breed loafer should leave behind them, in a remote missourian village, a fame a hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in the matter of definite facts than shakespeare left behind him in the village where he had lived the half of his lifetime? mark twain. [end.] . 1885 the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain notice persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. by order of the author per g. g., chief ordnance explanatory in this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods south-western dialect; the ordinary "pike-county" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. the shadings have not been done in a hap-hazard fashion, or by guess-work; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. i make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. the author chapter one you don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "the adventures of tom sawyer," but that ain't no matter. that book was made by mr. mark twain, and he told the truth, mainly. there was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. that is nothing. i never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was aunt polly, or the widow, or maybe mary. aunt pollytom's aunt polly, she isand mary, and the widow douglas, is all told about in that bookwhich is mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as i said before. now the way that the book winds up, is this: tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. we got six thousand dollars apieceall gold. it was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. well, judge thatcher, he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece, all the year roundmore than a body could tell what to do with. the widow douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when i couldn't stand it no longer, i lit out. i got into my old rags, and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. but tom sawyer, he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers and i might join if i would go back to the widow and be respectable. so i went back. the widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. she put me in them new clothes again, and i couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. well, then, the old thing commenced again. the widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. when you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there wasn't really anything the matter with them. that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. in a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better. after supper she got out her book and learned me about moses and the bulrushers; and i was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by-and-by she let it out that moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then i didn't care no more about him; because i don't take no stock in dead people. pretty soon i wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. but she wouldn't. she said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and i must try to not do it any more. that is just the way with some people. they get down on the thing when they don't know nothing about it. here she was a bothering about moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. and she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself. her sister, miss watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now, with a spelling-book. she worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. i couldn't stood it much longer. then for an hour it was deadly dull, and i was fidgety. miss watson would say, "don't put your feet up there, huckleberry"; and "don't scrunch up like that, huckleberryset up straight"; and pretty soon she would say, "don't gap and stretch like that, huckleberrywhy don't you try to behave?" then she told me all about the bad place, and i said i wished i was there. she got mad, then, but i didn't mean no harm. all i wanted was to go somewheres; all i wanted was a change, i warn't particular. she said it was wicked to say what i said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. well, i couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so i made up my mind i wouldn't try for it. but i never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good. now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. she said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. so i didn't think much of it. but i never said so. i asked her if she reckoned tom sawyer would go there, and, she said, not by a considerable sight. i was glad about that, because i wanted him and me to be together. miss watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. by-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. i went up to my room with a piece of candle and put it on the table. then i set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. i felt so lonesome i most wished i was dead. the stars was shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and i heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me and i couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. then away out in the woods i heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave and has to go about that way every night grieving. i got so down-hearted and scared, i did wish i had some company. pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and i flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before i could budge it was all shriveled up. i didn't need anybody to tell me that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so i was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. i got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then i tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. but i hadn't no confidence. you do that when you've lost a horse-shoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but i hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd killed a spider. i set down again, a shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death, now, and so the widow wouldn't know. well, after a long time i heard the clock away off in the town go boomboomboom-twelve licksand all still againstiller than ever. pretty soon i heard a twig snap, down in the dark amongst the treessomething was a stirring. i set still and listened. directly i could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. that was good! says i, "me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as i could, and then i put out the light and scrambled out of the window onto the shed. then i slipped down to the ground and crawled in amongst the trees, and sure enough there was tom sawyer waiting for me. chapter two we went tip-toeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. when we was passing by the kitchen i fell over a root and made a noise. we scrouched down and laid still. miss watson's big nigger, named jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. he got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. then he says: "who dah?" he listened some more; then he come tip-toeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. there was a place on my ankle that got to itching; but i dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. seemed like i'd die if i couldn't scratch. well, i've noticed that thing plenty of times since. if you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepyif you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. pretty soon jim says: "saywho is you? what is you? dog my cats ef i didn' hear sumf'n. well, i knows what i's gwyne to do. i's gwyne to set down here and listen tell i hears it agin." so he set down on the ground betwixt me and tom. he leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. my nose begun to itch. it itched till the tears come into my eyes. but i dasn't scratch. then it begun to itch on the inside. next i got to itching underneath. i didn't know how i was going to set still. this miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. i was itching in eleven different places now. i reckoned i couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but i set my teeth hard and got ready to try. just then jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snoreand then i was pretty soon comfortable again. tom he made a sign to mekind of a little noise with his mouthand we went creeping away on our hands and knees. when we was ten foot off, tom whispered to me and wanted to tie jim to the tree for fun; but i said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out i warn't in. then tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. i didn't want him to try. i said jim might wake up and come. but tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and tom laid five cents on the table for pay. then we got out, and i was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do tom but he must crawl to where jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. i waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome. as soon as tom was back, we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by-and-by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. tom said he slipped jim's hat off of his head and hung it on the limb right over him, and jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. afterwards jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the state, and then set him under the trees again and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. and next time jim told it he said they rode him down to new orleans; and after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by-and-by he said they rode him over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. niggers would come miles to hear jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, jim would happen in and say, "hm! what you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. jim always kept that five-center piece around his neck with a string and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to, just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. niggers would come from all around there and give jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. jim was most ruined, for a servant, because he got so stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches. well, when tom and me got to the edge of the hill-top, we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, may be; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. we went down the hill and found jo harper, and ben rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. so we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. we went to a clump of bushes, and tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees. we went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. tom poked about amongst the passages and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. we went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. tom says: "now we'll start this band of robbers and call it tom sawyer's gang. everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood." everybody was willing. so tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. it swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. and nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. and if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot, forever. everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked tom if he got it out of his own head. he said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate books, and robber books, and every gang that was high-toned had it. some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. then ben rogers says: "here's huck finn, he hain't got no familywhat you going to do 'bout him?" "well, hain't he got a father?" says tom sawyer. "yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him, these days. he used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts for a year or more." they talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. well, nobody could think of anything to doeverybody was stumped, and set still. i was most ready to cry; but all at once i thought of a way, and so i offered them miss watsonthey could kill her. everybody said: "oh, she'll do, she'll do. that's all right. huck can come in." then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and i made my mark on the paper. "now," says ben rogers, "what's the line of business of this gang?" "nothing only robbery and murder," tom said. "but who are we going to rob? housesor cattleor-" "stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery, it's burglary," says tom sawyer. "we ain't burglars. that ain't no sort of style. we are highwaymen. we stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money." "must we always kill the people?" "oh, certainly. it's best. some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them. except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed." "ransomed? what's that?" "i don't know. but that's what they do. i've seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do." "but how can we do it if we don't know what it is?" "why blame it all, we've to do it. don't i tell you it's in the books? do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?" "oh, that's all very fine to say, tom sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? that's the thing i want to get at. now what do you reckon it is?" "well i don't know. but per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead." "now, that's something like. that'll answer. why couldn't you said that before? we'll keep them till they're ransomed to deathand a bothersome lot they'll be, too, eating up everything and always trying to get loose." "how you talk, ben rogers. how can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?" "a guard. well, that is good. so somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. i think that's foolishness. why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?" "because it ain't in the booksthat's why. now, ben rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don't you?that's the idea. don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? do you reckon you can learn 'em anything? not by a good deal. no, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way." "all right. i don't mind; but i say it's a fool way, anyhow. saydo we kill the women, too?" "well, ben rogers, if i was as ignorant as you i wouldn't let on. kill the women? nonobody ever saw anything in the books like that. you fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by-and-by they fall in love with you and never want to go home any more." "well, if that's the way, i'm agreed, but i don't take no stock in it. mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that they won't be no place for the robbers. but go ahead, i ain't got nothing to say." little tommy barnes was asleep, now, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't want to be a robber any more. so they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. but tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week and rob somebody and kill some people. ben rogers said he couldn't get out much, only sundays, and so he wanted to begin next sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on sunday, and that settled the thing. they agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected tom sawyer first captain and jo harper second captain of the gang, and so started home. i clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. my new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and i was dog-tired. chapter three well, i got a good going-over in the morning, from old miss watson, on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay and looked so sorry that i thought i would behave a while if i could. then miss watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. she told me to pray every day, and whatever i asked for i would get it. but it warn't so. i tried it. once i got a fish-line, but no hooks. it warn't any good to me without hooks. i tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow i couldn't make it work. by-and-by, one day, i asked miss watson to try for me, but she said i was a fool. she never told me why, and i couldn't make it out no way. i set down, one time, back in the woods, and had a long think about it. i says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't deacon winn get back the money he lost on pork? why can't the widow get back her silver snuff-box that was stole? why can't miss watson fat up? no, says i to myself, there ain't nothing in it. i went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was "spiritual gifts." this was too many for me, but she told me what she meanti must help other people, and do everything i could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. this was including miss watson, as i took it. i went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but i couldn't see no advantage about itexcept for the other peopleso at last i reckoned i wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go. sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about providence in a way to make a body's mouth water; but maybe next day miss watson would take hold and knock it all down again. i judged i could see that there was two providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's providence, but if miss watson's got him there warn't no help for him any more. i thought it all out, and reckoned i would belong to the widow's, if he wanted me, though i couldn't make out how he was agoing to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing i was so ignorant and so kind of low-down and ornery. pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; i didn't want to see him no more. he used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though i used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. well, about this time he was found in the river drowned, about twelve miles above town, so people said. they judged it was him, anyway; said this drowned man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hairwhich was all like papbut they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. they said he was floating on his back in the water. they took him and buried him on the bank. but i warn't comfortable long, because i happened to think of something. i knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his back, but on his face. so i knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. so i was uncomfortable again. i judged the old man would turn up again by-and-by, though i wished he wouldn't. we played robber now and then about a month, and then i resigned. all the boys did. we hadn't robbed nobody, we hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended. we used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-drovers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. tom sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he called the turnips and stuff "julery" and we would go to the cave and pow-wow over what we had done and how many people we had killed and marked. but i couldn't see no profit in it. one time tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of spanish merchants and rich arabs was going to camp in cave hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. he said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. he never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it; though they was only lath and broom-sticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. i didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of spaniards and a-rabs, but i wanted to see the camels and elephants, so i was on hand next day, saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word, we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. but there warn't no spaniards and arabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. it warn't anything but a sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. we busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though ben rogers got a rag doll, and jo harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in and made us drop everything and cut. i didn't see no di'monds, and i told tom sawyer so. he said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was arabs there, too, and elephants and things. i said, why couldn't we see them, then? he said if i warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called "don quixote," i would know without asking. he said it was all done by enchantment. he said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant sunday school, just out of spite. i said, allright, then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. tom sawyer said i was a numskull. "why," says he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say jack robinson. they are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church." "well," i says, "s'pose we got some genies to help uscan't we lick the other crowd then?" "how you going to get them?" "i don't know. how do they get them?" "why they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. they don't think nothing of pulling a shot tower up by the roots, and belting a sunday-school superintendent over the head with itor any other man." "who makes them tear around so?" "why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. they belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. if he tells them to build a palace forty miles long, out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from china for you to marry, they've got to do itand they've got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. and more-they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." "well," says i, "i think they are a pack of flatheads for not keeping the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. and what's moreif i was one of them i would see a man in jericho before i would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp." "how you talk, huck finn. why, you'd have to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not." "what, and i as high as a tree and as big as a church? all right, then; i would come; but i lay i'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country." "shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, huck finn. you don't seem to know anything, somehowperfect sap-head." i thought all this over for two or three days, and then i reckoned i would see if there was anything in it. i got an old tin lamp and an iron ring and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till i sweat like an injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. so then i judged that all that stuff was only just one of tom sawyer's lies. i reckoned he believed in the a-rabs and the elephants, but as for me i think different. it had all the marks of a sunday school. chapter four well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter, now. i had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and i don't reckon i could ever get any further than that if i was to live forever. i don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. at first i hated the school, but by-and-by i got so i could stand it. whenever i got uncommon tired i played hookey, and the hiding i got next day done me good and cheered me up. so the longer i went to school the easier it got to be. i was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me. living in a house, and sleeping in a bed, pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather i used to slide out and sleep in the woods, sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. i liked the old ways best, but i was getting so i liked the new ones, too, a little bit. the widow said i was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. she said she warn't ashamed of me. one morning i happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. i reached for some of it as quick as i could, to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but miss watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off. she says, "take your hands away, huckleberrywhat a mess you are always making." the widow put in a good word for me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad luck, i knowed that well enough. i started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. there is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind; so i never tried to do anything, but just poked along low-spirited and on the watch-out. i went down the front garden and clumb over the stile, where you go through the high board fence. there was an inch of new snow on the ground, and i seen somebody's tracks. they had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden fence. it was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. i couldn't make it out. it was very curious, somehow. i was going to follow around, but i stooped down to look at the tracks first. i didn't notice anything at first, but next i did. there was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil. i was up in a second and shinning down the hill. i looked over my shoulder every now and then, but i didn't see nobody. i was at judge thatcher's as quick as i could get there. he said: "why, my boy, you are all out of breath. did you come for your interest?" "no sir," i says; "is there some for me?" "oh, yes, a half-yearly is in, last night. over a hundred and fifty dollars. quite a fortune for you. you better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it." "no sir," i says, "i don't want to spend it. i don't want it at allnor the six thousand, nuther. i want you to take it; i want to give it to youthe six thousand and all." he looked surprised. he couldn't seem to make it out. he says: "why, what can you mean, my boy?" i says, "don't you ask me no questions about it, please. you'll take itwon't you?" he says: "well i'm puzzled. i's something the matter?" "please take it," says i, "and don't ask me nothingthen i won't have to tell no lies." he studied a while, and then he says: "oho-o. i think i see. you want to sell all your property to menot give it. that's the correct idea." then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says: "thereyou see it says 'for a consideration.' that means i have bought it of you and paid you for it. here's a dollar for you. now, you sign it." so i signed it, and left. miss watson's nigger, jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. he said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. so i went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for i found his tracks in the snow. what i wanted to know, was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? jim got out his hair-ball, and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. it fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. jim got down on his knees and put his ear against it and listened. but it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. he said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. i told him i had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. (i reckoned i wouldn't say nothing about the dollar i got from the judge.) i said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. jim smelt it, and bit it, and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. he said he would split open a raw irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. well, i knowed a potato would do that, but i had forgot it. jim put the quarter under the hair-ball and got down and listened again. this time he said the hair-ball was all right. he said it would tell my whole fortune if i wanted it to. i says, go on. so the hair-ball talked to jim, and jim told it to me. he says: "yo'ole father doan' know, yit, what he's a-gwyne to do. sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay. de bes' way is to res' easy en let de ole man take his own way. dey's two angels hoverin' roun' 'bout him. one uv 'em is white en shiny, en 'tother one is black. de white one gits him to go right, a little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. a body can't tell, yit, which one gwyne to fetch him at de las'. but you is all right. you gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin. dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. one uv 'em's light en 'tother one is dark. one is rich en 'tother is po'. you's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by-en-by. you wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung." when i lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there set pap, his own self! chapter five i had shut the door to. then i turned around, and there he was. i used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. i reckoned i was scared now, too; but in a minute i see i was mistaken. that is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitchedhe being so unexpected; but right away after, i see i warn't scared of him worth bothering about. he was most fifty, and he looked it. his hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. it was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. there warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawla tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. as for his clothesjust rags, that was all. he had one ankle resting on 'tother knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. his hat was laying on the floor; an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. i stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. i set the candle down. i noticed the window was up; so he had clumb in by the shed. he kept a-looking me all over. by-and-by he says: "starchy clothesvery. you think you're a good deal of a big-bug, don't you?" "maybe i am, maybe i ain't," i says. "don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "you've put on considerble many frills since i been away. i'll take you down a peg before i get done with you. you're educated, too, they say; can read and write. you think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? i'll take it out of you. who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?who told you you could?" "the widow. she told me." "the widow, hey?and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business?" "nobody never told her." "well, i'll learn her how to meddle. and looky hereyou drop that school, you hear? i'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what he is. you lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. none of the family couldn't, before they died. i can't; and here you're a-swelling yourself up like this. i ain't the man to stand ityou hear? saylemme hear you read." i took up a book and begun something about general washington and the wars. when i'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. he says: "it's so. you can do it. i had my doubts when you told me. now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. i won't have it. i'll lay for you, my smarty; and if i catch you about that school i'll tan you good. first you know you'll get religion, too. i never see such a son." he took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and says: "what's this?" "it's something they give me for learning my lessons good." he tore it up, and says "i'll give you something betteri'll give you a cowhide." he set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says "ain't you a sweet-scented dandy, though? a bed; and bedclothes; and a look'n-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floorand your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. i never see such a son. i bet i'll take some o' these frills out o' you before i'm done with you. why there ain't no end to your airsthey say you're rich. hey?how's that?" "they liethat's how." "looky heremind how you talk to me; i'm a-standing about all i can stand, nowso don't gimme no sass. i've been in town two days, and i hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich. i heard about it away down the river, too. that's why i come. you git me that money to-morrowi want it." "i hain't got no money." "it's a lie. judge thatcher's got it. you git it. i want it." "i hain't got no money, i tell you. you ask judge thatcher; he'll tell you the same." "all right. i'll ask him; and i'll make him pungle, too, or i'll know the reason why. sayhow much you got in your pocket? i want it." "i hain't got only a dollar, and i want that to-" "it don't make no difference what you want it foryou just shell it out." he took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day. when he had got out on the shed, he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when i reckoned he was gone, he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if i didn't drop that. next day he was drunk, and he went to judge thatcher's and bullyragged him and tried to make him give up the money, but he couldn't, and then he swore he'd make the law force him. the judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther not take a child away from its father. so judge thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. that pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. he said he'd cowhide me till i was black and blue if i didn't raise some money for him. i borrowed three dollars from judge thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. but he said he was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for him. when he got out the new judge said he was agoing to make a man of him. so he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. and after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was agoing to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. the judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. the old man said that what a man wanted that was down, was sympathy; and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. and when it was bedtime, the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says: "look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take ahold of it; shake it. there's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and 'll die before he'll go back. you mark them wordsdon't forget i said them. it's a clean hand now; shake itdon't be afeard." so they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. the judge's wife she kissed it. then the old man he signed a pledgemade his mark. the judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night sometime he got powerful thirsty and clumb out onto the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. and when they come to look at that spare room, they had to take soundings before they could navigate it. the judge he felt kind of sore. he said he reckoned a body could reform the ole man with a shot-gun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. chapter six well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for judge thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for not stopping school. he catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but i went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. i didn't want to go to school much, before, but i reckoned i'd go now to spite pap. that law trial was a slow business; appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now and then i'd borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised cain around town; and every time he raised cain he got jailed. he was just suitedthis kind of thing was right in his line. he got to hanging around the widow's too much, and so she told him at last, that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. well, wasn't he mad? he said he would show who was huck finn's boss. so he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three miles, in a skiff, and crossed over to the illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was. he kept me with him all the time, and i never got a chance to run off. we lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head, nights. he had a gun which he had stole, i reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me. the widow she found out where i was, by-and-by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me, but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till i was used to being where i was, and liked it, all but the cowhide part. it was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and i didn't see how i'd ever got to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book and have old miss watson pecking at you all the time. i didn't want to go back no more. i had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but now i took to it again because pap hadn't no objections. it was pretty good times up in the woods there take it all around. but by-and-by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and i couldn't stand it. i was all over welts. he got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. once he locked me in and was gone three days. it was dreadful lonesome. i judged he had got drowned and i wasn't ever going to get out any more. i was scared. i made up my mind i would fix up some way to leave there. i had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but i couldn't find no way. there warn't a window to it big enought for a dog to get through. i couldn't get up the chimbly, it was too narrow. the door was thick solid oak slabs. pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; i reckon i had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, i was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. but this time i found something at last; i found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. i greased it up and went to work. there was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. i got under the table and raised the blanket and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out, big enough to let me through. well, it was a good long job, but i was getting towards the end of it when i heard pap's gun in the woods. i got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap came in. pap warn't in a good humorso he was his natural self. he said he was down to town, and everything was going wrong. his lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money, if they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and judge thatcher knowed how to do it. and he said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win, this time. this shook me up considerable, because i didn't want to go back to the widow's any more and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. then the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's-his-name, when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing. he said he would like to see the widow get me. he said he would watch out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six or seven mile off, to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn't find me. that made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; i reckoned i wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance. the old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. there was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. i toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. i thought it all over, and i reckoned i would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the woods when i run away. i guessed i wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. i judged i would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and i reckoned he would. i got so full of it i didn't notice how long i was staying, till the old man hollered and asked me whether i was asleep or drownded. i got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. while i was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. he had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. a body would a thought he was adam, he was just all mud. whenever his liquor begun to work, he most always went for the govment. this time he says: "call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from hima man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. and they call that govment! that ain't all, nuther. the law backs that old judge thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. here's what the law does. the law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and upards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. they call that govment! a man can't get his rights in a govment like this. sometimes i've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. yes, and i told 'em so; i told old thatcher so to his face. lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what i said. says i, for two cents i'd leave the blamed country and never come anear it agin. them's the very words. i says, look at my hatif you call it a hatbut the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. look at it, says isuch a hat for me to wearone of the wealthiest men in this town, if i could git my rights. "oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. why, looky here. there was a free nigger there, from ohio; a mulatter, most as white as a white man. he had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed canethe awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the state. and what do you think? they said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. and that ain't the wust. they said he could vote, when he was at home. well, that let me out. thinks i, what is the country a-coming to? it was 'lection day, and i was just about to go and vote, myself, if i warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, i drawed out. i says i'll never vote agin. them's the very words i said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all mei'll never vote agin as long as i live. and to see the cool way of that niggerwhy, he wouldn't a give me the road if i hadn't shoved him out o' the way. i says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and soldthat's what i want to know. and what do you reckon they said? why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the state six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. there, nowthat's a specimen. they call that a govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the state six months. here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take ahold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted nigger, and-" pap was agoing on so, he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork, and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of languagemostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. he hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. but it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. he said so his own self, afterwards. he had heard old sowberry hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but i reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. after supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. that was always his word. i judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then i would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or 'tother. he drank, and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets, by-and-by; but luck didn't run my way. he didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy. he groaned, and moaned, and thrashed around this way and that, for a long time. at last i got so sleepy i couldn't keep my eyes open, all i could do, and so before i knowed what i was about i was sound asleep, and the candle burning. i don't know how long i was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and i was up. there was pap, looking wild and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. he said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheekbut i couldn't see no snakes. he started and run round and round the cabin, hollering "take him off! take him off! he's biting me on the neck!" i never see a man look so wild in the eyes. pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over, wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming, and saying there was devils ahold of him. he wore out, by-and-by, and laid still a while, moaning. then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound. i could hear the owls and the wolves, away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. he was laying over by the corner. by-and-by he raised up, part way, and listened, with his head to one side. he says very low: "tramptramptramp; that's the dead; tramptramptramp; they're coming after me; but i won't gooh, they're here! don't touch medon't! hands offthey're cold; let gooh, let a poor devil alone!" then he went down on all fours and crawled off begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. i could hear him through the blanket. by-and-by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. he chased me round and round the place, with a clasp-knife, calling me the angel of death and saying he would kill me and then i couldn't come for him no more. i begged, and told him i was only huck, but he laughed such a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. once when i turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and i thought i was gone; but i slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. he put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who. so he dozed off, pretty soon. by-and-by i got the old splitbottom chair and clumb up, as easy as i could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun. i slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, and then i laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to stir. and how slow and still the time did drag along. chapter seven git up! what you 'bout!" i opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where i was. it was after sun-up, and i had been sound asleep. pap was standing over me, looking sourand sick, too. he says "what you doin' with this gun?" i judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so i says: "somebody tried to get in, so i was laying for him." "why didn't you roust me out?" "well i tried to, but i couldn't; i couldn't budge you." "well, all right. don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. i'll be along in a minute." he unlocked the door and i cleared out, up the river bank. i noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so i knowed the river had begun to rise. i reckoned i would have great times now, if i was over at the town. the june rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins, here comes cord-wood floating down, and pieces of log raftssometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood yards and the sawmill. i went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and 'tother one out for what the rise might fetch along. well, all at once, here comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. i shot head first off of the bank, like a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe. i just expected there'd be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and laugh at him. but it warn't so this time. it was a drift-canoe, sure enough, and i clumb in and paddled her ashore. thinks i, the old man will be glad when he sees thisshe's worth ten dollars. but when i got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as i was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, i struck another idea; i judged i'd hide her good, and then, stead of taking to the woods when i run off, i'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot. it was pretty close to the shanty, and i thought i heard the old man coming, all the time; but i got her hid; and then i out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. so he hadn't seen anything. when he got along, i was hard at it taking up a "trot" line. he abused me a little for being so slow, but i told him i fell in the river and that was what made me so long. i knowed he would see i was wet, and then he would be asking questions. we got five cat-fish off of the lines and went home. while we laid off, after breakfast, to sleep up, both of us being about wore out, i got to thinking that if i could fix up some way to keep pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you see, all kinds of things might happen. well, i didn't see no way for a while, but by-and-by pap raised up a minute, to drink another barrel of water, and he says: "another time a man comes a-prowling round here, you roust me out, you hear? that man warn't here for no good. i'd a shot him. next time, you roust me out, you hear?" then he dropped down and went to sleep againbut what he had been saying give me the very idea i wanted. i says to myself, i can fix it now so nobody won't think of following me. about twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. the river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. by-and-by, along comes part of a log raftnine logs fast together. we went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. then we had dinner. anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff; but that warn't pap's style. nine logs was enough for one time; he must shove right over to town and sell. so he locked me in and took the skiff and started off towing the raft about half-past three. i judged he wouldn't come back that night. i waited till i reckoned he had got a good start, then i out with my saw and went to work on that log again. before he was side of the river i was out of the hole; him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. i took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then i done the same with the side of bacon; then the whisky jug; i took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; i took the wadding; i took the bucket and gourd, i took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. i took fish-lines and matches and other thingseverything that was worth a cent. i cleaned out the place. i wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out at the wood pile, and i knowed why i was going to leave that. i fetched out the gun, and now i was done. i had wore the ground a good deal, crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things. so i fixed that as good as i could from the outside by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the sawdust. then i fixed the piece of log back in its place, and put two rocks under it and one against it to hold it there,for it was bent up at that place, and didn't quite touch ground. if you stood four or five foot away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't ever notice it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin and it warn't likely anybody would go fooling around there. it was all grass clear to the canoe; so i hadn't left a track. i followed around to see. i stood on the bank and looked out over the river. all safe. so i took the gun and went up a piece into the woods and was hunting around for some birds, when i see a wild pig; hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms. i shot this fellow and took him into camp. i took the axe and smashed in the doori beat it and hacked it considerable, a-doing it. i fetched the pig in and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down on the ground to bleedi say ground, because it was groundhard packed, and no boards. well, next i took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it,all i could dragand i started it from the pig and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and down it sunk, out of sight. you could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. i did wish tom sawyer was there, i knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. nobody could spread himself like tom sawyer in such a thing as that. well, last i pulled out some of my hair, and bloodied the axe good, and stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. then i took the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't drip) till i got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. now i thought of something else. so i went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe and fetched them to the house. i took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the placepap done everything with his clasp-knife, about the cooking. then i carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushesand ducks too, you might say, in the season. there was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side, that went miles away, i don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. the meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. i dropped pap's whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. then i tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn't leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again. it was about dark, now; so i dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. i made fast to a willow; then i took a bite to eat, and by-and-by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. i says to myself, they'll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me. and they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. they won't ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. they'll soon get tired of that, and won't bother no more about me. all right; i can stop anywhere i want to. jackson's island is good enough for me; i know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. and then i can paddle over to town, nights, and slink around and pick up things i want. jackson's island's the place. i was pretty tired, and the first thing i knowed, i was asleep. when i woke up i didn't know where i was, for a minute. i set up and looked around, a little scared. then i remembered. the river looked miles and miles across. the moon was so bright i could a counted the drift logs that went a slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelt late. you know what i meani don't know the words to put it in. i took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start, when i heard a sound away over the water. pretty soon i made it out. it was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. i peeped out through the willow branches, and there it wasa skiff, away across the water. i couldn't tell how many was in it. it kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me i see there warn't but one man in it. thinks i, maybe it's pap, though i warn't expecting him. he dropped below me, with the current, and by-and-by he come a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close i could a reached out the gun and touched him. well, it was pap, sure enoughand sober, too, by the way he laid to his oars. i didn't lose no time. the next minute i was a-spinning down stream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. i made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because soon i would be passing the ferry landing and people might see me and hail me. i got out amongst the drift-wood and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. i laid there and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky, not a cloud in it. the sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; i never knowed it before. and how far a body can hear on the water such nights! i heard people talking at the ferry landing. i heard what they said, too, every word of it. one man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights, now. 'tother one said this warn't one of the short ones, he reckonedand then they laughed, and he said it over again and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something brisk and said let him alone. the first fellow said he 'lowed to tell it to his old womanshe would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his tune. i heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. after that, the talk got further and further away, and i couldn't make out the words any more, but i could hear the mumble; and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off. i was away below the ferry now. i rose up and there was jackson's island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy-timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights. there warn't any signs of the bar at the headit was all under water, now. it didn't take me long to get there. i shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then i got into dead water and landed on the side towards the illinois shore. i run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that i knowed about; i had to part the willow branches to get in; and when i made fast nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside. i went up and set down on a log at the head of the island and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood, and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. a monstrous big lumber raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of it. i watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of where i stood i heard a man say, "stern oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!" i heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side. there was a little gray in the sky, now; so i stepped into the woods and laid down for a nap before breakfast. chapter eight the sun was up so high when i waked, that i judged it was after eight o'clock. i laid there in the grass and the cool shade, thinking about things and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. i could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. there was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. a couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. i was powerful lazy and comfortabledidn't want to get up and cook breakfast. well, i was dozing off again, when i think i hears a deep sound of "boom!" away up the river. i rouses up and rests my elbow and listens; pretty soon i hears it again. i hopped up and went and looked out a hole in the leaves, and i see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways upabout abreast the ferry. and there was the ferryboat full of people, floating along down. i knowed what was the matter, now. "boom!" i see the white smoke squirt out of the ferry-boat's side. you see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top. i was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire, because they might see the smoke. so i set there and watched the cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. the river was a mile wide, there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morningso i was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders, if i only had a bite to eat. well, then i happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there. so says i, i'll keep a lookout, and if any of them's floating around after me, i'll give them a show. i changed to the illinois edge of the island to see what luck i could have, and i warn't disappointed. a big double loaf come along, and i most got it, with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. of course i was where the current set in the closest to the shorei knowed enough for that. but by-and-by along comes another one, and this time i won. i took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver, and set my teeth in. it was "baker's bread"what the quality eatnone of your low-down corn-pone. i got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied. and then something struck me. i says, now i reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it. so there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing. that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and i reckon it don't work for only just the right kind. i lit a pipe and had a good long smoke and went on watching. the ferry-boat was floating with the current, and i allowed i'd have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in close, where the bread did. when she'd got pretty well along down towards me, i put out my pipe and went to where i fished out the bread, and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. where the log forked i could peep through. by-and-by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could a run out a plank and walked ashore. most everybody was on the boat. pap, and judge thatcher, and bessie thatcher, and jo harper, and tom sawyer, and his old aunt polly, and sid and mary, and plenty more. everybody was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says: "look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. i hope so, anyway." i didn't hope so. they all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. i could see them first-rate, but they couldn't see me. then the captain sung out: "stand away!" and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and i judged i was gone. if they'd a had some bullets in, i reckon they'd a got the corpse they was after. well, i see i warn't hurt, thanks to goodness. the boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. i could hear the booming, now and then, further and further off, and by-and-by after an hour, i didn't hear it no more. the island was three mile long. i judged they had got to the foot, and was giving it up. but they didn't yet a while. they turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the missouri side, under steam, and booming once in a while as they went. i crossed over to that side and watched them. when they got abreast of the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the missouri shore and went home to the town. i knowed i was all right now. nobody else would come a-hunting after me. i got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. i made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them. i catched a cat-fish and haggled him open with my saw, and towards sundown i started my camp fire and had supper. then i set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. when it was dark i set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty satisfied; but by-and-by it got sort of lonesome, and so i went and set on the bank and listened to the currents washing along, and counted the stars and drift-logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can't stay so, you soon get over it. and so for three days and nights. no differencejust the same thing. but the next day i went exploring around down through the island. i was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and i wanted to know all about it; but mainly i wanted to put in the time. i found plenty strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer-grapes, and green razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. they would all come handy by-and-by, i judged. well, i went fooling along in the deep woods till i judged i warn't far from the foot of the island. i had my gun along, but i hadn't shot nothing, it was for protection; thought i would kill some game nigh home. about this time i mighty near stepped on a good sized snake, and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and i after it, trying to get a shot at it. i clipped along, and all of a sudden i bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking. my heart jumped up amongst my lungs. i never waited for to look further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tip-toes as fast as ever i could. every now and then i stopped a second, amongst the thick leaves, and listened; but my breath come so hard i couldn't hear nothing else. i slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on; if i see a stump, i took it for a man; if i trod on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and i only got half, and the short half, too. when i got to camp i warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in my craw; but i says, this ain't no time to be fooling around. so i got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and i put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year's camp, and then clumb a tree. i reckon i was up in the tree two hours; but i didn't see nothing, i didn't hear nothingi only thought i heard and seen as much as a thousand things. well, i couldn't stay up there forever; so at last i got down, but i kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. all i could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. by the time it was night i was pretty hungry. so when it was good and dark, i slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the illinois bankabout a quarter of a mile. i went out in the woods and cooked a supper, and i had about made up my mind i would stay there all night, when i hear a plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk, and says to myself, horses coming; and next i hear people's voices. i got everything into the canoe as quick as i could, and then went creeping through the woods to see what i could find out. i hadn't got far when i hear a man say: "we better camp here, if we can find a good place; the horses is about beat out. let's look around." i didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. i tied up in the old place, and reckoned i would sleep in the canoe. i didn't sleep much. i couldn't, somehow, for thinking. and every time i waked up i thought somebody had me by the neck. so the sleep didn't do me no good. by-and-by i says to myself, i can't live this way; i'm agoing to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; i'll find it out or bust. well, i felt better, right off. so i took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. the moon was shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. i poked along well onto an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. well by this time i was most down to the foot of the island. a little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the night was about done. i give her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore; then i got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods. i set down there on a log and looked out through the leaves. i see the moon go off watch and the darkness begin to blanket the river. but in a little while i see a pale streak over the tree-tops, and knowed the day was coming. so i took my gun and slipped off towards where i had run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. but i hadn't no luck, somehow; i couldn't seem to find the place. but by-and-by, sure enough, i catched a glimpse of fire, away through the trees. i went for it, cautious and slow. by-and-by i was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. it most give me the fan-tods. he had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. i set there behind a clump of bushes, in about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady. it was getting gray daylight, now. pretty soon he gapped, and stretched himself, and hove off the blanket, and it was miss watson's jim! i bet i was glad to see him. i says: "hello, jim!" and skipped out. he bounced up and stared at me wild. then he drops down on his knees, and puts his hands together and says: "doan' hurt medon't! i hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. i awluz liked dead people, en done all i could for 'em. you go en git in de river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to ole jim, 'at 'uz awluz yo' fren'." well, i warn't long making him understand i warn't dead. i was ever so glad to see jim. i warn't lonesome, now. i told him i warn't afraid of him telling the people where i was. i talked along, but he only set there and looked at me; never said nothing. then i says: "it's good daylight. le's get breakfast. make up your camp fire good." "what's de use er makin' up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich truck? but you got a gun, hain't you? den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries." "strawberries and such truck," i says. "is that what you live on?" "i couldn' git nuffn else," he says. "why, how long you been on the island, jim?" "i come heah de night arter you's killed." "yesindeedy." "what, all that time?" "and ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" "no, sahnuffn else." "well, you must be most starved, ain't you?" "i reckon i could eat a hoss. i think i could. how long you ben on de islan'?" "since the night i got killed." "no! w'y, what has you lived on? but you got a gun. oh, yes, you got a gun. dat's good. now you kill sumfn en i'll make up de fire." so we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees, i fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft. i catched a good big cat-fish, too, and jim cleaned him with his knife, and fried him. when breakfast was ready, we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot. jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. then when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. by-and-by jim says: "but looky here, huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty, ef it warn't you?" then i told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. he said tom sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what i had. then i says: "how do you come to be here, jim, and how'd you get here?" he looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute. then he says: "maybe i better not tell." "why, jim?" "well, dey's reasons. but you wouldn' tell on me ef i 'uz to tell you, would you, huck?" "blamed if i would, jim." "well, i b'lieve you, huck. ii run off." "but mind, you said you wouldn't tellyou know you said you wouldn't tell, huck." "well, i did. i said i wouldn't, and i'll stick to it. honest injun i will. people would call me a low down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mumbut that don't make no difference. i ain't agoing to tell, and i ain't agoing back there anyways. so now, le's know all about it." "well, you see, it' uz dis way. ole missusdat's miss watsonshe pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn' sell me down to orleans. but i noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun' de place considable, lately, en i begin to git oneasy. well, one night i creeps to de do', pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en i hear ole missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to orleans, but she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it 'uz sich a big stack of money she couldn' resis'. de widder she try to git her to say she wouldn' do it, but i never waited to hear de res'. i lit out mighty quick, i tell you. "i tuck out en shin down de hill en 'spec to steal a skit 'long de sho' som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirrin' yit, so i hid in de ole tumble-down cooper shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go 'way. well, i wuz dah all night. dey wuz somebody roun' all de time. 'long 'bout six in de mawnin', skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er nine every skit dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over to de town en say you's killed. dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en genlmen agoin' over for to see de place. sometimes dey'd pull up at de sho' en take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk i got to know all 'bout de killin'. i 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, huck, but i ain't no mo, now. "i laid dah under de shavins all day. i 'uz hungry, but i warn't afeared; bekase i knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to de camp meetn' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows i goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'. de yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday, soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way. "well, when it come dark i tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses. i'd made up my mine 'bout what i's agwyne to do. you see ef i kep' on tryin' to git away afoot, de dogs 'ud track me; ef i stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah i'd lan' on de yuther side en whah to pick up my track. so i says, a raff is what i's arter; it doan' make no track. "i see a light a-comin'roun'de p'int, bymeby, so i wade' in en shove' a log ahead o' me, en swum more'n half-way acrost de river, en got in 'mongst de drift-wood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de current tell de raff come along. den i swum to de stern uv it, en tuck aholt. it clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while. so i clumb up en laid down on de planks. de men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle, whah de lantern wuz. de river wuz arisin' en dey wuz a good current; so i reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' i'd be twenty-five mile down de river, en den i'd slip in, jis' b'fo' daylight, en swim asho' en take to de woods on de illinoi side. "but i didn'have no luck. when we 'uz mos' down to de head er de islan', a man begin to come aft wid de lantern. i see it warn't no use fer to wait, so i slid overboard, en struck out fer de islan'. well, i had a notion i could lan' mos' anywheres, but i couldn'tbank too bluff. i 'uz mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' i foun' a good place. i went into de woods en jedged i wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de lantern roun' so. i had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some matches in my cap, en dey warn't wet, so i 'uz all right." "and so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? why didn't you get mud-turkles?" "how you gwyne to git'm? you can't slip up on um en grab um; en how's a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? how could a body do it in de night? en i warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime." "well, that's so. you've had to keep in the woods all the time, of course. did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?" "oh, yes. i knowed dey was arter you. i see um go by heah; watched um thoo de bushes." some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting. jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. he said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it. i was going to catch some of them, but jim wouldn't let me. he said it was death. he said his father laid mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would die, and he did. and jim said you musn't count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. the same if you shook the table-cloth after sundown. and he said if a man owned a bee-hive, and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but i didn't believe that, because i had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me. i had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. jim knowed all kinds of signs. he said he knowed most everything. i said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so i asked him if there warn't any goodluck signs. he says: "mighty fewan' dey ain' no use to a body. what you want to know when good luck's a-comin' for? want to keep it off?" and he said: "ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne to be rich. well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead. you see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn'know by de sign dat you gwyne be rich bymeby." "have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, jim?" "what's de use to ax dat question? don' see i has?" "well, are you rich?" "no, but i ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin. wunst i had foteen dollars, but i tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out." "what did you speculate in, jim?" "well, fust i tackled stock." "what kind of stock?" "why, live stock. cattle, you know. i put ten dollars in a cow. but i ain't gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. de cow up 'n' died on my han's." "so you lost the ten dollars." "no, i didn'lose it all. i on'y los' 'bout nine of it. i sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents." "you had five dollars and ten cents left. did you speculate any more?" "yes. you know dat one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old misto bradish? well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' dollars mo' at de en' er de year. well, all de niggers went in, but dey didn'have much. i wuz de on'y one dat had much. so i stuck out for mo' dan fo' dollars, en i said 'f i didn' git it i'd start a bank mysef. well o' course dat nigger want' keep me out er de business, bekase he say dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so he say i could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en' er de year. "so i done it. den i reck'n'd i'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right off en keep things a-movin'. dey wuz a nigger name' bob, dat had ketched a wood-flat, en his marster didn'know it; en i bought it off'n him en told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de year come; but somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex' day de one-laigged nigger say de bank's busted. so dey didn' none uv us git no money." "what did you do with the ten cents, jim?" "well, i 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but i had a dream, en de dream tole me to give it to a nigger name' balumbalum's ass dey call him for short, he's one er dem chuckle-heads, you know. but he's lucky, dey say, en i see i warn't lucky. de dream say let balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me. well, balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times. so balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." "well, what did come of it, jim?" "nuffn' never come of it. i couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way; en balum he couldn'. i ain'gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout i see de security. boun' to get yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says! ef i could git de ten cents back, i'd call it squah, en be glad er de chanst." "well, it's all right, anyway, jim, long as you're going to be rich again some time or other." "yesen i's rich now, come to look at it. i owns mysef, en i's wuth eight hundred dollars. i wisht i had de money, i wouldn' want no mo'." chapter nine i wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island, that i'd found when i was exploring; so we started, and soon got to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. this place was a tolerable long steep hill or ridge, about forty foot high. we had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so thick. we tramped and clumb around all over it, and by-and-by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side towards illinois. the cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and jim could stand up straight in it. it was cool in there. jim was for putting our traps in there, right away, but i said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time. jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, and they would never find us without dogs. and besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did i want the things to get wet? so we went back and got the canoe and paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there. then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. we took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner. the door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit and was flat and a good place to build a fire on. so we built it there and cooked dinner. we spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. we put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. pretty soon it darkened up and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and i never see the wind blow so. it was one of these regular summer storms. it would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackestfst! it was as bright as glory and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. "jim, this is nice," i says. "i wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here. pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread." "well, you wouldn't a ben here, 'f it hadn't a ben for jim. you'd a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too, dat you would, honey. chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile." the river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. the water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the illinois bottom. on that side it was a good many miles wide; but on the missouri side it was the same old distance acrossa half a milebecause the missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs. daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe. it was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods even if the sun was blazing outside. we went winding in and out amongst the trees; and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way. well, on every old broken-down tree, you could see rabbits, and snakes, and such things; and when the island had been overflowed a day or two, they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtlesthey would slide off in the water. the ridge our cavern was in, was full of them. we could a had pets enough if we'd wanted them. one night we catched a little section of a lumber raftnice pine planks. it was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above water six or seven inches, a solid level floor. we could see saw-logs go by in the daylight, sometimes, but we let them go; we didn't show ourselves in daylight. another night, when we was up at the head of the island, just before daylight, here comes a frame house down, on the west side. she was a two-story, and tilted over, considerable. we paddled out and got aboardclumb in at an up-stairs window. but it was too dark to see yet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight. the light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. then we looked in at the window. we could make out a bed, and a table, and two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor; and there was clothes hanging against the wall. there was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. so jim says: "hello, you!" but it didn't budge. so i hollered again, and then jim says: "de man ain't asleephe's dead. you hold stilli'll go en see." he went and bent down and looked, and says: "it's a dead man. yes, indeedy; naked, too. he's shot in de back. i reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. come in, huck, but doan' look at his face-it's too gashly." i didn't look at him at all. jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn't done it; i didn't want to see him. there was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures, made with charcoal. there was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's under-clothes, hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. we put the lot into the canoe; it might come good. there was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; i took that too. and there was a bottle that had milk in it; and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. we would a took the bottle, but it was broke. there was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. they stood open, but there warn't nothing left in them that was any account. the way things was scattered about, we reckoned the people left in a hurry and warn't fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff. we got an old tin lantern, and a butcher knife without any handle, and a bran-new barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bed-quilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fish-line as thick as my little finger, with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a horse-shoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them; and just as we was leaving i found a tolerable good curry-comb, and jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. the straps was broke off of it, but barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for jim, and we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all around. and so, take it all around, we made a good haul. when we was ready to shove off, we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so i made jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up, people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off. i paddled over to the illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. i crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody. we got home all safe. chapter ten after breakfast i wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but jim didn't want to. he said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a man that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one that was planted and comfortable. that sounded pretty reasonable, so i didn't say no more; but i couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing i knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for. we rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd a knowed the money was there they wouldn't a left it. i said i reckoned they killed him, too; but jim didn't want to talk about that. i says: "now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when i fetched in the snake-skin that i found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? you said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands. well, here's your bad luck! we've raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides. i wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, jim." "never you mind, honey, never you mind. don't you git too peart. it's a-comin'. mind i tell you, it's a-comin'." it did come, too. it was a tuesday that we had that talk. well, after dinner friday, we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. i went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. i killed him, and curled him up on the foot of jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun when jim found him there. well, by night i forgot all about the snake, and when jim flung himself down on the blanket while i struck a light, the snake's mate was there, and bit him. he jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmit curled up and ready for another spring. i laid him out in a second with a stick, and jim grabbed pap's whisky jug and begun to pour it down. he was barefooted, and the snake bit him on the heel. that all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes and curls around it. jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the body and roast a piece of it. i done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. he made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too. he said that would help. then i slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for i warn't going to let jim find out it was all my fault, not if i could help it. jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. his foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by-and-by the drunk begun to come, and so i judged he was all right; but i'd druther been bit with a snake than pap's whisky. jim was laid up for four days and nights. then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. i made up my mind i wouldn't ever take aholt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that i see what had come of it. jim said he reckoned i would believe him next time. and he said that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet. he said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his hand. well, i was getting to feel that way myself, though i've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. old hank bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot tower and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but i didn't see it. pap told me. but anyway, it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool. well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a cat-fish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. we couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into illinois. we just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. we found a brass button in his stomach, and a round ball, and lots of rubbage. we split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool in it. jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it. it was as big a fish as was ever catched in the mississippi, i reckon. jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one. he would a been worth a good deal over at the village. they peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry. next morning i said it was getting slow and dull, and i wanted to get a stirring up, some way. i said i reckoned i would slip over the river and find out what was going on. jim liked that notion; but he said i must go in the dark and look sharp. then he studied it over and said, couldn't i put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? that was a good notion, too. so we shortened up one of the calico gowns and i turned up my trowser-legs to my knees and got into it. jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. i put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe. jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. i practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by-and-by i could do pretty well in them, only jim said i didn't walk like a girl; and he said i must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches pocket. i took notice, and done better. i started up the illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. i started across to the town from a little below the ferry landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. i tied up and started along the bank. there was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and i wondered who had took up quarters there. i slipped up and peeped in at the window. there was a woman about forty year old in there, knitting by a candle that was on a pine table. i didn't know her face; she was a stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that i didn't know. now this was lucky, because i was weakening; i was getting afraid i had come; people might know my voice and find me out. but if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all i wanted to know; so i knocked at the door, and made up my mind i wouldn't forget i was a girl. chapter eleven "come in," says the woman, and i did. she says: "take a cheer." i done it. she looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says: "what might your name be?" "sarah williams." "where 'bouts do you live? in this neighborhood?" "no'm. in hookerville, seven mile below. i've walked all the way and i'm all tired out." "hungry, too, i reckon. i'll find you something." "no'm, i ain't hungry. i was so hungry i had to stop two mile below here at a farm; so i ain't hungry no more. it's what makes me so late. my mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and i come to tell my uncle abner moore. he lives at the upper end of the town, she says. i hain't ever been here before. do you know him?" "no; but i don't know everybody yet. i haven't lived here quite two weeks. it's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. you better stay here all night. take off your bonnet." "no," i says, "i'll rest a while, i reckon, and go on. i ain't afeard of the dark." she said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by-and-by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me. then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake coming to our town, instead of letting well aloneand so on and so on, till i was afeard i had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in this town; but by-and-by she dropped onto pap and the murder, and then i was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. she told about me and tom sawyer finding the six thousand dollars (only she got it ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot i was, and at last she got down to where i was murdered. i says: "who done it? we've heard considerable about these goings on, down in hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed huck finn." "well, i reckon there's a right smart chance of people here that'd like to know who killed him. some thinks old finn done it himself." "nois that so?" "most everybody thought it at first. he'll never know how nigh he come to getting lynched. but before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named jim." "why he-" i stopped. i reckoned i better keep still. she run on, and never noticed i had put in at all. "the nigger run off the very night huck finn was killed. so there's a reward out for himthree hundred dollars. and there's a reward out for old finn tootwo hundred dollars. you see, he come to town the morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the ferry-boat hunt, and right away after he up and left. before night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. well, next day they found out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten o'clock the night the murder was done. so then they put it on him, you see, and while they was full of it, next day back comes old finn and went boo-hooing to judge thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over illinois with. the judge give him some, and that evening he got drunk and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard looking strangers, and then went off with them. well, he hain't come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. people do say he warn't any too good to do it. oh, he's sly, i reckon. if he don't come back for a year, he'll be all right. you can't prove anything on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk into huck's money as easy as nothing." "yes, i reckon so, 'm. i don't see nothing in the way of it. has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?" "oh, no, not everybody. a good many thinks he done it. but they'll get the nigger pretty soon, now, and maybe they can scare it out of him." "why, are they after him yet?" "well, you're innocent, ain't you! does three hundred dollars lay round every day for people to pick up? some folks thinks the nigger ain't far from here. i'm one of thembut i hain't talked it around. a few days ago i was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island over yonder that they call jackson's island. don't anybody live there? says i. no, nobody, says they. i didn't say any more, but i done some thinking. i was pretty near certain i'd seen smoke over there, about the head of the island, a day or two before that, so i says to myself, like as not that nigger's hiding over there; anyway, says i, it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt. i hain't seen any smoke sence, so i reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him; but my husband's going over to seehim and another man. he was gone up the river; but he got back to-day and i told him as soon as he got here two hours ago." i had got so uneasy i couldn't set still. i had to do something with my hands; so i took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. my hands shook, and i was making a bad job of it. when the woman stopped talking, i looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious, and smiling a little. i put down the needle and thread and let on to be interestedand i was, tooand says: "three hundred dollars is a power of money. i wish my mother could get it. is your husband going over there to-night?" "oh, yes. he went up town with the man i was telling you of, to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. they'll go over after midnight." "couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime?" "yes. and couldn't the nigger see better, too? after midnight he'll likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he's got one." "i didn't think of that." the woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and i didn't feel a bit comfortable. pretty soon she says: "what did you say your name was, honey?" "mmary williams." somehow it didn't seem to me that i said it was mary before, so i didn't look up; seemed to me i said it was sarah; so i felt sort of cornered, and was afeard maybe i was looking it, too. i wished the woman would say something more; the longer she set still, the uneasier i was. but now she says: "honey, i thought you said it was sarah when you first come in?" "oh, yes'm, i did. sarah mary williams. sarah's my first name. some calls me sarah, some calls me mary." "oh, that's the way of it?" "yes'm." i was feeling better, then, but i wished i was out of there, anyway. i couldn't look up yet. well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth, and so on, and then i got easy again. she was right about the rats. you'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while. she said she had to have things handy to throw at them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace. she showed me a bar of lead, twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't know whether she could throw true, now. but she watched for a chance, and directly she banged away at a rat, but she missed him wide, and said "ouch!" it hurt her arm so. then she told me to try for the next one. i wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course i didn't let on. i got the thing, and the first rat that showed his nose i let drive, and if he'd a stayed where he was he'd a been a tolerable sick rat. she said that was first-rate, and she reckoned i would hive the next one. she went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back and brought along a hank of yarn, which she wanted me to help her with. i held up my two hands and she put the hank over them and went on talking about her and her husband's matters. but she broke off to say: "keep your eye on the rats. you better have the lead in your lap, handy." so she dropped the lump into my lap, just at that moment, and i clapped my legs together on it and she went on talking. but only about a minute. then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, but very pleasant, and says: "come, nowwhat's your real name?" "whwhat, mum?" "what's your real name? is it bill, or tom, or bob?or what is it?" i reckon i shook like a leaf, and i didn't know hardly what to do. but i says: "please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. if i'm in the way, here, i'll-" "no, you won't. set down and stay where you are. i ain't going to hurt you, and i ain't going to tell on you, nuther. you just tell me your secret, and trust me. i'll keep it; and what's more, i'll help you. so'll my old man, if you want him to. you see, you're a runaway 'prenticethat's all. it ain't anything. there ain't any harm in it. you've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. bless you, child, i wouldn't tell on you. tell me all about it, nowthat's a good boy." so i said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and i would just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she mustn't go back on her promise. then i told her my father and mother was dead, and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back from the river, and he treated me so bad i couldn't stand it no longer; he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so i took my chance and stole some of his daughter's old clothes, and cleared out, and i had been three nights coming the thirty miles; i traveled nights, and hid day-times and slept, and the bag of bread and meat i carried from home lasted me all the way and i had a plenty. i said i believed my uncle abner moore would take care of me, and so that was why i struck out for this town of goshen. "goshen, child? this ain't goshen. this is st. petersburg. goshen's ten mile further up the river. who told you this was goshen?" "why, a man i met at day-break this morning, just as i was going to turn into the woods for my regular sleep. he told me when the roads forked i must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to goshen." "he was drunk i reckon. he told you just exactly wrong." "well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now. i got to be moving along. i'll fetch goshen before day-light." "hold on a minute. i'll put you up a snack to eat. you might want it." so she put me up a snack, and says: "saywhen a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first? answer up prompt, nowdon't stop to study over it. which end gets up first?" "the hind end, mum." "well, then, a horse?" "the for'rard end, mum." "which side of a tree does the most moss grow on?" "north side." "if fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction?" "the whole fifteen, mum." "well, i reckon you have lived in the country. i thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. what's your real name now?" "george peters, mum." "well, try to remember it, george. don't forget and tell me it's elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's george-elexander when i catch you. and don't go about women in that old calico. you do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle, don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at itthat's the way a woman most always does; but a man always does 'tother way. and when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tip-toe, and fetch your hand up over your head as awkard as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn onlike a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side like a boy. and mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap, she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead. why, i spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and i contrived the other things just to make certain. now trot along to your uncle, sarah mary williams george elexander peters, and if you get into trouble you send word to mrs. judith lotus, which is me, and i'll do what i can to get you out of it. keep the river road, all the way, and next time you tramp, take shoes and socks with you. the river road's a rocky one, and your feet 'll be in a condition when you get to goshen, i reckon." i went up the bank about fifty yards, and then i doubled on my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. i jumped in and was off in a hurry. i went up stream far enough to make the head of the island, and then started across. i took off the sun-bonnet, for i didn't want no blinders on, then. when i was about the middle, i hear the clock begin to strike; so i stops and listens; the sound come faint over the water, but cleareleven. when i struck the head of the island i never waited to blow, though i was most winded, but i shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started a good fire there on a high-and-dry spot. then i jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place a mile and a half below, as hard as i could go. i landed, and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern. there jim laid, sound asleep on the ground. i roused him out and says: "git up and hump yourself, jim! there ain't a minute to lose. they're after us!" jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. by that time everything we had in the world was on our raft and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. we put out the camp fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a candle outside after that. i took the canoe out from shore a little piece and took a look, but if there was a boat around i couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't good to see by. then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still, never saying a word. chapter twelve it must a been close onto one o'clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. if a boat was to come along, we was going to take to the canoe and break for the illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the gun into the canoe, or a fishing-line or anything to eat. we was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. it warn't good judgment to put everything on the raft. if the men went to the island, i just expect they found the camp fire i built, and watched it all night for jim to come. anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no fault of mine. i played it as low-down on them as i could. when the first streak of day begun to show, we tied up to a tow-head in a big bend on the illinois side, and hacked off cotton-wood branches with the hatchet and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. a tow-head is a sand-bar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth. we had mountains on the missouri shore and heavy timber on the illinois side, and the channel was down the missouri shore at that place, so we warn't afraid of anybody running across us. we laid there all day and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the missouri shore, and upbound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. i told jim all about the time i had jabbering with that woman; and jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down and watch a camp fireno, sir, she'd fetch a dog. well, then, i said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed they must a gone up town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldn't be here on a tow-head sixteen or seventeen mile below the villageno, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. so i said i didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us, as long as they didn't. when it was beginning to come on dark, we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket and looked up, and down, and across; nothing in sight; so jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of the reach of steamboat waves. right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen. we made an extra steering oar, too, because one of the others might get broke, on a snag or something. we fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on; because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming down stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to light it for upstream boats unless we see we was in what they call a "crossing"; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little under water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the channel, but hunted easy water. this second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. we catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. it was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. we had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next. every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights, not a house could you see. the fifth night we passed st. louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. in st. petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in st. louis, but i never believed it till i see that wonderful spread of lights at two o'clock that still night. there warn't a sound there; everybody was asleep. every night, now, i used to slip ashore, towards ten o'clock, at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes i lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. i never see pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway. mornings, before daylight, i slipped into corn fields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any morethen he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others. so we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. but towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p'simmons. we warn't feeling just right, before that, but it was all comfortable now. i was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet. we shot a water-fowl, now and then, that got up too early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. take it all around, we lived pretty high. the fifth night below st. louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. we stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. when the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high rocky bluffs on both sides. by-and-by says i, "hel-lo jim, looky yonder!" it was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. we was drifting straight down for her. the lightning showed her very distinct. she was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it when the flashes come. well, it being away in the night, and stormy, and all so mysterious-like, i felt just the way any other boy would a felt when i see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. i wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there was there. so i says: "le's land on her, jim." but jim was dead against it, at first. he says: "i doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack. we's doin' blame' well, en we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says. like as not dey's a watchman on dat wrack." "watchman your grandmother," i says; "there ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk his life for a texas and a pilothouse such a night as this, when it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?" jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try. "and besides," i says, "we might borrow something worth having, out of the captain's stateroom. seegars, i bet youand cost five cents apiece, solid cash. steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they don't care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. stick a candle in your pocket; i can't rest, jim, till we give her a rummaging. do you reckon tom sawyer would ever go by this thing? not for pie, he wouldn't. he'd call it an adventurethat's what he'd call it; and he'd land on that wreck if it was his last act. and wouldn't he throw style into it?wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing? why, you'd think it was christopher c'lumbus discovering kingdom-come. i wish tom sawyer was here." jim he grumbled a little, but give in. he said we mustn't talk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. the lightning showed us the wreck again, just in time, and we fetched the starboard derrick, and made fast there. the deck was high out, here. we went sneaking down the slope of it to labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we couldn't see no sign of them. pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight, and clumb onto it; and the next step fetched us in front of the captain's door, which was open, and by jimminy, away down through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem to hear low voices in yonder! jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come along. i says, all right; and was going to start for the raft; but just then i heard a voice wail out and say: "oh, please don't, boys; i swear i won't ever tell!" another voice said, pretty loud: "it's a lie, jim turner. you've acted this way before. you always want more'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because you've swor't if you didn't you'd tell. but this time you've said it jest one time too many. you're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country." by this time jim was gone for the raft. i was just a-biling with curiosity; and i says to myself, tom sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so i won't either; i'm agoing to see what's going on here. so i dropped on my hands and knees, in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark, till there warn't but about one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall of the texas. then, in there i see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. this one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor and saying "i'd like to! and i orter, too, a mean skunk!" the man on the floor would shrivel up, and say: "oh, please don't, billi hain't ever goin' to tell." and every time he said that, the man with the lantern would laugh, and say: "'deed you ain't! you never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet you." and once he said: "hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the best of him and tied him, he'd a killed us both. and what for? jist for noth'n. jist because we stood on our rightsthat's what for. but i lay you ain't agoin'to threaten nobody any more, jim turner. put up that pistol, bill." bill says: "i don't want to, jake packard. i'm for killin' himand din't he kill old hatfield jist the same wayand don't he deserve it?" "but i don't want him killed, and i've got my reasons for it." "bless yo' heart for them words, jake packard! i'll never forgit you, long's i live!" says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering. packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail, and started towards where i was, there in the dark, and motioned bill to come. i crawfished as fast as i could, about two yards, but the boat slanted so that i couldn't make very good tune; so to keep from getting run over and catched i crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. the man come a-pawing along in the dark, and when packard got to my stateroom, he says: "herecome in here." and in he come, and bill after him. but before they got in, i was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry i come. then they stood there, with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. i couldn't see them, but i could tell where they was, by the whisky they'd been having. i was glad i didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference, anyway, because most of the time they couldn't a treed me because i didn't breathe. i was too scared. and besides, a body couldn't breathe, and hear such talk. they talked low and earnest. bill wanted to kill turner. he says: "he's said he'll tell, and he will. if we was to give both our shares to him now, it wouldn't make no difference after the row, and the way we've served him. shore's you're born, he'll turn state's evidence; now you hear me. i'm for putting him out of his troubles." "so'm i," says packard, very quiet. "blame it, i'd sorter begun to think you wasn't. well, then, that's all right. le's go and do it." "hold on a minute; i hain't had my say yit. you listen to me. shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the thing's gotto be done. but what i say, is this; it ain't good sense to go court'n around after a halter, if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's jist as good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks. ain't that so?" "you bet it is. but how you goin'to manage it this time?" "well, my idea is this: we'll rustle around and gether up whatever pickins we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. then we'll wait. now i say it ain't agoin' to be more 'n two hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. see? he'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own self. i reckon that's a considerble sight better'n killin' of him. i'm unfavorable to killin'a man as long as you can git around it; it ain't good sense, it ain't good morals. ain't i right?" "yesi reck'n you are. but s'pose she don't break up and wash off?" "well, we can wait the two hours, anyway, and see, can't we?" "all right, then; come along." so they started, and i lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled forward. it was dark as pitch there; but i said in a kind of a coarse whisper, "jim!" and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a moan, and i says: "quick, jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning; there's a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the wreck, there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix. but if we find their boat we can put all of 'em in a bad fixfor the sheriff'll get 'em. quickhurry! i'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. you start at the raft, and-" "oh, my lordy, lordy! raf dey ain' no raf' no mo', she done broke loose en gone!'en here we is!" chapter thirteen well, i catched my breath and most fainted. shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! but it warn't no time to be sentimentering. we'd got to find that boat, nowhad to have it for ourselves. so we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, tooseemed a week before we got to the stern. no sign of a boat. jim said he didn't believe he could go any furtherso scared he hadn't hardly any strength left, he said. but i said come on, if we get left on this wreck, we are in a fix, sure. so on we prowled, again. we struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in the water. when we got pretty close to the cross-hall door, there was the skiff, sure enough! i could just barely see her. i felt ever so thankful. in another second i would a been aboard of her; but just then the door opened. one of the men stuck his head out, only about a couple of foot from me, and i thought i was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says: "heave that blame lantern out o' sight, bill!" he flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself, and set down. it was packard. then bill he come out and got in. packard says, in a low voice: "all readyshove off!" i couldn't hardly hang onto the shutters, i was so weak. but bill says: "hold on'd you go through him?" "no. didn't you?" "no. so he's got his share o' the cash, yet." "well, then, come alongno use to take truck and leave money." "saywon't he suspicion what we're up to?" "maybe he won't. but we got to have it anyway. come along." so they got out and went in. the door slammed to, because it was on the careened side; and in a half second i was in the boat, and jim come a tumbling after me. i out with my knife and cut the rope, and away we went! we didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even breathe. we went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddlebox, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it. when we was three or four hundred yards down stream, we see the lantern show like a little spark at the texas door, for a second, and we knowed by that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble, now, as jim turner was. then jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. now was the first time i begun to worry about the meni reckon i hadn't had time to before. i begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. i says to myself, there ain't no telling but i might come to be a murderer myself, yet, and then how would i like it? so says i to jim: "the first light we see, we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then i'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes." but that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever. the rain poured down, and never a light showed; everybody in bed, i reckon. we boomed along down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. after a long time the rain let up, but the clouds staid, and the lightning kept whimpering, and by-and-by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we made for it. it was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. we seen a light, now, away down to the right, on shore. so i said i would go for it. the skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole, there on the wreck. we hustled it onto the raft in a pile, and i told jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone about two mile, and keep it burning till i come; then i manned my oars and shoved for the light. as i got down towards it, three or four more showedup on a hillside. it was a village. i closed in above the shore-light, and laid on my oars and floated. as i went by, i see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferry-boat. i skimmed around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by-and-by i found him roosting on the bitts, forward, with his head down between his knees. i give his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry. he stirred up, in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only me, he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says: "hello, what's up? don't cry, bub. what's the trouble?" i says: "pap, and mam, and sis, and-" then i broke down. he says: "oh, dang it, now, don't take on so, we all has to have our troubles and this'n 'll come out all right. what's the matter with 'em?" "they'rethey'reare you the watchman of the boat?" "yes," he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. "i'm the captain and the owner, and the mate, and the pilot, and watchman, and head deck-hand; and sometimes i'm the freight and passengers. i ain't as rich as old jim hornback, and i can't be so blame' generous and good to tom, dick and harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does; but i've told him a many a time 't i wouldn't trade places with him; for, says i, a sailor's life's the life for me, and i'm derned if i'd live two mile out o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin'on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it. says i-" i broke in and says: "they're in an awful peck of trouble, and-" "who is?" "why, pap, and mam, and sis, and miss hooker; and if you'd take your ferry-boat and go up there-" "up where? where are they?" "on the wreck." "what wreck?" "why, there ain't but one." "what, you don't mean the walter scott?" "yes." "good land! what are they doin' there, for gracious sakes?" "well, they didn't go there a-purpose." "i bet they didn't! why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em if they don't git off mighty quick! why, how in the nation did they ever git into such a scrape?" "easy enough. miss hooker was a-visiting, up there to the town-" "yes, booth's landinggo on." "she was a-visiting, there at booth's landing, and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry, to stay all night at her friend's house, miss what-you-may-call-her, i disremember her name, and they lost their steering-oar, and swung around and went afloating down, stern-first, about two mile, and saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferry man and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, but miss hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. well, about an hour after dark, we come along down in our trading-scow, and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it; and so we saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved but bill whippleand oh, he was the best cretur!i most wish't it had been me, i do." "my george! it's the beatenest thing i ever struck. and then what did you all do?" "well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there, we couldn't make nobody hear. so pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. i was the only one that could swim, so i made a dash for it, and miss hooker she said if i didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing. i made the land about a mile below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do something, but they said, 'what, in such a night and such a current? there ain't no sense in it; go for the steam-ferry.' now if you'll go, and-" "by jackson, i'd like to, and blame it i don't know but i will; but who in the dingnation's agoin' to pay for it? do you reckon your pap-" "why that's all right. miss hooker she told me, particular, that her uncle hornback-" "great guns! is he her uncle? looky here, you break for that light over yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you out to jim hornback's and he'll foot the bill. and don't you fool around any, because he'll want to know the news. tell him i'll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. hump yourself, now; i'm agoing up around the corner here, to roust out my engineer." i struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner i went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some woodboats; for i couldn't rest easy till i could see the ferry-boat start. but take it all around, i was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would a done it. i wished the widow knowed about it. i judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in. well, before long, here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along down! a kind of cold shiver went through me, and then i struck out for her. she was very deep, and i see in a minute there warn't much chance for anybody being alive in her. i pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn't any answer; all dead still. i felt a little bit heavyhearted about the gang, but not much, for i reckoned if they could stand it, i could. then here comes the ferry-boat; so i shoved for the middle of the river on a long down-stream slant; and when i judged i was out of eye-reach, i laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for miss hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her uncle horseback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat give it up and went for shore, and i laid into my work and went a-booming down the river. it did seem a powerful long time before jim's light showed up; and when it did show, it looked like it was a thousand mile off. by the time i got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east; so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people. chapter fourteen by-and-by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of seegars. we hadn't ever been this rich before, in neither of our lives. the seegars was prime. we laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. i told jim all about what happened inside the wreck, and at the ferry-boat; and i said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn't want no more adventures. he said that when i went in the texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone, he nearly died; because he judged it was all up with him, anyway it could be fixed; for if he didn't get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then miss watson would sell him south, sure. well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head, for a nigger. i read considerable to jim about kings, and dukes, and earls, and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead of mister; and jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested. he says: "i didn' know dey was so many un um. i hain't hearn 'bout none un um, skasely, but old king sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a pack er k'yards. how much do a king git?" "get?" i says; "why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to them." "ain't dat gay? en what dey got to do, huck?" "they don't do nothing! why how you talk. they just set around." "nois dat so?" "of course it is. they just set around. except maybe when there's a war; then they go to the war. but other times they just lazy around; or go hawkingjust hawking and spsh!d'you hear a noise?" we skipped out and looked; but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a steamboat's wheel, away down coming around the point; so we come back. "yes," says i, "and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the parlyment; and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off. but mostly they hang round the harem." "roun' de which?" "what's de harem?" "the place where he keep his wives. don't you know about the harem? solomon had one; he had about a million wives." "why, yes, dat's so; ii'd done forgot it. a harem's a bo'd'n-house, i reck'on. mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. en i reck'n de wives quarrels considable; en dat 'crease de racket. yit dey say sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'. i doan' take no stock in dat. bekase why would a wise man want to live in de mids'er sich a blimblammin' all de time? no'deed he wouldn't. a wise man 'ud take en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet down de biler-factry when he want to res'." "well, but he was the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me so, her own self." "i doan k'yer what de widder say, he warn't no wise man, nuther. he had some er de dad-fetchedes' ways i ever see. does you know 'bout dat chile dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?" "yes, the widow told me all about it." "well, den! warn't dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'? you jes' take en look at it a minute. dah's de stump, dahdat's one er de women; heah's youdat's de yuther one; i's sollermun; en dish-yer dollar bill's de chile. bofe un you claims it. what does i do? does i shin aroun' mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill do b'long to, en han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat had any gumption would? noi take en whack de bill in two, en give half un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. dat's de way sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. now i want to ast you: what's de use er dat half a bill?can't buy noth'n wid it. en what use is a half a chile? i would'n give a dern for a million un um." "but hang it, jim, you've clean missed the pointblame it, you've missed it a thousand mile." "who? me? go 'long. doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints. i reck'n i knows sense when i sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. de 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half a chile, doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain. doan'talk to me 'bout sollermun, huck, i knows him by de back." "but i tell you don't get the point." "blame de pint! i reck'n i knows what i knows. en mine you, de real pint is down furderit's down deeper. it lays in de way sollermun was raised. you take a man dat's got on'y one er two chillen; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? no, he ain't; he can't'ford it. he know how to value 'em. but you take a man dat's got 'bout five million chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. he as soon chop a chile in two as a cat. dey's plenty mo'. a chile er two, mo'er less, warn't no consekens to sollermun, dad fetch him!" i never see such a nigger. if he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again. he was the most down on solomon of any nigger i ever see. so i went to talking about other kings, and let solomon slide. i told about louis sixteenth that got his head cut off in france long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there. "po' little chap." "but some says he got out and got away, and come to america." "dat's good! but he'll be ooty lonesomedey ain' no kings here, is dey, huck?" "no." "den he cain't git no situation. what he gwyne to do?" "well, i don't know. some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk french." "why, huck, doan' de french people talk de same way we does?" "no, jim; you couldn't understand a word they saidnot a single word." "well, now, i be ding-busted! how do dat come?" "i don't know; but it's so. i got some of their jabber out of a book. spose a man was to come to you and say 'polly-voo-franzy'what would you think?" "i wouldn't think nuff'n; i'd take en bust him over de head. dat is, if he warn't white. i wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat." "shucks, it ain't calling you anything. it's only saying do you know how to talk french." "well, den, why couldn't he say it?" "why, he is a-saying it. that's a frenchman's way of saying it." "well, it's a blame' ridicklous way, en i doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout it. dey ain' no sense in it." "looky here, jim; does a cat talk like we do?" "no, a cat don't." "well, does a cow?" "no, a cow don't, nuther." "does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?" "no, dey don't." "it's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't it?" "course." "and ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?" "why, mos' sholy it is." "well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a frenchman to talk different from us? you answer me that." "is a cat a man, huck?" "no." "well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. is a cow a man?er is a cow a cat?" "no, she ain't either of them." "well, den, she ain' got no business to talk like either one or the yuther of 'em. is a frenchman a man?" "well, den! dad blame it, why doan' he talk like a man? you answer me dat!" i see it warn't no use wasting wordsyou can't learn a nigger to argue. so i quit. chapter fifteen we judged that three nights more would fetch us to cairo, at the bottom of illinois, where the ohio river comes in, and that was what we was after. we would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the ohio amongst the free states, and then be out of trouble. well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a tow-head to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in fog; but when i paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line, to make fast, there warn't anything but little saplings to tie to. i passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went. i see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared i couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to meand then there warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards. i jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern and grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke. but she didn't come. i was in such a hurry i hadn't untied her. i got up and tried to untie her, but i was so excited my hands shook so i couldn't hardly do anything with them. as soon as i got started i took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right down to the tow-head. that was all right as far as it went, but the tow-head warn't sixty yards long, and the minute i flew by the foot of it i shot out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way i was going than a dead man. thinks i, it won't do to paddle; first i know i'll run into the bank or a tow-head or something; i got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. i whooped and listened. away down there, somewheres, i hears a small whoop, and up comes my spirits. i went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again. the next time it come, i see i warn't heading for it but heading away to the right of it. and the next time, i was heading away to the left of itand not gaining on it much, either, for i was flying around, this way and that and 'tother, but it was going straight ahead all the time. i did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. well, i fought along, and directly i hears the whoop behind me. i was tangled good, now. that was somebody else's whoop, or else i was turned around. i throwed the paddle down. i heard the whoop again; it was behind me yet, but in a different place; it kept coming and kept changing its place, and i kept answering, till by-and-by it was in front of me again and i knowed the current had swung the canoe's head down stream and i was all right, if that was jim and not some other raftsman hollering. i couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog. the whooping went on, and in about a minute i come a booming down on a cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared, the current was tearing by them so swift. in another second or two it was solid white and still again. i set perfectly still, then, listening to my heart thump, and i reckon i didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred. i just give up, then. i knowed what the matter was. that cut bank was an island, and jim had gone down 'tother side of it. it warn't no tow-head, that you could float by in ten minutes. it had the big timber of a regular island; it might be five or six mile long and more than a half a mile wide. i kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, i reckon. i was floating along, of course, four or five mile an hour; but you don't ever think of that. no, you feel like you are laying dead still on the water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by, you don't think to yourself how fast you're going, but you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag's tearing along. if you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the night, you try it onceyou'll see. next, for about a half an hour, i whoops now and then; at last i hears the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but i couldn't do it, and directly i judged i'd got into a nest of tow-heads, for i had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me, sometimes just a narrow channel between; and some that i couldn't see, i knowed was there, because i'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. well, i warn't long losing the whoops, down amongst the tow-heads; and i only tried to chase them a little while, anyway, because it was worse than chasing a jack-o-lantern. you never knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much. i had to claw away from the bank pretty lively, four or five times, to keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so i judged the raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearingit was floating a little faster than what i was. well, i seemed to be in the open river again, by-and-by, but i couldn't hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. i reckoned jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. i was good and tired, so i laid down in the canoe and said i wouldn't bother no more. i didn't want to go to sleep, of course; but i was so sleepy i couldn't help it; so i thought i would take just one little cat-nap. but i reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when i waked up the stars was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and i was spinning down a big bend stern first. first i didn't know where i was; i thought i was dreaming; and when things begun to come back to me, they seemed to come up dim out of last week. it was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as i could see, by the stars. i looked away down stream, and seen a black speck on the water. i took out after it; but when i got to it warn't nothing but a couple of saw-logs made fast together. then i see another speck, and chased that; then another, and this time i was right. it was the raft. when i got to it jim was setting there with his head down between his knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering oar. the other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt. so she'd had a rough time. i made fast and laid down under jim's nose on the raft, and begun to gap, and stretch my fists out against jim, and says: "hello, jim, have i been asleep? why didn't you stir me up?" "goodness gracious, is dat you, huck? en you ain' deadyou ain'drowndedyou's back again? it's too good for true, honey, it's too good for true. lemme look at you, chile, lemme feel o' you. no, you ain' dead! you's back again, 'live en soun', jis de same ole huckde same ole huck, thanks to goodness!" "what's the matter with you, jim? you been a drinking?" "drinkin'? has i ben a drinkin'? has i had a chance to be a drinkin'?" "well, then, what makes you talk so wild?" "how does i talk wild?" "how? why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that stuff, as if i'd been gone away?" "huckhuck finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. hain't you ben gone away?" "gone away? why, what in the nation do you mean? i hain't been gone anywheres. where would i go to?" "well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is. is i me, or who is i? is i heah, or whah is i? now dat's what i wants to know?" "well, i think you're here, plain enough, but i think you're a tangle-headed old fool, jim." "i is, is i? well you answer me dis. didn't you tote out de line in de canoe, fer to make fas' to de tow-head?" "no, i didn't. what tow-head? i hain't seen no tow-head." "you hain't seen no tow-head? looky heredidn't de line pull loose en de raf' go a hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in de fog?" "what fog?" "why de fog. de fog dat's ben aroun' all night. en didn't you whoop, en didn't i whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got los' en 'tother one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah he wuz? en didn't i bust up again a lot er dem islands en have a turrible time en mos' git drownded? now ain'dat so, bossain't it so? you answer me dat." "well, this is too many for me, jim. i hain't seen no fog, nor no islands nor no troubles, nor nothing. i been setting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and i reckon i done the same. you couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course you've been dreaming." "dad fetch it, how is i gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?" "well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it happen." "but huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as-" "it don't make no difference how plain it is, there ain't nothing in it. i know, because i've been here all the time." jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying over it. then he says: "well, den, i reck'n i did dream it, huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't de powerfullest dream i ever see. en i hain't ever had no dream b'fo' dat's tired me like dis one." "oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like everything, sometimes. but this one was a staving dreamtell me all about it, jim." so jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable. then he said he must start in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. he said the first tow-head stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him. the whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it. the lot of tow-heads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free states, and wouldn't have no more trouble. it had clouded up pretty dark just after i got onto the raft, but it was clearing up again, now. "oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough, as far as it goes, jim," i says; "but what does these things stand for?" it was the leaves and rubbish on the raft, and the smashed oar. you could see them first rate, now. jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. he had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again, right away. but when he did get the thing straightened around, he looked at me steady, without ever smiling, and says: "what do dey stan' for? i's gwyne to tell you. when i got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en i didn' k'yer no mo' what become er me en de raf'. en when i wake up en fine you back agin', all safe en soun', de tears come en i could a got down on my knees en kiss' yo' foot i's so thankful. en all you wuz thinkin 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole jim wid a lie. dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed." then he got up slow, and walked to the wigwam, and went in there, without saying anything but that. but that was enough. it made me feel so mean i could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back. it was fifteen minutes before i could work myself up to go and humble myself to a niggerbut i done it, and i warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. i didn't do him no more mean tricks, and i wouldn't done that one if i'd a knowed it would make him feel that way. chapter sixteen we slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. she had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely. she had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end. there was a power of style about her. it amounted to something being a raftsman on such a craft as that. we went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got hot. the river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. we talked about cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. i said likely we wouldn't, because i had heard say there warn't but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how was we going to know we was passing a town? jim said if the two big rivers joined together there, that would show. but i said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again. that disturbed jimand me too. so the question was, what to do? i said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to cairo. jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited. there warn't nothing to do, now, but to look out sharp for the town, and not pass it without seeing it. he said he'd be mighty sure to see it, because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it he'd be in the slave country again and no more show for freedom. every little while he jumps up and says: "dah she is!" but it warn't. it was jack-o-lanterns, or lightning-bugs; so he set down again, and went to watching, same as before. jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. well, i can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because i begun to get it through my head that he was most freeand who was to blame for it? why, me. i couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. it got to troubling me so i couldn't rest; i couldn't stay still in one place. it hadn't ever come home to me before, what this thing was that i was doing. but now it did; and it staid with me, and scorched me more and more. i tried to make out to myself that i warn't to blame, because i didn't run jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "but you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody." that was soi couldn't get around that, no way. that was where it pinched. conscience says to me, "what had poor miss watson done to you, that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? what did that poor old woman do to you, that you could treat her so mean? why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. that's what she done." i got to feeling so mean and so miserable i most wished i was dead. i fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and jim was fidgeting up and down past me. we neither of us could keep still. every time he danced around and says, "dah's cairo!" it went through me like a shot, and i thought if it was cairo i reckoned i would die of miserableness. jim talked out loud all the time while i was talking to myself. he was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free state he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where miss watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an ab'litionist to go and steal them. it most froze me to hear such talk. he wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. it was according to the old saying, "give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." thinks i, this is what comes of my not thinking. here was this nigger which i had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his childrenchildren that belonged to a man i didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm. i was sorry to hear jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. my conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last i says to it, "let up on meit ain't too late, yeti'll paddle ashore at the first light and tell." i felt easy, and happy, and light as a feather, right off. all my troubles was gone. i went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. by-and-by one showed. jim sings out: "we's safe, huck, we's safe! jump up and crack yo' heels, dat's de good ole cairo at las', i jis knows it!" i says: "i'll take the canoe and go see, jim. it mightn't be, you know." he jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as i shoved off, he says: "pooty soon i'll be a-shout'n for joy, en i'll say, it's all on accounts o' huck; i's a free man, en i couldn't ever ben free ef it hadn't ben for huck; huck done it. jim won't ever forgit you, huck; you's de bes' fren' jim's ever had; en you's de only fren' ole jim's got now." i was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. i went along slow then, and i warn't right down certain whether i was glad i started or whether i warn't. when i was fifty yards off, jim says: "dah you goes, de ole true huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole jim." well, i just felt sick. but i says, i got to do iti can't get out of it. right then, along comes a skiff with two men in it, with guns, and they stopped and i stopped. one of them says: "what's that, yonder?" "a piece of a raft," i says. "so you belong on it?" "yes, sir." "any men on it?" "only one, sir." "well, there's five niggers run off to-night, up yonder above the head of the bend. is your man white or black?" i didn't answer up prompt. i tried to, but the words wouldn't come. i tried, for a second or two, to brace up and out with it, but i warn't man enoughhadn't the spunk of a rabbit. i see i was weakening; so i just give up trying, and up and says "he's white." "i reckon we'll go and see for ourselves." "i wish you would," says i, "because it's pap that's there, and maybe you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. he's sickand so is mam and mary ann." "oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy. but i s'pose we've got to. comebuckle to your paddle, and let's get along." i buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. when we had made a stroke or two, i says: "pap'll be mighty much obleeged to you, i can tell you. everybody goes away when i want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and i can't do it by myself." "well, that's infernal mean. odd, too. say, boy, what's the matter with your father?" "it's theathewell, it ain't anything, much." they stopped pulling. it warn't but a mighty little waysto the raft, now. one says: "boy, that's a lie. what is the matter with your pap? answer up square, now, and it'll be the better for you." "i will, sir, i will, honestbut don't leave us, please. it's thethegentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the head-line, you won't have to come a-near the raftplease do." "set her back, john, set her back!" says one. they backed water. "keep away, boykeep to looard. confound it, i just expect the wind has blowed it to us. your pap's got the smallpox, and you know it precious well. why didn't you come out and say so? do you want to spread it all over?" "well," says i, a-blubbering, "i've told everybody before, and then they just went away and left us." "poor devil, there's something in that. we are right down sorry for you, but wewell, hang it, we don't want the smallpox, you see. look here, i'll tell you what to do. don't you try to land by yourself, and you'll smash everything to pieces. you float along down about twenty miles and you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river. it will be long after sun-up, then, and when you ask for help, you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever. don't be a fool again, and let people guess what is the matter. now we're trying to do you a kindness; so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy. it wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light isit's only a wood-yard. sayi reckon your father's poor, and i'm bound to say he's in pretty hard luck. herei'll put a twenty dollar gold piece on this board, and you get it when it floats by. i feel mighty mean to leave you, but my kingdom! it won't do to fool with smallpox, don't you see?" "hold on, parker," says the other man, "here's a twenty to put on the board for me. good-bye, boy, you do as mr. parker told you, and you'll be all right." "that's so, my boygood-bye, good-bye. if you see any runaway niggers, you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it." "good-bye, sir," says i, "i won't let no runaway niggers get by me if i can help it." they went off, and i got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because i knowed very well i had done wrong, and i see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little, ain't got no showwhen the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. then i thought a minute, and says to myself, hold ons'pose you'd a done right and give jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? no, says i, i'd feel badi'd feel just the same way i do now. well, then, says i, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? i was stuck. i couldn't answer that. so i reckoned i wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever comes handiest at the time. i went into the wigwam; jim warn't there. i looked all around; he warn't anywhere. i says: "jim!" "here i is, huck. is dey out o' sight yit? don't talk loud." he was in the river, under the stern oar, with just his nose out. i told him they was out of sight, so he come aboard. he says: "i was a-listenin' to all de talk, en i slips into de river en was gwyne to shove for sho' if dey come aboard. den i was gwyne to swim to de raf' agin when dey was gone. but lawsy, how you did fool 'em, huck! dat wuz de smartes' dodge! tell you, chile, i 'speck it save' ole jimole jim ain' gwyne to forgit you for dat, honey." then we talked about the money. it was a pretty good raise, twenty dollars apiece. jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free states. he said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he wished we was already there. towards daybreak we tied up, and jim was mighty particular about hiding the raft good. then he worked all day fixing things in bundles, and getting all ready to quit rafting. that night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down in a left-hand bend. i went off in the canoe, to ask about it. pretty soon i found a man out in the aver with a skiff, setting a trot-line. i ranged up and says: "mister, is that town cairo?" "cairo? no. you must be a blame' fool." "what town is it, mister?" "if you want to know, go and find out. if you stay here botherin' around me for about a half minute longer, you'll get something you won't want." i paddled to the raft. jim was awful disappointed, but i said never mind, cairo would be the next place, i reckoned. we passed another town before daylight, and i was going out again; but it was high ground, so i didn't go. no high ground about cairo, jim said. i had forgot it. we laid up for the day, on a tow-head tolerable close to the left-hand bank. i begun to suspicion something. so did jim. i says: "maybe we went by cairo in the fog that night." he says: "doan' less' talk about it, huck. po' niggers can't have no luck. i awluz 'spected dat rattle-snake skin warn't done wid its work." "i wish i'd never seen that snake-skin, jimi do wish i'd never laid eyes on it." "it ain't yo' fault, huck; you didn' know. don't you blame yo'self 'bout it." when it was daylight, here was the clear ohio water in shore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular muddy! so it was all up with cairo. we talked it all over. it wouldn't do to take to the shore; we couldn't take the raft up the stream, of course. there warn't no way but to wait for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances. so we slept all day amongst the cotton-wood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work, and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone! we didn't say a word for a good while. there warn't anything to say. we both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattle-snake skin; so what was the use to talk about it? it would only look like we was finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luckand keep on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still. by-and-by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a canoe to go back in. we warn't going to borrow it when there warn't anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after us. so we shoved out, after dark, on the raft. anybody that don't believe yet, that it's foolishness to handle a snake-skin, after all that snake-skin done for us, will believe it now, if they read on and see what more it done for us. the place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying at shore. but we didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and more. well, the night got gray, and ruther thick, which is the next meanest thing to fog. you can't tell the shape of the river, and you can't see no distance. it got to be very late and still, and then along comes a steamboat up the river. we lit the lantern, and judged she would see it. up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us; they go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs; but nights like this they bull right up the channel against the whole river. we could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was close. she aimed right for us. often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he's mighty smart. well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try to shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. she was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she laughed out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. there was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a pow-wow of cussing, and whistling of steamand as jim went overboard on one side and i on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft. i divedand i aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel had got to go over me, and i wanted it to have plenty of room. i could always stay under water a minute; this time i reckon i staid under water a minute and a half. then i bounced for the top in a hurry, for i was nearly busting. i popped out to my arm-pits and blowed the water out of my nose, and puffed a bit. of course there was a booming current; and of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though i could hear her. i sung out for jim about a dozen times, but i didn't get any answer; so i grabbed a plank that touched me while i was "treading water," and struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. but i made out to see that the drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which meant that i was in a crossing; so i changed off and went that way. it was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings; so i was a good long time in getting over. i made a safe landing, and clum up the bank. i couldn't see but a little ways, but i went poking along over rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then i run across a big old-fashioned double log house before i noticed it. i was going to rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and barking at me, and i knowed better than to move another peg. chapter seventeen in about half a minute somebody spoke out of a window, without putting his head out, and says: "be done, boys! who's there?" i says: "it's me." "who's me?" "george jackson, sir." "what do you want?" "i don't want nothing, sir. i only want to go along by, but the dogs won't let me." "what are you prowling around here this time of night, forhey?" "i warn't prowling around, sir; i fell overboard off of the steamboat." "oh, you did, did you? strike a light there, somebody. what did you say your name was?" "george jackson, sir. i'm only a boy." "look here; if you're telling the truth, you needn't be afraidnobody'll hurt you. but don't try to budge; stand right where you are. rouse out bob and tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. george jackson, is there anybody with you?" "no, sir, nobody." i heard the people stirring around in the house, now, and see a light. the man sung out: "snatch that light away, betsy, you old foolain't you got any sense? put it on the floor behind the front door. bob, if you and tom are ready, take your places." "all ready." "now, george jackson, do you know the shepherdsons?" "no, siri never heard of them." "well, that may be so, and it mayn't. now, all ready. step forward, george jackson. and mind, don't you hurrycome mighty slow. if there's anybody with you, let him keep backif he shows himself he'll be shot. come along, now. come slow; push the door open, yourselfjust enough to squeeze in, d' you hear?" i didn't hurry, i couldn't if i'd a wanted to. i took one slow step at a time, and there warn't a sound, only i thought i could hear my heart. the dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me. when i got to the three log door-steps, i heard them unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. i put my hand on the door and pushed it a little and a little more, till somebody said, "there, that's enoughput your head in." i done it, but i judged they would take it off. the candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and me at them, for about a quarter of a minute. three big men with guns pointed at me, which made me wince, i tell you; the oldest, gray and about sixty, the other two thirty or moreall of them fine and handsomeand the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two young women which i couldn't see right well. the old gentleman says: "therei reckon it's all right. come in." as soon as i was in, the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and got together in a corner that was out of range of the front windowsthere warn't none on the side. they held the candle, and took a good look at me, and all said, "why he ain't a shepherdsonno, there ain't any shepherdson about him." then the old man said he hoped i wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by itit was only to make sure. so he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and said it was all right. he told me to make myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the old lady says: "why bless you, saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't you reckon it may be he's hungry?" "true for you, racheli forgot." so the old lady says: "betsy" (this was a nigger woman), "you fly around and get him something to eat, as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake up buck and tell himoh, here he is himself. buck, take this little stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of yours that's dry." buck looked about as old as methirteen or fourteen or along there, though he was a little bigger than me. he hadn't on anything but a shirt, and he was very frowsy-headed. he come in gaping and digging one fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. he says: "ain't they no shepherdsons around?" they said, no, 'twas a false alarm. "well," he says, "if they'd a ben some, i reckon i'd a got one." they all laughed, and bob says: "why, buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in coming." "well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right. i'm always kep' down; i don't get no show." "never mind, buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show enough, all in good time, don't you fret about that. go 'long with you now, and do as your mother told you." when we got up stairs to his room, he got me a coarse shirt and a roundabout and pants of his, and i put them on. while i was at it he asked me what my name was, but before i could tell him, he started to telling me about a blue jay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me where moses was when the candle went out. i said i didn't know; i hadn't heard about it before, no way. "well, guess," he says. "how'm i going to guess," says i, "when i never heard tell about it before?" "but you can guess, can't you? it's just as easy." "which candle?" i says. "why, any candle," he says. "i don't know where he was," says i; "where was he?" "why, he was in the dark! that's where he was!" "well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?" "why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? say, how long are you going to stay here? you got to stay always. we can just have booming timesthey don't have no school now. do you own a dog? i've got a dogand he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. do you like to comb up, sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? you bet i don't, but ma she makes me. confound these ole britches, i reckon i'd better put'em on, but i'd ruther not, it's so warm. are you all ready? all rightcome along, old hoss." cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilkthat is what they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever i've come across yet. buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. they all smoked and talked, and i eat and talked. the young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. they all asked me questions, and i told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of arkansaw, and my sister mary ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and bill went to hunt them and he warn't heard of no more, and tom and mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles; so when he died i took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how i come to be here. so they said i could have a home there as long as i wanted it. then it was most daylight, and everybody went to bed, and i went to bed with buck, and when i waked up in the morning, drat it all, i had forgot what my name was. so i laid there about an hour trying to think, and when buck waked up, i says: "can you spell, buck?" "yes," he says. "i bet you can't spell my name," says i. "i bet you what you dare i can," says he. "all right," says i, "go ahead." "g-o-r-g-e j-a-x-o-nthere now," he says. "well," says i, "you done it, but i didn't think you could. it ain't no slouch of a name to spellright off without studying." i set it down, private, because somebody might want me to spell it, next, and so i wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like i was used to it. it was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. i hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. it didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, and the same as houses in a town. there warn't no bed in the parlor, not a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them. there was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they washed them over with red water-paint that they called spanish-brown, same as they do in town. they had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. there was a clock on the middle of the mantel-piece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swing behind it. it was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out. they wouldn't took any money for her. well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. by one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look different nor interested. they squeaked through underneath. there was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. on a table in the middle of the room was a kind of lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they warn't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk or whatever it was, underneath. this table had a cover made out of beautiful oil-cloth, with a red and blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. it come all the way from philadelphia, they said. there was some books too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. one was a big family bible, full of pictures. one was "pilgrim's progress," about a man that left his family it didn't say why. i read considerable in it now and then. the statements was interesting, but tough. another was "friendship's offering," full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but i didn't read the poetry. another was henry clay's speeches, and another was dr. gunn's family medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. there was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. and there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, toonot bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket. they had pictures hung on the wallsmainly washingtons and lafayettes, and battles, and highland marys, and one called "signing the declaration." there was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. they was different from any pictures i ever see before; blacker, mostly, than is common. one was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the arm-pits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "shall i never see thee more alas." another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "i shall never hear thy sweet chirrup more alas." there was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing-wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "and art thou gone yes thou art gone alas." these was all nice pictures, i reckon, but i didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever i was down a little, they always give me the fan-tods. everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. but i reckoned, that with her disposition, she was having a better time in the graveyard. she was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. it was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moonand the idea was, to see which pair would look best and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as i was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. other times it was hid with a little curtain. the young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me. this young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the presbyterian observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. it was very good poetry. this is what she wrote about a boy by the name of stephen dowling bots that fell down a well and was drownded: ode to stephen dowling bots, dec'd. and did young stephen sicken, and did young stephen die? and did the sad hearts thicken, and did the mourners cry? no; such was not the fate of young stephen dowling bots; though sad hearts round him thickened, 'twas not from sickness'shots. no whooping-cough did rack his frame, nor measles drear, with spots; not these impaired the sacred name of stephen dowling bots. despised love struck not with woe that head of curly knots. nor stomach troubles laid him low, young stephen dowling bots. o no. then list with tearful eye, whilst i his fate do tell. his soul did from this cold world fly, by falling down a well. they got him out and emptied him; alas it was too late; his spirit was gone for to sport aloft in the realms of the good and great. if emmeline grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by-and-by. buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. she didn't ever have to stop to think. he said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it she would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go ahead. she warn't particular, she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about, just so it was sadful. every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. she called them tributes. the neighbors said it was the doctor first, then emmeline, then the undertakerthe undertaker never got in ahead of emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme the dead person's name, which was whistler. she warn't ever the same, after that; she never complained, but she kind of pined away and did not live long. poor thing, many's the time i made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and i had soured on her a little. i liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between us. poor emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some about her, now she was gone; so i tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but i couldn't seem to make it go, somehow. they kept emmeline's room trim and nice and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. the old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her bible there, mostly. well, as i was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the windows: white, with pictures painted on them, of castles with vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. there was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, i reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing, "the last link is broken" and play "the battle of prague" on it. the walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside. it was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. nothing couldn't be better. and warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too! chapter eighteen col. grangerford was a gentleman, you see. he was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. he was well born, as the saying is, and that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the widow douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a mudcat, himself. col. grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean-shaved every morning, all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. his forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight, and hung to his shoulders. his hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it. he carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. there warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud. he was as kind as he could beyou could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. he didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their mannerseverybody was always good mannered where he was. everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most alwaysi mean he made it seem like good weather. when he turned into a cloud-bank it was awful dark for a half a minute and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week. when him and the old lady come down in the morning, all the family got up out of their chairs and give them good-day, and didn't set down again till they had set down. then tom and bob went to the sideboard where the decanters was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he held it in his hand and waited till tom's and bob's was mixed, and then they bowed and said "our duty to you, sir, and madam;" and they bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all three, and bob and tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give it to me and buck, and we drank to the old people too. bob was the oldest, and tom next. tall, beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. they dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and wore broad panama hats. then there was miss charlotte, she was twenty-five, and tall and proud and grand, but as good as she could be, when she warn't stirred up; but when she was, she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like her father. she was beautiful. so was her sister, miss sophia, but it was a different kind. she was gentle and sweet, like a dove, and she was only twenty. each person had their own nigger to wait on thembuck, too. my nigger had a monstrous easy time, because i warn't used to having anybody do anything for me, but buck's was on the jump most of the time. this was all there was of the family, now; but there used to be morethree sons, they got killed; and emmeline that died. the old gentleman owned a lot of farms, and over a hundred niggers. sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods, day-times, and balls at the house, nights. these people was mostly kinfolks of the family. the men brought their guns with them. it was a handsome lot of quality, i tell you. there was another clan of aristocracy around therefive or six familiesmostly of the name of shepherdson. they was as high-toned, and well born, and rich and grand, as the tribe of grangerfords. the shepherdsons and the grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two mile above our house; so sometimes when i went up there with a lot of our folks i used to see a lot of the shepherdsons there, on their fine horses. one day buck and me was away out in the woods, hunting, and heard a horse coming. we was crossing the road. buck says: "quick! jump for the woods!" we done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. pretty soon a splendid young man came galloping down the road, setting his horse easy and looking like a soldier. he had his gun across his pommel. i had seen him before. it was young harney shepherdson. i heard buck's gun go off at my ear, and harney's hat tumbled off from his head. he grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. but we didn't wait. we started through the woods on a run. the woods warn't thick, so i looked over my shoulder, to dodge the bullet, and twice i seen harney cover buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he cometo get his hat, i reckon, but i couldn't see. we never stopped running till we got home. the old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute'twas pleasure, mainly, i judgedthen his face sort of smoothed down and he says, kind of gentle: "i don't like that shooting from behind a bush. why didn't you step into the road, my boy?" "the shepherdsons don't, father. they always take advantage." miss charlotte she held her head up like a queen while buck was telling his tale and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. the two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. miss sophia she turned pale, but the color came back when she found the man warn't hurt. soon as i could get buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by ourselves, i says: "did you want to kill him, buck?" "well, i bet i did." "what did he do to you?" "him? he never done nothing to me." "well, then, what did you want to kill him for?" "why, nothingonly it's on account of the feud." "what's a feud?" "why, where was you raised? don't you know what a feud is?" "never heard of it beforetell me about it." "well," says buck, "a feud is this way. a man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip inand by-and-by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. but it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." "has this one been going on long, buck?" "well i should reckon! it started thirty year ago, or som'ers along there. there was trouble 'bout something and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suitwhich he would naturally do, of course. anybody would." "what was the trouble about, buck?land?" "i reckon maybei don't know." "well, who done the shooting?was it a grangerford or a shepherdson?" "laws, how do i know? it was so long ago." "don't anybody know?" "oh, yes, pa knows, i reckon, and some of the other old folks; but they don't know, now, what the row was about in the first place." "has there been many killed, buck?" "yesright smart chance of funerals. but they don't always kill. pa's got a few buck-shot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh much anyway. bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and tom's been hurt once or twice." "has anybody been killed this year, buck?" "yes, we got one and they got one. 'bout three months ago, my cousin bud, fourteen years old, was riding through the woods, on t'other side of the river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame' foolishness, and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees old baldy shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun in his hand and his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of jumping off and taking to the brush, bud 'lowed he could outrun him; so they had it, nip and tuck, for five mile and more, the old man againing all the time; so at last bud seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced around so as to have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up and shot him down. but he didn't git much chance to enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks laid him out." "i reckon that old man was a coward, buck." "i reckon he warn't a coward. not by a blame' sight. there ain't a coward amongst them shepherdsonsnot a one. and there ain't no cowards amongst the grangerfords, either. why, that old man kep' up his end in a fight one day, for a half an hour, against three grangerfords, and come out winner. they was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got behind a little wood-pile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the bullets; but the grangerfords staid on their horses and capered around the old man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the grangerfords had to be fetched homeand one of 'em was dead, and another died the next day. no, sir, if a body's out hunting for cowards, he don't want to fool away any time against shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of that kind." next sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. the men took their guns along, so did buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. the shepherdsons done the same. it was pretty ornery preachingall about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination, and i don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest sundays i had run across yet. about an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. buck and a dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun, sound asleep. i went up to our room, and judged i would take a nap myself. i found that sweet miss sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if i liked her, and i said i did; and she asked me if i would do something for her and not tell anybody, and i said i would. then she said she'd forgot her testament, and left it in the seat at church, between two other books and would i slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say nothing to nobody. i said i would. so i slid out and slipped off up the road, and there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. if you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different. says i to myself something's upit ain't natural for a girl to be in such a sweat about a testament; so i give it a shake, and out drops a little piece of paper with "half-past two" wrote on it with a pencil. i ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else. i couldn't make anything out of that, so i put the paper in the book again, and when i got home and up stairs, there was miss sophia in her door waiting for me. she pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the testament till she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad; and before a body could think, she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and said i was the best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. she was mighty red in the face, for a minute, and her eyes lighted up and it made her powerful pretty. i was a good deal astonished, but when i got my breath i asked what the paper was about, and she asked me if i had read it, and i said no, and she asked me if i could read writing and i told her "no, only coarse-hand," and then she said the paper warn't anything but a book-mark to keep her place, and i might go and play now. i went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon i noticed that my nigger was following along behind. when we was out of sight of the house, he looked back and around a second, and then comes a-running, and says: "mars jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp, i'll show you a whole stack o' water-moccasins." thinks i, that's mighty curious; he said that yesterday. he oughter know a body don't love water moccasins enough to go around hunting for them. what is he up to anyway? so i says "all right, trot ahead." i followed a half a mile, then he struck out over the swamp and waded ankle deep as much as another half mile. we come to a little flat piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines, and he says "you shove right in dah, jist a few steps, mars jawge, dah's whah dey is. i's seed 'm befo', i don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'." then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid him. i poked into the place a-ways, and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom, all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there asleepand by jings it was my old jim! i waked him up, and i reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him to see me again, but it warn't. he nearly cried, he was so glad, but he warn't surprised. said he swum along behind me, that night, and heard me yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want nobody to pick him up, and take him into slavery again. says he "i got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so i wuz a considable ways behine you, towards de las'; when you landed i reckoned i could ketch up wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when i see dat house i begin to go slow. i off too fur to hear what dey say to youi wuz 'fraid o' de dogsbut when it 'uz all quiet agin, i knowed you's in de house, so i struck out for de woods to wait for day. early in de mawnin' some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey tuck me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts o' de water, en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you's a gitt'n along." "why didn't you tell my jack to fetch me here sooner, jim?" "well,'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, huck, tell we could do sumfnbut we's all right, now. i ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as i get a chanst, en a patchin' up de raf', nights, when-" "what raft, jim?" "our ole raf'." "you mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?" "no, she warn't. she was tore up a good dealone en' of her wasbut dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'. ef we hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn' ben so dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin' is, we'd a seed de raf'. but it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase now she's all fixed up agin mos' as good as new, en we's got a new lot o' stuff, too, in de place o' what 'uz los'." "why, how did you get hold of the raft again, jimdid you catch her?" "how i gwyne to ketch her, en i out in de woods? no, some er de niggers foun' her ketched on a snag, along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a crick, 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um she b'long to de mos', dat i come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so i ups en settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv um, but to you en me; en i ast'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman's propaty, en git a hid'n for it? den i gin 'm ten cents apiece, en dey 'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud come along en make 'm rich agin. dey's mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en whatever i wants 'm to do fur me, i doan' have to ast 'm twice, honey. dat jack's a good nigger, en pooty smart." "yes, he is. he ain't ever told me you was here; told me to come, and he'd show me a lot of water-moccasins. if anything happens, he ain't mixed up in it. he can say he never seen us together, and it'll be the truth." i don't want to talk much about the next day. i reckon i'll cut it pretty short. i waked up about dawn, and was agoing to turn over and go to sleep again, when i noticed how still it wasdidn't seem to be anybody stirring. that warn't usual. next i noticed that buck was up and gone. well, i gets up, a-wondering, and goes down stairsnobody around; everything as still as a mouse. just the same outside; thinks i, what does it mean? down by the wood-pile i comes across my jack, and says: "what's it all about?" says he: "don't you know, mars jawge?" "no," says i, "i don't." "well, den, miss sophia's run off! 'deed she has. she run off in de night, sometimenobody don't know jis' whenrun off to git married to dat young harney shepherdson, you knowleastways, so dey 'spec. de fambly foun' it out, 'bout half an hour agomaybe a little mo'en' i tell you dey warn't no time los'. sich another hurryin' up guns en hosses you never see! de women folks has gone for to stir up the relations, en ole mars saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin git acrost de river wid miss sophia. i reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty rough times." "buck went off 'thout waking me up." "well i reck'n he did! dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it. mars buck he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a shepherdson or bust. well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, i reck'n, en you bet you he'll fetch one ef he gits a chanst." i took up the river road as hard as i could put. by-and-by i begin to hear guns a good ways off. when i come in sight of the log store and the wood-pile where the steamboats lands, i worked along under the trees and brush till i got to a good place, and then i clumb up into the forks of a cotton-wood that was out of reach, and watched. there was a wood-rank four foot high, a little ways in front of the tree, and first i was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier i didn't. there was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the steamboat landingbut they couldn't come it. every time one of them showed himself on the river side of the wood-pile he got shot at. the two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch both ways. by-and-by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. they started riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. all the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the run. they got half-way to the tree i was in before the men noticed. then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after them. they gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good, the boys had too good a start; they got to the wood-pile that was in front of my tree, and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again. one of the boys was buck, and the other was a slim young chap about nineteen years old. the men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. as soon as they was out of sight, i sung out to buck and told him. he didn't know what to make of my voice coming out of the tree, at first. he was awful surprised. he told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or otherwouldn't be gone long. i wished i was out of that tree, but i dasn't come down. buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and his cousin joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this day, yet. he said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or three of the enemy. said the shepherdsons laid for them, in ambush. buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relationsthe shepherdsons was too strong for them. i asked him what was become of young harney and miss sophia. he said they'd got across the river and was safe. i was glad of that; but the way buck did take on because he didn't manage to kill harney that day he shot at himi hain't ever heard anything like it. all of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four gunsthe men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! the boys jumped for the riverboth of them hurtand as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, "kill them, kill them!" it made me so sick i most fell out of the tree. i ain't agoing to tell all that happenedit would make me sick again if i was to do that. i ain't ever going to get shut of themlots of times i dream about them. i staid in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down. sometimes i heard guns. away off in the woods; and twice i seen little gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so i reckoned the trouble was still agoing on. i was mighty down-hearted; so i made up my mind i wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because i reckoned i was to blame, somehow. i judged that piece of paper meant that miss sophia was to meet harney somewheres at halfpast two and run off; and i judged i ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way she acted, and then maybe he would a locked her up and this awful mess wouldn't ever happened. when i got down out of the tree, i crept along down the river bank a piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and tugged at them till i got them ashore; then i covered up their faces, and got away as quick as i could. i cried a little when i was covering up buck's face, for he was mighty good to me. it was just dark, now. i never went near the house, but struck through the woods and made for the swamp. jim warn't on his island, so i tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful countrythe raft was gone! my souls, but i was scared! i couldn't get my breath for most a minute. then i raised a yell. a voice not twenty-five foot from me, says "good lan'! is dat you, honey? doan' make no noise." it was jim's voicenothing ever sounded so good before. i run along the bank a piece and got aboard, and jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was so glad to see me. he says "laws bless you, chile, i 'uz right down sho' you's dead agin. jack's been heah, he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no mo'; so i's jes' dis minute a startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er de crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as jack comes agin en tells me for certain you is dead. lawsy, i's mighty glad to git you back agin, honey." i says "all rightthat's mighty good; they won't find me, and they'll think i've been killed, and floated down the riverthere's something up there that'll help them to think soso don't you lose no time, jim, but just shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can." i never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the mississippi. then we hung up our signal lantern, and judged that we was free and safe once more. i hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday; so jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage, and greensthere ain't nothing in the world so good, when it's cooked rightand whilst i eat my supper we talked, and had a good time. i was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was jim to get away from the swamp. we said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. you feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. chapter nineteen two or three days and nights went by; i reckon i might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. here is the way we put in the time. it was a monstrous big river down theresometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid day-times; soon as night was most gone, we stopped navigating and tied upnearly always in the dead water under a tow-head; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows and hid the raft with them. then we set out the lines. next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. not a sound, anywheresperfactly stilljust like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bull-frogs a-cluttering, maybe. the first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull linethat was the woods on t'other sideyou couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness, spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away-trading scows, and such things; and long black streaksrafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by-and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a wood-yard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze blows up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars, and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it! a little smoke couldn't be noticed, now, so we would take some fish off of the lines, and cook up a hot breakfast. and afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by-and-by lazy off to sleep. wake up, by-and-by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat, coughing along up stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to seejust solid lonesomeness. next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the ax flash, and come downyou don't hear nothing; you see that ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head, then you hear the k'chunk!it had took all that time to come over the water. so we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness. once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. a scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughingheard them plain; but we couldn't see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly, it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. jim said he believed it was spirits; but i says: "no, spirits wouldn't say, 'dern the dern fog.'" soon as it was night, out we shoved; when we got her out to about the middle, we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water and talked about all kinds of thingswe was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let usthe new clothes buck's folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides i didn't go much on clothes, nohow. sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a sparkwhich was a candle in a cabin windowand sometimes on the water you could see a spark or twoon a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. it's lovely to live on a raft. we had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happenedjim he allowed they was made, but i allowed they happened; i judged it would have took too long to make so many. jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so i didn't say nothing against it, because i've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. we used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest. once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her pow-wow shut off and leave the river still again; and by-and-by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something. after midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was blackno more sparks in the cabin windows. these sparks was our clockthe first one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up, right away. one morning about day-break, i found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shoreit was only two hundred yardsand paddled about a mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if i couldn't get some berries. just as i was passing a place where a kind of a cow-path crossed the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it. i thought i was a goner, for whenever anybody was after anybody i judged it was meor maybe jim. i was about to dig out from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung out and begged me to save their livessaid they hadn't been doing nothing, and was being chased for itsaid there was men and dogs a-coming. they wanted to jump right in, but i says "don't you do it. i don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got time to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you take to the water and wade down to me and get inthat'll throw the dogs off the scent." they done it, and as soon as they was aboard i lit out for our tow-head, and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, shouting. we heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn't see them; they seemed to stop and fool around a while; then, as we got further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the tow-head and hid in the cottonwoods and was safe. one of these fellows was about seventy, or upwards, and had a bald head and very gray whiskers. he had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot tops, and home-knit gallusesno, he only had one. he had an old longtailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons, flung over his arm, and both of them had big fat ratty-looking carpet-bags. the other fellow was about thirty and dressed about as ornery. after breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out was that these chaps didn't know one another. "what got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap. "well, i'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teethand it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel with itbut i staid about one night longer than i ought to, and was just in the act of sliding out when i ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. so i told you i was expecting trouble myself and would scatter with you. that's the whole yarnwhat's yourn?" "well, i'd been a-runnin'a little temperance revival thar, 'bout a week, and was the pet of the women-folks, big and little, for i was makin' it mighty warm for the rummies, i tell you, and takin' as much as five or six dollars a nightten cents a head, children and niggers freeand business a growin' all the time; when somehow or another a little report got around, last night, that i had a way of puttin'in my time with a private jug, on the sly. a nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told me the people was getherin' on the quiet, with their dogs and horses, and they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start, and then run me down, if they could; and if they got me they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. i didn't wait for no breakfasti warn't hungry." "old man," says the young one, "i reckon we might double-team it together; what do you think?" "i ain't undisposed. what's your linemainly?" "jour printer, by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theatre-actortragedy, you know; take a turn at mesmerism and phrenology when there's a chance; teach singing-geography school for a change; sling a lecture, sometimesoh, i do lots of thingsmost anything that comes handy, so it ain't work. what's your lay?" "i've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. layin' on o' hands is my best holtfor cancer, and paralysis, and sich things; and i k'n tell a fortune pretty good, when i've got somebody along to find out the facts for me. preachin's my line, too; and workin' camp-meetin's; and missionaryin' around." nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh and says "alas!" "what're you alassin' about?" says the baldhead. "to think i should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded down into such company." and he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag. "dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?" says the baldhead, pretty pert and uppish. "yes, it is good enough for me; it's as good as i deserve; for who fetched me so low, when i was so high? i did myself. i don't blame you, gentlemenfar from it; i don't blame anybody. i deserve it all. let the cold world do its worst; one thing i knowthere's a grave somewhere for me. the world may go on just as it's always done, and take everything from meloved ones, property, everythingbut it can't take that. some day i'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest." he went on a-wiping. "drot your pore broken heart," says the baldhead; "what are you heaving your pore broken heart at us f'r? we hain't done nothing." "no, i know you haven't. i ain't blaming you, gentlemen. i brought myself downyes, i did it myself. it's right i should sufferperfectly righti don't make any moan." "brought you down from whar? whar was you brought down from?" "ah, you would not believe me; the world never believeslet it pass'tis no matter. the secret of my birth-" "the secret of your birth? do you mean to say-" "gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "i will reveal it to you, for i feel i may have confidence in you. by rights i am a duke!" jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and i reckon mine did, too. then the baldhead says: "no! you can't mean it?" "yes. my great-grandfather, eldest son of the duke of bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. the second son of the late duke seized the title and estatesthe infant real duke was ignored. i am the lineal descendant of that infanti am the rightful duke of bridgewater; and here am i, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft!" jim pitied him ever so much, and so did i. we tried to comfort him, but he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. he said we ought to bow, when we spoke to him, and say "your grace," or "my lord," or "your lordship"and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain "bridgewater," which he said was a title, anyway, and not a name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done. well, that was all easy, so we done it. all through dinner jim stood around and waited on him, and says, "will yo' grace have some o'dis, or some o'dat?" and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him. but the old man got pretty silent, by-and-bydidn't have much to say, and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that duke. he seemed to have something on his mind. so, along in the afternoon, he says: "looky here, bilgewater," he says, "i'm nation sorry for you, but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that." "no?" "no, you ain't. you ain't the only person that's ben snaked down wrongfully out'n a high place." "alas!" "no, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth." and by jings, he begins to cry. "hold! what do you mean?" "bilgewater, kin i trust you?" says the old man, still sort of sobbing. "to the bitter death!" he took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, "the secret of your being: speak!" "bilgewater, i am the late dauphin!" you bet you jim and me stared, this time. then the duke says: "you are what?" "yes, my friend, it is too trueyour eyes is lookin' at this very moment on the pore disappeared dauphin, looy the seventeen, son of looy the sixteen and marry antonette." "you! at your age! no! you mean you're the late charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least." "trouble has done it, bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin' exiled, trampled-on and sufferin' rightful king of france." well, he cried and took on so, that me and jim didn't know hardly what to do, we was so sorryand so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too. so we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort him. but he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him "your majesty," and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them. so jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. this done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. but the duke kind of soured on him, and didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke's great-grandfather and all the other dukes of bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father and was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke staid hurry a good while, till by-and-by the king says: "like as not we got to be together a blamed long time, on this h-yer raft, bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? it'll only make things oncomfortable. it ain't my fault i warn't born a duke, it ain't your fault you warn't born a kingso what's the use to worry? make the best o' things the way you find 'em, says ithat's my motto. this ain't no bad thing that we've struck hereplenty grub and an easy lifecome, give us your hand, duke, and less all be friends." the duke done it, and jim and me was pretty glad to see it. it took away all the uncomfortableness, and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others. it didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes, at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. but i never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. if they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, i hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell jim, so i didn't tell him. if i never learnt nothing else out of pap, i learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way. chapter twenty they asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the day-time instead of runningwas jim a runaway nigger? says i "goodness sakes, would a runaway nigger run south?" no, they allowed he wouldn't. i had to account for things some way, so i says: "my folks was living in pike county, in missouri, where i was born, and they all died off but me and pa and my brother ike. pa, he 'lowed he'd break up and go down and live with uncle ben, who's got a little one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below orleans. pa was pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, jim. that warn't enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. well, when the river rose, pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to orleans on it. pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft, one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel; jim and me come up, all right, but pa was drunk, and ike was only four years old, so they never come up no more. well, for the next day or two we had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway nigger. we don't run day-times no more, now; nights they don't bother us." the duke says "leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the day-time if we want to. i'll think the thing overi'll invent a plan that'll fix it. we'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by that town yonder in daylightit mightn't be healthy." towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat lightning was squirting around, low down in the sky, and the leaves was beginning to shiverit was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that. so the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see what the beds was like. my bed was a straw tickbetter than jim's, which was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over, the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you wake up. well, the duke allowed he would take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn't. he says "i should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. your grace'll take the shuck bed yourself." jim and me was in a sweat again, for a minute, being afraid there was going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when the duke says "'tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; i yield, i submit; 'tis my fate. i am alone in the worldlet me suffer; i can bear it." we got away as soon as it was good and dark. the king told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town. we come in sight of the little bunch of lights by-and-bythat was the town, you knowand slid by, about a half a mile out, all right. when we was three-quarters of a mile below, we hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. it was my watch below, till twelve, but i wouldn't a turned in, anyway, if i'd had a bed; because a body don't see such a storm as that every night in the week, not by a long sight. my souls, how the wind did scream along! and every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a h-wack!bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bumand the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quitand then rip comes another flash and another sockdolager. the waves most washed me off the raft, sometimes, but i hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. we didn't have no trouble about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them. i had the middle watch, you know, but i was pretty sleepy by that time, so jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always mighty good, that way, jim was. i crawled into the wigwam, but the king and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for me; so i laid outsidei didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and the waves warn't running so high, now. about two they come up again, though, and jim was going to call me, but he changed his mind because he reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper, and washed me overboard. it most killed jim a-laughing. he was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway. i took the watch, and jim he laid down and snored away; and by-and-by the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed, i rousted him out and we slid the raft into hiding-quarters for the day. the king got out an old ratty deck of cards, after breakfast, and him and the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game. then they got tired of it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they called it. the duke went down into his carpet-bag and fetched up a lot of little printed bills, and read them out loud. one bill said "the celebrated dr. armand de montalban of paris," would "lecture on the science of phrenology" at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten cents admission, and "furnish charts of character at twenty-five cents apiece." the duke said that was him. in another bill he was the "world renowned shaksperean tragedian, garrick the younger, of drury lane, london." in other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a "divining rod," "dissipating witch-spells," and so on. by-and-by he says "but the histrionic muse is the darling. have you ever trod the boards, royalty?" "no," says the king. "you shall, then, before you're three days older, fallen grandeur," says the duke. "the first good town we come to, we'll hire a hall and do the sword-fight in richard iii. and the balcony scene in romeo and juliet. how does that strike you?" "i'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, bilgewater, but you see i don't know nothing about play-actn', and hain't ever seen much of it. i was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace. do you reckon you can learn me?" "easy!" "all right. i'm jist a-freezn' for something fresh, anyway. less commence, right away." so the duke he told him all about who romeo was, and who juliet was, and said he was used to being romeo, so the king could be juliet. "but if juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe." "no, don't you worrythese country jakes won't ever think of that. besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world; juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled night-cap. here are the costumes for the parts." he got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil armor for richard iii. and t'other chap, and a long white cotton night-shirt and a ruffled night-cap to match. the king was satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart. there was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangersome for jim; so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing. the king allowed he would go too, and see if he couldn't strike something. we was out of coffee, so jim said i better go along with them in the canoe and get some. when we got there, there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and perfectly dead and still, like sunday. we found a sick nigger sunning himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or too sick or too old, was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the woods. the king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that camp-meeting for all it was worth, and i might go, too. the duke said what he was after was a printing office. we found it; a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shopcarpenters and printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. it was a dirty, littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. the duke shed his coat and said he was all right, now. so me and the king lit out for the camp-meeting. we got there in about a half an hour, fairly dripping, for it was a most awful hot day. there was as much as a thousand people there, from twenty mile around. the woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched everywheres, feeding out of the wagon troughs and stomping to keep off the flies. there was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such-like truck. the preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was bigger and held crowds of people. the benches was made out of outside slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs. they didn't have no backs. the preachers had high platforms to stand on, at one end of the sheds. the women had on sunbonnets; and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on calico. some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt. some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on the sly. the first shed we come to, the preacher was lining out a hymn. he lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to singand so on. the people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end, some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. then the preacher begun to preach; and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, "it's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! look upon it and live!" and people would shout out, "glory!a-a-men!" and so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen: "oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (amen!) come, sick and sore! (amen!) come, lame and halt, and blind! (amen!) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (amen!) come all that's worn, and soiled, and suffering!come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands openoh, enter in and be at rest!" (a-a-men! glory, glory hallelujah!) and so on. you couldn't make out what the preacher said, any more, on account of the shouting and crying. folks got up, everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way, just by main strength, to the mourners' bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung, and shouted, and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild. well, the first i knowed, the king got agoing; and you could hear him over everybody; he went a-charging up on to the platform and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. he told them he was a piratebeen a pirate for thirty years, out in the indian ocean, and his crew was thinned out considerable, last spring, in a fight, and he was home now, to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness he'd been robbed last night, and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it, it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life; and poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the indian ocean and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all the pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there, without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, "don't you thank me, don't you give me no credit, it all belongs to them dear people in pokeville camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the raceand that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!" and then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. then somebody sings out, "take up a collection for him, take up a collection!" well, a half dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "let him pass the hat around!" then everybody said it, the preacher too. so the king went all through the crowd with his hat, swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him, for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six timesand he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the indian ocean right off and go to work on the pirates. when we got back to the raft and he come to count up, he found he had collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. and then he had fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon when we was starting home through the woods. the king said, take it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in the missionarying line. he said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't amount to shucks, alongside of pirates, to work a camp-meeting with. the duke was thinking he'd been doing pretty well, till the king come to show up, but after that he didn't think so much. he had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers, in that printing officehorse billsand took the money, four dollars. and he had got in ten dollars worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advanceso they done it. the price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cord-wood and onions, as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. he set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own headthree verseskind of sweet and saddishthe name of it was, "yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart"and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper and didn't charge nothing for it. well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work for it. then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for, because it was for us. it had a picture of a runaway nigger, with a bundle on a stick, over his shoulder, and "$200 reward" under it. the reading was all about jim, and just described him to a dot. it said he run away from st. jacques' plantation, forty mile below new orleans, last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him back, he could have the reward and expenses. "now," says the duke, "after to-night we can run in the daytime if we want to. whenever we see anybody coming, we can tie jim hand and foot with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward. handcuffs and chains would look still better on jim, but it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor. too much like jewelry. ropes are the correct thingwe must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards." we all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble about running daytimes. we judged we could make miles enough that night to get out of the reach of the pow-wow we reckoned the duke's work in the printing office was going to make in that little townthen we could boom right along, if we wanted to. we laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it. when jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says "huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis trip?" "no," i says, "i reckon not." "well," says he, "dat's all right, den. i doan' mine one er two kings, but dat's enough. dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much better." i found jim had been trying to get him to talk french, so he could hear what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and had so much trouble, he'd forgot it. chapter twenty-one it was after sun-up, now, but we went right on, and didn't tie up. the king and the duke turned out, by-and-by, looking pretty rusty; but after they'd jumped overboard and took a swim, it chippered them up a good deal. after breakfast the king he took a seat on a corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to getting his romeo and juliet by heart. when he had got it pretty good, him and the duke begun to practice it together. the duke had to learn him over and over again, how to say every speech; and he made him sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after while he said he done it pretty well; "only," he says, "you mustn't bellow out romeo! that way, like a bullyou must say it soft, and sick, and languishy, sor-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she don't bray like a jackass." well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of oak laths, and begun to practice the swordfightthe duke called himself richard iii.; and the way they laid on, and pranced around the raft was grand to see. but by-and-by the king tripped and fell overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures they'd had in other times along the river. after dinner, the duke says: "well, capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so i guess we'll add a little more to it. we want a little something to answer encores with, anyway." "what's onkores, bilgewater?" the duke told him, and then says: "i'll answer by doing the highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe; and youwell, let me seeoh, i've got ityou can do hamlet's soliloquy." "hamlet's which?" "hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in shakespeare. ah, it's sublime, sublime! always fetches the house. i haven't got it in the booki've only got one volumebut i reckon i can piece it out from memory. i'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if i can call it back from recollection's vaults." so he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear. it was beautiful to see him. by-and-by he got it. he told us to give attention. then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever i see before. this is the speechi learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king: to be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin that makes calamity of so long life; for who would fardels bear, till birnam wood do come to dunsinane, but that the fear of something after death murders the innocent sleep, great nature's second course, and makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune than fly to others that we know not of. there's the respect must give us pause: wake duncan with thy knocking! i would thou couldst; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, in the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn in customary suits of solemn black, but that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, breathes forth contagion on the world, and thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage, is sicklied o'er with care, and all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops, with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action. 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. but soft you, the fair ophelia: ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, but get thee to a nunnerygo! well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he could do it first rate. it seemed like he was just born for it; and when he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off. the first chance we got, the duke he had some show bills printed; and after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword-fighting and rehearsingas the duke called itgoing on all the time. one morning, when we was pretty well down the state of arkansaw, we come in sight of a little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about three-quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show. we struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. the circus would leave before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. the duke he hired the court house, and we went around and stuck up our bills. they read like this: shaksperean revival!!! wonderful attraction! for one night only! the world renowned tragedians, david garrick the younger, of drury lane theatre, london, and edmund kean the elder, of the royal haymarket theatre, whitechapel, pudding lane, piccadilly, london, and the royal continental theatres, in their sublime shaksperean spectacle entitled the balcony scene in romeo and juliet!!! romeo............................................... mr. garrick. juliet.............................................. mr. kean. also: the thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling broad-sword conflict in richard iii.!!! assisted by the whole strength of the company! new costumes, new scenery, new appointments! richard iii........................................ mr. garrick. richmond........................................... mr. kean. also (by special request,) hamlet's immortal soliloquy!! by the illustrious kean! done by him 300 consecutive nights in paris! for one night only, on account of imperative european engagements! admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents. then we went loafing around the town. the stores and houses was most all old shackly dried-up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted; they was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was overflowed. the houses had little gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in them but jimpson weeds, and sunflowers, and ash-piles, and old curled-up boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played-out tin-ware. the fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on at different times; and they leaned every which-way, and had gates that didn't generly have but one hingea leather one. some of the fences had been whitewashed, some time or another, but the duke said it was in clumbus's time, like enough. there was generly hogs in the garden, and people driving them out. all the stores was along one street. they had white-domestic awnings in front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning-posts. there was empty dry-goods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretchinga mighty ornery lot. they generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats; they called one another bill, and buck, and hank, and joe, and andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used considerable many cuss-words. there was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands in his britches pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of tobacco or scratch. what a body was hearing amongst them, all the time was "gimme a chaw'v tobacker, hank." "cain'ti hain't got but one chaw left. ask bill." maybe bill he gives him a chaw; maybe he lies and says he ain't got none. some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a chaw of tobacco of their own. they get all their chawing by borrowingthey say to a fellow, "i wisht you'd len' me a chaw, jack, i jist this minute give ben thompson the last chaw i had"which is a lie, pretty much every time; it don't fool nobody but a stranger; but jack ain't no stranger, so he says "you give him a chaw, did you? so did your sister's cat's grandmother. you pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me, lafe buckner, then i'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge you no back intrust, nuther." "well, i did pay you back some of it wunst." "yes, you did'bout six chaws. you borry'd store tobacker and paid back nigger-head." store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the natural leaf twisted. when they borrow a chaw, they don't generly cut it off with a knife, but they set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in twothen sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when it's handed back, and says, sarcastic "here, gimme the chaw, and you take the plug." all the streets and lanes was just mud, they warn't nothing else but mudmud as black as tar, and nigh about a foot deep in some places; and two or three inches deep in all the places. the hogs loafed and grunted around, everywheres. you'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out, and shut her eyes, and wave her ears, whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if she was on salary. and pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "hi! so boy! sick him, tige!" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more a-coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. then they'd settle back again till there was a dog-fight. there couldn't anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog-fightunless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin to his tail and see him run himself to death. on the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in. the people had moved out of them. the bank was caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over. people lived in them yet, but it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time. sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it. the nearer it got to noon that day, the thicker and thicker was the wagons and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time. families fetched their dinners with them, from the country, and eat them in the wagons. there was considerable whiskey drinking going on, and i seen three fights. by-and-by somebody sings out "here comes old boggs!in from the country for his little old monthly drunkhere he comes, boys!" all the loafers looked gladi reckoned they was used to having fun out of boggs. one of them says "wonder who he's a gwyne to chaw up this time. if he'd a chawed up all the men he's ben a gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year, he'd have considerable ruputation, now." another one says, "i wisht old boggs'd threaten me, 'cuz then i'd know i warn't gwyne to die for a thousan' year." boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whopping and yelling like an injun, and singing out "cler the track, thar. i'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a gwyne to raise." he was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year old, and had a very red face. everybody yelled at him, and laughed at him, and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now, because he'd come to town to kill old colonel sherburn, and his motto was, "meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on." he see me, and rode up and says "whar'd you come f'm, boy? you prepared to die?" then he rode on. i was scared; but a man says"he don't mean nothing; he's always a carryin'on like that, when he's drunk. he's the best-naturedest old fool in arkansawnever hurt nobody, drunk nor sober." boggs rode up before the biggest store in town and bent his head down so he could see under the curtain of the awning, and yells" come out here, sherburn! come out and meet the man you've swindled. you're the houn' i'm after, and i'm a gwyne to have you, too!" and so he went on, calling sherburn everything he could lay his tongue to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on. by-and-by a proudlooking man about fifty-fiveand he was a heap the best dressed man in that town, toosteps out of the store, and the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. he says to boggs, mighty ca'm and slowhe says: "i'm tired of this; but i'll endure it till one o'clock. till one o'clock, mindno longer. if you open your mouth against me only once, after that time, you can't travel so far but i will find you." then he turns and goes in. the crowd looked mighty sober; nobody stirred, and there warn't no more laughing. boggs rode off blackguarding sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street; and pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping it up. some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn't; they told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen minutes, and so he must go homehe must go right away. but it didn't do no good. he cussed away, with all his might, and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down the street again, with his gray hair a-flying. everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober; but it warn't no useup the street he would tear again, and give sherburn another cussing. by-and-by somebody says "go for his daughter!quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he'll listen to her. if anybody can persuade him, she can." so somebody started on a run. i walked down street a ways, and stopped. in about five or ten minutes, here comes boggs againbut not on his horse. he was a-reeling across the street towards me, bareheaded, with a friend on both sides of him aholt of his arms and hurrying him along. he was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he warn't hanging back any, but was doing some of the hurrying himself. somebody sings out "boggs!" i looked over to see who said it, and it was that colonel sherburn. he was standing perfectly still, in the street, and had a pistol raised in his right handnot aiming it, but holding it out with the barrel tilted up towards the sky. the same second i see a young girl coming on the run, and two men with her. boggs and the men turned round, to see who called him, and when they see the pistol the men jumped to one side, and the pistol barrel come down slow and steady to a level-both barrels cocked. boggs throws up both of his hands, and says, "o lord, don't shoot!" bang! goes the first shot, and he staggers back clawing at the airbang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards onto the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. that young girl screamed out, and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her father, crying, and saying, "oh, he's killed him, he's killed him!" the crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to shove them back, and shouting, "back, back! give him air, give him air!" colonel sherburn he tossed his pistol onto the ground, and turned around on his heels and walked off. they took boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around, just the same, and the whole town following, and i rushed and got a good place at the window, where i was close to him and could see in. they laid him on the floor, and put one large bible under his head, and opened another one and spread it on his breastbut they tore open his shirt first, and i seen where one of the bullets went in. he made about a dozen long gasps, his breast lifting the bible up when he drawed in his breath, and letting it down again when he breathed it outand after that he laid still; he was dead. then they pulled his daughter away from him, screaming and crying, and took her off. she was about sixteen, and very sweet and gentle-looking, but awful pale and scared. well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but people that had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was saying all the time, "say, now, you've looked enough, you fellows; 'taint right and 'taint fair, for you to stay thar all the time, and never give nobody a chance; other folks has their rights as well as you. there was considerable jawing back, so i slid out, thinking maybe there was going to be trouble. the streets was full, and everybody was excited. everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened, and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows, stretching their necks and listening. one long lanky man, with long hair and a big white fur stove-pipe hat on the back of his head, and a crooked-handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where boggs stood, and where sherburn stood, and the people following him around from one place to t'other and watching everything he done, and bobbing their heads to show they understood, and stopping a little and resting their hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where sherburn had stood, frowning and having his hatbrim down over his eyes, and sung out, "boggs!" and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says "bang!" staggered backwards, says "bang!" again, and fell down flat on his back. the people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect; said it was just exactly the way it all happened. then as much as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him. well, by-and-by somebody said sherburn ought to be lynched. in about a minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and snatching down every clothes-line they come to, to do the hanging with. chapter twenty-two they swarmed up the street towards sherburn's house, a-whooping and yelling and raging like injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to mush, and it was awful to see. children was heeling it ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of reach. lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most to death. they swarmed in front of sherburn's palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise. it was a little twenty-foot yard. some sung out "tear down the fence! tear down the fence!" then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave. just then sherburn steps out of the roof of his little front porch, with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm and deliberate, not saying a word. the racket stopped, and the wave sucked back. sherburn never said a wordjust stood there, looking down. the stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherever it struck, the people tried a little to outgaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. then pretty soon sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand in it. then he says, slow and scornful: "the idea of you lynching anybody! it's amusing. the idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? why, a man's safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kindas long as it's day-time and you're not behind him. "do i know you? i know you clear through. i was born and raised in the south, and i've lived in the north; so i know the average all around. the average man's a coward. in the north he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. in the south one man, all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men, in the day-time, and robbed the lot. your newspapers call you brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other peoplewhereas you're just as brave, and no braver. why don't your juries hang murderers? because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back, in the darkand it's just what they would do. "so they always acquit; and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back, and lynches the rascal. your mistake is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is that you didn't come in the dark, and fetch your masks. you brought part of a manbuck harkness, thereand if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd a taken it out in blowing. "you didn't want to come. the average man don't like trouble and danger. you don't like trouble and danger. but if only half a manlike buck harkness, thereshouts 'lynch him, lynch him!' you're afraid to back downafraid you'll be found out to be what you arecowardsand so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves onto that half-a-man's coat tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. the pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army isa mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. but a mob without any man at the head of it, is beneath pitifulness. now the thing for you to do, is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. if any real lynching's going to be done, it will be done in the dark, southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. now leaveand take your half-a-man with you"tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it, when he says this. the crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart and went tearing off every which way, and buck harkness he heeled it after them, looking tolerable cheap. i could a staid, if i'd a wanted to, but i didn't want to. i went to the circus, and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. i had a twenty-dollar gold piece and some other money, but i reckoned i better save, because there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from home and amongst strangers, that way. you can't be too careful. i ain't opposed to spending money on circuses, when there ain't no other way, but there ain't no use in wasting it on them. it was a real bully circus. it was the splendidest sight that ever was, when they all come riding two and two, a gentleman and lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and under-shirts, and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs, easy and comfortablethere must a' been twenty of themand every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, and just littered with diamonds. it was a powerful fine sight; i never see anything so lovely. and then one by one they got up and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, and their heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the tentroof, and every lady's rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking like the most loveliest parasol. and then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot stuck out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and the ring-master going round and round the centre-pole, cracking his whip and shouting "hi!hi!" and the clown cracking jokes behind him; and by-and-by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did lean over and hump themselves! and so, one after the other they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow i ever see, and then scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and went just about wild. well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things; and all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people. the ring-master couldn't ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said; and how he ever could think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what i couldn't noway understand. why, i couldn't a thought of them in a year. and by-and-by a drunk man tried to get into the ringsaid he wanted to ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. they argued and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show come to a standstill. then the people begun to holler at him and make fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear; so that stirred up the people, and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, "knock him down! throw him out!" and one or two women begun to scream. so, then, the ring-master he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble, he would let him ride, if he thought he could stay on the horse. so everybody laughed and said all right, and the man got on. the minute he was on, the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus men hanging onto his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man hanging onto his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump, and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till the tears rolled down. and at last sure enough, all the circus men could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then t'other one on t'other side, and the people just crazy. it warn't funny to me, though; i was all of a tremble to see his danger. but pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood! and the horse agoing like a house afire too. he just stood up there, a-sailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his lifeand then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. he shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. and then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly humand finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and astonishment. then the ring-master he see how he had been fooled, and he was the sickest ring-master you ever see, i reckon. why, it was one of his own men! he had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody. well, i felt sheepish enough, to be took in so, but i wouldn't a been in that ringmaster's place, not for a thousand dollars. i don't know; there may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but i never struck them yet. anyways it was plenty good enough for me; and wherever i run across it, it can have all of my custom, every time. well, that night we had our show; but there warn't only about twelve people there; just enough to pay expenses. and they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep. so the duke said these arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to shakspeare; what they wanted was low comedyand may be something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. he said he could size their style. so next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping-paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills and stuck them up all over the village. the bills said: at the court house! for 3 nights only! the world-renowned tragedians david garrick the younger! and edmund kean the elder! of the london and continental theatres, in their thrilling tragedy of the king's camelopard or the royal nonesuch!!! admission 50 cents. then at the bottom was the biggest line of all-which said: ladies and children not admitted "there," says he, "if that line don't fetch them, i don't know arkansaw!" chapter twenty-three well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage, and a curtain, and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time. when the place couldn't hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come onto the stage and stood up before the curtain, and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy and about edmund kean the elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. andbut never mind the rest of his outfit, it was just wild, but it was awful funny. the people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering, and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over agin; and after that, they made him do it another time. well, it would a made a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut. then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of pressing london engagements, where the seats is all sold aready for it in drury lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it. twenty people sings out: "what, is it over? is that all?" the duke says yes. then there was a fine time. everybody sings out "sold," and rose up mad, and was agoing for that stage and them tragedians. but a big fine-looking man jumps up on a bench, and shouts: "hold on! just a word, gentlemen." they stopped to listen. "we are soldmighty badly sold. but we don't want to hear the last of this thing as long as we live. no. what we be the laughing-stock of this whole town, i reckon, and never want, is to go out here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the rest of the town! then we'll all be in the same boat. ain't that sensible?" ("you bet it is!the jedge is right!" everybody sings out.) "all right, thennot a word about any sell. go along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy." next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid that show was. house was jammed again, that night, and we sold this crowd the same way. when me and the king and the duke got home to the raft, we all had a supper; and by-and-by, about midnight, they made jim and me back her out and float her down the middle of the river and fetch her in and hide her about two mile below the town. the third night the house was crammed againand they warn't new-comers, this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights. i stood by the duke at the door, and i see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging or something muffled up under his coatand i see it warn't no perfumery neither, not by a long sight. i smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if i know the signs of a dead cat being around, and i bet i do, there was sixty-four of them went in. i shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for me, i couldn't stand it. well, when the place couldn't hold no more people, the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, i after him; but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark, he says: "walk fast, now, till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the raft like the dickens was after you!" i done it, and he done the same. we struck the raft at the same time, and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. i reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience; but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, and says: "well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?" he hadn't been up town at all. we never showed a light till we was about ten mile below that village. then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed their bones loose over the way they'd served them people. the duke says: "greenhorns, flatheads! i knew the first house would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in; and i knew they'd lay for us the third night, and consider it was their turn now. well, it is their turn, and i'd give something to know how much they'd take for it. i would just like to know how they're putting in their opportunity. they can turn it into a picnic, if they want tothey brought plenty provisions." them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that three nights. i never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that, before. by-and-by, when they was asleep and snoring, jim says: "don't it 'sprise you, de way dem kings carries on, huck?" "no," i says, "it don't." "why don't it, huck?" "well, it don't, because it's in the breed. i reckon they're all alike." "but, huck, dese kings o' ourn is regular rapscallions; dat's jist what dey is; dey's reglar rapscallions." "well, that's what i'm a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as i can make out." "is dat so?" "you read about them onceyou'll see. look at henry the eight; this'n's a sunday-school superintendent to him. and look at charles second, and louis fourteen, and louis fifteen, and james second, and edward second, and richard third, and forty more; besides all them saxon heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise cain. my, you ought to seen old henry the eight when he was in bloom. he was a blossom. he used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. and he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. 'fetch up nell gwynn,' he says. they fetch her up. next morning, 'chop off her head!' and they chop it off. 'fetch up jane shore,' he says; and up she comes. next morning 'chop off her head'and they chop it off. 'ring up fair rosamun.' fair rosamun answers the bell. next morning, 'chop off her head.' he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it domesday bookwhich was a good name and stated the case. you don't know kings, jim, but i know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest i've struck in history. well, henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. how does he go at itgive notice?give the country a show? no. all of a sudden he heaves all the tea in boston harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. that was his stylehe never give anybody a chance. he had suspicions of his father, the duke of wellington. well, what did he do?ask him to show up? nodrownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. spose people left money laying around where he waswhat did he do? he collared it. spose he contracted to do a thing; and you paid him, and didn't set down there and see that he done itwhat did he do? he always done the other thing. spose he opened his mouthwhat then? if he didn't shut it up powerful quick, he'd lose a lie, every time. that's the kind of a bug henry was; and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings, he'd a fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done. i don't say that ourn is lambs because they ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain't nothing to that old ram, anyway. all i say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. it's the way they're raised." "but dis one do smell so like de nation, huck." "well, they all do, jim. we can't help the way a king smells; history don't tell no way." "now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man, in some ways." "yes, a duke's different. but not very different. this one's a middling hard lot, for a duke. when he's drunk, there ain't no near-sighted man could tell him from a king." "well, anyways, i doan' hanker for no mo' un um, huck. dese is all i kin stan'." "it's the way i feel, too, jim. but we've got them on our hands, and we got to remember what they are, and make allowances. sometimes i wish we could hear of a country that's out of kings." what was the use to tell jim these warn't real kings and dukes? it wouldn't a done no good; and besides, it was just as i said; you couldn't tell them from the real kind. i went to sleep, and jim didn't call me when it was my turn. he often done that. when i waked up, just at daybreak, he was setting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. i didn't take notice, nor let on. i knowed what it was about. he was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his life; and i do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n. it don't seem natural, but i reckon it's so. he was often moaning and mourning that way, nights, when he judged i was asleep, and saying, "po' little 'lizabeth! po' little johnny! its mighty hard; i spec' i ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!" he was a mighty good nigger, jim was. but this time i somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by-and-by he says: "what makes me feel so bad dis time, 'uz bekase i hear sumpn over yonder on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time i treat my little 'lizabeth so ornery. she warn't on'y 'bout fo' year ole, en she tuck de sk'yarlet-fever, en had a powful rough spell; but she got well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en i says to her, i says: "'shet de do'.' "she never done it; jis'stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me. it make me mad; en i says agin, mighty loud, i says: "'doan' you hear me?shet de do'!' "she jis' stood de same way, kiner smilin'up. i was a-bilin'! i says: "'i lay i make you mine!' "en wid dat i fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin'. den i went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when i come back, dah was dat do' a-stannin' open yit, en dat chile stannin' mos' right in it, a-lookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down. my, but i wuz mad, i was agwyne for de chile, but jis' denit was a do' dat open innerdsjis' den 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de chile, ker-blam!en my lan', de chile never move'! my breff mos' hop outer me; en i feel sosoi doan' know how i feel. i crope out, all a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my head in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden, i says pow! jis' as loud as i could yell. she never budge! oh, huck, i bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'oh, de po' little thing! de lord god amighty fogive po' ole jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long's he live!' oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, huck, plumb deef en dumben i'd ben a-treat'n her so!" chapter twenty-four next day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow tow-head out in the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns. jim he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope. you see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on him all by himself and not tied, it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. so the duke said it was kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it. he was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. he dressed jim up in king lear's outfitit was a long curtain-calico gown, and a white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theatre-paint and painted jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead dull solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days. blamed if he warn't the horriblest looking outrage i ever see. then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so sick arabbut harmless when not out of his head and he nailed the shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five foot in front of the wigwam. jim was satisfied. he said it was a sight better than laying tied a couple of years every day and trembling all over every time there was a sound. the duke told him to make himself free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around he must hop out of the wigwam, and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. which was sound enough judgment; but you take the average man, and he wouldn't wait for him to howl. why, he didn't only look like he was dead, he looked considerable more than that. these rapscallions wanted to try the nonesuch again, because there was so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe the news might a worked along down by this time. they couldn't hit no project that suited, exactly; so at last the duke said he reckoned he'd lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn't put up something on the arkansaw village; and the king he allowed he would drop over to t'other village, without any plan, but just trust in providence to lead him the profitable waymeaning the devil, i reckon. we had all bought store clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his'n on, and he told me to put mine on. i done it, of course. the king's duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. i never knowed how clothes could change a body before. why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he'd take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old leviticus himself. jim cleaned up the canoe, and i got my paddle ready. there was a big steamboat laying at the shore away up under the point, about three mile above townbeen there a couple of hours, taking on freight. says the king: "seein' how i'm dressed, i reckon maybe i better arrive down from st. louis or cincinnati, or some other big place. go for the steamboat, huckleberry; we'll come down to the village on her." i didn't have to be ordered twice, to go and take a steamboat ride. i fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting along the bluff bank in the easy water. pretty soon we come to a nice innocent-looking young country jake setting on a log swabbing the sweat off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather; and he had a couple of big carpet-bags by him. "run her nose in shore," says the king. i done it. "wher' you bound for, young man?" "for the steamboat; going to orleans." "git aboard," says the king. "hold on a minute, my servant'll he'p you with them bags. jump out and he'p the gentleman, adolphus"meaning me, i see. i done so, and then we all three started on again. the young chap was mighty thankful; said it was tough work toting his baggage in such weather. he asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. the young fellow says: "when i first see you, i says to myself, 'it's mr. wilks, sure, and he come mighty near getting here in time.' but then i says again, 'no, i reckon it ain't him, or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river.' you ain't him, are you?" "no, my name's blodgettelexander blodgettreverend elexander blodgett, i spose i must say, as i'm one o' the lord's poor servants. but still i'm jist as able to be sorry for mr. wilks for not arriving in time, all the same, if he's missed anything by itwhich i hope he hasn't." "well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all right; but he's missed seeing his brother peter diewhich he mayn't mind, nobody can tell as to thatbut his brother would a give anything in this world to see him before he died; never talked about nothing else all these three weeks; hadn't seen him since they was boys togetherand hadn't ever seen his brother william at allthat's the deef and dumb onewilliam ain't more than thirty or thirty-five. peter and george was the only ones that come out here; george was the married brother; him and his wife both died last year. harvey and william's the only ones that's left now; and, as i was saying, they haven't got here in time." "did anybody send' em word?" "oh, yes; a month or two ago, when peter was first took; because peter said then that he sorter felt like he warn't going to get well this time. you see, he was pretty old, and george's g'yirls was too young to be much company for him, except mary jane the red-headed one; and so he was kinder lonesome after george and his wife died, and didn't seem to care much to live. he most desperately wanted to see harveyand william too, for that matterbecause he was one of them kind that can't bear to make a will. he left a letter behind for harvey, and said he'd told in it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property divided up so george's g'yirls would be all rightfor george didn't leave nothing. and that letter was all they could get him to put a pen to." "why do you reckon harvey don't come? wher' does he live?" "oh, he lives in englandsheffieldpreaches therehasn't ever been in this country. he hasn't had any too much timeand besides he mightn't a got the letter at all, you know." "too bad, too bad he couldn't a lived to see his brothers, poor soul. you going to orleans, you say?" "yes, but that ain't only a part of it. i'm going in a ship, next wednesday, for ryo janeero, where my uncle lives." "it's a pretty long journey. but it'll be lovely; i wisht i was agoing. is mary jane the oldest? how old is the others?" "mary jane's nineteen, susan's fifteen, and joanna's about fourteenthat's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip." "poor things! to be left alone in the cold world so." "well, they could be worse off. old peter had friends, and they ain't going to let them come to no harm. there's hobson, the babtis' preacher; and deacon lot hovey, and ben rucker, and abner shackleford, and levi bell, the lawyer; and dr. robinson, and their wives, and the widow bartley, andwell, there's a lot of them; but these are the ones that peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when he wrote home; so harvey'll know where to look for friends when he gets here." well, the old man he went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied that young fellow. blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and everything in that blessed town, and all about the wilkses; and about peter's businesswhich was a tanner; and about george'swhich was a carpenter; and about harvey'swhich was a dissentering minister; and so on, and so on. then he says: "what did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for?" "because she's a big orleans boat, and i was afeard she mightn't stop there. when they're deep they won't stop for a hail. a cincinnati boat will, but this is a st. louis one." "was peter wilks well off?" "oh, yes, pretty well off. he had houses and land, and it's reckoned he left three or four thousand in cash hid up som'ers." "when did you say he died?" "i didn't say, but it was last night." "funeral to-morrow, likely?" "yes, 'bout the middle of the day." "well, it's all terrible sad; but we've all got to go, one time or another. so what we want to do is to be prepared; then we're all right." "yes, sir, it's the best way. ma used to always say that." when we struck the boat, she was about done loading, and pretty soon she got off. the king never said nothing about going aboard, so i lost my ride, after all. when the boat was gone, the king made me paddle up another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore, and says: "now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke up here, and the new carpet-bags. and if he's gone over to t'other side, go over there and git him. and tell him to git himself up regardless. shove along, now." i see what he was up to; but i never said nothing, of course. when i got back with the duke, we hid the canoe and then they set down on a log, and the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had said itevery last word of it. and all the time he was a doing it, he tried to talk like an englishman; and he done it pretty well too, for a slouch. i can't imitate him, and so i ain't agoing to try to; but he really done it pretty good. then he says: "how are you on the deef and dumb, bilgewater?" the duke said, leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef and dumb person on the histrionic boards. so then they waited for a steamboat. about the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along, but they didn't come from high enough up the river; but at last there was a big one, and they hailed her. she sent out her yawl, and we went aboard, and she was from cincinnati; and when they found we only wanted to go four or five mile, they was booming mad, and give us a cussing, and said they wouldn't land us. but the king was ca'm. he says: "if gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece, to be took on and put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry 'em, can't it?" so they softened down and said it was all right; and when we got to the village, they yawled us ashore. about two dozen men flocked down, when they see the yawl a coming; and when the king says "kin any of you gentlemen tell me where mr. peter wilks lives?" they give a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say, "what d' i tell you?" then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle: "i'm sorry, sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he did live yesterday evening." sudden as winking, the ornery old cretur went all to smash, and fell up against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his back, and says: "alas, alas, our poor brothergone, and we never got to see him; oh, it's too, too hard!" then he turns around, blubbering, and making a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and bust out a-crying. if they warn't the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever i struck. well, the men gethered around, and sympathized with them, and said all sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like they'd lost the twelve disciples. well, if ever i struck anything like it, i'm a nigger. it was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. chapter twenty-five the news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run, from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come. pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier-march. the windows and door-yards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence: "is it them?" and somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say, "you bet it is." when we got to the house, the street in front of it was packed, and the three girls was standing in the door. mary jane was red-headed, but that don't make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her face and her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles was come. the king he spread his arms, and mary jane she jumped for them, and the hare-lip jumped for the duke, and there they had it! everybody most, leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have such good times. then the king he hunched the duke, privatei see him do itand then he looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so then, him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, people saying "sh!" and all the men taking their hats off and dropping their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall. and when they got there, they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then they bust out a crying so you could a heard them to orleans, most; and then they put their arms around each other's neck, and hung their chins over each other's shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four, i never see two men leak the way they done. and mind you, everybody was doing the same; and the place was that damp i never see anything like it. then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t'other on t'other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and let on to pray all to theirselves. well, when it come to that, it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it, and so everybody broke down and went to sobbing right out loudthe poor girls, too; and every woman, nearly, went up to the girls, without saying a word, and kissed them, solemn, on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head, and looked up towards the sky, with the tears running down, and then busted out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and give the next woman a show. i never see anything so disgusting. well, by-and-by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and works himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and flapdoodle about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive, after the long journey of four thousand mile, but it's a trial that's sweetened and sanctified to us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out of their mouths they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and slush, till it was just sickening; and then he blubbers out a pious goody-goody amen, and turns hirnself loose and goes to crying fit to bust. and the minute the words was out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out. music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash, i never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully. then the king begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up with the ashes of the diseased; and says if his poor brother laying yonder could speak, he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and so he will name the same, to-wit, as follows, vizz:rev. mr. hobson, and deacon lot hovey, and mr. ben rucker, and abner shackleford, and levi bell, and dr. robinson, and their wives, and the widow bartley. rev. hobson and dr. robinson was down to the end of the town, a-hunting together; that is, i mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to t'other world, and the preacher was pinting him right. lawyer bell was away up to louisville on some business. but the rest was on hand, so they all come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him; and then they shook hands with the duke, and didn't say nothing but just kept a-smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst he made all sorts of signs with his hands and said "goo-googoo-goo-goo," all the time, like a baby that can't talk. so the king he blatted along, and managed to inquire about pretty much everybody and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little things that happened one time or another in the town, or to george's family, or to peter; and he always let on that peter wrote him the things, but that was a lie, he got every blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat. then mary jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the king he read it out loud and cried over it. it give the dwelling-house and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it give the tanyard (which was doing a good business), along with some other houses and land (worth about seven thousand), and three thousand dollars in gold to harvey and william, and told where the six thousand cash was hid, down cellar. so these two frauds said they'd go and fetch it up, and have everything square and above-board; and told me to come with a candle. we shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilt it out on the floor and it was a lovely sight, all them yaller-boys. my, the way the king's eyes did shine! he slaps the duke on the shoulder, and says: "oh, this ain't bully, nor noth'n! oh, no, i reckon not! why, biljy, it beats the nonesuch, don't it!" the duke allowed it did. they pawed the yaller-boys, and sifted them through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor; and the king says: "it ain't no use talkin'; bein' brothers to a rich dead man, and representatives of furrin heirs that's got left, is the line for you and me, bilge. thish-yer comes of trust'n to providence. it's the best way, in the long run. i've tried 'em all, and ther' ain't no better way." most everybody would a been satisfied with the pile, and took it on trust; but no, they must count it. so they counts it, and it comes out four hundred and fifteen dollars short. says the king: "dern him, i wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen dollars?" they worried over that a while, and ransacked all around for it. then the duke says: "well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistakei reckon that's the way of it. the best way's to let it go, and keep still about it. we can spare it." "oh, shucks, yes, we can spare it. i don't k'yer noth'n 'bout thatit's the count i'm thinkin'about. we want to be awful square and open and aboveboard, here, you know. we want to lug this h-yer money up stairs and count it before everybodythen ther' ain't noth'n suspicious. but when the dead man says ther's six thous'n dollars, you know, we don't want to-" "hold on," says the duke. "less make up the deffisit"and he begun to haul out yaller-boys out of his pocket. "it's a most amaz'n' good idea, dukeyou have got a rattlin' clever head on you," says the king. "blest if the old none-such ain't a heppin' us out agin"and he begun to haul out yaller-jackets and stack them up. it most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear. "say," says the duke, "i got another idea. le's go up stairs and count this money, and then take and give it to the girls." "good land, duke, lemme hug you! it's the most dazzling idea 'at ever a man struck. you have cert'nly got the most astonishin' head i ever see. oh, this is the boss dodge, ther' ain't no mistake 'bout it. let 'em fetch along their suspicions now, if they want tothis'll lay 'em out." when we got up stairs, everybody gethered around the table, and the king he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a piletwenty elegant little piles. everybody looked hungry at it, and licked their chops. then they raked it into the bag agin, and i see the king begin to swell himself up for another speech. he says: "friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder, has done generous by them that's left behind in the vale of sorrers. he has done generous by these-yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left fatherless and motherless. yes, and we that knowed him, knows that he would a done more generous by 'em if he hadn't ben afeard o' woundin' his dear william and me. now, wouldn't he? ther' ain't no question 'bout it, in my mind. well, thenwhat kind o' brothers would it be, that'd stand in his way at sech a time? and what kind o' uncles would it be that'd robyes, robsech poor sweet lambs as these 'at he loved so, at sech a time? if i know williamand i think i dohewell, i'll jest ask him." he turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with hands; and the duke he looks at him stupid and leather-headed a while, then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning, and jumps for the king, goo-gooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about fifteen times before he lets up. then the king says, "i knowed it; i reckon that'll convince anybody the way he feels about it. here, mary jane, susan, joanner, take the moneytake it all. it's the gift of him that lays yonder, cold but joyful." mary jane she went for him, susan and the hare-lip went for the duke, and then such another hugging and kissing i never see yet. and everybody crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off of them frauds, saying all the time: "you dear good souls!how lovely!how could you!" well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside, and stood a listening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was all busy listening. the king was sayingin the middle of something he'd started in on "-they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased. that's why they're invited here this evenin'; but to-morrow we want all to comeeverybody; for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that his funeral orgies sh'd be public." and so he went a-mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke he couldn't stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper, "obsequies, you old fool," and folds it up and goes to goo-gooing and reaching it over people's heads to him. the king he reads it, and puts it in his pocket, and says: "poor william, afflicted as he is, his heart's aluz right. asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeralwants me to make 'em all welcome. but he needn't a worriedit was jest what i was at." then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. and when he done it the third time he says: "i say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain'tobsequies bein' the common termbut because orgies is the right term. obsequies ain't used in england no more, nowit's gone out. we say orgies now, in england. orgies is better, because it means the thing you're after, more exact. it's a word that's made up outin the greek orgo, outside, open, abroad; and the hebrew jeesum, to plant, cover up; hence inter. so, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral." he was the worst i ever struck. well, the iron-jawed man he laughed right in his face. everybody was shocked. everybody says, "why doctor!" and abner shackleford says: "why, robinson, hain't you heard the news? this is harvey wilks." the king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says: "is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician? i-" "keep your hands off of me!" says the doctor. "you talk like an englishmandon't you? it's the worst imitation i ever heard. you peter wilks's brother. you're a fraud, that's what you are!" well, how they all took on! they crowded around the doctor, and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him, and tell him how harvey'd showed in forty ways that he was harvey, and knowed everybody by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged and begged him not to hurt harvey's feelings and the poor girls' feelings, and all that; but it warn't no use, he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to be an englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he did, was a fraud and a liar. the poor girls was hanging to the king and crying; and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on them. he says: "i was your father's friend, and i'm your friend; and i warn you as a friend, and an honest one, that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel, and have nothing to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic greek and hebrew as he calls it. he is the thinnest kind of an imposterhas come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he has picked up somewheres, and you take them for proofs, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here, who ought to know better. mary jane wilks, you know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. now listen to me; turn this pitiful rascal outi beg you to do it. will you?" mary jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! she says: "here is my answer." she hove up the bag of money and put it in the king's hands, and says, "take this six thousand dollars, and invest it for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for it." then she put her arm around the king on one side, and susan and the hare-lip done the same on the other. everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his hand and smiled proud. the doctor says: "all right, i wash my hands of the matter. but i warn you all that a time's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this day"and away he went. "all right, doctor," says the king, kinder mocking him, "we'll try and get 'em to send for you"which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit. chapter twenty-six well when they was all gone, the king he asks mary jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for uncle william, and she'd give her own room to uncle harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. the king said the cubby would do for his valleymeaning me. so mary jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. she said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in uncle harvey's way, but he said they warn't. the frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. there was an old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar box in another, and all sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room with. the king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don't disturb them. the duke's room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby. that night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there, and i stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and the niggers waited on the rest. mary jane she set at the head of the table, with susan along side of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens wasand all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tip-top, and said sosaid "how do you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "where, for the land's sake did you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know. and when it was all done, me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things. the hare-lip she got to pumping me about england, and blest if i didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin, sometimes. she says: "did you ever see the king?" "who? william fourth? well, i bet i havehe goes to our church." i knowed he was dead years ago, but i never let on. so when i says he goes to our church, she says: "whatregular?" "yesregular. his pew's right over opposite ournon t'other side the pulpit." "i thought he lived in london?" "well, he does. where would he live?" "but i thought you lived in sheffield?" i see i was up a stump. i had to let on to get choked with a chicken bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. then i says: "i mean he goes to our church regular when he's in sheffield. that's only in the summer-time, when he comes there to take the sea baths." "why, how you talksheffield ain't on the sea." "well, who said it was?" "why, you did." "i didn't, nuther." "you did!" "i didn't." "you did." "i never said nothing of the kind." "well, what did you say, then?" "said he come to take the sea bathsthat's what i said." "well, then! how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the sea?" "looky here," i says; "did you ever see any congress-water?" "yes." "well, did you have to go to congress to get it?" "why, no." "well, neither does william fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea bath." "how does he get it, then?" "gets it the way people down here gets congress-waterin barrels. there in the palace at sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. they can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. they haven't got no conveniences for it." "oh, i see, now. you might a said that in the first place and saved time." when she said that, i see i was out of the woods again, and so i was comfortable and glad. next, she says: "do you go to church, too?" "yesregular." "where do you set?" "why, in our pew." "whose pew?" "why, ournyour uncle harvey's." "his'n? what does he want with a pew?" "wants it to set in. what did you reckon he wanted with it?" "why, i thought he'd be in the pulpit." rot him, i forgot he was a preacher. i see i was up a stump again, so i played another chicken bone and got another think. then i says: "blame it, do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church?" "why, what do they want with more?" "what!to preach before a king? i never see such a girl as you. they don't have no less than seventeen." "seventeen! my land! why, i wouldn't set out such a string as that, not if i never got to glory. it must take 'em a week." "shucks, they don't all of 'em preach the same dayonly one of 'em." "well, then, what does the rest of 'em do?" "oh, nothing much. loll around, pass the plateand one thing or another. but mainly they don't do nothing." "well, then, what are they for?" "why, they're for style. don't you know nothing?" "well, i don't want to know no such foolishness as that. how is servants treated in england? do they treat 'em better 'n we treat our niggers?" "no! a servant ain't nobody there. they treat them worse than dogs." "don't they give 'em holidays, the way we do, christmas and new year's week, and fourth of july?" "oh, just listen! a body could tell you hain't ever been to england, by that. why, hare-lwhy, joanna, they never see a holiday from year's end to year's end; never go to the circus, nor theatre, nor nigger shows, nor nowheres." "nor church?" "nor church." "but you always went to church." well, i was gone up again. i forgot i was the old man's servant. but next minute i whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was different from a common servant, and had to go to church whether he wanted to or not, and set with the family, on account of it's being the law. but i didn't do it pretty good, and when i got done i see she warn't satisfied. she says: "honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?" "honest injun," says i. "none of it at all?" "none of it at all. not a lie in it," says i. "lay your hand on this book and say it." i see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so i laid my hand on it and said it. so then she looked a little better satisfied, and says: "well, then, i'll believe some of it; but i hope to gracious if i'll believe the rest." "what is it you won't believe, joe?" says mary jane, stepping in with susan behind her. "it ain't right nor kind for you to talk so to him, and him a stranger and so far from his people. how would you like to be treated so?" "that's always your way, maimalways sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. i hain't done nothing to him. he's told some stretchers, i reckon; and i said i wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and grain i did say. i reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't he?" "i don't care whether 'twas little or whether 'twas big, he's here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. if you was in his place, it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn't to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed." "why, maim, he said-" "it don't make no difference what he saidthat ain't the thing. the thing is for you to treat him kind, and not be saying things to make him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks." i says to myself, this is a girl that i'm letting that old reptle rob her of her money! then susan she waltzed in; and if you'll believe me, she did give hare-lip hark from the tomb! says i to myself, and this is another one that i'm letting him rob her of her money! then mary jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely againwhich was her waybut when she got done there warn't hardly anything left o' poor hare-lip. so she hollered. "all right, then," says the other girls, "you just ask his pardon." she done it, too. and she done it beautiful. she done it so beautiful it was good to hear; and i wished i could tell her a thousand lies, so she could do it again. i says to myself, this is another one that i'm letting him rob her of her money. and when she got through, they all jest laid theirselves out to make me feel at home and know i was amongst friends. i felt so ornery and low down and mean, that i says to myself, my mind's made up; i'll hive that money for them or bust. so then i lit outfor bed, i said, meaning some time or another. when i got by myself, i went to thinking the thing over. i says to myself, shall i go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? nothat won't do. he might tell who told him; then the king and the duke would make it warm for me. shall i go, private, and tell mary jane? noi dasn't do it. her face would give them a hint, sure; they've got the money, and they'd slide right out and get away with it. if she was to fetch in help, i'd get mixed up in the business, before it was done with, i judge. no, there ain't no good way but one. i got to steal that money, somehow; and i got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion that i done it. they've got a good thing, here; and they ain't agoing to leave till they've played this family and this town for all they're worth, so i'll find a chance time enough. i'll steal it, and hide it; and by-and-by, when i'm away down the river, i'll write a letter and tell mary jane where it's hid. but i better hive it to-night, if i can, because the doctor maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has; he might scare them out of here, yet. so, thinks i, i'll go and search them rooms. up stairs the hall was dark, but i found the duke's room, and started to paw around it with my hands; but i recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else take care of that money but his own self; so then i went to his room and begun to paw around there. but i see i couldn't do nothing without a candle, and i dasn't light one, of course. so i judged i'd got to do the other thinglay for them and eavesdrop. about that time, i hears their footsteps coming and was going to skip under the bed; i reached for it, but it wasn't where i thought it would be; but i touched the curtain that hid mary jane's frocks, so i jumped in behind that and snuggled in amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still. they come in and shut the door; and the first thing the duke done was to get down and look under the bed. then i was glad i hadn't found the bed when i wanted it. and yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under the bed when you are up to anything private. they sets down, then, and the king says: "well, what is it? and cut it middlin' short, because it's better for us to be down there a whoopin'-up the mournin', than up here givin' 'em a chance to talk us over." "well, this is it, capet. i ain't easy; i ain't comfortable. that doctor lays on my mind. i wanted to know your plans. i've got a notion, and i think it's a sound one." "what is it, duke?" "that we better glide out of this, before three in the morning, and clip it down the river with what we've got. specially, seeing we got it so easygiven back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of course we allowed to have to steal it back. i'm for knocking off and lighting out." that made me feel pretty bad. about an hour or two ago, it would a been a little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed. the king rips out and says: "what! and not sell out the rest o' the property? march off like a passel o' fools and leave eight or nine thous'n' dollars' worth o' property layin' around jest sufferin' to be scooped in?and all good salable stuff, too." the duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't want to go no deeperdidn't want to rob a lot of orphans of everything they had. "why, how you talk!" says the king. "we shan't rob 'em of nothing at all but jest this money. the people that buys the property is the suff'rers; because as soon's it's found out 'at we didn't own itwhich won't be long after we've slidthe sale won't be valid, and it'll all go back to the estate. these-yer orphans'll git their house back agin, and that's enough for them; they're young and spry, and k'n easy earn a livin'. they ain't agoing to suffer. why, jest thinkthere's thous'n's and thous'n's that ain't nigh so well off. bless you, they ain't got noth'n to complain of." well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all right, but said he believed it was blame foolishness to stay, and that doctor hanging over them. but the king says: "cuss the doctor! what do we k'yer for him? hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" so they got ready to go down stairs again. the duke says: "i don't think we put that money in a good place." that cheered me up. i'd begun to think i warn't going to get a hint of no kind to help me. the king says: "because mary jane'll be in mourning from this out; and first you know the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up and put 'em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it?" "your head's level, agin, duke," says the king; and he come a fumbling under the curtain two or three foot from where i was. i stuck tight to the wall, and kept mighty still, though quivery; and i wondered what them fellows would say to me if they catched me; and i tried to think what i'd better do if they did catch me. but the king he got the bag before i could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned i was around. they took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick that was under the feather bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst the straw and said it was all right, now, because a nigger only makes up the feather bed, and don't turn over the straw tick only about twice a year, and so it warn't in no danger of getting stole, now. but i knowed better. i had it out of there before they was half-way down stairs. i groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till i could get a chance to do better. i judged i better hide it outside of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking. i knowed that very well. then i turned in, with my clothes all on; but i couldn't a gone to sleep, if i'd a wanted to, i was in such a sweat to get through with the business. by-and-by i heard the king and the duke come up; so i rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder and waited to see if anything was going to happen. but nothing did. so i held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't begun, yet; and then i slipped down the ladder. chapter twenty-seven i crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring, so i tip-toed along, and got down stairs all right. there warn't a sound anywheres. i peeped through a crack of the diningroom door, and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. the door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. i passed along, and the parlor door was open; but i see there warn't nobody in there but the remainders of peter; so i shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. just then i heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. i run in the parlor, and took a swift look around, and the only place i see to hide the bag was in the coffin. the lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his shroud on. i tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and then i run back across the room and in behind the door. the person coming was mary jane. she went to the coffin, very soft, and kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief and i see she begun to cry, though i couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. i slid out, and as i passed the dining room i thought i'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me; so i looked through the crack and everything was all right. they hadn't stirred. i slipped up to bed, feeling rather blue, on accounts of the thing playing out that way after i had took so much trouble and run so much resk about it. says i, if it could stay where it is, all right; because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two, i could write back to mary jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the money'll be found when they come to screw on the lid. then the king'll get it again, and it'll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him. of course i wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but i dasn't try it. every minute it was getting earlier, now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and i might get catchedcatched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. i don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, i says to myself. when i got down stairs in the morning, the parlor was shut up, and the watchers was gone. there warn't nobody around but the family and the widow bartley and our tribe. i watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but i couldn't tell. towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. i see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but i dasn't go to look in under it, with folks around. then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. there warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor, and blowing nosesbecause people always blow them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church. when the place was packed full, the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. he never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passage-ways, and done it all with nods, and signs with his hands. then he took his place over against the wall. he was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man i ever see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. they had borrowed a melodeuma sick one; and when everything was ready, a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. then the reverend hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up, right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and waityou couldn't hear yourself think. it was right down awkward, and nobody didn't seem to know what to do. but pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, "don't you worryjust depend on me." then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. so he glided along, and the pow-wow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. then, in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. in a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided, and glided, around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "he had a rat!" then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. you could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. a little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. there warn't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was. well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screw-driver. i was in a sweat then, and watched him pretty keen. but he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along, as soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. so there i was! i didn't know whether the money was in there, or not. so, says i, spose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?now how do i know whether to write to mary jane or not? spose she dug him up and didn't find nothingwhat would she think of me? blame it, i says, i might get hunted up and jailed; i'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the thing's awful mixed, now; trying to better it, i've worsened it a hundred times, and i wish to goodness i'd just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business! they buried him, and we come back home, and i went to watching faces againi couldn't help it, and i couldn't rest easy. but nothing come of it; the faces didn't tell me nothing. the king he visited around, in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his congregation over in england would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away, and leave for home. he was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. and he said of course him and william would take the girls home with them; and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed, and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, tootickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but i didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune. well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight offsale two days after the funeral; but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to. so the next day after the funeral, along about noontime, the girls' joy got the first jolt; a couple of nigger traders come along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to memphis, and their mother down the river to orleans. i thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. the girls said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. i can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying; and i reckon i couldn't a stood it all but would a had to bust out and tell on our gang if i hadn't known the sale warn't no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two. the thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. it injured the frauds some; but the old fool he bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and i tell you the duke was powerful uneasy. next day was auction day. about broad-day in the morning, the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and i see by their look that there was trouble. the king says: "was you in my room night before last?" "no, your majesty"which was the way i always called him when nobody but our gang warn't around. "was you in there yesterday er last night?" "no, your majesty." "honor bright, nowno lies." "honor bright, your majesty, i'm telling you the truth. i hain't been anear your room since miss mary jane took you and the duke and showed it to you." the duke says: "have you seen anybody else go in there?" "no, your grace, not as i remember, i believe." "stop and think." i studied a while, and see my chance, then i says: "well, i see the niggers go in there several times." both of them give a little jump; and looked like they hadn't ever expected it, and then like they had. then the duke says: "what, all of them?" "noleastways not all at once. that is, i don't think i ever see them all come out at once but just one time." "hellowhen was that?" "it was the day we had the funeral. in the morning. it warn't early, because i overslept. i was just starting down the ladder, and i see them." "well, go on, go onwhat did they do? how'd they act?" "they didn't do anything. and they didn't act anyway, much, as fur as i see. they tip-toed away; so i seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in there to do up your majesty's room, or something, sposing you was up; and found you warn't up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up." "great guns, this is a go!" says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick, and tolerable silly. they stood there a thinking and scratching their heads, a minute, and then the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says: "it does beat all, how neat the niggers played their hand. they let on to be sorry they was going out of this region! and i believed they was sorry. and so did you, and so did everybody. don't ever tell me any more that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. why, the way they played that thing, it would fool anybody. in my opinion there's a fortune in 'em. if i had capital and a theatre, i wouldn't want a better lay out than thatand here we've gone and sold 'em for a song. yes, and ain't privileged to sing the song, yet. say, where is that song?that draft." "in the bank for to be collected. where would it be?" "well, that's all right then, thank goodness." says i, kind of timid-like: "is something gone wrong?" the king whirls on me and rips out: "none o' your business! you keep your head shet, and mind y'r own affairsif you got any. long as you're in this town, don't you forgit that, you hear?" then he says to the duke, "we got to jest swaller it, and say noth'n: mum's the word for us." as they was starting down the ladder, the duke he chuckles again, and says: "quick sales and small profits! it's a good businessyes." the king snarls around on him and says, "i was trying to do for the best, in sellin' 'm out so quick. if the profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to carry, is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?" "well, they'd be in this house yet, and we wouldn't if i could a got my advice listened to." the king sassed back, as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around and lit into me again. he give me down the banks for not coming and telling him i see the niggers come out of his room acting that waysaid any fool would a knowed something was up. and then waltzed in and cussed himself a while; and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it again. so they went off a jawing; and i felt dreadful glad i'd worked it all off onto the niggers and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it. chapter twenty-eight by-and-by it was getting-up time; so i come down the ladder and started for down stairs, but as i come to the girls' room, the door was open, and i see mary jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd been packing things in itgetting ready to go to england. but she had stopped now, with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. i felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. i went in there, and says: "miss mary jane, you can't abear to see people in trouble, and i can'tmost always. tell me about it." so she done it. and it was the niggersi just expected it. she said the beautiful trip to england was most about spoiled for her; she didn't know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn't ever going to see each other no moreand then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says: "oh, dear, to think they ain't ever going to see each other any more!" "but they willand inside of two weeksand i know it!" says i. laws, it was out before i could think!and before i could budge, she throws her arms around my neck, and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again! i see i had spoke too sudden, and said too much, and was in a close place. i asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited, and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that's had a tooth pulled out. so i went to studying it out. i says to myself, i reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place, is taking considerable many resks, though i ain't had no experience, and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here's a case where i'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth is better, and actuly safer, than a lie. i must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular. i never see nothing like it. well, i says to myself at last, i'm agoing to chance it; i'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. then i says: "miss mary jane, is there any place out of town a little ways, where you could go and stay three or four days?" "yesmr. lathrop's. why?" "never mind why, yet. if i tell you how i know the niggers will see each other againinside of two weekshere in this houseand prove how i know itwill you go to mr. lathrop's and stay four days?" "four days!" she says; "i'll stay a year!" "all right," i says, "i don't want nothing more out of you than just your wordi druther have it than another man's kiss-the-bible." she smiled, and reddened up very sweet, and i says, "if you don't mind it, i'll shut the doorand bolt it." then i come back and set down again, and says: "don't you holler. just set still, and take it like a man. i got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, miss mary, because it's a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. these uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at allthey're a couple of fraudsregular dead-beats. there, now we're over the worst of ityou can stand the rest middling easy." it holted her up like everything, of course; but i was over the shoal water now, so i went right along, her eyes a blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself onto the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen timesand then up she jumps, with her face afire like sunset, and says: "the brute! comedon't waste a minutenot a secondwe'll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river! says i: "cert'nly. but do you mean, before you go to mr. lathrop's, or-" "oh," she says, "what am i thinking about!" she says, and set right down again. "don't mind what i saidplease don'tyou won't, now, will you?" laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that i said i would die first. "i never thought, i was so stirred up," she says; "now go on, and i won't do so any more. you tell me what to do, and whatever you say, i'll do it." "well," i says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and i'm fixed so i got to travel with them a while longer, whether i want to or noti druther not tell you whyand if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and i'd be all right, but there'd be another person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. well, we got to save him, hain't we? of course. well, then, we won't blow on them." saying them words put a good idea in my head. i see how maybe i could get me and jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. but i didn't want to run the raft in day-time, without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so i didn't want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night. i says: "miss mary jane, i'll tell you what we'll doand you won't have to stay at mr. lathrop's so long, nuther. how fur is it?" "a little short of four milesright out in the country, back here." "well, that'll answer. now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half-past, to-night, and then get them to fetch you home againtell them you've thought of something. if you get here before eleven, put a candle in this window, and if i don't turn up, wait till eleven, and then if i don't turn up it means i'm gone, and out of the way, and safe. then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed." "good," she says, "i'll do it." "and if it just happens so that i don't get away, but get took up along with them, you must up and say i told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can." "stand by you, indeed i will. they shan't touch a hair of your head!" she says, and i see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too. "if i get away, i shan't be here," i says, "to prove these rapscallions ain't your uncles, and i couldn't do it if i was here. i could swear they was beats and bummers, that's all; though that's worth something. well, there's others can do that better than what i canand they're people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as i'd be. i'll tell you how to find them. gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. there'royal nonesuch, bricksville.' put it away, and don't lose it. when the court wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to bricksville and say they've got the men that oldyed the royal nonesuch, and ask for some witnesseswhy, you'll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, miss mary. and they'll come a-biling, too." i judged we had got everything fixed about right, now. so i says: "just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. nobody don't have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction, on accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they get that moneyand the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count, and they ain't going to get no money. it's just like the way it was with the niggersit warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before long. why, they can't collect the money for the niggers, yetthey're in the worst kind of a fix, miss mary." "well," she says, "i'll run down to breakfast now, and then i'll start straight for mr. lathrop's." "deed, that ain't the ticket, miss mary jane," i says, "by no manner of means; go before breakfast." "why?" "what did you reckon i wanted you to go at all for, miss mary?" "well, i never thoughtand come to think, i don't know. what was it?" "why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-face people. i don't want no better book than what your face is. a body can set down and read it off like coarse print. do you reckon you can go and face your uncles, when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never-" "there, there, don't! yes, i'll go before breakfasti'll be glad to. and leave my sisters with them?" "yesnever mind about them. they've got to stand it yet a while. they might suspicion something if all of you was to go. i don't want you to see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this townif a neighbor was to ask how is your uncles this morning, your face would tell something. no, you go right along, miss mary jane, and i'll fix it with all of them. i'll tell miss susan to give your love to your uncles and say you've went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the morning." "gone to see a friend is all right, but i won't have my love given to them." "well, then, it shan't be." it was well enough to tell her sono harm in it. it was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's the little things that smoothes people's roads the most, down here below; it would make mary jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. then i says: "there's one more thingthat bag of money." "well, they've got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it." "no, you're out, there. they hain't got it." "why, who's got it?" "i wish i knowed, but i don't. i had it, because i stole it from them: and i stole it to give to you; and i know where i hid it, but i'm afraid it ain't there no more. i'm awful sorry, miss mary jane, i'm just as sorry as i can be; but i done the best i could; i did, honest. i come nigh getting caught, and i had to shove it into the first place i come to, and runand it warn't a good place." "oh, stop blaming yourselfit's too bad to do it, and i won't allow ityou couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault. where did you hide it?" i didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and i couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. so for a minute i didn't say nothingthen i says: "i'd ruther not tell you where i put it, miss mary jane, if you don't mind letting me off; but i'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to mr. lathrop's, if you want to. do you reckon that'll do?" "oh, yes." so i wrote: "i put it in the coffin. it was in there when you was crying there, away in the night. i was behind the door, and i was mighty sorry for you, miss mary jane." it made my eyes water a little, to remember her crying there all by herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when i folded it up and give it to her, i see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says: "good-byei'm going to do everything just as you've told me; and if i don't ever see you again, i shan't ever forget you, and i'll think of you a many and a many a time, and i'll pray for you, too!"and she was gone. pray for me! i reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more nearer her size. but i bet she done it, just the sameshe was just that kind. she had the grit to pray for judus if she took the notionthere warn't no backdown to her, i judge. you may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl i ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. it sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery. and when it comes to beautyand goodness tooshe lays over them all. i hain't ever seen her since, but i reckon i've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever i'd a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if i wouldn't a done it or bust. well, mary jane she lit out the back way, i reckon; because nobody see her go. when i struck susan and the harelip, i says: "what's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes?" they says: "there's several; but it's the proctors, mainly." "that's the name," i says; "i most forgot it. well, miss mary jane she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurryone of them's sick." "which one?" "i don't know; leastways i kinder forget; but i think it's-" "sakes alive, i hope it ain't hanner?" "i'm sorry to say it," i says, "but hanner's the very one." "my goodnessand she so well only last week! is she took bad?" "it ain't no name for it. they set up with her all night, miss mary jane said, and they don't think she'll last many hours." "only think of that, now! what's the matter with her!" i couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so i says: "mumps." "mumps your granny! they don't set up with people that's got the mumps." "they don't, don't they? you better bet they do with these mumps. these mumps is different. it's a new kind, miss mary jane said." "how's it a new kind?" "because it's mixed up with other things." "what other things?" "well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and yeller janders, and brain fever, and i don't know what all." "my land! and they call it the mumps?" "that's what miss mary jane said." "well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for?" "why, because it is the mumps. that's what it starts with." "well, ther' ain't no sense in it. a body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, 'why, he stumped his toe.' would ther' be any sense in that? no. and ther' ain't no sense in this, nuther. is it ketching?" "is it ketching? why, how you talk. is a harrow catching?in the dark? if you don't hitch onto one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't you? and you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? well, these kind of mumps is a kind of harrow, as you may sayand it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good." "well, it's awful, i think," says the hare-lip. "i'll go to uncle harvey and-" "oh, yes," i says, "i would. of course i would. i wouldn't lose no time." "well, why wouldn't you?" "just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. hain't your uncles obleeged to get along home to england as fast as they can? and do you reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves? you know they'll wait for you. so fur, so good. your uncle harvey's a preacher, ain't he? very well, then; is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a ship clerk?so as to get them to let miss mary jane go aboard? now you know he ain't. what will he do, then? why, he'll say, 'it's a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it's my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she's got it.' but never mind, if you think it's best to tell your uncle harvey-" "shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in england whilst we was waiting to find out whether mary jane's got it or not? why, you talk like a muggins." "well, anyway, maybe you better tell some of the neighbors." "listen at that, now. you do beat all, for natural stupidness. can't you see that they'd go and tell? ther' ain't no way but just not to tell anybody at all." "well, maybe you're rightyes, i judge you are right." "but i reckon we ought to tell uncle harvey she's gone out a while, anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?" "yes, miss mary jane she wanted you to do that. she says, 'tell them to give uncle harvey and william my love and a kiss, and say i've run over the river to see mr.mr.what is the name of that rich family your uncle peter used to think so much of?i mean the one that-"' "why, you must mean the apthorps, ain't it?" "of course; bother them kind of names, a body can't ever seem to remember them, half the time, somehow. yes, she said, say she has run over for to ask the apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, because she allowed her uncle peter would ruther they had it than anybody else; and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come, and then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home; and if she is, she'll be home in the morning anyway. she said, don't say nothing about the proctors, but only about the apthorpswhich'll be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; i know it, because she told me so, herself." "all right," they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message. everything was all right now. the girls wouldn't say nothing because they wanted to go to england; and the king and the duke would ruther mary jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of doctor robinson. i felt very good; i judged i had done it pretty neati reckoned tom sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. of course he would a throwed more style into it, but i can't do that very handy, not being brung up to it. well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level piousest, up there longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little scripture, now and then, or a little goody-goody saying, of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly. but by-and-by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold. everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. so they'd got to work that offi never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting to swallow everything. well, whilst they was at it, a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out: "here's your opposition line! here's your two sets o' heirs to old peter wilksand you pays your money and you takes your choice!" chapter twenty-nine they was fetching a very nice looking old gentleman along, and a nice looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. and my souls, how the people yelled, and laughed, and kept it up. but i didn't see no joke about it, and i judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any. i reckoned they'd turn pale. but no, nary a pale did they turn. the duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them newcomers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. oh, he done it admirable. lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to let him see they was on his side. that old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. pretty soon he begun to speak, and i see, straight off, he pronounced like an englishman, not the king's way, though the king's was pretty good, for an imitation. i can't give the old gent's words, nor i can't imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this: "this is a surprise to me which i wasn't looking for; and i'll acknowledge, candid and frank, i ain't very well fixed to meet it and answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes, he's broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here, last night in the night by a mistake. i am peter wilks's brother harvey, and this is his brother william, which can't hear nor speakand can't even make signs to amount to much, now't he's only got one hand to work them with. we are who we say we are; and in a day or two, when i get the baggage, i can prove it. but, up till then, i won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait." so him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and blethers out: "broke his armvery likely ain't it?and very convenient, too, for a fraud that's got to make signs, and hain't learnt how. lost their baggage! that's mighty good!and mighty ingeniousunder the circumstances!" so he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. one of these was that doctor; another one was a sharp looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then and nodding their headsit was levi bell, the lawyer that was gone up to louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king now. and when the king got done, this husky up and says: "say, looky here; if you are harvey wilks, when'd you come to this town?" "the day before the funeral, friend," says the king. "but what time o' day?" "in the evenin''bout an hour er two before sundown." "how'd you come?" "i come down on the susan powell, from cincinnati." "well, then, how'd you come to be up at the pint in the mornin'in a canoe?" "i warn't up at the pint "it's a lie." several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher. "preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar. he was up at the pint that mornin'. i live up there, don't i? well, i was up there, and he was up there. i see him there. he come in a canoe, along with tim collins and a boy." the doctor he up and says: "would you know the boy again if you was to see him, hines?" "i reckon i would, but i don't know. why, yonder he is, now. i know him perfectly easy." it was me he pointed at. the doctor says: "neighbors, i don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if these two ain't frauds, i am an idiot, that's all. i think it's our duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this thing. come along, hines; come along, the rest of you. we'll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'other couple, and i reckon we'll find out something before we get through." it was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends; so we all started. it was about sundown. the doctor he led me along by the hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand. we all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and fetched in the new couple. first, the doctor says: "i don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but i think they're frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. if they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold peter wilks left? it ain't unlikely. if these men ain't frauds, they won't object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're all rightain't that so?" everybody agreed to that. so i judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place, right at the outstart. but the king he only looked sorrowful, and says: "gentlemen, i wish the money was there, for i ain't got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation o' this misable business; but alas, the money ain't there; you k'n send and see, if you want to." "where is it, then?" "well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her, i took and hid it inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein' used to niggers, and suppos'n' em honest, like servants in england. the niggers stole it the very next mornin' after i had went down stairs; and when i sold 'em, i hadn't missed the money yit, so they got clean away with it. my servant here k'n tell you 'bout it, gentlemen." the doctor and several said "shucks!" and i see nobody didn't altogether believe him. one man asked me if i see the niggers steal it. i said no, but i see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and i never thought nothing, only i reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. that was all they asked me. then the doctor whirls on me and says: "are you english too?" i says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, "stuff!" well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about supper, nor ever seemed to think about itand so they kept it up, and kept it up; and it was the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. they made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n; and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies. and by-and-by they had me up to tell what i knowed. the king he give me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so i knowed enough to talk on the right side. i begun to tell about sheffield, and how we lived there, and all about the english wilkses, and so on; but i didn't get pretty fur till the doctor begun to laugh; and levi bell, the lawyer, says: "set down, my boy, i wouldn't strain myself, if i was you. i reckon you ain't used to lying, it don't seem to come handy; what you want is practice. you do it pretty awkward." i didn't care nothing for the compliment, but i was glad to be let off, anyway. the doctor he started to say something, and turns and says: "if you'd been in town at first, levi bell-" the king broke in and reached out his hand, and says: "why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often about?" the lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, and they talked right along a while, and then got to one side and talked low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says: "that'll fix it. i'll take the order and send it, along with your brother's, and then they'll know it's all right." so they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something; and then they give the pen to the dukeand then for the first time, the duke looked sick. but he took the pen and wrote. so then the lawyer turns to the new old gentleman and says: "you and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names." the old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. the lawyer looked powerful astonished, and says: "well, it beats me"and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then them again; and then says: "these old letters is from harvey wilks; and here's these two's handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write them" (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, i tell you, to see how the lawyer had took them in), "and here's this old gentleman's handwriting, and anybody can tell, easy enough, he didn't write themfact is, the scratches he makes ain't properly writing, at all. now here's some letters from-" the new old gentleman says: "if you please, let me explain. nobody can read my hand but my brother thereso he copies for me. it's his hand you've got there, not mine." "well!" says the lawyer, "this is a state of things. i've got some of william's letters too; so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can com-" "he can't write with his left hand," says the old gentleman. "if he could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine too. look at both, pleasethey're by the same hand." the lawyer done it, and says: "i believe it's soand if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger resemblance than i'd noticed before, anyway. well, well, well! i thought we was right on the track of a slution, but it's gone to grass, partly. but anyway, one thing is provedthese two ain't either of 'em wilkses"and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke. well, what do you think?that muleheaded old fool wouldn't give in then! indeed he wouldn't. said it warn't no fair test. said his brother william was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn't tried to writehe see william was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper. and so he warmed up and went warbling and warbling right along, till he was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying, himselfbut pretty soon the new old gentleman broke in, and says: "i've thought of something. is there anybody here that helped to lay out my brhelped to lay out the late peter wilks for burying?" "yes," says somebody, "me and ab turner done it. we're both here." then the old man turns towards the king, and says: "perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tatooed on his breast?" blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd a squshed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him so suddenand mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most anybody sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any noticebecause how was he going to know what was tatooed on the man? he whitened a little; he couldn't help it; and it was mighty still in there, and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him. says i to myself, now he'll throw up the spongethere ain't no more use. well, did he? a body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. i reckon he thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so they'd thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. anyway, he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says: "mf! it's a very tough question, ain't it! yes, sir, i k'n tell you what's tatooed on his breast. it's jest a small, thin, blue arrowthat's what it is; and if you don't look clost, you can't see it. now what do you sayhey?" well, i never see anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out cheek. the new old gentleman turns brisk towards ab turner and his pard, and his eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king this time, and says: "thereyou've heard what he said! was there any such mark on peter wilks's breast?" both of them spoke up and says: "we didn't see no such mark." "good!" says the old gentleman. "now, what you did see on his breast was a small dim p, and a b (which is an initial he dropped when he was young), and a w, with dashes between them, so: p-b-w"-and he marked them that way on a piece of paper. "comeain't that what you saw?" both of them spoke up again, and says: "no, we didn't. we never seen any marks at all." well, everybody was in a state of mind, now; and they sings out: "the whole bilin' of' m's frauds! le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em! le's ride'em on a rail!" and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a rattling pow-wow. but the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and says: "gentlemengentlemen! hear me just a wordjust a single wordif you please! there's one way yetlet's go and dig up the corpse and look." that took them. "hooray!" they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer and the doctor sung out: "hold on, hold on! collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch them along, too!" "we'll do it!" they all shouted: "and if we don't find them marks we'll lynch the whole gang!" i was scared, now, i tell you. but there warn't no getting away, you know. they gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the evening. as we went by our house i wished i hadn't sent mary jane out of town; because now if i could tip her the wink, she'd light out and save me, and blow on our dead-beats. well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like wild-cats; and to make it more scary, the sky was darking up, and the lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst the leaves. this was the most awful trouble and most dangersome i ever was in; and i was kinder stunned; everything was going so different from what i had allowed for; stead of being fixed so i could take my own time, if i wanted to, and see all the fun, and have mary jane at my back to save me and set me free when the close-fit come, here was nothing in the world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tatoo-marks. if they didn't find them i couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, i couldn't think about nothing else. it got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the wristhinesand a body might as well try to give goliar the slip. he dragged me right along, he was so excited; and i had to run to keep up. when they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an overflow. and when they got to the grave, they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't thought to fetch a lantern. but they sailed into digging, anyway, by the flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house a half a mile off, to borrow one. so they dug and dug, like everything; and it got awful dark, and the rain started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but them people never took no notice of it, they was so full of this business; and one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all. at last they got out the coffin, and begun to unscrew the lid, and then such another crowding, and shouldering, and shoving as there was, to scrouge in and get a sight, you never see; and in the dark, that way, it was awful. hines he hurt my wrist dreadful, pulling and tugging so, and i reckon he clean forgot i was in the world, he was so excited and panting. all of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and somebody sings out: "by the living jingo, here's the bag of gold on his breast!" hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and give a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way i lit out and shinned for the road in the dark, there ain't nobody can tell. i had the road all to myself, and i fairly flewleastways i had it all to myself, except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of the thunder; and sure as you are born i did clip it along! when i struck the town, i see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so i never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main one; and when i begun to get towards our house i aimed my eye and set it. no light there; the house all darkwhich made me feel sorry and disappointed, i didn't know why. but at last, just as i was sailing by, flash comes the light in mary jane's window! and my heart swelled up sudden, like to bust; and the same second the house and all was behind me in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world. she was the best girl i ever see, and had the most sand. the minute i was far enough above the town to see i could make the tow-head, i begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow; and the first time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained, i snatched it and shoved. it was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope. the tow-head was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the river, but i didn't lose no time; and when i struck the raft at last, i was so fagged i would a just laid down to blow and gasp if i could afforded it. but i didn't. as i sprung aboard i sung out: "out with you jim, and set her loose! glory be to goodness, we're shut of them!" jim lit out, and was a coming for me with both arms spread, he was so full of joy; but when i glimpsed him in the lightning, my heart shot up in my mouth, and i went overboard backwards; for i forgot he was old king lear and a drowned a-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and lights out of me. but jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and bless me, and so on, he was so glad i was back and we was shut of the king and the duke, but i says: "not nowhave it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! cut loose and let her slide!" so, in two seconds, away we went, a sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us. i had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack my heels a few times, i couldn't help it; but about the third crack, i noticed a sound that i knowed mighty welland held my breath and listened and waitedand sure enough, when the next flash busted out over the water, here they come!and just a laying to their oars and making their skiff hum! it was the king and the duke. so i wilted right down onto the planks, then, and give up; and it was all i could do to keep from crying. chapter thirty when they got aboard, the king went for me, and shook me by the collar, and says: "tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup! tired of our companyhey?" i says: "no, your majesty, we warn'tplease don't, your majesty!" "quick, then, and tell us what was your idea, or i'll shake the insides out o' you!" "honest, i'll tell you everything, just as it happened, your majesty. the man that had aholt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by surprise by finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and whispers, 'heel it, now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and i lit out. it didn't seem no good for me to stayi couldn't do nothing, and i didn't want to be hung if i could get away. so i never stopped running till i found the canoe; and when i got there i told jim to hurry, or they'd catch me and hang me yet, and said i was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive, now, and i was awful sorry, and so was jim, and was awful glad when we see you coming, you may ask jim if i didn't." jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, "oh, yes, it's mighty likely!" and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd drowned me. but the duke says: "leggo the boy, you old idiot! would you a done any different? did you inquire around for him, when you got loose? i don't remember it." so the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in it. but the duke says: "you better a blame sight give yourself a good cussing, for you're the one that's entitled to it most. you hain't done a thing, from the start, that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue-arrow mark. that was brightit was right down bully; and it was the thing that saved us. for if it hadn't been for that, they'd a jailed us till them englishmen's baggage comeand thenthe penitentiary, you bet! but that trick took 'em to the graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn't let go all holts and made that rush to get a look, we'd a slept in our cravats to-nightcravats warranted to wear, toolonger than we'd need 'em." they was still a minutethinkingthen the king says, kind of absent-minded like: "mf! and we reckoned the niggers stole it!" that made me squirm! "yes," says the duke, kinder slow, and deliberate, and sarcastic, "we did." after about a half a minute, the king drawls out: "leastwaysi did." the duke says, the same way: "on the contraryi did." the king kind of ruffles up, and says: "looky here, bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?" the duke says, pretty brisk: "when it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was you referring to?" "shucks!" says the king, very sarcastic; "but i don't knowmaybe you was asleep, and didn't know what you was about." the duke bristles right up, now, and says: "oh, let up on this cussed nonsensedo you take me for a blame' fool? don't you reckon i know who hid that money in that coffin?" "yes, sir! i know you do knowbecause you done it yourself!" "it's a lie!"and the duke went for him. the king sings out: "take y'r hands off!leggo my throat!i take it all back!" the duke says: "well, you just own up, first, that you did hide that money there, intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it up, and have it all to yourself." "wait jest a minute, dukeanswer me this one question, honest and fair; if you didn't put that money there, say it, and i'll b'lieve you, and take back everything i said." "you old scoundrel, i didn't, and you know i didn't. there, now!" "well, then, i b'lieve you. but answer me only jest this one morenow don't git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it?" the duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says: "welli don't care if i did, i didn't do it, anyway. but you not only had it in mind to do it, but you done it." "i wisht i may never die if i done it, duke, and that's honest. i won't say i warn't goin' to do it, because i was; but youi mean somebodygot in ahead o' me." "it's a lie! you done it, and you got to say you done it, or-" the king begun to gurgle, and then he gasps out: "'nough!i own up!" i was very glad to hear him say that, it made me feel much more easier than what i was feeling before. so the duke took his hands off, and says: "if you ever deny it again, i'll drown you. it's well for you to set there and blubber like a babyit's fitten for you, after the way you've acted. i never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everythingand i a trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. you ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled onto a lot of poor niggers and you never say a word for 'em. it makes me feel ridiculous to think i was soft enough to believe that rubbage. cuss you, i can see, now, why you was so anxious to make up the deffesityou wanted to get what money i'd got out of the nonesuch and one thing or another, and scoop it all!" the king says, timid, and still a snuffling: "why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffersit, it warn't me." "dry up! i don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke. "and now you see what you got by it. they've got all their own money back, and all of ourn but a shekel or two, besides. g'long to bedand don't you deffersit me no more deffersits, long's you live!" so the king sneaked into the wigwam, and took to his bottle for comfort; and before long the duke tackled his bottle; and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got, the lovinger they got; and went off a snoring in each other's arms. they both got powerful mellow, but i noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. that made me feel easy and satisfied. of course when they got to snoring, we had a long gabble, and i told jim everything. chapter thirty-one we dasn't stop again at any town, for days and days; kept right along down the river. we was down south in the warm weather, now, and a mighty long ways from home. we begun to come to trees with spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards. it was the first i ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. so now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work the villages again. first they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on. then in another village they started a dancing school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made, the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. another time they tried a go at yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out. they tackled missionarying, and mesmerizering, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. so at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft, as she floated along, thinking, and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate. and at last they took a change, and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. jim and me got uneasy. we didn't like the look of it. we judged they was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. we turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business, or something. so then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake, and clear out and leave them behind. well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good safe place about two mile below a little bit of a shabby village, named pikesville, and the king he went ashore, and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the royal nonesuch there yet. ("house to rob, you mean," says i to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll come back here and wonder what's become of me and jim and the raftand you'll have to take it out in wondering.") and he said if he warn't back by midday, the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along. so we staid where we was. the duke he fretted and sweated around, and was in a mighty sour way. he scolded us for everything, and we couldn't seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing. something was abrewing, sure. i was good and glad when midday come and no king; we could have a change, anywayand maybe a chance for the change, on top of it. so me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by-and-by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he a cussing and threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to them. the duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to sass back; and the minute they was fairly at it, i lit out, and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deerfor i see our chance; and i made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and jim again. i got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out "set her loose, jim, we're all right, now!" but there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. jim was gone! i set up a shoutand then another one; and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no useold jim was gone. then i set down and cried; i couldn't help it. but i couldn't set still long. pretty soon i went out on the road, trying to think what i better do, and i run across a boy walking, and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says: "yes." "whereabouts?" says i. "down to silas phelps's place, two miles below here. he's a runaway nigger, and they've got him. was you looking for him?" "you bet i ain't! i run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if i hollered he'd cut my livers outand told me to lay down and stay where i was; and i done it. been there ever since; afeard to come out." "well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him. he run f'm down south, som'ers." "it's a good job they got him." "well, i reckon! there two hundred dollars reward on him. it's like picking up money out'n the road." "yes, it isand i could a had it if i'd been big enough; i see him first. who nailed him?" "it was an old fellowa strangerand he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. think o' that, now! you bet i'd wait, if it was seven year." "that's me, every time," says i. "but maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. maybe there's something ain't straight about it." "but it is, thoughstraight as a string. i see the handbill myself. it tells all about him, to a dotpaints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he's frum, below newrleans. no-siree-bob, they ain't no trouble 'bout that speculation, you bet you. say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won't ye?" i didn't have none, so he left. i went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. but i couldn't come to nothing. i thought till i wore my head sore, but i couldn't see no way out of the trouble. after all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. once i said to myself it would be a thousand times better for jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he's got to be a slave, and so i'd better write a letter to tom sawyer and tell him to tell miss watson where he was. but i soon give up that notion, for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. and then think of me! it would get all around, that huck finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if i was to ever see anybody from that town again, i'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. that's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace. that was my fix exactly. the more i studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery i got to feeling. and at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst i was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's one that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, i most dropped in my tracks i was so scared. well, i tried the best i could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying i was brung up wicked, and so i warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "there was the sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as i'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire." it made me shiver. and i about made up my mind to pray; and see if i couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy i was, and be better. so i kneeled down. but the words wouldn't come. why wouldn't they? it warn't no use to try and hide it from him. nor from me, neither. i knowed very well why they wouldn't come. it was because my heart warn't right; it was because i warn't square; it was because i was playing double. i was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me i was holding on to the biggest one of all. i was trying to make my mouth say i would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me i knowed it was a lie-and he knowed it. you can't pray a liei found that out. so i was full of trouble, full as i could be; and didn't know what to do. at last i had an idea; and i says, i'll go and write the letterand then see if i can pray. why, it was astonishing, the way i felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. so i got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: miss watson your runaway nigger jim is down here two mile below pikesville and mr. phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. huck finn i felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time i had ever felt so in my life, and i knowed i could pray now. but i didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinkingthinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near i come to being lost and going to hell. and went on thinking. and got to thinking over our trip down the river; and i see jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. but somehow i couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. i'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so i could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when i come back out of the fog; and when i come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last i struck the time i saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said i was the best friend old jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then i happened to look around, and see that paper. it was a close place. i took it up, and held it in my hand. i was a trembling, because i'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and i knowed it. i studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "all right, then, i'll go to hell"and tore it up. it was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. and i let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. i shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said i would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. and for a starter, i would go to work and steal jim out of slavery again; and if i could think up anything worse, i would do that, too; because as long as i was in, and in for good, i might as well go the whole hog. then i set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that suited me. so then i took the bearings of a woody island that was down the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark i crept out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. i slept the night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. i landed below where i judged was phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water, loaded rocks into her and sunk her where i could find her again when i wanted her, about a quarter of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank. then i struck up the road, and when i passed the mill i see a sign on it, "phelps's sawmill," and when i come to the farm-houses, two or three hundred yards further along, i kept my eyes peeled, but didn't see nobody around, though it was good daylight, now. but i didn't mind, because i didn't want to see nobody just yeti only wanted to get the lay of the land. according to my plan, i was going to turn up there from the village, not from below. so i just took a look, and shoved along, straight for town. well, the very first man i see, when i got there, was the duke. he was sticking up a bill for the royal nonesuchthree-night performancelike the other time. they had the cheek, them frauds! i was right on him, before i could shirk. he looked astonished and says: "hel-lo! where'd you come from?" then he says, kind of glad and eager, "where's the raft?got her in a good place?" i says: "why, that's just what i was agoing to ask your grace." then he didn't look so joyfuland says: "what was your idea for asking me?" he says. "well," i says, "when i see the king in that doggery yesterday, i says to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so i went a loafing around town to put in the time, and wait. a man up and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a sheep, and so i went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat, the man left me aholt of the rope and went behind him to shove him along, he was too strong for me, and jerked loose and run, and we after him. we didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out. we never got him till dark, then we fetched him over, and i started down for the raft. when i got there and see it was gone, i says to myself, 'they've got into trouble and had to leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger i've got in the world, and now i'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living'; so i set down and cried. i slept in the woods all night. but what did become of the raft then?and jim, poor jim!" "blamed if i knowthat is, what's become of the raft. that old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half dollars with him and got every cent but what he'd spent for whisky; and when i got him home late last night and found the raft gone, we said, 'that little rascal has stole our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.'" "i wouldn't shake my nigger, would i?the only nigger i had in the world, and the only property." "we never thought of that. fact is, i reckon we'd come to consider him our nigger; yes, we did consider him sogoodness knows we had trouble enough for him. so when we see the raft was gone, and we flat broke, there warn't anything for it but to try the royal nonesuch another shake. and i've pegged along ever since, dry as a powderhorn. where's that ten cents? give it here." i had considerable money, so i give him ten cents, but begged him to spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the money i had, and i hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. the next minute he whirls on me and says: "do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? we'd skin him if he done that!" "how can he blow? hain't he run off.?" "no! that old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's gone." "sold him?" i says, and begun to cry; "why, he was my nigger, and that was my money. where is he?i want my nigger." "well, you can't get your nigger, that's allso dry up your blubbering. looky heredo you think you'd venture to blow on us? blamed if i think i'd trust you. why, if you was to blow on us-" he stopped, but i never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. i went on a-whimpering, and says: "i don't want to blow on nobody; and i ain't got no time to blow, nohow. i got to turn out and find my nigger." he looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. at last he says: "i'll tell you something. we got to be here three days. if you'll promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, i'll tell you where to find him." so i promised, and he says: "a farmer by the name of silas ph-" and then he stopped. you see he started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped, that way, and begun to study and think agin, i reckoned he was changing his mind. and so he was. he wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days. so pretty soon he says: "the man that bought him is named abram fosterabram g. fosterand he lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to lafayette." "all right," i says, "i can walk it in three days. and i'll start this very afternoon." "no, you won't, you'll start now; and don't lose any time about it, neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with us, d'ye hear?" that was the order i wanted, and that was the one i played for. i wanted to be left free to work my plans. "so clear out," he says; "and can tell mr. foster whatever you want to. maybe you can get him to believe that jim is your niggersome idiots don't require documentsleastways i've heard there's such down south here. and when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting 'em out. go 'long, now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you don't work your jaw any between here and there." so i left, and struck for the back country. i didn't look around, but i kinder felt like he was watching me. but i knowed i could tire him out at that. i went straight out in the country as much as a mile, before i stopped; then i doubled back through the woods towards phelps's. i reckoned i better start in on my plan straight off, without fooling around, because i wanted to stop jim's mouth till these fellows could get away. i didn't want no trouble with their kind. i'd seen all i wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them. chapter thirty-two when i got there it was all still and sunday-like, and hot and sunshinythe hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering-spirits that's been dead ever so many yearsand you always think they're talking about you. as a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with it all. phelps's was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations; and they all look alike. a rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile, made out of logs sawed off and up-ended, in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump onto a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log house for the white folkshewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t'other side the smokehouse; one little hut all by itself away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash-hopper, and big kettle to bile soap in, by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there, in the sun; more hounds asleep, round about; about three shade-trees away off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a water-melon patch; then the cotton fields begins; and after the fields, the woods. i went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and started for the kitchen. when i got a little ways, i heard the dim hum of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then i knowed for certain i wished i was deadfor that is the lonesomest sound in the whole world. i went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for i'd noticed that providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if i left it alone. when i got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went for me, and of course i stopped and faced them, and kept still. and such another pow-wow as they made! in a quarter of a minute i was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you may sayspokes made out of dogscircle of fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a barking and howling; and more a coming; you could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres. a nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her hand, singing out, "begone! you tige! you spot! begone, sah!" and she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent him howling, and then the rest followed; and the next second, half of them come back, wagging their tails around me and making friends with me. there ain't no harm in a hound, nohow. and behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys, without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung onto their mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way they always do. and here comes the white woman running from the house, about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinningstick in her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same way the little niggers was doing. she was smiling all over so she could hardly standand says: "it's you, at last!ain't it?" i out with a "yes'm," before i thought. she grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "you don't look as much like your mother as i reckoned you would, but law sakes, i don't care for that, i'm so glad to see you! dear, dear, it does seem like i could eat you up! children, it's your cousin tom!tell him howdy." but they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and hid behind her. so she run on: "lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast, right awayor did you get your breakfast on the boat?" i said i had got it on the boat. so then she started for the house, leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. when we got there, she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says: "now i can have a good look at you: and laws-a-me, i've been hungry for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last! we been expecting you a couple of days and more. what's kep' you?boat get aground?" "don't say yes'msay aunt sally. where'd she get aground?" i didn't rightly know what to say, because i didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down. but i go a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming upfrom down towards orleans. that didn't help me much, though; for i didn't know the names of bars down that way. i see i'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got aground onornow i struck an idea, and fetched it out: "it warn't the groundingthat didn't keep us back but a little. we blowed out a cylinder-head." "good gracious! anybody hurt?" "no'm. killed a nigger." "well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. two years ago last christmas, your uncle silas was coming up from newrleans on the old lally rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. and i think he died afterwards. he was a babtist. your uncle silas knowed a family in baton rouge that knowed his people very well. yes, i remember, now he did die. mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. but it didn't save him. yes, it was mortificationthat was it. he turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. they say he was a sight to look at. your uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you. and he's gone again, not more'n an hour ago; he'll be back any minute, now. you must a met him on the road, didn't you?oldish man, with a-" "no, i didn't see nobody, aunt sally. the boat landed just at daylight, and i left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too soon; and so i come down the back way." "who'd you give the baggage to?" "nobody." "why, child, it'll be stole!" "not where i hid it i reckon it won't," i says. "how'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?" it was kinder thin ice, but i says: "the captain see me standing around, and told me i better have something to eat before i went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers' lunch, and give me all i wanted." i was getting so uneasy i couldn't listen good. i had my mind on the children all the time; i wanted to get them out to one side, and pump them a little, and find out who i was. but i couldn't get no show, mrs. phelps kept it up and run on so. pretty soon she made the cold chills streak all down my back, because she says: "but here we're a running on this way, and you hain't told me a word about sis, nor any of them. now i'll rest my works a little, and you start up yourn; just tell me everythingtell me all about 'm allevery one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of." well, i see i was up a stumpand up it good. providence had stood by me this fur, all right, but i was hard and tight aground, now, i see it warn't a bit of use to try to go aheadi'd got to throw up my hand. so i says to myself, here's another place where i got to resk the truth. i opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed, and says: "here he comes! stick your head down lowerthere, that'll do; you can't be seen, now. don't you let on you're here. i'll play a joke on him. children, don't you say a word." i see i was in a fix, now. but it warn't no use to worry; there warn't nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck. i had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in, then the bed hid him. mrs. phelps she jumps for him and says: "has he come?" "no," says her husband. "good-ness gracious!" she says, "what in the world can have become of him?" "i can't imagine," says the old gentleman; "and i must say, it makes me dreadful uneasy." "uneasy!" she says, "i'm ready to go distracted! he must a come; and you've missed him along the road. i know it's sosomething tells me so." "why sally, i couldn't miss him along the roadyou know that." "but oh, dear, dear, what will sis say! he must a come! you must a missed him. he-" "oh, don't distress me any more'n i'm already distressed. i don't know what in the world to make of it. i'm at my wit's end, and i don't mind acknowledging't i'm right down scared. but there's no hope that he's come; for he couldn't come and me miss him. sally, it's terriblejust terriblesomething's happened to the boat, sure!" "why, silas! look yonder!up the road!ain't that somebody coming?" he sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that gave mrs. phelps the chance she wanted. she stooped down quick, at the foot of the bed, and give me a pull, and out i come; and when he turned back from the window, there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and i standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. the old gentleman stared, and says: "why, who's that?" "who do you reckon 't is?" "i haint no idea. who is it?" "it's tom sawyer!" by jings, i most slumped through the floor. but there warn't no time to swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on shaking; and all the time, how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about sid, and mary, and the rest of the tribe. but if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what i was; for it was like being born again, i was so glad to find out who i was. well, they froze to me for two hours; and at last when my chin was so tired it couldn't hardly go, any more, i had told them more about my familyi mean the sawyer familythan ever happened to any six sawyer families. and i explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of white river and it took us three days to fix it. which was all right, and worked first rate; because they didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it. if i'd a called it a bolt-head it would a done just as well. now i was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty uncomfortable all up the other. being tom sawyer was easy and comfortable; and it stayed easy and comfortable till by-and-by i hear a steamboat coughing along down the riverthen i says to myself, spose tom sawyer come down on that boat?and spose he steps in here, any minute, and sings out my name before i can throw him a wink to keep quiet? well, i couldn't have it that wayit wouldn't do at all. i must go up the road and waylay him. so i told the folks i reckoned i would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage. the old gentleman was for going along with me, but i said no, i could drive the horse myself, and i druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me. chapter thirty-three so i started for town, in the wagon, and when i was half-way i see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was tom sawyer, and i stopped and waited till he come along. i says "hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and staid so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says: "i hain't ever done you no harm. you know that. so then, what you want to come back and ha'nt me for?" i says: "i hain't come backi hain't been gone." when he heard my voice, it righted him up some, but he warn't quite satisfied yet. he says: "don't you play nothing on me, because i wouldn't on you. honest injun, now, you ain't a ghost?" "honest injun, i ain't," i says. "welliiwell, that ought to settle it, of course; but i can't somehow seem to understand it, no way. looky here, warn't you ever murdered at all?" "no. i warn't ever murdered at alli played it on them. you come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me." so he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again, he didn't know what to do. and he wanted to know all about it right off; because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where he lived. but i said, leave it alone till by-and-by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and i told him the kind of a fix i was in, and what did he reckon we better do? he said, let him alone a minute, and don't disturb him. so he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says: "it's all right, i've got it. take my trunk in your wagon, and let on it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the house about the time you ought to; and i'll go towards town a piece, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you; and you needn't let on to know me, at first." i says: "all right; but wait a minute. there's one more thinga thing that nobody don't know but me. and that is, there's a nigger here that i'm a trying to steal out of slaveryand his name is jimold miss watson's jim." he says: "what! why jim is-" he stopped and went to studying. i says: "i know what you'll say. you'll say it's dirty low-down business; but what if it is?i'm low down; and i'm agoing to steal him, and i want you to keep mum and not let on. will you?" his eye lit up, and he says: "i'll help you steal him!" well, i let go all holts then, like i was shot. it was the most astonishing speech i ever heardand i'm bound to say tom sawyer fell, considerable, in my estimation. only i couldn't believe it. tom sawyer a nigger stealer! "oh, shucks," i says, "you're joking." "i ain't joking, either." "well, then," i says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that you don't know nothing about him, and i don't know nothing about him." then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon and he drove off his way, and i drove mine. but of course i forgot all about driving slow, on accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so i got home a heap too quick for that length of a trip. the old gentleman was at the door, and he says: "why, this is wonderful. who ever would a thought it was in that mare to do it. i wish we'd a timed her. and she hain't sweated a hairnot a hair. it's wonderful. why, i wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now; i wouldn't, honest; and yet i'd a sold her for fifteen before, and thought 'twas all she was worth." that's all he said. he was the innocentest, best old soul i ever see. but it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church and school-house, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. there was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and done the same way, down south. in about half an hour tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and aunt sally she see it through the window because it was only about fifty yards, and says: "why, there's somebody come! i wonder who 'tis? why, i do believe it's a stranger. jimmy" (that's one of the children), "run and tell lize to put on another plate for dinner." everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger don't come every year, and so he lays over the yaller fever, for interest, when he does come. tom was over the stile and starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all bunched in the front door. tom had his store clothes on, and an audienceand that was always nuts for tom sawyer. in them circumstances it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable. he warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no, he come ca'm and important, like the ram. when he got afront of us, he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and says: "mr. archibald nichols, i presume?" "no, my boy," says the old gentleman, "i'm sorry to say't your driver has deceived you; nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more. come in, come in." tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "too latehe's out of sight." "yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to nichols's." "oh, i can't make you so much trouble; i couldn't think of it. i'll walki don't mind the distance." "but we won't let you walkit wouldn't be southern hospitality to do it. come right in." "oh, do," says aunt sally; "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in the world. you must stay. it's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't let you walk. and besides, i've already told 'em to put on another plate, when i see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us. come right in, and make yourself at home." so tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be persuaded, and come in; and when he was in, he said he was a stranger from hicksville, ohio, and his name was william thompsonand he made another bow. well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about hicksville and everybody in it he could invent, and i was getting a little nervous, and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last, still talking along, he reached over and kissed aunt sally right on the mouth, and then settled back again in his chair, comfortable, and was going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand, and says: "you owdacious puppy!" he looked kind of hurt, and says: "i'm surprised at you, m'am." "you're s'rpwhy, what do you reckon i am? i've a good notion to take andsay, what do you mean by kissing me?" he looked kind of humble, and says: "i didn't mean nothing, m'am. i didn't mean no harm. iithought you'd like it." "why, you born fool!" she took up the spinning-stick, and it looked like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. "what made you think i'd like it?" "well, i don't know. only, theytheytold me you would." "they told you i would. whoever told you's another lunatic. i never heard the beat of it. who's they?" "whyeverybody. they all said so, m'am." it was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says: "who's 'everybody?' out with their namesor ther'll be an idiot short." he got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says: "i'm sorry, and i warn't expecting it. they told me to. they all told me to. they all said kiss her; and said she'll like it. they all said itevery one of them. but i'm sorry, m'am, and i won't do it no morei won't honest." "you won't, won't you? well, i sh'd reckon you won't!" "no'm, i'm honest about it; i won't ever do it again. till you ask me." "till i ask you! well, i never see the beat of it in my born days! i lay you'll be the methusalem-numskull of creation before ever i ask youor the likes of you." "well," he says, "it does surprise me so. i can't make it out, somehow. they said you would, and i thought you would. but-" he stopped and looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye, somewhere's; and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "didn't you think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?" "why, no, iiwell, no, i b'lieve i didn't." then he looks on around, the same way, to meand says: "tom, didn't you think aunt sally'd open out her arms and say, 'sid sawyer-'" "my land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young rascal, to fool a body so-" and was going to hug him, but he fended her off, and says: "no, not till you've asked me, first." so she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him, over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took what was left. and after they got a little quiet again, she says: "why, dear me, i never see such a surprise. we warn't looking for you, at all, but only tom. sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him." "it's because it warn't intended for any of us to come but tom," he says; "but i begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too; so, coming down the river, me and tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by-and-by tag along and drop in and let on to be a stranger. but it was a mistake, aunt sally. this ain't no healthy place for a stranger to come." "nonot impudent whelps, sid. you ought to had your jaws boxed; i hain't been so put out since i don't know when. but i don't care, i don't mind the termsi'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here. well, to think of that performance! i don't deny it, i was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack." we had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven familiesand all hot, too; none of your flabby tough meat that's laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning. uncle silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit, neither, the way i've seen them kind of interruptions do, lots of times. there was a considerable good deal of talk, all the afternoon, and me and tom was on the lookout all the time, but it warn't no use, they didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to it. but at supper, at night, one of the little boys says: "pa, mayn't tom and sid and me go to the show?" "no," says the old man, "i reckon there ain't going to be any; and you couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told burton and me all about that scandalous show, and burton said he would tell the people; so i reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this time." so there it was!but i couldn't help it. tom and me was to sleep in the same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid goodnight and went up to bed, right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for i didn't believe anybody was going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so, if i didn't hurry up and give them one they'd get into trouble sure. on the road tom he told me all about how it was reckoned i was murdered, and how pap disappeared, pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and what a stir there was when jim run away; and i told tom all about our royal nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft-voyage as i had time to; and as we struck into the town and up through the middle of itit was as much as half-after eight, thenhere comes a raging rush of people, with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by, i see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a railthat is, i knowed it was the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was humanjust looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes. well, it made me sick to see it; and i was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like i couldn't ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. it was a dreadful thing to see. human beings can be awful cruel to one another. we see we was too latecouldn't do no good. we asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them. so we poked along back home, and i warn't feeling so brash as i was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehowthough i hadn't done nothing. but that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. if i had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does, i would pison him. it takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow. tom sawyer he says the same. chapter thirty-four we stopped talking, and got to thinking. by-and-by tom says: "looky here, huck, what fools we are, to not think of it before! i bet i know where jim is." "no! where?" "in that hut down by the ash-hopper. why, looky here. when we was at dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?" "what did you think the vittles was for?" "for a dog." "so'd i. well, it wasn't for a dog." "because part of it was watermelon." "so it wasi noticed it. well, it does beat all, that i never thought about a dog not eating watermelon. it shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time." "well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it again when he come out. he fetched uncle a key, about the time we got up from tablesame key, i bet. watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner; and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation, and where the people's all so kind and good. jim's the prisoner. all righti'm glad we found it out detective fashion; i wouldn't give shucks for any other way. now you work your mind and study out a plan to steal jim, and i will study out one, too; and we'll take the one we like the best." what a head for just a boy to have! if i had tom sawyer's head, i wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in a circus, nor nothing i can think of. i went to thinking out a plan, but only just to be doing something; i knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from. pretty soon, tom says: "ready?" "yes," i says. "all rightbring it out." "my plan is this," i says. "we can easy find out if it's jim in there. then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the island. then the first dark night that comes, steal the key out of the old man's britches, after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on the raft, with jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and jim used to do before. wouldn't that plan work?" "work? why cert'nly, it would work, like rats a fighting. but it's too blame' simple; there ain't nothing to it. what's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble than that? it's as mild as goose-milk. why, huck, it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory." i never said nothing, because i warn't expecting nothing different; but i knowed mighty well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it. and it didn't. he told me what it was, and i see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine, for style, and would make jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. so i was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it. i needn't tell what it was, here, because i knowed it wouldn't stay the way it was. i knowed he would be changing it around, every which way, as we went along, and heaving in new bullinesses wherever he got a chance. and that is what he done. well, one thing was dead sure; and that was, that tom sawyer was in earnest and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. that was the thing that was too many for me. here was a boy that was respectable, and well brung up and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody. i couldn't understand it, no way at all. it was outrageous, and i knowed i ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was, and save himself. and i did start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says: "don't you reckon i know what i'm about? don't i generly know what i'm about?" "yes." "didn't i say i was going to help steal the nigger?" "yes." "well then." that's all he said, and that's all i said. it warn't no use to say any more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it. but i couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so i just let it go, and never bothered no more about it. if he was bound to have it so, i couldn't help it. when we got home, the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to the hut by the ash-hopper, for to examine it. we went through the yard, so as to see what the hounds would do. they knowed us, and didn't make no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in the night. when we got to the cabin, we took a look at the front and the two sides; and on the side i warn't acquainted withwhich was the north sidewe found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one stout board nailed across it. i says: "here's the ticket. this hole's big enough for jim to get through, if we wrench off the board." tom says: "it's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as playing hooky. i should hope we can find a way that's a little more complicated than that, huck finn." "well then," i says, "how'll it do to saw him out, the way i done before i was murdered, that time?" "that's more like," he says. "it's real mysterious, and troublesome, and good," he says; "but i bet we can find a way that's twice as long. there ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around." betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to, that joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. it was as long as the hut, but narrowonly about six foot wide. the door to it was at the south end, and was padlocked. tom he went to the soap kettle, and searched around and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with; so he took it and prized out one of the staples. the chain fell down, and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match, and see the shed was only built against the cabin and hadn't no connection with it; and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some rusty played-out hoes, and spades, and packs, and a crippled plow. the match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and the door was locked as good as ever. tom was joyful. he says: "now we're all right. we'll dig him out. it'll take about a week!" then we started for the house, and i went in the back dooryou only have to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doorsbut that warn't romantical enough for tom sawyer: no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning-rod. but after he got up half-way about three times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up; but after he was rested, he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time he made the trip. in the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed jimif it was jim that was being fed. the niggers was just getting through breakfast and starting for the fields; and jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan with bread and meat and things; and whilst the others was leaving, the key come from the house. this nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread. that was to keep witches off. he said the witches was pestering him awful, these nights, and making him see all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of strange words and noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so long, before, in his life. he got so worked up, and got to running on so about his troubles, he forgot all about what he'd been going to do. so tom says: "what's the vittles for? going to feed the dogs?" the nigger kind of smiled around graduly over his face, like when you heave a brickbat in a mud puddle, and he says: "yes, mars sid, a dog. cur'us dog, too. does you want to go en look at 'im?" "yes." i hunched tom, and whispers: "you going, right here in the day-break? that warn't the plan." "no, it warn'tbut it's the plan now." so, drat him, we went along, but i didn't like it much. when we got in, we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but jim was there, sure enough, and could see us; and he sings out: "why, huck! en good lan'! ain'dat misto tom?" i just knowed how it would be; i just expected it. i didn't know nothing to do; and if i had, i couldn't a done it; because that nigger busted in and says: "why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?" we could see pretty well, now. tom he looked at the nigger, steady and kind of wondering, and says: "does who know us?" "why, dish-yer runaway nigger." "i don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?" "what put it dar? didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed you?" tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way: "well, that's mighty curious. who sung out? when did he sing out? what did he sing out?" and turns to me, perfectly c'am, and says, "did you hear anybody sing out?" of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so i says: "no; i ain't heard nobody say nothing." then he turns to jim, and looks him over like he never see him before; and says: "did you sing out?" "no, sah," says jim; "i hain't said nothing, sah." "not a word?" "no, sah; not as i knows on." so tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and says, kind of severe: "what do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway? what made you think somebody sung out?" "oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en i wisht i was dead, i do. dey's awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so. please to don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole mars silas he'll scole me; 'kase he say dey ain't no witches. i jis' wish to goodness he was heah nowden what would he say! i jis' bet he couldn't fine no way to git around it dis time. but it's awluz jis' so; people dat's sot, stays sot; dey won't look into nothin' en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when you fine it out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you." tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told him to buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at jim, and says: "i wonder if uncle silas is going to hang this nigger. if i was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, i wouldn't give him up, i'd hang him." and whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to jim, and says: "don't ever let on to know us. and if you hear any digging going on nights, it's us: we're going to set you free." jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it, then the nigger come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted us to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks around then. chapter thirty-five it would be most an hour, yet, till breakfast, so we left, and struck down into the woods; because tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. we fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest, and tom says, kind of dissatisfied: "blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. and so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan. there ain't no watchman to be druggednow there ought to be a watchman. there ain't even a dog to get a sleeping-mixture to. and there's jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. and uncle silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the punkinheaded nigger, and don't send nobody to watch the nigger. jim could a got out of that window hole before this, only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg. why, drat it, huck, it's the stupidest arrangement i ever see. you got to invent all the difficulties. well, we can't help it, we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got. anyhow, there's one thingthere's more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers, where there warn't one of them furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your own head. now look at just that one thing of the lantern. when you come down to the cold facts, we simply got to let on that a lantern's resky. why, we could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to, i believe. now, whilst i think of it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of, the first chance we get." "what do we want of a saw?" "what do we want of it? hain't we got to saw the leg of jim's bed off, so as to get the chain loose?" "why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off." "well, if that ain't just like you, huck finn. you can get up the infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. why, hain't you ever read any books at all?baron trenck, nor casanova, nor benvenuto chelleeny, nor henri iv., nor none of them heroes? whoever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? no; the way all the best authorities does, is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see no sign of its being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound. then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you are. nothing to do but hitch your rope-ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moatbecause a rope-ladder is nineteen foot too short, you knowand there's your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle and away you go, to your native langudoc, or navarre, or wherever it is. it's gaudy, huck. i wish there was a moat to this cabin. if we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one." i says: "what do we want of a moat, when we're going to snake him out from under the cabin?" but he never heard me. he had forgot me and everything else. he had his chin in his hand, thinking. pretty soon, he sighs, and shakes his head; then sighs again, and says: "no, it wouldn't dothere ain't necessity enough for it." "for what?" i says. "why, to saw jim's leg off," he says. "good land!" i says, "why, there ain't no necessity for it. and what you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?" "well, some of the best authorities has done it. they couldn't get the chain off, so they just cut their hand off, and shoved. and a leg would be better still. but we got to let that go. there ain't necessity enough in this case; and besides, jim's a nigger and wouldn't understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in europe; so we'll let it go. but there's one thinghe can have a rope-ladder; we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope-ladder easy enough. and we can send it to him in a pie; it's mostly done that way. and i've et worse pies." "why, tom sawyer, how you talk," i says; "jim ain't got no use for a rope-ladder." "he has got use for it. how you talk, you better say; you don't know nothing about it. he's got to have a rope ladder; they all do." "what in the nation can he do with it?" "do with it? he can hide it in his bed, can't he? that's what they all do; and he's got to, too. huck, you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time. spose he don't do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed, for a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews? of course they will. and you wouldn't leave them any? that would be a pretty howdydo, wouldn't it! i never heard of such a thing." "well," i says, "if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have it, all right, let him have it; because i don't wish to go back on no regulations; but there's one thing, tom sawyerif we go to tearing up our sheets to make jim a rope-ladder, we're going to get into trouble with aunt sally, just as sure as you're born. now, the way i look at it, a hickry-bark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste nothing, and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag ladder you can start; and as for jim, he ain't had no experience, and so he don't care what kind of a-" "oh, shucks, huck finn, if i was as ignorant as you, i'd keep stillthat's what i'd do. who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickry-bark ladder? why, it's perfectly ridiculous." "well, all right, tom, fix it your own way; but if you'll take my advice, you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothes-line." he said that would do. and that give him another idea, and he says: "borrow a shirt, too." "what do we want of a shirt, tom?" "want it for jim to keep a journal on." "journal your grannyjim can't write." "spose he can't writehe can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel-hoop?" "why, tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one; and quicker, too." "prisoners don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you muggins. they always make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks, and months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. they wouldn't use a goosequill if they had it. it ain't regular." "well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?" "many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. jim can do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. the iron mask always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too." "jim ain't got no tin plates. they feed him in a pan." "that ain't anything; we can get him some." "can't nobody read his plates." "that ain't got nothing to do with it, huck finn. all he's got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out. you don't have to be able to read it. why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a plate, or anywhere else." "well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?" "why, blame it all, it ain't the prisoner's plates." "but it's somebody's plates, ain't it?" "well, spos'n it is? what does the prisoner care whose-" he broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. so we cleared out for the house. along during that morning i borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line; and i found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. i called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but tom said it warn't borrowing, it was stealing. he said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don't blame them for it, either. it ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, tom said; it's his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for, to get ourselves out of prison with. he said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean ornery person would steal when he warn't a prisoner. so we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. and yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when i stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime, without telling them what it was for. tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we needed. well, i says, i needed the watermelon. but he said i didn't need it to get out of prison with, there's where the difference was. he said if i'd a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. so i let it go at that, though i couldn't see no advantage in representing a prisoner, if i got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that, every time i see a chance to hog a watermelon. well, as i was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then tom he carried the sack into the leanto whilst i stood off a piece to keep watch. by-and-by he come out, and we went and set down on the wood-pile, to talk. he says: "everything's all right, now, except tools; and that's easy fixed." "tools?" i says. "tools for what?" "why, to dig with. we ain't going to gnaw him out, are we?" "ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a nigger out with?" i says. he turns on me looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says: "huck finn, did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? now i want to ask youif you got any reasonableness in you at allwhat kind of a show would that give him to be a hero? why, they might as well lend him the key, and done with it. picks and shovelswhy they wouldn't furnish 'em to a king." "well, then," i says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we want?" "a couple of case-knives." "to dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?" "yes." "confound it, it's foolish, tom." "it don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the right wayand it's the regular way. and there ain't no other way, that ever i heard of, and i've read all the books that gives any information about these things. they always dig out with a case-knifeand not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock. and it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the castle deef, in the harbor of marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was he at it, you reckon?" "i don't know." "well, guess." "i don't know. a month and a half?" "thirty-seven yearand he come out in china. that's the kind. i wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock." "jim don't know nobody in china." "what's that got to do with it? neither did our fellow. but you're always a-wandering off on a side issue. why can't you stick to the main point?" "all righti don't care where he comes out, so he comes out; and jim don't, either, i reckon. but there's one thing, anywayjim's too old to be dug out with a case-knife. he won't last." "yes he will last, too. you don't reckon it's going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a dirt foundation, do you?" "how long will it take, tom?" "well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't take very long for uncle silas to hear from down there by new orleans. he'll hear jim ain't from there. then his next move will be to advertise jim, or something like that. so we can't resk being as long digging him out as we ought to. by rights i reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can't. things being so uncertain, what i recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can let on, to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm. yes, i reckon that'll be the best way." "now, there's sense in that," i says. "letting on don't cost nothing; letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, i don't mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. it wouldn't strain me none, after i got my hand in. so i'll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives." "smouch three," he says; "we want one to make a saw out of." "tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it," i says, "there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the weatherboarding behind the smoke-house." he looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says: "it ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, huck. run along and smouch the knivesthree of them." so i done it. chapter thirty-six as soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep, that night, we went down the lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work. we cleared everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. tom said he was right behind jim's bed now, and we'd dig it under it, and when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there, because jim's counterpin hung down most to the ground, and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. so we dug and dug, with the caseknives, till most midnight; and then we was dog tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything, hardly. at last i says: "this ain't no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-eight year job, tom sawyer." he never said nothing. but he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped digging, and then for a good little while i knowed he was thinking. then he says: "it ain't no use, huck, it ain't agoing to work. if we was prisoners it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry; and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. but we can't fool along, we got to rush; we ain't got no time to spare. if we was to put in another night this way, we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get wellcouldn't touch a case-knife with them sooner." "well, then, what we going to do, tom?" "i'll tell you. it ain't right, and it ain't moral, and i wouldn't like it to get outbut there ain't only just the one way; we got to dig him out with the picks, and let on it's case-knives." "now you're talking!" i says; "your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, tom sawyer," i says. "picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, i don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. when i start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a sunday-school book, i ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done. what i want is my nigger; or what i want is my watermelon; or what i want is my sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing i'm agoing to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that sunday-school book out with; and i don't give a dead rat what the authorities think about it nuther." "well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like this; if it warn't so, i wouldn't approve of it, nor i wouldn't stand by and see the rules brokebecause right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better. it might answer for you to dig jim out with a pick, without any letting-on, because you don't know no better; but it wouldn't for me, because i do know better. gimme a case-knife." he had his own by him, but i handed him mine. he flung it down, and says: "gimme a case-knife." i didn't know just what to dobut then i thought. i scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pick-ax and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word. he was always just that particular. full of principle. so then i got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and made the fur fly. we stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. when i got up stairs, i looked out at the window and see tom doing his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his hands was so sore. at last he says: "it ain't no use, it can't be done. what you reckon i better do? can't you think up no way?" "yes," i says, "but i reckon it ain't regular. come up the stairs, and let on it's a lightning-rod." so he done it. next day tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house, for to make some pens for jim out of, and six tallow candles; and i hung around the nigger cabins, and laid for a chance, and stole three tin plates. tom said it wasn't enough; but i said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-holethen we could tote them back and he could use them over again. so tom was satisfied. then he says: "now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to jim." "take them in through the hole," i says, "when we get it done." he only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. by-and-by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide on any of them yet. said we'd got to post jim first. that night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. then we whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half the job was done. we crept in under jim's bed and into the cabin, and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over jim a while, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle and gradual. he was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with, right away, and clearing out without losing any time. but tom he showed him how unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and not be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, sure. so jim he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times a while, and then tom asked a lot of questions, and when jim told him uncle silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and aunt sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of them was kind as they could be, tom says: "now i know how to fix it. we'll send you some things by them." i said, "don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass ideas i ever struck;" but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. it was his way when he'd got his plans set. so he told jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie, and other large things, by nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the lookout, and not be surprised, and not let nat see him open them; and we would put small things in uncle's coat pockets and he must steal them out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron strings or put them in her apron pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and what they was for. and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood, and all that. he told him everything. jim he couldn't see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as tom said. jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. tom was in high spirits. he said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave jim to our children to get out; for he believed jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it. he said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. and he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it. in the morning we went out to the wood-pile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes, and tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket. then we went to the nigger cabins, and while i got nat's notice off, tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn-pone that was in jim's pan, and we went along with nat to see how it would work, and it just worked noble; when jim bit into it most mashed all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could a worked better. tom said so himself. jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places, first. and whilst we was a standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in, from under jim's bed; and they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room in there to get your breath. by jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to door. the nigger nat he only just hollered "witches!" once, and keeled over onto the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was dying. tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of jim's meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door, and i knowed he'd fixed the other door too. then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again. he raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says: "mars sid, you'll say i's a fool, but if i didn't b'lieve i see most a million dogs, er devils, er some'n, i wisht i may die right heah in dese tracks. i did, mos' sholy. mars sid, i felt umi felt um, sah; dey was all over me. dad fetch it, i jis' wisht i could git my han's on one er dem witches jis' wunston'y jis' wunstit's all i'd ast. but mos'ly i wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, i does." tom says: "well, i tell you what i think. what makes them come here just at this runaway nigger's breakfast-time? it's because they're hungry; that's the reason. you make them a witch pie; that's the thing for you to do." "but my lan', mars sid, how's i gwyne to make make 'm a witch pie? i doan' know how to make it. i hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'." "well, then, i'll have to make it myself" "will you do it, honey?will you? i'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot, i will!" "all right, i'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger. but you got to be mighty careful. when we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put in the pan, don't you let on you see it at all. and don't you look, when jim unloads the pansomething might happen, i don't know what. and above all, don't you handle the witch-things." "hannel 'm mars sid? what is you a talkin' 'bout? i wouldn' lay de weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n' billion dollars, i wouldn't." chapter thirty-seven that was all fixed. so then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour, and started for breakfast and found a couple of shingle-nails that tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in aunt sally's apron pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck in the band of uncle silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and tom dropped the pewter spoon in uncle silas's coat pocket, and aunt sally wasn't come yet, so we had to wait a little while. and when she come she was hot, and red, and cross, and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other, and says: "i've hunted high, and i've hunted low, and it does beat all, what has become of your other shirt." my heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a war-whoop, and tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and i would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder. but after that we was all right againit was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. uncle silas he says: "it's most uncommon curious, i can't understand it. i know perfectly well i took it off, because-" "because you hain't got but one on. just listen at the man! i know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too, because it was on the clo'esline yesterdayi see it there myself. but it's gonethat's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have to change to a red flann'l one till i can get time to make a new one. and it'll be the third i've made in two years; it just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to do with 'm all, is more'n i can make out. a body'd think you would learn to take some sort of care of 'em, at your time of life." "i know it, sally, and i do try all i can. but it oughtn't to be altogether my fault, because you know i don't see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they're on me; and i don't believe i've ever lost one of them off of me." "well, it ain't your fault if you haven't, silasyou'd a done it if you could, i reckon. and the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. ther's a spoon gone; and that ain't all. there was ten, and now there's only nine. the calf got the shirt i reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, that's certain." "why, what else is gone, sally?" "ther's six candles gonethat's what. the rats could a got the candles, and i reckon they did; i wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, silasyou'd never find it out; but you can't lay the spoon on the rats, and that i know." "well, sally, i'm in fault, and i acknowledge it; i've been remiss; but i won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes." "oh, i wouldn't hurry, next year'll do. matilda angelina araminta phelps!" whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any. just then, the nigger woman steps onto the passage, and says: "missus, dey's a sheet gone." "a sheet gone! well, for the land's sake!" "i'll stop up them holes to-day," says uncle silas, looking sorrowful. "oh, do shet up!spose the rats took the sheet? where's it gone, lize?" "clah to goodness i hain't no notion, miss sally. she wuz on de clo's-line yistiddy, but she done gone; she ain' dah no mo', now." "i reckon the world is coming to an end. i never see the beat of it, in all my born days. a shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can-" "missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick missin." "cler out from here, you hussy, er i'll take a skillet to ye!" well, she was just a biling. i begun to lay for a chance; i reckoned i would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. she kept a raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last uncle silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. she stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, i wished i was in jeruslem or somewheres. but not long; because she says: "it's just as i expected. so you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not you've got the other things there, too. how'd it get there?" "i reely don't know, sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you know i would tell. i was a-studying over my text in acts seventeen, before breakfast, and i reckon i put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put my testament in, and it must be so, because my testament ain't in, but i'll go and see, and if that testament is where i had it, i'll know i didn't put it in, and that will show that i laid the testament down and took up the spoon, and-" "oh, for the land's sake! give a body a rest! go 'long now, the whole kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till i've got back my peace of mind." i'd a heard her, if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out; and i'd a got up and obeyed her, if i'd a been dead. as we was passing through the setting-room, the old man he took up his hat, and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says: "well, it ain't no use to send things by him no more, he ain't reliable." then he says: "but he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without him knowing itstop up his rat-holes." there was a noble good lot of them, down cellar, and it took us a whole hour, but we done the job tight and good, and ship-shape. then we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light, and hid; and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other, looking as absent-minded as year before last. he went a mooning around, first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all. then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and thinking. then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying: "well, for the life of me i can't remember when i done it. i could show her now that i warn't to blame on account of the rats. but never mindlet it go. i reckon it wouldn't do no good." and so he went on a mumbling up stairs, and then we left. he was a mighty nice old man. and always is. tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said we'd got to have it; so he took a think. when he ciphered it out, he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket till we see aunt sally coming, and then tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and i slid one of them up my sleeve, and tom says: "why, aunt sally, there ain't but nine spoons, yet." she says: "go 'long to your play, and don't bother me. i know better, i counted 'm myself." "well, i've counted them twice, aunty, and i can't make but nine." she looked out of all patience, but of course she come to countanybody would. "i declare to gracious ther' ain't but nine!" she says. "why, what in the worldplague take the things, i'll count 'm again." so i slipped back the one i had, and when she got done counting, she says: "hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's ten, now!" and she looked hurry and bothered both. but tom says: "why, aunty, i don't think there's ten." "you numskull, didn't you see me count 'm?" "i know, but-" "well, i'll count 'm again." so i smouched one, and they come out nine same as the other time. well, she was in a tearing wayjust trembling all over, she was so mad. but she counted and counted, till she got that addled she'd start to count-in the basket for a spoon, sometimes; and so, three times they come out right and three times they come out wrong. then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley-west; and she said cle'r out and let her have some peace, and if we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner, she'd skin us. so we had the odd spoon; and dropped it in her apron pocket whilst she was a giving us our sailing-orders, and jim got it all right, along with her shingle-nail, before noon. we was very well satisfied with this business, and tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took, because he said now she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life; and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right, if she did; and said that after she'd about counted her head off, for the next three days, he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them any more. so we put the sheet back on the line, that night, and stole one out of her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again, for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had, any more, and said she didn't care, and warn't agoing to bullyrag the rest of her soul out about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life, she druther die first. so we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would blow over by-and-by. but that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. we fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we had to use up three washpans full of flour, before we got through, and we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke; because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't prop it up right, and she would always cave in. but of course we thought of the right way at last; which was to cook the ladder, too, in the pie. so then we laid in with jim, the second night, and tore up the sheet all in little strings, and twisted them together, and long before daylight we had a lovely rope, that you could a hung a person with. we let on it took nine months to make it. and in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go in the pie. being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough for forty pies, if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose. we could a had a whole dinner. but we didn't need it. all we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed the rest away. we didn't cook none of the pies in the washpan, afraid the solder would melt; but uncle silas he had a noble brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from england with william the conqueror in the mayflower or one of them early ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable, not on account of being any account because they warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies, because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. we took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her up with rag-rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at. but the person that et it would want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if the rope-ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business, i don't know nothing what i'm talking about, and lay him enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too. nat didn't look, when we put the witch-pie in jim's pan; and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so jim got everything all right, and so soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hid the rope-ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window-hole. chapter thirty-eight making them pens was a distressid-tough job, and so was the saw; and jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. that's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. but we had to have it; tom said we'd got to; there warn't no case of a state priosner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms. "look at lady jane grey," he says; "look at gilford dudley; look at old northumberland! why, huck, spose it is considerable trouble?what you going to do?how you going to get around it? jim's got to do his inscription and coat of arms. they all do." jim says: "why, mars tom, i hain't got no coat o' arms; i hain't got nuffn but dish-yer ole shirt, en you knows i got to keep de journal on dat." "oh, you don't understand, jim; a coat of arms is very different." "well," i says, "jim's right, anyway, when he says he hain't got no coat of arms, because he hain't." "i reckon i knowed that," tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he goes out of thisbecause he's going out right, and there ain't going to be no flaws in his record." so whilst me and jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, jim a making his'n out of the brass and i making mine out of the spoon, tom set to work to think out the coat of arms. by-and-by he said he'd struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on. he says: "on the scutcheon we'll have a bend or in the dexter base, a saltire murrey in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron vert in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field azure, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, sable, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister: and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, maggiore fretta, minore atto. got it out of a book-means, the more haste, the less speed." "geewhillikins," i says, "but what does the rest of it mean?" "we ain't got no time to bother over that," he says, "we got to dig in like all git-out." "well, anyway," i says, "what's some of it? what's a fess?" "a fessa fess isyou don't need to know what a fess is. i'll show him how to make it when he gets to it." "shucks, tom," i says, "i think you might tell a person. what's a bar sinister?" "oh, i don't know. but he's got to have it. all the nobility does." that was just his way. if it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you, he wouldn't do it. you might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no difference. he'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a mournful inscriptionsaid jim got to have one, like they all done. he made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so: 1. here a captive heart busted. 2. here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world and friends, fretted out his sorrowful life. 3. here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven years of solitary captivity. 4. here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of louis xiv. tom's voice trembled, whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. when he got done, he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for jim to scrabble onto the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all on. jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck onto the logs with a nail, and he didn't know how to make letters, besides; but tom said he would block them out for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the lines. then pretty soon he says: "come to think, the logs ain't agoing to do; they don't have log walls in a dungeon: we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. we'll fetch a rock." jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him such a pison long time to dig them into a rock, he wouldn't ever get out. but tom said he would let me help him do it. then he took a look to see how me and jim was getting along with the pens. it was most pesky tedious hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly. so tom says: "i know how to fix it. we got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. there's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it, and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it, too." it warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone nuther; but we allowed we'd tackle it. it warn't quite midnight, yet, so we cleared out for the mill, leaving jim at work. we smouched the grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough job. sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling over, and she come mighty near mashing us, every time. tom said she was going to get one of us, sure, before we got through. we got her half way; and then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat. we see it warn't no use, we got to go and fetch jim. so he raised up his bed and slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round his neck, and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and jim and me laid into the grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and tom superintended. he could out-superintend any boy i ever see. he knowed how to do everything. our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone through; but jim he took the pick and soon make it big enough. then tom marked out them things on it with the nail, and set jim to work on them, with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under his straw tick and sleep on it. then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves. but tom thought of something, and says: "you got any spiders in here, jim?" "no, sah, thanks to goodness i hain't, mars tom." "all right, we'll get you some." "but bless you, honey, i doan' want none. i's afeard un um. i jis' 's soon have rattlesnakes aroun'." tom thought a minute or two, and says: "it's a good idea. and i reckon it's been done. it must a been done; it stands to reason. yes, it's a prime good idea. where could you keep it?" "keep what, mars tom?" "why, a rattlesnake." "de goodness gracious alive, mars tom! why, if dey was a rattlesnake to come in heah, i'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, i would, wid my head." "why, jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it, after a little. you could tame it." "tame it!" "yeseasy enough. every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, and they wouldn't think of hurting a person that pets them. any book will tell you that. you trythat's all i ask; just try for two or three days. why, you can get him so, in a little while, that he'll love you; and sleep with you; and won't stay away from you a minute; and will let you wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth." "please, mars tomdoan' talk so! i can't stan' it! he'd let me shove his head in my mouffer a favor, hain't it? i lay he'd wait a pow'ful long time 'fo' i ast him. en mo' en dat, i doan' want him to sleep wid me." "jim, don't act so foolish. a prisoner's got to have some kind of a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why, there's more glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life." "why, mars tom, i doan' want no sich glory. snake take 'n bite jim's chin off, den whah is de glory? no, sah, i doan' want no sich doin's." "blame it, can't you try? i only want you to tryyou needn't keep it up if it don't work." "but de trouble all done, ef de snake bite me while i's a tryin' him. mars tom, i's willin' to tackle mos'anything' at ain't onreasonable, but ef you en huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, i's gwyne to leave, dat's shore." "well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bullheaded about it. we can get you some garter-snakes and you can tie some buttons on their tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and i reckon that'll have to do." "i k'n stan' dem, mars tom, but blame' 'f i couldn' get along widout um, i tell you dat. i never knowed b'fo', 't was so much bother and trouble to be a prisoner." "well, it always is, when it's done right. you got any rats around here?" "no, sah, i hain't seed none." "well, we'll get you some rats." "why, mars tom, i doan' want no rats. dey's de dadblamedest creturs to sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet, when he's trying to sleep, i ever see. no, sah, gimme g'yarter-snakes, 'f i's got to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats, i ain' got no use f'r um, skasely." "but jim, you got to have 'emthey all do. so don't make no more fuss about it. prisoners ain't ever without rats. there ain't no instance of it. and they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies. but you got to play music to them. you got anything to play music on?" "i ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a juice-harp; but i reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juice-harp." "yes they would. they don't care what kind of music 'tis. a jews-harp's plenty good enough for a rat. all animals likes musicin a prison they dote on it. specially, painful music; and you can't get no other kind out of a jews-harp. it always interests them; they come out to see what's the matter with you. yes, you're all right; you're fixed very well. you want to set on your bed, nights, before you go to sleep, and early in the mornings, and play your jews-harp; play the last link is brokenthat's the thing that'll scoop a rat, quicker'n anything else: and when you've played about two minutes, you'll see all the rats, and the snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you, and come. and they'll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good time." "yes, dey will, i reck'n, mars tom, but what kine er time is jim havin'? blest if i kin see de pint. but i'll do it ef i got to. i reck'n i better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de house." tom waited to think over, and see if there wasn't nothing else; and pretty soon he says: "ohthere's one thing i forgot. could you raise a flower here, do you reckon?" "i doan' know but maybe i could, mars tom; but it's tolerable dark in heah, en i ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a pow'ful sight o' trouble." "well, you try it anyway. some other prisoners has done it." "one er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah, mars tom, i reck'n, but she wouldn' be wuth half de trouble she'd coss." "don't you believe it. we'll fetch you a little one, and you plant it in the corner, over there, and raise it. and don't call it mullen, call it pitchiolathat's its right name, when it's in a prison. and you want to water it with your tears." "why, i got plenty spring water, mars tom." "you don't want spring water; you want to water it with your tears. it's the way they always do." "why, mars tom, i lay i kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste wid spring water whiles another man's a start'n one wid tears." "that ain't the idea. you got to do it with tears." "she'll die on my han's, mars tom, she sholy will; kase i doan' skasely ever cry." so tom was stumped. but he studied it over, and then said jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. he promised he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in jim's coffee-pot, in the morning. jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee;" and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and inscriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. so jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and tom shoved for bed. chapter thirty-nine in the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under aunt sally's bed. but while we was gone for spiders, little thomas franklin benjamin jefferson elexander phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and aunt sally she come in, and when we got back she was a standing on top of the bed raising cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. so she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. i never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. we got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we liketo got a hornet's nest, but we didn't. the family was at home. we didn't give it right up, but staid with them as long as we could; because we allowed we'd tire them out or they'd got to tire us out, and they done it. then we got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn't set down convenient. and so we went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and housesnakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper time, and a rattling good honest day's work; and hungry?oh, no, i reckon not! and there warn't a blessed snake up there, when we went backwe didn't half tie the sack, and they worked out, somehow, and left. but it didn't matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. so we judged we could get some of them again. no, there warn't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. you'd see them dripping from the rafters and places, every now and then; and they generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn't want them. well, they was handsome, and striped, and there warn't no harm in a million of them; but that never made no difference to aunt sally, she despised snakes, be the breed what they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it; and every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. i never see such a woman. and you could hear her whoop to jericho. you couldn't get her to take aholt of one of them with the tongs. and if she turned over and found one in bed, she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was afire. she disturbed the old man so, that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes created. why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week, aunt sally warn't over it yet; she warn't near over it; when she was setting thinking about something, you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings. it was very curious. but tom said all women was just so. he said they was made that way; for some reason or other. we got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way; and she allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them. i didn't mind the lickings, because they didn't amount to nothing; but i minded the trouble we had, to lay in another lot. but we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as jim's was when they'd all swarm out for music and go for him. jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders didn't like jim; and so they'd lay for him and make it mighty warm for him. and he said that between the rats, and the snakes, and the grindstone, there warn't no room in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body couldn't sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because they never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his way, and t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a new place, the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. he said if he ever got out, this time, he wouldn't ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary. well, by the end of three weeks, everything was in pretty good shape. the shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit jim he would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh; the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust, and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. we reckoned we was all going to die, but didn't. it was the most undigestible sawdust i ever see; and tom said the same. but as i was saying, we'd got all the work done, now, at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly jim. the old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below orleans to come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because there warn't no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise jim in the st. louis and new orleans papers; and when he mentioned the st. louis ones, it give me the cold shivers, and i see we hadn't no time to lose. so tom said, now for the nonnamous letters. "what's them?" i says. "warnings to the people that something is up. sometimes it's done one way, sometimes another. but there's always somebody spying around, that gives notice to the governor of the castle. when louis xvi was going to light out of the tooleries, a servant girl done it. it's a very good way, and so is the nonnamous letters. we'll use them both. and it's usual for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. we'll do that too." "but looky here, tom, what do we want to warn anybody for, that something's up? let them find it out for themselvesit's their lookout." "yes, i know; but you can't depend on them. it's the way they've acted from the very startleft us to do everything. they're so confiding and mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all. so if we don't give them notice, there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us, and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape'll go off perfectly flat: won't amount to nothingwon't be nothing to it." "well, as for me, tom, that's the way i'd like." "shucks," he says, and looked disgusted. so i says: "but i ain't going to make no complaint. any way that suits you suits me. what you going to do about the servant-girl?" "you'll be her. you slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that yaller girl's frock." "why, tom, that'll make trouble next morning; because of course she prob'bly hain't got any but that one." "i know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door." "all right, then, i'll do it; but i could carry it just as handy in my own togs." "you wouldn't look like a servant-girl then, would you?" "no, but there won't be nobody to see what i look like, anyway." "that ain't got nothing to do with it. the thing for us to do, is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. hain't you got no principle at all?" "all right, i ain't saying nothing; i'm the servant-girl. who's jim's mother?" "i'm his mother. i'll hook a gown from aunt sally." "well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and jim leaves." "not much. i'll stuff jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to represent his mother in disguise, and jim'll take aunt sally's gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together. when a prisoner of style escapes, it's called an evasion. it's always called so when a king escapes, frinstance. and the same with a king's son; it don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one." so tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and i smouched the yaller wench's frock, that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the way tom told me to. it said: beware, trouble is brewing. keep a sharp lookout. unknown friend next night, we stuck a picture which tom drawed in blood, of a skull and crossbones, on the front door; and next night another one of a coffin, on the back door. i never see a family in such a sweat. they couldn't a been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. if a door banged, aunt sally she jumped, and said "ouch!" if anything fell, she jumped and said "ouch!" if you happened to touch her, when she warn't noticing, she done the same; she couldn't face noway and be satisfied, because she allowed there was something behind her every time-so she was always a whirling around, sudden, and saying "ouch," and before she'd get two-thirds around, she'd whirl back again, and say it again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she dasn't set up. so the thing was working very well, tom said; he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. he said it showed it was done right. so he said, now for the grand bulge! so the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. tom he went down the lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was asleep, and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. this letter said: don't betray me, i wish to be your friend. there is a desprate gang of cutthroats from over in the ingean territory going to steal your runaway nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them. i am one of the gang, but have got religgion and wish to quit it and lead a honest life again, and will betray the helish design. they will sneak down from northards, along the fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger's cabin to get him. i am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if i see any danger; but stead of that, i will ba like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leasure. don't do anything but just the way i am telling you, if you do they will suspicion something and raise whoopjamboreehoo. i do not wish any reward but to know i have done the right thing. unknown friend chapter forty we was feeling pretty good, after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river a fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her back was turned, we slid for the cellar cubboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half-past eleven, and tom put on aunt sally's dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says: "where's the butter?" "i laid out a hunk of it," i says, "on a piece of corn-pone." "well, you left it laid out, thenit ain't here." "we can get along without it," i says. "we can get along with it, too," he says; "just you slide down cellar and fetch it. and then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. i'll go and stuff the straw into jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to ba like a sheep and shove soon as you get there." so out he went, and down cellar went i. the hunk of butter, big as a person's fist, was where i had left it, so i took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs, very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes aunt sally with a candle, and i clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says: "you been down cellar?" "yes'm." "what you been doing down there?" "noth'n." "noth'n!" "no'm." "well, then, what possessed you to go down there, this time of night?" "i don't know'm." "you don't know? don't answer me that way, tom, i want to know what you been doing down there." "i hain't been doing a single thing, aunt sally, i hope to gracious if i have." i reckoned she'd let me go, now, and as a generl thing she would; but i spose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she says, very decided: "you just march into that setting-room and stay there till i come. you been up to something you no business to, and i lay i'll find out what it is before i'm done with you." so she went away as i opened the door and walked into the setting-room. my, but there was a crowd there! fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a gun. i was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down. they was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't; but i knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with their buttons. i warn't easy myself, but i didn't take my hat off, all the same. i did wish aunt sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell tom how we'd overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet's nest we'd got ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around, straight off, and clear out with jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us. at last she come, and begun to ask me questions, but i couldn't answer them straight, i didn't know which end of me was up; because these men was in such a fidget now, that some was wanting to start right now and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep-signal; and here was aunty pegging away at the questions, and me a shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks i was that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of them says, "i'm for going and getting in the cabin first, and right now, and catching them when they come," i most dropped; and a streak of butter come a trickling down my forehead, and aunt sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says: "for the land's sake what is the matter with the child!he's got the brain fever as shore as you're born, and they're oozing out!" and everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread, and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and says: "oh, what a turn you give me! and how glad and grateful i am it ain't no worse; for luck's against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when i see that truck i thought we'd lost you, for i knowed by the color and all, it was just like your brains would be ifdear, dear, whyd'nt you tell me that was what you'd been down there for, i wouldn't a cared. now cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of you till morning!" i was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. i couldn't hardly get my words out, i was so anxious; but i told tom as quick as i could, we must jump for it, now, and not a minute to losethe house full of men, yonder, with guns! his eyes just blazed; and he says: "no!is that so? ain't it bully! why, huck, if it was to do over again, i bet i could fetch two hundred! if we could put it off till-" "hurry! hurry!" i says. "where's jim?" "right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. he's dressed, and everything's ready. now we'll slide out and give the sheep-signal." but then we heard the tramp of men, coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the padlock; and heard a man say: "i told you we'd be too soon; they haven't comethe door is locked. here, i'll lock some of you into the cabin and you lay for in the dark and kill when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and listen if you can hear 'em coming." so in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. but we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but softjim first, me next, and tom last, which was according to tom's orders. now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. so we crept to the door, and tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us jim must glide out first, and him last. so he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a scraping around, out there, all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence, in injun file, and got to it, all right, and me and jim over it; but tom's britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he heard the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started, somebody sings out: "who's that? answer, or i'll shoot!" but we didn't answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. then there was a rush, and a bang, bang, bang! and the bullets fairly whizzed around us! we heard them sing out: "here they are! they've broke for the river! after 'em, boys! and turn loose the dogs!" so here they come, full tilt. we could hear them, because they wore boots, and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots, and didn't yell. we was in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close onto us, we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. they'd had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making pow-wow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn't nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up steam again and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more noise than we was obleeged to. then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. and when we stepped onto the raft, i says: "now, old jim, you're a free man again, and i bet you won't ever be a slave no more." "en a mighty good job it wuz, too, huck. it 'uz planned beautiful, en it 'uz done beautiful; en dey ain't nobody kin git up a plan dat's mo' mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz." we was all as glad as we could be, but tom was the gladdest of all, because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg. when me and jim heard that, we didn't feel so brash as what we did before. it was hurting him considerble, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him, but he says: "gimme the rags, i can do it myself. don't stop, now; don't fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! boys, we done it elegant!'deed we did. i wish we'd a had the handling of louis xvi, there wouldn't a been no 'son of saint louis, ascend to heaven!' wrote down in his biography: no, sir, we'd a whooped him over the border-that's what we'd a done with himand done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. man the sweepsman the sweeps!" but me and jim was consultingand thinking. and after we'd thought a minute, i says: "say it, jim." so he says: "well, den, dis is de way it look to me, huck. ef it wuz him dat 'uz bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'go on en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one? is dat like mars tom sawyer? would he say dat? you bet he wouldn't! well, den, is jim gwyne to say it? no, sahi doan' budge a step out'n dis place, 'dout a doctor; not if it's forty year!" i knowed he was white inside, and i reckoned he'd say what he did sayso it was all right, now, and i told tom i was agoing for a doctor. he raised considerble row about it, but me and jim stuck to it and wouldn't budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but we wouldn't let him. then he give us a piece of his mindbut it didn't do no good. so when he see me getting the canoe ready, he says: "well, then, if you're bound to go, i'll tell you the way to do, when you get to the village. shut the door, and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywheres, in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. it's the way they all do." so i said i would, and left, and jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor coming, till he was gone again. chapter forty-one the doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man, when i got him up. i told him me and my brother was over on spanish island hunting, yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this evening, and surprise the folks. "who is your folks?" he says. "the phelpses, down yonder." "oh," he says. and after a minute, he says: "how'd you say he got shot?" "he had a dream," i says, "and it shot him." "singular dream," he says. so he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started. but when he see the canoe, he didn't like the look of hersaid she was big enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. i says: "oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us, easy enough." "what three?" "why me and sid, andandthe guns; that's what i mean." "oh," he says. but he put his foot on the gunnel, and rocked her; and shook his head, and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. but they was all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait till he come back, or i could hunt around further, or maybe i better go down home and get them ready for the surprise, if i wanted to. but i said i didn't; so i told him just how to find the raft, and then he started. i struck an idea, pretty soon. i says to myself, spos'n he can't fix that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is? spos'n it takes him three or four days? what are we going to do?lay around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? no, sir, i know what i'll do. i'll wait, and when he comes back, if he says he's got to go any more, i'll get down there, too, if i swim; and we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and shove out down the river; and when tom's done with him, we'll give him what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him get shore. so then i crept into a lumber pile to get some sleep; and next time i waked up the sun was away up over my head! i shot out and went for the doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night, some time or other, and warn't back yet. well, thinks i, that looks powerful bad for tom, and i'll dig out for the island, right off. so away i shoved, and turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into uncle silas's stomach! he says: "why, tom! where you been, all this time, you rascal?" "i hain't been nowheres," i says, "only just hunting for the runaway niggerme and sid." "why, where ever did you go?" he says. "your aunt's been mighty uneasy." "she needn't," i says, "because we was all right. we followed the men and the dogs, but they out-run us, and we lost them; but we thought we heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them, and crossed over but couldn't find nothing of them; so we cruised along up-shore till we got kind of tired and beat out; and tied up the canoe and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago, then we paddled over here to hear the news, and sid's at the post-office to see what he can hear, and i'm a branching out to get something to eat for us, and then we're going home." so then we went to the post-office to get "sid"; but just as i suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of the office, and we waited a while longer but sid didn't come; so the old man said come along, let sid foot it home, or canoe-it, when he got done fooling aroundbut we would ride. i couldn't get him to let me stay and wait for sid; and he said there warn't no use in it, and i must come along, and let aunt sally see we was all right. when we got home, aunt sally was that glad to see me she laughed and cried both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern that don't amount to shucks, and said she'd serve sid the same when he come. and the place was plumb full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner; and such another clack a body never heard. old mrs. hotchkiss was the worst; her tongue was agoing all the time. she says: "well, sister phelps, i've ransacked that-air cabin over an' i b'lieve the nigger was crazy. i says so to sister damrelldidn't i, sister damrells'i, he's crazy, s'ithem's the very words i said. you all hearn me: he's crazy, s'i; everything shows it, s'i. look at that-air grindstone, s'i; want to tell me't any cretur 'ts in his right mind's agoin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone, s'i? here sich'n sich a person busted his heart; 'n' here so 'n' so pegged along for thirty-seven year, 'n' all thatnatcherl son o' louis somebody, 'n' sich everlast'n rubbage. he's plumb crazy, s'i; it's what i says in the fust place, it's what i says in the middle, 'n' it's what i says last 'n' all the timethe nigger's crazycrazy's nebokoodneezer, s'i." "an' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, sister hotchkiss," says old mrs. damrell, "what in the name o' goodness could he ever want of-" "the very words i was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to sister utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself. sh-she, look at that-air rag ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'i, yes, look at it, s'iwhat could he a wanted of it, s'i. sh-she, sister hotchkiss, sh-she-" "but how in the nation'd they ever git that grindstone in there, anyway? 'n' who dug that-air hole? 'n' who-" "my very words, brer penrod! i was a-sayin'pass that air sasser o' m'lasses, won't ye?i was a-sayin' to sister dunlap, jist this minute, how did they git that grindstone in there, s'i. without help, mind you'thout help! thar's wher' 'tis. don't tell me, s'i; there wuz help, s'i; 'n' ther' wuz a plenty help, too, s'i; ther's ben a dozen a-helpin' that nigger, 'n' i lay i'd skin every last nigger on this place, but i'd find out who done it, s'i; 'n' moreover, s'i-" "a dozen says you!forty couldn't a done everything that's been done. look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've been made; look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for six men; look at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look at-" "you may well say it, brer hightower! it's jist as i was a-sayin' to brer phelps, his own self. s'e, what do you think of it, sister hotchkiss, s'e? think o' what, brer phelps, s'i? think o' that bed-leg sawed off that a way, s'e? think of it, s'i? i lay it never sawed itself off, s'isomebody sawed it, s'i; that's my opinion, take it or leave it, it mayn't be no'count, s'i, but sich as 't is, it's my opinion, s'i, 'n' if anybody k'n start a better one, s'i, let him do it, s'i, that's all. i says to sister dunlap, s'i-" "why, dog my cats, they must a ben a house-full o' niggers in there every night for four weeks, to a done all that work, sister phelps. look at that shirtevery last inch of it kivered over with secret africa writ'n done with blood! must a ben a raft uv 'm at it right along, all the time, amost. why, i'd give two dollars to have it read to me; 'n' as for the niggers that wrote it, i 'low i'd take 'n' lash 'm t'll-" "people to help him, brother marples! well, i reckon you'd think so, if you'd a been in this house for a while back. why, they've stole everything they could lay their hands onand we a watching, all the time, mind you. they stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of ther' ain't no telling how many times they didn't steal that; and flour, and candles, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and most a thousand things that i disremember, now, and my new calico dress; and me, and silas, and my sid and tom on the constant watch day and night, as i was a telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hair, nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under our noses, and fools us, and not only fools us but the injun territory robbers too, and actuly gets away with that nigger, safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very time! i tell you, it just bangs anything i ever heard of. why, sperits couldn't a done better, and been no smarter. and i reckon they must a been speritsbecause, you know our dogs, and ther' ain't no better; well, them dogs never even got on the track of 'm once! you explain that to me, if you can!any of you!" "well, it does beat-" "laws alive, i never-" "so help me, i wouldn't a be-" "house thieves as well as-" "goodnessgracioussakes, i'd a ben afeard to live in sich a-" "'fraid to live!why, i was that scared i dasn't hardly go to bed, or get up, or lay down, or set down, sister ridgeway. why, they'd steal the verywhy, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster i was in by the time midnight come, last night. i hope to gracious if i warn't afraid they'd steal some o' the family! i was just to that pass, i didn't have no reasoning faculties no more. it looks foolish enough, now, in the day-time; but i says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way up stairs in that lonesome room, and i declare to goodness i was that uneasy 't i crep' up there and locked 'em in! i did. and anybody would. because, you know, when you get scared, that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse, all the time, and your wits get to addling, and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by-and-by you think to yourself, spos'n i was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't locked, and you-" she stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on mei got up and took a walk. says i to myself, i can explain better how we come to not be in that room this morning, if i go out to one side and study over it a little. so i done it. but i dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me. and when it was late in the day, the people all went, and then i come in and told her the noise and shooting waked up me and "sid," and the door was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try that no more. and then i went on and told her all what i told uncle silas before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot, as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done. so then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of brown study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says: "why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and sid not come yet! what has become of that boy?" i see my chance; so i skips up and says: "i'll run right up to town and get him," i says. "no you won't," she says. "you'll stay right wher'you are; one's enough to be lost at a time. if he ain't here to supper, your uncle'll go." well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went. he come back about ten, a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across tom's track. aunt sally was a good deal uneasy; but uncle silas he said there warn't no occasion to beboys will be boys, he said, and you'll see this one turn up in the morning, all sound and right. so she had to be satisfied. but she said she'd set up for him a while, anyway, and keep a light burning, so he could see it. and then when i went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good i felt mean, and like i couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy sid was, and didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me every now and then, if i reckoned he could a got lost, or hurt, or maybe drownded, and might be laying at this minute, somewheres, suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down, silent, and i would tell her that sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure; and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in so much trouble. and when she was going away, she looked down in my eyes, so steady and gentle, and says: "the door ain't going to be locked, tom; and there's the window and the rod; but you'll be good, won't you? and you won't go? for my sake." laws knows i wanted to go, bad enough, to see about tom, and was all intending to go; but after that, i wouldn't a went, not for kingdoms. but she was on my mind, and tom was on my mind; so i slept very restless. and twice i went down the rod, away in the night, and slipped around front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window with her eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and i wished i could do something for her, but i couldn't, only to swear that i wouldn't never do nothing to grieve her any more. and the third time, i waked up at dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep. chapter forty-two the old man was up town again, before breakfast, but couldn't get no track of tom; and both of them set at the table, thinking, and not saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything. and by-and-by the old man says: "did i give you the letter?" "what letter?" "the one i got yesterday out of the post-office." "no, you didn't give me no letter." "well, i must a forgot it." so he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. she says: "why, it's from st. petersburg-it's from sis." i allowed another walk would do me good; but i couldn't stir. but before she could break it open, she dropped it and runfor she see something. and so did i. it was tom sawyer on a mattress; and that old doctor; and jim, in her calico dress, with his hands tied behind him; and a lot of people. i hid the letter behind the first thing that come handy, and rushed. she flung herself at tom, crying, and says: "oh, he's dead, he's dead, i know he's dead!" and tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her hands, and says: "he's alive, thank god! and that's enough!" and she snatched a kiss of him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way. i followed the men to see what they was going to do with jim; and the old doctor and uncle silas followed after tom into the house. the men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang jim, for an example to all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away, like jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family scared most to death for days and nights. but the others said, don't do it, it wouldn't answer at all, he ain't our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. so that cooled them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that hain't done just right, is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of him. they cussed jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two, side the head, once in a while, but jim never said nothing, and he never let on to know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-leg, this time, but to a big staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to eat, after this, till his owner come or he was sold at auction, because he didn't come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every night, and a bull-dog tied to the door in the day-time; and about this time they was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl good-bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look, and says: "don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't a bad nigger. when i got to where i found the boy, i see i couldn't cut the bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for me to leave, to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let me come anigh him, any more, and said if i chalked his raft he'd kill me, and no end of wild foolishness like that, and i see i couldn't do anything at all with him; so i says, i got to have help, somehow; and the minute i says it, out crawls this nigger from somewheres, and says he'll help, and he done it, too, and done it very well. of course i judged he must be a runaway nigger, and there i was! and there i had to stick, right straight along all the rest of the day, and all night. it was a fix, i tell you! i had a couple of patients with the chills, and of course, i'd of liked to run up to town and see them, but i dasn't, because the nigger might get away, and then i'd be to blame; and yet never a skiff come close enough for me to hail. so there i had to stick, plumb till daylight this morning; and i never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuller, and yet he was resking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, and i see plain enough he'd been worked main hard, lately. i liked the nigger for that; i tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollarsand kind treatment, too. i had everything i needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would a done at homebetter, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there i was, with both of 'm on my hands; and there i had to stick, till about dawn this morning; then some men in a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it, the nigger was setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees, sound asleep; so i motioned them in, quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. and the boy being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the nigger never made the least row nor said a word, from the start. he ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen; that's what i think about him." somebody says: "well, it sounds very good, doctor, i'm obleeged to say." then the others softened up a little, too, and i was mighty thankful to that old doctor for doing jim that good turn; and i was glad it was according to my judgment of him, too; because i thought he had a good heart in him and was a good man, the first time i see him. then they all agreed that jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it, and reward. so every one of them promised, right out and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more. then they come out and locked him up. i hoped they was going to say he could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water, but they didn't think of it, and i reckoned it warn't best for me to mix in, but i judged i'd get the doctor's yarn to aunt sally, somehow or other, as soon as i'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me. explanations, i mean, of how i forgot to mention about sid being shot, when i was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling around hunting the runaway nigger. but i had plenty time. aunt sally she stuck to the sickroom all day and all night; and every time i see uncle silas mooning around, i dodged him. next morning i heard tom was a good deal better, and they said aunt sally was gone to get a nap. so i slips to the sick-room, and if i found him awake i reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. but he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he come. so i set down and laid for him to wake. in about a half an hour, aunt sally comes gliding in, and there i was, up a stump again! she motioned me to be still, and set down by me, and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all the symptoms was first rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind. so we set there watching, and by-and-by he stirs a bit, and opened his eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says: "hello, why i'm at home! how's that? where's the raft?" "it's all right," i says. "and jim?" "the same," i says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. but he never noticed, but says: "good! splendid! now we're all right and safe! did you tell aunty?" i was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says: "about what, sid?" "why, about the way the whole thing was done." "what whole thing?" "why, the whole thing. there ain't but one; how we set the runaway nigger freeme and tom." "good land! set the runwhat is the child talking about! dear, dear, out of his head again!" "no, i ain't out of my head; i know all what i'm talking about. we did set him freeme and tom. we laid out to do it, and we done it. and we done it elegant, too." he'd got a start, and she never checked him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and i see it warn't no use for me to put in. "why, aunty, it cost us a power of workweeks of ithours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep. and we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and you can't think half the fun it was. and we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters from the robbers, and get up and down the lightningrod, and dig the hole into the cabin, and make the rope-ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie, and send in spoons and things to work with, in your apron pocket-" "mercy sakes!" -and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for jim; and then you kept tom here so long with the butter in his hat that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive at us, and i got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made our raft, and was all safe, and jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and wasn't it bully, aunty!" "well, i never heard the likes of it in all my born days! so it was you, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. i've as good a notion as ever i had in my life, to take it out o' you this very minute. to think, here i've been, night after night, ayou just get well once, you young scamp, and i lay i'll tan the old harry out o' both o' ye!" but tom, he was so proud and joyful, he just couldn't hold in, and his tongue just went itshe a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat-convention; and she says: "well, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it now, for mind i tell you if i catch you meddling with him again-" "meddling with who?" tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised. "with who? why, the runaway nigger, of course. who'd you reckon?" tom looks at me very grave, and says: "tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? hasn't he got away?" "him?" says aunt sally; "the runaway nigger? 'deed he hasn't. they've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!" tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me: "they hain't no right to shut him up! shove!and don't you lose a minute. turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth!" "what does the child mean?" "i mean every word i say, aunt sally, and if somebody don't go, i'll go. i've knowed him all his life, and so has tom, there. old miss watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will." "then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?" "well that is a question, i must say; and just like women! why, i wanted the adventure of it; and i'd a waded neckdeep in blood togoodness alive, aunt polly!" if she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half-full of pie, i wish i may never! aunt sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and i found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. and i peeped out, and in a little while tom's aunt polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at tom over her spectacleskind of grinding him into the earth, you know. and then she says: "yes, you better turn y'r head awayi would if i was you, tom." "oh, deary me!" says aunt sally; "is he changed so? why, that ain't tom, it's sid; tom'stom'swhy, where is tom? he was here a minute ago." "you mean where's huck finnthat's what you mean! i reckon i hain't raised such a scamp as my tom all these years, not to know him when i see him. that would be a pretty howdy-do. come out from under that bed, huck finn." so i done it. but not feeling brash. aunt sally she was one of the mixed-upest looking persons i ever see; except one, and that was uncle silas, when he come in, and they told it all to him. it kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting sermon that night that give him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't a understood it. so tom's aunt polly, she told all about who i was, and what; and i had to up and trill how i was in such a tight place when mrs. phelps took me for tom sawyershe chipped in and says, "oh, go on and call me aunt sally, i'm used to it, now, and 'taint no need to change"that when aunt sally took me for tom sawyer, i had to stand itthere warn't no other way, and i knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it and be perfectly satisfied. and so it turned out, and he let on to be sid, and made things as soft as he could for me. and his aunt polly she said tom was right about old miss watson setting jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, tom sawyer had gone and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and i couldn't ever understand, before, until that minute and that talk, how he could help a body set a nigger free, with his bringing-up. well, aunt polly she said that when aunt sally wrote to her that tom and sid had come, all right and safe, she says to herself: "look at that, now! i might have expected it, letting him go off that way without anybody to watch him. so now i got to go and trapse all the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's up to, this time; as long as i couldn't seem to get any answer out of you about it." "why, i never heard nothing from you," says aunt sally. "well, i wonder! why, i wrote to you twice, to ask you what you could mean by sid being here." "well, i never got 'em, sis." aunt polly, she turns around slow and severe, and says: "you, tom!" "wellwhat?" he says, kind of pettish. "don't you what me, you impudent thinghand out them letters." "what letters?" "them letters. i be bound, if i have to take aholt of you i'll-" "they're in the trunk. there, now. and they're just the same as they was when i got them out of the office. i hain't looked into them, i hain't touched them. but i knowed they'd make trouble, and i thought if you warn't in no hurry, i'd-" "well, you do need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. and i wrote another one to tell you i was coming; and i spose he-" "no, it come yesterday; i hain't read it yet, but it's all right, i've got that one." i wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but i reckoned maybe it was just as safe to not to. so i never said nothing. chapter the last the first time i catched tom, private, i asked him what was his idea, time of the evasion?what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before? and he said, what he had planned in his head, from the start, if we got jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river, on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we. but i reckened it was about as well the way it was. we had jim out of the chains in no time, and when aunt polly and uncle silas and aunt sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. and we had him up to the sick-room; and had a high talk; and tom give jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and jim was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says: "dah, now, huck, what i tell you?what i tell you up dah on jackson islan'? i tole you i got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en i tole you i ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich agin; en it's come true; en heah she is! dab, now! doan' talk to mesigns is signs, mine i tell you; en i knowed jis' 's well 'at i 'uz gwineter be rich agin as i's a stannin heah dis minute!" and then tom he talked along, and talked along, and says, le's all three slide out of here, one of these nights, and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the injuns, over in the territory, for a couple of weeks or two; and i says, all right, that suits me, but i ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and i reckon i couldn't get none from home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away from judge thatcher and drunk it up. "no, he hain't," tom says; "it's all there, yetsix thousand dollars and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. hadn't when i come away, anyhow." jim says, kind of solemn: "he ain't a comin' back no mo', huck." i says: "why, jim?" "nemmine why, huckbut he ain't comin' back no mo'." but i kept at him; so at last he says: "doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a man in dah, kivered up, en i went in en unkivered him and didn't let you come in? well, den, you k'n git yo' money when you wants it; kase dat wuz him." tom's most well, now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and i am rotten glad of it, because if i'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book i wouldn't a tackled it and ain't agoing to no more. but i reckon i got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because aunt sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and i can't stand it. i been there before. the end. yours truly, huck finn . the internet wiretap first electronic edition of a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court by mark twain (samuel l. clemens) copyright, 1889 and 1899, by samuel l. clemens this text is in the public domain. from the writings of mark twain volume xvi harper & brothers publishers, new york electronic edition by <dell@wiretap.spies.com> released to the public june 1993 preface the ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are historical, and the episodes which are used to illustrate them are also historical. it is not pretended that these laws and customs existed in england in the sixth century; no, it is only pretended that inasmuch as they existed in the english and other civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in practice in that day also. one is quite justified in inferring that whatever one of these laws or customs was lacking in that remote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one. the question as to whether there is such a thing as divine right of kings is not settled in this book. it was found too difficult. that the executive head of a nation should be a person of lofty character and extraordinary ability, was manifest and indisputable; that none but the deity could select that head unerringly, was also manifest and indisputable; that the deity ought to make that selection, then, was likewise manifest and indisputable; consequently, that he does make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. i mean, until the author of this book encountered the pompadour, and lady castlemaine, and some other executive heads of that kind; these were found so difficult to work into the scheme, that it was judged better to take the other tack in this book (which must be issued this fall), and then go into training and settle the question in another book. it is, of course, a thing which ought to be settled, and i am not going to have anything particular to do next winter anyway. mark twain. a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court a word of explanation it was in warwick castle that i came across the curious stranger whom i am going to talk about. he attracted me by three things: his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company -for he did all the talking. we fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown through, and he at once began to say things which interested me. as he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that i seemed to move among the specters and shadows and dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it! exactly as i would speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies, or my most familiar neighbors, he spoke of sir bedivere, sir bors de ganis, sir launcelot of the lake, sir galahad, and all the other great names of the table round -and how old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry and musty and ancient he came to look as he went on! presently he turned to me and said, just as one might speak of the weather, or any other common matter -"you know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition of epochs -and bodies?" i said i had not heard of it. he was so little interested -just as when people speak of the weather -that he did not notice whether i made him any answer or not. there was half a moment of silence, immediately interrupted by the droning voice of the salaried cicerone: "ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time of king arthur and the round table; said to have belonged to the knight sir sagramor le desirous; observe the round hole through the chain-mail in the left breast; can't be accounted for; supposed to have been done with a bullet since invention of firearms -perhaps maliciously by cromwell's soldiers." my acquaintance smiled -not a modern smile, but one that must have gone out of general use many, many centuries ago -and muttered apparently to himself: "wit ye well, i saw it done." then, after a pause, added: "i did it myself." by the time i had recovered from the electric surprise of this remark, he was gone. all that evening i sat by my fire at the warwick arms, steeped in a dream of the olden time, while the rain beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about the eaves and corners. from time to time i dipped into old sir thomas malory's enchanting book, and fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed in the fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again. midnight being come at length, i read another tale, for a nightcap -this which here follows, to wit: how sir launcelot slew two giants, and made a castle free anon withal came there upon him two great giants, well armed, all save the heads, with two horrible clubs in their hands. sir launcelot put his shield afore him, and put the stroke away of the one giant, and with his sword he clave his head asunder. when his fellow saw that, he ran away as he were wood [* demented], for fear of the horrible strokes, and sir launcelot after him with all his might, and smote him on the shoulder, and clave him to the middle. then sir launcelot went into the hall, and there came afore him three score ladies and damsels, and all kneeled unto him, and thanked god and him of their deliverance. for, sir, said they, the most part of us have been here this seven year their prisoners, and we have worked all manner of silk works for our meat, and we are all great gentle-women born, and blessed be the time, knight, that ever thou wert born;for thou hast done the most worship that ever did knight in the world, that will we bear record, and we all pray you to tell us your name, that we may tell our friends who delivered us out of prison. fair damsels, he said, my name is sir launcelot du lake. and so he departed from them and betaught them unto god. and then he mounted upon his horse, and rode into many strange and wild countries, and through many waters and valleys, and evil was he lodged. and at the last by fortune him happened against a night to come to a fair courtilage, and therein he found an old gentle-woman that lodged him with a good-will, and there he had good cheer for him and his horse. and when time was, his host brought him into a fair garret over the gate to his bed. there sir launcelot unarmed him, and set his harness by him, and went to bed, and anon he fell on sleep. so, soon after there came one on horseback, and knocked at the gate in great haste. and when sir launcelot heard this he rose up, and looked out at the window, and saw by the moonlight three knights come riding after that one man, and all three lashed on him at once with swords, and that one knight turned on them knightly again and defended him. truly, said sir launcelot, yonder one knight shall i help, for it were shame for me to see three knights on one, and if he be slain i am partner of his death. and therewith he took his harness and went out at a window by a sheet down to the four knights, and then sir launcelot said on high, turn you knights unto me, and leave your fighting with that knight. and then they all three left sir kay, and turned unto sir launcelot, and there began great battle, for they alight all three, and strake many strokes at sir launcelot, and assailed him on every side. then sir kay dressed him for to have holpen sir launcelot. nay, sir, said he, i will none of your help, therefore as ye will have my help let me alone with them. sir kay for the pleasure of the knight suffered him for to do his will, and so stood aside. and then anon within six strokes sir launcelot had stricken them to the earth. and then they all three cried, sir knight, we yield us unto you as man of might matchless. as to that, said sir launcelot, i will not take your yielding unto me, but so that ye yield you unto sir kay the seneschal, on that covenant i will save your lives and else not. fair knight, said they, that were we loath to do; for as for sir kay we chased him hither, and had overcome him had ye not been; therefore, to yield us unto him it were no reason. well, as to that, said sir launcelot, advise you well, for ye may choose whether ye will die or live, for an ye be yielden, it shall be unto sir kay. fair knight, then they said, in saving our lives we will do as thou commandest us. then shall ye, said sir launcelot, on whitsunday next coming go unto the court of king arthur, and there shall ye yield you unto queen guenever, and put you all three in her grace and mercy, and say that sir kay sent you thither to be her prisoners. on the morn sir launcelot arose early, and left sir kay sleeping; and sir launcelot took sir kay's armor and his shield and armed him, and so he went to the stable and took his horse, and took his leave of his host, and so he departed. then soon after arose sir kay and missed sir launcelot; and then he espied that he had his armor and his horse. now by my faith i know well that he will grieve some of the court of king arthur; for on him knights will be bold, and deem that it is i, and that will beguile them; and because of his armor and shield i am sure i shall ride in peace. and then soon after departed sir kay, and thanked his host. as i laid the book down there was a knock at the door, and my stranger came in. i gave him a pipe and a chair, and made him welcome. i also comforted him with a hot scotch whisky; gave him another one; then still another -hoping always for his story. after a fourth persuader, he drifted into it himself, in a quite simple and natural way: the stranger's history i am an american. i was born and reared in hartford, in the state of connecticut -anyway, just over the river, in the country. so i am a yankee of the yankees -and practical; yes, and nearly barren of sentiment, i suppose -or poetry, in other words. my father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and i was both, along at first. then i went over to the great arms factory and learned my real trade; learned all there was to it; learned to make everything: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of labor-saving machinery. why, i could make anything a body wanted -anything in the world, it didn't make any difference what; and if there wasn't any quick new-fangled way to make a thing, i could invent one -and do it as easy as rolling off a log. i became head superintendent; had a couple of thousand men under me. well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight -that goes without saying. with a couple of thousand rough men under one, one has plenty of that sort of amusement. i had, anyway. at last i met my match, and i got my dose. it was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call hercules. he laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack, and seemed to spring every joint in my skull and made it overlap its neighbor. then the world went out in darkness, and i didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything at all -at least for a while. when i came to again, i was sitting under an oak tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all to myself -nearly. not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down at me -a fellow fresh out of a picture-book. he was in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a prodigious spear; and his horse had armor on, too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous red and green silk trappings that hung down all around him like a bedquilt, nearly to the ground. "fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow. "will i which?" "will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for --" "what are you giving me?" i said. "get along back to your circus, or i'll report you." now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse's neck and his long spear pointed straight ahead. i saw he meant business, so i was up the tree when he arrived. he allowed that i was his property, the captive of his spear. there was argument on his side -and the bulk of the advantage -so i judged it best to humor him. we fixed up an agreement whereby i was to go with him and he was not to hurt me. i came down, and we started away, i walking by the side of his horse. we marched comfortably along, through glades and over brooks which i could not remember to have seen before -which puzzled me and made me wonder -and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of a circus. so i gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he was from an asylum. but we never came to an asylum -so i was up a stump, as you may say. i asked him how far we were from hartford. he said he had never heard of the place; which i took to be a lie, but allowed it to go at that. at the end of an hour we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the first i had ever seen out of a picture. "bridgeport?" said i, pointing. "camelot," said he. my stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness. he caught himself nodding, now, and smiled one of those pathetic, obsolete smiles of his, and said: "i find i can't go on; but come with me, i've got it all written out, and you can read it if you like." in his chamber, he said: "first, i kept a journal; then by and by, after years, i took the journal and turned it into a book. how long ago that was!" he handed me his manuscript, and pointed out the place where i should begin: "begin here -i've already told you what goes before." he was steeped in drowsiness by this time. as i went out at his door i heard him murmur sleepily: "give you good den, fair sir." i sat down by my fire and examined my treasure. the first part of it -the great bulk of it -was parchment, and yellow with age. i scanned a leaf particularly and saw that it was a palimpsest. under the old dim writing of the yankee historian appeared traces of a penmanship which was older and dimmer still -latin words and sentences: fragments from old monkish legends, evidently. i turned to the place indicated by my stranger and began to read -as follows: the tale of the lost land. chapter i. camelot "camelot -camelot," said i to myself. "i don't seem to remember hearing of it before. name of the asylum, likely." it was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as sunday. the air was full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on. the road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in the grass -wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one's hand. presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, came along. around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. it was as sweet an outfit as ever i saw, what there was of it. she walked indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her innocent face. the circus man paid no attention to her; didn't even seem to see her. and she -she was no more startled at his fantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day of her life. she was going by as indifferently as she might have gone by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, then there was a change! up went her hands, and she was turned to stone; her mouth dropped open, her eyes stared wide and timorously, she was the picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear. and there she stood gazing, in a sort of stupefied fascination, till we turned a corner of the wood and were lost to her view. that she should be startled at me instead of at the other man, was too many for me; i couldn't make head or tail of it . and that she should seem to consider me a spectacle, and totally overlook her own merits in that respect, was another puzzling thing, and a display of magnanimity, too, that was surprising in one so young. there was food for thought here. i moved along as one in a dream. as we approached the town, signs of life began to appear. at intervals we passed a wretched cabin, with a thatched roof, and about it small fields and garden patches in an indifferent state of cultivation. there were people, too; brawny men, with long, coarse, uncombed hair that hung down over their faces and made them look like animals. they and the women, as a rule, wore a coarse tow-linen robe that came well below the knee, and a rude sort of sandal, and many wore an iron collar. the small boys and girls were always naked; but nobody seemed to know it. all of these people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts and fetched out their families to gape at me; but nobody ever noticed that other fellow, except to make him humble salutation and get no response for their pains. in the town were some substantial windowless houses of stone scattered among a wilderness of thatched cabins; the streets were mere crooked alleys, and unpaved; troops of dogs and nude children played in the sun and made life and noise; hogs roamed and rooted contentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking wallow in the middle of the main thoroughfare and suckled her family. presently there was a distant blare of military music; it came nearer, still nearer, and soon a noble cavalcade wound into view, glorious with plumed helmets and flashing mail and flaunting banners and rich doublets and horse-cloths and gilded spearheads; and through the muck and swine, and naked brats, and joyous dogs, and shabby huts, it took its gallant way, and in its wake we followed. followed through one winding alley and then another, -and climbing, always climbing -till at last we gained the breezy height where the huge castle stood. there was an exchange of bugle blasts; then a parley from the walls, where men-at-arms, in hauberk and morion, marched back and forth with halberd at shoulder under flapping banners with the rude figure of a dragon displayed upon them; and then the great gates were flung open, the drawbridge was lowered, and the head of the cavalcade swept forward under the frowning arches; and we, following, soon found ourselves in a great paved court, with towers and turrets stretching up into the blue air on all the four sides; and all about us.the dismount was going on, and much greeting and ceremony, and running to and fro, and a gay display of moving and intermingling colors, and an altogether pleasant stir and noise and confusion. chapter ii. king arthur's court the moment i got a chance i slipped aside privately and touched an ancient common looking man on the shoulder and said, in an insinuating, confidential way: "friend, do me a kindness. do you belong to the asylum, or are you just on a visit or something like that?" he looked me over stupidly, and said: "marry, fair sir, me seemeth --" "that will do," i said; "i reckon you are a patient." i moved away, cogitating, and at the same time keeping an eye out for any chance passenger in his right mind that might come along and give me some light. i judged i had found one, presently; so i drew him aside and said in his ear: "if i could see the head keeper a minute -only just a minute --" "prithee do not let me." "let you what?" "hinder me, then, if the word please thee better. then he went on to say he was an under-cook and could not stop to gossip, though he would like it another time; for it would comfort his very liver to know where i got my clothes. as he started away he pointed and said yonder was one who was idle enough for my purpose, and was seeking me besides, no doubt. this was an airy slim boy in shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked carrot, the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles; and he had long yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin cap tilted complacently over his ear. by his look, he was good-natured; by his gait, he was satisfied with himself. he was pretty enough to frame. he arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page. "go 'long," i said; "you ain't more than a paragraph." it was pretty severe, but i was nettled. however, it never phazed him; he didn't appear to know he was hurt. he began to talk and laugh, in happy, thoughtless, boyish fashion, as we walked along, and made himself old friends with me at once; asked me all sorts of questions about myself and about my clothes, but never waited for an answer -always chattered straight ahead, as if he didn't know he had asked a question and wasn't expecting any reply, until at last he happened to mention that he was born in the beginning of the year 513. it made the cold chills creep over me! i stopped and said, a little faintly: "maybe i didn't hear you just right. say it again -and say it slow. what year was it?" "513." "513! you don't look it! come, my boy, i am a stranger and friendless; be honest and honorable with me. are you in your right mind?" he said he was. "are these other people in their right minds?" he said they were. "and this isn't an asylum? i mean, it isn't a place where they cure crazy people?" he said it wasn't. "well, then," i said, "either i am a lunatic, or something just as awful has happened. now tell me, honest and true, where am i?" "in king arthur's court." i waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way home, and then said: "and according to your notions, what year is it now?" "528 -nineteenth of june." i felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered: "i shall never see my friends again -never, never again. they will not be born for more than thirteen hundred years yet." i seemed to believe the boy, i didn't know why. something in me seemed to believe him -my consciousness, as you may say; but my reason didn't. my reason straightway began to clamor; that was natural. i didn't know how to go about satisfying it, because i knew that the testimony of men wouldn't serve -my reason would say they were lunatics, and throw out their evidence. but all of a sudden i stumbled on the very thing, just by luck. i knew that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century occurred on the 21st of june, a. d. 528, o.s., and began at 3 minutes after 12 noon. i also knew that no total eclipse of the sun was due in what to me was the present year -i.e., 1879. so, if i could keep my anxiety and curiosity from eating the heart out of me for forty-eight hours, i should then find out for certain whether this boy was telling me the truth or not. wherefore, being a practical connecticut man, i now shoved this whole problem clear out of my mind till its appointed day and hour should come, in order that i might turn all my attention to the circumstances of the present moment, and be alert and ready to make the most out of them that could be made. one thing at a time, is my motto -and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only two pair and a jack. i made up my mind to two things: if it was still the nineteenth century and i was among lunatics and couldn't get away, i would presently boss that asylum or know the reason why; and if, on the other hand, it was really the sixth century, all right, i didn't want any softer thing: i would boss the whole country inside of three months; for i judged i would have the start of the best-educated man in the kingdom by a matter of thirteen hundred years and upward. i'm not a man to waste time after my mind's made up and there's work on hand; so i said to the page: "now, clarence, my boy -if that might happen to be your name -i'll get you to post me up a little if you don't mind. what is the name of that apparition that brought me here?" "my master and thine? that is the good knight and great lord sir kay the seneschal, foster brother to our liege the king." "very good; go on, tell me everything." he made a long story of it; but the part that had immediate interest for me was this: he said i was sir kay's prisoner, and that in the due course of custom i would be flung into a dungeon and left there on scant commons until my friends ransomed me -unless i chanced to rot, first. i saw that the last chance had the best show, but i didn't waste any bother about that; time was too precious. the page said, further, that dinner was about ended in the great hall by this time, and that as soon as the sociability and the heavy drinking should begin, sir kay would have me in and exhibit me before king arthur and his illustrious knights seated at the table round, and would brag about his exploit in capturing me, and would probably exaggerate the facts a little, but it wouldn't be good form for me to correct him, and not over safe, either; and when i was done being exhibited, then ho for the dungeon; but he, clarence, would find a way to come and see me every now and then, and cheer me up, and help me get word to my friends. get word to my friends! i thanked him; i couldn't do less; and about this time a lackey came to say i was wanted; so clarence led me in and took me off to one side and sat down by me. well, it was a curious kind of spectacle, and interesting. it was an immense place, and rather naked -yes, and full of loud contrasts. it was very, very lofty; so lofty that the banners depending from the arched beams and girders away up there floated in a sort of twilight; there was a stone-railed gallery at each end, high up, with musicians in the one, and women, clothed in stunning colors, in the other. the floor was of big stone flags laid in black and white squares, rather battered by age and use, and needing repair. as to ornament, there wasn't any, strictly speaking; though on the walls hung some huge tapestries which were probably taxed as works of art; battle-pieces, they were, with horses shaped like those which children cut out of paper or create in gingerbread; with men on them in scale armor whose scales are represented by round holes -so that the man's coat looks as if it had been done with a biscuit-punch. there was a fireplace big enough to camp in; and its projecting sides and hood, of carved and pillared stonework, had the look of a cathedral door. along the walls stood men-at-arms, in breastplate and morion, with halberds for their only weapon -rigid as statues; and that is what they looked like. in the middle of this groined and vaulted public square was an oaken table which they called the table round. it was as large as a circus ring; and around it sat a great company of men dressed in such various and splendid colors that it hurt one's eyes to look at them. they wore their plumed hats, right along, except that whenever one addressed himself directly to the king, he lifted his hat a trifle just as he was beginning his remark. mainly they were drinking -from entire ox horns; but a few were still munching bread or gnawing beef bones. there was about an average of two dogs to one man; and these sat in expectant attitudes till a spent bone was flung to them, and then they went for it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there ensued a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and the storm of howlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time; but that was no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger interest anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet on it, and the ladies and the musicians stretched themselves out over their balusters with the same object; and all broke into delighted ejaculations from time to time. in the end, the winning dog stretched himself out comfortably with his bone between his paws, and proceeded to growl over it, and gnaw it, and grease the floor with it, just as fifty others were already doing; and the rest of the court resumed their previous industries and entertainments. as a rule, the speech and behavior of these people were gracious and courtly; and i noticed that they were good and serious listeners when anybody was telling anything -i mean in a dog-fightless interval. and plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else's lie, and believe it, too. it was hard to associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder. i was not the only prisoner present. there were twenty or more. poor devils, many of them were maimed, hacked, carved, in a frightful way; and their hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked with black and stiffened drenchings of blood. they were suffering sharp physical pain, of course; and weariness, and hunger and thirst, no doubt; and at least none had given them the comfort of a wash, or even the poor charity of a lotion for their wounds; yet you never heard them utter a moan or a groan, or saw them show any sign of restlessness, or any disposition to complain. the thought was forced upon me: "the rascals -they have served other people so in their day; it being their own turn, now, they were not expecting any better treatment than this; so their philosophical bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellectual fortitude, reasoning; it is mere animal training; they are white indians." chapter iii. knights of the table round mainly the round table talk was monologues -narrative accounts of the adventures in which these prisoners were captured and their friends and backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor. as a general thing -as far as i could make out -these murderous adventures were not forays undertaken to avenge injuries, nor to settle old disputes or sudden fallings out; no, as a rule they were simply duels between strangers -duels between people who had never even been introduced to each other, and between whom existed no cause of offense whatever. many a time i had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by chance, and say simultaneously, "i can lick you," and go at it on the spot; but i had always imagined until now that that sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign and mark of childhood; but here were these big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. yet there was something very engaging about these great simple-hearted creatures, something attractive and lovable. there did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fish-hook with; but you didn't seem to mind that, after a little, because you soon saw that brains were not needed in a society like that, and indeed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its symmetry -perhaps rendered its existence impossible. there was a fine manliness observable in almost every face; and in some a certain loftiness and sweetness that rebuked your belittling criticisms and stilled them. a most noble benignity and purity reposed in the countenance of him they called sir galahad, and likewise in the king's also; and there was majesty and greatness in the giant frame and high bearing of sir launcelot of the lake. there was presently an incident which centered the general interest upon this sir launcelot. at a sign from a sort of master of ceremonies, six or eight of the prisoners rose and came forward in a body and knelt on the floor and lifted up their hands toward the ladies' gallery and begged the grace of a word with the queen. the most conspicuously situated lady in that massed flower-bed of feminine show and finery inclined her head by way of assent, and then the spokesman of the prisoners delivered himself and his fellows into her hands for free pardon, ransom, captivity, or death, as she in her good pleasure might elect; and this, as he said, he was doing by command of sir kay the seneschal, whose prisoners they were, he having vanquished them by his single might and prowess in sturdy conflict in the field. surprise and astonishment flashed from face to face all over the house; the queen's gratified smile faded out at the name of sir kay, and she looked disappointed; and the page whispered in my ear with an accent and manner expressive of extravagant derision -"sir kay, forsooth! oh, call me pet names, dearest, call me a marine! in twice a thousand years shall the unholy invention of man labor at odds to beget the fellow to this majestic lie!" every eye was fastened with severe inquiry upon sir kay. but he was equal to the occasion. he got up and played his hand like a major -and took every trick. he said he would state the case exactly according to the facts; he would tell the simple straightforward tale, without comment of his own; "and then," said he, "if ye find glory and honor due, ye will give it unto him who is the mightiest man of his hands that ever bare shield or strake with sword in the ranks of christian battle -even him that sitteth there!" and he pointed to sir launcelot. ah, he fetched them; it was a rattling good stroke. then he went on and told how sir launcelot, seeking adventures, some brief time gone by, killed seven giants at one sweep of his sword, and set a hundred and forty-two captive maidens free; and then went further, still seeking adventures, and found him (sir kay) fighting a desperate fight against nine foreign knights, and straightway took the battle solely into his own hands, and conquered the nine; and that night sir launcelot rose quietly, and dressed him in sir kay's armor and took sir kay's horse and gat him away into distant lands, and vanquished sixteen knights in one pitched battle and thirty-four in another; and all these and the former nine he made to swear that about whitsuntide they would ride to arthur's court and yield them to queen guenever's hands as captives of sir kay the seneschal, spoil of his knightly prowess; and now here were these half dozen, and the rest would be along as soon as they might be healed of their desperate wounds. well, it was touching to see the queen blush and smile, and look embarrassed and happy, and fling furtive glances at sir launcelot that would have got him shot in arkansas, to a dead certainty. everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of sir launcelot; and as for me, i was perfectly amazed, that one man, all by himself, should have been able to beat down and capture such battalions of practiced fighters. i said as much to clarence; but this mocking featherhead only said: "an sir kay had had time to get another skin of sour wine into him, ye had seen the accompt doubled." i looked at the boy in sorrow; and as i looked i saw the cloud of a deep despondency settle upon his countenance. i followed the direction of his eye, and saw that a very old and white-bearded man, clothed in a flowing black gown, had risen and was standing at the table upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his ancient head and surveying the company with his watery and wandering eye. the same suffering look that was in the page's face was observable in all the faces around -the look of dumb creatures who know that they must endure and make no moan. "marry, we shall have it a again," sighed the boy; "that same old weary tale that he hath told a thousand times in the same words, and that he will tell till he dieth, every time he hath gotten his barrel full and feeleth his exaggeration-mill a-working. would god i had died or i saw this day!" "who is it?" "merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition singe him for the weariness he worketh with his one tale! but that men fear him for that he hath the storms and the lightnings and all the devils that be in hell at his beck and call, they would have dug his entrails out these many years ago to get at that tale and squelch it. he telleth it always in the third person, making believe he is too modest to glorify himself -maledictions light upon him, misfortune be his dole! good friend, prithee call me for evensong." the boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pretended to go to sleep. the old man began his tale; and presently the lad was asleep in reality; so also were the dogs, and the court, the lackeys, and the files of men-at-arms. the droning voice droned on; a soft snoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep and subdued accompaniment of wind instruments. some heads were bowed upon folded arms, some lay back with open mouths that issued unconscious music; the flies buzzed and bit, unmolested, the rats swarmed softly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about, and made themselves at home everywhere; and one of them sat up like a squirrel on the king's head and held a bit of cheese in its hands and nibbled it, and dribbled the crumbs in the king's face with naive and impudent irreverence. it was a tranquil scene, and restful to the weary eye and the jaded spirit. this was the old man's tale. he said: "right so the king and merlin departed, and went until an hermit that was a good man and a great leech. so the hermit searched all his wounds and gave him good salves; so the king was there three days, and then were his wounds well amended that he might ride and go, and so departed. and as they rode, arthur said, i have no sword. no force *, said merlin, hereby is a [* footnote from m.t.: no matter.] sword that shall be yours and i may. so they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. lo, said merlin, yonder is that sword that i spake of. with that they saw a damsel going upon the lake. what damsel is that? said arthur. that is the lady of the lake, said merlin; and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth, and richly beseen, and this damsel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword. anon withal came the damsel unto arthur and saluted him, and he her again. damsel, said arthur, what sword is that, that yonder the arm holdeth above the water? i would it were mine, for i have no sword. sir arthur king, said the damsel, that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift when i ask it you, ye shall have it. by my faith, said arthur, i will give you what gift ye will ask. well, said the damsel, go ye into yonder barge and row yourself to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you, and i will ask my gift when i see my time. so sir arthur and merlin alight, and tied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the ship, and when they came to the sword that the hand held, sir arthur took it up by the handles, and took it with him. and the arm and the hand went under the water; and so they came unto the land and rode forth. and then sir arthur saw a rich pavilion. what signifieth yonder pavilion? it is the knight's pavilion, said merlin, that ye fought with last, sir pellinore, but he is out, he is not there; he hath ado with a knight of yours, that hight egglame, and they have fought together, but at the last egglame fled, and else he had been dead, and he hath chased him even to carlion, and we shall meet with him anon in the highway. that is well said, said arthur, now have i a sword, now will i wage battle with him, and be avenged on him. sir, ye shall not so, said merlin, for the knight is weary of fighting and chasing, so that ye shall have no worship to have ado with him; also, he will not lightly be matched of one knight living; and therefore it is my counsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service in short time, and his sons, after his days. also ye shall see that day in short space ye shall be right glad to give him your sister to wed. when i see him, i will do as ye advise me, said arthur. then sir arthur looked on the sword, and liked it passing well. whether liketh you better, said merlin, the sword or the scabbard? me liketh better the sword, said arthur. ye are more unwise, said merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded; therefore, keep well the scabbard always with you. so they rode into carlion, and by the way they met with sir pellinore; but merlin had done such a craft that pellinore saw not arthur, and he passed by without any words. i marvel, said arthur, that the knight would not speak. sir, said merlin, he saw you not; for and he had seen you ye had not lightly departed. so they came unto carlion, whereof his knights were passing glad. and when they heard of his adventures they marveled that he would jeopard his person so alone. but all men of worship said it was merry to be under such a chieftain that would put his person in adventure as other poor knights did." chapter iv. sir dinadan the humorist it seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully told; but then i had heard it only once, and that makes a difference; it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt. sir dinadan the humorist was the first to awake, and he soon roused the rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality. he tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose, and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of fright, with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering and crashing against everything that came in their way and making altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din and turmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed till the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs and wallowed on the floor in ecstasy. it was just like so many children. sir dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else had got through. he was so set up that he concluded to make a speech -of course a humorous speech. i think i never heard so many old played-out jokes strung together in my life. he was worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. it seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before i was born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry gripes when i was a boy thirteen hundred years afterwards. it about convinced me that there isn't any such thing as a new joke possible. everybody laughed at these antiquities -but then they always do; i had noticed that, centuries later. however, of course the scoffer didn't laugh -i mean the boy. no, he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. he said the most of sir dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest were petrified. i said "petrified" was good; as i believed, myself, that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geologic periods. but that neat idea hit the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet. however, i made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate the commonwealth up to it if i pulled through. it is no use to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet. now sir kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill with me for fuel. it was time for me to feel serious, and i did. sir kay told how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians, who all wore the same ridiculous garb that i did -a garb that was a work of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt by human hands. however he had nullified the force of the enchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights in a three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my life in order that so strange a curiosity as i was might be exhibited to the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. he spoke of me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this prodigious giant," and "this horrible sky-towering monster," and "this tusked and taloned man-devouring ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh in the naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that there was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me. he said that in trying to escape from him i sprang into the top of a tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodged me with a stone the size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most of my bones, and then swore me to appear at arthur's court for sentence. he ended by condemning me to die at noon on the 21st; and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before he named the date. i was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, i was hardly enough in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up as to how i had better be killed, the possibility of the killing being doubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes. and yet it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slopshops. still, i was sane enough to notice this detail, to wit: many of the terms used in the most matter-offact way by this great assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land would have made a comanche blush. indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the idea. however, i had read "tom jones," and "roderick random," and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in england had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk implies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our own nineteenth century -in which century, broadly speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverable in english history -or in european history, for that matter -may be said to have made their appearance. suppose sir walter, instead of putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? we should have had talk from rebecca and ivanhoe and the soft lady rowena which would embarrass a tramp in our day. however, to the unconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. king arthur's people were not aware that they were indecent and i had presence of mind enough not to mention it. they were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they were mightily relieved, at last, when old merlin swept the difficulty away for them with a common-sense hint. he asked them why they were so dull -why didn't it occur to them to strip me. in half a minute i was as naked as a pair of tongs! and dear, dear, to think of it: i was the only embarrassed person there. everybody discussed me; and did it as unconcernedly as if i had been a cabbage. queen guenever was as naively interested as the rest, and said she had never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. it was the only compliment i got -if it was a compliment. finally i was carried off in one direction, and my perilous clothes in another. i was shoved into a dark and narrow cell in a dungeon, with some scant remnants for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed, and no end of rats for company. chapter v. an inspiration i was so tired that even my fears were not able to keep me awake long. when i next came to myself, i seemed to have been asleep a very long time. my first thought was, "well, what an astonishing dream i've had! i reckon i've waked only just in time to keep from being hanged or drowned or burned or something.... i'll nap again till the whistle blows, and then i'll go down to the arms factory and have it out with hercules." but just then i heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts, a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly, clarence, stood before me! i gasped with surprise; my breath almost got away from me. "what!" i said, "you here yet? go along with the rest of the dream! scatter!" but he only laughed, in his light-hearted way, and fell to making fun of my sorry plight. "all right," i said resignedly, "let the dream go on; i'm in no hurry." "prithee what dream?" "what dream? why, the dream that i am in arthur's court -a person who never existed; and that i am talking to you, who are nothing but a work of the imagination." "oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be burned to-morrow? ho-ho -answer me that!" the shock that went through me was distressing. i now began to reason that my situation was in the last degree serious, dream or no dream; for i knew by past experience of the lifelike intensity of dreams, that to be burned to death, even in a dream, would be very far from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by any means, fair or foul, that i could contrive. so i said beseechingly: "ah, clarence, good boy, only friend i've got, -for you are my friend, aren't you? -don't fail me; help me to devise some way of escaping from this place!" "now do but hear thyself! escape? why, man, the corridors are in guard and keep of men-at-arms." "no doubt, no doubt. but how many, clarence? not many, i hope?" "full a score. one may not hope to escape." after a pause -hesitatingly: "and there be other reasons -and weightier." "other ones? what are they?" "well, they say -oh, but i daren't, indeed daren't!" "why, poor lad, what is the matter? why do you blench? why do you tremble so?" "oh, in sooth, there is need! i do want to tell you, but --" "come, come, be brave, be a man -speak out, there's a good lad!" he hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear; then he stole to the door and peeped out, listening; and finally crept close to me and put his mouth to my ear and told me his fearful news in a whisper, and with all the cowering apprehension of one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of things whose very mention might be freighted with death. "merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this dungeon, and there bides not the man in these kingdoms that would be desperate enough to essay to cross its lines with you! now god pity me, i have told it! ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy who means thee well; for an thou betray me i am lost!" i laughed the only really refreshing laugh i had had for some time; and shouted: "merlin has wrought a spell! merlin, forsooth! that cheap old humbug, that maundering old ass? bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world! why, it does seem to me that of all the childish, idiotic, chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that ev -oh, damn merlin!" but clarence had slumped to his knees before i had half finished, and he was like to go out of his mind with fright. "oh, beware! these are awful words! any moment these walls may crumble upon us if you say such things. oh call them back before it is too late!" now this strange exhibition gave me a good idea and set me to thinking. if everybody about here was so honestly and sincerely afraid of merlin's pretended magic as clarence was, certainly a superior man like me ought to be shrewd enough to contrive some way to take advantage of such a state of things. i went on thinking, and worked out a plan. then i said: "get up. pull yourself together; look me in the eye. do you know why i laughed?" "no -but for our blessed lady's sake, do it no more." "well, i'll tell you why i laughed. because i'm a magician myself." "thou!" the boy recoiled a step, and caught his breath, for the thing hit him rather sudden; but the aspect which he took on was very, very respectful. i took quick note of that; it indicated that a humbug didn't need to have a reputation in this asylum; people stood ready to take him at his word, without that. i resumed. "i've know merlin seven hundred years, and he --" "seven hun --" "don't interrupt me. he has died and come alive again thirteen times, and traveled under a new name every time: smith, jones, robinson, jackson, peters, haskins, merlin -a new alias every time he turns up. i knew him in egypt three hundred years ago; i knew him in india five hundred years ago -he is always blethering around in my way, everywhere i go; he makes me tired. he don't amount to shucks, as a magician; knows some of the old common tricks, but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never will. he is well enough for the provinces-one-night stands and that sort of thing, you know -but dear me, he oughtn't to set up for an expert -anyway not where there's a real artist. now look here, clarence, i am going to stand your friend, right along, and in return you must be mine. i want you to do me a favor. i want you to get word to the king that i am a magician myself -and the supreme grand high-yu-muckamuck and head of the tribe, at that; and i want him to be made to understand that i am just quietly arranging a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in these realms if sir kay's project is carried out and any harm comes to me. will you get that to the king for me?" the poor boy was in such a state that he could hardly answer me. it was pitiful to see a creature so terrified, so unnerved, so demoralized. but he promised everything; and on my side he made me promise over and over again that i would remain his friend, and never turn against him or cast any enchantments upon him. then he worked his way out, staying himself with his hand along the wall, like a sick person. presently this thought occurred to me: how heedless i have been! when the boy gets calm, he will wonder why a great magician like me should have begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place; he will put this and that together, and will see that i am a humbug. i worried over that heedless blunder for an hour, and called myself a great many hard names, meantime. but finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these animals didn't reason; that they never put this and that together; that all their talk showed that they didn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. i was at rest, then. but as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes on something else to worry about. it occurred to me that i had made another blunder: i had sent the boy off to alarm his betters with a threat -i intending to invent a calamity at my leisure; now the people who are the readiest and eagerest and willingest to swallow miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see you perform them; suppose i should be called on for a sample? suppose i should be asked to name my calamity? yes, i had made a blunder; i ought to have invented my calamity first. "what shall i do? what can i say, to gain a little time?" i was in trouble again; in the deepest kind of trouble:... "there's a footstep! -they're coming. if i had only just a moment to think.... good, i've got it. i'm all right." you see, it was the eclipse. it came into my mind in the nick of time, how columbus, or cortez, or one of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and i saw my chance. i could play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be any plagiarism, either, because i should get it in nearly a thousand years ahead of those parties. clarence came in, subdued, distressed, and said: "i hasted the message to our liege the king, and straightway he had me to his presence. he was frighted even to the marrow, and was minded to give order for your instant enlargement, and that you be clothed in fine raiment and lodged as befitted one so great; but then came merlin and spoiled all; for he persuaded the king that you are mad, and know not whereof you speak; and said your threat is but foolishness and idle vaporing. they disputed long, but in the end, merlin, scoffing, said, 'wherefore hath he not named his brave calamity? verily it is because he cannot.' this thrust did in a most sudden sort close the king's mouth, and he could offer naught to turn the argument; and so, reluctant, and full loth to do you the discourtesy, he yet prayeth you to consider his perplexed case, as noting how the matter stands, and name the calamity -if so be you have determined the nature of it and the time of its coming. oh, prithee delay not; to delay at such a time were to double and treble the perils that already compass thee about. oh, be thou wise -name the calamity!" i allowed silence to accumulate while i got my impressiveness together, and then said: "how long have i been shut up in this hole?" "ye were shut up when yesterday was well spent it is 9 of the morning now." "no! then i have slept well, sure enough. nine in the morning now! and yet it is the very complexion of midnight, to a shade. this is the 20th, then?" "the 20th -yes." "and i am to be burned alive to-morrow." the boy shuddered. "at what hour?" "at high noon." "now then, i will tell you what to say." i paused, and stood over that cowering lad a whole minute in awful silence; then, in a voice deep, measured, charged with doom, i began, and rose by dramatically graded stages to my colossal climax, which i delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever i did such a thing in my life: "go back and tell the king that at that hour i will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; i will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to the last man!" i had to carry the boy out myself, he sunk into such a collapse. i handed him over to the soldiers, and went back. chapter vi. the eclipse in the stillness and the darkness, realization soon began to supplement knowledge. the mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color. it is all the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done. in the stillness and the darkness, the knowledge that i was in deadly danger took to itself deeper and deeper meaning all the time; a something which was realization crept inch by inch through my veins and turned me cold. but it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done. when my rally came, it came with a bound. i said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me, and make me the greatest man in the kingdom besides; and straightway my mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solicitudes all vanished. i was as happy a man as there was in the world. i was even impatient for tomorrow to come, i so wanted to gather in that great triumph and be the center of all the nation's wonder and reverence. besides, in a business way it would be the making of me; i knew that. meantime there was one thing which had got pushed into the background of my mind. that was the halfconviction that when the nature of my proposed calamity should be reported to those superstitious people, it would have such an effect that they would want to compromise. so, by and by when i heard footsteps coming, that thought was recalled to me, and i said to myself, "as sure as anything, it's the compromise. well, if it is good, all right, i will accept; but if it isn't, i mean to stand my ground and play my hand for all it is worth." the door opened, and some men-at-arms appeared. the leader said: "the stake is ready. come!" the stake! the strength went out of me, and i almost fell down. it is hard to get one's breath at such a time, such lumps come into one's throat, and such gaspings; but as soon as i could speak, i said: "but this is a mistake -the execution is tomorrow." "order changed; been set forward a day. haste thee!" i was lost. there was no help for me. i was dazed, stupefied; i had no command over myself, i only wandered purposely about, like one out of his mind; so the soldiers took hold of me, and pulled me along with them, out of the cell and along the maze of underground corridors, and finally into the fierce glare of daylight and the upper world. as we stepped into the vast enclosed court of the castle i got a shock; for the first thing i saw was the stake, standing in the center, and near it the piled fagots and a monk. on all four sides of the court the seated multitudes rose rank above rank, forming sloping terraces that were rich with color. the king and the queen sat in their thrones, the most conspicuous figures there, of course. to note all this, occupied but a second. the next second clarence had slipped from some place of concealment and was pouring news into my ear, his eyes beaming with triumph and gladness. he said: "'tis through me the change was wrought! and main hard have i worked to do it, too. but when i revealed to them the calamity in store, and saw how mighty was the terror it did engender, then saw i also that this was the time to strike! wherefore i diligently pretended, unto this and that and the other one, that your power against the sun could not reach its full until the morrow; and so if any would save the sun and the world, you must be slain to-day, while your enchantments are but in the weaving and lack potency. odsbodikins, it was but a dull lie, a most indifferent invention, but you should have seen them seize it and swallow it, in the frenzy of their fright, as it were salvation sent from heaven; and all the while was i laughing in my sleeve the one moment, to see them so cheaply deceived, and glorifying god the next, that he was content to let the meanest of his creatures be his instrument to the saving of thy life. ah how happy has the matter sped! you will not need to do the sun a real hurt -ah, forget not that, on your soul forget it not! only make a little darkness -only the littlest little darkness, mind, and cease with that. it will be sufficient. they will see that i spoke falsely, -being ignorant, as they will fancy -and with the falling of the first shadow of that darkness you shall see them go mad with fear; and they will set you free and make you great! go to thy triumph, now! but remember -ah, good friend, i implore thee remember my supplication, and do the blessed sun no hurt. for my sake, thy true friend." i choked out some words through my grief and misery; as much as to say i would spare the sun; for which the lad's eyes paid me back with such deep and loving gratitude that i had not the heart to tell him his good-hearted foolishness had ruined me and sent me to my death. as the soldiers assisted me across the court the stillness was so profound that if i had been blindfold i should have supposed i was in a solitude instead of walled in by four thousand people. there was not a movement perceptible in those masses of humanity; they were as rigid as stone images, and as pale; and dread sat upon every countenance. this hush continued while i was being chained to the stake; it still continued while the fagots were carefully and tediously piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs, my body. then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible, and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing torch; the multitude strained forward, gazing, and parting slightly from their seats without knowing it; the monk raised his hands above my head, and his eyes toward the blue sky, and began some words in latin; in this attitude he droned on and on, a little while, and then stopped. i waited two or three moments; then looked up; he was standing there petrified. with a common impulse the multitude rose slowly up and stared into the sky. i followed their eyes, as sure as guns, there was my eclipse beginning! the life went boiling through my veins; i was a new man! the rim of black spread slowly into the sun's disk, my heart beat higher and higher, and still the assemblage and the priest stared into the sky, motionless. i knew that this gaze would be turned upon me, next. when it was, l was ready. i was in one of the most grand attitudes i ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. it was a noble effect. you could see the shudder sweep the mass like a wave. two shouts rang out, one close upon the heels of the other: "apply the torch!" "i forbid it!" the one was from merlin, the other from the king. merlin started from his place -to apply the torch himself, i judged. i said: "stay where you are. if any man moves -even the king -before i give him leave, i will blast him with thunder, i will consume him with lightnings!" the multitude sank meekly into their seats, and i was just expecting they would. merlin hesitated a moment or two, and i was on pins and needles during that little while. then he sat down, and i took a good breath; for i knew i was master of the situation now. the king said: "be merciful, fair sir, and essay no further in this perilous matter, lest disaster follow. it was reported to us that your powers could not attain unto their full strength until the morrow; but --" "your majesty thinks the report may have been a lie? it was a lie." that made an immense effect; up went appealing hands everywhere, and the king was assailed with a storm of supplications that i might be bought off at any price, and the calamity stayed. the king was eager to comply. he said: "name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving of my kingdom; but banish this calamity, spare the sun!" my fortune was made. i would have taken him up in a minute, but i couldn't stop an eclipse; the thing was out of the question. so i asked time to consider. the king said: "how long -ah, how long, good sir? be merciful; look, it groweth darker, moment by moment. prithee how long?" "not long. half an hour -maybe an hour." there were a thousand pathetic protests, but i couldn't shorten up any, for i couldn't remember how long a total eclipse lasts. i was in a puzzled condition, anyway, and wanted to think. something was wrong about that eclipse, and the fact was very unsettling. if this wasn't the one i was after, how was i to tell whether this was the sixth century, or nothing but a dream? dear me, if i could only prove it was the latter! here was a glad new hope. if the boy was right about the date, and this was surely the 20th, it wasn't the sixth century. i reached for the monk's sleeve, in considerable excitement, and asked him what day of the month it was. hang him, he said it was the twenty-first! it made me turn cold to hear him. i begged him not to make any mistake about it; but he was sure; he knew it was the 21st. so, that feather-headed boy had botched things again! the time of the day was right for the eclipse; i had seen that for myself, in the beginning, by the dial that was near by. yes, i was in king arthur's court, and i might as well make the most out of it i could. the darkness was steadily growing, the people becoming more and more distressed. i now said: "i have reflected, sir king. for a lesson, i will let this darkness proceed, and spread night in the world; but whether i blot out the sun for good, or restore it, shall rest with you. these are the terms, to wit: you shall remain king over all your dominions, and receive all the glories and honors that belong to the kingship; but you shall appoint me your perpetual minister and executive, and give me for my services one per cent. of such actual increase of revenue over and above its present amount as i may succeed in creating for the state. if i can't live on that, i sha'n't ask anybody to give me a lift. is it satisfactory?" there was a prodigious roar of applause, and out of the midst of it the king's voice rose, saying: "away with his bonds, and set him free! and do him homage, high and low, rich and poor, for he is become the king's right hand, is clothed with power and authority, and his seat is upon the highest step of the throne! now sweep away this creeping night, and bring the light and cheer again, that all the world may bless thee." but i said: "that a common man should be shamed before the world, is nothing; but it were dishonor to the king if any that saw his minister naked should not also see him delivered from his shame. if i might ask that my clothes be brought again --" "they are not meet," the king broke in. "fetch raiment of another sort; clothe him like a prince!" my idea worked. i wanted to keep things as they were till the eclipse was total, otherwise they would be trying again to get me to dismiss the darkness, and of course i couldn't do it. sending for the clothes gained some delay, but not enough. so i had to make another excuse. i said it would be but natural if the king should change his mind and repent to some extent of what he had done under excitement; therefore i would let the darkness grow a while, and if at the end of a reasonable time the king had kept his mind the same, the darkness should be dismissed. neither the king nor anybody else was satisfied with that arrangement, but i had to stick to my point. it grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker, while i struggled with those awkward sixth-century clothes. it got to be pitch dark, at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the stars come out and twinkle in the sky. at last the eclipse was total, and i was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery; which was quite natural. i said: "the king, by his silence, still stands to the terms." then i lifted up my hands -stood just so a moment -then i said, with the most awful solemnity: "let the enchantment dissolve and pass harmless away!" there was no response, for a moment, in that deep darkness and that graveyard hush. but when the silver rim of the sun pushed itself out, a moment or two later, the assemblage broke loose with a vast shout and came pouring down like a deluge to smother me with blessings and gratitude; and clarence was not the last of the wash, to be sure. chapter vii. merlin's tower inasmuch as i was now the second personage in the kingdom, as far as political power and authorty were concerned, much was made of me. my raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold, and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfortable. but habit would soon reconcile me to my clothes; i was aware of that. i was given the choicest suite of apartments in the castle, after the king's. they were aglow with loud-colored silken hangings, but the stone floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet, and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of one breed. as for conveniences, properly speaking, there weren't any. i mean little conveniences; it is the little conveniences that make the real comfort of life. the big oaken chairs, graced with rude carvings, were well enough, but that was the stopping place. there was no soap, no matches, no looking-glass -except a metal one, about as powerful as a pail of water. and not a chromo. i had been used to chromos for years, and i saw now that without my suspecting it a passion for art had got worked into the fabric of my being, and was become a part of me. it made me homesick to look around over this proud and gaudy but heartless barrenness and remember that in our house in east hartford, all unpretending as it was, you couldn't go into a room but you would find an insurance-chromo, or at least a three-color god-bless-our-home over the door; and in the parlor we had nine. but here, even in my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature of a picture except a thing the size of a bedquilt, which was either woven or knitted (it had darned places in it), and nothing in it was the right color or the right shape; and as for proportions, even raphael himself couldn't have botched them more formidably, after all his practice on those nightmares they call his "celebrated hampton court cartoons." raphael was a bird. we had several of his chromos; one was his "miraculous draught of fishes," where he puts in a miracle of his own -puts three men into a canoe which wouldn't have held a dog without upsetting. i always admired to study r.'s art, it was so fresh and unconventional. there wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in the castle. i had a great many servants, and those that were on duty lolled in the anteroom; and when i wanted one of them i had to go and call for him. there was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze dish half full of boarding-house butter with a blazing rag floating in it was the thing that produced what was regarded as light. a lot of these hung along the walls and modified the dark, just toned it down enough to make it dismal. if you went out at night, your servants carried torches. there were no books, pens, paper or ink, and no glass in the openings they believed to be windows. it is a little thing -glass is -until it is absent, then it becomes a big thing. but perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn't any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. i saw that i was just another robinson crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society but some more or less tame animals, and if i wanted to make life bearable i must do as he did -invent, contrive, create, reorganize things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy. well, that was in my line. one thing troubled me along at first -the immense interest which people took in me. apparently the whole nation wanted a look at me. it soon transpired that the eclipse had scared the british world almost to death; that while it lasted the whole country, from one end to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, and the churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowed with praying and weeping poor creatures who thought the end of the world was come. then had followed the news that the producer of this awful event was a stranger, a mighty magician at arthur's court; that he could have blown out the sun like a candle, and was just going to do it when his mercy was purchased, and he then dissolved his enchantments, and was now recognized and honored as the man who had by his unaided might saved the globe from destruction and its peoples from extinction. now if you consider that everybody believed that, and not only believed it, but never even dreamed of doubting it, you will easily understand that there was not a person in all britain that would not have walked fifty miles to get a sight of me. of course i was all the talk -all other subjects were dropped; even the king became suddenly a person of minor interest and notoriety. within twentyfour hours the delegations began to arrive, and from that time onward for a fortnight they kept coming. the village was crowded, and all the countryside. i had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to these reverent and awe-stricken multitudes. it came to be a great burden, as to time and trouble, but of course it was at the same time compensatingly agreeable to be so celebrated and such a center of homage. it turned brer merlin green with envy and spite, which was a great satisfaction to me. but there was one thing i couldn't understand -nobody had asked for an autograph. i spoke to clarence about it. by george! i had to explain to him what it was. then he said nobody in the country could read or write but a few dozen priests. land! think of that. there was another thing that troubled me a little. those multitudes presently began to agitate for another miracle. that was natural. to be able to carry back to their far homes the boast that they had seen the man who could command the sun, riding in the heavens, and be obeyed, would make them great in the eyes of their neighbors, and envied by them all; but to be able to also say they had seen him work a miracle themselves -why, people would come a distance to see them. the pressure got to be pretty strong. there was going to be an eclipse of the moon, and i knew the date and hour, but it was too far away. two years. i would have given a good deal for license to hurry it up and use it now when there was a big market for it. it seemed a great pity to have it wasted so, and come lagging along at a time when a body wouldn't have any use for it, as like as not. if it had been booked for only a month away, i could have sold it short; but, as matters stood, i couldn't seem to cipher out any way to make it do me any good, so i gave up trying. next, clarence found that old merlin was making himself busy on the sly among those people. he was spreading a report that i was a humbug, and that the reason i didn't accommodate the people with a miracle was because i couldn't. i saw that i must do something. i presently thought out a plan. by my authority as executive i threw merlin into prison -the same cell i had occupied myself. then i gave public notice by herald and trumpet that i should be busy with affairs of state for a fortnight, but about the end of that time i would take a moment's leisure and blow up merlin's stone tower by fires from heaven; in the meantime, whoso listened to evil reports about me, let him beware. furthermore, i would perform but this one miracle at this time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, i would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them useful. quiet ensued. i took clarence into my confidence, to a certain degree, and we went to work privately. i told him that this was a sort of miracle that required a trifle of preparation, and that it would be sudden death to ever talk about these preparations to anybody. that made his mouth safe enough. clandestinely we made a few bushels of first-rate blasting powder, and i superintended my armorers while they constructed a lightningrod and some wires. this old stone tower was very massive -and rather ruinous, too, for it was roman, and four hundred years old. yes, and handsome, after a rude fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to summit, as with a shirt of scale mail. it stood on a lonely eminence, in good view from the castle, and about half a mile away. working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower -dug stones out, on the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet thick at the base. we put in a peck at a time, in a dozen places. we could have blown up the tower of london with these charges. when the thirteenth night was come we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in one of the batches of powder, and ran wires from it to the other batches. everybody had shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, but on the morning of the fourteenth i thought best to warn the people, through the heralds, to keep clear away -a quarter of a mile away. then added, by command, that at some time during the twenty-four hours i would consummate the miracle, but would first give a brief notice; by flags on the castle towers if in the daytime, by torch-baskets in the same places if at night. thunder-showers had been tolerably frequent of late, and i was not much afraid of a failure; still, i shouldn't have cared for a delay of a day or two; i should have explained that i was busy with affairs of state yet, and the people must wait. of course, we had a blazing sunny day -almost the first one without a cloud for three weeks; things always happen so. i kept secluded, and watched the weather. clarence dropped in from time to time and said the public excitement was growing and growing all the time, and the whole country filling up with human masses as far as one could see from the battlements. at last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared -in the right quarter, too, and just at nightfall. for a little while i watched that distant cloud spread and blacken, then i judged it was time for me to appear. i ordered the torch-baskets to be lit, and merlin liberated and sent to me. a quarter of an hour later i ascended the parapet and there found the king and the court assembled and gazing off in the darkness toward merlin's tower. already the darkness was so heavy that one could not see far; these people and the old turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow from the great torch-baskets overhead, made a good deal of a picture. merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. i said: "you wanted to burn me alive when i had not done you any harm, and latterly you have been trying to injure my professional reputation. therefore i am going to call down fire and blow up your tower, but it is only fair to give you a chance; now if you think you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires, step to the bat, it's your innings." "i can, fair sir, and i will. doubt it not." he drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof, and burnt a pinch of powder in it, which sent up a small cloud of aromatic smoke, whereat everybody fell back and began to cross themselves and get uncomfortable. then he began to mutter and make passes in the air with his hands. he worked himself up slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing around with his arms like the sails of a windmill. by this time the storm had about reached us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and making the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops of rain were falling, the world abroad was black as pitch, the lightning began to wink fitfully. of course, my rod would be loading itself now. in fact, things were imminent. so i said: "you have had time enough. i have given you every advantage, and not interfered. it is plain your magic is weak. it is only fair that i begin now." i made about three passes in the air, and then there was an awful crash and that old tower leaped into the sky in chunks, along with a vast volcanic fountain of fire that turned night to noonday, and showed a thousand acres of human beings groveling on the ground in a general collapse of consternation. well, it rained mortar and masonry the rest of the week. this was the report; but probably the facts would have modified it. it was an effective miracle. the great bothersome temporary population vanished. there were a good many thousand tracks in the mud the next morning, but they were all outward bound. if i had advertised another miracle i couldn't have raised an audience with a sheriff. merlin's stock was flat. the king wanted to stop his wages; he even wanted to banish him, but i interfered. i said he would be useful to work the weather, and attend to small matters like that, and i would give him a lift now and then when his poor little parlormagic soured on him. there wasn't a rag of his tower left, but i had the government rebuild it for him, and advised him to take boarders; but he was too hightoned for that. and as for being grateful, he never even said thank you. he was a rather hard lot, take him how you might; but then you couldn't fairly expect a man to be sweet that had been set back so. chapter viii. the boss to be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the on-looking world consent to it is a finer. the tower episode solidified my power, and made it impregnable. if any were perchance disposed to be jealous and critical before that, they experienced a change of heart, now. there was not any one in the kingdom who would have considered it good judgment to meddle with my matters. i was fast getting adjusted to my situation and circumstances. for a time, i used to wake up, mornings, and smile at my "dream," and listen for the colt's factory whistle; but that sort of thing played itself out, gradually, and at last i was fully able to realize that i was actually living in the sixth century, and in arthur's court, not a lunatic asylum. after that, i was just as much at home in that century as i could have been in any other; and as for preference, i wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth. look at the opportunities here for a man of knowledge, brains, pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up with the country. the grandest field that ever was; and all my own; not a competitor; not a man who wasn't a baby to me in acquirements and capacities; whereas, what would i amount to in the twentieth century? i should be foreman of a factory, that is about all; and could drag a seine down street any day and catch a hundred better men than myself. what a jump i had made! i couldn't keep from thinking about it, and contemplating it, just as one does who has struck oil. there was nothing back of me that could approach it, unless it might be joseph's case; and joseph's only approached it, it didn't equal it, quite. for it stands to reason that as joseph's splendid financial ingenuities advantaged nobody but the king, the general public must have regarded him with a good deal of disfavor, whereas i had done my entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and was popular by reason of it. i was no shadow of a king; i was the substance; the king himself was the shadow. my power was colossal; and it was not a mere name, as such things have generally been, it was the genuine article. i stood here, at the very spring and source of the second great period of the world's history; and could see the trickling stream of that history gather and deepen and broaden, and roll its mighty tides down the far centuries; and i could note the upspringing of adventurers like myself in the shelter of its long array of thrones: de montforts, gavestons, mortimers, villierses; the war-making, campaign-directing wantons of france, and charles the second's scepter-wielding drabs; but nowhere in the procession was my fullsized fellow visible. i was a unique; and glad to know that that fact could not be dislodged or challenged for thirteen centuries and a half, for sure. yes, in power i was equal to the king. at the same time there was another power that was a trifle stronger than both of us put together. that was the church. i do not wish to disguise that fact. i couldn't, if i wanted to. but never mind about that, now; it will show up, in its proper place, later on. it didn't cause me any trouble in the beginning -at least any of consequence. well, it was a curious country, and full of interest. and the people! they were the quaintest and simplest and trustingest race; why, they were nothing but rabbits. it was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! why, dear me,any kind of royalty, howsoever modified, any kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. it is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions. the most of king arthur's british nation were slaves, pure and simple, and bore that name, and wore the iron collar on their necks; and the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name; they imagined themselves men and freemen, and called themselves so. the truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. and for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor. inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine. i had mine, the king and his people had theirs. in both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should have proposed to divert them by reason and argument would have had a long contract on his hands. for instance, those people had inherited the idea that all men without title and a long pedigree, whether they had great natural gifts and acquirements or hadn't, were creatures of no more consideration than so many animals, bugs, insects; whereas i had inherited the idea that human daws who can consent to masquerade in the peacock-shams of inherited dignities and unearned titles, are of no good but to be laughed at. the way i was looked upon was odd, but it was natural. you know how the keeper and the public regard the elephant in the menagerie: well, that is the idea. they are full of admiration of his vast bulk and his prodigious strength; they speak with pride of the fact that he can do a hundred marvels which are far and away beyond their own powers; and they speak with the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is able to drive a thousand men before him. but does that make him one of them? no; the raggedest tramp in the pit would smile at the idea. he couldn't comprehend it; couldn't take it in; couldn't in any remote way conceive of it. well, to the king, the nobles, and all the nation, down to the very slaves and tramps, i was just that kind of an elephant, and nothing more. i was admired, also feared; but it was as an animal is admired and feared. the animal is not reverenced, neither was i; i was not even respected. i had no pedigree, no inherited title; so in the king's and nobles' eyes i was mere dirt; the people regarded me with wonder and awe, but there was no reverence mixed with it; through the force of inherited ideas they were not able to conceive of anything being entitled to that except pedigree and lordship. there you see the hand of that awful power, the roman catholic church. in two or three little centuries it had converted a nation of men to a nation of worms. before the day of the church's supremacy in the world, men were men, and held their heads up, and had a man's pride and spirit and independence; and what of greatness and position a person got, he got mainly by achievement, not by birth. but then the church came to the front, with an axe to grind; and she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way to skin a cat -or a nation; she invented "divine right of kings," and propped it all around, brick by brick, with the beatitudes -wrenching them from their good purpose to make them fortify an evil one; she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience to superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice; she preached (to the commoner) meekness under insult; preached (still to the commoner, always to the commoner) patience, meanness of spirit, non-resistance under oppression; and she introduced heritable ranks and aristocracies, and taught all the christian populations of the earth to bow down to them and worship them. even down to my birth-century that poison was still in the blood of christendom, and the best of english commoners was still content to see his inferiors impudently continuing to hold a number of positions, such as lordships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of his country did not allow him to aspire; in fact, he was not merely contented with this strange condition of things, he was even able to persuade himself that he was proud of it. it seems to show that there isn't anything you can't stand, if you are only born and bred to it. of course that taint, that reverence for rank and title, had been in our american blood, too -i know that; but when i left america it had disappeared -at least to all intents and purposes. the remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses. when a disease has worked its way down to that level, it may fairly be said to be out of the system. but to return to my anomalous position in king arthur's kingdom. here i was, a giant among pigmies, a man among children, a master intelligence among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement the one and only actually great man in that whole british world; and yet there and then, just as in the remote england of my birth-time, the sheep-witted earl who could claim long descent from a king's leman, acquired at second-hand from the slums of london, was a better man than i was. such a personage was fawned upon in arthur's realm and reverently looked up to by everybody, even though his dispositions were as mean as his intelligence, and his morals as base as his lineage. there were times when he could sit down in the king's presence, but i couldn't. i could have got a title easily enough, and that would have raised me a large step in everybody's eyes; even in the king's, the giver of it. but i didn't ask for it; and i declined it when it was offered. i couldn't have enjoyed such a thing with my notions; and it wouldn't have been fair, anyway, because as far back as i could go, our tribe had always been short of the bar sinister. i couldn't have felt really and satisfactorily fine and proud and set-up over any title except one that should come from the nation itself, the only legitimate source; and such an one i hoped to win; and in the course of years of honest and honorable endeavor, i did win it and did wear it with a high and clean pride. this title fell casually from the lips of a blacksmith, one day, in a village, was caught up as a happy thought and tossed from mouth to mouth with a laugh and an affirmative vote; in ten days it had swept the kingdom, and was become as familiar as the king's name. i was never known by any other designation afterward, whether in the nation's talk or in grave debate upon matters of state at the council-board of the sovereign. this title, translated into modern speech, would be the boss. elected by the nation. that suited me. and it was a pretty high title. there were very few the's, and i was one of them. if you spoke of the duke, or the earl, or the bishop, how could anybody tell which one you meant? but if you spoke of the king or the queen or the boss, it was different. well, i liked the king, and as king i respected him -respected the office; at least respected it as much as i was capable of respecting any unearned supremacy; but as men i looked down upon him and his nobles -privately. and he and they liked me, and respected my office; but as an animal, without birth or sham title, they looked down upon me -and were not particularly private about it, either. i didn't charge for my opinion about them, and they didn't charge for their opinion about me: the account was square, the books balanced, everybody was satisfied. chapter ix. the tournament they were always having grand tournaments there at camelot; and very stirring and picturesque and ridiculous human bull-fights they were, too, but just a little wearisome to the practical mind. however, i was generally on hand -for two reasons: a man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his community have at heart if he would be liked -especially as a statesman; and both as business man and statesman i wanted to study the tournament and see if i couldn't invent an improvement on it. that reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first official thing i did, in my administration -and it was on the very first day of it, too -was to start a patent office; for i knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways. things ran along, a tournament nearly every week; and now and then the boys used to want me to take a hand -i mean sir launcelot and the rest -but i said i would by and by; no hurry yet, and too much government machinery to oil up and set to rights and start a-going. we had one tournament which was continued from day to day during more than a week, and as many as five hundred knights took part in it, from first to last. they were weeks gathering. they came on horseback from everywhere; from the very ends of the country, and even from beyond the sea; and many brought ladies, and all brought squires and troops of servants. it was a most gaudy and gorgeous crowd, as to costumery, and very characteristic of the country and the time, in the way of high animal spirits, innocent indecencies of language, and happy-hearted indifference to morals. it was fight or look on, all day and every day; and sing, gamble, dance, carouse half the night every night. they had a most noble good time. you never saw such people. those banks of beautiful ladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see a knight sprawl from his horse in the lists with a lanceshaft the thickness of your ankle clean through him and the blood spouting, and instead of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a better view; only sometimes one would dive into her handkerchief, and look ostentatiously broken-hearted, and then you could lay two to one that there was a scandal there somewhere and she was afraid the public hadn't found it out. the noise at night would have been annoying to me ordinarily, but i didn't mind it in the present circumstances, because it kept me from hearing the quacks detaching legs and arms from the day's cripples. they ruined an uncommon good old cross-cut saw for me, and broke the saw-buck, too, but i let it pass. and as for my axe -well, i made up my mind that the next time i lent an axe to a surgeon i would pick my century. i not only watched this tournament from day to day, but detailed an intelligent priest from my department of public morals and agriculture, and ordered him to report it; for it was my purpose by and by, when i should have gotten the people along far enough, to start a newspaper. the first thing you want in a new country, is a patent office; then work up your school system; and after that, out with your paper. a newspaper has its faults, and plenty of them, but no matter, it's hark from the tomb for a dead nation, and don't you forget it. you can't resurrect a dead nation without it; there isn't any way. so i wanted to sample things, and be finding out what sort of reportermaterial i might be able to rake together out of the sixth century when i should come to need it. well, the priest did very well, considering. he got in all the details, and that is a good thing in a local item: you see, he had kept books for the undertakerdepartment of his church when he was younger, and there, you know, the money's in the details; the more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles, prayers -everything counts; and if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill shows up all right. and he had a good knack at getting in the complimentary thing here and there about a knight that was likely to advertise -no, i mean a knight that had influence; and he also had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door for a pious hermit who lived in a sty and worked miracles. of course this novice's report lacked whoop and crash and lurid description, and therefore wanted the true ring; but its antique wording was quaint and sweet and simple, and full of the fragrances and flavors of the time, and these little merits made up in a measure for its more important lacks. here is an extract from it: then sir brian de les isles and grummore grummorsum, knights of the castle, encountered with sir aglovale and sir tor, and sir tor smote down sir grummore grummorsum to the earth. then came sir carados of the dolorous tower, and sir turquine, knights of the castle, and there encountered with them sir percivale de galis and sir lamorak de galis, that were two brethren, and there encountered sir percivale with sir carados, and either brake their spears unto their hands, and then sir turquine with sir lamorak, and either of them smote down other, horse and all, to the earth, and either parties rescued other and horsed them again. and sir arnold, and sir gauter, knights of the castle, encountered with sir brandiles and sir kay, and these four knights encountered mightily, and brake their spears to their hands. then came sir pertolope from the castle, and there encountered with him sir lionel, and there sir pertolope the green knight smote down sir lionel, brother to sir launcelot. all this was marked by noble heralds, who bare him best, and their names. then sir bleobaris brake his spear upon sir gareth, but of that stroke sir bleobaris fell to the earth. when sir galihodin saw that, he bad sir gareth keep him, and sir gareth smote him to the earth. then sir galihud gat a spear to avenge his brother, and in the same wise sir gareth served him, and sir dinadan and his brother la cote male taile, and sir sagramore le disirous, and sir dodinas le savage; all these he bare down with one spear. when king aswisance of ireland saw sir gareth fare so he marvelled what he might be, that one time seemed green, and another time, at his again coming, he seemed blue. and thus at every course that he rode to and fro he changed his color, so that there might neither king nor knight have ready cognizance of him. then sir agwisance the king of ireland encountered with sir gareth, and there sir gareth smote him from his horse, saddle and all. and then came king carados of scotland, and sir gareth smote him down horse and man. and in the same wise he served king uriens of the land of gore. and then there came in six bagdemagus, and sir gareth smote him down horse and man to the earth. and bagdemagus's son meliganus brake a spear upon sir gareth mightily and knightly. and then sir galahault the noble prince cried on high, knight with the many colors, well hast thou justed; now make thee ready that i may just with thee. sir gareth heard him, and he gat a great spear, and so they encountered together, and there the prince brake his spear; but sir gareth smote him upon the left side of the helm, that he reeled here and there, and he had fallen down had not his men recovered him. truly, said king arthur, that knight with the many colors is a good knight. wherefore the king called unto him sir launcelot, and prayed him to encounter with that knight. sir, said launcelot, i may as well find in my heart for to forbear him at this time, for he hath had travail enough this day, and when a good knight doth so well upon some day, it is no good knight's part to let him of his worship, and, namely, when he seeth a knight hath done so great labour; for peradventure, said sir launcelot, his quarrel is here this day, and peradventure he is best beloved with this lady of all that be here, for i see well he paineth himself and enforceth him to do great deeds, and therefore, said sir launcelot, as for me, this day he shall have the honour; though it lay in my power to put him from it, i would not. there was an unpleasant little episode that day, which for reasons of state i struck out of my priest's report. you will have noticed that garry was doing some great fighting in the engagement. when i say garry i mean sir gareth. garry was my private pet name for him; it suggests that i had a deep affection for him, and that was the case. but it was a private pet name only, and never spoken aloud to any one, much less to him; being a noble, he would not have endured a familiarity like that from me. well, to proceed: i sat in the private box set apart for me as the king's minister. while sir dinadan was waiting for his turn to enter the lists, he came in there and sat down and began to talk; for he was always making up to me, because i was a stranger and he liked to have a fresh market for his jokes, the most of them having reached that stage of wear where the teller has to do the laughing himself while the other person looks sick. i had always responded to his efforts as well as i could, and felt a very deep and real kindness for him, too, for the reason that if by malice of fate he knew the one particular anecdote which i had heard oftenest and had most hated and most loathed all my life, he had at least spared it me. it was one which i had heard attributed to every humorous person who had ever stood on american soil, from columbus down to artemus ward. it was about a humorous lecturer who flooded an ignorant audience with the killingest jokes for an hour and never got a laugh; and then when he was leaving, some gray simpletons wrung him gratefully by the hand and said it had been the funniest thing they had ever heard, and "it was all they could do to keep from laughin' right out in meetin'." that anecdote never saw the day that it was worth the telling; and yet i had sat under the telling of it hundreds and thousands and millions and billions of times, and cried and cursed all the way through. then who can hope to know what my feelings were, to hear this armorplated ass start in on it again, in the murky twilight of tradition, before the dawn of history, while even lactantius might be referred to as "the late lactantius," and the crusades wouldn't be born for five hundred years yet? just as he finished, the call-boy came; so, haw-hawing like a demon, he went rattling and clanking out like a crate of loose castings, and i knew nothing more. it was some minutes before i came to, and then i opened my eyes just in time to see sir gareth fetch him an awful welt, and i unconsciously out with the prayer, "i hope to gracious he's killed!" but by ill-luck, before i had got half through with the words, sir gareth crashed into sir sagramor le desirous and sent him thundering over his horse's crupper, and sir sagramor caught my remark and thought i meant it for him. well, whenever one of those people got a thing into his head, there was no getting it out again. i knew that, so i saved my breath, and offered no explanations. as soon as sir sagramor got well, he notified me that there was a little account to settle between us, and he named a day three or four years in the future; place of settlement, the lists where the offense had been given. i said i would be ready when he got back. you see, he was going for the holy grail. the boys all took a flier at the holy grail now and then. it was a several years' cruise. they always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the holy grail really was, and i don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it. you see, it was just the northwest passage of that day, as you may say; that was all. every year expeditions went out holy grailing, and next year relief expeditions went out to hunt for them. there was worlds of reputation in it, but no money. why, they actually wanted me to put in! well, i should smile. chapter x. beginnings of civilization the round table soon heard of the challenge, and of course it was a good deal discussed, for such things interested the boys. the king thought i ought now to set forth in quest of adventures, so that i might gain renown and be the more worthy to meet sir sagramor when the several years should have rolled away. i excused myself for the present; i said it would take me three or four years yet to get things well fixed up and going smoothly; then i should be ready; all the chances were that at the end of that time sir sagramor would still be out grailing, so no valuable time would be lost by the postponement; i should then have been in office six or seven years, and i believed my system and machinery would be so well developed that i could take a holiday without its working any harm. i was pretty well satisfied with what i had already accomplished. in various quiet nooks and corners i had the beginnings of all sorts of industries under way -nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization. in these were gathered together the brightest young minds i could find, and i kept agents out raking the country for more, all the time. i was training a crowd of ignorant folk into experts -experts in every sort of handiwork and scientific calling. these nurseries of mine went smoothly and privately along undisturbed in their obscure country retreats, for nobody was allowed to come into their precincts without a special permit -for i was afraid of the church. i had started a teacher-factory and a lot of sundayschools the first thing; as a result, i now had an admirable system of graded schools in full blast in those places, and also a complete variety of protestant congregations all in a prosperous and growing condition. everybody could be any kind of a christian he wanted to; there was perfect freedom in that matter. but i confined public religious teaching to the churches and the sunday-schools, permitting nothing of it in my other educational buildings. i could have given my own sect the preference and made everybody a presbyterian without any trouble, but that would have been to affront a law of human nature: spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and, besides, i was afraid of a united church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought. all mines were royal property, and there were a good many of them. they had formerly been worked as savages always work mines -holes grubbed in the earth and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide by hand, at the rate of a ton a day; but i had begun to put the mining on a scientific basis as early as i could. yes, i had made pretty handsome progress when sir sagramor's challenge struck me. four years rolled by -and then! well, you would never imagine it in the world. unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. the despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. an earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. but as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible. my works showed what a despot could do with the resources of a kingdom at his command. unsuspected by this dark land, i had the civilization of the nineteenth century booming under its very nose! it was fenced away from the public view, but there it was, a gigantic and unassailable fact -and to be heard from, yet, if i lived and had luck. there it was, as sure a fact and as substantial a fact as any serene volcano, standing innocent with its smokeless summit in the blue sky and giving no sign of the rising hell in its bowels. my schools and churches were children four years before; they were grown-up now; my shops of that day were vast factories now; where i had a dozen trained men then, i had a thousand now; where i had one brilliant expert then, i had fifty now. i stood with my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn it on and flood the midnight world with light at any moment. but i was not going to do the thing in that sudden way. it was not my policy. the people could not have stood it; and, moreover, i should have had the established roman catholic church on my back in a minute. no, i had been going cautiously all the while. i had had confidential agents trickling through the country some time, whose office was to undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw a little at this and that and the other superstition, and so prepare the way gradually for a better order of things. i was turning on my light one-candle-power at a time, and meant to continue to do so. i had scattered some branch schools secretly about the kingdom, and they were doing very well. i meant to work this racket more and more, as time wore on, if nothing occurred to frighten me. one of my deepest secrets was my west point -my military academy. i kept that most jealously out of sight; and i did the same with my naval academy which i had established at a remote seaport. both were prospering to my satisfaction. clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head executive, my right hand. he was a darling; he was equal to anything; there wasn't anything he couldn't turn his hand to. of late i had been training him for journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start in the newspaper line; nothing big, but just a small weekly for experimental circulation in my civilizationnurseries. he took to it like a duck; there was an editor concealed in him, sure. already he had doubled himself in one way; he talked sixth century and wrote nineteenth. his journalistic style was climbing, steadily; it was already up to the back settlement alabama mark, and couldn't be told from the editorial output of that region either by matter or flavor. we had another large departure on hand, too. this was a telegraph and a telephone; our first venture in this line. these wires were for private service only, as yet, and must be kept private until a riper day should come. we had a gang of men on the road, working mainly by night. they were stringing ground wires; we were afraid to put up poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. ground wires were good enough, in both instances, for my wires were protected by an insulation of my own invention which was perfect. my men had orders to strike across country, avoiding roads, and establishing connection with any considerable towns whose lights betrayed their presence, and leaving experts in charge. nobody could tell you how to find any place in the kingdom, for nobody ever went intentionally to any place, but only struck it by accident in his wanderings, and then generally left it without thinking to inquire what its name was. at one time and another we had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map the kingdom, but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble. so we had given the thing up, for the present; it would be poor wisdom to antagonize the church. as for the general condition of the country, it was as it had been when i arrived in it, to all intents and purposes. i had made changes, but they were necessarily slight, and they were not noticeable. thus far, i had not even meddled with taxation, outside of the taxes which provided the royal revenues. i had systematized those, and put the service on an effective and righteous basis. as a result, these revenues were already quadrupled, and yet the burden was so much more equably distributed than before, that all the kingdom felt a sense of relief, and the praises of my administration were hearty and general. personally, i struck an interruption, now, but i did not mind it, it could not have happened at a better time. earlier it could have annoyed me, but now everything was in good hands and swimming right along. the king had reminded me several times, of late, that the postponement i had asked for, four years before, had about run out now. it was a hint that i ought to be starting out to seek adventures and get up a reputation of a size to make me worthy of the honor of breaking a lance with sir sagramor, who was still out grailing, but was being hunted for by various relief expeditions, and might be found any year, now. so you see i was expecting this interruption; it did not take me by surprise. chapter xi. the yankee in search of adventures. there never was such a country for wandering liars; and they were of both sexes. hardly a month went by without one of these tramps arriving; and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or other wanting help to get her out of some far-away castle where she was held in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant. now you would think that the first thing the king would do after listening to such a novelette from an entire stranger, would be to ask for credentials -yes, and a pointer or two as to locality of castle, best route to it, and so on. but nobody ever thought of so simple and common-sense a thing at that. no, everybody swallowed these people's lies whole, and never asked a question of any sort or about anything. well, one day when i was not around, one of these people came along -it was a she one, this time -and told a tale of the usual pattern. her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy castle, along with forty-four other young and beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses; they had been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six years; the masters of the castle were three stupendous brothers, each with four arms and one eye -the eye in the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit. sort of fruit not mentioned; their usual slovenliness in statistics. would you believe it? the king and the whole round table were in raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure. every knight of the table jumped for the chance, and begged for it; but to their vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me, who had not asked for it at all. by an effort, i contained my joy when clarence brought me the news. but he -he could not contain his. his mouth gushed delight and gratitude in a steady discharge -delight in my good fortune, gratitude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor for me. he could keep neither his legs nor his body still, but pirouetted about the place in an airy ecstasy of happiness. on my side, i could have cursed the kindness that conferred upon me this benefaction, but i kept my vexation under the surface for policy's sake, and did what i could to let on to be glad. indeed, i said i was glad. and in a way it was true; i was as glad as a person is when he is scalped. well, one must make the best of things, and not waste time with useless fretting, but get down to business and see what can be done. in all lies there is wheat among the chaff; i must get at the wheat in this case: so i sent for the girl and she came. she was a comely enough creature, and soft and modest, but, if signs went for anything, she didn't know as much as a lady's watch. i said: "my dear, have you been questioned as to particulars?" she said she hadn't. "well, i didn't expect you had, but i thought i would ask, to make sure; it's the way i've been raised. now you mustn't take it unkindly if i remind you that as we don't know you, we must go a little slow. you may be all right, of course, and we'll hope that you are; but to take it for granted isn't business. you understand that. i'm obliged to ask you a few questions; just answer up fair and square, and don't be afraid. where do you live, when you are at home?" "in the land of moder, fair sir." "land of moder. i don't remember hearing of it before. parents living?" "as to that, i know not if they be yet on live, sith it is many years that i have lain shut up in the castle." "your name, please?" "i hight the demoiselle alisande la carteloise, an it please you." "do you know anybody here who can identify you?" "that were not likely, fair lord, i being come hither now for the first time." "have you brought any letters -any documents -any proofs that you are trustworthy and truthful?" "of a surety, no; and wherefore should i? have i not a tongue, and cannot i say all that myself?" "but your saying it, you know, and somebody else's saying it, is different." "different? how might that be? i fear me i do not understand." "don't understand? land of -why, you see -you see -why, great scott, can't you understand a little thing like that? can't you understand the difference between your -why do you look so innocent and idiotic!" "i? in truth i know not, but an it were the will of god." "yes, yes, i reckon that's about the size of it. don't mind my seeming excited; i'm not. let us change the subject. now as to this castle, with fortyfive princesses in it, and three ogres at the head of it, tell me -where is this harem?" "harem?" "the castle, you understand; where is the castle?" "oh, as to that, it is great, and strong, and well beseen, and lieth in a far country. yes, it is many leagues." "how many?" "ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell, they are so many, and do so lap the one upon the other, and being made all in the same image and tincted with the same color, one may not know the one league from its fellow, nor how to count them except they be taken apart, and ye wit well it were god's work to do that, being not within man's capacity; for ye will note --" "hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance; whereabouts does the castle lie? what's the direction from here?" "ah, please you sir, it hath no direction from here; by reason that the road lieth not straight, but turneth evermore; wherefore the direction of its place abideth not, but is some time under the one sky and anon under another, whereso if ye be minded that it is in the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe that the way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by the space of half a circle, and this marvel happing again and yet again and still again, it will grieve you that you had thought by vanities of the mind to thwart and bring to naught the will of him that giveth not a castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth him, and if it please him not, will the rather that even all castles and all directions thereunto vanish out of the earth, leaving the places wherein they tarried desolate and vacant, so warning his creatures that where he will he will, and where he will not he --" "oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest; never mind about the direction, hang the direction -i beg pardon, i beg a thousand pardons, i am not well to-day; pay no attention when i soliloquize, it is an old habit, an old, bad habit, and hard to get rid of when one's digestion is all disordered with eating food that was raised forever and ever before he was born; good land! a man can't keep his functions regular on spring chickens thirteen hundred years old. but come -never mind about that; let's -have you got such a thing as a map of that region about you? now a good map --" "is it peradventure that manner of thing which of late the unbelievers have brought from over the great seas, which, being boiled in oil, and an onion and salt added thereto, doth --" "what, a map? what are you talking about? don't you know what a map is? there, there, never mind, don't explain, i hate explanations; they fog a thing up so that you can't tell anything about it. run along, dear; good-day; show her the way, clarence." oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these donkeys didn't prospect these liars for details. it may be that this girl had a fact in her somewhere, but i don't believe you could have sluiced it out with a hydraulic; nor got it with the earlier forms of blasting, even; it was a case for dynamite. why, she was a perfect ass; and yet the king and his knights had listened to her as if she had been a leaf out of the gospel. it kind of sizes up the whole party. and think of the simple ways of this court: this wandering wench hadn't any more trouble to get access to the king in his palace than she would have had to get into the poorhouse in my day and country. in fact, he was glad to see her, glad to hear her tale; with that adventure of hers to offer, she was as welcome as a corpse is to a coroner. just as i was ending-up these reflections, clarence came back. i remarked upon the barren result of my efforts with the girl; hadn't got hold of a single point that could help me to find the castle. the youth looked a little surprised, or puzzled, or something, and intimated that he had been wondering to himself what i had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for. "why, great guns," i said, "don't i want to find the castle? and how else would i go about it?" "la, sweet your worship, one may lightly answer that, i ween. she will go with thee. they always do. she will ride with thee." "ride with me? nonsense!" "but of a truth she will. she will ride with thee. thou shalt see." "what? she browse around the hills and scour the woods with me -alone -and i as good as engaged to be married? why, it's scandalous. think how it would look." my, the dear face that rose before me! the boy was eager to know all about this tender matter. i swore him to secresy and then whispered her name -"puss flanagan." he looked disappointed, and said he didn't remember the countess. how natural it was for the little courtier to give her a rank. he asked me where she lived. "in east har--" i came to myself and stopped, a little confused; then i said, "never mind, now; i'll tell you some time." and might he see her? would i let him see her some day? it was but a little thing to promise -thirteen hundred years or so -and he so eager; so i said yes. but i sighed; i couldn't help it. and yet there was no sense in sighing, for she wasn't born yet. but that is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we feel; we just feel. my expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and the boys were very good to me, and made much of me, and seemed to have forgotten their vexation and disappointment, and come to be as anxious for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old virgins loose as if it were themselves that had the contract. well, they were good children -but just children, that is all. and they gave me no end of points about how to scout for giants, and how to scoop them in; and they told me all sorts of charms against enchantments, and gave me salves and other rubbish to put on my wounds. but it never occurred to one of them to reflect that if i was such a wonderful necromancer as i was pretending to be, i ought not to need salves or instructions, or charms against enchantments, and, least of all, arms and armor, on a foray of any kind -even against fire-spouting dragons, and devils hot from perdition, let alone such poor adversaries as these i was after, these commonplace ogres of the back settlements. i was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn, for that was the usual way; but i had the demon's own time with my armor, and this delayed me a little. it is troublesome to get into, and there is so much detail. first you wrap a layer or two of blanket around your body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off the cold iron; then you put on your sleeves and shirt of chain mail -these are made of small steel links woven together, and they form a fabric so flexible that if you toss your shirt onto the floor, it slumps into a pile like a peck of wet fish-net; it is very heavy and is nearly the uncomfortablest material in the world for a night shirt, yet plenty used it for that -tax collectors, and reformers, and one-horse kings with a defective title, and those sorts of people; then you put on your shoes -flat-boats roofed over with interleaving bands of steel -and screw your clumsy spurs into the heels. next you buckle your greaves on your legs, and your cuisses on your thighs; then come your backplate and your breastplate, and you begin to feel crowded; then you hitch onto the breastplate the half-petticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down in front but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down, and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coal scuttle, either for looks or for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belt on your sword; then you put your stove-pipe joints onto your arms, your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto your head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to hang over the back of your neck -and there you are, snug as a candle in a candle-mould. this is no time to dance. well, a man that is packed away like that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there is so little of the meat, when you get down to it, by comparison with the shell. the boys helped me, or i never could have got in. just as we finished, sir bedivere happened in, and i saw that as like as not i hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip. how stately he looked; and tall and broad and grand. he had on his head a conical steel casque that only came down to his ears, and for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended down to his upper lip and protected his nose; and all the rest of him, from neck to heel, was flexible chain mail, trousers and all. but pretty much all of him was hidden under his outside garment, which of course was of chain mail, as i said, and hung straight from his shoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to the bottom, both before and behind, was divided, so that he could ride and let the skirts hang down on each side. he was going grailing, and it was just the outfit for it, too. i would have given a good deal for that ulster, but it was too late now to be fooling around. the sun was just up, the king and the court were all on hand to see me off and wish me luck; so it wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry. you don't get on your horse yourself; no, if you tried it you would get disappointed. they carry you out, just as they carry a sun-struck man to the drug store, and put you on, and help get you to rights, and fix your feet in the stirrups; and all the while you do feel so strange and stuffy and like somebody else -like somebody that has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or something like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and is sort of numb, and can't just get his bearings. then they stood up the mast they called a spear, in its socket by my left foot, and i gripped it with my hand; lastly they hung my shield around my neck, and i was all complete and ready to up anchor and get to sea. everybody was as good to me as they could be, and a maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self. there was nothing more to do now, but for that damsel to get up behind me on a pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on. and so we started, and everybody gave us a goodbye and waved their handkerchiefs or helmets. and everybody we met, going down the hill and through the village was respectful to us, except some shabby little boys on the outskirts. they said: "oh, what a guy!" and hove clods at us. in my experience boys are the same in all ages. they don't respect anything, they don't care for anything or anybody. they say "go up, baldhead" to the prophet going his unoffending way in the gray of antiquity; they sass me in the holy gloom of the middle ages; and i had seen them act the same way in buchanan's administration; i remember, because i was there and helped. the prophet had his bears and settled with his boys; and i wanted to get down and settle with mine, but it wouldn't answer, because i couldn't have got up again. i hate a country without a derrick. chapter xii. slow torture straight off, we were in the country. it was most lovely and pleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morning in the first freshness of autumn. from hilltops we saw fair green valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding through them, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade; and beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretching away in billowy perspective to the horizon, with at wide intervals a dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which we knew was a castle. we crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the cushioned turf giving out no sound of footfall; we dreamed along through glades in a mist of green light that got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leaves overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runlets went frisking and gossiping over its reefs and making a sort of whispering music, comfortable to hear; and at times we left the world behind and entered into the solemn great deeps and rich gloom of the forest, where furtive wild things whisked and scurried by and were gone before you could even get your eye on the place where the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were turning out and getting to business with a song here and a quarrel yonder and a mysterious faroff hammering and drumming for worms on a tree trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses of the woods. and by and by out we would swing again into the glare. about the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out into the glare -it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours or so after sun-up -it wasn't as pleasant as it had been. it was beginning to get hot. this was quite noticeable. we had a very long pull, after that, without any shade. now it is curious how progressively little frets grow and multiply after they once get a start. things which i didn't mind at all, at first, i began to mind now -and more and more, too, all the time. the first ten or fifteen times i wanted my handkerchief i didn't seem to care; i got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and dropped it out of my mind. but now it was different; i wanted it all the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; i couldn't get it out of my mind; and so at last i lost my temper and said hang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pockets in it. you see i had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some other things; but it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take off by yourself. that hadn't occurred to me when i put it there; and in fact i didn't know it. i supposed it would be particularly convenient there. and so now, the thought of its being there, so handy and close by, and yet not get-at-able, made it all the worse and the harder to bear. yes, the thing that you can't get is the thing that you want, mainly; every one has noticed that. well, it took my mind off from everything else; took it clear off, and centered it in my helmet; and mile after mile, there it stayed, imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it was bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes, and i couldn't get at it. it seems like a little thing, on paper, but it was not a little thing at all; it was the most real kind of misery. i would not say it if it was not so. i made up my mind that i would carry along a reticule next time, let it look how it might, and people say what they would. of course these iron dudes of the round table would think it was scandalous, and maybe raise sheol about it, but as for me, give me comfort first, and style afterwards. so we jogged along, and now and then we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds and get into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and of course i said things i oughtn't to have said, i don't deny that. i am not better than others. we couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome britain, not even an ogre; and, in the mood i was in then, it was well for the ogre; that is, an ogre with a handkerchief. most knights would have thought of nothing but getting his armor; but so i got his bandanna, he could keep his hardware, for all of me. meantime, it was getting hotter and hotter in there. you see, the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more and more all the time. well, when you are hot, that way, every little thing irritates you. when i trotted, i rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed me; and moreover i couldn't seem to stand that shield slatting and banging, now about my breast, now around my back; and if i dropped into a walk my joints creaked and screeched in that wearisome way that a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn't create any breeze at that gait, i was like to get fried in that stove; and besides, the quieter you went the heavier the iron settled down on you and the more and more tons you seemed to weigh every minute. and you had to be always changing hands, and passing your spear over to the other foot, it got so irksome for one hand to hold it long at a time. well, you know, when you perspire that way, in rivers, there comes a time when you -when you -well, when you itch. you are inside, your hands are outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between. it is not a light thing, let it sound as it may. first it is one place; then another; then some more; and it goes on spreading and spreading, and at last the territory is all occupied, and nobody can imagine what you feel like, nor how unpleasant it is. and when it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that i could not stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars and settled on my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and i couldn't get the visor up; and i could only shake my head, which was baking hot by this time, and the fly -well, you know how a fly acts when he has got a certainty -he only minded the shaking enough to change from nose to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz and buzz all around in there, and keep on lighting and biting, in a way that a person, already so distressed as i was, simply could not stand. so i gave in, and got alisande to unship the helmet and relieve me of it. then she emptied the conveniences out of it and fetched it full of water, and i drank and then stood up, and she poured the rest down inside the armor. one cannot think how refreshing it was. she continued to fetch and pour until i was well soaked and thoroughly comfortable. it was good to have a rest -and peace. but nothing is quite perfect in this life, at any time. i had made a pipe a while back, and also some pretty fair tobacco; not the real thing, but what some of the indians use: the inside bark of the willow, dried. these comforts had been in the helmet, and now i had them again, but no matches. gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne in upon my understanding -that we were weather-bound. an armed novice cannot mount his horse without help and plenty of it. sandy was not enough; not enough for me, anyway. we had to wait until somebody should come along. waiting, in silence, would have been agreeable enough, for i was full of matter for reflection, and wanted to give it a chance to work. i wanted to try and think out how it was that rational or even half-rational men could ever have learned to wear armor, considering its inconveniences; and how they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generations when it was plain that what i had suffered to-day they had had to suffer all the days of their lives. i wanted to think that out; and moreover i wanted to think out some way to reform this evil and persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out; but thinking was out of the question in the circumstances. you couldn't think, where sandy was. she was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she had a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your head sore like the drays and wagons in a city. if she had had a cork she would have been a comfort. but you can't cork that kind; they would die. her clack was going all day, and you would think something would surely happen to her works, by and by; but no, they never got out of order; and she never had to slack up for words. she could grind, and pump, and churn, and buzz by the week, and never stop to oil up or blow out. and yet the result was just nothing but wind. she never had any ideas, any more than a fog has. she was a perfect blatherskite; i mean for jaw, jaw, jaw, talk, talk, talk, jabber, jabber, jabber; but just as good as she could be. i hadn't minded her mill that morning, on account of having that hornets' nest of other troubles; but more than once in the afternoon i had to say: "take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air, the kingdom will have to go to importing it by to-morrow, and it's a low enough treasury without that." chapter xiii. freemen yes, it is strange how little a while at a time a person can be contented. only a little while back, when i was riding and suffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenity in this secluded shady nook by this purling stream would have seemed, where i could keep perfectly comfortable all the time by pouring a dipper of water into my armor now and then; yet already i was getting dissatisfied; partly because i could not light my pipe -for, although i had long ago started a match factory, i had forgotten to bring matches with me -and partly because we had nothing to eat. here was another illustration of the childlike improvidence of this age and people. a man in armor always trusted to chance for his food on a journey, and would have been scandalized at the idea of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. there was probably not a knight of all the round table combination who would not rather have died than been caught carrying such a thing as that on his flagstaff. and yet there could not be anything more sensible. it had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwiches into my helmet, but i was interrupted in the act, and had to make an excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them. night approached, and with it a storm. the darkness came on fast. we must camp, of course. i found a good shelter for the demoiselle under a rock, and went off and found another for myself. but i was obliged to remain in my armor, because i could not get it off by myself and yet could not allow alisande to help, because it would have seemed so like undressing before folk. it would not have amounted to that in reality, because i had clothes on underneath; but the prejudices of one's breeding are not gotten rid of just at a jump, and i knew that when it came to stripping off that bob-tailed iron petticoat i should be embarrassed. with the storm came a change of weather; and the stronger the wind blew, and the wilder the rain lashed around, the colder and colder it got. pretty soon, various kinds of bugs and ants and worms and things began to flock in out of the wet and crawl down inside my armor to get warm; and while some of them behaved well enough, and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majority were of a restless, uncomfortable sort, and never stayed still, but went on prowling and hunting for they did not know what; especially the ants, which went tickling along in wearisome procession from one end of me to the other by the hour, and are a kind of creatures which i never wish to sleep with again. it would be my advice to persons situated in this way, to not roll or thrash around, because this excites the interest of all the different sorts of animals and makes every last one of them want to turn out and see what is going on, and this makes things worse than they were before, and of course makes you objurgate harder, too, if you can. still, if one did not roll and thrash around he would die; so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other; there is no real choice. even after i was frozen solid i could still distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse does when he is taking electric treatment. i said i would never wear armor after this trip. all those trying hours whilst i was frozen and yet was in a living fire, as you may say, on account of that swarm of crawlers, that same unanswerable question kept circling and circling through my tired head: how do people stand this miserable armor? how have they managed to stand it all these generations? how can they sleep at night for dreading the tortures of next day? when the morning came at last, i was in a bad enough plight: seedy, drowsy, fagged, from want of sleep; weary from thrashing around, famished from long fasting; pining for a bath, and to get rid of the animals; and crippled with rheumatism. and how had it fared with the nobly born, the titled aristocrat, the demoiselle alisande la carteloise? why, she was as fresh as a squirrel; she had slept like the dead; and as for a bath, probably neither she nor any other noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was not missing it. measured by modern standards, they were merely modified savages, those people. this noble lady showed no impatience to get to breakfast -and that smacks of the savage, too. on their journeys those britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them; and also how to freight up against probable fasts before starting, after the style of the indian and the anaconda. as like as not, sandy was loaded for a three-day stretch. we were off before sunrise, sandy riding and i limping along behind. in half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded as a road. they were as humble as animals to me; and when i proposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that at first they were not able to believe that i was in earnest. my lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she said in their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with the other cattle -a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended them, for it didn't. and yet they were not slaves, not chattels. by a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respect-worthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. and yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be the nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. the priests had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state of things was ordained of god; and so, not reflecting upon how unlike god it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet. the talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in a formerly american ear. they were freemen, but they could not leave the estates of their lord or their bishop without his permission; they could not prepare their own bread, but must have their corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery, and pay roundly for the same; they could not sell a piece of their own property without paying him a handsome percentage of the proceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without remembering him in cash for the privilege; they had to harvest his grain for him gratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving their own crop to destruction by the threatened storm; they had to let him plant fruit trees in their fields, and then keep their indignation to themselves when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grain around the trees; they had to smother their anger when his hunting parties galloped through their fields laying waste the result of their patient toil; they were not allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms from my lord's dovecote settled on their crops they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would the penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then came the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it: first the church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissioner took his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroad upon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had liberty to bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble; there were taxes, and taxes, and taxes, and more taxes, and taxes again, and yet other taxes -upon this free and independent pauper, but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none upon the wasteful nobility or the all-devouring church; if the baron would sleep unvexed, the freeman must sit up all night after his day's work and whip the ponds to keep the frogs quiet; if the freeman's daughter -but no, that last infamy of monarchical government is unprintable; and finally, if the freeman, grown desperate with his tortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions, and sacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentle church condemned him to eternal fire, the gentle law buried him at midnight at the cross-roads with a stake through his back, and his master the baron or the bishop confiscated all his property and turned his widow and his orphans out of doors. and here were these freemen assembled in the early morning to work on their lord the bishop's road three days each -gratis; every head of a family, and every son of a family, three days each, gratis, and a day or so added for their servants. why, it was like reading about france and the french, before the ever memorable and blessed revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. there were two "reigns of terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor terror, the momentary terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? what is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? a city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all france could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real terror -that unspeakably bitter and awful terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. these poor ostensible freemen who were sharing their breakfast and their talk with me, were as full of humble reverence for their king and church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire. there was something pitifully ludicrous about it. i asked them if they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a free vote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and its descendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families -including the voter's; and would also elect that a certain hundred families should be raised to dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive transmissible glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation's families -including his own. they all looked unhit, and said they didn't know; that they had never thought about it before, and it hadn't ever occurred to them that a nation could be so situated that every man could have a say in the government. i said i had seen one -and that it would last until it had an established church. again they were all unhit -at first. but presently one man looked up and asked me to state that proposition again; and state it slowly, so it could soak into his understanding. i did it; and after a little he had the idea, and he brought his fist down and said he didn't believe a nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get down in the mud and dirt in any such way; and that to steal from a nation its will and preference must be a crime and the first of all crimes. i said to myself: "this one's a man. if i were backed by enough of his sort, i would make a strike for the welfare of this country, and try to prove myself its loyalest citizen by making a wholesome change in its system of government." you see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. the country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. to be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags -that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. i was from connecticut, whose constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient." under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. that he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does. and now here i was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. for the nine hundred and ninety-four to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and propose to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black treason. so to speak, i was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. it seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal. the thing that would have best suited the circus side of my nature would have been to resign the boss-ship and get up an insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but i knew that the jack cade or the wat tyler who tries such a thing without first educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely certain to get left. i had never been accustomed to getting left, even if i do say it myself. wherefore, the "deal" which had been for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different pattern from the cade-tyler sort. so i did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat munching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of human sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him. after i had finished, i got him to lend me a little ink from his veins; and with this and a sliver i wrote on a piece of bark - put him in the man-factory -and gave it to him, and said: "take it to the palace at camelot and give it into the hands of amyas le poulet, whom i call clarence, and he will understand." "he is a priest, then," said the man, and some of the enthusiasm went out of his face. "how -a priest? didn't i tell you that no chattel of the church, no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my man-factory? didn't i tell you that you couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever it might be, was your own free property?" "marry, it is so, and for that i was glad; wherefore it liked me not, and bred in me a cold doubt, to hear of this priest being there." "but he isn't a priest, i tell you." the man looked far from satisfied. he said: "he is not a priest, and yet can read?" "he is not a priest and yet can read -yes, and write, too, for that matter. i taught him myself." the man's face cleared. "and it is the first thing that you yourself will be taught in that factory --" "i? i would give blood out of my heart to know that art. why, i will be your slave, your --" "no you won't, you won't be anybody's slave. take your family and go along. your lord the bishop will confiscate your small property, but no matter. clarence will fix you all right." chapter xiv. "defend thee, lord" i paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagant price it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfasted a dozen persons for that money; but i was feeling good by this time, and i had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then these people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financial lift where the money would do so much more good than it would in my helmet, where, these pennies being made of iron and not stinted in weight, my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of a burden to me. i spent money rather too freely in those days, it is true; but one reason for it was that i hadn't got the proportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so long a sojourn in britain -hadn't got along to where i was able to absolutely realize that a penny in arthur's land and a couple of dollars in connecticut were about one and the same thing: just twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. if my start from camelot could have been delayed a very few days i could have paid these people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and that would have pleased me; and them, too, not less. i had adopted the american values exclusively. in a week or two now, cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, and also a trifle of gold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through the commercial veins of the kingdom, and i looked to see this new blood freshen up its life. the farmers were bound to throw in something, to sort of offset my liberality, whether i would or no; so i let them give me a flint and steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed sandy and me on our horse, i lit my pipe. when the first blast of smoke shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people broke for the woods, and sandy went over backwards and struck the ground with a dull thud. they thought i was one of those fire-belching dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other professional liars. i had infinite trouble to persuade those people to venture back within explaining distance. then i told them that this was only a bit of enchantment which would work harm to none but my enemies. and i promised, with my hand on my heart, that if all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and pass before me they should see that only those who remained behind would be struck dead. the procession moved with a good deal of promptness. there were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enough to remain behind to see what would happen. i lost some time, now, for these big children, their fears gone, became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks that i had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before they would let me go. still the delay was not wholly unproductive, for it took all that time to get sandy thoroughly wonted to the new thing, she being so close to it, you know. it plugged up her conversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that was a gain. but above all other benefits accruing, i had learned something. i was ready for any giant or any ogre that might come along, now. we tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my opportunity came about the middle of the next afternoon. we were crossing a vast meadow by way of short-cut, and i was musing absently, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when sandy suddenly interrupted a remark which she had begun that morning, with the cry: "defend thee, lord! -peril of life is toward!" and she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood. i looked up and saw, far off in the shade of a tree, half a dozen armed knights and their squires; and straightway there was bustle among them and tightening of saddle-girths for the mount. my pipe was ready and would have been lit, if i had not been lost in thinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restore to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging anybody. i lit up at once, and by the time i had got a good head of reserved steam on, here they came. all together, too; none of those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about -one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair play. no, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush, they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down, plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. it was a handsome sight, a beautiful sight -for a man up a tree. i laid my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron wave was just ready to break over me, then spouted a column of white smoke through the bars of my helmet. you should have seen the wave go to pieces and scatter! this was a finer sight than the other one. but these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, and this troubled me. my satisfaction collapsed, and fear came; i judged i was a lost man. but sandy was radiant; and was going to be eloquent -but i stopped her, and told her my magic had miscarried, somehow or other, and she must mount, with all despatch, and we must ride for life. no, she wouldn't. she said that my enchantment had disabled those knights; they were not riding on, because they couldn't; wait, they would drop out of their saddles presently, and we would get their horses and harness. i could not deceive such trusting simplicity, so i said it was a mistake; that when my fireworks killed at all, they killed instantly; no, the men would not die, there was something wrong about my apparatus, i couldn't tell what; but we must hurry and get away, for those people would attack us again, in a minute. sandy laughed, and said: "lack-a-day, sir, they be not of that breed! sir launcelot will give battle to dragons, and will abide by them, and will assail them again, and yet again, and still again, until he do conquer and destroy them; and so likewise will sir pellinore and sir aglovale and sir carados, and mayhap others, but there be none else that will venture it, let the idle say what the idle will. and, la, as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have not their fill, but yet desire more?" "well, then, what are they waiting for? why don't they leave? nobody's hindering. good land, i'm willing to let bygones be bygones, i'm sure." "leave, is it? oh, give thyself easement as to that. they dream not of it, no, not they. they wait to yield them." "come -really, is that 'sooth' -as you people say? if they want to, why don't they?" "it would like them much; but an ye wot how dragons are esteemed, ye would not hold them blamable. they fear to come." "well, then, suppose i go to them instead, and --" "ah, wit ye well they would not abide your coming. i will go." and she did. she was a handy person to have along on a raid. i would have considered this a doubtful errand, myself. i presently saw the knights riding away, and sandy coming back. that was a relief. i judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings -i mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview wouldn't have been so short. but it turned out that she had managed the business well; in fact, admirably. she said that when she told those people i was the boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sore with fear and dread" was her word; and then they were ready to put up with anything she might require. so she swore them to appear at arthur's court within two days and yield them, with horse and harness, and be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command. how much better she managed that thing than i should have done it myself! she was a daisy. chapter xv. sandy's tale and so i'm proprietor of some knights," said i, as we rode off. "who would ever have supposed that i should live to list up assets of that sort. i shan't know what to do with them; unless i raffle them off. how many of them are there, sandy?" "seven, please you, sir, and their squires." "it is a good haul. who are they? where do they hang out?" "where do they hang out?" "yes, where do they live?" "ah, i understood thee not. that will i tell eftsoons." then she said musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over her tongue: "hang they out -hang they out -where hang -where do they hang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. of a truth the phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded withal. i will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, whereby i may peradventure learn it. where do they hang out. even so! already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as --" "don't forget the cowboys, sandy." "cowboys?" "yes; the knights, you know: you were going to tell me about them. a while back, you remember. figuratively speaking, game's called." "game --" "yes, yes, yes! go to the bat. i mean, get to work on your statistics, and don't burn so much kindling getting your fire started. tell me about the knights." "i will well, and lightly will begin. so they two departed and rode into a great forest. and --" "great scott!" you see, i recognized my mistake at once. i had set her works a-going; it was my own fault; she would be thirty days getting down to those facts. and she generally began without a preface and finished without a result. if you interrupted her she would either go right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words, and go back and say the sentence over again. so, interruptions only did harm; and yet i had to interrupt, and interrupt pretty frequently, too, in order to save my life; a person would die if he let her monotony drip on him right along all day. "great scott! " i said in my distress. she went right back and began over again: "so they two departed and rode into a great forest. and --" "which two?" "sir gawaine and sir uwaine. and so they came to an abbey of monks, and there were well lodged. so on the morn they heard their masses in the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a great forest; then was sir gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, of twelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, and the damsels went to and fro by a tree. and then was sir gawaine ware how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as the damsels came by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire upon the shield --" "now, if i hadn't seen the like myself in this country, sandy, i wouldn't believe it. but i've seen it, and i can just see those creatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that. the women here do certainly act like all possessed. yes, and i mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. the humblest hello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in arthur's land." "hello-girl?" "yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new kind of a girl; they don't have them here; one often speaks sharply to them when they are not the least in fault, and he can't get over feeling sorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years, it's such shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is, no gentleman ever does it -though i -well, i myself, if i've got to confess --" "peradventure she --" "never mind her; never mind her; i tell you i couldn't ever explain her so you would understand." "even so be it, sith ye are so minded. then sir gawaine and sir uwaine went and saluted them, and asked them why they did that despite to the shield. sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you. there is a knight in this country that owneth this white shield, and he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth all ladies and gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this despite to the shield. i will say you, said sir gawaine, it beseemeth evil a good knight to despise all ladies and gentlewomen, and peradventure though he hate you he hath some cause, and peradventure he loveth in some other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved again, and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of --" "man of prowess -yes, that is the man to please them, sandy. man of brains -that is a thing they never think of. tom sayers -john heenan -john l. sullivan -pity but you could be here. you would have your legs under the round table and a 'sir' in front of your names within the twenty-four hours; and you could bring about a new distribution of the married princesses and duchesses of the court in another twenty-four. the fact is, it is just a sort of polished-up court of comanches, and there isn't a squaw in it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desert to the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt." "-and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said sir gawaine. now, what is his name? sir, said they, his name is marhaus the king's son of ireland." "son of the king of ireland, you mean; the other form doesn't mean anything. and look out and hold on tight, now, we must jump this gully.... there, we are all right now. this horse belongs in the circus; he is born before his time." "i know him well, said sir uwaine, he is a passing good knight as any is on live." "on live. if you've got a fault in the world, sandy, it is that you are a shade too archaic. but it isn't any matter." "-for i saw him once proved at a justs where many knights were gathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. ah, said sir gawaine, damsels, methinketh ye are to blame, for it is to suppose he that hung that shield there will not be long therefrom, and then may those knights match him on horseback, and that is more your worship than thus; for i will abide no longer to see a knight's shield dishonored. and therewith sir uwaine and sir gawaine departed a little from them, and then were they ware where sir marhaus came riding on a great horse straight toward them. and when the twelve damsels saw sir marhaus they fled into the turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way. then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield, and said on high, sir marhaus defend thee. and so they ran together that the knight brake his spear on marhaus, and sir marhaus smote him so hard that he brake his neck and the horse's back --" "well, that is just the trouble about this state of things, it ruins so many horses." "that saw the other knight of the turret, and dressed him toward marhaus, and they went so eagerly together, that the knight of the turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead --" "another horse gone; i tell you it is a custom that ought to be broken up. i don't see how people with any feeling can applaud and support it." .... "so these two knights came together with great random --" i saw that i had been asleep and missed a chapter, but i didn't say anything. i judged that the irish knight was in trouble with the visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case. "-that sir uwaine smote sir marhaus that his spear brast in pieces on the shield, and sir marhaus smote him so sore that horse and man he bare to the earth, and hurt sir uwaine on the left side -"the truth is, alisande, these archaics are a little too simple; the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptions suffer in the matter of variety; they run too much to level saharas of fact, and not enough to picturesque detail; this throws about them a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights are all alike: a couple of people come together with great random -random is a good word, and so is exegesis, for that matter, and so is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct and a hundred others, but land! a body ought to discriminate -they come together with great random, and a spear is brast, and one party brake his shield and the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horse-tail and brake his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in, and brast his spear, and the other man brast his shield, and down he goes, horse and man, over his horse-tail, and brake his neck, and then there's another elected, and another and another and still another, till the material is all used up; and when you come to figure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor who whipped; and as a picture, of living, raging, roaring battle, sho! why, it's pale and noiseless -just ghosts scuffling in a fog. dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle? -the burning of rome in nero's time, for instance? why, it would merely say, 'town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' why, that ain't a picture!" it was a good deal of a lecture, i thought, but it didn't disturb sandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam soared steadily up again, the minute i took off the lid: "then sir marhaus turned his horse and rode toward gawaine with his spear. and when sir gawaine saw that, he dressed his shield, and they aventred their spears, and they came together with all the might of their horses, that either knight smote other so hard in the midst of their shields, but sir gawaine's spear brake --" "i knew it would." -"but sir marhaus's spear held; and therewith sir gawaine and his horse rushed down to the earth --" "just so -and brake his back." -"and lightly sir gawaine rose upon his feet and pulled out his sword, and dressed him toward sir marhaus on foot, and therewith either came unto other eagerly, and smote together with their swords, that their shields flew in cantels, and they bruised their helms and their hauberks, and wounded either other. but sir gawaine, fro it passed nine of the clock, waxed by the space of three hours ever stronger and stronger. and thrice his might was increased. all this espied sir marhaus, and had great wonder how his might increased, and so they wounded other passing sore; and then when it was come noon --" the pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes and sounds of my boyhood days: "n-e-e-ew haven! ten minutes for refreshments -knductr'll strike the gong-bell two minutes before train leaves -passengers for the shore line please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yar don't go no furder -ahh pls, aw-rnjz, b'nanners, s-a-n-d'ches, p--op-corn!" -"and waxed past noon and drew toward evensong. sir gawaine's strength feebled and waxed passing faint, that unnethes he might dure any longer, and sir marhaus was then bigger and bigger --" "which strained his armor, of course; and yet little would one of these people mind a small thing like that." -"and so, sir knight, said sir marhaus, i have well felt that ye are a passing good knight, and a marvelous man of might as ever i felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and therefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for i feel you are passing feeble. ah, said sir gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word that i should say. and therewith they took off their helms and either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love other as brethren --" but i lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinking about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength -strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome iron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other for six hours on a stretch -should not have been born at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. take a jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because he is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. it is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place. and yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is going to come of it. when i came to myself again and began to listen, i perceived that i had lost another chapter, and that alisande had wandered a long way off with her people. "and so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby was the head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sitting thereby. in this country, said sir marhaus, came never knight since it was christened, but he found strange adventures --" "this is not good form, alisande. sir marhaus the king's son of ireland talks like all the rest; you ought to give him a brogue, or at least a characteristic expletive; by this means one would recognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named. it is a common literary device with the great authors. you should make him say, 'in this country, be jabers, came never knight since it was christened, but he found strange adventures, be jabers.' you see how much better that sounds." -"came never knight but he found strange adventures, be jabers. of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit 'tis passing hard to say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speed with usage. and then they rode to the damsels, and either saluted other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and she was threescore winter of age or more --" "the damsel was?" "even so, dear lord -and her hair was white under the garland --" "celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not -the loose-fit kind, that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, and fall out when you laugh." "the second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of gold about her head. the third damsel was but fifteen year of age --" billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice faded out of my hearing! fifteen! break -my heart! oh, my lost darling! just her age who was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whom i shall never see again! how the thought of her carries me back over wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when i used to wake in the soft summer mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "hello, central!" just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a "hello, hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. she got three dollars a week, but she was worth it. i could not follow alisande's further explanation of who our captured knights were, now -i mean in case she should ever get to explaining who they were. my interest was gone, my thoughts were far away, and sad. by fitful glimpses of the drifting tale, caught here and there and now and then, i merely noted in a vague way that each of these three knights took one of these three damsels up behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east, the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again and lie, after year and day. year and day -and without baggage. it was of a piece with the general simplicity of the country. the sun was now setting. it was about three in the afternoon when alisande had begun to tell me who the cowboys were; so she had made pretty good progress with it -for her. she would arrive some time or other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried. we were approaching a castle which stood on high ground; a huge, strong, venerable structure, whose gray towers and battlements were charmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass was drenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. it was the largest castle we had seen, and so i thought it might be the one we were after, but sandy said no. she did not know who owned it; she said she had passed it without calling, when she went down to camelot. chapter xvi. morgan le fay if knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in. as a matter of fact, knights errant were not persons to be believed -that is, measured by modern standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. it was very simple: you discounted a statement ninetyseven per cent.; the rest was fact. now after making this allowance, the truth remained that if i could find out something about a castle before ringing the doorbell -i mean hailing the warders -it was the sensible thing to do. so i was pleased when i saw in the distance a horseman making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle. as we approached each other, i saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious addition also -a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. however, i had to smile at my own forgetfulness when i got nearer and read this sign on his tabard: "persimmon's soap -all the prime-donna use it." that was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. in the first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense of knight errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. i had started a number of these people out -the bravest knights i could get -each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one device or another, and i judged that by and by when they got to be numerous enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even the steel-clad ass that hadn't any board would himself begin to look ridiculous because he was out of the fashion. secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. this would undermine the church. i mean would be a step toward that. next, education -next, freedom -and then she would begin to crumble. it being my conviction that any established church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, i had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. why, in my own former day -in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time -there were old englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a "free" country with the corporation act and the test still in force in it -timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an established anachronism with. my missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on their tabards -the showy gilding was a neat idea, i could have got the king to wear a bulletin-board for the sake of that barbaric splendor -they were to spell out these signs and then explain to the lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladies were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. the missionary's next move was to get the family together and try it on himself; he was to stop at no experiment, however desperate. that could convince the nobility that soap was harmless; if any final doubt remained, he must catch a hermit -the woods were full of them; saints they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be. they were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybody stood in awe of them. if a hermit could survive a wash, and that failed to convince a duke, give him up, let him alone. whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the road they washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go and get a bulletin-board and disseminate soap and civilization the rest of his days. as a consequence the workers in the field were increasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading. my soap factory felt the strain early. at first i had only two hands; but before i had left home i was already employing fifteen, and running night and day; and the atmospheric result was getting so pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gasping around and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer, and sir launcelot got so that he did hardly anything but walk up and down the roof and swear, although i told him it was worse up there than anywhere else, but he said he wanted plenty of air; and he was always complaining that a palace was no place for a soap factory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his house he would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. there were ladies present, too, but much these people ever cared for that; they would swear before children, if the wind was their way when the factory was going. this missionary knight's name was la cote male taile, and he said that this castle was the abode of morgan le fay, sister of king arthur, and wife of king uriens. monarch of a realm about as big as the district of columbia -you could stand in the middle of it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. "kings" and "kingdoms" were as thick in britain as they had been in little palestine in joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up because they couldn't stretch out without a passport. la cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worst failure of his campaign. he had not worked off a cake; yet he had tried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit; but the hermit died. this was, indeed, a bad failure, for this animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his place among the saints of the roman calendar. thus made he his moan, this poor sir la cote male taile, and sorrowed passing sore. and so my heart bled for him, and i was moved to comfort and stay him. wherefore i said: "forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. we have brains, you and i; and for such as have brains there are no defeats, but only victories. observe how we will turn this seeming disaster into an advertisement; an advertisement for our soap; and the biggest one, to draw, that was ever thought of; an advertisement that will transform that mount washington defeat into a matterhorn victory. we will put on your bulletin-board, 'patronized by the elect.' how does that strike you?" "verily, it is wonderly bethought!" "well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little one-line ad., it's a corker." so the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. he was a brave fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. his chief celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one of mine, which he had once made with a damsel named maledisant, who was as handy with her tongue as was sandy, though in a different way, for her tongue churned forth only railings and insult, whereas sandy's music was of a kindlier sort. i knew his story well, and so i knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when he bade me farewell. he supposed i was having a bitter hard time of it. sandy and i discussed his story, as we rode along, and she said that la cote's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of that trip; for the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day, and in such cases it was customary for the girl to desert to the conqueror, but maledisant didn't do it; and also persisted afterward in sticking to him, after all his defeats. but, said i, suppose the victor should decline to accept his spoil? she said that that wouldn't answer -he must. he couldn't decline; it wouldn't be regular. i made a note of that. if sandy's music got to be too burdensome, some time, i would let a knight defeat me, on the chance that she would desert to him. in due time we were challenged by the warders, from the castle walls, and after a parley admitted. i have nothing pleasant to tell about that visit. but it was not a disappointment, for i knew mrs. le fay by reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant. she was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made everybody believe she was a great sorceress. all her ways were wicked, all her instincts devilish. she was loaded to the eyelids with cold malice. all her history was black with crime; and among her crimes murder was common. i was most curious to see her; as curious as i could have been to see satan. to my surprise she was beautiful; black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, age had failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness. she could have passed for old uriens' granddaughter, she could have been mistaken for sister to her own son. as soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were ordered into her presence. king uriens was there, a kind-faced old man with a subdued look; and also the son, sir uwaine le blanchemains, in whom i was, of course, interested on account of the tradition that he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also on account of his trip with sir gawaine and sir marhaus, which sandy had been aging me with. but morgan was the main attraction, the conspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household, that was plain. she caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask me questions. dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, talking. i felt persuaded that this woman must have been misrepresented, lied about. she trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, and as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with something on a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdid his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her knee. she slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way as another person would have harpooned a rat! poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs in one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. out of the old king was wrung an involuntary "o-h!" of compassion. the look he got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphens in it. sir uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroom and called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetly along with her talk. i saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked she kept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they made no balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they came with fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; and when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had overlooked. it was plain to me that la cote male taile had failed to see the mistress of the house. often, how louder and clearer than any tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak. morgan le fay rippled along as musically as ever. marvelous woman. and what a glance she had: when it fell in reproof upon those servants, they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when the lightning flashes out of a cloud. i could have got the habit myself. it was the same with that poor old brer uriens; he was always on the ragged edge of apprehension; she could not even turn toward him but he winced. in the midst of the talk i let drop a complimentary word about king arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated her brother. that one little compliment was enough. she clouded up like storm; she called for her guards, and said: "hale me these varlets to the dungeons." that struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation. nothing occurred to me to say -or do. but not so with sandy. as the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilest confidence, and said: "god's wounds, dost thou covet destruction, thou maniac? it is the boss!" now what a happy idea that was! -and so simple; yet it would never have occurred to me. i was born modest; not all over, but in spots; and this was one of the spots. the effect upon madame was electrical. it cleared her countenance and brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces and blandishments; but nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover up with them the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. she said: "la, but do list to thine handmaid! as if one gifted with powers like to mine might say the thing which i have said unto one who has vanquished merlin, and not be jesting. by mine enchantments i foresaw your coming, and by them i knew you when you entered here. i did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which i have long been childishly curious to see." the guards were less curious, and got out as soon as they got permission. chapter xvii. a royal banquet madame, seeing me pacific and unresentful, no doubt judged that i was deceived by her excuse; for her fright dissolved away, and she was soon so importunate to have me give an exhibition and kill somebody, that the thing grew to be embarrassing. however, to my relief she was presently interrupted by the call to prayers. i will say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious. nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the church. more than once i had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage, stop to pray before cutting his throat; more than once i had seen a noble, after ambushing and despatching his enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and humbly give thanks, without even waiting to rob the body. there was to be nothing finer or sweeter in the life of even benvenuto cellini, that rough-hewn saint, ten centuries later. all the nobles of britain, with their families, attended divine service morning and night daily, in their private chapels, and even the worst of them had family worship five or six times a day besides. the credit of this belonged entirely to the church. although i was no friend to that catholic church, i was obliged to admit this. and often, in spite of me, i found myself saying, "what would this country be without the church?" after prayers we had dinner in a great banqueting hall which was lighted by hundreds of grease-jets, and everything was as fine and lavish and rudely splendid as might become the royal degree of the hosts. at the head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of the king, queen, and their son, prince uwaine. stretching down the hall from this, was the general table, on the floor. at this, above the salt, sat the visiting nobles and the grown members of their families, of both sexes, -the resident court, in effect -sixty-one persons; below the salt sat minor officers of the household, with their principal subordinates: altogether a hundred and eighteen persons sitting, and about as many liveried servants standing behind their chairs, or serving in one capacity or another. it was a very fine show. in a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps, and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to be the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later centuries as "in the sweet bye and bye." it was new, and ought to have been rehearsed a little more. for some reason or other the queen had the composer hanged, after dinner. after this music, the priest who stood behind the royal table said a noble long grace in ostensible latin. then the battalion of waiters broke away from their posts, and darted, rushed, flew, fetched and carried, and the mighty feeding began; no words anywhere, but absorbing attention to business. the rows of chops opened and shut in vast unison, and the sound of it was like to the muffled burr of subterranean machinery. the havoc continued an hour and a half, and unimaginable was the destruction of substantials. of the chief feature of the feast -the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portly and imposing at the start -nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop-skirt; and he was but the type and symbol of what had happened to all the other dishes. with the pastries and so on, the heavy drinking began -and the talk. gallon after gallon of wine and mead disappeared, and everybody got comfortable, then happy, then sparklingly joyous -both sexes, -and by and by pretty noisy. men told anecdotes that were terrific to hear, but nobody blushed; and when the nub was sprung, the assemblage let go with a horse-laugh that shook the fortress. ladies answered back with historiettes that would almost have made queen margaret of navarre or even the great elizabeth of england hide behind a handkerchief, but nobody hid here, but only laughed -howled, you may say. in pretty much all of these dreadful stories, ecclesiastics were the hardy heroes, but that didn't worry the chaplain any, he had his laugh with the rest; more than that, upon invitation he roared out a song which was of as daring a sort as any that was sung that night. by midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore with laughing; and, as a rule, drunk: some weepingly, some affectionately, some hilariously, some quarrelsomely, some dead and under the table. of the ladies, the worst spectacle was a lovely young duchess, whose wedding-eve this was; and indeed she was a spectacle, sure enough. just as she was she could have sat in advance for the portrait of the young daughter of the regent d'orleans, at the famous dinner whence she was carried, foul-mouthed, intoxicated, and helpless, to her bed, in the lost and lamented days of the ancient regime. suddenly, even while the priest was lifting his hands, and all conscious heads were bowed in reverent expectation of the coming blessing, there appeared under the arch of the far-off door at the bottom of the hall an old and bent and white-haired lady, leaning upon a crutch-stick; and she lifted the stick and pointed it toward the queen and cried out: "the wrath and curse of god fall upon you, woman without pity, who have slain mine innocent grandchild and made desolate this old heart that had nor chick, nor friend nor stay nor comfort in all this world but him!" everybody crossed himself in a grisly fright, for a curse was an awful thing to those people; but the queen rose up majestic, with the death-light in her eye, and flung back this ruthless command: "lay hands on her! to the stake with her!" the guards left their posts to obey. it was a shame; it was a cruel thing to see. what could be done? sandy gave me a look; i knew she had another inspiration. i said: "do what you choose." she was up and facing toward the queen in a moment. she indicated me, and said: "madame, he saith this may not be. recall the commandment, or he will dissolve the castle and it shall vanish away like the instable fabric of a dream!" confound it, what a crazy contract to pledge a person to! what if the queen -but my consternation subsided there, and my panic passed off; for the queen, all in a collapse, made no show of resistance but gave a countermanding sign and sunk into her seat. when she reached it she was sober. so were many of the others. the assemblage rose, whiffed ceremony to the winds, and rushed for the door like a mob; overturning chairs, smashing crockery, tugging, struggling, shouldering, crowding -anything to get out before i should change my mind and puff the castle into the measureless dim vacancies of space. well, well, well, they were a superstitious lot. it is all a body can do to conceive of it. the poor queen was so scared and humbled that she was even afraid to hang the composer without first consulting me. i was very sorry for her -indeed, any one would have been, for she was really suffering; so i was willing to do anything that was reasonable, and had no desire to carry things to wanton extremities. i therefore considered the matter thoughtfully, and ended by having the musicians ordered into our presence to play that sweet bye and bye again, which they did. then i saw that she was right, and gave her permission to hang the whole band. this little relaxation of sternness had a good effect upon the queen. a statesman gains little by the arbitrary exercise of iron-clad authority upon all occasions that offer, for this wounds the just pride of his subordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. a little concession, now and then, where it can do no harm, is the wiser policy. now that the queen was at ease in her mind once more, and measurably happy, her wine naturally began to assert itself again, and it got a little the start of her. i mean it set her music going -her silver bell of a tongue. dear me, she was a master talker. it would not become me to suggest that it was pretty late and that i was a tired man and very sleepy. i wished i had gone off to bed when i had the chance. now i must stick it out; there was no other way. so she tinkled along and along, in the otherwise profound and ghostly hush of the sleeping castle, until by and by there came, as if from deep down under us, a far-away sound, as of a muffled shriek -with an expression of agony about it that made my flesh crawl. the queen stopped, and her eyes lighted with pleasure; she tilted her graceful head as a bird does when it listens. the sound bored its way up through the stillness again. "what is it?" i said. "it is truly a stubborn soul, and endureth long. it is many hours now." "endureth what?" "the rack. come -ye shall see a blithe sight. an he yield not his secret now, ye shall see him torn asunder." what a silky smooth hellion she was; and so composed and serene, when the cords all down my legs were hurting in sympathy with that man's pain. conducted by mailed guards bearing flaring torches, we tramped along echoing corridors, and down stone stairways dank and dripping, and smelling of mould and ages of imprisoned night -a chill, uncanny journey and a long one, and not made the shorter or the cheerier by the sorceress's talk, which was about this sufferer and his crime. he had been accused by an anonymous informer, of having killed a stag in the royal preserves. i said: "anonymous testimony isn't just the right thing, your highness. it were fairer to confront the accused with the accuser." "i had not thought of that, it being but of small consequence. but an i would, i could not, for that the accuser came masked by night, and told the forester, and straightway got him hence again, and so the forester knoweth him not." "then is this unknown the only person who saw the stag killed?" "marry, no man saw the killing, but this unknown saw this hardy wretch near to the spot where the stag lay, and came with right loyal zeal and betrayed him to the forester." "so the unknown was near the dead stag, too? isn't it just possible that he did the killing himself? his loyal zeal -in a mask -looks just a shade suspicious. but what is your highness's idea for racking the prisoner? where is the profit?" "he will not confess, else; and then were his soul lost. for his crime his life is forfeited by the law -and of a surety will i see that he payeth it! -but it were peril to my own soul to let him die unconfessed and unabsolved. nay, i were a fool to fling me into hell for his accommodation." "but, your highness, suppose he has nothing to confess?" "as to that, we shall see, anon. an i rack him to death and he confess not, it will peradventure show that he had indeed naught to confess -ye will grant that that is sooth? then shall i not be damned for an unconfessed man that had naught to confess -wherefore, i shall be safe." it was the stubborn unreasoning of the time. it was useless to argue with her. arguments have no chance against petrified training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. and her training was everybody's. the brightest intellect in the land would not have been able to see that her position was defective. as we entered the rack-cell i caught a picture that will not go from me; i wish it would. a native young giant of thirty or thereabouts lay stretched upon the frame on his back, with his wrists and ankles tied to ropes which led over windlasses at either end. there was no color in him; his features were contorted and set, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. a priest bent over him on each side; the executioner stood by; guards were on duty; smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner crouched a poor young creature, her face drawn with anguish, a half-wild and hunted look in her eyes, and in her lap lay a little child asleep. just as we stepped across the threshold the executioner gave his machine a slight turn, which wrung a cry from both the prisoner and the woman; but i shouted, and the executioner released the strain without waiting to see who spoke. i could not let this horror go on; it would have killed me to see it. i asked the queen to let me clear the place and speak to the prisoner privately; and when she was going to object i spoke in a low voice and said i did not want to make a scene before her servants, but i must have my way; for i was king arthur's representative, and was speaking in his name. she saw she had to yield. i asked her to indorse me to these people, and then leave me. it was not pleasant for her, but she took the pill; and even went further than i was meaning to require. i only wanted the backing of her own authority; but she said: "ye will do in all things as this lord shall command. it is the boss." it was certainly a good word to conjure with: you could see it by the squirming of these rats. the queen's guards fell into line, and she and they marched away, with their torch-bearers, and woke the echoes of the cavernous tunnels with the measured beat of their retreating footfalls. i had the prisoner taken from the rack and placed upon his bed, and medicaments applied to his hurts, and wine given him to drink. the woman crept near and looked on, eagerly, lovingly, but timorously, -like one who fears a repulse; indeed, she tried furtively to touch the man's forehead, and jumped back, the picture of fright, when i turned unconsciously toward her. it was pitiful to see. "lord," i said, "stroke him, lass, if you want to. do anything you're a mind to; don't mind me." why, her eyes were as grateful as an animal's, when you do it a kindness that it understands. the baby was out of her way and she had her cheek against the man's in a minute. and her hands fondling his hair, and her happy tears running down. the man revived and caressed his wife with his eyes, which was all he could do. i judged i might clear the den, now, and i did; cleared it of all but the family and myself. then i said: "now, my friend, tell me your side of this matter; i know the other side." the man moved his head in sign of refusal. but the woman looked pleased -as it seemed to me -pleased with my suggestion. i went on -"you know of me?" "yes. all do, in arthur's realms." "if my reputation has come to you right and straight, you should not be afraid to speak." the woman broke in, eagerly: "ah, fair my lord, do thou persuade him! thou canst an thou wilt. ah, he suffereth so; and it is for me -for me! and how can i bear it? i would i might see him die -a sweet, swift death; oh, my hugo, i cannot bear this one!" and she fell to sobbing and grovelling about my feet, and still imploring. imploring what? the man's death? i could not quite get the bearings of the thing. but hugo interrupted her and said: "peace! ye wit not what ye ask. shall i starve whom i love, to win a gentle death? i wend thou knewest me better." "well," i said, "i can't quite make this out. it is a puzzle. now --" "ah, dear my lord, an ye will but persuade him! consider how these his tortures wound me! oh, and he will not speak! -whereas, the healing, the solace that lie in a blessed swift death --" "what are you maundering about? he's going out from here a free man and whole -he's not going to die." the man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at me in a most surprising explosion of joy, and cried out: "he is saved! -for it is the king's word by the mouth of the king's servant -arthur, the king whose word is gold!" "well, then you do believe i can be trusted, after all. why didn't you before?" "who doubted? not i, indeed; and not she." "well, why wouldn't you tell me your story, then?" "ye had made no promise; else had it been otherwise." "i see, i see.... and yet i believe i don't quite see, after all. you stood the torture and refused to confess; which shows plain enough to even the dullest understanding that you had nothing to confess --" "i, my lord? how so? it was i that killed the deer!" "you did? oh, dear, this is the most mixed-up business that ever --" "dear lord, i begged him on my knees to confess, but --" "you did! it gets thicker and thicker. what did you want him to do that for?" "sith it would bring him a quick death and save him all this cruel pain." "well -yes, there is reason in that. but he didn't want the quick death." "he? why, of a surety he did." "well, then, why in the world didn't he confess?" "ah, sweet sir, and leave my wife and chick without bread and shelter?" "oh, heart of gold, now i see it! the bitter law takes the convicted man's estate and beggars his widow and his orphans. they could torture you to death, but without conviction or confession they could not rob your wife and baby. you stood by them like a man; and you -true wife and the woman that you are -you would have bought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slow starvation and death -well, it humbles a body to think what your sex can do when it comes to self-sacrifice. i'll book you both for my colony; you'll like it there; it's a factory where i'm going to turn groping and grubbing automata into men." chapter xviii. in the queen's dungeons well, i arranged all that; and i had the man sent to his home. i had a great desire to rack the executioner; not because he was a good, painstaking and paingiving official, -for surely it was not to his discredit that he performed his functions well -but to pay him back for wantonly cuffing and otherwise distressing that young woman. the priests told me about this, and were generously hot to have him punished. something of this disagreeable sort was turning up every now and then. i mean, episodes that showed that not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but that many, even the great majority, of these that were down on the ground among the common people, were sincere and right-hearted, and devoted to the alleviation of human troubles and sufferings. well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so i seldom fretted about it, and never many minutes at a time; it has never been my way to bother much about things which you can't cure. but i did not like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep people reconciled to an established church. we must have a religion -it goes without saying -but my idea is, to have it cut up into forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been the case in the united states in my time. concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and and an established church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition. that wasn't law; it wasn't gospel: it was only an opinion -my opinion, and i was only a man, one man: so it wasn't worth any more than the pope's -or any less, for that matter. well, i couldn't rack the executioner, neither would i overlook the just complaint of the priests. the man must be punished somehow or other, so i degraded him from his office and made him leader of the band -the new one that was to be started. he begged hard, and said he couldn't play -a plausible excuse, but too thin; there wasn't a musician in the country that could. the queen was a good deal outraged, next morning when she found she was going to have neither hugo's life nor his property. but i told her she must bear this cross; that while by law and custom she certainly was entitled to both the man's life and his property, there were extenuating circumstances, and so in arthur the king's name i had pardoned him. the deer was ravaging the man's fields, and he had killed it in sudden passion, and not for gain; and he had carried it into the royal forest in the hope that that might make detection of the misdoer impossible. confound her, i couldn't make her see that sudden passion is an extenuating circumstance in the killing of venison -or of a person -so i gave it up and let her sulk it out i did think i was going to make her see it by remarking that her own sudden passion in the case of the page modified that crime. "crime!" she exclaimed. "how thou talkest! crime, forsooth! man, i am going to pay for him!" oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. training -training is everything; training is all there is to a person. we speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. we have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us. all that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed. and as for me, all that i think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me: the rest may land in sheol and welcome for all i care. no, confound her, her intellect was good, she had brains enough, but her training made her an ass -that is, from a many-centuries-later point of view. to kill the page was no crime -it was her right; and upon her right she stood, serenely and unconscious of offense. she was a result of generations of training in the unexamined and unassailed belief that the law which permitted her to kill a subject when she chose was a perfectly right and righteous one. well, we must give even satan his due. she deserved a compliment for one thing; and i tried to pay it, but the words stuck in my throat. she had a right to kill the boy, but she was in no wise obliged to pay for him. that was law for some other people, but not for her. she knew quite well that she was doing a large and generous thing to pay for that lad, and that i ought in common fairness to come out with something handsome about it, but i couldn't -my mouth refused. i couldn't help seeing, in my fancy, that poor old grandma with the broken heart, and that fair young creature lying butchered, his little silken pomps and vanities laced with his golden blood. how could she pay for him! whom could she pay? and so, well knowing that this woman, trained as she had been, deserved praise, even adulation, i was yet not able to utter it, trained as i had been. the best i could do was to fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak -and the pity of it was, that it was true: "madame, your people will adore you for this." quite true, but i meant to hang her for it some day if i lived. some of those laws were too bad, altogether too bad. a master might kill his slave for nothing -for mere spite, malice, or to pass the time -just as we have seen that the crowned head could do it with his slave, that is to say, anybody. a gentleman could kill a free commoner, and pay for him -cash or garden-truck. a noble could kill a noble without expense, as far as the law was concerned, but reprisals in kind were to be expected. anybody could kill somebody, except the commoner and the slave; these had no privileges. if they killed, it was murder, and the law wouldn't stand murder. it made short work of the experimenter -and of his family, too, if he murdered somebody who belonged up among the ornamental ranks. if a commoner gave a noble even so much as a damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got damiens' dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags and tatters with horses, and all the world came to see the show, and crack jokes, and have a good time; and some of the performances of the best people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable, as any that have been printed by the pleasant casanova in his chapter about the dismemberment of louis xv.'s poor awkward enemy. i had had enough of this grisly place by this time, and wanted to leave, but i couldn't, because i had something on my mind that my conscience kept prodding me about, and wouldn't let me forget. if i had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. it is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person; and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to have less good and more comfort. still, this is only my opinion, and i am only one man; others, with less experience, may think differently. they have a right to their view. i only stand to this: i have noticed my conscience for many years, and i know it is more trouble and bother to me than anything else i started with. i suppose that in the beginning i prized it, because we prize anything that is ours; and yet how foolish it was to think so. if we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it is: if i had an anvil in me would i prize it? of course not. and yet when you come to think, there is no real difference between a conscience and an anvil -i mean for comfort. i have noticed it a thousand times. and you could dissolve an anvil with acids, when you couldn't stand it any longer; but there isn't any way that you can work off a conscience -at least so it will stay worked off; not that i know of, anyway. there was something i wanted to do before leaving, but it was a disagreeable matter, and i hated to go at it. well, it bothered me all the morning. i could have mentioned it to the old king, but what would be the use? -he was but an extinct volcano; he had been active in his time, but his fire was out, this good while, he was only a stately ash-pile now; gentle enough, and kindly enough for my purpose, without doubt, but not usable. he was nothing, this so-called king: the queen was the only power there. and she was a vesuvius. as a favor, she might consent to warm a flock of sparrows for you, but then she might take that very opportunity to turn herself loose and bury a city. however, i reflected that as often as any other way, when you are expecting the worst, you get something that is not so bad, after all. so i braced up and placed my matter before her royal highness. i said i had been having a general jail-delivery at camelot and among neighboring castles, and with her permission i would like to examine her collection, her bric-a-brac -that is to say, her prisoners. she resisted; but i was expecting that. but she finally consented. i was expecting that, too, but not so soon. that about ended my discomfort. she called her guards and torches, and we went down into the dungeons. these were down under the castle's foundations, and mainly were small cells hollowed out of the living rock. some of these cells had no light at all. in one of them was a woman, in foul rags, who sat on the ground, and would not answer a question or speak a word, but only looked up at us once or twice, through a cobweb of tangled hair, as if to see what casual thing it might be that was disturbing with sound and light the meaningless dull dream that was become her life; after that, she sat bowed, with her dirt-caked fingers idly interlocked in her lap, and gave no further sign. this poor rack of bones was a woman of middle age, apparently; but only apparently; she had been there nine years, and was eighteen when she entered. she was a commoner, and had been sent here on her bridal night by sir breuse sance pite, a neighboring lord whose vassal her father was, and to which said lord she had refused what has since been called le droit du seigneur, and, moreover, had opposed violence to violence and spilt half a gill of his almost sacred blood. the young husband had interfered at that point. believing the bride's life in danger, and had flung the noble out into the midst of the humble and trembling wedding guests, in the parlor, and left him there astonished at this strange treatment, and implacably embittered against both bride and groom. the said lord being cramped for dungeon-room had asked the queen to accommodate his two criminals, and here in her bastile they had been ever since; hither, indeed, they had come before their crime was an hour old, and had never seen each other since. here they were, kenneled like toads in the same rock; they had passed nine pitch dark years within fifty feet of each other, yet neither knew whether the other was alive or not. all the first years, their only question had been -asked with beseechings and tears that might have moved stones, in time, perhaps, but hearts are not stones: "is he alive?" "is she alive?" but they had never got an answer; and at last that question was not asked any more -or any other. i wanted to see the man, after hearing all this. he was thirty-four years old, and looked sixty. he sat upon a squared block of stone, with his head bent down, his forearms resting on his knees, his long hair hanging like a fringe before his face, and he was muttering to himself. he raised his chin and looked us slowly over, in a listless dull way, blinking with the distress of the torchlight, then dropped his head and fell to muttering again and took no further notice of us. there were some pathetically suggestive dumb witnesses present. on his wrists and ankles were cicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened to the stone on which he sat was a chain with manacles and fetters attached; but this apparatus lay idle on the ground, and was thick with rust. chains cease to be needed after the spirit has gone out of a prisoner. i could not rouse the man; so i said we would take him to her, and see -to the bride who was the fairest thing in the earth to him, once -roses, pearls, and dew made flesh, for him; a wonder-work, the master-work of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voice like no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe young grace, and beauty, that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams -as he thought -and to no other. the sight of her would set his stagnant blood leaping; the sight of her -but it was a disappointment. they sat together on the ground and looked dimly wondering into each other's faces a while, with a sort of weak animal curiosity; then forgot each other's presence, and dropped their eyes, and you saw that they were away again and wandering in some far land of dreams and shadows that we know nothing about. i had them taken out and sent to their friends. the queen did not like it much. not that she felt any personal interest in the matter, but she thought it disrespectful to sir breuse sance pite. however, i assured her that if he found he couldn't stand it i would fix him so that he could. i set forty-seven prisoners loose out of those awful rat-holes, and left only one in captivity. he was a lord, and had killed another lord, a sort of kinsman of the queen. that other lord had ambushed him to assassinate him, but this fellow had got the best of him and cut his throat. however, it was not for that that i left him jailed, but for maliciously destroying the only public well in one of his wretched villages. the queen was bound to hang him for killing her kinsman, but i would not allow it: it was no crime to kill an assassin. but i said i was willing to let her hang him for destroying the well; so she concluded to put up with that, as it was better than nothing. dear me, for what trifling offenses the most of those forty-seven men and women were shut up there! indeed, some were there for no distinct offense at all, but only to gratify somebody's spite; and not always the queen's by any means, but a friend's. the newest prisoner's crime was a mere remark which he had made. he said he believed that men were about all alike, and one man as good as another, barring clothes. he said he believed that if you were to strip the nation naked and send a stranger through the crowd, he couldn't tell the king from a quack doctor, nor a duke from a hotel clerk. apparently here was a man whose brains had not been reduced to an ineffectual mush by idiotic training. i set him loose and sent him to the factory. some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind the face of the precipice, and in each of these an arrow-slit had been pierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thin ray from the blessed sun for his comfort. the case of one of these poor fellows was particularly hard. from his dusky swallow's hole high up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer out through the arrow-slit and see his own home off yonder in the valley; and for twenty-two years he had watched it, with heartache and longing, through that crack. he could see the lights shine there at night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in and come out -his wife and children, some of them, no doubt, though he could not make out at that distance. in the course of years he noted festivities there, and tried to rejoice, and wondered if they were weddings or what they might be. and he noted funerals; and they wrung his heart. he could make out the coffin, but he could not determine its size, and so could not tell whether it was wife or child. he could see the procession form, with priests and mourners, and move solemnly away, bearing the secret with them. he had left behind him five children and a wife; and in nineteen years he had seen five funerals issue, and none of them humble enough in pomp to denote a servant. so he had lost five of his treasures; there must still be one remaining -one now infinitely, unspeakably precious, -but which one? wife, or child? that was the question that tortured him, by night and by day, asleep and awake. well, to have an interest, of some sort, and half a ray of light, when you are in a dungeon, is a great support to the body and preserver of the intellect. this man was in pretty good condition yet. by the time he had finished telling me his distressful tale, i was in the same state of mind that you would have been in yourself, if you have got average human curiosity; that is to say, i was as burning up as he was to find out which member of the family it was that was left. so i took him over home myself; and an amazing kind of a surprise party it was, too -typhoons and cyclones of frantic joy, and whole niagaras of happy tears; and by george! we found the aforetime young matron graying toward the imminent verge of her half century, and the babies all men and women, and some of them married and experimenting familywise themselves -for not a soul of the tribe was dead! conceive of the ingenious devilishness of that queen: she had a special hatred for this prisoner, and she had invented all those funerals herself, to scorch his heart with; and the sublimest stroke of genius of the whole thing was leaving the family-invoice a funeral short, so as to let him wear his poor old soul out guessing. but for me, he never would have got out. morgan le fay hated him with her whole heart, and she never would have softened toward him. and yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness than deliberate depravity. he had said she had red hair. well, she had; but that was no way to speak of it. when redheaded people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn. consider it: among these forty-seven captives there were five whose names, offenses, and dates of incarceration were no longer known! one woman and four men -all bent, and wrinkled, and mind-extinguished patriarchs. they themselves had long ago forgotten these details; at any rate they had mere vague theories about them, nothing definite and nothing that they repeated twice in the same way. the succession of priests whose office it had been to pray daily with the captives and remind them that god had put them there, for some wise purpose or other, and teach them that patience, humbleness, and submission to oppression was what he loved to see in parties of a subordinate rank, had traditions about these poor old human ruins, but nothing more. these traditions went but little way, for they concerned the length of the incarceration only, and not the names of the offenses. and even by the help of tradition the only thing that could be proven was that none of the five had seen daylight for thirty-five years: how much longer this privation has lasted was not guessable. the king and the queen knew nothing about these poor creatures, except that they were heirlooms, assets inherited, along with the throne, from the former firm. nothing of their history had been transmitted with their persons, and so the inheriting owners had considered them of no value, and had felt no interest in them. i said to the queen: "then why in the world didn't you set them free?" the question was a puzzler. she didn't know why she hadn't, the thing had never come up in her mind. so here she was, forecasting the veritable history of future prisoners of the castle d'if, without knowing it. it seemed plain to me now, that with her training, those inherited prisoners were merely property -nothing more, nothing less. well, when we inherit property, it does not occur to us to throw it away, even when we do not value it. when i brought my procession of human bats up into the open world and the glare of the afternoon sun -previously blindfolding them, in charity for eyes so long untortured by light - they were a spectacle to look at. skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic frights, every one; legitimatest possible children of monarchy by the grace of god and the established church. i muttered absently: "i wish i could photograph them!" you have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they don't know the meaning of a new big word. the more ignorant they are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't shot over their heads. the queen was just one of that sort, and was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. she hesitated a moment; then her face brightened up with sudden comprehension, and she said she would do it for me. i thought to myself: she? why what can she know about photography? but it was a poor time to be thinking. when i looked around, she was moving on the procession with an axe! well, she certainly was a curious one, was morgan le fay. i have seen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she laid over them all for variety. and how sharply characteristic of her this episode was. she had no more idea than a horse of how to photograph a procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her to try to do it with an axe. chapter xix. knight-errantry as a trade sandy and i were on the road again, next morning, bright and early. it was so good to open up one's lungs and take in whole luscious barrels-ful of the blessed god's untainted, dew-fashioned, woodlandscented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for two days and nights in the moral and physical stenches of that intolerable old buzzard-roost! mean, for me: of course the place was all right and agreeable enough for sandy, for she had been used to high life all her days. poor girl, her jaws had had a wearisome rest now for a while, and i was expecting to get the consequences. i was right; but she had stood by me most helpfully in the castle, and had mightily supported and reinforced me with gigantic foolishnesses which were worth more for the occasion than wisdoms double their size; so i thought she had earned a right to work her mill for a while, if she wanted to, and i felt not a pang when she started it up: "now turn we unto sir marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty winter of age southward --" "are you going to see if you can work up another half-stretch on the trail of the cowboys, sandy?" "even so, fair my lord." "go ahead, then. i won't interrupt this time, if i can help it. begin over again; start fair, and shake out all your reefs, and i will load my pipe and give good attention." "now turn we unto sir marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty winter of age southward. and so they came into a deep forest, and by fortune they were nighted, and rode along in a deep way, and at the last they came into a courtelage where abode the duke of south marches, and there they asked harbour. and on the morn the duke sent unto sir marhaus, and bad him make him ready. and so sir marhaus arose and armed him, and there was a mass sung afore him, and he brake his fast, and so mounted on horseback in the court of the castle, there they should do the battle. so there was the duke already on horseback, clean armed, and his six sons by him, and every each had a spear in his hand, and so they encountered, whereas the duke and his two sons brake their spears upon him, but sir marhaus held up his spear and touched none of them. then came the four sons by couples, and two of them brake their spears, and so did the other two. and all this while sir marhaus touched them not. then sir marhaus ran to the duke, and smote him with his spear that horse and man fell to the earth. and so he served his sons. and then sir marhaus alight down, and bad the duke yield him or else he would slay him. and then some of his sons recovered, and would have set upon sir marhaus. then sir marhaus said to the duke, cease thy sons, or else i will do the uttermost to you all. when the duke saw he might not escape the death, he cried to his sons, and charged them to yield them to sir marhaus. and they kneeled all down and put the pommels of their swords to the knight, and so he received them. and then they holp up their father, and so by their common assent promised unto sir marhaus never to be foes unto king arthur, and thereupon at whitsuntide after, to come he and his sons, and put them in the king's grace. * [* footnote: the story is borrowed, language and all, from the morte d'arthur. --m.t.] "even so standeth the history, fair sir boss. now ye shall wit that that very duke and his six sons are they whom but few days past you also did overcome and send to arthur's court!" "why, sandy, you can't mean it!" "an i speak not sooth, let it be the worse for me." "well, well, well, -now who would ever have thought it? one whole duke and six dukelets; why, sandy, it was an elegant haul. knight-errantry is a most chuckle-headed trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but i begin to see that there is money in it, after all, if you have luck. not that i would ever engage in it as a business, for i wouldn't. no sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. a successful whirl in the knight-errantry line -now what is it when you blow away the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? it's just a corner in pork, that's all, and you can't make anything else out of it. you're rich -yes, -suddenly rich -for about a day, maybe a week; then somebody corners the market on you, and down goes your bucketshop; ain't that so, sandy?" "whethersoever it be that my mind miscarrieth, bewraying simple language in such sort that the words do seem to come endlong and overthwart --" "there's no use in beating about the bush and trying to get around it that way, sandy, it's so, just as i say. i know it's so. and, moreover, when you come right down to the bedrock, knight-errantry is worse than pork; for whatever happens, the pork's left, and so somebody's benefited anyway; but when the market breaks, in a knight-errantry whirl, and every knight in the pool passes in his checks, what have you got for assets? just a rubbish-pile of battered corpses and a barrel or two of busted hardware. can you call those assets? give me pork, every time. am i right?" "ah, peradventure my head being distraught by the manifold matters whereunto the confusions of these but late adventured haps and fortunings whereby not i alone nor you alone, but every each of us, meseemeth --" "no, it's not your head, sandy. your head's all right, as far as it goes, but you don't know business; that's where the trouble is. it unfits you to argue about business, and you're wrong to be always trying. however, that aside, it was a good haul, anyway, and will breed a handsome crop of reputation in arthur's court. and speaking of the cowboys, what a curious country this is for women and men that never get old. now there's morgan le fay, as fresh and young as a vassar pullet, to all appearances, and here is this old duke of the south marches still slashing away with sword and lance at his time of life, after raising such a family as he has raised. as i understand it, sir gawaine killed seven of his sons, and still he had six left for sir marhaus and me to take into camp. and then there was that damsel of sixty winter of age still excursioning around in her frosty bloom -how old are you, sandy?" it was the first time i ever struck a still place in her. the mill had shut down for repairs, or something. chapter xx. the ogre's castle between six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for a horse carrying triple -man, woman, and armor; then we stopped for a long nooning under some trees by a limpid brook. right so came by and by a knight riding; and as he drew near he made dolorous moan, and by the words of it i perceived that he was cursing and swearing; yet nevertheless was i glad of his coming, for that i saw he bore a bulletin-board whereon in letters all of shining gold was writ: "use peterson s prophylactic tooth-brush- all the go." i was glad of his coming, for even by this token i knew him for knight of mine. it was sir madok de la montaine, a burly great fellow whose chief distinction was that he had come within an ace of sending sir launcelot down over his horse-tail once. he was never long in a stranger's presence without finding some pretext or other to let out that great fact. but there was another fact of nearly the same size, which he never pushed upon anybody unasked, and yet never withheld when asked: that was, that the reason he didn't quite succeed was, that he was interrupted and sent down over horse-tail himself. this innocent vast lubber did not see any particular difference between the two facts. i liked him, for he was earnest in his work, and very valuable. and he was so fine to look at, with his broad mailed shoulders, and the grand leonine set of his plumed head, and his big shield with its quaint device of a gauntleted hand clutching a prophylactic tooth-brush, with motto: "try noyoudont." this was a tooth-wash that i was introducing. he was aweary, he said, and indeed he looked it; but he would not alight. he said he was after the stove-polish man; and with this he broke out cursing and swearing anew. the bulletin-boarder referred to was sir ossaise of surluse, a brave knight, and of considerable celebrity on account of his having tried conclusions in a tournament once, with no less a mogul that sir gaheris himself -although not successfully. he was of a light and laughing disposition, and to him nothing in this world was serious. it was for this reason that i had chosen him to work up a stove-polish sentiment. there were no stoves yet, and so there could be nothing serious about stove-polish. all that the agent needed to do was to deftly and by degrees prepare the public for the great change, and have them established in predilections toward neatness against the time when the stove should appear upon the stage. sir madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with cursings. he said he had cursed his soul to rags; and yet he would not get down from his horse, neither would he take any rest, or listen to any comfort, until he should have found sir ossaise and settled this account. it appeared, by what i could piece together of the unprofane fragments of his statement, that he had chanced upon sir ossaise at dawn of the morning, and been told that if he would make a short cut across the fields and swamps and broken hills and glades, he could head off a company of travelers who would be rare customers for prophylactics and tooth-wash. with characteristic zeal sir madok had plunged away at once upon this quest, and after three hours of awful crosslot riding had overhauled his game. and behold, it was the five patriarchs that had been released from the dungeons the evening before! poor old creatures, it was all of twenty years since any one of them had known what it was to be equipped with any remaining snag or remnant of a tooth. "blank-blank-blank him," said sir madok, "an i do not stove-polish him an i may find him, leave it to me; for never no knight that hight ossaise or aught else may do me this disservice and bide on live, an i may find him, the which i have thereunto sworn a great oath this day." and with these words and others, he lightly took his spear and gat him thence. in the middle of the afternoon we came upon one of those very patriarchs ourselves, in the edge of a poor village. he was basking in the love of relatives and friends whom he had not seen for fifty years; and about him and caressing him were also descendants of his own body whom he had never seen at all till now; but to him these were all strangers, his memory was gone, his mind was stagnant. it seemed incredible that a man could outlast half a century shut up in a dark hole like a rat, but here were his old wife and some old comrades to testify to it. they could remember him as he was in the freshness and strength of his young manhood, when he kissed his child and delivered it to its mother's hands and went away into that long oblivion. the people at the castle could not tell within half a generation the length of time the man had been shut up there for his unrecorded and forgotten offense; but this old wife knew; and so did her old child, who stood there among her married sons and daughters trying to realize a father who had been to her a name, a thought, a formless image, a tradition, all her life, and now was suddenly concreted into actual flesh and blood and set before her face. it was a curious situation; yet it is not on that account that i have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which seemed to me still more curious. to wit, that this dreadful matter brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against these oppressors. they had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. their entire being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in this life. their very imagination was dead. when you can say that of a man, he has struck bottom, i reckon; there is no lower deep for him. i rather wished i had gone some other road. this was not the sort of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning out a peaceful revolution in his mind. for it could not help bringing up the unget-aroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in the world ever did achieve their freedom by goodygoody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must begin in blood, whatever may answer afterward. if history teaches anything, it teaches that. what this folk needed, then, was a reign of terror and a guillotine, and i was the wrong man for them. two days later, toward noon, sandy began to show signs of excitement and feverish expectancy. she said we were approaching the ogre's castle. i was surprised into an uncomfortable shock. the object of our quest had gradually dropped out of my mind; this sudden resurrection of it made it seem quite a real and startling thing for a moment, and roused up in me a smart interest. sandy's excitement increased every moment; and so did mine, for that sort of thing is catching. my heart got to thumping. you can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns. presently, when sandy slid from the horse, motioned me to stop, and went creeping stealthily, with her head bent nearly to her knees, toward a row of bushes that bordered a declivity, the thumpings grew stronger and quicker. and they kept it up while she was gaining her ambush and getting her glimpse over the declivity; and also while i was creeping to her side on my knees. her eyes were burning now, as she pointed with her finger, and said in a panting whisper: "the castle! the castle! lo, where it looms!" what a welcome disappointment i experienced! i said: "castle? it is nothing but a pigsty; a pigsty with a wattled fence around it." she looked surprised and distressed. the animation faded out of her face; and during many moments she was lost in thought and silent. then: "it was not enchanted aforetime," she said in a musing fashion, as if to herself. "and how strange is this marvel, and how awful -that to the one perception it is enchanted and dight in a base and shameful aspect; yet to the perception of the other it is not enchanted, hath suffered no change, but stands firm and stately still, girt with its moat and waving its banners in the blue air from its towers. and god shield us, how it pricks the heart to see again these gracious captives, and the sorrow deepened in their sweet faces! we have tarried along, and are to blame." i saw my cue. the castle was enchanted to me, not to her. it would be wasted time to try to argue her out of her delusion, it couldn't be done; i must just humor it. so i said: "this is a common case -the enchanting of a thing to one eye and leaving it in its proper form to another. you have heard of it before, sandy, though you haven't happened to experience it. but no harm is done. in fact, it is lucky the way it is. if these ladies were hogs to everybody and to themselves, it would be necessary to break the enchantment, and that might be impossible if one failed to find out the particular process of the enchantment. and hazardous, too; for in attempting a disenchantment without the true key, you are liable to err, and turn your hogs into dogs, and the dogs into cats, the cats into rats, and so on, and end by reducing your materials to nothing finally, or to an odorless gas which you can't follow -which, of course, amounts to the same thing. but here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are under the enchantment, and so it is of no consequence to dissolve it. these ladies remain ladies to you, and to themselves, and to everybody else; and at the same time they will suffer in no way from my delusion, for when i know that an ostensible hog is a lady, that is enough for me, i know how to treat her." "thanks, oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an angel. and i know that thou wilt deliver them, for that thou art minded to great deeds and art as strong a knight of your hands and as brave to will and to do, as any that is on live." "i will not leave a princess in the sty, sandy. are those three yonder that to my disordered eyes are starveling swine-herds --" "the ogres, are they changed also? it is most wonderful. now am i fearful; for how canst thou strike with sure aim when five of their nine cubits of stature are to thee invisible? ah, go warily, fair sir; this is a mightier emprise than i wend." "you be easy, sandy. all i need to know is, how much of an ogre is invisible; then i know how to locate his vitals. don't you be afraid, i will make short work of these bunco-steerers. stay where you are." i left sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced but plucky and hopeful, and rode down to the pigsty, and struck up a trade with the swine-herds. i won their gratitude by buying out all the hogs at the lump sum of sixteen pennies, which was rather above latest quotations. i was just in time; for the church, the lord of the manor, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have been along next day and swept off pretty much all the stock, leaving the swine-herds very short of hogs and sandy out of princesses. but now the tax people could be paid in cash, and there would be a stake left besides. one of the men had ten children; and he said that last year when a priest came and of his ten pigs took the fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out upon him, and offered him a child and said: "thou beast without bowels of mercy, why leave me my child, yet rob me of the wherewithal to feed it?" how curious. the same thing had happened in the wales of my day, under this same old established church, which was supposed by many to have changed its nature when it changed its disguise. i sent the three men away, and then opened the sty gate and beckoned sandy to come -which she did; and not leisurely, but with the rush of a prairie fire. and when i saw her fling herself upon those hogs, with tears of joy running down her cheeks, and strain them to her heart, and kiss them, and caress them, and call them reverently by grand princely names, i was ashamed of her, ashamed of the human race. we had to drive those hogs home -ten miles; and no ladies were ever more fickle-minded or contrary. they would stay in no road, no path; they broke out through the brush on all sides, and flowed away in all directions, over rocks, and hills, and the roughest places they could find. and they must not be struck, or roughly accosted; sandy could not bear to see them treated in ways unbecoming their rank. the troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be called my lady, and your highness, like the rest. it is annoying and difficult to scour around after hogs, in armor. there was one small countess, with an iron ring in her snout and hardly any hair on her back, that was the devil for perversity. she gave me a race of an hour, over all sorts of country, and then we were right where we had started from, having made not a rod of real progress. i seized her at last by the tail, and brought her along squealing. when i overtook sandy she was horrified, and said it was in the last degree indelicate to drag a countess by her train. we got the hogs home just at dark -most of them. the princess nerovens de morganore was missing, and two of her ladies in waiting: namely, miss angela bohun, and the demoiselle elaine courtemains, the former of these two being a young black sow with a white star in her forehead, and the latter a brown one with thin legs and a slight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side -a couple of the tryingest blisters to drive that i ever saw. also among the missing were several mere baronesses -and i wanted them to stay missing; but no, all that sausage-meat had to be found; so servants were sent out with torches to scour the woods and hills to that end. of course, the whole drove was housed in the house, and, great guns! -well, i never saw anything like it. nor ever heard anything like it. and never smelt anything like it. it was like an insurrection in a gasometer. chapter xxi. the pilgrims when i did get to bed at last i was unspeakably tired; the stretching out, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious, how delicious! but that was as far as i could get -sleep was out of the question for the present. the ripping and tearing and squealing of the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemonium come again, and kept me broad awake. being awake, my thoughts were busy, of course; and mainly they busied themselves with sandy's curious delusion. here she was, as sane a person as the kingdom could produce; and yet, from my point of view she was acting like a crazy woman. my land, the power of training! of influence! of education! it can bring a body up to believe anything. i had to put myself in sandy's place to realize that she was not a lunatic. yes, and put her in mine, to demonstrate how easy it is to seem a lunatic to a person who has not been taught as you have been taught. if i had told sandy i had seen a wagon, uninfluenced by enchantment, spin along fifty miles an hour; had seen a man, unequipped with magic powers, get into a basket and soar out of sight among the clouds; and had listened, without any necromancer's help, to the conversation of a person who was several hundred miles away, sandy would not merely have supposed me to be crazy, she would have thought she knew it. everybody around her believed in enchantments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle could be turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs, would have been the same as my doubting among connecticut people the actuality of the telephone and its wonders, -and in both cases would be absolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. yes, sandy was sane; that must be admitted. if i also would be sane -to sandy -i must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculous locomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. also, i believed that the world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to support it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water that occupied all space above; but as i was the only person in the kingdom afflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, i recognized that it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too, if i did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybody as a madman. the next morning sandy assembled the swine in the dining-room and gave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally and manifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives of her island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its outward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may. i could have eaten with the hogs if i had had birth approaching my lofty official rank; but i hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidable slight and made no complaint. sandy and i had our breakfast at the second table. the family were not at home. i said: "how many are in the family, sandy, and where do they keep themselves?" "family?" "yes." "which family, good my lord?" "why, this family; your own family." "sooth to say, i understand you not. i have no family." "no family? why, sandy, isn't this your home?" "now how indeed might that be? i have no home." "well, then, whose house is this?" "ah, wit you well i would tell you an i knew myself." "come -you don't even know these people? then who invited us here?" "none invited us. we but came; that is all." "why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. the effrontery of it is beyond admiration. we blandly march into a man's house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobility the sun has yet discovered in the earth, and then it turns out that we don't even know the man's name. how did you ever venture to take this extravagant liberty? i supposed, of course, it was your home. what will the man say?" "what will he say? forsooth what can he say but give thanks?" "thanks for what?" her face was filled with a puzzled surprise: "verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words. do ye dream that one of his estate is like to have the honor twice in his life to entertain company such as we have brought to grace his house withal?" "well, no -when you come to that. no, it's an even bet that this is the first time he has had a treat like this." "then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speech and due humility; he were a dog, else, and the heir and ancestor of dogs." to my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. it might become more so. it might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. so i said: "the day is wasting, sandy. it is time to get the nobility together and be moving." "wherefore, fair sir and boss?" "we want to take them to their home, don't we?" "la, but list to him! they be of all the regions of the earth! each must hie to her own home; wend you we might do all these journeys in one so brief life as he hath appointed that created life, and thereto death likewise with help of adam, who by sin done through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought upon and bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, that serpent hight satan, aforetime consecrated and set apart unto that evil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heart through fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erst so white and pure whenso it hove with the shining multitudes its brethren-born in glade and shade of that fair heaven wherein all such as native be to that rich estate and --" "great scott!" "my lord?" "well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. don't you see, we could distribute these people around the earth in less time than it is going to take you to explain that we can't. we mustn't talk now, we must act. you want to be careful; you mustn't let your mill get the start of you that way, at a time like this. to business now -and sharp's the word. who is to take the aristocracy home?" "even their friends. these will come for them from the far parts of the earth." this was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpectedness; and the relief of it was like pardon to a prisoner. she would remain to deliver the goods, of course. "well, then, sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfully ended, i will go home and report; and if ever another one --" "i also am ready; i will go with thee." this was recalling the pardon. "how? you will go with me? why should you?" "will i be traitor to my knight, dost think? that were dishonor. i may not part from thee until in knightly encounter in the field some overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me. i were to blame an i thought that that might ever hap." "elected for the long term," i sighed to myself. "i may as well make the best of it." so then i spoke up and said: "all right; let us make a start." while she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, i gave that whole peerage away to the servants. and i asked them to take a duster and dust around a little where the nobilities had mainly lodged and promenaded; but they considered that that would be hardly worth while, and would moreover be a rather grave departure from custom, and therefore likely to make talk. a departure from custom -that settled it; it was a nation capable of committing any crime but that. the servants said they would follow the fashion, a fashion grown sacred through immemorial observance; they would scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls, and then the evidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible. it was a kind of satire on nature: it was the scientific method, the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family in a stratified record; and the antiquary could dig through it and tell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the family had introduced successively for a hundred years. the first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims. it was not going our way, but we joined it, nevertheless; for it was hourly being borne in upon me now, that if i would govern this country wisely, i must be posted in the details of its life, and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny. this company of pilgrims resembled chaucer's in this: that it had in it a sample of about all the upper occupations and professions the country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume. there were young men and old men, young women and old women, lively folk and grave folk. they rode upon mules and horses, and there was not a side-saddle in the party; for this specialty was to remain unknown in england for nine hundred years yet. it was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry and full of unconscious coarsenesses and innocent indecencies. what they regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and caused no more embarrassment than it would have caused in the best english society twelve centuries later. practical jokes worthy of the english wits of the first quarter of the far-off nineteenth century were sprung here and there and yonder along the line, and compelled the delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright remark was made at one end of the procession and started on its travels toward the other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparkling spray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along; and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake. sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage, and she posted me. she said: "they journey to the valley of holiness, for to be blessed of the godly hermits and drink of the miraculous waters and be cleased from sin." "where is this watering place?" "it lieth a two-day journey hence, by the borders of the land that hight the cuckoo kingdom." "tell me about it. is it a celebrated place?" "oh, of a truth, yes. there be none more so. of old time there lived there an abbot and his monks. belike were none in the world more holy than these; for they gave themselves to study of pious books, and spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, and ate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard, and prayed much, and washed never; also they wore the same garment until it fell from their bodies through age and decay. right so came they to be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities, and visited by rich and poor, and reverenced." "proceed." "but always there was lack of water there. whereas, upon a time, the holy abbot prayed, and for answer a great stream of clear water burst forth by miracle in a desert place. now were the fickle monks tempted of the fiend, and they wrought with their abbot unceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would construct a bath; and when he was become aweary and might not resist more, he said have ye your will, then, and granted that they asked. now mark thou what 'tis to forsake the ways of purity the which he loveth, and wanton with such as be worldly and an offense. these monks did enter into the bath and come thence washed as white as snow; and lo, in that moment his sign appeared, in miraculous rebuke! for his insulted waters ceased to flow, and utterly vanished away." "they fared mildly, sandy, considering how that kind of crime is regarded in this country." "belike; but it was their first sin; and they had been of perfect life for long, and differing in naught from the angels. prayers, tears, torturings of the flesh, all was vain to beguile that water to flow again. even processions; even burnt-offerings; even votive candles to the virgin, did fail every each of them; and all in the land did marvel." "how odd to find that even this industry has its financial panics, and at times sees its assignats and greenbacks languish to zero, and everything come to a standstill. go on, sandy." "and so upon a time, after year and day, the good abbot made humble surrender and destroyed the bath. and behold, his anger was in that moment appeased, and the waters gushed richly forth again, and even unto this day they have not ceased to flow in that generous measure." "then i take it nobody has washed since." "he that would essay it could have his halter free; yes, and swiftly would he need it, too." "the community has prospered since?" "even from that very day. the fame of the miracle went abroad into all lands. from every land came monks to join; they came even as the fishes come, in shoals; and the monastery added building to building, and yet others to these, and so spread wide its arms and took them in. and nuns came, also; and more again, and yet more; and built over against the monastery on the yon side of the vale, and added building to building, until mighty was that nunnery. and these were friendly unto those, and they joined their loving labors together, and together they built a fair great foundling asylum midway of the valley between." "you spoke of some hermits, sandy." "these have gathered there from the ends of the earth. a hermit thriveth best where there be multitudes of pilgrims. ye shall not find no hermit of no sort wanting. if any shall mention a hermit of a kind he thinketh new and not to be found but in some far strange land, let him but scratch among the holes and caves and swamps that line that valley of holiness, and whatsoever be his breed, it skills not, he shall find a sample of it there." i closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat good-humored face, purposing to make myself agreeable and pick up some further crumbs of fact; but i had hardly more than scraped acquaintance with him when he began eagerly and awkwardly to lead up, in the immemorial way, to that same old anecdote -the one sir dinadan told me, what time i got into trouble with sir sagramor and was challenged of him on account of it. i excused myself and dropped to the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence from this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day of broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and monotonous defeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how long eternity is, and how many have wended thither who know that anecdote. early in the afternoon we overtook another procession of pilgrims; but in this one was no merriment, no jokes, no laughter, no playful ways, nor any happy giddiness, whether of youth or age. yet both were here, both age and youth; gray old men and women, strong men and women of middle age, young husbands, young wives, little boys and girls, and three babies at the breast. even the children were smileless; there was not a face among all these half a hundred people but was cast down, and bore that set expression of hopelessness which is bred of long and hard trials and old acquaintance with despair. they were slaves. chains led from their fettered feet and their manacled hands to a sole-leather belt about their waists; and all except the children were also linked together in a file six feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar to collar all down the line. they were on foot, and had tramped three hundred miles in eighteen days, upon the cheapest odds and ends of food, and stingy rations of that. they had slept in these chains every night, bundled together like swine. they had upon their bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to be clothed. their irons had chafed the skin from their ankles and made sores which were ulcerated and wormy. their naked feet were torn, and none walked without a limp. originally there had been a hundred of these unfortunates, but about half had been sold on the trip. the trader in charge of them rode a horse and carried a whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided into several knotted tails at the end. with this whip he cut the shoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain, and straightened them up. he did not speak; the whip conveyed his desire without that. none of these poor creatures looked up as we rode along by; they showed no consciousness of our presence. and they made no sound but one; that was the dull and awful clank of their chains from end to end of the long file, as forty-three burdened feet rose and fell in unison. the file moved in a cloud of its own making. all these faces were gray with a coating of dust. one has seen the like of this coating upon furniture in unoccupied houses, and has written his idle thought in it with his finger. i was reminded of this when i noticed the faces of some of those women, young mothers carrying babes that were near to death and freedom, how a something in their hearts was written in the dust upon their faces, plain to see, and lord, how plain to read! for it was the track of tears. one of these young mothers was but a girl, and it hurt me to the heart to read that writing, and reflect that it was come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast that ought not to know trouble yet, but only the gladness of the morning of life; and no doubt -she reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down came the lash and flicked a flake of skin from her naked shoulder. it stung me as if i had been hit instead. the master halted the file and jumped from his horse. he stormed and swore at this girl, and said she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as this was the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now. she dropped on her knees and put up her hands and began to beg, and cry, and implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gave no attention. he snatched the child from her, and then made the men-slaves who were chained before and behind her throw her on the ground and hold her there and expose her body; and then he laid on with his lash like a madman till her back was flayed, she shrieking and struggling the while piteously. one of the men who was holding her turned away his face, and for this humanity he was reviled and flogged. all our pilgrims looked on and commented -on the expert way in which the whip was handled. they were too much hardened by lifelong everyday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anything else in the exhibition that invited comment. this was what slavery could do, in the way of ossifying what one may call the superior lobe of human feeling; for these pilgrims were kind-hearted people, and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that. i wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but that would not do. i must not interfere too much and get myself a name for riding over the country's laws and the citizen's rights roughshod. if i lived and prospered i would be the death of slavery, that i was resolved upon; but i would try to fix it so that when i became its executioner it should be by command of the nation. just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now arrived a landed proprietor who had bought this girl a few miles back, deliverable here where her irons could be taken off. they were removed; then there was a squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as to which should pay the blacksmith. the moment the girl was delivered from her irons, she flung herself, all tears and frantic sobbings, into the arms of the slave who had turned away his face when she was whipped. he strained her to his breast, and smothered her face and the child's with kisses, and washed them with the rain of his tears. i suspected. i inquired. yes, i was right; it was husband and wife. they had to be torn apart by force; the girl had to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shrieked like one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; and even after that, we could still make out the fading plaint of those receding shrieks. and the husband and father, with his wife and child gone, never to be seen by him again in life? -well, the look of him one might not bear at all, and so i turned away; but i knew i should never get his picture out of my mind again, and there it is to this day, to wring my heartstrings whenever i think of it. we put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and when i rose next morning and looked abroad, i was ware where a knight came riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized him for knight of mine -sir ozana le cure hardy. he was in the gentlemen's furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty was plug hats. he was clothed all in steel, in the beautifulest armor of the time -up to where his helmet ought to have been; but he hadn't any helmet, he wore a shiny stove-pipe hat, and was ridiculous a spectacle as one might want to see. it was another of my surreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making it grotesque and absurd. sir ozana's saddle was hung about with leather hat boxes, and every time he overcame a wandering knight he swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug and made him wear it. i dressed and ran down to welcome sir ozana and get his news. "how is trade?" i asked. "ye will note that i have but these four left; yet were they sixteen whenas i got me from camelot." "why, you have certainly done nobly, sir ozana. where have you been foraging of late?" "i am but now come from the valley of holiness, please you sir." "i am pointed for that place myself. is there anything stirring in the monkery, more than common?" "by the mass ye may not question it!.... give him good feed, boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy crown; so get ye lightly to the stable and do even as i bid...... sir, it is parlous news i bring, and -be these pilgrims? then ye may not do better, good folk, than gather and hear the tale i have to tell, sith it concerneth you, forasmuch as ye go to find that ye will not find, and seek that ye will seek in vain, my life being hostage for my word, and my word and message being these, namely: that a hap has happened whereof the like has not been seen no more but once this two hundred years, which was the first and last time that that said misfortune strake the holy valley in that form by commandment of the most high whereto by reasons just and causes thereunto contributing, wherein the matter --" "the miraculous fount hath ceased to flow!" this shout burst from twenty pilgrim mouths at once. "ye say well, good people. i was verging to it, even when ye spake. " "has somebody been washing again?" "nay, it is suspected, but none believe it. it is thought to be some other sin, but none wit what." "how are they feeling about the calamity?" "none may describe it in words. the fount is these nine days dry. the prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackcloth and ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceased nor night nor day; and so the monks and the nuns and the foundlings be all exhausted, and do hang up prayers writ upon parchment, sith that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. and at last they sent for thee, sir boss, to try magic and enchantment; and if you could not come, then was the messenger to fetch merlin, and he is there these three days now, and saith he will fetch that water though he burst the globe and wreck its kingdoms to accomplish it; and right bravely doth he work his magic and call upon his hellions to hie them hither and help, but not a whiff of moisture hath he started yet, even so much as might qualify as mist upon a copper mirror an ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweateth betwixt sun and sun over the dire labors of his task; and if ye --" breakfast was ready. as soon as it was over i showed to sir ozana these words which i had written on the inside of his hat: chemical department, laboratory extension, section g. pxxp. send two of first size, two of no. 3, and six of no. 4, together with the proper complementary details -and two of my trained assistants." and i said: "now get you to camelot as fast as you can fly, brave knight, and show the writing to clarence, and tell him to have these required matters in the valley of holiness with all possible dispatch." "i will well, sir boss," and he was off. chapter xxii. the holy fountain the pilgrims were human beings. otherwise they would have acted differently. they had come a long and difficult journey, and now when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done -turn back and get at something profitable -no, anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. there is no accounting for human beings. we made good time; and a couple of hours before sunset we stood upon the high confines of the valley of holiness, and our eyes swept it from end to end and noted its features. that is, its large features. these were the three masses of buildings. they were distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy constructions in the lonely waste of what seemed a desert -and was. such a scene is always mournful, it is so impressively still, and looks so steeped in death. but there was a sound here which interrupted the stillness only to add to its mournfulness; this was the faint far sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on the passing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knew whether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits. we reached the monastery before dark, and there the males were given lodging, but the women were sent over to the nunnery. the bells were close at hand now, and their solemn booming smote upon the ear like a message of doom. a superstitious despair possessed the heart of every monk and published itself in his ghastly face. everywhere, these black-robed, soft-sandaled, tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted about and disappeared, noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny. the old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. even to tears; but he did the shedding himself. he said: "delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. an we bring not the water back again, and soon, we are ruined, and the good work of two hundred years must end. and see thou do it with enchantments that be holy, for the church will not endure that work in her cause be done by devil's magic." "when i work, father, be sure there will be no devil's work connected with it. i shall use no arts that come of the devil, and no elements not created by the hand of god. but is merlin working strictly on pious lines?" "ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would, and took oath to make his promise good." "well, in that case, let him proceed." "but surely you will not sit idle by, but help?" "it will not answer to mix methods, father; neither would it be professional courtesy. two of a trade must not underbid each other. we might as well cut rates and be done with it; it would arrive at that in the end. merlin has the contract; no other magician can touch it till he throws it up." "but i will take it from him; it is a terrible emergency and the act is thereby justified. and if it were not so, who will give law to the church? the church giveth law to all; and what she wills to do, that she may do, hurt whom it may. i will take it from him; you shall begin upon the moment." "it may not be, father. no doubt, as you say, where power is supreme, one can do as one likes and suffer no injury; but we poor magicians are not so situated. merlin is a very good magician in a small way, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. he is struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would not be etiquette for me to take his job until he himself abandons it." the abbot's face lighted. "ah, that is simple. there are ways to persuade him to abandon it." "no-no, father, it skills not, as these people say. if he were persuaded against his will, he would load that well with a malicious enchantment which would balk me until i found out its secret. it might take a month. i could set up a little enchantment of mine which i call the telephone, and he could not find out its secret in a hundred years. yes, you perceive, he might block me for a month. would you like to risk a month in a dry time like this?" "a month! the mere thought of it maketh me to shudder. have it thy way, my son. but my heart is heavy with this disappointment. leave me, and let me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting, even as i have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thus the thing that is called rest, the prone body making outward sign of repose where inwardly is none." of course, it would have been best, all round, for merlin to waive etiquette and quit and call it half a day, since he would never be able to start that water, for he was a true magician of the time; which is to say, the big miracles, the ones that gave him his reputation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody but merlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowd around to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial moment and spoil everything. but i did not want merlin to retire from the job until i was ready to take hold of it effectively myself; and i could not do that until i got my things from camelot, and that would take two or three days. my presence gave the monks hope, and cheered them up a good deal; insomuch that they ate a square meal that night for the first time in ten days. as soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforced with food, their spirits began to rise fast; when the mead began to go round they rose faster. by the time everybody was half-seas over, the holy community was in good shape to make a night of it; so we stayed by the board and put it through on that line. matters got to be very jolly. good old questionable stories were told that made the tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide and the round bellies shake with laughter; and questionable songs were bellowed out in a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells. at last i ventured a story myself; and vast was the success of it. not right off, of course, for the native of those islands does not, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorous thing; but the fifth time i told it, they began to crack in places; the eight time i told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfth repetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth they disintegrated, and i got a broom and swept them up. this language is figurative. those islanders -well, they are slow pay at first, in the matter of return for your investment of effort, but in the end they make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast. i was at the well next day betimes. merlin was there, enchanting away like a beaver, but not raising the moisture. he was not in a pleasant humor; and every time i hinted that perhaps this contract was a shade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue and cursed like a bishop -french bishop of the regency days, i mean. matters were about as i expected to find them. the "fountain" was an ordinary well, it had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned up in the ordinary way. there was no miracle about it. even the lie that had created its reputation was not miraculous; i could have told it myself, with one hand tied behind me. the well was in a dark chamber which stood in the center of a cut-stone chapel, whose walls were hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that would have made a chromo feel good; pictures historically commemorative of curative miracles which had been achieved by the waters when nobody was looking. that is, nobody but angels; they are always on deck when there is a miracle to the fore -so as to get put in the picture, perhaps. angels are as fond of that as a fire company; look at the old masters. the well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the water was drawn with a windlass and chain by monks, and poured into troughs which delivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel -when there was water to draw, i mean -and none but monks could enter the well-chamber. i entered it, for i had temporary authority to do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate. but he hadn't entered it himself. he did everything by incantations; he never worked his intellect. if he had stepped in there and used his eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could have cured the well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle in the customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician who believed in his own magic; and no magician can thrive who is handicapped with a superstition like that. i had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that some of the wall stones near the bottom had fallen and exposed fissures that allowed the water to escape. i measured the chain -98 feet. then i called in couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, and made them lower me in the bucket. when the chain was all paid out, the candle confirmed my suspicion; a considerable section of the wall was gone, exposing a good big fissure. i almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble was correct, because i had another one that had a showy point or two about it for a miracle. i remembered that in america, many centuries later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to blast it out with a dynamite torpedo. if i should find this well dry and no explanation of it, i could astonish these people most nobly by having a person of no especial value drop a dynamite bomb into it. it was my idea to appoint merlin. however, it was plain that there was no occasion for the bomb. one cannot have everything the way he would like it. a man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even. that is what i did. i said to myself, i am in no hurry, i can wait; that bomb will come good yet. and it did, too. when i was above ground again, i turned out the monks, and let down a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there was forty-one feet of water in it i i called in a monk and asked: a yankee in king arthur's court 187 "how deep is the well?" "that, sir, i wit not, having never been told." "how does the water usually stand in it?" "near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth, brought down to us through our predecessors." it was true -as to recent times at least -for there was witness to it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirty feet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unworn and rusty. what had happened when the well gave out that other time? without doubt some practical person had come along and mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed the well would flow again. the leak had befallen again now, and these children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolled their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blew away, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to drop a fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what was really the matter. old habit of mind is one of the toughest things to get away from in the world. it transmits itself like physical form and feature; and for a man, in those days, to have had an idea that his ancestors hadn't had, would have brought him under suspicion of being illegitimate. i said to the monk: "it is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but we will try, if my brother merlin fails. brother merlin is a very passable artist, but only in the parlor-magic line, and he may not succeed; in fact, is not likely to succeed. but that should be nothing to his discredit; the man that can do this kind of miracle knows enough to keep hotel." "hotel? i mind not to have heard --" "of hotel? it's what you call hostel. the man that can do this miracle can keep hostel. i can do this miracle; i shall do this miracle; yet i do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracle to tax the occult powers to the last strain." "none knoweth that truth better than the brotherhood, indeed; for it is of record that aforetime it was parlous difficult and took a year. natheless, god send you good success, and to that end will we pray." as a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion around that the thing was difficult. many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising. that monk was filled up with the difficulty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others. in two days the solicitude would be booming. on my way home at noon, i met sandy. she had been sampling the hermits. i said: "i would like to do that myself. this is wednesday. is there a matinee?" "a which, please you, sir?" "matinee. do they keep open afternoons?" "who?" "the hermits, of course." "keep open?" "yes, keep open. isn't that plain enough? do they knock off at noon?" "knock off?" "knock off? -yes, knock off. what is the matter with knock off? i never saw such a dunderhead; can't you understand anything at all? in plain terms, do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the fires --" "shut up shop, draw --" "there, never mind, let it go; you make me tired. you can't seem to understand the simplest thing." i would i might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrow that i fail, albeit sith i am but a simple damsel and taught of none, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters of learning that do anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh of that most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend state to the mental eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of that great consecration seeth in his own unlearned estate but a symbol of that other sort of lack and loss which men do publish to the pitying eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of grief do lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when such shall in the darkness of his mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery, these shut-up-shops, and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it is but by the grace of god that he burst not for envy of the mind that can beget, and tongue that can deliver so great and mellow-sounding miracles of speech, and if there do ensue confusion in that humbler mind, and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, then if so be this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true, wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage and may not lightly be misprized, nor had been, an ye had noted this complexion of mood and mind and understood that that i would i could not, and that i could not i might not, nor yet nor might nor could, nor might-not nor could-not, might be by advantage turned to the desired would, and so i pray you mercy of my fault, and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, good my master and most dear lord." i couldn't make it all out -that is, the details -but i got the general idea; and enough of it, too, to be ashamed. it was not fair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon the untutored infant of the sixth and then rail at her because she couldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest best drive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn't fetch the home plate; and so i apologized. then we meandered pleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable converse together, and better friends than ever. i was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that i was standing in the awful presence of the mother of the german language. i was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences on me i unconsciously took the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words had been water, i had been drowned, sure. she had exactly the german way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth. we drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. it was a most strange menagerie. the chief emulation among them seemed to be, to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperous with vermin. their manner and attitudes were the last expression of complacent self-righteousness. it was one anchorite's pride to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister him unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all day long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims and pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours; it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out, eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down when he slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when there were pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of age, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel with forty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. groups of gazing pilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lost in reverent wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity which these pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven. by and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. he was a mighty celebrity; his fame had penetrated all christendom; the noble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globe to pay him reverence. his stand was in the center of the widest part of the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds. his stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on the top of it. he was now doing what he had been doing every day for twenty years up there -bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly almost to his feet. it was his way of praying. i timed him with a stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and 46 seconds. it seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste. it was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal movement; so i made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing machine with it. i afterward carried out that scheme, and got five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which was ten a day. i worked him sundays and all; he was going, sundays, the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power. these shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the materials -i furnished those myself, it would not have been right to make him do that -and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or a blooded race horse in arthurdom. they were regarded as a perfect protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights everywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch that there was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in england but you could read on it at a mile distance: "buy the only genuine st. stylite; patronized by the nobility. patent applied for." there was more money in the business than one knew what to do with. as it extended, i brought out a line of goods suitable for kings, and a nobby thing for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down the forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitch to leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay and triced up with a half-turn in the standing rigging forward of the weather-gaskets. yes, it was a daisy. but about that time i noticed that the motive power had taken to standing on one leg, and i found that there was something the matter with the other one; so i stocked the business and unloaded, taking sir bors de ganis into camp financially along with certain of his friends; for the works stopped within a year, and the good saint got him to his rest. but he had earned it. i can say that for him. when i saw him that first time -however, his personal condition will not quite bear description here. you can read it in the lives of the saints. * [* all the details concerning the hermits, in this chapter, are from lecky -but greatly modified. this book not being a history but only a tale, the majority of the historian's frank details were too strong for reproduction in it. editor] chapter xxiii. restoration of the fountain saturday noon i went to the well and looked on a while. merlin was still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and muttering gibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, for of course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet. finally i said: "how does the thing promise by this time, partner?" "behold, i am even now busied with trial of the powerfulest enchantment known to the princes of the occult arts in the lands of the east; an it fail me, naught can avail. peace, until i finish." he raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and must have made matters uncomfortable for the hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense and billowy fog. he poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinary way. at the end of twenty minutes he dropped down panting, and about exhausted. now arrived the abbot and several hundred monks and nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple of acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke, and all in a grand state of excitement. the abbot inquired anxiously for results. merlin said: "if any labor of mortal might break the spell that binds these waters, this which i have but just essayed had done it. it has failed; whereby i do now know that that which i had feared is a truth established; the sign of this failure is, that the most potent spirit known to the magicians of the east, and whose name none may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well. the mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can penetrate the secret of that spell, and without that secret none can break it. the water will flow no more forever, good father. i have done what man could. suffer me to go." of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of a consternation. he turned to me with the signs of it in his face, and said: "ye have heard him. is it true?" "part of it is." "not all, then, not all! what part is true?" "that that spirit with the russian name has put his spell upon the well." "god's wownds, then are we ruined!" "possibly." "but not certainly? ye mean, not certainly?" "that is it." "wherefore, ye also mean that when he saith none can break the spell --" "yes, when he says that, he says what isn't necessarily true. there are conditions under which an effort to break it may have some chance -that is, some small, some trifling chance -of success." "the conditions --" "oh, they are nothing difficult. only these: i want the well and the surroundings for the space of half a mile, entirely to myself from sunset to-day until i remove the ban -and nobody allowed to cross the ground but by my authority." "are these all?" "yes." "and you have no fear to try?" "oh, none. one may fail, of course; and one may also succeed. one can try, and i am ready to chance it. i have my conditions?" "these and all others ye may name. i will issue commandment to that effect." "wait," said merlin, with an evil smile. "ye wit that he that would break this spell must know that spirit's name?" "yes, i know his name." "and wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but ye must likewise pronounce it? ha-ha! knew ye that?" "yes, i knew that, too." "you had that knowledge! art a fool? are ye minded to utter that name and die?" "utter it? why certainly. i would utter it if it was welsh." "ye are even a dead man, then; and i go to tell arthur." "that's all right. take your gripsack and get along. the thing for you to do is to go home and work the weather, john w. merlin." it was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worst weather-failure in the kingdom. whenever he ordered up the danger-signals along the coast there was a week's dead calm, sure, and every time he prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats. but i kept him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine his reputation. however, that shot raised his bile, and instead of starting home to report my death, he said he would remain and enjoy it. my two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged, for they had traveled double tides. they had pack-mules along, and had brought everything i needed -tools, pump, lead pipe, greek fire, sheaves of big rockets, roman candles, colored fire sprays, electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries -everything necessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle. they got their supper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out through a solitude so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassed the required conditions. we took possession of the well and its surroundings. my boys were experts in all sorts of things, from the stoning up of a well to the constructing of a mathematical instrument. an hour before sunrise we had that leak mended in ship-shape fashion, and the water began to rise. then we stowed our fireworks in the chapel, locked up the place, and went home to bed. before the noon mass was over, we were at the well again; for there was a deal to do yet, and i was determined to spring the miracle before midnight, for business reasons: for whereas a miracle worked for the church on a week-day is worth a good deal, it is worth six times as much if you get it in on a sunday. in nine hours the water had risen to its customary level -that is to say, it was within twenty-three feet of the top. we put in a little iron pump, one of the first turned out by my works near the capital; we bored into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer wall of the well-chamber and inserted a section of lead pipe that was long enough to reach to the door of the chapel and project beyond the threshold, where the gushing water would be visible to the two hundred and fifty acres of people i was intending should be present on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at the proper time. we knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted this hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it down fast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on the bottom, then we stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets there are; and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, i can tell you. we grounded the wire of a pocket electrical battery in that powder, we placed a whole magazine of greek fire on each corner of the roof -blue on one corner, green on another, red on another, and purple on the last -and grounded a wire in each. about two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen of scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks on it, and so made a platform. we covered it with swell tapestries borrowed for the occasion, and topped it off with the abbot's own throne. when you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want to get in every detail that will count; you want to make all the properties impressive to the public eye; you want to make matters comfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose and play your effects for all they are worth. i know the value of these things, for i know human nature. you can't throw too much style into a miracle. it costs trouble, and work, and sometimes money; but it pays in the end. well, we brought the wires to the ground at the chapel, and then brought them under the ground to the platform, and hid the batteries there. we put a rope fence a hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the common multitude, and that finished the work. my idea was, doors open at 10:30, performance to begin at 11:25 sharp. i wished i could charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer. i instructed my boys to be in the chapel as early as 10, before anybody was around, and be ready to man the pumps at the proper time, and make the fur fly. then we went home to supper. the news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time; and now for two or three days a steady avalanche of people had been pouring into the valley. the lower end of the valley was become one huge camp; we should have a good house, no question about that. criers went the rounds early in the evening and announced the coming attempt, which put every pulse up to fever heat. they gave notice that the abbot and his official suite would move in state and occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time all the region which was under my ban must be clear; the bells would then cease from tolling, and this sign should be permission to the multitudes to close in and take their places. i was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when the abbot's solemn procession hove in sight -which it did not do till it was nearly to the rope fence, because it was a starless black night and no torches permitted. with it came merlin, and took a front seat on the platform; he was as good as his word for once. one could not see the multitudes banked together beyond the ban, but they were there, just the same. the moment the bells stopped, those banked masses broke and poured over the line like a vast black wave, and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow, and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked upon a pavement of human heads to -well, miles. we had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty minutes -a thing i had counted on for effect; it is always good to let your audience have a chance to work up its expectancy. at length, out of the silence a noble latin chant -men's voices -broke and swelled up and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. i had put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects i ever invented. when it was finished i stood up on the platform and extended my hands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted -that always produces a dead hush -and then slowly pronounced this ghastly word with a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, and many women to faint: "constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifen machersgesellschafft!" just as i was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, i touched off one of my electric connections and all that murky world of people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! it was immense -that effect! lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. the abbot and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered with agitated prayers. merlin held his grip, but he was astonished clear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to begin with that, before. now was the time to pile in the effects. i lifted my hands and groaned out this word -as it were in agony: "nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchensspreng ungsattentaetsversuchungen!" -and turned on the red fire! you should have heard that atlantic of people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue! after sixty seconds i shouted: "transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthier treibertrauungsthraenentragoedie!" -and lit up the green fire! after waiting only forty seconds this time, i spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastating syllables of this word of words: "mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmutter marmormonumentenmacher!" -and whirled on the purple glare! there they were, all going at once, red, blue, green, purple! -four furious volcanoes pouring vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. in the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first time in twenty years. i knew the boys were at the pump now and ready. so i said to the abbot: "the time is come, father. i am about to pronounce the dread name and command the spell to dissolve. you want to brace up, and take hold of something." then i shouted to the people: "behold, in another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it. if it break, all will know it, for you will see the sacred water gush from the chapel door!" i stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spread my announcement to those who couldn't hear, and so convey it to the furthest ranks, then i made a grand exhibition of extra posturing and gesturing, and shouted: "lo, i command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain to now disgorge into the skies all the infernal fires that still remain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee hence to the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years. by his own dread name i command it -bgwjjilligkkk!" then i touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of dazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith with a hissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels! one mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people -then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy -for there, fair and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the freed water leaping forth! the old abbot could not speak a word, for tears and the chokings in his throat; without utterance of any sort, he folded me in his arms and mashed me. it was more eloquent than speech. and harder to get over, too, in a country where there were really no doctors that were worth a damaged nickel. you should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, and talk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dear names they gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who was long gone away and lost, and was come home again. yes, it was pretty to see, and made me think more of them than i had done before. i sent merlin home on a shutter. he had caved in and gone down like a landslide when i pronounced that fearful name, and had never come to since. he never had heard that name before, -neither had i -but to him it was the right one. any jumble would have been the right one. he admitted, afterward, that that spirit's own mother could not have pronounced that name better than i did. he never could understand how i survived it, and i didn't tell him. it is only young magicians that give away a secret like that. merlin spent three months working enchantments to try to find out the deep trick of how to pronounce that name and outlive it. but he didn't arrive. when i started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell back reverently to make a wide way for me, as if i had been some kind of a superior being -and i was. i was aware of that. i took along a night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of the pump, and set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of the people out there were going to sit up with the water all night, consequently it was but right that they should have all they wanted of it. to those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle itself, and they were full of wonder over it; and of admiration, too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its performance. it was a great night, an immense night. there was reputation in it. i could hardly get to sleep for glorying over it. chapter xxiv. a rival magician my influence in the valley of holiness was something prodigious now. it seemed worth while to try to turn it to some valuable account. the thought came to me the next morning, and was suggested by my seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line come riding in. according to history, the monks of this place two centuries before had been worldly minded enough to want to wash. it might be that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness still remaining. so i sounded a brother: "wouldn't you like a bath?" he shuddered at the thought -the thought of the peril of it to the well -but he said with feeling: "one needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known that blessed refreshment sith that he was a boy. would god i might wash me! but it may not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden." and then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that i was resolved he should have at least one layer of his real estate removed, if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted the pile. so i went to the abbot and asked for a permit for this brother. he blenched at the idea -i don't mean that you could see him blench, for of course you couldn't see it without you scraped him, and i didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but i knew the blench was there, just the same, and within a book-cover's thickness of the surface, too -blenched, and trembled. he said: "ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely granted out of a grateful heart -but this, oh, this! would you drive away the blessed water again?" "no, father, i will not drive it away. i have mysterious knowledge which teaches me that there was an error that other time when it was thought the institution of the bath banished the fountain." a large interest began to show up in the old man's face. "my knowledge informs me that the bath was innocent of that misfortune, which was caused by quite another sort of sin." "these are brave words -but -but right welcome, if they be true." "they are true, indeed. let me build the bath again, father. let me build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever." "you promise this? -you promise it? say the word -say you promise it!" "i do promise it." "then will i have the first bath myself! go -get ye to your work. tarry not, tarry not, but go." i and my boys were at work, straight off. the ruins of the old bath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stone missing. they had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and avoided with a pious fear, as things accursed. in two days we had it all done and the water in -a spacious pool of clear pure water that a body could swim in. it was running water, too. it came in, and went out, through the ancient pipes. the old abbot kept his word, and was the first to try it. he went down black and shaky, leaving the whole black community above troubled and worried and full of bodings; but he came back white and joyful, and the game was made! another triumph scored. it was a good campaign that we made in that valley of holiness, and i was very well satisfied, and ready to move on now, but i struck a disappointment. i caught a heavy cold, and it started up an old lurking rheumatism of mine. of course the rheumatism hunted up my weakest place and located itself there. this was the place where the abbot put his arms about me and mashed me, what time he was moved to testify his gratitude to me with an embrace. when at last i got out, i was a shadow. but everybody was full of attentions and kindnesses, and these brought cheer back into my life, and were the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftly up toward health and strength again; so i gained fast. sandy was worn out with nursing; so i made up my mind to turn out and go a cruise alone, leaving her at the nunnery to rest up. my idea was to disguise myself as a freeman of peasant degree and wander through the country a week or two on foot. this would give me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and poorest class of free citizens on equal terms. there was no other way to inform myself perfectly of their everyday life and the operation of the laws upon it. if i went among them as a gentleman, there would be restraints and conventionalities which would shut me out from their private joys and troubles, and i should get no further than the outside shell. one morning i was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip, and had climbed the ridge which bordered the northern extremity of the valley, when i came upon an artificial opening in the face of a low precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermitage which had often been pointed out to me from a distance as the den of a hermit of high renown for dirt and austerity. i knew he had lately been offered a situation in the great sahara, where lions and sandflies made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive and difficult, and had gone to africa to take possession, so i thought i would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed with its reputation. my surprise was great: the place was newly swept and scoured. then there was another surprise. back in the gloom of the cavern i heard the clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation: "hello central! is this you, camelot? -behold, thou mayst glad thy heart an thou hast faith to believe the wonderful when that it cometh in unexpected guise and maketh itself manifest in impossible places -here standeth in the flesh his mightiness the boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear him speak!" now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumbling together of extravagant incongruities; what a fantastic conjunction of opposites and irreconcilables -the home of the bogus miracle become the home of a real one, the den of a mediaeval hermit turned into a telephone office! the telephone clerk stepped into the light, and i recognized one of my young fellows. i said: "how long has this office been established here, ulfius?" "but since midnight, fair sir boss, an it please you. we saw many lights in the valley, and so judged it well to make a station, for that where so many lights be needs must they indicate a town of goodly size." "quite right. it isn't a town in the customary sense, but it's a good stand, anyway. do you know where you are?" "of that i have had no time to make inquiry; for whenas my comradeship moved hence upon their labors, leaving me in charge, i got me to needed rest, purposing to inquire when i waked, and report the place's name to camelot for record." "well, this is the valley of holiness." it didn't take; i mean, he didn't start at the name, as i had supposed he would. he merely said: "i will so report it." "why, the surrounding regions are filled with the noise of late wonders that have happened here! you didn't hear of them?" "ah, ye will remember we move by night, and avoid speech with all. we learn naught but that we get by the telephone from camelot." "why they know all about this thing. haven't they told you anything about the great miracle of the restoration of a holy fountain?" "oh, that? indeed yes. but the name of this valley doth woundily differ from the name of that one; indeed to differ wider were not pos --" "what was that name, then?" "the valley of hellishness." "that explains it. confound a telephone, anyway. it is the very demon for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles of divergence from similarity of sense. but no matter, you know the name of the place now. call up camelot." he did it, and had clarence sent for. it was good to hear my boy's voice again. it was like being home. after some affectionate interchanges, and some account of my late illness, i said: "what is new?" "the king and queen and many of the court do start even in this hour, to go to your valley to pay pious homage to the waters ye have restored, and cleanse themselves of sin, and see the place where the infernal spirit spouted true hell-flames to the clouds -an ye listen sharply ye may hear me wink and hear me likewise smile a smile, sith 'twas i that made selection of those flames from out our stock and sent them by your order." "does the king know the way to this place?" "the king? -no, nor to any other in his realms, mayhap; but the lads that holp you with your miracle will be his guide and lead the way, and appoint the places for rests at noons and sleeps at night." "this will bring them here -when?" "mid-afternoon, or later, the third day." "anything else in the way of news?" "the king hath begun the raising of the standing army ye suggested to him; one regiment is complete and officered." "the mischief! i wanted a main hand in that myself. there is only one body of men in the kingdom that are fitted to officer a regular army." "yes -and now ye will marvel to know there's not so much as one west pointer in that regiment." "what are you talking about? are you in earnest?" "it is truly as i have said." "why, this makes me uneasy. who were chosen, and what was the method? competitive examination?" "indeed, i know naught of the method. i but know this -these officers be all of noble family, and are born -what is it you call it? -chuckleheads." "there's something wrong, clarence. " "comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a lieutenancy do travel hence with the king -young nobles both -and if you but wait where you are you will hear them questioned." "that is news to the purpose. i will get one west pointer in, anyway. mount a man and send him to that school with a message; let him kill horses, if necessary, but he must be there before sunset to-night and say -" "there is no need. i have laid a ground wire to the school. prithee let me connect you with it." it sounded good! in this atmosphere of telephones and lightning communication with distant regions, i was breathing the breath of life again after long suffocation. i realized, then, what a creepy, dull, inanimate horror this land had been to me all these years, and how i had been in such a stifled condition of mind as to have grown used to it almost beyond the power to notice it. i gave my order to the superintendent of the academy personally. i also asked him to bring me some paper and a fountain pen and a box or so of safety matches. i was getting tired of doing without these conveniences. i could have them now, as i wasn't going to wear armor any more at present, and therefore could get at my pockets. when i got back to the monastery, i found a thing of interest going on. the abbot and his monks were assembled in the great hall, observing with childish wonder and faith the performances of a new magician, a fresh arrival. his dress was the extreme of the fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an indian medicine-man wears. he was mowing, and mumbling, and gesticulating, and drawing mystical figures in the air and on the floor, -the regular thing, you know. he was a celebrity from asia -so he said, and that was enough. that sort of evidence was as good as gold, and passed current everywhere. how easy and cheap it was to be a great magician on this fellow's terms. his specialty was to tell you what any individual on the face of the globe was doing at the moment; and what he had done at any time in the past, and what he would do at any time in the future. he asked if any would like to know what the emperor of the east was doing now? the sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing of hands made eloquent answer -this reverend crowd would like to know what that monarch was at, just as this moment. the fraud went through some more mummery, and then made grave announcement: "the high and mighty emperor of the east doth at this moment put money in the palm of a holy begging friar -one, two, three pieces, and they be all of silver." a buzz of admiring exclamations broke out, all around: "it is marvelous!" "wonderful!" "what study, what labor, to have acquired a so amazing power as this!" would they like to know what the supreme lord of inde was doing? yes. he told them what the supreme lord of inde was doing. then he told them what the sultan of egypt was at; also what the king of the remote seas was about. and so on and so on; and with each new marvel the astonishment at his accuracy rose higher and higher. they thought he must surely strike an uncertain place some time; but no, he never had to hesitate, he always knew, and always with unerring precision. i saw that if this thing went on i should lose my supremacy, this fellow would capture my following, i should be left out in the cold. i must put a cog in his wheel, and do it right away, too. i said: "if i might ask, i should very greatly like to know what a certain person is doing." "speak, and freely. i will tell you." "it will be difficult -perhaps impossible." "my art knoweth not that word. the more difficult it is, the more certainly will i reveal it to you." you see, i was working up the interest. it was getting pretty high, too; you could see that by the craning necks all around, and the half-suspended breathing. so now i climaxed it: "if you make no mistake -if you tell me truly what i want to know -i will give you two hundred silver pennies." "the fortune is mine! i will tell you what you would know." "then tell me what i am doing with my right hand." "ah-h!" there was a general gasp of surprise. it had not occurred to anybody in the crowd -that simple trick of inquiring about somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away. the magician was hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet it. he looked stunned, confused; he couldn't say a word. "come," i said, "what are you waiting for? is it possible you can answer up, right off, and tell what anybody on the other side of the earth is doing, and yet can't tell what a person is doing who isn't three yards from you? persons behind me know what i am doing with my right hand -they will indorse you if you tell correctly." he was still dumb. "very well, i'll tell you why you don't speak up and tell; it is because you don't know. you a magician! good friends, this tramp is a mere fraud and liar." this distressed the monks and terrified them. they were not used to hearing these awful beings called names, and they did not know what might be the consequence. there was a dead silence now; superstitious bodings were in every mind. the magician began to pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an easy, nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around; for it indicated that his mood was not destructive. he said: "it hath struck me speechless, the frivolity of this person's speech. let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not, that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves with the doings of any but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born in the purple and them only. had ye asked me what arthur the great king is doing, it were another matter, and i had told ye; but the doings of a subject interest me not." "oh, i misunderstood you. i thought you said 'anybody,' and so i supposed 'anybody' included -well, anybody; that is, everybody." "it doth -anybody that is of lofty birth; and the better if he be royal." "that, it meseemeth, might well be," said the abbot, who saw his opportunity to smooth things and avert disaster, "for it were not likely that so wonderful a gift as this would be conferred for the revelation of the concerns of lesser beings than such as be born near to the summits of greatness. our arthur the king --" "would you know of him?" broke in the enchanter. "most gladly, yea, and gratefully." everybody was full of awe and interest again right away, the incorrigible idiots. they watched the incantations absorbingly, and looked at me with a "there, now, what can you say to that?" air, when the announcement came: "the king is weary with the chase, and lieth in his palace these two hours sleeping a dreamless sleep." "god's benison upon him!" said the abbot, and crossed himself; "may that sleep be to the refreshment of his body and his soul." "and so it might be, if he were sleeping," i said, "but the king is not sleeping, the king rides." here was trouble again -a conflict of authority. nobody knew which of us to believe; i still had some reputation left. the magician's scorn was stirred, and he said: "lo, i have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets and magicians in my life days, but none before that could sit idle and see to the heart of things with never an incantation to help." "you have lived in the woods, and lost much by it. i use incantations myself, as this good brotherhood are aware -but only on occasions of moment." when it comes to sarcasming, i reckon i know how to keep my end up. that jab made this fellow squirm. the abbot inquired after the queen and the court, and got this information: "they be all on sleep, being overcome by fatigue, like as to the king." i said: "that is merely another lie. half of them are about their amusements, the queen and the other half are not sleeping, they ride. now perhaps you can spread yourself a little, and tell us where the king and queen and all that are this moment riding with them are going?" "they sleep now, as i said; but on the morrow they will ride, for they go a journey toward the sea." "and where will they be the day after to-morrow at vespers?" "far to the north of camelot, and half their journey will be done." "that is another lie, by the space of a hundred and fifty miles. their journey will not be merely half done, it will be all done, and they will be here, in this valley." that was a noble shot! it set the abbot and the monks in a whirl of excitement, and it rocked the enchanter to his base. i followed the thing right up: "if the king does not arrive, i will have myself ridden on a rail: if he does i will ride you on a rail instead." next day i went up to the telephone office and found that the king had passed through two towns that were on the line. i spotted his progress on the succeeding day in the same way. i kept these matters to myself. the third day's reports showed that if he kept up his gait he would arrive by four in the afternoon. there was still no sign anywhere of interest in his coming; there seemed to be no preparations making to receive him in state; a strange thing, truly. only one thing could explain this: that other magician had been cutting under me, sure. this was true. i asked a friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, yes, the magician had tried some further enchantments and found out that the court had concluded to make no journey at all, but stay at home. think of that! observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country. these people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic in history, and the only one within their memory that had a positive value, and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer who could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere unproven word. however, it was not good politics to let the king come without any fuss and feathers at all, so i went down and drummed up a procession of pilgrims and smoked out a batch of hermits and started them out at two o'clock to meet him. and that was the sort of state he arrived in. the abbot was helpless with rage and humiliation when i brought him out on a balcony and showed him the head of the state marching in and never a monk on hand to offer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to glad his spirit. he took one look and then flew to rouse out his forces. the next minute the bells were dinning furiously, and the various buildings were vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in a rush toward the coming procession; and with them went that magician -and he was on a rail, too, by the abbot's order; and his reputation was in the mud, and mine was in the sky again. yes, a man can keep his trademark current in such a country, but he can't sit around and do it; he has got to be on deck and attending to business right along. chapter xxv. a competitive examination when the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or visited a distant noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the cost of his keep, part of the administration moved with him. it was a fashion of the time. the commission charged with the examination of candidates for posts in the army came with the king to the valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just as well at home. and although this expedition was strictly a holiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his business functions going just the same. he touched for the evil, as usual; he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he was himself chief justice of the king's bench. he shone very well in this latter office. he was a wise and humane judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest, -according to his lights. that is a large reservation. his lights -i mean his rearing -often colored his decisions. whenever there was a dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree, the king's leanings and sympathies were for the former class always, whether he suspected it or not. it was impossible that this should be otherwise. the blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name. this has a harsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to any -even to the noble himself -unless the fact itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact. the repulsive feature of slavery is the thing, not its name. one needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below him to recognize -and in but indifferently modified measure -the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these are the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling. they are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor's old and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being. the king's judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merely the fault of his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies. he was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother for the position of milkdistributor to starving children in famine-time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest. one very curious case came before the king. a young girl, an orphan, who had a considerable estate, married a fine young fellow who had nothing. the girl's property was within a seigniory held by the church. the bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion of the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on the ground that she had married privately, and thus had cheated the church out of one of its rights as lord of the seigniory -the one heretofore referred to as le droit du seigneur. the penalty of refusal or avoidance was confiscation. the girl's defense was, that the lordship of the seigniory was vested in the bishop, and the particular right here involved was not transferable, but must be exercised by the lord himself or stand vacated; and that an older law, of the church itself, strictly barred the bishop from exercising it. it was a very odd case, indeed. it reminded me of something i had read in my youth about the ingenious way in which the aldermen of london raised the money that built the mansion house. a person who had not taken the sacrament according to the anglican rite could not stand as a candidate for sheriff of london. thus dissenters were ineligible; they could not run if asked, they could not serve if elected. the aldermen, who without any question were yankees in disguise, hit upon this neat device: they passed a by-law imposing a fine of l400 upon any one who should refuse to be a candidate for sheriff, and a fine of l600 upon any person who, after being elected sheriff, refused to serve. then they went to work and elected a lot of dissenters, one after another, and kept it up until they had collected l15,000 in fines; and there stands the stately mansion house to this day, to keep the blushing citizen in mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of yankees slipped into london and played games of the sort that has given their race a unique and shady reputation among all truly good and holy peoples that be in the earth. the girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop's case was just as strong. i did not see how the king was going to get out of this hole. but he got out. i append his decision: "truly i find small difficulty here, the matter being even a child's affair for simpleness. an the young bride had conveyed notice, as in duty bound, to her feudal lord and proper master and protector the bishop, she had suffered no loss, for the said bishop could have got a dispensation making him, for temporary conveniency, eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thus would she have kept all she had. whereas, failing in her first duty, she hath by that failure failed in all; for whoso, clinging to a rope, severeth it above his hands, must fall; it being no defense to claim that the rest of the rope is sound, neither any deliverance from his peril, as he shall find. pardy, the woman's case is rotten at the source. it is the decree of the court that she forfeit to the said lord bishop all her goods, even to the last farthing that she doth possess, and be thereto mulcted in the costs. next!" here was a tragic end to a beautiful honeymoon not yet three months old. poor young creatures! they had lived these three months lapped to the lips in worldly comforts. these clothes and trinkets they were wearing were as fine and dainty as the shrewdest stretch of the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree; and in these pretty clothes, she crying on his shoulder, and he trying to comfort her with hopeful words set to the music of despair, they went from the judgment seat out into the world homeless, bedless, breadless; why, the very beggars by the roadsides were not so poor as they. well, the king was out of the hole; and on terms satisfactory to the church and the rest of the aristocracy, no doubt. men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible. arthur's people were of course poor material for a republic, because they had been debased so long by monarchy; and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make short work of that law which the king had just been administering if it had been submitted to their full and free vote. there is a phrase which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come to seem to have sense and meaning -the sense and meaning implied when it is used; that is the phrase which refers to this or that or the other nation as possibly being "capable of selfgovernment"; and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation somewhere, some time or other which wasn't capable of it -wasn't as able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or would be to govern it. the master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only -not from its privileged classes; and so, no matter what the nation's intellectual grade was; whether high or low, the bulk of its ability was in the long ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw the day that it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself. which is to assert an always self-proven fact: that even the best governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still behind the best condition attainable by its people; and that the same is true of kindred governments of lower grades, all the way down to the lowest. king arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyond my calculations. i had not supposed he would move in the matter while i was away; and so i had not mapped out a scheme for determining the merits of officers; i had only remarked that it would be wise to submit every candidate to a sharp and searching examination; and privately i meant to put together a list of military qualifications that nobody could answer to but my west pointers. that ought to have been attended to before i left; for the king was so taken with the idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but must get about it at once, and get up as good a scheme of examination as he could invent out of his own head. i was impatient to see what this was; and to show, too, how much more admirable was the one which i should display to the examining board. i intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired his curiosity when the board was assembled, i followed him in; and behind us came the candidates. one of these candidates was a bright young west pointer of mine, and with him were a couple of my west point professors. when i saw the board, i did not know whether to cry or to laugh. the head of it was the officer known to later centuries as norroy king-at-arms! the two other members were chiefs of bureaus in his department; and all three were priests, of course; all officials who had to know how to read and write were priests. my candidate was called first, out of courtesy to me, and the head of the board opened on him with official solemnity: "name?" "mal-ease." "son of?" "webster." "webster -webster. h'm -i -my memory faileth to recall the name. condition?" "weaver." "weaver! -god keep us!" the king was staggered, from his summit to his foundations; one clerk fainted, and the others came near it. the chairman pulled himself together, and said indignantly: "it is sufficient. get you hence." but i appealed to the king. i begged that my candidate might be examined. the king was willing, but the board, who were all well-born folk, implored the king to spare them the indignity of examining the weaver's son. i knew they didn't know enough to examine him anyway, so i joined my prayers to theirs and the king turned the duty over to my professors. i had had a blackboard prepared, and it was put up now, and the circus began. it was beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallow in details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, mining and countermining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy, signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket practice, revolver practice -and not a solitary word of it all could these catfish make head or tail of, you understand -and it was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the blackboard that would stump the angels themselves, and do it like nothing, too -all about eclipses, and comets, and solstices, and constellations, and mean time, and sidereal time, and dinner time, and bedtime, and every other imaginable thing above the clouds or under them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with and make him wish he hadn't come -and when the boy made his military salute and stood aside at last, i was proud enough to hug him, and all those other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified, partly drunk, and wholly caught out and snowed under. i judged that the cake was ours, and by a large majority. education is a great thing. this was the same youth who had come to west point so ignorant that when i asked him, "if a general officer should have a horse shot under him on the field of battle, what ought he to do?" answered up naively and said: "get up and brush himself." one of the young nobles was called up now. i thought i would question him a little myself. i said: "can your lordship read?" his face flushed indignantly, and he fired this at me: "takest me for a clerk? i trow i am not of a blood that --" "answer the question!" he crowded his wrath down and made out to answer "no." "can you write?" he wanted to resent this, too, but i said: "you will confine yourself to the questions, and make no comments. you are not here to air your blood or your graces, and nothing of the sort will be permitted. can you write?" "no." "do you know the multiplication table?" "i wit not what ye refer to." "how much is 9 times 6?" "it is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, i abide barren of the knowledge." "if a trade a barrel of onions to b, worth 2 pence the bushel, in exchange for a sheep worth 4 pence and a dog worth a penny, and c kill the dog before delivery, because bitten by the same, who mistook him for d, what sum is still due to a from b, and which party pays for the dog, c or d, and who gets the money? if a, is the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damages in the form of additional money to represent the possible profit which might have inured from the dog, and classifiable as earned increment, that is to say, usufruct?" "verily, in the all-wise and unknowable providence of god, who moveth in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, have i never heard the fellow to this question for confusion of the mind and congestion of the ducts of thought. wherefore i beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an i tried to help i should but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought." "what do you know of the laws of attraction and gravitation?" "if there be such, mayhap his grace the king did promulgate them whilst that i lay sick about the beginning of the year and thereby failed to hear his proclamation." "what do you know of the science of optics?" "i know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, and sheriffs of counties, and many like small offices and titles of honor, but him you call the science of optics i have not heard of before; peradventure it is a new dignity." "yes, in this country." try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying for an official position, of any kind under the sun! why, he had all the earmarks of a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the disposition to contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation. it was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of that sort out of his majestic supply of incapacity for the job. but that didn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the disposition, it only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet. after nagging him a little more, i let the professors loose on him and they turned him inside out, on the line of scientific war, and found him empty, of course. he knew somewhat about the warfare of the time -bushwhacking around for ogres, and bull-fights in the tournament ring, and such things -but otherwise he was empty and useless. then we took the other young noble in hand, and he was the first one's twin, for ignorance and incapacity. i delivered them into the hands of the chairman of the board with the comfortable consciousness that their cake was dough. they were examined in the previous order of precedence. "name, so please you?" "pertipole, son of sir pertipole, baron of barley mash." "grandfather?" "also sir pertipole, baron of barley mash." "great-grandfather?" "the same name and title." "great-great-grandfather?" "we had none, worshipful sir, the line failing before it had reached so far back." "it mattereth not. it is a good four generations, and fulfilleth the requirements of the rule." "fulfills what rule?" i asked. "the rule requiring four generations of nobility or else the candidate is not eligible." "a man not eligible for a lieutenancy in the army unless he can prove four generations of noble descent?" "even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissioned without that qualification." "oh, come, this is an astonishing thing. what good is such a qualification as that?" "what good? it is a hardy question, fair sir and boss, since it doth go far to impugn the wisdom of even our holy mother church herself." "as how?" "for that she hath established the self-same rule regarding saints. by her law none may be canonized until he hath lain dead four generations." "i see, i see -it is the same thing. it is wonderful. in the one case a man lies dead-alive four generations -mummified in ignorance and sloth -and that qualifies him to command live people, and take their weal and woe into his impotent hands; and in the other case, a man lies bedded with death and worms four generations, and that qualifies him for office in the celestial camp. does the king's grace approve of this strange law?" the king said: "why, truly i see naught about it that is strange. all places of honor and of profit do belong, by natural right, to them that be of noble blood, and so these dignities in the army are their property and would be so without this or any rule. the rule is but to mark a limit. its purpose is to keep out too recent blood, which would bring into contempt these offices, and men of lofty lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them. i were to blame an i permitted this calamity. you can permit it an you are minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority, but that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not comprehensible to any." "i yield. proceed, sir chief of the herald's college. " the chairman resumed as follows: "by what illustrious achievement for the honor of the throne and state did the founder of your great line lift himself to the sacred dignity of the british nobility?" "he built a brewery." "sire, the board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements and qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case open for decision after due examination of his competitor." the competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations of nobility himself. so there was a tie in military qualifications that far. he stood aside a moment, and sir pertipole was questioned further: "of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line?" "she came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble; she was gracious and pure and charitable, of a blameless life and character, insomuch that in these regards was she peer of the best lady in the land." "that will do. stand down." he called up the competing lordling again, and asked: "what was the rank and condition of the great-grandmother who conferred british nobility upon your great house?" "she was a king's leman and did climb to that splendid eminence by her own unholpen merit from the sewer where she was born." "ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this is the right and perfect intermixture. the lieutenancy is yours, fair lord. hold it not in contempt; it is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs more worthy of the splendor of an origin like to thine." i was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. i had promised myself an easy and zenith-scouring triumph, and this was the outcome! i was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the face. i told him to go home and be patient, this wasn't the end. i had a private audience with the king, and made a proposition. i said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities, and he couldn't have done a wiser thing. it would also be a good idea to add five hundred officers to it; in fact, add as many officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the country, even if there should finally be five times as many officers as privates in it; and thus make it the crack regiment, the envied regiment, the king's own regiment, and entitled to fight on its own hook and in its own way, and go whither it would and come when it pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell and independent. this would make that regiment the heart's desire of all the nobility, and they would all be satisfied and happy. then we would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace materials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper -nobodies selected on a basis of mere efficiency -and we would make this regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from restraint, and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering, to the end that whenever the king's own was tired and wanted to go off for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good time, it could go without uneasiness, knowing that matters were in safe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at the old stand, same as usual. the king was charmed with the idea. when i noticed that, it gave me a valuable notion. i thought i saw my way out of an old and stubborn difficulty at last. you see, the royalties of the pendragon stock were a long-lived race and very fruitful. whenever a child was born to any of these -and it was pretty often -there was wild joy in the nation's mouth, and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart. the joy was questionable, but the grief was honest. because the event meant another call for a royal grant. long was the list of these royalties, and they were a heavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasury and a menace to the crown. yet arthur could not believe this latter fact, and he would not listen to any of my various projects for substituting something in the place of the royal grants. if i could have persuaded him to now and then provide a support for one of these outlying scions from his own pocket, i could have made a grand to-do over it, and it would have had a good effect with the nation; but no, he wouldn't hear of such a thing. he had something like a religious passion for royal grant; he seemed to look upon it as a sort of sacred swag, and one could not irritate him in any way so quickly and so surely as by an attack upon that venerable institution. if i ventured to cautiously hint that there was not another respectable family in england that would humble itself to hold out the hat -however, that is as far as i ever got; he always cut me short there, and peremptorily, too. but i believed i saw my chance at last. i would form this crack regiment out of officers alone -not a single private. half of it should consist of nobles, who should fill all the places up to major-general, and serve gratis and pay their own expenses; and they would be glad to do this when they should learn that the rest of the regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood. these princes of the blood should range in rank from lieutenant-general up to field marshal, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped and fed by the state. moreover -and this was the master stroke -it should be decreed that these princely grandees should be always addressed by a stunningly gaudy and awe-compelling title (which i would presently invent), and they and they only in all england should be so addressed. finally, all princes of the blood should have free choice; join that regiment, get that great title, and renounce the royal grant, or stay out and receive a grant. neatest touch of all: unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be born into the regiment, and start fair, with good wages and a permanent situation, upon due notice from the parents. all the boys would join, i was sure of that; so, all existing grants would be relinquished; that the newly born would always join was equally certain. within sixty days that quaint and bizarre anomaly, the royal grant, would cease to be a living fact, and take its place among the curiosities of the past. chapter xxvi. the first newspaper when i told the king i was going out disguised as a petty freeman to scour the country and familiarize myself with the humbler life of the people, he was all afire with the novelty of the thing in a minute, and was bound to take a chance in the adventure himself -nothing should stop him -he would drop everything and go along -it was the prettiest idea he had run across for many a day. he wanted to glide out the back way and start at once; but i showed him that that wouldn't answer. you see, he was billed for the king's-evil -to touch for it, i mean -and it wouldn't be right to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay worth considering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. and i thought he ought to tell the queen he was going away. he clouded up at that and looked sad. i was sorry i had spoken, especially when he said mournfully: "thou forgettest that launcelot is here; and where launcelot is, she noteth not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth." of course, i changed the subject. yes, guenever was beautiful, it is true, but take her all around she was pretty slack. i never meddled in these matters, they weren't my affair, but i did hate to see the way things were going on, and i don't mind saying that much. many's the time she had asked me, "sir boss, hast seen sir launcelot about?" but if ever she went fretting around for the king i didn't happen to be around at the time. there was a very good lay-out for the king's-evil business -very tidy and creditable. the king sat under a canopy of state; about him were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals. conspicuous, both for location and personal outfit, stood marinel, a hermit of the quack-doctor species, to introduce the sick. all abroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the doors, in a thick jumble, lay or sat the scrofulous, under a strong light. it was as good as a tableau; in fact, it had all the look of being gotten up for that, though it wasn't. there were eight hundred sick people present. the work was slow; it lacked the interest of novelty for me, because i had seen the ceremonies before; the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required me to stick it out. the doctor was there for the reason that in all such crowds there were many people who only imagined something was the matter with them, and many who were consciously sound but wanted the immortal honor of fleshly contact with a king, and yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece of coin that went with the touch. up to this time this coin had been a wee little gold piece worth about a third of a dollar. when you consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age and country, and how usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead, you would understand that the annual king's-evil appropriation was just the river and harbor bill of that government for the grip it took on the treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning the surplus. so i had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself for the king's-evil. i covered sixsevenths of the appropriation into the treasury a week before starting from camelot on my adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into fivecent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk of the king's evil department; a nickel to take the place of each gold coin, you see, and do its work for it. it might strain the nickel some, but i judged it could stand it. as a rule, i do not approve of watering stock, but i considered it square enough in this case, for it was just a gift, anyway. of course, you can water a gift as much as you want to; and i generally do. the old gold and silver coins of the country were of ancient and unknown origin, as a rule, but some of them were roman; they were ill-shapen, and seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full; they were hammered, not minted, and they were so worn with use that the devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and looked like them. i judged that a sharp, bright new nickel, with a first-rate likeness of the king on one side of it and guenever on the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck out of scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the scrofulous fancy more; and i was right. this batch was the first it was tried on, and it worked to a charm. the saving in expense was a notable economy. you will see that by these figures: we touched a trifle over 700 of the 800 patients; at former rates, this would have cost the government about $240; at the new rate we pulled through for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop. to appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke, consider these other figures: the annual expenses of a national government amount to the equivalent of a contribution of three days' average wages of every individual of the population, counting every individual as if he were a man. if you take a nation of 60,000,000, where average wages are $2 per day, three days' wages taken from each individual will provide $360,000,000 and pay the government's expenses. in my day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts, and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid by the american people, and was so equally and exactly distributed among them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the annual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was precisely the same -each paid $6. nothing could be equaler than that, i reckon. well, scotland and ireland were tributary to arthur, and the united populations of the british islands amounted to something less than 1,ooo,ooo. a mechanic's average wage was 3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. by this rule the national government's expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day. thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evil day, i not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expense into the bargain -a saving which would have been the equivalent of $800,000 in my day in america. in making this substitution i had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source -the wisdom of my boyhood -for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood i had always saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause. the buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as the coin, the coin would answer me better than the buttons; all hands were happy and nobody hurt. marinel took the patients as they came. he examined the candidate; if he couldn't qualify he was warned off; if he could he was passed along to the king. a priest pronounced the words, "they shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover." then the king stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the patient graduated and got his nickel -the king hanging it around his neck himself -and was dismissed. would you think that that would cure? it certainly did. any mummery will cure if the patient's faith is strong in it. up by astolat there was a chapel where the virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd geese around there -the girl said so herself -and they built the chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the occurrence -a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick person to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lame and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away whole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live. of course, when i was told these things i did not believe them; but when i went there and saw them i had to succumb. i saw the cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable. i saw cripples whom i had seen around camelot for years on crutches, arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp. there were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a testimony. in other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying a word to him, and cured him. in others, experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and those patients went away cured. wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne -the subject's belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign -has passed away. in my youth the monarchs of england had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could have cured it forty-nine times in fifty. well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the good king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing forward as plenty as ever, i got to feeling intolerably bored. i was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state. for the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out: "they shall lay their hands on the sick" -when outside there rang clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless centuries about my ears: "camelot weekly hosannah and literary volcano! -latest irruption -only two cents -all about the big miracle in the valley of holiness!" one greater than kings had arrived -the newsboy. but i was the only person in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and what this imperial magician was come into the world to do. i dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the adam-newsboy of the world went around the corner to get my change; is around the corner yet. it was delicious to see a newspaper again, yet i was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon the first batch of display head-lines. i had lived in a clammy atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that they sent a quivery little cold wave through me: high times in the valley of holiness! --- the water-works corked! --- brer merlin works his arts, but gets left? --- but the boss scores on his first innings! --- the miraculous well uncorked amid awful outbursts of infernal fire and smoke athunder! --- the buzzard-roost astonished! --- unparalleled rejoibings! -and so on, and so on. yes, it was too loud. once i could have enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now its note was discordant. it was good arkansas journalism, but this was not arkansas. moreover, the next to the last line was calculated to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper. it was plain i had undergone a considerable change without noticing it. i found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. there was an abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me: local smoke and cinders. sir launcelot met up with old king agrivance of ireland unexpectedly last weok over on the moor south of sir balmoral le merveilleuse's hog dasture. the widow has been notified. expedition no. 3 will start adout the first of mext month on a search f8r sir sagramour le desirous. it is in com and of the renowned knight of the red lawns, assissted by sir persant of inde, who is compete9t. intelligent, courte ous, and in every way a brick, and fur ther assisted by sir palamides the sara cen, who is no huckleberry hinself. this is no pic-nic, these boys mean busine&s. the readers of the hosannah will re gret to learn that the hadndsome and popular sir charolais of gaul, who dur ing his four weeks' stay at the bull and halibut, this city, has won every heart by his polished manners and elegant cpnversation, will pull out to-day for home. give us another call, charley! the bdsiness end of the funeral of the late sir dalliance the duke's son of cornwall, killed in an encounter with the giant of the knotted bludgeon last tuesday on the borders of the plain of enchantment was in the hands of the ever affable and efficient mumble, prince of un3ertakers, then whom there exists none by whom it were a more satisfying pleasure to have the last sad offices performed. give him a trial. the cordial thanks of the hosannah office are due, from editor down to devil, to the ever courteous and thought ful lord high stew d of the palace's third assistant v t for several sau cets of ice cream a quality calculated to make the ey of the recipients hu mid with grt ude; and it done it. when this administration wants to chalk up a desirable name for early promotion, the hosannah would like a chance to sudgest. the demoiselle irene dewlap, of south astolat, is visiting her uncle, the popular host of the cattlemen's board ing ho&se, liver lane, this city. young barker the bellows-mender is home again, and looks much improved by his vacation round-up among the ut lying smithies. see his ad. a yankee in king arthur's court 239 of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; i knew that quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing. the "court circular" pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those disgraceful familiarities. but even it could have been improved. do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court circular, i acknowledge that. there is a profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest efforts to make them sparkle and enthuse. the best way to manage -in fact, the only sensible way -is to disguise repetitiousness of fact under variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words. it deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything; this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a good appetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup made out of a single bean. clarence's way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all i say is, it was not the best way: court circular. on monday, the king rode in the park. " tuesday, " " " " wendesday " " " " thursday " " " " friday, " " " " saturday " " " " sunday, " " " however, take the paper by and large, i was vastly pleased with it. little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything, and it was good enough arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and better than was needed in arthur's day and realm. as a rule, the grammar was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but i did not much mind these things. they are common defects of my own, and one mustn't criticise other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself. i was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole paper at this one meal, but i got only a few bites, and then had to postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eager questions: what is this curious thing? what is it for? is it a handkerchief? -saddle blanket? -part of a shirt? what is it made of? how thin it is, and how dainty and frail; and how it rattles. will it wear, do you think, and won't the rain injure it? is it writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation? they suspected it was writing, because those among them who knew how to read latin and had a smattering of greek, recognized some of the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a whole. i put my information in the simplest form i could: "it is a public journal; i will explain what that is, another time. it is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time i will explain what paper is. the lines on it are reading matter; and not written by hand, but printed; by and by i will explain what printing is. a thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute detail -they can't be told apart." then they all broke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration: "a thousand! verily a mighty work -a year's work for many men." "no -merely a day's work for a man and a boy." they crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two. "ah-h -a miracle, a wonder! dark work of enchantment." i let it go at that. then i read in a low voice, to as many as could crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part of the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and was accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through: "ah-h-h!" "how true!" "amazing, amazing!" "these be the very haps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!" and might they take this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examine it? -they would be very careful. yes. so they took it, handling it as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy thing come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture, caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes. these grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes -how beautiful to me! for was not this my darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent tribute and unforced compliment to it? i knew, then, how a mother feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby, and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it were not, for that time. i knew how she feels, and that there is no other satisfied ambition, whether of king, conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches half-way to that serene far summit or yields half so divine a contentment. during all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to group all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye was upon it always, and i sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction, drunk with enjoyment. yes, this was heaven; i was tasting it once, if i might never taste it more. chapter xxvii. the yankee and the king travel incognito about bedtime i took the king to my private quarters to cut his hair and help him get the hang of the lowly raiment he was to wear. the high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead but hanging to the shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas the lowest ranks of commoners were banged fore and aft both; the slaves were bangless, and allowed their hair free growth. so i inverted a bowl over his head and cut away all the locks that hung below it. i also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were only about a half-inch long; and tried to do it inartistically, and succeeded. it was a villainous disfigurement. when he got his lubberly sandals on, and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth, which hung straight from his neck to his ankle-bones, he was no longer the comeliest man in his kingdom, but one of the unhandsomest and most commonplace and unattractive. we were dressed and barbered alike, and could pass for small farmers, or farm bailiffs, or shepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, if we chose, our costume being in effect universal among the poor, because of its strength and cheapness. i don't mean that it was really cheap to a very poor person, but i do mean that it was the cheapest material there was for male attire -manufactured material, you understand. we slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broad sun-up had made eight or ten miles, and were in the midst of a sparsely settled country. i had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden with provisions -provisions for the king to taper down on, till he could take to the coarse fare of the country without damage. i found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside, and then gave him a morsel or two to stay his stomach with. then i said i would find some water for him, and strolled away. part of my project was to get out of sight and sit down and rest a little myself. it had always been my custom to stand when in his presence; even at the council board, except upon those rare occasions when the sitting was a very long one, extending over hours; then i had a trifling little backless thing which was like a reversed culvert and was as comfortable as the toothache. i didn't want to break him in suddenly, but do it by degrees. we should have to sit together now when in company, or people would notice; but it would not be good politics for me to be playing equality with him when there was no necessity for it. i found the water some three hundred yards away, and had been resting about twenty minutes, when i heard voices. that is all right, i thought -peasants going to work; nobody else likely to be stirring this early. but the next moment these comers jingled into sight around a turn of the road -smartly clad people of quality, with luggage-mules and servants in their train! i was off like a shot, through the bushes, by the shortest cut. for a while it did seem that these people would pass the king before i could get to him; but desperation gives you wings, you know, and i canted my body forward, inflated my breast, and held my breath and flew. i arrived. and in plenty good enough time, too. "pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony -jump! jump to your feet -some quality are coming!" "is that a marvel? let them come." "but my liege! you must not be seen sitting. rise! -and stand in humble posture while they pass. you are a peasant, you know." "true -i had forgot it, so lost was i in planning of a huge war with gaul" -he was up by this time, but a farm could have got up quicker, if there was any kind of a boom in real estate -"and right-so a thought came randoming overthwart this majestic dream the which --" "a humbler attitude, my lord the king -and quick! duck your head! -more! -still more! -droop it!" he did his honest best, but lord, it was no great things. he looked as humble as the leaning tower at pisa. it is the most you could say of it. indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that it raised wondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeous flunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but i jumped in time and was under it when it fell; and under cover of the volley of coarse laughter which followed, i spoke up sharply and warned the king to take no notice. he mastered himself for the moment, but it was a sore tax; he wanted to eat up the procession. i said: "it would end our adventures at the very start; and we, being without weapons, could do nothing with that armed gang. if we are going to succeed in our emprise, we must not only look the peasant but act the peasant." "it is wisdom; none can gainsay it. let us go on, sir boss. i will take note and learn, and do the best i may." he kept his word. he did the best he could, but i've seen better. if you have ever seen an active, heedless, enterprising child going diligently out of one mischief and into another all day long, and an anxious mother at its heels all the while, and just saving it by a hair from drowning itself or breaking its neck with each new experiment, you've seen the king and me. if i could have foreseen what the thing was going to be like, i should have said, no, if anybody wants to make his living exhibiting a king as a peasant, let him take the layout; i can do better with a menagerie, and last longer. and yet, during the first three days i never allowed him to enter a hut or other dwelling. if he could pass muster anywhere during his early novitiate it would be in small inns and on the road; so to these places we confined ourselves. yes, he certainly did the best he could, but what of that? he didn't improve a bit that i could see. he was always frightening me, always breaking out with fresh astonishers, in new and unexpected places. toward evening on the second day, what does he do but blandly fetch out a dirk from inside his robe! "great guns, my liege, where did you get that?" "from a smuggler at the inn, yester eve." "what in the world possessed you to buy it?" "we have escaped divers dangers by wit -thy wit -but i have bethought me that it were but prudence if i bore a weapon, too. thine might fail thee in some pinch." "but people of our condition are not allowed to carry arms. what would a lord say -yes, or any other person of whatever condition -if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger on his person?" it was a lucky thing for us that nobody came along just then. i persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy as persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing itself. we walked along, silent and thinking. finally the king said: "when ye know that i meditate a thing inconvenient, or that hath a peril in it, why do you not warn me to cease from that project?" it was a startling question, and a puzzler. i didn't quite know how to take hold of it, or what to say, and so, of course, i ended by saying the natural thing: "but, sire, how can i know what your thoughts are?" the king stopped dead in his tracks, and stared at me. "i believed thou wert greater than merlin; and truly in magic thou art. but prophecy is greater than magic. merlin is a prophet." i saw i had made a blunder. i must get back my lost ground. after a deep reflection and careful planning, i said: "sire, i have been misunderstood. i will explain. there are two kinds of prophecy. one is the gift to foretell things that are but a little way off, the other is the gift to foretell things that are whole ages and centuries away. which is the mightier gift, do you think?" "oh, the last, most surely!" "true. does merlin possess it?" "partly, yes. he foretold mysteries about my birth and future kingship that were twenty years away." "has he ever gone beyond that?" "he would not claim more, i think." "it is probably his limit. all prophets have their limit. the limit of some of the great prophets has been a hundred years." "these are few, i ween." "there have been two still greater ones, whose limit was four hundred and six hundred years, and one whose limit compassed even seven hundred and twenty." "gramercy, it is marvelous!" "but what are these in comparison with me? they are nothing." "what? canst thou truly look beyond even so vast a stretch of time as --" "seven hundred years? my liege, as clear as the vision of an eagle does my prophetic eye penetrate and lay bare the future of this world for nearly thirteen centuries and a half!" my land, you should have seen the king's eyes spread slowly open, and lift the earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch! that settled brer merlin. one never had any occasion to prove his facts, with these people; all he had to do was to state them. it never occurred to anybody to doubt the statement. "now, then," i continued, "i could work both kinds of prophecy -the long and the short -if i chose to take the trouble to keep in practice; but i seldom exercise any but the long kind, because the other is beneath my dignity. it is properer to merlin's sort -stump-tail prophets, as we call them in the profession. of course, i whet up now and then and flirt out a minor prophecy, but not often -hardly ever, in fact. you will remember that there was great talk, when you reached the valley of holiness, about my having prophesied your coming and the very hour of your arrival, two or three days beforehand." "indeed, yes, i mind it now." "well, i could have done it as much as forty times easier, and piled on a thousand times more detail into the bargain, if it had been five hundred years away instead of two or three days." "how amazing that it should be so!" "yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is five hundred years away easier than he can a thing that's only five hundred seconds off." "and yet in reason it should clearly be the other way; it should be five hundred times as easy to foretell the last as the first, for, indeed, it is so close by that one uninspired might almost see it. in truth, the law of prophecy doth contradict the likelihoods, most strangely making the difficult easy, and the easy difficult." it was a wise head. a peasant's cap was no safe disguise for it; you could know it for a king's under a diving-bell, if you could hear it work its intellect. i had a new trade now, and plenty of business in it. the king was as hungry to find out everything that was going to happen during the next thirteen centuries as if he were expecting to live in them. from that time out, i prophesied myself bald-headed trying to supply the demand. i have done some indiscreet things in my day, but this thing of playing myself for a prophet was the worst. still, it had its ameliorations. a prophet doesn't have to have any brains. they are good to have, of course, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but they are no use in professional work. it is the restfulest vocation there is. when the spirit of prophecy comes upon you, you merely cake your intellect and lay it off in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave it alone; it will work itself: the result is prophecy. every day a knight-errant or so came along, and the sight of them fired the king's martial spirit every time. he would have forgotten himself, sure, and said something to them in a style a suspicious shade or so above his ostensible degree, and so i always got him well out of the road in time. then he would stand and look with all his eyes; and a proud light would flash from them, and his nostrils would inflate like a war-horse's, and i knew he was longing for a brush with them. but about noon of the third day i had stopped in the road to take a precaution which had been suggested by the whip-stroke that had fallen to my share two days before; a precaution which i had afterward decided to leave untaken, i was so loath to institute it; but now i had just had a fresh reminder: while striding heedlessly along, with jaw spread and intellect at rest, for i was prophesying, i stubbed my toe and fell sprawling. i was so pale i couldn't think for a moment; then i got softly and carefully up and unstrapped my knapsack. i had that dynamite bomb in it, done up in wool in a box. it was a good thing to have along; the time would come when i could do a valuable miracle with it, maybe, but it was a nervous thing to have about me, and i didn't like to ask the king to carry it. yet i must either throw it away or think up some safe way to get along with its society. i got it out and slipped it into my scrip, and just then here came a couple of knights. the king stood, stately as a statue, gazing toward them -had forgotten himself again, of course -and before i could get a word of warning out, it was time for him to skip, and well that he did it, too. he supposed they would turn aside. turn aside to avoid trampling peasant dirt under foot? when had he ever turned aside himself -or ever had the chance to do it, if a peasant saw him or any other noble knight in time to judiciously save him the trouble? the knights paid no attention to the king at all; it was his place to look out himself, and if he hadn't skipped he would have been placidly ridden down, and laughed at besides. the king was in a flaming fury, and launched out his challenge and epithets with a most royal vigor. the knights were some little distance by now. they halted, greatly surprised, and turned in their saddles and looked back, as if wondering if it might be worth while to bother with such scum as we. then they wheeled and started for us. not a moment must be lost. i started for them. i passed them at a rattling gait, and as i went by i flung out a hair-lifting soulscorching thirteen-jointed insult which made the king's effort poor and cheap by comparison. i got it out of the nineteenth century where they know how. they had such headway that they were nearly to the king before they could check up; then, frantic with rage, they stood up their horses on their hind hoofs and whirled them around, and the next moment here they came, breast to breast. i was seventy yards off, then, and scrambling up a great bowlder at the roadside. when they were within thirty yards of me they let their long lances droop to a level, depressed their mailed heads, and so, with their horse-hair plumes streaming straight out behind, most gallant to see, this lightning express came tearing for me! when they were within fifteen yards, i sent that bomb with a sure aim, and it struck the ground just under the horses' noses. yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty to see. it resembled a steamboat explosion on the mississippi; and during the next fifteen minutes we stood under a steady drizzle of microscopic fragments of knights and hardware and horse-flesh. i say we, for the king joined the audience, of course, as soon as he had got his breath again. there was a hole there which would afford steady work for all the people in that region for some years to come -in trying to explain it, i mean; as for filling it up, that service would be comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot of a select few -peasants of that seignory; and they wouldn't get anything for it, either. but i explained it to the king myself. i said it was done with a dynamite bomb, this information did him no damage, because it left him as intelligent as he was before. however, it was a noble miracle, in his eyes, and was another settler for merlin. i thought it well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sort that it couldn't be done except when the atmospheric conditions were just right. otherwise he would be encoring it every time we had a good subject, and that would be inconvenient, because i hadn't any more bombs along. chapter xxviii. drilling the king on the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, and we had been tramping an hour in the chill dawn, i came to a resolution: the king must be drilled; things could not go on so, he must be taken in hand and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or we couldn't ever venture to enter a dwelling; the very cats would know this masquerader for a humbug and no peasant. so i called a halt and said: "sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, there is no discrepancy; but as between your clothes and your bearing, you are all wrong, there is a most noticeable discrepancy. your soldierly stride, your lordly port -these will not do. you stand too straight, your looks are too high, too confident. the cares of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin, they do not depress the high level of the eye-glance, they do not put doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of them in slouching body and unsure step. it is the sordid cares of the lowly born that do these things. you must learn the trick; you must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery, oppression, insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sap the manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper and approved subject and a satisfaction to his masters, or the very infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go to pieces at the first hut we stop at. pray try to walk like this." the king took careful note, and then tried an imitation. "pretty fair -pretty fair. chin a little lower, please -there, very good. eyes too high; pray don't look at the horizon, look at the ground, ten steps in front of you. ah -that is better, that is very good. wait, please; you betray too much vigor, too much decision; you want more of a shamble. look at me, please -this is what i mean......now you are getting it; that is the idea -at least, it sort of approaches it......yes, that is pretty fair. but! there is a great big something wanting, i don't quite know what it is. please walk thirty yards, so that i can get a perspective on the thing......now, then -your head's right, speed's right, shoulders right, eyes right, chin right, gait, carriage, general style right -everything's right! and yet the fact remains, the aggregate's wrong. the account don't balance. do it again, please......now i think i begin to see what it is. yes, i've struck it. you see, the genuine spiritlessness is wanting; that's what's the trouble. it's all amatueur -mechanical details all right, almost to a hair; everything about the delusion perfect, except that it don't delude." "what, then, must one do, to prevail?" "let me think......i can't seem to quite get at it. in fact, there isn't anything that can right the matter but practice. this is a good place for it: roots and stony ground to break up your stately gait, a region not liable to interruption, only one field and one hut in sight, and they so far away that nobody could see us from there. it will be well to move a little off the road and put in the whole day drilling you, sire." after the drill had gone on a little while, i said: "now, sire, imagine that we are at the door of the hut yonder, and the family are before us. proceed, please -accost the head of the house." the king unconsciously straightened up like a monument, and said, with frozen austerity: "varlet, bring a seat; and serve to me what cheer ye have." "ah, your grace, that is not well done." "in what lacketh it?" "these people do not call each other varlets." "nay, is that true?" "yes; only those above them call them so." "then must i try again. i will call him villein." "no-no; for he may be a freeman." "ah -so. then peradventure i should call him goodman." "that would answer, your grace, but it would be still better if you said friend, or brother." "brother! -to dirt like that?" "ah, but we are pretending to be dirt like that, too." "it is even true. i will say it. brother, bring a seat, and thereto what cheer ye have, withal. now 'tis right." "not quite, not wholly right. you have asked for one, not us -for one, not both; food for one, a seat for one." the king looked puzzled -he wasn't a very heavy weight, intellectually. his head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once. "would you have a seat also -and sit?" "if i did not sit, the man would perceive that we were only pretending to be equals -and playing the deception pretty poorly, too." "it is well and truly said! how wonderful is truth, come it in whatsoever unexpected form it may! yes, he must bring out seats and food for both, and in serving us present not ewer and napkin with more show of respect to the one than to the other." "and there is even yet a detail that needs correcting. he must bring nothing outside; we will go in -in among the dirt, and possibly other repulsive things, -and take the food with the household, and after the fashion of the house, and all on equal terms, except the man be of the serf class; and finally, there will be no ewer and no napkin, whether he be serf or free. please walk again, my liege. there -it is better -it is the best yet; but not perfect. the shoulders have known no ignobler burden than iron mail, and they will not stoop." "give me, then, the bag. i will learn the spirit that goeth with burdens that have not honor. it is the spirit that stoopeth the shoulders, i ween, and not the weight; for armor is heavy, yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it......nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections. i will have the thing. strap it upon my back." he was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little like a king as any man i had ever seen. but it was an obstinate pair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick of stooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness. the drill went on, i prompting and correcting: "now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless creditors; you are out of work -which is horse-shoeing, let us say -and can get none; and your wife is sick, your children are crying because they are hungry --" and so on, and so on. i drilled him as representing in turn all sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations and misfortunes. but lord, it was only just words, words -they meant nothing in the world to him, i might just as well have whistled. words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe. there are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about "the working classes," and satisfy themselves that a day's hard intellectual work is very much harder than a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much bigger pay. why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but haven't tried the other. but i know all about both; and so far as i am concerned, there isn't money enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days, but i will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as near nothing as you can cipher it down -and i will be satisfied, too. intellectual "work" is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. the poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him -why, certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. the law of work does seem utterly unfair -but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, also. and it's also the very law of those transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship. chapter xxix. the smallpox hut when we arrived at that hut at mid-afternoon, we saw no signs of life about it. the field near by had been denuded of its crop some time before, and had a skinned look, so exhaustively had it been harvested and gleaned. fences, sheds, everything had a ruined look, and were eloquent of poverty. no animal was around anywhere, no living thing in sight. the stillness was awful, it was like the stillness of death. the cabin was a one-story one, whose thatch was black with age, and ragged from lack of repair. the door stood a trifle ajar. we approached it stealthily -on tiptoe and at half-breath -for that is the way one's feeling makes him do, at such a time. the king knocked. we waited. no answer. knocked again. no answer. i pushed the door softly open and looked in. i made out some dim forms, and a woman started up from the ground and stared at me, as one does who is wakened from sleep. presently she found her voice: "have mercy!" she pleaded. "all is taken, nothing is left." "i have not come to take anything, poor woman." "you are not a priest?" "no." "nor come not from the lord of the manor?" "no, i am a stranger." "oh, then, for the fear of god, who visits with misery and death such as be harmless, tarry not here, but fly! this place is under his curse -and his church's." "let me come in and help you -you are sick and in trouble." i was better used to the dim light now. i could see her hollow eyes fixed upon me. i could see how emaciated she was. "i tell you the place is under the church's ban. save yourself -and go, before some straggler see thee here, and report it." "give yourself no trouble about me; i don't care anything for the church's curse. let me help you." "now all good spirits -if there be any such -bless thee for that word. would god i had a sup of water! -but hold, hold, forget i said it, and fly; for there is that here that even he that feareth not the church must fear: this disease whereof we die. leave us, thou brave, good stranger, and take with thee such whole and sincere blessing as them that be accursed can give." but before this i had picked up a wooden bowl and was rushing past the king on my way to the brook. it was ten yards away. when i got back and entered, the king was within, and was opening the shutter that closed the window-hole, to let in air and light. the place was full of a foul stench. i put the bowl to the woman's lips, and as she gripped it with her eager talons the shutter came open and a strong light flooded her face. smallpox! i sprang to the king, and said in his ear: "out of the door on the instant, sire! the woman is dying of that disease that wasted the skirts of camelot two years ago." he did not budge. "of a truth i shall remain -and likewise help." i whispered again: "king, it must not be. you must go." "ye mean well, and ye speak not unwisely. but it were shame that a king should know fear, and shame that belted knight should withhold his hand where be such as need succor. peace, i will not go. it is you who must go. the church's ban is not upon me, but it forbiddeth you to be here, and she will deal with you with a heavy hand an word come to her of your trespass." it was a desperate place for him to be in, and might cost him his life, but it was no use to argue with him. if he considered his knightly honor at stake here, that was the end of argument; he would stay, and nothing could prevent it; i was aware of that. and so i dropped the subject. the woman spoke: "fair sir, of your kindness will ye climb the ladder there, and bring me news of what ye find? be not afraid to report, for times can come when even a mother's heart is past breaking -being already broke." "abide," said the king, "and give the woman to eat. i will go." and he put down the knapsack. i turned to start, but the king had already started. he halted, and looked down upon a man who lay in a dim light, and had not noticed us thus far, or spoken. "is it your husband?" the king asked. "yes." "is he asleep?" "god be thanked for that one charity, yes -these three hours. where shall i pay to the full, my gratitude! for my heart is bursting with it for that sleep he sleepeth now." i said: "we will be careful. we will not wake him." "ah, no, that ye will not, for he is dead." "dead?" "yes, what triumph it is to know it! none can harm him, none insult him more. he is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there, he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find neither abbot nor yet bishop. we were boy and girl together; we were man and wife these five and twenty years, and never separated till this day. think how long that is to love and suffer together. this morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we were boy and girl again and wandering in the happy fields; and so in that innocent glad converse wandered he far and farther, still lightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we know not of, and was shut away from mortal sight. and so there was no parting, for in his fancy i went with him; he knew not but i went with him, my hand in his -my young soft hand, not this withered claw. ah, yes, to go, and know it not; to separate and know it not; how could one go peace -fuller than that? it was his reward for a cruel life patiently borne." there was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. it was the king descending. i could see that he was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the other. he came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a slender girl of fifteen. she was but half conscious; she was dying of smallpox. here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open field unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold to gaze and applaud; and yet the king's bearing was as serenely brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. he was great now; sublimely great. the rude statues of his ancestors in his palace should have an addition -i would see to that; and it would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the rest, it would be a king in commoner's garb bearing death in his arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child and be comforted. he laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearments and caresses from an overflowing heart, and one could detect a flickering faint light of response in the child's eyes, but that was all. the mother hung over her, kissing her, petting her, and imploring her to speak, but the lips only moved and no sound came. i snatched my liquor flask from my knapsack, but the woman forbade me, and said: "no -she does not suffer; it is better so. it might bring her back to life. none that be so good and kind as ye are would do her that cruel hurt. for look you -what is left to live for? her brothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, the church's curse is upon her, and none may shelter or befriend her even though she lay perishing in the road. she is desolate. i have not asked you, good heart, if her sister be still on live, here overhead; i had no need; ye had gone back, else, and not left the poor thing forsaken --" "she lieth at peace," interrupted the king, in a subdued voice. "i would not change it. how rich is this day in happiness! ah, my annis, thou shalt join thy sister soon -thou'rt on thy way, and these be merciful friends that will not hinder." and so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, and softly stroking her face and hair, and kissing her and calling her by endearing names; but there was scarcely sign of response now in the glazing eyes. i saw tears well from the king's eyes, and trickle down his face. the woman noticed them, too, and said: "ah, i know that sign: thou'st a wife at home, poor soul, and you and she have gone hungry to bed, many's the time, that the little ones might have your crust; you know what poverty is, and the daily insults of your betters, and the heavy hand of the church and the king." the king winced under this accidental home-shot, but kept still; he was learning his part; and he was playing it well, too, for a pretty dull beginner. i struck up a diversion. i offered the woman food and liquor, but she refused both. she would allow nothing to come between her and the release of death. then i slipped away and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her. this broke her down again, and there was another scene that was full of heartbreak. by and by i made another diversion, and beguiled her to sketch her story. "ye know it well yourselves, having suffered it -for truly none of our condition in britain escape it. it is the old, weary tale. we fought and struggled and succeeded; meaning by success, that we lived and did not die; more than that is not to be claimed. no troubles came that we could not outlive, till this year brought them; then came they all at once, as one might say, and overwhelmed us. years ago the lord of the manor planted certain fruit trees on our farm; in the best part of it, too -a grievous wrong and shame --" "but it was his right," interrupted the king. "none denieth that, indeed; an the law mean anything, what is the lord's is his, and what is mine is his also. our farm was ours by lease, therefore 'twas likewise his, to do with it as he would. some little time ago, three of those trees were found hewn down. our three grown sons ran frightened to report the crime. well, in his lordship's dungeon there they lie, who saith there shall they lie and rot till they confess. they have naught to confess, being innocent, wherefore there will they remain until they die. ye know that right well, i ween. think how this left us; a man, a woman and two children, to gather a crop that was planted by so much greater force, yes, and protect it night and day from pigeons and prowling animals that be sacred and must not be hurt by any of our sort. when my lord's crop was nearly ready for the harvest, so also was ours; when his bell rang to call us to his fields to harvest his crop for nothing, he would not allow that i and my two girls should count for our three captive sons, but for only two of them; so, for the lacking one were we daily fined. all this time our own crop was perishing through neglect; and so both the priest and his lordship fined us because their shares of it were suffering through damage. in the end the fines ate up our crop -and they took it all; they took it all and made us harvest it for them, without pay or food, and we starving. then the worst came when i, being out of my mind with hunger and loss of my boys, and grief to see my husband and my little maids in rags and misery and despair, uttered a deep blasphemy -oh! a thousand of them! -against the church and the church's ways. it was ten days ago. i had fallen sick with this disease, and it was to the priest i said the words, for he was come to chide me for lack of due humility under the chastening hand of god. he carried my trespass to his betters; i was stubborn; wherefore, presently upon my head and upon all heads that were dear to me, fell the curse of rome. "since that day we are avoided, shunned with horror. none has come near this hut to know whether we live or not. the rest of us were taken down. then i roused me and got up, as wife and mother will. it was little they could have eaten in any case; it was less than little they had to eat. but there was water, and i gave them that. how they craved it! and how they blessed it! but the end came yesterday; my strength broke down. yesterday was the last time i ever saw my husband and this youngest child alive. i have lain here all these hours -these ages, ye may say -listening, listening for any sound up there that --" she gave a sharp quick glance at her eldest daughter, then cried out, "oh, my darling!" and feebly gathered the stiffening form to her sheltering arms. she had recognized the death-rattle. chapter xxx. the tragedy of the manor-house at midnight all was over, and we sat in the presence of four corpses. we covered them with such rags as we could find, and started away, fastening the door behind us. their home must be these people's grave, for they could not have christian burial, or be admitted to consecrated ground. they were as dogs, wild beasts, lepers, and no soul that valued its hope of eternal life would throw it away by meddling in any sort with these rebuked and smitten outcasts. we had not moved four steps when i caught a sound as of footsteps upon gravel. my heart flew to my throat. we must not be seen coming from that house. i plucked at the king's robe and we drew back and took shelter behind the corner of the cabin. "now we are safe," i said, "but it was a close call -so to speak. if the night had been lighter he might have seen us, no doubt, he seemed to be so near." "mayhap it is but a beast and not a man at all." "true. but man or beast, it will be wise to stay here a minute and let it get by and out of the way." "hark! it cometh hither." true again. the step was coming toward us -straight toward the hut. it must be a beast, then, and we might as well have saved our trepidation. i was going to step out, but the king laid his hand upon my arm. there was a moment of silence, then we heard a soft knock on the cabin door. it made me shiver. presently the knock was repeated, and then we heard these words in a guarded voice: "mother! father! open -we have got free, and we bring news to pale your cheeks but glad your hearts; and we may not tarry, but must fly! and -but they answer not. mother! father! --" i drew the king toward the other end of the hut and whispered: "come -now we can get to the road." the king hesitated, was going to demur; but just then we heard the door give way, and knew that those desolate men were in the presence of their dead. "come, my liege! in a moment they will strike a light, and then will follow that which it would break your heart to hear." he did not hesitate this time. the moment we were in the road i ran; and after a moment he threw dignity aside and followed. i did not want to think of what was happening in the hut -i couldn't bear it; i wanted to drive it out of my mind; so i struck into the first subject that lay under that one in my mind: "i have had the disease those people died of, and so have nothing to fear; but if you have not had it also --" he broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and it was his conscience that was troubling him: "these young men have got free, they say -but how? it is not likely that their lord hath set them free." "oh, no, i make no doubt they escaped." "that is my trouble; i have a fear that this is so, and your suspicion doth confirm it, you having the same fear. "i should not call it by that name though. i do suspect that they escaped, but if they did, i am not sorry, certainly." "i am not sorry, i think -but --" "what is it? what is there for one to be troubled about?" "if they did escape, then are we bound in duty to lay hands upon them and deliver them again to their lord; for it is not seemly that one of his quality should suffer a so insolent and high-handed outrage from persons of their base degree." there it was again. he could see only one side of it. he was born so, educated so, his veins were full of ancestral blood that was rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought down by inheritance from a long procession of hearts that had each done its share toward poisoning the stream. to imprison these men without proof, and starve their kindred, was no harm, for they were merely peasants and subject to the will and pleasure of their lord, no matter what fearful form it might take; but for these men to break out of unjust captivity was insult and outrage, and a thing not to be countenanced by any conscientious person who knew his duty to his sacred caste. i worked more than half an hour before i got him to change the subject -and even then an outside matter did it for me. this was a something which caught our eyes as we struck the summit of a small hill -a red glow, a good way off. "that's a fire," said i. fires interested me considerably, because i was getting a good deal of an insurance business started, and was also training some horses and building some steam fire-engines, with an eye to a paid fire department by and by. the priests opposed both my fire and life insurance, on the ground that it was an insolent attempt to hinder the decrees of god; and if you pointed out that they did not hinder the decrees in the least, but only modified the hard consequences of them if you took out policies and had luck, they retorted that that was gambling against the decrees of god, and was just as bad. so they managed to damage those industries more or less, but i got even on my accident business. as a rule, a knight is a lummox, and some times even a labrick, and hence open to pretty poor arguments when they come glibly from a superstition-monger, but even he could see the practical side of a thing once in a while; and so of late you couldn't clean up a tournament and pile the result without finding one of my accident-tickets in every helmet. we stood there awhile, in the thick darkness and stillness, looking toward the red blur in the distance, and trying to make out the meaning of a far-away murmur that rose and fell fitfully on the night. sometimes it swelled up and for a moment seemed less remote; but when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its cause and nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it. we started down the hill in its direction, and the winding road plunged us at once into almost solid darkness -darkness that was packed and crammed in between two tall forest walls. we groped along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and more distinct all the time. the coming storm threatening more and more, with now and then a little shiver of wind, a faint show of lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder. i was in the lead. i ran against something -a soft heavy something which gave, slightly, to the impulse of my weight; at the same moment the lightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhing face of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree! that is, it seemed to be writhing, but it was not. it was a grewsome sight. straightway there was an earsplitting explosion of thunder, and the bottom of heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge. no matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the chance that there might be life in him yet, mustn't we? the lightning came quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and midnight. one moment the man would be hanging before me in an intense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness. i told the king we must cut him down. the king at once objected. "if he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to his lord; so let him be. if others hanged him, belike they had the right -let him hang." "but --" "but me no buts, but even leave him as he is. and for yet another reason. when the lightning cometh again -there, look abroad." two others hanging, within fifty yards of us! "it is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. they are past thanking you. come -it is unprofitable to tarry here." there was reason in what he said, so we moved on. within the next mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion. that murmur was a murmur no longer, it was a roar; a roar of men's voices. a man came flying by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him. they disappeared. presently another case of the kind occurred, and then another and another. then a sudden turn of the road brought us in sight of that fire -it was a large manorhouse, and little or nothing was left of it -and everywhere men were flying and other men raging after them in pursuit. i warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers. we would better get away from the light, until matters should improve. we stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the wood. from this hiding-place we saw both men and women hunted by the mob. the fearful work went on until nearly dawn. then, the fire being out and the storm spent, the voices and flying footsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again. we ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we were worn out and sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place some miles behind us. then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoal burner, and got what was to be had. a woman was up and about, but the man was still asleep, on a straw shake-down, on the clay floor. the woman seemed uneasy until i explained that we were travelers and had lost our way and been wandering in the woods all night. she became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the terrible goings-on at the manor-house of abblasoure. yes, we had heard of them, but what we wanted now was rest and sleep. the king broke in: "sell us the house and take yourselves away, for we be perilous company, being late come from people that died of the spotted death." it was good of him, but unnecessary. one of the commonest decorations of the nation was the waffleiron face. i had early noticed that the woman and her husband were both so decorated. she made us entirely welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was immensely impressed by the king's proposition; for, of course, it was a good deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king's humble appearance who was ready to buy a man's house for the sake of a night's lodging. it gave her a large respect for us, and she strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make us comfortable. we slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to make cotter fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularly as it was scant in quantity. and also in variety; it consisted solely of onions, salt, and the national black breadñmade out of horsefeed. the woman told us about the affair of the evening before. at ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, the manor-house burst into flames. the country-side swarmed to the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, the master. he did not appear. everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking the burning house seeking that valuable personage. but after a while he was found -what was left of him -which was his corpse. it was in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a dozen places. who had done this? suspicion fell upon a humble family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated with peculiar harshness by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extended itself to their relatives and familiars. a suspicion was enough; my lord's liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade against these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general. the woman's husband had been active with the mob, and had not returned home until nearly dawn. he was gone now to find out what the general result had been. while we were still talking he came back from his quest. his report was revolting enough. eighteen persons hanged or butchered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisoners lost in the fire. "and how many prisoners were there altogether in the vaults?" "thirteen." "then every one of them was lost?" "yes, all." "but the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it they could save none of the prisoners?" the man looked puzzled, and said: "would one unlock the vaults at such a time? marry, some would have escaped." "then you mean that nobody did unlock them?" "none went near them, either to lock or unlock. it standeth to reason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needful to establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not escape, but be taken. none were taken." "natheless, three did escape," said the king, "and ye will do well to publish it and set justice upon their track, for these murthered the baron and fired the house." i was just expecting he would come out with that. for a moment the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news and an impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something else betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions. i answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effects produced. i was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these three prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere; that our hosts' continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now only pretended and not real. the king did not notice the change, and i was glad of that. i worked the conversation around toward other details of the night's proceedings, and noted that these people were relieved to have it take that direction. the painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor. this man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. this man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it. this was depressing -to a man with the dream of a republic in his head. it reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our south who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them. and there was only one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was, that secretly the "poor white" did detest the slave-lord, and did feel his own shame. that feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out, under favoring circumstances, was something -in fact, it was enough; for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it doesn't show on the outside. well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of the southern "poor white" of the far future. the king presently showed impatience, and said: "an ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. think ye the criminals will abide in their father's house? they are fleeing, they are not waiting. you should look to it that a party of horse be set upon their track." the woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked flustered and irresolute. i said: "come, friend, i will walk a little way with you, and explain which direction i think they would try to take. if they were merely resisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity i would try to protect them from capture; but when men murder a person of high degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter." the last remark was for the king -to quiet him. on the road the man pulled his resolution together, and began the march with a steady gait, but there was no eagerness in it. by and by i said: "what relation were these men to you -cousins?" he turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and stopped, trembling. "ah, my god, how know ye that?" "i didn't know it; it was a chance guess." "poor lads, they are lost. and good lads they were, too." "were you actually going yonder to tell on them?" he didn't quite know how to take that; but he said, hesitatingly: "ye-s." "then i think you are a damned scoundrel!" it made him as glad as if i had called him an angel. "say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that ye would not betray me an i failed of my duty." "duty? there is no duty in the matter, except the duty to keep still and let those men get away. they've done a righteous deed." he looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at the same time. he looked up and down the road to see that no one was coming, and then said in a cautious voice: "from what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous words, and seem not to be afraid?" "they are not perilous words when spoken to one of my own caste, i take it. you would not tell anybody i said them?" "i? i would be drawn asunder by wild horses first." "well, then, let me say my say. i have no fears of your repeating it. i think devil's work has been done last night upon those innocent poor people. that old baron got only what he deserved. if i had my way. all his kind should have the same luck." fear and depression vanished from the man's manner, and gratefulness and a brave animation took their place: "even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing, yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and others like to them, i would go to the gallows happy, as having had one good feast at least in a starved life. and i will say my say now, and ye may report it if ye be so minded. i helped to hang my neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of zeal in the master's cause; the others helped for none other reason. all rejoice today that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly sorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in that lies safety. i have said the words, i have said the words! the only ones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient. lead on, an ye will, be it even to the scaffold, for i am ready." there it was, you see. a man is a man, at bottom. whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken. yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed -even the russians; plenty of manhood in them -even in the germans -if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it. we should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe. first, a modified monarchy, till arthur's days were done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of the nation there to remain. yes, there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while. chapter xxxi. marco we strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, and talked. we must dispose of about the amount of time it ought to take to go to the little hamlet of abblasoure and put justice on the track of those murderers and get back home again. and meantime i had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, never lost its novelty for me since i had been in arthur's kingdom: the behavior -born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste -of chance passers-by toward each other. toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a countenance respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the air -he couldn't even see him. well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce. presently we struck an incident. a small mob of half-naked boys and girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking. the eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen years old. they implored help, but they were so beside themselves that we couldn't make out what the matter was. however, we plunged into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to death. we rescued him, and fetched him around. it was some more human nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elders; they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised to be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for. it was not a dull excursion for me. i managed to put in the time very well. i made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask as many questions as i wanted to. a thing which naturally interested me, as a statesman, was the matter of wages. i picked up what i could under that head during the afternoon. a man who hasn't had much experience, and doesn't think, is apt to measure a nation's prosperity or lack of prosperity by the mere size of the prevailing wages; if the wages be high, the nation is prosperous; if low, it isn't. which is an error. it isn't what sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it, that's the important thing; and it's that that tells whether your wages are high in fact or only high in name. i could remember how it was in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century. in the north a carpenter got three dollars a day, gold valuation; in the south he got fifty -payable in confederate shinplasters worth a dollar a bushel. in the north a suit of overalls cost three dollars -a day's wages; in the south it cost seventyfive -which was two days' wages. other things were in proportion. consequently, wages were twice as high in the north as they were in the south, because the one wage had that much more purchasing power than the other had. yes, i made various acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing that gratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation -lots of milrays, lots of mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels, and some silver; all this among the artisans and commonalty generally; yes, and even some gold -but that was at the bank, that is to say, the goldsmith's. i dropped in there while marco, the son of marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over a quarter of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty-dollar gold piece. they furnished it -that is, after they had chewed the piece, and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and asked me where i got it, and who i was, and where i was from, and where i was going to, and when i expected to get there, and perhaps a couple of hundred more questions; and when they got aground, i went right on and furnished them a lot of information voluntarily; told them i owned a dog, and his name was watch, and my first wife was a free will baptist, and her grandfather was a prohibitionist, and i used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and a wart on the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection, and so on, and so on, and so on, till even that hungry village questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade put out; but he had to respect a man of my financial strength, and so he didn't give me any lip, but i noticed he took it out of his underlings, which was a perfectly natural thing to do. yes, they changed my twenty, but i judged it strained the bank a little, which was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as walking into a paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiring the boss of it to change a two thousand-dollar bill for you all of a sudden. he could do it, maybe; but at the same time he would wonder how a small farmer happened to be carrying so much money around in his pocket; which was probably this goldsmith's thought, too; for he followed me to the door and stood there gazing after me with reverent admiration. our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its language was already glibly in use; that is to say, people had dropped the names of the former moneys, and spoke of things as being worth so many dollars or cents or mills or milrays now. it was very gratifying. we were progressing, that was sure. i got to know several master mechanics, but about the most interesting fellow among them was the blacksmith, dowley. he was a live man and a brisk talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentices, and was doing a raging business. in fact, he was getting rich, hand over fist, and was vastly respected. marco was very proud of having such a man for a friend. he had taken me there ostensibly to let me see the big establishment which bought so much of his charcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar terms he was on with this great man. dowley and i fraternized at once; i had had just such picked men, splendid fellows, under me in the colt arms factory. i was bound to see more of him, so i invited him to come out to marco's sunday, and dine with us. marco was appalled, and held his breath; and when the grandee accepted, he was so grateful that he almost forgot to be astonished at the condescension. marco's joy was exuberant -but only for a moment; then he grew thoughtful, then sad; and when he heard me tell dowley i should have dickon, the boss mason, and smug, the boss wheelwright, out there, too, the coal-dust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost his grip. but i knew what was the matter with him; it was the expense. he saw ruin before him; he judged that his financial days were numbered. however, on our way to invite the others, i said: "you must allow me to have these friends come; and you must also allow me to pay the costs." his face cleared, and he said with spirit: "but not all of it, not all of it. ye cannot well bear a burden like to this alone." i stopped him, and said: "now let's understand each other on the spot, old friend. i am only a farm bailiff, it is true; but i am not poor, nevertheless. i have been very fortunate this year -you would be astonished to know how i have thriven. i tell you the honest truth when i say i could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like this and never care that for the expense!" and i snapped my fingers. i could see myself rise a foot at a time in marco's estimation, and when i fetched out those last words i was become a very tower for style and altitude. "so you see, you must let me have my way. you can't contribute a cent to this orgy, that's settled." "it's grand and good of you --" "no, it isn't. you've opened your house to jones and me in the most generous way; jones was remarking upon it to-day, just before you came back from the village; for although he wouldn't be likely to say such a thing to you -because jones isn't a talker, and is diffident in society -he has a good heart and a grateful, and knows how to appreciate it when he is well treated; yes, you and your wife have been very hospitable toward us --" "ah, brother, 'tis nothing -such hospitality!" "but it is something; the best a man has, freely given, is always something, and is as good as a prince can do, and ranks right along beside it -for even a prince can but do his best. and so we'll shop around and get up this layout now, and don't you worry about the expense. i'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever was born. why, do you know, sometimes in a single week i spend -but never mind about that -you'd never believe it anyway." and so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing things, and gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and now and then running across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes had been taken from them and their parents butchered or hanged. the raiment of marco and his wife was of coarse tow-linen and linsey-woolsey respectively, and resembled township maps, it being made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been added, township by township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a hand's-breadth of the original garments was surviving and present. now i wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of that swell company, and i didn't know just how to get at it -with delicacy, until at last it struck me that as i had already been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it would be just the thing to back it up with evidence of a substantial sort; so i said: "and marco, there's another thing which you must permit -out of kindness for jones -because you wouldn't want to offend him. he was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but he is so diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he begged me to buy some little things and give them to you and dame phyllis and let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came from him -you know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing -and so i said i would, and we would keep mum. well, his idea was, a new outfit of clothes for you both --" "oh, it is wastefulness! it may not be, brother, it may not be. consider the vastness of the sum --" "hang the vastness of the sum! try to keep quiet for a moment, and see how it would seem; a body can't get in a word edgeways, you talk so much. you ought to cure that, marco; it isn't good form, you know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it. yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff -and don't forget to remember to not let on to jones that you know he had anything to do with it. you can't think how curiously sensitive and proud he is. he's a farmer -pretty fairly well-to-do farmer -an i'm his bailiff; but -the imagination of that man! why, sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off, you'd think he was one of the swells of the earth; and you might listen to him a hundred years and never take him for a farmer -especially if he talked agriculture. he thinks he's a sheol of a farmer; thinks he's old grayback from wayback; but between you and me privately he don't know as much about farming as he does about running a kingdom -still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop your underjaw and listen, the same as if you had never heard such incredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid you might die before you got enough of it. that will please jones." it tickled marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character; but it also prepared him for accidents; and in my experience when you travel with a king who is letting on to be something else and can't remember it more than about half the time, you can't take too many precautions. this was the best store we had come across yet; it had everything in it, in small quantities, from anvils and drygoods all the way down to fish and pinchbeck jewelry. i concluded i would bunch my whole invoice right here, and not go pricing around any more. so i got rid of marco, by sending him off to invite the mason and the wheelwright, which left the field free to me. for i never care to do a thing in a quiet way; it's got to be theatrical or i don't take any interest in it. i showed up money enough, in a careless way, to corral the shopkeeper's respect, and then i wrote down a list of the things i wanted, and handed it to him to see if he could read it. he could, and was proud to show that he could. he said he had been educated by a priest, and could both read and write. he ran it through, and remarked with satisfaction that it was a pretty heavy bill. well, and so it was, for a little concern like that. i was not only providing a swell dinner, but some odds and ends of extras. i ordered that the things be carted out and delivered at the dwelling of marco, the son of marco, by saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time sunday. he said i could depend upon his promptness and exactitude, it was the rule of the house. he also observed that he would throw in a couple of miller-guns for the marcos gratis -that everybody was using them now. he had a mighty opinion of that clever device. i said: "and please fill them up to the middle mark, too; and add that to the bill." he would, with pleasure. he filled them, and i took them with me. i couldn't venture to tell him that the miller-gun was a little invention of my own, and that i had officially ordered that every shopkeeper in the kingdom keep them on hand and sell them at government price -which was the merest trifle, and the shopkeeper got that, not the government. we furnished them for nothing. the king had hardly missed us when we got back at nightfall. he had early dropped again into his dream of a grand invasion of gaul with the whole strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoon had slipped away without his ever coming to himself again. chapter xxxii. dowley's humiliation well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, saturday afternoon, i had my hands full to keep the marcos from fainting. they were sure jones and i were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves as accessories to this bankruptcy. you see, in addition to the dinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, i had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family: for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tables of their class as was ice-cream to a hermit's; also a sizeable deal dinner-table; also two entire pounds of salt, which was another piece of extravagance in those people's eyes; also crockery, stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on. i instructed the marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to give me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. concerning the new clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were up and down, all night, to see if it wasn't nearly daylight, so that they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much as an hour before dawn was due. then their pleasure -not to say delirium -was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of it paid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered. the king had slept just as usual -like the dead. the marcos could not thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but they tried every way they could think of to make him see how grateful they were. which all went for nothing: he didn't notice any change. it turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which is just a june day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to be out of doors. toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembled under a great tree and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances. even the king's reserve melted a little, though it was some little trouble to him to adjust himself to the name of jones along at first. i had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer; but i had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the thing stand at that, and not elaborate it any. because he was just the kind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing like that if you didn't warn him, his tongue was so handy, and his spirit so willing, and his information so uncertain. dowley was in fine feather, and i early got him started, and then adroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text and himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him hum. self-made man, you know. they know how to talk. they do deserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true; and they are among the very first to find it out, too. he told how he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest master lived; how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hours long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade -or "mystery" as dowley called it. that was his first great rise, his first gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn't yet speak of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a gilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common human being. he got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but on his graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linens and made him feel unspeakably rich and fine. "i remember me of that day!" the wheelwright sang out, with enthusiasm. "and i likewise!" cried the mason. "i would not believe they were thine own; in faith i could not." "nor other!" shouted dowley, with sparkling eyes. "i was like to lose my character, the neighbors wending i had mayhap been stealing. it was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth not days like that." yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and always had a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it white bread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak. and in time dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter. "and now consider what is come to pass," said he, impressively. "two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table." he made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added -"and eight times salt meat." "it is even true," said the wheelwright, with bated breath. "i know it of mine own knowledge," said the mason, in the same reverent fashion. "on my table appeareth white bread every sunday in the year," added the master smith, with solemnity. "i leave it to your own consciences, friends, if this is not also true?" "by my head, yes," cried the mason. "i can testify it -and i do," said the wheelwright. "and as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment is. " he waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank and unhampered freedom of speech, and added: "speak as ye are moved; speak as ye would speak; an i were not here." "ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeit your family is but three," said the wheelwright, with deep respect. "and six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewter to cat and drink from withal," said the mason, impressively. "and i say it as knowing god is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth." "now ye know what manner of man i am, brother jones," said the smith, with a fine and friendly condescension, "and doubtless ye would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect and but sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality be assured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye well ye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but is willing to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrieth a right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest. and in token of it, here is my hand; and i say with my own mouth we are equals -equals "-and he smiled around on the company with the satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and gracious thing and is quite well aware of it. the king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and let go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of which had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural to one who was being called upon by greatness. the dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. it caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and a sumptuous article of deal. but the surprise rose higher still when the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore, but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it. that was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs, and it hit him hard; you could see it. but marco was in paradise; you could see that, too. then the dame brought two fine new stools -whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes of every guest. then she brought two more -as calmly as she could. sensation again -with awed murmurs. again she brought two -walking on air, she was so proud. the guests were petrified, and the mason muttered: "there is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence." as the dame turned away, marco couldn't help slapping on the climax while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a languid composure but was a poor imitation of it: "these suffice; leave the rest." so there were more yet! it was a fine effect. i couldn't have played the hand better myself. from this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped "oh's" and "ah's," and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. she fetched crockery -new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white wheaten bread. take it by and large, that spread laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had seen before. and while they sat there just simply stupefied with wonder and awe, i sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had come to collect. "that's all right," i said, indifferently. "what is the amount? give us the items." then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate waves of terror and admiration surged over marco's: 2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800 3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700 2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6,000 2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800 1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600 8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000 1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000 2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 he ceased. there was a pale and awful silence. not a limb stirred. not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath. "is that all?" i asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness. "all, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head hight sundries. if it would like you, i will sepa --" "it is of no consequence," i said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference; "give me the grand total, please." the clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said: "thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!" the wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of: "god be with us in the day of disaster!" the clerk hastened to say: "my father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you --" i paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money and tossed four dollars on to the table. ah, you should have seen them stare! the clerk was astonished and charmed. he asked me to retain one of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and -i interrupted: "what, and fetch back nine cents? nonsense! take the whole. keep the change." there was an amazed murmur to this effect: "verily this being is made of money! he throweth it away even as if it were dirt." the blacksmith was a crushed man. the clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. i said to marco and his wife: "good folk, here is a little trifle for you" -handing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, i turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day: "well, if we are all ready, i judge the dinner is. come, fall to." ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. i don't know that i ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular effects out of the materials available. the blacksmith -well, he was simply mashed. land! i wouldn't have felt what that man was feeling, for anything in the world. here he had been blowing and bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white bread every sunday the year round -all for a family of three; the entire cost for the year not above 69.2.6 (sixty-nine cents, two mills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along a man who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and not only that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such small sums. yes, dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up and collapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that's been stepped on by a cow. chapter xxxiii. sixth century political economy however, i made a dead set at him, and before the first third of the dinner was reached, i had him happy again. it was easy to do -in a country of ranks and castes. you see, in a country where they have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he is only part of a man, he can't ever get his full growth. you prove your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that's the end of it -he knuckles down. you can't insult him after that. no, i don't mean quite that; of course you can insult him, i only mean it's difficult; and so, unless you've got a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn't pay to try. i had the smith's reverence now, because i was apparently immensely prosperous and rich; i could have had his adoration if i had had some little gimcrack title of nobility. and not only his, but any commoner's in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and i bankrupt in all three. this was to remain so, as long as england should exist in the earth. with the spirit of prophecy upon me, i could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored the creators of this world -after god -gutenburg, watt, arkwright, whitney, morse, stephenson, bell. the king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness and went off to take a nap. mrs. marco cleared the table, placed the beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters near and dear to the hearts of our sort -business and wages, of course. at a first glance, things appeared to be exceeding prosperous in this little tributary kingdom -whose lord was king bagdemagus -as compared with the state of things in my own region. they had the "protection" system in full force here, whereas we were working along down toward free-trade, by easy stages, and were now about half way. before long, dowley and i were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. dowley warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and they did have something of that look: "in your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?" "twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent. the smith's face beamed with joy. he said: "with us they are allowed the double of it! and what may a mechanic get -carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, and the like?" "on the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day." "ho-ho! with us they are allowed a hundred! with us any good mechanic is allowed a cent a day! i count out the tailor, but not the others -they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they get more -yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen milrays a day. i've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within the week. 'rah for protection -to sheol with free-trade!" and his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. but i didn't scare at all. i rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth -drive him all in -drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should show above ground. here is the way i started in on him. i asked: "what do you pay a pound for salt?" "a hundred milrays." "we pay forty. what do you pay for beef and mutton -when you buy it?" that was a neat hit; it made the color come. "it varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say 75 milrays the pound." "we pay 33. what do you pay for eggs?" "fifty milrays the dozen." "we pay 20. what do you pay for beer?" "it costeth us 8 1/2 milrays the pint." "we get it for 4; 25 bottles for a cent. what do you pay for wheat?" "at the rate of 900 milrays the bushel." "we pay 400. what do you pay for a man's towlinen suit?" "thirteen cents." "we pay 6. what do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the laborer or the mechanic?" "we pay 8.4.0." "well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four mills, we pay only four cents." i prepared now to sock it to him. l said: "look here, dear friend, what's become of your high wages you were bragging so about a few minutes ago?" -and i looked around on the company with placid satisfaction, for i had slipped up on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his ever noticing that he was being tied at all. "what's become of those noble high wages of yours? -i seem to have knocked the stuffing all out of them, it appears to me." but if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that is all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he had walked into a trap, didn't discover that he was in a trap. i could have shot him, from sheer vexation. with cloudy eye and a struggling intellect he fetched this out: "marry, i seem not to understand. it is proved that our wages be double thine; how then may it be that thou'st knocked therefrom the stuffing? -an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the first time under grace and providence of god it hath been granted me to hear it." well, i was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with him and were of his mind -if you might call it mind. my position was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified more? however, i must try: "why, look here, brother dowley, don't you see? your wages are merely higher than ours in name, not in fact." "hear him! they are the double -ye have confessed it yourself." "yes-yes, i don't deny that at all. but that's got nothing to do with it; the amount of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do with it. the thing is, how much can you buy with your wages? -that's the idea. while it is true that with you a good mechanic is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only about a dollar and seventy-five --" "there -ye're confessing it again, ye're confessing it again!" "confound it, i've never denied it, i tell you! what i say is this. with us half a dollar buys more than a dollar buys with you -and therefore it stands to reason and the commonest kind of common-sense, that our wages are higher than yours." he looked dazed, and said, despairingly: "verily, i cannot make it out. ye've just said ours are the higher, and with the same breath ye take it back." "oh, great scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thing through your head? now look here -let me illustrate. we pay four cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is four mills more than double. what do you allow a laboring woman who works on a farm?" "two mills a day." "very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth of a cent a day; and --" "again ye're conf --" "wait! now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'll understand it. for instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earn her gown, at 2 mills a day -7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers in forty days -two days short of 7 weeks. your woman has a gown, and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, and two days' wages left, to buy something else with. there -now you understand it!" he looked -well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most i can say; so did the others. i waited -to let the thing work. dowley spoke at last -and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten away from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. he said, with a trifle of hesitancy: "but -but -ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better than one." shucks! well, of course, i hated to give it up. so i chanced another flyer: "let us suppose a case. suppose one of your journeymen goes out and buys the following articles: "1 pound of salt; 1 dozen eggs; 1 dozen pints of beer; 1 bushel of wheat; 1 tow-linen suit; 5 pounds of beef; 5 pounds of mutton. "the lot will cost him 32 cents. it takes him 32 working days to earn the money -5 weeks and 2 days. let him come to us and work 32 days at half the wages; he can buy all those things for a shade under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29 days' work, and he will have about half a week's wages over. carry it through the year; he would save nearly a week's wages every two months, your man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks' wages in a year, your man not a cent. now i reckon you understand that 'high wages' and 'low wages' are phrases that don't mean anything in the world until you find out which of them will buy the most!" it was a crusher. but, alas! it didn't crush. no, i had to give it up. what those people valued was high wages; it didn't seem to be a matter of any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not. they stood for "protection," and swore by it, which was reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them into the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages. i proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages had advanced but 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced 40 per cent. while the cost of living had gone steadily down. but it didn't do any good. nothing could unseat their strange beliefs. well, i was smarting under a sense of defeat. undeserved defeat, but what of that? that didn't soften the smart any. and to think of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant country blacksmith! and i could see that those others were sorry for me -which made me blush till i could smell my whiskers scorching. put yourself in my place; feel as mean as i did, as ashamed as i felt -wouldn't you have struck below the belt to get even? yes, you would; it is simply human nature. well, that is what i did. i am not trying to justify it; i'm only saying that i was mad, and anybody would have done it. well, when i make up my mind to hit a man, i don't plan out a love-tap; no, that isn't my way; as long as i'm going to hit him at all, i'm going to hit him a lifter. and i don't jump at him all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way business of it; no, i get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him gradually, so that he never suspects that i'm going to hit him at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he's flat on his back, and he can't tell for the life of him how it all happened. that is the way i went for brother dowley. i started to talking lazy and comfortable, as if i was just talking to pass the time; and the oldest man in the world couldn't have taken the bearings of my starting place and guessed where i was going to fetch up: "boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it; yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement, too. there are written laws -they perish; but there are also unwritten laws -they are eternal. take the unwritten law of wages: it says they've got to advance, little by little, straight through the centuries. and notice how it works. we know what wages are now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that's the wages of to-day. we know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that's as far back as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. good, so far. do we stop there? no. we stop looking backward; we face around and apply the law to the future. my friends, i can tell you what people's wages are going to be at any date in the future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years." "what, goodman, what!" "yes. in seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be allowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6." "i would't i might die now and live then!" interrupted smug, the wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye. "and that isn't all; they'll get their board besides -such as it is: it won't bloat them. two hundred and fifty years later -pay attention now -a mechanic's wages will be - mind you, this is law, not guesswork; a mechanic's wages will then be twenty cents a day!" there was a general gasp of awed astonishment, dickon the mason murmured, with raised eyes and hands: "more than three weeks' pay for one day's work!" "riches! -of a truth, yes, riches!" muttered marco, his breath coming quick and short, with excitement. "wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and forty years more there'll be at least one country where the mechanic's average wage will be two hundred cents a day!" it knocked them absolutely dumb! not a man of them could get his breath for upwards of two minutes. then the coal-burner said prayerfully: "might i but live to see it!" "it is the income of an earl!" said smug. "an earl, say ye?" said dowley; "ye could say more than that and speak no lie; there's no earl in the realm of bagdemagus that hath an income like to that. income of an earl -mf! it's the income of an angel!" "now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages. in that remote day, that man will earn, with one week's work, that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of fifty weeks to earn now. some other pretty surprising things are going to happen, too. brother dowley, who is it that determines, every spring, what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, and servant shall be for that year?" "sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all, the magistrate. ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistrate that fixes the wages." "doesn't ask any of those poor devils to help him fix their wages for them, does he?" "hm! that were an idea! the master that's to pay him the money is the one that's rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice " "yes -but i thought the other man might have some little trifle at stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures. the masters are these: nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally. these few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shall have who do work. you see? they're a 'combine' -a trade union, to coin a new phrase -who band themselves together to force their lowly brother to take what they choose to give. thirteen hundred years hence -so says the unwritten law -the 'combine' will be the other way, and then how these fine people's posterity will fume and fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of trade unions! yes, indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the wages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century; and then all of a sudden the wage-earner will consider that a couple of thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing; and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself. ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliation to settle." "do ye believe -" "that he actually will help to fix his own wages? yes, indeed. and he will be strong and able, then." "brave times, brave times, of a truth!" sneered the prosperous smith. "oh, -and there's another detail. in that day, a master may hire a man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time, if he wants to." "what?" "it's true. moreover, a magistrate won't be able to force a man to work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the man wants to or not." "will there be no law or sense in that day?" "both of them, dowley. in that day a man will be his own property, not the property of magistrate and master. and he can leave town whenever he wants to, if the wages don't suit him! -and they can't put him in the pillory for it." "perdition catch such an age!" shouted dowley, in strong indignation. "an age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors and respect for authority! the pillory --" "oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution. i think the pillory ought to be abolished." "a most strange idea. why?" "well, i'll tell you why. is a man ever put in the pillory for a capital crime?" "no." "is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a small offense and then kill him?" there was no answer. i had scored my first point! for the first time, the smith wasn't up and ready. the company noticed it. good effect. "you don't answer, brother. you were about to glorify the pillory a while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn't going to use it. i think the pillory ought to be abolished. what usually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some little offense that didn't amount to anything in the world? the mob try to have some fun with him, don't they?" "yes." "they begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to pieces to see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?" "yes." "then they throw dead cats at him, don't they?" "yes." "well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that mob and here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge against him -and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community, for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another -stones and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't they?" "there is no doubt of it." "as a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he? -jaws broken, teeth smashed out? -or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off? -or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?" "it is true, god knoweth it." "and if he is unpopular he can depend on dying, right there in the stocks, can't he?" "he surely can! one may not deny it." "i take it none of you are unpopular -by reason of pride or insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things that excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? you wouldn't think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?" dowley winced, visibly. i judged he was hit. but he didn't betray it by any spoken word. as for the others, they spoke out plainly, and with strong feeling. they said they had seen enough of the stocks to know what a man's chance in them was, and they would never consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quick death by hanging. "well, to change the subject -for i think i've established my point that the stocks ought to be abolished. i think some of our laws are pretty unfair. for instance, if i do a thing which ought to deliver me to the stocks, and you know i did it and yet keep still and don't report me, you will get the stocks if anybody informs on you." "ah, but that would serve you but right," said dowley, "for you must inform. so saith the law." the others coincided. "well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. but there's one thing which certainly isn't fair. the magistrate fixes a mechanic's wage at 1 cent a day, for instance. the law says that if any master shall venture, even under utmost press of business, to pay anything over that cent a day, even for a single day, he shall be both fined and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he did it and doesn't inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried. now it seems to me unfair, dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil --" oh, i tell you it was a smasher! you ought to have seen them to go to pieces, the whole gang. i had just slipped up on poor smiling and complacent dowley so nice and easy and softly, that he never suspected anything was going to happen till the blow came crashing down and knocked him all to rags. a fine effect. in fact, as fine as any i ever produced, with so little time to work it up in. but i saw in a moment that i had overdone the thing a little. i was expecting to scare them, but i wasn't expecting to scare them to death. they were mighty near it, though. you see they had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if i chose to go and report -well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover from the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together. pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? why, they weren't any better than so many dead men. it was very uncomfortable. of course, i thought they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands, and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end. but no; you see i was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed and suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantage taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates. appeal to me to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? of course, they wanted to, but they couldn't dare. chapter xxxiv. the yankee and the king sold as slaves well, what had i better do? nothing in a hurry, sure. i must get up a diversion; anything to employ me while i could think, and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life again. there sat marco, petrified in the act of trying to get the hang of his miller-gun -turned to stone, just in the attitude he was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in his unconscious fingers. so i took it from him and proposed to explain its mystery. mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet it was mysterious enough, for that race and that age. i never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, they were totally unused to it. the miller-gun was a little double-barreled tube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a spring to it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. but the shot wouldn't hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand. in the gun were two sizes -wee mustardseed shot, and another sort that were several times larger. they were money. the mustard-seed shot represented milrays, the larger ones mills. so the gun was a purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the dark with it, with accuracy; and you could carry it in your mouth; or in your vest pocket, if you had one. i made them of several sizes -one size so large that it would carry the equivalent of a dollar. using shot for money was a good thing for the government; the metal cost nothing, and the money couldn't be counterfeited, for i was the only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot tower. "paying the shot" soon came to be a common phrase. yes, and i knew it would still be passing men's lips, away down in the nineteenth century, yet none would suspect how and when it originated. the king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap, and feeling good. anything could make me nervous now, i was so uneasy -for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me to detect a complacent something in the king's eye which seemed to indicate that he had been loading himself up for a performance of some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choose such a time as this? i was right. he began, straight off, in the most innocently artful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up to the subject of agriculture. the cold sweat broke out all over me. i wanted to whisper in his ear, "man, we are in awful danger! every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men's confidence; don't waste any of this golden time." but of course i couldn't do it. whisper to him? it would look as if we were conspiring. so i had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while the king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about his damned onions and things. at first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion and fifing and drumming that i couldn't take in a word; but presently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallize and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and quiet ensued and i caught the boom of the king's batteries, as if out of remote distance: "-were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be denied that authorities differ as concerning this point, some contending that the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken early from the tree --" the audience showed signs of life, and sought each other's eyes in a surprised and troubled way. "-whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, that this is not of necessity the case, instancing that plums and other like cereals do be always dug in the unripe state --" the audience exhibited distinct distress; yes, and also fear. "-yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when one doth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of the tranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage --" the wild light of terror began to glow in these men's eyes, and one of them muttered, "these be errors, every one -god hath surely smitten the mind of this farmer." i was in miserable apprehension; i sat upon thorns. "-and further instancing the known truth that in the case of animals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of the creature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe, his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which defect, taken in connection with his several rancid habits, and fulsome appetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious quality of morals --" they rose and went for him! with a fierce shout, "the one would betray us, the other is mad! kill them! kill them!" they flung themselves upon us. what joy flamed up in the king's eye! he might be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just in his line. he had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight. he hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clear off his feet and stretched him flat on his back. "st. george for britain!" and he downed the wheelwright. the mason was big, but i laid him out like nothing. the three gathered themselves up and came again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeating this, with native british pluck, until they were battered to jelly, reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they couldn't tell us from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away with what might was left in them. hammering each other -for we stepped aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to business of so many bulldogs. we looked on without apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safe from intrusion. well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what had become of marco. i looked around; he was nowhere to be seen. oh, but this was ominous! i pulled the king's sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut. no marco there, no phyllis there! they had gone to the road for help, sure. i told the king to give his heels wings, and i would explain later. we made good time across the open ground, and as we darted into the shelter of the wood i glanced back and saw a mob of excited peasants swarm into view, with marco and his wife at their head. they were making a world of noise, but that couldn't hurt anybody; the wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depths we would take to a tree and let them whistle. ah, but then came another sound -dogs! yes, that was quite another matter. it magnified our contract -we must find running water. we tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behind and modified to a murmur. we struck a stream and darted into it. we waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as much as three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a great bough sticking out over the water. we climbed up on this bough, and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree; now we began to hear those sounds more plainly; so the mob had struck our trail. for a while the sounds approached pretty fast. and then for another while they didn't. no doubt the dogs had found the place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzing up and down the shores trying to pick up the trail again. when we were snugly lodged in the tree and curtained with foliage, the king was satisfied, but i was doubtful. i believed we could crawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and i judged it worth while to try. we tried it, and made a success of it, though the king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to connect. we got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment among the foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt. presently we heard it coming -and coming on the jump, too; yes, and down both sides of the stream. louder -louder -next minute it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, and swept by like a cyclone. "i was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something to them," said i, "but i don't mind the disappointment. come, my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time. we've flanked them. dark is coming on, presently. if we can cross the stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from somebody's pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough." we started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed to hear the hunt returning. we stopped to listen. "yes," said i, "they're baffled, they've given it up, they're on their way home. we will climb back to our roost again, and let them go by." so we climbed back. the king listened a moment and said: "they still search -i wit the sign. we did best to abide." he was right. he knew more about hunting than i did. the noise approached steadily, but not with a rush. the king said: "they reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them, and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we took the water." "yes, sire, that is about it, i am afraid, though i was hoping better things." the noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting under us, on both sides of the water. a voice called a halt from the other bank, and said: "an they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branch that overhangs, and yet not touch ground. ye will do well to send a man up it." "marry, that we will do!" i was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing and swapping trees to beat it. but, don't you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? awkwardness and stupidity can. the best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot. well, how could i, with all my gifts, make any valuable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right one? and that is what he did. he went for the wrong tree, which was, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started. matters were serious now. we remained still, and awaited developments. the peasant toiled his difficult way up. the king raised himself up and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer's head arrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the man floundering to the ground. there was a wild outbreak of anger below, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we were treed, and prisoners. another man started up; the bridging bough was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnished the bridge. the king ordered me to play horatius and keep the bridge. for a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no matter, the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodged him as soon as he came in reach. the king's spirits rose, his joy was limitless. he said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospect we should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics we could hold the tree against the whole country-side. however, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; wherefore they called off the assault and began to debate other plans. they had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stones might answer. we had no objections. a stone might possibly penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't very likely; we were well protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible from any good aiming point. if they would but waste half an hour in stonethrowing, the dark would come to our help. we were feeling very well satisfied. we could smile; almost laugh. but we didn't; which was just as well, for we should have been interrupted. before the stones had been raging through the leaves and bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to notice a smell. a couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation -it was smoke! our game was up at last. we recognized that. when smoke invites you, you have to come. they raised their pile of dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke out in a storm of joy-clamors. i got enough breath to say: "proceed, my liege; after you is manners." the king gasped: "follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of the trunk, and leave me the other. then will we fight. let each pile his dead according to his own fashion and taste." then he descended, barking and coughing, and i followed. i struck the ground an instant after him; we sprang to our appointed places, and began to give and take with all our might. the powwow and racket were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and confusion and thick-falling blows. suddenly some horsemen tore into the midst of the crowd, and a voice shouted: "hold -or ye are dead men!" how good it sounded! the owner of the voice bore all the marks of a gentleman: picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command, a hard countenance, with complexion and features marred by dissipation. the mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels. the gentleman inspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants: "what are ye doing to these people?" "they be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we know not whence, and --" "ye know not whence? do ye pretend ye know them not?" "most honored sir, we speak but the truth. they are strangers and unknown to any in this region; and they be the most violent and bloodthirsty madmen that ever --" "peace! ye know not what ye say. they are not mad. who are ye? and whence are ye? explain." "we are but peaceful strangers, sir," i said, "and traveling upon our own concerns. we are from a far country, and unacquainted here. we have purposed no harm; and yet but for your brave interference and protection these people would have killed us. as you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violent or bloodthirsty." the gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly: "lash me these animals to their kennels!" the mob vanished in an instant; and after them plunged the horsemen, laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down such as were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to the bush. the shrieks and supplications presently died away in the distance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back. meantime the gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dug no particulars out of us. we were lavish of recognition of the service he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that we were friendless strangers from a far country. when the escort were all returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants: "bring the led-horses and mount these people." "yes, my lord." we were placed toward the rear, among the servants. we traveled pretty fast, and finally drew rein some time after dark at a roadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our troubles. my lord went immediately to his room, after ordering his supper, and we saw no more of him. at dawn in the morning we breakfasted and made ready to start. my lord's chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment with indolent grace, and said: "ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is our direction likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl grip, hath given commandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certain of us ride with ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight cambenet, whenso ye shall be out of peril." we could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the offer. we jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate and comfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord grip was a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day's journey beyond cambenet. we loitered to such a degree that it was near the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square of the town. we dismounted, and left our thanks once more for my lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center of the square, to see what might be the object of interest. it was the remnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves! so they had been dragging their chains about, all this weary time. that poor husband was gone, and also many others; and some few purchases had been added to the gang. the king was not interested, and wanted to move along, but i was absorbed, and full of pity. i could not take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity. there they sat, grounded upon the ground, silent, uncomplaining, with bowed heads, a pathetic sight. and by hideous contrast, a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious british liberties!" i was boiling. i had forgotten i was a plebeian, i was remembering i was a man. cost what it might, i would mount that rostrum and -click! the king and i were handcuffed together! our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord grip stood looking on. the king burst out in a fury, and said: "what meaneth this ill-mannered jest?" my lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly: "put up the slaves and sell them!" slaves! the word had a new sound -and how unspeakably awful! the king lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force; but my lord was out of the way when they arrived. a dozen of the rascal's servants sprang forward, and in a moment we were helpless, with our hands bound behind us. we so loudly and so earnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interested attention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude. the orator said: "if, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear -the god-given liberties of britain are about ye for your shield and shelter! (applause.) ye shall soon see. bring forth your proofs." "what proofs?" "proof that ye are freemen." ah -i remembered! i came to myself; i said nothing. but the king stormed out: "thou'rt insane, man. it were better, and more in reason, that this thief and scoundrel here prove that we are not freemen." you see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know the laws; by words, not by effects. they take a meaning, and get to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself. all hands shook their heads and looked disappointed; some turned away, no longer interested. the orator said -and this time in the tones of business, not of sentiment: "an ye do not know your country's laws, it were time ye learned them. ye are strangers to us; ye will not deny that. ye may be freemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves. the law is clear: it doth not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves, it requireth you to prove ye are not." i said: "dear sir, give us only time to send to astolat; or give us only time to send to the valley of holiness --" "peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you may not hope to have them granted. it would cost much time, and would unwarrantably inconvenience your master --" "master, idiot!" stormed the king. "i have no master, i myself am the m--" "silence, for god's sake!" i got the words out in time to stop the king. we were in trouble enough already; it could not help us any to give these people the notion that we were lunatics. there is no use in stringing out the details. the earl put us up and sold us at auction. this same infernal law had existed in our own south in my own time, more than thirteen hundred years later, and under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove that they were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery without the circumstance making any particular impression upon me; but the minute law and the auction block came into my personal experience, a thing which had been merely improper before became suddenly hellish. well, that's the way we are made. yes, we were sold at auction, like swine. in a big town and an active market we should have brought a good price; but this place was utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes me ashamed, every time i think of it. the king of england brought seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was easily worth twelve dollars and i as easily worth fifteen. but that is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dull market, i don't care what the property is, you are going to make a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it. if the earl had had wit enough to -however, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies up on his account. let him go, for the present; i took his number, so to speak. the slave-dealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that long chain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession. we took up our line of march and passed out of cambenet at noon; and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the king of england and his chief minister, marching manacled and fettered and yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle men and women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely, and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark. dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a king than there is about a tramp, after all. he is just a cheap and hollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king. but reveal his quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to look at him. i reckon we are all fools. born so, no doubt. chapter xxxv. a pitiful incident it's a world of surprises. the king brooded; this was natural. what would he brood about, should you say? why, about the prodigious nature of his fall, of course -from the loftiest place in the world to the lowest; from the most illustrious station in the world to the obscurest; from the grandest vocation among men to the basest. no, i take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to start with, was not this, but the price he had fetched! he couldn't seem to get over that seven dollars. well, it stunned me so, when i first found it out, that i couldn't believe it; it didn't seem natural. but as soon as my mental sight cleared and i got a right focus on it, i saw i was mistaken; it was natural. for this reason: a king is a mere artificiality, and so a king's feelings, like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities; but as a man, he is a reality, and his feelings, as a man, are real, not phantoms. it shames the average man to be valued below his own estimate of his worth, and the king certainly wasn't anything more than an average man, if he was up that high. confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anything like a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, sure -a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldest conceit; i wasn't worth it myself. but it was tender ground for me to argue on. in fact, i had to simply shirk argument and do the diplomatic instead. i had to throw conscience aside, and brazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars; whereas i was quite well aware that in all the ages, the world had never seen a king that was worth half the money, and during the next thirteen centuries wouldn't see one that was worth the fourth of it. yes, he tired me. if he began to talk about the crops; or about the recent weather; or about the condition of politics; or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology -no matter what -i sighed, for i knew what was coming; he was going to get out of it a palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale. wherever we halted where there was a crowd, he would give me a look which said plainly: "if that thing could be tried over again now, with this kind of folk, you would see a different result." well, when he was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go for seven dollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worrying i wished he had fetched a hundred. the thing never got a chance to die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchasers looked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on the king was something like this: "here's a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirtydollar style. pity but style was marketable." at last this sort of remark produced an evil result. our owner was a practical person and he perceived that this defect must be mended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king. so he went to work to take the style out of his sacred majesty. i could have given the man some valuable advice, but i didn't; you mustn't volunteer advice to a slave-driver unless you want to damage the cause you are arguing for. i had found it a sufficiently difficult job to reduce the king's style to a peasant's style, even when he was a willing and anxious pupil; now then, to undertake to reduce the king's style to a slave's style -and by force -go to! it was a stately contract. never mind the details -it will save me trouble to let you imagine them. i will only remark that at the end of a week there was plenty of evidence that lash and club and fist had done their work well; the king's body was a sight to see -and to weep over; but his spirit? -why, it wasn't even phased. even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able to see that there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a man till he dies; whose bones you can break, but whose manhood you can't. this man found that from his first effort down to his latest, he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but the king was ready to plunge for him, and did it. so he gave up at last, and left the king in possession of his style unimpaired. the fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was a man; and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him. we had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth, and suffering. and what englishman was the most interested in the slavery question by that time? his grace the king! yes; from being the most indifferent, he was become the most interested. he was become the bitterest hater of the institution i had ever heard talk. and so i ventured to ask once more a question which i had asked years before and had gotten such a sharp answer that i had not thought it prudent to meddle in the matter further. would he abolish slavery? his answer was as sharp as before, but it was music this time; i shouldn't ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanity was not good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crash-word almost in the middle instead of at the end, where, of course, it ought to have been. i was ready and willing to get free now; i hadn't wanted to get free any sooner. no, i cannot quite say that. i had wanted to, but i had not been willing to take desperate chances, and had always dissuaded the king from them. but now -ah, it was a new atmosphere! liberty would be worth any cost that might be put upon it now. i set about a plan, and was straightway charmed with it. it would require time, yes, and patience, too, a great deal of both. one could invent quicker ways, and fully as sure ones; but none that would be as picturesque as this; none that could be made so dramatic. and so i was not going to give this one up. it might delay us months, but no matter, i would carry it out or break something. now and then we had an adventure. one night we were overtaken by a snow-storm while still a mile from the village we were making for. almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving snow was so thick. you couldn't see a thing, and we were soon lost. the slave-driver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin before him, but his lashings only made matters worse, for they drove us further from the road and from likelihood of succor. so we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where we were. the storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased. by this time two of our feebler men and three of our women were dead, and others past moving and threatened with death. our master was nearly beside himself. he stirred up the living, and made us stand, jump, slap ourselves, to restore our circulation, and he helped as well as he could with his whip. now came a diversion. we heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flung herself into our midst and begged for protection. a mob of people came tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was a witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a black cat. this poor woman had been stoned until she hardly looked human, she was so battered and bloody. the mob wanted to burn her. well, now, what do you suppose our master did? when we closed around this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. he said, burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. imagine that! they were willing. they fastened her to a post; they brought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch while she shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters to her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life and commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocent life of that poor harmless mother. that was the sort of master we had. i took his number. that snow-storm cost him nine of his flock; and he was more brutal to us than ever, after that, for many days together, he was so enraged over his loss. we had adventures all along. one day we ran into a procession. and such a procession! all the riffraff of the kingdom seemed to be comprehended in it; and all drunk at that. in the van was a cart with a coffin in it, and on the coffin sat a comely young girl of about eighteen suckling a baby, which she squeezed to her breast in a passion of love every little while, and every little while wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained down upon it; and always the foolish little thing smiled up at her, happy and content, kneading her breast with its dimpled fat hand, which she patted and fondled right over her breaking heart. men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or after the cart, hooting, shouting profane and ribald remarks, singing snatches of foul song, skipping, dancing -a very holiday of hellions, a sickening sight. we had struck a suburb of london, outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of london society. our master secured a good place for us near the gallows. a priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb up, and said comforting words to her, and made the under-sheriff provide a stool for her. then he stood there by her on the gallows, and for a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at his feet, then out over the solid pavement of heads that stretched away on every side occupying the vacancies far and near, and then began to tell the story of the case. and there was pity in his voice -how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant and savage land! i remember every detail of what he said, except the words he said it in; and so i change it into my own words: "law is intended to mete out justice. sometimes it fails. this cannot be helped. we can only grieve, and be resigned, and pray for the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and that his fellows may be few. a law sends this poor young thing to death -and it is right. but another law had placed her where she must commit her crime or starve with her child -and before god that law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death! "a little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years, was as happy a wife and mother as any in england; and her lips were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and innocent hearts. her young husband was as happy as she; for he was doing his whole duty, he worked early and late at his handicraft, his bread was honest bread well and fairly earned, he was prospering, he was furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family, he was adding his mite to the wealth of the nation. by consent of a treacherous law, instant destruction fell upon this holy home and swept it away! that young husband was waylaid and impressed, and sent to sea. the wife knew nothing of it. she sought him everywhere, she moved the hardest hearts with the supplications of her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair. weeks dragged by, she watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreck under the burden of her misery. little by little all her small possessions went for food. when she could no longer pay her rent, they turned her out of doors. she begged, while she had strength; when she was starving at last, and her milk failing, she stole a piece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth part of a cent, thinking to sell it and save her child. but she was seen by the owner of the cloth. she was put in jail and brought to trial. the man testified to the facts. a plea was made for her, and her sorrowful story was told in her behalf. she spoke, too, by permission, and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mind was so disordered of late by trouble that when she was overborne with hunger all acts, criminal or other, swam meaningless through her brain and she knew nothing rightly, except that she was so hungry! for a moment all were touched, and there was disposition to deal mercifully with her, seeing that she was so young and friendless, and her case so piteous, and the law that robbed her of her support to blame as being the first and only cause of her transgression; but the prosecuting officer replied that whereas these things were all true, and most pitiful as well, still there was much small theft in these days, and mistimed mercy here would be a danger to property -oh, my god, is there no property in ruined homes, and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that british law holds precious! -and so he must require sentence. "when the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolen linen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his face as gray as ashes; and when the awful words came, he cried out, 'oh, poor child, poor child, i did not know it was death!' and fell as a tree falls. when they lifted him up his reason was gone; before the sun was set, he had taken his own life. a kindly man; a man whose heart was right, at bottom; add his murder to this that is to be now done here; and charge them both where they belong -to the rulers and the bitter laws of britain. the time is come, my child; let me pray over thee -not for thee, dear abused poor heart and innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death, who need it more." after his prayer they put the noose around the young girl's neck, and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it, and snatching it to her face and her breast, and drenching it with tears, and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the baby crowing, and laughing, and kicking its feet with delight over what it took for romp and play. even the hangman couldn't stand it, but turned away. when all was ready the priest gently pulled and tugged and forced the child out of the mother's arms, and stepped quickly out of her reach; but she clasped her hands, and made a wild spring toward him, with a shriek; but the rope -and the under-sheriff -held her short. then she went on her knees and stretched out her hands and cried: "one more kiss -oh, my god, one more, one more, -it is the dying that begs it!" she got it; she almost smothered the little thing. and when they got it away again, she cried out: "oh, my child, my darling, it will die! it has no home, it has no father, no friend, no mother --" "it has them all!" said that good priest. "all these will i be to it till i die." you should have seen her face then! gratitude? lord, what do you want with words to express that? words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself. she gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong. chapter xxxvi. an encounter in the dark london -to a slave -was a sufficiently interesting place. it was merely a great big village; and mainly mud and thatch. the streets were muddy, crooked, unpaved. the populace was an ever flocking and drifting swarm of rags, and splendors, of nodding plumes and shining armor. the king had a palace there; he saw the outside of it. it made him sigh; yes, and swear a little, in a poor juvenile sixth century way. we saw knights and grandees whom we knew, but they didn't know us in our rags and dirt and raw welts and bruises, and wouldn't have recognized us if we had hailed them, nor stopped to answer, either, it being unlawful to speak with slaves on a chain. sandy passed within ten yards of me on a mule -hunting for me, i imagined. but the thing which clean broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old barrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man being boiled to death in oil for counterfeiting pennies. it was the sight of a newsboy -and i couldn't get at him! still, i had one comfort -here was proof that clarence was still alive and banging away. i meant to be with him before long; the thought was full of cheer. i had one little glimpse of another thing, one day, which gave me a great uplift. it was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop. telegraph or telephone, sure. i did very much wish i had a little piece of it. it was just what i needed, in order to carry out my project of escape. my idea was to get loose some night, along with the king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him, batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave-chain, assume possession of the property, march to camelot, and -but you get my idea; you see what a stunning dramatic surprise i would wind up with at the palace. it was all feasible, if i could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which i could shape into a lock-pick. i could then undo the lumbering padlocks with which our chains were fastened, whenever i might choose. but i never had any luck; no such thing ever happened to fall in my way. however, my chance came at last. a gentleman who had come twice before to dicker for me, without result, or indeed any approach to a result, came again. i was far from expecting ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time i was first enslaved was exorbitant, and always provoked either anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it -twenty-two dollars. he wouldn't bate a cent. the king was greatly admired, because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against him, and he wasn't salable; nobody wanted that kind of a slave. i considered myself safe from parting from him because of my extravagant price. no, i was not expecting to ever belong to this gentleman whom i have spoken of, but he had something which i expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visit us often enough. it was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with which his long cloth outside garment was fastened together in front. there were three of them. he had disappointed me twice, because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project entirely safe; but this time i succeeded; i captured the lower clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost it on the way. i had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straightway a chance to be sad again. for when the purchase was about to fail, as usual, the master suddenly spoke up and said what would be worded thus -in modern english: "i'll tell you what i'll do. i'm tired supporting these two for no good. give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and i'll throw the other one in." the king couldn't get his breath, he was in such a fury. he began to choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman moved away discussing. "an ye will keep the offer open --" "'tis open till the morrow at this hour." "then i will answer you at that time," said the gentleman, and disappeared, the master following him. i had a time of it to cool the king down, but i managed it. i whispered in his ear, to this effect: "your grace will go for nothing, but after another fashion. and so shall i. to-night we shall both be free." "ah! how is that?" "with this thing which i have stolen, i will unlock these locks and cast off these chains to-night. when he comes about nine-thirty to inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batter him, and early in the morning we will march out of this town, proprietors of this caravan of slaves." that was as far as i went, but the king was charmed and satisfied. that evening we waited patiently for our fellow-slaves to get to sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take many chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it. it is best to keep your own secrets. no doubt they fidgeted only about as usual, but it didn't seem so to me. it seemed to me that they were going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring. as the time dragged on i got nervously afraid we shouldn't have enough of it left for our needs; so i made several premature attempts, and merely delayed things by it; for i couldn't seem to touch a padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattle out of it which interrupted somebody's sleep and made him turn over and wake some more of the gang. but finally i did get my last iron off, and was a free man once more. i took a good breath of relief, and reached for the king's irons. too late! in comes the master, with a light in one hand and his heavy walkingstaff in the other. i snuggled close among the wallow of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that i was naked of irons; and i kept a sharp lookout and prepared to spring for my man the moment he should bend over me. but he didn't approach. he stopped, gazed absently toward our dusky mass a minute, evidently thinking about something else; then set down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before a body could imagine what he was going to do, he was out of the door and had closed it behind him. "quick!" said the king. "fetch him back!" of course, it was the thing to do, and i was up and out in a moment. but, dear me, there were no lamps in those days, and it was a dark night. but i glimpsed a dim figure a few steps away. i darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there was a state of things and lively! we fought and scuffled and struggled, and drew a crowd in no time. they took an immense interest in the fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact, couldn't have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own fight. then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as much as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some sympathy in that. lanterns began to swing in all directions; it was the watch gathering from far and near. presently a halberd fell across my back, as a reminder, and i knew what it meant. i was in custody. so was my adversary. we were marched off toward prison, one on each side of the watchman. here was disaster, here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction! i tried to imagine what would happen when the master should discover that it was i who had been fighting him; and what would happen if they jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty law-breakers, as was the custom; and what might -just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction, the freckled light from the watchman's tin lantern fell on it, and, by george, he was the wrong man! chapter xxxvii. an awful predicament sleep? it was impossible. it would naturally have been impossible in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. but the thing that made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole size of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quarters in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine. it was a long night, but the morning got around at last. i made a full and frank explanation to the court. i said i was a slave, the property of the great earl grip, who had arrived just after dark at the tabard inn in the village on the other side of the water, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. i had been ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best physician; i was doing my best; naturally i was running with all my might; the night was dark, i ran against this common person here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, although i told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake of the great earl my master's mortal peril -the common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was going to explain how i rushed upon him and attacked him without a word -"silence, sirrah!" from the court. "take him hence and give him a few stripes whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of a nobleman after a different fashion another time. go!" then the court begged my pardon, and hoped i would not fail to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court's fault that this high-handed thing had happened. i said i would make it all right, and so took my leave. took it just in time, too; he was starting to ask me why i didn't fetch out these facts the moment i was arrested. i said i would if i had thought of it -which was true -but that i was so battered by that man that all my wit was knocked out of me -and so forth and so on, and got myself away, still mumbling. i didn't wait for breakfast. no grass grew under my feet. i was soon at the slave quarters. empty -everybody gone! that is, everybody except one body -the slave-master's. it lay there all battered to pulp; and all about were the evidences of a terrific fight. there was a rude board coffin on a cart at the door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a road through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in. i picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talk with one so shabby as i, and got his account of the matter. "there were sixteen slaves here. they rose against their master in the night, and thou seest how it ended." "yes. how did it begin?" "there was no witness but the slaves. they said the slave that was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange way -by magic arts 'twas thought, by reason that he had no key, and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured. when the master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair, and threw himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and brake his back and in other and divers ways did give him hurts that brought him swiftly to his end." "this is dreadful. it will go hard with the slaves, no doubt, upon the trial." "marry, the trial is over." "over!" "would they be a week, think you -and the matter so simple? they were not the half of a quarter of an hour at it." "why, i don't see how they could determine which were the guilty ones in so short a time." "which ones? indeed, they considered not particulars like to that. they condemned them in a body. wit ye not the law? -which men say the romans left behind them here when they went -that if one slave killeth his master all the slaves of that man must die for it." "true. i had forgotten. and when will these die?" "belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some say they will wait a pair of days more, if peradventure they may find the missing one meantime." the missing one! it made me feel uncomfortable. "is it likely they will find him?" "before the day is spent -yes. they seek him everywhere. they stand at the gates of the town, with certain of the slaves who will discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass out but he will be first examined." "might one see the place where the rest are confined?" "the outside of it -yes. the inside of it -but ye will not want to see that." i took the address of that prison for future reference and then sauntered off. at the first second-hand clothing shop i came to, up a back street, i got a rough rig suitable for a common seaman who might be going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face with a liberal bandage, saying i had a toothache. this concealed my worst bruises. it was a transformation. i no longer resembled my former self. then i struck out for that wire, found it and followed it to its den. it was a little room over a butcher's shop -which meant that business wasn't very brisk in the telegraphic line. the young chap in charge was drowsing at his table. i locked the door and put the vast key in my bosom. this alarmed the young fellow, and he was going to make a noise; but i said: "save your wind; if you open your mouth you are dead, sure. tackle your instrument. lively, now! call camelot." "this doth amaze me! how should such as you know aught of such matters as --" "call camelot! i am a desperate man. call camelot, or get away from the instrument and i will do it myself." "what -you?" "yes -certainly. stop gabbling. call the palace." he made the call. "now, then, call clarence." "clarence who?" "never mind clarence who. say you want clarence; you'll get an answer." he did so. we waited five nerve-straining minutes -ten minutes -how long it did seem! -and then came a click that was as familiar to me as a human voice; for clarence had been my own pupil. "now, my lad, vacate! they would have known my touch, maybe, and so your call was surest; but i'm all right now." he vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen -but it didn't win. i used a cipher. i didn't waste any time in sociabilities with clarence, but squared away for business, straight-off -thus: "the king is here and in danger. we were captured and brought here as slaves. we should not be able to prove our identity -and the fact is, i am not in a position to try. send a telegram for the palace here which will carry conviction with it." his answer came straight back: "they don't know anything about the telegraph; they haven't had any experience yet, the line to london is so new. better not venture that. they might hang you. think up something else." might hang us! little he knew how closely he was crowding the facts. i couldn't think up anything for the moment. then an idea struck me, and i started it along: "send five hundred picked knights with launcelot in the lead; and send them on the jump. let them enter by the southwest gate, and look out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm." the answer was prompt: "they shall start in half an hour." "all right, clarence; now tell this lad here that i'm a friend of yours and a dead-head; and that he must be discreet and say nothing about this visit of mine." the instrument began to talk to the youth and i hurried away. i fell to ciphering. in half an hour it would be nine o'clock. knights and horses in heavy armor couldn't travel very fast. these would make the best time they could, and now that the ground was in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would probably make a seven-mile gait; they would have to change horses a couple of times; they would arrive about six, or a little after; it would still be plenty light enough; they would see the white cloth which i should tie around my right arm, and i would take command. we would surround that prison and have the king out in no time. it would be showy and picturesque enough, all things considered, though i would have preferred noonday, on account of the more theatrical aspect the thing would have. now, then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, i thought i would look up some of those people whom i had formerly recognized, and make myself known. that would help us out of our scrape, without the knights. but i must proceed cautiously, for it was a risky business. i must get into sumptuous raiment, and it wouldn't do to run and jump into it. no, i must work up to it by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes, in shops wide apart, and getting a little finer article with each change, until i should finally reach silk and velvet, and be ready for my project. so i started. but the scheme fell through like scat! the first corner i turned, i came plump upon one of our slaves, snooping around with a watchman. i coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right into my marrow. i judge he thought he had heard that cough before. i turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter, pricing things and watching out of the corner of my eye. those people had stopped, and were talking together and looking in at the door. i made up my mind to get out the back way, if there was a back way, and i asked the shopwoman if i could step out there and look for the escaped slave, who was believed to be in hiding back there somewhere, and said i was an officer in disguise, and my pard was yonder at the door with one of the murderers in charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him he needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end of the back alley and be ready to head him off when i rousted him out. she was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated murderers, and she started on the errand at once. i slipped out the back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket and started off, chuckling to myself and comfortable. well, i had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake. a double one, in fact. there were plenty of ways to get rid of that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, i must pick out a picturesque one; it is the crying defect of my character. and then, i had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, being human, would naturally do; whereas when you are least expecting it, a man will now and then go and do the very thing which it's not natural for him to do. the natural thing for the officer to do, in this case, was to follow straight on my heels; he would find a stout oaken door, securely locked, between him and me; before he could break it down, i should be far away and engaged in slipping into a succession of baffling disguises which would soon get me into a sort of raiment which was a surer protection from meddling law-dogs in britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity of character. but instead of doing the natural thing, the officer took me at my word, and followed my instructions. and so, as i came trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction with my own cleverness, he turned the corner and i walked right into his handcuffs. if i had known it was a cul de sac -however, there isn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. charge it up to profit and loss. of course, i was indignant, and swore i had just come ashore from a long voyage, and all that sort of thing -just to see, you know, if it would deceive that slave. but it didn't. he knew me. then i reproached him for betraying me. he was more surprised than hurt. he stretched his eyes wide, and said: "what, wouldst have me let thee, of all men, escape and not hang with us, when thou'rt the very cause of our hanging? go to!" "go to" was their way of saying "i should smile!" or "i like that!" queer talkers, those people. well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so i dropped the matter. when you can't cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to argue? it isn't my way. so i only said: "you're not going to be hanged. none of us are." both men laughed, and the slave said: "ye have not ranked as a fool -before. you might better keep your reputation, seeing the strain would not be for long." "it will stand it, i reckon. before to-morrow we shall be out of prison, and free to go where we will, besides." the witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made a rasping noise in his throat, and said: "out of prison -yes -ye say true. and free likewise to go where ye will, so ye wander not out of his grace the devil's sultry realm." i kept my temper, and said, indifferently: "now i suppose you really think we are going to hang within a day or two." "i thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decided and proclaimed." "ah, then you've changed your mind, is that it?" "even that. i only thought, then; i know, now." i felt sarcastical, so i said: "oh, sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell us, then, what you know." "that ye will all be hanged to-day, at mid-afternoon! oho! that shot hit home! lean upon me." the fact is i did need to lean upon somebody. my knights couldn't arrive in time. they would be as much as three hours too late. nothing in the world could save the king of england; nor me, which was more important. more important, not merely to me, but to the nation -the only nation on earth standing ready to blossom into civilization. i was sick. i said no more, there wasn't anything to say. i knew what the man meant; that if the missing slave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the execution take place to-day. well, the missing slave was found. chapter xxxviii. sir launcelot and knights to the rescue nearing four in the afternoon. the scene was just outside the walls of london. a cool, comfortable, superb day, with a brilliant sun; the kind of day to make one want to live, not die. the multitude was prodigious and far-reaching; and yet we fifteen poor devils hadn't a friend in it. there was something painful in that thought, look at it how you might. there we sat, on our tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all those enemies. we were being made a holiday spectacle. they had built a sort of grand stand for the nobility and gentry, and these were there in full force, with their ladies. we recognized a good many of them. the crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of the king. the moment we were freed of our bonds he sprang up, in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and proclaimed himself arthur, king of britain, and denounced the awful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hair of his sacred head were touched. it startled and surprised him to hear them break into a vast roar of laughter. it wounded his dignity, and he locked himself up in silence. then, although the crowd begged him to go on, and tried to provoke him to it by catcalls, jeers, and shouts of "let him speak! the king! the king! his humble subjects hunger and thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their master his serene and sacred raggedness!" but it went for nothing. he put on all his majesty and sat under this rain of contempt and insult unmoved. he certainly was great in his way. absently, i had taken off my white bandage and wound it about my right arm. when the crowd noticed this, they began upon me. they said: "doubtless this sailor-man is his minister -observe his costly badge of office!" i let them go on until they got tired, and then i said: "yes, i am his minister, the boss; and to-morrow you will hear that from camelot which --" i got no further. they drowned me out with joyous derision. but presently there was silence; for the sheriffs of london, in their official robes, with their subordinates, began to make a stir which indicated that business was about to begin. in the hush which followed, our crime was recited, the death warrant read, then everybody uncovered while a priest uttered a prayer. then a slave was blindfolded; the hangman unslung his rope. there lay the smooth road below us, we upon one side of it, the banked multitude wailing its other side -a good clear road, and kept free by the police -how good it would be to see my five hundred horsemen come tearing down it! but no, it was out of the possibilities. i followed its receding thread out into the distance -not a horseman on it, or sign of one. there was a jerk, and the slave hung dangling; dangling and hideously squirming, for his limbs were not tied. a second rope was unslung, in a moment another slave was dangling. in a minute a third slave was struggling in the air. it was dreadful. i turned away my head a moment, and when i turned back i missed the king! they were blindfolding him! i was paralyzed; i couldn't move, i was choking, my tongue was petrified. they finished blindfolding him, they led him under the rope. i couldn't shake off that clinging impotence. but when i saw them put the noose around his neck, then everything let go in me and i made a spring to the rescue -and as i made it i shot one more glance abroad -by george! here they came, a-tilting! -five hundred mailed and belted knights on bicycles! the grandest sight that ever was seen. lord, how the plumes streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed from the endless procession of webby wheels! i waved my right arm as launcelot swept in -he recognized my rag -i tore away noose and bandage, and shouted: "on your knees, every rascal of you, and salute the king! who fails shall sup in hell to-night!" i always use that high style when i'm climaxing an effect. well, it was noble to see launcelot and the boys swarm up onto that scaffold and heave sheriffs and such overboard. and it was fine to see that astonished multitude go down on their knees and beg their lives of the king they had just been deriding and insulting. and as he stood apart there, receiving this homage in rags, i thought to myself, well, really there is something peculiarly grand about the gait and bearing of a king, after all. i was immensely satisfied. take the whole situation all around, it was one of the gaudiest effects i ever instigated. and presently up comes clarence, his own self! and winks, and says, very modernly: "good deal of a surprise, wasn't it? i knew you'd like it. i've had the boys practicing this long time, privately; and just hungry for a chance to show off." chapter xxxix. the yankee's fight with the knights home again, at camelot. a morning or two later i found the paper, damp from the press, by my plate at the breakfast table. i turned to the advertising columns, knowing i should find something of personal interest to me there. it was this: de par le roi. know that the great lord and illus trious kni8ht, sir sagramor le desirous naving condescended to meet the king's minister, hank mor gan, the which is surnamed the boss, for satisfgction of offence anciently given, these will engage in the lists by camelot about the fourth hour of the morning of the sixteenth day of this next succeeding month. the battle will be a l outrance, sith the said offence was of a deadly sort, admitting of no composition. de par le roi clarence's editorial reference to this affair was to this effect: it will be observed, by a gl7nce at our advertising columns, that the commu nity is to be favored with a treat of un usual interest in the tournament line. the n ames of the artists are warrant of good entertemment. the box-office will be open at noon of the 13th; ad mission 3 cents, reserved seatsh 5; pro ceeds to go to the hospital fund the royal pair and all the court will be pres ent. with these exceptions, and the press and the clergy, the free list is strict ly suspended. parties are hereby warn ed against buying tickets of speculators; they will not be good at the door. everybody knows and likes the boss, everybody knows and likes sir sag.; come, let us give the lads a good send off. remember, the proceeds go to a great and free charity, and one whose broad begevolence stretches out its help ing hand, warm with the blood of a lov ing heart, to all that suffer, regardless of race, creed, condition or color--the only charity yet established in the earth which has no politico-religious stop cock on its compassion, but says here flows the stream, let all come and drink! turn out, all hands! fetch along your dou3hnuts and your gum-drops and have a good time. pie for sale on the grounds, and rocks to crack it with; and circus-lemonade--three drops of lime juice to a barrel of water. n.b. this is the first tournament under the new law, whidh allow each combatant to use any weapon he may pre fer. you may want to make a note of that. up to the day set, there was no talk in all britain of anything but this combat. all other topics sank into insignificance and passed out of men's thoughts and interest. it was not because a tournament was a great matter, it was not because sir sagramor had found the holy grail, for he had not, but had failed; it was not because the second (official) personage in the kingdom was one of the duellists; no, all these features were commonplace. yet there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which this coming fight was creating. it was born of the fact that all the nation knew that this was not to be a duel between mere men, so to speak, but a duel between two mighty magicians; a duel not of muscle but of mind, not of human skill but of superhuman art and craft; a final struggle for supremacy between the two master enchanters of the age. it was realized that the most prodigious achievements of the most renowned knights could not be worthy of comparison with a spectacle like this; they could be but child's play, contrasted with this mysterious and awful battle of the gods. yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duel between merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers against mine. it was known that merlin had been busy whole days and nights together, imbuing sir sagramor's arms and armor with supernal powers of offense and defense, and that he had procured for him from the spirits of the air a fleecy veil which would render the wearer invisible to his antagonist while still visible to other men. against sir sagramor, so weaponed and protected, a thousand knights could accomplish nothing; against him no known enchantments could prevail. these facts were sure; regarding them there was no doubt, no reason for doubt. there was but one question: might there be still other enchantments, unknown to merlin, which could render sir sagramor's veil transparent to me, and make his enchanted mail vulnerable to my weapons? this was the one thing to be decided in the lists. until then the world must remain in suspense. so the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and the world was right, but it was not the one they had in their minds. no, a far vaster one was upon the cast of this die: the life of knight-errantry. i was a champion, it was true, but not the champion of the frivolous black arts, i was the champion of hard unsentimental common-sense and reason. i was entering the lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its victim. vast as the show-grounds were, there were no vacant spaces in them outside of the lists, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 16th. the mammoth grand-stand was clothed in flags, streamers, and rich tapestries, and packed with several acres of small-fry tributary kings, their suites, and the british aristocracy; with our own royal gang in the chief place, and each and every individual a flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets -well, i never saw anything to begin with it but a fight between an upper mississippi sunset and the aurora borealis. the huge camp of beflagged and gaycolored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiffstanding sentinel at every door and a shining shield hanging by him for challenge, was another fine sight. you see, every knight was there who had any ambition or any caste feeling; for my feeling toward their order was not much of a secret, and so here was their chance. if i won my fight with sir sagramor, others would have the right to call me out as long as i might be willing to respond. down at our end there were but two tents; one for me, and another for my servants. at the appointed hour the king made a sign, and the heralds, in their tabards, appeared and made proclamation, naming the combatants and stating the cause of quarrel. there was a pause, then a ringing bugle-blast, which was the signal for us to come forth. all the multitude caught their breath, and an eager curiosity flashed into every face. out from his tent rode great sir sagramor, an imposing tower of iron, stately and rigid, his huge spear standing upright in its socket and grasped in his strong hand, his grand horse's face and breast cased in steel, his body clothed in rich trappings that almost dragged the ground -oh, a most noble picture. a great shout went up, of welcome and admiration. and then out i came. but i didn't get any shout. there was a wondering and eloquent silence for a moment, then a great wave of laughter began to sweep along that human sea, but a warning bugle-blast cut its career short. i was in the simplest and comfortablest of gymnast costumes -flesh-colored tights from neck to heel, with blue silk puffings about my loins, and bareheaded. my horse was not above medium size, but he was alert, slender-limbed, muscled with watchsprings, and just a greyhound to go. he was a beauty, glossy as silk, and naked as he was when he was born, except for bridle and ranger-saddle. the iron tower and the gorgeous bedquilt came cumbrously but gracefully pirouetting down the lists, and we tripped lightly up to meet them. we halted; the tower saluted, i responded; then we wheeled and rode side by side to the grand-stand and faced our king and queen, to whom we made obeisance. the queen exclaimed: "alack, sir boss, wilt fight naked, and without lance or sword or --" but the king checked her and made her understand, with a polite phrase or two, that this was none of her business. the bugles rang again; and we separated and rode to the ends of the lists, and took position. now old merlin stepped into view and cast a dainty web of gossamer threads over sir sagramor which turned him into hamlet's ghost; the king made a sign, the bugles blew, sir sagramor laid his great lance in rest, and the next moment here he came thundering down the course with his veil flying out behind, and i went whistling through the air like an arrow to meet him -cocking my ear the while, as if noting the invisible knight's position and progress by hearing, not sight. a chorus of encouraging shouts burst out for him, and one brave voice flung out a heartening word for me -said: "go it, slim jim!" it was an even bet that clarence had procured that favor for me -and furnished the language, too. when that formidable lance-point was within a yard and a half of my breast i twitched my horse aside without an effort, and the big knight swept by, scoring a blank. i got plenty of applause that time. we turned, braced up, and down we came again. another blank for the knight, a roar of applause for me. this same thing was repeated once more; and it fetched such a whirlwind of applause that sir sagramor lost his temper, and at once changed his tactics and set himself the task of chasing me down. why, he hadn't any show in the world at that; it was a game of tag, with all the advantage on my side; i whirled out of his path with ease whenever i chose, and once i slapped him on the back as i went to the rear. finally i took the chase into my own hands; and after that, turn, or twist, or do what he would, he was never able to get behind me again; he found himself always in front at the end of his maneuver. so he gave up that business and retired to his end of the lists. his temper was clear gone now, and he forgot himself and flung an insult at me which disposed of mine. i slipped my lasso from the horn of my saddle, and grasped the coil in my right hand. this time you should have seen him come! -it was a business trip, sure; by his gait there was blood in his eye. i was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; the moment he was under way, i started for him; when the space between us had narrowed to forty feet, i sent the snaky spirals of the rope a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under him for a surge. the next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked sir sagramor out of the saddle! great scott, but there was a sensation! unquestionably, the popular thing in this world is novelty. these people had never seen anything of that cowboy business before, and it carried them clear off their feet with delight. from all around and everywhere, the shout went up: "encore! encore!" i wondered where they got the word, but there was no time to cipher on philological matters, because the whole knight-errantry hive was just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn't have been better. the moment my lasso was released and sir sagramor had been assisted to his tent, i hauled in the slack, took my station and began to swing my loop around my head again. i was sure to have use for it as soon as they could elect a successor for sir sagramor, and that couldn't take long where there were so many hungry candidates. indeed, they elected one straight off -sir hervis de revel. bzz! here he came, like a house afire; i dodged: he passed like a flash, with my horse-hair coils settling around his neck; a second or so later, fst! his saddle was empty. i got another encore; and another, and another, and still another. when i had snaked five men out, things began to look serious to the ironclads, and they stopped and consulted together. as a result, they decided that it was time to waive etiquette and send their greatest and best against me. to the astonishment of that little world, i lassoed sir lamorak de galis, and after him sir galahad. so you see there was simply nothing to be done now, but play their right bower -bring out the superbest of the superb, the mightiest of the mighty, the great sir launcelot himself! a proud moment for me? i should think so. yonder was arthur, king of britain; yonder was guenever; yes, and whole tribes of little provincial kings and kinglets; and in the tented camp yonder, renowned knights from many lands; and likewise the selectest body known to chivalry, the knights of the table round, the most illustrious in christendom; and biggest fact of all, the very sun of their shining system was yonder couching his lance, the focal point of forty thousand adoring eyes; and all by myself, here was i laying for him. across my mind flitted the dear image of a certain hello-girl of west hartford, and i wished she could see me now. in that moment, down came the invincible, with the rush of a whirlwind -the courtly world rose to its feet and bent forward -the fateful coils went circling through the air, and before you could wink i was towing sir launcelot across the field on his back, and kissing my hand to the storm of waving kerchiefs and the thunder-crash of applause that greeted me! said i to myself, as i coiled my lariat and hung it on my saddle-horn, and sat there drunk with glory, "the victory is perfect -no other will venture against me -knight-errantry is dead." now imagine my astonishment -and everybody else's, too -to hear the peculiar bugle-call which announces that another competitor is about to enter the lists! there was a mystery here; i couldn't account for this thing. next, i noticed merlin gliding away from me; and then i noticed that my lasso was gone! the old sleight-of-hand expert had stolen it, sure, and slipped it under his robe. the bugle blew again. i looked, and down came sagramor riding again, with his dust brushed off and is veil nicely re-arranged. i trotted up to meet him, and pretended to find him by the sound of his horse's hoofs. he said: "thou'rt quick of ear, but it will not save thee from this!" and he touched the hilt of his great sword . "an ye are not able to see it, because of the influence of the veil, know that it is no cumbrous lance, but a sword -and i ween ye will not be able to avoid it." his visor was up; there was death in his smile. i should never be able to dodge his sword, that was plain. somebody was going to die this time. if he got the drop on me, i could name the corpse. we rode forward together, and saluted the royalties. this time the king was disturbed. he said: "where is thy strange weapon?" "it is stolen, sire." "hast another at hand?" "no, sire, i brought only the one." then merlin mixed in: "he brought but the one because there was but the one to bring. there exists none other but that one. it belongeth to the king of the demons of the sea. this man is a pretender, and ignorant, else he had known that that weapon can be used in but eight bouts only, and then it vanisheth away to its home under the sea." "then is he weaponless," said the king. "sir sagramore, ye will grant him leave to borrow." "and i will lend!" said sir launcelot, limping up. "he is as brave a knight of his hands as any that be on live, and he shall have mine." he put his hand on his sword to draw it, but sir sagramor said: "stay, it may not be. he shall fight with his own weapons; it was his privilege to choose them and bring them. if he has erred, on his head be it." "knight!" said the king. "thou'rt overwrought with passion; it disorders thy mind. wouldst kill a naked man?" "an he do it, he shall answer it to me," said sir launcelot. "i will answer it to any he that desireth!" retorted sir sagramor hotly. merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his lowdownest smile of malicious gratification: "'tis well said, right well said! and 'tis enough of parleying, let my lord the king deliver the battle signal." the king had to yield. the bugle made proclamation, and we turned apart and rode to our stations. there we stood, a hundred yards apart, facing each other, rigid and motionless, like horsed statues. and so we remained, in a soundless hush, as much as a full minute, everybody gazing, nobody stirring. it seemed as if the king could not take heart to give the signal. but at last he lifted his hand, the clear note of the bugle followed, sir sagramor's long blade described a flashing curve in the air, and it was superb to see him come. i sat still. on he came. i did not move. people got so excited that they shouted to me: "fly, fly! save thyself! this is murther!" i never budged so much as an inch till that thunderng apparition had got within fifteen paces of me; then i snatched a dragoon revolver out of my holster, there was a flash and a roar, and the revolver was back in the holster before anybody could tell what had happened. here was a riderless horse plunging by, and yonder lay sir sagramor, stone dead. the people that ran to him were stricken dumb to find that the life was actually gone out of the man and no reason for it visible, no hurt upon his body, nothing like a wound. there was a hole through the breast of his chain-mail, but they attached no importance to a little thing like that; and as a bullet wound there produces but little blood, none came in sight because of the clothing and swaddlings under the armor. the body was dragged over to let the king and the swells look down upon it. they were stupefied with astonishment naturally. i was requested to come and explain the miracle. but i remained in my tracks, like a statue, and said: "if it is a command, i will come, but my lord the king knows that i am where the laws of combat require me to remain while any desire to come against me." i waited. nobody challenged. then i said: "if there are any who doubt that this field is well and fairly won, i do not wait for them to challenge me, i challenge them." "it is a gallant offer," said the king, "and well beseems you. whom will you name first?" "i name none, i challenge all! here i stand, and dare the chivalry of england to come against me -not by individuals, but in mass!" "what!" shouted a score of knights. "you have heard the challenge. take it, or i proclaim you recreant knights and vanquished, every one!" it was a "bluff" you know. at such a time it is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to "call," and you rake in the chips. but just this once -well, things looked squally! in just no time, five hundred knights were scrambling into their saddles, and before you could wink a widely scattering drove were under way and clattering down upon me. i snatched both revolvers from the holsters and began to measure distances and calculate chances. bang! one saddle empty. bang! another one. bang -bang, and i bagged two. well, it was nip and tuck with us, and i knew it. if i spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people, the twelfth man would kill me, sure. and so i never did feel so happy as i did when my ninth downed its man and i detected the wavering in the crowd which is premonitory of panic. an instant lost now could knock out my last chance. but i didn't lose it. i raised both revolvers and pointed them -the halted host stood their ground just about one good square moment, then broke and fled. the day was mine. knight-errantry was a doomed institution. the march of civilization was begun. how did i feel? ah, you never could imagine it. and brer merlin? his stock was flat again. somehow, every time the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science, the magic of fol-de-rol got left. chapter xl. three years later when i broke the back of knight-errantry that time, i no longer felt obliged to work in secret. so, the very next day i exposed my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factories and workshops to an astonished world. that is to say, i exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth. well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly. the knights were temporarily down, but if i would keep them so i must just simply paralyze them -nothing short of that would answer. you see, i was "bluffing" that last time in the field; it would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion, if i gave them a chance. so i must not give them time; and i didn't. i renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in the advertising columns of the paper. i not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. i said, name the day, and i would take fifty assistants and stand up against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it. i was not bluffing this time. i meant what i said; i could do what i promised. there wasn't any way to misunderstand the language of that challenge. even the dullest of the chivalry perceived that this was a plain case of "put up, or shut up." they were wise and did the latter. in all the next three years they gave me no trouble worth mentioning. consider the three years sped. now look around on england. a happy and prosperous country, and strangely altered. schools everywhere, and several colleges; a number of pretty good newspapers. even authorship was taking a start; sir dinadan the humorist was first in the field, with a volume of gray-headed jokes which i had been familiar with during thirteen centuries. if he had left out that old rancid one about the lecturer i wouldn't have said anything; but i couldn't stand that one. i suppressed the book and hanged the author. slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law; taxation had been equalized. the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand willing and handy servants of steam and electricity were working their way into favor. we had a steamboat or two on the thames, we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercial marine; i was getting ready to send out an expedition to discover america. we were building several lines of railway, and our line from camelot to london was already finished and in operation. i was shrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passenger service places of high and distinguished honor. my idea was to attract the chivalry and nobility, and make them useful and keep them out of mischief. the plan worked very well, the competition for the places was hot. the conductor of the 4.33 express was a duke; there wasn't a passenger conductor on the line below the degree of earl. they were good men, every one, but they had two defects which i couldn't cure, and so had to wink at: they wouldn't lay aside their armor, and they would "knock down" fare -i mean rob the company. there was hardly a knight in all the land who wasn't in some useful employment. they were going from end to end of the country in all manner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering, and their experience in it, made them altogether the most effective spreaders of civilization we had. they went clothed in steel and equipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn't persuade a person to try a sewing-machine on the installment plan, or a melodeon, or a barbed-wire fence, or a prohibition journal, or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for, they removed him and passed on. i was very happy. things were working steadily toward a secretly longed-for point. you see, i had two schemes in my head which were the vastest of all my projects. the one was to overthrow the catholic church and set up the protestant faith on its ruins -not as an established church, but a go-as-you-please one; and the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding that upon arthur's death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike -at any rate to all men, wise or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one. arthur was good for thirty years yet, he being about my own age -that is to say, forty -and i believed that in that time i could easily have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager for an event which should be the first of its kind in the history of the world -a rounded and complete governmental revolution without bloodshed. the result to be a republic. well, i may as well confess, though i do feel ashamed when i think of it: i was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president myself. yes, there was more or less human nature in me; i found that out. clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified way. his idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate. he believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. i urged that kings were dangerous. he said, then have cats. he was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. they would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive; finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house, and "tom vii., or tom xi., or tom xiv. by the grace of god king," would sound as well as it would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. "and as a rule," said he, in his neat modern english, "the character of these cats would be considerably above the character of the average king, and this would be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reason that a nation always models its morals after its monarch's. the worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it. the eyes of the whole harried world would soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and royal butchers would presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fill the vacancies with catlings from our own royal house; we should become a factory; we should supply the thrones of the world; within forty years all europe would be governed by cats, and we should furnish the cats. the reign of universal peace would begin then, to end no more forever...... me-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow -fzt! -wow!" hang him, i supposed he was in earnest, and was beginning to be persuaded by him, until he exploded that cat-howl and startled me almost out of my clothes. but he never could be in earnest. he didn't know what it was. he had pictured a distinct and perfectly rational and feasible improvement upon constitutional monarchy, but he was too feather-headed to know it, or care anything about it, either. i was going to give him a scolding, but sandy came flying in at that moment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobs that for a minute she could not get her voice. i ran and took her in my arms, and lavished caresses upon her and said, beseechingly: "speak, darling, speak! what is it?" her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped, almost inaudibly: "hello-central!" "quick!" i shouted to clarence; "telephone the king's homeopath to come!" in two minutes i was kneeling by the child's crib, and sandy was dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere, all over the palace. i took in the situation almost at a glance -membranous croup! i bent down and whispered: "wake up, sweetheart! hello-central" she opened her soft eyes languidly, and made out to say: "papa." that was a comfort. she was far from dead yet. i sent for preparations of sulphur, i rousted out the croup-kettle myself; for i don't sit down and wait for doctors when sandy or the child is sick. i knew how to nurse both of them, and had had experience. this little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life, and often i could soothe away its troubles and get it to laugh through the tear-dews on its eyelashes when even its mother couldn't. sir launcelot, in his richest armor, came striding along the great hall now on his way to the stockboard; he was president of the stock-board, and occupied the siege perilous, which he had bought of sir galahad; for the stock-board consisted of the knights of the round table, and they used the round table for business purposes now. seats at it were worth -well, you would never believe the figure, so it is no use to state it. sir launcelot was a bear, and he had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just getting ready to squeeze the shorts to-day; but what of that? he was the same old launcelot, and when he glanced in as he was passing the door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enough for him; bulls and bears might fight it out their own way for all him, he would come right in here and stand by little hellocentral for all he was worth. and that was what he did. he shied his helmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wick in the alcohol lamp and was firing up on the croup-kettle. by this time sandy had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everything was ready. sir launcelot got up steam, he and i loaded up the kettle with unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch of lactic acid added thereto, then filled the thing up with water and inserted the steam-spout under the canopy. everything was ship-shape now, and we sat down on either side of the crib to stand our watch. sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a couple of church-wardens with willow-bark and sumach-tobacco for us, and told us to smoke as much as we pleased, it couldn't get under the canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in the land who had ever seen a cloud blown. well, there couldn't be a more contented or comfortable sight than sir launcelot in his noble armor sitting in gracious serenity at the end of a yard of snowy church-warden. he was a beautiful man, a lovely man, and was just intended to make a wife and children happy. but, of course guenever -however, it's no use to cry over what's done and can't be helped. well, he stood watch-and-watch with me, right straight through, for three days and nights, till the child was out of danger; then he took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumes falling about her golden head, then laid her softly in sandy's lap again and took his stately way down the vast hall, between the ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials, and so disappeared. and no instinct warned me that i should never look upon him again in this world! lord, what a world of heart-break it is. the doctors said we must take the child away, if we would coax her back to health and strength again. and she must have sea-air. so we took a man-ofwar, and a suite of two hundred and sixty persons, and went cruising about, and after a fortnight of this we stepped ashore on the french coast, and the doctors thought it would be a good idea to make something of a stay there. the little king of that region offered us his hospitalities, and we were glad to accept. if he had had as many conveniences as he lacked, we should have been plenty comfortable enough; even as it was, we made out very well, in his queer old castle, by the help of comforts and luxuries from the ship. at the end of a month i sent the vessel home for fresh supplies, and for news. we expected her back in three or four days. she would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain experiment which i had been starting. it was a project of mine to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve the best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation. i had had a choice band of them in private training for some time, and the date was now arriving for their first public effort. this experiment was baseball. in order to give the thing vogue from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, i chose my nines by rank, not capacity. there wasn't a knight in either team who wasn't a sceptered sovereign. as for material of this sort, there was a glut of it always around arthur. you couldn't throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king. of course, i couldn't get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn't do that when they bathed. they consented to differentiate the armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that was the most they would do. so, one of the teams wore chain-mail ulsters, and the other wore platearmor made of my new bessemer steel. their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing i ever saw. being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the result; when a bessemer was at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards sometimes. and when a man was running, and threw himself on his stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into port. at first i appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but i had to discontinue that. these people were no easier to please than other nines. the umpire's first decision was usually his last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter. when it was noticed that no umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. so i was obliged to appoint somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would protect him. here are the names of the nines: bessemers ulsters king arthur. emperor lucius. king lot of lothian. king logris. king of northgalis. king marhalt of ireland. king marsil. king morganore. king of little britain. king mark of cornwall. king labor. king nentres of garlot. king pellam of listengese. king meliodas of liones. king bagdemagus. king of the lake. king tolleme la feintes. the sowdan of syria. umpire -clarence. the first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people; and for solid fun would be worth going around the world to see. everything would be favorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring weather now, and nature was all tailored out in her new clothes. chapter xli. the interdict however, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters; our child began to lose ground again, and we had to go to sitting up with her, her case became so serious. we couldn't bear to allow anybody to help in this service, so we two stood watch-and-watch, day in and day out. ah, sandy, what a right heart she had, how simple, and genuine, and good she was! she was a flawless wife and mother; and yet i had married her for no other particular reasons, except that by the customs of chivalry she was my property until some knight should win her from me in the field. she had hunted britain over for me; had found me at the hanging-bout outside of london, and had straightway resumed her old place at my side in the placidest way and as of right. i was a new englander, and in my opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her, sooner or later. she couldn't see how, but i cut argument short and we had a wedding. now i didn't know i was drawing a prize, yet that was what i did draw. within the twelvemonth i became her worshiper; and ours was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was. people talk about beautiful friendships between two persons of the same sex. what is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendship of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? there is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine. in my dreams, along at first, i still wandered thirteen centuries away, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all up and down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world. many a time sandy heard that imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep. with a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon our child, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine. it touched me to tears, and it also nearly knocked me off my feet, too, when she smiled up in my face for an earned reward, and played her quaint and pretty surprise upon me: "the name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made holy, and the music of it will abide alway in our ears. now thou'lt kiss me, as knowing the name i have given the child." but i didn't know it, all the same. i hadn't an idea in the world; but it would have been cruel to confess it and spoil her pretty game; so i never let on, but said: "yes, i know, sweetheart -how dear and good it is of you, too! but i want to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine, utter it first -then its music will be perfect." pleased to the marrow, she murmured: "hello-central!" i didn't laugh -i am always thankful for that -but the strain ruptured every cartilage in me, and for weeks afterward i could hear my bones clack when i walked. she never found out her mistake. the first time she heard that form of salute used at the telephone she was surprised, and not pleased; but i told her i had given order for it: that henceforth and forever the telephone must always be invoked with that reverent formality, in perpetual honor and remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake. this was not true. but it answered. well, during two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and in our deep solicitude we were unconscious of any world outside of that sick-room. then our reward came: the center of the universe turned the corner and began to mend. grateful? it isn't the term. there isn't any term for it. you know that yourself, if you've watched your child through the valley of the shadow and seen it come back to life and sweep night out of the earth with one all-illuminating smile that you could cover with your hand. why, we were back in this world in one instant! then we looked the same startled thought into each other's eyes at the same moment; more than two weeks gone, and that ship not back yet! in another minute i appeared in the presence of my train. they had been steeped in troubled bodings all this time -their faces showed it. i called an escort and we galloped five miles to a hilltop overlooking the sea. where was my great commerce that so lately had made these glistening expanses populous and beautiful with its white-winged flocks? vanished, every one! not a sail, from verge to verge, not a smoke-bank -just a dead and empty solitude, in place of all that brisk and breezy life. i went swiftly back, saying not a word to anybody. i told sandy this ghastly news. we could imagine no explanation that would begin to explain. had there been an invasion? an earthquake? a pestilence? had the nation been swept out of existence? but guessing was profitless. i must go -at once. i borrowed the king's navy -a "ship" no bigger than a steam launch -and was soon ready. the parting -ah, yes, that was hard. as i was devouring the child with last kisses, it brisked up and jabbered out its vocabulary! -the first time in more than two weeks, and it made fools of us for joy. the darling mispronunciations of childhood! -dear me, there's no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again. well, how good it was to be able to carry that gracious memory away with me! i approached england the next morning, with the wide highway of salt water all to myself. there were ships in the harbor, at dover, but they were naked as to sails, and there was no sign of life about them. it was sunday; yet at canterbury the streets were empty; strangest of all, there was not even a priest in sight, and no stroke of a bell fell upon my ear. the mournfulness of death was everywhere. i couldn't understand it. at last, in the further edge of that town i saw a small funeral procession -just a family and a few friends following a coffin -no priest; a funeral without bell, book, or candle; there was a church there close at hand, but they passed it by weeping, and did not enter it; i glanced up at the belfry, and there hung the bell, shrouded in black, and its tongue tied back. now i knew! now i understood the stupendous calamity that had overtaken england. invasion? invasion is a triviality to it. it was the interdict! i asked no questions; i didn't need to ask any. the church had struck; the thing for me to do was to get into a disguise, and go warily. one of my servants gave me a suit of clothes, and when we were safe beyond the town i put them on, and from that time i traveled alone; i could not risk the embarrassment of company. a miserable journey. a desolate silence everywhere. even in london itself. traffic had ceased; men did not talk or laugh, or go in groups, or even in couples; they moved aimlessly about, each man by himself, with his head down, and woe and terror at his heart. the tower showed recent war-scars. verily, much had been happening. of course, i meant to take the train for camelot. train! why, the station was as vacant as a cavern. i moved on. the journey to camelot was a repetition of what i had already seen. the monday and the tuesday differed in no way from the sunday. i arrived far in the night. from being the best electriclighted town in the kingdom and the most like a recumbent sun of anything you ever saw, it was become simply a blot -a blot upon darkness -that is to say, it was darker and solider than the rest of the darkness, and so you could see it a little better; it made me feel as if maybe it was symbolical -a sort of sign that the church was going to keep the upper hand now, and snuff out all my beautiful civilization just like that. i found no life stirring in the somber streets. i groped my way with a heavy heart. the vast castle loomed black upon the hilltop, not a spark visible about it. the drawbridge was down, the great gate stood wide, i entered without challenge, my own heels making the only sound i heard -and it was sepulchral enough, in those huge vacant courts. chapter xlii. war! i found clarence alone in his quarters, drowned in melancholy; and in place of the electric light, he had reinstituted the ancient rag-lamp, and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtains drawn tight. he sprang up and rushed for me eagerly, saying: "oh, it's worth a billion milrays to look upon a live person again!" he knew me as easily as if i hadn't been disguised at all. which frightened me; one may easily believe that. "quick, now, tell me the meaning of this fearful disaster," i said. "how did it come about?" "well, if there hadn't been any queen guenever, it wouldn't have come so early; but it would have come, anyway. it would have come on your own account by and by; by luck, it happened to come on the queen's." "and sir launcelot's?" "just so." "give me the details." "i reckon you will grant that during some years there has been only one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that has not been looking steadily askance at the queen and sir launcelot --" "yes, king arthur's." "-and only one heart that was without suspicion --" "yes -the king's; a heart that isn't capable of thinking evil of a friend." "well, the king might have gone on, still happy and unsuspecting, to the end of his days, but for one of your modern improvements -the stock-board. when you left, three miles of the london, canterbury and dover were ready for the rails, and also ready and ripe for manipulation in the stock-market. it was wildcat, and everybody knew it. the stock was for sale at a give-away. what does sir launcelot do, but --" "yes, i know; he quietly picked up nearly all of it for a song; then he bought about twice as much more, deliverable upon call; and he was about to call when i left." "very well, he did call. the boys couldn't deliver. oh, he had them -and he just settled his grip and squeezed them. they were laughing in their sleeves over their smartness in selling stock to him at 15 and 16 and along there that wasn't worth 10. well, when they had laughed long enough on that side of their mouths, they rested-up that side by shifting the laugh to the other side. that was when they compromised with the invincible at 283!" "good land!" "he skinned them alive, and they deserved it -anyway, the whole kingdom rejoiced. well, among the flayed were sir agravaine and sir mordred, nephews to the king. end of the first act. act second, scene first, an apartment in carlisle castle, where the court had gone for a few days' hunting. persons present, the whole tribe of the king's nephews. mordred and agravaine propose to call the guileless arthur's attention to guenever and sir launcelot. sir gawaine, sir gareth, and sir gaheris will have nothing to do with it. a dispute ensues, with loud talk; in the midst of it enter the king. mordred and agravaine spring their devastating tale upon him. tableau. a trap is laid for launcelot, by the king's command, and sir launcelot walks into it. he made it sufficiently uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses -to wit, mordred, agravaine, and twelve knights of lesser rank, for he killed every one of them but mordred; but of course that couldn't straighten matters between launcelot and the king, and didn't." "oh, dear, only one thing could result -i see that. war, and the knights of the realm divided into a king's party and a sir launcelot's party." "yes -that was the way of it. the king sent the queen to the stake, proposing to purify her with fire. launcelot and his knights rescued her, and in doing it slew certain good old friends of yours and mine -in fact, some of the best we ever had; to wit, sir belias le orgulous, sir segwarides, sir griflet le fils de dieu, sir brandiles, sir aglovale --" "oh, you tear out my heartstrings." "-wait, i'm not done yet -sir tor, sir gauter, sir gillimer --" "the very best man in my subordinate nine. what a handy right-fielder he was!" "-sir reynold's three brothers, sir damus, sir priamus, sir kay the stranger --" "my peerless short-stop! i've seen him catch a daisy-cutter in his teeth. come, i can't stand this!" "-sir driant, sir lambegus, sir herminde, sir pertilope, sir perimones, and -whom do you think?" "rush! go on." "sir gaheris, and sir gareth -both!" "oh, incredible! their love for launcelot was indestructible." "well, it was an accident. they were simply onlookers; they were unarmed, and were merely there to witness the queen's punishment. sir launcelot smote down whoever came in the way of his blind fury, and he killed these without noticing who they were. here is an instantaneous photograph one of our boys got of the battle; it's for sale on every news-stand. there -the figures nearest the queen are sir launcelot with his sword up, and sir gareth gasping his latest breath. you can catch the agony in the queen's face through the curling smoke. it's a rattling battle-picture." "indeed, it is. we must take good care of it; its historical value is incalculable. go on." "well, the rest of the tale is just war, pure and simple. launcelot retreated to his town and castle of joyous gard, and gathered there a great following of knights. the king, with a great host, went there, and there was desperate fighting during several days, and, as a result, all the plain around was paved with corpses and cast-iron. then the church patched up a peace between arthur and launcelot and the queen and everybody -everybody but sir gawaine. he was bitter about the slaying of his brothers, gareth and gaheris, and would not be appeased. he notified launcelot to get him thence, and make swift preparation, and look to be soon attacked. so launcelot sailed to his duchy of guienne with his following, and gawaine soon followed with an army, and he beguiled arthur to go with him. arthur left the kingdom in sir mordred's hands until you should return --" "ah -a king's customary wisdom!" "yes. sir mordred set himself at once to work to make his kingship permanent. he was going to marry guenever, as a first move; but she fled and shut herself up in the tower of london. mordred attacked; the bishop of canterbury dropped down on him with the interdict. the king returned; mordred fought him at dover, at canterbury, and again at barham down. then there was talk of peace and a composition. terms, mordred to have cornwall and kent during arthur's life, and the whole kingdom afterward." "well, upon my word! my dream of a republic to be a dream, and so remain." "yes. the two armies lay near salisbury. gawaine -gawaine's head is at dover castle, he fell in the fight there -gawaine appeared to arthur in a dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him to refrain from conflict for a month, let the delay cost what it might. but battle was precipitated by an accident. arthur had given order that if a sword was raised during the consultation over the proposed treaty with mordred, sound the trumpet and fall on! for he had no confidence in mordred. mordred had given a similar order to his people. well, by and by an adder bit a knight's heel; the knight forgot all about the order, and made a slash at the adder with his sword. inside of half a minute those two prodigious hosts came together with a crash! they butchered away all day. then the king -however, we have started something fresh since you left -our paper has." "no? what is that?" "war correspondence!" "why, that's good." "yes, the paper was booming right along, for the interdict made no impression, got no grip, while the war lasted. i had war correspondents with both armies. i will finish that battle by reading you what one of the boys says: then the king looked about him, and then was he ware of all his host and of all his good knights were left no more on live but two knights, that was sir lucan de butlere, and his brother sir bedivere: and they were full sore wounded. jesu mercy, said the king, where are all my noble knights becomen? alas that ever i should see this doleful day. for now, said arthur, i am come to mine end. but would to god that i wist where were that traitor sir mordred, that hath caused all this mischief. then was king arthur ware where sir mordred leaned upon his sword among a great heap of dead men. now give me my spear, said arthur unto sir lucan, for yonder i have espied the traitor that all this woe hath wrought. sir, let him be, said sir lucan, for he is unhappy; and if ye pass this unhappy day, ye shall be right well revenged upon him. good lord, remember ye of your night's dream, and what the spirit of sir gawaine told you this night, yet god of his great goodness hath preserved you hitherto. therefore, for god's sake, my lord, leave off by this. for blessed be god ye have won the field: for here we be three on live, and with sir mordred is none on live. and if ye leave off now, this wicked day of destiny is past. tide me death, betide me life, saith the king, now i see him yonder alone, he shall never escape mine hands, for at a better avail shall i never have him. god speed you well, said sir bedivere. then the king gat his spear in both his hands, and ran toward sir mordred crying, traitor, now is thy death day come. and when sir mordred heard sir arthur, he ran until him with his sword drawn in his hand. and then king arthur smote sir mordred under the shield, with a foin of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom. and when sir mordred felt that he had his death's wound, he thrust himself, with the might that he had, up to the butt of king arthur's spear. and right so he smote his father arthur with his sword holden in both his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain-pan, and therewithal sir mordred fell stark dead to the earth. and the noble arthur fell in a swoon to the earth, and there he swooned oft-times "that is a good piece of war correspondence, clarence; you are a first-rate newspaper man. well -is the king all right?" did he get well?" "poor soul, no. he is dead." i was utterly stunned; it had not seemed to me that any wound could be mortal to him. "and the queen, clarence?" "she is a nun, in almesbury." "what changes! and in such a short while. it is inconceivable. what next, i wonder?" "i can tell you what next." "well?" "stake our lives and stand by them!" "what do you mean by that?" "the church is master now. the interdict included you with mordred; it is not to be removed while you remain alive. the clans are gathering. the church has gathered all the knights that are left alive, and as soon as you are discovered we shall have business on our hands." "stuff! with our deadly scientific war-material; with our hosts of trained --" "save your breath -we haven't sixty faithful left!" "what are you saying? our schools, our colleges, our vast workshops, our --" "when those knights come, those establishments will empty themselves and go over to the enemy. did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people?" "i certainly did think it." "well, then, you may unthink it. they stood every strain easily -until the interdict. since then, they merely put on a bold outside -at heart they are quaking. make up your mind to it -when the armies come, the mask will fall." "it's hard news. we are lost. they will turn our own science against us." "no they won't." "why?" "because i and a handful of the faithful have blocked that game. i'll tell you what i've done, and what moved me to it. smart as you are, the church was smarter. it was the church that sent you cruising -through her servants, the doctors." "clarence!" "it is the truth. i know it. every officer of your ship was the church's picked servant, and so was every man of the crew." "oh, come!" "it is just as i tell you. i did not find out these things at once, but i found them out finally. did you send me verbal information, by the commander of the ship, to the effect that upon his return to you, with supplies, you were going to leave cadiz --" "cadiz! i haven't been at cadiz at all!" "-going to leave cadiz and cruise in distant seas indefinitely, for the health of your family? did you send me that word?" "of course not. i would have written, wouldn't i?" "naturally. i was troubled and suspicious. when the commander sailed again i managed to ship a spy with him. i have never heard of vessel or spy since. i gave myself two weeks to hear from you in. then i resolved to send a ship to cadiz. there was a reason why i didn't." "what was that?" "our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared! also, as suddenly and as mysteriously, the railway and telegraph and telephone service ceased, the men all deserted, poles were cut down, the church laid a ban upon the electric light! i had to be up and doing -and straight off. your life was safe -nobody in these kingdoms but merlin would venture to touch such a magician as you without ten thousand men at his back -i had nothing to think of but how to put preparations in the best trim against your coming. i felt safe myself -nobody would be anxious to touch a pet of yours. so this is what i did. from our various works i selected all the men -boys i mean -whose faithfulness under whatsoever pressure i could swear to, and i called them together secretly and gave them their instructions. there are fifty-two of them; none younger than fourteen, and none above seventeen years old." "why did you select boys?" "because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstition and reared in it. it is in their blood and bones. we imagined we had educated it out of them; they thought so, too; the interdict woke them up like a thunderclap! it revealed them to themselves, and it revealed them to me, too. with boys it was different. such as have been under our training from seven to ten years have had no acquaintance with the church's terrors, and it was among these that i found my fifty-two. as a next move, i paid a private visit to that old cave of merlin's -not the small one -the big one --" "yes, the one where we secretly established our first great electric plant when i was projecting a miracle." "just so. and as that miracle hadn't become necessary then, i thought it might be a good idea to utilize the plant now. i've provisioned the cave for a siege --" "a good idea, a first-rate idea." "i think so. i placed four of my boys there as a guard -inside, and out of sight. nobody was to be hurt -while outside; but any attempt to enter -well, we said just let anybody try it! then i went out into the hills and uncovered and cut the secret wires which connected your bedroom with the wires that go to the dynamite deposits under all our vast factories, mills, workshops, magazines, etc., and about midnight i and my boys turned out and connected that wire with the cave, and nobody but you and i suspects where the other end of it goes to. we laid it under ground, of course, and it was all finished in a couple of hours or so. we sha'n't have to leave our fortress now when we want to blow up our civilization." "it was the right move -and the natural one; military necessity, in the changed condition of things. well, what changes have come! we expected to be besieged in the palace some time or other, but -however, go on." "next, we built a wire fence." "wire fence?" "yes. you dropped the hint of it yourself, two or three years ago." "oh, i remember -the time the church tried her strength against us the first time, and presently thought it wise to wait for a hopefuler season. well, how have you arranged the fence?" "i start twelve immensely strong wires -naked, not insulated -from a big dynamo in the cave -dynamo with no brushes except a positive and a negative one --" "yes, that's right." "the wires go out from the cave and fence in a circle of level ground a hundred yards in diameter; they make twelve independent fences, ten feet apart -that is to say, twelve circles within circles -and their ends come into the cave again." "right; go on." "the fences are fastened to heavy oaken posts only three feet apart, and these posts are sunk five feet in the ground." "that is good and strong." "yes. the wires have no ground-connection outside of the cave. they go out from the positive brush of the dynamo; there is a ground-connection through the negative brush; the other ends of the wire return to the cave, and each is grounded independently." "nono, that won't do!" "why?" "it's too expensive -uses up force for nothing. you don't want any ground-connection except the one through the negative brush. the other end of every wire must be brought back into the cave and fastened independently, and without any ground-connection. now, then, observe the economy of it. a cavalry charge hurls itself against the fence; you are using no power, you are spending no money, for there is only one ground-connection till those horses come against the wire; the moment they touch it they form a connection with the negative brush through the ground, and drop dead. don't you see? -you are using no energy until it is needed; your lightning is there, and ready, like the load in a gun; but it isn't costing you a cent till you touch it off. oh, yes, the single ground-connection --" "of course! i don't know how i overlooked that. it's not only cheaper, but it's more effectual than the other way, for if wires break or get tangled, no harm is done. "no, especially if we have a tell-tale in the cave and disconnect the broken wire. well, go on. the gatlings?" "yes -that's arranged. in the center of the inner circle, on a spacious platform six feet high, i've grouped a battery of thirteen gatling guns, and provided plenty of ammunition." "that's it. they command every approach, and when the church's knights arrive, there's going to be music. the brow of the precipice over the cave --" "i've got a wire fence there, and a gatling. they won't drop any rocks down on us." "well, and the glass-cylinder dynamite torpedoes?" "that's attended to. it's the prettiest garden that was ever planted. it's a belt forty feet wide, and goes around the outer fence -distance between it and the fence one hundred yards -kind of neutral ground that space is. there isn't a single square yard of that whole belt but is equipped with a torpedo. we laid them on the surface of the ground, and sprinkled a layer of sand over them. it's an innocent looking garden, but you let a man start in to hoe it once, and you'll see." "you tested the torpedoes?" "well, i was going to, but --" "but what? why, it's an immense oversight not to apply a --" "test? yes, i know; but they're all right; i laid a few in the public road beyond our lines and they've been tested." "oh, that alters the case. who did it?" "a church committee." "how kind!" "yes. they came to command us to make submission . you see they didn't really come to test the torpedoes; that was merely an incident." "did the committee make a report?" "yes, they made one. you could have heard it a mile." "unanimous?" "that was the nature of it. after that i put up some signs, for the protection of future committees, and we have had no intruders since." "clarence, you've done a world of work, and done it perfectly." "we had plenty of time for it; there wasn't any occasion for hurry." we sat silent awhile, thinking. then my mind was made up, and i said: "yes, everything is ready; everything is shipshape, no detail is wanting. i know what to do now." "so do i; sit down and wait." "no, sir! rise up and strike!" "do you mean it?" "yes, indeed! the defensive isn't in my line, and the offensive is. that is, when i hold a fair hand -two-thirds as good a hand as the enemy. oh, yes, we'll rise up and strike; that's our game." " a hundred to one you are right. when does the performance begin?" "now! we'll proclaim the republic." "well, that will precipitate things, sure enough!" "it will make them buzz, i tell you! england will be a hornets' nest before noon to-morrow, if the church's hand hasn't lost its cunning -and we know it hasn't. now you write and i'll dictate thus: "proclamation -- "be it known unto all. whereas the king having died and left no heir, it becomes my duty to continue the executive authority vested in me, until a government shall have been created and set in motion. the monarchy has lapsed, it no longer exists. by consequence, all political power has reverted to its original source, the people of the nation. with the monarchy, its several adjuncts died also; wherefore there is no longer a nobility, no longer a privileged class, no longer an established church; all men are become exactly equal; they are upon one common level, and religion is free. a republic is hereby proclaimed, as being the natural estate of a nation when other authority has ceased. it is the duty of the british people to meet together immediately, and by their votes elect representatives and deliver into their hands the government." i signed it "the boss," and dated it from merlin's cave. clarence said -"why, that tells where we are, and invites them to call right away." "that is the idea. we strike -by the proclamation -then it's their innings. now have the thing set up and printed and posted, right off; that is, give the order; then, if you've got a couple of bicycles handy at the foot of the hill, ho for merlin's cave!" "i shall be ready in ten minutes. what a cyclone there is going to be to-morrow when this piece of paper gets to work!...... it's a pleasant old palace, this is; i wonder if we shall ever again -but never mind about that." chapter xliii. the battle of the sand belt in merlin's cave -clarence and i and fifty-two fresh, bright, well-educated, clean-minded young british boys. at dawn i sent an order to the factories and to all our great works to stop operations and remove all life to a safe distance, as everything was going to be blown up by secret mines, "and no telling at what moment -therefore, vacate at once." these people knew me, and had confidence in my word. they would clear out without waiting to part their hair, and i could take my own time about dating the explosion. you couldn't hire one of them to go back during the century, if the explosion was still impending. we had a week of waiting. it was not dull for me, because i was writing all the time. during the first three days, i finished turning my old diary into this narrative form; it only required a chapter or so to bring it down to date. the rest of the week i took up in writing letters to my wife. it was always my habit to write to sandy every day, whenever we were separate, and now i kept up the habit for love of it, and of her, though i couldn't do anything with the letters, of course, after i had written them. but it put in the time, you see, and was almost like talking; it was almost as if i was saying, "sandy, if you and hello-central were here in the cave, instead of only your photographs, what good times we could have!" and then, you know, i could imagine the baby googooing something out in reply, with its fists in its mouth and itself stretched across its mother's lap on its back, and she a-laughing and admiring and worshiping, and now and then tickling under the baby's chin to set it cackling, and then maybe throwing in a word of answer to me herself -and so on and so on -well, don't you know, i could sit there in the cave with my pen, and keep it up, that way, by the hour with them. why, it was almost like having us all together again. i had spies out every night, of course, to get news. every report made things look more and more impressive. the hosts were gathering, gathering; down all the roads and paths of england the knights were riding, and priests rode with them, to hearten these original crusaders, this being the church's war. all the nobilities, big and little, were on their way, and all the gentry. this was all as was expected. we should thin out this sort of folk to such a degree that the people would have nothing to do but just step to the front with their republic and -ah, what a donkey i was! toward the end of the week i began to get this large and disenchanting fact through my head: that the mass of the nation had swung their caps and shouted for the republic for about one day, and there an end! the church, the nobles, and the gentry then turned one grand, alldisapproving frown upon them and shriveled them into sheep! from that moment the sheep had begun to gather to the fold -that is to say, the camps -and offer their valueless lives and their valuable wool to the "righteous cause." why, even the very men who had lately been slaves were in the "righteous cause," and glorifying it, praying for it, sentimentally slabbering over it, just like all the other commoners. imagine such human muck as this; conceive of this folly! yes, it was now "death to the republic!" everywhere -not a dissenting voice. all england was marching against us! truly, this was more than i had bargained for. i watched my fifty-two boys narrowly; watched their faces, their walk, their unconscious attitudes: for all these are a language -a language given us purposely that it may betray us in times of emergency, when we have secrets which we want to keep. i knew that that thought would keep saying itself over and over again in their minds and hearts, all england is marching against us! and ever more strenuously imploring attention with each repetition, ever more sharply realizing itself to their imaginations, until even in their sleep they would find no rest from it, but hear the vague and flitting creatures of the dreams say, all england -all england! -is marching against you! i knew all this would happen; i knew that ultimately the pressure would become so great that it would compel utterance; therefore, i must be ready with an answer at that time -an answer well chosen and tranquilizing. i was right. the time came. they had to speak. poor lads, it was pitiful to see, they were so pale, so worn, so troubled. at first their spokesman could hardly find voice or words; but he presently got both. this is what he said -and he put it in the neat modern english taught him in my schools: "we have tried to forget what we are -english boys! we have tried to put reason before sentiment, duty before love; our minds approve, but our hearts reproach us. while apparently it was only the nobility, only the gentry, only the twenty-five or thirty thousand knights left alive out of the late wars, we were of one mind, and undisturbed by any troubling doubt; each and every one of these fifty-two lads who stand here before you, said, 'they have chosen -it is their affair.' but think! -the matter is altered -all england is marching against us! oh, sir, consider! -reflect! -these people are our people, they are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, we love them -do not ask us to destroy our nation!" well, it shows the value of looking ahead, and being ready for a thing when it happens. if i hadn't foreseen this thing and been fixed, that boy would have had me! -i couldn't have said a word. but i was fixed. i said: "my boys, your hearts are in the right place, you have thought the worthy thought, you have done the worthy thing. you are english boys, you will remain english boys, and you will keep that name unsmirched. give yourselves no further concern, let your minds be at peace. consider this: while all england is marching against us, who is in the van? who, by the commonest rules of war, will march in the front? answer me." "the mounted host of mailed knights." "true. they are 30,000 strong. acres deep they will march. now, observe: none but they will ever strike the sand-belt! then there will be an episode! immediately after, the civilian multitude in the rear will retire, to meet business engagements elsewhere. none but nobles and gentry are knights, and none but these will remain to dance to our music after that episode. it is absolutely true that we shall have to fight nobody but these thirty thousand knights. now speak, and it shall be as you decide. shall we avoid the battle, retire from the field?" "no!!!" the shout was unanimous and hearty. "are you -are you -well, afraid of these thirty thousand knights?" that joke brought out a good laugh, the boys' troubles vanished away, and they went gaily to their posts. ah, they were a darling fifty-two! as pretty as girls, too. i was ready for the enemy now. let the approaching big day come along -it would find us on deck. the big day arrived on time. at dawn the sentry on watch in the corral came into the cave and reported a moving black mass under the horizon, and a faint sound which he thought to be military music. breakfast was just ready; we sat down and ate it. this over, i made the boys a little speech, and then sent out a detail to man the battery, with clarence in command of it. the sun rose presently and sent its unobstructed splendors over the land, and we saw a prodigious host moving slowly toward us, with the steady drift and aligned front of a wave of the sea. nearer and nearer it came, and more and more sublimely imposing became its aspect; yes, all england was there, apparently. soon we could see the innumerable banners fluttering, and then the sun struck the sea of armor and set it all aflash. yes, it was a fine sight; i hadn't ever seen anything to beat it. at last we could make out details. all the front ranks, no telling how many acres deep, were horsemen -plumed knights in armor. suddenly we heard the blare of trumpets; the slow walk burst into a gallop, and then -well, it was wonderful to see! down swept that vast horse-shoe wave -it approached the sand-belt -my breath stood still; nearer, nearer -the strip of green turf beyond the yellow belt grew narrow -narrower still -became a mere ribbon in front of the horses -then disappeared under their hoofs. great scott! why, the whole front of that host shot into the sky with a thunder-crash, and became a whirling tempest of rags and fragments; and along the ground lay a thick wall of smoke that hid what was left of the multitude from our sight. time for the second step in the plan of campaign! i touched a button, and shook the bones of england loose from her spine! in that explosion all our noble civilization-factories went up in the air and disappeared from the earth. it was a pity, but it was necessary. we could not afford to let the enemy turn our own weapons against us. now ensued one of the dullest quarter-hours i had ever endured. we waited in a silent solitude enclosed by our circles of wire, and by a circle of heavy smoke outside of these. we couldn't see over the wall of smoke, and we couldn't see through it. but at last it began to shred away lazily, and by the end of another quarter-hour the land was clear and our curiosity was enabled to satisfy itself. no living creature was in sight! we now perceived that additions had been made to our defenses. the dynamite had dug a ditch more than a hundred feet wide, all around us, and cast up an embankment some twenty-five feet high on both borders of it. as to destruction of life, it was amazing. moreover, it was beyond estimate. of course, we could not count the dead, because they did not exist as individuals, but merely as homogeneous protoplasm, with alloys of iron and buttons. no life was in sight, but necessarily there must have been some wounded in the rear ranks, who were carried off the field under cover of the wall of smoke; there would be sickness among the others -there always is, after an episode like that. but there would be no reinforcements; this was the last stand of the chivalry of england; it was all that was left of the order, after the recent annihilating wars. so i felt quite safe in believing that the utmost force that could for the future be brought against us would be but small; that is, of knights. i therefore issued a congratulatory proclamation to my army in these words: soldiers, champions of human liberty and equality: your general congratulates you! in the pride of his strength and the vanity of his renown, an arrogant enemy came against you. you were ready. the conflict was brief; on your side, glorious. this mighty victory, having been achieved utterly without loss, stands without example in history. so long as the planets shall continue to move in their orbits, the battle of the sand-belt will not perish out of the memories of men. the boss. i read it well, and the applause i got was very gratifying to me. i then wound up with these remarks: "the war with the english nation, as a nation, is at an end. the nation has retired from the field and the war. before it can be persuaded to return, war will have ceased. this campaign is the only one that is going to be fought. it will be brief -the briefest in history. also the most destructive to life, considered from the standpoint of proportion of casualties to numbers engaged. we are done with the nation; henceforth we deal only with the knights. english knights can be killed, but they cannot be conquered. we know what is before us. while one of these men remains alive, our task is not finished, the war is not ended. we will kill them all." [loud and long continued applause.] i picketed the great embankments thrown up around our lines by the dynamite explosion -merely a lookout of a couple of boys to announce the enemy when he should appear again. next, i sent an engineer and forty men to a point just beyond our lines on the south, to turn a mountain brook that was there, and bring it within our lines and under our command, arranging it in such a way that i could make instant use of it in an emergency. the forty men were divided into two shifts of twenty each, and were to relieve each other every two hours. in ten hours the work was accomplished. it was nightfall now, and i withdrew my pickets. the one who had had the northern outlook reported a camp in sight, but visible with the glass only. he also reported that a few knights had been feeling their way toward us, and had driven some cattle across our lines, but that the knights themselves had not come very near. that was what i had been expecting. they were feeling us, you see; they wanted to know if we were going to play that red terror on them again. they would grow bolder in the night, perhaps. i believed i knew what project they would attempt, because it was plainly the thing i would attempt myself if i were in their places and as ignorant as they were. i mentioned it to clarence. "i think you are right," said he; "it is the obvious thing for them to try." "well, then," i said, "if they do it they are doomed. "certainly." they won't have the slightest show in the world." "of course they won't." "it's dreadful, clarence. it seems an awful pity." the thing disturbed me so that i couldn't get any peace of mind.for thinking of it and worrying over it. so, at last, to quiet my conscience, i framed this message to the knights: to the honorable the commander of the insurgent chivalry of england: you fight in vain. we know your strength -if one may call it by that name. we know that at the utmost you cannot bring against us above five and twenty thousand knights. therefore, you have no chance -none whatever. reflect: we are well equipped, well fortified, we number 54. fifty-four what? men? no, minds -the capablest in the world; a force against which mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail against the granite barriers of england. be advised. we offer you your lives; for the sake of your families, do not reject the gift. we offer you this chance, and it is the last: throw down your arms; surrender unconditionally to the republic, and all will be forgiven. (signed) the boss. i read it to clarence, and said i proposed to send it by a flag of truce. he laughed the sarcastic laugh he was born with, and said: "somehow it seems impossible for you to ever fully realize what these nobilities are. now let us save a little time and trouble. consider me the commander of the knights yonder. now, then, you are the flag of truce; approach and deliver me your message, and i will give you your answer." i humored the idea. i came forward under an imaginary guard of the enemy's soldiers, produced my paper, and read it through. for answer, clarence struck the paper out of my hand, pursed up a scornful lip and said with lofty disdain: "dismember me this animal, and return him in a basket to the base-born knave who sent him; other answer have i none!" how empty is theory in presence of fact! and this was just fact, and nothing else. it was the thing that would have happened, there was no getting around that. i tore up the paper and granted my mistimed sentimentalities a permanent rest. then, to business. i tested the electric signals from the gatling platform to the cave, and made sure that they were all right; i tested and retested those which commanded the fences -these were signals whereby i could break and renew the electric current in each fence independently of the others at will. i placed the brook-connection under the guard and authority of three of my best boys, who would alternate in twohour watches all night and promptly obey my signal, if i should have occasion to give it -three revolvershots in quick succession. sentry-duty was discarded for the night, and the corral left empty of life; i ordered that quiet be maintained in the cave, and the electric lights turned down to a glimmer. as soon as it was good and dark, i shut off the current from all the fences, and then groped my way out to the embankment bordering our side of the great dynamite ditch. i crept to the top of it and lay there on the slant of the muck to watch. but it was too dark to see anything. as for sounds, there were none. the stillness was deathlike. true, there were the usual night-sounds of the country -the whir of nightbirds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine -but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain. i presently gave up looking, the night shut down so black, but i kept my ears strained to catch the least suspicious sound, for i judged i had only to wait, and i shouldn't be disappointed. however, i had to wait a long time. at last i caught what you may call in distinct glimpses of soundñdulled metallic sound. i pricked up my ears, then, and held my breath, for this was the sort of thing i had been waiting for. this sound thickened, and approached -from toward the north. presently, i heard it at my own level -the ridge-top of the opposite embankment, a hundred feet or more away. then i seemed to see a row of black dots appear along that ridge -human heads? i couldn't tell; it mightn't be anything at all; you can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. however, the question was soon settled. i heard that metallic noise descending into the great ditch. it augmented fast, it spread all along, and it unmistakably furnished me this fact: an armed host was taking up its quarters in the ditch. yes, these people were arranging a little surprise party for us. we could expect entertainment about dawn, possibly earlier. i groped my way back to the corral now; i had seen enough. i went to the platform and signaled to turn the current on to the two inner fences. then i went into the cave, and found everything satisfactory there -nobody awake but the working-watch. i woke clarence and told him the great ditch was filling up with men, and that i believed all the knights were coming for us in a body. it was my notion that as soon as dawn approached we could expect the ditch's ambuscaded thousands to swarm up over the embankment and make an assault, and be followed immediately by the rest of their army. clarence said: "they will be wanting to send a scout or two in the dark to make preliminary observations. why not take the lightning off the outer fences, and give them a chance?" "i've already done it, clarence. did you ever know me to be inhospitable?" "no, you are a good heart. i want to go and --" "be a reception committee? i will go, too." we crossed the corral and lay down together between the two inside fences. even the dim light of the cave had disordered our eyesight somewhat, but the focus straightway began to regulate itself and soon it was adjusted for present circumstances. we had had to feel our way before, but we could make out to see the fence posts now. we started a whispered conversation, but suddenly clarence broke off and said: "what is that?" "what is what?" "that thing yonder." "what thing -where?" "there beyond you a little piece -dark something -a dull shape of some kind -against the second fence." i gazed and he gazed. i said: "could it be a man, clarence?" "no, i think not. if you notice, it looks a lit -why, it is a man! -leaning on the fence." "i certainly believe it is; let us go and see." we crept along on our hands and knees until we were pretty close, and then looked up. yes, it was a man -a dim great figure in armor, standing erect, with both hands on the upper wire -and, of course, there was a smell of burning flesh. poor fellow, dead as a door-nail, and never knew what hurt him. he stood there like a statue -no motion about him, except that his plumes swished about a little in the night wind. we rose up and looked in through the bars of his visor, but couldn't make out whether we knew him or not -features too dim and shadowed. we heard muffled sounds approaching, and we sank down to the ground where we were. we made out another knight vaguely; he was coming very stealthily, and feeling his way. he was near enough now for us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and step under it and over the lower one. now he arrived at the first knight -and started slightly when he discovered him. he stood a moment -no doubt wondering why the other one didn't move on; then he said, in a low voice, "why dreamest thou here, good sir mar --" then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder -and just uttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead. killed by a dead man, you see -killed by a dead friend, in fact. there was something awful about it. these early birds came scattering along after each other, about one every five minutes in our vicinity, during half an hour. they brought no armor of offense but their swords; as a rule, they carried the sword ready in the hand, and put it forward and found the wires with it. we would now and then see a blue spark when the knight that caused it was so far away as to be invisible to us; but we knew what had happened, all the same; poor fellow, he had touched a charged wire with his sword and been elected. we had brief intervals of grim stillness, interrupted with piteous regularity by the clash made by the falling of an iron-clad; and this sort of thing was going on, right along, and was very creepy there in the dark and lonesomeness. we concluded to make a tour between the inner fences. we elected to walk upright, for convenience's sake; we argued that if discerned, we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any case we should be out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seem to have any spears along. well, it was a curious trip. everywhere dead men were lying outside the second fence -not plainly visible, but still visible; and we counted fifteen of those pathetic statues -dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire. one thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated: our current was so tremendous that it killed before the victim could cry out. pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next moment we guessed what it was. it was a surprise in force coming! whispered clarence to go and wake the army, and notify it to wait in silence in the cave for further orders. he was soon back, and we stood by the inner fence and watched the silent lightning do its awful work upon that swarming host. one could make out but little of detail; but he could note that a black mass was piling itself up beyond the second fence. that swelling bulk was dead men! our camp was enclosed with a solid wall of the dead -a bulwark, a breastwork, of corpses, you may say. one terrible thing about this thing was the absence of human voices; there were no cheers, no war cries; being intent upon a surprise, these men moved as noiselessly as they could; and always when the front rank was near enough to their goal to make it proper for them to begin to get a shout ready, of course they struck the fatal line and went down without testifying. i sent a current through the third fence now; and almost immediately through the fourth and fifth, so quickly were the gaps filled up. i believed the time was come now for my climax; i believed that that whole army was in our trap. anyway, it was high time to find out. so i touched a button and set fifty electric suns aflame on the top of our precipice. land, what a sight! we were enclosed in three walls of dead men! all the other fences were pretty nearly filled with the living, who were stealthily working their way forward through the wires. the sudden glare paralyzed this host, petrified them, you may say, with astonishment; there was just one instant for me to utilize their immobility in, and i didn't lose the chance. you see, in another instant they would have recovered their faculties, then they'd have burst into a cheer and made a rush, and my wires would have gone down before it; but that lost instant lost them their opportunity forever; while even that slight fragment of time was still unspent, i shot the current through all the fences and struck the whole host dead in their tracks! there was a groan you could hear! it voiced the death-pang of eleven thousand men. it swelled out on the night with awful pathos. a glance showed that the rest of the enemy -perhaps ten thousand strong -were between us and the encircling ditch, and pressing forward to the assault. consequently we had them all! and had them past help. time for the last act of the tragedy. i fired the three appointed revolver shots -which meant: "turn on the water!" there was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountain brook was raging through the big ditch and creating a river a hundred feet wide and twentyfive deep. "stand to your guns, men! open fire!" the thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand. they halted, they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. a full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; the three-fourths reached it and plunged over -to death by drowning. within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were masters of england. twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us. but how treacherous is fortune! in a little while -say an hour -happened a thing, by my own fault, which -but i have no heart to write that. let the record end here. chapter xliv. a postscript by clarence i, clarence, must write it for him. he proposed that we two go out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded. i was strenuous against the project. i said that if there were many, we could do but little for them; and it would not be wise for us to trust ourselves among them, anyway. but he could seldom be turned from a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric current from the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosing ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field. the first wounded mall who appealed for help was sitting with his back against a dead comrade. when the boss bent over him and spoke to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him. that knight was sir meliagraunce, as i found out by tearing off his helmet. he will not ask for help any more. we carried the boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was not very serious, the best care we could. in this service we had the help of merlin, though we did not know it. he was disguised as a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife. in this disguise, with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, he had appeared a few days after the boss was hurt and offered to cook for us, saying her people had gone off to join certain new camps which the enemy were forming, and that she was starving. the boss had been getting along very well, and had amused himself with finishing up his record. we were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. we were in a trap, you see -a trap of our own making. if we stayed where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our defenses, we should no longer be invincible. we had conquered; in turn we were conquered. the boss recognized this; we all recognized it. if we could go to one of those new camps and patch up some kind of terms with the enemy -yes, but the boss could not go, and neither could i, for i was among the first that were made sick by the poisonous air bred by those dead thousands. others were taken down, and still others. to-morrow -to-morrow. it is here. and with it the end. about midnight i awoke, and saw that hag making curious passes in the air about the boss's head and face, and wondered what it meant. everybody but the dynamo-watch lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound. the woman ceased from her mysterious foolery, and started tip-toeing toward the door. i called out: "stop! what have you been doing?" she halted, and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction: "ye were conquerors; ye are conquered! these others are perishing -you also. ye shall all die in this place -every one -except him. he sleepeth now -and shall sleep thirteen centuries. i am merlin!" then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeled about like a drunken man, and presently fetched up against one of our wires. his mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is still laughing. i suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh until the corpse turns to dust. the boss has never stirred -sleeps like a stone. if he does not wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. as for the rest of us -well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever escapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and loyally hide this manuscript with the boss, our dear good chief, whose property it is, be he alive or dead. the end of the manuscript final p.s. by m.t. the dawn was come when i laid the manuscript aside. the rain had almost ceased, the world was gray and sad, the exhausted storm was sighing and sobbing itself to rest. i went to the stranger's room, and listened at his door, which was slightly ajar. i could hear his voice, and so i knocked. there was no answer, but i still heard the voice. i peeped in. the man lay on his back in bed, talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with his arms, which he thrashed about, restlessly, as sick people do in delirium. i slipped in softly and bent over him. his mutterings and ejaculations went on. i spoke -merely a word, to call his attention. his glassy eyes and his ashy face were alight in an instant with pleasure, gratitude, gladness, welcome: "oh, sandy, you are come at last -how i have longed for you! sit by me -do not leave me -never leave me again, sandy, never again. where is your hand? -give it me, dear, let me hold it -there -now all is well, all is peace, and i am happy again -we are happy again, isn't it so, sandy? you are so dim, so vague, you are but a mist, a cloud, but you are here, and that is blessedness sufficient; and i have your hand; don't take it away -it is for only a little while, i shall not require it long...... was that the child?...... hello-central!...... she doesn't answer. asleep, perhaps? bring her when she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair, and tell her good-bye...... sandy! yes, you are there. i lost myself a moment, and i thought you were gone...... have i been sick long? it must be so; it seems months to me. and such dreams! such strange and awful dreams, sandy! dreams that were as real as reality -delirium, of course, but so real! why, i thought the king was dead, i thought you were in gaul and couldn't get home, i thought there was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzy of these dreams, i thought that clarence and i and a handful of my cadets fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of england! but even that was not the strangest. i seemed to be a creature out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even that was as real as the rest! yes, i seemed to have flown back out of that age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set down, a stranger and forlorn in that strange england, with an abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you! between me and my home and my friends! between me and all that is dear to me, all that could make life worth the living! it was awful -awfuler than you can ever imagine, sandy. ah, watch by me, sandy -stay by me every moment -don't let me go out of my mind again; death is nothing, let it come, but not with those dreams, not with the torture of those hideous dreams -i cannot endure that again...... sandy?......" he lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time he lay silent, and apparently sinking away toward death. presently his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign i knew that his end was at hand with the first suggestion of the death-rattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemed to listen: then he said: "a bugle?...... it is the king! the drawbridge, there! man the battlements! -turn out the --" he was getting up his last "effect"; but he never finished it. the end . [pg/etext94/tramp10.txt] a tramp abroad, by mark twain [pseudonym of samuel clemems] march, 1994 [etext #119] this text is in the public domain. a tramp abroad by mark twain (samuel l. clemens) first published in 1880 * * * * * * chapter i [the knighted knave of bergen] one day it occurred to me that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake a journey through europe on foot. after much thought, i decided that i was a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle. so i determined to do it. this was in march, 1878. i looked about me for the right sort of person to accompany me in the capacity of agent, and finally hired a mr. harris for this service. it was also my purpose to study art while in europe. mr. harris was in sympathy with me in this. he was as much of an enthusiast in art as i was, and not less anxious to learn to paint. i desired to learn the german language; so did harris. toward the middle of april we sailed in the holsatia, captain brandt, and had a very peasant trip, indeed. after a brief rest at hamburg, we made preparations for a long pedestrian trip southward in the soft spring weather, but at the last moment we changed the program, for private reasons, and took the express-train. we made a short halt at frankfort-on-the-main, and found it an interesting city. i would have liked to visit the birthplace of gutenburg, but it could not be done, as no memorandum of the site of the house has been kept. so we spent an hour in the goethe mansion instead. the city permits this house to belong to private parties, instead of gracing and dignifying herself with the honor of possessing and protecting it. frankfort is one of the sixteen cities which have the distinction of being the place where the following incident occurred. charlemagne, while chasing the saxons (as he said), or being chased by them (as they said), arrived at the bank of the river at dawn, in a fog. the enemy were either before him or behind him; but in any case he wanted to get across, very badly. he would have given anything for a guide, but none was to be had. presently he saw a deer, followed by her young, approach the water. he watched her, judging that she would seek a ford, and he was right. she waded over, and the army followed. so a great frankish victory or defeat was gained or avoided; and in order to commemorate the episode, charlemagne commanded a city to be built there, which he named frankfort--the ford of the franks. none of the other cities where this event happened were named for it. this is good evidence that frankfort was the first place it occurred at. frankfort has another distinction--it is the birthplace of the german alphabet; or at least of the german word for alphabet --buchstaben. they say that the first movable types were made on birch sticks--buchstabe--hence the name. i was taught a lesson in political economy in frankfort. i had brought from home a box containing a thousand very cheap cigars. by way of experiment, i stepped into a little shop in a queer old back street, took four gaily decorated boxes of wax matches and three cigars, and laid down a silver piece worth 48 cents. the man gave me 43 cents change. in frankfort everybody wears clean clothes, and i think we noticed that this strange thing was the case in hamburg, too, and in the villages along the road. even in the narrowest and poorest and most ancient quarters of frankfort neat and clean clothes were the rule. the little children of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into a body's lap. and as for the uniforms of the soldiers, they were newness and brightness carried to perfection. one could never detect a smirch or a grain of dust upon them. the street-car conductors and drivers wore pretty uniforms which seemed to be just out of the bandbox, and their manners were as fine as their clothes. in one of the shops i had the luck to stumble upon a book which has charmed me nearly to death. it is entitled the legends of the rhine from basle to rotterdam, by f. j. kiefer; translated by l. w. garnham, b.a. all tourists mention the rhine legends--in that sort of way which quietly pretends that the mentioner has been familiar with them all his life, and that the reader cannot possibly be ignorant of them--but no tourist ever tells them. so this little book fed me in a very hungry place; and i, in my turn, intend to feed my reader, with one or two little lunches from the same larder. i shall not mar garnharn's translation by meddling with its english; for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint fashion of building english sentences on the german plan-and punctuating them accordingly to no plan at all. in the chapter devoted to "legends of frankfort," i find the following: "the knave of bergen" "in frankfort at the romer was a great mask-ball, at the coronation festival, and in the illuminated saloon, the clanging music invited to dance, and splendidly appeared the rich toilets and charms of the ladies, and the festively costumed princes and knights. all seemed pleasure, joy, and roguish gaiety, only one of the numerous guests had a gloomy exterior; but exactly the black armor in which he walked about excited general attention, and his tall figure, as well as the noble propriety of his movements, attracted especially the regards of the ladies. who the knight was? nobody could guess, for his vizier was well closed, and nothing made him recognizable. proud and yet modest he advanced to the empress; bowed on one knee before her seat, and begged for the favor of a waltz with the queen of the festival. and she allowed his request. with light and graceful steps he danced through the long saloon, with the sovereign who thought never to have found a more dexterous and excellent dancer. but also by the grace of his manner, and fine conversation he knew to win the queen, and she graciously accorded him a second dance for which he begged, a third, and a fourth, as well as others were not refused him. how all regarded the happy dancer, how many envied him the high favor; how increased curiosity, who the masked knight could be. "also the emperor became more and more excited with curiosity, and with great suspense one awaited the hour, when according to mask-law, each masked guest must make himself known. this moment came, but although all other unmasked; the secret knight still refused to allow his features to be seen, till at last the queen driven by curiosity, and vexed at the obstinate refusal; commanded him to open his vizier. he opened it, and none of the high ladies and knights knew him. but from the crowded spectators, 2 officials advanced, who recognized the black dancer, and horror and terror spread in the saloon, as they said who the supposed knight was. it was the executioner of bergen. but glowing with rage, the king commanded to seize the criminal and lead him to death, who had ventured to dance, with the queen; so disgraced the empress, and insulted the crown. the culpable threw himself at the emperor, and said-"'indeed i have heavily sinned against all noble guests assembled here, but most heavily against you my sovereign and my queen. the queen is insulted by my haughtiness equal to treason, but no punishment even blood, will not be able to wash out the disgrace, which you have suffered by me. therefore oh king! allow me to propose a remedy, to efface the shame, and to render it as if not done. draw your sword and knight me, then i will throw down my gauntlet, to everyone who dares to speak disrespectfully of my king.' "the emperor was surprised at this bold proposal, however it appeared the wisest to him; 'you are a knave he replied after a moment's consideration, however your advice is good, and displays prudence, as your offense shows adventurous courage. well then, and gave him the knight-stroke so i raise you to nobility, who begged for grace for your offense now kneels before me, rise as knight; knavish you have acted, and knave of bergen shall you be called henceforth, and gladly the black knight rose; three cheers were given in honor of the emperor, and loud cries of joy testified the approbation with which the queen danced still once with the knave of bergen." chapter ii heidelberg [landing a monarch at heidelberg] we stopped at a hotel by the railway-station. next morning, as we sat in my room waiting for breakfast to come up, we got a good deal interested in something which was going on over the way, in front of another hotel. first, the personage who is called the portier (who is not the porter, but is a sort of first-mate of a hotel) [1. see appendix a] appeared at the door in a spick-and-span new blue cloth uniform, decorated with shining brass buttons, and with bands of gold lace around his cap and wristbands; and he wore white gloves, too. he shed an official glance upon the situation, and then began to give orders. two women-servants came out with pails and brooms and brushes, and gave the sidewalk a thorough scrubbing; meanwhile two others scrubbed the four marble steps which led up to the door; beyond these we could see some men-servants taking up the carpet of the grand staircase. this carpet was carried away and the last grain of dust beaten and banged and swept our of it; then brought back and put down again. the brass stair-rods received an exhaustive polishing and were returned to their places. now a troop of servants brought pots and tubs of blooming plants and formed them into a beautiful jungle about the door and the base of the staircase. other servants adorned all the balconies of the various stories with flowers and banners; others ascended to the roof and hoisted a great flag on a staff there. now came some more chamber-maids and retouched the sidewalk, and afterward wiped the marble steps with damp cloths and finished by dusting them off with feather brushes. now a broad black carpet was brought out and laid down the marble steps and out across the sidewalk to the curbstone. the portier cast his eye along it, and found it was not absolutely straight; he commanded it to be straightened; the servants made the effort--made several efforts, in fact--but the portier was not satisfied. he finally had it taken up, and then he put it down himself and got it right. at this stage of the proceedings, a narrow bright red carpet was unrolled and stretched from the top of the marble steps to the curbstone, along the center of the black carpet. this red path cost the portier more trouble than even the black one had done. but he patiently fixed and refixed it until it was exactly right and lay precisely in the middle of the black carpet. in new york these performances would have gathered a mighty crowd of curious and intensely interested spectators; but here it only captured an audience of half a dozen little boys who stood in a row across the pavement, some with their school-knapsacks on their backs and their hands in their pockets, others with arms full of bundles, and all absorbed in the show. occasionally one of them skipped irreverently over the carpet and took up a position on the other side. this always visibly annoyed the portier. now came a waiting interval. the landlord, in plain clothes, and bareheaded, placed himself on the bottom marble step, abreast the portier, who stood on the other end of the same steps; six or eight waiters, gloved, bareheaded, and wearing their whitest linen, their whitest cravats, and their finest swallow-tails, grouped themselves about these chiefs, but leaving the carpetway clear. nobody moved or spoke any more but only waited. in a short time the shrill piping of a coming train was heard, and immediately groups of people began to gather in the street. two or three open carriages arrived, and deposited some maids of honor and some male officials at the hotel. presently another open carriage brought the grand duke of baden, a stately man in uniform, who wore the handsome brass-mounted, steel-spiked helmet of the army on his head. last came the empress of germany and the grand duchess of baden in a closed carriage; these passed through the low-bowing groups of servants and disappeared in the hotel, exhibiting to us only the backs of their heads, and then the show was over. it appears to be as difficult to land a monarch as it is to launch a ship. but as to heidelberg. the weather was growing pretty warm, --very warm, in fact. so we left the valley and took quarters at the schloss hotel, on the hill, above the castle. heidelberg lies at the mouth of a narrow gorge--a gorge the shape of a shepherd's crook; if one looks up it he perceives that it is about straight, for a mile and a half, then makes a sharp curve to the right and disappears. this gorge--along whose bottom pours the swift neckar-is confined between (or cloven through) a couple of long, steep ridges, a thousand feet high and densely wooded clear to their summits, with the exception of one section which has been shaved and put under cultivation. these ridges are chopped off at the mouth of the gorge and form two bold and conspicuous headlands, with heidelberg nestling between them; from their bases spreads away the vast dim expanse of the rhine valley, and into this expanse the neckar goes wandering in shining curves and is presently lost to view. now if one turns and looks up the gorge once more, he will see the schloss hotel on the right perched on a precipice overlooking the neckar--a precipice which is so sumptuously cushioned and draped with foliage that no glimpse of the rock appears. the building seems very airily situated. it has the appearance of being on a shelf half-way up the wooded mountainside; and as it is remote and isolated, and very white, it makes a strong mark against the lofty leafy rampart at its back. this hotel had a feature which was a decided novelty, and one which might be adopted with advantage by any house which is perched in a commanding situation. this feature may be described as a series of glass-enclosed parlors clinging to the outside of the house, one against each and every bed-chamber and drawing-room. they are like long, narrow, high-ceiled bird-cages hung against the building. my room was a corner room, and had two of these things, a north one and a west one. from the north cage one looks up the neckar gorge; from the west one he looks down it. this last affords the most extensive view, and it is one of the loveliest that can be imagined, too. out of a billowy upheaval of vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge ruin of heidelberg castle, [2. see appendix b] with empty window arches, ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers--the lear of inanimate nature--deserted, discrowned, beaten by the storms, but royal still, and beautiful. it is a fine sight to see the evening sunlight suddenly strike the leafy declivity at the castle's base and dash up it and drench it as with a luminous spray, while the adjacent groves are in deep shadow. behind the castle swells a great dome-shaped hill, forest-clad, and beyond that a nobler and loftier one. the castle looks down upon the compact brown-roofed town; and from the town two picturesque old bridges span the river. now the view broadens; through the gateway of the sentinel headlands you gaze out over the wide rhine plain, which stretches away, softly and richly tinted, grows gradually and dreamily indistinct, and finally melts imperceptibly into the remote horizon. i have never enjoyed a view which had such a serene and satisfying charm about it as this one gives. the first night we were there, we went to bed and to sleep early; but i awoke at the end of two or three hours, and lay a comfortable while listening to the soothing patter of the rain against the balcony windows. i took it to be rain, but it turned out to be only the murmur of the restless neckar, tumbling over her dikes and dams far below, in the gorge. i got up and went into the west balcony and saw a wonderful sight. away down on the level under the black mass of the castle, the town lay, stretched along the river, its intricate cobweb of streets jeweled with twinkling lights; there were rows of lights on the bridges; these flung lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows of the arches; and away at the extremity of all this fairy spectacle blinked and glowed a massed multitude of gas-jets which seemed to cover acres of ground; it was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spread out there. i did not know before, that a half-mile of sextuple railway-tracks could be made such an adornment. one thinks heidelberg by day--with its surroundings-is the last possibility of the beautiful; but when he sees heidelberg by night, a fallen milky way, with that glittering railway constellation pinned to the border, he requires time to consider upon the verdict. one never tires of poking about in the dense woods that clothe all these lofty neckar hills to their beguiling and impressive charm in any country; but german legends and fairy tales have given these an added charm. they have peopled all that region with gnomes, and dwarfs, and all sorts of mysterious and uncanny creatures. at the time i am writing of, i had been reading so much of this literature that sometimes i was not sure but i was beginning to believe in the gnomes and fairies as realities. one afternoon i got lost in the woods about a mile from the hotel, and presently fell into a train of dreamy thought about animals which talk, and kobolds, and enchanted folk, and the rest of the pleasant legendary stuff; and so, by stimulating my fancy, i finally got to imagining i glimpsed small flitting shapes here and there down the columned aisles of the forest. it was a place which was peculiarly meet for the occasion. it was a pine wood, with so thick and soft a carpet of brown needles that one's footfall made no more sound than if he were treading on wool; the tree-trunks were as round and straight and smooth as pillars, and stood close together; they were bare of branches to a point about twenty-five feet above-ground, and from there upward so thick with boughs that not a ray of sunlight could pierce through. the world was bright with sunshine outside, but a deep and mellow twilight reigned in there, and also a deep silence so profound that i seemed to hear my own breathings. when i had stood ten minutes, thinking and imagining, and getting my spirit in tune with the place, and in the right mood to enjoy the supernatural, a raven suddenly uttered a horse croak over my head. it made me start; and then i was angry because i started. i looked up, and the creature was sitting on a limb right over me, looking down at me. i felt something of the same sense of humiliation and injury which one feels when he finds that a human stranger has been clandestinely inspecting him in his privacy and mentally commenting upon him. i eyed the raven, and the raven eyed me. nothing was said during some seconds. then the bird stepped a little way along his limb to get a better point of observation, lifted his wings, stuck his head far down below his shoulders toward me and croaked again--a croak with a distinctly insulting expression about it. if he had spoken in english he could not have said any more plainly that he did say in raven, "well, what do you want here?" i felt as foolish as if i had been caught in some mean act by a responsible being, and reproved for it. however, i made no reply; i would not bandy words with a raven. the adversary waited a while, with his shoulders still lifted, his head thrust down between them, and his keen bright eye fixed on me; then he threw out two or three more insults, which i could not understand, further than that i knew a portion of them consisted of language not used in church. i still made no reply. now the adversary raised his head and called. there was an answering croak from a little distance in the wood--evidently a croak of inquiry. the adversary explained with enthusiasm, and the other raven dropped everything and came. the two sat side by side on the limb and discussed me as freely and offensively as two great naturalists might discuss a new kind of bug. the thing became more and more embarrassing. they called in another friend. this was too much. i saw that they had the advantage of me, and so i concluded to get out of the scrape by walking out of it. they enjoyed my defeat as much as any low white people could have done. they craned their necks and laughed at me (for a raven can laugh, just like a man), they squalled insulting remarks after me as long as they could see me. they were nothing but ravens--i knew that--what they thought of me could be a matter of no consequence--and yet when even a raven shouts after you, "what a hat!" "oh, pull down your vest!" and that sort of thing, it hurts you and humiliates you, and there is no getting around it with fine reasoning and pretty arguments. animals talk to each other, of course. there can be no question about that; but i suppose there are very few people who can understand them. i never knew but one man who could. i knew he could, however, because he told me so himself. he was a middle-aged, simple-hearted miner who had lived in a lonely corner of california, among the woods and mountains, a good many years, and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, the beasts and the birds, until he believed he could accurately translate any remark which they made. this was jim baker. according to jim baker, some animals have only a limited education, and some use only simple words, and scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure; whereas, certain other animals have a large vocabulary, a fine command of language and a ready and fluent delivery; consequently these latter talk a great deal; they like it; they are so conscious of their talent, and they enjoy "showing off." baker said, that after long and careful observation, he had come to the conclusion that the bluejays were the best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. said he: "there's more to a bluejay than any other creature. he has got more moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures; and, mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language. and no mere commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-out book-talk--and bristling with metaphor, too--just bristling! and as for command of language--why you never see a bluejay get stuck for a word. no man ever did. they just boil out of him! and another thing: i've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that uses as good grammar as a bluejay. you may say a cat uses good grammar. well, a cat does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use. now i've never heard a jay use bad grammar but very seldom; and when they do, they are as ashamed as a human; they shut right down and leave. "you may call a jay a bird. well, so he is, in a measure-but he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps; but otherwise he is just as much human as you be. and i'll tell you for why. a jay's gifts, and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. a jay hasn't got any more principle than a congressman. a jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise. the sacredness of an obligation is such a thing which you can't cram into no bluejay's head. now, on top of all this, there's another thing; a jay can out-swear any gentleman in the mines. you think a cat can swear. well, a cat can; but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for his reserve-powers, and where is your cat? don't talk to me--i know too much about this thing; in the one little particular of scolding--just good, clean, out-and-out scolding-a bluejay can lay over anything, human or divine. yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. a jay can cry, a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a sense of humor, a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do--maybe better. if a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all. now i'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about some bluejays. chapter iii baker's bluejay yarn [what stumped the blue jays] "when i first begun to understand jay language correctly, there was a little incident happened here. seven years ago, the last man in this region but me moved away. there stands his house--been empty ever since; a log house, with a plank roof--just one big room, and no more; no ceiling--nothing between the rafters and the floor. well, one sunday morning i was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat, taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills, and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees, and thinking of the home away yonder in the states, that i hadn't heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, 'hello, i reckon i've struck something.' when he spoke, the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didn't care; his mind was all on the thing he had struck. it was a knot-hole in the roof. he cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug; then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a wink or two with his wings--which signifies gratification, you understand--and says, 'it looks like a hole, it's located like a hole--blamed if i don't believe it is a hole!' "then he cocked his head down and took another look; he glances up perfectly joyful, this time; winks his wings and his tail both, and says, 'oh, no, this ain't no fat thing, i reckon! if i ain't in luck! --why it's a perfectly elegant hole!' so he flew down and got that acorn, and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting his head back, with the heavenliest smile on his face, when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude and that smile faded gradually out of his countenance like breath off'n a razor, and the queerest look of surprise took its place. then he says, 'why, i didn't hear it fall!' he cocked his eye at the hole again, and took a long look; raised up and shook his head; stepped around to the other side of the hole and took another look from that side; shook his head again. he studied a while, then he just went into the details-walked round and round the hole and spied into it from every point of the compass. no use. now he took a thinking attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back of his head with his right foot a minute, and finally says, 'well, it's too many for me, that's certain; must be a mighty long hole; however, i ain't got no time to fool around here, i got to "tend to business"; i reckon it's all right--chance it, anyway.' "so he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it, but he was too late. he held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised up and sighed, and says, 'confound it, i don't seem to understand this thing, no way; however, i'll tackle her again.' he fetched another acorn, and done his level best to see what become of it, but he couldn't. he says, 'well, i never struck no such a hole as this before; i'm of the opinion it's a totally new kind of a hole.' then he begun to get mad. he held in for a spell, walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose and cussed himself black in the face. i never see a bird take on so about a little thing. when he got through he walks to the hole and looks in again for half a minute; then he says, 'well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole, and a mighty singular hole altogether--but i've started in to fill you, and i'm damned if i don't fill you, if it takes a hundred years!' "and with that, away he went. you never see a bird work so since you was born. he laid into his work like a nigger, and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and astonishing spectacles i ever struck. he never stopped to take a look anymore--he just hove 'em in and went for more. well, at last he could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out. he comes a-dropping down, once more, sweating like an ice-pitcher, dropped his acorn in and says, 'now i guess i've got the bulge on you by this time!' so he bent down for a look. if you'll believe me, when his head come up again he was just pale with rage. he says, 'i've shoveled acorns enough in there to keep the family thirty years, and if i can see a sign of one of 'em i wish i may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust in two minutes!' "he just had strength enough to crawl up on to the comb and lean his back agin the chimbly, and then he collected his impressions and begun to free his mind. i see in a second that what i had mistook for profanity in the mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say. "another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, and stops to inquire what was up. the sufferer told him the whole circumstance, and says, 'now yonder's the hole, and if you don't believe me, go and look for yourself.' so this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says, "how many did you say you put in there?' 'not any less than two tons,' says the sufferer. the other jay went and looked again. he couldn't seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more jays come. they all examined the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, then they all discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could have done. "they called in more jays; then more and more, till pretty soon this whole region 'peared to have a blue flush about it. there must have been five thousand of them; and such another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing, you never heard. every jay in the whole lot put his eye to the hole and delivered a more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there before him. they examined the house all over, too. the door was standing half open, and at last one old jay happened to go and light on it and look in. of course, that knocked the mystery galley-west in a second. there lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor.. he flopped his wings and raised a whoop. 'come here!' he says, 'come here, everybody; hang'd if this fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns!' they all came a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door and took a glance, the whole absurdity of the contract that that first jay had tackled hit him home and he fell over backward suffocating with laughter, and the next jay took his place and done the same. "well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop and the trees for an hour, and guffawed over that thing like human beings. it ain't any use to tell me a bluejay hasn't got a sense of humor, because i know better. and memory, too. they brought jays here from all over the united states to look down that hole, every summer for three years. other birds, too. and they could all see the point except an owl that come from nova scotia to visit the yo semite, and he took this thing in on his way back. he said he couldn't see anything funny in it. but then he was a good deal disappointed about yo semite, too." humor, a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do--maybe better. if a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all. now i'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about some bluejays." chapter iv student life [the laborious beer king] the summer semester was in full tide; consequently the most frequent figure in and about heidelberg was the student. most of the students were germans, of course, but the representatives of foreign lands were very numerous. they hailed from every corner of the globe--for instruction is cheap in heidelberg, and so is living, too. the anglo-american club, composed of british and american students, had twenty-five members, and there was still much material left to draw from. nine-tenths of the heidelberg students wore no badge or uniform; the other tenth wore caps of various colors, and belonged to social organizations called "corps." there were five corps, each with a color of its own; there were white caps, blue caps, and red, yellow, and green ones. the famous duel-fighting is confined to the "corps" boys. the "kneip" seems to be a specialty of theirs, too. kneips are held, now and then, to celebrate great occasions, like the election of a beer king, for instance. the solemnity is simple; the five corps assemble at night, and at a signal they all fall loading themselves with beer, out of pint-mugs, as fast as possible, and each man keeps his own count--usually by laying aside a lucifer match for each mud he empties. the election is soon decided. when the candidates can hold no more, a count is instituted and the one who has drank the greatest number of pints is proclaimed king. i was told that the last beer king elected by the corps--or by his own capabilities--emptied his mug seventy-five times. no stomach could hold all that quantity at one time, of course--but there are ways of frequently creating a vacuum, which those who have been much at sea will understand. one sees so many students abroad at all hours, that he presently begins to wonder if they ever have any working-hours. some of them have, some of them haven't. each can choose for himself whether he will work or play; for german university life is a very free life; it seems to have no restraints. the student does not live in the college buildings, but hires his own lodgings, in any locality he prefers, and he takes his meals when and where he pleases. he goes to bed when it suits him, and does not get up at all unless he wants to. he is not entered at the university for any particular length of time; so he is likely to change about. he passes no examinations upon entering college. he merely pays a trifling fee of five or ten dollars, receives a card entitling him to the privileges of the university, and that is the end of it. he is now ready for business--or play, as he shall prefer. if he elects to work, he finds a large list of lectures to choose from. he selects the subjects which he will study, and enters his name for these studies; but he can skip attendance. the result of this system is, that lecture-courses upon specialties of an unusual nature are often delivered to very slim audiences, while those upon more practical and every-day matters of education are delivered to very large ones. i heard of one case where, day after day, the lecturer's audience consisted of three students--and always the same three. but one day two of them remained away. the lecturer began as usual -"gentlemen," --then, without a smile, he corrected himself, saying -"sir," --and went on with his discourse. it is said that the vast majority of the heidelberg students are hard workers, and make the most of their opportunities; that they have no surplus means to spend in dissipation, and no time to spare for frolicking. one lecture follows right on the heels of another, with very little time for the student to get out of one hall and into the next; but the industrious ones manage it by going on a trot. the professors assist them in the saving of their time by being promptly in their little boxed-up pulpits when the hours strike, and as promptly out again when the hour finishes. i entered an empty lecture-room one day just before the clock struck. the place had simple, unpainted pine desks and benches for about two hundred persons. about a minute before the clock struck, a hundred and fifty students swarmed in, rushed to their seats, immediately spread open their notebooks and dipped their pens in ink. when the clock began to strike, a burly professor entered, was received with a round of applause, moved swiftly down the center aisle, said "gentlemen," and began to talk as he climbed his pulpit steps; and by the time he had arrived in his box and faced his audience, his lecture was well under way and all the pens were going. he had no notes, he talked with prodigious rapidity and energy for an hour--then the students began to remind him in certain well-understood ways that his time was up; he seized his hat, still talking, proceeded swiftly down his pulpit steps, got out the last word of his discourse as he struck the floor; everybody rose respectfully, and he swept rapidly down the aisle and disappeared. an instant rush for some other lecture-room followed, and in a minute i was alone with the empty benches once more. yes, without doubt, idle students are not the rule. out of eight hundred in the town, i knew the faces of only about fifty; but these i saw everywhere, and daily. they walked about the streets and the wooded hills, they drove in cabs, they boated on the river, they sipped beer and coffee, afternoons, in the schloss gardens. a good many of them wore colored caps of the corps. they were finely and fashionably dressed, their manners were quite superb, and they led an easy, careless, comfortable life. if a dozen of them sat together and a lady or a gentleman passed whom one of them knew and saluted, they all rose to their feet and took off their caps. the members of a corps always received a fellow-member in this way, too; but they paid no attention to members of other corps; they did not seem to see them. this was not a discourtesy; it was only a part of the elaborate and rigid corps etiquette. there seems to be no chilly distance existing between the german students and the professor; but, on the contrary, a companionable intercourse, the opposite of chilliness and reserve. when the professor enters a beer-hall in the evening where students are gathered together, these rise up and take off their caps, and invite the old gentleman to sit with them and partake. he accepts, and the pleasant talk and the beer flow for an hour or two, and by and by the professor, properly charged and comfortable, gives a cordial good night, while the students stand bowing and uncovered; and then he moves on his happy way homeward with all his vast cargo of learning afloat in his hold. nobody finds fault or feels outraged; no harm has been done. it seemed to be a part of corps etiquette to keep a dog or so, too. i mean a corps dog--the common property of the organization, like the corps steward or head servant; then there are other dogs, owned by individuals. on a summer afternoon in the castle gardens, i have seen six students march solemnly into the grounds, in single file, each carrying a bright chinese parasol and leading a prodigious dog by a string. it was a very imposing spectacle. sometimes there would be as many dogs around the pavilion as students; and of all breeds and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness. these dogs had a rather dry time of it; for they were tied to the benches and had no amusement for an hour or two at a time except what they could get out of pawing at the gnats, or trying to sleep and not succeeding. however, they got a lump of sugar occasionally--they were fond of that. it seemed right and proper that students should indulge in dogs; but everybody else had them, too--old men and young ones, old women and nice young ladies. if there is one spectacle that is unpleasanter than another, it is that of an elegantly dressed young lady towing a dog by a string. it is said to be the sign and symbol of blighted love. it seems to me that some other way of advertising it might be devised, which would be just as conspicuous and yet not so trying to the proprieties. it would be a mistake to suppose that the easy-going pleasure-seeking student carries an empty head. just the contrary. he has spent nine years in the gymnasium, under a system which allowed him no freedom, but vigorously compelled him to work like a slave. consequently, he has left the gymnasium with an education which is so extensive and complete, that the most a university can do for it is to perfect some of its profounder specialties. it is said that when a pupil leaves the gymnasium, he not only has a comprehensive education, but he knows what he knows--it is not befogged with uncertainty, it is burnt into him so that it will stay. for instance, he does not merely read and write greek, but speaks it; the same with the latin. foreign youth steer clear of the gymnasium; its rules are too severe. they go to the university to put a mansard roof on their whole general education; but the german student already has his mansard roof, so he goes there to add a steeple in the nature of some specialty, such as a particular branch of law, or diseases of the eye, or special study of the ancient gothic tongues. so this german attends only the lectures which belong to the chosen branch, and drinks his beer and tows his dog around and has a general good time the rest of the day. he has been in rigid bondage so long that the large liberty of the university life is just what he needs and likes and thoroughly appreciates; and as it cannot last forever, he makes the most of it while it does last, and so lays up a good rest against the day that must see him put on the chains once more and enter the slavery of official or professional life. chapter v at the students' dueling-ground [dueling by wholesale] one day in the interest of science my agent obtained permission to bring me to the students' dueling-place. we crossed the river and drove up the bank a few hundred yards, then turned to the left, entered a narrow alley, followed it a hundred yards and arrived at a two-story public house; we were acquainted with its outside aspect, for it was visible from the hotel. we went upstairs and passed into a large whitewashed apartment which was perhaps fifty feet long by thirty feet wide and twenty or twenty-five high. it was a well-lighted place. there was no carpet. across one end and down both sides of the room extended a row of tables, and at these tables some fifty or seventy-five students [1. see appendix c] were sitting. some of them were sipping wine, others were playing cards, others chess, other groups were chatting together, and many were smoking cigarettes while they waited for the coming duels. nearly all of them wore colored caps; there were white caps, green caps, blue caps, red caps, and bright-yellow ones; so, all the five corps were present in strong force. in the windows at the vacant end of the room stood six or eight, narrow-bladed swords with large protecting guards for the hand, and outside was a man at work sharpening others on a grindstone. he understood his business; for when a sword left his hand one could shave himself with it. it was observable that the young gentlemen neither bowed to nor spoke with students whose caps differed in color from their own. this did not mean hostility, but only an armed neutrality. it was considered that a person could strike harder in the duel, and with a more earnest interest, if he had never been in a condition of comradeship with his antagonist; therefore, comradeship between the corps was not permitted. at intervals the presidents of the five corps have a cold official intercourse with each other, but nothing further. for example, when the regular dueling-day of one of the corps approaches, its president calls for volunteers from among the membership to offer battle; three or more respond--but there must not be less than three; the president lays their names before the other presidents, with the request that they furnish antagonists for these challengers from among their corps. this is promptly done. it chanced that the present occasion was the battle-day of the red cap corps. they were the challengers, and certain caps of other colors had volunteered to meet them. the students fight duels in the room which i have described, two days in every week during seven and a half or eight months in every year. this custom had continued in germany two hundred and fifty years. to return to my narrative. a student in a white cap met us and introduced us to six or eight friends of his who also wore white caps, and while we stood conversing, two strange-looking figures were led in from another room. they were students panoplied for the duel. they were bareheaded; their eyes were protected by iron goggles which projected an inch or more, the leather straps of which bound their ears flat against their heads were wound around and around with thick wrappings which a sword could not cut through; from chin to ankle they were padded thoroughly against injury; their arms were bandaged and rebandaged, layer upon layer, until they looked like solid black logs. these weird apparitions had been handsome youths, clad in fashionable attire, fifteen minutes before, but now they did not resemble any beings one ever sees unless in nightmares. they strode along, with their arms projecting straight out from their bodies; they did not hold them out themselves, but fellow-students walked beside them and gave the needed support. there was a rush for the vacant end of the room, now, and we followed and got good places. the combatants were placed face to face, each with several members of his own corps about him to assist; two seconds, well padded, and with swords in their hands, took their stations; a student belonging to neither of the opposing corps placed himself in a good position to umpire the combat; another student stood by with a watch and a memorandum-book to keep record of the time and the number and nature of the wounds; a gray-haired surgeon was present with his lint, his bandages, and his instruments. after a moment's pause the duelists saluted the umpire respectfully, then one after another the several officials stepped forward, gracefully removed their caps and saluted him also, and returned to their places. everything was ready now; students stood crowded together in the foreground, and others stood behind them on chairs and tables. every face was turned toward the center of attraction. the combatants were watching each other with alert eyes; a perfect stillness, a breathless interest reigned. i felt that i was going to see some wary work. but not so. the instant the word was given, the two apparitions sprang forward and began to rain blows down upon each other with such lightning rapidity that i could not quite tell whether i saw the swords or only flashes they made in the air; the rattling din of these blows as they struck steel or paddings was something wonderfully stirring, and they were struck with such terrific force that i could not understand why the opposing sword was not beaten down under the assault. presently, in the midst of the sword-flashes, i saw a handful of hair skip into the air as if it had lain loose on the victim's head and a breath of wind had puffed it suddenly away. the seconds cried "halt!" and knocked up the combatants' swords with their own. the duelists sat down; a student official stepped forward, examined the wounded head and touched the place with a sponge once or twice; the surgeon came and turned back the hair from the wound-and revealed a crimson gash two or three inches long, and proceeded to bind an oval piece of leather and a bunch of lint over it; the tally-keeper stepped up and tallied one for the opposition in his book. then the duelists took position again; a small stream of blood was flowing down the side of the injured man's head, and over his shoulder and down his body to the floor, but he did not seem to mind this. the word was given, and they plunged at each other as fiercely as before; once more the blows rained and rattled and flashed; every few moments the quick-eyed seconds would notice that a sword was bent--then they called "halt!" struck up the contending weapons, and an assisting student straightened the bent one. the wonderful turmoil went on--presently a bright spark sprung from a blade, and that blade broken in several pieces, sent one of its fragments flying to the ceiling. a new sword was provided and the fight proceeded. the exercise was tremendous, of course, and in time the fighters began to show great fatigue. they were allowed to rest a moment, every little while; they got other rests by wounding each other, for then they could sit down while the doctor applied the lint and bandages. the laws is that the battle must continue fifteen minutes if the men can hold out; and as the pauses do not count, this duel was protracted to twenty or thirty minutes, i judged. at last it was decided that the men were too much wearied to do battle longer. they were led away drenched with crimson from head to foot. that was a good fight, but it could not count, partly because it did not last the lawful fifteen minutes (of actual fighting), and partly because neither man was disabled by his wound. it was a drawn battle, and corps law requires that drawn battles shall be refought as soon as the adversaries are well of their hurts. during the conflict, i had talked a little, now and then, with a young gentleman of the white cap corps, and he had mentioned that he was to fight next--and had also pointed out his challenger, a young gentleman who was leaning against the opposite wall smoking a cigarette and restfully observing the duel then in progress. my acquaintanceship with a party to the coming contest had the effect of giving me a kind of personal interest in it; i naturally wished he might win, and it was the reverse of pleasant to learn that he probably would not, because, although he was a notable swordsman, the challenger was held to be his superior. the duel presently began and in the same furious way which had marked the previous one. i stood close by, but could not tell which blows told and which did not, they fell and vanished so like flashes of light. they all seemed to tell; the swords always bent over the opponents' heads, from the forehead back over the crown, and seemed to touch, all the way; but it was not so--a protecting blade, invisible to me, was always interposed between. at the end of ten seconds each man had struck twelve or fifteen blows, and warded off twelve or fifteen, and no harm done; then a sword became disabled, and a short rest followed whilst a new one was brought. early in the next round the white corps student got an ugly wound on the side of his head and gave his opponent one like it. in the third round the latter received another bad wound in the head, and the former had his under-lip divided. after that, the white corps student gave many severe wounds, but got none of the consequence in return. at the end of five minutes from the beginning of the duel the surgeon stopped it; the challenging party had suffered such injuries that any addition to them might be dangerous. these injuries were a fearful spectacle, but are better left undescribed. so, against expectation, my acquaintance was the victor. chapter vi [a sport that sometimes kills] the third duel was brief and bloody. the surgeon stopped it when he saw that one of the men had received such bad wounds that he could not fight longer without endangering his life. the fourth duel was a tremendous encounter; but at the end of five or six minutes the surgeon interfered once more: another man so severely hurt as to render it unsafe to add to his harms. i watched this engagement as i watched the others--with rapt interest and strong excitement, and with a shrink and a shudder for every blow that laid open a cheek or a forehead; and a conscious paling of my face when i occasionally saw a wound of a yet more shocking nature inflicted. my eyes were upon the loser of this duel when he got his last and vanquishing wound--it was in his face and it carried away his--but no matter, i must not enter into details. i had but a glance, and then turned quickly, but i would not have been looking at all if i had known what was coming. no, that is probably not true; one thinks he would not look if he knew what was coming, but the interest and the excitement are so powerful that they would doubtless conquer all other feelings; and so, under the fierce exhilaration of the clashing steel, he would yield and look after all. sometimes spectators of these duels faint--and it does seem a very reasonable thing to do, too. both parties to this fourth duel were badly hurt so much that the surgeon was at work upon them nearly or quite an hour--a fact which is suggestive. but this waiting interval was not wasted in idleness by the assembled students. it was past noon, therefore they ordered their landlord, downstairs, to send up hot beefsteaks, chickens, and such things, and these they ate, sitting comfortable at the several tables, whilst they chatted, disputed and laughed. the door to the surgeon's room stood open, meantime, but the cutting, sewing, splicing, and bandaging going on in there in plain view did not seem to disturb anyone's appetite. i went in and saw the surgeon labor awhile, but could not enjoy; it was much less trying to see the wounds given and received than to see them mended; the stir and turmoil, and the music of the steel, were wanting here--one's nerves were wrung by this grisly spectacle, whilst the duel's compensating pleasurable thrill was lacking. finally the doctor finished, and the men who were to fight the closing battle of the day came forth. a good many dinners were not completed, yet, but no matter, they could be eaten cold, after the battle; therefore everybody crowded forth to see. this was not a love duel, but a "satisfaction" affair. these two students had quarreled, and were here to settle it. they did not belong to any of the corps, but they were furnished with weapons and armor, and permitted to fight here by the five corps as a courtesy. evidently these two young men were unfamiliar with the dueling ceremonies, though they were not unfamiliar with the sword. when they were placed in position they thought it was time to begin--and then did begin, too, and with a most impetuous energy, without waiting for anybody to give the word. this vastly amused the spectators, and even broke down their studied and courtly gravity and surprised them into laughter. of course the seconds struck up the swords and started the duel over again. at the word, the deluge of blows began, but before long the surgeon once more interfered--for the only reason which ever permits him to interfere--and the day's war was over. it was now two in the afternoon, and i had been present since half past nine in the morning. the field of battle was indeed a red one by this time; but some sawdust soon righted that. there had been one duel before i arrived. in it one of the men received many injuries, while the other one escaped without a scratch. i had seen the heads and faces of ten youths gashed in every direction by the keen two-edged blades, and yet had not seen a victim wince, nor heard a moan, or detected any fleeting expression which confessed the sharp pain the hurts were inflicting. this was good fortitude, indeed. such endurance is to be expected in savages and prize-fighters, for they are born and educated to it; but to find it in such perfection in these gently bred and kindly natured young fellows is matter for surprise. it was not merely under the excitement of the sword-play that this fortitude was shown; it was shown in the surgeon's room where an uninspiring quiet reigned, and where there was no audience. the doctor's manipulations brought out neither grimaces nor moans. and in the fights it was observable that these lads hacked and slashed with the same tremendous spirit, after they were covered with streaming wounds, which they had shown in the beginning. the world in general looks upon the college duels as very farcical affairs: true, but considering that the college duel is fought by boys; that the swords are real swords; and that the head and face are exposed, it seems to me that it is a farce which had quite a grave side to it. people laugh at it mainly because they think the student is so covered up with armor that he cannot be hurt. but it is not so; his eyes are ears are protected, but the rest of his face and head are bare. he can not only be badly wounded, but his life is in danger; and he would sometimes lose it but for the interference of the surgeon. it is not intended that his life shall be endangered. fatal accidents are possible, however. for instance, the student's sword may break, and the end of it fly up behind his antagonist's ear and cut an artery which could not be reached if the sword remained whole. this has happened, sometimes, and death has resulted on the spot. formerly the student's armpits were not protected--and at that time the swords were pointed, whereas they are blunt, now; so an artery in the armpit was sometimes cut, and death followed. then in the days of sharp-pointed swords, a spectator was an occasional victim--the end of a broken sword flew five or ten feet and buried itself in his neck or his heart, and death ensued instantly. the student duels in germany occasion two or three deaths every year, now, but this arises only from the carelessness of the wounded men; they eat or drink imprudently, or commit excesses in the way of overexertion; inflammation sets in and gets such a headway that it cannot be arrested. indeed, there is blood and pain and danger enough about the college duel to entitle it to a considerable degree of respect. all the customs, all the laws, all the details, pertaining to the student duel are quaint and naive. the grave, precise, and courtly ceremony with which the thing is conducted, invests it with a sort of antique charm. this dignity and these knightly graces suggest the tournament, not the prize-fight. the laws are as curious as they are strict. for instance, the duelist may step forward from the line he is placed upon, if he chooses, but never back of it. if he steps back of it, or even leans back, it is considered that he did it to avoid a blow or contrive an advantage; so he is dismissed from his corps in disgrace. it would seem natural to step from under a descending sword unconsciously, and against one's will and intent--yet this unconsciousness is not allowed. again: if under the sudden anguish of a wound the receiver of it makes a grimace, he falls some degrees in the estimation of his fellows; his corps are ashamed of him: they call him "hare foot," which is the german equivalent for chicken-hearted. chapter vii [how bismark fought] in addition to the corps laws, there are some corps usages which have the force of laws. perhaps the president of a corps notices that one of the membership who is no longer an exempt--that is a freshman-has remained a sophomore some little time without volunteering to fight; some day, the president, instead of calling for volunteers, will appoint this sophomore to measure swords with a student of another corps; he is free to decline--everybody says so--there is no compulsion. this is all true--but i have not heard of any student who did decline; to decline and still remain in the corps would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and properly so, since he knew, when he joined, that his main business, as a member, would be to fight. no, there is no law against declining--except the law of custom, which is confessedly stronger than written law, everywhere. the ten men whose duels i had witnessed did not go away when their hurts were dressed, as i had supposed they would, but came back, one after another, as soon as they were free of the surgeon, and mingled with the assemblage in the dueling-room. the white-cap student who won the second fight witnessed the remaining three, and talked with us during the intermissions. he could not talk very well, because his opponent's sword had cut his under-lip in two, and then the surgeon had sewed it together and overlaid it with a profusion of white plaster patches; neither could he eat easily, still he contrived to accomplish a slow and troublesome luncheon while the last duel was preparing. the man who was the worst hurt of all played chess while waiting to see this engagement. a good part of his face was covered with patches and bandages, and all the rest of his head was covered and concealed by them. it is said that the student likes to appear on the street and in other public places in this kind of array, and that this predilection often keeps him out when exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger for him. newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle in the public gardens of heidelberg. it is also said that the student is glad to get wounds in the face, because the scars they leave will show so well there; and it is also said that these face wounds are so prized that youths have even been known to pull them apart from time to time and put red wine in them to make them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar as possible. it does not look reasonable, but it is roundly asserted and maintained, nevertheless; i am sure of one thing--scars are plenty enough in germany, among the young men; and very grim ones they are, too. they crisscross the face in angry red welts, and are permanent and ineffaceable. some of these scars are of a very strange and dreadful aspect; and the effect is striking when several such accent the milder ones, which form a city map on a man's face; they suggest the "burned district" then. we had often noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk band or ribbon diagonally across their breasts. it transpired that this signifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decision was reached--duels in which he either whipped or was whipped--for drawn battles do not count. [1] after a student has received his ribbon, he is "free"; he can cease from fighting, without reproach--except some one insult him; his president cannot appoint him to fight; he can volunteer if he wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so. statistics show that he does not prefer to remain quiescent. they show that the duel has a singular fascination about it somewhere, for these free men, so far from resting upon the privilege of the badge, are always volunteering. a corps student told me it was of record that prince bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term when he was in college. so he fought twenty-nine after his badge had given him the right to retire from the field. 1. from my diary.--dined in a hotel a few miles up the neckar, in a room whose walls were hung all over with framed portrait-groups of the five corps; some were recent, but many antedated photography, and were pictured in lithography--the dates ranged back to forty or fifty years ago. nearly every individual wore the ribbon across his breast. in one portrait-group representing (as each of these pictures did) an entire corps, i took pains to count the ribbons: there were twenty-seven members, and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge. the statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars. two days in every week are devoted to dueling. the rule is rigid that there must be three duels on each of these days; there are generally more, but there cannot be fewer. there were six the day i was present; sometimes there are seven or eight. it is insisted that eight duels a week--four for each of the two days--is too low an average to draw a calculation from, but i will reckon from that basis, preferring an understatement to an overstatement of the case. this requires about four hundred and eighty or five hundred duelists a year--for in summer the college term is about three and a half months, and in winter it is four months and sometimes longer. of the seven hundred and fifty students in the university at the time i am writing of, only eighty belonged to the five corps, and it is only these corps that do the dueling; occasionally other students borrow the arms and battleground of the five corps in order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen every dueling-day. [2] consequently eighty youths furnish the material for some two hundred and fifty duels a year. this average gives six fights a year to each of the eighty. this large work could not be accomplished if the badge-holders stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer. 2. they have to borrow the arms because they could not get them elsewhere or otherwise. as i understand it, the public authorities, all over germany, allow the five corps to keep swords, but do not allow them to use them. this is law is rigid; it is only the execution of it that is lax. of course, where there is so much fighting, the students make it a point to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. one often sees them, at the tables in the castle grounds, using their whips or canes to illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between the duels, on the day whose history i have been writing, the swords were not always idle; every now and then we heard a succession of the keen hissing sounds which the sword makes when it is being put through its paces in the air, and this informed us that a student was practicing. necessarily, this unceasing attention to the art develops an expert occasionally. he becomes famous in his own university, his renown spreads to other universities. he is invited to go"ttingen, to fight with a go"ttingen expert; if he is victorious, he will be invited to other colleges, or those colleges will send their experts to him. americans and englishmen often join one or another of the five corps. a year or two ago, the principal heidelberg expert was a big kentuckian; he was invited to the various universities and left a wake of victory behind him all about germany; but at last a little student in strasburg defeated him. there was formerly a student in heidelberg who had picked up somewhere and mastered a peculiar trick of cutting up under instead of cleaving down from above. while the trick lasted he won in sixteen successive duels in his university; but by that time observers had discovered what his charm was, and how to break it, therefore his championship ceased. a rule which forbids social intercourse between members of different corps is strict. in the dueling-house, in the parks, on the street, and anywhere and everywhere that the students go, caps of a color group themselves together. if all the tables in a public garden were crowded but one, and that one had two red-cap students at it and ten vacant places, the yellow-caps, the blue-caps, the white caps, and the green caps, seeking seats, would go by that table and not seem to see it, nor seem to be aware that there was such a table in the grounds. the student by whose courtesy we had been enabled to visit the dueling-place, wore the white cap--prussian corps. he introduced us to many white caps, but to none of another color. the corps etiquette extended even to us, who were strangers, and required us to group with the white corps only, and speak only with the white corps, while we were their guests, and keep aloof from the caps of the other colors. once i wished to examine some of the swords, but an american student said, "it would not be quite polite; these now in the windows all have red hilts or blue; they will bring in some with white hilts presently, and those you can handle freely. "when a sword was broken in the first duel, i wanted a piece of it; but its hilt was the wrong color, so it was considered best and politest to await a properer season. it was brought to me after the room was cleared, and i will now make a "life-size" sketch of it by tracing a line around it with my pen, to show the width of the weapon. [figure 1] the length of these swords is about three feet, and they are quite heavy. one's disposition to cheer, during the course of the duels or at their close, was naturally strong, but corps etiquette forbade any demonstrations of this sort. however brilliant a contest or a victory might be, no sign or sound betrayed that any one was moved. a dignified gravity and repression were maintained at all times. when the dueling was finished and we were ready to go, the gentlemen of the prussian corps to whom we had been introduced took off their caps in the courteous german way, and also shook hands; their brethren of the same order took off their caps and bowed, but without shaking hands; the gentlemen of the other corps treated us just as they would have treated white caps--they fell apart, apparently unconsciously, and left us an unobstructed pathway, but did not seem to see us or know we were there. if we had gone thither the following week as guests of another corps, the white caps, without meaning any offense, would have observed the etiquette of their order and ignored our presence. [how strangely are comedy and tragedy blended in this life! i had not been home a full half-hour, after witnessing those playful sham-duels, when circumstances made it necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist personally at a real one--a duel with no effeminate limitation in the matter of results, but a battle to the death. an account of it, in the next chapter, will show the reader that duels between boys, for fun, and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs.] chapter viii the great french duel [i second gambetta in a terrific duel] much as the modern french duel is ridiculed by certain smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous institutions of our day. since it is always fought in the open air, the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold. m. paul de cassagnac, the most inveterate of the french duelists, had suffered so often in this way that he is at last a confirmed invalid; and the best physician in paris has expressed the opinion that if he goes on dueling for fifteen or twenty years more--unless he forms the habit of fighting in a comfortable room where damps and draughts cannot intrude--he will eventually endanger his life. this ought to moderate the talk of those people who are so stubborn in maintaining that the french duel is the most health-giving of recreations because of the open-air exercise it affords. and it ought also to moderate that foolish talk about french duelists and socialist-hated monarchs being the only people who are immoral. but it is time to get at my subject. as soon as i heard of the late fiery outbreak between m. gambetta and m. fourtou in the french assembly, i knew that trouble must follow. i knew it because a long personal friendship with m. gambetta revealed to me the desperate and implacable nature of the man. vast as are his physical proportions, i knew that the thirst for revenge would penetrate to the remotest frontiers of his person. i did not wait for him to call on me, but went at once to him. as i had expected, i found the brave fellow steeped in a profound french calm. i say french calm, because french calmness and english calmness have points of difference. he was moving swiftly back and forth among the debris of his furniture, now and then staving chance fragments of it across the room with his foot; grinding a constant grist of curses through his set teeth; and halting every little while to deposit another handful of his hair on the pile which he had been building of it on the table. he threw his arms around my neck, bent me over his stomach to his breast, kissed me on both cheeks, hugged me four or five times, and then placed me in his own arm-chair. as soon as i had got well again, we began business at once. i said i supposed he would wish me to act as his second, and he said, "of course." i said i must be allowed to act under a french name, so that i might be shielded from obloquy in my country, in case of fatal results. he winced here, probably at the suggestion that dueling was not regarded with respect in america. however, he agreed to my requirement. this accounts for the fact that in all the newspaper reports m. gambetta's second was apparently a frenchman. first, we drew up my principal's will. i insisted upon this, and stuck to my point. i said i had never heard of a man in his right mind going out to fight a duel without first making his will. he said he had never heard of a man in his right mind doing anything of the kind. when he had finished the will, he wished to proceed to a choice of his "last words." he wanted to know how the following words, as a dying exclamation, struck me: "i die for my god, for my country, for freedom of speech, for progress, and the universal brotherhood of man!" i objected that this would require too lingering a death; it was a good speech for a consumptive, but not suited to the exigencies of the field of honor. we wrangled over a good many ante-mortem outburts, but i finally got him to cut his obituary down to this, which he copied into his memorandum-book, purposing to get it by heart: "i die that france might live." i said that this remark seemed to lack relevancy; but he said relevancy was a matter of no consequence in last words, what you wanted was thrill. the next thing in order was the choice of weapons. my principal said he was not feeling well, and would leave that and the other details of the proposed meeting to me. therefore i wrote the following note and carried it to m. fourtou's friend: sir: m. gambetta accepts m. fourtou's challenge, and authorizes me to propose plessis-piquet as the place of meeting; tomorrow morning at daybreak as the time; and axes as the weapons. i am, sir, with great respect, mark twain. m. fourtou's friend read this note, and shuddered. then he turned to me, and said, with a suggestion of severity in his tone: "have you considered, sir, what would be the inevitable result of such a meeting as this?" "well, for instance, what would it be?" "bloodshed!" "that's about the size of it," i said. "now, if it is a fair question, what was your side proposing to shed?" i had him there. he saw he had made a blunder, so he hastened to explain it away. he said he had spoken jestingly. then he added that he and his principal would enjoy axes, and indeed prefer them, but such weapons were barred by the french code, and so i must change my proposal. i walked the floor, turning the thing over in my mind, and finally it occurred to me that gatling-guns at fifteen paces would be a likely way to get a verdict on the field of honor. so i framed this idea into a proposition. but it was not accepted. the code was in the way again. i proposed rifles; then double-barreled shotguns; then colt's navy revolvers. these being all rejected, i reflected awhile, and sarcastically suggested brickbats at three-quarters of a mile. i always hate to fool away a humorous thing on a person who has no perception of humor; and it filled me with bitterness when this man went soberly away to submit the last proposition to his principal. he came back presently and said his principal was charmed with the idea of brickbats at three-quarters of a mile, but must decline on account of the danger to disinterested parties passing between them. then i said: "well, i am at the end of my string, now. perhaps you would be good enough to suggest a weapon? perhaps you have even had one in your mind all the time?" his countenance brightened, and he said with alacrity: "oh, without doubt, monsieur!" so he fell to hunting in his pockets--pocket after pocket, and he had plenty of them--muttering all the while, "now, what could i have done with them?" at last he was successful. he fished out of his vest pocket a couple of little things which i carried to the light and ascertained to be pistols. they were single-barreled and silver-mounted, and very dainty and pretty. i was not able to speak for emotion. i silently hung one of them on my watch-chain, and returned the other. my companion in crime now unrolled a postage-stamp containing several cartridges, and gave me one of them. i asked if he meant to signify by this that our men were to be allowed but one shot apiece. he replied that the french code permitted no more. i then begged him to go and suggest a distance, for my mind was growing weak and confused under the strain which had been put upon it. he named sixty-five yards. i nearly lost my patience. i said: "sixty-five yards, with these instruments? squirt-guns would be deadlier at fifty. consider, my friend, you and i are banded together to destroy life, not make it eternal." but with all my persuasions, all my arguments, i was only able to get him to reduce the distance to thirty-five yards; and even this concession he made with reluctance, and said with a sigh, "i wash my hands of this slaughter; on your head be it." there was nothing for me but to go home to my old lion-heart and tell my humiliating story. when i entered, m. gambetta was laying his last lock of hair upon the altar. he sprang toward me, exclaiming: "you have made the fatal arrangements--i see it in your eye!" "i have." his face paled a trifle, and he leaned upon the table for support. he breathed thick and heavily for a moment or two, so tumultuous were his feelings; then he hoarsely whispered: "the weapon, the weapon! quick! what is the weapon?" "this!" and i displayed that silver-mounted thing. he cast but one glance at it, then swooned ponderously to the floor. when he came to, he said mournfully: "the unnatural calm to which i have subjected myself has told upon my nerves. but away with weakness! i will confront my fate like a man and a frenchman." he rose to his feet, and assumed an attitude which for sublimity has never been approached by man, and has seldom been surpassed by statues. then he said, in his deep bass tones: "behold, i am calm, i am ready; reveal to me the distance." "thirty-five yards." ... i could not lift him up, of course; but i rolled him over, and poured water down his back. he presently came to, and said: "thirty-five yards--without a rest? but why ask? since murder was that man's intention, why should he palter with small details? but mark you one thing: in my fall the world shall see how the chivalry of france meets death." after a long silence he asked: "was nothing said about that man's family standing up with him, as an offset to my bulk? but no matter; i would not stoop to make such a suggestion; if he is not noble enough to suggest it himself, he is welcome to this advantage, which no honorable man would take." he now sank into a sort of stupor of reflection, which lasted some minutes; after which he broke silence with: "the hour--what is the hour fixed for the collision?" "dawn, tomorrow." he seemed greatly surprised, and immediately said: "insanity! i never heard of such a thing. nobody is abroad at such an hour." "that is the reason i named it. do you mean to say you want an audience?" "it is no time to bandy words. i am astonished that m. fourtou should ever have agreed to so strange an innovation. go at once and require a later hour." i ran downstairs, threw open the front door, and almost plunged into the arms of m. fourtou's second. he said: "i have the honor to say that my principal strenuously objects to the hour chosen, and begs you will consent to change it to half past nine." "any courtesy, sir, which it is in our power to extend is at the service of your excellent principal. we agree to the proposed change of time." "i beg you to accept the thanks of my client." then he turned to a person behind him, and said, "you hear, m. noir, the hour is altered to half past nine. " whereupon m. noir bowed, expressed his thanks, and went away. my accomplice continued: "if agreeable to you, your chief surgeons and ours shall proceed to the field in the same carriage as is customary." "it is entirely agreeable to me, and i am obliged to you for mentioning the surgeons, for i am afraid i should not have thought of them. how many shall i want? i supposed two or three will be enough?" "two is the customary number for each party. i refer to 'chief' surgeons; but considering the exalted positions occupied by our clients, it will be well and decorous that each of us appoint several consulting surgeons, from among the highest in the profession. these will come in their own private carriages. have you engaged a hearse?" "bless my stupidity, i never thought of it!" i will attend to it right away. i must seem very ignorant to you; but you must try to overlook that, because i have never had any experience of such a swell duel as this before. i have had a good deal to do with duels on the pacific coast, but i see now that they were crude affairs. a hearse--sho! we used to leave the elected lying around loose, and let anybody cord them up and cart them off that wanted to. have you anything further to suggest?" "nothing, except that the head undertakers shall ride together, as is usual. the subordinates and mutes will go on foot, as is also usual. i will see you at eight o'clock in the morning, and we will then arrange the order of the procession. i have the honor to bid you a good day." i returned to my client, who said, "very well; at what hour is the engagement to begin?" "half past nine." "very good indeed.; have you sent the fact to the newspapers?" "sir! if after our long and intimate friendship you can for a moment deem me capable of so base a treachery--" "tut, tut! what words are these, my dear friend? have i wounded you? ah, forgive me; i am overloading you with labor. therefore go on with the other details, and drop this one from your list. the bloody-minded fourtou will be sure to attend to it. or i myself--yes, to make certain, i will drop a note to my journalistic friend, m. noir--" "oh, come to think of it, you may save yourself the trouble; that other second has informed m. noir." "h'm! i might have known it. it is just like that fourtou, who always wants to make a display." at half past nine in the morning the procession approached the field of plessis-piquet in the following order: first came our carriage--nobody in it but m. gambetta and myself; then a carriage containing m. fourtou and his second; then a carriage containing two poet-orators who did not believe in god, and these had ms. funeral orations projecting from their breast pockets; then a carriage containing the head surgeons and their cases of instruments; then eight private carriages containing consulting surgeons; then a hack containing a coroner; then the two hearses; then a carriage containing the head undertakers; then a train of assistants and mutes on foot; and after these came plodding through the fog a long procession of camp followers, police, and citizens generally. it was a noble turnout, and would have made a fine display if we had had thinner weather. there was no conversation. i spoke several times to my principal, but i judge he was not aware of it, for he always referred to his note-book and muttered absently, "i die that france might live." "arrived on the field, my fellow-second and i paced off the thirty-five yards, and then drew lots for choice of position. this latter was but an ornamental ceremony, for all the choices were alike in such weather. these preliminaries being ended, i went to my principal and asked him if he was ready. he spread himself out to his full width, and said in a stern voice, "ready! let the batteries be charged." the loading process was done in the presence of duly constituted witnesses. we considered it best to perform this delicate service with the assistance of a lantern, on account of the state of the weather. we now placed our men. at this point the police noticed that the public had massed themselves together on the right and left of the field; they therefore begged a delay, while they should put these poor people in a place of safety. the request was granted. the police having ordered the two multitudes to take positions behind the duelists, we were once more ready. the weather growing still more opaque, it was agreed between myself and the other second that before giving the fatal signal we should each deliver a loud whoop to enable the combatants to ascertain each other's whereabouts. i now returned to my principal, and was distressed to observe that he had lost a good deal of his spirit. i tried my best to hearten him. i said, "indeed, sir, things are not as bad as they seem. considering the character of the weapons, the limited number of shots allowed, the generous distance, the impenetrable solidity of the fog, and the added fact that one of the combatants is one-eyed and the other cross-eyed and near-sighted, it seems to me that this conflict need not necessarily be fatal. there are chances that both of you may survive. therefore, cheer up; do not be downhearted." this speech had so good an effect that my principal immediately stretched forth his hand and said, "i am myself again; give me the weapon." i laid it, all lonely and forlorn, in the center of the vast solitude of his palm. he gazed at it and shuddered. and still mournfully contemplating it, he murmured in a broken voice: "alas, it is not death i dread, but mutilation." i heartened him once more, and with such success that he presently said, "let the tragedy begin. stand at my back; do not desert me in this solemn hour, my friend." i gave him my promise. i now assisted him to point his pistol toward the spot where i judged his adversary to be standing, and cautioned him to listen well and further guide himself by my fellow-second's whoop. then i propped myself against m. gambetta's back, and raised a rousing "whoop-ee!" this was answered from out the far distances of the fog, and i immediately shouted: "one--two--three--fire!" two little sounds like spit! spit! broke upon my ear, and in the same instant i was crushed to the earth under a mountain of flesh. bruised as i was, i was still able to catch a faint accent from above, to this effect: "i die for... for ... perdition take it, what is it i die for? ... oh, yes--france! i die that france may live!" the surgeons swarmed around with their probes in their hands, and applied their microscopes to the whole area of m. gambetta's person, with the happy result of finding nothing in the nature of a wound. then a scene ensued which was in every way gratifying and inspiriting. the two gladiators fell upon each other's neck, with floods of proud and happy tears; that other second embraced me; the surgeons, the orators, the undertakers, the police, everybody embraced, everybody congratulated, everybody cried, and the whole atmosphere was filled with praise and with joy unspeakable. it seems to me then that i would rather be a hero of a french duel than a crowned and sceptered monarch. when the commotion had somewhat subsided, the body of surgeons held a consultation, and after a good deal of debate decided that with proper care and nursing there was reason to believe that i would survive my injuries. my internal hurts were deemed the most serious, since it was apparent that a broken rib had penetrated my left lung, and that many of my organs had been pressed out so far to one side or the other of where they belonged, that it was doubtful if they would ever learn to perform their functions in such remote and unaccustomed localities. they then set my left arm in two places, pulled my right hip into its socket again, and re-elevated my nose. i was an object of great interest, and even admiration; and many sincere and warm-hearted persons had themselves introduced to me, and said they were proud to know the only man who had been hurt in a french duel in forty years. i was placed in an ambulance at the very head of the procession; and thus with gratifying 'eclat i was marched into paris, the most conspicuous figure in that great spectacle, and deposited at the hospital. the cross of the legion of honor has been conferred upon me. however, few escape that distinction. such is the true version of the most memorable private conflict of the age. i have no complaints to make against any one. i acted for myself, and i can stand the consequences. without boasting, i think i may say i am not afraid to stand before a modern french duelist, but as long as i keep in my right mind i will never consent to stand behind one again. chapter ix [what the beautiful maiden said] one day we took the train and went down to mannheim to see "king lear" played in german. it was a mistake. we sat in our seats three whole hours and never understood anything but the thunder and lightning; and even that was reversed to suit german ideas, for the thunder came first and the lightning followed after. the behavior of the audience was perfect. there were no rustlings, or whisperings, or other little disturbances; each act was listened to in silence, and the applauding was done after the curtain was down. the doors opened at half past four, the play began promptly at half past five, and within two minutes afterward all who were coming were in their seats, and quiet reigned. a german gentleman in the train had said that a shakespearian play was an appreciated treat in germany and that we should find the house filled. it was true; all the six tiers were filled, and remained so to the end--which suggested that it is not only balcony people who like shakespeare in germany, but those of the pit and gallery, too. another time, we went to mannheim and attended a shivaree-otherwise an opera--the one called "lohengrin." the banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. the racking and pitiless pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the time that i had my teeth fixed. there were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay through the hour hours to the end, and i stayed; but the recollection of that long, dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. to have to endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder. i was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers, of the two sexes, and this compelled repression; yet at times the pain was so exquisite that i could hardly keep the tears back. at those times, as the howlings and wailings and shrieking of the singers, and the ragings and roarings and explosions of the vast orchestra rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer and fiercer, i could have cried if i had been alone. those strangers would not have been surprised to see a man do such a thing who was being gradually skinned, but they would have marveled at it here, and made remarks about it no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the present case which was an advantage over being skinned. there was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act, and i could not trust myself to do it, for i felt that i should desert to stay out. there was another wait of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but i had gone through so much by that time that i had no spirit left, and so had no desire but to be let alone. i do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were like me, for, indeed, they were not. whether it was that they naturally liked that noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like it by getting used to it, i did not at the time know; but they did like--this was plain enough. while it was going on they sat and looked as rapt and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs; and whenever the curtain fell they rose to their feet, in one solid mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of applause swept the place. this was not comprehensible to me. of course, there were many people there who were not under compulsion to stay; yet the tiers were as full at the close as they had been at the beginning. this showed that the people liked it. it was a curious sort of a play. in the manner of costumes and scenery it was fine and showy enough; but there was not much action. that is to say, there was not much really done, it was only talked about; and always violently. it was what one might call a narrative play. everybody had a narrative and a grievance, and none were reasonable about it, but all in an offensive and ungovernable state. there was little of that sort of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand down by the footlights, warbling, with blended voices, and keep holding out their arms toward each other and drawing them back and spreading both hands over first one breast and then the other with a shake and a pressure--no, it was every rioter for himself and no blending. each sang his indictive narrative in turn, accompanied by the whole orchestra of sixty instruments, and when this had continued for some time, and one was hoping they might come to an understanding and modify the noise, a great chorus composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth, and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, i lived over again all that i suffered the time the orphan asylum burned down. we only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven's sweet ecstasy and peace during all this long and diligent and acrimonious reproduction of the other place. this was while a gorgeous procession of people marched around and around, in the third act, and sang the wedding chorus. to my untutored ear that was music--almost divine music. while my seared soul was steeped in the healing balm of those gracious sounds, it seemed to me that i could almost resuffer the torments which had gone before, in order to be so healed again. there is where the deep ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. it deals so largely in pain that its scattered delights are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts. a pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, i suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere. i have since found out that there is nothing the germans like so much as an opera. they like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with their whole hearts. this is a legitimate result of habit and education. our nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt. one in fifty of those who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but i think a good many of the other forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, and the rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. the latter usually hum the airs while they are being sung, so that their neighbors may perceive that they have been to operas before. the funerals of these do not occur often enough. a gentle, old-maidish person and a sweet young girl of seventeen sat right in front of us that night at the mannheim opera. these people talked, between the acts, and i understood them, though i understood nothing that was uttered on the distant stage. at first they were guarded in their talk, but after they had heard my agent and me conversing in english they dropped their reserve and i picked up many of their little confidences; no, i mean many of her little confidences--meaning the elder party--for the young girl only listened, and gave assenting nods, but never said a word. how pretty she was, and how sweet she was! i wished she would speak. but evidently she was absorbed in her own thoughts, her own young-girl dreams, and found a dearer pleasure in silence. but she was not dreaming sleepy dreams--no, she was awake, alive, alert, she could not sit still a moment. she was an enchanting study. her gown was of a soft white silky stuff that clung to her round young figure like a fish's skin, and it was rippled over with the gracefulest little fringy films of lace; she had deep, tender eyes, with long, curved lashes; and she had peachy cheeks, and a dimpled chin, and such a dear little rosebud of a mouth; and she was so dovelike, so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and so bewitching. for long hours i did mightily wish she would speak. and at last she did; the red lips parted, and out leaps her thought--and with such a guileless and pretty enthusiasm, too: "auntie, i just know i've got five hundred fleas on me!" that was probably over the average. yes, it must have been very much over the average. the average at that time in the grand duchy of baden was forty-five to a young person (when alone), according to the official estimate of the home secretary for that year; the average for older people was shifty and indeterminable, for whenever a wholesome young girl came into the presence of her elders she immediately lowered their average and raised her own. she became a sort of contribution-box. this dear young thing in the theater had been sitting there unconsciously taking up a collection. many a skinny old being in our neighborhood was the happier and the restfuler for her coming. in that large audience, that night, there were eight very conspicuous people. these were ladies who had their hats or bonnets on. what a blessed thing it would be if a lady could make herself conspicuous in our theaters by wearing her hat. it is not usual in europe to allow ladies and gentlemen to take bonnets, hats, overcoats, canes, or umbrellas into the auditorium, but in mannheim this rule was not enforced because the audiences were largely made up of people from a distance, and among these were always a few timid ladies who were afraid that if they had to go into an anteroom to get their things when the play was over, they would miss their train. but the great mass of those who came from a distance always ran the risk and took the chances, preferring the loss of a train to a breach of good manners and the discomfort of being unpleasantly conspicuous during a stretch of three or four hours. chapter x [how wagner operas bang along] three or four hours. that is a long time to sit in one place, whether one be conspicuous or not, yet some of wagner's operas bang along for six whole hours on a stretch! but the people sit there and enjoy it all, and wish it would last longer. a german lady in munich told me that a person could not like wagner's music at first, but must go through the deliberate process of learning to like it--then he would have his sure reward; for when he had learned to like it he would hunger for it and never be able to get enough of it. she said that six hours of wagner was by no means too much. she said that this composer had made a complete revolution in music and was burying the old masters one by one. and she said that wagner's operas differed from all others in one notable respect, and that was that they were not merely spotted with music here and there, but were all music, from the first strain to the last. this surprised me. i said i had attended one of his insurrections, and found hardly any music in it except the wedding chorus. she said "lohengrin" was noisier than wagner's other operas, but that if i would keep on going to see it i would find by and by that it was all music, and therefore would then enjoy it. i could have said, "but would you advise a person to deliberately practice having a toothache in the pit of his stomach for a couple of years in order that he might then come to enjoy it?" but i reserved that remark. this lady was full of the praises of the head-tenor who had performed in a wagner opera the night before, and went on to enlarge upon his old and prodigious fame, and how many honors had been lavished upon him by the princely houses of germany. here was another surprise. i had attended that very opera, in the person of my agent, and had made close and accurate observations. so i said: "why, madam, my experience warrants me in stating that that tenor's voice is not a voice at all, but only a shriek--the shriek of a hyena." "that is very true," she said; "he cannot sing now; it is already many years that he has lost his voice, but in other times he sang, yes, divinely! so whenever he comes now, you shall see, yes, that the theater will not hold the people. jawohl bei gott! his voice is wunderscho"n in that past time." i said she was discovering to me a kindly trait in the germans which was worth emulating. i said that over the water we were not quite so generous; that with us, when a singer had lost his voice and a jumper had lost his legs, these parties ceased to draw. i said i had been to the opera in hanover, once, and in mannheim once, and in munich (through my authorized agent) once, and this large experience had nearly persuaded me that the germans preferred singers who couldn't sing. this was not such a very extravagant speech, either, for that burly mannheim tenor's praises had been the talk of all heidelberg for a week before his performance took place--yet his voice was like the distressing noise which a nail makes when you screech it across a window-pane. i said so to heidelberg friends the next day, and they said, in the calmest and simplest way, that that was very true, but that in earlier times his voice had been wonderfully fine. and the tenor in hanover was just another example of this sort. the english-speaking german gentleman who went with me to the opera there was brimming with enthusiasm over that tenor. he said: "ach gott! a great man! you shall see him. he is so celebrate in all germany--and he has a pension, yes, from the government. he not obliged to sing now, only twice every year; but if he not sing twice each year they take him his pension away." very well, we went. when the renowned old tenor appeared, i got a nudge and an excited whisper: "now you see him!" but the "celebrate" was an astonishing disappointment to me. if he had been behind a screen i should have supposed they were performing a surgical operation on him. i looked at my friend--to my great surprise he seemed intoxicated with pleasure, his eyes were dancing with eager delight. when the curtain at last fell, he burst into the stormiest applause, and kept it up--as did the whole house--until the afflictive tenor had come three times before the curtain to make his bow. while the glowing enthusiast was swabbing the perspiration from his face, i said: "i don't mean the least harm, but really, now, do you think he can sing?" "him? no! gott im himmel, aber, how he has been able to sing twenty-five years ago?" [then pensively.] "ach, no, now he not sing any more, he only cry. when he think he sing, now, he not sing at all, no, he only make like a cat which is unwell." where and how did we get the idea that the germans are a stolid, phlegmatic race? in truth, they are widely removed from that. they are warm-hearted, emotional, impulsive, enthusiastic, their tears come at the mildest touch, and it is not hard to move them to laughter. they are the very children of impulse. we are cold and self-contained, compared to the germans. they hug and kiss and cry and shout and dance and sing; and where we use one loving, petting expressions they pour out a score. their language is full of endearing diminutives; nothing that they love escapes the application of a petting diminutive--neither the house, nor the dog, nor the horse, nor the grandmother, nor any other creature, animate or inanimate. in the theaters at hanover, hamburg, and mannheim, they had a wise custom. the moment the curtain went up, the light in the body of the house went down. the audience sat in the cool gloom of a deep twilight, which greatly enhanced the glowing splendors of the stage. it saved gas, too, and people were not sweated to death. when i saw "king lear" played, nobody was allowed to see a scene shifted; if there was nothing to be done but slide a forest out of the way and expose a temple beyond, one did not see that forest split itself in the middle and go shrieking away, with the accompanying disenchanting spectacle of the hands and heels of the impelling impulse--no, the curtain was always dropped for an instant--one heard not the least movement behind it--but when it went up, the next instant, the forest was gone. even when the stage was being entirely reset, one heard no noise. during the whole time that "king lear" was playing the curtain was never down two minutes at any one time. the orchestra played until the curtain was ready to go up for the first time, then they departed for the evening. where the stage waits never each two minutes there is no occasion for music. i had never seen this two-minute business between acts but once before, and that was when the "shaughraun" was played at wallack's. i was at a concert in munich one night, the people were streaming in, the clock-hand pointed to seven, the music struck up, and instantly all movement in the body of the house ceased--nobody was standing, or walking up the aisles, or fumbling with a seat, the stream of incomers had suddenly dried up at its source. i listened undisturbed to a piece of music that was fifteen minutes long--always expecting some tardy ticket-holders to come crowding past my knees, and being continuously and pleasantly disappointed--but when the last note was struck, here came the stream again. you see, they had made those late comers wait in the comfortable waiting-parlor from the time the music had begin until it was ended. it was the first time i had ever seen this sort of criminals denied the privilege of destroying the comfort of a house full of their betters. some of these were pretty fine birds, but no matter, they had to tarry outside in the long parlor under the inspection of a double rank of liveried footmen and waiting-maids who supported the two walls with their backs and held the wraps and traps of their masters and mistresses on their arms. we had no footmen to hold our things, and it was not permissible to take them into the concert-room; but there were some men and women to take charge of them for us. they gave us checks for them and charged a fixed price, payable in advance--five cents. in germany they always hear one thing at an opera which has never yet been heard in america, perhaps--i mean the closing strain of a fine solo or duet. we always smash into it with an earthquake of applause. the result is that we rob ourselves of the sweetest part of the treat; we get the whiskey, but we don't get the sugar in the bottom of the glass. our way of scattering applause along through an act seems to me to be better than the mannheim way of saving it all up till the act is ended. i do not see how an actor can forget himself and portray hot passion before a cold still audience. i should think he would feel foolish. it is a pain to me to this day, to remember how that old german lear raged and wept and howled around the stage, with never a response from that hushed house, never a single outburst till the act was ended. to me there was something unspeakably uncomfortable in the solemn dead silences that always followed this old person's tremendous outpourings of his feelings. i could not help putting myself in his place--i thought i knew how sick and flat he felt during those silences, because i remembered a case which came under my observation once, and which--but i will tell the incident: one evening on board a mississippi steamboat, a boy of ten years lay asleep in a berth--a long, slim-legged boy, he was, encased in quite a short shirt; it was the first time he had ever made a trip on a steamboat, and so he was troubled, and scared, and had gone to bed with his head filled with impending snaggings, and explosions, and conflagrations, and sudden death. about ten o'clock some twenty ladies were sitting around about the ladies' saloon, quietly reading, sewing, embroidering, and so on, and among them sat a sweet, benignant old dame with round spectacles on her nose and her busy knitting-needles in her hands. now all of a sudden, into the midst of this peaceful scene burst that slim-shanked boy in the brief shirt, wild-eyed, erect-haired, and shouting, "fire, fire! jump and run, the boat's afire and there ain't a minute to lose!" all those ladies looked sweetly up and smiled, nobody stirred, the old lady pulled her spectacles down, looked over them, and said, gently: "but you mustn't catch cold, child. run and put on your breastpin, and then come and tell us all about it." it was a cruel chill to give to a poor little devil's gushing vehemence. he was expecting to be a sort of hero--the creator of a wild panic--and here everybody sat and smiled a mocking smile, and an old woman made fun of his bugbear. i turned and crept away--for i was that boy--and never even cared to discover whether i had dreamed the fire or actually seen it. i am told that in a german concert or opera, they hardly ever encore a song; that though they may be dying to hear it again, their good breeding usually preserves them against requiring the repetition. kings may encore; that is quite another matter; it delights everybody to see that the king is pleased; and as to the actor encored, his pride and gratification are simply boundless. still, there are circumstances in which even a royal encore-but it is better to illustrate. the king of bavaria is a poet, and has a poet's eccentricities--with the advantage over all other poets of being able to gratify them, no matter what form they may take. he is fond of opera, but not fond of sitting in the presence of an audience; therefore, it has sometimes occurred, in munich, that when an opera has been concluded and the players were getting off their paint and finery, a command has come to them to get their paint and finery on again. presently the king would arrive, solitary and alone, and the players would being at the beginning and do the entire opera over again with only that one individual in the vast solemn theater for audience. once he took an odd freak into his head. high up and out of sight, over the prodigious stage of the court theater is a maze of interlacing water-pipes, so pierced that in case of fire, innumerable little thread-like streams of water can be caused to descend; and in case of need, this discharge can be augmented to a pouring flood. american managers might want to make a note of that. the king was sole audience. the opera proceeded, it was a piece with a storm in it; the mimic thunder began to mutter, the mimic wind began to wail and sough, and the mimic rain to patter. the king's interest rose higher and higher; it developed into enthusiasm. he cried out: "it is very, very good, indeed! but i will have real rain! turn on the water!" the manager pleaded for a reversal of the command; said it would ruin the costly scenery and the splendid costumes, but the king cried: "no matter, no matter, i will have real rain! turn on the water!" so the real rain was turned on and began to descend in gossamer lances to the mimic flower-beds and gravel walks of the stage. the richly dressed actresses and actors tripped about singing bravely and pretending not to mind it. the king was delighted--his enthusiasm grew higher. he cried out: "bravo, bravo! more thunder! more lightning! turn on more rain!" the thunder boomed, the lightning glared, the storm-winds raged, the deluge poured down. the mimic royalty on the stage, with their soaked satins clinging to their bodies, slopped about ankle-deep in water, warbling their sweetest and best, the fiddlers under the eaves of the state sawed away for dear life, with the cold overflow spouting down the backs of their necks, and the dry and happy king sat in his lofty box and wore his gloves to ribbons applauding. "more yet!" cried the king; "more yet--let loose all the thunder, turn on all the water! i will hang the man that raises an umbrella!" when this most tremendous and effective storm that had ever been produced in any theater was at last over, the king's approbation was measureless. he cried: "magnificent, magnificent! encore! do it again!" but the manager succeeded in persuading him to recall the encore, and said the company would feel sufficiently rewarded and complimented in the mere fact that the encore was desired by his majesty, without fatiguing him with a repetition to gratify their own vanity. during the remainder of the act the lucky performers were those whose parts required changes of dress; the others were a soaked, bedraggled, and uncomfortable lot, but in the last degree picturesque. the stage scenery was ruined, trap-doors were so swollen that they wouldn't work for a week afterward, the fine costumes were spoiled, and no end of minor damages were done by that remarkable storm. it was royal idea--that storm--and royally carried out. but observe the moderation of the king; he did not insist upon his encore. if he had been a gladsome, unreflecting american opera-audience, he probably would have had his storm repeated and repeated until he drowned all those people. chapter xi [i paint a "turner"] the summer days passed pleasantly in heidelberg. we had a skilled trainer, and under his instructions we were getting our legs in the right condition for the contemplated pedestrian tours; we were well satisfied with the progress which we had made in the german language, [1. see appendix d for information concerning this fearful tongue.] and more than satisfied with what we had accomplished in art. we had had the best instructors in drawing and painting in germany--ha"mmerling, vogel, mu"ller, dietz, and schumann. ha"mmerling taught us landscape-painting. vogel taught us figure-drawing, mu"ller taught us to do still-life, and dietz and schumann gave us a finishing course in two specialties--battle-pieces and shipwrecks. whatever i am in art i owe to these men. i have something of the manner of each and all of them; but they all said that i had also a manner of my own, and that it was conspicuous. they said there was a marked individuality about my style--insomuch that if i ever painted the commonest type of a dog, i should be sure to throw a something into the aspect of that dog which would keep him from being mistaken for the creation of any other artist. secretly i wanted to believe all these kind sayings, but i could not; i was afraid that my masters' partiality for me, and pride in me, biased their judgment. so i resolved to make a test. privately, and unknown to any one, i painted my great picture, "heidelberg castle illuminated"--my first really important work in oils--and had it hung up in the midst of a wilderness of oil-pictures in the art exhibition, with no name attached to it. to my great gratification it was instantly recognized as mine. all the town flocked to see it, and people even came from neighboring localities to visit it. it made more stir than any other work in the exhibition. but the most gratifying thing of all was, that chance strangers, passing through, who had not heard of my picture, were not only drawn to it, as by a lodestone, the moment they entered the gallery, but always took it for a "turner." apparently nobody had ever done that. there were ruined castles on the overhanging cliffs and crags all the way; these were said to have their legends, like those on the rhine, and what was better still, they had never been in print. there was nothing in the books about that lovely region; it had been neglected by the tourist, it was virgin soil for the literary pioneer. meantime the knapsacks, the rough walking-suits and the stout walking-shoes which we had ordered, were finished and brought to us. a mr. x and a young mr. z had agreed to go with us. we went around one evening and bade good-by to our friends, and afterward had a little farewell banquet at the hotel. we got to bed early, for we wanted to make an early start, so as to take advantage of the cool of the morning. we were out of bed at break of day, feeling fresh and vigorous, and took a hearty breakfast, then plunged down through the leafy arcades of the castle grounds, toward the town. what a glorious summer morning it was, and how the flowers did pour out their fragrance, and how the birds did sing! it was just the time for a tramp through the woods and mountains. we were all dressed alike: broad slouch hats, to keep the sun off; gray knapsacks; blue army shirts; blue overalls; leathern gaiters buttoned tight from knee down to ankle; high-quarter coarse shoes snugly laced. each man had an opera-glass, a canteen, and a guide-book case slung over his shoulder, and carried an alpenstock in one hand and a sun-umbrella in the other. around our hats were wound many folds of soft white muslin, with the ends hanging and flapping down our backs--an idea brought from the orient and used by tourists all over europe. harris carried the little watch-like machine called a "pedometer," whose office is to keep count of a man's steps and tell how far he has walked. everybody stopped to admire our costumes and give us a hearty "pleasant march to you!" when we got downtown i found that we could go by rail to within five miles of heilbronn. the train was just starting, so we jumped aboard and went tearing away in splendid spirits. it was agreed all around that we had done wisely, because it would be just as enjoyable to walk down the neckar as up it, and it could not be needful to walk both ways. there were some nice german people in our compartment. i got to talking some pretty private matters presently, and harris became nervous; so he nudged me and said: "speak in german--these germans may understand english." i did so, it was well i did; for it turned out that there was not a german in that party who did not understand english perfectly. it is curious how widespread our language is in germany. after a while some of those folks got out and a german gentleman and his two young daughters got in. i spoke in german of one of the latter several times, but without result. finally she said: "ich verstehe nur deutch und englishe,"--or words to that effect. that is, "i don't understand any language but german and english." and sure enough, not only she but her father and sister spoke english. so after that we had all the talk we wanted; and we wanted a good deal, for they were agreeable people. they were greatly interested in our customs; especially the alpenstocks, for they had not seen any before. they said that the neckar road was perfectly level, so we must be going to switzerland or some other rugged country; and asked us if we did not find the walking pretty fatiguing in such warm weather. but we said no. we reached wimpfen--i think it was wimpfen--in about three hours, and got out, not the least tired; found a good hotel and ordered beer and dinner--then took a stroll through the venerable old village. it was very picturesque and tumble-down, and dirty and interesting. it had queer houses five hundred years old in it, and a military tower 115 feet high, which had stood there more than ten centuries. i made a little sketch of it. i kept a copy, but gave the original to the burgomaster. i think the original was better than the copy, because it had more windows in it and the grass stood up better and had a brisker look. there was none around the tower, though; i composed the grass myself, from studies i made in a field by heidelberg in ha"mmerling's time. the man on top, looking at the view, is apparently too large, but i found he could not be made smaller, conveniently. i wanted him there, and i wanted him visible, so i thought out a way to manage it; i composed the picture from two points of view; the spectator is to observe the man from bout where that flag is, and he must observe the tower itself from the ground. this harmonizes the seeming discrepancy. [figure 2] near an old cathedral, under a shed, were three crosses of stone--moldy and damaged things, bearing life-size stone figures. the two thieves were dressed in the fanciful court costumes of the middle of the sixteenth century, while the saviour was nude, with the exception of a cloth around the loins. we had dinner under the green trees in a garden belonging to the hotel and overlooking the neckar; then, after a smoke, we went to bed. we had a refreshing nap, then got up about three in the afternoon and put on our panoply. as we tramped gaily out at the gate of the town, we overtook a peasant's cart, partly laden with odds and ends of cabbages and similar vegetable rubbish, and drawn by a small cow and a smaller donkey yoked together. it was a pretty slow concern, but it got us into heilbronn before dark--five miles, or possibly it was seven. we stopped at the very same inn which the famous old robber-knight and rough fighter go"tz von berlichingen, abode in after he got out of captivity in the square tower of heilbronn between three hundred and fifty and four hundred years ago. harris and i occupied the same room which he had occupied and the same paper had not quite peeled off the walls yet. the furniture was quaint old carved stuff, full four hundred years old, and some of the smells were over a thousand. there was a hook in the wall, which the landlord said the terrific old go"tz used to hang his iron hand on when he took it off to go to bed. this room was very large--it might be called immense-and it was on the first floor; which means it was in the second story, for in europe the houses are so high that they do not count the first story, else they would get tired climbing before they got to the top. the wallpaper was a fiery red, with huge gold figures in it, well smirched by time, and it covered all the doors. these doors fitted so snugly and continued the figures of the paper so unbrokenly, that when they were closed one had to go feeling and searching along the wall to find them. there was a stove in the corner--one of those tall, square, stately white porcelain things that looks like a monument and keeps you thinking of death when you ought to be enjoying your travels. the windows looked out on a little alley, and over that into a stable and some poultry and pig yards in the rear of some tenement-houses. there were the customary two beds in the room, one in one end, the other in the other, about an old-fashioned brass-mounted, single-barreled pistol-shot apart. they were fully as narrow as the usual german bed, too, and had the german bed's ineradicable habit of spilling the blankets on the floor every time you forgot yourself and went to sleep. a round table as large as king arthur's stood in the center of the room; while the waiters were getting ready to serve our dinner on it we all went out to see the renowned clock on the front of the municipal buildings. chapter xii [what the wives saved] the rathhaus, or municipal building, is of the quaintest and most picturesque middle-age architecture. it has a massive portico and steps, before it, heavily balustraded, and adorned with life-sized rusty iron knights in complete armor. the clock-face on the front of the building is very large and of curious pattern. ordinarily, a gilded angel strikes the hour on a big bell with a hammer; as the striking ceases, a life-sized figure of time raises its hour-glass and turns it; two golden rams advance and butt each other; a gilded cock lifts its wings; but the main features are two great angels, who stand on each side of the dial with long horns at their lips; it was said that they blew melodious blasts on these horns every hour--but they did not do it for us. we were told, later, than they blew only at night, when the town was still. within the rathhaus were a number of huge wild boars' heads, preserved, and mounted on brackets along the wall; they bore inscriptions telling who killed them and how many hundred years ago it was done. one room in the building was devoted to the preservation of ancient archives. there they showed us no end of aged documents; some were signed by popes, some by tilly and other great generals, and one was a letter written and subscribed by go"tz von berlichingen in heilbronn in 1519 just after his release from the square tower. this fine old robber-knight was a devoutly and sincerely religious man, hospitable, charitable to the poor, fearless in fight, active, enterprising, and possessed of a large and generous nature. he had in him a quality of being able to overlook moderate injuries, and being able to forgive and forget mortal ones as soon as he had soundly trounced the authors of them. he was prompt to take up any poor devil's quarrel and risk his neck to right him. the common folk held him dear, and his memory is still green in ballad and tradition. he used to go on the highway and rob rich wayfarers; and other times he would swoop down from his high castle on the hills of the neckar and capture passing cargoes of merchandise. in his memoirs he piously thanks the giver of all good for remembering him in his needs and delivering sundry such cargoes into his hands at times when only special providences could have relieved him. he was a doughty warrior and found a deep joy in battle. in an assault upon a stronghold in bavaria when he was only twenty-three years old, his right hand was shot away, but he was so interested in the fight that he did not observe it for a while. he said that the iron hand which was made for him afterward, and which he wore for more than half a century, was nearly as clever a member as the fleshy one had been. i was glad to get a facsimile of the letter written by this fine old german robin hood, though i was not able to read it. he was a better artist with his sword than with his pen. we went down by the river and saw the square tower. it was a very venerable structure, very strong, and very ornamental. there was no opening near the ground. they had to use a ladder to get into it, no doubt. we visited the principal church, also--a curious old structure, with a towerlike spire adorned with all sorts of grotesque images. the inner walls of the church were placarded with large mural tablets of copper, bearing engraved inscriptions celebrating the merits of old heilbronn worthies of two or three centuries ago, and also bearing rudely painted effigies of themselves and their families tricked out in the queer costumes of those days. the head of the family sat in the foreground, and beyond him extended a sharply receding and diminishing row of sons; facing him sat his wife, and beyond her extended a low row of diminishing daughters. the family was usually large, but the perspective bad. then we hired the hack and the horse which go"tz von berlichingen used to use, and drove several miles into the country to visit the place called weibertreu--wife's fidelity i suppose it means. it was a feudal castle of the middle ages. when we reached its neighborhood we found it was beautifully situated, but on top of a mound, or hill, round and tolerably steep, and about two hundred feet high. therefore, as the sun was blazing hot, we did not climb up there, but took the place on trust, and observed it from a distance while the horse leaned up against a fence and rested. the place has no interest except that which is lent it by its legend, which is a very pretty one--to this effect: the legend in the middle ages, a couple of young dukes, brothers, took opposite sides in one of the wars, the one fighting for the emperor, the other against him. one of them owned the castle and village on top of the mound which i have been speaking of, and in his absence his brother came with his knights and soldiers and began a siege. it was a long and tedious business, for the people made a stubborn and faithful defense. but at last their supplies ran out and starvation began its work; more fell by hunger than by the missiles of the enemy. they by and by surrendered, and begged for charitable terms. but the beleaguering prince was so incensed against them for their long resistance that he said he would spare none but the women and children--all men should be put to the sword without exception, and all their goods destroyed. then the women came and fell on their knees and begged for the lives of their husbands. "no," said the prince, "not a man of them shall escape alive; you yourselves shall go with your children into houseless and friendless banishment; but that you may not starve i grant you this one grace, that each woman may bear with her from this place as much of her most valuable property as she is able to carry." very well, presently the gates swung open and out filed those women carrying their husbands on their shoulders. the besiegers, furious at the trick, rushed forward to slaughter the men, but the duke stepped between and said: "no, put up your swords--a prince's word is inviolable." when we got back to the hotel, king arthur's round table was ready for us in its white drapery, and the head waiter and his first assistant, in swallow-tails and white cravats, brought in the soup and the hot plates at once. mr. x had ordered the dinner, and when the wine came on, he picked up a bottle, glanced at the label, and then turned to the grave, the melancholy, the sepulchral head waiter and said it was not the sort of wine he had asked for. the head waiter picked up the bottle, cast his undertaker-eye on it and said: "it is true; i beg pardon." then he turned on his subordinate and calmly said, "bring another label." at the same time he slid the present label off with his hand and laid it aside; it had been newly put on, its paste was still wet. when the new label came, he put it on; our french wine being now turned into german wine, according to desire, the head waiter went blandly about his other duties, as if the working of this sort of miracle was a common and easy thing to him. mr. x said he had not known, before, that there were people honest enough to do this miracle in public, but he was aware that thousands upon thousands of labels were imported into america from europe every year, to enable dealers to furnish to their customers in a quiet and inexpensive way all the different kinds of foreign wines they might require. we took a turn around the town, after dinner, and found it fully as interesting in the moonlight as it had been in the daytime. the streets were narrow and roughly paved, and there was not a sidewalk or a street-lamp anywhere. the dwellings were centuries old, and vast enough for hotels. they widened all the way up; the stories projected further and further forward and aside as they ascended, and the long rows of lighted windows, filled with little bits of panes, curtained with figured white muslin and adorned outside with boxes of flowers, made a pretty effect. the moon was bright, and the light and shadow very strong; and nothing could be more picturesque than those curving streets, with their rows of huge high gables leaning far over toward each other in a friendly gossiping way, and the crowds below drifting through the alternating blots of gloom and mellow bars of moonlight. nearly everybody was abroad, chatting, singing, romping, or massed in lazy comfortable attitudes in the doorways. in one place there was a public building which was fenced about with a thick, rusty chain, which sagged from post to post in a succession of low swings. the pavement, here, was made of heavy blocks of stone. in the glare of the moon a party of barefooted children were swinging on those chains and having a noisy good time. they were not the first ones who have done that; even their great-great-grandfathers had not been the first to do it when they were children. the strokes of the bare feet had worn grooves inches deep in the stone flags; it had taken many generations of swinging children to accomplish that. everywhere in the town were the mold and decay that go with antiquity, and evidence of it; but i do not know that anything else gave us so vivid a sense of the old age of heilbronn as those footworn grooves in the paving-stones. chapter xiii [my long crawl in the dark] when we got back to the hotel i wound and set the pedometer and put it in my pocket, for i was to carry it next day and keep record of the miles we made. the work which we had given the instrument to do during which had just closed had not fatigued it perceptibly. we were in bed by ten, for we wanted to be up and away on our tramp homeward with the dawn. i hung fire, but harris went to sleep at once. i hate a man who goes to sleep at once; there is a sort of indefinable something about it which is not exactly an insult, and yet is an insolence; and one which is hard to bear, too. i lay there fretting over this injury, and trying to go to sleep; but the harder i tried, the wider awake i grew. i got to feeling very lonely in the dark, ith no company but an undigested dinner. my mind got a start by and by, and began to consider the beginning of every subject which has ever been thought of; but it never went further than the beginning; it was touch and go; it fled from topic to topic with a frantic speed. at the end of an hour my head was in a perfect whirl and i was dead tired, fagged out. the fatigue was so great that it presently began to make some head against the nervous excitement; while imagining myself wide awake, i would really doze into momentary unconsciousness, and come suddenly out of it with a physical jerk which nearly wrenched my joints apart--the delusion of the instant being that i was tumbling backward over a precipice. after i had fallen over eight or nine precipices and thus found out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight or nine times without the wide-awake, hard-working other half suspecting it, the periodical unconsciousnesses began to extend their spell gradually over more of my brain-territory, and at last i sank into a drowse which grew deeper and deeper and was doubtless just on the very point of being a solid, blessed dreamless stupor, when--what was that? my dulled faculties dragged themselves partly back to life and took a receptive attitude. now out of an immense, a limitless distance, came a something which grew and grew, and approached, and presently was recognizable as a sound-it had rather seemed to be a feeling, before. this sound was a mile away, now--perhaps it was the murmur of a storm; and now it was nearer--not a quarter of a mile away; was it the muffled rasping and grinding of distant machinery? no, it came still nearer; was it the measured tramp of a marching troop? but it came nearer still, and still nearer--and at last it was right in the room: it was merely a mouse gnawing the woodwork. so i had held my breath all that time for such a trifle. well, what was done could not be helped; i would go to sleep at once and make up the lost time. that was a thoughtless thought. without intending it--hardly knowing it--i fell to listening intently to that sound, and even unconsciously counting the strokes of the mouse's nutmeg-grater. presently i was deriving exquisite suffering from this employment, yet maybe i could have endured it if the mouse had attended steadily to his work; but he did not do that; he stopped every now and then, and i suffered more while waiting and listening for him to begin again than i did while he was gnawing. along at first i was mentally offering a reward of five--six--seven--ten--dollars for that mouse; but toward the last i was offering rewards which were entirely beyond my means. i close-reefed my ears-that is to say, i bent the flaps of them down and furled them into five or six folds, and pressed them against the hearing-orifice--but it did no good: the faculty was so sharpened by nervous excitement that it was become a microphone and could hear through the overlays without trouble. my anger grew to a frenzy. i finally did what all persons before me have done, clear back to adam,--resolved to throw something. i reached down and got my walking-shoes, then sat up in bed and listened, in order to exactly locate the noise. but i couldn't do it; it was as unlocatable as a cricket's noise; and where one thinks that that is, is always the very place where it isn't. so i presently hurled a shoe at random, and with a vicious vigor. it struck the wall over harris's head and fell down on him; i had not imagined i could throw so far. it woke harris, and i was glad of it until i found he was not angry; then i was sorry. he soon went to sleep again, which pleased me; but straightway the mouse began again, which roused my temper once more. i did not want to wake harris a second time, but the gnawing continued until i was compelled to throw the other shoe. this time i broke a mirror--there were two in the room--i got the largest one, of course. harris woke again, but did not complain, and i was sorrier than ever. i resolved that i would suffer all possible torture before i would disturb him a third time. the mouse eventually retired, and by and by i was sinking to sleep, when a clock began to strike; i counted till it was done, and was about to drowse again when another clock began; i counted; then the two great rathhaus clock angels began to send forth soft, rich, melodious blasts from their long trumpets. i had never heard anything that was so lovely, or weird, or mysterious--but when they got to blowing the quarter-hours, they seemed to me to be overdoing the thing. every time i dropped off for the moment, a new noise woke me. each time i woke i missed my coverlet, and had to reach down to the floor and get it again. at last all sleepiness forsook me. i recognized the fact that i was hopelessly and permanently wide awake. wide awake, and feverish and thirsty. when i had lain tossing there as long as i could endure it, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to dress and go out in the great square and take a refreshing wash in the fountain, and smoke and reflect there until the remnant of the night was gone. i believed i could dress in the dark without waking harris. i had banished my shoes after the mouse, but my slippers would do for a summer night. so i rose softly, and gradually got on everything--down to one sock. i couldn't seem to get on the track of that sock, any way i could fix it. but i had to have it; so i went down on my hands and knees, with one slipper on and the other in my hand, and began to paw gently around and rake the floor, but with no success. i enlarged my circle, and went on pawing and raking. with every pressure of my knee, how the floor creaked! and every time i chanced to rake against any article, it seemed to give out thirty-five or thirty-six times more noise than it would have done in the daytime. in those cases i always stopped and held my breath till i was sure harris had not awakened--then i crept along again. i moved on and on, but i could not find the sock; i could not seem to find anything but furniture. i could not remember that there was much furniture in the room when i went to bed, but the place was alive with it now --especially chairs--chairs everywhere-had a couple of families moved in, in the mean time? and i never could seem to glance on one of those chairs, but always struck it full and square with my head. my temper rose, by steady and sure degrees, and as i pawed on and on, i fell to making vicious comments under my breath. finally, with a venomous access of irritation, i said i would leave without the sock; so i rose up and made straight for the door--as i supposed--and suddenly confronted my dim spectral image in the unbroken mirror. it startled the breath out of me, for an instant; it also showed me that i was lost, and had no sort of idea where i was. when i realized this, i was so angry that i had to sit down on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off with an explosion of opinion. if there had been only one mirror, it might possibly have helped to locate me; but there were two, and two were as bad as a thousand; besides, these were on opposite sides of the room. i could see the dim blur of the windows, but in my turned-around condition they were exactly where they ought not to be, and so they only confused me instead of helping me. i started to get up, and knocked down an umbrella; it made a noise like a pistol-shot when it struck that hard, slick, carpetless floor; i grated my teeth and held my breath--harris did not stir. i set the umbrella slowly and carefully on end against the wall, but as soon as i took my hand away, its heel slipped from under it, and down it came again with another bang. i shrunk together and listened a moment in silent fury-no harm done, everything quiet. with the most painstaking care and nicety, i stood the umbrella up once more, took my hand away, and down it came again. i have been strictly reared, but if it had not been so dark and solemn and awful there in that lonely, vast room, i do believe i should have said something then which could not be put into a sunday-school book without injuring the sale of it. if my reasoning powers had not been already sapped dry by my harassments, i would have known better than to try to set an umbrella on end on one of those glassy german floors in the dark; it can't be done in the daytime without four failures to one success. i had one comfort, though--harris was yet still and silent--he had not stirred. the umbrella could not locate me--there were four standing around the room, and all alike. i thought i would feel along the wall and find the door in that way. i rose up and began this operation, but raked down a picture. it was not a large one, but it made noise enough for a panorama. harris gave out no sound, but i felt that if i experimented any further with the pictures i should be sure to wake him. better give up trying to get out. yes, i would find king arthur's round table once more--i had already found it several times--and use it for a base of departure on an exploring tour for my bed; if i could find my bed i could then find my water pitcher; i would quench my raging thirst and turn in. so i started on my hands and knees, because i could go faster that way, and with more confidence, too, and not knock down things. by and by i found the table--with my head--rubbed the bruise a little, then rose up and started, with hands abroad and fingers spread, to balance myself. i found a chair; then a wall; then another chair; then a sofa; then an alpenstock, then another sofa; this confounded me, for i had thought there was only one sofa. i hunted up the table again and took a fresh start; found some more chairs. it occurred to me, now, as it ought to have done before, that as the table was round, it was therefore of no value as a base to aim from; so i moved off once more, and at random among the wilderness of chairs and sofas-wandering off into unfamiliar regions, and presently knocked a candlestick and knocked off a lamp, grabbed at the lamp and knocked off a water pitcher with a rattling crash, and thought to myself, "i've found you at last--i judged i was close upon you." harris shouted "murder," and "thieves," and finished with "i'm absolutely drowned." the crash had roused the house. mr. x pranced in, in his long night-garment, with a candle, young z after him with another candle; a procession swept in at another door, with candles and lanterns--landlord and two german guests in their nightgowns and a chambermaid in hers. i looked around; i was at harris's bed, a sabbath-day's journey from my own. there was only one sofa; it was against the wall; there was only one chair where a body could get at it--i had been revolving around it like a planet, and colliding with it like a comet half the night. i explained how i had been employing myself, and why. then the landlord's party left, and the rest of us set about our preparations for breakfast, for the dawn was ready to break. i glanced furtively at my pedometer, and found i had made 47 miles. but i did not care, for i had come out for a pedestrian tour anyway. chapter xiv [rafting down the neckar] when the landlord learned that i and my agents were artists, our party rose perceptibly in his esteem; we rose still higher when he learned that we were making a pedestrian tour of europe. he told us all about the heidelberg road, and which were the best places to avoid and which the best ones to tarry at; he charged me less than cost for the things i broke in the night; he put up a fine luncheon for us and added to it a quantity of great light-green plums, the pleasantest fruit in germany; he was so anxious to do us honor that he would not allow us to walk out of heilbronn, but called up go"tz von berlichingen's horse and cab and made us ride. i made a sketch of the turnout. it is not a work, it is only what artists call a "study"--a thing to make a finished picture from. this sketch has several blemishes in it; for instance, the wagon is not traveling as fast as the horse is. this is wrong. again, the person trying to get out of the way is too small; he is out of perspective, as we say. the two upper lines are not the horse's back, they are the reigns; there seems to be a wheel missing-this would be corrected in a finished work, of course. this thing flying out behind is not a flag, it is a curtain. that other thing up there is the sun, but i didn't get enough distance on it. i do not remember, now, what that thing is that is in front of the man who is running, but i think it is a haystack or a woman. this study was exhibited in the paris salon of 1879, but did not take any medal; they do not give medals for studies. [figure 3] we discharged the carriage at the bridge. the river was full of logs--long, slender, barkless pine logs--and we leaned on the rails of the bridge, and watched the men put them together into rafts. these rafts were of a shape and construction to suit the crookedness and extreme narrowness of the neckar. they were from fifty to one hundred yards long, and they gradually tapered from a nine-log breadth at their sterns, to a three-log breadth at their bow-ends. the main part of the steering is done at the bow, with a pole; the three-log breadth there furnishes room for only the steersman, for these little logs are not larger around than an average young lady's waist. the connections of the several sections of the raft are slack and pliant, so that the raft may be readily bent into any sort of curve required by the shape of the river. the neckar is in many places so narrow that a person can throw a dog across it, if he has one; when it is also sharply curved in such places, the raftsman has to do some pretty nice snug piloting to make the turns. the river is not always allowed to spread over its whole bed--which is as much as thirty, and sometimes forty yards wide--but is split into three equal bodies of water, by stone dikes which throw the main volume, depth, and current into the central one. in low water these neat narrow-edged dikes project four or five inches above the surface, like the comb of a submerged roof, but in high water they are overflowed. a hatful of rain makes high water in the neckar, and a basketful produces an overflow. there are dikes abreast the schloss hotel, and the current is violently swift at that point. i used to sit for hours in my glass cage, watching the long, narrow rafts slip along through the central channel, grazing the right-bank dike and aiming carefully for the middle arch of the stone bridge below; i watched them in this way, and lost all this time hoping to see one of them hit the bridge-pier and wreck itself sometime or other, but was always disappointed. one was smashed there one morning, but i had just stepped into my room a moment to light a pipe, so i lost it. while i was looking down upon the rafts that morning in heilbronn, the daredevil spirit of adventure came suddenly upon me, and i said to my comrades: "_i_ am going to heidelberg on a raft. will you venture with me?" their faces paled a little, but they assented with as good a grace as they could. harris wanted to cable his mother--thought it his duty to do that, as he was all she had in this world--so, while he attended to this, i went down to the longest and finest raft and hailed the captain with a hearty "ahoy, shipmate!" which put us upon pleasant terms at once, and we entered upon business. i said we were on a pedestrian tour to heidelberg, and would like to take passage with him. i said this partly through young z, who spoke german very well, and partly through mr. x, who spoke it peculiarly. i can understand german as well as the maniac that invented it, but i talk it best through an interpreter. the captain hitched up his trousers, then shifted his quid thoughtfully. presently he said just what i was expecting he would say--that he had no license to carry passengers, and therefore was afraid the law would be after him in case the matter got noised about or any accident happened. so i chartered the raft and the crew and took all the responsibilities on myself. with a rattling song the starboard watch bent to their work and hove the cable short, then got the anchor home, and our bark moved off with a stately stride, and soon was bowling along at about two knots an hour. our party were grouped amidships. at first the talk was a little gloomy, and ran mainly upon the shortness of life, the uncertainty of it, the perils which beset it, and the need and wisdom of being always prepared for the worst; this shaded off into low-voiced references to the dangers of the deep, and kindred matters; but as the gray east began to redden and the mysterious solemnity and silence of the dawn to give place to the joy-songs of the birds, the talk took a cheerier tone, and our spirits began to rise steadily. germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful, but nobody has understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities of this soft and peaceful beauty unless he has voyaged down the neckar on a raft. the motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is gentle, and gliding, and smooth, and noiseless; it calms down all feverish activities, it soothes to sleep all nervous hurry and impatience; under its restful influence all the troubles and vexations and sorrows that harass the mind vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm, a deep and tranquil ecstasy. how it contrasts with hot and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening railroad rush, and tedious jolting behind tired horses over blinding white roads! we went slipping silently along, between the green and fragrant banks, with a sense of pleasure and contentment that grew, and grew, all the time. sometimes the banks were overhung with thick masses of willows that wholly hid the ground behind; sometimes we had noble hills on one hand, clothed densely with foliage to their tops, and on the other hand open levels blazing with poppies, or clothed in the rich blue of the corn-flower; sometimes we drifted in the shadow of forests, and sometimes along the margin of long stretches of velvety grass, fresh and green and bright, a tireless charm to the eye. and the birds!--they were everywhere; they swept back and forth across the river constantly, and their jubilant music was never stilled. it was a deep and satisfying pleasure to see the sun create the new morning, and gradually, patiently, lovingly, clothe it on with splendor after splendor, and glory after glory, till the miracle was complete. how different is this marvel observed from a raft, from what it is when one observes it through the dingy windows of a railway-station in some wretched village while he munches a petrified sandwich and waits for the train. chapter xv down the river [charming waterside pictures] men and women and cattle were at work in the dewy fields by this time. the people often stepped aboard the raft, as we glided along the grassy shores, and gossiped with us and with the crew for a hundred yards or so, then stepped ashore again, refreshed by the ride. only the men did this; the women were too busy. the women do all kinds of work on the continent. they dig, they hoe, they reap, they sow, they bear monstrous burdens on their backs, they shove similar ones long distances on wheelbarrows, they drag the cart when there is no dog or lean cow to drag it--and when there is, they assist the dog or cow. age is no matter--the older the woman the stronger she is, apparently. on the farm a woman's duties are not defined--she does a little of everything; but in the towns it is different, there she only does certain things, the men do the rest. for instance, a hotel chambermaid has nothing to do but make beds and fires in fifty or sixty rooms, bring towels and candles, and fetch several tons of water up several flights of stairs, a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious metal pitchers. she does not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours a day, and she can always get down on her knees and scrub the floors of halls and closets when she is tired and needs a rest. as the morning advanced and the weather grew hot, we took off our outside clothing and sat in a row along the edge of the raft and enjoyed the scenery, with our sun-umbrellas over our heads and our legs dangling in the water. every now and then we plunged in and had a swim. every projecting grassy cape had its joyous group of naked children, the boys to themselves and the girls to themselves, the latter usually in care of some motherly dame who sat in the shade of a tree with her knitting. the little boys swam out to us, sometimes, but the little maids stood knee-deep in the water and stopped their splashing and frolicking to inspect the raft with their innocent eyes as it drifted by. once we turned a corner suddenly and surprised a slender girl of twelve years or upward, just stepping into the water. she had not time to run, but she did what answered just as well; she promptly drew a lithe young willow bough athwart her white body with one hand, and then contemplated us with a simple and untroubled interest. thus she stood while we glided by. she was a pretty creature, and she and her willow bough made a very pretty picture, and one which could not offend the modesty of the most fastidious spectator. her white skin had a low bank of fresh green willows for background and effective contrast--for she stood against them--and above and out of them projected the eager faces and white shoulders of two smaller girls. toward noon we heard the inspiring cry: "sail ho!" "where away?" shouted the captain. "three points off the weather bow!" we ran forward to see the vessel. it proved to be a steamboat--for they had begun to run a steamer up the neckar, for the first time in may. she was a tug, and one of a very peculiar build and aspect. i had often watched her from the hotel, and wondered how she propelled herself, for apparently she had no propeller or paddles. she came churning along, now, making a deal of noise of one kind or another, and aggravating it every now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle. she had nine keel-boats hitched on behind and following after her in a long, slender rank. we met her in a narrow place, between dikes, and there was hardly room for us both in the cramped passage. as she went grinding and groaning by, we perceived the secret of her moving impulse. she did not drive herself up the river with paddles or propeller, she pulled herself by hauling on a great chain. this chain is laid in the bed of the river and is only fastened at the two ends. it is seventy miles long. it comes in over the boat's bow, passes around a drum, and is payed out astern. she pulls on that chain, and so drags herself up the river or down it. she has neither bow or stern, strictly speaking, for she has a long-bladed rudder on each end and she never turns around. she uses both rudders all the time, and they are powerful enough to enable her to turn to the right or the left and steer around curves, in spite of the strong resistance of the chain. i would not have believed that that impossible thing could be done; but i saw it done, and therefore i know that there is one impossible thing which can be done. what miracle will man attempt next? we met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails, mule power, and profanity--a tedious and laborious business. a wire rope led from the foretopmast to the file of mules on the tow-path a hundred yards ahead, and by dint of much banging and swearing and urging, the detachment of drivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles an hour out of the mules against the stiff current. the neckar has always been used as a canal, and thus has given employment to a great many men and animals; but now that this steamboat is able, with a small crew and a bushel or so of coal, to take nine keel-boats farther up the river in one hour than thirty men and thirty mules can do it in two, it is believed that the old-fashioned towing industry is on its death-bed. a second steamboat began work in the neckar three months after the first one was put in service. [figure 4] at noon we stepped ashore and bought some bottled beer and got some chickens cooked, while the raft waited; then we immediately put to sea again, and had our dinner while the beer was cold and the chickens hot. there is no pleasanter place for such a meal than a raft that is gliding down the winding neckar past green meadows and wooded hills, and slumbering villages, and craggy heights graced with crumbling towers and battlements. in one place we saw a nicely dressed german gentleman without any spectacles. before i could come to anchor he had got underway. it was a great pity. i so wanted to make a sketch of him. the captain comforted me for my loss, however, by saying that the man was without any doubt a fraud who had spectacles, but kept them in his pocket in order to make himself conspicuous. below hassmersheim we passed hornberg, go"tz von berlichingen's old castle. it stands on a bold elevation two hundred feet above the surface of the river; it has high vine-clad walls enclosing trees, and a peaked tower about seventy-five feet high. the steep hillside, from the castle clear down to the water's edge, is terraced, and clothed thick with grape vines. this is like farming a mansard roof. all the steeps along that part of the river which furnish the proper exposure, are given up to the grape. that region is a great producer of rhine wines. the germans are exceedingly fond of rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. one tells them from vinegar by the label. the hornberg hill is to be tunneled, and the new railway will pass under the castle. the cave of the specter two miles below hornberg castle is a cave in a low cliff, which the captain of the raft said had once been occupied by a beautiful heiress of hornberg--the lady gertrude-in the old times. it was seven hundred years ago. she had a number of rich and noble lovers and one poor and obscure one, sir wendel lobenfeld. with the native chuckleheadedness of the heroine of romance, she preferred the poor and obscure lover. with the native sound judgment of the father of a heroine of romance, the von berlichingen of that day shut his daughter up in his donjon keep, or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place, and resolved that she should stay there until she selected a husband from among her rich and noble lovers. the latter visited her and persecuted her with their supplications, but without effect, for her heart was true to her poor despised crusader, who was fighting in the holy land. finally, she resolved that she would endure the attentions of the rich lovers no longer; so one stormy night she escaped and went down the river and hid herself in the cave on the other side. her father ransacked the country for her, but found not a trace of her. as the days went by, and still no tidings of her came, his conscience began to torture him, and he caused proclamation to be made that if she were yet living and would return, he would oppose her no longer, she might marry whom she would. the months dragged on, all hope forsook the old man, he ceased from his customary pursuits and pleasures, he devoted himself to pious works, and longed for the deliverance of death. now just at midnight, every night, the lost heiress stood in the mouth of her cave, arrayed in white robes, and sand a little love ballad which her crusader had made for her. she judged that if he came home alive the superstitious peasants would tell him about the ghost that sang in the cave, and that as soon as they described the ballad he would know that none but he and she knew that song, therefore he would suspect that she was alive, and would come and find her. as time went on, the people of the region became sorely distressed about the specter of the haunted cave. it was said that ill luck of one kind or another always overtook any one who had the misfortune to hear that song. eventually, every calamity that happened thereabouts was laid at the door of that music. consequently, no boatmen would consent to pass the cave at night; the peasants shunned the place, even in the daytime. but the faithful girl sang on, night after night, month after month, and patiently waited; her reward must come at last. five years dragged by, and still, every night at midnight, the plaintive tones floated out over the silent land, while the distant boatmen and peasants thrust their fingers into their ears and shuddered out a prayer. and now came the crusader home, bronzed and battle-scarred, but bringing a great and splendid fame to lay at the feet of his bride. the old lord of hornberg received him as his son, and wanted him to stay by him and be the comfort and blessing of his age; but the tale of that young girl's devotion to him and its pathetic consequences made a changed man of the knight. he could not enjoy his well-earned rest. he said his heart was broken, he would give the remnant of his life to high deeds in the cause of humanity, and so find a worthy death and a blessed reunion with the brave true heart whose love had more honored him than all his victories in war. when the people heard this resolve of his, they came and told him there was a pitiless dragon in human disguise in the haunted cave, a dread creature which no knight had yet been bold enough to face, and begged him to rid the land of its desolating presence. he said he would do it. they told him about the song, and when he asked what song it was, they said the memory of it was gone, for nobody had been hardy enough to listen to it for the past four years and more. toward midnight the crusader came floating down the river in a boat, with his trusty cross-bow in his hands. he drifted silently through the dim reflections of the crags and trees, with his intent eyes fixed upon the low cliff which he was approaching. as he drew nearer, he discerned the black mouth of the cave. now--is that a white figure? yes. the plaintive song begins to well forth and float away over meadow and river--the cross-bow is slowly raised to position, a steady aim is taken, the bolt flies straight to the mark--the figure sinks down, still singing, the knight takes the wool out of his ears, and recognizes the old ballad--too late! ah, if he had only not put the wool in his ears! the crusader went away to the wars again, and presently fell in battle, fighting for the cross. tradition says that during several centuries the spirit of the unfortunate girl sang nightly from the cave at midnight, but the music carried no curse with it; and although many listened for the mysterious sounds, few were favored, since only those could hear them who had never failed in a trust. it is believed that the singing still continues, but it is known that nobody has heard it during the present century. chapter xvi an ancient legend of the rhine [the lorelei] the last legend reminds one of the "lorelei"--a legend of the rhine. there is a song called "the lorelei." germany is rich in folk-songs, and the words and airs of several of them are peculiarly beautiful--but "the lorelei" is the people's favorite. i could not endure it at first, but by and by it began to take hold of me, and now there is no tune which i like so well. it is not possible that it is much known in america, else i should have heard it there. the fact that i never heard it there, is evidence that there are others in my country who have fared likewise; therefore, for the sake of these, i mean to print the words and music in this chapter. and i will refresh the reader's memory by printing the legend of the lorelei, too. i have it by me in the legends of the rhine, done into english by the wildly gifted garnham, bachelor of arts. i print the legend partly to refresh my own memory, too, for i have never read it before. the legend lore (two syllables) was a water nymph who used to sit on a high rock called the ley or lei (pronounced like our word lie) in the rhine, and lure boatmen to destruction in a furious rapid which marred the channel at that spot. she so bewitched them with her plaintive songs and her wonderful beauty that they forgot everything else to gaze up at her, and so they presently drifted among the broken reefs and were lost. in those old, old times, the count bruno lived in a great castle near there with his son, the count hermann, a youth of twenty. hermann had heard a great deal about the beautiful lore, and had finally fallen very deeply in love with her without having seen her. so he used to wander to the neighborhood of the lei, evenings, with his zither and "express his longing in low singing," as garnham says. on one of these occasions, "suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful lore. "an unintentional cry of joy escaped the youth, he let his zither fall, and with extended arms he called out the name of the enigmatical being, who seemed to stoop lovingly to him and beckon to him in a friendly manner; indeed, if his ear did not deceive him, she called his name with unutterable sweet whispers, proper to love. beside himself with delight the youth lost his senses and sank senseless to the earth." after that he was a changed person. he went dreaming about, thinking only of his fairy and caring for naught else in the world. "the old count saw with affliction this changement in his son," whose cause he could not divine, and tried to divert his mind into cheerful channels, but to no purpose. then the old count used authority. he commanded the youth to betake himself to the camp. obedience was promised. garnham says: "it was on the evening before his departure, as he wished still once to visit the lei and offer to the nymph of the rhine his sighs, the tones of his zither, and his songs. he went, in his boat, this time accompanied by a faithful squire, down the stream. the moon shed her silvery light over the whole country; the steep bank mountains appeared in the most fantastical shapes, and the high oaks on either side bowed their branches on hermann's passing. as soon as he approached the lei, and was aware of the surf-waves, his attendant was seized with an inexpressible anxiety and he begged permission to land; but the knight swept the strings of his guitar and sang: "once i saw thee in dark night, in supernatural beauty bright; of light-rays, was the figure wove, to share its light, locked-hair strove. "thy garment color wave-dove by thy hand the sign of love, thy eyes sweet enchantment, raying to me, oh! enchantment. "o, wert thou but my sweetheart, how willingly thy love to part! with delight i should be bound to thy rocky house in deep ground." that hermann should have gone to that place at all, was not wise; that he should have gone with such a song as that in his mouth was a most serious mistake. the lorelei did not "call his name in unutterable sweet whispers" this time. no, that song naturally worked an instant and thorough "changement" in her; and not only that, but it stirred the bowels of the whole afflicted region around about there--for-"scarcely had these tones sounded, everywhere there began tumult and sound, as if voices above and below the water. on the lei rose flames, the fairy stood above, at that time, and beckoned with her right hand clearly and urgently to the infatuated knight, while with a staff in her left hand she called the waves to her service. they began to mount heavenward; the boat was upset, mocking every exertion; the waves rose to the gunwale, and splitting on the hard stones, the boat broke into pieces. the youth sank into the depths, but the squire was thrown on shore by a powerful wave." the bitterest things have been said about the lorelei during many centuries, but surely her conduct upon this occasion entitles her to our respect. one feels drawn tenderly toward her and is moved to forget her many crimes and remember only the good deed that crowned and closed her career. "the fairy was never more seen; but her enchanting tones have often been heard. in the beautiful, refreshing, still nights of spring, when the moon pours her silver light over the country, the listening shipper hears from the rushing of the waves, the echoing clang of a wonderfully charming voice, which sings a song from the crystal castle, and with sorrow and fear he thinks on the young count hermann, seduced by the nymph." here is the music, and the german words by heinrich heine. this song has been a favorite in germany for forty years, and will remain a favorite always, maybe. [figure 5] i have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. when i am the reader, and the author considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice compliment--but if he would do the translating for me i would try to get along without the compliment. if i were at home, no doubt i could get a translation of this poem, but i am abroad and can't; therefore i will make a translation myself. it may not be a good one, for poetry is out of my line, but it will serve my purpose--which is, to give the ungerman young girl a jingle of words to hang the tune on until she can get hold of a good version, made by some one who is a poet and knows how to convey a poetical thought from one language to another. the lorelei i cannot divine what it meaneth, this haunting nameless pain: a tale of the bygone ages keeps brooding through my brain: the faint air cools in the glooming, and peaceful flows the rhine, the thirsty summits are drinking the sunset's flooding wine; the loveliest maiden is sitting high-throned in yon blue air, her golden jewels are shining, she combs her golden hair; she combs with a comb that is golden, and sings a weird refrain that steeps in a deadly enchantment the list'ner's ravished brain: the doomed in his drifting shallop, is tranced with the sad sweet tone, he sees not the yawning breakers, he sees but the maid alone: the pitiless billows engulf him!--so perish sailor and bark; and this, with her baleful singing, is the lorelei's gruesome work. i have a translation by garnham, bachelor of arts, in the legends of the rhine, but it would not answer the purpose i mentioned above, because the measure is too nobly irregular; it don't fit the tune snugly enough; in places it hangs over at the ends too far, and in other places one runs out of words before he gets to the end of a bar. still, garnham's translation has high merits, and i am not dreaming of leaving it out of my book. i believe this poet is wholly unknown in america and england; i take peculiar pleasure in bringing him forward because i consider that i discovered him: the lorelei translated by l. w. garnham, b.a. i do not know what it signifies. that i am so sorrowful? a fable of old times so terrifies, leaves my heart so thoughtful. the air is cool and it darkens, and calmly flows the rhine; the summit of the mountain hearkens in evening sunshine line. the most beautiful maiden entrances above wonderfully there, her beautiful golden attire glances, she combs her golden hair. with golden comb so lustrous, and thereby a song sings, it has a tone so wondrous, that powerful melody rings. the shipper in the little ship it effects with woe sad might; he does not see the rocky slip, he only regards dreaded height. i believe the turbulent waves swallow the last shipper and boat; she with her singing craves all to visit her magic moat. no translation could be closer. he has got in all the facts; and in their regular order, too. there is not a statistic wanting. it is as succinct as an invoice. that is what a translation ought to be; it should exactly reflect the thought of the original. you can't sing "above wonderfully there," because it simply won't go to the tune, without damaging the singer; but it is a most clingingly exact translation of dort oben wunderbar--fits it like a blister. mr. garnham's reproduction has other merits--a hundred of them--but it is not necessary to point them out. they will be detected. no one with a specialty can hope to have a monopoly of it. even garnham has a rival. mr. x had a small pamphlet with him which he had bought while on a visit to munich. it was entitled a catalogue of pictures in the old pinacotek, and was written in a peculiar kind of english. here are a few extracts: "it is not permitted to make use of the work in question to a publication of the same contents as well as to the pirated edition of it." "an evening landscape. in the foreground near a pond and a group of white beeches is leading a footpath animated by travelers." "a learned man in a cynical and torn dress holding an open book in his hand." "st. bartholomew and the executioner with the knife to fulfil the martyr." "portrait of a young man. a long while this picture was thought to be bindi altoviti's portrait; now somebody will again have it to be the self-portrait of raphael." "susan bathing, surprised by the two old man. in the background the lapidation of the condemned." ("lapidation" is good; it is much more elegant than "stoning.") "st. rochus sitting in a landscape with an angel who looks at his plague-sore, whilst the dog the bread in his mouth attents him." "spring. the goddess flora, sitting. behind her a fertile valley perfused by a river." "a beautiful bouquet animated by may-bugs, etc." "a warrior in armor with a gypseous pipe in his hand leans against a table and blows the smoke far away of himself." "a dutch landscape along a navigable river which perfuses it till to the background." "some peasants singing in a cottage. a woman lets drink a child out of a cup." "st. john's head as a boy--painted in fresco on a brick." (meaning a tile.) "a young man of the riccio family, his hair cut off right at the end, dressed in black with the same cap. attributed to raphael, but the signation is false." "the virgin holding the infant. it is very painted in the manner of sassoferrato." "a larder with greens and dead game animated by a cook-maid and two kitchen-boys." however, the english of this catalogue is at least as happy as that which distinguishes an inscription upon a certain picture in rome--to wit: "revelations-view. st. john in patterson's island." but meanwhile the raft is moving on. chapter xvii [why germans wear spectacles] a mile or two above eberbach we saw a peculiar ruin projecting above the foliage which clothed the peak of a high and very steep hill. this ruin consisted of merely a couple of crumbling masses of masonry which bore a rude resemblance to human faces; they leaned forward and touched foreheads, and had the look of being absorbed in conversation. this ruin had nothing very imposing or picturesque about it, and there was no great deal of it, yet it was called the "spectacular ruin." legend of the "spectacular ruin" the captain of the raft, who was as full of history as he could stick, said that in the middle ages a most prodigious fire-breathing dragon used to live in that region, and made more trouble than a tax-collector. he was as long as a railway-train, and had the customary impenetrable green scales all over him. his breath bred pestilence and conflagration, and his appetite bred famine. he ate men and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular. the german emperor of that day made the usual offer: he would grant to the destroyer of the dragon, any one solitary thing he might ask for; for he had a surplusage of daughters, and it was customary for dragon-killers to take a daughter for pay. so the most renowned knights came from the four corners of the earth and retired down the dragon's throat one after the other. a panic arose and spread. heroes grew cautious. the procession ceased. the dragon became more destructive than ever. the people lost all hope of succor, and fled to the mountains for refuge. at last sir wissenschaft, a poor and obscure knight, out of a far country, arrived to do battle with the monster. a pitiable object he was, with his armor hanging in rags about him, and his strange-shaped knapsack strapped upon his back. everybody turned up their noses at him, and some openly jeered him. but he was calm. he simply inquired if the emperor's offer was still in force. the emperor said it was--but charitably advised him to go and hunt hares and not endanger so precious a life as his in an attempt which had brought death to so many of the world's most illustrious heroes. but this tramp only asked--"were any of these heroes men of science?" this raised a laugh, of course, for science was despised in those days. but the tramp was not in the least ruffled. he said he might be a little in advance of his age, but no matter--science would come to be honored, some time or other. he said he would march against the dragon in the morning. out of compassion, then, a decent spear was offered him, but he declined, and said, "spears were useless to men of science." they allowed him to sup in the servants' hall, and gave him a bed in the stables. when he started forth in the morning, thousands were gathered to see. the emperor said: "do not be rash, take a spear, and leave off your knapsack." but the tramp said: "it is not a knapsack," and moved straight on. the dragon was waiting and ready. he was breathing forth vast volumes of sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame. the ragged knight stole warily to a good position, then he unslung his cylindrical knapsack--which was simply the common fire-extinguisher known to modern times-and the first chance he got he turned on his hose and shot the dragon square in the center of his cavernous mouth. out went the fires in an instant, and the dragon curled up and died. this man had brought brains to his aid. he had reared dragons from the egg, in his laboratory, he had watched over them like a mother, and patiently studied them and experimented upon them while they grew. thus he had found out that fire was the life principle of a dragon; put out the dragon's fires and it could make steam no longer, and must die. he could not put out a fire with a spear, therefore he invented the extinguisher. the dragon being dead, the emperor fell on the hero's neck and said: "deliverer, name your request," at the same time beckoning out behind with his heel for a detachment of his daughters to form and advance. but the tramp gave them no observance. he simply said: "my request is, that upon me be conferred the monopoly of the manufacture and sale of spectacles in germany." the emperor sprang aside and exclaimed: "this transcends all the impudence i ever heard! a modest demand, by my halidome! why didn't you ask for the imperial revenues at once, and be done with it?" but the monarch had given his word, and he kept it. to everybody's surprise, the unselfish monopolist immediately reduced the price of spectacles to such a degree that a great and crushing burden was removed from the nation. the emperor, to commemorate this generous act, and to testify his appreciation of it, issued a decree commanding everybody to buy this benefactor's spectacles and wear them, whether they needed them or not. so originated the wide-spread custom of wearing spectacles in germany; and as a custom once established in these old lands is imperishable, this one remains universal in the empire to this day. such is the legend of the monopolist's once stately and sumptuous castle, now called the "spectacular ruin." on the right bank, two or three miles below the spectacular ruin, we passed by a noble pile of castellated buildings overlooking the water from the crest of a lofty elevation. a stretch of two hundred yards of the high front wall was heavily draped with ivy, and out of the mass of buildings within rose three picturesque old towers. the place was in fine order, and was inhabited by a family of princely rank. this castle had its legend, too, but i should not feel justified in repeating it because i doubted the truth of some of its minor details. along in this region a multitude of italian laborers were blasting away the frontage of the hills to make room for the new railway. they were fifty or a hundred feet above the river. as we turned a sharp corner they began to wave signals and shout warnings to us to look out for the explosions. it was all very well to warn us, but what could we do? you can't back a raft upstream, you can't hurry it downstream, you can't scatter out to one side when you haven't any room to speak of, you won't take to the perpendicular cliffs on the other shore when they appear to be blasting there, too. your resources are limited, you see. there is simply nothing for it but to watch and pray. for some hours we had been making three and a half or four miles an hour and we were still making that. we had been dancing right along until those men began to shout; then for the next ten minutes it seemed to me that i had never seen a raft go so slowly. when the first blast went off we raised our sun-umbrellas and waited for the result. no harm done; none of the stones fell in the water. another blast followed, and another and another. some of the rubbish fell in the water just astern of us. we ran that whole battery of nine blasts in a row, and it was certainly one of the most exciting and uncomfortable weeks i ever spent, either aship or ashore. of course we frequently manned the poles and shoved earnestly for a second or so, but every time one of those spurts of dust and debris shot aloft every man dropped his pole and looked up to get the bearings of his share of it. it was very busy times along there for a while. it appeared certain that we must perish, but even that was not the bitterest thought; no, the abjectly unheroic nature of the death--that was the sting--that and the bizarre wording of the resulting obituary: "shot with a rock, on a raft." there would be no poetry written about it. none could be written about it. example: not by war's shock, or war's shaft,--shot, with a rock, on a raft. no poet who valued his reputation would touch such a theme as that. i should be distinguished as the only "distinguished dead" who went down to the grave unsonneted, in 1878. but we escaped, and i have never regretted it. the last blast was peculiarly strong one, and after the small rubbish was done raining around us and we were just going to shake hands over our deliverance, a later and larger stone came down amongst our little group of pedestrians and wrecked an umbrella. it did no other harm, but we took to the water just the same. it seems that the heavy work in the quarries and the new railway gradings is done mainly by italians. that was a revelation. we have the notion in our country that italians never do heavy work at all, but confine themselves to the lighter arts, like organ-grinding, operatic singing, and assassination. we have blundered, that is plain. all along the river, near every village, we saw little station-houses for the future railway. they were finished and waiting for the rails and business. they were as trim and snug and pretty as they could be. they were always of brick or stone; they were of graceful shape, they had vines and flowers about them already, and around them the grass was bright and green, and showed that it was carefully looked after. they were a decoration to the beautiful landscape, not an offense. wherever one saw a pile of gravel or a pile of broken stone, it was always heaped as trimly and exactly as a new grave or a stack of cannon-balls; nothing about those stations or along the railroad or the wagon-road was allowed to look shabby or be unornamental. the keeping a country in such beautiful order as germany exhibits, has a wise practical side to it, too, for it keeps thousands of people in work and bread who would otherwise be idle and mischievous. as the night shut down, the captain wanted to tie up, but i thought maybe we might make hirschhorn, so we went on. presently the sky became overcast, and the captain came aft looking uneasy. he cast his eye aloft, then shook his head, and said it was coming on to blow. my party wanted to land at once--therefore i wanted to go on. the captain said we ought to shorten sail anyway, out of common prudence. consequently, the larboard watch was ordered to lay in his pole. it grew quite dark, now, and the wind began to rise. it wailed through the swaying branches of the trees, and swept our decks in fitful gusts. things were taking on an ugly look. the captain shouted to the steersman on the forward log: "how's she landing?" the answer came faint and hoarse from far forward: "nor'-east-and-by-nor'--east-by-east, half-east, sir." "let her go off a point!" "aye-aye, sir!" "what water have you got?" "shoal, sir. two foot large, on the stabboard, two and a half scant on the labboard!" "let her go off another point!" "aye-aye, sir!" "forward, men, all of you! lively, now! stand by to crowd her round the weather corner!" "aye-aye, sir!" then followed a wild running and trampling and hoarse shouting, but the forms of the men were lost in the darkness and the sounds were distorted and confused by the roaring of the wind through the shingle-bundles. by this time the sea was running inches high, and threatening every moment to engulf the frail bark. now came the mate, hurrying aft, and said, close to the captain's ear, in a low, agitated voice: "prepare for the worst, sir--we have sprung a leak!" "heavens! where?" "right aft the second row of logs." "nothing but a miracle can save us! don't let the men know, or there will be a panic and mutiny! lay her in shore and stand by to jump with the stern-line the moment she touches. gentlemen, i must look to you to second my endeavors in this hour of peril. you have hats--go forward and bail for your lives!" down swept another mighty blast of wind, clothed in spray and thick darkness. at such a moment as this, came from away forward that most appalling of all cries that are ever heard at sea: "man overboard!" the captain shouted: "hard a-port! never mind the man! let him climb aboard or wade ashore!" another cry came down the wind: "breakers ahead!" "where away?" "not a log's length off her port fore-foot!" we had groped our slippery way forward, and were now bailing with the frenzy of despair, when we heard the mate's terrified cry, from far aft: "stop that dashed bailing, or we shall be aground!" but this was immediately followed by the glad shout: "land aboard the starboard transom!" "saved!" cried the captain. "jump ashore and take a turn around a tree and pass the bight aboard!" the next moment we were all on shore weeping and embracing for joy, while the rain poured down in torrents. the captain said he had been a mariner for forty years on the neckar, and in that time had seen storms to make a man's cheek blanch and his pulses stop, but he had never, never seen a storm that even approached this one. how familiar that sounded! for i have been at sea a good deal and have heard that remark from captains with a frequency accordingly. we framed in our minds the usual resolution of thanks and admiration and gratitude, and took the first opportunity to vote it, and put it in writing and present it to the captain, with the customary speech. we tramped through the darkness and the drenching summer rain full three miles, and reached "the naturalist tavern" in the village of hirschhorn just an hour before midnight, almost exhausted from hardship, fatigue, and terror. i can never forget that night. the landlord was rich, and therefore could afford to be crusty and disobliging; he did not at all like being turned out of his warm bed to open his house for us. but no matter, his household got up and cooked a quick supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves, to keep off consumption. after supper and punch we had an hour's soothing smoke while we fought the naval battle over again and voted the resolutions; then we retired to exceedingly neat and pretty chambers upstairs that had clean, comfortable beds in them with heirloom pillowcases most elaborately and tastefully embroidered by hand. such rooms and beds and embroidered linen are as frequent in german village inns as they are rare in ours. our villages are superior to german villages in more merits, excellences, conveniences, and privileges than i can enumerate, but the hotels do not belong in the list. "the naturalist tavern" was not a meaningless name; for all the halls and all the rooms were lined with large glass cases which were filled with all sorts of birds and animals, glass-eyed, ably stuffed, and set up in the most natural eloquent and dramatic attitudes. the moment we were abed, the rain cleared away and the moon came out. i dozed off to sleep while contemplating a great white stuffed owl which was looking intently down on me from a high perch with the air of a person who thought he had met me before, but could not make out for certain. but young z did not get off so easily. he said that as he was sinking deliciously to sleep, the moon lifted away the shadows and developed a huge cat, on a bracket, dead and stuffed, but crouching, with every muscle tense, for a spring, and with its glittering glass eyes aimed straight at him. it made z uncomfortable. he tried closing his own eyes, but that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept making him open them again to see if the cat was still getting ready to launch at him--which she always was. he tried turning his back, but that was a failure; he knew the sinister eyes were on him still. so at last he had to get up, after an hour or two of worry and experiment, and set the cat out in the hall. so he won, that time. chapter xviii [the kindly courtesy of germans] in the morning we took breakfast in the garden, under the trees, in the delightful german summer fashion. the air was filled with the fragrance of flowers and wild animals; the living portion of the menagerie of the "naturalist tavern" was all about us. there were great cages populous with fluttering and chattering foreign birds, and other great cages and greater wire pens, populous with quadrupeds, both native and foreign. there were some free creatures, too, and quite sociable ones they were. white rabbits went loping about the place, and occasionally came and sniffed at our shoes and shins; a fawn, with a red ribbon on its neck, walked up and examined us fearlessly; rare breeds of chickens and doves begged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven hopped about with a humble, shamefaced mein which said, "please do not notice my exposure--think how you would feel in my circumstances, and be charitable." if he was observed too much, he would retire behind something and stay there until he judged the party's interest had found another object. i never have seen another dumb creature that was so morbidly sensitive. bayard taylor, who could interpret the dim reasonings of animals, and understood their moral natures better than most men, would have found some way to make this poor old chap forget his troubles for a while, but we have not his kindly art, and so had to leave the raven to his griefs. after breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient castle of hirschhorn, and the ruined church near it. there were some curious old bas-reliefs leaning against the inner walls of the church--sculptured lords of hirschhorn in complete armor, and ladies of hirschhorn in the picturesque court costumes of the middle ages. these things are suffering damage and passing to decay, for the last hirschhorn has been dead two hundred years, and there is nobody now who cares to preserve the family relics. in the chancel was a twisted stone column, and the captain told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter of legends he could not seem to restrain himself; but i do not repeat his tale because there was nothing plausible about it except that the hero wrenched this column into its present screw-shape with his hands --just one single wrench. all the rest of the legend was doubtful. but hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river. then the clustered brown towers perched on the green hilltop, and the old battlemented stone wall, stretching up and over the grassy ridge and disappearing in the leafy sea beyond, make a picture whose grace and beauty entirely satisfy the eye. we descended from the church by steep stone stairways which curved this way and that down narrow alleys between the packed and dirty tenements of the village. it was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering, unkempt and uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps and begged piteously. the people of the quarter were not all idiots, of course, but all that begged seemed to be, and were said to be. i was thinking of going by skiff to the next town, necharsteinach; so i ran to the riverside in advance of the party and asked a man there if he had a boat to hire. i suppose i must have spoken high german--court german--i intended it for that, anyway--so he did not understand me. i turned and twisted my question around and about, trying to strike that man's average, but failed. he could not make out what i wanted. now mr. x arrived, faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied this sentence on him, in the most glib and confident way: "can man boat get here?" the mariner promptly understood and promptly answered. i can comprehend why he was able to understand that particular sentence, because by mere accident all the words in it except "get" have the same sound and the same meaning in german that they have in english; but how he managed to understand mr. x's next remark puzzled me. i will insert it, presently. x turned away a moment, and i asked the mariner if he could not find a board, and so construct an additional seat. i spoke in the purest german, but i might as well have spoken in the purest choctaw for all the good it did. the man tried his best to understand me; he tried, and kept on trying, harder and harder, until i saw it was really of no use, and said: "there, don't strain yourself--it is of no consequence." then x turned to him and crisply said: "machen sie a flat board." i wish my epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man did not answer up at once, and say he would go and borrow a board as soon as he had lit the pipe which he was filling. we changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have to go. i have given mr. x's two remarks just as he made them. four of the five words in the first one were english, and that they were also german was only accidental, not intentional; three out of the five words in the second remark were english, and english only, and the two german ones did not mean anything in particular, in such a connection. x always spoke english to germans, but his plan was to turn the sentence wrong end first and upside down, according to german construction, and sprinkle in a german word without any essential meaning to it, here and there, by way of flavor. yet he always made himself understood. he could make those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand him, sometimes, when even young z had failed with them; and young z was a pretty good german scholar. for one thing, x always spoke with such confidence--perhaps that helped. and possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called platt-deutsch, and so they found his english more familiar to their ears than another man's german. quite indifferent students of german can read fritz reuter's charming platt-deutch tales with some little facility because many of the words are english. i suppose this is the tongue which our saxon ancestors carried to england with them. by and by i will inquire of some other philologist. however, in the mean time it had transpired that the men employed to calk the raft had found that the leak was not a leak at all, but only a crack between the logs--a crack that belonged there, and was not dangerous, but had been magnified into a leak by the disordered imagination of the mate. therefore we went aboard again with a good degree of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident. as we swam smoothly along between the enchanting shores, we fell to swapping notes about manners and customs in germany and elsewhere. as i write, now, many months later, i perceive that each of us, by observing and noting and inquiring, diligently and day by day, had managed to lay in a most varied and opulent stock of misinformation. but this is not surprising; it is very difficult to get accurate details in any country. for example, i had the idea once, in heidelberg, to find out all about those five student-corps. i started with the white cap corps. i began to inquire of this and that and the other citizen, and here is what i found out: 1. it is called the prussian corps, because none but prussians are admitted to it. 2. it is called the prussian corps for no particular reason. it has simply pleased each corps to name itself after some german state. 3. it is not named the prussian corps at all, but only the white cap corps. 4. any student can belong to it who is a german by birth. 5. any student can belong to it who is european by birth. 6. any european-born student can belong to it, except he be a frenchman. 7. any student can belong to it, no matter where he was born. 8. no student can belong to it who is not of noble blood. 9. no student can belong to it who cannot show three full generations of noble descent. 10. nobility is not a necessary qualification. 11. no moneyless student can belong to it. 12. money qualification is nonsense--such a thing has never been thought of. i got some of this information from students themselves-students who did not belong to the corps. i finally went to headquarters--to the white caps--where i would have gone in the first place if i had been acquainted. but even at headquarters i found difficulties; i perceived that there were things about the white cap corps which one member knew and another one didn't. it was natural; for very few members of any organization know all that can be known about it. i doubt there is a man or a woman in heidelberg who would not answer promptly and confidently three out of every five questions about the white cap corps which a stranger might ask; yet it is a very safe bet that two of the three answers would be incorrect every time. there is one german custom which is universal--the bowing courteously to strangers when sitting down at table or rising up from it. this bow startles a stranger out of his self-possession, the first time it occurs, and he is likely to fall over a chair or something, in his embarrassment, but it pleases him, nevertheless. one soon learns to expect this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it; but to learn to lead off and make the initial bow one's self is a difficult matter for a diffident man. one thinks, "if i rise to go, and tender my box, and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads to ignore the custom of their nation, and not return it, how shall i feel, in case i survive to feel anything." therefore he is afraid to venture. he sits out the dinner, and makes the strangers rise first and originate the bowing. a table d'ho^te dinner is a tedious affair for a man who seldom touches anything after the three first courses; therefore i used to do some pretty dreary waiting because of my fears. it took me months to assure myself that those fears were groundless, but i did assure myself at last by experimenting diligently through my agent. i made harris get up and bow and leave; invariably his bow was returned, then i got up and bowed myself and retired. thus my education proceeded easily and comfortably for me, but not for harris. three courses of a table d'ho^te dinner were enough for me, but harris preferred thirteen. even after i had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed the agent's help, i sometimes encountered difficulties. once at baden-baden i nearly lost a train because i could not be sure that three young ladies opposite me at table were germans, since i had not heard them speak; they might be american, they might be english, it was not safe to venture a bow; but just as i had got that far with my thought, one of them began a german remark, to my great relief and gratitude; and before she got out her third word, our bows had been delivered and graciously returned, and we were off. there is a friendly something about the german character which is very winning. when harris and i were making a pedestrian tour through the black forest, we stopped at a little country inn for dinner one day; two young ladies and a young gentleman entered and sat down opposite us. they were pedestrians, too. our knapsacks were strapped upon our backs, but they had a sturdy youth along to carry theirs for them. all parties were hungry, so there was no talking. by and by the usual bows were exchanged, and we separated. as we sat at a late breakfast in the hotel at allerheiligen, next morning, these young people and took places near us without observing us; but presently they saw us and at once bowed and smiled; not ceremoniously, but with the gratified look of people who have found acquaintances where they were expecting strangers. then they spoke of the weather and the roads. we also spoke of the weather and the roads. next, they said they had had an enjoyable walk, notwithstanding the weather. we said that that had been our case, too. then they said they had walked thirty english miles the day before, and asked how many we had walked. i could not lie, so i told harris to do it. harris told them we had made thirty english miles, too. that was true; we had "made" them, though we had had a little assistance here and there. after breakfast they found us trying to blast some information out of the dumb hotel clerk about routes, and observing that we were not succeeding pretty well, they went and got their maps and things, and pointed out and explained our course so clearly that even a new york detective could have followed it. and when we started they spoke out a hearty good-by and wished us a pleasant journey. perhaps they were more generous with us than they might have been with native wayfarers because we were a forlorn lot and in a strange land; i don't know; i only know it was lovely to be treated so. very well, i took an american young lady to one of the fine balls in baden-baden, one night, and at the entrance-door upstairs we were halted by an official--something about miss jones's dress was not according to rule; i don't remember what it was, now; something was wanting--her back hair, or a shawl, or a fan, or a shovel, or something. the official was ever so polite, and every so sorry, but the rule was strict, and he could not let us in. it was very embarrassing, for many eyes were on us. but now a richly dressed girl stepped out of the ballroom, inquired into the trouble, and said she could fix it in a moment. she took miss jones to the robing-room, and soon brought her back in regulation trim, and then we entered the ballroom with this benefactress unchallenged. being safe, now, i began to puzzle through my sincere but ungrammatical thanks, when there was a sudden mutual recognition --the benefactress and i had met at allerheiligen. two weeks had not altered her good face, and plainly her heart was in the right place yet, but there was such a difference between these clothes and the clothes i had seen her in before, when she was walking thirty miles a day in the black forest, that it was quite natural that i had failed to recognize her sooner. i had on my other suit, too, but my german would betray me to a person who had heard it once, anyway. she brought her brother and sister, and they made our way smooth for that evening. well--months afterward, i was driving through the streets of munich in a cab with a german lady, one day, when she said: "there, that is prince ludwig and his wife, walking along there." everybody was bowing to them--cabmen, little children, and everybody else--and they were returning all the bows and overlooking nobody, when a young lady met them and made a deep courtesy. "that is probably one of the ladies of the court," said my german friend. i said: "she is an honor to it, then. i know her. i don't know her name, but i know her. i have known her at allerheiligen and baden-baden. she ought to be an empress, but she may be only a duchess; it is the way things go in this way." if one asks a german a civil question, he will be quite sure to get a civil answer. if you stop a german in the street and ask him to direct you to a certain place, he shows no sign of feeling offended. if the place be difficult to find, ten to one the man will drop his own matters and go with you and show you. in london, too, many a time, strangers have walked several blocks with me to show me my way. there is something very real about this sort of politeness. quite often, in germany, shopkeepers who could not furnish me the article i wanted have sent one of their employees with me to show me a place where it could be had. chapter xix [the deadly jest of dilsberg] however, i wander from the raft. we made the port of necharsteinach in good season, and went to the hotel and ordered a trout dinner, the same to be ready against our return from a two-hour pedestrian excursion to the village and castle of dilsberg, a mile distant, on the other side of the river. i do not mean that we proposed to be two hours making two miles--no, we meant to employ most of the time in inspecting dilsberg. for dilsberg is a quaint place. it is most quaintly and picturesquely situated, too. imagine the beautiful river before you; then a few rods of brilliant green sward on its opposite shore; then a sudden hill--no preparatory gently rising slopes, but a sort of instantaneous hill-a hill two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet high, as round as a bowl, with the same taper upward that an inverted bowl has, and with about the same relation of height to diameter that distinguishes a bowl of good honest depth--a hill which is thickly clothed with green bushes--a comely, shapely hill, rising abruptly out of the dead level of the surrounding green plains, visible from a great distance down the bends of the river, and with just exactly room on the top of its head for its steepled and turreted and roof-clustered cap of architecture, which same is tightly jammed and compacted within the perfectly round hoop of the ancient village wall. there is no house outside the wall on the whole hill, or any vestige of a former house; all the houses are inside the wall, but there isn't room for another one. it is really a finished town, and has been finished a very long time. there is no space between the wall and the first circle of buildings; no, the village wall is itself the rear wall of the first circle of buildings, a nd the roofs jut a little over the wall a nd thus furnish it with eaves. the general level of the massed roofs is gracefully broken and relieved by the dominating towers of the ruined castle and the tall spires of a couple of churches; so, from a distance dilsberg has rather more the look of a king's crown than a cap. that lofty green eminence and its quaint coronet form quite a striking picture, you may be sure, in the flush of the evening sun. we crossed over in a boat and began the ascent by a narrow, steep path which plunged us at once into the leafy deeps of the bushes. but they were not cool deeps by any means, for the sun's rays were weltering hot and there was little or no breeze to temper them. as we panted up the sharp ascent, we met brown, bareheaded and barefooted boys and girls, occasionally, and sometimes men; they came upon us without warning, they gave us good day, flashed out of sight in the bushes, and were gone as suddenly and mysteriously as they had come. they were bound for the other side of the river to work. this path had been traveled by many generations of these people. they have always gone down to the valley to earn their bread, but they have always climbed their hill again to eat it, and to sleep in their snug town. it is said the the dilsbergers do not emigrate much; they find that living up there above the world, in their peaceful nest, is pleasanter than living down in the troublous world. the seven hundred inhabitants are all blood-kin to each other, too; they have always been blood-kin to each other for fifteen hundred years; they are simply one large family, and they like the home folks better than they like strangers, hence they persistently stay at home. it has been said that for ages dilsberg has been merely a thriving and diligent idiot-factory. i saw no idiots there, but the captain said, "because of late years the government has taken to lugging them off to asylums and otherwheres; and government wants to cripple the factory, too, and is trying to get these dilsbergers to marry out of the family, but they don't like to." the captain probably imagined all this, as modern science denies that the intermarrying of relatives deteriorates the stock. arrived within the wall, we found the usual village sights and life. we moved along a narrow, crooked lane which had been paved in the middle ages. a strapping, ruddy girl was beating flax or some such stuff in a little bit of a good-box of a barn, and she swung her flail with a will--if it was a flail; i was not farmer enough to know what she was at; a frowsy, barelegged girl was herding half a dozen geese with a stick--driving them along the lane and keeping them out of the dwellings; a cooper was at work in a shop which i know he did not make so large a thing as a hogshead in, for there was not room. in the front rooms of dwellings girls and women were cooking or spinning, and ducks and chickens were waddling in and out, over the threshold, picking up chance crumbs and holding pleasant converse; a very old and wrinkled man sat asleep before his door, with his chin upon his breast and his extinguished pipe in his lap; soiled children were playing in the dirt everywhere along the lane, unmindful of the sun. except the sleeping old man, everybody was at work, but the place was very still and peaceful, nevertheless; so still that the distant cackle of the successful hen smote upon the ear but little dulled by intervening sounds. that commonest of village sights was lacking here--the public pump, with its great stone tank or trough of limpid water, and its group of gossiping pitcher-bearers; for there is no well or fountain or spring on this tall hill; cisterns of rain-water are used. our alpenstocks and muslin tails compelled attention, and as we moved through the village we gathered a considerable procession of little boys and girls, and so went in some state to the castle. it proved to be an extensive pile of crumbling walls, arches, and towers, massive, properly grouped for picturesque effect, weedy, grass-grown, and satisfactory. the children acted as guides; they walked us along the top of the highest walls, then took us up into a high tower and showed us a wide and beautiful landscape, made up of wavy distances of woody hills, and a nearer prospect of undulating expanses of green lowlands, on the one hand, and castle-graced crags and ridges on the other, with the shining curves of the neckar flowing between. but the principal show, the chief pride of the children, was the ancient and empty well in the grass-grown court of the castle. its massive stone curb stands up three or four feet above-ground, and is whole and uninjured. the children said that in the middle ages this well was four hundred feet deep, and furnished all the village with an abundant supply of water, in war and peace. they said that in the old day its bottom was below the level of the neckar, hence the water-supply was inexhaustible. but there were some who believed it had never been a well at all, and was never deeper than it is now--eighty feet; that at that depth a subterranean passage branched from it and descended gradually to a remote place in the valley, where it opened into somebody's cellar or other hidden recess, and that the secret of this locality is now lost. those who hold this belief say that herein lies the explanation that dilsberg, besieged by tilly and many a soldier before him, was never taken: after the longest and closest sieges the besiegers were astonished to perceive that the besieged were as fat and hearty as ever, and were well furnished with munitions of war--therefore it must be that the dilsbergers had been bringing these things in through the subterranean passage all the time. the children said that there was in truth a subterranean outlet down there, and they would prove it. so they set a great truss of straw on fire and threw it down the well, while we leaned on the curb and watched the glowing mass descend. it struck bottom and gradually burned out. no smoke came up. the children clapped their hands and said: "you see! nothing makes so much smoke as burning straw--now where did the smoke go to, if there is no subterranean outlet?" so it seemed quite evident that the subterranean outlet indeed existed. but the finest thing within the ruin's limits was a noble linden, which the children said was four hundred years old, and no doubt it was. it had a mighty trunk and a mighty spread of limb and foliage. the limbs near the ground were nearly the thickness of a barrel. that tree had witnessed the assaults of men in mail-how remote such a time seems, and how ungraspable is the fact that real men ever did fight in real armor!--and it had seen the time when these broken arches and crumbling battlements were a trim and strong and stately fortress, fluttering its gay banners in the sun, and peopled with vigorous humanity--how impossibly long ago that seems!--and here it stands yet, and possibly may still be standing here, sunning itself and dreaming its historical dreams, when today shall have been joined to the days called "ancient." well, we sat down under the tree to smoke, and the captain delivered himself of his legend: the legend of dilsberg castle it was to this effect. in the old times there was once a great company assembled at the castle, and festivity ran high. of course there was a haunted chamber in the castle, and one day the talk fell upon that. it was said that whoever slept in it would not wake again for fifty years. now when a young knight named conrad von geisberg heard this, he said that if the castle were his he would destroy that chamber, so that no foolish person might have the chance to bring so dreadful a misfortune upon himself and afflict such as loved him with the memory of it. straightway, the company privately laid their heads together to contrive some way to get this superstitious young man to sleep in that chamber. and they succeeded--in this way. they persuaded his betrothed, a lovely mischievous young creature, niece of the lord of the castle, to help them in their plot. she presently took him aside and had speech with him. she used all her persuasions, but could not shake him; he said his belief was firm, that if he should sleep there he would wake no more for fifty years, and it made him shudder to think of it. catharina began to weep. this was a better argument; conrad could not out against it. he yielded and said she should have her wish if she would only smile and be happy again. she flung her arms about his neck, and the kisses she gave him showed that her thankfulness and her pleasure were very real. then she flew to tell the company her success, and the applause she received made her glad and proud she had undertaken her mission, since all alone she had accomplished what the multitude had failed in. at midnight, that night, after the usual feasting, conrad was taken to the haunted chamber and left there. he fell asleep, by and by. when he awoke again and looked about him, his heart stood still with horror! the whole aspect of the chamber was changed. the walls were moldy and hung with ancient cobwebs; the curtains and beddings were rotten; the furniture was rickety and ready to fall to pieces. he sprang out of bed, but his quaking knees sunk under him and he fell to the floor. "this is the weakness of age," he said. he rose and sought his clothing. it was clothing no longer. the colors were gone, the garments gave way in many places while he was putting them on. he fled, shuddering, into the corridor, and along it to the great hall. here he was met by a middle-aged stranger of a kind countenance, who stopped and gazed at him with surprise. conrad said: "good sir, will you send hither the lord ulrich?" the stranger looked puzzled a moment, then said: "the lord ulrich?" "yes--if you will be so good." the stranger called--"wilhelm!" a young serving-man came, and the stranger said to him: "is there a lord ulrich among the guests?" "i know none of the name, so please your honor." conrad said, hesitatingly: "i did not mean a guest, but the lord of the castle, sir." the stranger and the servant exchanged wondering glances. then the former said: "i am the lord of the castle." "since when, sir?" "since the death of my father, the good lord ulrich more than forty years ago." conrad sank upon a bench and covered his face with his hands while he rocked his body to and fro and moaned. the stranger said in a low voice to the servant: "i fear me this poor old creature is mad. call some one." in a moment several people came, and grouped themselves about, talking in whispers. conrad looked up and scanned the faces about him wistfully. then he shook his head and said, in a grieved voice: "no, there is none among ye that i know. i am old and alone in the world. they are dead and gone these many years that cared for me. but sure, some of these aged ones i see about me can tell me some little word or two concerning them." several bent and tottering men and women came nearer and answered his questions about each former friend as he mentioned the names. this one they said had been dead ten years, that one twenty, another thirty. each succeeding blow struck heavier and heavier. at last the sufferer said: "there is one more, but i have not the courage to--o my lost catharina!" one of the old dames said: "ah, i knew her well, poor soul. a misfortune overtook her lover, and she died of sorrow nearly fifty years ago. she lieth under the linden tree without the court." conrad bowed his head and said: "ah, why did i ever wake! and so she died of grief for me, poor child. so young, so sweet, so good! she never wittingly did a hurtful thing in all the little summer of her life. her loving debt shall be repaid--for i will die of grief for her." his head drooped upon his breast. in the moment there was a wild burst of joyous laughter, a pair of round young arms were flung about conrad's neck and a sweet voice cried: "there, conrad mine, thy kind words kill me--the farce shall go no further! look up, and laugh with us--'twas all a jest!" and he did look up, and gazed, in a dazed wonderment-for the disguises were stripped away, and the aged men and women were bright and young and gay again. catharina's happy tongue ran on: "'twas a marvelous jest, and bravely carried out. they gave you a heavy sleeping-draught before you went to bed, and in the night they bore you to a ruined chamber where all had fallen to decay, and placed these rags of clothing by you. and when your sleep was spent and you came forth, two strangers, well instructed in their parts, were here to meet you; and all we, your friends, in our disguises, were close at hand, to see and hear, you may be sure. ah, 'twas a gallant jest! come, now, and make thee ready for the pleasures of the day. how real was thy misery for the moment, thou poor lad! look up and have thy laugh, now!" he looked up, searched the merry faces about him in a dreamy way, then sighed and said: "i am aweary, good strangers, i pray you lead me to her grave." all the smile vanished away, every cheek blanched, catharina sunk to the ground in a swoon. all day the people went about the castle with troubled faces, and communed together in undertones. a painful hush pervaded the place which had lately been so full of cheery life. each in his turn tried to arouse conrad out of his hallucination and bring him to himself; but all the answer any got was a meek, bewildered stare, and then the words: "good stranger, i have no friends, all are at rest these many years; ye speak me fair, ye mean me well, but i know ye not; i am alone and forlorn in the world--prithee lead me to her grave." during two years conrad spent his days, from the early morning till the night, under the linden tree, mourning over the imaginary grave of his catharina. catharina was the only company of the harmless madman. he was very friendly toward her because, as he said, in some ways she reminded him of his catharina whom he had lost "fifty years ago." he often said: "she was so gay, so happy-hearted--but you never smile; and always when you think i am not looking, you cry." when conrad died, they buried him under the linden, according to his directions, so that he might rest "near his poor catharina." then catharina sat under the linden alone, every day and all day long, a great many years, speaking to no one, and never smiling; and at last her long repentance was rewarded with death, and she was buried by conrad's side. harris pleased the captain by saying it was good legend; and pleased him further by adding: "now that i have seen this mighty tree, vigorous with its four hundred years, i feel a desire to believe the legend for its sake; so i will humor the desire, and consider that the tree really watches over those poor hearts and feels a sort of human tenderness for them." we returned to necharsteinach, plunged our hot heads into the trough at the town pump, and then went to the hotel and ate our trout dinner in leisurely comfort, in the garden, with the beautiful neckar flowing at our feet, the quaint dilsberg looming beyond, and the graceful towers and battlements of a couple of medieval castles (called the "swallow's nest" [1] and "the brothers.") assisting the rugged scenery of a bend of the river down to our right. we got to sea in season to make the eight-mile run to heidelberg before the night shut down. we sailed by the hotel in the mellow glow of sunset, and came slashing down with the mad current into the narrow passage between the dikes. i believed i could shoot the bridge myself, and i went to the forward triplet of logs and relieved the pilot of his pole and his responsibility. 1. the seeker after information is referred to appendix e for our captain's legend of the "swallow's nest" and "the brothers." we went tearing along in a most exhilarating way, and i performed the delicate duties of my office very well indeed for a first attempt; but perceiving, presently, that i really was going to shoot the bridge itself instead of the archway under it, i judiciously stepped ashore. the next moment i had my long-coveted desire: i saw a raft wrecked. it hit the pier in the center and went all to smash and scatteration like a box of matches struck by lightning. i was the only one of our party who saw this grand sight; the others were attitudinizing, for the benefit of the long rank of young ladies who were promenading on the bank, and so they lost it. but i helped to fish them out of the river, down below the bridge, and then described it to them as well as i could. they were not interested, though. they said they were wet and felt ridiculous and did not care anything for descriptions of scenery. the young ladies, and other people, crowded around and showed a great deal of sympathy, but that did not help matters; for my friends said they did not want sympathy, they wanted a back alley and solitude. chapter xx [my precious, priceless tear-jug] next morning brought good news--our trunks had arrived from hamburg at last. let this be a warning to the reader. the germans are very conscientious, and this trait makes them very particular. therefore if you tell a german you want a thing done immediately, he takes you at your word; he thinks you mean what you say; so he does that thing immediately--according to his idea of immediately-which is about a week; that is, it is a week if it refers to the building of a garment, or it is an hour and a half if it refers to the cooking of a trout. very well; if you tell a german to send your trunk to you by "slow freight," he takes you at your word; he sends it by "slow freight," and you cannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging your admiration of the expressiveness of that phrase in the german tongue, before you get that trunk. the hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful, when i got it ready for shipment in hamburg; it was baldheaded when it reached heidelberg. however, it was still sound, that was a comfort, it was not battered in the least; the baggagemen seemed to be conscientiously careful, in germany, of the baggage entrusted to their hands. there was nothing now in the way of our departure, therefore we set about our preparations. naturally my chief solicitude was about my collection of ceramics. of course i could not take it with me, that would be inconvenient, and dangerous besides. i took advice, but the best brick-a-brackers were divided as to the wisest course to pursue; some said pack the collection and warehouse it; others said try to get it into the grand ducal museum at mannheim for safe keeping. so i divided the collection, and followed the advice of both parties. i set aside, for the museum, those articles which were the most frail and precious. among these was my etruscan tear-jug. i have made a little sketch of it here; [figure 6] that thing creeping up the side is not a bug, it is a hole. i bought this tear-jug of a dealer in antiquities for four hundred and fifty dollars. it is very rare. the man said the etruscans used to keep tears or something in these things, and that it was very hard to get hold of a broken one, now. i also set aside my henri ii. plate. see sketch from my pencil; [figure 7] it is in the main correct, though i think i have foreshortened one end of it a little too much, perhaps. this is very fine and rare; the shape is exceedingly beautiful and unusual. it has wonderful decorations on it, but i am not able to reproduce them. it cost more than the tear-jug, as the dealer said there was not another plate just like it in the world. he said there was much false henri ii ware around, but that the genuineness of this piece was unquestionable. he showed me its pedigree, or its history, if you please; it was a document which traced this plate's movements all the way down from its birth--showed who bought it, from whom, and what he paid for it--from the first buyer down to me, whereby i saw that it had gone steadily up from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. he said that the whole ceramic world would be informed that it was now in my possession and would make a note of it, with the price paid. [figure 8] there were masters in those days, but, alas--it is not so now. of course the main preciousness of this piece lies in its color; it is that old sensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating, transboreal blue which is the despair of modern art. the little sketch which i have made of this gem cannot and does not do it justice, since i have been obliged to leave out the color. but i've got the expression, though. however, i must not be frittering away the reader's time with these details. i did not intend to go into any detail at all, at first, but it is the failing of the true ceramiker, or the true devotee in any department of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his pen started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop until he drops from exhaustion. he has no more sense of the flight of time than has any other lover when talking of his sweetheart. the very "marks" on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy; and i could forsake a drowning relative to help dispute about whether the stopple of a departed buon retiro scent-bottle was genuine or spurious. many people say that for a male person, bric-a-brac hunting is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes, or decorating japanese pots with decalcomanie butterflies would be, and these people fling mud at the elegant englishman, byng, who wrote a book called the bric-a-brac hunter, and make fun of him for chasing around after what they choose to call "his despicable trifles"; and for "gushing" over these trifles; and for exhibiting his "deep infantile delight" in what they call his "tuppenny collection of beggarly trivialities"; and for beginning his book with a picture of himself seated, in a "sappy, self-complacent attitude, in the midst of his poor little ridiculous bric-a-brac junk shop." it is easy to say these things; it is easy to revile us, easy to despise us; therefore, let these people rail on; they cannot feel as byng and i feel--it is their loss, not ours. for my part i am content to be a brick-a-bracker and a ceramiker--more, i am proud to be so named. i am proud to know that i lose my reason as immediately in the presence of a rare jug with an illustrious mark on the bottom of it, as if i had just emptied that jug. very well; i packed and stored a part of my collection, and the rest of it i placed in the care of the grand ducal museum i n mannheim, by permission. my old blue china cat remains there yet. i presented it to that excellent institution. i had but one misfortune with my things. an egg which i had kept back from breakfast that morning, was broken in packing. it was a great pity. i had shown it to the best connoisseurs in heidelberg, and they all said it was an antique. we spent a day or two in farewell visits, and then left for baden-baden. we had a pleasant trip to it, for the rhine valley is always lovely. the only trouble was that the trip was too short. if i remember rightly it only occupied a couple of hours, therefore i judge that the distance was very little, if any, over fifty miles. we quitted the train at oos, and walked the entire remaining distance to baden-baden, with the exception of a lift of less than an hour which we got on a passing wagon, the weather being exhaustingly warm. we came into town on foot. one of the first persons we encountered, as we walked up the street, was the rev. mr. ------, an old friend from america--a lucky encounter, indeed, for his is a most gentle, refined, and sensitive nature, and his company and companionship are a genuine refreshment. we knew he had been in europe some time, but were not at all expecting to run across him. both parties burst forth into loving enthusiasms, and rev. mr. ------said: "i have got a brimful reservoir of talk to pour out on you, and an empty one ready and thirsting to receive what you have got; we will sit up till midnight and have a good satisfying interchange, for i leave here early in the morning." we agreed to that, of course. i had been vaguely conscious, for a while, of a person who was walking in the street abreast of us; i had glanced furtively at him once or twice, and noticed that he was a fine, large, vigorous young fellow, with an open, independent countenance, faintly shaded with a pale and even almost imperceptible crop of early down, and that he was clothed from head to heel in cool and enviable snow-white linen. i thought i had also noticed that his head had a sort of listening tilt to it. now about this time the rev. mr. ------said: "the sidewalk is hardly wide enough for three, so i will walk behind; but keep the talk going, keep the talk going, there's no time to lose, and you may be sure i will do my share." he ranged himself behind us, and straightway that stately snow-white young fellow closed up to the sidewalk alongside him, fetched him a cordial slap on the shoulder with his broad palm, and sung out with a hearty cheeriness: "americans for two-and-a-half and the money up! hey?" the reverend winced, but said mildly: "yes--we are americans." "lord love you, you can just bet that's what _i_ am, every time! put it there!" he held out his sahara of his palm, and the reverend laid his diminutive hand in it, and got so cordial a shake that we heard his glove burst under it. "say, didn't i put you up right?" "oh, yes." "sho! i spotted you for my kind the minute i heard your clack. you been over here long?" "about four months. have you been over long?" "long? well, i should say so! going on two years, by geeminy! say, are you homesick?" "no, i can't say that i am. are you?" "oh, hell, yes!" this with immense enthusiasm. the reverend shrunk a little, in his clothes, and we were aware, rather by instinct than otherwise, that he was throwing out signals of distress to us; but we did not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quite happy. the young fellow hooked his arm into the reverend's, now, with the confiding and grateful air of a waif who has been longing for a friend, and a sympathetic ear, and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accents of the mother-tongue--and then he limbered up the muscles of his mouth and turned himself loose--and with such a relish! some of his words were not sunday-school words, so i am obliged to put blanks where they occur. "yes indeedy! if _i_ ain't an american there ain't any americans, that's all. and when i heard you fellows gassing away in the good old american language, i'm -----if it wasn't all i could do to keep from hugging you! my tongue's all warped with trying to curl it around these ------forsaken wind-galled nine-jointed german words here; now i tell you it's awful good to lay it over a christian word once more and kind of let the old taste soak it. i'm from western new york. my name is cholley adams. i'm a student, you know. been here going on two years. i'm learning to be a horse-doctor! i like that part of it, you know, but ------these people, they won't learn a fellow in his own language, they make him learn in german; so before i could tackle the horse-doctoring i had to tackle this miserable language. "first off, i thought it would certainly give me the botts, but i don't mind now. i've got it where the hair's short, i think; and dontchuknow, they made me learn latin, too. now between you and me, i wouldn't give a ------for all the latin that was ever jabbered; and the first thing _i_ calculate to do when i get through, is to just sit down and forget it. 'twon't take me long, and i don't mind the time, anyway. and i tell you what! the difference between school-teaching over yonder and school-teaching over here--sho! we don't know anything about it! here you're got to peg and peg and peg and there just ain't any let-up--and what you learn here, you've got to know, dontchuknow --or else you'll have one of these ------spavined, spectacles, ring-boned, knock-kneed old professors in your hair. i've been here long enough, and i'm getting blessed tired of it, mind i tell you. the old man wrote me that he was coming over in june, and said he'd take me home in august, whether i was done with my education or not, but durn him, he didn't come; never said why; just sent me a hamper of sunday-school books, and told me to be good, and hold on a while. i don't take to sunday-school books, dontchuknow--i don't hanker after them when i can get pie--but i read them, anyway, because whatever the old man tells me to do, that's the thing that i'm a-going to do, or tear something, you know. i buckled in and read all those books, because he wanted me to; but that kind of thing don't excite me, i like something hearty. but i'm awful homesick. i'm homesick from ear-socket to crupper, and from crupper to hock-joint; but it ain't any use, i've got to stay here, till the old man drops the rag and give the word--yes, sir, right here in this ------country i've got to linger till the old man says come!--and you bet your bottom dollar, johnny, it ain't just as easy as it is for a cat to have twins!" at the end of this profane and cordial explosion he fetched a prodigious "whoosh!" to relieve his lungs and make recognition of the heat, and then he straightway dived into his narrative again for "johnny's" benefit, beginning, "well, ------it ain't any use talking, some of those old american words do have a kind of a bully swing to them; a man can express himself with 'em--a man can get at what he wants to say, dontchuknow." when we reached our hotel and it seemed that he was about to lose the reverend, he showed so much sorrow, and begged so hard and so earnestly that the reverend's heart was not hard enough to hold out against the pleadings-so he went away with the parent-honoring student, like a right christian, and took supper with him in his lodgings, and sat in the surf-beat of his slang and profanity till near midnight, and then left him--left him pretty well talked out, but grateful "clear down to his frogs," as he expressed it. the reverend said it had transpired during the interview that "cholley" adams's father was an extensive dealer in horses in western new york; this accounted for cholley's choice of a profession. the reverend brought away a pretty high opinion of cholley as a manly young fellow, with stuff in him for a useful citizen; he considered him rather a rough gem, but a gem, nevertheless. chapter xxi [insolent shopkeepers and gabbling americans] baden-baden sits in the lap of the hills, and the natural and artificial beauties of the surroundings are combined effectively and charmingly. the level strip of ground which stretches through and beyond the town is laid out in handsome pleasure grounds, shaded by noble trees and adorned at intervals with lofty and sparkling fountain-jets. thrice a day a fine band makes music in the public promenade before the conversation house, and in the afternoon and evening that locality is populous with fashionably dressed people of both sexes, who march back and forth past the great music-stand and look very much bored, though they make a show of feeling otherwise. it seems like a rather aimless and stupid existence. a good many of these people are there for a real purpose, however; they are racked with rheumatism, and they are there to stew it out in the hot baths. these invalids looked melancholy enough, limping about on their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over all sorts of cheerless things. people say that germany, with her damp stone houses, is the home of rheumatism. if that is so, providence must have foreseen that it would be so, and therefore filled the land with the healing baths. perhaps no other country is so generously supplied with medicinal springs as germany. some of these baths are good for one ailment, some for another; and again, peculiar ailments are conquered by combining the individual virtues of several different baths. for instance, for some forms of disease, the patient drinks the native hot water of baden-baden, with a spoonful of salt from the carlsbad springs dissolved in it. that is not a dose to be forgotten right away. they don't sell this hot water; no, you go into the great trinkhalle, and stand around, first on one foot and then on the other, while two or three young girls sit pottering at some sort of ladylike sewing-work in your neighborhood and can't seem to see you --polite as three-dollar clerks in government offices. by and by one of these rises painfully, and "stretches"--stretches fists and body heavenward till she raises her heels from the floor, at the same time refreshing herself with a yawn of such comprehensiveness that the bulk of her face disappears behind her upper lip and one is able to see how she is constructed inside--then she slowly closes her cavern, brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward, contemplates you contemptuously, draws you a glass of hot water and sets it down where you can get it by reaching for it. you take it and say: "how much?"--and she returns you, with elaborate indifference, a beggar's answer: "nach beliebe" (what you please.) this thing of using the common beggar's trick and the common beggar's shibboleth to put you on your liberality when you were expecting a simple straightforward commercial transaction, adds a little to your prospering sense of irritation. you ignore her reply, and ask again: "how much?" --and she calmly, indifferently, repeats: "nach beliebe." you are getting angry, but you are trying not to show it; you resolve to keep on asking your question till she changes her answer, or at least her annoyingly indifferent manner. therefore, if your case be like mine, you two fools stand there, and without perceptible emotion of any kind, or any emphasis on any syllable, you look blandly into each other's eyes, and hold the following idiotic conversation: "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." i do not know what another person would have done, but at this point i gave up; that cast-iron indifference, that tranquil contemptuousness, conquered me, and i struck my colors. now i knew she was used to receiving about a penny from manly people who care nothing about the opinions of scullery-maids, and about tuppence from moral cowards; but i laid a silver twenty-five cent piece within her reach and tried to shrivel her up with this sarcastic speech: "if it isn't enough, will you stoop sufficiently from your official dignity to say so?" she did not shrivel. without deigning to look at me at all, she languidly lifted the coin and bit it!--to see if it was good. then she turned her back and placidly waddled to her former roost again, tossing the money into an open till as she went along. she was victor to the last, you see. i have enlarged upon the ways of this girl because they are typical; her manners are the manners of a goodly number of the baden-baden shopkeepers. the shopkeeper there swindles you if he can, and insults you whether he succeeds in swindling you or not. the keepers of baths also take great and patient pains to insult you. the frowsy woman who sat at the desk in the lobby of the great friederichsbad and sold bath tickets, not only insulted me twice every day, with rigid fidelity to her great trust, but she took trouble enough to cheat me out of a shilling, one day, to have fairly entitled her to ten. baden-baden's splendid gamblers are gone, only her microscopic knaves remain. an english gentleman who had been living there several years, said: "if you could disguise your nationality, you would not find any insolence here. these shopkeepers detest the english and despise the americans; they are rude to both, more especially to ladies of your nationality and mine. if these go shopping without a gentleman or a man-servant, they are tolerably sure to be subjected to petty insolences-insolences of manner and tone, rather than word, though words that are hard to bear are not always wanting. i know of an instance where a shopkeeper tossed a coin back to an american lady with the remark, snappishly uttered, 'we don't take french money here.' and i know of a case where an english lady said to one of these shopkeepers, 'don't you think you ask too much for this article?' and he replied with the question, 'do you think you are obliged to buy it?' however, these people are not impolite to russians or germans. and as to rank, they worship that, for they have long been used to generals and nobles. if you wish to see what abysses servility can descend, present yourself before a baden-baden shopkeeper in the character of a russian prince." it is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, and snobbery, but the baths are good. i spoke with many people, and they were all agreed in that. i had the twinges of rheumatism unceasingly during three years, but the last one departed after a fortnight's bathing there, and i have never had one since. i fully believe i left my rheumatism in baden-baden. baden-baden is welcome to it. it was little, but it was all i had to give. i would have preferred to leave something that was catching, but it was not in my power. there are several hot springs there, and during two thousand years they have poured forth a never-diminishing abundance of the healing water. this water is conducted in pipe to the numerous bath-houses, and is reduced to an endurable temperature by the addition of cold water. the new friederichsbad is a very large and beautiful building, and in it one may have any sort of bath that has ever been invented, and with all the additions of herbs and drugs that his ailment may need or that the physician of the establishment may consider a useful thing to put into the water. you go there, enter the great door, get a bow graduated to your style and clothes from the gorgeous portier, and a bath ticket and an insult from the frowsy woman for a quarter; she strikes a bell and a serving-man conducts you down a long hall and shuts you into a commodious room which has a washstand, a mirror, a bootjack, and a sofa in it, and there you undress at your leisure. the room is divided by a great curtain; you draw this curtain aside, and find a large white marble bathtub, with its rim sunk to the level of the floor, and with three white marble steps leading down to it. this tub is full of water which is as clear as crystal, and is tempered to 28 degrees re'aumur (about 95 degrees fahrenheit). sunk into the floor, by the tub, is a covered copper box which contains some warm towels and a sheet. you look fully as white as an angel when you are stretched out in that limpid bath. you remain in it ten minutes, the first time, and afterward increase the duration from day to day, till you reach twenty-five or thirty minutes. there you stop. the appointments of the place are so luxurious, the benefit so marked, the price so moderate, and the insults so sure, that you very soon find yourself adoring the friederichsbad and infesting it. we had a plain, simple, unpretending, good hotel, in baden-baden--the ho^tel de france--and alongside my room i had a giggling, cackling, chattering family who always went to bed just two hours after me and always got up two hours ahead of me. but this is common in german hotels; the people generally go to bed long after eleven and get up long before eight. the partitions convey sound like a drum-head, and everybody knows it; but no matter, a german family who are all kindness and consideration in the daytime make apparently no effort to moderate their noises for your benefit at night. they will sing, laugh, and talk loudly, and bang furniture around in a most pitiless way. if you knock on your wall appealingly, they will quiet down and discuss the matter softly among themselves for a moment--then, like the mice, they fall to persecuting you again, and as vigorously as before. they keep cruelly late and early hours, for such noisy folk. of course, when one begins to find fault with foreign people's ways, he is very likely to get a reminder to look nearer home, before he gets far with it. i open my note-book to see if i can find some more information of a valuable nature about baden-baden, and the first thing i fall upon is this: "baden-baden (no date). lot of vociferous americans at breakfast this morning. talking at everybody, while pretending to talk among themselves. on their first travels, manifestly. showing off. the usual signs--airy, easy-going references to grand distances and foreign places. 'well good-by, old fellow-if i don't run across you in italy, you hunt me up in london before you sail.'" the next item which i find in my note-book is this one: "the fact that a band of 6,000 indians are now murdering our frontiersmen at their impudent leisure, and that we are only able to send 1,200 soldiers against them, is utilized here to discourage emigration to america. the common people think the indians are in new jersey." this is a new and peculiar argument against keeping our army down to a ridiculous figure in the matter of numbers. it is rather a striking one, too. i have not distorted the truth in saying that the facts in the above item, about the army and the indians, are made use of to discourage emigration to america. that the common people should be rather foggy in their geography, and foggy as to the location of the indians, is a matter for amusement, maybe, but not of surprise. there is an interesting old cemetery in baden-baden, and we spent several pleasant hours in wandering through it and spelling out the inscriptions on the aged tombstones. apparently after a man has laid there a century or two, and has had a good many people buried on top of him, it is considered that his tombstone is not needed by him any longer. i judge so from the fact that hundreds of old gravestones have been removed from the graves and placed against the inner walls of the cemetery. what artists they had in the old times! they chiseled angels and cherubs and devils and skeletons on the tombstones in the most lavish and generous way--as to supply--but curiously grotesque and outlandish as to form. it is not always easy to tell which of the figures belong among the blest and which of them among the opposite party. but there was an inscription, in french, on one of those old stones, which was quaint and pretty, and was plainly not the work of any other than a poet. it was to this effect: here reposes in god, caroline de clery, a religieuse of st. denis aged 83 years--and blind. the light was restored to her in baden the 5th of january, 1839 we made several excursions on foot to the neighboring villages, over winding and beautiful roads and through enchanting woodland scenery. the woods and roads were similar to those at heidelberg, but not so bewitching. i suppose that roads and woods which are up to the heidelberg mark are rare in the world. once we wandered clear away to la favorita palace, which is several miles from baden-baden. the grounds about the palace were fine; the palace was a curiosity. it was built by a margravine in 1725, and remains as she left it at her death. we wandered through a great many of its rooms, and they all had striking peculiarities of decoration. for instance, the walls of one room were pretty completely covered with small pictures of the margravine in all conceivable varieties of fanciful costumes, some of them male. the walls of another room were covered with grotesquely and elaborately figured hand-wrought tapestry. the musty ancient beds remained in the chambers, and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated with curious handwork, and the walls and ceilings frescoed with historical and mythological scenes in glaring colors. there was enough crazy and rotten rubbish in the building to make a true brick-a-bracker green with envy. a painting in the dining-hall verged upon the indelicate-but then the margravine was herself a trifle indelicate. it is in every way a wildly and picturesquely decorated house, and brimful of interest as a reflection of the character and tastes of that rude bygone time. in the grounds, a few rods from the palace, stands the margravine's chapel, just as she left it--a coarse wooden structure, wholly barren of ornament. it is said that the margravine would give herself up to debauchery and exceedingly fast living for several months at a time, and then retire to this miserable wooden den and spend a few months in repenting and getting ready for another good time. she was a devoted catholic, and was perhaps quite a model sort of a christian as christians went then, in high life. tradition says she spent the last two years of her life in the strange den i have been speaking of, after having indulged herself in one final, triumphant, and satisfying spree. she shut herself up there, without company, and without even a servant, and so abjured and forsook the world. in her little bit of a kitchen she did her own cooking; she wore a hair shirt next the skin, and castigated herself with whips--these aids to grace are exhibited there yet. she prayed and told her beads, in another little room, before a waxen virgin niched in a little box against the wall; she bedded herself like a slave. in another small room is an unpainted wooden table, and behind it sit half-life-size waxen figures of the holy family, made by the very worst artist that ever lived, perhaps, and clothed in gaudy, flimsy drapery. [1] the margravine used to bring her meals to this table and dine with the holy family. what an idea that was! what a grisly spectacle it must have been! imagine it: those rigid, shock-headed figures, with corpsy complexions and fish glass eyes, occupying one side of the table in the constrained attitudes and dead fixedness that distinquish all men that are born of wax, and this wrinkled, smoldering old fire-eater occupying the other side, mumbling her prayers and munching her sausages in the ghostly stillness and shadowy indistinctness of a winter twilight. it makes one feel crawly even to think of it. 1. the savior was represented as a lad of about fifteen years of age. this figure had lost one eye. in this sordid place, and clothed, bedded, and fed like a pauper, this strange princess lived and worshiped during two years, and in it she died. two or three hundred years ago, this would have made the poor den holy ground; and the church would have set up a miracle-factory there and made plenty of money out of it. the den could be moved into some portions of france and made a good property even now. chapter xxii [the black forest and its treasures] from baden-baden we made the customary trip into the black forest. we were on foot most of the time. one cannot describe those noble woods, nor the feeling with which they inspire him. a feature of the feeling, however, is a deep sense of contentment; another feature of it is a buoyant, boyish gladness; and a third and very conspicuous feature of it is one's sense of the remoteness of the work-day world and his entire emancipation from it and its affairs. those woods stretch unbroken over a vast region; and everywhere they are such dense woods, and so still, and so piney and fragrant. the stems of the trees are trim and straight, and in many places all the ground is hidden for miles under a thick cushion of moss of a vivid green color, with not a decayed or ragged spot in its surface, and not a fallen leaf or twig to mar its immaculate tidiness. a rich cathedral gloom pervades the pillared aisles; so the stray flecks of sunlight that strike a trunk here and a bough yonder are strongly accented, and when they strike the moss they fairly seem to burn. but the weirdest effect, and the most enchanting is that produced by the diffused light of the low afternoon sun; no single ray is able to pierce its way in, then, but the diffused light takes color from moss and foliage, and pervades the place like a faint, greet-tinted mist, the theatrical fire of fairyland. the suggestion of mystery and the supernatural which haunts the forest at all times is intensified by this unearthly glow. we found the black forest farmhouses and villages all that the black forest stories have pictured them. the first genuine specimen which we came upon was the mansion of a rich farmer and member of the common council of the parish or district. he was an important personage in the land and so was his wife also, of course. his daughter was the "catch" of the region, and she may be already entering into immortality as the heroine of one of auerbach's novels, for all i know. we shall see, for if he puts her in i shall recognize her by her black forest clothes, and her burned complexion, her plump figure, her fat hands, her dull expression, her gentle spirit, her generous feet, her bonnetless head, and the plaited tails of hemp-colored hair hanging down her back. the house was big enough for a hotel; it was a hundred feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to eaves; but from the eaves to the comb of the mighty roof was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. this roof was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick, and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, mainly moss. the mossless spots were places where repairs had been made by the insertion of bright new masses of yellow straw. the eaves projected far down, like sheltering, hospitable wings. across the gable that fronted the road, and about ten feet above the ground, ran a narrow porch, with a wooden railing; a row of small windows filled with very small panes looked upon the porch. above were two or three other little windows, one clear up under the sharp apex of the roof. before the ground-floor door was a huge pile of manure. the door of the second-story room on the side of the house was open, and occupied by the rear elevation of a cow. was this probably the drawing-room? all of the front half of the house from the ground up seemed to be occupied by the people, the cows, and the chickens, and all the rear half by draught-animals and hay. but the chief feature, all around this house, was the big heaps of manure. we became very familiar with the fertilizer in the forest. we fell unconsciously into the habit of judging of a man's station in life by this outward and eloquent sign. sometimes we said, "here is a poor devil, this is manifest." when we saw a stately accumulation, we said, "here is a banker." when we encountered a country-seat surrounded by an alpine pomp of manure, we said, "doubtless a duke lives here." the importance of this feature has not been properly magnified in the black forest stories. manure is evidently the black-forester's main treasure--his coin, his jewel, his pride, his old master, his ceramics, his bric-a-brac, his darling, his title to public consideration, envy, veneration, and his first solicitude when he gets ready to make his will. the true black forest novel, if it is ever written, will be skeletoned somewhat in this way: skeleton for a black forest novel rich old farmer, named huss. has inherited great wealth of manure, and by diligence has added to it. it is double-starred in baedeker. [1] the black forest artist paints it--his masterpiece. the king comes to see it. gretchen huss, daughter and heiress. paul hoch, young neighbor, suitor for gretchen's hand--ostensibly; he really wants the manure. hoch has a good many cart-loads of the black forest currency himself, and therefore is a good catch; but he is sordid, mean, and without sentiment, whereas gretchen is all sentiment and poetry. hans schmidt, young neighbor, full of sentiment, full of poetry, loves gretchen, gretchen loves him. but he has no manure. old huss forbids him in the house. his heart breaks, he goes away to die in the woods, far from the cruel world--for he says, bitterly, "what is man, without manure?" 1. when baedeker's guide-books mention a thing and put two stars (**) after it, it means well worth visiting. m.t. [interval of six months.] paul hoch comes to old huss and says, "i am at last as rich as you required--come and view the pile." old huss views it and says, "it is sufficient--take her and be happy,"--meaning gretchen. [interval of two weeks.] wedding party assembled in old huss's drawing-room. hoch placid and content, gretchen weeping over her hard fate. enter old huss's head bookkeeper. huss says fiercely, "i gave you three weeks to find out why your books don't balance, and to prove that you are not a defaulter; the time is up--find me the missing property or you go to prison as a thief." bookkeeper: "i have found it." "where?" bookkeeper (sternly--tragically): "in the bridegroom's pile!--behold the thief--see him blench and tremble!" [sensation.] paul hoch: lost, lost!"--falls over the cow in a swoon and is handcuffed. gretchen: "saved!" falls over the calf in a swoon of joy, but is caught in the arms of hans schmidt, who springs in at that moment. old huss: "what, you here, varlet? unhand the maid and quit the place." hans (still supporting the insensible girl): "never! cruel old man, know that i come with claims which even you cannot despise." huss: "what, you? name them." hans: "listen then. the world has forsaken me, i forsook the world, i wandered in the solitude of the forest, longing for death but finding none. i fed upon roots, and in my bitterness i dug for the bitterest, loathing the sweeter kind. digging, three days agone, i struck a manure mine!--a golconda, a limitless bonanza, of solid manure! i can buy you all, and have mountain ranges of manure left! ha-ha, now thou smilest a smile!" [immense sensation.] exhibition of specimens from the mine. old huss (enthusiastically): "wake her up, shake her up, noble young man, she is yours!" wedding takes place on the spot; bookkeeper restored to his office and emoluments; paul hoch led off to jail. the bonanza king of the black forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of his wife and of his twenty-seven children, and the still sweeter envy of everybody around. we took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the plow inn, in a very pretty village (ottenho"fen), and then went into the public room to rest and smoke. there we found nine or ten black forest grandees assembled around a table. they were the common council of the parish. they had gathered there at eight o'clock that morning to elect a new member, and they had now been drinking beer four hours at the new member's expense. they were men of fifty or sixty years of age, with grave good-natures faces, and were all dressed in the costume made familiar to us by the black forest stories; broad, round-topped black felt hats with the brims curled up all round; long red waistcoats with large metal buttons, black alpaca coats with the waists up between the shoulders. there were no speeches, there was but little talk, there were no frivolities; the council filled themselves gradually, steadily, but surely, with beer, and conducted themselves with sedate decorum, as became men of position, men of influence, men of manure. we had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy bank of a rushing stream of clear water, past farmhouses, water-mills, and no end of wayside crucifixes and saints and virgins. these crucifixes, etc., are set up in memory of departed friends, by survivors, and are almost as frequent as telegraph-poles are in other lands. we followed the carriage-road, and had our usual luck; we traveled under a beating sun, and always saw the shade leave the shady places before we could get to them. in all our wanderings we seldom managed to strike a piece of road at its time for being shady. we had a particularly hot time of it on that particular afternoon, and with no comfort but what we could get out of the fact that the peasants at work away up on the steep mountainsides above our heads were even worse off than we were. by and by it became impossible to endure the intolerable glare and heat any longer; so we struck across the ravine and entered the deep cool twilight of the forest, to hunt for what the guide-book called the "old road." we found an old road, and it proved eventually to be the right one, though we followed it at the time with the conviction that it was the wrong one. if it was the wrong one there could be no use in hurrying; therefore we did not hurry, but sat down frequently on the soft moss and enjoyed the restful quiet and shade of the forest solitudes. there had been distractions in the carriage-road-school-children, peasants, wagons, troops of pedestrianizing students from all over germany-but we had the old road to ourselves. now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious ant at his work. i found nothing new in him--certainly nothing to change my opinion of him. it seems to me that in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely overrated bird. during many summers, now, i have watched him, when i ought to have been in better business, and i have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one. i refer to the ordinary ant, of course; i have had no experience of those wonderful swiss and african ones which vote, keep drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute about religion. those particular ants may be all that the naturalist paints them, but i am persuaded that the average ant is a sham. i admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest-working creature in the world--when anybody is looking--but his leather-headedness is the point i make against him. he goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do? go home? no--he goes anywhere but home. he doesn't know where home is. his home may be only three feet away--no matter, he can't find it. he makes his capture, as i have said; it is generally something which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else; it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be; he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it; he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts; not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead of going around it, he climbs over it backward dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it this way, then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; it never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it; and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top--which is as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from heidelberg to paris by way of strasburg steeple; when he gets up there he finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off once more--as usual, in a new direction. at the end of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches of the place he started from and lays his burden down; meantime he as been over all the ground for two yards around, and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across. now he wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, and then marches aimlessly off, in as violently a hurry as ever. he does not remember to have ever seen it before; he looks around to see which is not the way home, grabs his bundle and starts; he goes through the same adventures he had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along. evidently the friend remarks that a last year's grasshopper leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquires where he got it. evidently the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it "around here somewhere." evidently the friend contracts to help him freight it home. then, with a judgment peculiarly antic (pun not intended), then take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg a nd begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions. presently they take a rest and confer together. they decide that something is wrong, they can't make out what. then they go at it again, just as before. same result. mutual recriminations follow. evidently each accuses the other of being an obstructionist. they lock themselves together and chew each other's jaws for a while; then they roll and tumble on the ground till one loses a horn or a leg and has to haul off for repairs. they make up and go to work again in the same old insane way, but the crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he may, the other one drags off the booty and him at the end of it. instead of giving up, he hangs on, and gets his shins bruised against every obstruction that comes in the way. by and by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over the same old ground once more, it is finally dumped at about the spot where it originally lay, the two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully and decide that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property after all, and then each starts off in a different direction to see if he can't find an old nail or something else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it. there in the black forest, on the mountainside, i saw an ant go through with such a performance as this with a dead spider of fully ten times his own weight. the spider was not quite dead, but too far gone to resist. he had a round body the size of a pea. the little ant-observing that i was noticing--turned him on his back, sunk his fangs into his throat, lifted him into the air and started vigorously off with him, stumbling over little pebbles, stepping on the spider's legs and tripping himself up, dragging him backward, shoving him bodily ahead, dragging him up stones six inches high instead of going around them, climbing weeds twenty times his own height and jumping from their summits--and finally leaving him in the middle of the road to be confiscated by any other fool of an ant that wanted him. i measured the ground which this ass traversed, and arrived at the conclusion that what he had accomplished inside of twenty minutes would constitute some such job as this--relatively speaking--for a man; to wit: to strap two eight-hundred-pound horses together, carry them eighteen hundred feet, mainly over (not around) boulders averaging six feet high, and in the course of the journey climb up and jump from the top of one precipice like niagara, and three steeples, each a hundred and twenty feet high; and then put the horses down, in an exposed place, without anybody to watch them, and go off to indulge in some other idiotic miracle for vanity's sake. science has recently discovered that the ant does not lay up anything for winter use. this will knock him out of literature, to some extent. he does not work, except when people are looking, and only then when the observer has a green, naturalistic look, and seems to be taking notes. this amounts to deception, and will injure him for the sunday-schools. he has not judgment enough to know what is good to eat from what isn't. this amounts to ignorance, and will impair the world's respect for him. he cannot stroll around a stump and find his way home again. this amounts to idiocy, and once the damaging fact is established, thoughtful people will cease to look up to him, the sentimental will cease to fondle him. his vaunted industry is but a vanity and of no effect, since he never gets home with anything he starts with. this disposes of the last remnant of his reputation and wholly destroys his main usefulness as a moral agent, since it will make the sluggard hesitate to go to him any more. it is strange, beyond comprehension, that so manifest a humbug as the ant has been able to fool so many nations and keep it up so many ages without being found out. the ant is strong, but we saw another strong thing, where we had not suspected the presence of much muscular power before. a toadstool--that vegetable which springs to full growth in a single night--had torn loose and lifted a matted mass of pine needles and dirt of twice its own bulk into the air, and supported it there, like a column supporting a shed. ten thousand toadstools, with the right purchase, could lift a man, i suppose. but what good would it do? all our afternoon's progress had been uphill. about five or half past we reached the summit, and all of a sudden the dense curtain of the forest parted and we looked down into a deep and beautiful gorge and out over a wide panorama of wooded mountains with their summits shining in the sun and their glade-furrowed sides dimmed with purple shade. the gorge under our feet--called allerheiligen--afforded room in the grassy level at its head for a cozy and delightful human nest, shut away from the world and its botherations, and consequently the monks of the old times had not failed to spy it out; and here were the brown and comely ruins of their church and convent to prove that priests had as fine an instinct seven hundred years ago in ferreting out the choicest nooks and corners in a land as priests have today. a big hotel crowds the ruins a little, now, and drives a brisk trade with summer tourists. we descended into the gorge and had a supper which would have been very satisfactory if the trout had not been boiled. the germans are pretty sure to boil a trout or anything else if left to their own devices. this is an argument of some value in support of the theory that they were the original colonists of the wild islands of the coast of scotland. a schooner laden with oranges was wrecked upon one of those islands a few years ago, and the gentle savages rendered the captain such willing assistance that he gave them as many oranges as they wanted. next day he asked them how they liked them. they shook their heads and said: "baked, they were tough; and even boiled, they warn't things for a hungry man to hanker after." we went down the glen after supper. it is beautiful--a mixture of sylvan loveliness and craggy wildness. a limpid torrent goes whistling down the glen, and toward the foot of it winds through a narrow cleft between lofty precipices and hurls itself over a succession of falls. after one passes the last of these he has a backward glimpse at the falls which is very pleasing--they rise in a seven-stepped stairway of foamy and glittering cascades, and make a picture which is as charming as it is unusual. chapter xxiii [nicodemus dodge and the skeleton] we were satisfied that we could walk to oppenau in one day, now that we were in practice; so we set out the next morning after breakfast determined to do it. it was all the way downhill, and we had the loveliest summer weather for it. so we set the pedometer and then stretched away on an easy, regular stride, down through the cloven forest, drawing in the fragrant breath of the morning in deep refreshing draughts, and wishing we might never have anything to do forever but walk to oppenau and keep on doing it and then doing it over again. now, the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. the walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. it is no matter whether one talks wisdom or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the flapping of the sympathetic ear. and what motley variety of subjects a couple of people will casually rake over in the course of a day's tramp! there being no constraint, a change of subject is always in order, and so a body is not likely to keep pegging at a single topic until it grows tiresome. we discussed everything we knew, during the first fifteen or twenty minutes, that morning, and then branched out into the glad, free, boundless realm of the things we were not certain about. harris said that if the best writer in the world once got the slovenly habit of doubling up his "haves" he could never get rid of it while he lived. that is to say, if a man gets the habit of saying "i should have liked to have known more about it" instead of saying simply and sensibly, "i should have liked to know more about it," that man's disease is incurable. harris said that his sort of lapse is to be found in every copy of every newspaper that has ever been printed in english, and in almost all of our books. he said he had observed it in kirkham's grammar and in macaulay. harris believed that milk-teeth are commoner in men's mouths than those "doubled-up haves." [1] 1. i do not know that there have not been moments in the course of the present session when i should have been very glad to have accepted the proposal of my noble friend, and to have exchanged parts in some of our evenings of work.--[from a speech of the english chancellor of the exchequer, august, 1879.] that changed the subject to dentistry. i said i believed the average man dreaded tooth-pulling more than amputation, and that he would yell quicker under the former operation than he would under the latter. the philosopher harris said that the average man would not yell in either case if he had an audience. then he continued: "when our brigade first went into camp on the potomac, we used to be brought up standing, occasionally, by an ear-splitting howl of anguish. that meant that a soldier was getting a tooth pulled in a tent. but the surgeons soon changed that; they instituted open-air dentistry. there never was a howl afterward--that is, from the man who was having the tooth pulled. at the daily dental hour there would always be about five hundred soldiers gathered together in the neighborhood of that dental chair waiting to see the performance--and help; and the moment the surgeon took a grip on the candidate's tooth and began to lift, every one of those five hundred rascals would clap his hand to his jaw and begin to hop around on one leg and howl with all the lungs he had! it was enough to raise your hair to hear that variegated and enormous unanimous caterwaul burst out! with so big and so derisive an audience as that, a suffer wouldn't emit a sound though you pulled his head off. the surgeons said that pretty often a patient was compelled to laugh, in the midst of his pangs, but that had never caught one crying out, after the open-air exhibition was instituted." dental surgeons suggested doctors, doctors suggested death, death suggested skeletons--and so, by a logical process the conversation melted out of one of these subjects and into the next, until the topic of skeletons raised up nicodemus dodge out of the deep grave in my memory where he had lain buried and forgotten for twenty-five years. when i was a boy in a printing-office in missouri, a loose-jointed, long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad countrified cub of about sixteen lounged in one day, and without removing his hands from the depths of his trousers pockets or taking off his faded ruin of a slouch hat, whose broken rim hung limp and ragged about his eyes and ears like a bug-eaten cabbage leaf, stared indifferently around, then leaned his hip against the editor's table, crossed his mighty brogans, aimed at a distant fly from a crevice in his upper teeth, laid him low, and said with composure: "whar's the boss?" "i am the boss," said the editor, following this curious bit of architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face with his eye. "don't want anybody fur to learn the business, 'tain't likely?" "well, i don't know. would you like to learn it?" "pap's so po' he cain't run me no mo', so i want to git a show somers if i kin, 'taint no diffunce what--i'm strong and hearty, and i don't turn my back on no kind of work, hard nur soft." "do you think you would like to learn the printing business?" "well, i don't re'ly k'yer a durn what i do learn, so's i git a chance fur to make my way. i'd jist as soon learn print'n's anything." "can you read?" "yes--middlin'." "write?" "well, i've seed people could lay over me thar." "cipher?" "not good enough to keep store, i don't reckon, but up as fur as twelve-times-twelve i ain't no slouch. 'tother side of that is what gits me." "where is your home?" "i'm f'm old shelby." "what's your father's religious denomination?" "him? oh, he's a blacksmith." "no, no--i don't mean his trade. what's his religious denomination?" "oh--i didn't understand you befo'. he's a freemason." "no, no, you don't get my meaning yet. what i mean is, does he belong to any church?" "now you're talkin'! couldn't make out what you was a-tryin' to git through yo' head no way. b'long to a church! why, boss, he's ben the pizenest kind of free-will babtis' for forty year. they ain't no pizener ones 'n what he is. mighty good man, pap is. everybody says that. if they said any diffrunt they wouldn't say it whar _i_ wuz-not much they wouldn't." "what is your own religion?" "well, boss, you've kind o' got me, there--and yit you hain't got me so mighty much, nuther. i think 't if a feller he'ps another feller when he's in trouble, and don't cuss, and don't do no mean things, nur noth'n' he ain' no business to do, and don't spell the saviour's name with a little g, he ain't runnin' no resks--he's about as saift as he b'longed to a church." "but suppose he did spell it with a little g--what then?" "well, if he done it a-purpose, i reckon he wouldn't stand no chance--he oughtn't to have no chance, anyway, i'm most rotten certain 'bout that." "what is your name?" "nicodemus dodge." "i think maybe you'll do, nicodemus. we'll give you a trial, anyway." "all right." "when would you like to begin?" "now." so, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nondescript he was one of us, and with his coat off and hard at it. beyond that end of our establishment which was furthest from the street, was a deserted garden, pathless, and thickly grown with the bloomy and villainous "jimpson" weed and its common friend the stately sunflower. in the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed and aged little "frame" house with but one room, one window, and no ceiling--it had been a smoke-house a generation before. nicodemus was given this lonely and ghostly den as a bedchamber. the village smarties recognized a treasure in nicodemus, right away--a butt to play jokes on. it was easy to see that he was inconceivably green and confiding. george jones had the glory of perpetrating the first joke on him; he gave him a cigar with a firecracker in it and winked to the crowd to come; the thing exploded presently and swept away the bulk of nicodemus's eyebrows and eyelashes. he simply said: "i consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome,"--and seemed to suspect nothing. the next evening nicodemus waylaid george and poured a bucket of ice-water over him. one day, while nicodemus was in swimming, tom mcelroy "tied" his clothes. nicodemus made a bonfire of tom's by way of retaliation. a third joke was played upon nicodemus a day or two later--he walked up the middle aisle of the village church, sunday night, with a staring handbill pinned between his shoulders. the joker spent the remainder of the night, after church, in the cellar of a deserted house, and nicodemus sat on the cellar door till toward breakfast-time to make sure that the prisoner remembered that if any noise was made, some rough treatment would be the consequence. the cellar had two feet of stagnant water in it, and was bottomed with six inches of soft mud. but i wander from the point. it was the subject of skeletons that brought this boy back to my recollection. before a very long time had elapsed, the village smarties began to feel an uncomfortable consciousness of not having made a very shining success out of their attempts on the simpleton from "old shelby." experimenters grew scarce and chary. now the young doctor came to the rescue. there was delight and applause when he proposed to scare nicodemus to death, and explained how he was going to do it. he had a noble new skeleton--the skeleton of the late and only local celebrity, jimmy finn, the village drunkard--a grisly piece of property which he had bought of jimmy finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars, under great competition, when jimmy lay very sick in the tan-yard a fortnight before his death. the fifty dollars had gone promptly for whiskey and had considerably hurried up the change of ownership in the skeleton. the doctor would put jimmy finn's skeleton in nicodemus's bed! this was done--about half past ten in the evening. about nicodemus's usual bedtime--midnight--the village jokers came creeping stealthily through the jimpson weeds and sunflowers toward the lonely frame den. they reached the window and peeped in. there sat the long-legged pauper, on his bed, in a very short shirt, and nothing more; he was dangling his legs contentedly back and forth, and wheezing the music of "camptown races" out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing against his mouth; by him lay a new jewsharp, a new top, and solid india-rubber ball, a handful of painted marbles, five pounds of "store" candy, and a well-gnawed slab of gingerbread as big and as thick as a volume of sheet-music. he had sold the skeleton to a traveling quack for three dollars and was enjoying the result! just as we had finished talking about skeletons and were drifting into the subject of fossils, harris and i heard a shout, and glanced up the steep hillside. we saw men and women standing away up there looking frightened, and there was a bulky object tumbling and floundering down the steep slope toward us. we got out of the way, and when the object landed in the road it proved to be a boy. he had tripped and fallen, and there was nothing for him to do but trust to luck and take what might come. when one starts to roll down a place like that, there is no stopping till the bottom is reached. think of people farming on a slant which is so steep that the best you can say of it--if you want to be fastidiously accurate--is, that it is a little steeper than a ladder and not quite so steep as a mansard roof. but that is what they do. some of the little farms on the hillside opposite heidelberg were stood up "edgeways." the boy was wonderfully jolted up, and his head was bleeding, from cuts which it had got from small stones on the way. harris and i gathered him up and set him on a stone, and by that time the men and women had scampered down and brought his cap. men, women, and children flocked out from neighboring cottages and joined the crowd; the pale boy was petted, and stared at, and commiserated, and water was brought for him to drink and bathe his bruises in. and such another clatter of tongues! all who had seen the catastrophe were describing it at once, and each trying to talk louder than his neighbor; and one youth of a superior genius ran a little way up the hill, called attention, tripped, fell, rolled down among us, and thus triumphantly showed exactly how the thing had been done. harris and i were included in all the descriptions; how we were coming along; how hans gross shouted; how we looked up startled; how we saw peter coming like a cannon-shot; how judiciously we got out of the way, and let him come; and with what presence of mind we picked him up and brushed him off and set him on a rock when the performance was over. we were as much heroes as anybody else, except peter, and were so recognized; we were taken with peter and the populace to peter's mother's cottage, and there we ate bread and cheese, and drank milk and beer with everybody, and had a most sociable good time; and when we left we had a handshake all around, and were receiving and shouting back leb' wohl's until a turn in the road separated us from our cordial and kindly new friends forever. we accomplished our undertaking. at half past eight in the evening we stepped into oppenau, just eleven hours and a half out of allerheiligen--one hundred and forty-six miles. this is the distance by pedometer; the guide-book and the imperial ordinance maps make it only ten and a quarter--a surprising blunder, for these two authorities are usually singularly accurate in the matter of distances. chapter xxiv [i protect the empress of germany] that was a thoroughly satisfactory walk--and the only one we were ever to have which was all the way downhill. we took the train next morning and returned to baden-baden through fearful fogs of dust. every seat was crowded, too; for it was sunday, and consequently everybody was taking a "pleasure" excursion. hot! the sky was an oven--and a sound one, too, with no cracks in it to let in any air. an odd time for a pleasure excursion, certainly! sunday is the great day on the continent--the free day, the happy day. one can break the sabbath in a hundred ways without committing any sin. we do not work on sunday, because the commandment forbids it; the germans do not work on sunday, because the commandment forbids it. we rest on sunday, because the commandment requires it; the germans rest on sunday because the commandment requires it. but in the definition of the word "rest" lies all the difference. with us, its sunday meaning is, stay in the house and keep still; with the germans its sunday and week-day meanings seem to be the same--rest the tired part, and never mind the other parts of the frame; rest the tired part, and use the means best calculated to rest that particular part. thus: if one's duties have kept him in the house all the week, it will rest him to be out on sunday; if his duties have required him to read weighty and serious matter all the week, it will rest him to read light matter on sunday; if his occupation has busied him with death and funerals all the week, it will rest him to go to the theater sunday night and put in two or three hours laughing at a comedy; if he is tired with digging ditches or felling trees all the week, it will rest him to lie quiet in the house on sunday; if the hand, the arm, the brain, the tongue, or any other member, is fatigued with inanition, it is not to be rested by added a day's inanition; but if a member is fatigued with exertion, inanition is the right rest for it. such is the way in which the germans seem to define the word "rest"; that is to say, they rest a member by recreating, recuperating, restore its forces. but our definition is less broad. we all rest alike on sunday--by secluding ourselves and keeping still, whether that is the surest way to rest the most of us or not. the germans make the actors, the preachers, etc., work on sunday. we encourage the preachers, the editors, the printers, etc., to work on sunday, and imagine that none of the sin of it falls upon us; but i do not know how we are going to get around the fact that if it is wrong for the printer to work at his trade on sunday it must be equally wrong for the preacher to work at his, since the commandment has made no exception in his favor. we buy monday morning's paper and read it, and thus encourage sunday printing. but i shall never do it again. the germans remember the sabbath-day to keep it holy, by abstaining from work, as commanded; we keep it holy by abstaining from work, as commanded, and by also abstaining from play, which is not commanded. perhaps we constructively break the command to rest, because the resting we do is in most cases only a name, and not a fact. these reasonings have sufficed, in a measure, to mend the rent in my conscience which i made by traveling to baden-baden that sunday. we arrived in time to furbish up and get to the english church before services began. we arrived in considerable style, too, for the landlord had ordered the first carriage that could be found, since there was no time to lose, and our coachman was so splendidly liveried that we were probably mistaken for a brace of stray dukes; why else were we honored with a pew all to ourselves, away up among the very elect at the left of the chancel? that was my first thought. in the pew directly in front of us sat an elderly lady, plainly and cheaply dressed; at her side sat a young lady with a very sweet face, and she also was quite simply dressed; but around us and about us were clothes and jewels which it would do anybody's heart good to worship in. i thought it was pretty manifest that the elderly lady was embarrassed at finding herself in such a conspicuous place arrayed in such cheap apparel; i began to feel sorry for her and troubled about her. she tried to seem very busy with her prayer-book and her responses, and unconscious that she was out of place, but i said to myself, "she is not succeeding--there is a distressed tremulousness in her voice which betrays increasing embarrassment." presently the savior's name was mentioned, and in her flurry she lost her head completely, and rose and courtesied, instead of making a slight nod as everybody else did. the sympathetic blood surged to my temples and i turned and gave those fine birds what i intended to be a beseeching look, but my feelings got the better of me and changed it into a look which said, "if any of you pets of fortune laugh at this poor soul, you will deserve to be flayed for it." things went from bad to worse, and i shortly found myself mentally taking the unfriended lady under my protection. my mind was wholly upon her. i forgot all about the sermon. her embarrassment took stronger and stronger hold upon her; she got to snapping the lid of her smelling-bottle--it made a loud, sharp sound, but in her trouble she snapped and snapped away, unconscious of what she was doing. the last extremity was reached when the collection-plate began its rounds; the moderate people threw in pennies, the nobles and the rich contributed silver, but she laid a twenty-mark gold piece upon the book-rest before her with a sounding slap! i said to myself, "she has parted with all her little hoard to buy the consideration of these unpitying people--it is a sorrowful spectacle." i did not venture to look around this time; but as the service closed, i said to myself, "let them laugh, it is their opportunity; but at the door of this church they shall see her step into our fine carriage with us, and our gaudy coachman shall drive her home." then she rose--and all the congregation stood while she walked down the aisle. she was the empress of germany! no--she had not been so much embarrassed as i had supposed. my imagination had got started on the wrong scent, and that is always hopeless; one is sure, then, to go straight on misinterpreting everything, clear through to the end. the young lady with her imperial majesty was a maid of honor--and i had been taking her for one of her boarders, all the time. this is the only time i have ever had an empress under my personal protection; and considering my inexperience, i wonder i got through with it so well. i should have been a little embarrassed myself if i had known earlier what sort of a contract i had on my hands. we found that the empress had been in baden-baden several days. it is said that she never attends any but the english form of church service. i lay abed and read and rested from my journey's fatigues the remainder of that sunday, but i sent my agent to represent me at the afternoon service, for i never allow anything to interfere with my habit of attending church twice every sunday. there was a vast crowd in the public grounds that night to hear the band play the "fremersberg." this piece tells one of the old legends of the region; how a great noble of the middle ages got lost in the mountains, and wandered about with his dogs in a violent storm, until at last the faint tones of a monastery bell, calling the monks to a midnight service, caught his ear, and he followed the direction the sounds came from and was saved. a beautiful air ran through the music, without ceasing, sometimes loud and strong, sometimes so soft that it could hardly be distinguished--but it was always there; it swung grandly along through the shrill whistling of the storm-wind, the rattling patter of the rain, and the boom and crash of the thunder; it wound soft and low through the lesser sounds, the distant ones, such as the throbbing of the convent bell, the melodious winding of the hunter's horn, the distressed bayings of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks; it rose again, with a jubilant ring, and mingled itself with the country songs and dances of the peasants assembled in the convent hall to cheer up the rescued huntsman while he ate his supper. the instruments imitated all these sounds with a marvelous exactness. more than one man started to raise his umbrella when the storm burst forth and the sheets of mimic rain came driving by; it was hardly possible to keep from putting your hand to your hat when the fierce wind began to rage and shriek; and it was not possible to refrain from starting when those sudden and charmingly real thunder-crashes were let loose. i suppose the "fremersberg" is a very low-grade music; i know, indeed, that it must be low-grade music, because it delighted me, warmed me, moved me, stirred me, uplifted me, enraptured me, that i was full of cry all the time, and mad with enthusiasm. my soul had never had such a scouring out since i was born. the solemn and majestic chanting of the monks was not done by instruments, but by men's voices; and it rose and fell, and rose again in that rich confusion of warring sounds, and pulsing bells, and the stately swing of that ever-present enchanting air, and it seemed to me that nothing but the very lowest of low-grade music could be so divinely beautiful. the great crowd which the "fremersberg" had called out was another evidence that it was low-grade music; for only the few are educated up to a point where high-grade music gives pleasure. i have never heard enough classic music to be able to enjoy it. i dislike the opera because i want to love it and can't. i suppose there are two kinds of music--one kind which one feels, just as an oyster might, and another sort which requires a higher faculty, a faculty which must be assisted and developed by teaching. yet if base music gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other? but we do. we want it because the higher and better like it. we want it without giving it the necessary time and trouble; so we climb into that upper tier, that dress-circle, by a lie; we pretend we like it. i know several of that sort of people--and i propose to be one of them myself when i get home with my fine european education. and then there is painting. what a red rag is to a bull, turner's "slave ship" was to me, before i studied art. mr. ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year, when i was ignorant. his cultivation enables him--and me, now--to see water in that glaring yellow mud, and natural effects in those lurid explosions of mixed smoke and flame, and crimson sunset glories; it reconciles him--and me, now--to the floating of iron cable-chains and other unfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming around on top of the mud--i mean the water. the most of the picture is a manifest impossibility--that is to say, a lie; and only rigid cultivation can enable a man to find truth in a lie. but it enabled mr. ruskin to do it, and it has enabled me to do it, and i am thankful for it. a boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the slave ship floundering about in that fierce conflagration of reds and yellows, and said it reminded him of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. in my then uneducated state, that went home to my non-cultivation, and i thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye. mr. ruskin would have said: this person is an ass. that is what i would say, now. [1] 1. months after this was written, i happened into the national gallery in london, and soon became so fascinated with the turner pictures that i could hardly get away from the place. i went there often, afterward, meaning to see the rest of the gallery, but the turner spell was too strong; it could not be shaken off. however, the turners which attracted me most did not remind me of the slave ship. however, our business in baden-baden this time, was to join our courier. i had thought it best to hire one, as we should be in italy, by and by, and we did not know the language. neither did he. we found him at the hotel, ready to take charge of us. i asked him if he was "all fixed." he said he was. that was very true. he had a trunk, two small satchels, and an umbrella. i was to pay him fifty-five dollars a month and railway fares. on the continent the railway fare on a trunk is about the same it is on a man. couriers do not have to pay any board and lodging. this seems a great saving to the tourist--at first. it does not occur to the tourist that somebody pays that man's board and lodging. it occurs to him by and by, however, in one of his lucid moments. chapter xxv [hunted by the little chamois] next morning we left in the train for switzerland, and reached lucerne about ten o'clock at night. the first discovery i made was that the beauty of the lake had not been exaggerated. within a day or two i made another discovery. this was, that the lauded chamois is not a wild goat; that it is not a horned animal; that it is not shy; that it does not avoid human society; and that there is no peril in hunting it. the chamois is a black or brown creature no bigger than a mustard seed; you do not have to go after it, it comes after you; it arrives in vast herds and skips and scampers all over your body, inside your clothes; thus it is not shy, but extremely sociable; it is not afraid of man, on the contrary, it will attack him; its bite is not dangerous, but neither is it pleasant; its activity has not been overstated --if you try to put your finger on it, it will skip a thousand times its own length at one jump, and no eye is sharp enough to see where it lights. a great deal of romantic nonsense has been written about the swiss chamois and the perils of hunting it, whereas the truth is that even women and children hunt it, and fearlessly; indeed, everybody hunts it; the hunting is going on all the time, day and night, in bed and out of it. it is poetic foolishness to hunt it with a gun; very few people do that; there is not one man in a million who can hit it with a gun. it is much easier to catch it that it is to shoot it, and only the experienced chamois-hunter can do either. another common piece of exaggeration is that about the "scarcity" of the chamois. it is the reverse of scarce. droves of one hundred million chamois are not unusual in the swiss hotels. indeed, they are so numerous as to be a great pest. the romancers always dress up the chamois-hunter in a fanciful and picturesque costume, whereas the best way to hut this game is to do it without any costume at all. the article of commerce called chamois-skin is another fraud; nobody could skin a chamois, it is too small. the creature is a humbug in every way, and everything which has been written about it is sentimental exaggeration. it was no pleasure to me to find the chamois out, for he had been one of my pet illusions; all my life it had been my dream to see him in his native wilds some day, and engage in the adventurous sport of chasing him from cliff to cliff. it is no pleasure to me to expose him, now, and destroy the reader's delight in him and respect for him, but still it must be done, for when an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence. lucerne is a charming place. it begins at the water's edge, with a fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads itself over two or three sharp hills in a crowded, disorderly, but picturesque way, offering to the eye a heaped-up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables, dormer windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there a bit of ancient embattled wall bending itself over the ridges, worm-fashion, and here and there an old square tower of heavy masonry. and also here and there a town clock with only one hand--a hand which stretches across the dial and has no joint in it; such a clock helps out the picture, but you cannot tell the time of day by it. between the curving line of hotels and the lake is a broad avenue with lamps and a double rank of low shade trees. the lake-front is walled with masonry like a pier, and has a railing, to keep people from walking overboard. all day long the vehicles dash along the avenue, and nurses, children, and tourists sit in the shade of the trees, or lean on the railing and watch the schools of fishes darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake at the stately border of snow-hooded mountains peaks. little pleasure steamers, black with people, are coming and going all the time; and everywhere one sees young girls and young men paddling about in fanciful rowboats, or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind. the front rooms of the hotels have little railed balconies, where one may take his private luncheon in calm, cool comfort and look down upon this busy and pretty scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the work connected with it. most of the people, both male and female, are in walking costume, and carry alpenstocks. evidently, it is not considered safe to go about in switzerland, even in town, without an alpenstock. if the tourist forgets and comes down to breakfast without his alpenstock he goes back and gets it, and stands it up in the corner. when his touring in switzerland is finished, he does not throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home with him, to the far corners of the earth, although this costs him more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could. you see, the alpenstock is his trophy; his name is burned upon it; and if he has climbed a hill, or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it, he has the names of those places burned upon it, too. thus it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and bears the record of his achievements. it is worth three francs when he buys it, but a bonanza could not purchase it after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it. there are artisans all about switzerland whose trade it is to burn these things upon the alpenstock of the tourist. and observe, a man is respected in switzerland according to his alpenstock. i found i could get no attention there, while i carried an unbranded one. however, branding is not expected, so i soon remedied that. the effect upon the next detachment of tourists was very marked. i felt repaid for my trouble. half of the summer horde in switzerland is made up of english people; the other half is made up of many nationalities, the germans leading and the americans coming next. the americans were not as numerous as i had expected they would be. the seven-thirty table d'ho^te at the great schweitzerhof furnished a mighty array and variety of nationalities, but it offered a better opportunity to observe costumes than people, for the multitude sat at immensely long tables, and therefore the faces were mainly seen in perspective; but the breakfasts were served at small round tables, and then if one had the fortune to get a table in the midst of the assemblage he could have as many faces to study as he could desire. we used to try to guess out the nationalities, and generally succeeded tolerably well. sometimes we tried to guess people's names; but that was a failure; that is a thing which probably requires a good deal of practice. we presently dropped it and gave our efforts to less difficult particulars. one morning i said: "there is an american party." harris said: "yes--but name the state." i named one state, harris named another. we agreed upon one thing, however--that the young girl with the party was very beautiful, and very tastefully dressed. but we disagreed as to her age. i said she was eighteen, harris said she was twenty. the dispute between us waxed warm, and i finally said, with a pretense of being in earnest: "well, there is one way to settle the matter--i will go and ask her." harris said, sarcastically, "certainly, that is the thing to do. all you need to do is to use the common formula over here: go and say, 'i'm an american!' of course she will be glad to see you." then he hinted that perhaps there was no great danger of my venturing to speak to her. i said, "i was only talking--i didn't intend to approach her, but i see that you do not know what an intrepid person i am. i am not afraid of any woman that walks. i will go and speak to this young girl." the thing i had in my mind was not difficult. i meant to address her in the most respectful way and ask her to pardon me if her strong resemblance to a former acquaintance of mine was deceiving me; and when she should reply that the name i mentioned was not the name she bore, i meant to beg pardon again, most respectfully, and retire. there would be no harm done. i walked to her table, bowed to the gentleman, then turned to her and was about to begin my little speech when she exclaimed: "i knew i wasn't mistaken--i told john it was you! john said it probably wasn't, but i knew i was right. i said you would recognize me presently and come over; and i'm glad you did, for i shouldn't have felt much flattered if you had gone out of this room without recognizing me. sit down, sit down--how odd it is--you are the last person i was ever expecting to see again." this was a stupefying surprise. it took my wits clear away, for an instant. however, we shook hands cordially all around, and i sat down. but truly this was the tightest place i ever was in. i seemed to vaguely remember the girl's face, now, but i had no idea where i had seen it before, or what named belonged with it. i immediately tried to get up a diversion about swiss scenery, to keep her from launching into topics that might betray that i did not know her, but it was of no use, she went right along upon matters which interested her more: "oh dear, what a night that was, when the sea washed the forward boats away--do you remember it?" "oh, don't i!" said i--but i didn't. i wished the sea had washed the rudder and the smoke-stack and the captain away--then i could have located this questioner. "and don't you remember how frightened poor mary was, and how she cried?" "indeed i do!" said i. "dear me, how it all comes back!" i fervently wished it would come back--but my memory was a blank. the wise way would have been to frankly own up; but i could not bring myself to do that, after the young girl had praised me so for recognizing her; so i went on, deeper and deeper into the mire, hoping for a chance clue but never getting one. the unrecognizable continued, with vivacity: "do you know, george married mary, after all?" "why, no! did he?" "indeed he did. he said he did not believe she was half as much to blame as her father was, and i thought he was right. didn't you?" "of course he was. it was a perfectly plain case. i always said so." "why, no you didn't!--at least that summer." "oh, no, not that summer. no, you are perfectly right about that. it was the following winter that i said it." "well, as it turned out, mary was not in the least to blame --it was all her father's fault--at least his and old darley's." it was necessary to say something--so i said: "i always regarded darley as a troublesome old thing." "so he was, but then they always had a great affection for him, although he had so many eccentricities. you remember that when the weather was the least cold, he would try to come into the house." i was rather afraid to proceed. evidently darley wa not a man--he must be some other kind of animal--possibly a dog, maybe an elephant. however, tails are common to all animals, so i ventured to say: "and what a tail he had!" "one! he had a thousand!" this was bewildering. i did not quite know what to say, so i only said: "yes, he was rather well fixed in the matter of tails." "for a negro, and a crazy one at that, i should say he was," said she. it was getting pretty sultry for me. i said to myself, "is it possible she is going to stop there, and wait for me to speak? if she does, the conversation is blocked. a negro with a thousand tails is a topic which a person cannot talk upon fluently and instructively without more or less preparation. as to diving rashly into such a vast subject--" but here, to my gratitude, she interrupted my thoughts by saying: "yes, when it came to tales of his crazy woes, there was simply no end to them if anybody would listen. his own quarters were comfortable enough, but when the weather was cold, the family were sure to have his company--nothing could keep him out of the house. but they always bore it kindly because he had saved tom's life, years before. you remember tom? "oh, perfectly. fine fellow he was, too." "yes he was. and what a pretty little thing his child was!" "you may well say that. i never saw a prettier child." "i used to delight to pet it and dandle it and play with it." "so did i." "you named it. what was that name? i can't call it to mind." it appeared to me that the ice was getting pretty thin, here. i would have given something to know what the child's was. however, i had the good luck to think of a name that would fit either sex--so i brought it out: "i named it frances." "from a relative, i suppose? but you named the one that died, too--one that i never saw. what did you call that one?" i was out of neutral names, but as the child was dead and she had never seen it, i thought i might risk a name for it and trust to luck. therefore i said: "i called that one thomas henry." she said, musingly: "that is very singular ... very singular." i sat still and let the cold sweat run down. i was in a good deal of trouble, but i believed i could worry through if she wouldn't ask me to name any more children. i wondered where the lightning was going to strike next. she was still ruminating over that last child's title, but presently she said: "i have always been sorry you were away at the time--i would have had you name my child." "your child! are you married?" "i have been married thirteen years." "christened, you mean." `"no, married. the youth by your side is my son." "it seems incredible--even impossible. i do not mean any harm by it, but would you mind telling me if you are any over eighteen?--that is to say, will you tell me how old you are?" "i was just nineteen the day of the storm we were talking about. that was my birthday." that did not help matters, much, as i did not know the date of the storm. i tried to think of some non-committal thing to say, to keep up my end of the talk, and render my poverty in the matter of reminiscences as little noticeable as possible, but i seemed to be about out of non-committal things. i was about to say, "you haven't changed a bit since then"--but that was risky. i thought of saying, "you have improved ever so much since then"--but that wouldn't answer, of course. i was about to try a shy at the weather, for a saving change, when the girl slipped in ahead of me and said: "how i have enjoyed this talk over those happy old times-haven't you?" "i never have spent such a half-hour in all my life before!" said i, with emotion; and i could have added, with a near approach to truth, "and i would rather be scalped than spend another one like it." i was holily grateful to be through with the ordeal, and was about to make my good-bys and get out, when the girl said: "but there is one thing that is ever so puzzling to me." "why, what is that?" "that dead child's name. what did you say it was?" here was another balmy place to be in: i had forgotten the child's name; i hadn't imagined it would be needed again. however, i had to pretend to know, anyway, so i said: "joseph william." the youth at my side corrected me, and said: "no, thomas henry." i thanked him--in words--and said, with trepidation: "o yes--i was thinking of another child that i named--i have named a great many, and i get them confused--this one was named henry thompson--" "thomas henry," calmly interposed the boy. i thanked him again--strictly in words--and stammered out: "thomas henry--yes, thomas henry was the poor child's name. i named him for thomas--er--thomas carlyle, the great author, you know--and henry--er--er--henry the eight. the parents were very grateful to have a child named thomas henry." "that makes it more singular than ever," murmured my beautiful friend. "does it? why?" "because when the parents speak of that child now, they always call it susan amelia." that spiked my gun. i could not say anything. i was entirely out of verbal obliquities; to go further would be to lie, and that i would not do; so i simply sat still and suffered --sat mutely and resignedly there, and sizzled--for i was being slowly fried to death in my own blushes. presently the enemy laughed a happy laugh and said: "i have enjoyed this talk over old times, but you have not. i saw very soon that you were only pretending to know me, and so as i had wasted a compliment on you in the beginning, i made up my mind to punish you. and i have succeeded pretty well. i was glad to see that you knew george and tom and darley, for i had never heard of them before and therefore could not be sure that you had; and i was glad to learn the names of those imaginary children, too. one can get quite a fund of information out of you if one goes at it cleverly. mary and the storm, and the sweeping away of the forward boats, were facts--all the rest was fiction. mary was my sister; her full name was mary ------. now do you remember me?" "yes," i said, "i do remember you now; and you are as hard-headed as you were thirteen years ago in that ship, else you wouldn't have punished me so. you haven't change your nature nor your person, in any way at all; you look as young as you did then, you are just as beautiful as you were then, and you have transmitted a deal of your comeliness to this fine boy. there--if that speech moves you any, let's fly the flag of truce, with the understanding that i am conquered and confess it." all of which was agreed to and accomplished, on the spot. when i went back to harris, i said: "now you see what a person with talent and address can do." "excuse me, i see what a person of colossal ignorance and simplicity can do. the idea of your going and intruding on a party of strangers, that way, and talking for half an hour; why i never heard of a man in his right mind doing such a thing before. what did you say to them?" i never said any harm. i merely asked the girl what her name was." "i don't doubt it. upon my word i don't. i think you were capable of it. it was stupid in me to let you go over there and make such an exhibition of yourself. but you know i couldn't really believe you would do such an inexcusable thing. what will those people think of us? but how did you say it?--i mean the manner of it. i hope you were not abrupt." "no, i was careful about that. i said, 'my friend and i would like to know what your name is, if you don't mind.'" "no, that was not abrupt. there is a polish about it that does you infinite credit. and i am glad you put me in; that was a delicate attention which i appreciate at its full value. what did she do?" "she didn't do anything in particular. she told me her name." "simply told you her name. do you mean to say she did not show any surprise?" "well, now i come to think, she did show something; maybe it was surprise; i hadn't thought of that--i took it for gratification." "oh, undoubtedly you were right; it must have been gratification; it could not be otherwise than gratifying to be assaulted by a stranger with such a question as that. then what did you do?" "i offered my hand and the party gave me a shake." "i saw it! i did not believe my own eyes, at the time. did the gentleman say anything about cutting your throat?" "no, they all seemed glad to see me, as far as i could judge." "and do you know, i believe they were. i think they said to themselves, 'doubtless this curiosity has got away from his keeper--let us amuse ourselves with him.' there is no other way of accounting for their facile docility. you sat down. did they ask you to sit down?" "no, they did not ask me, but i suppose they did not think of it." "you have an unerring instinct. what else did you do? what did you talk about?" "well, i asked the girl how old she was." "undoubtedly. your delicacy is beyond praise. go on, go on--don't mind my apparent misery--i always look so when i am steeped in a profound and reverent joy. go on--she told you her age?" "yes, she told me her age, and all about her mother, and her grandmother, and her other relations, and all about herself." "did she volunteer these statistics?" "no, not exactly that. i asked the questions and she answered them." "this is divine. go on--it is not possible that you forgot to inquire into her politics?" "no, i thought of that. she is a democrat, her husband is a republican, and both of them are baptists." "her husband? is that child married?" "she is not a child. she is married, and that is her husband who is there with her." "has she any children." "yes--seven and a half." "that is impossible." "no, she has them. she told me herself." "well, but seven and a half? how do you make out the half? where does the half come in?" "there is a child which she had by another husband-not this one but another one--so it is a stepchild, and they do not count in full measure." "another husband? has she another husband?" "yes, four. this one is number four." "i don't believe a word of it. it is impossible, upon its face. is that boy there her brother?" "no, that is her son. he is her youngest. he is not as old as he looked; he is only eleven and a half." "these things are all manifestly impossible. this is a wretched business. it is a plain case: they simply took your measure, and concluded to fill you up. they seem to have succeeded. i am glad i am not in the mess; they may at least be charitable enough to think there ain't a pair of us. are they going to stay here long?" "no, they leave before noon." "there is one man who is deeply grateful for that. how did you find out? you asked, i suppose?" "no, along at first i inquired into their plans, in a general way, and they said they were going to be here a week, and make trips round about; but toward the end of the interview, when i said you and i would tour around with them with pleasure, and offered to bring you over and introduce you, they hesitated a little, and asked if you were from the same establishment that i was. i said you were, and then they said they had changed their mind and considered it necessary to start at once and visit a sick relative in siberia." "ah, me, you struck the summit! you struck the loftiest altitude of stupidity that human effort has ever reached. you shall have a monument of jackasses' skulls as high as the strasburg spire if you die before i do. they wanted to know i was from the same 'establishment' that you hailed from, did they? what did they mean by 'establishment'?" "i don't know; it never occurred to me to ask." "well _i_ know. they meant an asylum--an idiot asylum, do you understand? so they do think there's a pair of us, after all. now what do you think of yourself?" "well, i don't know. i didn't know i was doing any harm; i didn't mean to do any harm. they were very nice people, and they seemed to like me." harris made some rude remarks and left for his bedroom-to break some furniture, he said. he was a singularly irascible man; any little thing would disturb his temper. i had been well scorched by the young woman, but no matter, i took it out on harris. one should always "get even" in some way, else the sore place will go on hurting. chapter xxvi [the nest of the cuckoo-clock] the hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts. all summer long the tourists flock to that church about six o'clock in the evening, and pay their franc, and listen to the noise. they don't stay to hear all of it, but get up and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting late comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. this tramping back and forth is kept up nearly all the time, and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door, and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd. meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing and thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is the biggest and best organ in europe, and that a tight little box of a church is the most favorable place to average and appreciate its powers in. it is true, there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally, but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get fitful glimpses of them, so to speak. then right away the organist would let go another avalanche. the commerce of lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort; the shops are packed with alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. i will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the lion of lucerne are to be had in them. millions of them. but they are libels upon him, every one of them. there is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get. even the sun fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. the shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the lion of lucerne the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting. the lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff--for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. his size is colossal, his attitude is noble. how head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of france. vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies. around about are green trees and grass. the place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion--and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. the lion of lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is. martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. louis xvi did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him; she is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues which are not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings. she makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. none of these qualities are kingly but the last. taken together they make a character which would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill luck to miss martyrdom. with the best intentions to do the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one. moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him. he knew, well enough, that in national emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how he ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink the man and be the king--but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female saint. he was not instant in season, but out of season. he could not be persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good--he was iron, he was adamant in his stubbornness then--but as soon as the thing had reached a point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could stop him. he did not do it because it would be harmful, but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier. his comprehension was always a train or two behindhand. if a national toe required amputating, he could not see that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first perceived that the toe needed cutting off--so he cut it off; and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the disease had reached the thigh. he was good, and honest, and well meaning, in the matter of chasing national diseases, but he never could overtake one. as a private man, he would have been lovable; but viewed as a king, he was strictly contemptible. his was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable spectacle in it was his sentimental treachery to his swiss guard on that memorable 10th of august, when he allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause, and forbade them to shed the "sacred french blood" purporting to be flowing in the veins of the red-capped mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace. he meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint once more. some of his biographers think that upon this occasion the spirit of saint louis had descended upon him. it must have found pretty cramped quarters. if napoleon the first had stood in the shoes of louis xvi that day, instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on, there would be no lion of lucerne, now, but there would be a well-stocked communist graveyard in paris which would answer just as well to remember the 10th of august by. martyrdom made a saint of mary queen of scots three hundred years ago, and she has hardly lost all of her saintship yet. martyrdom made a saint of the trivial and foolish marie antoinette, and her biographers still keep her fragrant with the odor of sanctity to this day, while unconsciously proving upon almost every page they write that the only calamitous instinct which her husband lacked, she supplied--the instinct to root out and get rid of an honest, able, and loyal official, wherever she found him. the hideous but beneficent french revolution would have been deferred, or would have fallen short of completeness, or even might not have happened at all, if marie antoinette had made the unwise mistake of not being born. the world owes a great deal to the french revolution, and consequently to its two chief promoters, louis the poor in spirit and his queen. we did not buy any wooden images of the lion, nor any ivory or ebony or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones, or even any photographic slanders of him. the truth is, these copies were so common, so universal, in the shops and everywhere, that they presently became as intolerable to the wearied eye as the latest popular melody usually becomes to the harassed ear. in lucerne, too, the wood carvings of other sorts, which had been so pleasant to look upon when one saw them occasionally at home, soon began to fatigue us. we grew very tired of seeing wooden quails and chickens picking and struting around clock-faces, and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the alleged chamois skipping about wooden rocks, or lying upon them in family groups, or peering alertly up from behind them. the first day, i would have bought a hundred and fifty of these clocks if i had the money--and i did buy three-but on the third day the disease had run its course, i had convalesced, and was in the market once more--trying to sell. however, i had no luck; which was just as well, for the things will be pretty enough, no doubt, when i get them home. for years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock; now here i was, at last, right in the creature's home; so wherever i went that distressing "hoo'hoo! hoo'hoo! hoo'hoo!" was always in my ears. for a nervous man, this was a fine state of things. some sounds are hatefuler than others, but no sound is quite so inane, and silly, and aggravating as the "hoo'hoo" of a cuckoo clock, i think. i bought one, and am carrying it home to a certain person; for i have always said that if the opportunity ever happened, i would do that man an ill turn. what i meant, was, that i would break one of his legs, or something of that sort; but in lucerne i instantly saw that i could impair his mind. that would be more lasting, and more satisfactory every way. so i bought the cuckoo clock; and if i ever get home with it, he is "my meat," as they say in the mines. i thought of another candidate--a book-reviewer whom i could name if i wanted to--but after thinking it over, i didn't buy him a clock. i couldn't injure his mind. we visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which span the green and brilliant reuss just below where it goes plunging and hurrahing out of the lake. these rambling, sway-backed tunnels are very attractive things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting water. they contain two or three hundred queer old pictures, by old swiss masters--old boss sign-painters, who flourished before the decadence of art. the lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye, for the water is very clear. the parapets in front of the hotels were usually fringed with fishers of all ages. one day i thought i would stop and see a fish caught. the result brought back to my mind, very forcibly, a circumstance which i had not thought of before for twelve years. this one: the man who put up at gadsby's when my odd friend riley and i were newspaper correspondents in washington, in the winter of '67, we were coming down pennsylvania avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction. this is lucky! you are mr. riley, ain't you?" riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the republic. he stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said: "i am mr. riley. did you happen to be looking for me?" "that's just what i was doing," said the man, joyously, "and it's the biggest luck in the world that i've found you. my name is lykins. i'm one of the teachers of the high school--san francisco. as soon as i heard the san francisco postmastership was vacant, i made up my mind to get it--and here i am." "yes," said riley, slowly, "as you have remarked ... mr. lykins ... here you are. and have you got it?" "well, not exactly got it, but the next thing to it. i've brought a petition, signed by the superintendent of public instruction, and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. now i want you, if you'll be so good, to go around with me to the pacific delegation, for i want to rush this thing through and get along home." "if the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation tonight," said riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it--to an unaccustomed ear. "oh, tonight, by all means! i haven't got any time to fool around. i want their promise before i go to bed-i ain't the talking kind, i'm the doing kind!" "yes ... you've come to the right place for that. when did you arrive?" "just an hour ago." "when are you intending to leave?" "for new york tomorrow evening--for san francisco next morning." "just so.... what are you going to do tomorrow?" "do! why, i've got to go to the president with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven't i?" "yes ... very true ... that is correct. and then what?" "executive session of the senate at 2 p.m.--got to get the appointment confirmed--i reckon you'll grant that?" "yes ... yes," said riley, meditatively, "you are right again. then you take the train for new york in the evening, and the steamer for san francisco next morning?" "that's it--that's the way i map it out!" riley considered a while, and then said: "you couldn't stay ... a day ... well, say two days longer?" "bless your soul, no! it's not my style. i ain't a man to go fooling around--i'm a man that does things, i tell you." the storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he looked up and said: "have you ever heard about that man who put up at gadsby's, once? ... but i see you haven't." he backed mr. lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the ancient mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest: "i will tell you about that man. it was in jackson's time. gadsby's was the principal hotel, then. well, this man arrived from tennessee about nine o'clock, one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond of and proud of; he drove up before gadsby's, and the clerk and the landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said, 'never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman to wait--said he hadn't time to take anything to eat, he only had a little claim against the government to collect, would run across the way, to the treasury, and fetch the money, and then get right along back to tennessee, for he was in considerable of a hurry. "well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses up--said he would collect the claim in the morning. this was in january, you understand--january, 1834-the 3d of january--wednesday. "well, on the 5th of february, he sold the fine carriage, and bought a cheap second-hand one--said it would answer just as well to take the money home in, and he didn't care for style. "on the 11th of august he sold a pair of the fine horses-said he'd often thought a pair was better than four, to go over the rough mountain roads with where a body had to be careful about his driving--and there wasn't so much of his claim but he could lug the money home with a pair easy enough. "on the 13th of december he sold another horse--said two warn't necessary to drag that old light vehicle with--in fact, one could snatch it along faster than was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid winter weather and the roads in splendid condition. "on the 17th of february, 1835, he sold the old carriage and bought a cheap second-hand buggy--said a buggy was just the trick to skim along mushy, slushy early spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try a buggy on those mountain roads, anyway. "on the 1st august he sold the buggy and bought the remains of an old sulky--said he just wanted to see those green tennesseans stare and gawk when they saw him come a-ripping along in a sulky--didn't believe they'd ever heard of a sulky in their lives. "well, on the 29th of august he sold his colored coachman--said he didn't need a coachman for a sulky-wouldn't be room enough for two in it anyway--and, besides, it wasn't every day that providence sent a man a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for such a third-rate negro as that--been wanting to get rid of the creature for years, but didn't like to throw him away. "eighteen months later--that is to say, on the 15th of february, 1837--he sold the sulky and bought a saddle--said horseback-riding was what the doctor had always recommended him to take, and dog'd if he wanted to risk his neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself. "on the 9th of april he sold the saddle--said he wasn't going to risk his life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a rainy, miry april road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe--always had despised to ride on a saddle, anyway. "on the 24th of april he sold his horse--said 'i'm just fifty-seven today, hale and hearty--it would be a pretty howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such weather as this, on a horse, when there ain't anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains, to a man that is a man--and i can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle, anyway, when it's collected. so tomorrow i'll be up bright and early, make my little old collection, and mosey off to tennessee, on my own hind legs, with a rousing good-by to gadsby's.' "on the 22d of june he sold his dog--said 'dern a dog, anyway, where you're just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the summer woods and hills--perfect nuisance--chases the squirrels, barks at everything, goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords-man can't get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature-and i'd a blamed sight ruther carry the claim myself, it's a mighty sight safer; a dog's mighty uncertain in a financial way-always noticed it--well, good-by, boys--last call--i'm off for tennessee with a good leg and a gay heart, early in the morning.'" there was a pause and a silence--except the noise of the wind and the pelting snow. mr. lykins said, impatiently: "well?" riley said: "well,--that was thirty years ago." "very well, very well--what of it?" "i'm great friends with that old patriarch. he comes every evening to tell me good-by. i saw him an hour ago-he's off for tennessee early tomorrow morning--as usual; said he calculated to get his claim through and be off before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. the tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going to see his old tennessee and his friends once more." another silent pause. the stranger broke it: "is that all?" "that is all." "well, for the time of night, and the kind of night, it seems to me the story was full long enough. but what's it all for?" "oh, nothing in particular." "well, where's the point of it?" "oh, there isn't any particular point to it. only, if you are not in too much of a hurry to rush off to san francisco with that post-office appointment, mr. lykins, i'd advise you to 'put up at gadsby's' for a spell, and take it easy. good-by. god bless you!" so saying, riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished school-teacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow of the street-lamp. he never got that post-office. to go back to lucerne and its fishers, i concluded, after about nine hours' waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to "put up at gadsby's" and take it easy. it is likely that a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it. one may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented and happy and patient all along the seine at paris, but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times is a thing they don't fish for at all--the recent dog and the translated cat. chapter xxvii [i spare an awful bore] close by the lion of lucerne is what they call the "glacier garden"--and it is the only one in the world. it is on high ground. four or five years ago, some workmen who were digging foundations for a house came upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age. scientific men perceived in it a confirmation of their theories concerning the glacial period; so through their persuasions the little tract of ground was bought and permanently protected against being built upon. the soil was removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered track which the ancient glacier had made as it moved along upon its slow and tedious journey. this track was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock, formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders by the turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers. these huge round boulders still remain in the holes; they and the walls of the holes are worn smooth by the long-continued chafing which they gave each other in those old days. it took a mighty force to churn these big lumps of stone around in that vigorous way. the neighboring country had a very different shape, at that time--the valleys have risen up and become hills, since, and the hills have become valleys. the boulders discovered in the pots had traveled a great distance, for there is no rock like them nearer than the distant rhone glacier. for some days we were content to enjoy looking at the blue lake lucerne and at the piled-up masses of snow-mountains that border it all around--an enticing spectacle, this last, for there is a strange and fascinating beauty and charm about a majestic snow-peak with the sun blazing upon it or the moonlight softly enriching it--but finally we concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on a steamboat, and a dash on foot at the rigi. very well, we had a delightful trip to fluelen, on a breezy, sunny day. everybody sat on the upper deck, on benches, under an awning; everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonder scenery; in truth, a trip on that lake is almost the perfection of pleasuring. the mountains were a never-ceasing marvel. sometimes they rose straight up out of the lake, and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way. not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their foreheads in them. they were not barren and repulsive, but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye. and they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes, that one could not imagine a man being able to keep his footing upon such a surface, yet there are paths, and the swiss people go up and down them every day. sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight inclination of the huge ship-houses in dockyards-then high aloft, toward the sky, it took a little stronger inclination, like that of a mansard roof--and perched on this dizzy mansard one's eye detected little things like martin boxes, and presently perceived that these were the dwellings of peasants--an airy place for a home, truly. and suppose a peasant should walk in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front yard?--the friends would have a tedious long journey down out of those cloud-heights before they found the remains. and yet those far-away homes looked ever so seductive, they were so remote from the troubled world, they dozed in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams--surely no one who has learned to live up there would ever want to live on a meaner level. we swept through the prettiest little curving arms of the lake, among these colossal green walls, enjoying new delights, always, as the stately panorama unfolded itself before us and rerolled and hid itself behind us; and now and then we had the thrilling surprise of bursting suddenly upon a tremendous white mass like the distant and dominating jungfrau, or some kindred giant, looming head and shoulders above a tumbled waste of lesser alps. once, while i was hungrily taking in one of these surprises, and doing my best to get all i possibly could of it while it should last, i was interrupted by a young and care-free voice: "you're an american, i think--so'm i." he was about eighteen, or possibly nineteen; slender and of medium height; open, frank, happy face; a restless but independent eye; a snub nose, which had the air of drawing back with a decent reserve from the silky new-born mustache below it until it should be introduced; a loosely hung jaw, calculated to work easily in the sockets. he wore a low-crowned, narrow-brimmed straw hat, with a broad blue ribbon around it which had a white anchor embroidered on it in front; nobby short-tailed coat, pantaloons, vest, all trim and neat and up with the fashion; red-striped stockings, very low-quarter patent-leather shoes, tied with black ribbon; blue ribbon around his neck, wide-open collar; tiny diamond studs; wrinkleless kids; projecting cuffs, fastened with large oxidized silver sleeve-buttons, bearing the device of a dog's face--english pug. he carries a slim cane, surmounted with an english pug's head with red glass eyes. under his arm he carried a german grammar--otto's. his hair was short, straight, and smooth, and presently when he turned his head a moment, i saw that it was nicely parted behind. he took a cigarette out of a dainty box, stuck it into a meerschaum holder which he carried in a morocco case, and reached for my cigar. while he was lighting, i said: "yes--i am an american." "i knew it--i can always tell them. what ship did you come over in?" "holsatia." "we came in the batavia--cunard, you know. what kind of passage did you have?" "tolerably rough." "so did we. captain said he'd hardly ever seen it rougher. where are you from?" "new england." "so'm i. i'm from new bloomfield. anybody with you?" "yes--a friend." "our whole family's along. it's awful slow, going around alone--don't you think so?" "rather slow." "ever been over here before?" "yes." "i haven't. my first trip. but we've been all around--paris and everywhere. i'm to enter harvard next year. studying german all the time, now. can't enter till i know german. i know considerable french--i get along pretty well in paris, or anywhere where they speak french. what hotel are you stopping at?" "schweitzerhof." "no! is that so? i never see you in the reception-room. i go to the reception-room a good deal of the time, because there's so many americans there. i make lots of acquaintances. i know an american as soon as i see him--and so i speak to him and make his acquaintance. i like to be always making acquaintances--don't you?" "lord, yes!" "you see it breaks up a trip like this, first rate. i never got bored on a trip like this, if i can make acquaintances and have somebody to talk to. but i think a trip like this would be an awful bore, if a body couldn't find anybody to get acquainted with and talk to on a trip like this. i'm fond of talking, ain't you? "passionately." "have you felt bored, on this trip?" "not all the time, part of it." "that's it!--you see you ought to go around and get acquainted, and talk. that's my way. that's the way i always do--i just go 'round, 'round, 'round and talk, talk, talk--i never get bored. you been up the rigi yet?" "no." "going?" "i think so." "what hotel you going to stop at?" "i don't know. is there more than one?" "three. you stop at the schreiber--you'll find it full of americans. what ship did you say you came over in?" "city of antwerp." "german, i guess. you going to geneva?" "yes." "what hotel you going to stop at?" "hotel de l''ecu de g'en`eve." "don't you do it! no americans there! you stop at one of those big hotels over the bridge--they're packed full of americans." "but i want to practice my arabic." "good gracious, do you speak arabic?" "yes--well enough to get along." "why, hang it, you won't get along in geneva--they don't speak arabic, they speak french. what hotel are you stopping at here?" "hotel pension-beaurivage." "sho, you ought to stop at the schweitzerhof. didn't you know the schweitzerhof was the best hotel in switzerland?-look at your baedeker." "yes, i know--but i had an idea there warn't any americans there." "no americans! why, bless your soul, it's just alive with them! i'm in the great reception-room most all the time. i make lots of acquaintances there. not as many as i did at first, because now only the new ones stop in there-the others go right along through. where are you from?" "arkansaw." "is that so? i'm from new england--new bloomfield's my town when i'm at home. i'm having a mighty good time today, ain't you?" "divine." "that's what i call it. i like this knocking around, loose and easy, and making acquaintances and talking. i know an american, soon as i see him; so i go and speak to him and make his acquaintance. i ain't ever bored, on a trip like this, if i can make new acquaintances and talk. i'm awful fond of talking when i can get hold of the right kind of a person, ain't you?" "i prefer it to any other dissipation." "that's my notion, too. now some people like to take a book and sit down and read, and read, and read, or moon around yawping at the lake or these mountains and things, but that ain't my way; no, sir, if they like it, let 'em do it, i don't object; but as for me, talking's what _i_ like. you been up the rigi?" "yes." "what hotel did you stop at?" "schreiber." "that's the place!--i stopped there too. full of americans, wasn't it? it always is--always is. that's what they say. everybody says that. what ship did you come over in?" "ville de paris." "french, i reckon. what kind of a passage did ... excuse me a minute, there's some americans i haven't seen before." and away he went. he went uninjured, too--i had the murderous impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock, but as i raised the weapon the disposition left me; i found i hadn't the heart to kill him, he was such a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull. half an hour later i was sitting on a bench inspecting, with strong interest, a noble monolith which we were skimming by--a monolith not shaped by man, but by nature's free great hand--a massy pyramidal rock eighty feet high, devised by nature ten million years ago against the day when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument. the time came at last, and now this grand remembrancer bears schiller's name in huge letters upon its face. curiously enough, this rock was not degraded or defiled in any way. it is said that two years ago a stranger let himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys, and painted all over it, in blue letters bigger than those in schiller's name, these words: "try sozodont;" "buy sun stove polish;" "helmbold's buchu;" "try benzaline for the blood." he was captured and it turned out that he was an american. upon his trial the judge said to him: "you are from a land where any insolent that wants to is privileged to profane and insult nature, and, through her, nature's god, if by so doing he can put a sordid penny in his pocket. but here the case is different. because you are a foreigner and ignorant, i will make your sentence light; if you were a native i would deal strenuously with you. hear and obey: --you will immediately remove every trace of your offensive work from the schiller monument; you pay a fine of ten thousand francs; you will suffer two years' imprisonment at hard labor; you will then be horsewhipped, tarred and feathered, deprived of your ears, ridden on a rail to the confines of the canton, and banished forever. the severest penalties are omitted in your case--not as a grace to you, but to that great republic which had the misfortune to give you birth." the steamer's benches were ranged back to back across the deck. my back hair was mingling innocently with the back hair of a couple of ladies. presently they were addressed by some one and i overheard this conversation: "you are americans, i think? so'm i." "yes--we are americans." "i knew it--i can always tell them. what ship did you come over in?" "city of chester." "oh, yes--inman line. we came in the batavia--cunard you know. what kind of a passage did you have?" "pretty fair." "that was luck. we had it awful rough. captain said he'd hardly seen it rougher. where are you from?" "new jersey." "so'm i. no--i didn't mean that; i'm from new england. new bloomfield's my place. these your children?--belong to both of you?" "only to one of us; they are mine; my friend is not married." "single, i reckon? so'm i. are you two ladies traveling alone?" "no--my husband is with us." "our whole family's along. it's awful slow, going around alone--don't you think so?" "i suppose it must be." "hi, there's mount pilatus coming in sight again. named after pontius pilate, you know, that shot the apple off of william tell's head. guide-book tells all about it, they say. i didn't read it--an american told me. i don't read when i'm knocking around like this, having a good time. did you ever see the chapel where william tell used to preach?" "i did not know he ever preached there." "oh, yes, he did. that american told me so. he don't ever shut up his guide-book. he knows more about this lake than the fishes in it. besides, they call it 'tell's chapel'--you know that yourself. you ever been over here before?" "yes." "i haven't. it's my first trip. but we've been all around --paris and everywhere. i'm to enter harvard next year. studying german all the time now. can't enter till i know german. this book's otto's grammar. it's a mighty good book to get the ich habe gehabt haben's out of. but i don't really study when i'm knocking around this way. if the notion takes me, i just run over my little old ich have gehabt, du hast gehabt, er hat gehabt, wir haben gehabt, ihr haben gehabt, sie haben gehabt --kind of 'now-i-lay-me-down-to-sleep' fashion, you know, and after that, maybe i don't buckle to it for three days. it's awful undermining to the intellect, german is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them sloshing around in your head same as so much drawn butter. but french is different; french ain't anything. i ain't any more afraid of french than a tramp's afraid of pie; i can rattle off my little j'ai, tu as, il a, and the rest of it, just as easy as a-b-c. i get along pretty well in paris, or anywhere where they speak french. what hotel are you stopping at?" "the schweitzerhof." "no! is that so? i never see you in the big reception-room. i go in there a good deal of the time, because there's so many americans there. i make lots of acquaintances. you been up the rigi yet?" "no." "going?" "we think of it." "what hotel you going to stop at?" "i don't know." "well, then you stop at the schreiber--it's full of americans. what ship did you come over in?" "city of chester." "oh, yes, i remember i asked you that before. but i always ask everybody what ship they came over in, and so sometimes i forget and ask again. you going to geneva?" "yes." "what hotel you going to stop at?" "we expect to stop in a pension." "i don't hardly believe you'll like that; there's very few americans in the pensions. what hotel are you stopping at here?" "the schweitzerhof." "oh, yes. i asked you that before, too. but i always ask everybody what hotel they're stopping at, and so i've got my head all mixed up with hotels. but it makes talk, and i love to talk. it refreshes me up so--don't it you--on a trip like this?" "yes--sometimes." "well, it does me, too. as long as i'm talking i never feel bored--ain't that the way with you?" "yes--generally. but there are exception to the rule." "oh, of course. _i_ don't care to talk to everybody, myself. if a person starts in to jabber-jabber-jabber about scenery, and history, and pictures, and all sorts of tiresome things, i get the fan-tods mighty soon. i say 'well, i must be going now--hope i'll see you again'--and then i take a walk. where you from?" "new jersey." "why, bother it all, i asked you that before, too. have you seen the lion of lucerne?" "not yet." "nor i, either. but the man who told me about mount pilatus says it's one of the things to see. it's twenty-eight feet long. it don't seem reasonable, but he said so, anyway. he saw it yesterday; said it was dying, then, so i reckon it's dead by this time. but that ain't any matter, of course they'll stuff it. did you say the children are yours--or hers?" "mine." "oh, so you did. are you going up the ... no, i asked you that. what ship ... no, i asked you that, too. what hotel are you ... no, you told me that. let me see ... um .... oh, what kind of voy ... no, we've been over that ground, too. um ... um ... well, i believe that is all. bonjour--i am very glad to have made your acquaintance, ladies. guten tag." chapter xxviii [the jodel and its native wilds] the rigi-kulm is an imposing alpine mass, six thousand feet high, which stands by itself, and commands a mighty prospect of blue lakes, green valleys, and snowy mountains-a compact and magnificent picture three hundred miles in circumference. the ascent is made by rail, or horseback, or on foot, as one may prefer. i and my agent panoplied ourselves in walking-costume, one bright morning, and started down the lake on the steamboat; we got ashore at the village of wa"ggis; three-quarters of an hour distant from lucerne. this village is at the foot of the mountain. we were soon tramping leisurely up the leafy mule-path, and then the talk began to flow, as usual. it was twelve o'clock noon, and a breezy, cloudless day; the ascent was gradual, and the glimpses, from under the curtaining boughs, of blue water, and tiny sailboats, and beetling cliffs, were as charming as glimpses of dreamland. all the circumstances were perfect--and the anticipations, too, for we should soon be enjoying, for the first time, that wonderful spectacle, an alpine sunrise--the object of our journey. there was (apparently) no real need for hurry, for the guide-book made the walking-distance from wa"ggis to the summit only three hours and a quarter. i say "apparently," because the guide-book had already fooled us once--about the distance from allerheiligen to oppenau--and for aught i knew it might be getting ready to fool us again. we were only certain as to the altitudes-we calculated to find out for ourselves how many hours it is from the bottom to the top. the summit is six thousand feet above the sea, but only forty-five hundred feet above the lake. when we had walked half an hour, we were fairly into the swing and humor of the undertaking, so we cleared for action; that is to say, we got a boy whom we met to carry our alpenstocks and satchels and overcoats and things for us; that left us free for business. i suppose we must have stopped oftener to stretch out on the grass in the shade and take a bit of a smoke than this boy was used to, for presently he asked if it had been our idea to hire him by the job, or by the year? we told him he could move along if he was in a hurry. he said he wasn't in such a very particular hurry, but he wanted to get to the top while he was young. we told him to clear out, then, and leave the things at the uppermost hotel and say we should be along presently. he said he would secure us a hotel if he could, but if they were all full he would ask them to build another one and hurry up and get the paint and plaster dry against we arrived. still gently chaffing us, he pushed ahead, up the trail, and soon disappeared. by six o'clock we were pretty high up in the air, and the view of lake and mountains had greatly grown in breadth and interest. we halted awhile at a little public house, where we had bread and cheese and a quart or two of fresh milk, out on the porch, with the big panorama all before us--and then moved on again. ten minutes afterward we met a hot, red-faced man plunging down the mountain, making mighty strides, swinging his alpenstock ahead of him, and taking a grip on the ground with its iron point to support these big strides. he stopped, fanned himself with his hat, swabbed the perspiration from his face and neck with a red handkerchief, panted a moment or two, and asked how far to wa"ggis. i said three hours. he looked surprised, and said: "why, it seems as if i could toss a biscuit into the lake from here, it's so close by. is that an inn, there?" i said it was. "well," said he, "i can't stand another three hours, i've had enough today; i'll take a bed there." i asked: "are we nearly to the top?" "nearly to the top?" why, bless your soul, you haven't really started, yet." i said we would put up at the inn, too. so we turned back and ordered a hot supper, and had quite a jolly evening of it with this englishman. the german landlady gave us neat rooms and nice beds, and when i and my agent turned in, it was with the resolution to be up early and make the utmost of our first alpine sunrise. but of course we were dead tired, and slept like policemen; so when we awoke in the morning and ran to the window it was already too late, because it was half past eleven. it was a sharp disappointment. however, we ordered breakfast and told the landlady to call the englishman, but she said he was already up and off at daybreak--and swearing like mad about something or other. we could not find out what the matter was. he had asked the landlady the altitude of her place above the level of the lake, and she told him fourteen hundred and ninety-five feet. that was all that was said; then he lost his temper. he said that between ------fools and guide-books, a man could acquire ignorance enough in twenty-four hours in a country like this to last him a year. harris believed our boy had been loading him up with misinformation; and this was probably the case, for his epithet described that boy to a dot. we got under way about the turn of noon, and pulled out for the summit again, with a fresh and vigorous step. when we had gone about two hundred yards, and stopped to rest, i glanced to the left while i was lighting my pipe, and in the distance detected a long worm of black smoke crawling lazily up the steep mountain. of course that was the locomotive. we propped ourselves on our elbows at once, to gaze, for we had never seen a mountain railway yet. presently we could make out the train. it seemed incredible that that thing should creep straight up a sharp slant like the roof of a house--but there it was, and it was doing that very miracle. in the course of a couple hours we reached a fine breezy altitude where the little shepherd huts had big stones all over their roofs to hold them down to the earth when the great storms rage. the country was wild and rocky about here, but there were plenty of trees, plenty of moss, and grass. away off on the opposite shore of the lake we could see some villages, and now for the first time we could observe the real difference between their proportions and those of the giant mountains at whose feet they slept. when one is in one of those villages it seems spacious, and its houses seem high and not out of proportion to the mountain that overhands them--but from our altitude, what a change! the mountains were bigger and grander than ever, as they stood there thinking their solemn thoughts with their heads in the drifting clouds, but the villages at their feet--when the painstaking eye could trace them up and find them--were so reduced, almost invisible, and lay so flat against the ground, that the exactest simile i can devise is to compare them to ant-deposits of granulated dirt overshadowed by the huge bulk of a cathedral. the steamboats skimming along under the stupendous precipices were diminished by distance to the daintiest little toys, the sailboats and rowboats to shallops proper for fairies that keep house in the cups of lilies and ride to court on the backs of bumblebees. presently we came upon half a dozen sheep nibbling grass in the spray of a stream of clear water that sprang from a rock wall a hundred feet high, and all at once our ears were startled with a melodious "lul ... l ... l l l llul-lul-lahee-o-o-o!" pealing joyously from a near but invisible source, and recognized that we were hearing for the first time the famous alpine jodel in its own native wilds. and we recognized, also, that it was that sort of quaint commingling of baritone and falsetto which at home we call "tyrolese warbling." the jodeling (pronounced yodling--emphasis on the o) continued, and was very pleasant and inspiriting to hear. now the jodeler appeared--a shepherd boy of sixteen-and in our gladness and gratitude we gave him a franc to jodel some more. so he jodeled and we listened. we moved on, presently, and he generously jodeled us out of sight. after about fifteen minutes we came across another shepherd boy who was jodeling, and gave him half a franc to keep it up. he also jodeled us out of sight. after that, we found a jodeler every ten minutes; we gave the first one eight cents, the second one six cents, the third one four, the fourth one a penny, contributed nothing to nos. 5, 6, and 7, and during the remainder of the day hired the rest of the jodelers, at a franc apiece, not to jodel any more. there is somewhat too much of the jodeling in the alps. about the middle of the afternoon we passed through a prodigious natural gateway called the felsenthor, formed by two enormous upright rocks, with a third lying across the top. there was a very attractive little hotel close by, but our energies were not conquered yet, so we went on. three hours afterward we came to the railway-track. it was planted straight up the mountain with the slant of a ladder that leans against a house, and it seemed to us that man would need good nerves who proposed to travel up it or down it either. during the latter part of the afternoon we cooled our roasting interiors with ice-cold water from clear streams, the only really satisfying water we had tasted since we left home, for at the hotels on the continent they merely give you a tumbler of ice to soak your water in, and that only modifies its hotness, doesn't make it cold. water can only be made cold enough for summer comfort by being prepared in a refrigerator or a closed ice-pitcher. europeans say ice-water impairs digestion. how do they know?--they never drink any. at ten minutes past six we reached the kaltbad station, where there is a spacious hotel with great verandas which command a majestic expanse of lake and mountain scenery. we were pretty well fagged out, now, but as we did not wish to miss the alpine sunrise, we got through our dinner as quickly as possible and hurried off to bed. it was unspeakably comfortable to stretch our weary limbs between the cool, damp sheets. and how we did sleep!--for there is no opiate like alpine pedestrianism. in the morning we both awoke and leaped out of bed at the same instant and ran and stripped aside the window-curtains; but we suffered a bitter disappointment again: it was already half past three in the afternoon. we dressed sullenly and in ill spirits, each accusing the other of oversleeping. harris said if we had brought the courier along, as we ought to have done, we should not have missed these sunrises. i said he knew very well that one of us would have to sit up and wake the courier; and i added that we were having trouble enough to take care of ourselves, on this climb, without having to take care of a courier besides. during breakfast our spirits came up a little, since we found by this guide-book that in the hotels on the summit the tourist is not left to trust to luck for his sunrise, but is roused betimes by a man who goes through the halls with a great alpine horn, blowing blasts that would raise the dead. and there was another consoling thing: the guide-book said that up there on the summit the guests did not wait to dress much, but seized a red bed blanket and sailed out arrayed like an indian. this was good; this would be romantic; two hundred and fifty people grouped on the windy summit, with their hair flying and their red blankets flapping, in the solemn presence of the coming sun, would be a striking and memorable spectacle. so it was good luck, not ill luck, that we had missed those other sunrises. we were informed by the guide-book that we were now 3,228 feet above the level of the lake--therefore full two-thirds of our journey had been accomplished. we got away at a quarter past four, p.m.; a hundred yards above the hotel the railway divided; one track went straight up the steep hill, the other one turned square off to the right, with a very slight grade. we took the latter, and followed it more than a mile, turned a rocky corner, and came in sight of a handsome new hotel. if we had gone on, we should have arrived at the summit, but harris preferred to ask a lot of questions--as usual, of a man who didn't know anything--and he told us to go back and follow the other route. we did so. we could ill afford this loss of time. we climbed and climbed; and we kept on climbing; we reached about forty summits, but there was always another one just ahead. it came on to rain, and it rained in dead earnest. we were soaked through and it was bitter cold. next a smoky fog of clouds covered the whole region densely, and we took to the railway-ties to keep from getting lost. sometimes we slopped along in a narrow path on the left-hand side of the track, but by and by when the fog blew as aside a little and we saw that we were treading the rampart of a precipice and that our left elbows were projecting over a perfectly boundless and bottomless vacancy, we gasped, and jumped for the ties again. the night shut down, dark and drizzly and cold. about eight in the evening the fog lifted and showed us a well-worn path which led up a very steep rise to the left. we took it, and as soon as we had got far enough from the railway to render the finding it again an impossibility, the fog shut down on us once more. we were in a bleak, unsheltered place, now, and had to trudge right along, in order to keep warm, though we rather expected to go over a precipice, sooner or later. about nine o'clock we made an important discovery-that we were not in any path. we groped around a while on our hands and knees, but we could not find it; so we sat down in the mud and the wet scant grass to wait. we were terrified into this by being suddenly confronted with a vast body which showed itself vaguely for an instant and in the next instant was smothered in the fog again. it was really the hotel we were after, monstrously magnified by the fog, but we took it for the face of a precipice, and decided not to try to claw up it. we sat there an hour, with chattering teeth and quivering bodies, and quarreled over all sorts of trifles, but gave most of our attention to abusing each other for the stupidity of deserting the railway-track. we sat with our backs to the precipice, because what little wind there was came from that quarter. at some time or other the fog thinned a little; we did not know when, for we were facing the empty universe and the thinness could not show; but at last harris happened to look around, and there stood a huge, dim, spectral hotel where the precipice had been. one could faintly discern the windows and chimneys, and a dull blur of lights. our first emotion was deep, unutterable gratitude, our next was a foolish rage, born of the suspicion that possibly the hotel had been visible three-quarters of an hour while we sat there in those cold puddles quarreling. yes, it was the rigi-kulm hotel--the one that occupies the extreme summit, and whose remote little sparkle of lights we had often seen glinting high aloft among the stars from our balcony away down yonder in lucerne. the crusty portier and the crusty clerks gave us the surly reception which their kind deal out in prosperous times, but by mollifying them with an extra display of obsequiousness and servility we finally got them to show us to the room which our boy had engaged for us. we got into some dry clothing, and while our supper was preparing we loafed forsakenly through a couple of vast cavernous drawing-rooms, one of which had a stove in it. this stove was in a corner, and densely walled around with people. we could not get near the fire, so we moved at large in the artic spaces, among a multitude of people who sat silent, smileless, forlorn, and shivering--thinking what fools they were to come, perhaps. there were some americans and some germans, but one could see that the great majority were english. we lounged into an apartment where there was a great crowd, to see what was going on. it was a memento-magazine. the tourists were eagerly buying all sorts and styles of paper-cutters, marked "souvenir of the rigi," with handles made of the little curved horn of the ostensible chamois; there were all manner of wooden goblets and such things, similarly marked. i was going to buy a paper-cutter, but i believed i could remember the cold comfort of the rigi-kulm without it, so i smothered the impulse. supper warmed us, and we went immediately to bed--but first, as mr. baedeker requests all tourists to call his attention to any errors which they may find in his guide-books, i dropped him a line to inform him he missed it by just about three days. i had previously informed him of his mistake about the distance from allerheiligen to oppenau, and had also informed the ordnance depart of the german government of the same error in the imperial maps. i will add, here, that i never got any answer to those letters, or any thanks from either of those sources; and, what is still more discourteous, these corrections have not been made, either in the maps or the guide-books. but i will write again when i get time, for my letters may have miscarried. we curled up in the clammy beds, and went to sleep without rocking. we were so sodden with fatigue that we never stirred nor turned over till the blooming blasts of the alpine horn aroused us. it may well be imagined that we did not lose any time. we snatched on a few odds and ends of clothing, cocooned ourselves in the proper red blankets, and plunged along the halls and out into the whistling wind bareheaded. we saw a tall wooden scaffolding on the very peak of the summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it. we rushed up the stairs to the top of this scaffolding, and stood there, above the vast outlying world, with hair flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking in the fierce breeze. "fifteen minutes too late, at last!" said harris, in a vexed voice. "the sun is clear above the horizon." "no matter," i said, "it is a most magnificent spectacle, and we will see it do the rest of its rising anyway." in a moment we were deeply absorbed in the marvel before us, and dead to everything else. the great cloud-barred disk of the sun stood just above a limitless expanse of tossing white-caps--so to speak--a billowy chaos of massy mountain domes and peaks draped in imperishable snow, and flooded with an opaline glory of changing and dissolving splendors, while through rifts in a black cloud-bank above the sun, radiating lances of diamond dust shot to the zenith. the cloven valleys of the lower world swam in a tinted mist which veiled the ruggedness of their crags and ribs and ragged forests, and turned all the forbidding region into a soft and rich and sensuous paradise. we could not speak. we could hardly breathe. we could only gaze in drunken ecstasy and drink in it. presently harris exclaimed: "why--nation, it's going down!" perfectly true. we had missed the morning hornblow, and slept all day. this was stupefying. harris said: "look here, the sun isn't the spectacle--it's us--stacked up here on top of this gallows, in these idiotic blankets, and two hundred and fifty well-dressed men and women down here gawking up at us and not caring a straw whether the sun rises or sets, as long as they've got such a ridiculous spectacle as this to set down in their memorandum-books. they seem to be laughing their ribs loose, and there's one girl there at appears to be going all to pieces. i never saw such a man as you before. i think you are the very last possibility in the way of an ass." "what have _i_ done?" i answered, with heat. "what have you done?" you've got up at half past seven o'clock in the evening to see the sun rise, that's what you've done." "and have you done any better, i'd like to know? i've always used to get up with the lark, till i came under the petrifying influence of your turgid intellect." "you used to get up with the lark--oh, no doubt-you'll get up with the hangman one of these days. but you ought to be ashamed to be jawing here like this, in a red blanket, on a forty-foot scaffold on top of the alps. and no end of people down here to boot; this isn't any place for an exhibition of temper." and so the customary quarrel went on. when the sun was fairly down, we slipped back to the hotel in the charitable gloaming, and went to bed again. we had encountered the horn-blower on the way, and he had tried to collect compensation, not only for announcing the sunset, which we did see, but for the sunrise, which we had totally missed; but we said no, we only took our solar rations on the "european plan"--pay for what you get. he promised to make us hear his horn in the morning, if we were alive. chapter xxix [looking west for sunrise] he kept his word. we heard his horn and instantly got up. it was dark and cold and wretched. as i fumbled around for the matches, knocking things down with my quaking hands, i wished the sun would rise in the middle of the day, when it was warm and bright and cheerful, and one wasn't sleepy. we proceeded to dress by the gloom of a couple sickly candles, but we could hardly button anything, our hands shook so. i thought of how many happy people there were in europe, asia, and america, and everywhere, who were sleeping peacefully in their beds, and did not have to get up and see the rigi sunrise--people who did not appreciate their advantage, as like as not, but would get up in the morning wanting more boons of providence. while thinking these thoughts i yawned, in a rather ample way, and my upper teeth got hitched on a nail over the door, and while i was mounting a chair to free myself, harris drew the window-curtain, and said: "oh, this is luck! we shan't have to go out at all-yonder are the mountains, in full view." that was glad news, indeed. it made us cheerful right away. one could see the grand alpine masses dimly outlined against the black firmament, and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts in the night. fully clothed, and wrapped in blankets, and huddled ourselves up, by the window, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited in exceeding comfort to see how an alpine sunrise was going to look by candlelight. by and by a delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence spread itself by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of the snowy wastes--but there the effort seemed to stop. i said, presently: "there is a hitch about this sunrise somewhere. it doesn't seem to go. what do you reckon is the matter with it?" "i don't know. it appears to hang fire somewhere. i never saw a sunrise act like that before. can it be that the hotel is playing anything on us?" "of course not. the hotel merely has a property interest in the sun, it has nothing to do with the management of it. it is a precarious kind of property, too; a succession of total eclipses would probably ruin this tavern. now what can be the matter with this sunrise?" harris jumped up and said: "i've got it! i know what's the matter with it! we've been looking at the place where the sun set last night!" "it is perfectly true! why couldn't you have thought of that sooner? now we've lost another one! and all through your blundering. it was exactly like you to light a pipe and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in the west." "it was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too. you never would have found it out. i find out all the mistakes." "you make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty would be wasted on you. but don't stop to quarrel, now--maybe we are not too late yet." but we were. the sun was well up when we got to the exhibition-ground. on our way up we met the crowd returning--men and women dressed in all sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting all degrees of cold and wretchedness in their gaits and countenances. a dozen still remained on the ground when we reached there, huddled together about the scaffold with their backs to the bitter wind. they had their red guide-books open at the diagram of the view, and were painfully picking out the several mountains and trying to impress their names and positions on their memories. it was one of the saddest sights i ever saw. two sides of this place were guarded by railings, to keep people from being blown over the precipices. the view, looking sheer down into the broad valley, eastward, from this great elevation--almost a perpendicular mile--was very quaint and curious. counties, towns, hilly ribs and ridges, wide stretches of green meadow, great forest tracts, winding streams, a dozen blue lakes, a block of busy steamboats--we saw all this little world in unique circumstantiality of detail--saw it just as the birds see it--and all reduced to the smallest of scales and as sharply worked out and finished as a steel engraving. the numerous toy villages, with tiny spires projecting out of them, were just as the children might have left them when done with play the day before; the forest tracts were diminished to cushions of moss; one or two big lakes were dwarfed to ponds, the smaller ones to puddles--though they did not look like puddles, but like blue eardrops which had fallen and lodged in slight depressions, conformable to their shapes, among the moss-beds and the smooth levels of dainty green farm-land; the microscopic steamboats glided along, as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time to cover the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart; and the isthmus which separated two lakes looked as if one might stretch out on it and lie with both elbows in the water, yet we knew invisible wagons were toiling across it and finding the distance a tedious one. this beautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance of those "relief maps" which reproduce nature precisely, with the heights and depressions and other details graduated to a reduced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes, etc., colored after nature. i believed we could walk down to wa"ggis or vitznau in a day, but i knew we could go down by rail in about an hour, so i chose the latter method. i wanted to see what it was like, anyway. the train came along about the middle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was. the locomotive-boiler stood on end, and it and the whole locomotive-boiler stood on end, and it and the whole locomotive were tiled sharply backward. there were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all around. these cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; this enables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline. there are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the "lantern wheel" of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip. about the same speed--three miles an hour--is maintained both ways. whether going up or down, the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train. it pushes in the one case, braces back in the other. the passenger rides backward going up, and faces forward going down. we got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yards on level ground, i was not the least frightened; but now it started abruptly downstairs, and i caught my breath. and i, like my neighbors, unconsciously held back all i could, and threw my weight to the rear, but, of course, that did no particular good. i had slidden down the balusters when i was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters in a railway-train is a thing to make one's flesh creep. sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level ground, and this gave us a few full breaths in comfort; but straightway we would turn a corner and see a long steep line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort was at an end. one expected to see the locomotive pause, or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, but it did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothly downstairs, untroubled by the circumstances. it was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices, after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-off valley which i was describing a while ago. there was no level ground at the kaltbad station; the railbed was as steep as a roof; i was curious to see how the stop was going to be managed. but it was very simple; the train came sliding down, and when it reached the right spot it just stopped--that was all there was "to it"--stopped on the steep incline, and when the exchange of passengers and baggage had been made, it moved off and went sliding down again. the train can be stopped anywhere, at a moment's notice. there was one curious effect, which i need not take the trouble to describe--because i can scissor a description of it out of the railway company's advertising pamphlet, and say my ink: "on the whole tour, particularly at the descent, we undergo an optical illusion which often seems to be incredible. all the shrubs, fir trees, stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent in a slanting direction, as by an immense pressure of air. they are all standing awry, so much awry that the chalets and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. it is the consequence of the steep inclination of the line. those who are seated in the carriage do not observe that they are doing down a declivity of twenty to twenty-five degrees (their seats being adapted to this course of proceeding and being bent down at their backs). they mistake their carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure of the normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside which really are in a horizontal position must show a disproportion of twenty to twenty-five degrees declivity, in regard to the mountain." by the time one reaches kaltbad, he has acquired confidence in the railway, and he now ceases to try to ease the locomotive by holding back. thenceforth he smokes his pipe in serenity, and gazes out upon the magnificent picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment. there is nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze; it is like inspecting the world on the wing. however--to be exact--there is one place where the serenity lapses for a while; this is while one is crossing the schnurrtobel bridge, a frail structure which swings its gossamer frame down through the dizzy air, over a gorge, like a vagrant spider-strand. one has no difficulty in remembering his sins while the train is creeping down this bridge; and he repents of them, too; though he sees, when he gets to vitznau, that he need not have done it, the bridge was perfectly safe. so ends the eventual trip which we made to the rigi-kulm to see an alpine sunrise. chapter xxx [harris climbs mountains for me] an hour's sail brought us to lucerne again. i judged it best to go to bed and rest several days, for i knew that the man who undertakes to make the tour of europe on foot must take care of himself. thinking over my plans, as mapped out, i perceived that they did not take in the furka pass, the rhone glacier, the finsteraarhorn, the wetterhorn, etc. i immediately examined the guide-book to see if these were important, and found they were; in fact, a pedestrian tour of europe could not be complete without them. of course that decided me at once to see them, for i never allow myself to do things by halves, or in a slurring, slipshod way. i called in my agent and instructed him to go without delay and make a careful examination of these noted places, on foot, and bring me back a written report of the result, for insertion in my book. i instructed him to go to hospenthal as quickly as possible, and make his grand start from there; to extend his foot expedition as far as the giesbach fall, and return to me from thence by diligence or mule. i told him to take the courier with him. he objected to the courier, and with some show of reason, since he was about to venture upon new and untried ground; but i thought he might as well learn how to take care of the courier now as later, therefore i enforced my point. i said that the trouble, delay, and inconvenience of traveling with a courier were balanced by the deep respect which a courier's presence commands, and i must insist that as much style be thrown into my journeys as possible. so the two assumed complete mountaineering costumes and departed. a week later they returned, pretty well used up, and my agent handed me the following official report of a visit to the furka region. by h. harris, agent about seven o'clock in the morning, with perfectly fine weather, we started from hospenthal, and arrived at the maison on the furka in a little under quatre hours. the want of variety in the scenery from hospenthal made the kahkahponeeka wearisome; but let none be discouraged; no one can fail to be completely r'ecompens'ee for his fatigue, when he sees, for the first time, the monarch of the oberland, the tremendous finsteraarhorn. a moment before all was dullness, but a pas further has placed us on the summit of the furka; and exactly in front of us, at a hopow of only fifteen miles, this magnificent mountain lifts its snow-wreathed precipices into the deep blue sky. the inferior mountains on each side of the pass form a sort of frame for the picture of their dread lord, and close in the view so completely that no other prominent feature in the oberland is visible from this bong-a-bong; nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary grandeur of the finsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form the abutments of the central peak. with the addition of some others, who were also bound for the grimsel, we formed a large xhvloj as we descended the steg which winds round the shoulder of a mountain toward the rhone glacier. we soon left the path and took to the ice; and after wandering amongst the crevices un peu, to admire the wonders of these deep blue caverns, and hear the rushing of waters through their subglacial channels, we struck out a course toward l'autre co^t'e and crossed the glacier successfully, a little above the cave from which the infant rhone takes its first bound from under the grand precipice of ice. half a mile below this we began to climb the flowery side of the meienwand. one of our party started before the rest, but the hitze was so great, that we found ihm quite exhausted, and lying at full length in the shade of a large gestein. we sat down with him for a time, for all felt the heat exceedingly in the climb up this very steep bolwoggoly, and then we set out again together, and arrived at last near the dead man's lake, at the foot of the sidelhorn. this lonely spot, once used for an extempore burying-place, after a sanguinary battue between the french and austrians, is the perfection of desolation; there is nothing in sight to mark the hand of man, except the line of weather-beaten whitened posts, set up to indicate the direction of the pass in the owdawakk of winter. near this point the footpath joins the wider track, which connects the grimsel with the head of the rhone schnawp; this has been carefully constructed, and leads with a tortuous course among and over les pierres, down to the bank of the gloomy little swosh-swosh, which almost washes against the walls of the grimsel hospice. we arrived a little before four o'clock at the end of our day's journey, hot enough to justify the step, taking by most of the partie, of plunging into the crystal water of the snow-fed lake. the next afternoon we started for a walk up the unteraar glacier, with the intention of, at all events, getting as far as the hu"tte which is used as a sleeping-place by most of those who cross the strahleck pass to grindelwald. we got over the tedious collection of stones and de'bris which covers the pied of the gletcher, and had walked nearly three hours from the grimsel, when, just as we were thinking of crossing over to the right, to climb the cliffs at the foot of the hut, the clouds, which had for some time assumed a threatening appearance, suddenly dropped, and a huge mass of them, driving toward us from the finsteraarhorn, poured down a deluge of haboolong and hail. fortunately, we were not far from a very large glacier-table; it was a huge rock balanced on a pedestal of ice high enough to admit of our all creeping under it for gowkarak. a stream of puckittypukk had furrowed a course for itself in the ice at its base, and we were obliged to stand with one fuss on each side of this, and endeavor to keep ourselves chaud by cutting steps in the steep bank of the pedestal, so as to get a higher place for standing on, as the wasser rose rapidly in its trench. a very cold bzzzzzzzzeee accompanied the storm, and made our position far from pleasant; and presently came a flash of blitzen, apparently in the middle of our little party, with an instantaneous clap of yokky, sounding like a large gun fired close to our ears; the effect was startling; but in a few seconds our attention was fixed by the roaring echoes of the thunder against the tremendous mountains which completely surrounded us. this was followed by many more bursts, none of welche, however, was so dangerously near; and after waiting a long demi-hour in our icy prison, we sallied out to talk through a haboolong which, though not so heavy as before, was quite enough to give us a thorough soaking before our arrival at the hospice. the grimsel is certainement a wonderful place; situated at the bottom of a sort of huge crater, the sides of which are utterly savage gebirge, composed of barren rocks which cannot even support a single pine arbre, and afford only scanty food for a herd of gmwkwllolp, it looks as if it must be completely begraben in the winter snows. enormous avalanches fall against it every spring, sometimes covering everything to the depth of thirty or forty feet; and, in spite of walls four feet thick, and furnished with outside shutters, the two men who stay here when the voyageurs are snugly quartered in their distant homes can tell you that the snow sometimes shakes the house to its foundations. next morning the hogglebumgullup still continued bad, but we made up our minds to go on, and make the best of it. half an hour after we started, the regen thickened unpleasantly, and we attempted to get shelter under a projecting rock, but being far to nass already to make standing at all agre'able, we pushed on for the handeck, consoling ourselves with the reflection that from the furious rushing of the river aar at our side, we should at all events see the celebrated wasserfall in grande perfection. nor were we nappersocket in our expectation; the water was roaring down its leap of two hundred and fifty feet in a most magnificent frenzy, while the trees which cling to its rocky sides swayed to and fro in the violence of the hurricane which it brought down with it; even the stream, which falls into the main cascade at right angles, and toutefois forms a beautiful feature in the scene, was now swollen into a raging torrent; and the violence of this "meeting of the waters," about fifty feet below the frail bridge where we stood, was fearfully grand. while we were looking at it, glu"cklicheweise a gleam of sunshine came out, and instantly a beautiful rainbow was formed by the spray, and hung in mid-air suspended over the awful gorge. on going into the chalet above the fall, we were informed that a bru"cke had broken down near guttanen, and that it would be impossible to proceed for some time; accordingly we were kept in our drenched condition for ein stunde, when some voyageurs arrived from meiringen, and told us that there had been a trifling accident, aber that we could now cross. on arriving at the spot, i was much inclined to suspect that the whole story was a ruse to make us slowwk and drink the more at the handeck inn, for only a few planks had been carried away, and though there might perhaps have been some difficulty with mules, the gap was certainly not larger than a mmbglx might cross with a very slight leap. near guttanen the haboolong happily ceased, and we had time to walk ourselves tolerably dry before arriving at reichenback, wo we enjoyed a good dine' at the hotel des alps. next morning we walked to rosenlaui, the beau id'eal of swiss scenery, where we spent the middle of the day in an excursion to the glacier. this was more beautiful than words can describe, for in the constant progress of the ice it has changed the form of its extremity and formed a vast cavern, as blue as the sky above, and rippled like a frozen ocean. a few steps cut in the whoopjamboreehoo enabled us to walk completely under this, and feast our eyes upon one of the loveliest objects in creation. the glacier was all around divided by numberless fissures of the same exquisite color, and the finest wood-erdbeeren were growing in abundance but a few yards from the ice. the inn stands in a charmant spot close to the c^ote de la rivie`re, which, lower down, forms the reichenbach fall, and embosomed in the richest of pine woods, while the fine form of the wellhorn looking down upon it completes the enchanting bopple. in the afternoon we walked over the great scheideck to grindelwald, stopping to pay a visit to the upper glacier by the way; but we were again overtaken by bad hogglebumgullup and arrived at the hotel in a solche a state that the landlord's wardrobe was in great request. the clouds by this time seemed to have done their worst, for a lovely day succeeded, which we determined to devote to an ascent of the faulhorn. we left grindelwald just as a thunder-storm was dying away, and we hoped to find guten wetter up above; but the rain, which had nearly ceased, began again, and we were struck by the rapidly increasing froid as we ascended. two-thirds of the way up were completed when the rain was exchanged for gnillic, with which the boden was thickly covered, and before we arrived at the top the gnillic and mist became so thick that we could not see one another at more than twenty poopoo distance, and it became difficult to pick our way over the rough and thickly covered ground. shivering with cold, we turned into bed with a double allowance of clothes, and slept comfortably while the wind howled autour de la maison; when i awoke, the wall and the window looked equally dark, but in another hour i found i could just see the form of the latter; so i jumped out of bed, and forced it open, though with great difficulty from the frost and the quantities of gnillic heaped up against it. a row of huge icicles hung down from the edge of the roof, and anything more wintry than the whole anblick could not well be imagined; but the sudden appearance of the great mountains in front was so startling that i felt no inclination to move toward bed again. the snow which had collected upon la fene^tre had increased the finsterniss oder der dunkelheit, so that when i looked out i was surprised to find that the daylight was considerable, and that the balragoomah would evidently rise before long. only the brightest of les e'toiles were still shining; the sky was cloudless overhead, though small curling mists lay thousands of feet below us in the valleys, wreathed around the feet of the mountains, and adding to the splendor of their lofty summits. we were soon dressed and out of the house, watching the gradual approach of dawn, thoroughly absorbed in the first near view of the oberland giants, which broke upon us unexpectedly after the intense obscurity of the evening before. "kabaugwakko songwashee kum wetterhorn snawpo!" cried some one, as that grand summit gleamed with the first rose of dawn; and in a few moments the double crest of the schreckhorn followed its example; peak after peak seemed warmed with life, the jungfrau blushed even more beautifully than her neighbors, and soon, from the wetterhorn in the east to the wildstrubel in the west, a long row of fires glowed upon mighty altars, truly worthy of the gods. the wlgw was very severe; our sleeping-place could hardly be distinguee' from the snow around it, which had fallen to a depth of a flirk during the past evening, and we heartily enjoyed a rough scramble en bas to the giesbach falls, where we soon found a warm climate. at noon the day before grindelwald the thermometer could not have stood at less than 100 degrees fahr. in the sun; and in the evening, judging from the icicles formed, and the state of the windows, there must have been at least twelve dingblatter of frost, thus giving a change of 80 degrees during a few hours. i said: "you have done well, harris; this report is concise, compact, well expressed; the language is crisp, the descriptions are vivid and not needlessly elaborated; your report goes straight to the point, attends strictly to business, and doesn't fool around. it is in many ways an excellent document. but it has a fault--it is too learned, it is much too learned. what is 'dingblatter'? "'dingblatter' is a fiji word meaning 'degrees.'" "you knew the english of it, then?" "oh, yes." "what is 'gnillic'? "that is the eskimo term for 'snow.'" "so you knew the english for that, too?" "why, certainly." "what does 'mmbglx' stand for?" "that is zulu for 'pedestrian.'" "'while the form of the wellhorn looking down upon it completes the enchanting bopple.' what is 'bopple'?" "'picture.' it's choctaw." "what is 'schnawp'?" "'valley.' that is choctaw, also." "what is 'bolwoggoly'?" "that is chinese for 'hill.'" "'kahkahponeeka'?" "'ascent.' choctaw." "'but we were again overtaken by bad hogglebumgullup.' what does 'hogglebumgullup' mean?" "that is chinese for 'weather.'" "is 'hogglebumgullup' better than the english word? is it any more descriptive?" "no, it means just the same." "and 'dingblatter' and 'gnillic,' and 'bopple,' and 'schnawp'--are they better than the english words?" "no, they mean just what the english ones do." "then why do you use them? why have you used all this chinese and choctaw and zulu rubbish?" "because i didn't know any french but two or three words, and i didn't know any latin or greek at all." "that is nothing. why should you want to use foreign words, anyhow?" "they adorn my page. they all do it." "who is 'all'?" "everybody. everybody that writes elegantly. anybody has a right to that wants to." "i think you are mistaken." i then proceeded in the following scathing manner. "when really learned men write books for other learned men to read, they are justified in using as many learned words as they please--their audience will understand them; but a man who writes a book for the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign expressions. it is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying, 'get the translations made yourself if you want them, this book is not written for the ignorant classes.' there are men who know a foreign language so well and have used it so long in their daily life that they seem to discharge whole volleys of it into their english writings unconsciously, and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time. that is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the man's readers. what is the excuse for this? the writer would say he only uses the foreign language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in english. very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he ought to warn the nine other not to buy his book. however, the excuse he offers is at least an excuse; but there is another set of men who are like you; they know a word here and there, of a foreign language, or a few beggarly little three-word phrases, filched from the back of the dictionary, and these are continually peppering into their literature, with a pretense of knowing that language--what excuse can they offer? the foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact equivalents in a nobler language--english; yet they think they 'adorn their page' when they say strasse for street, and bahnhof for railway-station, and so on--flaunting these fluttering rags of poverty in the reader's face and imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the sign of untold riches held in reserve. i will let your 'learning' remain in your report; you have as much right, i suppose, to 'adorn your page' with zulu and chinese and choctaw rubbish as others of your sort have to adorn theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched from half a dozen learned tongues whose a-b abs they don't even know." when the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel, he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up. similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the tranquil and unsuspecting agent. i can be dreadfully rough on a person when the mood takes me. chapter xxxi [alp-scaling by carriage] we now prepared for a considerable walk--from lucerne to interlaken, over the bru"nig pass. but at the last moment the weather was so good that i changed my mind and hired a four-horse carriage. it was a huge vehicle, roomy, as easy in its motion as a palanquin, and exceedingly comfortable. we got away pretty early in the morning, after a hot breakfast, and went bowling over a hard, smooth road, through the summer loveliness of switzerland, with near and distant lakes and mountains before and about us for the entertainment of the eye, and the music of multitudinous birds to charm the ear. sometimes there was only the width of the road between the imposing precipices on the right and the clear cool water on the left with its shoals of uncatchable fish skimming about through the bars of sun and shadow; and sometimes, in place of the precipices, the grassy land stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant, and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets, the peculiarly captivating cottage of switzerland. the ordinary chalet turns a broad, honest gable end to the road, and its ample roof hovers over the home in a protecting, caressing way, projecting its sheltering eaves far outward. the quaint windows are filled with little panes, and garnished with white muslin curtains, and brightened with boxes of blooming flowers. across the front of the house, and up the spreading eaves and along the fanciful railings of the shallow porch, are elaborate carvings--wreaths, fruits, arabesques, verses from scripture, names, dates, etc. the building is wholly of wood, reddish brown in tint, a very pleasing color. it generally has vines climbing over it. set such a house against the fresh green of the hillside, and it looks ever so cozy and inviting and picturesque, and is a decidedly graceful addition to the landscape. one does not find out what a hold the chalet has taken upon him, until he presently comes upon a new house-a house which is aping the town fashions of germany and france, a prim, hideous, straight-up-and-down thing, plastered all over on the outside to look like stone, and altogether so stiff, and formal, and ugly, and forbidding, and so out of tune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf and dumb and dead to the poetry of its surroundings, that it suggests an undertaker at a picnic, a corpse at a wedding, a puritan in paradise. in the course of the morning we passed the spot where pontius pilate is said to have thrown himself into the lake. the legend goes that after the crucifixion his conscience troubled him, and he fled from jerusalem and wandered about the earth, weary of life and a prey to tortures of the mind. eventually, he hid himself away, on the heights of mount pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and crags for years; but rest and peace were still denied him, so he finally put an end to his misery by drowning himself. presently we passed the place where a man of better odor was born. this was the children's friend, santa claus, or st. nicholas. there are some unaccountable reputations in the world. this saint's is an instance. he has ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children, yet it appears he was not much of a friend to his own. he had ten of them, and when fifty years old he left them, and sought out as dismal a refuge from the world as possible, and became a hermit in order that he might reflect upon pious themes without being disturbed by the joyous and other noises from the nursery, doubtless. judging by pilate and st. nicholas, there exists no rule for the construction of hermits; they seem made out of all kinds of material. but pilate attended to the matter of expiating his sin while he was alive, whereas st. nicholas will probably have to go on climbing down sooty chimneys, christmas eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other people's children, to make up for deserting his own. his bones are kept in a church in a village (sachseln) which we visited, and are naturally held in great reverence. his portrait is common in the farmhouses of the region, but is believed by many to be but an indifferent likeness. during his hermit life, according to legend, he partook of the bread and wine of the communion once a month, but all the rest of the month he fasted. a constant marvel with us, as we sped along the bases of the steep mountains on this journey, was, not that avalanches occur, but that they are not occurring all the time. one does not understand why rocks and landslides do not plunge down these declivities daily. a landslip occurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route from arth to brunnen, which was a formidable thing. a mass of conglomerate two miles long, a thousand feet broad, and a hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three thousand feet high and hurled itself into the valley below, burying four villages and five hundred people, as in a grave. we had such a beautiful day, and such endless pictures of limpid lakes, and green hills and valleys, and majestic mountains, and milky cataracts dancing down the steeps and gleaming in the sun, that we could not help feeling sweet toward all the world; so we tried to drink all the milk, and eat all the grapes and apricots and berries, and buy all the bouquets of wild flowers which the little peasant boys and girls offered for sale; but we had to retire from this contract, for it was too heavy. at short distances--and they were entirely too short--all along the road, were groups of neat and comely children, with their wares nicely and temptingly set forth in the grass under the shade trees, and as soon as we approached they swarmed into the road, holding out their baskets and milk bottles, and ran beside the carriage, barefoot and bareheaded, and importuned us to buy. they seldom desisted early, but continued to run and insist--beside the wagon while they could, and behind it until they lost breath. then they turned and chased a returning carriage back to their trading-post again. after several hours of this, without any intermission, it becomes almost annoying. i do not know what we should have done without the returning carriages to draw off the pursuit. however, there were plenty of these, loaded with dusty tourists and piled high with luggage. indeed, from lucerne to interlaken we had the spectacle, among other scenery, of an unbroken procession of fruit-peddlers and tourists carriages. our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we should see on the down-grade of the bru"nig, by and by, after we should pass the summit. all our friends in lucerne had said that to look down upon meiringen, and the rushing blue-gray river aar, and the broad level green valley; and across at the mighty alpine precipices that rise straight up to the clouds out of that valley; and up at the microscopic chalets perched upon the dizzy eaves of those precipices and winking dimly and fitfully through the drifting veil of vapor; and still up and up, at the superb oltschiback and the other beautiful cascades that leap from those rugged heights, robed in powdery spray, ruffled with foam, and girdled with rainbows--to look upon these things, they say, was to look upon the last possibility of the sublime and the enchanting. therefore, as i say, we talked mainly of these coming wonders; if we were conscious of any impatience, it was to get there in favorable season; if we felt any anxiety, it was that the day might remain perfect, and enable us to see those marvels at their best. as we approached the kaiserstuhl, a part of the harness gave way. we were in distress for a moment, but only a moment. it was the fore-and-aft gear that was broken--the thing that leads aft from the forward part of the horse and is made fast to the thing that pulls the wagon. in america this would have been a heavy leathern strap; but, all over the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope the size of your little finger--clothes-line is what it is. cabs use it, private carriages, freight-carts and wagons, all sorts of vehicles have it. in munich i afterward saw it used on a long wagon laden with fifty-four half-barrels of beer; i had before noticed that the cabs in heidelberg used it--not new rope, but rope that had been in use since abraham's time --and i had felt nervous, sometimes, behind it when the cab was tearing down a hill. but i had long been accustomed to it now, and had even become afraid of the leather strap which belonged in its place. our driver got a fresh piece of clothes-line out of his locker and repaired the break in two minutes. so much for one european fashion. every country has its own ways. it may interest the reader to know how they "put horses to" on the continent. the man stands up the horses on each side of the thing that projects from the front end of the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess of gear forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and passes the other thing through the other ring and hauls it aft on the other side of the other horse, opposite to the first one, after crossing them and bringing the loose end back, and then buckles the other thing underneath the horse, and takes another thing and wraps it around the thing i spoke of before, and puts another thing over each horse's head, with broad flappers to it to keep the dust out of his eyes, and puts the iron thing in his mouth for him to grit his teeth on, uphill, and brings the ends of these things aft over his back, after buckling another one around under his neck to hold his head up, and hitching another thing on a thing that goes over his shoulders to keep his head up when he is climbing a hill, and then takes the slack of the thing which i mentioned a while ago, and fetches it aft and makes it fast to the thing that pulls the wagon, and hands the other things up to the driver to steer with. i never have buckled up a horse myself, but i do not think we do it that way. we had four very handsome horses, and the driver was very proud of his turnout. he would bowl along on a reasonable trot, on the highway, but when he entered a village he did it on a furious run, and accompanied it with a frenzy of ceaseless whip-crackings that sounded like volleys of musketry. he tore through the narrow streets and around the sharp curves like a moving earthquake, showering his volleys as he went, and before him swept a continuous tidal wave of scampering children, ducks, cats, and mothers clasping babies which they had snatched out of the way of the coming destruction; and as this living wave washed aside, along the walls, its elements, being safe, forgot their fears and turned their admiring gaze upon that gallant driver till he thundered around the next curve and was lost to sight. he was a great man to those villagers, with his gaudy clothes and his terrific ways. whenever he stopped to have his cattle watered and fed with loaves of bread, the villagers stood around admiring him while he swaggered about, the little boys gazed up at his face with humble homage, and the landlord brought out foaming mugs of beer and conversed proudly with him while he drank. then he mounted his lofty box, swung his explosive whip, and away he went again, like a storm. i had not seen anything like this before since i was a boy, and the stage used to flourish the village with the dust flying and the horn tooting. when we reached the base of the kaiserstuhl, we took two more horses; we had to toil along with difficulty for an hour and a half or two hours, for the ascent was not very gradual, but when we passed the backbone and approached the station, the driver surpassed all his previous efforts in the way of rush and clatter. he could not have six horses all the time, so he made the most of his chance while he had it. up to this point we had been in the heart of the william tell region. the hero is not forgotten, by any means, or held in doubtful veneration. his wooden image, with his bow drawn, above the doors of taverns, was a frequent feature of the scenery. about noon we arrived at the foot of the bru"nig pass, and made a two-hour stop at the village hotel, another of those clean, pretty, and thoroughly well-kept inns which are such an astonishment to people who are accustomed to hotels of a dismally different pattern in remote country-towns. there was a lake here, in the lap of the great mountains, the green slopes that rose toward the lower crags were graced with scattered swiss cottages nestling among miniature farms and gardens, and from out a leafy ambuscade in the upper heights tumbled a brawling cataract. carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and trunks, arrived, and the quiet hotel was soon populous. we were early at the table d'ho^te and saw the people all come in. there were twenty-five, perhaps. they were of various nationalities, but we were the only americans. next to me sat an english bride, and next to her sat her new husband, whom she called "neddy," though he was big enough and stalwart enough to be entitled to his full name. they had a pretty little lovers' quarrel over what wine they should have. neddy was for obeying the guide-book and taking the wine of the country; but the bride said: "what, that nahsty stuff!" "it isn't nahsty, pet, it's quite good." "it is nahsty." "no, it isn't nahsty." "it's oful nahsty, neddy, and i shahn't drink it." then the question was, what she must have. she said he knew very well that she never drank anything but champagne. she added: "you know very well papa always has champagne on his table, and i've always been used to it." neddy made a playful pretense of being distressed about the expense, and this amused her so much that she nearly exhausted herself with laughter--and this pleased him so much that he repeated his jest a couple of times, and added new and killing varieties to it. when the bride finally recovered, she gave neddy a love-box on the arm with her fan, and said with arch severity: "well, you would have me--nothing else would do-so you'll have to make the best of a bad bargain. do order the champagne, i'm oful dry." so with a mock groan which made her laugh again, neddy ordered the champagne. the fact that this young woman had never moistened the selvedge edge of her soul with a less plebeian tipple than champagne, had a marked and subduing effect on harris. he believed she belonged to the royal family. but i had my doubts. we heard two or three different languages spoken by people at the table and guessed out the nationalities of most of the guests to our satisfaction, but we failed with an elderly gentleman and his wife and a young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentleman of about thirty-five who sat three seats beyond harris. we did not hear any of these speak. but finally the last-named gentleman left while we were not noticing, but we looked up as he reached the far end of the table. he stopped there a moment, and made his toilet with a pocket comb. so he was a german; or else he had lived in german hotels long enough to catch the fashion. when the elderly couple and the young girl rose to leave, they bowed respectfully to us. so they were germans, too. this national custom is worth six of the other one, for export. after dinner we talked with several englishmen, and they inflamed our desire to a hotter degree than ever, to see the sights of meiringen from the heights of the bru"nig pass. they said the view was marvelous, and that one who had seen it once could never forget it. they also spoke of the romantic nature of the road over the pass, and how in one place it had been cut through a flank of the solid rock, in such a way that the mountain overhung the tourist as he passed by; and they furthermore said that the sharp turns in the road and the abruptness of the descent would afford us a thrilling experience, for we should go down in a flying gallop and seem to be spinning around the rings of a whirlwind, like a drop of whiskey descending the spirals of a corkscrew. i got all the information out of these gentlemen that we could need; and then, to make everything complete, i asked them if a body could get hold of a little fruit and milk here and there, in case of necessity. they threw up their hands in speechless intimation that the road was simply paved with refreshment-peddlers. we were impatient to get away, now, and the rest of our two-hour stop rather dragged. but finally the set time arrived and we began the ascent. indeed it was a wonderful road. it was smooth, and compact, and clean, and the side next the precipices was guarded all along by dressed stone posts about three feet high, placed at short distances apart. the road could not have been better built if napoleon the first had built it. he seems to have been the introducer of the sort of roads which europe now uses. all literature which describes life as it existed in england, france, and germany up to the close of the last century, is filled with pictures of coaches and carriages wallowing through these three countries in mud and slush half-wheel deep; but after napoleon had floundered through a conquered kingdom he generally arranged things so that the rest of the world could follow dry-shod. we went on climbing, higher and higher, and curving hither and thither, in the shade of noble woods, and with a rich variety and profusion of wild flowers all about us; and glimpses of rounded grassy backbones below us occupied by trim chalets and nibbling sheep, and other glimpses of far lower altitudes, where distance diminished the chalets to toys and obliterated the sheep altogether; and every now and then some ermined monarch of the alps swung magnificently into view for a moment, then drifted past an intervening spur and disappeared again. it was an intoxicating trip altogether; the exceeding sense of satisfaction that follows a good dinner added largely to the enjoyment; the having something especial to look forward to and muse about, like the approaching grandeurs of meiringen, sharpened the zest. smoking was never so good before, solid comfort was never solider; we lay back against the thick cushions silent, meditative, steeped in felicity. i rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started. i had been dreaming i was at sea, and it was a thrilling surprise to wake up and find land all around me. it took me a couple seconds to "come to," as you may say; then i took in the situation. the horses were drinking at a trough in the edge of a town, the driver was taking beer, harris was snoring at my side, the courier, with folded arms and bowed head, was sleeping on the box, two dozen barefooted and bareheaded children were gathered about the carriage, with their hands crossed behind, gazing up with serious and innocent admiration at the dozing tourists baking there in the sun. several small girls held night-capped babies nearly as big as themselves in their arms, and even these fat babies seemed to take a sort of sluggish interest in us. we had slept an hour and a half and missed all the scenery! i did not need anybody to tell me that. if i had been a girl, i could have cursed for vexation. as it was, i woke up the agent and gave him a piece of my mind. instead of being humiliated, he only upbraided me for being so wanting in vigilance. he said he had expected to improve his mind by coming to europe, but a man might travel to the ends of the earth with me and never see anything, for i was manifestly endowed with the very genius of ill luck. he even tried to get up some emotion about that poor courier, who never got a chance to see anything, on account of my heedlessness. but when i thought i had borne about enough of this kind of talk, i threatened to make harris tramp back to the summit and make a report on that scenery, and this suggestion spiked his battery. we drove sullenly through brienz, dead to the seductions of its bewildering array of swiss carvings and the clamorous hoo-hooing of its cuckoo clocks, and had not entirely recovered our spirits when we rattled across a bridge over the rushing blue river and entered the pretty town of interlaken. it was just about sunset, and we had made the trip from lucerne in ten hours. chapter xxxii [the jungfrau, the bride, and the piano] we located ourselves at the jungfrau hotel, one of those huge establishments which the needs of modern travel have created in every attractive spot on the continent. there was a great gathering at dinner, and, as usual, one heard all sorts of languages. the table d'ho^te was served by waitresses dressed in the quaint and comely costume of the swiss peasants. this consists of a simple gros de laine, trimmed with ashes of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventre saint gris, cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaise and narrow insertions of pa^te de foie gras backstitched to the mise en sce`ne in the form of a jeu d'esprit. it gives to the wearer a singularly piquant and alluring aspect. one of these waitresses, a woman of forty, had side-whiskers reaching half-way down her jaws. they were two fingers broad, dark in color, pretty thick, and the hairs were an inch long. one sees many women on the continent with quite conspicuous mustaches, but this was the only woman i saw who had reached the dignity of whiskers. after dinner the guests of both sexes distributed themselves about the front porches and the ornamental grounds belonging to the hotel, to enjoy the cool air; but, as the twilight deepened toward darkness, they gathered themselves together in that saddest and solemnest and most constrained of all places, the great blank drawing-room which is the chief feature of all continental summer hotels. there they grouped themselves about, in couples and threes, and mumbled in bated voices, and looked timid and homeless and forlorn. there was a small piano in this room, a clattery, wheezy, asthmatic thing, certainly the very worst miscarriage in the way of a piano that the world has seen. in turn, five or six dejected and homesick ladies approached it doubtingly, gave it a single inquiring thump, and retired with the lockjaw. but the boss of that instrument was to come, nevertheless; and from my own country--from arkansaw. she was a brand-new bride, innocent, girlish, happy in herself and her grave and worshiping stripling of a husband; she was about eighteen, just out of school, free from affections, unconscious of that passionless multitude around her; and the very first time she smote that old wreck one recognized that it had met its destiny. her stripling brought an armful of aged sheet-music from their room-for this bride went "heeled," as you might say--and bent himself lovingly over and got ready to turn the pages. the bride fetched a swoop with her fingers from one end of the keyboard to the other, just to get her bearings, as it were, and you could see the congregation set their teeth with the agony of it. then, without any more preliminaries, she turned on all the horrors of the "battle of prague," that venerable shivaree, and waded chin-deep in the blood of the slain. she made a fair and honorable average of two false notes in every five, but her soul was in arms and she never stopped to correct. the audience stood it with pretty fair grit for a while, but when the cannonade waxed hotter and fiercer, and the discord average rose to four in five, the procession began to move. a few stragglers held their ground ten minutes longer, but when the girl began to wring the true inwardness out of the "cries of the wounded," they struck their colors and retired in a kind of panic. there never was a completer victory; i was the only non-combatant left on the field. i would not have deserted my countrywoman anyhow, but indeed i had no desires in that direction. none of us like mediocrity, but we all reverence perfection. this girl's music was perfection in its way; it was the worst music that had ever been achieved on our planet by a mere human being. i moved up close, and never lost a strain. when she got through, i asked her to play it again. she did it with a pleased alacrity and a heightened enthusiasm. she made it all discords, this time. she got an amount of anguish into the cries of the wounded that shed a new light on human suffering. she was on the war-path all the evening. all the time, crowds of people gathered on the porches and pressed their noses against the windows to look and marvel, but the bravest never ventured in. the bride went off satisfied and happy with her young fellow, when her appetite was finally gorged, and the tourists swarmed in again. what a change has come over switzerland, and in fact all europe, during this century! seventy or eighty years ago napoleon was the only man in europe who could really be called a traveler; he was the only man who had devoted his attention to it and taken a powerful interest in it; he was the only man who had traveled extensively; but now everybody goes everywhere; and switzerland, and many other regions which were unvisited and unknown remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days a buzzing hive of restless strangers every summer. but i digress. in the morning, when we looked out of our windows, we saw a wonderful sight. across the valley, and apparently quite neighborly and close at hand, the giant form of the jungfrau rose cold and white into the clear sky, beyond a gateway in the nearer highlands. it reminded me, somehow, of one of those colossal billows which swells suddenly up beside one's ship, at sea, sometimes, with its crest and shoulders snowy white, and the rest of its noble proportions streaked downward with creamy foam. i took out my sketch-book and made a little picture of the jungfrau, merely to get the shape. [figure 9] i do not regard this as one of my finished works, in fact i do not rank it among my works at all; it is only a study; it is hardly more than what one might call a sketch. other artists have done me the grace to admire it; but i am severe in my judgments of my own pictures, and this one does not move me. it was hard to believe that that lofty wooded rampart on the left which so overtops the jungfrau was not actually the higher of the two, but it was not, of course. it is only two or three thousand feet high, and of course has no snow upon it in summer, whereas the jungfrau is not much shorter of fourteen thousand feet high and therefore that lowest verge of snow on her side, which seems nearly down to the valley level, is really about seven thousand feet higher up in the air than the summit of that wooded rampart. it is the distance that makes the deception. the wooded height is but four or five miles removed from us, but the jungfrau is four or five times that distance away. walking down the street of shops, in the fore-noon, i was attracted by a large picture, carved, frame and all, from a single block of chocolate-colored wood. there are people who know everything. some of these had told us that continental shopkeepers always raise their prices on english and americans. many people had told us it was expensive to buy things through a courier, whereas i had supposed it was just the reverse. when i saw this picture, i conjectured that it was worth more than the friend i proposed to buy it for would like to pay, but still it was worth while to inquire; so i told the courier to step in and ask the price, as if he wanted it for himself; i told him not to speak in english, and above all not to reveal the fact that he was a courier. then i moved on a few yards, and waited. the courier came presently and reported the price. i said to myself, "it is a hundred francs too much," and so dismissed the matter from my mind. but in the afternoon i was passing that place with harris, and the picture attracted me again. we stepped in, to see how much higher broken german would raise the price. the shopwoman named a figure just a hundred francs lower than the courier had named. this was a pleasant surprise. i said i would take it. after i had given directions as to where it was to be shipped, the shipped, the shopwoman said, appealingly: "if your please, do not let your courier know you bought it." this was an unexpected remark. i said: "what makes you think i have a courier?" "ah, that is very simple; he told me himself." "he was very thoughtful. but tell me--why did you charge him more than you are charging me?" "that is very simple, also: i do not have to pay you a percentage." "oh, i begin to see. you would have had to pay the courier a percentage." "undoubtedly. the courier always has his percentage. in this case it would have been a hundred francs." "then the tradesman does not pay a part of it-the purchaser pays all of it?" "there are occasions when the tradesman and the courier agree upon a price which is twice or thrice the value of the article, then the two divide, and both get a percentage." "i see. but it seems to me that the purchaser does all the paying, even then." "oh, to be sure! it goes without saying." "but i have bought this picture myself; therefore why shouldn't the courier know it?" the woman exclaimed, in distress: "ah, indeed it would take all my little profit! he would come and demand his hundred francs, and i should have to pay." "he has not done the buying. you could refuse." "i could not dare to refuse. he would never bring travelers here again. more than that, he would denounce me to the other couriers, they would divert custom from me, and my business would be injured." i went away in a thoughtful frame of mind. i began to see why a courier could afford to work for fifty-five dollars a month and his fares. a month or two later i was able to understand why a courier did not have to pay any board and lodging, and why my hotel bills were always larger when i had him with me than when i left him behind, somewhere, for a few days. another thing was also explained, now, apparently. in one town i had taken the courier to the bank to do the translating when i drew some money. i had sat in the reading-room till the transaction was finished. then a clerk had brought the money to me in person, and had been exceedingly polite, even going so far as to precede me to the door and holding it open for me and bow me out as if i had been a distinguished personage. it was a new experience. exchange had been in my favor ever since i had been in europe, but just that one time. i got simply the face of my draft, and no extra francs, whereas i had expected to get quite a number of them. this was the first time i had ever used the courier at the bank. i had suspected something then, and as long as he remained with me afterward i managed bank matters by myself. still, if i felt that i could afford the tax, i would never travel without a courier, for a good courier is a convenience whose value cannot be estimated in dollars and cents. without him, travel is a bitter harassment, a purgatory of little exasperating annoyances, a ceaseless and pitiless punishment--i mean to an irascible man who has no business capacity and is confused by details. without a courier, travel hasn't a ray of pleasure in it, anywhere; but with him it is a continuous and unruffled delight. he is always at hand, never has to be sent for; if your bell is not answered promptly--and it seldom is--you have only to open the door and speak, the courier will hear, and he will have the order attended to or raise an insurrection. you tell him what day you will start, and whither you are going--leave all the rest to him. you need not inquire about trains, or fares, or car changes, or hotels, or anything else. at the proper time he will put you in a cab or an omnibus, and drive you to the train or the boat; he has packed your luggage and transferred it, he has paid all the bills. other people have preceded you half an hour to scramble for impossible places and lose their tempers, but you can take your time; the courier has secured your seats for you, and you can occupy them at your leisure. at the station, the crowd mash one another to pulp in the effort to get the weigher's attention to their trunks; they dispute hotly with these tyrants, who are cool and indifferent; they get their baggage billets, at last, and then have another squeeze and another rage over the disheartening business of trying to get them recorded and paid for, and still another over the equally disheartening business of trying to get near enough to the ticket office to buy a ticket; and now, with their tempers gone to the dogs, they must stand penned up and packed together, laden with wraps and satchels and shawl-straps, with the weary wife and babies, in the waiting-room, till the doors are thrown open--and then all hands make a grand final rush to the train, find it full, and have to stand on the platform and fret until some more cars are put on. they are in a condition to kill somebody by this time. meantime, you have been sitting in your car, smoking, and observing all this misery in the extremest comfort. on the journey the guard is polite and watchful--won't allow anybody to get into your compartment--tells them you are just recovering from the small-pox and do not like to be disturbed. for the courier has made everything right with the guard. at way-stations the courier comes to your compartment to see if you want a glass of water, or a newspaper, or anything; at eating-stations he sends luncheon out to you, while the other people scramble and worry in the dining-rooms. if anything breaks about the car you are in, and a station-master proposes to pack you and your agent into a compartment with strangers, the courier reveals to him confidentially that you are a french duke born deaf and dumb, and the official comes and makes affable signs that he has ordered a choice car to be added to the train for you. at custom-houses the multitude file tediously through, hot and irritated, and look on while the officers burrow into the trunks and make a mess of everything; but you hand your keys to the courier and sit still. perhaps you arrive at your destination in a rain-storm at ten at night--you generally do. the multitude spend half an hour verifying their baggage and getting it transferred to the omnibuses; but the courier puts you into a vehicle without a moment's loss of time, and when you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been secured two or three days in advance, everything is ready, you can go at once to bed. some of those other people will have to drift around to two or three hotels, in the rain, before they find accommodations. i have not set down half of the virtues that are vested in a good courier, but i think i have set down a sufficiency of them to show that an irritable man who can afford one and does not employ him is not a wise economist. my courier was the worst one in europe, yet he was a good deal better than none at all. it could not pay him to be a better one than he was, because i could not afford to buy things through him. he was a good enough courier for the small amount he got out of his service. yes, to travel with a courier is bliss, to travel without one is the reverse. i have had dealings with some very bad couriers; but i have also had dealings with one who might fairly be called perfection. he was a young polander, named joseph n. verey. he spoke eight languages, and seemed to be equally at home in all of them; he was shrewd, prompt, posted, and punctual; he was fertile in resources, and singularly gifted in the matter of overcoming difficulties; he not only knew how to do everything in his line, but he knew the best ways and the quickest; he was handy with children and invalids; all his employer needed to do was to take life easy and leave everything to the courier. his address is, care of messrs. gay & son, strand, london; he was formerly a conductor of gay's tourist parties. excellent couriers are somewhat rare; if the reader is about to travel, he will find it to his advantage to make a note of this one. chapter xxxiii [we climb far--by buggy] the beautiful giesbach fall is near interlaken, on the other side of the lake of brienz, and is illuminated every night with those gorgeous theatrical fires whose name i cannot call just at this moment. this was said to be a spectacle which the tourist ought by no means to miss. i was strongly tempted, but i could not go there with propriety, because one goes in a boat. the task which i had set myself was to walk over europe on foot, not skim over it in a boat. i had made a tacit contract with myself; it was my duty to abide by it. i was willing to make boat trips for pleasure, but i could not conscientiously make them in the way of business. it cost me something of a pang to lose that fine sight, but i lived down the desire, a nd gained in my self-respect through the triumph. i had a finer and a grander sight, however, where i was. this was the mighty dome of the jungfrau softly outlined against the sky and faintly silvered by the starlight. there was something subduing in the influence of that silent and solemn and awful presence; one seemed to meet the immutable, the indestructible, the eternal, face to face, and to feel the trivial and fleeting nature of his own existence the more sharply by the contrast. one had the sense of being under the brooding contemplation of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice--a spirit which had looked down, through the slow drift of the ages, upon a million vanished races of men, and judged them; and would judge a million more--and still be there, watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life should be gone and the earth have become a vacant desolation. while i was feeling these things, i was groping, without knowing it, toward an understanding of what the spell is which people find in the alps, and in no other mountains--that strange, deep, nameless influence, which, once felt, cannot be forgotten--once felt, leaves always behind it a restless longing to feel it again--a longing which is like homesickness; a grieving, haunting yearning which will plead, implore, and persecute till it has its will. i met dozens of people, imaginative and unimaginative, cultivated and uncultivated, who had come from far countries and roamed through the swiss alps year after year--they could not explain why. they had come first, they said, out of idle curiosity, because everybody talked about it; they had come since because they could not help it, and they should keep on coming, while they lived, for the same reason; they had tried to break their chains and stay away, but it was futile; now, they had no desire to break them. others came nearer formulating what they felt; they said they could find perfect rest and peace nowhere else when they were troubled: all frets and worries and chafings sank to sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of the alps; the great spirit of the mountain breathed his own peace upon their hurt minds and sore hearts, and healed them; they could not think base thoughts or do mean and sordid things here, before the visible throne of god. down the road a piece was a kursaal--whatever that may be-and we joined the human tide to see what sort of enjoyment it might afford. it was the usual open-air concert, in an ornamental garden, with wines, beer, milk, whey, grapes, etc.--the whey and the grapes being necessaries of life to certain invalids whom physicians cannot repair, and who only continue to exist by the grace of whey or grapes. one of these departed spirits told me, in a sad and lifeless way, that there is no way for him to live but by whey, and dearly, dearly loved whey, he didn't know whey he did, but he did. after making this pun he died--that is the whey it served him. some other remains, preserved from decomposition by the grape system, told me that the grapes were of a peculiar breed, highly medicinal in their nature, and that they were counted out and administered by the grape-doctors as methodically as if they were pills. the new patient, if very feeble, began with one grape before breakfast, took three during breakfast, a couple between meals, five at luncheon, three in the afternoon, seven at dinner, four for supper, and part of a grape just before going to bed, by way of a general regulator. the quantity was gradually and regularly increased, according to the needs and capacities of the patient, until by and by you would find him disposing of his one grape per second all the day long, and his regular barrel per day. he said that men cured in this way, and enabled to discard the grape system, never afterward got over the habit of talking as if they were dictating to a slow amanuensis, because they always made a pause between each two words while they sucked the substance out of an imaginary grape. he said these were tedious people to talk with. he said that men who had been cured by the other process were easily distinguished from the rest of mankind because they always tilted their heads back, between every two words, and swallowed a swig of imaginary whey. he said it was an impressive thing to observe two men, who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in conversation--said their pauses and accompanying movements were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think himself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines. one finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling, if he stumbles upon the right person. i did not remain long at the kursaal; the music was good enough, but it seemed rather tame after the cyclone of that arkansaw expert. besides, my adventurous spirit had conceived a formidable enterprise--nothing less than a trip from interlaken, by the gemmi and visp, clear to zermatt, on foot! so it was necessary to plan the details, and get ready for an early start. the courier (this was not the one i have just been speaking of) thought that the portier of the hotel would be able to tell us how to find our way. and so it turned out. he showed us the whole thing, on a relief-map, and we could see our route, with all its elevations and depressions, its villages and its rivers, as clearly as if we were sailing over it in a balloon. a relief-map is a great thing. the portier also wrote down each day's journey and the nightly hotel on a piece of paper, and made our course so plain that we should never be able to get lost without high-priced outside help. i put the courier in the care of a gentleman who was going to lausanne, and then we went to bed, after laying out the walking-costumes and putting them into condition for instant occupation in the morning. however, when we came down to breakfast at 8 a.m., it looked so much like rain that i hired a two-horse top-buggy for the first third of the journey. for two or three hours we jogged along the level road which skirts the beautiful lake of thun, with a dim and dreamlike picture of watery expanses and spectral alpine forms always before us, veiled in a mellowing mist. then a steady downpour set in, and hid everything but the nearest objects. we kept the rain out of our faces with umbrellas, and away from our bodies with the leather apron of the buggy; but the driver sat unsheltered and placidly soaked the weather in and seemed to like it. we had the road to ourselves, and i never had a pleasanter excursion. the weather began to clear while we were driving up a valley called the kienthal, and presently a vast black cloud-bank in front of us dissolved away and uncurtained the grand proportions and the soaring loftiness of the blumis alp. it was a sort of breath-taking surprise; for we had not supposed there was anything behind that low-hung blanket of sable cloud but level valley. what we had been mistaking for fleeting glimpses of sky away aloft there, were really patches of the blumis's snowy crest caught through shredded rents in the drifting pall of vapor. we dined in the inn at frutigen, and our driver ought to have dined there, too, but he would not have had time to dine and get drunk both, so he gave his mind to making a masterpiece of the latter, and succeeded. a german gentleman and his two young-lady daughters had been taking their nooning at the inn, and when they left, just ahead of us, it was plain that their driver was as drunk as ours, and as happy and good-natured, too, which was saying a good deal. these rascals overflowed with attentions and information for their guests, and with brotherly love for each other. they tied their reins, and took off their coats and hats, so that they might be able to give unencumbered attention to conversation and to the gestures necessary for its illustration. the road was smooth; it led up and over and down a continual succession of hills; but it was narrow, the horses were used to it, and could not well get out of it anyhow; so why shouldn't the drivers entertain themselves and us? the noses of our horses projected sociably into the rear of the forward carriage, and as we toiled up the long hills our driver stood up and talked to his friend, and his friend stood up and talked back to him, with his rear to the scenery. when the top was reached and we went flying down the other side, there was no change in the program. i carry in my memory yet the picture of that forward driver, on his knees on his high seat, resting his elbows on its back, and beaming down on his passengers, with happy eye, and flying hair, and jolly red face, and offering his card to the old german gentleman while he praised his hack and horses, and both teams were whizzing down a long hill with nobody in a position to tell whether we were bound to destruction or an undeserved safety. toward sunset we entered a beautiful green valley dotted with chalets, a cozy little domain hidden away from the busy world in a cloistered nook among giant precipices topped with snowy peaks that seemed to float like islands above the curling surf of the sea of vapor that severed them from the lower world. down from vague and vaporous heights, little ruffled zigzag milky currents came crawling, and found their way to the verge of one of those tremendous overhanging walls, whence they plunged, a shaft of silver, shivered to atoms in mid-descent and turned to an air puff of luminous dust. here and there, in grooved depressions among the snowy desolations of the upper altitudes, one glimpsed the extremity of a glacier, with its sea-green and honeycombed battlements of ice. up the valley, under a dizzy precipice, nestled the village of kandersteg, our halting-place for the night. we were soon there, and housed in the hotel. but the waning day had such an inviting influence that we did not remain housed many moments, but struck out and followed a roaring torrent of ice-water up to its far source in a sort of little grass-carpeted parlor, walled in all around by vast precipices and overlooked by clustering summits of ice. this was the snuggest little croquet-ground imaginable; it was perfectly level, and not more than a mile long by half a mile wide. the walls around it were so gigantic, and everything about it was on so mighty a scale that it was belittled, by contrast, to what i have likened it to--a cozy and carpeted parlor. it was so high above the kandersteg valley that there was nothing between it and the snowy-peaks. i had never been in such intimate relations with the high altitudes before; the snow-peaks had always been remote and unapproachable grandeurs, hitherto, but now we were hob-a-nob--if one may use such a seemingly irreverent expression about creations so august as these. we could see the streams which fed the torrent we had followed issuing from under the greenish ramparts of glaciers; but two or three of these, instead of flowing over the precipices, sank down into the rock and sprang in big jets out of holes in the mid-face of the walls. the green nook which i have been describing is called the gasternthal. the glacier streams gather and flow through it in a broad and rushing brook to a narrow cleft between lofty precipices; here the rushing brook becomes a mad torrent and goes booming and thundering down toward kandersteg, lashing and thrashing its way over and among monster boulders, and hurling chance roots and logs about like straws. there was no lack of cascades along this route. the path by the side of the torrent was so narrow that one had to look sharp, when he heard a cow-bell, and hunt for a place that was wide enough to accommodate a cow and a christian side by side, and such places were not always to be had at an instant's notice. the cows wear church-bells, and that is a good idea in the cows, for where that torrent is, you couldn't hear an ordinary cow-bell any further than you could hear the ticking of a watch. i needed exercise, so i employed my agent in setting stranded logs and dead trees adrift, and i sat on a boulder and watched them go whirling and leaping head over heels down the boiling torrent. it was a wonderfully exhilarating spectacle. when i had had enough exercise, i made the agent take some, by running a race with one of those logs. i made a trifle by betting on the log. after dinner we had a walk up and down the kandersteg valley, in the soft gloaming, with the spectacle of the dying lights of day playing about the crests and pinnacles of the still and solemn upper realm for contrast, and text for talk. there were no sounds but the dulled complaining of the torrent and the occasional tinkling of a distant bell. the spirit of the place was a sense of deep, pervading peace; one might dream his life tranquilly away there, and not miss it or mind it when it was gone. the summer departed with the sun, and winter came with the stars. it grew to be a bitter night in that little hotel, backed up against a precipice that had no visible top to it, but we kept warm, and woke in time in the morning to find that everybody else had left for gemmi three hours before-so our little plan of helping that german family (principally the old man) over the pass, was a blocked generosity. chapter xxxiv [the world's highest pig farm] we hired the only guide left, to lead us on our way. he was over seventy, but he could have given me nine-tenths of his strength and still had all his age entitled him to. he shouldered our satchels, overcoats, and alpenstocks, and we set out up the steep path. it was hot work. the old man soon begged us to hand over our coats and waistcoats to him to carry, too, and we did it; one could not refuse so little a thing to a poor old man like that; he should have had them if he had been a hundred and fifty. when we began that ascent, we could see a microscopic chalet perched away up against heaven on what seemed to be the highest mountain near us. it was on our right, across the narrow head of the valley. but when we got up abreast it on its own level, mountains were towering high above on every hand, and we saw that its altitude was just about that of the little gasternthal which we had visited the evening before. still it seemed a long way up in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness of rocks. it had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it which seemed about as big as a billiard-table, and this grass-plot slanted so sharply downward, and was so brief, and ended so exceedingly soon at the verge of the absolute precipice, that it was a shuddery thing to think of a person's venturing to trust his foot on an incline so situated at all. suppose a man stepped on an orange peel in that yard; there would be nothing for him to seize; nothing could keep him from rolling; five revolutions would bring him to the edge, and over he would go. what a frightful distance he would fall!--for there are very few birds that fly as high as his starting-point. he would strike and bounce, two or three times, on his way down, but this would be no advantage to him. i would as soon taking an airing on the slant of a rainbow as in such a front yard. i would rather, in fact, for the distance down would be about the same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce. i could not see how the peasants got up to that chalet-the region seemed too steep for anything but a balloon. as we strolled on, climbing up higher and higher, we were continually bringing neighboring peaks into view and lofty prominence which had been hidden behind lower peaks before; so by and by, while standing before a group of these giants, we looked around for the chalet again; there it was, away down below us, apparently on an inconspicuous ridge in the valley! it was as far below us, now, as it had been above us when we were beginning the ascent. after a while the path led us along a railed precipice, and we looked over--far beneath us was the snug parlor again, the little gasternthal, with its water jets spouting from the face of its rock walls. we could have dropped a stone into it. we had been finding the top of the world all along--and always finding a still higher top stealing into view in a disappointing way just ahead; when we looked down into the gasternthal we felt pretty sure that we had reached the genuine top at last, but it was not so; there were much higher altitudes to be scaled yet. we were still in the pleasant shade of forest trees, we were still in a region which was cushioned with beautiful mosses and aglow with the many-tinted luster of innumerable wild flowers. we found, indeed, more interest in the wild flowers than in anything else. we gathered a specimen or two of every kind which we were unacquainted with; so we had sumptuous bouquets. but one of the chief interests lay in chasing the seasons of the year up the mountain, and determining them by the presence of flowers and berries which we were acquainted with. for instance, it was the end of august at the level of the sea; in the kandersteg valley at the base of the pass, we found flowers which would not be due at the sea-level for two or three weeks; higher up, we entered october, and gathered fringed gentians. i made no notes, and have forgotten the details, but the construction of the floral calendar was very entertaining while it lasted. in the high regions we found rich store of the splendid red flower called the alpine rose, but we did not find any examples of the ugly swiss favorite called edelweiss. its name seems to indicate that it is a noble flower and that it is white. it may be noble enough, but it is not attractive, and it is not white. the fuzzy blossom is the color of bad cigar ashes, and appears to be made of a cheap quality of gray plush. it has a noble and distant way of confining itself to the high altitudes, but that is probably on account of its looks; it apparently has no monopoly of those upper altitudes, however, for they are sometimes intruded upon by some of the loveliest of the valley families of wild flowers. everybody in the alps wears a sprig of edelweiss in his hat. it is the native's pet, and also the tourist's. all the morning, as we loafed along, having a good time, other pedestrians went staving by us with vigorous strides, and with the intent and determined look of men who were walking for a wager. these wore loose knee-breeches, long yarn stockings, and hobnailed high-laced walking-shoes. they were gentlemen who would go home to england or germany and tell how many miles they had beaten the guide-book every day. but i doubted if they ever had much real fun, outside of the mere magnificent exhilaration of the tramp through the green valleys and the breezy heights; for they were almost always alone, and even the finest scenery loses incalculably when there is no one to enjoy it with. all the morning an endless double procession of mule-mounted tourists filed past us along the narrow path--the one procession going, the other coming. we had taken a good deal of trouble to teach ourselves the kindly german custom of saluting all strangers with doffed hat, and we resolutely clung to it, that morning, although it kept us bareheaded most of the time a nd was not always responded to. still we found an interest in the thing, because we naturally liked to know who were english and americans among the passers-by. all continental natives responded of course; so did some of the english and americans, but, as a general thing, these two races gave no sign. whenever a man or a woman showed us cold neglect, we spoke up confidently in our own tongue and asked for such information as we happened to need, and we always got a reply in the same language. the english and american folk are not less kindly than other races, they are only more reserved, and that comes of habit and education. in one dreary, rocky waste, away above the line of vegetation, we met a procession of twenty-five mounted young men, all from america. we got answering bows enough from these, of course, for they were of an age to learn to do in rome as rome does, without much effort. at one extremity of this patch of desolation, overhung by bare and forbidding crags which husbanded drifts of everlasting snow in their shaded cavities, was a small stretch of thin and discouraged grass, and a man and a family of pigs were actually living here in some shanties. consequently this place could be really reckoned as "property"; it had a money value, and was doubtless taxed. i think it must have marked the limit of real estate in this world. it would be hard to set a money value upon any piece of earth that lies between that spot and the empty realm of space. that man may claim the distinction of owning the end of the world, for if there is any definite end to the world he has certainly found it. from here forward we moved through a storm-swept and smileless desolation. all about us rose gigantic masses, crags, and ramparts of bare and dreary rock, with not a vestige or semblance of plant or tree or flower anywhere, or glimpse of any creature that had life. the frost and the tempests of unnumbered ages had battered and hacked at these cliffs, with a deathless energy, destroying them piecemeal; so all the region about their bases was a tumbled chaos of great fragments which had been split off and hurled to the ground. soiled and aged banks of snow lay close about our path. the ghastly desolation of the place was as tremendously complete as if dor'e had furnished the working-plans for it. but every now and then, through the stern gateways around us we caught a view of some neighboring majestic dome, sheathed with glittering ice, and displaying its white purity at an elevation compared to which ours was groveling and plebeian, and this spectacle always chained one's interest and admiration at once, and made him forget there was anything ugly in the world. i have just said that there was nothing but death and desolation in these hideous places, but i forgot. in the most forlorn and arid and dismal one of all, where the racked and splintered debris was thickest, where the ancient patches of snow lay against the very path, where the winds blew bitterest and the general aspect was mournfulest and dreariest, and furthest from any suggestion of cheer or hope, i found a solitary wee forget-me-not flourishing away, not a droop about it anywhere, but holding its bright blue star up with the prettiest and gallantest air in the world, the only happy spirit, the only smiling thing, in all that grisly desert. she seemed to say, "cheer up!--as long as we are here, let us make the best of it." i judged she had earned a right to a more hospitable place; so i plucked her up and sent her to america to a friend who would respect her for the fight she had made, all by her small self, to make a whole vast despondent alpine desolation stop breaking its heart over the unalterable, and hold up its head and look at the bright side of things for once. we stopped for a nooning at a strongly built little inn called the schwarenbach. it sits in a lonely spot among the peaks, where it is swept by the trailing fringes of the cloud-rack, and is rained on, and snowed on, and pelted and persecuted by the storms, nearly every day of its life. it was the only habitation in the whole gemmi pass. close at hand, now, was a chance for a blood-curdling alpine adventure. close at hand was the snowy mass of the great altels cooling its topknot in the sky and daring us to an ascent. i was fired with the idea, and immediately made up my mind to procure the necessary guides, ropes, etc., and undertake it. i instructed harris to go to the landlord of the inn and set him about our preparations. meantime, i went diligently to work to read up and find out what this much-talked-of mountain-climbing was like, and how one should go about it--for in these matters i was ignorant. i opened mr. hinchliff's summer months among the alps (published 1857), and selected his account of his ascent of monte rosa. it began: "it is very difficult to free the mind from excitement on the evening before a grand expedition--" i saw that i was too calm; so i walked the room a while and worked myself into a high excitement; but the book's next remark --that the adventurer must get up at two in the morning--came as near as anything to flatting it all out again. however, i reinforced it, and read on, about how mr. hinchliff dressed by candle-light and was "soon down among the guides, who were bustling about in the passage, packing provisions, and making every preparation for the start"; and how he glanced out into the cold clear night and saw that-"the whole sky was blazing with stars, larger and brighter than they appear through the dense atmosphere breathed by inhabitants of the lower parts of the earth. they seemed actually suspended from the dark vault of heaven, and their gentle light shed a fairylike gleam over the snow-fields around the foot of the matterhorn, which raised its stupendous pinnacle on high, penetrating to the heart of the great bear, and crowning itself with a diadem of his magnificent stars. not a sound disturbed the deep tranquillity of the night, except the distant roar of streams which rush from the high plateau of the st. theodule glacier, and fall headlong over precipitous rocks till they lose themselves in the mazes of the gorner glacier." he took his hot toast and coffee, and then about half past three his caravan of ten men filed away from the riffel hotel, and began the steep climb. at half past five he happened to turn around, and "beheld the glorious spectacle of the matterhorn, just touched by the rosy-fingered morning, and looking like a huge pyramid of fire rising out of the barren ocean of ice and rock around it." then the breithorn and the dent blanche caught the radiant glow; but "the intervening mass of monte rosa made it necessary for us to climb many long hours before we could hope to see the sun himself, yet the whole air soon grew warmer after the splendid birth of the day." he gazed at the lofty crown of monte rosa and the wastes of snow that guarded its steep approaches, and the chief guide delivered the opinion that no man could conquer their awful heights and put his foot upon that summit. but the adventurers moved steadily on, nevertheless. they toiled up, and up, and still up; they passed the grand plateau; then toiled up a steep shoulder of the mountain, clinging like flies to its rugged face; and now they were confronted by a tremendous wall from which great blocks of ice and snow were evidently in the habit of falling. they turned aside to skirt this wall, and gradually ascended until their way was barred by a "maze of gigantic snow crevices,"--so they turned aside again, and "began a long climb of sufficient steepness to make a zigzag course necessary." fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a moment or two. at one of these halts somebody called out, "look at mont blanc!" and "we were at once made aware of the very great height we had attained by actually seeing the monarch of the alps and his attendant satellites right over the top of the breithorn, itself at least 14,000 feet high!" these people moved in single file, and were all tied to a strong rope, at regular distances apart, so that if one of them slipped on those giddy heights, the others could brace themselves on their alpenstocks and save him from darting into the valley, thousands of feet below. by and by they came to an ice-coated ridge which was tilted up at a sharp angle, and had a precipice on one side of it. they had to climb this, so the guide in the lead cut steps in the ice with his hatchet, and as fast as he took his toes out of one of these slight holes, the toes of the man behind him occupied it. "slowly and steadily we kept on our way over this dangerous part of the ascent, and i dare say it was fortunate for some of us that attention was distracted from the head by the paramount necessity of looking after the feet; for, while on the left the incline of ice was so steep that it would be impossible for any man to save himself in case of a slip, unless the others could hold him up, on the right we might drop a pebble from the hand over precipices of unknown extent down upon the tremendous glacier below. "great caution, therefore, was absolutely necessary, and in this exposed situation we were attacked by all the fury of that grand enemy of aspirants to monte rosa--a severe and bitterly cold wind from the north. the fine powdery snow was driven past us in the clouds, penetrating the interstices of our clothes, and the pieces of ice which flew from the blows of peter's ax were whisked into the air, and then dashed over the precipice. we had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from being served in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then, in the more violent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our alpenstocks into the ice and hold on hard." having surmounted this perilous steep, they sat down and took a brief rest with their backs against a sheltering rock and their heels dangling over a bottomless abyss; then they climbed to the base of another ridge--a more difficult and dangerous one still: "the whole of the ridge was exceedingly narrow, and the fall on each side desperately steep, but the ice in some of these intervals between the masses of rock assumed the form of a mere sharp edge, almost like a knife; these places, though not more than three or four short paces in length, looked uncommonly awkward; but, like the sword leading true believers to the gates of paradise, they must needs be passed before we could attain to the summit of our ambition. these were in one or two places so narrow, that in stepping over them with toes well turned out for greater security, one end of the foot projected over the awful precipice on the right, while the other was on the beginning of the ice slope on the left, which was scarcely less steep than the rocks. on these occasions peter would take my hand, and each of us stretching as far as we could, he was thus enabled to get a firm footing two paces or rather more from me, whence a spring would probably bring him to the rock on the other side; then, turning around, he called to me to come, and, taking a couple of steps carefully, i was met at the third by his outstretched hand ready to clasp mine, and in a moment stood by his side. the others followed in much the same fashion. once my right foot slipped on the side toward the precipice, but i threw out my left arm in a moment so that it caught the icy edge under my armpit as i fell, and supported me considerably; at the same instant i cast my eyes down the side on which i had slipped, and contrived to plant my right foot on a piece of rock as large as a cricket-ball, which chanced to protrude through the ice, on the very edge of the precipice. being thus anchored fore and aft, as it were, i believe i could easily have recovered myself, even if i had been alone, though it must be confessed the situation would have been an awful one; as it was, however, a jerk from peter settled the matter very soon, and i was on my legs all right in an instant. the rope is an immense help in places of this kind." now they arrived at the base of a great knob or dome veneered with ice and powdered with snow--the utmost, summit, the last bit of solidity between them and the hollow vault of heaven. they set to work with their hatchets, and were soon creeping, insectlike, up its surface, with their heels projecting over the thinnest kind of nothingness, thickened up a little with a few wandering shreds and films of cloud moving in a lazy procession far below. presently, one man's toe-hold broke and he fell! there he dangled in mid-air at the end of the rope, like a spider, till his friends above hauled him into place again. a little bit later, the party stood upon the wee pedestal of the very summit, in a driving wind, and looked out upon the vast green expanses of italy and a shoreless ocean of billowy alps. when i had read thus far, harris broke into the room in a noble excitement and said the ropes and the guides were secured, and asked if i was ready. i said i believed i wouldn't ascend the altels this time. i said alp-climbing was a different thing from what i had supposed it was, and so i judged we had better study its points a little more before we went definitely into it. but i told him to retain the guides and order them to follow us to zermatt, because i meant to use them there. i said i could feel the spirit of adventure beginning to stir in me, and was sure that the fell fascination of alp-climbing would soon be upon me. i said he could make up his mind to it that we would do a deed before we were a week older which would make the hair of the timid curl with fright. this made harris happy, and filled him with ambitious anticipations. he went at once to tell the guides to follow us to zermatt and bring all their paraphernalia with them. chapter xxxv [swindling the coroner] a great and priceless thing is a new interest! how it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him! i strode onward from the schwarenback hostelry a changed man, a reorganized personality. i walked into a new world, i saw with new eyes. i had been looking aloft at the giant show-peaks only as things to be worshiped for their grandeur and magnitude, and their unspeakable grace of form; i looked up at them now, as also things to be conquered and climbed. my sense of their grandeur and their noble beauty was neither lost nor impaired; i had gained a new interest in the mountains without losing the old ones. i followed the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye, and noted the possibility or impossibility of following them with my feet. when i saw a shining helmet of ice projecting above the clouds, i tried to imagine i saw files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a gossamer thread. we skirted the lonely little lake called the daubensee, and presently passed close by a glacier on the right-a thing like a great river frozen solid in its flow and broken square off like a wall at its mouth. i had never been so near a glacier before. here we came upon a new board shanty, and found some men engaged in building a stone house; so the schwarenback was soon to have a rival. we bought a bottle or so of beer here; at any rate they called it beer, but i knew by the price that it was dissolved jewelry, and i perceived by the taste that dissolved jewelry is not good stuff to drink. we were surrounded by a hideous desolation. we stepped forward to a sort of jumping-off place, and were confronted by a startling contrast: we seemed to look down into fairyland. two or three thousand feet below us was a bright green level, with a pretty town in its midst, and a silvery stream winding among the meadows; the charming spot was walled in on all sides by gigantic precipices clothed with pines; and over the pines, out of the softened distances, rose the snowy domes and peaks of the monte rosa region. how exquisitely green and beautiful that little valley down there was! the distance was not great enough to obliterate details, it only made them little, and mellow, and dainty, like landscapes and towns seen through the wrong end of a spy-glass. right under us a narrow ledge rose up out of the valley, with a green, slanting, bench-shaped top, and grouped about upon this green-baize bench were a lot of black and white sheep which looked merely like oversized worms. the bench seemed lifted well up into our neighborhood, but that was a deception--it was a long way down to it. we began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road i have ever seen. it wound it corkscrew curves down the face of the colossal precipice--a narrow way, with always the solid rock wall at one elbow, and perpendicular nothingness at the other. we met an everlasting procession of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing up this steep and muddy path, and there was no room to spare when you had to pass a tolerably fat mule. i always took the inside, when i heard or saw the mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall. i preferred the inside, of course, but i should have had to take it anyhow, because the mule prefers the outside. a mule's preference--on a precipice--is a thing to be respected. well, his choice is always the outside. his life is mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers and packages which rest against his body--therefore he is habituated to taking the outside edge of mountain paths, to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or banks on the other. when he goes into the passenger business he absurdly clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger always dangling over the great deeps of the lower world while that passenger's heart is in the highlands, so to speak. more than once i saw a mule's hind foot cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into the bottom abyss; and i noticed that upon these occasions the rider, whether male or female, looked tolerably unwell. there was one place where an eighteen-inch breadth of light masonry had been added to the verge of the path, and as there was a very sharp turn here, a panel of fencing had been set up there at some time, as a protection. this panel was old and gray and feeble, and the light masonry had been loosened by recent rains. a young american girl came along on a mule, and in making the turn the mule's hind foot caved all the loose masonry and one of the fence-posts overboard; the mule gave a violent lurch inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort, but that girl turned as white as the snows of mont blanc for a moment. the path was simply a groove cut into the face of the precipice; there was a four-foot breadth of solid rock under the traveler, and four-foot breadth of solid rock just above his head, like the roof of a narrow porch; he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer summitless and bottomless wall of rock before him, across a gorge or crack a biscuit's toss in width-but he could not see the bottom of his own precipice unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge. i did not do this, because i did not wish to soil my clothes. every few hundred yards, at particularly bad places, one came across a panel or so of plank fencing; but they were always old and weak, and they generally leaned out over the chasm and did not make any rash promises to hold up people who might need support. there was one of these panels which had only its upper board left; a pedestrianizing english youth came tearing down the path, was seized with an impulse to look over the precipice, and without an instant's thought he threw his weight upon that crazy board. it bent outward a foot! i never made a gasp before that came so near suffocating me. the english youth's face simply showed a lively surprise, but nothing more. he went swinging along valleyward again, as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner by the closest kind of a shave. the alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box made fast between the middles of two long poles, and sometimes it is a chair with a back to it and a support for the feet. it is carried by relays of strong porters. the motion is easier than that of any other conveyance. we met a few men and a great many ladies in litters; it seemed to me that most of the ladies looked pale and nauseated; their general aspect gave me the idea that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering. as a rule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery to take care of itself. but the most frightened creature i saw, was a led horse that overtook us. poor fellow, he had been born and reared in the grassy levels of the kandersteg valley and had never seen anything like this hideous place before. every few steps he would stop short, glance wildly out from the dizzy height, and then spread his red nostrils wide and pant as violently as if he had been running a race; and all the while he quaked from head to heel as with a palsy. he was a handsome fellow, and he made a fine statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to see him suffer so. this dreadful path has had its tragedy. baedeker, with his customary overterseness, begins and ends the tale thus: "the descent on horseback should be avoided. in 1861 a comtesse d'herlincourt fell from her saddle over the precipice and was killed on the spot." we looked over the precipice there, and saw the monument which commemorates the event. it stands in the bottom of the gorge, in a place which has been hollowed out of the rock to protect it from the torrent and the storms. our old guide never spoke but when spoken to, and then limited himself to a syllable or two, but when we asked him about this tragedy he showed a strong interest in the matter. he said the countess was very pretty, and very young--hardly out of her girlhood, in fact. she was newly married, and was on her bridal tour. the young husband was riding a little in advance; one guide was leading the husband's horse, another was leading the bride's. the old man continued: "the guide that was leading the husband's horse happened to glance back, and there was that poor young thing sitting up staring out over the precipice; and her face began to bend downward a little, and she put up her two hands slowly and met it--so,--and put them flat against her eyes--so--and then she sank out of the saddle, with a sharp shriek, and one caught only the flash of a dress, and it was all over." then after a pause: "ah, yes, that guide saw these things--yes, he saw them all. he saw them all, just as i have told you." after another pause: "ah, yes, he saw them all. my god, that was me. i was that guide!" this had been the one event of the old man's life; so one may be sure he had forgotten no detail connected with it. we listened to all he had to say about what was done and what happened and what was said after the sorrowful occurrence, and a painful story it was. when we had wound down toward the valley until we were about on the last spiral of the corkscrew, harris's hat blew over the last remaining bit of precipice--a small cliff a hundred or hundred and fifty feet high--and sailed down toward a steep slant composed of rough chips and fragments which the weather had flaked away from the precipices. we went leisurely down there, expecting to find it without any trouble, but we had made a mistake, as to that. we hunted during a couple of hours--not because the old straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to find out how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open ground where there was nothing left for it to hide behind. when one is reading in bed, and lays his paper-knife down, he cannot find it again if it is smaller than a saber; that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife could have been, and we finally had to give it up; but we found a fragment that had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging around and turning over the rocks we gradually collected all the lenses and the cylinders and the various odds and ends that go to making up a complete opera-glass. we afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner can have his adventurous lost-property by submitting proofs and paying costs of rehabilitation. we had hopes of finding the owner there, distributed around amongst the rocks, for it would have made an elegant paragraph; but we were disappointed. still, we were far from being disheartened, for there was a considerable area which we had not thoroughly searched; we were satisfied he was there, somewhere, so we resolved to wait over a day at leuk and come back and get him. then we sat down to polish off the perspiration and arrange about what we would do with him when we got him. harris was for contributing him to the british museum; but i was for mailing him to his widow. that is the difference between harris and me: harris is all for display, i am all for the simple right, even though i lose money by it. harris argued in favor of his proposition against mine, i argued in favor of mine and against his. the discussion warmed into a dispute; the dispute warmed into a quarrel. i finally said, very decidedly: "my mind is made up. he goes to the widow." harris answered sharply: "and my mind is made up. he goes to the museum." i said, calmly: "the museum may whistle when it gets him." harris retorted: "the widow may save herself the trouble of whistling, for i will see that she never gets him." after some angry bandying of epithets, i said: "it seems to me that you are taking on a good many airs about these remains. i don't quite see what you've got to say about them?" "i? i've got all to say about them. they'd never have been thought of if i hadn't found their opera-glass. the corpse belongs to me, and i'll do as i please with him." i was leader of the expedition, and all discoveries achieved by it naturally belonged to me. i was entitled to these remains, and could have enforced my right; but rather than have bad blood about the matter, i said we would toss up for them. i threw heads and won, but it was a barren victory, for although we spent all the next day searching, we never found a bone. i cannot imagine what could ever have become of that fellow. the town in the valley is called leuk or leukerbad. we pointed our course toward it, down a verdant slope which was adorned with fringed gentians and other flowers, and presently entered the narrow alleys of the outskirts and waded toward the middle of the town through liquid "fertilizer." they ought to either pave that village or organize a ferry. harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture; his person was populous with the little hungry pests; his skin, when he stripped, was splotched like a scarlet-fever patient's; so, when we were about to enter one of the leukerbad inns, and he noticed its sign, "chamois hotel," he refused to stop there. he said the chamois was plentiful enough, without hunting up hotels where they made a specialty of it. i was indifferent, for the chamois is a creature that will neither bite me nor abide with me; but to calm harris, we went to the ho^tel des alpes. at the table d'ho^te, we had this, for an incident. a very grave man--in fact his gravity amounted to solemnity, and almost to austerity--sat opposite us and he was "tight," but doing his best to appear sober. he took up a corked bottle of wine, tilted it over his glass awhile, then set it out of the way, with a contented look, and went on with his dinner. presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of course found it empty. he looked puzzled, and glanced furtively and suspiciously out of the corner of his eye at a benignant and unconscious old lady who sat at his right. shook his head, as much as to say, "no, she couldn't have done it." he tilted the corked bottle over his glass again, meantime searching around with his watery eye to see if anybody was watching him. he ate a few mouthfuls, raised his glass to his lips, and of course it was still empty. he bent an injured and accusing side-glance upon that unconscious old lady, which was a study to see. she went on eating and gave no sign. he took up his glass and his bottle, with a wise private nod of his head, and set them gravely on the left-hand side of his plate-poured himself another imaginary drink--went to work with his knife and fork once more--presently lifted his glass with good confidence, and found it empty, as usual. this was almost a petrifying surprise. he straightened himself up in his chair and deliberately and sorrowfully inspected the busy old ladies at his elbows, first one and then the other. at last he softly pushed his plate away, set his glass directly in front of him, held on to it with his left hand, and proceeded to pour with his right. this time he observed that nothing came. he turned the bottle clear upside down; still nothing issued from it; a plaintive look came into his face, and he said, as if to himself, " 'ic! they've got it all!" then he set the bottle down, resignedly, and took the rest of his dinner dry. it was at that table d'ho^te, too, that i had under inspection the largest lady i have ever seen in private life. she was over seven feet high, and magnificently proportioned. what had first called my attention to her, was my stepping on an outlying flange of her foot, and hearing, from up toward the ceiling, a deep "pardon, m'sieu, but you encroach!" that was when we were coming through the hall, and the place was dim, and i could see her only vaguely. the thing which called my attention to her the second time was, that at a table beyond ours were two very pretty girls, and this great lady came in and sat down between them and me and blotted out my view. she had a handsome face, and she was very finely formed--perfected formed, i should say. but she made everybody around her look trivial and commonplace. ladies near her looked like children, and the men about her looked mean. they looked like failures; and they looked as if they felt so, too. she sat with her back to us. i never saw such a back in my life. i would have so liked to see the moon rise over it. the whole congregation waited, under one pretext or another, till she finished her dinner and went out; they wanted to see her at full altitude, and they found it worth tarrying for. she filled one's idea of what an empress ought to be, when she rose up in her unapproachable grandeur and moved superbly out of that place. we were not at leuk in time to see her at her heaviest weight. she had suffered from corpulence and had come there to get rid of her extra flesh in the baths. five weeks of soaking-five uninterrupted hours of it every day--had accomplished her purpose and reduced her to the right proportions. those baths remove fat, and also skin-diseases. the patients remain in the great tanks for hours at a time. a dozen gentlemen and ladies occupy a tank together, and amuse themselves with rompings and various games. they have floating desks and tables, and they read or lunch or play chess in water that is breast-deep. the tourist can step in and view this novel spectacle if he chooses. there's a poor-box, and he will have to contribute. there are several of these big bathing-houses, and you can always tell when you are near one of them by the romping noises and shouts of laughter that proceed from it. the water is running water, and changes all the time, else a patient with a ringworm might take the bath with only a partial success, since, while he was ridding himself of the ringworm, he might catch the itch. the next morning we wandered back up the green valley, leisurely, with the curving walls of those bare and stupendous precipices rising into the clouds before us. i had never seen a clean, bare precipice stretching up five thousand feet above me before, and i never shall expect to see another one. they exist, perhaps, but not in places where one can easily get close to them. this pile of stone is peculiar. from its base to the soaring tops of its mighty towers, all its lines and all its details vaguely suggest human architecture. there are rudimentary bow-windows, cornices, chimneys, demarcations of stories, etc. one could sit and stare up there and study the features and exquisite graces of this grand structure, bit by bit, and day after day, and never weary his interest. the termination, toward the town, observed in profile, is the perfection of shape. it comes down out of the clouds in a succession of rounded, colossal, terracelike projections--a stairway for the gods; at its head spring several lofty storm-scarred towers, one after another, with faint films of vapor curling always about them like spectral banners. if there were a king whose realms included the whole world, here would be the place meet and proper for such a monarch. he would only need to hollow it out and put in the electric light. he could give audience to a nation at a time under its roof. our search for those remains having failed, we inspected with a glass the dim and distant track of an old-time avalanche that once swept down from some pine-grown summits behind the town and swept away the houses and buried the people; then we struck down the road that leads toward the rhone, to see the famous ladders. these perilous things are built against the perpendicular face of a cliff two or three hundred feet high. the peasants, of both sexes, were climbing up and down them, with heavy loads on their backs. i ordered harris to make the ascent, so i could put the thrill and horror of it in my book, and he accomplished the feat successfully, though a subagent, for three francs, which i paid. it makes me shudder yet when i think of what i felt when i was clinging there between heaven and earth in the person of that proxy. at times the world swam around me, and i could hardly keep from letting go, so dizzying was the appalling danger. many a person would have given up and descended, but i stuck to my task, and would not yield until i had accomplished it. i felt a just pride in my exploit, but i would not have repeated it for the wealth of the world. i shall break my neck yet with some such foolhardy performance, for warnings never seem to have any lasting effect on me. when the people of the hotel found that i had been climbing those crazy ladders, it made me an object of considerable attention. next morning, early, we drove to the rhone valley and took the train for visp. there we shouldered our knapsacks and things, and set out on foot, in a tremendous rain, up the winding gorge, toward zermatt. hour after hour we slopped along, by the roaring torrent, and under noble lesser alps which were clothed in rich velvety green all the way up and had little atomy swiss homes perched upon grassy benches along their mist-dimmed heights. the rain continued to pour and the torrent to boom, and we continued to enjoy both. at the one spot where this torrent tossed its white mane highest, and thundered loudest, and lashed the big boulders fiercest, the canton had done itself the honor to build the flimsiest wooden bridge that exists in the world. while we were walking over it, along with a party of horsemen, i noticed that even the larger raindrops made it shake. i called harris's attention to it, and he noticed it, too. it seemed to me that if i owned an elephant that was a keepsake, and i thought a good deal of him, i would think twice before i would ride him over that bridge. we climbed up to the village of st. nicholas, about half past four in the afternoon, waded ankle-deep through the fertilizer-juice, and stopped at a new and nice hotel close by the little church. we stripped and went to bed, and sent our clothes down to be baked. and the horde of soaked tourists did the same. that chaos of clothing got mixed in the kitchen, and there were consequences. i did not get back the same drawers i sent down, when our things came up at six-fifteen; i got a pair on a new plan. they were merely a pair of white ruffle-cuffed absurdities, hitched together at the top with a narrow band, and they did not come quite down to my knees. they were pretty enough, but they made me feel like two people, and disconnected at that. the man must have been an idiot that got himself up like that, to rough it in the swiss mountains. the shirt they brought me was shorter than the drawers, and hadn't any sleeves to it--at least it hadn't anything more than what mr. darwin would call "rudimentary" sleeves; these had "edging" around them, but the bosom was ridiculously plain. the knit silk undershirt they brought me was on a new plan, and was really a sensible thing; it opened behind, and had pockets in it to put your shoulder-blades in; but they did not seem to fit mine, and so i found it a sort of uncomfortable garment. they gave my bobtail coat to somebody else, and sent me an ulster suitable for a giraffe. i had to tie my collar on, because there was no button behind on that foolish little shirt which i described a while ago. when i was dressed for dinner at six-thirty, i was too loose in some places and too tight in others, and altogether i felt slovenly and ill-conditioned. however, the people at the table d'ho^te were no better off than i was; they had everybody's clothes but their own on. a long stranger recognized his ulster as soon as he saw the tail of it following me in, but nobody claimed my shirt or my drawers, though i described them as well as i was able. i gave them to the chambermaid that night when i went to bed, and she probably found the owner, for my own things were on a chair outside my door in the morning. there was a lovable english clergyman who did not get to the table d'ho^te at all. his breeches had turned up missing, and without any equivalent. he said he was not more particular than other people, but he had noticed that a clergyman at dinner without any breeches was almost sure to excite remark. chapter xxxvi [the fiendish fun of alp-climbing] we did not oversleep at st. nicholas. the church-bell began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from the length of time it continued to ring i judged that it takes the swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation through his head. most church-bells in the world are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin, but the st. nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening in its operation. still, it may have its right and its excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be any excuse for our church-bells at home, for their is no family in america without a clock, and consequently there is no fair pretext for the usual sunday medley of dreadful sounds that issues from our steeples. there is much more profanity in america on sunday than is all in the other six days of the week put together, and it is of a more bitter and malignant character than the week-day profanity, too. it is produced by the cracked-pot clangor of the cheap church-bells. we build our churches almost without regard to cost; we rear an edifice which is an adornment to the town, and we gild it, and fresco it, and mortgage it, and do everything we can think of to perfect it, and then spoil it all by putting a bell on it which afflicts everybody who hears it, giving some the headache, others st. vitus's dance, and the rest the blind staggers. an american village at ten o'clock on a summer sunday is the quietest and peacefulest and holiest thing in nature; but it is a pretty different thing half an hour later. mr. poe's poem of the "bells" stands incomplete to this day; but it is well enough that it is so, for the public reciter or "reader" who goes around trying to imitate the sounds of the various sorts of bells with his voice would find himself "up a stump" when he got to the church-bell-as joseph addison would say. the church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example. it is still clinging to one or two things which were useful once, but which are not useful now, neither are they ornamental. one is the bell-ringing to remind a clock-caked town that it is church-time, and another is the reading from the pulpit of a tedious list of "notices" which everybody who is interested has already read in the newspaper. the clergyman even reads the hymn through--a relic of an ancient time when hymn-books are scarce and costly; but everybody has a hymn-book, now, and so the public reading is no longer necessary. it is not merely unnecessary, it is generally painful; for the average clergyman could not fire into his congregation with a shotgun and hit a worse reader than himself, unless the weapon scattered shamefully. i am not meaning to be flippant and irreverent, i am only meaning to be truthful. the average clergyman, in all countries and of all denominations, is a very bad reader. one would think he would at least learn how to read the lord's prayer, by and by, but it is not so. he races through it as if he thought the quicker he got it in, the sooner it would be answered. a person who does not appreciate the exceeding value of pauses, and does not know how to measure their duration judiciously, cannot render the grand simplicity and dignity of a composition like that effectively. we took a tolerably early breakfast, and tramped off toward zermatt through the reeking lanes of the village, glad to get away from that bell. by and by we had a fine spectacle on our right. it was the wall-like butt end of a huge glacier, which looked down on us from an alpine height which was well up in the blue sky. it was an astonishing amount of ice to be compacted together in one mass. we ciphered upon it and decided that it was not less than several hundred feet from the base of the wall of solid ice to the top of it--harris believed it was really twice that. we judged that if st. paul's, st. peter's, the great pyramid, the strasburg cathedral and the capitol in washington were clustered against that wall, a man sitting on its upper edge could not hang his hat on the top of any one of them without reaching down three or four hundred feet--a thing which, of course, no man could do. to me, that mighty glacier was very beautiful. i did not imagine that anybody could find fault with it; but i was mistaken. harris had been snarling for several days. he was a rabid protestant, and he was always saying: "in the protestant cantons you never see such poverty and dirt and squalor as you do in this catholic one; you never see the lanes and alleys flowing with foulness; you never see such wretched little sties of houses; you never see an inverted tin turnip on top of a church for a dome; and as for a church-bell, why, you never hear a church-bell at all." all this morning he had been finding fault, straight along. first it was with the mud. he said, "it ain't muddy in a protestant canton when it rains." then it was with the dogs: "they don't have those lop-eared dogs in a protestant canton." then it was with the roads: "they don't leave the roads to make themselves in a protestant canton, the people make them--and they make a road that is a road, too." next it was the goats: "you never see a goat shedding tears in a protestant canton--a goat, there, is one of the cheerfulest objects in nature." next it was the chamois: "you never see a protestant chamois act like one of these-they take a bite or two and go; but these fellows camp with you and stay." then it was the guide-boards: "in a protestant canton you couldn't get lost if you wanted to, but you never see a guide-board in a catholic canton." next, "you never see any flower-boxes in the windows, here--never anything but now and then a cat--a torpid one; but you take a protestant canton: windows perfectly lovely with flowers--and as for cats, there's just acres of them. these folks in this canton leave a road to make itself, and then fine you three francs if you 'trot' over it-as if a horse could trot over such a sarcasm of a road." next about the goiter: "they talk about goiter!--i haven't seen a goiter in this whole canton that i couldn't put in a hat." he had growled at everything, but i judged it would puzzle him to find anything the matter with this majestic glacier. i intimated as much; but he was ready, and said with surly discontent: "you ought to see them in the protestant cantons." this irritated me. but i concealed the feeling, and asked: "what is the matter with this one?" "matter? why, it ain't in any kind of condition. they never take any care of a glacier here. the moraine has been spilling gravel around it, and got it all dirty." "why, man, they can't help that." "they? you're right. that is, they won't. they could if they wanted to. you never see a speck of dirt on a protestant glacier. look at the rhone glacier. it is fifteen miles long, and seven hundred feet think. if this was a protestant glacier you wouldn't see it looking like this, i can tell you." "that is nonsense. what would they do with it?" "they would whitewash it. they always do." i did not believe a word of this, but rather than have trouble i let it go; for it is a waste of breath to argue with a bigot. i even doubted if the rhone glacier was in a protestant canton; but i did not know, so i could not make anything by contradicting a man who would probably put me down at once with manufactured evidence. about nine miles from st. nicholas we crossed a bridge over the raging torrent of the visp, and came to a log strip of flimsy fencing which was pretending to secure people from tumbling over a perpendicular wall forty feet high and into the river. three children were approaching; one of them, a little girl, about eight years old, was running; when pretty close to us she stumbled and fell, and her feet shot under the rail of the fence and for a moment projected over the stream. it gave us a sharp shock, for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground slanted steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer impossibility; but she managed to scramble up, and ran by us laughing. we went forward and examined the place and saw the long tracks which her feet had made in the dirt when they darted over the verge. if she had finished her trip she would have struck some big rocks in the edge of the water, and then the torrent would have snatched her downstream among the half-covered boulders and she would have been pounded to pulp in two minutes. we had come exceedingly near witnessing her death. and now harris's contrary nature and inborn selfishness were striking manifested. he has no spirit of self-denial. he began straight off, and continued for an hour, to express his gratitude that the child was not destroyed. i never saw such a man. that was the kind of person he was; just so he was gratified, he never cared anything about anybody else. i had noticed that trait in him, over and over again. often, of course, it was mere heedlessness, mere want of reflection. doubtless this may have been the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard to bar on that account--and after all, its bottom, its groundwork, was selfishness. there is no avoiding that conclusion. in the instance under consideration, i did think the indecency of running on in that way might occur to him; but no, the child was saved and he was glad, that was sufficient--he cared not a straw for my feelings, or my loss of such a literary plum, snatched from my very mouth at the instant it was ready to drop into it. his selfishness was sufficient to place his own gratification in being spared suffering clear before all concern for me, his friend. apparently, he did not once reflect upon the valuable details which would have fallen like a windfall to me: fishing the child out--witnessing the surprise of the family and the stir the thing would have made among the peasants--then a swiss funeral--then the roadside monument, to be paid for by us and have our names mentioned in it. and we should have gone into baedeker and been immortal. i was silent. i was too much hurt to complain. if he could act so, and be so heedless and so frivolous at such a time, and actually seem to glory in it, after all i had done for him, i would have cut my hand off before i would let him see that i was wounded. we were approaching zermatt; consequently, we were approaching the renowned matterhorn. a month before, this mountain had been only a name to us, but latterly we had been moving through a steadily thickening double row of pictures of it, done in oil, water, chromo, wood, steel, copper, crayon, and photography, and so it had at length become a shape to us--and a very distinct, decided, and familiar one, too. we were expecting to recognize that mountain whenever or wherever we should run across it. we were not deceived. the monarch was far away when we first saw him, but there was no such thing as mistaking him. he has the rare peculiarity of standing by himself; he is peculiarly steep, too, and is also most oddly shaped. he towers into the sky like a colossal wedge, with the upper third of its blade bent a little to the left. the broad base of this monster wedge is planted upon a grand glacier-paved alpine platform whose elevation is ten thousand feet above sea-level; as the wedge itself is some five thousand feet high, it follows that its apex is about fifteen thousand feet above sea-level. so the whole bulk of this stately piece of rock, this sky-cleaving monolith, is above the line of eternal snow. yet while all its giant neighbors have the look of being built of solid snow, from their waists up, the matterhorn stands black and naked and forbidding, the year round, or merely powdered or streaked with white in places, for its sides are so steep that the snow cannot stay there. its strange form, its august isolation, and its majestic unkinship with its own kind, make it--so to speak--the napoleon of the mountain world. "grand, gloomy, and peculiar," is a phrase which fits it as aptly as it fitted the great captain. think of a monument a mile high, standing on a pedestal two miles high! this is what the matterhorn is--a monument. its office, henceforth, for all time, will be to keep watch and ward over the secret resting-place of the young lord douglas, who, in 1865, was precipitated from the summit over a precipice four thousand feet high, and never seen again. no man ever had such a monument as this before; the most imposing of the world's other monuments are but atoms compared to it; and they will perish, and their places will pass from memory, but this will remain. [1] 1. the accident which cost lord douglas his life (see chapter xii) also cost the lives of three other men. these three fell four-fifths of a mile, and their bodies were afterward found, lying side by side, upon a glacier, whence they were borne to zermatt and buried in the churchyard. the remains of lord douglas have never been found. the secret of his sepulture, like that of moses, must remain a mystery always. a walk from st. nicholas to zermatt is a wonderful experience. nature is built on a stupendous plan in that region. one marches continually between walls that are piled into the skies, with their upper heights broken into a confusion of sublime shapes that gleam white and cold against the background of blue; and here and there one sees a big glacier displaying its grandeurs on the top of a precipice, or a graceful cascade leaping and flashing down the green declivities. there is nothing tame, or cheap, or trivial--it is all magnificent. that short valley is a picture-gallery of a notable kind, for it contains no mediocrities; from end to end the creator has hung it with his masterpieces. we made zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine hours out from st. nicholas. distance, by guide-book, twelve miles; by pedometer seventy-two. we were in the heart and home of the mountain-climbers, now, as all visible things testified. the snow-peaks did not hold themselves aloof, in aristocratic reserve; they nestled close around, in a friendly, sociable way; guides, with the ropes and axes and other implements of their fearful calling slung about their persons, roosted in a long line upon a stone wall in front of the hotel, and waited for customers; sun-burnt climbers, in mountaineering costume, and followed by their guides and porters, arrived from time to time, from breakneck expeditions among the peaks and glaciers of the high alps; male and female tourists, on mules, filed by, in a continuous procession, hotelward-bound from wild adventures which would grow in grandeur very time they were described at the english or american fireside, and at last outgrow the possible itself. we were not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home of the alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; no, for here was mr. girdlestone himself, the famous englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable alpine summits without a guide. i was not equal to imagining a girdlestone; it was all i could do to even realize him, while looking straight at him at short range. i would rather face whole hyde parks of artillery than the ghastly forms of death which he has faced among the peaks and precipices of the mountains. there is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it. i have not jumped to this conclusion; i have traveled to it per gravel-train, so to speak. i have thought the thing all out, and am quite sure i am right. a born climber's appetite for climbing is hard to satisfy; when it comes upon him he is like a starving man with a feast before him; he may have other business on hand, but it must wait. mr. girdlestone had had his usual summer holiday in the alps, and had spent it in his usual way, hunting for unique chances to break his neck; his vacation was over, and his luggage packed for england, but all of a sudden a hunger had come upon him to climb the tremendous weisshorn once more, for he had heard of a new and utterly impossible route up it. his baggage was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend, laden with knapsacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens of milk, were just setting out. they would spend the night high up among the snows, somewhere, and get up at two in the morning and finish the enterprise. i had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it down-a feat which mr. girdlestone, with all his fortitude, could not do. even ladies catch the climbing mania, and are unable to throw it off. a famous climber, of that sex, had attempted the weisshorn a few days before our arrival, and she and her guides had lost their way in a snow-storm high up among the peaks and glaciers and been forced to wander around a good while before they could find a way down. when this lady reached the bottom, she had been on her feet twenty-three hours! our guides, hired on the gemmi, were already at zermatt when we reached there. so there was nothing to interfere with our getting up an adventure whenever we should choose the time and the object. i resolved to devote my first evening in zermatt to studying up the subject of alpine climbing, by way of preparation. i read several books, and here are some of the things i found out. one's shoes must be strong and heavy, and have pointed hobnails in them. the alpenstock must be of the best wood, for if it should break, loss of life might be the result. one should carry an ax, to cut steps in the ice with, on the great heights. there must be a ladder, for there are steep bits of rock which can be surmounted with this instrument--or this utensil--but could not be surmounted without it; such an obstruction has compelled the tourist to waste hours hunting another route, when a ladder would have saved him all trouble. one must have from one hundred and fifty to five hundred feet of strong rope, to be used in lowering the party down steep declivities which are too steep and smooth to be traversed in any other way. one must have a steel hook, on another rope--a very useful thing; for when one is ascending and comes to a low bluff which is yet too high for the ladder, he swings this rope aloft like a lasso, the hook catches at the top of the bluff, and then the tourist climbs the rope, hand over hand--being always particular to try and forget that if the hook gives way he will never stop falling till he arrives in some part of switzerland where they are not expecting him. another important thing--there must be a rope to tie the whole party together with, so that if one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the rope and save him. one must have a silk veil, to protect his face from snow, sleet, hail and gale, and colored goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous enemy, snow-blindness. finally, there must be some porters, to carry provisions, wine and scientific instruments, and also blanket bags for the party to sleep in. i closed my readings with a fearful adventure which mr. whymper once had on the matterhorn when he was prowling around alone, five thousand feet above the town of breil. he was edging his way gingerly around the corner of a precipice where the upper edge of a sharp declivity of ice-glazed snow joined it. this declivity swept down a couple of hundred feet, into a gully which curved around and ended at a precipice eight hundred feet high, overlooking a glacier. his foot slipped, and he fell. he says: "my knapsack brought my head down first, and i pitched into some rocks about a dozen feet below; they caught something, and tumbled me off the edge, head over heels, into the gully; the baton was dashed from my hands, and i whirled downward in a series of bounds, each longer than the last; now over ice, now into rocks, striking my head four or five times, each time with increased force. the last bound sent me spinning through the air in a leap of fifty or sixty feet, from one side of the gully to the other, and i struck the rocks, luckily, with the whole of my left side. they caught my clothes for a moment, and i fell back on to the snow with motion arrested. my head fortunately came the right side up, and a few frantic catches brought me to a halt, in the neck of the gully and on the verge of the precipice. baton, hat, and veil skimmed by and disappeared, and the crash of the rocks--which i had started--as they fell on to the glacier, told how narrow had been the escape from utter destruction. as it was, i fell nearly two hundred feet in seven or eight bounds. ten feet more would have taken me in one gigantic leaps of eight hundred feet on to the glacier below. "the situation was sufficiently serious. the rocks could not be let go for a moment, and the blood was spurting out of more than twenty cuts. the most serious ones were in the head, and i vainly tried to close them with one hand, while holding on with the other. it was useless; the blood gushed out in blinding jets at each pulsation. at last, in a moment of inspiration, i kicked out a big lump of snow and struck it as plaster on my head. the idea was a happy one, and the flow of blood diminished. then, scrambling up, i got, not a moment too soon, to a place of safety, and fainted away. the sun was setting when consciousness returned, and it was pitch-dark before the great staircase was descended; but by a combination of luck and care, the whole four thousand seven hundred feet of descent to breil was accomplished without a slip, or once missing the way." his wounds kept him abed some days. then he got up and climbed that mountain again. that is the way with a true alp-climber; the more fun he has, the more he wants. chapter xxxvii [our imposing column starts upward] after i had finished my readings, i was no longer myself; i was tranced, uplifted, intoxicated, by the almost incredible perils and adventures i had been following my authors through, and the triumphs i had been sharing with them. i sat silent some time, then turned to harris and said: "my mind is made up." something in my tone struck him: and when he glanced at my eye and read what was written there, his face paled perceptibly. he hesitated a moment, then said: "speak." i answered, with perfect calmness: "i will ascend the riffelberg." if i had shot my poor friend he could not have fallen from his chair more suddenly. if i had been his father he could not have pleaded harder to get me to give up my purpose. but i turned a deaf ear to all he said. when he perceived at last that nothing could alter my determination, he ceased to urge, and for a while the deep silence was broken only by his sobs. i sat in marble resolution, with my eyes fixed upon vacancy, for in spirit i was already wrestling with the perils of the mountains, and my friend sat gazing at me in adoring admiration through his tears. at last he threw himself upon me in a loving embrace and exclaimed in broken tones: "your harris will never desert you. we will die together." i cheered the noble fellow with praises, and soon his fears were forgotten and he was eager for the adventure. he wanted to summon the guides at once and leave at two in the morning, as he supposed the custom was; but i explained that nobody was looking at that hour; and that the start in the dark was not usually made from the village but from the first night's resting-place on the mountain side. i said we would leave the village at 3 or 4 p.m. on the morrow; meantime he could notify the guides, and also let the public know of the attempt which we proposed to make. i went to bed, but not to sleep. no man can sleep when he is about to undertake one of these alpine exploits. i tossed feverishly all night long, and was glad enough when i heard the clock strike half past eleven and knew it was time to get up for dinner. i rose, jaded and rusty, and went to the noon meal, where i found myself the center of interest and curiosity; for the news was already abroad. it is not easy to eat calmly when you are a lion; but it is very pleasant, nevertheless. as usual, at zermatt, when a great ascent is about to be undertaken, everybody, native and foreign, laid aside his own projects and took up a good position to observe the start. the expedition consisted of 198 persons, including the mules; or 205, including the cows. as follows: chiefs of service subordinates myself 1 veterinary surgeon mr. harris 1 butler 17 guides 12 waiters 4 surgeons 1 footman 1 geologist 1 barber 1 botanist 1 head cook 3 chaplains 9 assistants 15 barkeepers 1 confectionery artist 1 latinist transportation, etc. 27 porters 3 coarse washers and ironers 44 mules 1 fine ditto 44 muleteers 7 cows 2 milkers total, 154 men, 51 animals. grand total, 205. rations, etc. apparatus 16 cases hams 25 spring mattresses 2 barrels flour 2 hair ditto 22 barrels whiskey bedding for same 1 barrel sugar 2 mosquito-nets 1 keg lemons 29 tents 2,000 cigars scientific instruments 1 barrel pies 97 ice-axes 1 ton of pemmican 5 cases dynamite 143 pair crutches 7 cans nitroglycerin 2 barrels arnica 22 40-foot ladders 1 bale of lint 2 miles of rope 27 kegs paregoric 154 umbrellas it was full four o'clock in the afternoon before my cavalcade was entirely ready. at that hour it began to move. in point of numbers and spectacular effect, it was the most imposing expedition that had ever marched from zermatt. i commanded the chief guide to arrange the men and animals in single file, twelve feet apart, and lash them all together on a strong rope. he objected that the first two miles was a dead level, with plenty of room, and that the rope was never used except in very dangerous places. but i would not listen to that. my reading had taught me that many serious accidents had happened in the alps simply from not having the people tied up soon enough; i was not going to add one to the list. the guide then obeyed my order. when the procession stood at ease, roped together, and ready to move, i never saw a finer sight. it was 3,122 feet long--over half a mile; every man and me was on foot, and had on his green veil and his blue goggles, and his white rag around his hat, and his coil of rope over one shoulder and under the other, and his ice-ax in his belt, and carried his alpenstock in his left hand, his umbrella (closed) in his right, and his crutches slung at his back. the burdens of the pack-mules and the horns of the cows were decked with the edelweiss and the alpine rose. i and my agent were the only persons mounted. we were in the post of danger in the extreme rear, and tied securely to five guides apiece. our armor-bearers carried our ice-axes, alpenstocks, and other implements for us. we were mounted upon very small donkeys, as a measure of safety; in time of peril we could straighten our legs and stand up, and let the donkey walk from under. still, i cannot recommend this sort of animal--at least for excursions of mere pleasure--because his ears interrupt the view. i and my agent possessed the regulation mountaineering costumes, but concluded to leave them behind. out of respect for the great numbers of tourists of both sexes who would be assembled in front of the hotels to see us pass, and also out of respect for the many tourists whom we expected to encounter on our expedition, we decided to make the ascent in evening dress. we watered the caravan at the cold stream which rushes down a trough near the end of the village, and soon afterward left the haunts of civilization behind us. about half past five o'clock we arrived at a bridge which spans the visp, and after throwing over a detachment to see if it was safe, the caravan crossed without accident. the way now led, by a gentle ascent, carpeted with fresh green grass, to the church at winkelmatten. without stopping to examine this edifice, i executed a flank movement to the right and crossed the bridge over the findelenbach, after first testing its strength. here i deployed to the right again, and presently entered an inviting stretch of meadowland which was unoccupied save by a couple of deserted huts toward the furthest extremity. these meadows offered an excellent camping-place. we pitched our tents, supped, established a proper grade, recorded the events of the day, and then went to bed. we rose at two in the morning and dressed by candle-light. it was a dismal and chilly business. a few stars were shining, but the general heavens were overcast, and the great shaft of the matterhorn was draped in a cable pall of clouds. the chief guide advised a delay; he said he feared it was going to rain. we waited until nine o'clock, and then got away in tolerably clear weather. our course led up some terrific steeps, densely wooded with larches and cedars, and traversed by paths which the rains had guttered and which were obstructed by loose stones. to add to the danger and inconvenience, we were constantly meeting returning tourists on foot and horseback, and as constantly being crowded and battered by ascending tourists who were in a hurry and wanted to get by. our troubles thickened. about the middle of the afternoon the seventeen guides called a halt and held a consultation. after consulting an hour they said their first suspicion remained intact--that is to say, they believed they were lost. i asked if they did not know it? no, they said, they couldn't absolutely know whether they were lost or not, because none of them had ever been in that part of the country before. they had a strong instinct that they were lost, but they had no proofs--except that they did not know where they were. they had met no tourists for some time, and they considered that a suspicious sign. plainly we were in an ugly fix. the guides were naturally unwilling to go alone and seek a way out of the difficulty; so we all went together. for better security we moved slow and cautiously, for the forest was very dense. we did not move up the mountain, but around it, hoping to strike across the old trail. toward nightfall, when we were about tired out, we came up against a rock as big as a cottage. this barrier took all the remaining spirit out of the men, and a panic of fear and despair ensued. they moaned and wept, and said they should never see their homes and their dear ones again. then they began to upbraid me for bringing them upon this fatal expedition. some even muttered threats against me. clearly it was no time to show weakness. so i made a speech in which i said that other alp-climbers had been in as perilous a position as this, and yet by courage and perseverance had escaped. i promised to stand by them, i promised to rescue them. i closed by saying we had plenty of provisions to maintain us for quite a siege--and did they suppose zermatt would allow half a mile of men and mules to mysteriously disappear during any considerable time, right above their noses, and make no inquiries? no, zermatt would send out searching-expeditions and we should be saved. this speech had a great effect. the men pitched the tents with some little show of cheerfulness, and we were snugly under cover when the night shut down. i now reaped the reward of my wisdom in providing one article which is not mentioned in any book of alpine adventure but this. i refer to the paregoric. but for that beneficent drug, would have not one of those men slept a moment during that fearful night. but for that gentle persuader they must have tossed, unsoothed, the night through; for the whiskey was for me. yes, they would have risen in the morning unfitted for their heavy task. as it was, everybody slept but my agent and me--only we and the barkeepers. i would not permit myself to sleep at such a time. i considered myself responsible for all those lives. i meant to be on hand and ready, in case of avalanches up there, but i did not know it then. we watched the weather all through that awful night, and kept an eye on the barometer, to be prepared for the least change. there was not the slightest change recorded by the instrument, during the whole time. words cannot describe the comfort that that friendly, hopeful, steadfast thing was to me in that season of trouble. it was a defective barometer, and had no hand but the stationary brass pointer, but i did not know that until afterward. if i should be in such a situation again, i should not wish for any barometer but that one. all hands rose at two in the morning and took breakfast, and as soon as it was light we roped ourselves together and went at that rock. for some time we tried the hook-rope and other means of scaling it, but without success--that is, without perfect success. the hook caught once, and harris started up it hand over hand, but the hold broke and if there had not happened to be a chaplain sitting underneath at the time, harris would certainly have been crippled. as it was, it was the chaplain. he took to his crutches, and i ordered the hook-rope to be laid aside. it was too dangerous an implement where so many people are standing around. we were puzzled for a while; then somebody thought of the ladders. one of these was leaned against the rock, and the men went up it tied together in couples. another ladder was sent up for use in descending. at the end of half an hour everybody was over, and that rock was conquered. we gave our first grand shout of triumph. but the joy was short-lived, for somebody asked how we were going to get the animals over. this was a serious difficulty; in fact, it was an impossibility. the courage of the men began to waver immediately; once more we were threatened with a panic. but when the danger was most imminent, we were saved in a mysterious way. a mule which had attracted attention from the beginning by its disposition to experiment, tried to eat a five-pound can of nitroglycerin. this happened right alongside the rock. the explosion threw us all to the ground, and covered us with dirt and debris; it frightened us extremely, too, for the crash it made was deafening, and the violence of the shock made the ground tremble. however, we were grateful, for the rock was gone. its place was occupied by a new cellar, about thirty feet across, by fifteen feet deep. the explosion was heard as far as zermatt; and an hour and a half afterward, many citizens of that town were knocked down and quite seriously injured by descending portions of mule meat, frozen solid. this shows, better than any estimate in figures, how high the experimenter went. we had nothing to do, now, but bridge the cellar and proceed on our way. with a cheer the men went at their work. i attended to the engineering, myself. i appointed a strong detail to cut down trees with ice-axes and trim them for piers to support the bridge. this was a slow business, for ice-axes are not good to cut wood with. i caused my piers to be firmly set up in ranks in the cellar, and upon them i laid six of my forty-foot ladders, side by side, and laid six more on top of them. upon this bridge i caused a bed of boughs to be spread, and on top of the boughs a bed of earth six inches deep. i stretched ropes upon either side to serve as railings, and then my bridge was complete. a train of elephants could have crossed it in safety and comfort. by nightfall the caravan was on the other side and the ladders were taken up. next morning we went on in good spirits for a while, though our way was slow and difficult, by reason of the steep and rocky nature of the ground and the thickness of the forest; but at last a dull despondency crept into the men's faces and it was apparent that not only they, but even the guides, were now convinced that we were lost. the fact that we still met no tourists was a circumstance that was but too significant. another thing seemed to suggest that we were not only lost, but very badly lost; for there must surely be searching-parties on the road before this time, yet we had seen no sign of them. demoralization was spreading; something must be done, and done quickly, too. fortunately, i am not unfertile in expedients. i contrived one now which commended itself to all, for it promised well. i took three-quarters of a mile of rope and fastened one end of it around the waist of a guide, and told him to go find the road, while the caravan waited. i instructed him to guide himself back by the rope, in case of failure; in case of success, he was to give the rope a series of violent jerks, whereupon the expedition would go to him at once. he departed, and in two minutes had disappeared among the trees. i payed out the rope myself, while everybody watched the crawling thing with eager eyes. the rope crept away quite slowly, at times, at other times with some briskness. twice or thrice we seemed to get the signal, and a shout was just ready to break from the men's lips when they perceived it was a false alarm. but at last, when over half a mile of rope had slidden away, it stopped gliding and stood absolutely still--one minute--two minutes--three--while we held our breath and watched. was the guide resting? was he scanning the country from some high point? was he inquiring of a chance mountaineer? stop,--had he fainted from excess of fatigue and anxiety? this thought gave us a shock. i was in the very first act of detailing an expedition to succor him, when the cord was assailed with a series of such frantic jerks that i could hardly keep hold of it. the huzza that went up, then, was good to hear. "saved! saved!" was the word that rang out, all down the long rank of the caravan. we rose up and started at once. we found the route to be good enough for a while, but it began to grow difficult, by and by, and this feature steadily increased. when we judged we had gone half a mile, we momently expected to see the guide; but no, he was not visible anywhere; neither was he waiting, for the rope was still moving, consequently he was doing the same. this argued that he had not found the road, yet, but was marching to it with some peasant. there was nothing for us to do but plod along--and this we did. at the end of three hours we were still plodding. this was not only mysterious, but exasperating. and very fatiguing, too; for we had tried hard, along at first, to catch up with the guide, but had only fagged ourselves, in vain; for although he was traveling slowly he was yet able to go faster than the hampered caravan over such ground. at three in the afternoon we were nearly dead with exhaustion--and still the rope was slowly gliding out. the murmurs against the guide had been growing steadily, and at last they were become loud and savage. a mutiny ensued. the men refused to proceed. they declared that we had been traveling over and over the same ground all day, in a kind of circle. they demanded that our end of the rope be made fast to a tree, so as to halt the guide until we could overtake him and kill him. this was not an unreasonable requirement, so i gave the order. as soon as the rope was tied, the expedition moved forward with that alacrity which the thirst for vengeance usually inspires. but after a tiresome march of almost half a mile, we came to a hill covered thick with a crumbly rubbish of stones, and so steep that no man of us all was now in a condition to climb it. every attempt failed, and ended in crippling somebody. within twenty minutes i had five men on crutches. whenever a climber tried to assist himself by the rope, it yielded and let him tumble backward. the frequency of this result suggested an idea to me. i ordered the caravan to 'bout face and form in marching order; i then made the tow-rope fast to the rear mule, and gave the command: "mark time--by the right flank--forward--march!" the procession began to move, to the impressive strains of a battle-chant, and i said to myself, "now, if the rope don't break i judge this will fetch that guide into the camp." i watched the rope gliding down the hill, and presently when i was all fixed for triumph i was confronted by a bitter disappointment; there was no guide tied to the rope, it was only a very indignant old black ram. the fury of the baffled expedition exceeded all bounds. they even wanted to wreak their unreasoning vengeance on this innocent dumb brute. but i stood between them and their prey, menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks, and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder, and it was directly over my corpse. even as i spoke i saw that my doom was sealed, except a miracle supervened to divert these madmen from their fell purpose. i see the sickening wall of weapons now; i see that advancing host as i saw it then, i see the hate in those cruel eyes; i remember how i drooped my head upon my breast, i feel again the sudden earthquake shock in my rear, administered by the very ram i was sacrificing myself to save; i hear once more the typhoon of laughter that burst from the assaulting column as i clove it from van to rear like a sepoy shot from a rodman gun. i was saved. yes, i was saved, and by the merciful instinct of ingratitude which nature had planted in the breast of that treacherous beast. the grace which eloquence had failed to work in those men's hearts, had been wrought by a laugh. the ram was set free and my life was spared. we lived to find out that that guide had deserted us as soon as he had placed a half-mile between himself and us. to avert suspicion, he had judged it best that the line should continue to move; so he caught that ram, and at the time that he was sitting on it making the rope fast to it, we were imagining that he was lying in a swoon, overcome by fatigue and distress. when he allowed the ram to get up it fell to plunging around, trying to rid itself of the rope, and this was the signal which we had risen up with glad shouts to obey. we had followed this ram round and round in a circle all day--a thing which was proven by the discovery that we had watered the expedition seven times at one and same spring in seven hours. as expert a woodman as i am, i had somehow failed to notice this until my attention was called to it by a hog. this hog was always wallowing there, and as he was the only hog we saw, his frequent repetition, together with his unvarying similarity to himself, finally caused me to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led me to the deduction that this must be the same spring, also--which indeed it was. i made a note of this curious thing, as showing in a striking manner the relative difference between glacial action and the action of the hog. it is now a well-established fact that glaciers move; i consider that my observations go to show, with equal conclusiveness, that a hog in a spring does not move. i shall be glad to receive the opinions of other observers upon this point. to return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide, and then i shall be done with him. after leaving the ram tied to the rope, he had wandered at large a while, and then happened to run across a cow. judging that a cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took her by the tail, and the result justified his judgment. she nibbled her leisurely way downhill till it was near milking-time, then she struck for home and towed him into zermatt. chapter xxxviii [i conquer the gorner grat] we went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram had brought us. the men were greatly fatigued. their conviction that we were lost was forgotten in the cheer of a good supper, and before the reaction had a chance to set in, i loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed. next morning i was considering in my mind our desperate situation and trying to think of a remedy, when harris came to me with a baedeker map which showed conclusively that the mountain we were on was still in switzerland--yes, every part of it was in switzerland. so we were not lost, after all. this was an immense relief; it lifted the weight of two such mountains from my breast. i immediately had the news disseminated and the map was exhibited. the effect was wonderful. as soon as the men saw with their own eyes that they knew where they were, and that it was only the summit that was lost and not themselves, they cheered up instantly and said with one accord, let the summit take care of itself. our distresses being at an end, i now determined to rest the men in camp and give the scientific department of the expedition a chance. first, i made a barometric observation, to get our altitude, but i could not perceive that there was any result. i knew, by my scientific reading, that either thermometers or barometers ought to be boiled, to make them accurate; i did not know which it was, so i boiled them both. there was still no result; so i examined these instruments and discovered that they possessed radical blemishes: the barometer had no hand but the brass pointer and the ball of the thermometer was stuffed with tin-foil. i might have boiled those things to rags, and never found out anything. i hunted up another barometer; it was new and perfect. i boiled it half an hour in a pot of bean soup which the cooks were making. the result was unexpected: the instrument was not affecting at all, but there was such a strong barometer taste to the soup that the head cook, who was a most conscientious person, changed its name in the bill of fare. the dish was so greatly liked by all, that i ordered the cook to have barometer soup every day. it was believed that the barometer might eventually be injured, but i did not care for that. i had demonstrated to my satisfaction that it could not tell how high a mountain was, therefore i had no real use for it. changes in the weather i could take care of without it; i did not wish to know when the weather was going to be good, what i wanted to know was when it was going to be bad, and this i could find out from harris's corns. harris had had his corns tested and regulated at the government observatory in heidelberg, and one could depend upon them with confidence. so i transferred the new barometer to the cooking department, to be used for the official mess. it was found that even a pretty fair article of soup could be made from the defective barometer; so i allowed that one to be transferred to the subordinate mess. i next boiled the thermometer, and got a most excellent result; the mercury went up to about 200 degrees fahrenheit. in the opinion of the other scientists of the expedition, this seemed to indicate that we had attained the extraordinary altitude of two hundred thousand feet above sea-level. science places the line of eternal snow at about ten thousand feet above sea-level. there was no snow where we were, consequently it was proven that the eternal snow-line ceases somewhere above the ten-thousand-foot level and does not begin any more. this was an interesting fact, and one which had not been observed by any observer before. it was as valuable as interesting, too, since it would open up the deserted summits of the highest alps to population and agriculture. it was a proud thing to be where we were, yet it caused us a pang to reflect that but for that ram we might just as well been two hundred thousand feet higher. the success of my last experiment induced me to try an experiment with my photographic apparatus. i got it out, and boiled one of my cameras, but the thing was a failure; it made the wood swell up and burst, and i could not see that the lenses were any better than they were before. i now concluded to boil a guide. it might improve him, it could not impair his usefulness. but i was not allowed to proceed. guides have no feeling for science, and this one would not consent to be made uncomfortable in its interest. in the midst of my scientific work, one of those needless accidents happened which are always occurring among the ignorant and thoughtless. a porter shot at a chamois and missed it and crippled the latinist. this was not a serious matter to me, for a latinist's duties are as well performed on crutches as otherwise-but the fact remained that if the latinist had not happened to be in the way a mule would have got that load. that would have been quite another matter, for when it comes down to a question of value there is a palpable difference between a latinist and a mule. i could not depend on having a latinist in the right place every time; so, to make things safe, i ordered that in the future the chamois must not be hunted within limits of the camp with any other weapon than the forefinger. my nerves had hardly grown quiet after this affair when they got another shake-up--one which utterly unmanned me for a moment: a rumor swept suddenly through the camp that one of the barkeepers had fallen over a precipice! however, it turned out that it was only a chaplain. i had laid in an extra force of chaplains, purposely to be prepared for emergencies like this, but by some unaccountable oversight had come away rather short-handed in the matter of barkeepers. on the following morning we moved on, well refreshed and in good spirits. i remember this day with peculiar pleasure, because it saw our road restored to us. yes, we found our road again, and in quite an extraordinary way. we had plodded along some two hours and a half, when we came up against a solid mass of rock about twenty feet high. i did not need to be instructed by a mule this time. i was already beginning to know more than any mule in the expedition. i at once put in a blast of dynamite, and lifted that rock out of the way. but to my surprise and mortification, i found that there had been a chalet on top of it. i picked up such members of the family as fell in my vicinity, and subordinates of my corps collected the rest. none of these poor people were injured, happily, but they were much annoyed. i explained to the head chaleteer just how the thing happened, and that i was only searching for the road, and would certainly have given him timely notice if i had known he was up there. i said i had meant no harm, and hoped i had not lowered myself in his estimation by raising him a few rods in the air. i said many other judicious things, and finally when i offered to rebuild his chalet, and pay for the breakages, and throw in the cellar, he was mollified and satisfied. he hadn't any cellar at all, before; he would not have as good a view, now, as formerly, but what he had lost in view he had gained in cellar, by exact measurement. he said there wasn't another hole like that in the mountains-and he would have been right if the late mule had not tried to eat up the nitroglycerin. i put a hundred and sixteen men at work, and they rebuilt the chalet from its own debris in fifteen minutes. it was a good deal more picturesque than it was before, too. the man said we were now on the feil-stutz, above the schwegmatt--information which i was glad to get, since it gave us our position to a degree of particularity which we had not been accustomed to for a day or so. we also learned that we were standing at the foot of the riffelberg proper, and that the initial chapter of our work was completed. we had a fine view, from here, of the energetic visp, as it makes its first plunge into the world from under a huge arch of solid ice, worn through the foot-wall of the great gorner glacier; and we could also see the furggenbach, which is the outlet of the furggen glacier. the mule-road to the summit of the riffelberg passed right in front of the chalet, a circumstance which we almost immediately noticed, because a procession of tourists was filing along it pretty much all the time. [1] the chaleteer's business consisted in furnishing refreshments to tourists. my blast had interrupted this trade for a few minutes, by breaking all the bottles on the place; but i gave the man a lot of whiskey to sell for alpine champagne, and a lot of vinegar which would answer for rhine wine, consequently trade was soon as brisk as ever. 1. "pretty much" may not be elegant english, but it is high time it was. there is no elegant word or phrase which means just what it means.--m.t. leaving the expedition outside to rest, i quartered myself in the chalet, with harris, proposing to correct my journals and scientific observations before continuing the ascent. i had hardly begun my work when a tall, slender, vigorous american youth of about twenty-three, who was on his way down the mountain, entered and came toward me with that breeze self-complacency which is the adolescent's idea of the well-bred ease of the man of the world. his hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an american person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out. he introduced himself, smiling a smirky smile borrowed from the courtiers of the stage, extended a fair-skinned talon, and while he gripped my hand in it he bent his body forward three times at the hips, as the stage courtier does, and said in the airiest and most condescending and patronizing way--i quite remember his exact language: "very glad to make your acquaintance, 'm sure; very glad indeed, assure you. i've read all your little efforts and greatly admired them, and when i heard you were here, i ..." i indicated a chair, and he sat down. this grandee was the grandson of an american of considerable note in his day, and not wholly forgotten yet--a man who came so near being a great man that he was quite generally accounted one while he lived. i slowly paced the floor, pondering scientific problems, and heard this conversation: grandson. first visit to europe? harris. mine? yes. g.s. (with a soft reminiscent sigh suggestive of bygone joys that may be tasted in their freshness but once.) ah, i know what it is to you. a first visit!--ah, the romance of it! i wish i could feel it again. h. yes, i find it exceeds all my dreams. it is enchantment. i go... g.s. (with a dainty gesture of the hand signifying "spare me your callow enthusiasms, good friend.") yes, _i_ know, i know; you go to cathedrals, and exclaim; and you drag through league-long picture-galleries and exclaim; and you stand here, and there, and yonder, upon historic ground, and continue to exclaim; and you are permeated with your first crude conceptions of art, and are proud and happy. ah, yes, proud and happy--that expresses it. yes-yes, enjoy it--it is right--it is an innocent revel. h. and you? don't you do these things now? g.s. i! oh, that is very good! my dear sir, when you are as old a traveler as i am, you will not ask such a question as that. _i_ visit the regulation gallery, moon around the regulation cathedral, do the worn round of the regulation sights, yet?--excuse me! h. well, what do you do, then? g.s. do? i flit--and flit--for i am ever on the wing--but i avoid the herd. today i am in paris, tomorrow in berlin, anon in rome; but you would look for me in vain in the galleries of the louvre or the common resorts of the gazers in those other capitals. if you would find me, you must look in the unvisited nooks and corners where others never think of going. one day you will find me making myself at home in some obscure peasant's cabin, another day you will find me in some forgotten castle worshiping some little gem or art which the careless eye has overlooked and which the unexperienced would despise; again you will find me as guest in the inner sanctuaries of palaces while the herd is content to get a hurried glimpse of the unused chambers by feeing a servant. h. you are a guest in such places? g.s. and a welcoming one. h. it is surprising. how does it come? g.s. my grandfather's name is a passport to all the courts in europe. i have only to utter that name and every door is open to me. i flit from court to court at my own free will and pleasure, and am always welcome. i am as much at home in the palaces of europe as you are among your relatives. i know every titled person in europe, i think. i have my pockets full of invitations all the time. i am under promise to go to italy, where i am to be the guest of a succession of the noblest houses in the land. in berlin my life is a continued round of gaiety in the imperial palace. it is the same, wherever i go. h. it must be very pleasant. but it must make boston seem a little slow when you are at home. g.s. yes, of course it does. but i don't go home much. there's no life there--little to feed a man's higher nature. boston's very narrow, you know. she doesn't know it, and you couldn't convince her of it--so i say nothing when i'm there: where's the use? yes, boston is very narrow, but she has such a good opinion of herself that she can't see it. a man who has traveled as much as i have, and seen as much of the world, sees it plain enough, but he can't cure it, you know, so the best is to leave it and seek a sphere which is more in harmony with his tastes and culture. i run across there, one a year, perhaps, when i have nothing important on hand, but i'm very soon back again. i spend my time in europe. h. i see. you map out your plans and ... g.s. no, excuse me. i don't map out any plans. i simply follow the inclination of the day. i am limited by no ties, no requirements, i am not bound in any way. i am too old a traveler to hamper myself with deliberate purposes. i am simply a traveler--an inveterate traveler--a man of the world, in a word--i can call myself by no other name. i do not say, "i am going here, or i am going there"--i say nothing at all, i only act. for instance, next week you may find me the guest of a grandee of spain, or you may find me off for venice, or flitting toward dresden. i shall probably go to egypt presently; friends will say to friends, "he is at the nile cataracts"--and at that very moment they will be surprised to learn that i'm away off yonder in india somewhere. i am a constant surprise to people. they are always saying, "yes, he was in jerusalem when we heard of him last, but goodness knows where he is now." presently the grandson rose to leave--discovered he had an appointment with some emperor, perhaps. he did his graces over again: gripped me with one talon, at arm's-length, pressed his hat against his stomach with the other, bent his body in the middle three times, murmuring: "pleasure, 'm sure; great pleasure, 'm sure. wish you much success." then he removed his gracious presence. it is a great and solemn thing to have a grandfather. i have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way, for what little indignation he excited in me soon passed and left nothing behind it but compassion. one cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum. i have tried to repeat this lad's very words; if i have failed anywhere i have at least not failed to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what he said. he and the innocent chatterbox whom i met on the swiss lake are the most unique and interesting specimens of young america i came across during my foreign tramping. i have made honest portraits of them, not caricatures. the grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five or six times as an "old traveler,"and as many as three times (with a serene complacency which was maddening) as a "man of the world." there was something very delicious about his leaving boston to her "narrowness," unreproved and uninstructed. i formed the caravan in marching order, presently, and after riding down the line to see that it was properly roped together, gave the command to proceed. in a little while the road carried us to open, grassy land. we were above the troublesome forest, now, and had an uninterrupted view, straight before us, of our summit-the summit of the riffelberg. we followed the mule-road, a zigzag course, now to the right, now to the left, but always up, and always crowded and incommoded by going and coming files of reckless tourists who were never, in a single instance, tied together. i was obliged to exert the utmost care and caution, for in many places the road was not two yards wide, and often the lower side of it sloped away in slanting precipices eight and even nine feet deep. i had to encourage the men constantly, to keep them from giving way to their unmanly fears. we might have made the summit before night, but for a delay caused by the loss of an umbrella. i was allowing the umbrella to remain lost, but the men murmured, and with reason, for in this exposed region we stood in peculiar need of protection against avalanches; so i went into camp and detached a strong party to go after the missing article. the difficulties of the next morning were severe, but our courage was high, for our goal was near. at noon we conquered the last impediment--we stood at last upon the summit, and without the loss of a single man except the mule that ate the glycerin. our great achievement was achieved--the possibility of the impossible was demonstrated, and harris and i walked proudly into the great dining-room of the riffelberg hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner. yes, i had made the grand ascent; but it was a mistake to do it in evening dress. the plug hats were battered, the swallow-tails were fluttering rags, mud added no grace, the general effect was unpleasant and even disreputable. there were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel-mainly ladies and little children--and they gave us an admiring welcome which paid us for all our privations and sufferings. the ascent had been made, and the names and dates now stand recorded on a stone monument there to prove it to all future tourists. i boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with a most curious result: the summit was not as high as the point on the mountainside where i had taken the first altitude. suspecting that i had made an important discovery, i prepared to verify it. there happened to be a still higher summit (called the gorner grat), above the hotel, and notwithstanding the fact that it overlooks a glacier from a dizzy height, and that the ascent is difficult and dangerous, i resolved to venture up there and boil a thermometer. so i sent a strong party, with some borrowed hoes, in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig a stairway in the soil all the way up, and this i ascended, roped to the guides. this breezy height was the summit proper--so i accomplished even more than i had originally purposed to do. this foolhardy exploit is recorded on another stone monument. i boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this spot, which purported to be two thousand feet higher than the locality of the hotel, turned out to be nine thousand feet lower. thus the fact was clearly demonstrated that, above a certain point, the higher a point seems to be, the lower it actually is. our ascent itself was a great achievement, but this contribution to science was an inconceivably greater matter. cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower temperature the higher and higher you go, and hence the apparent anomaly. i answer that i do not base my theory upon what the boiling water does, but upon what a boiled thermometer says. you can't go behind the thermometer. i had a magnificent view of monte rosa, and apparently all the rest of the alpine world, from that high place. all the circling horizon was piled high with a mighty tumult of snowy crests. one might have imagined he saw before him the tented camps of a beleaguering host of brobdingnagians. but lonely, conspicuous, and superb, rose that wonderful upright wedge, the matterhorn. its precipitous sides were powdered over with snow, and the upper half hidden in thick clouds which now and then dissolved to cobweb films and gave brief glimpses of the imposing tower as through a veil. [2] a little later the matterhorn took to himself the semblance of a volcano; he was stripped naked to his apex-around this circled vast wreaths of white cloud which strung slowly out and streamed away slantwise toward the sun, a twenty-mile stretch of rolling and tumbling vapor, and looking just as if it were pouring out of a crater. later again, one of the mountain's sides was clean and clear, and another side densely clothed from base to summit in thick smokelike cloud which feathered off and flew around the shaft's sharp edge like the smoke around the corners of a burning building. the matterhorn is always experimenting, and always gets up fine effects, too. in the sunset, when all the lower world is palled in gloom, it points toward heaven out of the pervading blackness like a finger of fire. in the sunrise--well, they say it is very fine in the sunrise. 2. note.--i had the very unusual luck to catch one little momentary glimpse of the matterhorn wholly unencumbered by clouds. i leveled my photographic apparatus at it without the loss of an instant, and should have got an elegant picture if my donkey had not interfered. it was my purpose to draw this photograph all by myself for my book, but was obliged to put the mountain part of it into the hands of the professional artist because i found i could not do landscape well. authorities agree that there is no such tremendous "layout" of snowy alpine magnitude, grandeur, and sublimity to be seen from any other accessible point as the tourist may see from the summit of the riffelberg. therefore, let the tourist rope himself up and go there; for i have shown that with nerve, caution, and judgment, the thing can be done. i wish to add one remark, here--in parentheses, so to speak --suggested by the word "snowy," which i have just used. we have all seen hills and mountains and levels with snow on them, and so we think we know all the aspects and effects produced by snow. but indeed we do not until we have seen the alps. possibly mass and distance add something--at any rate, something is added. among other noticeable things, there is a dazzling, intense whiteness about the distant alpine snow, when the sun is on it, which one recognizes as peculiar, and not familiar to the eye. the snow which one is accustomed to has a tint to it--painters usually give it a bluish cast--but there is no perceptible tint to the distant alpine snow when it is trying to look its whitest. as to the unimaginable splendor of it when the sun is blazing down on it--well, it simply is unimaginable. chapter xxxix [we travel by glacier] a guide-book is a queer thing. the reader has just seen what a man who undertakes the great ascent from zermatt to the riffelberg hotel must experience. yet baedeker makes these strange statements concerning this matter: 1. distance--3 hours. 2. the road cannot be mistaken. 3. guide unnecessary. 4. distance from riffelberg hotel to the gorner grat, one hour and a half. 5. ascent simple and easy. guide unnecessary. 6. elevation of zermatt above sea-level, 5,315 feet. 7. elevation of riffelberg hotel above sea-level, 8,429 feet. 8. elevation of the gorner grat above sea-level, 10,289 feet. i have pretty effectually throttled these errors by sending him the following demonstrated facts: 1. distance from zermatt to riffelberg hotel, 7 days. 2. the road can be mistaken. if i am the first that did it, i want the credit of it, too. 3. guides are necessary, for none but a native can read those finger-boards. 4. the estimate of the elevation of the several localities above sea-level is pretty correct--for baedeker. he only misses it about a hundred and eighty or ninety thousand feet. i found my arnica invaluable. my men were suffering excruciatingly, from the friction of sitting down so much. during two or three days, not one of them was able to do more than lie down or walk about; yet so effective was the arnica, that on the fourth all were able to sit up. i consider that, more than to anything else, i owe the success of our great undertaking to arnica and paregoric. my men are being restored to health and strength, my main perplexity, now, was how to get them down the mountain again. i was not willing to expose the brave fellows to the perils, fatigues, and hardships of that fearful route again if it could be helped. first i thought of balloons; but, of course, i had to give that idea up, for balloons were not procurable. i thought of several other expedients, but upon consideration discarded them, for cause. but at last i hit it. i was aware that the movement of glaciers is an established fact, for i had read it in baedeker; so i resolved to take passage for zermatt on the great gorner glacier. very good. the next thing was, how to get down the glacier comfortably--for the mule-road to it was long, and winding, and wearisome. i set my mind at work, and soon thought out a plan. one looks straight down upon the vast frozen river called the gorner glacier, from the gorner grat, a sheer precipice twelve hundred feet high. we had one hundred and fifty-four umbrellas-and what is an umbrella but a parachute? i mentioned this noble idea to harris, with enthusiasm, and was about to order the expedition to form on the gorner grat, with their umbrellas, and prepare for flight by platoons, each platoon in command of a guide, when harris stopped me and urged me not to be too hasty. he asked me if this method of descending the alps had ever been tried before. i said no, i had not heard of an instance. then, in his opinion, it was a matter of considerable gravity; in his opinion it would not be well to send the whole command over the cliff at once; a better way would be to send down a single individual, first, and see how he fared. i saw the wisdom in this idea instantly. i said as much, and thanked my agent cordially, and told him to take his umbrella and try the thing right away, and wave his hat when he got down, if he struck in a soft place, and then i would ship the rest right along. harris was greatly touched with this mark of confidence, and said so, in a voice that had a perceptible tremble in it; but at the same time he said he did not feel himself worthy of so conspicuous a favor; that it might cause jealousy in the command, for there were plenty who would not hesitate to say he had used underhanded means to get the appointment, whereas his conscience would bear him witness that he had not sought it at all, nor even, in his secret heart, desired it. i said these words did him extreme credit, but that he must not throw away the imperishable distinction of being the first man to descend an alp per parachute, simply to save the feelings of some envious underlings. no, i said, he must accept the appointment--it was no longer an invitation, it was a command. he thanked me with effusion, and said that putting the thing in this form removed every objection. he retired, and soon returned with his umbrella, his eye flaming with gratitude and his cheeks pallid with joy. just then the head guide passed along. harris's expression changed to one of infinite tenderness, and he said: "that man did me a cruel injury four days ago, and i said in my heart he should live to perceive and confess that the only noble revenge a man can take upon his enemy is to return good for evil. i resign in his favor. appoint him." i threw my arms around the generous fellow and said: "harris, you are the noblest soul that lives. you shall not regret this sublime act, neither shall the world fail to know of it. you shall have opportunity far transcending this one, too, if i live--remember that." i called the head guide to me and appointed him on the spot. but the thing aroused no enthusiasm in him. he did not take to the idea at all. he said: "tie myself to an umbrella and jump over the gorner grat! excuse me, there are a great many pleasanter roads to the devil than that." upon a discussion of the subject with him, it appeared that he considered the project distinctly and decidedly dangerous. i was not convinced, yet i was not willing to try the experiment in any risky way--that is, in a way that might cripple the strength and efficiency of the expedition. i was about at my wits' end when it occurred to me to try it on the latinist. he was called in. but he declined, on the plea of inexperience, diffidence in public, lack of curiosity, and i didn't know what all. another man declined on account of a cold in the head; thought he ought to avoid exposure. another could not jump well--never could jump well--did not believe he could jump so far without long and patient practice. another was afraid it was going to rain, and his umbrella had a hole in it. everybody had an excuse. the result was what the reader has by this time guessed: the most magnificent idea that was ever conceived had to be abandoned, from sheer lack of a person with enterprise enough to carry it out. yes, i actually had to give that thing up--while doubtless i should live to see somebody use it and take all the credit from me. well, i had to go overland--there was no other way. i marched the expedition down the steep and tedious mule-path and took up as good a position as i could upon the middle of the glacier--because baedeker said the middle part travels the fastest. as a measure of economy, however, i put some of the heavier baggage on the shoreward parts, to go as slow freight. i waited and waited, but the glacier did not move. night was coming on, the darkness began to gather--still we did not budge. it occurred to me then, that there might be a time-table in baedeker; it would be well to find out the hours of starting. i called for the book--it could not be found. bradshaw would certainly contain a time-table; but no bradshaw could be found. very well, i must make the best of the situation. so i pitched the tents, picketed the animals, milked the cows, had supper, paregoricked the men, established the watch, and went to bed--with orders to call me as soon as we came in sight of zermatt. i awoke about half past ten next morning, and looked around. we hadn't budged a peg! at first i could not understand it; then it occurred to me that the old thing must be aground. so i cut down some trees and rigged a spar on the starboard and another on the port side, and fooled away upward of three hours trying to spar her off. but it was no use. she was half a mile wide and fifteen or twenty miles long, and there was no telling just whereabouts she was aground. the men began to show uneasiness, too, and presently they came flying to me with ashy faces, saying she had sprung a leak. nothing but my cool behavior at this critical time saved us from another panic. i order them to show me the place. they led me to a spot where a huge boulder lay in a deep pool of clear and brilliant water. it did look like a pretty bad leak, but i kept that to myself. i made a pump and set the men to work to pump out the glacier. we made a success of it. i perceived, then, that it was not a leak at all. this boulder had descended from a precipice and stopped on the ice in the middle of the glacier, and the sun had warmed it up, every day, and consequently it had melted its way deeper and deeper into the ice, until at last it reposed, as we had found it, in a deep pool of the clearest and coldest water. presently baedeker was found again, and i hunted eagerly for the time-table. there was none. the book simply said the glacier was moving all the time. this was satisfactory, so i shut up the book and chose a good position to view the scenery as we passed along. i stood there some time enjoying the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did not seem to be gaining any on the scenery. i said to myself, "this confounded old thing's aground again, sure,"--and opened baedeker to see if i could run across any remedy for these annoying interruptions. i soon found a sentence which threw a dazzling light upon the matter. it said, "the gorner glacier travels at an average rate of a little less than an inch a day." i have seldom felt so outraged. i have seldom had my confidence so wantonly betrayed. i made a small calculation: one inch a day, say thirty feet a year; estimated distance to zermatt, three and one-eighteenth miles. time required to go by glacier, a little over five hundred years! i said to myself, "i can walk it quicker--and before i will patronize such a fraud as this, i will do it." when i revealed to harris the fact that the passenger part of this glacier--the central part--the lightning-express part, so to speak--was not due in zermatt till the summer of 2378, and that the baggage, coming along the slow edge, would not arrive until some generations later, he burst out with: "that is european management, all over! an inch a day--think of that! five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles! but i am not a bit surprised. it's a catholic glacier. you can tell by the look of it. and the management." i said, no, i believed nothing but the extreme end of it was in a catholic canton. "well, then, it's a government glacier," said harris. "it's all the same. over here the government runs everything--so everything's slow; slow, and ill-managed. but with us, everything's done by private enterprise--and then there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it. i wish tom scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab once--you'd see it take a different gait from this." i said i was sure he would increase the speed, if there was trade enough to justify it. "he'd make trade," said harris. "that's the difference between governments and individuals. governments don't care, individuals do. tom scott would take all the trade; in two years gorner stock would go to two hundred, and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers under the hammer for taxes." after a reflective pause, harris added, "a little less than an inch a day; a little less than an inch, mind you. well, i'm losing my reverence for glaciers." i was feeling much the same way myself. i have traveled by canal-boat, ox-wagon, raft, and by the ephesus and smyrna railway; but when it comes down to good solid honest slow motion, i bet my money on the glacier. as a means of passenger transportation, i consider the glacier a failure; but as a vehicle of slow freight, i think she fills the bill. in the matter of putting the fine shades on that line of business, i judge she could teach the germans something. i ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land journey to zermatt. at this moment a most interesting find was made; a dark object, bedded in the glacial ice, was cut out with the ice-axes, and it proved to be a piece of the undressed skin of some animal--a hair trunk, perhaps; but a close inspection disabled the hair-trunk theory, and further discussion and examination exploded it entirely--that is, in the opinion of all the scientists except the one who had advanced it. this one clung to his theory with affectionate fidelity characteristic of originators of scientific theories, and afterward won many of the first scientists of the age to his view, by a very able pamphlet which he wrote, entitled, "evidences going to show that the hair trunk, in a wild state, belonged to the early glacial period, and roamed the wastes of chaos in the company with the cave-bear, primeval man, and the other oo"litics of the old silurian family." each of our scientists had a theory of his own, and put forward an animal of his own as a candidate for the skin. i sided with the geologist of the expedition in the belief that this patch of skin had once helped to cover a siberian elephant, in some old forgotten age--but we divided there, the geologist believing that this discovery proved that siberia had formerly been located where switzerland is now, whereas i held the opinion that it merely proved that the primeval swiss was not the dull savage he is represented to have been, but was a being of high intellectual development, who liked to go to the menagerie. we arrived that evening, after many hardships and adventures, in some fields close to the great ice-arch where the mad visp boils and surges out from under the foot of the great gorner glacier, and here we camped, our perils over and our magnificent undertaking successfully completed. we marched into zermatt the next day, and were received with the most lavish honors and applause. a document, signed and sealed by the authorities, was given to me which established and endorsed the fact that i had made the ascent of the riffelberg. this i wear around my neck, and it will be buried with me when i am no more. chapter xl [piteous relics at chamonix] i am not so ignorant about glacial movement, now, as i was when i took passage on the gorner glacier. i have "read up" since. i am aware that these vast bodies of ice do not travel at the same rate of speed; while the gorner glacier makes less than an inch a day, the unter-aar glacier makes as much as eight; and still other glaciers are said to go twelve, sixteen, and even twenty inches a day. one writer says that the slowest glacier travels twenty-give feet a year, and the fastest four hundred. what is a glacier? it is easy to say it looks like a frozen river which occupies the bed of a winding gorge or gully between mountains. but that gives no notion of its vastness. for it is sometimes six hundred feet thick, and we are not accustomed to rivers six hundred feet deep; no, our rivers are six feet, twenty feet, and sometimes fifty feet deep; we are not quite able to grasp so large a fact as an ice-river six hundred feet deep. the glacier's surface is not smooth and level, but has deep swales and swelling elevations, and sometimes has the look of a tossing sea whose turbulent billows were frozen hard in the instant of their most violent motion; the glacier's surface is not a flawless mass, but is a river with cracks or crevices, some narrow, some gaping wide. many a man, the victim of a slip or a misstep, has plunged down on of these and met his death. men have been fished out of them alive; but it was when they did not go to a great depth; the cold of the great depths would quickly stupefy a man, whether he was hurt or unhurt. these cracks do not go straight down; one can seldom see more than twenty to forty feet down them; consequently men who have disappeared in them have been sought for, in the hope that they had stopped within helping distance, whereas their case, in most instances, had really been hopeless from the beginning. in 1864 a party of tourists was descending mont blanc, and while picking their way over one of the mighty glaciers of that lofty region, roped together, as was proper, a young porter disengaged himself from the line and started across an ice-bridge which spanned a crevice. it broke under him with a crash, and he disappeared. the others could not see how deep he had gone, so it might be worthwhile to try and rescue him. a brave young guide named michel payot volunteered. two ropes were made fast to his leather belt and he bore the end of a third one in his hand to tie to the victim in case he found him. he was lowered into the crevice, he descended deeper and deeper between the clear blue walls of solid ice, he approached a bend in the crack and disappeared under it. down, and still down, he went, into this profound grave; when he had reached a depth of eighty feet he passed under another bend in the crack, and thence descended eighty feet lower, as between perpendicular precipices. arrived at this stage of one hundred and sixty feet below the surface of the glacier, he peered through the twilight dimness and perceived that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its course was lost in darkness. what a place that was to be in--especially if that leather belt should break! the compression of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow; he called to his friends to draw him up, but could not make them hear. they still lowered him, deeper and deeper. then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could; his friends understood, and dragged him out of those icy jaws of death. then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it down two hundred feet, but it found no bottom. it came up covered with congelations--evidence enough that even if the poor porter reached the bottom with unbroken bones, a swift death from cold was sure, anyway. a glacier is a stupendous, ever-progressing, resistless plow. it pushes ahead of its masses of boulders which are packed together, and they stretch across the gorge, right in front of it, like a long grave or a long, sharp roof. this is called a moraine. it also shoves out a moraine along each side of its course. imposing as the modern glaciers are, they are not so huge as were some that once existed. for instance, mr. whymper says: "at some very remote period the valley of aosta was occupied by a vast glacier, which flowed down its entire length from mont blanc to the plain of piedmont, remained stationary, or nearly so, at its mouth for many centuries, and deposited there enormous masses of debris. the length of this glacier exceeded eighty miles, and it drained a basin twenty-five to thirty-five miles across, bounded by the highest mountains in the alps. the great peaks rose several thousand feet above the glaciers, and then, as now, shattered by sun and frost, poured down their showers of rocks and stones, in witness of which there are the immense piles of angular fragments that constitute the moraines of ivrea. "the moraines around ivrea are of extraordinary dimensions. that which was on the left bank of the glacier is about thirteen miles long, and in some places rises to a height of two thousand one hundred and thirty feet above the floor of the valley! the terminal moraines (those which are pushed in front of the glaciers) cover something like twenty square miles of country. at the mouth of the valley of aosta, the thickness of the glacier must have been at least two thousand feet, and its width, at that part, five miles and a quarter." it is not easy to get at a comprehension of a mass of ice like that. if one could cleave off the butt end of such a glacier--an oblong block two or three miles wide by five and a quarter long and two thousand feet thick-he could completely hide the city of new york under it, and trinity steeple would only stick up into it relatively as far as a shingle-nail would stick up into the bottom of a saratoga trunk. "the boulders from mont blanc, upon the plain below ivrea, assure us that the glacier which transported them existed for a prodigious length of time. their present distance from the cliffs from which they were derived is about 420,000 feet, and if we assume that they traveled at the rate of 400 feet per annum, their journey must have occupied them no less than 1,055 years! in all probability they did not travel so fast." glaciers are sometimes hurried out of their characteristic snail-pace. a marvelous spectacle is presented then. mr. whymper refers to a case which occurred in iceland in 1721: "it seems that in the neighborhood of the mountain kotlugja, large bodies of water formed underneath, or within the glaciers (either on account of the interior heat of the earth, or from other causes), and at length acquired irresistible power, tore the glaciers from their mooring on the land, and swept them over every obstacle into the sea. prodigious masses of ice were thus borne for a distance of about ten miles over land in the space of a few hours; and their bulk was so enormous that they covered the sea for seven miles from the shore, and remained aground in six hundred feet of water! the denudation of the land was upon a grand scale. all superficial accumulations were swept away, and the bedrock was exposed. it was described, in graphic language, how all irregularities and depressions were obliterated, and a smooth surface of several miles' area laid bare, and that this area had the appearance of having been planed by a plane." the account translated from the icelandic says that the mountainlike ruins of this majestic glacier so covered the sea that as far as the eye could reach no open water was discoverable, even from the highest peaks. a monster wall or barrier of ice was built across a considerable stretch of land, too, by this strange irruption: "one can form some idea of the altitude of this barrier of ice when it is mentioned that from hofdabrekka farm, which lies high up on a fjeld, one could not see hjorleifshofdi opposite, which is a fell six hundred and forty feet in height; but in order to do so had to clamber up a mountain slope east of hofdabrekka twelve hundred feet high." these things will help the reader to understand why it is that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by. the alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work. the alpine glaciers move--that is granted, now, by everybody. but there was a time when people scoffed at the idea; they said you might as well expect leagues of solid rock to crawl along the ground as expect leagues of ice to do it. but proof after proof as furnished, and the finally the world had to believe. the wise men not only said the glacier moved, but they timed its movement. they ciphered out a glacier's gait, and then said confidently that it would travel just so far in so many years. there is record of a striking and curious example of the accuracy which may be attained in these reckonings. in 1820 the ascent of mont blanc was attempted by a russian and two englishmen, with seven guides. they had reached a prodigious altitude, and were approaching the summit, when an avalanche swept several of the party down a sharp slope of two hundred feet and hurled five of them (all guides) into one of the crevices of a glacier. the life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer which was strapped to his back--it bridged the crevice and suspended him until help came. the alpenstock or baton of another saved its owner in a similar way. three men were lost--pierre balmat, pierre carrier, and auguste tairraz. they had been hurled down into the fathomless great deeps of the crevice. dr. forbes, the english geologist, had made frequent visits to the mont blanc region, and had given much attention to the disputed question of the movement of glaciers. during one of these visits he completed his estimates of the rate of movement of the glacier which had swallowed up the three guides, and uttered the prediction that the glacier would deliver up its dead at the foot of the mountain thirty-five years from the time of the accident, or possibly forty. a dull, slow journey--a movement imperceptible to any eye-but it was proceeding, nevertheless, and without cessation. it was a journey which a rolling stone would make in a few seconds--the lofty point of departure was visible from the village below in the valley. the prediction cut curiously close to the truth; forty-one years after the catastrophe, the remains were cast forth at the foot of the glacier. i find an interesting account of the matter in the histoire du mont blanc, by stephen d'arve. i will condense this account, as follows: on the 12th of august, 1861, at the hour of the close of mass, a guide arrived out of breath at the mairie of chamonix, and bearing on his shoulders a very lugubrious burden. it was a sack filled with human remains which he had gathered from the orifice of a crevice in the glacier des bossons. he conjectured that these were remains of the victims of the catastrophe of 1820, and a minute inquest, immediately instituted by the local authorities, soon demonstrated the correctness of his supposition. the contents of the sack were spread upon a long table, and officially inventoried, as follows: portions of three human skulls. several tufts of black and blonde hair. a human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth. a forearm and hand, all the fingers of the latter intact. the flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand preserved a degree of flexibility in the articulations. the ring-finger had suffered a slight abrasion, and the stain of the blood was still visible and unchanged after forty-one years. a left foot, the flesh white and fresh. along with these fragments were portions of waistcoats, hats, hobnailed shoes, and other clothing; a wing of a pigeon, with black feathers; a fragment of an alpenstock; a tin lantern; and lastly, a boiled leg of mutton, the only flesh among all the remains that exhaled an unpleasant odor. the guide said that the mutton had no odor when he took it from the glacier; an hour's exposure to the sun had already begun the work of decomposition upon it. persons were called for, to identify these poor pathetic relics, and a touching scene ensured. two men were still living who had witnessed the grim catastrophe of nearly half a century before--marie couttet (saved by his baton) and julien davouassoux (saved by the barometer). these aged men entered and approached the table. davouassoux, more than eighty years old, contemplated the mournful remains mutely and with a vacant eye, for his intelligence and his memory were torpid with age; but couttet's faculties were still perfect at seventy-two, and he exhibited strong emotion. he said: "pierre balmat was fair; he wore a straw hat. this bit of skull, with the tuft of blond hair, was his; this is his hat. pierre carrier was very dark; this skull was his, and this felt hat. this is balmat's hand, i remember it so well!" and the old man bent down and kissed it reverently, then closed his fingers upon it in an affectionate grasp, crying out, "i could never have dared to believe that before quitting this world it would be granted me to press once more the hand of one of those brave comrades, the hand of my good friend balmat." there is something weirdly pathetic about the picture of that white-haired veteran greeting with his loving handshake this friend who had been dead forty years. when these hands had met last, they were alike in the softness and freshness of youth; now, one was brown and wrinkled and horny with age, while the other was still as young and fair and blemishless as if those forty years had come and gone in a single moment, leaving no mark of their passage. time had gone on, in the one case; it had stood still in the other. a man who has not seen a friend for a generation, keeps him in mind always as he saw him last, and is somehow surprised, and is also shocked, to see the aging change the years have wrought when he sees him again. marie couttet's experience, in finding his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he had carried in his memory for forty years, is an experience which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps. couttet identified other relics: "this hat belonged to auguste tairraz. he carried the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon the summit. here is the wing of one of those pigeons. and here is the fragment of my broken baton; it was by grace of that baton that my life was saved. who could have told me that i should one day have the satisfaction to look again upon this bit of wood that supported me above the grave that swallowed up my unfortunate companions!" no portions of the body of tairraz, other than a piece of the skull, had been found. a diligent search was made, but without result. however, another search was instituted a year later, and this had better success. many fragments of clothing which had belonged to the lost guides were discovered; also, part of a lantern, and a green veil with blood-stains on it. but the interesting feature was this: one of the searchers came suddenly upon a sleeved arm projecting from a crevice in the ice-wall, with the hand outstretched as if offering greeting! "the nails of this white hand were still rosy, and the pose of the extended fingers seemed to express an eloquent welcome to the long-lost light of day." the hand and arm were alone; there was no trunk. after being removed from the ice the flesh-tints quickly faded out and the rosy nails took on the alabaster hue of death. this was the third right hand found; therefore, all three of the lost men were accounted for, beyond cavil or question. dr. hamel was the russian gentleman of the party which made the ascent at the time of the famous disaster. he left chamonix as soon as he conveniently could after the descent; and as he had shown a chilly indifference about the calamity, and offered neither sympathy nor assistance to the widows and orphans, he carried with him the cordial execrations of the whole community. four months before the first remains were found, a chamonix guide named balmat--a relative of one of the lost men--was in london, and one day encountered a hale old gentleman in the british museum, who said: "i overheard your name. are you from chamonix, monsieur balmat?" "yes, sir." "haven't they found the bodies of my three guides, yet? i am dr. hamel." "alas, no, monsieur." "well, you'll find them, sooner or later." "yes, it is the opinion of dr. forbes and mr. tyndall, that the glacier will sooner or later restore to us the remains of the unfortunate victims." "without a doubt, without a doubt. and it will be a great thing for chamonix, in the matter of attracting tourists. you can get up a museum with those remains that will draw!" this savage idea has not improved the odor of dr. hamel's name in chamonix by any means. but after all, the man was sound on human nature. his idea was conveyed to the public officials of chamonix, and they gravely discussed it around the official council-table. they were only prevented from carrying it into execution by the determined opposition of the friends and descendants of the lost guides, who insisted on giving the remains christian burial, and succeeded in their purpose. a close watch had to be kept upon all the poor remnants and fragments, to prevent embezzlement. a few accessory odds and ends were sold. rags and scraps of the coarse clothing were parted with at the rate equal to about twenty dollars a yard; a piece of a lantern and one or two other trifles brought nearly their weight in gold; and an englishman offered a pound sterling for a single breeches-button. chapter xli [the fearful disaster of 1865] one of the most memorable of all the alpine catastrophes was that of july, 1865, on the matterhorn--already sighted referred to, a few pages back. the details of it are scarcely known in america. to the vast majority of readers they are not known at all. mr. whymper's account is the only authentic one. i will import the chief portion of it into this book, partly because of its intrinsic interest, and partly because it gives such a vivid idea of what the perilous pastime of alp-climbing is. this was mr. whymper's ninth attempt during a series of years, to vanquish that steep and stubborn pillar or rock; it succeeded, the other eight were failures. no man had ever accomplished the ascent before, though the attempts had been numerous. mr. whymper's narrative we started from zermatt on the 13th of july, at half past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless morning. we were eight in number--croz (guide), old peter taugwalder (guide) and his two sons; lord f. douglas, mr. hadow, rev. mr. hudson, and i. to insure steady motion, one tourist and one native walked together. the youngest taugwalder fell to my share. the wine-bags also fell to my lot to carry, and throughout the day, after each drink, i replenished them secretly with water, so that at the next halt they were found fuller than before! this was considered a good omen, and little short of miraculous. on the first day we did not intend to ascend to any great height, and we mounted, accordingly, very leisurely. before twelve o'clock we had found a good position for the tent, at a height of eleven thousand feet. we passed the remaining hours of daylight--some basking in the sunshine, some sketching, some collecting; hudson made tea, i coffee, and at length we retired, each one to his blanket bag. we assembled together before dawn on the 14th and started directly it was light enough to move. one of the young taugwalders returned to zermatt. in a few minutes we turned the rib which had intercepted the view of the eastern face from our tent platform. the whole of this great slope was now revealed, rising for three thousand feet like a huge natural staircase. some parts were more, and others were less easy, but we were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment, for when an obstruction was met in front it could always be turned to the right or to the left. for the greater part of the way there was no occasion, indeed, for the rope, and sometimes hudson led, sometimes myself. at six-twenty we had attained a height of twelve thousand eight hundred feet, and halted for half an hour; we then continued the ascent without a break until nine-fifty-five, when we stopped for fifty minutes, at a height of fourteen thousand feet. we had now arrived at the foot of that part which, seen from the riffelberg, seems perpendicular or overhanging. we could no longer continue on the eastern side. for a little distance we ascended by snow upon the are^te--that is, the ridge--then turned over to the right, or northern side. the work became difficult, and required caution. in some places there was little to hold; the general slope of the mountain was less than forty degrees, and snow had accumulated in, and had filled up, the interstices of the rock-face, leaving only occasional fragments projecting here and there. these were at times covered with a thin film of ice. it was a place which any fair mountaineer might pass in safety. we bore away nearly horizontally for about four hundred feet, then ascended directly toward the summit for about sixty feet, then doubled back to the ridge which descends toward zermatt. a long stride round a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more. that last doubt vanished! the matterhorn was ours! nothing but two hundred feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted. the higher we rose, the more intense became the excitement. the slope eased off, at length we could be detached, and croz and i, dashed away, ran a neck-and-neck race, which ended in a dead heat. at 1:40 p.m., the world was at our feet, and the matterhorn was conquered! the others arrived. croz now took the tent-pole, and planted it in the highest snow. "yes," we said, "there is the flag-staff, but where is the flag?" "here it is," he answered, pulling off his blouse and fixing it to the stick. it made a poor flag, and there was no wind to float it out, yet it was seen all around. they saw it at zermatt--at the riffel--in the val tournanche... . we remained on the summit for one hour-one crowded hour of glorious life. it passed away too quickly, and we began to prepare for the descent. hudson and i consulted as to the best and safest arrangement of the party. we agreed that it was best for croz to go first, and hadow second; hudson, who was almost equal to a guide in sureness of foot, wished to be third; lord douglas was placed next, and old peter, the strongest of the remainder, after him. i suggested to hudson that we should attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival at the difficult bit, and hold it as we descended, as an additional protection. he approved the idea, but it was not definitely decided that it should be done. the party was being arranged in the above order while i was sketching the summit, and they had finished, and were waiting for me to be tied in line, when some one remembered that our names had not been left in a bottle. they requested me to write them down, and moved off while it was being done. a few minutes afterward i tied myself to young peter, ran down after the others, and caught them just as they were commencing the descent of the difficult part. great care was being taken. only one man was moving at a time; when he was firmly planted the next advanced, and so on. they had not, however, attached the additional rope to rocks, and nothing was said about it. the suggestion was not made for my own sake, and i am not sure that it ever occurred to me again. for some little distance we two followed the others, detached from them, and should have continued so had not lord douglas asked me, about 3 p.m., to tie on to old peter, as he feared, he said, that taugwalder would not be able to hold his ground if a slip occurred. a few minutes later, a sharp-eyed lad ran into the monte rosa hotel, at zermatt, saying that he had seen an avalanche fall from the summit of the matterhorn onto the matterhorn glacier. the boy was reproved for telling idle stories; he was right, nevertheless, and this was what he saw. michel croz had laid aside his ax, and in order to give mr. hadow greater security, was absolutely taking hold of his legs, and putting his feet, one by one, into their proper positions. as far as i know, no one was actually descending. i cannot speak with certainty, because the two leading men were partially hidden from my sight by an intervening mass of rock, but it is my belief, from the movements of their shoulders, that croz, having done as i said, was in the act of turning round to go down a step or two himself; at this moment mr. hadow slipped, fell against him, and knocked him over. i heard one startled exclamation from croz, then saw him and mr. hadow flying downward; in another moment hudson was dragged from his steps, and lord douglas immediately after him. all this was the work of a moment. immediately we heard croz's exclamation, old peter and i planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks would permit; the rope was taut between us, and the jerk came on us both as on one man. we held; but the rope broke midway between taugwalder and lord francis douglas. for a few seconds we saw our unfortunate companions sliding downward on their backs, and spreading out their hands, endeavoring to save themselves. they passed from our sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from the precipice to precipice onto the matterhorn glacier below, a distance of nearly four thousand feet in height. from the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them. so perished our comrades! for more than two hours afterward i thought almost every moment that the next would be my last; for the taugwalders, utterly unnerved, were not only incapable of giving assistance, but were in such a state that a slip might have been expected from them at any moment. after a time we were able to do that which should have been done at first, and fixed rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together. these ropes were cut from time to time, and were left behind. even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed, and several times old peter turned, with ashy face and faltering limbs, and said, with terrible emphasis, "i cannot!" about 6 p.m., we arrived at the snow upon the ridge descending toward zermatt, and all peril was over. we frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried to them, but no sound returned. convinced at last that they were neither within sight nor hearing, we ceased from our useless efforts; and, too cast down for speech, silently gathered up our things, and the little effects of those who were lost, and then completed the descent. ---------such is mr. whymper's graphic and thrilling narrative. zermatt gossip darkly hints that the elder taugwalder cut the rope, when the accident occurred, in order to preserve himself from being dragged into the abyss; but mr. whymper says that the ends of the rope showed no evidence of cutting, but only of breaking. he adds that if taugwalder had had the disposition to cut the rope, he would not have had time to do it, the accident was so sudden and unexpected. lord douglas' body has never been found. it probably lodged upon some inaccessible shelf in the face of the mighty precipice. lord douglas was a youth of nineteen. the three other victims fell nearly four thousand feet, and their bodies lay together upon the glacier when found by mr. whymper and the other searchers the next morning. their graves are beside the little church in zermatt. chapter xlii [chillon has a nice, roomy dungeon] switzerland is simply a large, humpy, solid rock, with a thin skin of grass stretched over it. consequently, they do not dig graves, they blast them out with power and fuse. they cannot afford to have large graveyards, the grass skin is too circumscribed and too valuable. it is all required for the support of the living. the graveyard in zermatt occupies only about one-eighth of an acre. the graves are sunk in the living rock, and are very permanent; but occupation of them is only temporary; the occupant can only stay till his grave is needed by a later subject, he is removed, then, for they do not bury one body on top of another. as i understand it, a family owns a grave, just as it owns a house. a man dies and leaves his house to his son--and at the same time, this dead father succeeds to his own father's grave. he moves out of the house and into the grave, and his predecessor moves out of the grave and into the cellar of the chapel. i saw a black box lying in the churchyard, with skull and cross-bones painted on it, and was told that this was used in transferring remains to the cellar. in that cellar the bones and skulls of several hundred of former citizens were compactly corded up. they made a pile eighteen feet long, seven feet high, and eight feet wide. i was told that in some of the receptacles of this kind in the swiss villages, the skulls were all marked, and if a man wished to find the skulls of his ancestors for several generations back, he could do it by these marks, preserved in the family records. an english gentleman who had lived some years in this region, said it was the cradle of compulsory education. but he said that the english idea that compulsory education would reduce bastardy and intemperance was an error--it has not that effect. he said there was more seduction in the protestant than in the catholic cantons, because the confessional protected the girls. i wonder why it doesn't protect married women in france and spain? this gentleman said that among the poorer peasants in the valais, it was common for the brothers in a family to cast lots to determine which of them should have the coveted privilege of marrying, and his brethren--doomed bachelors--heroically banded themselves together to help support the new family. we left zermatt in a wagon--and in a rain-storm, too-for st. nicholas about ten o'clock one morning. again we passed between those grass-clad prodigious cliffs, specked with wee dwellings peeping over at us from velvety green walls ten and twelve hundred feet high. it did not seem possible that the imaginary chamois even could climb those precipices. lovers on opposite cliffs probably kiss through a spy-glass, and correspond with a rifle. in switzerland the farmer's plow is a wide shovel, which scrapes up and turns over the thin earthy skin of his native rock--and there the man of the plow is a hero. now here, by our st. nicholas road, was a grave, and it had a tragic story. a plowman was skinning his farm one morning--not the steepest part of it, but still a steep part--that is, he was not skinning the front of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves--when he absent-mindedly let go of the plow-handles to moisten his hands, in the usual way; he lost his balance and fell out of his farm backward; poor fellow, he never touched anything till he struck bottom, fifteen hundred feet below. [1] we throw a halo of heroism around the life of the soldier and the sailor, because of the deadly dangers they are facing all the time. but we are not used to looking upon farming as a heroic occupation. this is because we have not lived in switzerland. 1. this was on a sunday.--m.t. from st. nicholas we struck out for visp--or vispach--on foot. the rain-storms had been at work during several days, and had done a deal of damage in switzerland and savoy. we came to one place where a stream had changed its course and plunged down a mountain in a new place, sweeping everything before it. two poor but precious farms by the roadside were ruined. one was washed clear away, and the bed-rock exposed; the other was buried out of sight under a tumbled chaos of rocks, gravel, mud, and rubbish. the resistless might of water was well exemplified. some saplings which had stood in the way were bent to the ground, stripped clean of their bark, and buried under rocky debris. the road had been swept away, too. in another place, where the road was high up on the mountain's face, and its outside edge protected by flimsy masonry, we frequently came across spots where this masonry had carved off and left dangerous gaps for mules to get over; and with still more frequency we found the masonry slightly crumbled, and marked by mule-hoofs, thus showing that there had been danger of an accident to somebody. when at last we came to a badly ruptured bit of masonry, with hoof-prints evidencing a desperate struggle to regain the lost foothold, i looked quite hopefully over the dizzy precipice. but there was nobody down there. they take exceedingly good care of their rivers in switzerland and other portions of europe. they wall up both banks with slanting solid stone masonry--so that from end to end of these rivers the banks look like the wharves at st. louis and other towns on the mississippi river. it was during this walk from st. nicholas, in the shadow of the majestic alps, that we came across some little children amusing themselves in what seemed, at first, a most odd and original way--but it wasn't; it was in simply a natural and characteristic way. they were roped together with a string, they had mimic alpenstocks and ice-axes, and were climbing a meek and lowly manure-pile with a most blood-curdling amount of care and caution. the "guide" at the head of the line cut imaginary steps, in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a monkey budged till the step above was vacated. if we had waited we should have witnessed an imaginary accident, no doubt; and we should have heard the intrepid band hurrah when they made the summit and looked around upon the "magnificent view," and seen them throw themselves down in exhausted attitudes for a rest in that commanding situation. in nevada i used to see the children play at silver-mining. of course, the great thing was an accident in a mine, and there were two "star" parts; that of the man who fell down the mimic shaft, and that of the daring hero who was lowered into the depths to bring him up. i knew one small chap who always insisted on playing both of these parts--and he carried his point. he would tumble into the shaft and die, and then come to the surface and go back after his own remains. it is the smartest boy that gets the hero part everywhere; he is head guide in switzerland, head miner in nevada, head bull-fighter in spain, etc.; but i knew a preacher's son, seven years old, who once selected a part for himself compared to which those just mentioned are tame and unimpressive. jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginary horse-cars one sunday--stopped him from playing captain of an imaginary steamboat next sunday--stopped him from leading an imaginary army to battle the following sunday--and so on. finally the little fellow said: "i've tried everything, and they won't any of them do. what can i play?" "i hardly know, jimmy; but you must play only things that are suitable to the sabbath-day." next sunday the preacher stepped softly to a back-room door to see if the children were rightly employed. he peeped in. a chair occupied the middle of the room, and on the back of it hung jimmy's cap; one of his little sisters took the cap down, nibbled at it, then passed it to another small sister and said, "eat of this fruit, for it is good." the reverend took in the situation--alas, they were playing the expulsion from eden! yet he found one little crumb of comfort. he said to himself, "for once jimmy has yielded the chief role--i have been wronging him, i did not believe there was so much modesty in him; i should have expected him to be either adam or eve." this crumb of comfort lasted but a very little while; he glanced around and discovered jimmy standing in an imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown on his face. what that meant was very plain--he was impersonating the deity! think of the guileless sublimity of that idea. we reached vispach at 8 p.m., only about seven hours out from st. nicholas. so we must have made fully a mile and a half an hour, and it was all downhill, too, and very muddy at that. we stayed all night at the ho^tel de soleil; i remember it because the landlady, the portier, the waitress, and the chambermaid were not separate persons, but were all contained in one neat and chipper suit of spotless muslin, and she was the prettiest young creature i saw in all that region. she was the landlord's daughter. and i remember that the only native match to her i saw in all europe was the young daughter of the landlord of a village inn in the black forest. why don't more people in europe marry and keep hotel? next morning we left with a family of english friends and went by train to brevet, and thence by boat across the lake to ouchy (lausanne). ouchy is memorable to me, not on account of its beautiful situation and lovely surroundings--although these would make it stick long in one's memory--but as the place where _i_ caught the london times dropping into humor. it was not aware of it, though. it did not do it on purpose. an english friend called my attention to this lapse, and cut out the reprehensible paragraph for me. think of encountering a grin like this on the face of that grim journal: erratum.--we are requested by reuter's telegram company to correct an erroneous announcement made in their brisbane telegram of the 2d inst., published in our impression of the 5th inst., stating that "lady kennedy had given birth to twins, the eldest being a son." the company explain that the message they received contained the words "governor of queensland, twins first son." being, however, subsequently informed that sir arthur kennedy was unmarried and that there must be some mistake, a telegraphic repetition was at once demanded. it has been received today (11th inst.) and shows that the words really telegraphed by reuter's agent were "governor queensland turns first sod," alluding to the maryborough-gympic railway in course of construction. the words in italics were mutilated by the telegraph in transmission from australia, and reaching the company in the form mentioned above gave rise to the mistake. i had always had a deep and reverent compassion for the sufferings of the "prisoner of chillon," whose story byron had told in such moving verse; so i took the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of the castle of chillon, to see the place where poor bonnivard endured his dreary captivity three hundred years ago. i am glad i did that, for it took away some of the pain i was feeling on the prisoner's account. his dungeon was a nice, cool, roomy place, and i cannot see why he should have been dissatisfied with it. if he had been imprisoned in a st. nicholas private dwelling, where the fertilizer prevails, and the goat sleeps with the guest, and the chickens roost on him and the cow comes in and bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have been another matter altogether; but he surely could not have had a very cheerless time of it in that pretty dungeon. it has romantic window-slits that let in generous bars of light, and it has tall, noble columns, carved apparently from the living rock; and what is more, they are written all over with thousands of names; some of them--like byron's and victor hugo's--of the first celebrity. why didn't he amuse himself reading these names? then there are the couriers and tourists--swarms of them every day--what was to hinder him from having a good time with them? i think bonnivard's sufferings have been overrated. next, we took the train and went to martigny, on the way to mont blanc. next morning we started, about eight o'clock, on foot. we had plenty of company, in the way of wagon-loads and mule-loads of tourists--and dust. this scattering procession of travelers was perhaps a mile long. the road was uphill--interminable uphill--and tolerably steep. the weather was blisteringly hot, and the man or woman who had to sit on a creeping mule, or in a crawling wagon, and broil in the beating sun, was an object to be pitied. we could dodge among the bushes, and have the relief of shade, but those people could not. they paid for a conveyance, and to get their money's worth they rode. we went by the way of the te^te noir, and after we reached high ground there was no lack of fine scenery. in one place the road was tunneled through a shoulder of the mountain; from there one looked down into a gorge with a rushing torrent in it, and on every hand was a charming view of rocky buttresses and wooded heights. there was a liberal allowance of pretty waterfalls, too, on the te^te noir route. about half an hour before we reached the village of argentie`re a vast dome of snow with the sun blazing on it drifted into view and framed itself in a strong v-shaped gateway of the mountains, and we recognized mont blanc, the "monarch of the alps." with every step, after that, this stately dome rose higher and higher into the blue sky, and at last seemed to occupy the zenith. some of mont blanc's neighbors--bare, light-brown, steeplelike rocks--were very peculiarly shaped. some were whittled to a sharp point, and slightly bent at the upper end, like a lady's finger; one monster sugar-loaf resembled a bishop's hat; it was too steep to hold snow on its sides, but had some in the division. while we were still on very high ground, and before the descent toward argentie`re began, we looked up toward a neighboring mountain-top, and saw exquisite prismatic colors playing about some white clouds which were so delicate as to almost resemble gossamer webs. the faint pinks and greens were peculiarly beautiful; none of the colors were deep, they were the lightest shades. they were bewitching commingled. we sat down to study and enjoy this singular spectacle. the tints remained during several minutes--fitting, changing, melting into each other; paling almost away for a moment, then reflushing--a shifting, restless, unstable succession of soft opaline gleams, shimmering over that air film of white cloud, and turning it into a fabric dainty enough to clothe an angel with. by and by we perceived what those super-delicate colors, and their continuous play and movement, reminded us of; it is what one sees in a soap-bubble that is drifting along, catching changes of tint from the objects it passes. a soap-bubble is the most beautiful thing, and the most exquisite, in nature; that lovely phantom fabric in the sky was suggestive of a soap-bubble split open, and spread out in the sun. i wonder how much it would take to buy a soap-bubble, if there was only one in the world? one could buy a hatful of koh-i-noors with the same money, no doubt. we made the tramp from martigny to argentie`re in eight hours. we beat all the mules and wagons; we didn't usually do that. we hired a sort of open baggage-wagon for the trip down the valley to chamonix, and then devoted an hour to dining. this gave the driver time to get drunk. he had a friend with him, and this friend also had had time to get drunk. when we drove off, the driver said all the tourists had arrived and gone by while we were at dinner; "but," said he, impressively, "be not disturbed by that--remain tranquil--give yourselves no uneasiness--their dust rises far before us-rest you tranquil, leave all to me--i am the king of drivers. behold!" down came his whip, and away we clattered. i never had such a shaking up in my life. the recent flooding rains had washed the road clear away in places, but we never stopped, we never slowed down for anything. we tore right along, over rocks, rubbish, gullies, open fields--sometimes with one or two wheels on the ground, but generally with none. every now and then that calm, good-natured madman would bend a majestic look over his shoulder at us and say, "ah, you perceive? it is as i have said --i am the king of drivers." every time we just missed going to destruction, he would say, with tranquil happiness, "enjoy it, gentlemen, it is very rare, it is very unusual-it is given to few to ride with the king of drivers-and observe, it is as i have said, _i_ am he." he spoke in french, and punctuated with hiccoughs. his friend was french, too, but spoke in german--using the same system of punctuation, however. the friend called himself the "captain of mont blanc," and wanted us to make the ascent with him. he said he had made more ascents than any other man--forty seven--and his brother had made thirty-seven. his brother was the best guide in the world, except himself--but he, yes, observe him well--he was the "captain of mont blanc"--that title belonged to none other. the "king" was as good as his word--he overtook that long procession of tourists and went by it like a hurricane. the result was that we got choicer rooms at the hotel in chamonix than we should have done if his majesty had been a slower artist--or rather, if he hadn't most providentially got drunk before he left argentie`re. chapter xliii [my poor sick friend disappointed] everybody was out-of-doors; everybody was in the principal street of the village--not on the sidewalks, but all over the street; everybody was lounging, loafing, chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested--for it was train-time. that is to say, it was diligence-time-the half-dozen big diligences would soon be arriving from geneva, and the village was interested, in many ways, in knowing how many people were coming and what sort of folk they might be. it was altogether the livest-looking street we had seen in any village on the continent. the hotel was by the side of a booming torrent, whose music was loud and strong; we could not see this torrent, for it was dark, now, but one could locate it without a light. there was a large enclosed yard in front of the hotel, and this was filled with groups of villagers waiting to see the diligences arrive, or to hire themselves to excursionists for the morrow. a telescope stood in the yard, with its huge barrel canted up toward the lustrous evening star. the long porch of the hotel was populous with tourists, who sat in shawls and wraps under the vast overshadowing bulk of mont blanc, and gossiped or meditated. never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed at one's very elbow, and its majestic dome, and the lofty cluster of slender minarets that were its neighbors, seemed to be almost over one's head. it was night in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling everywhere; the broad bases and shoulders of the mountains were in a deep gloom, but their summits swam in a strange rich glow which was really daylight, and yet had a mellow something about it which was very different from the hard white glare of the kind of daylight i was used to. its radiance was strong and clear, but at the same time it was singularly soft, and spiritual, and benignant. no, it was not our harsh, aggressive, realistic daylight; it seemed properer to an enchanted land--or to heaven. i had seen moonlight and daylight together before, but i had not seen daylight and black night elbow to elbow before. at least i had not seen the daylight resting upon an object sufficiently close at hand, before, to make the contrast startling and at war with nature. the daylight passed away. presently the moon rose up behind some of those sky-piercing fingers or pinnacles of bare rock of which i have spoken--they were a little to the left of the crest of mont blanc, and right over our heads--but she couldn't manage to climb high enough toward heaven to get entirely above them. she would show the glittering arch of her upper third, occasionally, and scrape it along behind the comblike row; sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuette of ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed to glide out of it by its own volition and power, and become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk with the black exclamation-point of its presence. the top of one pinnacle took the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head, in the inkiest silhouette, while it rested against the moon. the unillumined peaks and minarets, hovering vague and phantom-like above us while the others were painfully white and strong with snow and moonlight, made a peculiar effect. but when the moon, having passed the line of pinnacles, was hidden behind the stupendous white swell of mont blanc, the masterpiece of the evening was flung on the canvas. a rich greenish radiance sprang into the sky from behind the mountain, and in this same airy shreds and ribbons of vapor floated about, and being flushed with that strange tint, went waving to and fro like pale green flames. after a while, radiating bars--vast broadening fan-shaped shadows--grew up and stretched away to the zenith from behind the mountain. it was a spectacle to take one's breath, for the wonder of it, and the sublimity. indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and shadow streaming up from behind that dark and prodigious form and occupying the half of the dull and opaque heavens, was the most imposing and impressive marvel i had ever looked upon. there is no simile for it, for nothing is like it. if a child had asked me what it was, i should have said, "humble yourself, in this presence, it is the glory flowing from the hidden head of the creator." one falls shorter of the truth than that, sometimes, in trying to explain mysteries to the little people. i could have found out the cause of this awe-compelling miracle by inquiring, for it is not infrequent at mont blanc,--but i did not wish to know. we have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. we have lost as much as we gained by prying into the matter. we took a walk down street, a block or two, and a place where four streets met and the principal shops were clustered, found the groups of men in the roadway thicker than ever--for this was the exchange of chamonix. these men were in the costumes of guides and porters, and were there to be hired. the office of that great personage, the guide-in-chief of the chamonix guild of guides, was near by. this guild is a close corporation, and is governed by strict laws. there are many excursion routes, some dangerous and some not, some that can be made safely without a guide, and some that cannot. the bureau determines these things. where it decides that a guide is necessary, you are forbidden to go without one. neither are you allowed to be a victim of extortion: the law states what you are to pay. the guides serve in rotation; you cannot select the man who is to take your life into his hands, you must take the worst in the lot, if it is his turn. a guide's fee ranges all the way up from a half-dollar (for some trifling excursion of a few rods) to twenty dollars, according to the distance traversed and the nature of the ground. a guide's fee for taking a person to the summit of mont blanc and back, is twenty dollars--and he earns it. the time employed is usually three days, and there is enough early rising in it to make a man far more "healthy and wealthy and wise" than any one man has any right to be. the porter's fee for the same trip is ten dollars. several fools--no, i mean several tourists--usually go together, and divide up the expense, and thus make it light; for if only one f--tourist, i mean--went, he would have to have several guides and porters, and that would make the matter costly. we went into the chief's office. there were maps of mountains on the walls; also one or two lithographs of celebrated guides, and a portrait of the scientist de saussure. in glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots and batons, and other suggestive relics and remembrances of casualties on mount blanc. in a book was a record of all the ascents which have ever been made, beginning with nos. 1 and 2--being those of jacques balmat and de saussure, in 1787, and ending with no. 685, which wasn't cold yet. in fact no. 685 was standing by the official table waiting to receive the precious official diploma which should prove to his german household and to his descendants that he had once been indiscreet enough to climb to the top of mont blanc. he looked very happy when he got his document; in fact, he spoke up and said he was happy. i tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at home who had never traveled, and whose desire all his life has been to ascend mont blanc, but the guide-in-chief rather insolently refused to sell me one. i was very much offended. i said i did not propose to be discriminated against on the account of my nationality; that he had just sold a diploma to this german gentleman, and my money was a good as his; i would see to it that he couldn't keep his shop for germans and deny his produce to americans; i would have his license taken away from him at the dropping of a handkerchief; if france refused to break him, i would make an international matter of it and bring on a war; the soil should be drenched with blood; and not only that, but i would set up an opposition show and sell diplomas at half price. for two cents i would have done these things, too; but nobody offered me two cents. i tried to move that german's feelings, but it could not be done; he would not give me his diploma, neither would he sell it to me. i told him my friend was sick and could not come himself, but he said he did not care a verdammtes pfennig, he wanted his diploma for himself--did i suppose he was going to risk his neck for that thing and then give it to a sick stranger? indeed he wouldn't, so he wouldn't. i resolved, then, that i would do all i could to injure mont blanc. in the record-book was a list of all the fatal accidents which happened on the mountain. it began with the one in 1820 when the russian dr. hamel's three guides were lost in a crevice of the glacier, and it recorded the delivery of the remains in the valley by the slow-moving glacier forty-one years later. the latest catastrophe bore the date 1877. we stepped out and roved about the village awhile. in front of the little church was a monument to the memory of the bold guide jacques balmat, the first man who ever stood upon the summit of mont blanc. he made that wild trip solitary and alone. he accomplished the ascent a number of times afterward. a stretch of nearly half a century lay between his first ascent and his last one. at the ripe old age of seventy-two he was climbing around a corner of a lofty precipice of the pic du midi--nobody with him--when he slipped and fell. so he died in the harness. he had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go off stealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible gold among those perilous peaks and precipices. he was on a quest of that kind when he lost his life. there was a statue to him, and another to de saussure, in the hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door of a room upstairs bore an inscription to the effect that that room had been occupied by albert smith. balmat and de saussure discovered mont blanc--so to speak--but it was smith who made it a paying property. his articles in blackwood and his lectures on mont blanc in london advertised it and made people as anxious to see it as if it owed them money. as we strolled along the road we looked up and saw a red signal-light glowing in the darkness of the mountainside. it seemed but a trifling way up--perhaps a hundred yards, a climb of ten minutes. it was a lucky piece of sagacity in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met and get a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb to that lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose. the man said that that lantern was on the grands mulets, some sixty-five hundred feet above the valley! i know by our riffelberg experience, that it would have taken us a good part of a week to go up there. i would sooner not smoke at all, than take all that trouble for a light. even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this mountain's close proximity creates curious deceptions. for instance, one sees with the naked eye a cabin up there beside the glacier, and a little above and beyond he sees the spot where that red light was located; he thinks he could throw a stone from the one place to the other. but he couldn't, for the difference between the two altitudes is more than three thousand feet. it looks impossible, from below, that this can be true, but it is true, nevertheless. while strolling around, we kept the run of the moon all the time, and we still kept an eye on her after we got back to the hotel portico. i had a theory that the gravitation of refraction, being subsidiary to atmospheric compensation, the refrangibility of the earth's surface would emphasize this effect in regions where great mountain ranges occur, and possibly so even-handed impact the odic and idyllic forces together, the one upon the other, as to prevent the moon from rising higher than 12,200 feet above sea-level. this daring theory had been received with frantic scorn by some of my fellow-scientists, and with an eager silence by others. among the former i may mention prof. h----y; and among the latter prof. t----l. such is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself. there is no feeling of brotherhood among these people. indeed, they always resent it when i call them brother. to show how far their ungenerosity can carry them, i will state that i offered to let prof. h----y publish my great theory as his own discovery; i even begged him to do it; i even proposed to print it myself as his theory. instead of thanking me, he said that if i tried to fasten that theory on him he would sue me for slander. i was going to offer it to mr. darwin, whom i understood to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to me that perhaps he would not be interested in it since it did not concern heraldry. but i am glad now, that i was forced to father my intrepid theory myself, for, on the night of which i am writing, it was triumphantly justified and established. mont blanc is nearly sixteen thousand feet high; he hid the moon utterly; near him is a peak which is 12,216 feet high; the moon slid along behind the pinnacles, and when she approached that one i watched her with intense interest, for my reputation as a scientist must stand or fall by its decision. i cannot describe the emotions which surged like tidal waves through my breast when i saw the moon glide behind that lofty needle and pass it by without exposing more than two feet four inches of her upper rim above it; i was secure, then. i knew she could rise no higher, and i was right. she sailed behind all the peaks and never succeeded in hoisting her disk above a single one of them. while the moon was behind one of those sharp fingers, its shadow was flung athwart the vacant heavens-a long, slanting, clean-cut, dark ray--with a streaming and energetic suggestion of force about it, such as the ascending jet of water from a powerful fire-engine affords. it was curious to see a good strong shadow of an earthly object cast upon so intangible a field as the atmosphere. we went to bed, at last, and went quickly to sleep, but i woke up, after about three hours, with throbbing temples, and a head which was physically sore, outside and in. i was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy, unrefreshed. i recognized the occasion of all this: it was that torrent. in the mountain villages of switzerland, and along the roads, one has always the roar of the torrent in his ears. he imagines it is music, and he thinks poetic things about it; he lies in his comfortable bed and is lulled to sleep by it. but by and by he begins to notice that his head is very sore--he cannot account for it; in solitudes where the profoundest silence reigns, he notices a sullen, distant, continuous roar in his ears, which is like what he would experience if he had sea-shells pressed against them--he cannot account for it; he is drowsy and absent-minded; there is no tenacity to his mind, he cannot keep hold of a thought and follow it out; i f he sits down to write, his vocabulary is empty, no suitable words will come, he forgets what he started to do, and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes closed, listening painfully to the muffled roar of a distant train in his ears; in his soundest sleep the strain continues, he goes on listening, always listening intently, anxiously, and wakes at last, harassed, irritable, unrefreshed. he cannot manage to account for these things. day after day he feels as if he had spent his nights in a sleeping-car. it actually takes him weeks to find out that it is those persecuting torrents that have been making all the mischief. it is time for him to get out of switzerland, then, for as soon as he has discovered the cause, the misery is magnified several fold. the roar of the torrent is maddening, then, for his imagination is assisting; the physical pain it inflicts is exquisite. when he finds he is approaching one of those streams, his dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track and avoid the implacable foe. eight or nine months after the distress of the torrents had departed from me, the roar and thunder of the streets of paris brought it all back again. i moved to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for peace. about midnight the noises dulled away, and i was sinking to sleep, when i heard a new and curious sound; i listened: evidently some joyous lunatic was softly dancing a "double shuffle" in the room over my head. i had to wait for him to get through, of course. five long, long minutes he smoothly shuffled away--a pause followed, then something fell with a thump on the floor. i said to myself "there--he is pulling off his boots-thank heavens he is done." another slight pause--he went to shuffling again! i said to myself, "is he trying to see what he can do with only one boot on?" presently came another pause and another thump on the floor. i said "good, he has pulled off his other boot--now he is done." but he wasn't. the next moment he was shuffling again. i said, "confound him, he is at it in his slippers!" after a little came that same old pause, and right after it that thump on the floor once more. i said, "hang him, he had on two pair of boots!" for an hour that magician went on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed as many as twenty-five pair, and i was hovering on the verge of lunacy. i got my gun and stole up there. the fellow was in the midst of an acre of sprawling boots, and he had a boot in his hand, shuffling it--no, i mean polishing it. the mystery was explained. he hadn't been dancing. he was the "boots" of the hotel, and was attending to business. chapter xliv [i scale mont blanc--by telescope] after breakfast, that next morning in chamonix, we went out in the yard and watched the gangs of excursioning tourists arriving and departing with their mules and guides and porters; they we took a look through the telescope at the snowy hump of mont blanc. it was brilliant with sunshine, and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly five hundred yards away. with the naked eye we could dimly make out the house at the pierre pointue, which is located by the side of the great glacier, and is more than three thousand feet above the level of the valley; but with the telescope we could see all its details. while i looked, a woman rode by the house on a mule, and i saw her with sharp distinctness; i could have described her dress. i saw her nod to the people of the house, and rein up her mule, and put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. i was not used to telescopes; in fact, i had never looked through a good one before; it seemed incredible to me that this woman could be so far away. i was satisfied that i could see all these details with my naked eye; but when i tried it, that mule and those vivid people had wholly vanished, and the house itself was become small and vague. i tried the telescope again, and again everything was vivid. the strong black shadows of the mule and the woman were flung against the side of the house, and i saw the mule's silhouette wave its ears. the telescopulist--or the telescopulariat--i do not know which is right--said a party were making a grand ascent, and would come in sight on the remote upper heights, presently; so we waited to observe this performance. presently i had a superb idea. i wanted to stand with a party on the summit of mont blanc, merely to be able to say i had done it, and i believed the telescope could set me within seven feet of the uppermost man. the telescoper assured me that it could. i then asked him how much i owed him for as far as i had got? he said, one franc. i asked him how much it would cost to make the entire ascent? three francs. i at once determined to make the entire ascent. but first i inquired if there was any danger? he said no--not by telescope; said he had taken a great many parties to the summit, and never lost a man. i asked what he would charge to let my agent go with me, together with such guides and porters as might be necessary. he said he would let harris go for two francs; and that unless we were unusually timid, he should consider guides and porters unnecessary; it was not customary to take them, when going by telescope, for they were rather an encumbrance than a help. he said that the party now on the mountain were approaching the most difficult part, and if we hurried we should overtake them within ten minutes, and could then join them and have the benefit of their guides and porters without their knowledge, and without expense to us. i then said we would start immediately. i believe i said it calmly, though i was conscious of a shudder and of a paling cheek, in view of the nature of the exploit i was so unreflectingly engaged in. but the old daredevil spirit was upon me, and i said that as i had committed myself i would not back down; i would ascend mont blanc if it cost me my life. i told the man to slant his machine in the proper direction and let us be off. harris was afraid and did not want to go, but i heartened him up and said i would hold his hand all the way; so he gave his consent, though he trembled a little at first. i took a last pathetic look upon the pleasant summer scene about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass and prepared to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows. we took our way carefully and cautiously across the great glacier des bossons, over yawning and terrific crevices and among imposing crags and buttresses of ice which were fringed with icicles of gigantic proportions. the desert of ice that stretched far and wide about us was wild and desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us were so great that at times i was minded to turn back. but i pulled my pluck together and pushed on. we passed the glacier safely and began to mount the steeps beyond, with great alacrity. when we were seven minutes out from the starting-point, we reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect; an apparently limitless continent of gleaming snow was tilted heavenward before our faces. as my eye followed that awful acclivity far away up into the remote skies, it seemed to me that all i had ever seen before of sublimity and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this. we rested a moment, and then began to mount with speed. within three minutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us, and stopped to observe them. they were toiling up a long, slanting ridge of snow--twelve persons, roped together some fifteen feet apart, marching in single file, and strongly marked against the clear blue sky. one was a woman. we could see them lift their feet and put them down; we saw them swing their alpenstocks forward in unison, like so many pendulums, and then bear their weight upon them; we saw the lady wave her handkerchief. they dragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way, for they had been climbing steadily from the grand mulets, on the glacier des dossons, since three in the morning, and it was eleven, now. we saw them sink down in the snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle. after a while they moved on, and as they approached the final short dash of the home-stretch we closed up on them and joined them. presently we all stood together on the summit! what a view was spread out below! away off under the northwestern horizon rolled the silent billows of the farnese oberland, their snowy crests glinting softly in the subdued lights of distance; in the north rose the giant form of the wobblehorn, draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds; beyond him, to the right, stretched the grand processional summits of the cisalpine cordillera, drowned in a sensuous haze; to the east loomed the colossal masses of the yodelhorn, the fuddelhorn, and the dinnerhorn, their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun; beyond them shimmered the faint far line of the ghauts of jubbelpore and the aigulles des alleghenies; in the south towered the smoking peak of popocatapetl and the unapproachable altitudes of the peerless scrabblehorn; in the west-south the stately range of the himalayas lay dreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all around the curving horizon the eye roved over a troubled sea of sun-kissed alps, and noted, here and there, the noble proportions and the soaring domes of the bottlehorn, and the saddlehorn, and the shovelhorn, and the powderhorn, all bathed in the glory of noon and mottled with softly gliding blots, the shadows flung from drifting clouds. overcome by the scene, we all raised a triumphant, tremendous shout, in unison. a startled man at my elbow said: "confound you, what do you yell like that for, right here in the street?" that brought me down to chamonix, like a flirt. i gave that man some spiritual advice and disposed of him, and then paid the telescope man his full fee, and said that we were charmed with the trip and would remain down, and not reascend and require him to fetch us down by telescope. this pleased him very much, for of course we could have stepped back to the summit and put him to the trouble of bringing us home if we wanted to. i judged we could get diplomas, now, anyhow; so we went after them, but the chief guide put us off, with one pretext or another, during all the time we stayed in chamonix, and we ended by never getting them at all. so much for his prejudice against people's nationality. however, we worried him enough to make him remember us and our ascent for some time. he even said, once, that he wished there was a lunatic asylum in chamonix. this shows that he really had fears that we were going to drive him mad. it was what we intended to do, but lack of time defeated it. i cannot venture to advise the reader one way or the other, as to ascending mont blanc. i say only this: if he is at all timid, the enjoyments of the trip will hardly make up for the hardships and sufferings he will have to endure. but, if he has good nerve, youth, health, and a bold, firm will, and could leave his family comfortably provided for in case the worst happened, he would find the ascent a wonderful experience, and the view from the top a vision to dream about, and tell about, and recall with exultation all the days of his life. while i do not advise such a person to attempt the ascent, i do not advise him against it. but if he elects to attempt it, let him be warily careful of two things: chose a calm, clear day; and do not pay the telescope man in advance. there are dark stories of his getting advance payers on the summit and then leaving them there to rot. a frightful tragedy was once witnessed through the chamonix telescopes. think of questions and answers like these, on an inquest: coroner. you saw deceased lose his life? witness. i did. c. where was he, at the time? w. close to the summit of mont blanc. c. where were you? w. in the main street of chamonix. c. what was the distance between you? w. a little over five miles, as the bird flies. this accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the disaster on the matterhorn. three adventurous english gentlemen, [1] of great experience in mountain-climbing, made up their minds to ascend mont blanc without guides or porters. all endeavors to dissuade them from their project failed. powerful telescopes are numerous in chamonix. these huge brass tubes, mounted on their scaffoldings and pointed skyward from every choice vantage-ground, have the formidable look of artillery, and give the town the general aspect of getting ready to repel a charge of angels. the reader may easily believe that the telescopes had plenty of custom on that august morning in 1866, for everybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was on foot, and all had fears that misfortune would result. all the morning the tubes remained directed toward the mountain heights, each with its anxious group around it; but the white deserts were vacant. 1. sir george young and his brothers james and albert. at last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who were looking through the telescopes cried out "there they are!"--and sure enough, far up, on the loftiest terraces of the grand plateau, the three pygmies appeared, climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit. they disappeared in the "corridor," and were lost to sight during an hour. then they reappeared, and were presently seen standing together upon the extreme summit of mont blanc. so, all was well. they remained a few minutes on that highest point of land in europe, a target for all the telescopes, and were then seen to begin descent. suddenly all three vanished. an instant after, they appeared again, two thousand feet below! evidently, they had tripped and been shot down an almost perpendicular slope of ice to a point where it joined the border of the upper glacier. naturally, the distant witness supposed they were now looking upon three corpses; so they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently saw two of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third. during two hours and a half they watched the two busying themselves over the extended form of their brother, who seemed entirely inert. chamonix's affairs stood still; everybody was in the street, all interest was centered upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stage five miles away. finally the two--one of them walking with great difficulty--were seen to begin descent, abandoning the third, who was no doubt lifeless. their movements were followed, step by step, until they reached the "corridor" and disappeared behind its ridge. before they had had time to traverse the "corridor" and reappear, twilight was come, and the power of the telescope was at an end. the survivors had a most perilous journey before them in the gathering darkness, for they must get down to the grands mulets before they would find a safe stopping-place--a long and tedious descent, and perilous enough even in good daylight. the oldest guides expressed the opinion that they could not succeed; that all the chances were that they would lose their lives. yet those brave men did succeed. they reached the grands mulets in safety. even the fearful shock which their nerves had sustained was not sufficient to overcome their coolness and courage. it would appear from the official account that they were threading their way down through those dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o'clock in the morning, or later, because the rescuing party from chamonix reached the grand mulets about three in the morning and moved thence toward the scene of the disaster under the leadership of sir george young, "who had only just arrived." after having been on his feet twenty-four hours, in the exhausting work of mountain-climbing, sir george began the reascent at the head of the relief party of six guides, to recover the corpse of his brother. this was considered a new imprudence, as the number was too few for the service required. another relief party presently arrived at the cabin on the grands mulets and quartered themselves there to await events. ten hours after sir george's departure toward the summit, this new relief were still scanning the snowy altitudes above them from their own high perch among the ice deserts ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any living thing appearing up there. this was alarming. half a dozen of their number set out, then early in the afternoon, to seek and succor sir george and his guides. the persons remaining at the cabin saw these disappear, and then ensued another distressing wait. four hours passed, without tidings. then at five o'clock another relief, consisting of three guides, set forward from the cabin. they carried food and cordials for the refreshment of their predecessors; they took lanterns with them, too; night was coming on, and to make matters worse, a fine, cold rain had begun to fall. at the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent, the official guide-in-chief of the mont blanc region undertook the dangerous descent to chamonix, all alone, to get reinforcements. however, a couple of hours later, at 7 p.m., the anxious solicitude came to an end, and happily. a bugle note was heard, and a cluster of black specks was distinguishable against the snows of the upper heights. the watchers counted these specks eagerly--fourteen--nobody was missing. an hour and a half later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin. they had brought the corpse with them. sir george young tarried there but a few minutes, and then began the long and troublesome descent from the cabin to chamonix. he probably reached there about two or three o'clock in the morning, after having been afoot among the rocks and glaciers during two days and two nights. his endurance was equal to his daring. the cause of the unaccountable delay of sir george and the relief parties among the heights where the disaster had happened was a thick fog--or, partly that and partly the slow and difficult work of conveying the dead body down the perilous steeps. the corpse, upon being viewed at the inquest, showed no bruises, and it was some time before the surgeons discovered that the neck was broken. one of the surviving brothers had sustained some unimportant injuries, but the other had suffered no hurt at all. how these men could fall two thousand feet, almost perpendicularly, and live afterward, is a most strange and unaccountable thing. a great many women have made the ascent of mont blanc. an english girl, miss stratton, conceived the daring idea, two or three years ago, of attempting the ascent in the middle of winter. she tried it--and she succeeded. moreover, she froze two of her fingers on the way up, she fell in love with her guide on the summit, and she married him when she got to the bottom again. there is nothing in romance, in the way of a striking "situation," which can beat this love scene in midheaven on an isolated ice-crest with the thermometer at zero and an artic gale blowing. the first woman who ascended mont blanc was a girl aged twenty-two--mlle. maria paradis--1809. nobody was with her but her sweetheart, and he was not a guide. the sex then took a rest for about thirty years, when a mlle. d'angeville made the ascent --1838. in chamonix i picked up a rude old lithograph of that day which pictured her "in the act." however, i value it less as a work of art than as a fashion-plate. miss d'angeville put on a pair of men's pantaloons to climb it, which was wise; but she cramped their utility by adding her petticoat, which was idiotic. one of the mournfulest calamities which men's disposition to climb dangerous mountains has resulted in, happened on mont blanc in september 1870. m. d'arve tells the story briefly in his histoire du mont blanc. in the next chapter i will copy its chief features. chapter xlv a catastrophe which cost eleven lives [perished at the verge of safety] on the 5th of september, 1870, a caravan of eleven persons departed from chamonix to make the ascent of mont blanc. three of the party were tourists; messrs. randall and bean, americans, and mr. george corkindale, a scotch gentleman; there were three guides and five porters. the cabin on the grands mulets was reached that day; the ascent was resumed early the next morning, september 6th. the day was fine and clear, and the movements of the party were observed through the telescopes of chamonix; at two o'clock in the afternoon they were seen to reach the summit. a few minutes later they were seen making the first steps of the descent; then a cloud closed around them and hid them from view. eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night came, no one had returned to the grands mulets. sylvain couttet, keeper of the cabin there, suspected a misfortune, and sent down to the valley for help. a detachment of guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedious trip and reached the cabin, a raging storm had set in. they had to wait; nothing could be attempted in such a tempest. the wild storm lasted more than a week, without ceasing; but on the 17th, couttet, with several guides, left the cabin and succeeded in making the ascent. in the snowy wastes near the summit they came upon five bodies, lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude which suggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there, while exhausted with fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold, and never knew when death stole upon them. couttet moved a few steps further and discovered five more bodies. the eleventh corpse--that of a porter--was not found, although diligent search was made for it. in the pocket of mr. bean, one of the americans, was found a note-book in which had been penciled some sentences which admit us, in flesh and spirit, as it were, to the presence of these men during their last hours of life, and to the grisly horrors which their fading vision looked upon and their failing consciousness took cognizance of: tuesday, sept. 6. i have made the ascent of mont blanc, with ten persons--eight guides, and mr. corkindale and mr. randall. we reached the summit at half past 2. immediately after quitting it, we were enveloped in clouds of snow. we passed the night in a grotto hollowed in the snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and i was ill all night. sept. 7--morning. the cold is excessive. the snow falls heavily and without interruption. the guides take no rest. evening. my dear hessie, we have been two days on mont blanc, in the midst of a terrible hurricane of snow, we have lost our way, and are in a hole scooped in the snow, at an altitude of 15,000 feet. i have no longer any hope of descending. they had wandered around, and around, in the blinding snow-storm, hopelessly lost, in a space only a hundred yards square; and when cold and fatigue vanquished them at last, they scooped their cave and lay down there to die by inches, unaware that five steps more would have brought them into the truth path. they were so near to life and safety as that, and did not suspect it. the thought of this gives the sharpest pang that the tragic story conveys. the author of the histoire du mont blanc introduced the closing sentences of mr. bean's pathetic record thus: "here the characters are large and unsteady; the hand which traces them is become chilled and torpid; but the spirit survives, and the faith and resignation of the dying man are expressed with a sublime simplicity." perhaps this note-book will be found and sent to you. we have nothing to eat, my feet are already frozen, and i am exhausted; i have strength to write only a few words more. i have left means for c's education; i know you will employ them wisely. i die with faith in god, and with loving thoughts of you. farewell to all. we shall meet again, in heaven. ... i think of you always. it is the way of the alps to deliver death to their victims with a merciful swiftness, but here the rule failed. these men suffered the bitterest death that has been recorded in the history of those mountains, freighted as that history is with grisly tragedies. chapter xlvi [meeting a hog on a precipice] mr. harris and i took some guides and porters and ascended to the ho^tel des pyramides, which is perched on the high moraine which borders the glacier des bossons. the road led sharply uphill, all the way, through grass and flowers and woods, and was a pleasant walk, barring the fatigue of the climb. from the hotel we could view the huge glacier at very close range. after a rest we followed down a path which had been made in the steep inner frontage of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself. one of the shows of the place was a tunnel-like cavern, which had been hewn in the glacier. the proprietor of this tunnel took candles and conducted us into it. it was three or four feet wide and about six feet high. its walls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich blue light that produced a lovely effect, and suggested enchanted caves, and that sort of thing. when we had proceeded some yards and were entering darkness, we turned about and had a dainty sunlit picture of distant woods and heights framed in the strong arch of the tunnel and seen through the tender blue radiance of the tunnel's atmosphere. the cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and when we reached its inner limit the proprietor stepped into a branch tunnel with his candles and left us buried in the bowels of the glacier, and in pitch-darkness. we judged his purpose was murder and robbery; so we got out our matches and prepared to sell our lives as dearly as possible by setting the glacier on fire if the worst came to the worst--but we soon perceived that this man had changed his mind; he began to sing, in a deep, melodious voice, and woke some curious and pleasing echoes. by and by he came back and pretended that that was what he had gone behind there for. we believed as much of that as we wanted to. thus our lives had been once more in imminent peril, but by the exercise of the swift sagacity and cool courage which had saved us so often, we had added another escape to the long list. the tourist should visit that ice-cavern, by all means, for it is well worth the trouble; but i would advise him to go only with a strong and well-armed force. i do not consider artillery necessary, yet it would not be unadvisable to take it along, if convenient. the journey, going and coming, is about three miles and a half, three of which are on level ground. we made it in less than a day, but i would counsel the unpracticed--if not pressed for time--to allow themselves two. nothing is gained in the alps by over-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding two days' work into one for the poor sake of being able to boast of the exploit afterward. it will be found much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days, and then subtract one of them from the narrative. this saves fatigue, and does not injure the narrative. all the more thoughtful among the alpine tourists do this. we now called upon the guide-in-chief, and asked for a squadron of guides and porters for the ascent of the montanvert. this idiot glared at us, and said: "you don't need guides and porters to go to the montanvert." "what do we need, then?" "such as you?--an ambulance!" i was so stung by this brutal remark that i took my custom elsewhere. betimes, next morning, we had reached an altitude of five thousand feet above the level of the sea. here we camped and breakfasted. there was a cabin there--the spot is called the caillet--and a spring of ice-cold water. on the door of the cabin was a sign, in french, to the effect that "one may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes." we did not invest; what we wanted was to see a dead one. a little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the new hotel on the montanvert, and had a view of six miles, right up the great glacier, the famous mer de glace. at this point it is like a sea whose deep swales and long, rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement and frozen solid; but further up it is broken up into wildly tossing billows of ice. we descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine, and invaded the glacier. there were tourists of both sexes scattered far and wide over it, everywhere, and it had the festive look of a skating-rink. the empress josephine came this far, once. she ascended the montanvert in 1810--but not alone; a small army of men preceded her to clear the path--and carpet it, perhaps--and she followed, under the protection of sixty-eight guides. her successor visited chamonix later, but in far different style. it was seven weeks after the first fall of the empire, and poor marie louise, ex-empress was a fugitive. she came at night, and in a storm, with only two attendants, and stood before a peasant's hut, tired, bedraggled, soaked with rain, "the red print of her lost crown still girdling her brow, " and implored admittance--and was refused! a few days before, the adulations and applauses of a nation were sounding in her ears, and now she was come to this! we crossed the mer de glace in safety, but we had misgivings. the crevices in the ice yawned deep and blue and mysterious, and it made one nervous to traverse them. the huge round waves of ice were slippery and difficult to climb, and the chances of tripping and sliding down them and darting into a crevice were too many to be comfortable. in the bottom of a deep swale between two of the biggest of the ice-waves, we found a fraud who pretended to be cutting steps to insure the safety of tourists. he was "soldiering" when we came upon him, but he hopped up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough for a cat, and charged us a franc or two for it. then he sat down again, to doze till the next party should come along. he had collected blackmail from two or three hundred people already, that day, but had not chipped out ice enough to impair the glacier perceptibly. i have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it seems to me that keeping toll-bridge on a glacier is the softest one i have encountered yet. that was a blazing hot day, and it brought a persistent and persecuting thirst with it. what an unspeakable luxury it was to slake that thirst with the pure and limpid ice-water of the glacier! down the sides of every great rib of pure ice poured limpid rills in gutters carved by their own attrition; better still, wherever a rock had lain, there was now a bowl-shaped hole, with smooth white sides and bottom of ice, and this bowl was brimming with water of such absolute clearness that the careless observer would not see it at all, but would think the bowl was empty. these fountains had such an alluring look that i often stretched myself out when i was not thirsty and dipped my face in and drank till my teeth ached. everywhere among the swiss mountains we had at hand the blessing--not to be found in europe except in the mountains--of water capable of quenching thirst. everywhere in the swiss highlands brilliant little rills of exquisitely cold water went dancing along by the roadsides, and my comrade and i were always drinking and always delivering our deep gratitude. but in europe everywhere except in the mountains, the water is flat and insipid beyond the power of words to describe. it is served lukewarm; but no matter, ice could not help it; it is incurably flat, incurably insipid. it is only good to wash with; i wonder it doesn't occur to the average inhabitant to try it for that. in europe the people say contemptuously, "nobody drinks water here." indeed, they have a sound and sufficient reason. in many places they even have what may be called prohibitory reasons. in paris and munich, for instance, they say, "don't drink the water, it is simply poison." either america is healthier than europe, notwithstanding her "deadly" indulgence in ice-water, or she does not keep the run of her death-rate as sharply as europe does. i think we do keep up the death statistics accurately; and if we do, our cities are healthier than the cities of europe. every month the german government tabulates the death-rate of the world and publishes it. i scrap-booked these reports during several months, and it was curious to see how regular and persistently each city repeated its same death-rate month after month. the tables might as well have been stereotyped, they varied so little. these tables were based upon weekly reports showing the average of deaths in each 1,000 population for a year. munich was always present with her 33 deaths in each 1,000 of her population (yearly average), chicago was as constant with her 15 or 17, dublin with her 48--and so on. only a few american cities appear in these tables, but they are scattered so widely over the country that they furnish a good general average of city health in the united states; and i think it will be granted that our towns and villages are healthier than our cities. here is the average of the only american cities reported in the german tables: chicago, deaths in 1,000 population annually, 16; philadelphia, 18; st. louis, 18; san francisco, 19; new york (the dublin of america), 23. see how the figures jump up, as soon as one arrives at the transatlantic list: paris, 27; glasgow, 27; london, 28; vienna, 28; augsburg, 28; braunschweig, 28; k:onigsberg, 29; cologne, 29; dresden, 29; hamburg, 29; berlin, 30; bombay, 30; warsaw, 31; breslau, 31; odessa, 32; munich, 33; strasburg, 33, pesth, 35; cassel, 35; lisbon, 36; liverpool, 36; prague, 37; madras, 37; bucharest, 39; st. petersburg, 40; trieste, 40; alexandria (egypt), 43; dublin, 48; calcutta, 55. edinburgh is as healthy as new york--23; but there is no city in the entire list which is healthier, except frankfort-on-the-main--20. but frankfort is not as healthy as chicago, san francisco, st. louis, or philadelphia. perhaps a strict average of the world might develop the fact that where one in 1,000 of america's population dies, two in 1,000 of the other populations of the earth succumb. i do not like to make insinuations, but i do think the above statistics darkly suggest that these people over here drink this detestable water "on the sly." we climbed the moraine on the opposite side of the glacier, and then crept along its sharp ridge a hundred yards or so, in pretty constant danger of a tumble to the glacier below. the fall would have been only one hundred feet, but it would have closed me out as effectually as one thousand, therefore i respected the distance accordingly, and was glad when the trip was done. a moraine is an ugly thing to assault head-first. at a distance it looks like an endless grave of fine sand, accurately shaped and nicely smoothed; but close by, it is found to be made mainly of rough boulders of all sizes, from that of a man's head to that of a cottage. by and by we came to the mauvais pas, or the villainous road, to translate it feelingly. it was a breakneck path around the face of a precipice forth or fifty feet high, and nothing to hang on to but some iron railings. i got along, slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, and finally reached the middle. my hopes began to rise a little, but they were quickly blighted; for there i met a hog--a long-nosed, bristly fellow, that held up his snout and worked his nostrils at me inquiringly. a hog on a pleasure excursion in switzerland--think of it! it is striking and unusual; a body might write a poem about it. he could not retreat, if he had been disposed to do it. it would have been foolish to stand upon our dignity in a place where there was hardly room to stand upon our feet, so we did nothing of the sort. there were twenty or thirty ladies and gentlemen behind us; we all turned about and went back, and the hog followed behind. the creature did not seem set up by what he had done; he had probably done it before. we reached the restaurant on the height called the chapeau at four in the afternoon. it was a memento-factory, and the stock was large, cheap, and varied. i bought the usual paper-cutter to remember the place by, and had mont blanc, the mauvais pas, and the rest of the region branded on my alpenstock; then we descended to the valley and walked home without being tied together. this was not dangerous, for the valley was five miles wide, and quite level. we reached the hotel before nine o'clock. next morning we left for geneva on top of the diligence, under shelter of a gay awning. if i remember rightly, there were more than twenty people up there. it was so high that the ascent was made by ladder. the huge vehicle was full everywhere, inside and out. five other diligences left at the same time, all full. we had engaged our seats two days beforehand, to make sure, and paid the regulation price, five dollars each; but the rest of the company were wiser; they had trusted baedeker, and waited; consequently some of them got their seats for one or two dollars. baedeker knows all about hotels, railway and diligence companies, and speaks his mind freely. he is a trustworthy friend of the traveler. we never saw mont blanc at his best until we were many miles away; then he lifted his majestic proportions high into the heavens, all white and cold and solemn, and made the rest of the world seem little and plebeian, and cheap and trivial. as he passed out of sight at last, an old englishman settled himself in his seat and said: "well, i am satisfied, i have seen the principal features of swiss scenery--mont blanc and the goiter--now for home!" chapter xlvii [queer european manners] we spent a few pleasant restful days at geneva, that delightful city where accurate time-pieces are made for all the rest of the world, but whose own clocks never give the correct time of day by any accident. geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are filled with the most enticing gimacrackery, but if one enters one of these places he is at once pounced upon, and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this, that, and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get out again, and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment. the shopkeepers of the smaller sort, in geneva, are as troublesome and persistent as are the salesmen of that monster hive in paris, the grands magasins du louvre--an establishment where ill-mannered pestering, pursuing, and insistence have been reduced to a science. in geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very elastic-that is another bad feature. i was looking in at a window at a very pretty string of beads, suitable for a child. i was only admiring them; i had no use for them; i hardly ever wear beads. the shopwoman came out and offered them to me for thirty-five francs. i said it was cheap, but i did not need them. "ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful!" i confessed it, but said they were not suitable for one of my age and simplicity of character. she darted in and brought them out and tried to force them into my hands, saying: "ah, but only see how lovely they are! surely monsieur will take them; monsieur shall have them for thirty francs. there, i have said it--it is a loss, but one must live." i dropped my hands, and tried to move her to respect my unprotected situation. but no, she dangled the beads in the sun before my face, exclaiming, "ah, monsieur cannot resist them!" she hung them on my coat button, folded her hand resignedly, and said: "gone,--and for thirty francs, the lovely things--it is incredible!--but the good god will sanctify the sacrifice to me." i removed them gently, returned them, and walked away, shaking my head and smiling a smile of silly embarrassment while the passers-by halted to observe. the woman leaned out of her door, shook the beads, and screamed after me: "monsieur shall have them for twenty-eight!" i shook my head. "twenty-seven! it is a cruel loss, it is ruin-but take them, only take them." i still retreated, still wagging my head. "mon dieu, they shall even go for twenty-six! there, i have said it. come!" i wagged another negative. a nurse and a little english girl had been near me, and were following me, now. the shopwoman ran to the nurse, thrust the beads into her hands, and said: "monsieur shall have them for twenty-five! take them to the hotel--he shall send me the money tomorrow-next day--when he likes." then to the child: "when thy father sends me the money, come thou also, my angel, and thou shall have something oh so pretty!" i was thus providentially saved. the nurse refused the beads squarely and firmly, and that ended the matter. the "sights" of geneva are not numerous. i made one attempt to hunt up the houses once inhabited by those two disagreeable people, rousseau and calvin, but i had no success. then i concluded to go home. i found it was easier to propose to do that than to do it; for that town is a bewildering place. i got lost in a tangle of narrow and crooked streets, and stayed lost for an hour or two. finally i found a street which looked somewhat familiar, and said to myself, "now i am at home, i judge." but i was wrong; this was "hell street." presently i found another place which had a familiar look, and said to myself, "now i am at home, sure." it was another error. this was "purgatory street." after a little i said, "now i've got the right place, anyway ... no, this is 'paradise street'; i'm further from home than i was in the beginning." those were queer names--calvin was the author of them, likely. "hell" and "purgatory" fitted those two streets like a glove, but the "paradise" appeared to be sarcastic. i came out on the lake-front, at last, and then i knew where i was. i was walking along before the glittering jewelry shops when i saw a curious performance. a lady passed by, and a trim dandy lounged across the walk in such an apparently carefully timed way as to bring himself exactly in front of her when she got to him; he made no offer to step out of the way; he did not apologize; he did not even notice her. she had to stop still and let him lounge by. i wondered if he had done that piece of brutality purposely. he strolled to a chair and seated himself at a small table; two or three other males were sitting at similar tables sipping sweetened water. i waited; presently a youth came by, and this fellow got up and served him the same trick. still, it did not seem possible that any one could do such a thing deliberately. to satisfy my curiosity i went around the block, and, sure enough, as i approached, at a good round speed, he got up and lounged lazily across my path, fouling my course exactly at the right moment to receive all my weight. this proved that his previous performances had not been accidental, but intentional. i saw that dandy's curious game played afterward, in paris, but not for amusement; not with a motive of any sort, indeed, but simply from a selfish indifference to other people's comfort and rights. one does not see it as frequently in paris as he might expect to, for there the law says, in effect, "it is the business of the weak to get out of the way of the strong." we fine a cabman if he runs over a citizen; paris fines the citizen for being run over. at least so everybody says--but i saw something which caused me to doubt; i saw a horseman run over an old woman one day--the police arrested him and took him away. that looked as if they meant to punish him. it will not do for me to find merit in american manners-for are they not the standing butt for the jests of critical and polished europe? still, i must venture to claim one little matter of superiority in our manners; a lady may traverse our streets all day, going and coming as she chooses, and she will never be molested by any man; but if a lady, unattended, walks abroad in the streets of london, even at noonday, she will be pretty likely to be accosted and insulted--and not by drunken sailors, but by men who carry the look and wear the dress of gentlemen. it is maintained that these people are not gentlemen, but are a lower sort, disguised as gentlemen. the case of colonel valentine baker obstructs that argument, for a man cannot become an officer in the british army except he hold the rank of gentleman. this person, finding himself alone in a railway compartment with an unprotected girl--but it is an atrocious story, and doubtless the reader remembers it well enough. london must have been more or less accustomed to bakers, and the ways of bakers, else london would have been offended and excited. baker was "imprisoned"--in a parlor; and he could not have been more visited, or more overwhelmed with attentions, if he had committed six murders and then-while the gallows was preparing--"got religion"--after the manner of the holy charles peace, of saintly memory. arkansaw--it seems a little indelicate to be trumpeting forth our own superiorities, and comparisons are always odious, but still--arkansaw would certainly have hanged baker. i do not say she would have tried him first, but she would have hanged him, anyway. even the most degraded woman can walk our streets unmolested, her sex and her weakness being her sufficient protection. she will encounter less polish than she would in the old world, but she will run across enough humanity to make up for it. the music of a donkey awoke us early in the morning, and we rose up and made ready for a pretty formidable walk--to italy; but the road was so level that we took the train.. we lost a good deal of time by this, but it was no matter, we were not in a hurry. we were four hours going to chamb`ery. the swiss trains go upward of three miles an hour, in places, but they are quite safe. that aged french town of chamb`ery was as quaint and crooked as heilbronn. a drowsy reposeful quiet reigned in the back streets which made strolling through them very pleasant, barring the almost unbearable heat of the sun. in one of these streets, which was eight feet wide, gracefully curved, and built up with small antiquated houses, i saw three fat hogs lying asleep, and a boy (also asleep) taking care of them. from queer old-fashioned windows along the curve projected boxes of bright flowers, and over the edge of one of these boxes hung the head and shoulders of a cat--asleep. the five sleeping creatures were the only living things visible in that street. there was not a sound; absolute stillness prevailed. it was sunday; one is not used to such dreamy sundays on the continent. in our part of the town it was different that night. a regiment of brown and battered soldiers had arrived home from algiers, and i judged they got thirsty on the way. they sang and drank till dawn, in the pleasant open air. we left for turin at ten the next morning by a railway which was profusely decorated with tunnels. we forgot to take a lantern along, consequently we missed all the scenery. our compartment was full. a ponderous tow-headed swiss woman, who put on many fine-lady airs, but was evidently more used to washing linen than wearing it, sat in a corner seat and put her legs across into the opposite one, propping them intermediately with her up-ended valise. in the seat thus pirated, sat two americans, greatly incommoded by that woman's majestic coffin-clad feet. one of them begged, politely, to remove them. she opened her wide eyes and gave him a stare, but answered nothing. by and by he preferred his request again, with great respectfulness. she said, in good english, and in a deeply offended tone, that she had paid her passage and was not going to be bullied out of her "rights" by ill-bred foreigners, even if she was alone and unprotected. "but i have rights, also, madam. my ticket entitles me to a seat, but you are occupying half of it." "i will not talk with you, sir. what right have you to speak to me? i do not know you. one would know you came from a land where there are no gentlemen. no gentleman would treat a lady as you have treated me." "i come from a region where a lady would hardly give me the same provocation." "you have insulted me, sir! you have intimated that i am not a lady--and i hope i am not one, after the pattern of your country." "i beg that you will give yourself no alarm on that head, madam; but at the same time i must insist--always respectfully--that you let me have my seat." here the fragile laundress burst into tears and sobs. "i never was so insulted before! never, never! it is shameful, it is brutal, it is base, to bully and abuse an unprotected lady who has lost the use of her limbs and cannot put her feet to the floor without agony!" "good heavens, madam, why didn't you say that at first! i offer a thousand pardons. and i offer them most sincerely. i did not know--i could not know--anything was the matter. you are most welcome to the seat, and would have been from the first if i had only known. i am truly sorry it all happened, i do assure you." but he couldn't get a word of forgiveness out of her. she simply sobbed and sniffed in a subdued but wholly unappeasable way for two long hours, meantime crowding the man more than ever with her undertaker-furniture and paying no sort of attention to his frequent and humble little efforts to do something for her comfort. then the train halted at the italian line and she hopped up and marched out of the car with as firm a leg as any washerwoman of all her tribe! and how sick i was, to see how she had fooled me. turin is a very fine city. in the matter of roominess it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of before, i fancy. it sits in the midst of a vast dead-level, and one is obliged to imagine that land may be had for the asking, and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it. the streets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares are prodigious, the houses are huge and handsome, and compacted into uniform blocks that stretch away as straight as an arrow, into the distance. the sidewalks are about as wide as ordinary european streets, and are covered over with a double arcade supported on great stone piers or columns. one walks from one end to the other of these spacious streets, under shelter all the time, and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shops and the most inviting dining-houses. there is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with the most wickedly enticing shops, which is roofed with glass, high aloft overhead, and paved with soft-toned marbles laid in graceful figures; and at night when the place is brilliant with gas and populous with a sauntering and chatting and laughing multitude of pleasure-seekers, it is a spectacle worth seeing. everything is on a large scale; the public buildings, for instance--and they are architecturally imposing, too, as well as large. the big squares have big bronze monuments in them. at the hotel they gave us rooms that were alarming, for size, and parlor to match. it was well the weather required no fire in the parlor, for i think one might as well have tried to warm a park. the place would have a warm look, though, in any weather, for the window-curtains were of red silk damask, and the walls were covered with the same fire-hued goods--so, also, were the four sofas and the brigade of chairs. the furniture, the ornaments, the chandeliers, the carpets, were all new and bright and costly. we did not need a parlor at all, but they said it belonged to the two bedrooms and we might use it if we chose. since it was to cost nothing, we were not averse to using it, of course. turin must surely read a good deal, for it has more book-stores to the square rod than any other town i know of. and it has its own share of military folk. the italian officers' uniforms are very much the most beautiful i have ever seen; and, as a general thing, the men in them were as handsome as the clothes. they were not large men, but they had fine forms, fine features, rich olive complexions, and lustrous black eyes. for several weeks i had been culling all the information i could about italy, from tourists. the tourists were all agreed upon one thing--one must expect to be cheated at every turn by the italians. i took an evening walk in turin, and presently came across a little punch and judy show in one of the great squares. twelve or fifteen people constituted the audience. this miniature theater was not much bigger than a man's coffin stood on end; the upper part was open and displayed a tinseled parlor--a good-sized handkerchief would have answered for a drop-curtain; the footlights consisted of a couple of candle-ends an inch long; various manikins the size of dolls appeared on the stage and made long speeches at each other, gesticulating a good deal, and they generally had a fight before they got through. they were worked by strings from above, and the illusion was not perfect, for one saw not only the strings but the brawny hand that manipulated them--and the actors and actresses all talked in the same voice, too. the audience stood in front of the theater, and seemed to enjoy the performance heartily. when the play was done, a youth in his shirt-sleeves started around with a small copper saucer to make a collection. i did not know how much to put in, but thought i would be guided by my predecessors. unluckily, i only had two of these, and they did not help me much because they did not put in anything. i had no italian money, so i put in a small swiss coin worth about ten cents. the youth finished his collection trip and emptied the result on the stage; he had some very animated talk with the concealed manager, then he came working his way through the little crowd--seeking me, i thought. i had a mind to slip away, but concluded i wouldn't; i would stand my ground, and confront the villainy, whatever it was. the youth stood before me and held up that swiss coin, sure enough, and said something. i did not understand him, but i judged he was requiring italian money of me. the crowd gathered close, to listen. i was irritated, and said--in english, of course: "i know it's swiss, but you'll take that or none. i haven't any other." he tried to put the coin in my hand, and spoke again. i drew my hand away, and said: "no, sir. i know all about you people. you can't play any of your fraudful tricks on me. if there is a discount on that coin, i am sorry, but i am not going to make it good. i noticed that some of the audience didn't pay you anything at all. you let them go, without a word, but you come after me because you think i'm a stranger and will put up with an extortion rather than have a scene. but you are mistaken this time--you'll take that swiss money or none." the youth stood there with the coin in his fingers, nonplused and bewildered; of course he had not understood a word. an english-speaking italian spoke up, now, and said: "you are misunderstanding the boy. he does not mean any harm. he did not suppose you gave him so much money purposely, so he hurried back to return you the coin lest you might get away before you discovered your mistake. take it, and give him a penny--that will make everything smooth again." i probably blushed, then, for there was occasion. through the interpreter i begged the boy's pardon, but i nobly refused to take back the ten cents. i said i was accustomed to squandering large sums in that way-it was the kind of person i was. then i retired to make a note to the effect that in italy persons connected with the drama do not cheat. the episode with the showman reminds me of a dark chapter in my history. i once robbed an aged and blind beggar-woman of four dollars--in a church. it happened this way. when i was out with the innocents abroad, the ship stopped in the russian port of odessa and i went ashore, with others, to view the town. i got separated from the rest, and wandered about alone, until late in the afternoon, when i entered a greek church to see what it was like. when i was ready to leave, i observed two wrinkled old women standing stiffly upright against the inner wall, near the door, with their brown palms open to receive alms. i contributed to the nearer one, and passed out. i had gone fifty yards, perhaps, when it occurred to me that i must remain ashore all night, as i had heard that the ship's business would carry her away at four o'clock and keep her away until morning. it was a little after four now. i had come ashore with only two pieces of money, both about the same size, but differing largely in value--one was a french gold piece worth four dollars, the other a turkish coin worth two cents and a half. with a sudden and horrified misgiving, i put my hand in my pocket, now, and sure enough, i fetched out that turkish penny! here was a situation. a hotel would require pay in advance --i must walk the street all night, and perhaps be arrested as a suspicious character. there was but one way out of the difficulty--i flew back to the church, and softly entered. there stood the old woman yet, and in the palm of the nearest one still lay my gold piece. i was grateful. i crept close, feeling unspeakably mean; i got my turkish penny ready, and was extending a trembling hand to make the nefarious exchange, when i heard a cough behind me. i jumped back as if i had been accused, and stood quaking while a worshiper entered and passed up the aisle. i was there a year trying to steal that money; that is, it seemed a year, though, of course, it must have been much less. the worshipers went and came; there were hardly ever three in the church at once, but there was always one or more. every time i tried to commit my crime somebody came in or somebody started out, and i was prevented; but at last my opportunity came; for one moment there was nobody in the church but the two beggar-women and me. i whipped the gold piece out of the poor old pauper's palm and dropped my turkish penny in its place. poor old thing, she murmured her thanks--they smote me to the heart. then i sped away in a guilty hurry, and even when i was a mile from the church i was still glancing back, every moment, to see if i was being pursued. that experience has been of priceless value and benefit to me; for i resolved then, that as long as i lived i would never again rob a blind beggar-woman in a church; and i have always kept my word. the most permanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of booky teaching, but of experience. chapter xlviii [beauty of women--and of old masters] in milan we spent most of our time in the vast and beautiful arcade or gallery, or whatever it is called. blocks of tall new buildings of the most sumptuous sort, rich with decoration and graced with statues, the streets between these blocks roofed over with glass at a great height, the pavements all of smooth and variegated marble, arranged in tasteful patterns--little tables all over these marble streets, people sitting at them, eating, drinking, or smoking--crowds of other people strolling by--such is the arcade. i should like to live in it all the time. the windows of the sumptuous restaurants stand open, and one breakfasts there and enjoys the passing show. we wandered all over the town, enjoying whatever was going on in the streets. we took one omnibus ride, and as i did not speak italian and could not ask the price, i held out some copper coins to the conductor, and he took two. then he went and got his tariff card and showed me that he had taken only the right sum. so i made a note--italian omnibus conductors do not cheat. near the cathedral i saw another instance of probity. an old man was peddling dolls and toy fans. two small american children and one gave the old man a franc and three copper coins, and both started away; but they were called back, and the franc and one of the coppers were restored to them. hence it is plain that in italy, parties connected with the drama and the omnibus and the toy interests do not cheat. the stocks of goods in the shops were not extensive, generally. in the vestibule of what seemed to be a clothing store, we saw eight or ten wooden dummies grouped together, clothed in woolen business suits and each marked with its price. one suit was marked forty-five francs--nine dollars. harris stepped in and said he wanted a suit like that. nothing easier: the old merchant dragged in the dummy, brushed him off with a broom, stripped him, and shipped the clothes to the hotel. he said he did not keep two suits of the same kind in stock, but manufactured a second when it was needed to reclothe the dummy. in another quarter we found six italians engaged in a violent quarrel. they danced fiercely about, gesticulating with their heads, their arms, their legs, their whole bodies; they would rush forward occasionally with a sudden access of passion and shake their fists in each other's very faces. we lost half an hour there, waiting to help cord up the dead, but they finally embraced each other affectionately, and the trouble was over. the episode was interesting, but we could not have afforded all the time to it if we had known nothing was going to come of it but a reconciliation. note made--in italy, people who quarrel cheat the spectator. we had another disappointment afterward. we approached a deeply interested crowd, and in the midst of it found a fellow wildly chattering and gesticulating over a box on the ground which was covered with a piece of old blanket. every little while he would bend down and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no deception--chattering away all the while--but always, just as i was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain, he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further. however, at last he uncovered the box and got out a spoon with a liquid in it, and held it fair and frankly around, for people to see that it was all right and he was taking no advantage--his chatter became more excited than ever. i supposed he was going to set fire to the liquid and swallow it, so i was greatly wrought up and interested. i got a cent ready in one hand and a florin in the other, intending to give him the former if he survived and the latter if he killed himself--for his loss would be my gain in a literary way, and i was willing to pay a fair price for the item --but this impostor ended his intensely moving performance by simply adding some powder to the liquid and polishing the spoon! then he held it aloft, and he could not have shown a wilder exultation if he had achieved an immortal miracle. the crowd applauded in a gratified way, and it seemed to me that history speaks the truth when it says these children of the south are easily entertained. we spent an impressive hour in the noble cathedral, where long shafts of tinted light were cleaving through the solemn dimness from the lofty windows and falling on a pillar here, a picture there, and a kneeling worshiper yonder. the organ was muttering, censers were swinging, candles were glinting on the distant altar and robed priests were filing silently past them; the scene was one to sweep all frivolous thoughts away and steep the soul in a holy calm. a trim young american lady paused a yard or two from me, fixed her eyes on the mellow sparks flecking the far-off altar, bent her head reverently a moment, then straightened up, kicked her train into the air with her heel, caught it deftly in her hand, and marched briskly out. we visited the picture-galleries and the other regulation "sights" of milan--not because i wanted to write about them again, but to see if i had learned anything in twelve years. i afterward visited the great galleries of rome and florence for the same purpose. i found i had learned one thing. when i wrote about the old masters before, i said the copies were better than the originals. that was a mistake of large dimensions. the old masters were still unpleasing to me, but they were truly divine contrasted with the copies. the copy is to the original as the pallid, smart, inane new wax-work group is to the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men and women whom it professes to duplicate. there is a mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures, which is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound is to the ear. that is the merit which is most loudly praised in the old picture, and is the one which the copy most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must not hope to compass. it was generally conceded by the artists with whom i talked, that that subdued splendor, that mellow richness, is imparted to the picture by age. then why should we worship the old master for it, who didn't impart it, instead of worshiping old time, who did? perhaps the picture was a clanging bell, until time muffled it and sweetened it. in conversation with an artist in venice, i asked: "what is it that people see in the old masters? i have been in the doge's palace and i saw several acres of very bad drawing, very bad perspective, and very incorrect proportions. paul veronese's dogs to not resemble dogs; all the horses look like bladders on legs; one man had a right leg on the left side of his body; in the large picture where the emperor (barbarossa?) is prostrate before the pope, there are three men in the foreground who are over thirty feet high, if one may judge by the size of a kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground; and according to the same scale, the pope is seven feet high and the doge is a shriveled dwarf of four feet." the artist said: "yes, the old masters often drew badly; they did not care much for truth and exactness in minor details; but after all, in spite of bad drawing, bad perspective, bad proportions, and a choice of subjects which no longer appeal to people as strongly as they did three hundred years ago, there is a something about their pictures which is divine--a something which is above and beyond the art of any epoch since--a something which would be the despair of artists but that they never hope or expect to attain it, and therefore do not worry about it." that is what he said--and he said what he believed; and not only believed, but felt. reasoning--especially reasoning, without technical knowledge--must be put aside, in cases of this kind. it cannot assist the inquirer. it will lead him, in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes of artists, would be a most illogical conclusion. thus: bad drawing, bad proportion, bad perspective, indifference to truthful detail, color which gets its merit from time, and not from the artist--these things constitute the old master; conclusion, the old master was a bad painter, the old master was not an old master at all, but an old apprentice. your friend the artist will grant your premises, but deny your conclusion; he will maintain that notwithstanding this formidable list of confessed defects, there is still a something that is divine and unapproachable about the old master, and that there is no arguing the fact away by any system of reasoning whatsoever. i can believe that. there are women who have an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would fail. he would say to one of these women: this chin is too short, this nose is too long, this forehead is too high, this hair is too red, this complexion is too pallid, the perspective of the entire composition is incorrect; conclusion, the woman is not beautiful. but her nearest friend might say, and say truly, "your premises are right, your logic is faultless, but your conclusion is wrong, nevertheless; she is an old master--she is beautiful, but only to such as know her; it is a beauty which cannot be formulated, but it is there, just the same." i found more pleasure in contemplating the old masters this time than i did when i was in europe in former years, but still it was a calm pleasure; there was nothing overheated about it. when i was in venice before, i think i found no picture which stirred me much, but this time there were two which enticed me to the doge's palace day after day, and kept me there hours at a time. one of these was tintoretto's three-acre picture in the great council chamber. when i saw it twelve years ago i was not strongly attracted to it--the guide told me it was an insurrection in heaven--but this was an error. the movement of this great work is very fine. there are ten thousand figures, and they are all doing something. there is a wonderful "go" to the whole composition. some of the figures are driving headlong downward, with clasped hands, others are swimming through the cloud-shoals--some on their faces, some on their backs--great processions of bishops, martyrs, and angels are pouring swiftly centerward from various outlying directions--everywhere is enthusiastic joy, there is rushing movement everywhere. there are fifteen or twenty figures scattered here and there, with books, but they cannot keep their attention on their reading--they offer the books to others, but no one wishes to read, now. the lion of st. mark is there with his book; st. mark is there with his pen uplifted; he and the lion are looking each other earnestly in the face, disputing about the way to spell a word--the lion looks up in rapt admiration while st. mark spells. this is wonderfully interpreted by the artist. it is the master-stroke of this imcomparable painting. [figure 10] i visited the place daily, and never grew tired of looking at that grand picture. as i have intimated, the movement is almost unimaginable vigorous; the figures are singing, hosannahing, and many are blowing trumpets. so vividly is noise suggested, that spectators who become absorbed in the picture almost always fall to shouting comments in each other's ears, making ear-trumpets of their curved hands, fearing they may not otherwise be heard. one often sees a tourist, with the eloquent tears pouring down his cheeks, funnel his hands at his wife's ear, and hears him roar through them, "oh, to be there and at rest!" none but the supremely great in art can produce effects like these with the silent brush. twelve years ago i could not have appreciated this picture. one year ago i could not have appreciated it. my study of art in heidelberg has been a noble education to me. all that i am today in art, i owe to that. the other great work which fascinated me was bassano's immortal hair trunk. this is in the chamber of the council of ten. it is in one of the three forty-foot pictures which decorate the walls of the room. the composition of this picture is beyond praise. the hair trunk is not hurled at the stranger's head--so to speak--as the chief feature of an immortal work so often is; no, it is carefully guarded from prominence, it is subordinated, it is restrained, it is most deftly and cleverly held in reserve, it is most cautiously and ingeniously led up to, by the master, and consequently when the spectator reaches it at last, he is taken unawares, he is unprepared, and it bursts upon him with a stupefying surprise. one is lost in wonder at all the thought and care which this elaborate planning must have cost. a general glance at the picture could never suggest that there was a hair trunk in it; the hair trunk is not mentioned in the title even--which is, "pope alexander iii. and the doge ziani, the conqueror of the emperor frederick barbarossa"; you see, the title is actually utilized to help divert attention from the trunk; thus, as i say, nothing suggests the presence of the trunk, by any hint, yet everything studiedly leads up to it, step by step. let us examine into this, and observe the exquisitely artful artlessness of the plan. at the extreme left end of the picture are a couple of women, one of them with a child looking over her shoulder at a wounded man sitting with bandaged head on the ground. these people seem needless, but no, they are there for a purpose; one cannot look at them without seeing the gorgeous procession of grandees, bishops, halberdiers, and banner-bearers which is passing along behind them; one cannot see the procession without feeling the curiosity to follow it and learn whither it is going; it leads him to the pope, in the center of the picture, who is talking with the bonnetless doge--talking tranquilly, too, although within twelve feet of them a man is beating a drum, and not far from the drummer two persons are blowing horns, and many horsemen are plunging and rioting about--indeed, twenty-two feet of this great work is all a deep and happy holiday serenity and sunday-school procession, and then we come suddenly upon eleven and one-half feet of turmoil and racket and insubordination. this latter state of things is not an accident, it has its purpose. but for it, one would linger upon the pope and the doge, thinking them to be the motive and supreme feature of the picture; whereas one is drawn along, almost unconsciously, to see what the trouble is about. now at the very end of this riot, within four feet of the end of the picture, and full thirty-six feet from the beginning of it, the hair trunk bursts with an electrifying suddenness upon the spectator, in all its matchless perfection, and the great master's triumph is sweeping and complete. from that moment no other thing in those forty feet of canvas has any charm; one sees the hair trunk, and the hair trunk only--and to see it is to worship it. bassano even placed objects in the immediate vicinity of the supreme feature whose pretended purpose was to divert attention from it yet a little longer and thus delay and augment the surprise; for instance, to the right of it he has placed a stooping man with a cap so red that it is sure to hold the eye for a moment--to the left of it, some six feet away, he has placed a red-coated man on an inflated horse, and that coat plucks your eye to that locality the next moment--then, between the trunk and the red horseman he has intruded a man, naked to his waist, who is carrying a fancy flour-sack on the middle of his back instead of on his shoulder--this admirable feat interests you, of course--keeps you at bay a little longer, like a sock or a jacket thrown to the pursuing wolf--but at last, in spite of all distractions and detentions, the eye of even the most dull and heedless spectator is sure to fall upon the world's masterpiece, and in that moment he totters to his chair or leans upon his guide for support. descriptions of such a work as this must necessarily be imperfect, yet they are of value. the top of the trunk is arched; the arch is a perfect half-circle, in the roman style of architecture, for in the then rapid decadence of greek art, the rising influence of rome was already beginning to be felt in the art of the republic. the trunk is bound or bordered with leather all around where the lid joins the main body. many critics consider this leather too cold in tone; but i consider this its highest merit, since it was evidently made so to emphasize by contrast the impassioned fervor of the hasp. the highlights in this part of the work are cleverly managed, the motif is admirably subordinated to the ground tints, and the technique is very fine. the brass nail-heads are in the purest style of the early renaissance. the strokes, here, are very firm and bold--every nail-head is a portrait. the handle on the end of the trunk has evidently been retouched--i think, with a piece of chalk-but one can still see the inspiration of the old master in the tranquil, almost too tranquil, hang of it. the hair of this trunk is real hair--so to speak--white in patched, brown in patches. the details are finely worked out; the repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive attitude is charmingly expressed. there is a feeling about this part of the work which lifts it to the highest altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism vanishes away--one recognizes that there is soul here. view this trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel, it is a miracle. some of the effects are very daring, approaching even to the boldest flights of the rococo, the sirocco, and the byzantine schools--yet the master's hand never falters--it moves on, calm, majestic, confident--and, with that art which conceals art, it finally casts over the tout ensemble, by mysterious methods of its own, a subtle something which refines, subdues, etherealizes the arid components and endures them with the deep charm and gracious witchery of poesy. among the art-treasures of europe there are pictures which approach the hair trunk--there are two which may be said to equal it, possibly--but there is none that surpasses it. so perfect is the hair trunk that it moves even persons who ordinarily have no feeling for art. when an erie baggagemaster saw it two years ago, he could hardly keep from checking it; and once when a customs inspector was brought into its presence, he gazed upon it in silent rapture for some moments, then slowly and unconsciously placed one hand behind him with the palm uppermost, and got out his chalk with the other. these facts speak for themselves. chapter xlix [hanged with a golden rope] one lingers about the cathedral a good deal, in venice. there is a strong fascination about it--partly because it is so old, and partly because it is so ugly. too many of the world's famous buildings fail of one chief virtue--harmony; they are made up of a methodless mixture of the ugly and the beautiful; this is bad; it is confusing, it is unrestful. one has a sense of uneasiness, of distress, without knowing why. but one is calm before st. mark's, one is calm in the cellar; for its details are masterfully ugly, no misplaced and impertinent beauties are intruded anywhere; and the consequent result is a grand harmonious whole, of soothing, entrancing, tranquilizing, soul-satisfying ugliness. one's admiration of a perfect thing always grows, never declines; and this is the surest evidence to him that it is perfect. st. mark's is perfect. to me it soon grew to be so nobly, so augustly ugly, that it was difficult to stay away from it, even for a little while. every time its squat domes disappeared from my view, i had a despondent feeling; whenever they reappeared, i felt an honest rapture--i have not known any happier hours than those i daily spent in front of florian's, looking across the great square at it. propped on its long row of low thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes, it seemed like a vast warty bug taking a meditative walk. st. mark's is not the oldest building in the world, of course, but it seems the oldest, and looks the oldest--especially inside. when the ancient mosaics in its walls become damaged, they are repaired but not altered; the grotesque old pattern is preserved. antiquity has a charm of its own, and to smarten it up would only damage it. one day i was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule looking up at an ancient piece of apprentice-work, in mosaic, illustrative of the command to "multiply and replenish the earth." the cathedral itself had seemed very old; but this picture was illustrating a period in history which made the building seem young by comparison. but i presently found an antique which was older than either the battered cathedral or the date assigned to the piece of history; it was a spiral-shaped fossil as large as the crown of a hat; it was embedded in the marble bench, and had been sat upon by tourists until it was worn smooth. contrasted with the inconceivable antiquity of this modest fossil, those other things were flippantly modern--jejune--mere matters of day-before-yesterday. the sense of the oldness of the cathedral vanished away under the influence of this truly venerable presence. st. mark's is monumental; it is an imperishable remembrancer of the profound and simply piety of the middle ages. whoever could ravish a column from a pagan temple, did it and contributed his swag to this christian one. so this fane is upheld by several hundred acquisitions procured in that peculiar way. in our day it would be immoral to go on the highway to get bricks for a church, but it was no sin in the old times. st. mark's was itself the victim of a curious robbery once. the thing is set down in the history of venice, but it might be smuggled into the arabian nights and not seem out of place there: nearly four hundred and fifty years ago, a candian named stammato, in the suite of a prince of the house of este, was allowed to view the riches of st. mark's. his sinful eye was dazzled and he hid himself behind an altar, with an evil purpose in his heart, but a priest discovered him and turned him out. afterward he got in again--by false keys, this time. he went there, night after night, and worked hard and patiently, all alone, overcoming difficulty after difficulty with his toil, and at last succeeded in removing a great brick of the marble paneling which walled the lower part of the treasury; this block he fixed so that he could take it out and put it in at will. after that, for weeks, he spent all his midnights in his magnificent mine, inspecting it in security, gloating over its marvels at his leisure, and always slipping back to his obscure lodgings before dawn, with a duke's ransom under his cloak. he did not need to grab, haphazard, and run--there was no hurry. he could make deliberate and well-considered selections; he could consult his esthetic tastes. one comprehends how undisturbed he was, and how safe from any danger of interruption, when it is stated that he even carried off a unicorn's horn--a mere curiosity--which would not pass through the egress entire, but had to be sawn in two-a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor. he continued to store up his treasures at home until his occupation lost the charm of novelty and became monotonous; then he ceased from it, contented. well he might be; for his collection, raised to modern values, represented nearly fifty million dollars! he could have gone home much the richest citizen of his country, and it might have been years before the plunder was missed; but he was human--he could not enjoy his delight alone, he must have somebody to talk about it with. so he exacted a solemn oath from a candian noble named crioni, then led him to his lodgings and nearly took his breath away with a sight of his glittering hoard. he detected a look in his friend's face which excited his suspicion, and was about to slip a stiletto into him when crioni saved himself by explaining that that look was only an expression of supreme and happy astonishment. stammato made crioni a present of one of the state's principal jewels--a huge carbuncle, which afterward figured in the ducal cap of state--and the pair parted. crioni went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal, and handed over the carbuncle as evidence. stammato was arrested, tried, and condemned, with the old-time venetian promptness. he was hanged between the two great columns in the piazza--with a gilded rope, out of compliment to his love of gold, perhaps. he got no good of his booty at all--it was all recovered. in venice we had a luxury which very seldom fell to our lot on the continent--a home dinner with a private family. if one could always stop with private families, when traveling, europe would have a charm which it now lacks. as it is, one must live in the hotels, of course, and that is a sorrowful business. a man accustomed to american food and american domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in europe; but i think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die. he would have to do without his accustomed morning meal. that is too formidable a change altogether; he would necessarily suffer from it. he could get the shadow, the sham, the base counterfeit of that meal; but it would do him no good, and money could not buy the reality. to particularize: the average american's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak; well, in europe, coffee is an unknown beverage. you can get what the european hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness. it is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff, and almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an american hotel. the milk used for it is what the french call "christian" milk--milk which has been baptized. after a few months' acquaintance with european "coffee," one's mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream, after all, and a thing which never existed. next comes the european bread--fair enough, good enough, after a fashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic; and never any change, never any variety--always the same tiresome thing. next, the butter--the sham and tasteless butter; no salt in it, and made of goodness knows what. then there is the beefsteak. they have it in europe, but they don't know how to cook it. neither will they cut it right. it comes on the table in a small, round pewter platter. it lies in the center of this platter, in a bordering bed of grease-soaked potatoes; it is the size, shape, and thickness of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers cut off. it is a little overdone, is rather dry, it tastes pretty insipidly, it rouses no enthusiasm. imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing; and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an outlying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel also adds a great cup of american home-made coffee, with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup--could words describe the gratitude of this exile? the european dinner is better than the european breakfast, but it has its faults and inferiorities; it does not satisfy. he comes to the table eager and hungry; he swallows his soup--there is an undefinable lack about it somewhere; thinks the fish is going to be the thing he wants-eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps the one that will hit the hungry place--tries it, and is conscious that there was a something wanting about it, also. and thus he goes on, from dish to dish, like a boy after a butterfly which just misses getting caught every time it alights, but somehow doesn't get caught after all; and at the end the exile and the boy have fared about alike; the one is full, but grievously unsatisfied, the other has had plenty of exercise, plenty of interest, and a fine lot of hopes, but he hasn't got any butterfly. there is here and there an american who will say he can remember rising from a european table d'ho^te perfectly satisfied; but we must not overlook the fact that there is also here and there an american who will lie. the number of dishes is sufficient; but then it is such a monotonous variety of unstriking dishes. it is an inane dead-level of "fair-to-middling." there is nothing to accent it. perhaps if the roast of mutton or of beef--a big, generous one--were brought on the table and carved in full view of the client, that might give the right sense of earnestness and reality to the thing; but they don't do that, they pass the sliced meat around on a dish, and so you are perfectly calm, it does not stir you in the least. now a vast roast turkey, stretched on the broad of his back, with his heels in the air and the rich juices oozing from his fat sides ... but i may as well stop there, for they would not know how to cook him. they can't even cook a chicken respectably; and as for carving it, they do that with a hatchet. this is about the customary table d'ho^te bill in summer: soup (characterless). fish--sole, salmon, or whiting--usually tolerably good. roast--mutton or beef--tasteless--and some last year's potatoes. a pa^te, or some other made dish--usually good--"considering." one vegetable--brought on in state, and all alone--usually insipid lentils, or string-beans, or indifferent asparagus. roast chicken, as tasteless as paper. lettuce-salad--tolerably good. decayed strawberries or cherries. sometimes the apricots and figs are fresh, but this is no advantage, as these fruits are of no account anyway. the grapes are generally good, and sometimes there is a tolerably good peach, by mistake. the variations of the above bill are trifling. after a fortnight one discovers that the variations are only apparent, not real; in the third week you get what you had the first, and in the fourth the week you get what you had the second. three or four months of this weary sameness will kill the robustest appetite. it has now been many months, at the present writing, since i have had a nourishing meal, but i shall soon have one--a modest, private affair, all to myself. i have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when i arrive--as follows: radishes. baked apples, with brook-trout, from sierra cream. nevadas. fried oysters; stewed oysters. lake-trout, from tahoe. frogs. sheepshead and croakers from american coffee, with real cream. new orleans. american butter. black-bass from the mississippi. fried chicken, southern style. american roast beef. porterhouse steak. roast turkey, thanksgiving saratoga potatoes. style. broiled chicken, american style. cranberry sauce. celery. hot biscuits, southern style. roast wild turkey. woodcock. hot wheat-bread, southern canvasback-duck, from style. baltimore. hot buckwheat cakes. prairie-hens, from illinois. american toast. clear maple missouri partridges, broiled. syrup. possum. coon. virginia bacon, broiled. boston bacon and beans. blue points, on the half shell. bacon and greens, southern style. cherry-stone clams. hominy. boiled onions. san francisco mussels, steamed. turnips. oyster soup. clam soup. pumpkin. squash. asparagus. philadelphia terrapin soup. butter-beans. sweet-potatoes. oysters roasted in shell--lettuce. succotash. northern style. string-beans. soft-shell crabs. connecticut mashed potatoes. catsup. shad. boiled potatoes, in their skins. baltimore perch. new potatoes, minus the skins. early rose potatoes, roasted in hot egg-bread, southern style. the ashes, southern style, hot light-bread, southern style. served hot. buttermilk. iced sweet milk. sliced tomatoes, with sugar or apple dumplings, with real vinegar. stewed tomatoes. cream. green corn, cut from the ear and apple pie. apple fritters. served with butter and pepper. apple puffs, southern style. green corn, on the ear. peach cobbler, southern style. hot corn-pone, with chitlings, peach pie. american mince pie. southern style. pumpkin pie. squash pie. hot hoe-cake, southern style. all sorts of american pastry. fresh american fruits of all sorts, including strawberries, which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator. americans intending to spend a year or so in european hotels, will do well to copy this bill and carry it along. they will find it an excellent thing to get up an appetite with, in the dispiriting presence of the squalid table d'ho^te. foreigners cannot enjoy our food, i suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. it is not strange; for tastes are made, not born. i might glorify my bill of fare until i was tired; but after all, the scotchman would shake his head and say, "where's your haggis?" and the fijian would sigh and say, "where's your missionary?" i have a neat talent in matters pertaining to nourishment. this has met with professional recognition. i have often furnished recipes for cook-books. here are some designs for pies and things, which i recently prepared for a friend's projected cook-book, but as i forgot to furnish diagrams and perspectives, they had to be left out, of course. recipe for an ash-cake take a lot of water and add to it a lot of coarse indian-meal and about a quarter of a lot of salt. mix well together, knead into the form of a "pone," and let the pone stand awhile--not on its edge, but the other way. rake away a place among the embers, lay it there, and cover it an inch deep with hot ashes. when it is done, remove it; blow off all the ashes but one layer; butter that one and eat. n.b.--no household should ever be without this talisman. it has been noticed that tramps never return for another ash-cake. ---------recipe for new english pie to make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as follows: take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough. work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned up some three-fourths of an inch. toughen and kiln-dry in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature. construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and of the same material. fill with stewed dried apples; aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron; add two portions of new orleans sugars, then solder on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies. serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy. ---------recipe for german coffee take a barrel of water and bring it to a boil; rub a chicory berry against a coffee berry, then convey the former into the water. continue the boiling and evaporation until the intensity of the flavor and aroma of the coffee and chicory has been diminished to a proper degree; then set aside to cool. now unharness the remains of a once cow from the plow, insert them in a hydraulic press, and when you shall have acquired a teaspoon of that pale-blue juice which a german superstition regards as milk, modify the malignity of its strength in a bucket of tepid water and ring up the breakfast. mix the beverage in a cold cup, partake with moderation, and keep a wet rag around your head to guard against over-excitement. ---------to carve fowls in the german fashion use a club, and avoid the joints. chapter l [titian bad and titian good] i wonder why some things are? for instance, art is allowed as much indecent license today as in earlier times-but the privileges of literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed within the past eighty or ninety years. fielding and smollett could portray the beastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we have plenty of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowed to approach them very near, even with nice and guarded forms of speech. but not so with art. the brush may still deal freely with any subject, however revolting or indelicate. it makes a body ooze sarcasm at every pore, to go about rome and florence and see what this last generation has been doing with the statues. these works, which had stood in innocent nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. yes, every one of them. nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. but the comical thing about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid marble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham and ostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blood paintings which do really need it have in no case been furnished with it. at the door of the uffizzi, in florence, one is confronted by statues of a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime--they hardly suggest human beings-yet these ridiculous creatures have been thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious generation. you enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery that exists in the world--the tribune--and there, against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses--titian's venus. it isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. if i ventured to describe that attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the venus lies, for anybody to gloat over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art, and art has its privileges. i saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; i saw young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; i saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest. how i should like to describe her--just to see what a holy indignation i could stir up in the world--just to hear the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all that. the world says that no worded description of a moving spectacle is a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacle seen with one's own eyes--yet the world is willing to let its son and its daughter and itself look at titian's beast, but won't stand a description of it in words. which shows that the world is not as consistent as it might be. there are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure thought--i am well aware of that. i am not railing at such. what i am trying to emphasize is the fact that titian's venus is very far from being one of that sort. without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. in truth, it is too strong for any place but a public art gallery. titian has two venuses in the tribune; persons who have seen them will easily remember which one i am referring to. in every gallery in europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerable suffering--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every day and publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for they are innocent, they are inoffensive, being works of art. but suppose a literary artist ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate description of one of these grisly things--the critics would skin him alive. well, let it go, it cannot be helped; art retains her privileges, literature has lost hers. somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the consistencies of it--i haven't got time. titian's venus defiles and disgraces the tribune, there is no softening that fact, but his "moses" glorifies it. the simple truthfulness of its noble work wins the heart and the applause of every visitor, be he learned or ignorant. after wearying one's self with the acres of stuffy, sappy, expressionless babies that populate the canvases of the old masters of italy, it is refreshing to stand before this peerless child and feel that thrill which tells you you are at last in the presence of the real thing. this is a human child, this is genuine. you have seen him a thousand times--you have seen him just as he is here-and you confess, without reserve, that titian was a master. the doll-faces of other painted babes may mean one thing, they may mean another, but with the "moses" the case is different. the most famous of all the art-critics has said, "there is no room for doubt, here--plainly this child is in trouble." i consider that the "moses" has no equal among the works of the old masters, except it be the divine hair trunk of bassano. i feel sure that if all the other old masters were lost and only these two preserved, the world would be the gainer by it. my sole purpose in going to florence was to see this immortal "moses," and by good fortune i was just in time, for they were already preparing to remove it to a more private and better-protected place because a fashion of robbing the great galleries was prevailing in europe at the time. i got a capable artist to copy the picture; pannemaker, the engraver of dor'e's books, engraved it for me, and i have the pleasure of laying it before the reader in this volume. we took a turn to rome and some other italian cities-then to munich, and thence to paris--partly for exercise, but mainly because these things were in our projected program, and it was only right that we should be faithful to it. from paris i branched out and walked through holland and belgium, procuring an occasional lift by rail or canal when tired, and i had a tolerably good time of it "by and large." i worked spain and other regions through agents to save time and shoe-leather. we crossed to england, and then made the homeward passage in the cunarder gallia, a very fine ship. i was glad to get home--immeasurably glad; so glad, in fact, that it did not seem possible that anything could ever get me out of the country again. i had not enjoyed a pleasure abroad which seemed to me to compare with the pleasure i felt in seeing new york harbor again. europe has many advantages which we have not, but they do not compensate for a good many still more valuable ones which exist nowhere but in our own country. then we are such a homeless lot when we are over there! so are europeans themselves, for the matter. they live in dark and chilly vast tombs--costly enough, maybe, but without conveniences. to be condemned to live as the average european family lives would make life a pretty heavy burden to the average american family. on the whole, i think that short visits to europe are better for us than long ones. the former preserve us from becoming europeanized; they keep our pride of country intact, and at the same time they intensify our affection for our country and our people; whereas long visits have the effect of dulling those feelings--at least in the majority of cases. i think that one who mixes much with americans long resident abroad must arrive at this conclusion. appendix ---------nothing gives such weight and dignity to a book as an appendix. herodotus appendix a the portier omar khay'am, the poet-prophet of persia, writing more than eight hundred years ago, has said: "in the four parts of the earth are many that are able to write learned books, many that are able to lead armies, and many also that are able to govern kingdoms and empires; but few there be that can keep a hotel." a word about the european hotel portier. he is a most admirable invention, a most valuable convenience. he always wears a conspicuous uniform; he can always be found when he is wanted, for he sticks closely to his post at the front door; he is as polite as a duke; he speaks from four to ten languages; he is your surest help and refuge in time of trouble or perplexity. he is not the clerk, he is not the landlord; he ranks above the clerk, and represents the landlord, who is seldom seen. instead of going to the clerk for information, as we do at home, you go to the portier. it is the pride of our average hotel clerk to know nothing whatever; it is the pride of the portier to know everything. you ask the portier at what hours the trains leave--he tells you instantly; or you ask him who is the best physician in town; or what is the hack tariff; or how many children the mayor has; or what days the galleries are open, and whether a permit is required, and where you are to get it, and what you must pay for it; or when the theaters open and close, what the plays are to be, and the price of seats; or what is the newest thing in hats; or how the bills of mortality average; or "who struck billy patterson." it does not matter what you ask him: in nine cases out of ten he knows, and in the tenth case he will find out for you before you can turn around three times. there is nothing he will not put his hand to. suppose you tell him you wish to go from hamburg to peking by the way of jericho, and are ignorant of routes and prices-the next morning he will hand you a piece of paper with the whole thing worked out on it to the last detail. before you have been long on european soil, you find yourself still saying you are relying on providence, but when you come to look closer you will see that in reality you are relying on the portier. he discovers what is puzzling you, or what is troubling you, or what your need is, before you can get the half of it out, and he promptly says, "leave that to me." consequently, you easily drift into the habit of leaving everything to him. there is a certain embarrassment about applying to the average american hotel clerk, a certain hesitancy, a sense of insecurity against rebuff; but you feel no embarrassment in your intercourse with the portier; he receives your propositions with an enthusiasm which cheers, and plunges into their accomplishment with an alacrity which almost inebriates. the more requirements you can pile upon him, the better he likes it. of course the result is that you cease from doing anything for yourself. he calls a hack when you want one; puts you into it; tells the driver whither to take you; receives you like a long-lost child when you return; sends you about your business, does all the quarreling with the hackman himself, and pays him his money out of his own pocket. he sends for your theater tickets, and pays for them; he sends for any possible article you can require, be it a doctor, an elephant, or a postage stamp; and when you leave, at last, you will find a subordinate seated with the cab-driver who will put you in your railway compartment, buy your tickets, have your baggage weighed, bring you the printed tags, and tell you everything is in your bill and paid for. at home you get such elaborate, excellent, and willing service as this only in the best hotels of our large cities; but in europe you get it in the mere back country-towns just as well. what is the secret of the portier's devotion? it is very simple: he gets fees, and no salary. his fee is pretty closely regulated, too. if you stay a week, you give him five marks--a dollar and a quarter, or about eighteen cents a day. if you stay a month, you reduce this average somewhat. if you stay two or three months or longer, you cut it down half, or even more than half. if you stay only one day, you give the portier a mark. the head waiter's fee is a shade less than the portier's; the boots, who not only blacks your boots and brushes your clothes, but is usually the porter and handles your baggage, gets a somewhat smaller fee than the head waiter; the chambermaid's fee ranks below that of the boots. you fee only these four, and no one else. a german gentleman told me that when he remained a week in a hotel, he gave the portier five marks, the head waiter four, the boots three, and the chambermaid two; and if he stayed three months he divided ninety marks among them, in about the above proportions. ninety marks make $22.50. none of these fees are ever paid until you leave the hotel, though it be a year--except one of these four servants should go away in the mean time; in that case he will be sure to come and bid you good-by and give you the opportunity to pay him what is fairly coming to him. it is considered very bad policy to fee a servant while you are still to remain longer in the hotel, because if you gave him too little he might neglect you afterward, and if you gave him too much he might neglect somebody else to attend to you. it is considered best to keep his expectations "on a string" until your stay in concluded. i do not know whether hotel servants in new york get any wages or not, but i do know that in some of the hotels there the feeing system in vogue is a heavy burden. the waiter expects a quarter at breakfast--and gets it. you have a different waiter at luncheon, and so he gets a quarter. your waiter at dinner is another stranger--consequently he gets a quarter. the boy who carries your satchel to your room and lights your gas fumbles around and hangs around significantly, and you fee him to get rid of him. now you may ring for ice-water; and ten minutes later for a lemonade; and ten minutes afterward, for a cigar; and by and by for a newspaper--and what is the result? why, a new boy has appeared every time and fooled and fumbled around until you have paid him something. suppose you boldly put your foot down, and say it is the hotel's business to pay its servants? you will have to ring your bell ten or fifteen times before you get a servant there; and when he goes off to fill your order you will grow old and infirm before you see him again. you may struggle nobly for twenty-four hours, maybe, if you are an adamantine sort of person, but in the mean time you will have been so wretchedly served, and so insolently, that you will haul down your colors, and go to impoverishing yourself with fees. it seems to me that it would be a happy idea to import the european feeing system into america. i believe it would result in getting even the bells of the philadelphia hotels answered, and cheerful service rendered. the greatest american hotels keep a number of clerks and a cashier, and pay them salaries which mount up to a considerable total in the course of a year. the great continental hotels keep a cashier on a trifling salary, and a portier who pays the hotel a salary. by the latter system both the hotel and the public save money and are better served than by our system. one of our consuls told me that a portier of a great berlin hotel paid five thousand dollars a year for his position, and yet cleared six thousand dollars for himself. the position of portier in the chief hotels of saratoga, long branch, new york, and similar centers of resort, would be one which the holder could afford to pay even more than five thousand dollars for, perhaps. when we borrowed the feeing fashion from europe a dozen years ago, the salary system ought to have been discontinued, of course. we might make this correction now, i should think. and we might add the portier, too. since i first began to study the portier, i have had opportunities to observe him in the chief cities of germany, switzerland, and italy; and the more i have seen of him the more i have wished that he might be adopted in america, and become there, as he is in europe, the stranger's guardian angel. yes, what was true eight hundred years ago, is just as true today: "few there be that can keep a hotel." perhaps it is because the landlords and their subordinates have in too many cases taken up their trade without first learning it. in europe the trade of hotel-keeper is taught. the apprentice begins at the bottom of the ladder and masters the several grades one after the other. just as in our country printing-offices the apprentice first learns how to sweep out and bring water; then learns to "roll"; then to sort "pi"; then to set type; and finally rounds and completes his education with job-work and press-work; so the landlord-apprentice serves as call-boy; then as under-waiter; then as a parlor waiter; then as head waiter, in which position he often has to make out all the bills; then as clerk or cashier; then as portier. his trade is learned now, and by and by he will assume the style and dignity of landlord, and be found conducting a hotel of his own. now in europe, the same as in america, when a man has kept a hotel so thoroughly well during a number of years as to give it a great reputation, he has his reward. he can live prosperously on that reputation. he can let his hotel run down to the last degree of shabbiness and yet have it full of people all the time. for instance, there is the ho^tel de ville, in milan. it swarms with mice and fleas, and if the rest of the world were destroyed it could furnish dirt enough to start another one with. the food would create an insurrection in a poorhouse; and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel makes up its loss by overcharging you on all sorts of trifles--and without making any denials or excuses about it, either. but the ho^tel de ville's old excellent reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded with travelers who would be elsewhere if they had only some wise friend to warn them. appendix b heidelberg castle heidelberg castle must have been very beautiful before the french battered and bruised and scorched it two hundred years ago. the stone is brown, with a pinkish tint, and does not seem to stain easily. the dainty and elaborate ornamentation upon its two chief fronts is as delicately carved as if it had been intended for the interior of a drawing-room rather than for the outside of a house. many fruit and flower clusters, human heads and grim projecting lions' heads are still as perfect in every detail as if they were new. but the statues which are ranked between the windows have suffered. these are life-size statues of old-time emperors, electors, and similar grandees, clad in mail and bearing ponderous swords. some have lost an arm, some a head, and one poor fellow is chopped off at the middle. there is a saying that if a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across the court to the castle front without saying anything, he can made a wish and it will be fulfilled. but they say that the truth of this thing has never had a chance to be proved, for the reason that before any stranger can walk from the drawbridge to the appointed place, the beauty of the palace front will extort an exclamation of delight from him. a ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. this one could not have been better placed. it stands upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green words, there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude. nature knows how to garnish a ruin to get the best effect. one of these old towers is split down the middle, and one half has tumbled aside. it tumbled in such a way as to establish itself in a picturesque attitude. then all it lacked was a fitting drapery, and nature has furnished that; she has robed the rugged mass in flowers and verdure, and made it a charm to the eye. the standing half exposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like open, toothless mouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have done their work of grace. the rear portion of the tower has not been neglected, either, but is clothed with a clinging garment of polished ivy which hides the wounds and stains of time. even the top is not left bare, but is crowned with a flourishing group of trees and shrubs. misfortune has done for this old tower what it has done for the human character sometimes--improved it. a gentleman remarked, one day, that it might have been fine to live in the castle in the day of its prime, but that we had one advantage which its vanished inhabitants lacked--the advantage of having a charming ruin to visit and muse over. but that was a hasty idea. those people had the advantage of us. they had the fine castle to live in, and they could cross the rhine valley and muse over the stately ruin of trifels besides. the trifels people, in their day, five hundred years ago, could go and muse over majestic ruins that have vanished, now, to the last stone. there have always been ruins, no doubt; and there have always been pensive people to sigh over them, and asses to scratch upon them their names and the important date of their visit. within a hundred years after adam left eden, the guide probably gave the usual general flourish with his hand and said: "place where the animals were named, ladies and gentlemen; place where the tree of the forbidden fruit stood; exact spot where adam and eve first met; and here, ladies and gentlemen, adorned and hallowed by the names and addresses of three generations of tourists, we have the crumbling remains of cain's altar--fine old ruin!" then, no doubt, he taxed them a shekel apiece and let them go. an illumination of heidelberg castle is one of the sights of europe. the castle's picturesque shape; its commanding situation, midway up the steep and wooded mountainside; its vast size--these features combine to make an illumination a most effective spectacle. it is necessarily an expensive show, and consequently rather infrequent. therefore whenever one of these exhibitions is to take place, the news goes about in the papers and heidelberg is sure to be full of people on that night. i and my agent had one of these opportunities, and improved it. about half past seven on the appointed evening we crossed the lower bridge, with some american students, in a pouring rain, and started up the road which borders the neunheim side of the river. this roadway was densely packed with carriages and foot-passengers; the former of all ages, and the latter of all ages and both sexes. this black and solid mass was struggling painfully onward, through the slop, the darkness, and the deluge. we waded along for three-quarters of a mile, and finally took up a position in an unsheltered beer-garden directly opposite the castle. we could not see the castle--or anything else, for that matter--but we could dimly discern the outlines of the mountain over the way, through the pervading blackness, and knew whereabouts the castle was located. we stood on one of the hundred benches in the garden, under our umbrellas; the other ninety-nine were occupied by standing men and women, and they also had umbrellas. all the region round about, and up and down the river-road, was a dense wilderness of humanity hidden under an unbroken pavement of carriage tops and umbrellas. thus we stood during two drenching hours. no rain fell on my head, but the converging whalebone points of a dozen neighboring umbrellas poured little cooling steams of water down my neck, and sometimes into my ears, and thus kept me from getting hot and impatient. i had the rheumatism, too, and had heard that this was good for it. afterward, however, i was led to believe that the water treatment is not good for rheumatism. there were even little girls in that dreadful place. a men held one in his arms, just in front of me, for as much as an hour, with umbrella-drippings soaking into her clothing all the time. in the circumstances, two hours was a good while for us to have to wait, but when the illumination did at last come, we felt repaid. it came unexpectedly, of course--things always do, that have been long looked and longed for. with a perfectly breath-taking suddenness several mast sheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out of the black throats of the castle towers, accompanied by a thundering crash of sound, and instantly every detail of the prodigious ruin stood revealed against the mountainside and glowing with an almost intolerable splendor of fire and color. for some little time the whole building was a blinding crimson mass, the towers continued to spout thick columns of rockets aloft, and overhead the sky was radiant with arrowy bolts which clove their way to the zenith, paused, curved gracefully downward, then burst into brilliant fountain-sprays of richly colored sparks. the red fires died slowly down, within the castle, and presently the shell grew nearly black outside; the angry glare that shone out through the broken arches and innumerable sashless windows, now, reproduced the aspect which the castle must have borne in the old time when the french spoilers saw the monster bonfire which they had made there fading and spoiling toward extinction. while we still gazed and enjoyed, the ruin was suddenly enveloped in rolling and rumbling volumes of vaporous green fire; then in dazzling purple ones; then a mixture of many colors followed, then drowned the great fabric in its blended splendors. meantime the nearest bridge had been illuminated, and from several rafts anchored in the river, meteor showers of rockets, roman candles, bombs, serpents, and catharine wheels were being discharged in wasteful profusion into the sky--a marvelous sight indeed to a person as little used to such spectacles as i was. for a while the whole region about us seemed as bright as day, and yet the rain was falling in torrents all the time. the evening's entertainment presently closed, and we joined the innumerable caravan of half-drowned strangers, and waded home again. the castle grounds are very ample and very beautiful; and as they joined the hotel grounds, with no fences to climb, but only some nobly shaded stone stairways to descend, we spent a part of nearly every day in idling through their smooth walks and leafy groves. there was an attractive spot among the trees where were a great many wooden tables and benches; and there one could sit in the shade and pretend to sip at his foamy beaker of beer while he inspected the crowd. i say pretend, because i only pretended to sip, without really sipping. that is the polite way; but when you are ready to go, you empty the beaker at a draught. there was a brass band, and it furnished excellent music every afternoon. sometimes so many people came that every seat was occupied, every table filled. and never a rough in the assemblace--all nicely dressed fathers and mothers, young gentlemen and ladies and children; and plenty of university students and glittering officers; with here and there a gray professor, or a peaceful old lady with her knitting; and always a sprinkling of gawky foreigners. everybody had his glass of beer before him, or his cup of coffee, or his bottle of wine, or his hot cutlet and potatoes; young ladies chatted, or fanned themselves, or wrought at their crocheting or embroidering; the students fed sugar to their dogs, or discussed duels, or illustrated new fencing tricks with their little canes; and everywhere was comfort and enjoyment, and everywhere peace and good-will to men. the trees were jubilant with birds, and the paths with rollicking children. one could have a seat in that place and plenty of music, any afternoon, for about eight cents, or a family ticket for the season for two dollars. for a change, when you wanted one, you could stroll to the castle, and burrow among its dungeons, or climb about its ruined towers, or visit its interior shows--the great heidelberg tun, for instance. everybody has heard of the great heidelberg tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. it is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. i think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. however, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. an empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. i do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense. what could this cask have been built for? the more one studies over that, the more uncertain and unhappy he becomes. some historians say that thirty couples, some say thirty thousand couples, can dance on the head of this cask at the same time. even this does not seem to me to account for the building of it. it does not even throw light on it. a profound and scholarly englishman--a specialist--who had made the great heidelberg tun his sole study for fifteen years, told me he had at last satisfied himself that the ancients built it to make german cream in. he said that the average german cow yielded from one to two and half teaspoons of milk, when she was not worked in the plow or the hay-wagon more than eighteen or nineteen hours a day. this milk was very sweet and good, and a beautiful transparent bluish tint; but in order to get cream from it in the most economical way, a peculiar process was necessary. now he believed that the habit of the ancients was to collect several milkings in a teacup, pour it into the great tun, fill up with water, and then skim off the cream from time to time as the needs of the german empire demanded. this began to look reasonable. it certainly began to account for the german cream which i had encountered and marveled over in so many hotels and restaurants. but a thought struck me-"why did not each ancient dairyman take his own teacup of milk and his own cask of water, and mix them, without making a government matter of it?' "where could he get a cask large enough to contain the right proportion of water?" very true. it was plain that the englishman had studied the matter from all sides. still i thought i might catch him on one point; so i asked him why the modern empire did not make the nation's cream in the heidelberg tun, instead of leaving it to rot away unused. but he answered as one prepared-"a patient and diligent examination of the modern german cream had satisfied me that they do not use the great tun now, because they have got a bigger one hid away somewhere. either that is the case or they empty the spring milkings into the mountain torrents and then skim the rhine all summer." there is a museum of antiquities in the castle, and among its most treasured relics are ancient manuscripts connected with german history. there are hundreds of these, and their dates stretch back through many centuries. one of them is a decree signed and sealed by the hand of a successor of charlemagne, in the year 896. a signature made by a hand which vanished out of this life near a thousand years ago, is a more impressive thing than even a ruined castle. luther's wedding-ring was shown me; also a fork belonging to a time anterior to our era, and an early bookjack. and there was a plaster cast of the head of a man who was assassinated about sixty years ago. the stab-wounds in the face were duplicated with unpleasant fidelity. one or two real hairs still remained sticking in the eyebrows of the cast. that trifle seemed to almost change the counterfeit into a corpse. there are many aged portraits--some valuable, some worthless; some of great interest, some of none at all. i bought a couple--one a gorgeous duke of the olden time, and the other a comely blue-eyed damsel, a princess, maybe. i bought them to start a portrait-gallery of my ancestors with. i paid a dollar and a half for the duke and a half for the princess. one can lay in ancestors at even cheaper rates than these, in europe, if he will mouse among old picture shops and look out for chances. appendix c the college prison it seems that the student may break a good many of the public laws without having to answer to the public authorities. his case must come before the university for trial and punishment. if a policeman catches him in an unlawful act and proceeds to arrest him, the offender proclaims that he is a student, and perhaps shows his matriculation card, whereupon the officer asks for his address, then goes his way, and reports the matter at headquarters. if the offense is one over which the city has no jurisdiction, the authorities report the case officially to the university, and give themselves no further concern about it. the university court send for the student, listen to the evidence, and pronounce judgment. the punishment usually inflicted is imprisonment in the university prison. as i understand it, a student's case is often tried without his being present at all. then something like this happens: a constable in the service of the university visits the lodgings of the said student, knocks, is invited to come in, does so, and says politely-"if you please, i am here to conduct you to prison." "ah," says the student, "i was not expecting it. what have i been doing?" "two weeks ago the public peace had the honor to be disturbed by you." "it is true; i had forgotten it. very well: i have been complained of, tried, and found guilty--is that it?" "exactly. you are sentenced to two days' solitary confinement in the college prison, and i am sent to fetch you." student. "o, i can't go today." officer. "if you please--why?" student. "because i've got an engagement." officer. "tomorrow, then, perhaps?" student. "no, i am going to the opera, tomorrow." officer. "could you come friday?" student. (reflectively.) "let me see--friday--friday. i don't seem to have anything on hand friday." officer. "then, if you please, i will expect you on friday." student. "all right, i'll come around friday." officer. "thank you. good day, sir." student. "good day." so on friday the student goes to the prison of his own accord, and is admitted. it is questionable if the world's criminal history can show a custom more odd than this. nobody knows, now, how it originated. there have always been many noblemen among the students, and it is presumed that all students are gentlemen; in the old times it was usual to mar the convenience of such folk as little as possible; perhaps this indulgent custom owes its origin to this. one day i was listening to some conversation upon this subject when an american student said that for some time he had been under sentence for a slight breach of the peace and had promised the constable that he would presently find an unoccupied day and betake himself to prison. i asked the young gentleman to do me the kindness to go to jail as soon as he conveniently could, so that i might try to get in there and visit him, and see what college captivity was like. he said he would appoint the very first day he could spare. his confinement was to endure twenty-four hours. he shortly chose his day, and sent me word. i started immediately. when i reached the university place, i saw two gentlemen talking together, and, as they had portfolios under their arms, i judged they were tutors or elderly students; so i asked them in english to show me the college jail. i had learned to take it for granted that anybody in germany who knows anything, knows english, so i had stopped afflicting people with my german. these gentlemen seemed a trifle amused--and a trifle confused, too--but one of them said he would walk around the corner with me and show me the place. he asked me why i wanted to get in there, and i said to see a friend--and for curiosity. he doubted if i would be admitted, but volunteered to put in a word or two for me with the custodian. he rang the bell, a door opened, and we stepped into a paved way and then up into a small living-room, where we were received by a hearty and good-natured german woman of fifty. she threw up her hands with a surprised "ach gott, herr professor!" and exhibited a mighty deference for my new acquaintance. by the sparkle in her eye i judged she was a good deal amused, too. the "herr professor" talked to her in german, and i understood enough of it to know that he was bringing very plausible reasons to bear for admitting me. they were successful. so the herr professor received my earnest thanks and departed. the old dame got her keys, took me up two or three flights of stairs, unlocked a door, and we stood in the presence of the criminal. then she went into a jolly and eager description of all that had occurred downstairs, and what the herr professor had said, and so forth and so on. plainly, she regarded it as quite a superior joke that i had waylaid a professor and employed him in so odd a service. but i wouldn't have done it if i had known he was a professor; therefore my conscience was not disturbed. now the dame left us to ourselves. the cell was not a roomy one; still it was a little larger than an ordinary prison cell. it had a window of good size, iron-grated; a small stove; two wooden chairs; two oaken tables, very old and most elaborately carved with names, mottoes, faces, armorial bearings, etc.--the work of several generations of imprisoned students; and a narrow wooden bedstead with a villainous straw mattress, but no sheets, pillows, blankets, or coverlets--for these the student must furnish at his own cost if he wants them. there was no carpet, of course. the ceiling was completely covered with names, dates, and monograms, done with candle-smoke. the walls were thickly covered with pictures and portraits (in profile), some done with ink, some with soot, some with a pencil, and some with red, blue, and green chalks; and whenever an inch or two of space had remained between the pictures, the captives had written plaintive verses, or names and dates. i do not think i was ever in a more elaborately frescoed apartment. against the wall hung a placard containing the prison laws. i made a note of one or two of these. for instance: the prisoner must pay, for the "privilege" of entering, a sum equivalent to 20 cents of our money; for the privilege of leaving, when his term had expired, 20 cents; for every day spent in the prison, 12 cents; for fire and light, 12 cents a day. the jailer furnishes coffee, mornings, for a small sum; dinners and suppers may be ordered from outside if the prisoner chooses--and he is allowed to pay for them, too. here and there, on the walls, appeared the names of american students, and in one place the american arms and motto were displayed in colored chalks. with the help of my friend i translated many of the inscriptions. some of them were cheerful, others the reverse. i will give the reader a few specimens: "in my tenth semester (my best one), i am cast here through the complaints of others. let those who follow me take warning." "iii tage ohne grund angeblich aus neugierde." which is to say, he had a curiosity to know what prison life was like; so he made a breach in some law and got three days for it. it is more than likely that he never had the same curiosity again. (translation.) "e. glinicke, four days for being too eager a spectator of a row." "f. graf bismarck--27-29, ii, '74." which means that count bismarck, son of the great statesman, was a prisoner two days in 1874. (translation.) "r. diergandt--for love--4 days." many people in this world have caught it heavier than for the same indiscretion. this one is terse. i translate: "four weeks for misinterpreted gallantry." i wish the sufferer had explained a little more fully. a four-week term is a rather serious matter. there were many uncomplimentary references, on the walls, to a certain unpopular dignitary. one sufferer had got three days for not saluting him. another had "here two days slept and three nights lain awake," on account of this same "dr. k." in one place was a picture of dr. k. hanging on a gallows. here and there, lonesome prisoners had eased the heavy time by altering the records left by predecessors. leaving the name standing, and the date and length of the captivity, they had erased the description of the misdemeanor, and written in its place, in staring capitals, "for theft!" or "for murder!" or some other gaudy crime. in one place, all by itself, stood this blood-curdling word: "rache!" [1] 1. "revenge!" there was no name signed, and no date. it was an inscription well calculated to pique curiosity. one would greatly like to know the nature of the wrong that had been done, and what sort of vengeance was wanted, and whether the prisoner ever achieved it or not. but there was no way of finding out these things. occasionally, a name was followed simply by the remark, "ii days, for disturbing the peace," and without comment upon the justice or injustice of the sentence. in one place was a hilarious picture of a student of the green cap corps with a bottle of champagne in each hand; and below was the legend: "these make an evil fate endurable." there were two prison cells, and neither had space left on walls or ceiling for another name or portrait or picture. the inside surfaces of the two doors were completely covered with cartes de visite of former prisoners, ingeniously let into the wood and protected from dirt and injury by glass. i very much wanted one of the sorry old tables which the prisoners had spent so many years in ornamenting with their pocket-knives, but red tape was in the way. the custodian could not sell one without an order from a superior; and that superior would have to get it from his superior; and this one would have to get it from a higher one--and so on up and up until the faculty should sit on the matter and deliver final judgment. the system was right, and nobody could find fault with it; but it did not seem justifiable to bother so many people, so i proceeded no further. it might have cost me more than i could afford, anyway; for one of those prison tables, which was at the time in a private museum in heidelberg, was afterward sold at auction for two hundred and fifty dollars. it was not worth more than a dollar, or possibly a dollar and half, before the captive students began their work on it. persons who saw it at the auction said it was so curiously and wonderfully carved that it was worth the money that was paid for it. among them many who have tasted the college prison's dreary hospitality was a lively young fellow from one of the southern states of america, whose first year's experience of german university life was rather peculiar. the day he arrived in heidelberg he enrolled his name on the college books, and was so elated with the fact that his dearest hope had found fruition and he was actually a student of the old and renowned university, that he set to work that very night to celebrate the event by a grand lark in company with some other students. in the course of his lark he managed to make a wide breach in one of the university's most stringent laws. sequel: before noon, next day, he was in the college prison--booked for three months. the twelve long weeks dragged slowly by, and the day of deliverance came at last. a great crowd of sympathizing fellow-students received him with a rousing demonstration as he came forth, and of course there was another grand lark--in the course of which he managed to make a wide breach of the city's most stringent laws. sequel: before noon, next day, he was safe in the city lockup--booked for three months. this second tedious captivity drew to an end in the course of time, and again a great crowd of sympathizing fellow students gave him a rousing reception as he came forth; but his delight in his freedom was so boundless that he could not proceed soberly and calmly, but must go hopping and skipping and jumping down the sleety street from sheer excess of joy. sequel: he slipped and broke his leg, and actually lay in the hospital during the next three months! when he at last became a free man again, he said he believed he would hunt up a brisker seat of learning; the heidelberg lectures might be good, but the opportunities of attending them were too rare, the educational process too slow; he said he had come to europe with the idea that the acquirement of an education was only a matter of time, but if he had averaged the heidelberg system correctly, it was rather a matter of eternity. appendix d the awful german language a little learning makes the whole world kin. --proverbs xxxii, 7. i went often to look at the collection of curiosities in heidelberg castle, and one day i surprised the keeper of it with my german. i spoke entirely in that language. he was greatly interested; and after i had talked a while he said my german was very rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum. if he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. harris and i had been hard at work on our german during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. a person who has not studied german can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is. surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. one is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." he runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. so overboard he goes again, to hunt for another ararat and find another quicksand. such has been, and continues to be, my experience. every time i think i have got one of these four confusing "cases" where i am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. for instance, my book inquires after a certain bird--(it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of no consequence to anybody): "where is the bird?" now the answer to this question--according to the book--is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. very well, i begin to cipher out the german for that answer. i begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the german idea. i say to myself, "regen (rain) is masculine--or maybe it is feminine--or possibly neuter--it is too much trouble to look now. therefore, it is either der (the) regen, or die (the) regen, or das (the) regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when i look. in the interest of science, i will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. very well--then the rain is der regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion--nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something--that is, resting (which is one of the german grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the dative case, and makes it dem regen. however, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively,--it is falling--to interfere with the bird, likely--and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the accusative case and changing dem regen into den regen." having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, i answer up confidently and state in german that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) den regen." then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the genitive case, regardless of consequences--and therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des regens." n.b.--i was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen den regen" in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to anything but rain. there are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. an average sentence, in a german newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech--not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary--six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam--that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it--after which comes the verb, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb--merely by way of ornament, as far as i can make out--the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haven geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. i suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature--not necessary, but pretty. german books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head--so as to reverse the construction--but i think that to learn to read and understand a german newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner. yet even the german books are not entirely free from attacks of the parenthesis distemper--though they are usually so mild as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your mind because you are able to remember a good deal of what has gone before. now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent german novel--which a slight parenthesis in it. i will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader--though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can: "but when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-coverednow-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife met," etc., etc. [1] 1. wenn er aber auf der strasse der in sammt und seide gehu"llten jetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode gekleideten regierungsrathin begegnet. that is from the old mamselle's secret, by mrs. marlitt. and that sentence is constructed upon the most approved german model. you observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in a german newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; and i have heard that sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at all. of course, then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and ignorant state. we have the parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual fog which stands for clearness among these people. for surely it is not clearness--it necessarily can't be clearness. even a jury would have penetration enough to discover that. a writer's ideas must be a good deal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence, when he starts out to say that a man met a counselor's wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this so simple undertaking halts these approaching people and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory of the woman's dress. that is manifestly absurd. it reminds a person of those dentists who secure your instant and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it with the forceps, and then stand there and drawl through a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste. the germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? these things are called "separable verbs." the german grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. a favorite one is reiste ab--which means departed. here is an example which i culled from a novel and reduced to english: "the trunks being now ready, he deafter kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, parted." however, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. one is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. for instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six--and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. but mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. this explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, i generally try to kill him, if a stranger. now observe the adjective. here was a case where simplicity would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of this language complicated it all he could. when we wish to speak of our "good friend or friends," in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the german tongue it is different. when a german gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining it until the common sense is all declined out of it. it is as bad as latin. he says, for instance: singular nominative--mein guter freund, my good friend. genitives--meines guten freundes, of my good friend. dative--meinem guten freund, to my good friend. accusative--meinen guten freund, my good friend. plural n.--meine guten freunde, my good friends. g.--meiner guten freunde, of my good friends. d.--meinen guten freunden, to my good friends. a.--meine guten freunde, my good friends. now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected. one might better go without friends in germany than take all this trouble about them. i have shown what a bother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter. now there are more adjectives in this language than there are black cats in switzerland, and they must all be as elaborately declined as the examples above suggested. difficult?--troublesome?--these words cannot describe it. i heard a californian student in heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one german adjective. the inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of. for instance, if one is casually referring to a house, haus, or a horse, pferd, or a dog, hund, he spells these words as i have indicated; but if he is referring to them in the dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary e and spells them hause, pferde, hunde. so, as an added e often signifies the plural, as the s does with us, the new student is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a dative dog before he discovers his mistake; and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog in the dative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural--which left the law on the seller's side, of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit for recovery could not lie. in german, all the nouns begin with a capital letter. now that is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. i consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute you see it. you fall into error occasionally, because you mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it. german names almost always do mean something, and this helps to deceive the student. i translated a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest" (tannenwald). when i was girding up my loins to doubt this, i found out that tannenwald in this instance was a man's name. every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. there is no other way. to do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. in german, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. see how it looks in print--i translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the german sunday-school books: "gretchen. wilhelm, where is the turnip? "wilhelm. she has gone to the kitchen. "gretchen. where is the accomplished and beautiful english maiden? wilhelm. it has gone to the opera." to continue with the german genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female--tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it--for in germany all the women either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. the inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay. now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in germany a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land. in the german it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a woman is a female; but a wife (weib) is not--which is unfortunate. a wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. to describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. a german speaks of an englishman as the engla"nder; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for englishwoman-engla"nderinn. that seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a german; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die engla"nderinn,"--which means "the she-englishwoman." i consider that that person is over-described. well, after the student has learned the sex of a great number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which it has been always accustomed to refer to it as "it." when he even frames a german sentence in his mind, with the hims and hers in the right places, and then works up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use-the moment he begins to speak his tongue files the track and all those labored males and females come out as "its." and even when he is reading german to himself, he always calls those things "it," where as he ought to read in this way: tale of the fishwife and its sad fate [2] 2. i capitalize the nouns, in the german (and ancient english) fashion. it is a bleak day. hear the rain, how he pours, and the hail, how he rattles; and see the snow, how he drifts along, and of the mud, how deep he is! ah the poor fishwife, it is stuck fast in the mire; it has dropped its basket of fishes; and its hands have been cut by the scales as it seized some of the falling creatures; and one scale has even got into its eye. and it cannot get her out. it opens its mouth to cry for help; but if any sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the storm. and now a tomcat has got one of the fishes and she will surely escape with him. no, she bites off a fin, she holds her in her mouth--will she swallow her? no, the fishwife's brave mother-dog deserts his puppies and rescues the fin--which he eats, himself, as his reward. o, horror, the lightning has struck the fish-basket; he sets him on fire; see the flame, how she licks the doomed utensil with her red and angry tongue; now she attacks the helpless fishwife's foot--she burns him up, all but the big toe, and even she is partly consumed; and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery tongues; she attacks the fishwife's leg and destroys it; she attacks its hand and destroys her also; she attacks the fishwife's leg and destroys her also; she attacks its body and consumes him; she wreathes herself about its heart and it is consumed; next about its breast, and in a moment she is a cinder; now she reaches its neck--he goes; now its chin-it goes; now its nose--she goes. in another moment, except help come, the fishwife will be no more. time presses--is there none to succor and save? yes! joy, joy, with flying feet the she-englishwoman comes! but alas, the generous she-female is too late: where now is the fated fishwife? it has ceased from its sufferings, it has gone to a better land; all that is left of it for its loved ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering ash-heap. ah, woeful, woeful ash-heap! let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly shovel, and bear him to his long rest, with the prayer that when he rises again it will be a realm where he will have one good square responsible sex, and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted sexes scattered all over him in spots. ----------there, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. i suppose that in all languages the similarities of look and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner. it is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in the german. now there is that troublesome word verma"hlt: to me it has so close a resemblance--either real or fancied--to three or four other words, that i never know whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married; until i look in the dictionary, and then i find it means the latter. there are lots of such words and they are a great torment. to increase the difficulty there are words which seem to resemble each other, and yet do not; but they make just as much trouble as if they did. for instance, there is the word vermiethen (to let, to lease, to hire); and the word verheirathen (another way of saying to marry). i heard of an englishman who knocked at a man's door in heidelberg and proposed, in the best german he could command, to "verheirathen" that house. then there are some words which mean one thing when you emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very different if you throw the emphasis on the last syllable. for instance, there is a word which means a runaway, or the act of glancing through a book, according to the placing of the emphasis; and another word which signifies to associate with a man, or to avoid him, according to where you put the emphasis--and you can generally depend on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble. there are some exceedingly useful words in this language. schlag, for example; and zug. there are three-quarters of a column of schlags in the dictonary, and a column and a half of zugs. the word schlag means blow, stroke, dash, hit, shock, clap, slap, time, bar, coin, stamp, kind, sort, manner, way, apoplexy, wood-cutting, enclosure, field, forest-clearing. this is its simple and exact meaning--that is to say, its restricted, its fettered meaning; but there are ways by which you can set it free, so that it can soar away, as on the wings of the morning, and never be at rest. you can hang any word you please to its tail, and make it mean anything you want to. you can begin with schlag-ader, which means artery, and you can hang on the whole dictionary, word by word, clear through the alphabet to schlag-wasser, which means bilge-water--and including schlag-mutter, which means mother-in-law. just the same with zug. strictly speaking, zug means pull, tug, draught, procession, march, progress, flight, direction, expedition, train, caravan, passage, stroke, touch, line, flourish, trait of character, feature, lineament, chess-move, organ-stop, team, whiff, bias, drawer, propensity, inhalation, disposition: but that thing which it does not mean--when all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not been discovered yet. one cannot overestimate the usefulness of schlag and zug. armed just with these two, and the word also, what cannot the foreigner on german soil accomplish? the german word also is the equivalent of the english phrase "you know," and does not mean anything at all--in talk, though it sometimes does in print. every time a german opens his mouth an also falls out; and every time he shuts it he bites one in two that was trying to get out. now, the foreigner, equipped with these three noble words, is master of the situation. let him talk right along, fearlessly; let him pour his indifferent german forth, and when he lacks for a word, let him heave a schlag into the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it like a plug, but if it doesn't let him promptly heave a zug after it; the two together can hardly fail to bung the hole; but if, by a miracle, they should fail, let him simply say also! and this will give him a moment's chance to think of the needful word. in germany, when you load your conversational gun it is always best to throw in a schlag or two and a zug or two, because it doesn't make any difference how much the rest of the charge may scatter, you are bound to bag something with them. then you blandly say also, and load up again. nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance and unconstraint to a german or an english conversation as to scatter it full of "also's" or "you knows." in my note-book i find this entry: july 1.--in the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables was successfully removed from a patient--a north german from near hamburg; but as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, under the impression that he contained a panorama, he died. the sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community. that paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the most curious and notable features of my subject--the length of german words. some german words are so long that they have a perspective. observe these examples: freundschaftsbezeigungen. dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten. stadtverordnetenversammlungen. these things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. and they are not rare; one can open a german newspaper at any time and see them marching majestically across the page--and if he has any imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. they impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. i take a great interest in these curiosities. whenever i come across a good one, i stuff it and put it in my museum. in this way i have made quite a valuable collection. when i get duplicates, i exchange with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. here rare some specimens which i lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter: generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen. alterthumswissenschaften. kinderbewahrungsanstalten. unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen. wiedererstellungbestrebungen. waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen. of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape--but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel through it. so he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no help there. the dictionary must draw the line somewhere--so it leaves this sort of words out. and it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed. they are compound words with the hyphens left out. the various words used in building them are in the dictionary, but in a very scattered condition; so you can hunt the materials out, one by one, and get at the meaning at last, but it is a tedious and harassing business. i have tried this process upon some of the above examples. "freundshaftsbezeigungen" seems to be "friendship demonstrations," which is only a foolish and clumsy way of saying "demonstrations of friendship." "unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen" seems to be "independencedeclarations," which is no improvement upon "declarations of independence," so far as i can see. "generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen" seems to be "general-statesrepresentativesmeetings," as nearly as i can get at it--a mere rhythmical, gushy euphuism for "meetings of the legislature," i judge. we used to have a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature, but it has gone out now. we used to speak of a things as a "never-to-be-forgotten" circumstance, instead of cramping it into the simple and sufficient word "memorable" and then going calmly about our business as if nothing had happened. in those days we were not content to embalm the thing and bury it decently, we wanted to build a monument over it. but in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers a little to the present day, but with the hyphens left out, in the german fashion. this is the shape it takes: instead of saying "mr. simmons, clerk of the county and district courts, was in town yesterday," the new form put it thus: "clerk of the county and district courts simmons was in town yesterday." this saves neither time nor ink, and has an awkward sound besides. one often sees a remark like this in our papers: "mrs. assistant district attorney johnson returned to her city residence yesterday for the season." that is a case of really unjustifiable compounding; because it not only saves no time or trouble, but confers a title on mrs. johnson which she has no right to. but these little instances are trifles indeed, contrasted with the ponderous and dismal german system of piling jumbled compounds together. i wish to submit the following local item, from a mannheim journal, by way of illustration: "in the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno'clock night, the inthistownstandingtavern called 'the wagoner' was downburnt. when the fire to the onthedownburninghouseresting stork's nest reached, flew the parent storks away. but when the bytheraging, firesurrounded nest itself caught fire, straightway plunged the quickreturning mother-stork into the flames and died, her wings over her young ones outspread." even the cumbersome german construction is not able to take the pathos out of that picture--indeed, it somehow seems to strengthen it. this item is dated away back yonder months ago. i could have used it sooner, but i was waiting to hear from the father-stork. i am still waiting. "also!" if i had not shown that the german is a difficult language, i have at least intended to do so. i have heard of an american student who was asked how he was getting along with his german, and who answered promptly: "i am not getting along at all. i have worked at it hard for three level months, and all i have got to show for it is one solitary german phrase--'zwei glas'" (two glasses of beer). he paused for a moment, reflectively; then added with feeling: "but i've got that solid!" and if i have not also shown that german is a harassing and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault, and not my intent. i heard lately of a worn and sorely tried american student who used to fly to a certain german word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations no longer--the only word whose sound was sweet and precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit. this was the word damit. it was only the sound that helped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he learned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable, his only stay and support was gone, and he faded away and died. 3. it merely means, in its general sense, "herewith." i think that a description of any loud, stirring, tumultuous episode must be tamer in german than in english. our descriptive words of this character have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their german equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless. boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, hell. these are magnificent words; the have a force and magnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe. but their german equivalents would be ever so nice to sing the children to sleep with, or else my awe-inspiring ears were made for display and not for superior usefulness in analyzing sounds. would any man want to die in a battle which was called by so tame a term as a schlacht? or would not a comsumptive feel too much bundled up, who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and a seal-ring, into a storm which the bird-song word gewitter was employed to describe? and observe the strongest of the several german equivalents for explosion--ausbruch. our word toothbrush is more powerful than that. it seems to me that the germans could do worse than import it into their language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with. the german word for hell--ho"lle--sounds more like helly than anything else; therefore, how necessary chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. if a man were told in german to go there, could he really rise to thee dignity of feeling insulted? having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language, i now come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues. the capitalizing of the nouns i have already mentioned. but far before this virtue stands another--that of spelling a word according to the sound of it. after one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell how any german word is pronounced without having to ask; whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us, "what does b, o, w, spell?" we should be obliged to reply, "nobody can tell what it spells when you set if off by itself; you can only tell by referring to the context and finding out what it signifies--whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nod of one's head, or the forward end of a boat." there are some german words which are singularly and powerfully effective. for instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with outdoor nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects--with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, respose, and peace; those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland; and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly rich and affective. there are german songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. that shows that the sound of the words is correct--it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart. the germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is the right one. they repeat it several times, if they choose. that is wise. but in english, when we have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph, we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak enough to exchange it for some other word which only approximates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy is a greater blemish. repetition may be bad, but surely inexactness is worse. ----------there are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble to point out the faults in a religion or a language, and then go blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy. i am not that kind of person. i have shown that the german language needs reforming. very well, i am ready to reform it. at least i am ready to make the proper suggestions. such a course as this might be immodest in another; but i have devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last, to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and thus have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it which no mere superficial culture could have conferred upon me. in the first place, i would leave out the dative case. it confuses the plurals; and, besides, nobody ever knows when he is in the dative case, except he discover it by accident--and then he does not know when or where it was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it, or how he is going to get out of it again. the dative case is but an ornamental folly--it is better to discard it. in the next place, i would move the verb further up to the front. you may load up with ever so good a verb, but i notice that you never really bring down a subject with it at the present german range--you only cripple it. so i insist that this important part of speech should be brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen with the naked eye. thirdly, i would import some strong words from the english tongue--to swear with, and also to use in describing all sorts of vigorous things in a vigorous ways. [4] 4. "verdammt," and its variations and enlargements, are words which have plenty of meaning, but the sounds are so mild and ineffectual that german ladies can use them without sin. german ladies who could not be induced to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion, promptly rip out one of these harmless little words when they tear their dresses or don't like the soup. it sounds about as wicked as our "my gracious." german ladies are constantly saying, "ach! gott!" "mein gott!" "gott in himmel!" "herr gott" "der herr jesus!" etc. they think our ladies have the same custom, perhaps; for i once heard a gentle and lovely old german lady say to a sweet young american girl: "the two languages are so alike--how pleasant that is; we say 'ach! gott!' you say 'goddamn.'" fourthly, i would reorganizes the sexes, and distribute them accordingly to the will of the creator. this as a tribute of respect, if nothing else. fifthly, i would do away with those great long compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. to wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time than when they come in bulk. intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. sixthly, i would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and not hang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden seins" to the end of his oration. this sort of gewgaws undignify a speech, instead of adding a grace. they are, therefore, an offense, and should be discarded. seventhly, i would discard the parenthesis. also the reparenthesis, the re-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses, and likewise the final wide-reaching all-enclosing king-parenthesis. i would require every individual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforward tale, or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace. infractions of this law should be punishable with death. and eighthly, and last, i would retain zug and schlag, with their pendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary. this would simplify the language. i have now named what i regard as the most necessary and important changes. these are perhaps all i could be expected to name for nothing; but there are other suggestions which i can and will make in case my proposed application shall result in my being formally employed by the government in the work of reforming the language. my philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn english (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, french in thirty days, and german in thirty years. it seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. if it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it. a fourth of july oration in the german tongue, delivered at a banquet of the anglo-american club of students by the author of this book gentlemen: since i arrived, a month ago, in this old wonderland, this vast garden of germany, my english tongue has so often proved a useless piece of baggage to me, and so troublesome to carry around, in a country where they haven't the checking system for luggage, that i finally set to work, and learned the german language. also! es freut mich dass dies so ist, denn es muss, in ein haupts:achlich degree, h:oflich sein, dass man auf ein occasion like this, sein rede in die sprache des landes worin he boards, aussprechen soll. daf:ur habe ich, aus reinische verlegenheit--no, vergangenheit--no, i mean hoflichkeit--aus reinishe hoflichkeit habe ich resolved to tackle this business in the german language, um gottes willen! also! sie mu"ssen so freundlich sein, und verzeih mich die interlarding von ein oder zwei englischer worte, hie und da, denn ich finde dass die deutsche is not a very copious language, and so when you've really got anything to say, you've got to draw on a language that can stand the strain. wenn haber man kann nicht meinem rede verstehen, so werde ich ihm sp:ater dasselbe :ubersetz, wenn er solche dienst verlangen wollen haben werden sollen sein h:atte. (i don't know what wollen haben werden sollen sein ha"tte means, but i notice they always put it at the end of a german sentence--merely for general literary gorgeousness, i suppose.) this is a great and justly honored day--a day which is worthy of the veneration in which it is held by the true patriots of all climes and nationalities--a day which offers a fruitful theme for thought and speech; und meinem freunde--no, meinen freunden--meines freundes--well, take your choice, they're all the same price; i don't know which one is right--also! ich habe gehabt haben worden gewesen sein, as goethe says in his paradise lost--ich--ich--that is to say--ich--but let us change cars. also! die anblich so viele grossbrittanischer und amerikanischer hier zusammengetroffen in bruderliche concord, ist zwar a welcome and inspiriting spectacle. and what has moved you to it? can the terse german tongue rise to the expression of this impulse? is it freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordnetenversammlungenfamilieneigenth:umlichkeiten? nein, o nein! this is a crisp and noble word, but it fails to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered this friendly meeting and produced diese anblick--eine anblich welche ist gut zu sehen--gut fu"r die augen in a foreign land and a far country--eine anblick solche als in die gew:ohnliche heidelberger phrase nennt man ein "scho"nes aussicht!" ja, freilich natu"rlich wahrscheinlich ebensowohl! also! die aussicht auf dem k:onigsstuhl mehr gr:osser ist, aber geistlische sprechend nicht so scho"n, lob' gott! because sie sind hier zusammengetroffen, in bruderlichem concord, ein grossen tag zu feirn, whose high benefits were not for one land and one locality, but have conferred a measure of good upon all lands that know liberty today, and love it. hundert jahre voru"ber, waren die engla"nder und die amerikaner feinde; aber heut sind sie herzlichen freunde, gott sei dank! may this good-fellowship endure; may these banners here blended in amity so remain; may they never any more wave over opposing hosts, or be stained with blood which was kindred, is kindred, and always will be kindred, until a line drawn upon a map shall be able to say: "this bars the ancestral blood from flowing in the veins of the descendant!" appendix e legend of the castles called the "swallow's nest" and "the brothers," as condensed from the captain's tale in the neighborhood of three hundred years ago the swallow's nest and the larger castle between it and neckarsteinach were owned and occupied by two old knights who were twin brothers, and bachelors. they had no relatives. they were very rich. they had fought through the wars and retired to private life--covered with honorable scars. they were honest, honorable men in their dealings, but the people had given them a couple of nicknames which were very suggestive--herr givenaught and herr heartless. the old knights were so proud of these names that if a burgher called them by their right ones they would correct them. the most renowned scholar in europe, at the time, was the herr doctor franz reikmann, who lived in heidelberg. all germany was proud of the venerable scholar, who lived in the simplest way, for great scholars are always poor. he was poor, as to money, but very rich in his sweet young daughter hildegarde and his library. he had been all his life collecting his library, book and book, and he lived it as a miser loves his hoarded gold. he said the two strings of his heart were rooted, the one in his daughter, the other in his books; and that if either were severed he must die. now in an evil hour, hoping to win a marriage portion for his child, this simple old man had entrusted his small savings to a sharper to be ventured in a glittering speculation. but that was not the worst of it: he signed a paper--without reading it. that is the way with poets and scholars; they always sign without reading. this cunning paper made him responsible for heaps of things. the rest was that one night he found himself in debt to the sharper eight thousand pieces of gold!--an amount so prodigious that it simply stupefied him to think of it. it was a night of woe in that house. "i must part with my library--i have nothing else. so perishes one heartstring," said the old man. "what will it bring, father?" asked the girl. "nothing! it is worth seven hundred pieces of gold; but by auction it will go for little or nothing." "then you will have parted with the half of your heart and the joy of your life to no purpose, since so mighty of burden of debt will remain behind." "there is no help for it, my child. our darlings must pass under the hammer. we must pay what we can." "my father, i have a feeling that the dear virgin will come to our help. let us not lose heart." "she cannot devise a miracle that will turn nothing into eight thousand gold pieces, and lesser help will bring us little peace." "she can do even greater things, my father. she will save us, i know she will." toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep in his chair where he had been sitting before his books as one who watches by his beloved dead and prints the features on his memory for a solace in the aftertime of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room and gently woke him, saying-"my presentiment was true! she will save us. three times has she appeared to me in my dreams, and said, 'go to the herr givenaught, go to the herr heartless, ask them to come and bid.' there, did i not tell you she would save us, the thrice blessed virgin!" sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh. "thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their castles stand upon as to the harder ones that lie in those men's breasts, my child. they bid on books writ in the learned tongues!--they can scarce read their own." but hildegarde's faith was in no wise shaken. bright and early she was on her way up the neckar road, as joyous as a bird. meantime herr givenaught and herr heartless were having an early breakfast in the former's castle--the sparrow's nest--and flavoring it with a quarrel; for although these twins bore a love for each other which almost amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which they could not touch without calling each other hard names-and yet it was the subject which they oftenest touched upon. "i tell you," said givenaught, "you will beggar yourself yet with your insane squanderings of money upon what you choose to consider poor and worthy objects. all these years i have implored you to stop this foolish custom and husband your means, but all in vain. you are always lying to me about these secret benevolences, but you never have managed to deceive me yet. every time a poor devil has been set upon his feet i have detected your hand in it--incorrigible ass!" "every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself, you mean. where i give one unfortunate a little private lift, you do the same for a dozen. the idea of your swelling around the country and petting yourself with the nickname of givenaught--intolerable humbug! before i would be such a fraud as that, i would cut my right hand off. your life is a continual lie. but go on, i have tried my best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous charities--now for the thousandth time i wash my hands of the consequences. a maundering old fool! that's what you are." "and you a blethering old idiot!" roared givenaught, springing up. "i won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more delicacy than to call me such names. mannerless swine!" so saying, herr heartless sprang up in a passion. but some lucky accident intervened, as usual, to change the subject, and the daily quarrel ended in the customary daily living reconciliation. the gray-headed old eccentrics parted, and herr heartless walked off to his own castle. half an hour later, hildegarde was standing in the presence of herr givenaught. he heard her story, and said-"i am sorry for you, my child, but i am very poor, i care nothing for bookish rubbish, i shall not be there." he said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor hildegarde's heart, nevertheless. when she was gone the old heartbreaker muttered, rubbing his hands-"it was a good stroke. i have saved my brother's pocket this time, in spite of him. nothing else would have prevented his rushing off to rescue the old scholar, the pride of germany, from his trouble. the poor child won't venture near him after the rebuff she has received from his brother the givenaught." but he was mistaken. the virgin had commanded, and hildegarde would obey. she went to herr heartless and told her story. but he said coldly-"i am very poor, my child, and books are nothing to me. i wish you well, but i shall not come." when hildegarde was gone, he chuckled and said-"how my fool of a soft-headed soft-hearted brother would rage if he knew how cunningly i have saved his pocket. how he would have flown to the old man's rescue! but the girl won't venture near him now." when hildegarde reached home, her father asked her how she had prospered. she said-"the virgin has promised, and she will keep her word; but not in the way i thought. she knows her own ways, and they are best." the old man patted her on the head, and smiled a doubting smile, but he honored her for her brave faith, nevertheless. ii next day the people assembled in the great hall of the ritter tavern, to witness the auction--for the proprietor had said the treasure of germany's most honored son should be bartered away in no meaner place. hildegarde and her father sat close to the books, silent and sorrowful, and holding each other's hands. there was a great crowd of people present. the bidding began-"how much for this precious library, just as it stands, all complete?" called the auctioneer. "fifty pieces of gold!" "a hundred!" "two hundred." "three!" "four!" "five hundred!" "five twenty-five." a brief pause. "five forty!" a longer pause, while the auctioneer redoubled his persuasions. "five-forty-five!" a heavy drag--the auctioneer persuaded, pleaded, implored--it was useless, everybody remained silent-"well, then--going, going--one--two--" "five hundred and fifty!" this in a shrill voice, from a bent old man, all hung with rags, and with a green patch over his left eye. everybody in his vicinity turned and gazed at him. it was givenaught in disguise. he was using a disguised voice, too. "good!" cried the auctioneer. "going, going--one--two--" "five hundred and sixty!" this, in a deep, harsh voice, from the midst of the crowd at the other end of the room. the people near by turned, and saw an old man, in a strange costume, supporting himself on crutches. he wore a long white beard, and blue spectacles. it was herr heartless, in disguise, and using a disguised voice. "good again! going, going--one--" "six hundred!" sensation. the crowd raised a cheer, and some one cried out, "go it, green-patch!" this tickled the audience and a score of voices shouted, "go it, green-patch!" "going--going--going--third and last call--one--two--" "seven hundred!" "huzzah!--well done, crutches!" cried a voice. the crowd took it up, and shouted altogether, "well done, crutches!" "splendid, gentlemen! you are doing magnificently. going, going--" "a thousand!" "three cheers for green-patch! up and at him, crutches!" "going--going--" "two thousand!" and while the people cheered and shouted, "crutches" muttered, "who can this devil be that is fighting so to get these useless books?--but no matter, he sha'n't have them. the pride of germany shall have his books if it beggars me to buy them for him." "going, going, going--" "three thousand!" "come, everybody--give a rouser for green-patch!" and while they did it, "green-patch" muttered, "this cripple is plainly a lunatic; but the old scholar shall have his books, nevertheless, though my pocket sweat for it." "going--going--" "four thousand!" "huzza!" "five thousand!" "huzza!" "six thousand!" "huzza!" "seven thousand!" "huzza!" "eight thousand!" "we are saved, father! i told you the holy virgin would keep her word!" "blessed be her sacred name!" said the old scholar, with emotion. the crowd roared, "huzza, huzza, huzza--at him again, green-patch!" "going--going--" "ten thousand!" as givenaught shouted this, his excitement was so great that he forgot himself and used his natural voice. he brother recognized it, and muttered, under cover of the storm of cheers-"aha, you are there, are you, besotted old fool? take the books, i know what you'll do with them!" so saying, he slipped out of the place and the auction was at an end. givenaught shouldered his way to hildegarde, whispered a word in her ear, and then he also vanished. the old scholar and his daughter embraced, and the former said, "truly the holy mother has done more than she promised, child, for she has give you a splendid marriage portion-think of it, two thousand pieces of gold!" "and more still," cried hildegarde, "for she has give you back your books; the stranger whispered me that he would none of them--'the honored son of germany must keep them,' so he said. i would i might have asked his name and kissed his hand and begged his blessing; but he was our lady's angel, and it is not meet that we of earth should venture speech with them that dwell above." appendix f german journals the daily journals of hamburg, frankfort, baden, munich, and augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan. i speak of these because i am more familiar with them than with any other german papers. they contain no "editorials" whatever; no "personals"--and this is rather a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph column; no police-court reports; no reports of proceedings of higher courts; no information about prize-fights or other dog-fights, horse-races, walking-machines, yachting-contents, rifle-matches, or other sporting matters of any sort; no reports of banquet speeches; no department of curious odds and ends of floating fact and gossip; no "rumors" about anything or anybody; no prognostications or prophecies about anything or anybody; no lists of patents granted or sought, or any reference to such things; no abuse of public officials, big or little, or complaints against them, or praises of them; no religious columns saturdays, no rehash of cold sermons mondays; no "weather indications"; no "local item" unveiling of what is happening in town--nothing of a local nature, indeed, is mentioned, beyond the movements of some prince, or the proposed meeting of some deliberative body. after so formidable a list of what one can't find in a german daily, the question may well be asked, what can be found in it? it is easily answered: a child's handful of telegrams, mainly about european national and international political movements; letter-correspondence about the same things; market reports. there you have it. that is what a german daily is made of. a german daily is the slowest and saddest and dreariest of the inventions of man. our own dailies infuriate the reader, pretty often; the german daily only stupefies him. once a week the german daily of the highest class lightens up its heavy columns--that is, it thinks it lightens them up--with a profound, an abysmal, book criticism; a criticism which carries you down, down, down into the scientific bowels of the subject--for the german critic is nothing if not scientific--and when you come up at last and scent the fresh air and see the bonny daylight once more, you resolve without a dissenting voice that a book criticism is a mistaken way to lighten up a german daily. sometimes, in place of the criticism, the first-class daily gives you what it thinks is a gay and chipper essay--about ancient grecian funeral customs, or the ancient egyptian method of tarring a mummy, or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples who existed before the flood did not approve of cats. these are not unpleasant subjects; they are not uninteresting subjects; they are even exciting subjects-until one of these massive scientists gets hold of them. he soon convinces you that even these matters can be handled in such a way as to make a person low-spirited. as i have said, the average german daily is made up solely of correspondences--a trifle of it by telegraph, the rest of it by mail. every paragraph has the side-head, "london," "vienna," or some other town, and a date. and always, before the name of the town, is placed a letter or a sign, to indicate who the correspondent is, so that the authorities can find him when they want to hang him. stars, crosses, triangles, squares, half-moons, suns-such are some of the signs used by correspondents. some of the dailies move too fast, others too slowly. for instance, my heidelberg daily was always twenty-four hours old when it arrived at the hotel; but one of my munich evening papers used to come a full twenty-four hours before it was due. some of the less important dailies give one a tablespoonful of a continued story every day; it is strung across the bottom of the page, in the french fashion. by subscribing for the paper for five years i judge that a man might succeed in getting pretty much all of the story. if you ask a citizen of munich which is the best munich daily journal, he will always tell you that there is only one good munich daily, and that it is published in augsburg, forty or fifty miles away. it is like saying that the best daily paper in new york is published out in new jersey somewhere. yes, the augsburg allgemeine zeitung is "the best munich paper," and it is the one i had in my mind when i was describing a "first-class german daily" above. the entire paper, opened out, is not quite as large as a single page of the new york herald. it is printed on both sides, of course; but in such large type that its entire contents could be put, in herald type, upon a single page of the herald--and there would still be room enough on the page for the zeitung's "supplement" and some portion of the zeitung's next day's contents. such is the first-class daily. the dailies actually printed in munich are all called second-class by the public. if you ask which is the best of these second-class papers they say there is no difference; one is as good as another. i have preserved a copy of one of them; it is called the mu"nchener tages-anzeiger, and bears date january 25, 1879. comparisons are odious, but they need not be malicious; and without any malice i wish to compare this journals of other countries. i know of no other way to enable the reader to "size" the thing. a column of an average daily paper in america contains from 1,800 to 2,500 words; the reading-matter in a single issue consists of from 25,000 to 50,000 words. the reading-matter in my copy of the munich journal consists of a total of 1,654 words --for i counted them. that would be nearly a column of one of our dailies. a single issue of the bulkiest daily newspaper in the world--the london times--often contains 100,000 words of reading-matter. considering that the daily anzeiger issues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading matter in a single number of the london times would keep it in "copy" two months and a half. the anzeiger is an eight-page paper; its page is one inch wider and one inch longer than a foolscap page; that is to say, the dimensions of its page are somewhere between those of a schoolboy's slate and a lady's pocket handkerchief. one-fourth of the first page is taken up with the heading of the journal; this gives it a rather top-heavy appearance; the rest of the first page is reading-matter; all of the second page is reading-matter; the other six pages are devoted to advertisements. the reading-matter is compressed into two hundred and five small-pica lines, and is lighted up with eight pica headlines. the bill of fare is as follows: first, under a pica headline, to enforce attention and respect, is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that, although they are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs of heaven; and that "when they depart from earth they soar to heaven." perhaps a four-line sermon in a saturday paper is the sufficient german equivalent of the eight or ten columns of sermons which the new-yorkers get in their monday morning papers. the latest news (two days old) follows the four-line sermon, under the pica headline "telegrams"--these are "telegraphed" with a pair of scissors out of the augsburger zeitung of the day before. these telegrams consist of fourteen and two-thirds lines from berlin, fifteen lines from vienna, and two and five-eights lines from calcutta. thirty-three small-pica lines news in a daily journal in a king's capital of one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants is surely not an overdose. next we have the pica heading, "news of the day," under which the following facts are set forth: prince leopold is going on a visit to vienna, six lines; prince arnulph is coming back from russia, two lines; the landtag will meet at ten o'clock in the morning and consider an election law, three lines and one word over; a city government item, five and one-half lines; prices of tickets to the proposed grand charity ball, twenty-three lines--for this one item occupies almost one-fourth of the entire first page; there is to be a wonderful wagner concert in frankfurt-on-the-main, with an orchestra of one hundred and eight instruments, seven and one-half lines. that concludes the first page. eighty-five lines, altogether, on that page, including three headlines. about fifty of those lines, as one perceives, deal with local matters; so the reporters are not overworked. exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with an opera criticism, fifty-three lines (three of them being headlines), and "death notices," ten lines. the other half of the second page is made up of two paragraphs under the head of "miscellaneous news." one of these paragraphs tells about a quarrel between the czar of russia and his eldest son, twenty-one and a half lines; and the other tells about the atrocious destruction of a peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth of the total of the reading-matter contained in the paper. consider what a fifth part of the reading-matter of an american daily paper issued in a city of one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants amounts to! think what a mass it is. would any one suppose i could so snugly tuck away such a mass in a chapter of this book that it would be difficult to find it again in the reader lost his place? surely not. i will translate that child-murder word for word, to give the reader a realizing sense of what a fifth part of the reading-matter of a munich daily actually is when it comes under measurement of the eye: "from oberkreuzberg, january 21st, the donau zeitung receives a long account of a crime, which we shortened as follows: in rametuach, a village near eppenschlag, lived a young married couple with two children, one of which, a boy aged five, was born three years before the marriage. for this reason, and also because a relative at iggensbach had bequeathed m400 ($100) to the boy, the heartless father considered him in the way; so the unnatural parents determined to sacrifice him in the cruelest possible manner. they proceeded to starve him slowly to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him--as the village people now make known, when it is too late. the boy was shut in a hole, and when people passed by he cried, and implored them to give him bread. his long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed him at last, on the third of january. the sudden (sic) death of the child created suspicion, the more so as the body was immediately clothed and laid upon the bier. therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest was held on the 6th. what a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then! the body was a complete skeleton. the stomach and intestines were utterly empty; they contained nothing whatsoever. the flesh on the corpse was not as thick as the back of a knife, and incisions in it brought not one drop of blood. there was not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar on the whole body; wounds, scars, bruises, discolored extravasated blood, everywhere--even on the soles of the feet there were wounds. the cruel parents asserted that the boy had been so bad that they had been obliged to use severe punishments, and that he finally fell over a bench and broke his neck. however, they were arrested two weeks after the inquest and put in the prison at deggendorf." yes, they were arrested "two weeks after the inquest." what a home sound that has. that kind of police briskness rather more reminds me of my native land than german journalism does. i think a german daily journal doesn't do any good to speak of, but at the same time it doesn't do any harm. that is a very large merit, and should not be lightly weighted nor lightly thought of. the german humorous papers are beautifully printed upon fine paper, and the illustrations are finely drawn, finely engraved, and are not vapidly funny, but deliciously so. so also, generally speaking, are the two or three terse sentences which accompany the pictures. i remember one of these pictures: a most dilapidated tramp is ruefully contemplating some coins which lie in his open palm. he says: "well, begging is getting played out. only about five marks ($1.25) for the whole day; many an official makes more!" and i call to mind a picture of a commercial traveler who is about to unroll his samples: merchant (pettishly).--no, don't. i don't want to buy anything! drummer.--if you please, i was only going to show you-merchant.--but i don't wish to see them! drummer (after a pause, pleadingly).--but do you you mind letting me look at them! i haven't seen them for three weeks! [end.] .