The Complete Works of Mark Twain - Part 5

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The Complete Works of Mark Twain - Part 5

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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 handbreadth 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 sandbar 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 course--and 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 arose--hostile 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 practised 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 XVII

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 schoolhouse yard, and feeling very melancholy. But she found
nothing there to comfort her. She soliloquized:

"Oh, if I only had a 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. Oh, if it was to do over again, I wouldn't say
that--I 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 tears rolling
down her cheeks. Then quite a group of boys and girls--playmates of
Tom's and Joe's--came 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 so--just as I am
now, and as if you was him--I was as close as that--and he smiled, just
this way--and then something seemed to go all over me, like--awful, you
know--and 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 flow--SING!--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 day--according to Aunt Polly's
varying moods--than he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew
which expressed the most gratefulness to God and affection for himself.



CHAPTER XVIII

THAT was Tom's great secret--the 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?"

"I--well, 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 have 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 way--he 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
dreamt about you, anyway. That's something, ain't it?"

"It ain't much--a cat does that much--but 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 woodbox, 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?"

"Oh, lots. But it's so dim, now."

"Well, try to recollect--can't you?"

"Somehow it seems to me that the wind--the wind blowed the--the--"

"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, Tom--go on!"

"And it seems to me that you said, 'Why, I believe that that door--'"

"Go ON, Tom!"

"Just let me study a moment--just a moment. Oh, yes--you said you
believed the door was open."

"As I'm sitting here, I did! Didn't I, Mary! Go on!"

"And then--and then--well I won't be certain, but it seems like as if
you made Sid go and--and--"

"Well? Well? What did I make him do, Tom? What did I make him do?"

"You made him--you--Oh, 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!"

"Oh, 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 than--than--I 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 prophesying--that's what you
was doing! Land alive, go on, Tom!"

"Then Sid he said--he 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 said--I 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 firecracker, and
you told about Peter and the Painkiller--"

"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 me--and 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 dead--we 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 a--dream," Sid soliloquized
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 again--now 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, Tom--take yourselves off--you'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 marvellous dream. Sid had better
judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the
house. It was this: "Pretty thin--as 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 suntanned 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 listeners--but 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 her--she 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 schoolmates, 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 elbow--with sham vivacity:

"Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn't you come to Sunday-school?"

"I did come--didn't you see me?"

"Why, no! Did you? Where did you sit?"

"I was in Miss Peters' 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."

"Oh, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?"

"My ma's going to let me have one."

"Oh, 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."

"Oh, won't it be fun! You going to have all the girls and boys?"

"Yes, every one that's friends to me--or 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."

"Oh, may I come?" said Grace 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 schoolhouse looking at a picture-book with Alfred Temple--and 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 besides.
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 eyeballs 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
vain--the girl chirped on. Tom thought, "Oh, 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! Oh, 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 boy
--pummelling the air, and kicking and gouging. "Oh, 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, kept
exclaiming: "Oh, here's a jolly one! look at this!" she lost patience
at last, and said, "Oh, 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 done--for she had said
she would look at pictures all through the nooning--and she walked on,
crying. Then Alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. He was
humiliated and angry. He easily guessed his way to the truth--the 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 XIX

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 it--but I didn't think."

"Oh, 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
did--and I know it, Tom."

"Indeed and 'deed I did, auntie--I wish I may never stir if I didn't."

"Oh, Tom, don't lie--don'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
grieving--that was all that made me come."

"I'd give the whole world to believe that--it 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, 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 you--I 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, auntie--certain 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 it--but it's a
blessed, blessed lie, there's such a comfort come from it. I hope the
Lord--I KNOW the Lord will forgive him, because it was such
goodheartedness 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 lie--it's a good lie--I 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 XX

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 live--please 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 schoolyard 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 any 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-page--Professor 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
frontispiece--a 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 oh, 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 girl--they'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 does--ask 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 fix--let 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 still--because, 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
broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly
upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bout--he
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 levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot
his quarrel with her. Quick--something 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 lost--the 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 sank 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
boys--considered 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 face--it was white with terror]
--"did you tear--no, 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
dismissed--for 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 XXI

VACATION was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, 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 now--at least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and
young ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins'
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 fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in
the evening the schoolhouse 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; snowbanks 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
non-participating 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 used--supposing 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 shamefaced 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
house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than
its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom
struggled awhile 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 declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises,
and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The
prime feature of the evening was in order, now--original "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 brain-racking 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 the 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 everything 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 imbittered 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 a while 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 leave--whose 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 un-perceived--unsought. 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 remade 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 higher--the cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher's
head--down, 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 pate--for the sign-painter's boy
had GILDED it!

That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.

   NOTE:--The pretended "compositions" quoted in
   this chapter are taken without alteration from a
   volume entitled "Prose and Poetry, by a Western
   Lady"--but they are exactly and precisely after
   the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much
   happier than any mere imitations could be.



CHAPTER XXII

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 thing--namely, 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 up
--gave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty-eight hours--and
fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was
apparently on his deathbed 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 high--so high that he would venture to get out his regalia
and practise before the looking-glass. But the Judge had a most
discouraging way of fluctuating. At last he was pronounced upon the
mend--and then convalescent. Tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of
injury, too. He handed in his resignation at once--and 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, however
--there was something in that. He could drink and swear, now--but 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 diary--but 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 disappointment--for 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 carpeting--admission, three pins for boys, two for
girls--and then circusing was abandoned.

A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came--and 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 vacation--so 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 wait--for 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! they--like Tom--had suffered a relapse.



CHAPTER XXIII

AT last the sleepy atmosphere was stirred--and 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 about--that?"

"'Bout what?"

"You know what."

"Oh--'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 always--most 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 on--and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do
that--leastways most of us--preachers and such like. But he's kind of
good--he 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, 'twouldn't do any
good; they'd ketch him again."

"Yes--so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the
dickens when he never done--that."

"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 before--went 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
before--it cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and
treacherous to the last degree when Potter said:

"You've been mighty good to me, boys--better'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't--THEY don't forget him, says I, 'and I don't forget them.' Well,
boys, I done an awful thing--drunk and crazy at the time--that's the
only way I account for it--and now I got to swing for it, and it's
right. Right, and BEST, too, I reckon--hope 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 drunk--then you won't
ever get here. Stand a litter furder west--so--that'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
faces--good friendly faces. Git up on one another's backs and let me
touch 'em. That's it. Shake hands--yourn'll come through the bars, but
mine's too big. Little hands, and weak--but 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 court-room, but invariably
heard distressing news--the 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 court-house 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 court-room. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion
testified itself in tears. Counsel for the defence 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' grave?"

"Yes, sir."

"Speak up--just 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--"

"Wait--wait 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 boy--don't be diffident. The truth is always
respectable. What did you take there?"

"Only a--a--dead 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 occurred--tell it in your own way--don't skip anything,
and don't be afraid."

Tom began--hesitatingly 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 XXIV

TOM was a glittering hero once more--the 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 clew." But you
can't hang a "clew" 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 XXV

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.

"Oh, most anywhere."

"Why, is it hid all around?"

"No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck
--sometimes 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 course--who'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
marks--a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's
mostly signs and hy'roglyphics."

"HyroQwhich?"

"Hy'roglyphics--pictures 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 trees--dead 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 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 apiece--there ain't any, hardly, but's
worth six bits or a dollar."

"No! Is that so?"

"Cert'nly--anybody'll tell you so. Hain't you ever seen one, Huck?"

"Not as I remember."

"Oh, kings have slathers of them."

"Well, I don' 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?--your granny! No!"

"Well, what did you say they did, for?"

"Shucks, I only meant you'd SEE 'em--not hopping, of course--what do
they want to hop for?--but I mean you'd just see 'em--scattered around,
you know, in a kind of a general way. Like that old humpbacked 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 say--where 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?"

"I'm agreed."

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."

"Oh, 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
necktie and a bull pup, and get married."

"Married!"

"That's it."

"Tom, you--why, you ain't in your right mind."

"Wait--you'll see."

"Well, that's the foolishest thing you could do. 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 awhile. I tell you you better. What's the name
of the gal?"

"It ain't a gal at all--it's a girl."

"It's all the same, I reckon; some says gal, some says girl--both's
right, like enough. Anyway, what's her name, Tom?"

"I'll tell you some time--not now."

"All right--that'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?"

"Sometimes--not 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 maow 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. 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 awhile; and then said:

"The ha'nted house. That's it!"

"Blame it, I don't like ha'nted houses, Tom. Why, they're a dern 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, Tom--nobody 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, anyway--but nothing's ever been seen around that house except
in the night--just some blue lights slipping by the windows--no 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 afeard?"

"Well, all right. We'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say so--but 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 awhile, 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 XXVI

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, also--but suddenly said:

"Lookyhere, 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 night--dreampt 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 England--and 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' been 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 cry--and curse. But we'll
play Robin Hood--it's nobby 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 up-stairs.
This was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring
each other, and of course there could be but one result--they 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 fraud--there 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! ... Oh, 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.... No--coming.... 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 lately--never 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 yonder--but 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 daytime!--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, lad--you 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 chance--come!"

Huck said:

"I can't--I'd die if they was to wake."

Tom urged--Huck 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 around--smiled grimly
upon his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his knees--stirred 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?"

"Oh, 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 know--leave 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."

"Well--all right--it won't matter to come here once more."

"No--but I'd say come in the night as we used to do--it'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 it--and bury it deep."

"Good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down,
raised one of the rearward hearth-stones 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 auspices--there would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to
where to dig. They nudged each other every moment--eloquent nudges and
easily understood, for they simply meant--"Oh, 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 plank--no, it's a box, I believe. Here--bear 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 fireplace--I 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 awhile in
blissful silence.

"Pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said Injun Joe.

"'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used to be 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 altogether--it's REVENGE!" and a wicked light flamed in his
eyes. "I'll need your help in it. When it's finished--then Texas. Go
home to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me."

"Well--if you say so; what'll we do with this--bury 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 here--and 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 exactly--not exactly. We'll take it to my
den."

"Why, of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number
One?"

"No--Number Two--under the cross. The other place is bad--too 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
up-stairs?"

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 stairs--the intolerable distress of the situation woke
the stricken resolution of the lads--they 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 there--who cares? If they want to jump down, now,
and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes
--and 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 awhile; 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 themselves--hating 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!"

"Oh, 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 else--at 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 XXVII

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 away--somewhat 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 idea--namely, 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 any one'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. Oh, 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?"

"Oh, 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 night--with that patch-eyed Spanish
devil going for me all through 'em--rot 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 pile--and 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, anyway--and track him out--to
his Number Two."

"Number Two--yes, that's it. I been 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, Huck--maybe it's the number of a house!"

"Goody! ... No, Tom, that ain't it. If it is, it ain't in this
one-horse town. They ain't no numbers here."

"Well, that's so. Lemme think a minute. Here--it's the number of a
room--in a tavern, you know!"

"Oh, 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 you--and if he did,
maybe he'd never think anything."

"Well, if it's pretty dark I reckon I'll track him. I dono--I 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 XXVIII

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 "maow," 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 lantern--it
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 lying 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, 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 ha'nted with whiskey! 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, no--I 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:

"Lookyhere, 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 maow--and 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' hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap's nigger man,
Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and
any time 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. Sometime 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, 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 maow."



CHAPTER XXIX

THE first thing Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of news
--Judge 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 school-mates. 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
"maow," 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
the 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 ferryboat
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:

"Say--I'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'. She'll
have ice-cream! She has it most every day--dead loads of it. And she'll
be awful glad to have us."

"Oh, 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 wrong--but--"

"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' splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. It and
Tom's persuasions presently carried the day. So it was decided to say
nothing 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'. And why should he
give it up, he reasoned--the 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 ferryboat 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 procured, and straightway there
was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was up the
hillside--an 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 defence 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 hand--for 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 same--labyrinth
under 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 ferryboat
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 ferryboat'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 wharf--and 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 absurd--the 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 Welshman'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 awhile; 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 over the hill--ominous 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' grounds. Very well, he thought, let them
bury it there; it won't be hard to find.

Now there was a voice--a very low voice--Injun Joe's:

"Damn her, maybe she's got company--there's lights, late as it is."

"I can't see any."

This was that stranger's voice--the stranger of the haunted house. A
deadly chill went to Huck's heart--this, 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 dare--they 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 next--which was--

"Because the bush is in your way. Now--this way--now 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 swag--you may have it. But her husband was
rough on me--many times he was rough on me--and 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."

"Oh, 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 her--bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils--you notch
her ears like a sow!"

"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 me in this thing--for MY sake
--that's why you're here--I 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
her--and 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
better--I'm all in a shiver."

"Do it NOW? And company there? Look here--I'll get suspicious of you,
first thing you know. No--we'll wait till the lights are out--there's
no hurry."

Huck felt that a silence was going to ensue--a 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, and--a twig
snapped under his foot! His breath stopped and he listened. There was
no sound--the stillness was perfect. His gratitude was measureless. Now
he turned in his tracks, between the walls of sumach bushes--turned
himself as carefully as if he were a ship--and 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 Welshman'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 in--quick! I'll tell everything."

"Why, who are you?"

"Huckleberry Finn--quick, 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 don't--I'd be killed, sure--but the widow's been good
friends to me sometimes, and I want to tell--I 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 tiptoe, their weapons in
their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great
bowlder 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 XXX

AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck
came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman'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
unlocked, 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, too
--make 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 across them devils, even if they was dead."

"Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of it--but
there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No, they
ain't dead, lad--we 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 tiptoe till we got within fifteen feet of them--dark as a cellar
that sumach path was--and 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?"

"Oh yes; I saw them down-town and follered them."

"Splendid! Describe them--describe 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 sheriff--get your breakfast to-morrow morning!"

The Welshman's sons departed at once. As they were leaving the room
Huck sprang up and exclaimed:

"Oh, please don't tell ANYbody it was me that blowed on them! Oh,
please!"

"All right if you say it, Huck, but you ought to have the credit of
what you did."

"Oh no, no! Please don't tell!"

When the young men were gone, the old Welshman said:

"They won't tell--and 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 world--he 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 it--and sometimes I can't sleep much, on
account 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 know--but somehow it seems as if I did."

"Then they went on, and you--"

"Follered 'em--yes. That was it. I wanted to see what was up--they
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 Welshman said:

"My boy, don't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head
for all the world. No--I'd protect you--I'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 me--tell me what it is, and trust me
--I 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 Spaniard--it's Injun Joe!"

The Welshman 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 suspended--waiting for the answer. The
Welshman started--stared in return--three seconds--five seconds--ten
--then replied:

"Of burglar's tools. Why, what's the MATTER with you?"

Huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. The
Welshman eyed him gravely, curiously--and 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 place--the inquiring eye was upon him--he would
have given anything for material for a plausible answer--nothing
suggested itself--the inquiring eye was boring deeper and deeper--a
senseless reply offered--there was no time to weigh it, so at a venture
he uttered it--feebly:

"Sunday-school books, maybe."

Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the 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 bill like everything. Then he added:

"Poor old chap, you're white and jaded--you ain't well a bit--no
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,
however--he had not known that it wasn't--and 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 Welshman admitted several ladies and
gentlemen, among them the Widow Douglas, and noticed that groups of
citizens were climbing up the hill--to stare at the stile. So the news
had spread. The Welshman 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 matter--but the Welshman 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
again--they 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 retold 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 stayed at your house last
night--one 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 ferryboat 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 ferryboat ordered out, and before the horror
was half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down highroad 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 candles--and 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 Welshman 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
Welshman 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 sombre 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 aisle--and 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 asked--dimly
dreading the worst--if 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, child--what a turn
you did give me!"

"Only tell me just one thing--only just one--please! 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 forever--gone
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:

"There--he's asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it! Pity but somebody
could find Tom Sawyer! Ah, there ain't many left, now, that's got hope
enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching."



CHAPTER XXXI

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 cave--wonders 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 incrusted with a frostwork 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 awhile, 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 them--and 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 it--but then the bats. If they put 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:

"Oh, 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 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:

"Oh, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! We seem to get
worse and worse off all the time."

"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.

"Oh, 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 Becky--he
could not find his way back!

"Oh, 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! No--I 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! Oh, 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 again--aimlessly--simply at random--all they could do
was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of
reviving--not 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 pockets--yet he must economize.

By-and-by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to
pay 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 laugh--but it was
stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it.

"Oh, 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 this--they
could not tell how long--Tom said they must go softly and listen for
dripping water--they 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 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."

"Yes--I 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-cake--but 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 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, I reckon."

"Tom, it might be dark then--would 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
also--that 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 then--the 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, now--maybe 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, Becky--we'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 hundred--there 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 heart-sinking
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 farther 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 to--Injun
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 die--it 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 XXXII

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 heartbreaking 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't--and 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 clews 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 down-town 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 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-locked--and 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?"

"Oh, Judge, Injun Joe's in the cave!"



CHAPTER XXXIII

WITHIN a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiff-loads of
men were on their way to McDougal's cave, and the ferryboat, 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 something--in order to pass
the weary time--in 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-tick--a dessertspoonful 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 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 thing--the 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
Welshman 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
whiskey. Nobody told me it was you; but I just knowed it must 'a' ben
you, soon as I heard 'bout that whiskey 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 tavern
was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you
was to watch there that night?"

"Oh 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?"

"Yes--but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind him,
and I don't want 'em 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 Welshman's part of it before.

"Well," said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question,
"whoever nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I reckon
--anyways 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, now--is it fun, or earnest?"

"Earnest, Huck--just 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 every thing I've got in the world. I
will, by jings."

"All right--it'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, Tom--least 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
new-fangled 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 hollow--no 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 in--because of course
there's got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it.
Tom Sawyer's Gang--it sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?"

"Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?"

"Oh, most anybody. Waylay people--that's mostly the way."

"And kill them?"

"No, not always. Hive 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 robbers
--you'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 believe 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? There--on
the big rock over yonder--done 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 awhile, and then said with a shaky voice:

"Tom, less git out of here!"

"What! and leave the treasure?"

"Yes--leave 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
died--away out at the mouth of the cave--five 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--

"Lookyhere, 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 researched 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:

"Lookyhere, Huck, there's footprints 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, lookyhere!"

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, ploughing 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! Say--let'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, Huck--leave 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 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 woodshed, 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
Welshman's house, they stopped to rest. Just as they were about to move
on, the Welshman stepped out and said:

"Hallo, who's that?"

"Huck and Tom Sawyer."

"Good! Come along with me, boys, you are keeping everybody waiting.
Here--hurry up, trot ahead--I'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 nature--hurry 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'."

Huck said with some apprehension--for he was long used to being
falsely accused:

"Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing."

The Welshman 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, anyway."

"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' 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 bedchamber and said:

"Now wash and dress yourselves. Here are two new suits of clothes
--shirts, socks, everything complete. They're Huck's--no, no thanks,
Huck--Mr. Jones bought one and I the other. But they'll fit both of you.
Get into them. We'll wait--come down when you are slicked up enough."

Then she left.



CHAPTER XXXIV

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."

"Oh, 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. Say--ain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?"

"Now, Mr. Siddy, you jist '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 Welshman and his sons, on account of that scrape they
helped her out of the other night. And say--I 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 knows
--the widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. Mr. Jones was
bound Huck should be here--couldn'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?"

"Oh, never mind who it was. SOMEBODY told--that'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.
There--no 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 dare--and 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. Oh, you needn't smile--I reckon I can show you. You just wait a
minute."

Tom ran out of doors. The company looked at each other with a
perplexed interest--and inquiringly at Huck, who was tongue-tied.

"Sid, what ails Tom?" said Aunt Polly. "He--well, 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:

"There--what 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 brimful of
interest. There was scarcely an interruption from any one 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 XXXV

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 treasure--and not by boys, but men--pretty 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 prodigious--a dollar for every week-day
in the year and half of the Sundays. It was just what the minister got
--no, it was what he was promised--he generally couldn't collect it. A
dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in
those old simple days--and 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 lie--a 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 afterward 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' protection introduced him into society--no, dragged him into
it, hurled him into it--and his sufferings were almost more than 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 a 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 get 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 woodshed; 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 for--well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and
sweat and sweat--I 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 bell--everything'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 easy--I 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-swimming--dern'd if I hain't got to ask to do
everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort--I'd got
to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, 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, Tom--I just had to. And besides, that school's
going to open, and I'd a had to go to it--well, 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 sometimes--not
many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout it's tollable
hard to git--and you go and beg off for me with the widder."

"Oh, 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! Yes--the 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 dern foolishness has got to
come up and spile it all!"

Tom saw his opportunity--

"Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning
robber."

"No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?"

"Just as dead earnest as I'm 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 is--as a general thing. In most countries they're awful high up
in the nobility--dukes 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 to--but 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, Tom--now 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?"

"Oh, 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 gay--that'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 find--a 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

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 stop--that 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.


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






ALONZO FITZ AND OTHER STORIES

by Mark Twain



Contents:
     The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz Clarence And Rosannah Ethelton
     On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying
     About Magnanimous-Incident Literature
          The Grateful Poodle
          The Benevolent Author
          The Grateful Husband
     Punch, Brothers, Punch
     The Great Revolution In Pitcairn
     The Canvasser's Tale
     An Encounter With An Interviewer
     Paris Notes
     Legend Of Sagenfeld, In Germany
     Speech On The Babies
     Speech On The Weather
     Concerning The American Language
     Rogers





THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON


It was well along in the forenoon of a bitter winter's day.  The town of
Eastport, in the state of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that was
newly fallen.  The customary bustle in the streets was wanting.  One
could look long distances down them and see nothing but a dead-white
emptiness, with silence to match.  Of course I do not mean that you could
see the silence--no, you could only hear it.  The sidewalks were merely
long, deep ditches, with steep snow walls on either side.  Here and there
you might hear the faint, far scrape of a wooden shovel, and if you were
quick enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figure stooping
and disappearing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next moment
with a motion which you would know meant the heaving out of a shovelful
of snow.  But you needed to be quick, for that black figure would not
linger, but would soon drop that shovel and scud for the house, thrashing
itself with its arms to warm them.  Yes, it was too venomously cold for
snow-shovelers or anybody else to stay out long.

Presently the sky darkened; then the wind rose and began to blow in
fitful, vigorous gusts, which sent clouds of powdery snow aloft, and
straight ahead, and everywhere.  Under the impulse of one of these gusts,
great white drifts banked themselves like graves across the streets; a
moment later another gust shifted them around the other way, driving a
fine spray of snow from their sharp crests, as the gale drives the spume
flakes from wave-crests at sea; a third gust swept that place as clean as
your hand, if it saw fit.  This was fooling, this was play; but each and
all of the gusts dumped some snow into the sidewalk ditches, for that was
business.

Alonzo Fitz Clarence was sitting in his snug and elegant little parlor,
in a lovely blue silk dressing-gown, with cuffs and facings of crimson
satin, elaborately quilted.  The remains of his breakfast were before
him, and the dainty and costly little table service added a harmonious
charm to the grace, beauty, and richness of the fixed appointments of the
room.  A cheery fire was blazing on the hearth.

A furious gust of wind shook the windows, and a great wave of snow washed
against them with a drenching sound, so to speak.  The handsome young
bachelor murmured:

"That means, no going out to-day.  Well, I am content.  But what to do
for company?  Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but
these, like the poor, I have with me always.  On so grim a day as this,
one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of
captivity.  That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything.
One doesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but just
the reverse."

He glanced at his pretty French mantel-clock.

"That clock's wrong again.  That clock hardly ever knows what time it is;
and when it does know, it lies about it--which amounts to the same thing.
Alfred!"

There was no answer.

"Alfred!  .  .  .  Good servant, but as uncertain as the clock."

Alonzo touched an electric bell button in the wall.  He waited a moment,
then touched it again; waited a few moments more, and said:

"Battery out of order, no doubt.  But now that I have started, I will
find out what time it is."  He stepped to a speaking-tube in the wall,
blew its whistle, and called, "Mother!" and repeated it twice.

"Well, that's no use.  Mother's battery is out of order, too.  Can't
raise anybody down-stairs--that is plain."

He sat down at a rosewood desk, leaned his chin on the left-hand edge of
it and spoke, as if to the floor: "Aunt Susan!"

A low, pleasant voice answered, "Is that you, Alonzo?'

"Yes.  I'm too lazy and comfortable to go downstairs; I am in extremity,
and I can't seem to scare up any help."

"Dear me, what is the matter?"

"Matter enough, I can tell you!"

"Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear!  What is it?"

"I want to know what time it is."

"You abominable boy, what a turn you did give me!  Is that all?"

"All--on my honor.  Calm yourself.  Tell me the time, and receive my
blessing."

"Just five minutes after nine.  No charge--keep your blessing."

"Thanks.  It wouldn't have impoverished me, aunty, nor so enriched you
that you could live without other means."

He got up, murmuring, "Just five minutes after nine," and faced his
clock.  "Ah," said he, "you are doing better than usual.  You are only
thirty-four minutes wrong.  Let me see .  .  . let me see.  .  .  .
Thirty-three and twenty-one are fifty-four; four times fifty-four are two
hundred and thirty-six.  One off, leaves two hundred and thirty-five.
That's right."

He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-five
minutes to one, and said, "Now see if you can't keep right for a while
--else I'll raffle you!"

He sat down at the desk again, and said, "Aunt Susan!"

"Yes, dear."

"Had breakfast?"

"Yes, indeed, an hour ago."

"Busy?"

"No--except sewing.  Why?"

"Got any company?"

"No, but I expect some at half past nine."

"I wish I did.  I'm lonesome.  I want to talk to somebody."

"Very well, talk to me."

"But this is very private."

"Don't be afraid--talk right along, there's nobody here but me."

"I hardly know whether to venture or not, but--"

"But what?  Oh, don't stop there!  You know you can trust me, Alonzo--you
know, you can."

"I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious.  It affects me deeply--me,
and all the family---even the whole community."

"Oh, Alonzo, tell me!  I will never breathe a word of it.  What is it?"

"Aunt, if I might dare--"

"Oh, please go on!  I love you, and feel for you.  Tell me all.
Confide in me.  What is it?"

"The weather!"

"Plague take the weather!  I don't see how you can have the heart to
serve me so, Lon."

"There, there, aunty dear, I'm sorry; I am, on my honor.  I won't do it
again.  Do you forgive me?"

"Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know I oughtn't to.
You will fool me again as soon as I have forgotten this time."

"No, I won't, honor bright.  But such weather, oh, such weather!  You've
got to keep your spirits up artificially.  It is snowy, and blowy, and
gusty, and bitter cold!  How is the weather with you?"

"Warm and rainy and melancholy.  The mourners go about the streets with
their umbrellas running streams from the end of every whalebone.  There's
an elevated double pavement of umbrellas, stretching down the sides of
the streets as far as I can see.  I've got a fire for cheerfulness, and
the windows open to keep cool.  But it is vain, it is useless: nothing
comes in but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mocking
odors from the flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice in
their lawless profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunt their
gaudy splendors in his face while his soul is clothed in sackcloth and
ashes and his heart breaketh."

Alonzo opened his lips to say, "You ought to print that, and get it
framed," but checked himself, for he heard his aunt speaking to some one
else.  He went and stood at the window and looked out upon the wintry
prospect.  The storm was driving the snow before it more furiously than
ever; window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, with
bowed head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quaking body
against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girl was
plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from the
blast, and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over her
head.  Alonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, "Better the slop, and the
sultry rain, and even the insolent flowers, than this!"

He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped in a listening
attitude.  The faint, sweet notes of a familiar song caught his ear.  He
remained there, with his head unconsciously bent forward, drinking in the
melody, stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing.  There was a
blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo it seemed an added
charm instead of a defect.  This blemish consisted of a marked flatting
of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes of the refrain or
chorus of the piece.  When the music ended, Alonzo drew a deep breath,
and said, "Ah, I never have heard 'In the Sweet By-and-by' sung like that
before!"

He stepped quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and said in a guarded,
confidential voice, "Aunty, who is this divine singer?"

"She is the company I was expecting.  Stays with me a month or two.
I will introduce you.  Miss--"

"For goodness' sake, wait a moment, Aunt Susan!  You never stop to think
what you are about!"

He flew to his bedchamber, and returned in a moment perceptibly changed
in his outward appearance, and remarking, snappishly:

"Hang it, she would have introduced me to this angel in that sky-blue
dressing-gown with red-hot lapels!  Women never think, when they get
a-going."

He hastened and stood by the desk, and said eagerly, "Now, Aunty, I am
ready," and fell to smiling and bowing with all the persuasiveness and
elegance that were in him.

"Very well.  Miss Rosannah Ethelton, let me introduce to you my favorite
nephew, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence.  There!  You are both good people, and
I like you; so I am going to trust you together while I attend to a few
household affairs.  Sit down, Rosannah; sit down, Alonzo.  Good-by; I
sha'n't be gone long."

Alonzo had been bowing and smiling all the while, and motioning imaginary
young ladies to sit down in imaginary chairs, but now he took a seat
himself, mentally saying, "Oh, this is luck!  Let the winds blow now, and
the snow drive, and the heavens frown!  Little I care!"

While these young people chat themselves into an acquaintanceship, let us
take the liberty of inspecting the sweeter and fairer of the two.  She
sat alone, at her graceful ease, in a richly furnished apartment which
was manifestly the private parlor of a refined and sensible lady,
if signs and symbols may go for anything.  For instance, by a low,
comfortable chair stood a dainty, top-heavy workstand, whose summit was a
fancifully embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored crewels, and
other strings and odds and ends protruding from under the gaping lid and
hanging down in negligent profusion.  On the floor lay bright shreds of
Turkey red, Prussian blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spool
or two, a pair of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs.
On a luxurious sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goods
wrought in black and gold threads interwebbed with other threads not so
pronounced in color, lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon whose
surface a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deft cultivation
of the crochet-needle.  The household cat was asleep on this work of art.
In a bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished picture on it, and a
palette and brushes on a chair beside it.  There were books everywhere:
Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne, Rab and His
Friends, cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books--and books about all
kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course.  There was a piano,
with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender.  There was a great
plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantelpiece, and
around generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and
quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly
devilish china.  The bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with
foreign and domestic flowers and flowering shrubs.

But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within
or without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features,
of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is
receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor of the
garden; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an
expression made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness of
a fawn; a beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a lithe and
rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement was instinct with
native grace.

Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that can
come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture.  Her gown was of
a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blue
flounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-roses chenille;
overdress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins;
corn-colored polonaise, en zanier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttons
and silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff velvet lashings;
basque of lavender reps, picked out with valenciennes; low neck, short
sleeves; maroon velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; inside
handkerchief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffron
tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure of forget-me-nots and
lilies-of-the-valley massed around a noble calla.

This was all; yet even in this subdued attire she was divinely beautiful.
Then what must she have been when adorned for the festival or the ball?

All this time she had been busily chatting with Alonzo, unconscious of
our inspection.  The minutes still sped, and still she talked.  But by
and by she happened to look up, and saw the clock.  A crimson blush sent
its rich flood through her cheeks, and she exclaimed:

"There, good-by, Mr. Fitz Clarence; I must go now!"

She sprang from her chair with such haste that she hardly heard the young
man's answering good-by.  She stood radiant, graceful, beautiful, and
gazed, wondering, upon the accusing clock.  Presently her pouting lips
parted, and she said:

"Five minutes after eleven!  Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twenty
minutes!  Oh, dear, what will he think of me!"

At the self-same moment Alonzo was staring at his clock.  And presently
he said:

"Twenty-five minutes to three!  Nearly two hours, and I didn't believe it
was two minutes!  Is it possible that this clock is humbugging again?
Miss Ethelton!  Just one moment, please.  Are you there yet?"

"Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away."

"Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?"

The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, "It's right down cruel of
him to ask me!" and then spoke up and answered with admirably
counterfeited unconcern, "Five minutes after eleven."

"Oh, thank you!  You have to go, now, have you?"

"I'm sorry."

No reply.

"Miss Ethelton!"

"Well?"

"You you're there yet, ain't you?"

"Yes; but please hurry.  What did you want to say?"

"Well, I--well, nothing in particular.  It's very lonesome here.  It's
asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by
and by--that is, if it will not trouble you too much?"

"I don't know but I'll think about it.  I'll try."

"Oh, thanks!  Miss Ethelton!  .  .  .  Ah, me, she's gone, and here are
the black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again!
But she said good-by.  She didn't say good morning, she said good-by!
.  .  .  The clock was right, after all.  What a lightning-winged
two hours it was!"

He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a
sigh and said:

"How wonderful it is!  Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my
heart's in San Francisco!"

About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of her
bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas
that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, "How different he
is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic
talent of mimicry!"


II

Four weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gay
luncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with
some capital imitations of the voices and gestures of certain popular
actors and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees.  He was
elegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fellow, barring a trifling cast
in his eye.  He seemed very jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eye on
the door with an expectant and uneasy watchfulness.  By and by a nobby
lackey appeared, and delivered a message to the mistress, who nodded her
head understandingly.  That seemed to settle the thing for Mr. Burley;
his vivacity decreased little by little, and a dejected look began to
creep into one of his eyes and a sinister one into the other.

The rest of the company departed in due time, leaving him with the
mistress, to whom he said:

"There is no longer any question about it.  She avoids me.  She
continually excuses herself.  If I could see her, if I could speak to her
only a moment, but this suspense--"

"Perhaps her seeming avoidance is mere accident, Mr. Burley.  Go to the
small drawing-room up-stairs and amuse yourself a moment.  I will
despatch a household order that is on my mind, and then I will go to her
room.  Without doubt she will be persuaded to see you."

Mr. Burley went up-stairs, intending to go to the small drawing-room, but
as he was passing "Aunt Susan's" private parlor, the door of which stood
slightly ajar, he heard a joyous laugh which he recognized; so without
knock or announcement he stepped confidently in.  But before he could
make his presence known he heard words that harrowed up his soul and
chilled his young blood, he heard a voice say:

"Darling, it has come!"

Then he heard Rosannah Ethelton, whose back was toward him, say:

"So has yours, dearest!"

He saw her bowed form bend lower; he heard her kiss something--not merely
once, but again and again!  His soul raged within him.  The heartbreaking
conversation went on:

"Rosannah, I knew you must be beautiful, but this is dazzling, this is
blinding, this is intoxicating!"

"Alonzo, it is such happiness to hear you say it.  I know it is not true,
but I am so grateful to have you think it is, nevertheless!  I knew you
must have a noble face, but the grace and majesty of the reality beggar
the poor creation of my fancy."

Burley heard that rattling shower of kisses again.

"Thank you, my Rosannah!  The photograph flatters me, but you must not
allow yourself to think of that.  Sweetheart?"

"Yes, Alonzo."

"I am so happy, Rosannah."

"Oh, Alonzo, none that have gone before me knew what love was, none that
come after me will ever know what happiness is.  I float in a gorgeous
cloud land, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ecstasy!"

"Oh, my Rosannah! for you are mine, are you not?"

"Wholly, oh, wholly yours, Alonzo, now and forever!  All the day long,
and all through my nightly dreams, one song sings itself, and its sweet
burden is, 'Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, state
of Maine!'"

"Curse him, I've got his address, anyway!" roared Burley, inwardly, and
rushed from the place.

Just behind the unconscious Alonzo stood his mother, a picture of
astonishment.  She was so muffled from head to heel in furs that nothing
of herself was visible but her eyes and nose.  She was a good allegory of
winter, for she was powdered all over with snow.

Behind the unconscious Rosannah stood "Aunt Susan," another picture of
astonishment.  She was a good allegory of summer, for she was lightly
clad, and was vigorously cooling the perspiration on her face with a fan.

Both of these women had tears of joy in their eyes.

"Soho!" exclaimed Mrs.  Fitz Clarence, "this explains why nobody has been
able to drag you out of your room for six weeks, Alonzo!"

"So ho!" exclaimed Aunt Susan, "this explains why you have been a hermit
for the past six weeks, Rosannah!"

The young couple were on their feet in an instant, abashed, and standing
like detected dealers in stolen goods awaiting judge Lynch's doom.

"Bless you, my son!  I am happy in your happiness.  Come to your mother's
arms, Alonzo!"

"Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew's sake!  Come to my arms!"

Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of rejoicing on
Telegraph Hill and in Eastport Square.

Servants were called by the elders, in both places.  Unto one was given
the order, "Pile this fire high, with hickory wood, and bring me a
roasting-hot lemonade."

Unto the other was given the order, "Put out this fire, and bring me two
palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water."

Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talk the
sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans.

Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the mansion on Telegraph
Hill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody.  He hissed
through his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in
melodrama, "Him shall she never wed!  I have sworn it!  Ere great Nature
shall have doffed her winter's ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring,
she shall be mine!"


III

Two weeks later.  Every few hours, during same three or four days, a very
prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had
visited Alonzo.  According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave,
of Cincinnati.  He said he had retired from the ministry on account of
his health.  If he had said on account of ill-health, he would probably
have erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build.  He was the
inventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his bread by
selling the privilege of using it.  "At present," he continued, "a man
may go and tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert
from one state to another, and he can attach his private telephone and
steal a hearing of that music as it passes along.  My invention will stop
all that."

"Well," answered Alonzo, "if the owner of the music could not miss what
was stolen, why should he care?"

"He shouldn't care," said the Reverend.

"Well?" said Alonzo, inquiringly.

"Suppose," replied the Reverend, "suppose that, instead of music that was
passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was loving
endearments of the most private and sacred nature?"

Alonzo shuddered from head to heel.  "Sir, it is a priceless invention,"
said he; "I must have it at any cost."

But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most
unaccountably.  The impatient Alonzo could hardly wait.  The thought of
Rosannah's sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief was
galling to him.  The Reverend came frequently and lamented the delay, and
told of measures he had taken to hurry things up.  This was some little
comfort to Alonzo.

One forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and knocked at Alonzo's
door.  There was no response.  He entered, glanced eagerly around,
closed the door softly, then ran to the telephone.  The exquisitely soft
and remote strains of the "Sweet By-and-by" came floating through the
instrument.  The singer was flatting, as usual, the five notes that
follow the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted her
with this word, in a voice which was an exact imitation of Alonzo's, with
just the faintest flavor of impatience added:

"Sweetheart?"

"Yes, Alonzo?"

"Please don't sing that any more this week--try something modern."

The agile step that goes with a happy heart was heard on the stairs, and
the Reverend, smiling diabolically, sought sudden refuge behind the heavy
folds of the velvet window-curtains.  Alonzo entered and flew to the
telephone.  Said he:

"Rosannah, dear, shall we sing something together?"

"Something modern?" asked she, with sarcastic bitterness.

"Yes, if you prefer."

"Sing it yourself, if you like!"

This snappishness amazed and wounded the young man.  He said:

"Rosannah, that was not like you."

"I suppose it becomes me as much as your very polite speech became you,
Mr. Fitz Clarence."

"Mister Fitz Clarence!  Rosannah, there was nothing impolite about my
speech."

"Oh, indeed!  Of course, then, I misunderstood you, and I most humbly beg
your pardon, ha-ha-ha!  No doubt you said, 'Don't sing it any more
to-day.'"

"Sing what any more to-day?"

"The song you mentioned, of course, How very obtuse we are, all of a
sudden!"

"I never mentioned any song."

"Oh, you didn't?"

"No, I didn't!"

"I am compelled to remark that you did."

"And I am obliged to reiterate that I didn't."

"A second rudeness!  That is sufficient, sir.  I will never forgive you.
All is over between us."

Then came a muffled sound of crying.  Alonzo hastened to say:

"Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words!  There is some dreadful mystery here,
some hideous mistake.  I am utterly earnest and sincere when I say I
never said anything about any song.  I would not hurt you for the whole
world .  .  .  .  Rosannah, dear speak to me, won't you?"

There was a pause; then Alonzo heard the girl's sobbings retreating, and
knew she had gone from the telephone.  He rose with a heavy sigh, and
hastened from the room, saying to himself, "I will ransack the charity
missions and the haunts of the poor for my mother.  She will persuade her
that I never meant to wound her."

A minute later the Reverend was crouching over the telephone like a cat
that knoweth the ways of the prey.  He had not very many minutes to wait.
A soft, repentant voice, tremulous with tears, said:

"Alonzo, dear, I have been wrong.  You could not have said so cruel a
thing.  It must have been some one who imitated your voice in malice or
in jest."

The Reverend coldly answered, in Alonzo's tones:

"You have said all was over between us.  So let it be.  I spurn your
proffered repentance, and despise it!"

Then he departed, radiant with fiendish triumph, to return no more with
his imaginary telephonic invention forever.

Four hours afterward Alonzo arrived with his mother from her favorite
haunts of poverty and vice.  They summoned the San Francisco household;
but there was no reply.  They waited, and continued to wait, upon the
voiceless telephone.

At length, when it was sunset in San Francisco, and three hours and a
half after dark in Eastport, an answer to the oft-repeated cry of
"Rosannah!"

But, alas, it was Aunt Susan's voice that spake.  She said:

"I have been out all day; just got in.  I will go and find her."

The watchers waited two minutes--five minutes--ten minutes.  Then came
these fatal words, in a frightened tone:

"She is gone, and her baggage with her.  To visit another friend, she
told the servants.  But I found this note on the table in her room.
Listen: 'I am gone; seek not to trace me out; my heart is broken; you
will never see me more.  Tell him I shall always think of him when I sing
my poor "Sweet By-and-by," but never of the unkind words he said about
it.' That is her note.  Alonzo, Alonzo, what does it mean?  What has
happened?"

But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead.  His mother threw back the
velvet curtains and opened a window.  The cold air refreshed the
sufferer, and he told his aunt his dismal story.  Meantime his mother was
inspecting a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor when she cast
the curtains back.  It read, "Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, San Francisco."

"The miscreant!" shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the false
Reverend and destroy him; for the card explained everything, since in the
course of the lovers' mutual confessions they had told each other all
about all the sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end of mud at
their failings and foibles for lovers always do that.  It has a
fascination that ranks next after billing and cooing.


IV

During the next two months many things happened.  It had early transpired
that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her
grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a
duplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph
Hill.  Whosoever was sheltering her--if she was still alive--had been
persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts
to find trace of her had failed.

Did Alonzo give her up?  Not he.  He said to himself, "She will sing
that sweet song when she is sad; I shall find her."  So he took his
carpet-sack and a portable telephone, and shook the snow of his native
city from his arctics, and went forth into the world.  He wandered far
and wide and in many states.  Time and again, strangers were astounded to
see a wasted, pale, and woe-worn man laboriously climb a telegraph-pole
in wintry and lonely places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear at a
little box, then come sighing down, and wander wearily away.  Sometimes
they shot at him, as peasants do at aeronauts, thinking him mad and
dangerous.  Thus his clothes were much shredded by bullets and his person
grievously lacerated.  But he bore it all patiently.

In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say, "Ah, if I could
but hear the 'Sweet By-and-by'!"  But toward the end of it he used to
shed tears of anguish and say, "Ah, if I could but hear something else!"

Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last some humane people
seized him and confined him in a private mad-house in New York.  He made
no moan, for his strength was all gone, and with it all heart and all
hope.  The superintendent, in pity, gave up his own comfortable parlor
and bedchamber to him and nursed him with affectionate devotion.

At the end of a week the patient was able to leave his bed for the first
time.  He was lying, comfortably pillowed, on a sofa, listening to the
plaintive Miserere of the bleak March winds and the muffled sound of
tramping feet in the street below for it was about six in the evening,
and New York was going home from work.  He had a bright fire and the
added cheer of a couple of student-lamps.  So it was warm and snug
within, though bleak and raw without; it was light and bright within,
though outside it was as dark and dreary as if the world had been lit
with Hartford gas.  Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his loving vagaries
had made him a maniac in the eyes of the world, and was proceeding to
pursue his line of thought further, when a faint, sweet strain, the very
ghost of sound, so remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon his ear.
His pulses stood still; he listened with parted lips and bated breath.
The song flowed on--he waiting, listening, rising slowly and unconsciously
from his recumbent position.  At last he exclaimed:

"It is! it is she!  Oh, the divine hated notes!"

He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the sounds proceeded,
tore aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone.  He bent over, and as
the last note died away he burst forthwith the exclamation:

"Oh, thank Heaven, found at last!  Speak tome, Rosannah, dearest!  The
cruel mystery has been unraveled; it was the villain Burley who mimicked
my voice and wounded you with insolent speech!"

There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo; then a faint sound
came, framing itself into language:

"Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo!"

"They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah, and you shall have
the proof, ample and abundant proof!"

"Oh; Alonzo, stay by me!  Leave me not for a moment!  Let me feel that
you are near me!  Tell me we shall never be parted more!  Oh, this happy
hour, this blessed hour, this memorable hour!"

"We will make record of it, my Rosannah; every year, as this dear hour
chimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, all the
years of our life."

"We will, we will, Alonzo!"

"Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah, shall henceforth--"

"Twenty-three minutes after twelve, afternoon shall--"

"Why; Rosannah, darling, where are you?"

"In Honolulu, Sandwich Islands.  And where are you?  Stay by me; do not
leave me for a moment.  I cannot bear it.  Are you at home?"

"No, dear, I am in New York--a patient in the doctor's hands."

An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like the sharp buzzing
of a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles.  Alonzo
hastened to say:

"Calm yourself, my child.  It is nothing.  Already I am getting well
under the sweet healing of your presence.  Rosannah?"

"Yes, Alonzo?  Oh, how you terrified me!  Say on."

"Name the happy day, Rosannah!"

There was a little pause.  Then a diffident small voice replied,
"I blush--but it is with pleasure, it is with happiness.  Would--would
you like to have it soon?"

"This very night, Rosannah!  Oh, let us risk no more delays.  Let it be
now!--this very night, this very moment!"

"Oh, you impatient creature!  I have nobody here but my good old uncle,
a missionary for a generation, and now retired from service--nobody but
him and his wife.  I would so dearly like it if your mother and your Aunt
Susan--"

"Our mother and our Aunt Susan, my Rosannah."

"Yes, our mother and our Aunt Susan--I am content to word it so if it
pleases you; I would so like to have them present."

"So would I.  Suppose you telegraph Aunt Susan.  How long would it take
her to come?"

"The steamer leaves San Francisco day after tomorrow.  The passage is
eight days.  She would be here the 31st of March."

"Then name the 1st of April; do, Rosannah, dear."

"Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo!"

"So we be the happiest ones that that day's suit looks down upon in the
whole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care?  Call it the 1st of
April, dear."

"Then the 1st of April at shall be, with all my heart!"

"Oh, happiness!  Name the hour, too, Rosannah."

"I like the morning, it is so blithe.  Will eight in the morning do,
Alonzo?"

"The loveliest hour in the day--since it will make you mine."

There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if
wool-upped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannah
said, "Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and am
called to meet it."

The young girl sought a large parlor and took her place at a window which
looked out upon a beautiful scene.  To the left one could view the
charming Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers
and its plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills clothed in
the shining green of lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storied
precipice beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foes over
to their destruction, a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no
doubt, for now it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under the
glowing arches of a succession of rainbows. In front of the window one
could see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group of
dusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the right lay
the restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine.

Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushed and
heated face, waiting.  A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged blue necktie
and part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced,
"'Frisco haole!"

"Show him in," said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming a
meaning dignity.  Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head to
heel in dazzling snow--that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of
Irish linen.  He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture and
gave him a look which checked him suddenly.  She said, coldly, "I am
here, as I promised.  I believed your assertions, I yielded to your
importune lies, and said I would name the day.  I name the 1st of April
--eight in the morning.  NOW GO!"

"Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a lifetime--"

"Not a word.  Spare me all sight of you, all communication with you,
until that hour.  No--no supplications; I will have it so."

When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege of
troubles she had undergone had wasted her strength.  Presently she said,
"What a narrow escape!  If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier
--Oh, horror, what an escape I have made!  And to think I had come to
imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherous
monster!  Oh, he shall repent his villainy!"

Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more needs to be
told.  On the 2d of the ensuing April, the Honolulu Advertiser contained
this notice:

     MARRIED.--In this city, by telephone, yesterday morning,--at eight
     o'clock, by Rev. Nathan Hays, assisted by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, of
     New York, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U. S., and
     Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U. S.  Mrs. Susan
     Howland, of San Francisco, a friend of the bride, was present, she
     being the guest of the Rev. Mr. Hays and wife, uncle and aunt of the
     bride.  Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, of San Francisco, was also
     present but did not remain till the conclusion of the marriage
     service.  Captain Hawthorne's beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated,
     was in waiting, and the happy bride and her friends immediately
     departed on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala.

The New York papers of the same date contained this notice:

     MARRIED.--In this city, yesterday, by telephone, at half-past two in
     the morning, by Rev.  Nathaniel Davis, assisted by Rev. Nathan Hays,
     of Honolulu, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss
     Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon.  The parents and several
     friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a sumptuous
     breakfast and much festivity until nearly sunrise, and then departed
     on a bridal trip to the Aquarium, the bridegroom's state of health
     not admitting of a more extended journey.

Toward the close of that memorable day Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo Fitz Clarence
were buried in sweet converse concerning the pleasures of their several
bridal tours, when suddenly the young wife exclaimed: "Oh, Lonny, I
forgot!  I did what I said I would."

"Did you, dear?"

"Indeed, I did.  I made him the April fool!  And I told him so, too!
Ah, it was a charming surprise!  There he stood, sweltering in a black
dress-suit, with the mercury leaking out of the top of the thermometer,
waiting to be married.  You should have seen the look he gave when I
whispered it in his ear.  Ah, his wickedness cost me many a heartache and
many a tear, but the score was all squared up, then.  So the vengeful
feeling went right out of my heart, and I begged him to stay, and said I
forgave him everything.  But he wouldn't.  He said he would live to be
avenged; said he would make our lives a curse to us.  But he can't, can
he, dear?"

"Never in this world, my Rosannah!"

Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and their
Eastport parents, are all happy at this writing, and likely to remain so.
Aunt Susan brought the bride from the islands, accompanied her across our
continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rapturous meeting
between an adoring husband and wife who had never seen each other until
that moment.

A word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came so near
wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will be
sufficient.  In a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless
artisan who he fancied had done him some small offense, he fell into a
caldron of boiling oil and expired before he could be extinguished.






ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING

ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE HISTORICAL AND
ANTIQUARIAN CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OFFERED FOR THE THIRTY-DOLLAR PRIZE.
NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.--[Did not take the prize]

Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered
any decay or interruption--no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, is
eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need,
the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is
immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains.  My
complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying.  No high-minded
man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly
lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so
prostituted.  In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this scheme
with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters
to the mothers in Israel.  It would not become me to criticize you,
gentlemen, who are nearly all my elders--and my superiors, in this thing
--and so, if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in
most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than of fault-finding;
indeed, if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the
attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development
which this Club has devoted to it I should not need to utter this lament
or shed a single tear.  I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a
spirit of just and appreciative recognition.

[It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and give
illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me
to beware of particulars and confine myself to generalities.]

No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our
circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without
saying.  No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and
diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this one
ought to be taught in the public schools--at the fireside--even in the
newspapers.  What chance has the ignorant, uncultivated liar against the
educated expert?  What chance have I against Mr. Per-- against a lawyer?
Judicious lying is what the world needs.  I sometimes think it were even
better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously.  An
awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.

Now let us see what the philosophers say.  Note that venerable proverb:
Children and fools always speak the truth.  The deduction is plain
--adults and wise persons never speak it.  Parkman, the historian, says,
"The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity." In
another place in the same chapter he says, "The saying is old that truth
should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience
worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and
nuisances."  It is strong language, but true.  None of us could live with
an habitual truth-teller; but, thank goodness, none of us has to.  An
habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does not
exist; he never has existed.  Of course there are people who think they
never lie, but it is not so--and this ignorance is one of the very things
that shame our so-called civilization.  Everybody lies--every day; every
hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he
keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will
convey deception--and purposely.  Even in sermons--but that is a
platitude.

In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying
calls, under the humane and kindly pretense of wanting to see each other;
and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice,
saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out"--not
meaning that they found out anything against the fourteen--no, that was
only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home--and their
manner of saying it--expressed their lively satisfaction in that fact.
Now, their pretense of wanting to see the fourteen--and the other two
whom they had been less lucky with--was that commonest and mildest form
of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflection from the truth.
Is it justifiable?  Most certainly.  It is beautiful, it is noble; for
its object is, not to reap profit, but to convey a pleasure to the
sixteen.  The iron-souled truth-monger would plainly manifest, or even
utter the fact, that he didn't want to see those people--and he would be
an ass, and inflict a totally unnecessary pain.  And next, those ladies
in that far country--but never mind, they had a thousand pleasant ways of
lying, that grew out of gentle impulses, and were a credit to their
intelligence and at honor to their hearts.  Let the particulars go.

The men in that far country were liars; every one.  Their mere howdy-do
was a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were
undertakers.  To the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made
no conscientious diagnosis of your case, but answered at random, and
usually missed it considerably.  You lied to the undertaker, and said
your health was failing--a wholly commendable lie, since it cost you
nothing and pleased the other man.  If a stranger called and interrupted
you, you said with your hearty tongue, "I'm glad to see you," and said
with your heartier soul, "I wish you were with the cannibals and it was
dinner-time."  When he went, you said regretfully, "Must you go?" and
followed it with a "Call again"; but you did no harm, for you did not
deceive anybody nor inflict any hurt, whereas the truth would have made
you both unhappy.

I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and
should be cultivated.  The highest perfection of politeness is only a
beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and
gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth.  Let us do
what we can to eradicate it.  An injurious truth has no merit over an
injurious lie.  Neither should ever be uttered.  The man who speaks an
injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should
reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.  The man
who tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble is one of whom the
angels doubtless say, "Lo, here is an heroic soul who casts his own
welfare into jeopardy to succor his neighbor's; let us exalt this
magnanimous liar."

An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same
degree, is an injurious truth--a fact which is recognized by the law of
libel.

Among other common lies, we have the silent lie, the deception which one
conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth.  Many obstinate
truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak
no lie, they lie not at all.  In that far country where I once lived,
there was a lovely spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high and
pure, and whose character answered to them.  One day I was there at
dinner, and remarked, in a general way, that we are all liars.  She was
amazed, and said, "Not all!"  It was before "Pinafore's" time so I did
not make the response which would naturally follow in our day, but
frankly said, "Yes, all--we are all liars; there are no exceptions."
She looked almost offended, and said, "Why, do you include me?"
"Certainly," I said, "I think you even rank as an expert." She said,
"'Sh!--'sh! the children!"

So the subject was changed in deference to the children's presence, and
we went on talking about other things.  But as soon as the young people
were out of the way, the lady came warmly back to the matter and said,
"I have made it the rule of my life to never tell a lie; and I have never
departed from it in a single instance."  I said, "I don't mean the least
harm or disrespect, but really you have been lying like smoke ever since
I've been sitting here.  It has caused me a good deal of pain, because I
am not used to it."  She required of me an instance--just a single
instance.  So I said:

"Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank which the Oakland
hospital people sent to you by the hand of the sick-nurse when she came
here to nurse your little nephew through his dangerous illness.  This
blank asks all manner of questions as to the conduct of that sick-nurse:
'Did she ever sleep on her watch?  Did she ever forget to give the
medicine?' and so forth and so on.  You are warned to be very careful and
explicit in your answers, for the welfare of the service requires that
the nurses be promptly fined or otherwise punished for derelictions.
You told me you were perfectly delighted with that nurse--that she had a
thousand perfections and only one fault: you found you never could depend
on her wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently while he waited in a chilly
chair for her to rearrange the warm bed.  You filled up the duplicate of
this paper, and sent it back to the hospital by the hand of the nurse.
How did you answer this question--'Was the nurse at any time guilty of a
negligence which was likely to result in the patient's taking cold?'
Come--everything is decided by a bet here in California: ten dollars to
ten cents you lied when you answered that question."  She said, "I
didn't; I left it blank!"  "Just so--you have told a silent lie; you have
left it to be inferred that you had no fault to find in that matter."
She said, "Oh, was that a lie?  And how could I mention her one single
fault, and she so good?--it would have been cruel."  I said, "One ought
always to lie when one can do good by it; your impulse was right, but,
your judgment was crude; this comes of unintelligent practice.  Now
observe the result of this inexpert deflection of yours.  You know Mr.
Jones's Willie is lying very low with scarlet fever; well, your
recommendation was so enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him,
and the worn-out family have all been trustingly sound asleep for the
last fourteen hours, leaving their darling with full confidence in those
fatal hands, because you, like young George Washington, have a reputa--
However, if you are not going to have anything to do, I will come around
to-morrow and we'll attend the funeral together, for, of course, you'll
naturally feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case--as personal a one,
in fact, as the undertaker."

But that was all lost.  Before I was half-way through she was in a
carriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion to save
what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly nurse.
All of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had been lying
myself.  But that same day, all the same, she sent a line to the hospital
which filled up the neglected blank, and stated the facts, too, in the
squarest possible manner.

Now, you see, this lady's fault was not in lying, but only in lying
injudiciously.  She should have told the truth there, and made it up to
the nurse with a fraudulent compliment further along in the paper.  She
could have said, "In one respect the sick-nurse is perfection--when she
is on watch, she never snores."  Almost any little pleasant lie would
have taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary expression of
the truth.

Lying is universal we all do it; we all must do it.  Therefore, the wise
thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully,
judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for
others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably,
humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and
graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely,
with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as
being ashamed of our high calling.  Then shall we be rid of the rank and
pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good
and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature
habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather.  Then--but
I am but a new and feeble student in this gracious art; I can not
instruct this Club.

Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise examination into what
sorts of lies are best and wholesomest to be indulged, seeing we must all
lie and do all lie, and what sorts it may be best to avoid--and this is a
thing which I feel I can confidently put into the hands of this
experienced Club--a ripe body, who may be termed, in this regard, and
without undue flattery, Old Masters.






ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE

All my life, from boyhood up, I have had the habit of reading a certain
set of anecdotes, written in the quaint vein of The World's ingenious
Fabulist, for the lesson they taught me and the pleasure they gave me.
They lay always convenient to my hand, and whenever I thought meanly of
my kind I turned to them, and they banished that sentiment; whenever I
felt myself to be selfish, sordid, and ignoble I turned to them, and they
told me what to do to win back my self-respect.  Many times I wished that
the charming anecdotes had not stopped with their happy climaxes, but had
continued the pleasing history of the several benefactors and
beneficiaries.  This wish rose in my breast so persistently that at last
I determined to satisfy it by seeking out the sequels of those anecdotes
myself.  So I set about it, and after great labor and tedious research
accomplished my task.  I will lay the result before you, giving you each
anecdote in its turn, and following it with its sequel as I gathered it
through my investigations.


                           THE GRATEFUL POODLE

One day a benevolent physician (who had read the books) having found a
stray poodle suffering from a broken leg, conveyed the poor creature to
his home, and after setting and bandaging the injured limb gave the
little outcast its liberty again, and thought no more about the matter.
But how great was his surprise, upon opening his door one morning, some
days later, to find the grateful poodle patiently waiting there, and in
its company another stray dog, one of whose legs, by some accident, had
been broken.  The kind physician at once relieved the distressed animal,
nor did he forget to admire the inscrutable goodness and mercy of God,
who had been willing to use so humble an instrument as the poor outcast
poodle for the inculcating of, etc., etc., etc.


                                  SEQUEL

The next morning the benevolent physician found the two dogs, beaming
with gratitude, waiting at his door, and with them two other
dogs-cripples.  The cripples were speedily healed, and the four went
their way, leaving the benevolent physician more overcome by pious wonder
than ever.  The day passed, the morning came.  There at the door sat now
the four reconstructed dogs, and with them four others requiring
reconstruction.  This day also passed, and another morning came; and now
sixteen dogs, eight of them newly crippled, occupied the sidewalk, and
the people were going around.  By noon the broken legs were all set, but
the pious wonder in the good physician's breast was beginning to get
mixed with involuntary profanity.  The sun rose once more, and exhibited
thirty-two dogs, sixteen of them with broken legs, occupying the sidewalk
and half of the street; the human spectators took up the rest of the
room.  The cries of the wounded, the songs of the healed brutes, and the
comments of the onlooking citizens made great and inspiring cheer, but
traffic was interrupted in that street.  The good physician hired a
couple of assistant surgeons and got through his benevolent work before
dark, first taking the precaution to cancel his church-membership, so
that he might express himself with the latitude which the case required.

But some things have their limits.  When once more the morning dawned,
and the good physician looked out upon a massed and far-reaching
multitude of clamorous and beseeching dogs, he said, "I might as well
acknowledge it, I have been fooled by the books; they only tell the
pretty part of the story, and then stop.  Fetch me the shotgun; this
thing has gone along far enough."

He issued forth with his weapon, and chanced to step upon the tail of the
original poodle, who promptly bit him in the leg.  Now the great and good
work which this poodle had been engaged in had engendered in him such a
mighty and augmenting enthusiasm as to turn his weak head at last and
drive him mad.  A month later, when the benevolent physician lay in the
death-throes of hydrophobia, he called his weeping friends about him, and
said:

"Beware of the books.  They tell but half of the story.  Whenever a poor
wretch asks you for help, and you feel a doubt as to what result may flow
from your benevolence, give yourself the benefit of the doubt and kill
the applicant."

And so saying he turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost.



                          THE BENEVOLENT AUTHOR

A poor and young literary beginner had tried in vain to get his
manuscripts accepted.  At last, when the horrors of starvation were
staring him in the face, he laid his sad case before a celebrated author,
beseeching his counsel and assistance.  This generous man immediately put
aside his own matters and proceeded to peruse one of the despised
manuscripts.  Having completed his kindly task, he shook the poor young
man cordially by the hand, saying, "I perceive merit in this; come again
to me on Monday."  At the time specified, the celebrated author, with a
sweet smile, but saying nothing, spread open a magazine which was damp
from the press.  What was the poor young man's astonishment to discover
upon the printed page his own article.  "How can I ever," said he,
falling upon his knees and bursting into tears, "testify my gratitude for
this noble conduct!"

The celebrated author was the renowned Snodgrass; the poor young beginner
thus rescued from obscurity and starvation was the afterward equally
renowned Snagsby.  Let this pleasing incident admonish us to turn a
charitable ear to all beginners that need help.

                                  SEQUEL

The next week Snagsby was back with five rejected manuscripts.  The
celebrated author was a little surprised, because in the books the young
struggler had needed but one lift, apparently.  However, he plowed
through these papers, removing unnecessary flowers and digging up some
acres of adjective stumps, and then succeeded in getting two of the
articles accepted.

A week or so drifted by, and the grateful Snagsby arrived with another
cargo.  The celebrated author had felt a mighty glow of satisfaction
within himself the first time he had successfully befriended the poor
young struggler, and had compared himself with the generous people in the
books with high gratification; but he was beginning to suspect now that
he had struck upon something fresh in the noble-episode line.  His
enthusiasm took a chill.  Still, he could not bear to repulse this
struggling young author, who clung to him with such pretty simplicity and
trustfulness.

Well, the upshot of it all was that the celebrated author presently found
himself permanently freighted with the poor young beginner.  All his mild
efforts to unload this cargo went for nothing.  He had to give daily
counsel, daily encouragement; he had to keep on procuring magazine
acceptances, and then revamping the manuscripts to make them presentable.
When the young aspirant got a start at last, he rode into sudden fame by
describing the celebrated author's private life with such a caustic humor
and such minuteness of blistering detail that the book sold a prodigious
edition, and broke the celebrated author's heart with mortification.
With his latest gasp he said, "Alas, the books deceived me; they do not
tell the whole story.  Beware of the struggling young author, my friends.
Whom God sees fit to starve, let not man presumptuously rescue to his own
undoing."



                           THE GRATEFUL HUSBAND

One day a lady was driving through the principal street of a great city
with her little boy, when the horses took fright and dashed madly away,
hurling the coachman from his box and leaving the occupants of the
carnage paralyzed with terror.  But a brave youth who was driving a
grocery-wagon threw himself before the plunging animals, and succeeded in
arresting their flight at the peril of his own.--[This is probably a
misprint.--M. T.]--The grateful lady took his number, and upon arriving
at her home she related the heroic act to her husband (who had read the
books), who listened with streaming eyes to the moving recital, and who,
after returning thanks, in conjunction with his restored loved ones, to
Him who suffereth not even a sparrow to fall to the ground unnoticed,
sent for the brave young person, and, placing a check for five hundred
dollars in his hand, said, "Take this as a reward for your noble act,
William Ferguson, and if ever you shall need a friend, remember that
Thompson McSpadden has a grateful heart."  Let us learn from this that
a good deed cannot fail to benefit the doer, however humble he may be.

                                  SEQUEL

William Ferguson called the next week and asked Mr. McSpadden to use his
influence to get him a higher employment, he feeling capable of better
things than driving a grocer's wagon.  Mr. McSpadden got him an
underclerkship at a good salary.

Presently William Ferguson's mother fell sick, and William--Well, to cut
the story short, Mr. McSpadden consented to take her into his house.
Before long she yearned for the society of her younger children; so Mary
and Julia were admitted also, and little Jimmy, their brother.  Jimmy had
a pocket knife, and he wandered into the drawing-room with it one day,
alone, and reduced ten thousand dollars' worth of furniture to an
indeterminable value in rather less than three-quarters of an hour.
A day or two later he fell down-stairs and broke his neck, and seventeen
of his family's relatives came to the house to attend the funeral.  This
made them acquainted, and they kept the kitchen occupied after that, and
likewise kept the McSpaddens busy hunting-up situations of various sorts
for them, and hunting up more when they wore these out.  The old woman
drank a good deal and swore a good deal; but the grateful McSpaddens knew
it was their duty to reform her, considering what her son had done for
them, so they clave nobly to their generous task.  William came often and
got decreasing sums of money, and asked for higher and more lucrative
employments--which the grateful McSpadden more or less promptly procured
for him.  McSpadden consented also, after some demur, to fit William for
college; but when the first vacation came and the hero requested to be
sent to Europe for his health, the persecuted McSpadden rose against the
tyrant and revolted.  He plainly and squarely refused.  William
Ferguson's mother was so astounded that she let her gin-bottle drop, and
her profane lips refused to do their office.  When she recovered she said
in a half-gasp, "Is this your gratitude?  Where would your wife and boy
be now, but for my son?"

William said, "Is this your gratitude?  Did I save your wife's life or
not?  Tell me that!"

Seven relations swarmed in from the kitchen and each said, "And this is
his gratitude!"

William's sisters stared, bewildered, and said, "And this is his grat--"
but were interrupted by their mother, who burst into tears and exclaimed,

"To think that my sainted little Jimmy threw away his life in the service
of such a reptile!"

Then the pluck of the revolutionary McSpadden rose to the occasion, and
he replied with fervor, "Out of my house, the whole beggarly tribe of
you!  I was beguiled by the books, but shall never be beguiled again
--once is sufficient for me."  And turning to William he shouted, "Yes,
you did save my, wife's life, and the next man that does it shall die in
his tracks!"


Not being a clergyman, I place my text at the end of my sermon instead of
at the beginning.  Here it is, from Mr. Noah Brooks's Recollections of
President Lincoln in Scribners Monthly:

     J.  H.  Hackett, in his part of Falstaff, was an actor who gave Mr.
     Lincoln great delight.  With his usual desire to signify to others
     his sense of obligation, Mr. Lincoln wrote a genial little note to
     the actor expressing his pleasure at witnessing his performance.
     Mr. Hackett, in reply, sent a book of some sort; perhaps it was one
     of his own authorship.  He also wrote several notes to the
     President.  One night, quite late, when the episode had passed out
     of my mind, I went to the white House in answer to a message.
     Passing into the President's office, I noticed, to my surprise,
     Hackett sitting in the anteroom as if waiting for an audience.  The
     President asked me if any one was outside.  On being told, he said,
     half sadly, "Oh, I can't see him, I can't see him; I was in hopes he
     had gone away."  Then he added, "Now this just illustrates the
     difficulty of having pleasant friends and acquaintances in this
     place.  You know how I liked Hackett as an actor, and how I wrote to
     tell him so.  He sent me that book, and there I thought the matter
     would end.  He is a master of his place in the profession, I
     suppose, and well fixed in it; but just because we had a little
     friendly correspondence, such as any two men might have, he wants
     something.  What do you suppose he wants?"  I could not guess, and
     Mr. Lincoln added, "well, he wants to be consul to London.  Oh,
     dear!"

I will observe, in conclusion, that the William Ferguson incident
occurred, and within my personal knowledge--though I have changed the
nature of the details, to keep William from recognizing himself in it.

All the readers of this article have in some sweet and gushing hour of
their lives played the role of Magnanimous-Incident hero.  I wish I knew
how many there are among them who are willing to talk about that episode
and like to be reminded of the consequences that flowed from it.






PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH

Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following lines, and see
if he can discover anything harmful in them?

               Conductor, when you receive a fare,
               Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
               A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
               A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
               A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare,
               Punch in the presence of the passenjare!

               CHORUS

               Punch, brothers! punch with care!
               Punch in the presence of the passenjare!


I came across these jingling rhymes in a newspaper, a little while ago,
and read them a couple of times.  They took instant and entire possession
of me.  All through breakfast they went waltzing through my brain; and
when, at last, I rolled up my napkin, I could not tell whether I had
eaten anything or not.  I had carefully laid out my day's work the day
before--thrilling tragedy in the novel which I am writing.  I went to my
den to begin my deed of blood.  I took up my pen, but all I could get it
to say was, "Punch in the presence of the passenjare."  I fought hard for
an hour, but it was useless.  My head kept humming, "A blue trip slip for
an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare," and so on and
so on, without peace or respite.  The day's work was ruined--I could see
that plainly enough.  I gave up and drifted down-town, and presently
discovered that my feet were keeping time to that relentless jingle.
When I could stand it no longer I altered my step.  But it did no good;
those rhymes accommodated themselves to the new step and went on
harassing me just as before.  I returned home, and suffered all the
afternoon; suffered all through an unconscious and unrefreshing dinner;
suffered, and cried, and jingled all through the evening; went to bed and
rolled, tossed, and jingled right along, the same as ever; got up at
midnight frantic, and tried to read; but there was nothing visible upon
the whirling page except "Punch! punch in the presence of the
passenjare."  By sunrise I was out of my mind, and everybody marveled and
was distressed at the idiotic burden of my ravings--"Punch! oh, punch!
punch in the presence of the passenjare!"

Two days later, on Saturday morning, I arose, a tottering wreck, and went
forth to fulfil an engagement with a valued friend, the Rev. Mr.------,
to walk to the Talcott Tower, ten miles distant.  He stared at me, but
asked no questions.  We started. Mr.------ talked, talked, talked as is
his wont.  I said nothing; I heard nothing.  At the end of a mile,
Mr.------ said  "Mark, are you sick?  I never saw a man look so haggard
and worn and absent-minded.  Say something, do!"

Drearily, without enthusiasm, I said: "Punch brothers, punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!"

My friend eyed me blankly, looked perplexed, they said:

"I do not think I get your drift, Mark.  Then does not seem to be any
relevancy in what you have said, certainly nothing sad; and yet--maybe it
was the way you said the words--I never heard anything that sounded so
pathetic.  What is--"

But I heard no more.  I was already far away with my pitiless,
heartbreaking "blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, buff trip slip for
a six-cent fare, pink trip slip for a three-cent fare; punch in the
presence of the passenjare."  I do not know what occurred during the
other nine miles.  However, all of a sudden Mr.------ laid his hand on my
shoulder and shouted:

"Oh, wake up! wake up! wake up!  Don't sleep all day!  Here we are at
the Tower, man!  I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind, and never
got a response.  Just look at this magnificent autumn landscape!  Look at
it! look at it!  Feast your eye on it!  You have traveled; you have seen
boaster landscapes elsewhere.  Come, now, deliver an honest opinion.
What do you say to this?"

I sighed wearily; and murmured:

"A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent
fare, punch in the presence of the passenjare."

Rev.  Mr. ------ stood there, very grave, full of concern, apparently, and
looked long at me; then he said:

"Mark, there is something about this that I cannot understand.  Those are
about the same words you said before; there does not seem to be anything
in them, and yet they nearly break my heart when you say them.  Punch in
the--how is it they go?"

I began at the beginning and repeated all the lines.

My friend's face lighted with interest.  He said:

"Why, what a captivating jingle it is!  It is almost music.  It flows
along so nicely.  I have nearly caught the rhymes myself.  Say them over
just once more, and then I'll have them, sure."

I said them over.  Then Mr. ------ said them.  He made one little
mistake, which I corrected.  The next time and the next he got them
right.  Now a great burden seemed to tumble from my shoulders.  That
torturing jingle departed out of my brain, and a grateful sense of rest
and peace descended upon me.  I was light-hearted enough to sing; and I
did sing for half an hour, straight along, as we went jogging homeward.
Then my freed tongue found blessed speech again, and the pent talk of
many a weary hour began to gush and flow.  It flowed on and on, joyously,
jubilantly, until the fountain was empty and dry.  As I wrung my friend's
hand at parting, I said:

"Haven't we had a royal good time!  But now I remember, you haven't said
a word for two hours.  Come, come, out with something!"

The Rev.  Mr.------ turned a lack-luster eye upon me, drew a deep sigh,
and said, without animation, without apparent consciousness:

"Punch, brothers, punch with care!  Punch in the presence of the
passenjare!"

A pang shot through me as I said to myself, "Poor fellow, poor fellow!
he has got it, now."

I did not see Mr.------ for two or three days after that.  Then, on
Tuesday evening, he staggered into my presence and sank dejectedly into a
seat.  He was pale, worn; he was a wreck.  He lifted his faded eyes to my
face and said:

"Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartless
rhymes.  They have ridden me like a nightmare, day and night, hour after
hour, to this very moment.  Since I saw you I have suffered the torments
of the lost.  Saturday evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, and
took the night train for Boston.  The occasion was the death of a valued
old friend who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon.
I took my seat in the cars and set myself to framing the discourse.  But
I never got beyond the opening paragraph; for then the train started and
the car-wheels began their 'clack, clack-clack-clack-clack! clack-clack!
--clack-clack-clack!' and right away those odious rhymes fitted
themselves to that accompaniment.  For an hour I sat there and set a
syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clack the
car-wheels made.  Why, I was as fagged out, then, as if I had been
chopping wood all day.  My skull was splitting with headache.  It seemed
to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer; so I undressed and
went to bed.  I stretched myself out in my berth, and--well, you know
what the result was.  The thing went right along, just the same.
'Clack-clack clack, a blue trip slip, clack-clack-clack, for an eight
cent fare; clack-clack-clack, a buff trip slip, clack clack-clack, for a
six-cent fare, and so on, and so on, and so on punch in the presence of
the passenjare!'  Sleep?  Not a single wink!  I was almost a lunatic when
I got to Boston.  Don't ask me about the funeral.  I did the best I
could, but every solemn individual sentence was meshed and tangled and
woven in and out with 'Punch, brothers, punch with care, punch in the
presence of the passenjare.'  And the most distressing thing was that my
delivery dropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing rhymes, and
I could actually catch absent-minded people nodding time to the swing of
it with their stupid heads.  And, Mark, you may believe it or not, but
before I got through the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing their
heads in solemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all.  The moment I had
finished, I fled to the anteroom in a state bordering on frenzy.  Of
course it would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of
the deceased there, who had arrived from Springfield too late to get into
the church.  She began to sob, and said:

"'Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone, and I didn't see him before he died!'

"'Yes!' I said, 'he is gone, he is gone, he is gone--oh, will this
suffering never cease!'

"'You loved him, then!  Oh, you too loved him!'

"'Loved him!  Loved who?'

"'Why, my poor George! my poor nephew!'

"'Oh--him!  Yes--oh, yes, yes.  Certainly--certainly.  Punch--punch--oh,
this misery will kill me!'

"'Bless you! bless you, sir, for these sweet words!  I, too, suffer in
this dear loss.  Were you present during his last moments?'

"'Yes.  I--whose last moments?'

"'His.  The dear departed's.'

"'Yes!  Oh, yes--yes--yes!  I suppose so, I think so, I don't know!  Oh,
certainly--I was there I was there!'

"'Oh, what a privilege! what a precious privilege!  And his last words
--oh, tell me, tell me his last words!  What did he say?'

"'He said--he said--oh, my head, my head, my head!  He said--he said--he
never said anything but Punch, punch, punch in the presence of the
passenjare!  Oh, leave me, madam!  In the name of all that is generous,
leave me to my madness, my misery, my despair!--a buff trip slip for a
six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare--endu--rance can no
fur--ther go!--PUNCH in the presence of the passenjare!"

My friend's hopeless eyes rested upon mine a pregnant minute, and then he
said impressively:

"Mark, you do not say anything.  You do not offer me any hope.  But, ah
me, it is just as well--it is just as well.  You could not do me any
good.  The time has long gone by when words could comfort me.  Something
tells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that
remorseless jingle.  There--there it is coming on me again: a blue trip
slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a--"

Thus murmuring faint and fainter, my friend sank into a peaceful trance
and forgot his sufferings in a blessed respite.

How did I finally save him from an asylum?  I took him to a neighboring
university and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymes
into the eager ears of the poor, unthinking students.  How is it with
them, now?  The result is too sad to tell.  Why did I write this article?
It was for a worthy, even a noble, purpose.  It was to warn you, reader,
if you should came across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them--avoid
them as you would a pestilence.






THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN

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 live stock--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 tranquillity, 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
     cocoanuts.  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 afterward.  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 prayer-meetings; 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 whaleboat; 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 Eliza
beth 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 court-room--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 great-great-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 stepsister, my
niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin,
my great-aunt, 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 thirty-five 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, Sunday-school
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 upward 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 wait for the
emperor and threw yams at him, unmindful of the body-guard.

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 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--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 upward 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 mean time, 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 ex-emperor 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 ex-emperor 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."






THE CANVASSER'S TALE

Poor, sad-eyed stranger!  There was that about his humble mien, his tired
look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard,
seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the empty
vastness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under his
arm, and said to myself, Behold, Providence hath delivered his servant
into the hands of another canvasser.

Well, these people always get one interested.  Before I well knew how it
came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention
and sympathy.  He told it something like this:

My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child.  My uncle
Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own.  He was my only
relative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous.  He
reared me in the lap of luxury.  I knew no want that money could satisfy.

In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my
servants--my chamberlain and my valet--to travel in foreign countries.
During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens
of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one
whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with
confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you
too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation.  In those far lands I
reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the
heart.  But of all things, that which most appealed to my inborn esthetic
taste was the prevailing custom there, among the rich, of making
collections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu, and
in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ithuriel to a plane of
sympathy with this exquisite employment.

I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells;
another's noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another's elevating and
refining collection of undecipherable autographs; another's priceless
collection of old china; another's enchanting collection of
postage-stamps--and so forth and so on.  Soon my letters yielded fruit.
My uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of.  You
may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates.  His soon
became a raging fever, though I knew it not.  He began to neglect his
great pork business; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant
leisure into a rabid search for curious things.  His wealth was vast, and
he spared it not.  First he tried cow-bells.  He made a collection which
filled five large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts of
cow-bells that ever had been contrived, save one.  That one--an antique,
and the only specimen extant--was possessed by another collector.  My
uncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell.
Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted.  A true collector attaches
no value to a collection that is not complete.  His great heart breaks,
he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems
unoccupied.

Thus did my uncle.  He next tried brickbats.  After piling up a vast and
intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened; his
great heart broke again; he sold out his soul's idol to the retired
brewer who possessed the missing brick.  Then he tried flint hatchets and
other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the
factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as
himself.  He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales--another
failure, after incredible labor and expense.  When his collection seemed
at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztec
inscription from the Cundurango regions of Central America that made all
former specimens insignificant.  My uncle hastened to secure these noble
gems.  He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the
inscription.  A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of
such supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather
part with his family than with it.  So my uncle sold out, and saw his
darlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal-black hair turned
white as snow in a single night.

Now he waited, and thought.  He knew another disappointment might kill
him.  He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other
man was collecting.  He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered
the field-this time to make a collection of echoes.

"Of what?" said I.

Echoes, sir.  His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated
four times; his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was a
thirteen-repeater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas; his
next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak,
because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it
having tumbled down.  He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few
thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble
the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertook the job had never
built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one.  Before he
meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but now it
was only fit for the deaf-and-dumb asylum.  Well, next he bought a lot of
cheap little double-barreled echoes, scattered around over various states
and territories; he got them at twenty per cent. off by taking the lot.
Next he bought a perfect Gatling-gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a
fortune, I can tell you.  You may know, sir, that in the echo market the
scale of prices is cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds; in fact,
the same phraseology is used.  A single-carat echo is worth but ten
dollars over and above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or
double-barreled echo is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine
hundred and fifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand.  My uncle's
Oregon-echo, which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat
gem, and cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars--they threw the
land in, for it was four hundred miles from a settlement.

Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses.  I was the accepted
suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was
beloved to distraction.  In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss.
The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an
uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars.  However, none of us
knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more than
a small way, for esthetic amusement.

Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head.  That divine echo,
since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of
Repetitions, was discovered.  It was a sixty-five carat gem.  You could
utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the
day was otherwise quiet.  But behold, another fact came to light at the
same time: another echo-collector was in the field.  The two rushed to
make the peerless purchase.  The property consisted of a couple of small
hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements
of New York State.  Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and
neither knew the other was there.  The echo was not all owned by one man;
a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the east hill,
and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledso owned the west hill; the
swale between was the dividing-line.  So while my uncle was buying
Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand
dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hill for a shade over three
million.

Now, do you perceive the natural result?  Why, the noblest collection of
echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but
the one-half of the king echo of the universe.  Neither man was content
with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other.  There
were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings.  And at last that other
collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward a
man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill!

You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that
nobody should have it.  He would remove his hill, and then there would be
nothing to reflect my uncle's echo.  My uncle remonstrated with him, but
the man said, "I own one end of this echo; I choose to kill my end; you
must take care of your own end yourself."

Well, my uncle got an injunction put an him.  The other man appealed and
fought it in a higher court.  They carried it on up, clear to the Supreme
Court of the United States.  It made no end of trouble there.  Two of the
judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it was
impalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, salable, and
consequently taxable; two others believed that an echo was real estate,
because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not removable
from place to place; other of the judges contended that an echo was not
property at all.

It was finally decided that the echo was property; that the hills were
property; that the two men were separate and independent owners of the
two hills, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was at
full liberty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, but
must give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which
might result to my uncle's half of the echo.  This decision also debarred
my uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo,
without defendant's consent; he must use only his own hill; if his part
of the echo would not go, under these circumstances, it was sad, of
course, but the court could find no remedy.  The court also debarred
defendant from using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo,
without consent.  You see the grand result!  Neither man would give
consent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from
its great powers; and since that day that magnificent property is tied up
and unsalable.

A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss and the
nobility were gathering from far and near to honor our espousals, came
news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making me his sole
heir.  He was gone; alas, my dear benefactor was no more.  The thought
surcharges my heart even at this remote day.  I handed the will to the
earl; I could not read it for the blinding tears.  The earl read it; then
he sternly said, "Sir, do you call this wealth?--but doubtless you do in
your inflated country.  Sir, you are left sole heir to a vast collection
of echoes--if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered far
and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent; sir,
this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; there is not an echo in
the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard man, but I must
look to my child's interest; if you had but one echo which you could
honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which was free from
incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble,
painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus wrest from it a
maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry my child to a
beggar.  Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your mortgage-ridden
echoes and quit my sight forever."

My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she
would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the
world.  But it could not be.  We were torn asunder, she to pine and die
within the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone,
praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together
again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the
weary are at rest.  Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these
maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for less
money than any man in the trade.  Now this one, which cost my uncle ten
dollars, thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in Texas, I
will let you have for--

"Let me interrupt you," I said.  "My friend, I have not had a moment's
respite from canvassers this day.  I have bought a sewing-machine which I
did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details;
I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison
which the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of
useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness.
I would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me.
I would not let it stay on the place.  I always hate a man that tries to
sell me echoes.  You see this gun?  Now take your collection and move on;
let us not have bloodshed."

But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams.
You know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have
once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have got
to suffer defeat.

I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour.  I bought
two double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another,
which he said was not salable because it only spoke German.  He said,
"She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down."






AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER

The nervous, dapper, "peart" young man took the chair I offered him, and
said he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added:

"Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you."

"Come to what?"

"Interview you."

"Ah!  I see.  Yes--yes.  Um!  Yes--yes."

I was not feeling bright that morning.  Indeed, my powers seemed a bit
under a cloud.  However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been
looking six or seven minutes I found I was obliged to refer to the young
man.  I said:

"How do you spell it?"

"Spell what?"

"Interview."

"Oh, my goodness! what do you want to spell it for?"

"I don't want to spell it; I want to see what it means."

"Well, this is astonishing, I must say.  I can tell you what it means, if
you--if you--"

"Oh, all right!  That will answer, and much obliged to you, too."

"In, in, ter, ter, inter--"

"Then you spell it with an h"

Why certainly!"

"Oh, that is what took me so long."

"Why, my dear sir, what did you propose to spell it with?"

"Well, I--I--hardly know.  I had the Unabridged, and I was ciphering
around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures.
But it's a very old edition."

"Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a picture of it in even the latest
e---  My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, but you
do not look as--as--intelligent as I had expected you would.  No harm
--I mean no harm at all."

"Oh, don't mention it!  It has often been said, and by people who would
not flatter and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quite
remarkable in that way.  Yes--yes; they always speak of it with rapture."

"I can easily imagine it.  But about this interview.  You know it is the
custom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious."

"Indeed, I had not heard of it before.  It must be very interesting.
What do you do it with?"

"Ah, well--well--well--this is disheartening.  It ought to be done with a
club in some cases; but customarily it consists in the interviewer asking
questions and the interviewed answering them.  It is all the rage now.
Will you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring out the
salient points of your public and private history?"

"Oh, with pleasure--with pleasure.  I have a very bad memory, but I hope
you will not mind that.  That is to say, it is an irregular memory
--singularly irregular.  Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it
will be as much as a fortnight passing a given point.  This is a great
grief to me."

"Oh, it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can."

"I will.  I will put my whole mind on it."

"Thanks.  Are you ready to begin?"

"Ready."

Q.  How old are you?

A.  Nineteen, in June.

Q.  Indeed.  I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six.  Where were
you born?

A.  In Missouri.

Q.  When did you begin to write?

A.  In 1836.

Q.  Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now?

A.  I don't know.  It does seem curious, somehow.

Q.  It does, indeed.  Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you
ever met?

A.  Aaron Burr.

Q.  But you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you are only nineteen
years!

A.  Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for?

Q.  Well, it was only a suggestion; nothing more.  How did you happen to
meet Burr?

A.  Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day, and he asked me to
make less noise, and--

Q.  But, good heavens! if you were at his funeral, he must have been
dead, and if he was dead how could he care whether you made a noise or
not?

A.  I don't know.  He was always a particular kind of a man that way.

Q.  Still, I don't understand it at all, You say he spoke to you, and
that he was dead.

A.  I didn't say he was dead.

Q.  But wasn't he dead?

A.  Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't.

Q.  What did you think?

A.  Oh, it was none of my business!  It wasn't any of my funeral.

Q.  Did you--However, we can never get this matter straight.  Let me ask
about something else.  What was the date of your birth?

A.  Monday, October 31, 1693.

Q.  What!  Impossible!  That would make you a hundred and eighty years
old.  How do you account for that?

A.  I don't account for it at all.

Q.  But you said at first you were only nineteen, and now you make
yourself out to be one hundred and eighty.  It is an awful discrepancy.

A.  Why, have you noticed that?  (Shaking hands.) Many a time it has
seemed to me like a discrepancy, but somehow I couldn't make up my mind.
How quick you notice a thing!

Q.  Thank you for the compliment, as far as it goes.  Had you, or have
you, any brothers or sisters?

A.  Eh!  I--I--I think so--yes--but I don't remember.

Q.  Well, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard!

A.  Why, what makes you think that?

Q.  How could I think otherwise?  Why, look here!  Who is this a picture
of on the wall?  Isn't that a brother of yours?

A.  Oh, yes, yes, yes!  Now you remind me of it; that was a brother of
mine.  That's William--Bill we called him.  Poor old Bill!

Q.  Why?  Is he dead, then?

A.  Ah! well, I suppose so.  We never could tell.  There was a great
mystery about it.

Q.  That is sad, very sad.  He disappeared, then?

A.  Well, yes, in a sort of general way.  We buried him.

Q.  Buried him!  Buried him, without knowing whether he was dead or not?

A.  Oh, no!  Not that.  He was dead enough.

Q.  Well, I confess that I can't understand this.  If you buried him, and
you knew he was dead

A.  No! no!  We only thought he was.

Q.  Oh, I see!  He came to life again?

A.  I bet he didn't.

Q.  Well, I never heard anything like this.  Somebody was dead.  Somebody
was buried.  Now, where was the mystery?

A.  Ah! that's just it!  That's it exactly.  You see, we were twins
--defunct--and I--and we got mixed in the bathtub when we were only two
weeks old, and one of us was drowned.  But we didn't know which.  Some
think it was Bill.  Some think it was me.

Q.  Well, that is remarkable.  What do you think?

A.  Goodness knows!  I would give whole worlds to know.  This solemn,
this awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life.  But I will tell
you a secret now, which I never have revealed to any creature before.
One of us had a peculiar mark--a large mole on the back of his left hand;
that was me.  That child was the one that was drowned!

Q.  Very well, then, I don't see that there is any mystery about it,
after all.

A.  You don't?  Well, I do.  Anyway, I don't see how they could ever have
been such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child.  But, 'sh!
--don't mention it where the family can hear of it.  Heaven knows they
have heartbreaking troubles enough without adding this.

Q.  Well, I believe I have got material enough for the present, and I am
very much obliged to you for the pains you have taken.  But I was a good
deal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral.  Would you mind
telling me what particular circumstance it was that made you think Burr
was such a remarkable man?

A.  Oh! it was a mere trifle!  Not one man in fifty would have noticed
it at all.  When the sermon was over, and the procession all ready to
start for the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he
said he wanted to take a last look at the scenery, and so he got up and
rode with the driver.

Then the young man reverently withdrew.  He was very pleasant company,
and I was sorry to see him go.






PARIS NOTES

--[Crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad" to make room for more vital
statistics.--M. T.]

The Parisian travels but little, he knows no language but his own, reads
no literature but his own, and consequently he is pretty narrow and
pretty self-sufficient.  However, let us not be too sweeping; there are
Frenchmen who know languages not their own: these are the waiters.  Among
the rest, they know English; that is, they know it on the European plan
--which is to say, they can speak it, but can't understand it.  They
easily make themselves understood, but it is next to impossible to word
an English sentence in such away as to enable them to comprehend it.
They think they comprehend it; they pretend they do; but they don't.
Here is a conversation which I had with one of these beings; I wrote it
down at the time, in order to have it exactly correct.

I.  These are fine oranges.  Where are they grown?

He.  More?  Yes, I will bring them.

I.  No, do not bring any more; I only want to know where they are from
where they are raised.

He.  Yes?  (with imperturbable mien and rising inflection.)

I.  Yes.  Can you tell me what country they are from?

He.  Yes?  (blandly, with rising inflection.)

I. (disheartened).  They are very nice.

He.  Good night.  (Bows, and retires, quite satisfied with himself.)

That young man could have become a good English scholar by taking the
right sort of pains, but he was French, and wouldn't do that.  How
different is the case with our people; they utilize every means that
offers.  There are some alleged French Protestants in Paris, and they
built a nice little church on one of the great avenues that lead away
from the Arch of Triumph, and proposed to listen to the correct thing,
preached in the correct way, there, in their precious French tongue, and
be happy.  But their little game does not succeed.  Our people are always
there ahead of them Sundays, and take up all the room.  When the minister
gets up to preach, he finds his house full of devout foreigners, each
ready and waiting, with his little book in his hand--a morocco-bound
Testament, apparently.  But only apparently; it is Mr. Bellows's
admirable and exhaustive little French-English dictionary, which in look
and binding and size is just like a Testament and those people are there
to study French.  The building has been nicknamed "The Church of the
Gratis French Lesson."

These students probably acquire more language than general information,
for I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech--it never
names a 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 May--that but for him, France
     the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant
     almanac today!

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 set itself.  But for
     it there had been no 30 November--sorrowful 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 atone--the blessed 25th December.

It may be well enough to explain, though in the case of many of my
readers this will hardly be necessary.  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 mountain-tops disappeared under the flood.  When you go
to church in France, you want to take your almanac with you--annotated.






LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY

--[Left out of "A Tramp Abroad" because its authenticity seemed doubtful,
and could not at that time be proved.--M. T.]


More than a thousand years ago this small district was a kingdom
--a little bit of a kingdom, a sort of dainty little toy kingdom, as one
might say.  It was far removed from the jealousies, strifes, and turmoils
of that old warlike day, and so its life was a simple life, its people a
gentle and guileless race; it lay always in a deep dream of peace, a soft
Sabbath tranquillity; there was no malice, there was no envy, there was
no ambition, consequently there were no heart-burnings, there was no
unhappiness in the land.

In the course of time the old king died and his little son Hubert came to
the throne.  The people's love for him grew daily; he was so good and so
pure and so noble, that by and by his love became a passion, almost a
worship.  Now at his birth the soothsayers had diligently studied the
stars and found something written in that shining book to this effect:

     In Hubert's fourteenth year a pregnant event will happen; the animal
     whose singing shall sound sweetest in Hubert's ear shall save
     Hubert's life.  So long as the king and the nation shall honor this
     animal's race for this good deed, the ancient dynasty shall not fail
     of an heir, nor the nation know war or pestilence or poverty.  But
     beware an erring choice!

All through the king's thirteenth year but one thing was talked of by the
soothsayers, the statesmen, the little parliament, and the general
people.  That one thing was this: How is the last sentence of the
prophecy to be understood?  What goes before seems to mean that the
saving animal will choose itself at the proper time; but the closing
sentence seems to mean that the king must choose beforehand, and say what
singer among the animals pleases him best, and that if he choose wisely
the chosen animal will save his life, his dynasty, his people, but that
if he should make "an erring choice"--beware!

By the end of the year there were as many opinions about this matter as
there had been in the beginning; but a majority of the wise and the
simple were agreed that the safest plan would be for the little king to
make choice beforehand, and the earlier the better.  So an edict was sent
forth commanding all persons who owned singing creatures to bring them to
the great hall of the palace in the morning of the first day of the new
year.  This command was obeyed.  When everything was in readiness for the
trial, the king made his solemn entry with the great officers of the
crown, all clothed in their robes of state.  The king mounted his golden
throne and prepared to give judgment.  But he presently said:

"These creatures all sing at once; the noise is unendurable; no one can
choose in such a turmoil.  Take them all away, and bring back one at a
time."

This was done.  One sweet warbler after another charmed the young king's
ear and was removed to make way for another candidate.  The precious
minutes slipped by; among so many bewitching songsters he found it hard
to choose, and all the harder because the promised penalty for an error
was so terrible that it unsettled his judgment and made him afraid to
trust his own ears.  He grew nervous and his face showed distress.  His
ministers saw this, for they never took their eyes from him a moment.
Now they began to say in their hearts:

"He has lost courage--the cool head is gone--he will err--he and his
dynasty and his people are doomed!"

At the end of an hour the king sat silent awhile, and then said:

"Bring back the linnet."

The linnet trilled forth her jubilant music.  In the midst of it the king
was about to uplift his scepter in sign of choice, but checked himself
and said:

"But let us be sure.  Bring back the thrush; let them sing together."

The thrush was brought, and the two birds poured out their marvels of
song together.  The king wavered, then his inclination began to settle
and strengthen--one could see it in his countenance.  Hope budded in the
hearts of the old ministers, their pulses began to beat quicker, the
scepter began to rise slowly, when:  There was a hideous interruption!
It was a sound like this--just at the door:

"Waw .  .  .  he! waw .  .  .  he! waw-he!-waw
he!-waw-he!"

Everybody was sorely startled--and enraged at himself for showing it.

The next instant the dearest, sweetest, prettiest little peasant-maid of
nine years came tripping in, her brown eyes glowing with childish
eagerness; but when she saw that august company and those angry faces she
stopped and hung her head and put her poor coarse apron to her eyes.
Nobody gave her welcome, none pitied her.  Presently she looked up
timidly through her tears, and said:

"My lord the king, I pray you pardon me, for I meant no wrong.  I have no
father and no mother, but I have a goat and a donkey, and they are all in
all to me.  My goat gives me the sweetest milk, and when my dear good
donkey brays it seems to me there is no music like to it.  So when my
lord the king's jester said the sweetest singer among all the animals
should save the crown and nation, and moved me to bring him here--"

All the court burst into a rude laugh, and the child fled away crying,
without trying to finish her speech.  The chief minister gave a private
order that she and her disastrous donkey be flogged beyond the precincts
of the palace and commanded to come within them no more.

Then the trial of the birds was resumed.  The two birds sang their best,
but the scepter lay motionless in the king's hand.  Hope died slowly out
in the breasts of all.  An hour went by; two hours, still no decision.
The day waned to its close, and the waiting multitudes outside the palace
grew crazed with anxiety and apprehension.  The twilight came on, the
shadows fell deeper and deeper.  The king and his court could no longer
see each other's faces.  No one spoke--none called for lights.  The great
trial had been made; it had failed; each and all wished to hide their
faces from the light and cover up their deep trouble in their own hearts.

Finally-hark!  A rich, full strain of the divinest melody streamed forth
from a remote part of the hall the nightingale's voice!

"Up!" shouted the king, "let all the bells make proclamation to the
people, for the choice is made and we have not erred.  King, dynasty,
and nation are saved.  From henceforth let the nightingale be honored
throughout the land forever.  And publish it among all the people that
whosoever shall insult a nightingale, or injure it, shall suffer death.
The king hath spoken."

All that little world was drunk with joy.  The castle and the city blazed
with bonfires all night long, the people danced and drank and sang; and
the triumphant clamor of the bells never ceased.

From that day the nightingale was a sacred bird.  Its song was heard in
every house; the poets wrote its praises; the painters painted it; its
sculptured image adorned every arch and turret and fountain and public
building.  It was even taken into the king's councils; and no grave
matter of state was decided until the soothsayers had laid the thing
before the state nightingale and translated to the ministry what it was
that the bird had sung about it.


II

The young king was very fond of the chase.  When the summer was come he
rode forth with hawk and hound, one day, in a brilliant company of his
nobles.  He got separated from them by and by, in a great forest, and
took what he imagined a neat cut, to find them again; but it was a
mistake.  He rode on and on, hopefully at first, but with sinking courage
finally.  Twilight came on, and still he was plunging through a lonely
and unknown land.  Then came a catastrophe.  In the dim light he forced
his horse through a tangled thicket overhanging a steep and rocky
declivity.  When horse and rider reached the bottom, the former had a
broken neck and the latter a broken leg.  The poor little king lay there
suffering agonies of pain, and each hour seemed a long month to him.
He kept his ear strained to hear any sound that might promise hope of
rescue; but he heard no voice, no sound of horn or bay of hound.  So at
last he gave up all hope, and said, "Let death come, for come it must."

Just then the deep, sweet song of a nightingale swept across the still
wastes of the night.

"Saved!" the king said.  "Saved!  It is the sacred bird, and the prophecy
is come true.  The gods themselves protected me from error in the
choice."

He could hardly contain his joy; he could not word his gratitude.  Every
few moments, now he thought he caught the sound of approaching succor.
But each time it was a disappointment; no succor came.  The dull hours
drifted on.  Still no help came--but still the sacred bird sang on.  He
began to have misgivings about his choice, but he stifled them.  Toward
dawn the bird ceased.  The morning came, and with it thirst and hunger;
but no succor.  The day waxed and waned.  At last the king cursed the
nightingale.

Immediately the song of the thrush came from out the wood.  The king said
in his heart, "This was the true-bird--my choice was false--succor will
come now."

But it did not come.  Then he lay many hours insensible.  When he came to
himself, a linnet was singing.  He listened with apathy.  His faith was
gone.  "These birds," he said, "can bring no help; I and my house and my
people are doomed."  He turned him about to die; for he was grown very
feeble from hunger and thirst and suffering, and felt that his end was
near.  In truth, he wanted to die, and be released from pain.  For long
hours he lay without thought or feeling or motion.  Then his senses
returned.  The dawn of the third morning was breaking.  Ah, the world
seemed very beautiful to those worn eyes.  Suddenly a great longing to
live rose up in the lad's heart, and from his soul welled a deep and
fervent prayer that Heaven would have mercy upon him and let him see his
home and his friends once more.  In that instant a soft, a faint, a
far-off sound, but oh, how inexpressibly sweet to his waiting ear, came
floating out of the distance:

"Waw .  .  .  he! waw .  .  .  he! waw-he!--waw-he!--waw-he!"

"That, oh, that song is sweeter, a thousand times sweeter than the voice
of the nightingale, thrush, or linnet, for it brings not mere hope, but
certainty of succor; and now, indeed, am I saved!  The sacred singer has
chosen itself, as the oracle intended; the prophecy is fulfilled, and my
life, my house, and my people are redeemed.  The ass shall be sacred from
this day!"

The divine music grew nearer and nearer, stronger and stronger and ever
sweeter and sweeter to the perishing sufferer's ear.  Down the declivity
the docile little donkey wandered, cropping herbage and singing as he
went; and when at last he saw the dead horse and the wounded king, he
came and snuffed at them with simple and marveling curiosity.  The king
petted him, and he knelt down as had been his wont when his little
mistress desired to mount.  With great labor and pain the lad drew
himself upon the creature's back, and held himself there by aid of the
generous ears.  The ass went singing forth from the place and carried the
king to the little peasant-maid's hut.  She gave him her pallet for a
bed, refreshed him with goat's milk, and then flew to tell the great news
to the first scouting-party of searchers she might meet.

The king got well.  His first act was to proclaim the sacredness and
inviolability of the ass; his second was to add this particular ass to
his cabinet and make him chief minister of the crown; his third was to
have all the statues and effigies of nightingales throughout his kingdom
destroyed, and replaced by statues and effigies of the sacred donkey;
and, his fourth was to announce that when the little peasant maid should
reach her fifteenth year he would make her his queen and he kept his
word.

Such is the legend.  This explains why the moldering image of the ass
adorns all these old crumbling walls and arches; and it explains why,
during many centuries, an ass was always the chief minister in that royal
cabinet, just as is still the case in most cabinets to this day; and it
also explains why, in that little kingdom, during many centuries, all
great poems, all great speeches, all great books, all public solemnities,
and all royal proclamations, always began with these stirring words:

"Waw .  .  .  he! waw .  .  . he!--waw he!  Waw-he!"






SPEECH ON THE BABIES

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 minute
--if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married
life and recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he
amounted to a great deal, and even something over.  You soldiers all know
that when the 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
right--three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the
colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those 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 thin--simply 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 treetop," 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?  ["Go on!"]  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
leviathan--a 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 them cradles the
unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething--think 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
interest--poor little chap!--and wondering what has become of that other
one they call the wet-nurse.  In another the future great historian is
lying--and 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 mouth--an 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.






SPEECH ON THE WEATHER

AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY

     The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant--The Weather of New
     England."

                    Who can lose it and forget it?
                    Who can have it and regret it?

                    Be interposes 'twixt us Twain.
                                   Merchant of Venice.

     To this Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) replied as follows:--


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
admiration--and 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 marvelous 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 quantity--well, 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:
Probable northeast to southwest minds, 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 this postscript from his wandering mind, to
cover accidents:  "But it is possible that the program 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
it--a 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 whether--Well, 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 England lengthways,
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 weather--no 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 vagaries--the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice
from the bottom to the top--ice that is as bright and clear as crystal;
when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, 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 gold--the 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.






CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

--[Being part of a chapter which was crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad."--
M.T.]

There was as Englishman in our compartment, and he complimented me on
--on what?  But you would never guess.  He complimented me on my English.
He said Americans in general did not speak the English language as
correctly as I did.  I said I was obliged to him for his compliment,
since I knew he meant it for one, but that I was not fairly entitled to
it, for I did not speak English at all--I only spoke American.

He laughed, and said it was a distinction without a difference.  I said
no, the difference was not prodigious, but still it was considerable.
We fell into a friendly dispute over the matter.  I put my case as well
as I could, and said:

"The languages were identical several generations ago, but our changed
conditions and the spread of our people far to the south and far to the
west have made many alterations in our pronunciation, and have introduced
new words among us and changed the meanings of many old ones.  English
people talk through their noses; we do not.  We say know, English people
say nao; we say cow, the Briton says kaow; we--"

"Oh, come! that is pure Yankee; everybody knows that."

"Yes, it is pure Yankee; that is true.  One cannot hear it in America
outside of the little corner called New England, which is Yankee land.
The English themselves planted it there, two hundred and fifty years ago,
and there it remains; it has never spread.  But England talks through her
nose yet; the Londoner and the backwoods New-Englander pronounce 'know'
and 'cow' alike, and then the Briton unconsciously satirizes himself by
making fun of the Yankee's pronunciation."

We argued this point at some length; nobody won; but no matter, the fact
remains Englishmen say nao and kaow for "know" and "cow," and that is
what the rustic inhabitant of a very small section of America does.

"You conferred your 'a' upon New England, too, and there it remains; it
has not traveled out of the narrow limits of those six little states in
all these two hundred and fifty years.  All England uses it, New
England's small population--say four millions--use it, but we have
forty-five millions who do not use it.  You say 'glahs of wawtah,' so
does New England; at least, New England says 'glahs.'  America at large
flattens the 'a', and says 'glass of water.' These sounds are pleasanter
than yours; you may think they are not right--well, in English they are
not right, but 'American' they are.  You say 'flahsk' and 'bahsket,' and
'jackahss'; we say 'flask,' 'basket,' 'jackass'--sounding the 'a' as it
is in 'tallow,' 'fallow,' and so on.  Up to as late as 1847 Mr. Webster's
Dictionary had the impudence to still pronounce 'basket' bahsket, when he
knew that outside of his little New England all America shortened the 'a'
and paid no attention to his English broadening of it. However, it called
itself an English Dictionary, so it was proper enough that it should
stick to English forms, perhaps.  It still calls itself an English
Dictionary today, but it has quietly ceased to pronounce 'basket' as if
it were spelt 'bahsket.'  In the American language the 'h' is respected;
the 'h' is not dropped or added improperly."

"The same is the case in England--I mean among the educated classes, of
course."

"Yes, that is true; but a nation's language is a very large matter.
It is not simply a manner of speech obtaining among the educated handful;
the manner obtaining among the vast uneducated multitude must be
considered also.  Your uneducated masses speak English, you will not deny
that; our uneducated masses speak American it won't be fair for you to
deny that, for you can see, yourself, that when your stable-boy says,
'It isn't the 'unting that 'urts the 'orse, but the 'ammer, 'ammer,
'ammer on the 'ard 'ighway,' and our stable-boy makes the same remark
without suffocating a single h, these two people are manifestly talking
two different languages.  But if the signs are to be trusted, even your
educated classes used to drop the 'h.'  They say humble, now, and heroic,
and historic etc., but I judge that they used to drop those h's because
your writers still keep up the fashion of patting an before those words
instead of a.  This is what Mr. Darwin might call a 'rudimentary' sign
that as an was justifiable once, and useful when your educated classes
used to say 'umble, and 'eroic, and 'istorical.  Correct writers of the
American language do not put an before three words."

The English gentleman had something to say upon this matter, but never
mind what he said--I'm not arguing his case.  I have him at a
disadvantage, now.  I proceeded:

"In England you encourage an orator by exclaiming, 'H'yaah! 'yaah!'
We pronounce it heer in some sections, 'h'yer' in others, and so on; but
our whites do not say 'h'yaah,' pronouncing the a's like the a in ah.
I have heard English ladies say 'don't you'--making two separate and
distinct words of it; your Mr. Burnand has satirized it.  But we always
say 'dontchu.'  This is much better.  Your ladies say, 'Oh, it's oful
nice!'  Ours say, 'Oh, it's awful nice!'  We say, 'Four hundred,' you say
'For'--as in the word or.  Your clergymen speak of 'the Lawd,' ours of
'the Lord'; yours speak of 'the gawds of the heathen,' ours of 'the gods
of the heathen.' When you are exhausted, you say you are 'knocked up.'
We don't.  When you say you will do a thing 'directly,' you mean
'immediately'; in the American language--generally speaking--the word
signifies 'after a little.'  When you say 'clever,' you mean 'capable';
with us the word used to mean 'accommodating,' but I don't know what it
means now.  Your word 'stout' means 'fleshy'; our word 'stout' usually
means 'strong.'  Your words 'gentleman' and 'lady' have a very restricted
meaning; with us they include the barmaid, butcher, burglar, harlot, and
horse-thief.  You say, 'I haven't got any stockings on,' 'I haven't got
any memory,' 'I haven't got any money in my purse; we usually say, 'I
haven't any stockings on,' 'I haven't any memory!' 'I haven't any money
in my purse.'  You say 'out of window'; we always put in a the.  If one
asks 'How old is that man?' the Briton answers, 'He will be about forty';
in the American language we should say, 'He is about forty.'  However,
I won't tire you, sir; but if I wanted to, I could pile up differences
here until I not only convinced you that English and American are
separate languages, but that when I speak my native tongue in its utmost
purity an Englishman can't understand me at all."

"I don't wish to flatter you, but it is about all I can do to understand
you now."

That was a very pretty compliment, and it put us on the pleasantest terms
directly--I use the word in the English sense.

[Later--1882.  Esthetes in many of our schools are now beginning to teach
the pupils to broaden the 'a,' and to say "don't you," in the elegant
foreign way.]






ROGERS

This Man Rogers happened upon me and introduced himself at the town
of -----, in the South of England, where I stayed awhile.  His stepfather
had married a distant relative of mine who was afterward hanged; and so
he seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us.  He came in
every day and sat down and talked.  Of all the bland, serene human
curiosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest.  He desired to look
at my new chimney-pot hat.  I was very willing, for I thought he would
notice the name of the great Oxford Street hatter in it, and respect me
accordingly.  But he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion,
pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recently
arrived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself.  Said he
would send me the address of his hatter.  Then he said, "Pardon me," and
proceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper; daintily notched the
edges of it; took the mucilage and pasted it in my hat so as to cover the
manufacturer's name.  He said, "No one will know now where you got it.
I will send you a hat-tip of my hatter, and you can paste it over this
tissue circle."  It was the calmest, coolest thing--I never admired a man
so much in my life.  Mind, he did this while his own hat sat offensively
near our noses, on the table--an ancient extinguisher of the "slouch"
pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discolored by vicissitudes of the
weather, and banded by an equator of bear's grease that had stewed
through.

Another time he examined my coat.  I had no terrors, for over my tailor's
door was the legend, "By Special Appointment Tailor to H. R. H. the
Prince of Wales," etc.  I did not know at the time that the most of the
tailor shops had the same sign out, and that whereas it takes nine
tailors to make an ordinary man, it takes a hundred and fifty to make a
prince.  He was full of compassion for my coat.  Wrote down the address
of his tailor for me.  Did not tell me to mention my nom de plume and the
tailor would put his best work on my garment, as complimentary people
sometimes do, but said his tailor would hardly trouble himself for an
unknown person (unknown person, when I thought I was so celebrated in
England!--that was the cruelest cut), but cautioned me to mention his
name, and it would be all right.  Thinking to be facetious, I said:

"But he might sit up all night and injure his health."

"Well, let him," said Rogers; "I've done enough for him, for him to show
some appreciation of it."

I might as well have tried to disconcert a mummy with my facetiousness.
Said Rogers: "I get all my coats there--they're the only coats fit to be
seen in."

I made one more attempt.  I said, "I wish you had brought one with you
--I would like to look at it."

"Bless your heart, haven't I got one on?--this article is Morgan's make."

I examined it.  The coat had been bought ready-made, of a Chatham Street
Jew, without any question--about 1848.  It probably cost four dollars
when it was new.  It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless and
greasy.  I could not resist showing him where it was ripped.  It so
affected him that I was almost sorry I had done it.  First he seemed
plunged into a bottomless abyss of grief.  Then he roused himself, made
a feint with his hands as if waving off the pity of a nation, and said
--with what seemed to me a manufactured emotion--"No matter; no matter;
don't mind me; do not bother about it.  I can get another."

When he was thoroughly restored, so that he could examine the rip and
command his feelings, he said, ah, now he understood it--his servant must
have done it while dressing him that morning.

His servant! There was something awe-inspiring in effrontery like this.

Nearly every day he interested himself in some article of my clothing.
One would hardly have expected this sort of infatuation in a man who
always wore the same suit, and it a suit that seemed coeval with the
Conquest.

It was an unworthy ambition, perhaps, but I did wish I could make this
man admire something about me or something I did--you would have felt the
same way.  I saw my opportunity: I was about to return to London, and had
"listed" my soiled linen for the wash. It made quite an imposing
mountain in the corner of the room--fifty-four pieces. I hoped he would
fancy it was the accumulation of a single week.  I took up the wash-list,
as if to see that it was all right, and then tossed it on the table, with
pretended forgetfulness.  Sure enough, he took it up and ran his eye
along down to the grand total.  Then he said, "You get off easy," and
laid it down again.

His gloves were the saddest ruin, but he told me where I could get some
like them.  His shoes would hardly hold walnuts without leaking, but he
liked to put his feet up on the mantelpiece and contemplate them.
He wore a dim glass breastpin, which he called a "morphylitic diamond"
--whatever that may mean--and said only two of them had ever been found
--the Emperor of China had the other one.

Afterward, in London, it was a pleasure to me to see this fantastic
vagabond come marching into the lobby of the hotel in his grand-ducal
way, for he always had some new imaginary grandeur to develop--there was
nothing stale about him but his clothes.  If he addressed me when
strangers were about, he always raised his voice a little and called me
"Sir Richard," or "General," or "Your Lordship"--and when people began to
stare and look deferential, he would fall to inquiring in a casual way
why I disappointed the Duke of Argyll the night before; and then remind
me of our engagement at the Duke of Westminster's for the following day.
I think that for the time being these things were realities to him.  He
once came and invited me to go with him and spend the evening with the
Earl of Warwick at his town house.  I said I had received no formal
invitation.  He said that that was of no consequence, the Earl had no
formalities for him or his friends.  I asked if I could go just as I was.
He said no, that would hardly do; evening dress was requisite at night in
any gentleman's house.  He said he would wait while I dressed, and then
we would go to his apartments and I could take a bottle of champagne and
a cigar while he dressed.  I was very willing to see how this enterprise
would turn out, so I dressed, and we started to his lodgings.  He said if
I didn't mind we would walk.  So we tramped some four miles through the
mud and fog, and finally found his "apartments"; they consisted of a
single room over a barber's shop in a back street.  Two chairs, a small
table, an ancient valise, a wash-basin and pitcher (both on the floor
in a corner), an unmade bed, a fragment of a looking-glass, and a
flower-pot, with a perishing little rose geranium in it, which he called
a century plant, and said it had not bloomed now for upward of two
centuries--given to him by the late Lord Palmerston (been offered a
prodigious sum for it)--these were the contents of the room.  Also a
brass candlestick and a part of a candle.  Rogers lit the candle, and
told me to sit down and make myself at home.  He said he hoped I was
thirsty, because he would surprise my palate with an article of champagne
that seldom got into a commoner's system; or would I prefer sherry, or
port?  Said he had port in bottles that were swathed in stratified
cobwebs, every stratum representing a generation.  And as for his
cigars--well, I should judge of them myself.  Then he put his head out
at the door and called:

"Sackville!"  No answer.

"Hi-Sackville!"  No answer.

"Now what the devil can have become of that butler?  I never allow a
servant to--Oh, confound that idiot, he's got the keys.  Can't get into
the other rooms without the keys."

(I was just wondering at his intrepidity in still keeping up the delusion
of the champagne, and trying to imagine how he was going to get out of
the difficulty.)

Now he stopped calling Sackville and began to call "Anglesy."  But
Anglesy didn't come.  He said, "This is the second time that that equerry
has been absent without leave.  To-morrow I'll discharge him."  Now he
began to whoop for "Thomas," but Thomas didn't answer.  Then for
"Theodore," but no Theodore replied.

"Well, I give it up," said Rogers.  "The servants never expect me at this
hour, and so they're all off on a lark.  Might get along without the
equerry and the page, but can't have any wine or cigars without the
butler, and can't dress without my valet."

I offered to help him dress, but he would not hear of it; and besides, he
said he would not feel comfortable unless dressed by a practised hand.
However, he finally concluded that he was such old friends with the Earl
that it would not make any difference how he was dressed.  So we took a
cab, he gave the driver some directions, and we started.  By and by we
stopped before a large house and got out.  I never had seen this man with
a collar on.  He now stepped under a lamp and got a venerable paper
collar out of his coat pocket, along with a hoary cravat, and put them
on.  He ascended the stoop, and entered.  Presently he reappeared,
descended rapidly, and said:

"Come--quick!"

We hurried away, and turned the corner.

"Now we're safe," he said, and took off his collar and cravat and
returned them to his pocket.

"Made a mighty narrow escape," said he.

"How?" said I.

"B' George, the Countess was there!"

"Well, what of that?--don't she know you?"

"Know me?  Absolutely worships me.  I just did happen to catch a glimpse
of her before she saw me--and out I shot.  Haven't seen her for two
months--to rush in on her without any warning might have been fatal.
She could not have stood it.  I didn't know she was in town--thought she
was at the castle.  Let me lean on you--just a moment--there; now I am
better--thank you; thank you ever so much.  Lord bless me, what an
escape!"

So I never got to call on the Earl, after all.  But I marked the house
for future reference.  It proved to be an ordinary family hotel, with
about a thousand plebeians roosting in it.

In most things Rogers was by no means a fool.  In some things it was
plain enough that he was a fool, but he certainly did not know it.
He was in the "deadest" earnest in these matters.  He died at sea, last
summer, as the "Earl of Ramsgate."


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






SOME RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION

by Mark Twain



All the journeyings I had ever done had been purely in the way of
business.  The pleasant May weather suggested a novelty namely, a trip
for pure recreation, the bread-and-butter element left out.  The Reverend
said he would go, too; a good man, one of the best of men, although a
clergyman.  By eleven at night we were in New Haven and on board the New
York boat.  We bought our tickets, and then went wandering around here
and there, in the solid comfort of being free and idle, and of putting
distance between ourselves and the mails and telegraphs.

After a while I went to my stateroom and undressed, but the night was too
enticing for bed.  We were moving down the bay now, and it was pleasant
to stand at the window and take the cool night breeze and watch the
gliding lights on shore.  Presently, two elderly men sat down under that
window and began a conversation.  Their talk was properly no business of
mine, yet I was feeling friendly toward the world and willing to be
entertained.  I soon gathered that they were brothers, that they were
from a small Connecticut village, and that the matter in hand concerned
the cemetery.  Said one:

"Now, John, we talked it all over amongst ourselves, and this is what
we've done.  You see, everybody was a-movin' from the old buryin'-ground,
and our folks was 'most about left to theirselves, as you may say.  They
was crowded, too, as you know; lot wa'n't big enough in the first place;
and last year, when Seth's wife died, we couldn't hardly tuck her in.
She sort o' overlaid Deacon Shorb's lot, and he soured on her, so to
speak, and on the rest of us, too.  So we talked it over, and I was for a
lay out in the new simitery on the hill.  They wa'n't unwilling, if it
was cheap.  Well, the two best and biggest plots was No. 8 and No. 9
--both of a size; nice comfortable room for twenty-six--twenty-six
full-growns, that is; but you reckon in children and other shorts, and
strike an everage, and I should say you might lay in thirty, or maybe
thirty-two or three, pretty genteel--no crowdin' to signify."

"That's a plenty, William.  Which one did you buy?"

"Well, I'm a-comin' to that, John.  You see, No. 8 was thirteen dollars,
No. 9 fourteen--"

"I see.  So's't you took No. 8."

"You wait.  I took No. 9.  And I'll tell you for why.  In the first
place, Deacon Shorb wanted it.  Well, after the way he'd gone on about
Seth's wife overlappin' his prem'ses, I'd 'a' beat him out of that No. 9
if I'd 'a' had to stand two dollars extra, let alone one.  That's the way
I felt about it.  Says I, what's a dollar, anyway?  Life's on'y a
pilgrimage, says I; we ain't here for good, and we can't take it with us,
says I.  So I just dumped it down, knowin' the Lord don't suffer a good
deed to go for nothin', and cal'latin' to take it out o' somebody in the
course o' trade.  Then there was another reason, John.  No. 9's a long
way the handiest lot in the simitery, and the likeliest for situation.
It lays right on top of a knoll in the dead center of the buryin' ground;
and you can see Millport from there, and Tracy's, and Hopper Mount, and a
raft o' farms, and so on.  There ain't no better outlook from a
buryin'-plot in the state.  Si Higgins says so, and I reckon he ought to
know.  Well, and that ain't all.  'Course Shorb had to take No. 8; wa'n't
no help for 't.  Now, No. 8 jines onto No. 9, but it's on the slope of
the hill, and every time it rains it 'll soak right down onto the Shorbs.
Si Higgins says 't when the deacon's time comes, he better take out fire
and marine insurance both on his remains."

Here there was the sound of a low, placid, duplicate chuckle of
appreciation and satisfaction.

"Now, John, here's a little rough draft of the ground that I've made on a
piece of paper.  Up here in the left-hand corner we've bunched the
departed; took them from the old graveyard and stowed them one alongside
o' t'other, on a first-come-first-served plan, no partialities, with
Gran'ther Jones for a starter, on'y because it happened so, and windin'
up indiscriminate with Seth's twins.  A little crowded towards the end of
the lay-out, maybe, but we reckoned 'twa'n't best to scatter the twins.
Well, next comes the livin'.  Here, where it's marked A, we're goin' to
put Mariar and her family, when they're called; B, that's for Brother
Hosea and hisn; C, Calvin and tribe.  What's left is these two lots
here--just the gem of the whole patch for general style and outlook;
they're for me and my folks, and you and yourn.  Which of them would you
rather be buried in?"

"I swan, you've took me mighty unexpected, William!  It sort of started
the shivers.  Fact is, I was thinkin' so busy about makin' things
comfortable for the others, I hadn't thought about being buried myself."

"Life's on'y a fleetin' show, John, as the sayin' is.  We've all got to
go, sooner or later.  To go with a clean record's the main thing.  Fact
is, it's the on'y thing worth strivin' for, John."

"Yes, that's so, William, that's so; there ain't no getting around it.
Which of these lots would you recommend?"

"Well, it depends, John.  Are you particular about outlook?"

"I don't say I am, William, I don't say I ain't.  Reely, I don't know.
But mainly, I reckon, I'd set store by a south exposure."

"That's easy fixed, John.  They're both south exposure.  They take the
sun, and the Shorbs get the shade."

"How about site, William?"

"D's a sandy sile, E's mostly loom."

"You may gimme E, then; William; a sandy sile caves in, more or less, and
costs for repairs."

"All right, set your name down here, John, under E.  Now, if you don't
mind payin' me your share of the fourteen dollars, John, while we're on
the business, everything's fixed."

After some Niggling and sharp bargaining the money was paid, and John
bade his brother good night and took his leave.  There was silence for
some moments; then a soft chuckle welled up from the lonely William, and
he muttered: "I declare for 't, if I haven't made a mistake!  It's D
that's mostly loom, not E.  And John's booked for a sandy site after
all."

There was another soft chuckle, and William departed to his rest also.

The next day, in New York, was a hot one.  Still we managed to get more
or less entertainment out of it.  Toward the middle of the afternoon we
arrived on board the stanch steamship Bermuda, with bag and baggage, and
hunted for a shady place.  It was blazing summer weather, until we were
half-way down the harbor.  Then I buttoned my coat closely; half an hour
later I put on a spring overcoat and buttoned that.  As we passed the
light-ship I added an ulster and tied a handkerchief around the collar to
hold it snug to my neck.  So rapidly had the summer gone and winter come
again?

By nightfall we were far out at sea, with no land in sight.  No telegrams
could come here, no letters, no news.  This was an uplifting thought.  It
was still more uplifting to reflect that the millions of harassed people
on shore behind us were suffering just as usual.

The next day brought us into the midst of the Atlantic solitudes--out of
smoke-colored sounding into fathomless deep blue; no ships visible
anywhere over the wide ocean; no company but Mother Carey's chickens
wheeling, darting, skimming the waves in the sun.  There were some
seafaring men among the passengers, and conversation drifted into matter
concerning ships and sailors.  One said that "true as the needle to the
pole" was a bad figure, since the needle seldom pointed to the pole.
He said a ship's compass was not faithful to any particular point, but
was the most fickle and treacherous of the servants of man.  It was
forever changing.  It changed every day in the year; consequently the
amount of the daily variation had to be ciphered out and allowance made
for it, else the mariner would go utterly astray.  Another said there was
a vast fortune waiting for the genius who should invent a compass that
would not be affected by the local influences of an iron ship.  He said
there was only one creature more fickle than a wooden ship's compass,
and that was the compass of an iron ship.  Then came reference to the
well known fact that an experienced mariner can look at the compass of a
new iron vessel, thousands of mile from her birthplace, and tell which
way her head was pointing when she was in process of building.

Now an ancient whale-ship master fell to talking about the sort of crews
they used to have in his early days.  Said he:

"Sometimes we'd have a batch of college students Queer lot.  Ignorant?
Why, they didn't know the catheads from the main brace.  But if you took
them for fools you'd get bit, sure.  They'd learn more in a month than
another man would in a year.  We had one, once, in the Mary Ann, that
came aboard with gold spectacles on.  And besides, he was rigged out from
main truck to keelson in the nobbiest clothes that ever saw a fo'castle.
He had a chestful, too: cloaks, and broadcloth coats, and velvet vests;
everything swell, you know; and didn't the saltwater fix them out for
him?  I guess not!  Well, going to sea, the mate told him to go aloft and
help shake out the foreto'gallants'l.  Up he shins to the foretop, with
his spectacles on, and in a minute down he comes again, looking insulted.
Says the mate, 'What did you come down for?' Says the chap, 'P'r'aps you
didn't notice that there ain't any ladders above there.'  You see we
hadn't any shrouds above the foretop.  The men bursted out in a laugh
such as I guess you never heard the like of.  Next night, which was dark
and rainy, the mate ordered this chap to go aloft about something, and
I'm dummed if he didn't start up with an umbrella and a lantern!  But no
matter; he made a mighty good sailor before the voyage was done, and we
had to hunt up something else to laugh at.  Years afterwards, when I had
forgot all about him, I comes into Boston, mate of a ship, and was
loafing around town with the second mate, and it so happened that we
stepped into the Revere House, thinking maybe we would chance the
salt-horse in that big diningroom for a flyer, as the boys say.  Some
fellows were talking just at our elbow, and one says, 'Yonder's the new
governor of Massachusetts--at that table over there with the ladies.'
We took a good look my mate and I, for we hadn't either of us ever see a
governor before.  I looked and looked at that face and then all of a
sudden it popped on me!  But didn't give any sign.  Says I, 'Mate, I've a
notion to go over and shake hands with him.'  Says he 'I think I see you
doing it, Tom.'  Says I, 'Mate I'm a-going to do it.'  Says he, 'Oh, yes,
I guess so.  Maybe you don't want to bet you will, Tom?'  Say I, 'I don't
mind going a V on it, mate.'  Says he 'Put it up.'  'Up she goes,' says
I, planking the cash.  This surprised him.  But he covered it, and say.
pretty sarcastic, 'Hadn't you better take your grub with the governor and
the ladies, Tom?'  Says I 'Upon second thoughts, I will.'  Says he, 'Well
Tom, you aye a dum fool.'  Says I, 'Maybe I am maybe I ain't; but the
main question is, do you wan to risk two and a half that I won't do it?'
'Make it a V,' says he.  'Done,' says I.  I started, him a giggling and
slapping his hand on his thigh, he felt so good.  I went over there and
leaned my knuckle: on the table a minute and looked the governor in the
face, and says I, 'Mr. Gardner, don't you know me?  He stared, and I
stared, and he stared.  Then all of a sudden he sings out, 'Tom Bowling,
by the holy poker!  Ladies, it's old Tom Bowling, that you've heard me
talk about--shipmate of mine in the Mary Ann.'  He rose up and shook
hands with me ever so hearty--I sort of glanced around and took a
realizing sense of my mate's saucer eyes--and then says the governor,
'Plant yourself, Tom, plant yourself; you can't cat your anchor again
till you've had a feed with me and the ladies!'  I planted myself
alongside the governor, and canted my eye around toward my mate.  Well,
sir, his dead-lights were bugged out like tompions; and his mouth stood
that wide open that you could have laid a ham in it without him noticing
it."

There was great applause at the conclusion of the old captain's story;
then, after a moment's silence, a grave, pale young man said:

"Had you ever met the governor before?"

The old captain looked steadily at this inquirer awhile, and then got up
and walked aft without making any reply.  One passenger after another
stole a furtive glance at the inquirer; but failed to make him out, and
so gave him up.  It took some little work to get the talk-machinery to
running smoothly again after this derangement; but at length a
conversation sprang up about that important and jealously guarded
instrument, a ship's timekeeper, its exceeding delicate accuracy, and the
wreck and destruction that have sometimes resulted from its varying a few
seemingly trifling moments from the true time; then, in due course, my
comrade, the Reverend, got off on a yarn, with a fair wind and everything
drawing.  It was a true story, too--about Captain Rounceville's shipwreck
--true in every detail.  It was to this effect:

Captain Rounceville's vessel was lost in mid-Atlantic, and likewise his
wife and his two little children.  Captain Rounceville and seven seamen
escaped with life, but with little else.  A small, rudely constructed
raft was to be their home for eight days.  They had neither provisions
nor water.  They had scarcely any clothing; no one had a coat but the
captain.  This coat was changing hands all the time, for the weather was
very cold.  Whenever a man became exhausted with the cold, they put the
coat on him and laid him down between two shipmates until the garment and
their bodies had warmed life into him again.  Among the sailors was a
Portuguese who knew no English.  He seemed to have no thought of his own
calamity, but was concerned only about the captain's bitter loss of wife
and children.  By day he would look his dumb compassion in the captain's
face; and by night, in the darkness and the driving spray and rain, he
would seek out the captain and try to comfort him with caressing pats on
the shoulder.  One day, when hunger and thirst were making their sure
inroad; upon the men's strength and spirits, a floating barrel was seen
at a distance.  It seemed a great find, for doubtless it contained food
of some sort.  A brave fellow swam to it, and after long and exhausting
effort got it to the raft.  It was eagerly opened.  It was a barrel of
magnesia!  On the fifth day an onion was spied.  A sailor swam off and
got it.  Although perishing with hunger, he brought it in its integrity
and put it into the captain's hand.  The history of the sea teaches
that among starving, shipwrecked men selfishness is rare, and a
wonder-compelling magnanimity the rule.  The onion was equally divided
into eight parts, and eaten with deep thanksgivings.  On the eighth day a
distant ship was sighted.  Attempts were made to hoist an oar, with
Captain Rounceville's coat on it for a signal.  There were many failures,
for the men were but skeletons now, and strengthless.  At last success
was achieved, but the signal brought no help.  The ship faded out of
sight and left despair behind her.  By and by another ship appeared, and
passed so near that the castaways, every eye eloquent with gratitude,
made ready to welcome the boat that would be sent to save them.  But this
ship also drove on, and left these men staring their unutterable surprise
and dismay into each other's ashen faces.  Late in the day, still another
ship came up out of the distance, but the men noted with a pang that her
course was one which would not bring her nearer.  Their remnant of life
was nearly spent; their lips and tongues were swollen, parched, cracked
with eight days' thirst; their bodies starved; and here was their last
chance gliding relentlessly from them; they would not be alive when the
next sun rose.  For a day or two past the men had lost their voices, but
now Captain Rounceville whispered, "Let us pray."  The Portuguese patted
him on the shoulder in sign of deep approval.  All knelt at the base of
the oar that was waving the signal-coat aloft, and bowed their heads. The
sea was tossing; the sun rested, a red, rayless disk, on the sea-line in
the west.  When the men presently raised their heads they would have
roared a hallelujah if they had had a voice--the ship's sails lay
wrinkled and flapping against her masts--she was going about!  Here was
rescue at last, and in the very last instant of time that was left for
it.  No, not rescue yet--only the imminent prospect of it.  The red disk
sank under the sea, and darkness blotted out the ship.  By and by came a
pleasant sound-oars moving in a boat's rowlocks.  Nearer it came, and
nearer-within thirty steps, but nothing visible.  Then a deep voice:
"Hol-lo!"  The castaways could not answer; their swollen tongues refused
voice.  The boat skirted round and round the raft, started away--the
agony of it!--returned, rested the oars, close at hand, listening, no
doubt.  The deep voice again: "Hol-lo!  Where are ye, shipmates?" Captain
Rounceville whispered to his men, saying: "Whisper your best, boys! now
--all at once!"  So they sent out an eightfold whisper in hoarse concert:
"Here!", There was life in it if it succeeded; death if it failed.  After
that supreme moment Captain Rounceville was conscious of nothing until he
came to himself on board the saving ship.  Said the Reverend, concluding:

"There was one little moment of time in which that raft could be visible
from that ship, and only one.  If that one little fleeting moment had
passed unfruitful, those men's doom was sealed.  As close as that does
God shave events foreordained from the beginning of the world.  When the
sun reached the water's edge that day, the captain of that ship was
sitting on deck reading his prayer-book.  The book fell; he stooped to
pick it up, and happened to glance at the sun.  In that instant that
far-off raft appeared for a second against the red disk, its needlelike
oar and diminutive signal cut sharp and black against the bright surface,
and in the next instant was thrust away into the dusk again.  But that
ship, that captain, and that pregnant instant had had their work
appointed for them in the dawn of time and could not fail of the
performance.  The chronometer of God never errs!"

There was deep, thoughtful silence for some moments.  Then the grave,
pale young man said:

"What is the chronometer of God?"



II

At dinner, six o'clock, the same people assembled whom we had talked with
on deck and seen at luncheon and breakfast this second day out, and at
dinner the evening before.  That is to say, three journeying
ship-masters, a Boston merchant, and a returning Bermudian who had been
absent from his Bermuda thirteen years; these sat on the starboard side.
On the port side sat the Reverend in the seat of honor; the pale young
man next to him; I next; next to me an aged Bermudian, returning to his
sunny islands after an absence of twenty-seven years.  Of course, our
captain was at the head of the table, the purser at the foot of it.  A
small company, but small companies are pleasantest.

No racks upon the table; the sky cloudless, the sun brilliant, the blue
sea scarcely ruffled; then what had become of the four married couples,
the three bachelors, and the active and obliging doctor from the rural
districts of Pennsylvania?--for all these were on deck when we sailed
down New York harbor.  This is the explanation.  I quote from my
note-book:

     Thursday, 3.30 P.M.  Under way, passing the Battery.  The large
     party, of four married couples, three bachelors, and a cheery,
     exhilarating doctor from the wilds of Pennsylvania, are evidently
     traveling together.  All but the doctor grouped in camp-chairs on
     deck.

     Passing principal fort.  The doctor is one of those people who has
     an infallible preventive of seasickness; is flitting from friend to
     friend administering it and saying, "Don't you be afraid; I know
     this medicine; absolutely infallible; prepared under my own
     supervision."  Takes a dose himself, intrepidly.

     4.15 P.M.  Two of those ladies have struck their colors,
     notwithstanding the "infallible."  They have gone below.  The other
     two begin to show distress.

     5 P.M.  Exit one husband and one bachelor.  These still had their
     infallible in cargo when they started, but arrived at the
     companionway without it.

     5.10.  Lady No. 3, two bachelors, and one married man have gone
     below with their own opinion of the infallible.

     5.20.  Passing Quarantine Hulk.  The infallible has done the
     business for all the party except the Scotchman's wife and the
     author of that formidable remedy.

     Nearing the Light-Ship.  Exit the Scotchman's wife, head drooped on
     stewardess's shoulder.

     Entering the open sea.  Exit doctor!


The rout seems permanent; hence the smallness of the company at table
since the voyage began.  Our captain is a grave, handsome Hercules of
thirty-five, with a brown hand of such majestic size that one cannot eat
for admiring it and wondering if a single kid or calf could furnish
material for gloving it.

Conversation not general; drones along between couples.  One catches a
sentence here and there. Like this, from Bermudian of thirteen years'
absence: "It is the nature of women to ask trivial, irrelevant, and
pursuing questions--questions that pursue you from a beginning in nothing
to a run-to-cover in nowhere."  Reply of Bermudian of twenty-seven years'
absence:  "Yes; and to think they have logical, analytical minds and
argumentative ability.  You see 'em begin to whet up whenever they smell
argument in the air."  Plainly these be philosophers.

Twice since we left port our engines have stopped for a couple of minutes
at a time.  Now they stop again.  Says the pale young man, meditatively,
"There!--that engineer is sitting down to rest again."

Grave stare from the captain, whose mighty jaws cease to work, and whose
harpooned potato stops in midair on its way to his open, paralyzed mouth.
Presently he says in measured tones, "Is it your idea that the engineer
of this ship propels her by a crank turned by his own hands?"

The pale young man studies over this a moment, then lifts up his
guileless eyes, and says, "Don't he?"

Thus gently falls the death-blow to further conversation, and the dinner
drags to its close in a reflective silence, disturbed by no sounds but
the murmurous wash of the sea and the subdued clash of teeth.

After a smoke and a promenade on deck, where is no motion to discompose
our steps, we think of a game of whist.  We ask the brisk and capable
stewardess from Ireland if there are any cards in the ship.

"Bless your soul, dear, indeed there is.  Not a whole pack, true for ye,
but not enough missing to signify."

However, I happened by accident to bethink me of a new pack in a morocco
case, in my trunk, which I had placed there by mistake, thinking it to be
a flask of something.  So a party of us conquered the tedium of the
evening with a few games and were ready for bed at six bells, mariner's
time, the signal for putting out the lights.

There was much chat in the smoking-cabin on the upper deck after luncheon
to-day, mostly whaler yarns from those old sea-captains.  Captain Tom
Bowling was garrulous.  He had that garrulous attention to minor detail
which is born of secluded farm life or life at sea on long voyages, where
there is little to do and time no object.  He would sail along till he
was right in the most exciting part of a yarn, and then say, "Well, as I
was saying, the rudder was fouled, ship driving before the gale, head-on,
straight for the iceberg, all hands holding their breath, turned to
stone, top-hamper giving 'way, sails blown to ribbons, first one stick
going, then another, boom! smash! crash! duck your head and stand from
under! when up comes Johnny Rogers, capstan-bar in hand, eyes a-blazing,
hair a-flying .  .  .  no, 'twa'n't Johnny Rogers.  .  .  lemme see .  .
seems to me Johnny Rogers wa'n't along that voyage; he was along one
voyage, I know that mighty well, but somehow it seems to me that he
signed the articles for this voyage, but--but--whether he come along or
not, or got left, or something happened--"

And so on and so on till the excitement all cooled down and nobody cared
whether the ship struck the iceberg or not.

In the course of his talk he rambled into a criticism upon New England
degrees of merit in ship building.  Said he, "You get a vessel built away
down Maine-way; Bath, for instance; what's the result?  First thing you
do, you want to heave her down for repairs--that's the result!  Well,
sir, she hain't been hove down a week till you can heave a dog through
her seams.  You send that vessel to sea, and what's the result?  She wets
her oakum the first trip!  Leave it to any man if 'tain't so.  Well, you
let our folks build you a vessel--down New Bedford-way.  What's the
result?  Well, sir, you might take that ship and heave her down, and keep
her hove down six months, and she'll never shed a tear!"

Everybody, landsmen and all, recognized the descriptive neatness of that
figure, and applauded, which greatly pleased the old man.  A moment
later, the meek eyes of the pale young fellow heretofore mentioned came
up slowly, rested upon the old man's face a moment, and the meek mouth
began to open.

"Shet your head!" shouted the old mariner.

It was a rather startling surprise to everybody, but it was effective in
the matter of its purpose.  So the conversation flowed on instead of
perishing.

There was some talk about the perils of the sea, and a landsman delivered
himself of the customary nonsense about the poor mariner wandering in far
oceans, tempest-tossed, pursued by dangers, every storm-blast and
thunderbolt in the home skies moving the friends by snug firesides to
compassion for that poor mariner, and prayers for his succor.  Captain
Bowling put up with this for a while, and then burst out with a new view
of the matter.

"Come, belay there!  I have read this kind of rot all my life in poetry
and tales and such-like rubbage.  Pity for the poor mariner! sympathy for
the poor mariner!  All right enough, but not in the way the poetry puts
it.  Pity for the mariner's wife! all right again, but not in the way the
poetry puts it.  Look-a here! whose life's the safest in the whole world
The poor mariner's.  You look at the statistics, you'll see.  So don't
you fool away any sympathy on the poor mariner's dangers and privations
and sufferings.  Leave that to the poetry muffs.  Now you look at the
other side a minute.  Here is Captain Brace, forty years old, been at sea
thirty.  On his way now to take command of his ship and sail south from
Bermuda.  Next week he'll be under way; easy times; comfortable quarters;
passengers, sociable company; just enough to do to keep his mind healthy
and not tire him; king over his ship, boss of everything and everybody;
thirty years' safety to learn him that his profession ain't a dangerous
one.  Now you look back at his home.  His wife's a feeble woman; she's a
stranger in New York; shut up in blazing hot or freezing cold lodgings,
according to the season; don't know anybody hardly; no company but her
lonesomeness and her thoughts; husband gone six months at a time.  She
has borne eight children; five of them she has buried without her husband
ever setting eyes on them.  She watches them all the long nights till
they died--he comfortable on the sea; she followed them to the grave she
heard the clods fall that broke her heart he comfortable on the sea; she
mourned at home, weeks and weeks, missing them every day and every hour
--he cheerful at sea, knowing nothing about it.  Now look at it a minute
--turn it over in your mind and size it: five children born, she among
strangers, and him not by to hearten her; buried, and him not by to
comfort her; think of that!  Sympathy for the poor mariner's perils is
rot; give it to his wife's hard lines, where it belongs!  Poetry makes
out that all the wife worries about is the dangers her husband's running.
She's got substantialer things to worry over, I tell you.  Poetry's
always pitying the poor mariner on account of his perils at sea; better a
blamed sight pity him for the nights he can't sleep for thinking of how
he had to leave his wife in her very birth pains, lonesome and
friendless, in the thick of disease and trouble and death.  If there's
one thing that can make me madder than another, it's this sappy, damned
maritime poetry!"

Captain Brace was a patient, gentle, seldom speaking man, with a pathetic
something in his bronzed face that had been a mystery up to this time,
but stood interpreted now since we had heard his story.  He had voyaged
eighteen times to the Mediterranean, seven times to India, once to the
arctic pole in a discovery-ship, and "between times" had visited all the
remote seas and ocean corners of the globe.  But he said that twelve
years ago, on account of his family, he "settled down," and ever
since then had ceased to roam.  And what do you suppose was this
simple-hearted, lifelong wanderer's idea of settling down and ceasing to
roam? Why, the making of two five-month voyages a year between Surinam
and Boston for sugar and molasses!

Among other talk to-day, it came out that whale-ships carry no doctor.
The captain adds the doctorship to his own duties.  He not only gives
medicines, but sets broken limbs after notions of his own, or saws them
off and sears the stump when amputation seems best.  The captain is
provided with a medicine-chest, with the medicines numbered instead of
named.  A book of directions goes with this.  It describes diseases and
symptoms, and says, "Give a teaspoonful of No. 9 once an hour," or "Give
ten grains of No. 12 every half-hour," etc.  One of our sea-captains came
across a skipper in the North Pacific who was in a state of great
surprise and perplexity.  Said he:

"There's something rotten about this medicine-chest business.  One of my
men was sick--nothing much the matter.  I looked in the book: it said
give him a teaspoonful of No. 15.  I went to the medicine-chest, and I
see I was out of No. 15.  I judged I'd got to get up a combination
somehow that would fill the bill; so I hove into the fellow half a
teaspoonful of No. 8 and half a teaspoonful of No. 7, and I'll be hanged
if it didn't kill him in fifteen minutes!  There's something about this
medicine-chest system that's too many for me!"

There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain "Hurricane"
Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes!  Two or three of us
present had known him; I particularly well, for I had made four
sea-voyages with him.  He was a very remarkable man.  He was born in a
ship; he picked up what little education he had among his shipmates;
he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the
captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea.
He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all
climates.  When a man has been fifty years at sea he necessarily knows
nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the
world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's a B C, and that
blurred and distorted by the unfocused lenses of an untrained mind.  Such
a man is only a gray and bearded child.  That is what old Hurricane Jones
was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant.  When his spirit was in
repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he was
a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive.  He was
formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless
courage.  He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes
tattooed in red and blue India ink.  I was with him one voyage when he
got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his left
ankle.  During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare
and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding
of India ink: "Virtue is its own R'd."  (There was a lack of room.) He
was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fishwoman.  He
considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an
order unillumined by it.  He was a profound biblical scholar--that is, he
thought he was.  He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own
methods of arriving at his beliefs.  He was of the "advanced" school of
thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles,
somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six
geological epochs, and so forth.  Without being aware of it, he was a
rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists.  Such a man as I
have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one
knows that without being told it.

One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a
clergyman, since the passenger-list did not betray the fact.  He took a
great liking to this Reverend Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great
deal; told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and
wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that
was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated
speech.  One day the captain said, "Peters, do you ever read the Bible?"

"Well--yes."

"I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it.  Now, you tackle it in
dead earnest once, and you'll find it 'll pay.  Don't you get
discouraged, but hang right on.  First, you won't understand it; but by
and by things will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down
to eat."

"Yes, I have heard that said."

"And it's so, too.  There ain't a book that begins with it.  It lays over
'm all, Peters.  There's some pretty tough things in it--there ain't any
getting around that--but you stick to them and think them out, and when
once you get on the inside everything's plain as day."

"The miracles, too, captain?"

"Yes, sir! the miracles, too.  Every one of them.  Now, there's that
business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?"

"Well, I don't know but--"

"Own up now; it stumped you.  Well, I don't wonder.  You hadn't had any
experience in raveling such things out, and naturally it was too many for
you.  Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show you
how to get at the meat of these matters?"

"Indeed, I would, captain, if you don't mind."

Then the captain proceeded as follows: "I'll do it with pleasure.  First,
you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got to
understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and then
after that it was all clear and easy.  Now this was the way I put it up,
concerning Isaac--[This is the captain's own mistake]--and the prophets
of Baal.  There was some mighty sharp men among the public characters of
that old ancient day, and Isaac was one of them.  Isaac had his failings
--plenty of them, too; it ain't for me to apologize for Isaac; he played
it on the prophets of Baal, and like enough he was justifiable,
considering the odds that was against him.  No, all I say is, 'twa'n't
any miracle, and that I'll show you so's't you can see it yourself.

"Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets--that is,
prophets of Isaac's denomination.  There was four hundred and fifty
prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is,
if Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don't say.
Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade.  Isaac was pretty
low-spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt he
went a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office business,
but 'twa'n't any use; he couldn't run any opposition to amount to
anything.  By and by things got desperate with him; he sets his head to
work and thinks it all out, and then what does he do?  Why, he begins to
throw out hints that the other parties are this and that and t'other
--nothing very definite, maybe, but just kind of undermining their
reputation in a quiet way.  This made talk, of course, and finally got to
the king.  The king asked Isaac what he meant by his talk.  Says Isaac,
'Oh, nothing particular; only, can they pray-down fire from heaven on an
altar?  It ain't much, maybe, your majesty, only can they do it?  That's
the idea.'  So the king was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the
prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an altar
ready, they were ready; and they intimated he better get it insured, too.

"So next morning all the children of Israel and their parents and the
other people gathered themselves together.  Well, here was that great
crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking
up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job.  When time was
called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other
team to take the first innings.  So they went at it, the whole four
hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopeful, and doing
their level best.  They prayed an hour--two hours--three hours--and so
on, plumb till noon.  It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick.  Of
course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they
might.  Now, what would a magnanimous man do?  Keep still, wouldn't he?
Of course.  What did Isaac do?  He graveled the prophets of Baal every
way he could think of.  Says he, 'You don't speak up loud enough; your
god's asleep, like enough, or maybe he's taking a walk; you want to
holler, you know'--or words to that effect; I don't recollect the exact
language.  Mind, I don't apologize for Isaac; he had his faults.

"Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the
afternoon, and never raised, a spark.  At last, about sundown, they were
all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.

"What does Isaac do now?  He steps up and says to some friends of his
there, 'Pour four barrels of water on the altar!'  Everybody was
astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got
whitewashed.  They poured it on.  Says he, 'Heave on four more barrels.'
Then he says, 'Heave on four more.'  Twelve barrels, you see, altogether.
The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a
trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads-'measures,' it
says; I reckon it means about a hogshead.  Some of the people were going
to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy.  They
didn't know Isaac.  Isaac knelt down and began to pray; he strung along,
and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the
sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about
those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual program,
you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about
something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he
outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up
the whole thing blazes like a house afire!  Twelve barrels of water?
Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!"

"Petroleum, captain?"

"Yes, sir, the country was full of it.  Isaac knew all about that.
You read the Bible.  Don't you worry about the tough places.  They ain't
tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them.  There
ain't a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go
prayerfully to work and cipher out how 'twas done."

At eight o'clock on the third morning out from New York, land was
sighted.  Away across the sunny waves one saw a faint dark stripe
stretched along under the horizon-or pretended to see it, for the credit
of his eyesight.  Even the Reverend said he saw it, a thing which was
manifestly not so.  But I never have seen any one who was morally strong
enough to confess that he could not see land when others claimed that
they could.

By and by the Bermuda Islands were easily visible.  The principal one lay
upon the water in the distance, a long, dull-colored body; scalloped with
slight hills and valleys.  We could not go straight at it, but had to
travel all the way around it, sixteen miles from shore, because it is
fenced with an invisible coral reef.  At last we sighted buoys, bobbing
here and there, and then we glided into a narrow channel among them,
"raised the reef," and came upon shoaling blue water that soon further
shoaled into pale green, with a surface scarcely rippled.  Now came the
resurrection hour; the berths gave up their dead.  Who are these pale
specters in plug-hats and silken flounces that file up the companionway
in melancholy procession and step upon the deck?  These are they which
took the infallible preventive of seasickness in New York harbor and then
disappeared and were forgotten.  Also there came two or three faces not
seen before until this moment.  One's impulse is to ask, "Where did you
come aboard?"

We followed the narrow channel a long time, with land on both sides--low
hills that might have been green and grassy, but had a faded look
instead.  However, the land-locked water was lovely, at any rate, with
its glittering belts of blue and green where moderate soundings were, and
its broad splotches of rich brown where the rocks lay near the surface.
Everybody was feeling so well that even the grave, pale young man (who,
by a sort of kindly common consent, had come latterly to be referred to
as "The Ass") received frequent and friendly notice--which was right
enough, for there was no harm in him.

At last we steamed between two island points whose rocky jaws allowed
only just enough room for the vessel's body, and now before us loomed
Hamilton on her clustered hillsides and summits, the whitest mass of
terraced architecture that exists in the world, perhaps.

It was Sunday afternoon, and on the pier were gathered one or two hundred
Bermudians, half of them black, half of them white, and all of them
nobbily dressed, as the poet says.

Several boats came off to the ship, bringing citizens.  One of these
citizens was a faded, diminutive old gentleman, who approached our most
ancient passenger with a childlike joy in his twinkling eyes, halted
before him, folded his arms, and said, smiling with all his might and
with all the simple delight that was in him, "You don't know me, John!
Come, out with it now; you know you don't!"

The ancient passenger scanned him perplexedly, scanned the napless,
threadbare costume of venerable fashion that had done Sunday service no
man knows how many years, contemplated the marvelous stovepipe hat of
still more ancient and venerable pattern, with its poor, pathetic old
stiff brim canted up "gallusly" in the wrong places, and said, with a
hesitation that indicated strong internal effort to "place" the gentle
old apparition, "Why .  .  .  let me see .  .  .  plague on it .  .  .
there's something about you that .  .  .  er .  .  .  er .  .  .  but
I've been gone from Bermuda for twenty-seven years, and .  .  .  hum, hum
.  .  .  I don't seem to get at it, somehow, but there's something about
you that is just as familiar to me as--"

"Likely it might be his hat," murmured the Ass, with innocent,
sympathetic interest.

So the Reverend and I had at last arrived at Hamilton, the principal town
in the Bermuda Islands.  A wonderfully white town; white as snow itself.
White as marble; white as flour.  Yet looking like none of these,
exactly.  Never mind, we said; we shall hit upon a figure by and by that
will describe this peculiar white.

It was a town that was compacted together upon the sides and tops of a
cluster of small hills.  Its outlying borders fringed off and thinned
away among the cedar forests, and there was no woody distance of curving
coast or leafy islet sleeping upon the dimpled, painted sea, but was
flecked with shining white points--half-concealed houses peeping out of
the foliage.  The architecture of the town was mainly Spanish, inherited
from the colonists of two hundred and fifty years ago.  Some
ragged-topped cocoa-palms, glimpsed here and there, gave the land
a tropical aspect.

There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this, under shelter, were
some thousands of barrels containing that product which has carried the
fame of Bermuda to many lands, the potato.  With here and there an onion.
That last sentence is facetious; for they grow at least two onions in
Bermuda to one potato.  The onion is the pride and joy of Bermuda.  It is
her jewel, her gem of gems.  In her conversation, her pulpit, her
literature, it is her most frequent and eloquent figure.  In Bermuda
metaphor it stands for perfection--perfection absolute.

The Bermudian weeping over the departed exhausts praise when he says, "He
was an onion!"  The Bermudian extolling the living hero bankrupts
applause when he says, "He is an onion!"  The Bermudian setting his son
upon the stage of life to dare and do for himself climaxes all counsel,
supplication, admonition, comprehends all ambition, when he says, "Be an
onion!"

When parallel with the pier, and ten or fifteen steps outside it, we
anchored.  It was Sunday, bright and sunny.  The groups upon the pier
--men, youths, and boys-were whites and blacks in about equal proportion.
All were well and neatly dressed; many of them nattily, a few of them
very stylishly.  One would have to travel far before he would find
another town of twelve thousand inhabitants that could represent itself
so respectably, in the matter of clothes, on a freight-pier, without
premeditation or effort.  The women and young girls, black and white, who
occasionally passed by, were nicely clad, and many were elegantly and
fashionably so.  The men did not affect summer clothing much, but the
girls and women did, and their white garments were good to look at, after
so many months of familiarity with somber colors.

Around one isolated potato-barrel stood four young gentlemen, two black,
two white, becomingly dressed, each with the head of a slender cane
pressed against his teeth, and each with a foot propped up on the barrel.
Another young gentleman came up, looked longingly at the barrel, but saw
no rest for his foot there, and turned pensively away to seek another
barrel.  He wandered here and there, but without result.  Nobody sat upon
a barrel, as is the custom of the idle in other lands, yet all the
isolated barrels were humanly occupied.  Whosoever had a foot to spare
put it on a barrel, if all the places on it were not already taken.  The
habits of all peoples are determined by their circumstances.  The
Bermudians lean upon barrels because of the scarcity of lamp-posts.

Many citizens came on board and spoke eagerly to the officers--inquiring
about the Turco-Russian war news, I supposed.  However, by listening
judiciously I found that this was not so.  They said, "What is the price
of onions?" or, "How's onions?"  Naturally enough this was their first
interest; but they dropped into the war the moment it was satisfied.

We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant nature: there were no
hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses on the pier or about it anywhere, and nobody
offered his services to us, or molested us in any way.  I said it was
like being in heaven.  The Reverend rebukingly and rather pointedly
advised me to make the most of it, then.  We knew of a boarding-house,
and what we needed now was somebody to pilot us to it.  Presently a
little barefooted colored boy came along, whose raggedness was
conspicuously not Bermudian.  His rear was so marvelously bepatched with
colored squares and triangles that one was half persuaded he had got it
out of an atlas.  When the sun struck him right, he was as good to follow
as a lightning-bug.  We hired him and dropped into his wake.  He piloted
us through one picturesque street after another, and in due course
deposited us where we belonged.  He charged nothing for his map, and but
a trifle for his services: so the Reverend doubled it.  The little chap
received the money with a beaming applause in his eye which plainly said,
"This man's an onion!"

We had brought no letters of introduction; our names had been misspelled
in the passenger-list; nobody knew whether we were honest folk or
otherwise.  So we were expecting to have a good private time in case
there was nothing in our general aspect to close boarding-house doors
against us.  We had no trouble.  Bermuda has had but little experience of
rascals, and is not suspicious.  We got large, cool, well-lighted rooms
on a second floor, overlooking a bloomy display of flowers and flowering
shrubscalia and annunciation lilies, lantanas, heliotrope, jasmine,
roses, pinks, double geraniums, oleanders, pomegranates, blue
morning-glories of a great size, and many plants that were unknown to me.

We took a long afternoon walk, and soon found out that that exceedingly
white town was built of blocks of white coral.  Bermuda is a coral
island, with a six-inch crust of soil on top of it, and every man has a
quarry on his own premises.  Everywhere you go you see square recesses
cut into the hillsides, with perpendicular walls unmarred by crack or
crevice, and perhaps you fancy that a house grew out of the ground there,
and has been removed in a single piece from the mold.  If you do, you
err.  But the material for a house has been quarried there.  They cut
right down through the coral, to any depth that is convenient--ten to
twenty feet--and take it out in great square blocks.  This cutting is
done with a chisel that has a handle twelve or fifteen feet long, and is
used as one uses a crowbar when he is drilling a hole, or a dasher when
he is churning.  Thus soft is this stone.  Then with a common handsaw
they saw the great blocks into handsome, huge bricks that are two feet
long, a foot wide, and about six inches thick.  These stand loosely piled
during a month to harden; then the work of building begins.

The house is built of these blocks; it is roofed with broad coral slabs
an inch thick, whose edges lap upon each other, so that the roof looks
like a succession of shallow steps or terraces; the chimneys are built of
the coral blocks, and sawed into graceful and picturesque patterns; the
ground-floor veranda is paved with coral blocks; also the walk to the
gate; the fence is built of coral blocks--built in massive panels, with
broad capstones and heavy gate-posts, and the whole trimmed into easy
lines and comely shape with the saw.  Then they put a hard coat of
whitewash, as thick as your thumb-nail, on the fence and all over the
house, roof, chimneys, and all; the sun comes out and shines on this
spectacle, and it is time for you to shut your unaccustomed eyes, lest
they be put out.  It is the whitest white you can conceive of, and the
blindingest.  A Bermuda house does not look like marble; it is a much
intenser white than that; and, besides, there is a dainty, indefinable
something else about its look that is not marble-like.  We put in a great
deal of solid talk and reflection over this matter of trying to find a
figure that would describe the unique white of a Bermuda house, and we
contrived to hit upon it at last.  It is exactly the white of the icing
of a cake, and has the same unemphasized and scarcely perceptible polish.
The white of marble is modest and retiring compared with it.

After the house is cased in its hard scale of whitewash, not a crack, or
sign of a seam, or joining of the blocks is detectable, from base-stone
to chimney-top; the building looks as if it had been carved from a single
block of stone, and the doors and windows sawed out afterward.  A white
marble house has a cold, tomb-like, unsociable look, and takes the
conversation out of a body and depresses him.  Not so with a Bermuda
house.  There is something exhilarating, even hilarious, about its vivid
whiteness when the sun plays upon it.  If it be of picturesque shape and
graceful contour--and many of the Bermudian dwellings are--it will so
fascinate you that you will keep your eyes on it until they ache.  One of
those clean-cut, fanciful chimneys--too pure and white for this world
--with one side glowing in the sun and the other touched with a soft
shadow, is an object that will charm one's gaze by the hour.  I know of
no other country that has chimneys worthy to be gazed at and gloated
over.  One of those snowy houses, half concealed and half glimpsed
through green foliage, is a pretty thing to see; and if it takes one by
surprise and suddenly, as he turns a sharp corner of a country road, it
will wring an exclamation from him, sure.

Wherever you go, in town or country, you find those snowy houses, and
always with masses of bright-colored flowers about them, but with no
vines climbing their walls; vines cannot take hold of the smooth, hard
whitewash.  Wherever you go, in the town or along the country roads,
among little potato farms and patches or expensive country-seats, these
stainless white dwellings, gleaming out from flowers and foliage, meet
you at every turn.  The least little bit of a cottage is as white and
blemishless as the stateliest mansion.  Nowhere is there dirt or stench,
puddle or hog-wallow, neglect, disorder, or lack of trimness and
neatness.  The roads, the streets, the dwellings, the people, the
clothes--this neatness extends to everything that falls under the eye.
It is the tidiest country in the world.  And very much the tidiest, too.

Considering these things, the question came up, Where do the poor live?
No answer was arrived at.  Therefore, we agreed to leave this conundrum
for future statesmen to wrangle over.

What a bright and startling spectacle one of those blazing white country
palaces, with its brown-tinted window-caps and ledges, and green
shutters, and its wealth of caressing flowers and foliage, would be in
black London!  And what a gleaming surprise it would be in nearly any
American city one could mention, too!

Bermuda roads are made by cutting down a few inches into the solid white
coral--or a good many feet, where a hill intrudes itself--and smoothing
off the surface of the road-bed.  It is a simple and easy process.  The
grain of the coral is coarse and porous; the road-bed has the look of
being made of coarse white sugar.  Its excessive cleanness and whiteness
are a trouble in one way: the sun is reflected into your eyes with such
energy as you walk along that you want to sneeze all the time.  Old
Captain Tom Bowling found another difficulty.  He joined us in our walk,
but kept wandering unrestfully to the roadside.  Finally he explained.
Said he, "Well, I chew, you know, and the road's so plagued clean."

We walked several miles that afternoon in the bewildering glare of the
sun, the white roads, and the white buildings.  Our eyes got to paining
us a good deal.  By and by a soothing, blessed twilight spread its cool
balm around.  We looked up in pleased surprise and saw that it proceeded
from an intensely black negro who was going by.  We answered his military
salute in the grateful gloom of his near presence, and then passed on
into the pitiless white glare again.

The colored women whom we met usually bowed and spoke; so did the
children.  The colored men commonly gave the military salute.  They
borrow this fashion from the soldiers, no doubt; England has kept a
garrison here for generations.  The younger men's custom of carrying
small canes is also borrowed from the soldiers, I suppose, who always
carry a cane, in Bermuda as everywhere else in Britain's broad dominions.

The country roads curve and wind hither and thither in the delightfulest
way, unfolding pretty surprises at every turn: billowy masses of oleander
that seem to float out from behind distant projections like the pink
cloud-banks of sunset; sudden plunges among cottages and gardens, life
and activity, followed by as sudden plunges into the somber twilight and
stillness of the woods; flitting visions of white fortresses and beacon
towers pictured against the sky on remote hilltops; glimpses of shining
green sea caught for a moment through opening headlands, then lost again;
more woods and solitude; and by and by another turn lays bare, without
warning, the full sweep of the inland ocean, enriched with its bars of
soft color and graced with its wandering sails.

Take any road you please, you may depend upon it you will not stay in it
half a mile. Your road is everything that a road ought to be: it is
bordered with trees, and with strange plants and flowers; it is shady and
pleasant, or sunny and still pleasant; it carries you by the prettiest
and peacefulest and most homelike of homes, and through stretches of
forest that lie in a deep hush sometimes, and sometimes are alive with
the music of birds; it curves always, which is a continual promise,
whereas straight roads reveal everything at a glance and kill interest.
Your road is all this, and yet you will not stay in it half a mile, for
the reason that little seductive, mysterious roads are always branching
out from it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and hide what
is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your own chosen
road and explore them.  You are usually paid for your trouble;
consequently, your walk inland always turns out to be one of the most
crooked, involved, purposeless, and interesting experiences a body can
imagine. There is enough of variety.  Sometimes you are in the level
open, with marshes thick grown with flag-lances that are ten feet high on
the one hand, and potato and onion orchards on the other; next, you are
on a hilltop, with the ocean and the islands spread around you; presently
the road winds through a deep cut, shut in by perpendicular walls thirty
or forty feet high, marked with the oddest and abruptest stratum lines,
suggestive of sudden and eccentric old upheavals, and garnished with here
and there a clinging adventurous flower, and here and there a dangling
vine; and by and by your way is along the sea edge, and you may look down
a fathom or two through the transparent water and watch the diamond-like
flash and play of the light upon the rocks and sands on the bottom until
you are tired of it--if you are so constituted as to be able to get tired
of it.

You may march the country roads in maiden meditation, fancy free, by
field and farm, for no dog will plunge out at you from unsuspected gate,
with breath-taking surprise of ferocious bark, notwithstanding it is a
Christian land and a civilized.  We saw upward of a million cats in
Bermuda, but the people are very abstemious in the matter of dogs.  Two
or three nights we prowled the country far and wide, and never once were
accosted by a dog.  It is a great privilege to visit such a land.  The
cats were no offense when properly distributed, but when piled they
obstructed travel.

As we entered the edge of the town that Sunday afternoon, we stopped at a
cottage to get a drink of water.  The proprietor, a middle-aged man with
a good face, asked us to sit down and rest.  His dame brought chairs, and
we grouped ourselves in the shade of the trees by the door.  Mr. Smith
--that was not his name, but it will answer--questioned us about ourselves
and our country, and we answered him truthfully, as a general thing, and
questioned him in return.  It was all very simple and pleasant and
sociable.  Rural, too; for there was a pig and a small donkey and a hen
anchored out, close at hand, by cords to their legs, on a spot that
purported to be grassy.  Presently, a woman passed along, and although
she coldly said nothing she changed the drift of our talk.  Said Smith:

"She didn't look this way, you noticed?  Well, she is our next neighbor
on one side, and there's another family that's our next neighbors on the
other side; but there's a general coolness all around now, and we don't
speak.  Yet these three families, one generation and another, have lived
here side by side and been as friendly as weavers for a hundred and fifty
years, till about a year ago."

"Why, what calamity could have been powerful enough to break up so old a
friendship?"

"Well, it was too bad, but it couldn't be helped.  It happened like this:
About a year or more ago, the rats got to pestering my place a good deal,
and I set up a steel trap in my back yard.  Both of these neighbors run
considerable to cats, and so I warned them about the trap, because their
cats were pretty sociable around here nights, and they might get into
trouble without my intending it.  Well, they shut up their cats for a
while, but you know how it is with people; they got careless, and sure
enough one night the trap took Mrs.  Jones's principal tomcat into camp
and finished him up.  In the morning Mrs. Jones comes here with the
corpse in her arms, and cries and takes on the same as if it was a child.
It was a cat by the name of Yelverton--Hector G. Yelverton--a troublesome
old rip, with no more principle than an Injun, though you couldn't make
her believe it.  I said all a man could to comfort her, but no, nothing
would do but I must pay for him.  Finally, I said I warn't investing in
cats now as much as I was, and with that she walked off in a huff,
carrying the remains with her.  That closed our intercourse with the
Joneses.  Mrs. Jones joined another church and took her tribe with her.
She said she would not hold fellowship with assassins.  Well, by and by
comes Mrs. Brown's turn--she that went by here a minute ago.  She had a
disgraceful old yellow cat that she thought as much of as if he was
twins, and one night he tried that trap on his neck, and it fitted him
so, and was so sort of satisfactory, that he laid down and curled up and
stayed with it.  Such was the end of Sir John Baldwin."

"Was that the name of the cat?"

"The same.  There's cats around here with names that would surprise you.
Maria" (to his wife), "what was that cat's name that eat a keg of
ratsbane by mistake over at Hooper's, and started home and got struck by
lightning and took the blind staggers and fell in the well and was 'most
drowned before they could fish him out?"

"That was that colored Deacon Jackson's cat.  I only remember the last
end of its name, which was Hold-The-Fort-For-I-Am-Coming Jackson."

"Sho! that ain't the one.  That's the one that eat up an entire box of
Seidlitz powders, and then hadn't any more judgment than to go and take a
drink.  He was considered to be a great loss, but I never could see it.
Well, no matter about the names.  Mrs. Brown wanted to be reasonable, but
Mrs. Jones wouldn't let her.  She put her up to going to law for damages.
So to law she went, and had the face to claim seven shillings and
sixpence.  It made a great stir.  All the neighbors went to court.
Everybody took sides.  It got hotter and hotter, and broke up all the
friendships for three hundred yards around friendships that had lasted
for generations and generations.

"Well, I proved by eleven witnesses that the cat was of a low character
and very ornery, and warn't worth a canceled postage-stamp, anyway,
taking the average of cats here; but I lost the case.  What could I
expect?  The system is all wrong here, and is bound to make revolution
and bloodshed some day.  You see, they give the magistrate a poor little
starvation salary, and then turn him loose on the public to gouge for
fees and costs to live on.  What is the natural result?  Why, he never
looks into the justice of a case--never once.  All he looks at is which
client has got the money.  So this one piled the fees and costs and
everything on to me.  I could pay specie, don't you see? and he knew
mighty well that if he put the verdict on to Mrs. Brown, where it
belonged, he'd have to take his swag in currency."

"Currency?  Why, has Bermuda a currency?"

"Yes--onions.  And they were forty per cent. discount, too, then, because
the season had been over as much as three months.  So I lost my case.
I had to pay for that cat.  But the general trouble the case made was the
worst thing about it.  Broke up so much good feeling.  The neighbors
don't speak to each other now.  Mrs. Brown had named a child after me.
But she changed its name right away.  She is a Baptist.  Well, in the
course of baptizing it over again it got drowned.  I was hoping we might
get to be friendly again some time or other, but of course this drowning
the child knocked that all out of the question.  It would have saved a
world of heartbreak and ill blood if she had named it dry."

I knew by the sigh that this was honest.  All this trouble and all this
destruction of confidence in the purity of the bench on account of a
seven-shilling lawsuit about a cat!  Somehow, it seemed to "size" the
country.

At this point we observed that an English flag had just been placed at
half-mast on a building a hundred yards away.  I and my friends were busy
in an instant trying to imagine whose death, among the island
dignitaries, could command such a mark of respect as this.  Then a
shudder shook them and me at the same moment, and I knew that we had
jumped to one and the same conclusion: "The governor has gone to England;
it is for the British admiral!"

At this moment Mr. Smith noticed the flag.  He said with emotion:

"That's on a boarding-house.  I judge there's a boarder dead."

A dozen other flags within view went to half-mast.

"It's a boarder, sure," said Smith.

"But would they half-mast the flags here for a boarder, Mr. Smith?"

"Why, certainly they would, if he was dead."

That seemed to size the country again.



IV

The early twilight of a Sunday evening in Hamilton, Bermuda, is an
alluring time.  There is just enough of whispering breeze, fragrance of
flowers, and sense of repose to raise one's thoughts heavenward; and just
enough amateur piano music to keep him reminded of the other place.
There are many venerable pianos in Hamilton, and they all play at
twilight.  Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical
instruments--notably those of the violin--but it seems to set a piano's
teeth on edge.  Most of the music in vogue there is the same that those
pianos prattled in their innocent infancy; and there is something very
pathetic about it when they go over it now, in their asthmatic second
childhood, dropping a note here and there where a tooth is gone.

We attended evening service at the stately Episcopal church on the hill,
where five or six hundred people, half of them white and the other half
black, according to the usual Bermudian proportions; and all well
dressed--a thing which is also usual in Bermuda and to be confidently
expected.  There was good music, which we heard, and doubtless--a good
sermon, but there was a wonderful deal of coughing, and so only the high
parts of the argument carried over it.  As we came out, after service,
I overheard one young girl say to another:

"Why, you don't mean to say you pay duty on gloves and laces!  I only pay
postage; have them done up and sent in the Boston Advertiser."

There are those that believe that the most difficult thing to create is
a woman who can comprehend that it is wrong to smuggle; and that an
impossible thing to create is a woman who will not smuggle, whether or
no, when she gets a chance.  But these may be errors.

We went wandering off toward the country, and were soon far down in the
lonely black depths of a road that was roofed over with the dense foliage
of a double rank of great cedars.  There was no sound of any kind there;
it was perfectly still.  And it was so dark that one could detect nothing
but somber outlines.  We strode farther and farther down this tunnel,
cheering the way with chat.

Presently the chat took this shape: "How insensibly the character of the
people and of a government makes its impress upon a stranger, and gives
him a sense of security or of insecurity without his taking deliberate
thought upon the matter or asking anybody a question!  We have been in
this land half a day; we have seen none but honest faces; we have noted
the British flag flying, which means efficient government and good order;
so without inquiry we plunge unarmed and with perfect confidence into
this dismal place, which in almost any other country would swarm with
thugs and garroters--"

'Sh!  What was that?  Stealthy footsteps!  Low voices!  We gasp, we close
up together, and wait.  A vague shape glides out of the dusk and
confronts us.  A voice speaks--demands money!

"A shilling, gentlemen, if you please, to help build the new Methodist
church."

Blessed sound!  Holy sound!  We contribute with thankful avidity to the
new Methodist church, and are happy to think how lucky it was that those
little colored Sunday-school scholars did not seize upon everything we
had with violence, before we recovered from our momentary helpless
condition.  By the light of cigars we write down the names of weightier
philanthropists than ourselves on the contribution cards, and then pass
on into the farther darkness, saying, What sort of a government do they
call this, where they allow little black pious children, with
contribution cards, to plunge out upon peaceable strangers in the dark
and scare them to death?

We prowled on several hours, sometimes by the seaside, sometimes inland,
and finally managed to get lost, which is a feat that requires talent in
Bermuda.  I had on new shoes.  They were No. 7's when I started, but were
not more than 5's now, and still diminishing.  I walked two hours in
those shoes after that, before we reached home.  Doubtless I could have
the reader's sympathy for the asking.  Many people have never had the
headache or the toothache, and I am one of those myself; but every body
has worn tight shoes for two or three hours, and known the luxury of
taking them off in a retired place and seeing his feet swell up and
obscure the firmament.  Once when I was a callow, bashful cub, I took a
plain, unsentimental country girl to a comedy one night.  I had known her
a day; she seemed divine; I wore my new boots.  At the end of the first
half-hour she said, "Why do you fidget so with your feet?"  I said, "Did
I?"  Then I put my attention there and kept still.  At the end of another
half-hour she said, "Why do you say, 'Yes, oh yes!' and 'Ha, ha, oh,
certainly! very true!' to everything I say, when half the time those are
entirely irrelevant answers?"  I blushed, and explained that I had been a
little absent-minded.  At the end of another half-hour she said, "Please,
why do you grin so steadfastly at vacancy, and yet look so sad?"
I explained that I always did that when I was reflecting.  An hour
passed, and then she turned and contemplated me with her earnest eyes and
said, "Why do you cry all the time?"  I explained that very funny
comedies always made me cry.  At last human nature surrendered, and I
secretly slipped my boots off.  This was a mistake.  I was not able to
get them on any more.  It was a rainy night; there were no omnibuses
going our way; and as I walked home, burning up with shame, with the girl
on one arm and my boots under the other, I was an object worthy of some
compassion--especially in those moments of martyrdom when I had to pass
through the glare that fell upon the pavement from street-lamps.
Finally, this child of the forest said, "Where are your boots?" and being
taken unprepared, I put a fitting finish to the follies of the evening
with the stupid remark, "The higher classes do not wear them to the
theater."

The Reverend had been an army chaplain during the war, and while we were
hunting for a road that would lead to Hamilton he told a story about two
dying soldiers which interested me in spite of my feet.  He said that in
the Potomac hospitals rough pine coffins were furnished by government,
but that it was not always possible to keep up with the demand; so, when
a man died, if there was no coffin at hand he was buried without one.
One night, late, two soldiers lay dying in a ward.  A man came in with a
coffin on his shoulder, and stood trying to make up his mind which of
these two poor fellows would be likely to need it first.  Both of them
begged for it with their fading eyes--they were past talking.  Then one
of them protruded a wasted hand from his blankets and made a feeble
beckoning sign with the fingers, to signify, "Be a good fellow; put it
under my bed, please."  The man did it, and left.  The lucky soldier
painfully turned himself in his bed until he faced the other warrior,
raised himself partly on his elbow, and began to work up a mysterious
expression of some kind in his face.  Gradually, irksomely, but surely
and steadily, it developed, and at last it took definite form as a pretty
successful wink.  The sufferer fell back exhausted with his labor, but
bathed in glory.  Now entered a personal friend of No. 2, the despoiled
soldier.  No. 2 pleaded with him with eloquent eyes, till presently he
understood, and removed the coffin from under No. 1's bed and put it
under No. 2's.  No. 2 indicated his joy, and made some more signs; the
friend understood again, and put his arm under No. 2's shoulders and
lifted him partly up.  Then the dying hero turned the dim exultation of
his eye upon No. 1, and began a slow and labored work with his hands;
gradually he lifted one hand up toward his face; it grew weak and dropped
back again; once more he made the effort, but failed again.  He took a
rest; he gathered all the remnant of his strength, and this time he
slowly but surely carried his thumb to the side of his nose, spread the
gaunt fingers wide in triumph, and dropped back dead.  That picture
sticks by me yet.  The "situation" is unique.

The next morning, at what seemed a very early hour, the little white
table-waiter appeared suddenly in my room and shot a single word out of
himself "Breakfast!"

This was a remarkable boy in many ways.  He was about eleven years old;
he had alert, intent black eyes; he was quick of movement; there was no
hesitation, no uncertainty about him anywhere; there was a military
decision in his lip, his manner, his speech, that was an astonishing
thing to see in a little chap like him; he wasted no words; his answers
always came so quick and brief that they seemed to be part of the
question that had been asked instead of a reply to it.  When he stood at
table with his fly-brush, rigid, erect, his face set in a cast-iron
gravity, he was a statue till he detected a dawning want in somebody's
eye; then he pounced down, supplied it, and was instantly a statue again.
When he was sent to the kitchen for anything, he marched upright till he
got to the door; he turned hand-springs the rest of the way.

"Breakfast!"

I thought I would make one more effort to get some conversation out of
this being.

"Have you called the Reverend, or are--"

"Yes s'r!"

"Is it early, or is--"

"Eight-five."

"Do you have to do all the 'chores,' or is there somebody to give
you a--"

"Colored girl."

"Is there only one parish in this island, or are there--"

"Eight!"

"Is the big church on the hill a parish church, or is it--"

"Chapel-of-ease!"

"Is taxation here classified into poll, parish, town, and--"

"Don't know!"

Before I could cudgel another question out of my head, he was below,
hand-springing across the back yard.  He had slid down the balusters,
headfirst.  I gave up trying to provoke a discussion with him.  The
essential element of discussion had been left out of him; his answers
were so final and exact that they did not leave a doubt to hang
conversation on.  I suspect that there is the making of a mighty man or a
mighty rascal in this boy--according to circumstances--but they are going
to apprentice him to a carpenter.  It is the way the world uses its
opportunities.

During this day and the next we took carriage drives about the island and
over to the town of St. George's, fifteen or twenty miles away.  Such
hard, excellent roads to drive over are not to be found elsewhere out of
Europe.  An intelligent young colored man drove us, and acted as
guide-book.  In the edge of the town we saw five or six mountain-cabbage
palms (atrocious name!) standing in a straight row, and equidistant from
each other.  These were not the largest or the tallest trees I have ever
seen, but they were the stateliest, the most majestic.  That row of them
must be the nearest that nature has ever come to counterfeiting a
colonnade. These trees are all the same height, say sixty feet; the
trunks as gray as granite, with a very gradual and perfect taper; without
sign of branch or knot or flaw; the surface not looking like bark, but
like granite that has been dressed and not polished.  Thus all the way up
the diminishing shaft for fifty feet; then it begins to take the
appearance of being closely wrapped, spool-fashion, with gray cord, or of
having been turned in a lathe.  Above this point there is an outward
swell, and thence upward for six feet or more the cylinder is a bright,
fresh green, and is formed of wrappings like those of an ear of green
Indian corn.  Then comes the great, spraying palm plume, also green.
Other palm trees always lean out of the perpendicular, or have a curve in
them.  But the plumb-line could not detect a deflection in any individual
of this stately row; they stand as straight as the colonnade of Baalbec;
they have its great height, they have its gracefulness, they have its
dignity; in moonlight or twilight, and shorn of their plumes, they would
duplicate it.

The birds we came across in the country were singularly tame; even that
wild creature, the quail, would pick around in the grass at ease while we
inspected it and talked about it at leisure.  A small bird of the canary
species had to be stirred up with the butt-end of the whip before it
would move, and then it moved only a couple of feet.  It is said that
even the suspicious flea is tame and sociable in Bermuda, and will allow
himself to be caught and caressed without misgivings.  This should be
taken with allowance, for doubtless there is more or less brag about it.
In San Francisco they used to claim that their native flea could kick a
child over, as if it were a merit in a flea to be able to do that; as if
the knowledge of it trumpeted abroad ought to entice immigration.  Such a
thing in nine cases out of ten would be almost sure to deter a thinking
man from coming.

We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was thinking of saying
in print, in a general way, that there were none at all; but one night
after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into my room carrying
something, and asked, "Is this your boot?"  I said it was, and he said he
had met a spider going off with it.  Next morning he stated that just at
dawn the same spider raised his window and was coming in to get a shirt,
but saw him and fled.

I inquired, "Did he get the shirt?"

"No."

"How did you know it was a shirt he was after?"

"I could see it in his eye."

We inquired around, but could hear of no Bermudian spider capable of
doing these things.  Citizens said that their largest spiders could not
more than spread their legs over an ordinary saucer, and that they had
always been considered honest.  Here was testimony of a clergyman against
the testimony of mere worldlings--interested ones, too.  On the whole, I
judged it best to lock up my things.

Here and there on the country roads we found lemon, papaw, orange, lime,
and fig trees; also several sorts of palms, among them the cocoa, the
date, and the palmetto.  We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with stems
as thick as a man's arm.  Jungles of the mangrove tree stood up out of
swamps; propped on their interlacing roots as upon a tangle of stilts.
In drier places the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud of shade.
Here and there the blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside.  There was a
curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on it.
It might have passed itself off for a dead apple tree but for the fact
that it had a a star-like, red-hot flower sprinkled sparsely over its
person.  It had the scattery red glow that a constellation might have
when glimpsed through smoked glass.  It is possible that our
constellations have been so constructed as to be invisible through smoked
glass; if this is so it is a great mistake.

We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as calmly and unostentatiously
as a vine would do it.  We saw an India-rubber tree, but out of season,
possibly, so there were no shoes on it, nor suspenders, nor anything that
a person would properly expect to find there.  This gave it an
impressively fraudulent look.  There was exactly one mahogany tree on the
island.  I know this to be reliable, because I saw a man who said he had
counted it many a time and could not be mistaken.  He was a man with a
harelip and a pure heart, and everybody said he was as true as steel.
Such men are all too few.

One's eye caught near and far the pink cloud of the oleander and the
red blaze of the pomegranate blossom.  In one piece of wild wood the
morning-glory vines had wrapped the trees to their very tops, and
decorated them all over with couples and clusters of great bluebells--a
fine and striking spectacle, at a little distance.  But the dull cedar is
everywhere, and is the prevailing foliage.  One does not appreciate how
dull it is until the varnished, bright green attire of the infrequent
lemon tree pleasantly intrudes its contrast.  In one thing Bermuda is
eminently tropical--was in May, at least--the unbrilliant, slightly
faded, unrejoicing look of the landscape.  For forests arrayed in a
blemishless magnificence of glowing green foliage that seems to exult in
its own existence and can move the beholder to an enthusiasm that will
make him either shout or cry, one must go to countries that have
malignant winters.

We saw scores of colored farmers digging their crops of potatoes and
onions, their wives and children helping--entirely contented and
comfortable, if looks go for anything.  We never met a man, or woman, or
child anywhere in this sunny island who seemed to be unprosperous, or
discontented, or sorry about anything.  This sort of monotony became very
tiresome presently, and even something worse.  The spectacle of an entire
nation groveling in contentment is an infuriating thing.  We felt the
lack of something in this community--a vague, an indefinable, an elusive
something, and yet a lack.  But after considerable thought we made out
what it was--tramps.  Let them go there, right now, in a body.  It is
utterly virgin soil.  Passage is cheap.  Every true patriot in America
will help buy tickets.  Whole armies of these excellent beings can be
spared from our midst and our polls; they will find a delicious climate
and a green, kind-hearted people.  There are potatoes and onions for all,
and a generous welcome for the first batch that arrives, and elegant
graves for the second.

It was the Early Rose potato the people were digging.  Later in the year
they have another crop, which they call the Garnet.  We buy their
potatoes (retail) at fifteen dollars a barrel; and those colored farmers
buy ours for a song, and live on them.  Havana might exchange cigars with
Connecticut in the same advantageous way, if she thought of it.

We passed a roadside grocery with a sign up, "Potatoes Wanted."  An
ignorant stranger, doubtless.  He could not have gone thirty steps from
his place without finding plenty of them.

In several fields the arrowroot crop was already sprouting.  Bermuda used
to make a vast annual profit out of this staple before firearms came into
such general use.

The island is not large.  Somewhere in the interior a man ahead of us had
a very slow horse.  I suggested that we had better go by him; but the
driver said the man had but a little way to go.  I waited to see,
wondering how he could know.  Presently the man did turn down another
road.  I asked, "How did you know he would?"

"Because I knew the man, and where he lived."

I asked him, satirically, if he knew everybody in the island; he
answered, very simply, that he did.  This gives a body's mind a good
substantial grip on the dimensions of the place.

At the principal hotel at St. George's, a young girl, with a sweet,
serious face, said we could not be furnished with dinner, because we had
not been expected, and no preparation had been made.  Yet it was still an
hour before dinner-time.  We argued, she yielded not; we supplicated, she
was serene.  The hotel had not been expecting an inundation of two
people, and so it seemed that we should have to go home dinnerless.
I said we were not very hungry a fish would do.  My little maid answered,
it was not the market-day for fish.  Things began to look serious; but
presently the boarder who sustained the hotel came in, and when the case
was laid before him he was cheerfully willing to divide.  So we had much
pleasant chat at table about St. George's chief industry, the repairing
of damaged ships; and in between we had a soup that had something in it
that seemed to taste like the hereafter, but it proved to be only pepper
of a particularly vivacious kind.  And we had an iron-clad chicken that
was deliciously cooked, but not in the right way.  Baking was not the
thing to convince this sort.  He ought to have been put through a
quartz-mill until the "tuck" was taken out of him, and then boiled till
we came again.  We got a good deal of sport out of him, but not enough
sustenance to leave the victory on our side.  No matter; we had potatoes
and a pie and a sociable good time.  Then a ramble through the town,
which is a quaint one, with interesting, crooked streets, and narrow,
crooked lanes, with here and there a grain of dust.  Here, as in
Hamilton, the dwellings had Venetian blinds of a very sensible pattern.
They were not double shutters, hinged at the sides, but a single broad
shutter, hinged at the top; you push it outward, from the bottom, and
fasten it at any angle required by the sun or desired by yourself.

All about the island one sees great white scars on the hill-slopes.
These are dished spaces where the soil has been scraped off and the coral
exposed and glazed with hard whitewash.  Some of these are a quarter-acre
in size.  They catch and carry the rainfall to reservoirs; for the wells
are few and poor, and there are no natural springs and no brooks.

They say that the Bermuda climate is mild and equable, with never any
snow or ice, and that one may be very comfortable in spring clothing the
year round, there.  We had delightful and decided summer weather in May,
with a flaming sun that permitted the thinnest of raiment, and yet there
was a constant breeze; consequently we were never discomforted by heat.
At four or five in the afternoon the mercury began to go down, and then
it became necessary to change to thick garments.  I went to St. George's
in the morning clothed in the thinnest of linen, and reached home at five
in the afternoon with two overcoats on.  The nights are said to be always
cool and bracing.  We had mosquito-nets, and the Reverend said the
mosquitoes persecuted him a good deal.  I often heard him slapping and
banging at these imaginary creatures with as much zeal as if they had
been real.  There are no mosquitoes in the Bermudas in May.

The poet Thomas Moore spent several months in Bermuda more than seventy
years ago.  He was sent out to be registrar of the admiralty.  I am not
quite clear as to the function of a registrar of the admiralty of
Bermuda, but I think it is his duty to keep a record of all the admirals
born there.  I will inquire into this.  There was not much doing in
admirals, and Moore got tired and went away.  A reverently preserved
souvenir of him is still one of the treasures of the islands: I gathered
the idea, vaguely, that it was a jug, but was persistently thwarted in
the twenty-two efforts I made to visit it.  However, it was no matter,
for I found out afterward that it was only a chair.

There are several "sights" in the Bermudas, of course, but they are
easily avoided.  This is a great advantage--one cannot have it in Europe.
Bermuda is the right country for a jaded man to "loaf" in.  There are no
harassments; the deep peace and quiet of the country sink into one's body
and bones and give his conscience a rest, and chloroform the legion of
invisible small devils that are always trying to whitewash his hair.
A good many Americans go there about the first of March and remain until
the early spring weeks have finished their villainies at home.

The Bermudians are hoping soon to have telegraphic communication with the
world.  But even after they shall have acquired this curse it will still
be a good country to go to for a vacation, for there are charming little
islets scattered about the inclosed sea where one could live secure from
interruption.  The telegraph-boy would have to come in a boat, and one
could easily kill him while he was making his landing.

We had spent four days in Bermuda--three bright ones out of doors and one
rainy one in the house, we being disappointed about getting a yacht for a
sail; and now our furlough was ended, and we entered into the ship again
and sailed homeward.

We made the run home to New York quarantine in three days and five hours,
and could have gone right along up to the city if we had had a health
permit.  But health permits are not granted after seven in the evening,
partly because a ship cannot be inspected and overhauled with exhaustive,
thoroughness except in daylight, and partly because health-officers are
liable to catch cold if they expose themselves to the night air.  Still,
you can buy a permit after hours for five dollars extra, and the officer
will do the inspecting next week.  Our ship and passengers lay under
expense and in humiliating captivity all night, under the very nose of
the little official reptile who is supposed to protect New York from
pestilence by his vigilant "inspections."  This imposing rigor gave
everybody a solemn and awful idea of the beneficent watchfulness of our
government, and there were some who wondered if anything finer could be
found in other countries.

In the morning we were all a-tiptoe to witness the intricate ceremony
of inspecting the ship.  But it was a disappointing thing.  The
health-officer's tug ranged alongside for a moment, our purser handed the
lawful three-dollar permit fee to the health-officer's bootblack, who
passed us a folded paper in a forked stick, and away we went.  The entire
"inspection" did not occupy thirteen seconds.

The health-officer's place is worth a hundred thousand dollars a year to
him.  His system of inspection is perfect, and therefore cannot be
improved on; but it seems to me that his system of collecting his fees
might be amended.  For a great ship to lie idle all night is a most
costly loss of time; for her passengers to have to do the same thing
works to them the same damage, with the addition of an amount of
exasperation and bitterness of soul that the spectacle of that
health-officer's ashes on a shovel could hardly sweeten.  Now why would
it not be better and simpler to let the ships pass in unmolested, and the
fees and permits be exchanged once a year by post.


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Rambling Notes of an Idle
Excursion, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT

by Mark Twain



[Left out of A Tramp Abroad, because it was feared that some of the
particulars had been exaggerated, and that others were not true.  Before
these suspicions had been proven groundless, the book had gone to press.
--M.  T.]



The following curious history was related to me by a chance railway
acquaintance.  He was a gentleman more than seventy years of age, and his
thoroughly good and gentle face and earnest and sincere manner imprinted
the unmistakable stamp of truth upon every statement which fell from his
lips.  He said:

You know in what reverence the royal white elephant of Siam is held by
the people of that country.  You know it is sacred to kings, only kings
may possess it, and that it is, indeed, in a measure even superior to
kings, since it receives not merely honor but worship.  Very well; five
years ago, when the troubles concerning the frontier line arose between
Great Britain and Siam, it was presently manifest that Siam had been in
the wrong.  Therefore every reparation was quickly made, and the British
representative stated that he was satisfied and the past should be
forgotten.  This greatly relieved the King of Siam, and partly as a token
of gratitude, partly also, perhaps, to wipe out any little remaining
vestige of unpleasantness which England might feel toward him, he wished
to send the Queen a present--the sole sure way of propitiating an enemy,
according to Oriental ideas.  This present ought not only to be a royal
one, but transcendently royal.  Wherefore, what offering could be so meet
as that of a white elephant?  My position in the Indian civil service was
such that I was deemed peculiarly worthy of the honor of conveying the
present to her Majesty.  A ship was fitted out for me and my servants and
the officers and attendants of the elephant, and in due time I arrived in
New York harbor and placed my royal charge in admirable quarters in
Jersey City.  It was necessary to remain awhile in order to recruit the
animal's health before resuming the voyage.

All went well during a fortnight--then my calamities began.  The white
elephant was stolen!  I was called up at dead of night and informed of
this fearful misfortune.  For some moments I was beside myself with
terror and anxiety; I was helpless.  Then I grew calmer and collected my
faculties.  I soon saw my course--for, indeed, there was but the one
course for an intelligent man to pursue.  Late as it was, I flew to New
York and got a policeman to conduct me to the headquarters of the
detective force.  Fortunately I arrived in time, though the chief of the
force, the celebrated Inspector Blunt was just on the point of leaving
for his home.  He was a man of middle size and compact frame, and when he
was thinking deeply he had a way of kniting his brows and tapping his
forehead reflectively with his finger, which impressed you at once with
the conviction that you stood in the presence of a person of no common
order.  The very sight of him gave me confidence and made me hopeful.
I stated my errand.  It did not flurry him in the least; it had no more
visible effect upon his iron self-possession than if I had told him
somebody had stolen my dog.  He motioned me to a seat, and said, calmly:

"Allow me to think a moment, please."

So saying, he sat down at his office table and leaned his head upon his
hand.  Several clerks were at work at the other end of the room; the
scratching of their pens was all the sound I heard during the next six or
seven minutes.  Meantime the inspector sat there, buried in thought.
Finally he raised his head, and there was that in the firm lines of his
face which showed me that his brain had done its work and his plan was
made.  Said he--and his voice was low and impressive:

"This is no ordinary case.  Every step must be warily taken; each step
must be made sure before the next is ventured.  And secrecy must be
observed--secrecy profound and absolute.  Speak to no one about the
matter, not even the reporters.  I will take care of them; I will see
that they get only what it may suit my ends to let them know."  He
touched a bell; a youth appeared.  "Alaric, tell the reporters to remain
for the present."  The boy retired.  "Now let us proceed to business--and
systematically.  Nothing can be accomplished in this trade of mine
without strict and minute method."

He took a pen and some paper.  "Now--name of the elephant?"

"Hassan Ben Ali Ben Selim Abdallah Mohammed Moist Alhammal
Jamsetjejeebhoy Dhuleep Sultan Ebu Bhudpoor."

"Very well.  Given name?"

"Jumbo."

"Very well.  Place of birth?"

"The capital city of Siam."

"Parents living?"

"No--dead."

"Had they any other issue besides this one?"

"None.  He was an only child."

"Very well.  These matters are sufficient under that head.  Now please
describe the elephant, and leave out no particular, however
insignificant--that is, insignificant from your point of view.  To me in
my profession there are no insignificant particulars; they do not exist."

I described he wrote.  When I was done, he said:

"Now listen.  If I have made any mistakes, correct me."

He read as follows:

"Height, 19 feet; length from apex of forehead insertion of tail, 26
feet; length of trunk, 16 feet; length of tail, 6 feet; total length,
including trunk, and tail, 48 feet; length of tusks, 9 feet; ears
keeping with these dimensions; footprint resembles the mark left when one
up-ends a barrel in the snow; the color of the elephant, a dull white;
has a hole the size of a plate in each ear for the insertion of jewelry
and possesses the habit in a remarkable degree of squirting water upon
spectators and of maltreating with his trunk not only such persons as he
is acquainted with, but even entire strangers; limps slightly with his
right hind leg, and has a small scar in his left armpit caused by a
former boil; had on, when stolen, a castle containing seats for fifteen
persons, and a gold-cloth saddle-blanket the size of an ordinary carpet."

There were no mistakes.  The inspector touched the bell, handed the
description to Alaric, and said:

"Have fifty thousand copies of this printed at once and mailed to every
detective office and pawnbroker's shop on the continent."  Alaric
retired.  "There--so far, so good.  Next, I must have a photograph of the
property."

I gave him one.  He examined it critically, and said:

"It must do, since we can do no better; but he has his trunk curled up
and tucked into his mouth.  That is unfortunate, and is calculated to
mislead, for of course he does not usually have it in that position."
He touched his bell.

"Alaric, have fifty thousand copies of this photograph made the first
thing in the morning, and mail them with the descriptive circulars."

Alaric retired to execute his orders.  The inspector said:

"It will be necessary to offer a reward, of course.  Now as to the
amount?"

"What sum would you suggest?"

"To begin with, I should say--well, twenty-five thousand dollars.  It is
an intricate and difficult business; there are a thousand avenues of
escape and opportunities of concealment.  These thieves have friends and
pals everywhere--"

"Bless me, do you know who they are?"

The wary face, practised in concealing the thoughts and feelings within,
gave me no token, nor yet the replying words, so quietly uttered:

"Never mind about that.  I may, and I may not.  We generally gather a
pretty shrewd inkling of who our man is by the manner of his work and the
size of the game he goes after.  We are not dealing with a pickpocket or
a hall thief now, make up your mind to that.  This property was not
'lifted' by a novice.  But, as I was saying, considering the amount of
travel which will have to be done, and the diligence with which the
thieves will cover up their traces as they move along, twenty-five
thousand may be too small a sum to offer, yet I think it worth while to
start with that."

So we determined upon that figure as a beginning.  Then this man, whom
nothing escaped which could by any possibility be made to serve as a
clue, said:

"There are cases in detective history to show that criminals have been
detected through peculiarities, in their appetites.  Now, what does this
elephant eat, and how much?"

"Well, as to what he eats--he will eat anything.  He will eat a man, he
will eat a Bible--he will eat anything between a man and a Bible."

"Good very good, indeed, but too general.  Details are necessary--details
are the only valuable things in our trade.  Very well--as to men.  At one
meal--or, if you prefer, during one day--how man men will he eat, if
fresh?"

"He would not care whether they were fresh or not; at a single meal he
would eat five ordinary men.

"Very good; five men; we will put that down.  What nationalities would he
prefer?"

"He is indifferent about nationalities.  He prefers acquaintances, but is
not prejudiced against strangers."

"Very good.  Now, as to Bibles.  How many Bibles would he eat at a meal?"

"He would eat an entire edition."

"It is hardly succinct enough.  Do you mean the ordinary octavo, or the
family illustrated?"

"I think he would be indifferent to illustrations that is, I think he
would not value illustrations above simple letterpress."

"No, you do not get my idea.  I refer to bulk.  The ordinary octavo Bible
weighs about two pound; and a half, while the great quarto with the
illustrations weighs ten or twelve.  How many Dore Bibles would he eat at
a meal?"

"If you knew this elephant, you could not ask.  He would take what they
had."

"Well, put it in dollars and cents, then.  We must get at it somehow.
The Dore costs a hundred dollars a copy, Russia leather, beveled."

"He would require about fifty thousand dollars worth--say an edition of
five hundred copies."

"Now that is more exact.  I will put that down.  Very well; he likes men
and Bibles; so far, so good.  What else will he eat?  I want
particulars."

"He will leave Bibles to eat bricks, he will leave bricks to eat bottles,
he will leave bottles to eat clothing, he will leave clothing to eat
cats, he will leave cats to eat oysters, he will leave oysters to eat
ham, he will leave ham to eat sugar, he will leave sugar to eat pie, he
will leave pie to eat potatoes, he will leave potatoes to eat bran; he
will leave bran to eat hay, he will leave hay to eat oats, he will leave
oats to eat rice, for he was mainly raised on it.  There is nothing
whatever that he will not eat but European butter, and he would eat that
if he could taste it."

"Very good.  General quantity at a meal--say about--"

"Well, anywhere from a quarter to half a ton."

"And he drinks--"

"Everything that is fluid.  Milk, water, whisky, molasses, castor oil,
camphene, carbolic acid--it is no use to go into particulars; whatever
fluid occurs to you set it down.  He will drink anything that is fluid,
except European coffee."

"Very good.  As to quantity?"

"Put it down five to fifteen barrels--his thirst varies; his other
appetites do not."

"These things are unusual.  They ought to furnish quite good clues toward
tracing him."

He touched the bell.

"Alaric; summon Captain Burns."

Burns appeared.  Inspector Blunt unfolded the whole matter to him, detail
by detail.  Then he said in the clear, decisive tones of a man whose
plans are clearly defined in his head and who is accustomed to command:

"Captain Burns, detail Detectives Jones, Davis, Halsey, Bates, and
Hackett to shadow the elephant."

"Yes, sir."

"Detail Detectives Moses, Dakin, Murphy, Rogers, Tupper, Higgins, and
Bartholomew to shadow the thieves."

"Yes, sir."

"Place a strong guard--A guard of thirty picked men, with a relief of
thirty--over the place from whence the elephant was stolen, to keep
strict watch there night and day, and allow none to approach--except
reporters--without written authority from me."

"Yes, sir."

"Place detectives in plain clothes in the railway; steamship, and ferry
depots, and upon all roadways leading out of Jersey City, with orders to
search all suspicious persons."

"Yes, sir."

"Furnish all these men with photograph and accompanying description of
the elephant, and instruct them to search all trains and outgoing
ferryboats and other vessels."

"Yes, sir."

"If the elephant should be found, let him be seized, and the information
forwarded to me by telegraph."

"Yes, sir."

"Let me be informed at once if any clues should be found footprints of
the animal, or anything of that kind."

"Yes, sir."

"Get an order commanding the harbor police to patrol the frontages
vigilantly."

"Yes, sir."

"Despatch detectives in plain clothes over all the railways, north as far
as Canada, west as far as Ohio, south as far as Washington."

"Yes, sir."

"Place experts in all the telegraph offices to listen in to all messages;
and let them require that all cipher despatches be interpreted to them."

"Yes, sir."

"Let all these things be done with the utmost's secrecy--mind, the most
impenetrable secrecy."

"Yes, sir."

"Report to me promptly at the usual hour."

"Yes, Sir."

"Go!"

"Yes, sir."

He was gone.

Inspector Blunt was silent and thoughtful a moment, while the fire in his
eye cooled down and faded out.  Then he turned to me and said in a placid
voice:

"I am not given to boasting, it is not my habit; but--we shall find the
elephant."

I shook him warmly by the hand and thanked him; and I felt my thanks,
too.  The more I had seen of the man the more I liked him and the more I
admired him and marveled over the mysterious wonders of his profession.
Then we parted for the night, and I went home with a far happier heart
than I had carried with me to his office.


II

Next morning it was all in the newspapers, in the minutest detail.  It
even had additions--consisting of Detective This, Detective That, and
Detective The Other's "Theory" as to how the robbery was done, who the
robbers were, and whither they had flown with their booty.  There were
eleven of these theories, and they covered all the possibilities; and
this single fact shows what independent thinkers detectives are.  No two
theories were alike, or even much resembled each other, save in one
striking particular, and in that one all the other eleven theories were
absolutely agreed.  That was, that although the rear of my building was
torn out and the only door remained locked, the elephant had not been
removed through the rent, but by some other (undiscovered) outlet.
All agreed that the robbers had made that rent only to mislead the
detectives.  That never would have occurred to me or to any other layman,
perhaps, but it had not deceived the detectives for a moment.  Thus, what
I had supposed was the only thing that had no mystery about it was in
fact the very thing I had gone furthest astray in.  The eleven theories
all named the supposed robbers, but no two named the same robbers; the
total number of suspected persons was thirty-seven.  The various
newspaper accounts all closed with the most important opinion of all
--that of Chief Inspector Blunt.  A portion of this statement read as
follows:

     The chief knows who the two principals are, namely, "Brick" Daffy
     and "Red" McFadden.  Ten days before the robbery was achieved he was
     already aware that it was to be attempted, and had quietly proceeded
     to shadow these two noted villains; but unfortunately on the night
     in question their track was lost, and before it could be found again
     the bird was flown--that is, the elephant.

     Daffy and McFadden are the boldest scoundrels in the profession; the
     chief has reasons for believing that they are the men who stole the
     stove out of the detective headquarters on a bitter night last
     winter--in consequence of which the chief and every detective
     present were in the hands of the physicians before morning, some
     with frozen feet, others with frozen fingers, ears, and other
     members.

When I read the first half of that I was more astonished than ever at the
wonderful sagacity of this strange man.  He not only saw everything in
the present with a clear eye, but even the future could not be hidden
from him.  I was soon at his office, and said I could not help wishing he
had had those men arrested, and so prevented the trouble and loss; but
his reply was simple and unanswerable:

"It is not our province to prevent crime, but to punish it.  We cannot
punish it until it is committed."

I remarked that the secrecy with which we had begun had been marred by
the newspapers; not only all our facts but all our plans and purposes had
been revealed; even all the suspected persons had been named; these would
doubtless disguise themselves now, or go into hiding.

"Let them.  They will find that when I am ready for them my hand will
descend upon them, in their secret places, as unerringly as the hand of
fate.  As to the newspapers, we must keep in with them.  Fame,
reputation, constant public mention--these are the detective's bread and
butter.  He must publish his facts, else he will be supposed to have
none; he must publish his theory, for nothing is so strange or striking
as a detective's theory, or brings him so much wonderful respect; we must
publish our plans, for these the journals insist upon having, and we
could not deny them without offending.  We must constantly show the
public what we are doing, or they will believe we are doing nothing.
It is much pleasanter to have a newspaper say, 'Inspector Blunt's
ingenious and extraordinary theory is as follows,' than to have it say
some harsh thing, or, worse still, some sarcastic one."

"I see the force of what you say.  But I noticed that in one part of your
remarks in the papers this morning you refused to reveal your opinion
upon a certain minor point."

"Yes, we always do that; it has a good effect.  Besides, I had not formed
any opinion on that point, anyway."

I deposited a considerable sum of money with the inspector, to meet
current expenses, and sat down to wait for news.  We were expecting the
telegrams to begin to arrive at any moment now.  Meantime I reread the
newspapers and also our descriptive circular, and observed that our
twenty-five thousand dollars reward seemed to be offered only to
detectives.  I said I thought it ought to be offered to anybody who would
catch the elephant.  The inspector said:

"It is the detectives who will find the elephant; hence the reward will
go to the right place.  If other people found the animal, it would only
be by watching the detectives and taking advantage of clues and
indications stolen from them, and that would entitle the detectives to
the reward, after all.  The proper office of a reward is to stimulate the
men who deliver up their time and their trained sagacities to this sort
of work, and not to confer benefits upon chance citizens who stumble upon
a capture without having earned the benefits by their own merits and
labors."

This was reasonable enough, certainly.  Now the telegraphic machine in
the corner began to click, and the following despatch was the result:

                         FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 7.30 A.M.
     Have got a clue.  Found a succession of deep tracks across a farm
     near here.  Followed them two miles east without result; think
     elephant went west.  Shall now shadow him in that direction.
                         DARLEY, Detective.

"Darley's one of the best men on the force," said the inspector.  "We
shall hear from him again before long."

Telegram No. 2 came:

                         BARKER'S, N. J., 7.40 A.M.
     Just arrived.  Glass factory broken open here during night, and
     eight hundred bottles taken.  Only water in large quantity near here
     is five miles distant.  Shall strike for there.  Elephant will be
     thirsty.  Bottles were empty.
                         DARLEY, Detective.

"That promises well, too," said the inspector.

"I told you the creature's appetites would not be bad clues."

Telegram No. 3:

                         TAYLORVILLE, L. I. 8.15 A.M.
     A haystack near here disappeared during night.  Probably eaten.
     Have got a clue, and am off.
                         HUBBARD, Detective.

"How he does move around!" said the inspector "I knew we had a difficult
job on hand, but we shall catch him yet."

                         FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 9 A.M.
     Shadowed the tracks three miles westward.  Large, deep, and ragged.
     Have just met a farmer who says they are not elephant-tracks.  Says
     they are holes where he dug up saplings for shade-trees when ground
     was frozen last winter.  Give me orders how to proceed.
                         DARLEY, Detective.

"Aha! a confederate of the thieves!  The thing, grows warm," said the
inspector.

He dictated the following telegram to Darley:

     Arrest the man and force him to name his pals.  Continue to follow
     the tracks to the Pacific, if necessary.
                         Chief BLUNT.

Next telegram:

                         CONEY POINT, PA., 8.45 A.M.
     Gas office broken open here during night and three month; unpaid gas
     bills taken.  Have got a clue and am away.
                         MURPHY, Detective.

"Heavens!" said the inspector; "would he eat gas bills?"

"Through ignorance--yes; but they cannot support life.  At least,
unassisted."

Now came this exciting telegram:

                         IRONVILLE, N. Y., 9.30 A.M.
     Just arrived.  This village in consternation.  Elephant passed
     through here at five this morning.  Some say he went east some say
     west, some north, some south--but all say they did not wait to
     notice, particularly.  He killed a horse; have secure a piece of it
     for a clue.  Killed it with his trunk; from style of blow, think he
     struck it left-handed.  From position in which horse lies, think
     elephant traveled northward along line Berkley Railway.  Has four
     and a half hours' start, but I move on his track at once.
                         HAWES, Detective

I uttered exclamations of joy.  The inspector was as self-contained as a
graven image.  He calmly touched his bell.

"Alaric, send Captain Burns here."

Burns appeared.

"How many men are ready for instant orders?"

"Ninety-six, sir."

"Send them north at once.  Let them concentrate along the line of the
Berkley road north of Ironville."

"Yes, sir."

"Let them conduct their movements with the utmost secrecy.  As fast as
others are at liberty, hold them for orders."

"Yes, sir."

"Go!"

"Yes, sir."

Presently came another telegram:

                         SAGE CORNERS, N. Y., 10.30.
     Just arrived.  Elephant passed through here at 8.15.  All escaped
     from the town but a policeman.  Apparently elephant did not strike
     at policeman, but at the lamp-post.  Got both.  I have secured a
     portion of the policeman as clue.
                         STUMM, Detective.

"So the elephant has turned westward," said the inspector.  "However, he
will not escape, for my men are scattered all over that region."

The next telegram said:

                         GLOVER'S, 11.15
Just arrived.  Village deserted, except sick and aged.  Elephant passed
through three-quarters of an hour ago.  The anti-temperance mass-meeting
was in session; he put his trunk in at a window and washed it out with
water from cistern.  Some swallowed it--since dead; several drowned.
Detectives Cross and O'Shaughnessy were passing through town, but going
south--so missed elephant.  Whole region for many miles around in terror
--people flying from their homes.  Wherever they turn they meet elephant,
and many are killed.
                         BRANT, Detective.

I could have shed tears, this havoc so distressed me.  But the inspector
only said:

"You see--we are closing in on him.  He feels our presence; he has turned
eastward again."

Yet further troublous news was in store for us.  The telegraph brought
this:

                         HOGANSPORT, 12.19.
     Just arrived.  Elephant passed through half an hour ago, creating
     wildest fright and excitement.  Elephant raged around streets; two
     plumbers going by, killed one--other escaped.  Regret general.
                         O'FLAHERTY, Detective.

"Now he is right in the midst of my men," said the inspector.  "Nothing
can save him."

A succession of telegrams came from detectives who were scattered through
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and who were following clues consisting of
ravaged barns, factories, and Sunday-school libraries, with high
hopes-hopes amounting to certainties, indeed.  The inspector said:

"I wish I could communicate with them and order them north, but that is
impossible.  A detective only visits a telegraph office to send his
report; then he is off again, and you don't know where to put your hand
on him."

Now came this despatch:

                         BRIDGEPORT, CT., 12.15.
     Barnum offers rate of $4,000 a year for exclusive privilege of using
     elephant as traveling advertising medium from now till detectives
     find him.  Wants to paste circus-posters on him. Desires immediate
     answer.
                         BOGGS, Detective.

"That is perfectly absurd!" I exclaimed.

"Of course it is," said the inspector.  "Evidently Mr. Barnum, who thinks
he is so sharp, does not know me--but I know him."

Then he dictated this answer to the despatch:

     Mr. Barnum's offer declined.  Make it $7,000 or nothing.
                         Chief BLUNT.

"There.  We shall not have to wait long for an answer.  Mr.  Barnum is
not at home; he is in the telegraph office--it is his way when he has
business on hand.  Inside of three--"

     Done.--P. T. BARNUM.

So interrupted the clicking telegraphic instrument.  Before I could make
a comment upon this extraordinary episode, the following despatch carried
my thoughts into another and very distressing channel:

                         BOLIVIA, N. Y., 12.50.
     Elephant arrived here from the south and passed through toward the
     forest at 11.50, dispersing a funeral on the way, and diminishing
     the mourners by two.  Citizens fired some small cannon-balls into
     him, and they fled.  Detective Burke and I arrived ten minutes
     later, from the north, but mistook some excavations for footprints,
     and so lost a good deal of time; but at last we struck the right
     trail and followed it to the woods.  We then got down on our hands
     and knees and continued to keep a sharp eye on the track, and so
     shadowed it into the brush.  Burke was in advance.  Unfortunately
     the animal had stopped to rest; therefore, Burke having his head
     down, intent upon the track, butted up against the elephant's hind
     legs before he was aware of his vicinity.  Burke instantly arose to
     his feet, seized the tail, and exclaimed joyfully, "I claim the
     re--" but got no further, for a single blow of the huge trunk laid
     the brave fellow's fragments low in death.  I fled rearward, and the
     elephant turned and shadowed me to the edge of the wood, making
     tremendous speed, and I should inevitably have been lost, but that
     the remains of the funeral providentially intervened again and
     diverted his attention.  I have just learned that nothing of that
     funeral is now left; but this is no loss, for there is abundance of
     material for another.  Meantime, the elephant has disappeared again.
                         MULROONEY, Detective.

We heard no news except from the diligent and confident detectives
scattered about New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia--who
were all following fresh and encouraging clues--until shortly after
2 P.M., when this telegram came:

                         BAXTER CENTER, 2.15.
     Elephant been here, plastered over with circus-bills, any broke up a
     revival, striking down and damaging many who were on the point of
     entering upon a better life.  Citizens penned him up and established
     a guard.  When Detective Brown and I arrived, some time after, we
     entered inclosure and proceeded to identify elephant by photograph
     and description.  All masks tallied exactly except one, which we
     could not see--the boil-scar under armpit.  To make sure, Brown
     crept under to look, and was immediately brained--that is, head
     crushed and destroyed, though nothing issued from debris.  All fled
     so did elephant, striking right and left with much effect.  He
     escaped, but left bold blood-track from cannon-wounds.  Rediscovery
     certain.  He broke southward, through a dense forest.
                         BRENT, Detective.

That was the last telegram.  At nightfall a fog shut down which was so
dense that objects but three feet away could not be discerned.  This
lasted all night.  The ferry-boats and even the omnibuses had to stop
running.



III

Next morning the papers were as full of detective theories as before;
they had all our tragic facts in detail also, and a great many more which
they had received from their telegraphic correspondents.  Column after
column was occupied, a third of its way down, with glaring head-lines,
which it made my heart sick to read.  Their general tone was like this:

     THE WHITE ELEPHANT AT LARGE!  HE MOVES UPON HIS FATAL MARCH WHOLE
     VILLAGES DESERTED BY THEIR FRIGHT-STRICKEN OCCUPANTS!  PALE TERROR
     GOES BEFORE HIM, DEATH AND DEVASTATION FOLLOW AFTER!  AFTER THESE,
     THE DETECTIVES!  BARNS DESTROYED, FACTORIES GUTTED, HARVESTS
     DEVOURED, PUBLIC ASSEMBLAGES DISPERSED, ACCOMPANIED BY SCENES OF
     CARNAGE IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE!  THEORIES OF THIRTY-FOUR OF THE MOST
     DISTINGUISHED DETECTIVES ON THE FORCES!  THEORY OF CHIEF BLUNT!

"There!" said Inspector Blunt, almost betrayed into excitement, "this is
magnificent!  This is the greatest windfall that any detective
organization ever had.  The fame of it will travel to the ends of the
earth, and endure to the end of time, and my name with it."

But there was no joy for me.  I felt as if I had committed all those red
crimes, and that the elephant was only my irresponsible agent.  And how
the list had grown!  In one place he had "interfered with an election and
killed five repeaters."  He had followed this act with the destruction of
two pool fellows, named O'Donohue and McFlannigan, who had "found a
refuge in the home of the oppressed of all lands only the day before, and
were in the act of exercising for the first time the noble right of
American citizens at the polls, when stricken down by the relentless
hand of the Scourge of Siam."  In another, he had "found a crazy
sensation-preacher preparing his next season's heroic attacks on the
dance, the theater, and other things which can't strike back, and had
stepped on him."  And in still another place he had "killed a
lightning-rod agent." And so the list went on, growing redder and redder,
and more and more heartbreaking.  Sixty persons had been killed, and two
hundred and forty wounded.  All the accounts bore just testimony to the
activity and devotion of the detectives, and all closed with the remark
that "three hundred thousand citizen; and four detectives saw the dread
creature, and two of the latter he destroyed."

I dreaded to hear the telegraphic instrument begin to click again.
By and by the messages began to pour in, but I was happily disappointed
in they nature.  It was soon apparent that all trace of the elephant was
lost.  The fog had enabled him to search out a good hiding-place
unobserved.  Telegrams from the most absurdly distant points reported
that a dim vast mass had been glimpsed there through the fog at such and
such an hour, and was "undoubtedly the elephant."  This dim vast mass had
been glimpsed in New Haven, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, in interior
New York, in Brooklyn, and even in the city of New York itself!  But in
all cases the dim vast mass had vanished quickly and left no trace.
Every detective of the large force scattered over this huge extent of
country sent his hourly report, and each and every one of them had a
clue, and was shadowing something, and was hot upon the heels of it.

But the day passed without other result.

The next day the same.

The next just the same.

The newspaper reports began to grow monotonous with facts that amounted
to nothing, clues which led to nothing, and theories which had nearly
exhausted the elements which surprise and delight and dazzle.

By advice of the inspector I doubled the reward.

Four more dull days followed.  Then came a bitter blow to the poor,
hard-working detectives--the journalists declined to print their
theories, and coldly said, "Give us a rest."

Two weeks after the elephant's disappearance I raised the reward to
seventy-five thousand dollars by the inspector's advice.  It was a great
sum, but I felt that I would rather sacrifice my whole private fortune
than lose my credit with my government.  Now that the detectives were in
adversity, the newspapers turned upon them, and began to fling the most
stinging sarcasms at them.  This gave the minstrels an idea, and they
dressed themselves as detectives and hunted the elephant on the stage in
the most extravagant way.  The caricaturists made pictures of detectives
scanning the country with spy-glasses, while the elephant, at their
backs, stole apples out of their pockets.  And they made all sorts of
ridiculous pictures of the detective badge--you have seen that badge
printed in gold on the back of detective novels, no doubt it is a
wide-staring eye, with the legend, "WE NEVER SLEEP."  When detectives
called for a drink, the would-be facetious barkeeper resurrected an
obsolete form of expression and said, "Will you have an eye-opener?"
All the air was thick with sarcasms.

But there was one man who moved calm, untouched, unaffected, through it
all.  It was that heart of oak, the chief inspector.  His brave eye never
drooped, his serene confidence never wavered.  He always said:

"Let them rail on; he laughs best who laughs last."

My admiration for the man grew into a species of worship.  I was at his
side always.  His office had become an unpleasant place to me, and now
became daily more and more so.  Yet if he could endure it I meant to do
so also--at least, as long as I could.  So I came regularly, and stayed
--the only outsider who seemed to be capable of it.  Everybody wondered
how I could; and often it seemed to me that I must desert, but at such
times I looked into that calm and apparently unconscious face, and held
my ground.

About three weeks after the elephant's disappearance I was about to say,
one morning, that I should have to strike my colors and retire, when the
great detective arrested the thought by proposing one more superb and
masterly move.

This was to compromise with the robbers.  The fertility of this man's
invention exceeded anything I have ever seen, and I have had a wide
intercourse with the world's finest minds.  He said he was confident he
could compromise for one hundred thousand dollars and recover the
elephant.  I said I believed I could scrape the amount together, but what
would become of the poor detectives who had worked so faithfully?  He
said:

"In compromises they always get half."

This removed my only objection.  So the inspector wrote two notes, in
this form:

     DEAR MADAM,--Your husband can make a large sum of money (and be
     entirely protected from the law) by making an immediate, appointment
     with me.                           Chief BLUNT.

He sent one of these by his confidential messenger to the "reputed wife"
of Brick Duffy, and the other to the reputed wife of Red McFadden.

Within the hour these offensive answers came:

     YE OWLD FOOL: brick Duffys bin ded 2 yere.
                                        BRIDGET MAHONEY.

     CHIEF BAT,--Red McFadden is hung and in heving 18 month.  Any Ass
     but a detective know that.
                                        MARY O'HOOLIGAN.

"I had long suspected these facts," said the inspector; "this testimony
proves the unerring accuracy of my instinct."

The moment one resource failed him he was ready with another.  He
immediately wrote an advertisement for the morning papers, and I kept a
copy of it:

     A.--xWhlv.  242 ht.  Tjnd--fz328wmlg.  Ozpo,--2 m!  2m!.  M! ogw.

He said that if the thief was alive this would bring him to the usual
rendezvous.  He further explained that the usual rendezvous was a glare
where all business affairs between detectives and criminals were
conducted.  This meeting would take place at twelve the next night.

We could do nothing till then, and I lost no time in getting out of the
office, and was grateful indeed for the privilege.

At eleven the next night I brought one hundred thousand dollars in
bank-notes and put them into the chief's hands, and shortly afterward he
took his leave, with the brave old undimmed confidence in his eye.
An almost intolerable hour dragged to a close; then I heard his welcome
tread, and rose gasping and tottered to meet him.  How his fine eyes
flamed with triumph!  He said:

"We've compromised!  The jokers will sing a different tune to-morrow!
Follow me!"

He took a lighted candle and strode down into the vast vaulted basement
where sixty detectives always slept, and where a score were now playing
cards to while the time.  I followed close after him.  He walked swiftly
down to the dim and remote end of the place, and just as I succumbed to
the pangs of suffocation and was swooning away he stumbled and fell over
the outlying members of a mighty object, and I heard him exclaim as he
went down:

"Our noble profession is vindicated.  Here is your elephant!"

I was carried to the office above and restored with carbolic acid.  The
whole detective force swarmed in, and such another season of triumphant
rejoicing ensued as I had never witnessed before.  The reporters were
called, baskets of champagne were opened, toasts were drunk, the
handshakings and congratulations were continuous and enthusiastic.
Naturally the chief was the hero of the hour, and his happiness was so
complete and had been so patiently and worthily and bravely won that it
made me happy to see it, though I stood there a homeless beggar, my
priceless charge dead, and my position in my country's service lost to me
through what would always seem my fatally careless execution of a great
trust.  Many an eloquent eye testified its deep admiration for the chief,
and many a detective's voice murmured, "Look at him--just the king of the
profession; only give him a clue, it's all he wants, and there ain't
anything hid that he can't find."  The dividing of the fifty thousand
dollars made great pleasure; when it was finished the chief made a little
speech while he put his share in his pocket, in which he said, "Enjoy it,
boys, for you've earned it; and, more than that, you've earned for the
detective profession undying fame."

A telegram arrived, which read:

                         MONROE, MICH., 10 P.M.
First time I've struck a telegraph office in over three weeks.  Have
followed those footprints, horseback, through the woods, a thousand miles
to here, and they get stronger and bigger and fresher every day.  Don't
worry-inside of another week I'll have the elephant.  This is dead sure.
                         DARLEY, Detective.

The chief ordered three cheers for "Darley, one of the finest minds on
the force," and then commanded that he be telegraphed to come home and
receive his share of the reward.

So ended that marvelous episode of the stolen elephant.  The newspapers
were pleasant with praises once more, the next day, with one contemptible
exception.  This sheet said, "Great is the detective!  He may be a little
slow in finding a little thing like a mislaid elephant he may hunt him
all day and sleep with his rotting carcass all night for three weeks, but
he will find him at last if he can get the man who mislaid him to show
him the place!"

Poor Hassan was lost to me forever.  The cannonshots had wounded him
fatally, he had crept to that unfriendly place in the fog, and there,
surrounded by his enemies and in constant danger of detection, he had
wasted away with hunger and suffering till death gave him peace.

The compromise cost me one hundred thousand dollars; my detective
expenses were forty-two thousand dollars more; I never applied for a
place again under my government; I am a ruined man and a wanderer on the
earth but my admiration for that man, whom I believe to be the greatest
detective the world has ever produced, remains undimmed to this day, and
will so remain unto the end.


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Stolen White Elephant
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






                    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 out 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."



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 Goettingen,
to fight with a Goettingen 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 outbursts, 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 WUNDERSCHOEN 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 begin 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--Haemmerling, Vogel, Mueller,
Dietz, and Schumann.  Haemmerling taught us landscape-painting.
Vogel taught us figure-drawing, Mueller 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 Haemmerling'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 Goetz 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 Goetz 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 Goetz 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 Goetz 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
the day 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, with 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 Goetz 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, Goetz 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 sang
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,
and the roofs jut a little over the wall and 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 that 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 in 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
distinguish 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 (Ottenhoefen), 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-natured 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 has 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 and 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 than 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 hunt 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 was 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 strutting 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 HABE 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 Waeggis; 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 Waeggis 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 Waeggis.
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 teardrops 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 Waeggis 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 were tilted 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 save 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 HUETTE 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, GLUECKLICHEWEISE 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 BRUECKE 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 Bruenig 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 Bruenig, 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 Bruenig 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 Bruenig 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 shopwoman said, appealingly:

"If you 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, and 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 and 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 Schwarenbach
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.