Bot-S: The Complete Works of Mark Twain

My sense of their grandeur and their noble beauty
was neither lost nor impaired; I had gained a new
interest in the mountains without losing the old ones.
I followed the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye,
and noted the possibility or impossibility of following
them with my feet.  When I saw a shining helmet of ice
projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagine I saw
files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a
gossamer thread.

We skirted the lonely little lake called the Daubensee,
and presently passed close by a glacier on the right
--a thing like a great river frozen solid in its flow
and broken square off like a wall at its mouth.
I had never been so near a glacier before.

Here we came upon a new board shanty, and found some men
engaged in building a stone house; so the Schwarenbach was
soon to have a rival.  We bought a bottle or so of beer here;
at any rate they called it beer, but I knew by the price
that it was dissolved jewelry, and I perceived by the
taste that dissolved jewelry is not good stuff to drink.

We were surrounded by a hideous desolation.  We stepped
forward to a sort of jumping-off place, and were confronted
by a startling contrast: we seemed to look down into fairyland.
Two or three thousand feet below us was a bright green level,
with a pretty town in its midst, and a silvery stream
winding among the meadows; the charming spot was walled
in on all sides by gigantic precipices clothed with pines;
and over the pines, out of the softened distances,
rose the snowy domes and peaks of the Monte Rosa region.
How exquisitely green and beautiful that little valley
down there was! The distance was not great enough to
obliterate details, it only made them little, and mellow,
and dainty, like landscapes and towns seen through the
wrong end of a spy-glass.

Right under us a narrow ledge rose up out of the valley,
with a green, slanting, bench-shaped top, and grouped
about upon this green-baize bench were a lot of black
and white sheep which looked merely like oversized worms.
The bench seemed lifted well up into our neighborhood,
but that was a deception--it was a long way down to it.

We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road I
have ever seen.  It wound its corkscrew curves down the face
of the colossal precipice--a narrow way, with always
the solid rock wall at one elbow, and perpendicular
nothingness at the other.  We met an everlasting procession
of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing
up this steep and muddy path, and there was no room
to spare when you had to pass a tolerably fat mule.
I always took the inside, when I heard or saw the
mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall.
I preferred the inside, of course, but I should have had
to take it anyhow, because the mule prefers the outside.
A mule's preference--on a precipice--is a thing to
be respected.  Well, his choice is always the outside.
His life is mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers
and packages which rest against his body--therefore he
is habituated to taking the outside edge of mountain paths,
to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or banks
on the other.  When he goes into the passenger business he
absurdly clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his
passenger always dangling over the great deeps of the lower
world while that passenger's heart is in the highlands,
so to speak.  More than once I saw a mule's hind foot
cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into
the bottom abyss; and I noticed that upon these occasions
the rider, whether male or female, looked tolerably unwell.

There was one place where an eighteen-inch breadth of
light masonry had been added to the verge of the path,
and as there was a very sharp turn here, a panel of fencing
had been set up there at some time, as a protection.
This panel was old and gray and feeble, and the light
masonry had been loosened by recent rains.  A young
American girl came along on a mule, and in making the turn
the mule's hind foot caved all the loose masonry and one
of the fence-posts overboard; the mule gave a violent lurch
inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort,
but that girl turned as white as the snows of Mont Blanc
for a moment.

The path was simply a groove cut into the face of
the precipice; there was a four-foot breadth of solid rock
under the traveler, and four-foot breadth of solid rock
just above his head, like the roof of a narrow porch;
he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer
summitless and bottomless wall of rock before him,
across a gorge or crack a biscuit's toss in width
--but he could not see the bottom of his own precipice
unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge.
I did not do this, because I did not wish to soil my clothes.

Every few hundred yards, at particularly bad places,
one came across a panel or so of plank fencing; but they
were always old and weak, and they generally leaned
out over the chasm and did not make any rash promises
to hold up people who might need support.  There was one
of these panels which had only its upper board left;
a pedestrianizing English youth came tearing down the path,
was seized with an impulse to look over the precipice,
and without an instant's thought he threw his weight
upon that crazy board.  It bent outward a foot! I never
made a gasp before that came so near suffocating me.
The English youth's face simply showed a lively surprise,
but nothing more.  He went swinging along valleyward again,
as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner by the
closest kind of a shave.

The Alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box
made fast between the middles of two long poles,
and sometimes it is a chair with a back to it and a support
for the feet.  It is carried by relays of strong porters.
The motion is easier than that of any other conveyance.
We met a few men and a great many ladies in litters;
it seemed to me that most of the ladies looked pale
and nauseated; their general aspect gave me the idea
that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering.
As a rule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery
to take care of itself.

But the most frightened creature I saw, was a led horse
that overtook us.  Poor fellow, he had been born and reared
in the grassy levels of the Kandersteg valley and had
never seen anything like this hideous place before.
Every few steps he would stop short, glance wildly out from
the dizzy height, and then spread his red nostrils wide
and pant as violently as if he had been running a race;
and all the while he quaked from head to heel as with
a palsy.  He was a handsome fellow, and he made a fine
statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to see
him suffer so.

This dreadful path has had its tragedy.  Baedeker, with his
customary over-terseness, begins and ends the tale thus:

"The descent on horseback should be avoided.
In 1861 a Comtesse d'Herlincourt fell from her saddle
over the precipice and was killed on the spot."

We looked over the precipice there, and saw the monument
which commemorates the event.  It stands in the bottom
of the gorge, in a place which has been hollowed out of
the rock to protect it from the torrent and the storms.
Our old guide never spoke but when spoken to, and then
limited himself to a syllable or two, but when we asked
him about this tragedy he showed a strong interest
in the matter.  He said the Countess was very pretty,
and very young--hardly out of her girlhood, in fact.
She was newly married, and was on her bridal tour.
The young husband was riding a little in advance; one guide
was leading the husband's horse, another was leading the
bride's.

The old man continued:

"The guide that was leading the husband's horse happened
to glance back, and there was that poor young thing sitting
up staring out over the precipice; and her face began
to bend downward a little, and she put up her two hands
slowly and met it--so,--and put them flat against her
eyes--so--and then she sank out of the saddle, with a
sharp shriek, and one caught only the flash of a dress,
and it was all over."

Then after a pause:

"Ah, yes, that guide saw these things--yes, he saw them all.
He saw them all, just as I have told you."

After another pause:

"Ah, yes, he saw them all.  My God, that was ME.
I was that guide!"

This had been the one event of the old man's life; so one
may be sure he had forgotten no detail connected with it.
We listened to all he had to say about what was done and what
happened and what was said after the sorrowful occurrence,
and a painful story it was.

When we had wound down toward the valley until we were about
on the last spiral of the corkscrew, Harris's hat blew
over the last remaining bit of precipice--a small cliff
a hundred or hundred and fifty feet high--and sailed down
toward a steep slant composed of rough chips and fragments
which the weather had flaked away from the precipices.
We went leisurely down there, expecting to find it without
any trouble, but we had made a mistake, as to that.
We hunted during a couple of hours--not because the old
straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to find out
how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open
ground where there was nothing left for it to hide behind.
When one is reading in bed, and lays his paper-knife down,
he cannot find it again if it is smaller than a saber;
that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife could have been,
and we finally had to give it up; but we found a fragment
that had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging
around and turning over the rocks we gradually collected
all the lenses and the cylinders and the various odds
and ends that go to making up a complete opera-glass.
We afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner
can have his adventurous lost-property by submitting
proofs and paying costs of rehabilitation.  We had hopes
of finding the owner there, distributed around amongst
the rocks, for it would have made an elegant paragraph;
but we were disappointed.  Still, we were far from
being disheartened, for there was a considerable area
which we had not thoroughly searched; we were satisfied he
was there, somewhere, so we resolved to wait over a day at
Leuk and come back and get him.

Then we sat down to polish off the perspiration and
arrange about what we would do with him when we got him.
Harris was for contributing him to the British Museum;
but I was for mailing him to his widow.  That is the difference
between Harris and me: Harris is all for display, I am
all for the simple right, even though I lose money by it.
Harris argued in favor of his proposition against mine,
I argued in favor of mine and against his.  The discussion
warmed into a dispute; the dispute warmed into a quarrel.
I finally said, very decidedly:

"My mind is made up.  He goes to the widow."

Harris answered sharply:

"And MY mind is made up.  He goes to the Museum."

I said, calmly:

"The museum may whistle when it gets him."

Harris retorted:

"The widow may save herself the trouble of whistling,
for I will see that she never gets him."

After some angry bandying of epithets, I said:

"It seems to me that you are taking on a good many airs
about these remains.  I don't quite see what YOU'VE got
to say about them?"

"I? I've got ALL to say about them.  They'd never have
been thought of if I hadn't found their opera-glass. The
corpse belongs to me, and I'll do as I please with him."

I was leader of the Expedition, and all discoveries
achieved by it naturally belonged to me.  I was entitled
to these remains, and could have enforced my right;
but rather than have bad blood about the matter,
I said we would toss up for them.  I threw heads and won,
but it was a barren victory, for although we spent all
the next day searching, we never found a bone.  I cannot
imagine what could ever have become of that fellow.

The town in the valley is called Leuk or Leukerbad.
We pointed our course toward it, down a verdant slope
which was adorned with fringed gentians and other flowers,
and presently entered the narrow alleys of the outskirts
and waded toward the middle of the town through liquid
"fertilizer." They ought to either pave that village or
organize a ferry.

Harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture; his person
was populous with the little hungry pests; his skin,
when he stripped, was splotched like a scarlet-fever patient's;
so, when we were about to enter one of the Leukerbad inns,
and he noticed its sign, "Chamois Hotel," he refused
to stop there.  He said the chamois was plentiful enough,
without hunting up hotels where they made a specialty of it.
I was indifferent, for the chamois is a creature that will
neither bite me nor abide with me; but to calm Harris,
we went to the Ho^tel des Alpes.

At the table d'ho^te, we had this, for an incident.
A very grave man--in fact his gravity amounted to solemnity,
and almost to austerity--sat opposite us and he was
"tight," but doing his best to appear sober.  He took up
a CORKED bottle of wine, tilted it over his glass awhile,
then set it out of the way, with a contented look, and went
on with his dinner.

Presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of course
found it empty.  He looked puzzled, and glanced furtively
and suspiciously out of the corner of his eye at a
benignant and unconscious old lady who sat at his right.
Shook his head, as much as to say, "No, she couldn't have
done it." He tilted the corked bottle over his glass again,
meantime searching around with his watery eye to see
if anybody was watching him.  He ate a few mouthfuls,
raised his glass to his lips, and of course it was
still empty.  He bent an injured and accusing side-glance
upon that unconscious old lady, which was a study to see.
She went on eating and gave no sign.  He took up his glass
and his bottle, with a wise private nod of his head,
and set them gravely on the left-hand side of his plate
--poured himself another imaginary drink--went to work
with his knife and fork once more--presently lifted
his glass with good confidence, and found it empty,
as usual.

This was almost a petrifying surprise.  He straightened
himself up in his chair and deliberately and sorrowfully
inspected the busy old ladies at his elbows, first one and
then the other.  At last he softly pushed his plate away,
set his glass directly in front of him, held on to it
with his left hand, and proceeded to pour with his right.
This time he observed that nothing came.  He turned the
bottle clear upside down; still nothing issued from it;
a plaintive look came into his face, and he said, as if
to himself,

"'IC! THEY'VE GOT IT ALL!" Then he set the bottle down,
resignedly, and took the rest of his dinner dry.

It was at that table d'ho^te, too, that I had under inspection
the largest lady I have ever seen in private life.
She was over seven feet high, and magnificently proportioned.
What had first called my attention to her, was my stepping
on an outlying flange of her foot, and hearing, from up
toward the ceiling, a deep "Pardon, m'sieu, but you encroach!"

That was when we were coming through the hall, and the place
was dim, and I could see her only vaguely.  The thing
which called my attention to her the second time was,
that at a table beyond ours were two very pretty girls,
and this great lady came in and sat down between them
and me and blotted out my view.  She had a handsome face,
and she was very finely formed--perfected formed,
I should say.  But she made everybody around her look trivial
and commonplace.  Ladies near her looked like children,
and the men about her looked mean.  They looked like failures;
and they looked as if they felt so, too.  She sat with
her back to us.  I never saw such a back in my life.
I would have so liked to see the moon rise over it.
The whole congregation waited, under one pretext or another,
till she finished her dinner and went out; they wanted to see
her at full altitude, and they found it worth tarrying for.
She filled one's idea of what an empress ought to be,
when she rose up in her unapproachable grandeur and moved
superbly out of that place.

We were not at Leuk in time to see her at her heaviest weight.
She had suffered from corpulence and had come there to get
rid of her extra flesh in the baths.  Five weeks of soaking
--five uninterrupted hours of it every day--had accomplished
her purpose and reduced her to the right proportions.

Those baths remove fat, and also skin-diseases. The
patients remain in the great tanks for hours at a time.
A dozen gentlemen and ladies occupy a tank together,
and amuse themselves with rompings and various games.
They have floating desks and tables, and they read or lunch
or play chess in water that is breast-deep. The tourist
can step in and view this novel spectacle if he chooses.
There's a poor-box, and he will have to contribute.
There are several of these big bathing-houses, and you can
always tell when you are near one of them by the romping
noises and shouts of laughter that proceed from it.
The water is running water, and changes all the time,
else a patient with a ringworm might take the bath with only
a partial success, since, while he was ridding himself of
the ringworm, he might catch the itch.

The next morning we wandered back up the green valley,
leisurely, with the curving walls of those bare and
stupendous precipices rising into the clouds before us.
I had never seen a clean, bare precipice stretching up
five thousand feet above me before, and I never shall
expect to see another one.  They exist, perhaps, but not
in places where one can easily get close to them.
This pile of stone is peculiar.  From its base to the
soaring tops of its mighty towers, all its lines and
all its details vaguely suggest human architecture.
There are rudimentary bow-windows, cornices, chimneys,
demarcations of stories, etc.  One could sit and stare up
there and study the features and exquisite graces of this
grand structure, bit by bit, and day after day, and never
weary his interest.  The termination, toward the town,
observed in profile, is the perfection of shape.
It comes down out of the clouds in a succession of rounded,
colossal, terracelike projections--a stairway for the gods;
at its head spring several lofty storm-scarred towers,
one after another, with faint films of vapor curling
always about them like spectral banners.  If there were
a king whose realms included the whole world, here would
be the place meet and proper for such a monarch.  He would
only need to hollow it out and put in the electric light.
He could give audience to a nation at a time under its roof.

Our search for those remains having failed, we inspected with
a glass the dim and distant track of an old-time avalanche
that once swept down from some pine-grown summits behind
the town and swept away the houses and buried the people;
then we struck down the road that leads toward the Rhone,
to see the famous Ladders.  These perilous things are
built against the perpendicular face of a cliff two or
three hundred feet high.  The peasants, of both sexes,
were climbing up and down them, with heavy loads on
their backs.  I ordered Harris to make the ascent, so I
could put the thrill and horror of it in my book, and he
accomplished the feat successfully, though a subagent,
for three francs, which I paid.  It makes me shudder yet
when I think of what I felt when I was clinging there
between heaven and earth in the person of that proxy.
At times the world swam around me, and I could hardly keep
from letting go, so dizzying was the appalling danger.
Many a person would have given up and descended, but I stuck
to my task, and would not yield until I had accomplished it.
I felt a just pride in my exploit, but I would not
have repeated it for the wealth of the world.  I shall
break my neck yet with some such foolhardy performance,
for warnings never seem to have any lasting effect on me.
When the people of the hotel found that I had been
climbing those crazy Ladders, it made me an object of
considerable attention.

Next morning, early, we drove to the Rhone valley and took
the train for Visp.  There we shouldered our knapsacks
and things, and set out on foot, in a tremendous rain,
up the winding gorge, toward Zermatt.  Hour after hour we
slopped along, by the roaring torrent, and under noble
Lesser Alps which were clothed in rich velvety green
all the way up and had little atomy Swiss homes perched
upon grassy benches along their mist-dimmed heights.

The rain continued to pour and the torrent to boom, and we
continued to enjoy both.  At the one spot where this torrent
tossed its white mane highest, and thundered loudest,
and lashed the big boulders fiercest, the canton had done
itself the honor to build the flimsiest wooden bridge
that exists in the world.  While we were walking over it,
along with a party of horsemen, I noticed that even
the larger raindrops made it shake.  I called Harris's
attention to it, and he noticed it, too.  It seemed
to me that if I owned an elephant that was a keepsake,
and I thought a good deal of him, I would think twice
before I would ride him over that bridge.

We climbed up to the village of St. Nicholas, about half
past four in the afternoon, waded ankle-deep through
the fertilizer-juice, and stopped at a new and nice hotel
close by the little church.  We stripped and went to bed,
and sent our clothes down to be baked.  And the horde
of soaked tourists did the same.  That chaos of clothing
got mixed in the kitchen, and there were consequences.
I did not get back the same drawers I sent down, when our
things came up at six-fifteen; I got a pair on a new plan.
They were merely a pair of white ruffle-cuffed absurdities,
hitched together at the top with a narrow band, and they did
not come quite down to my knees.  They were pretty enough,
but they made me feel like two people, and disconnected
at that.  The man must have been an idiot that got himself
up like that, to rough it in the Swiss mountains.
The shirt they brought me was shorter than the drawers,
and hadn't any sleeves to it--at least it hadn't anything
more than what Mr. Darwin would call "rudimentary" sleeves;
these had "edging" around them, but the bosom was
ridiculously plain.  The knit silk undershirt they brought
me was on a new plan, and was really a sensible thing;
it opened behind, and had pockets in it to put your
shoulder-blades in; but they did not seem to fit mine,
and so I found it a sort of uncomfortable garment.
They gave my bobtail coat to somebody else, and sent me
an ulster suitable for a giraffe.  I had to tie my collar on,
because there was no button behind on that foolish little shirt
which I described a while ago.

When I was dressed for dinner at six-thirty, I was too loose
in some places and too tight in others, and altogether I
felt slovenly and ill-conditioned. However, the people
at the table d'ho^te were no better off than I was;
they had everybody's clothes but their own on.  A long
stranger recognized his ulster as soon as he saw the tail
of it following me in, but nobody claimed my shirt or
my drawers, though I described them as well as I was able.
I gave them to the chambermaid that night when I went
to bed, and she probably found the owner, for my own
things were on a chair outside my door in the morning.

There was a lovable English clergyman who did
not get to the table d'ho^te at all.  His breeches
had turned up missing, and without any equivalent.
He said he was not more particular than other people,
but he had noticed that a clergyman at dinner without
any breeches was almost sure to excite remark.



CHAPTER XXXVI
[The Fiendish Fun of Alp-climbing]

We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas.  The church-bell
began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from
the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it
takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation
through his head.  Most church-bells in the world
are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping
sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin,
but the St. Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one
that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening
in its operation.  Still, it may have its right and its
excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every
citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be
any excuse for our church-bells at home, for their is no
family in America without a clock, and consequently there
is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful
sounds that issues from our steeples.  There is much more
profanity in America on Sunday than is all in the other six
days of the week put together, and it is of a more bitter
and malignant character than the week-day profanity, too.
It is produced by the cracked-pot clangor of the cheap
church-bells.

We build our churches almost without regard to cost;
we rear an edifice which is an adornment to the town, and we
gild it, and fresco it, and mortgage it, and do everything
we can think of to perfect it, and then spoil it all by
putting a bell on it which afflicts everybody who hears it,
giving some the headache, others St. Vitus's dance,
and the rest the blind staggers.

An American village at ten o'clock on a summer Sunday is
the quietest and peacefulest and holiest thing in nature;
but it is a pretty different thing half an hour later.
Mr. Poe's poem of the "Bells" stands incomplete to this day;
but it is well enough that it is so, for the public reciter
or "reader" who goes around trying to imitate the sounds
of the various sorts of bells with his voice would find
himself "up a stump" when he got to the church-bell
--as Joseph Addison would say.  The church is always trying
to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea
to reform itself a little, by way of example.  It is still
clinging to one or two things which were useful once,
but which are not useful now, neither are they ornamental.
One is the bell-ringing to remind a clock-caked town
that it is church-time, and another is the reading from
the pulpit of a tedious list of "notices" which everybody
who is interested has already read in the newspaper.
The clergyman even reads the hymn through--a relic
of an ancient time when hymn-books are scarce and costly;
but everybody has a hymn-book, now, and so the public reading
is no longer necessary.  It is not merely unnecessary,
it is generally painful; for the average clergyman could
not fire into his congregation with a shotgun and hit a worse
reader than himself, unless the weapon scattered shamefully.
I am not meaning to be flippant and irreverent, I am only
meaning to be truthful.  The average clergyman, in all
countries and of all denominations, is a very bad reader.
One would think he would at least learn how to read
the Lord's Prayer, by and by, but it is not so.  He races
through it as if he thought the quicker he got it in,
the sooner it would be answered.  A person who does not
appreciate the exceeding value of pauses, and does not know
how to measure their duration judiciously, cannot render
the grand simplicity and dignity of a composition like
that effectively.

We took a tolerably early breakfast, and tramped off
toward Zermatt through the reeking lanes of the village,
glad to get away from that bell.  By and by we had a fine
spectacle on our right.  It was the wall-like butt end of a
huge glacier, which looked down on us from an Alpine height
which was well up in the blue sky.  It was an astonishing
amount of ice to be compacted together in one mass.
We ciphered upon it and decided that it was not less than
several hundred feet from the base of the wall of solid
ice to the top of it--Harris believed it was really
twice that.  We judged that if St. Paul's, St. Peter's,
the Great Pyramid, the Strasburg Cathedral and the Capitol
in Washington were clustered against that wall, a man
sitting on its upper edge could not hang his hat on the top
of any one of them without reaching down three or four
hundred feet--a thing which, of course, no man could do.

To me, that mighty glacier was very beautiful.  I did
not imagine that anybody could find fault with it; but I
was mistaken.  Harris had been snarling for several days.
He was a rabid Protestant, and he was always saying:

"In the Protestant cantons you never see such poverty
and dirt and squalor as you do in this Catholic one;
you never see the lanes and alleys flowing with foulness;
you never see such wretched little sties of houses;
you never see an inverted tin turnip on top of a church
for a dome; and as for a church-bell, why, you never hear
a church-bell at all."

All this morning he had been finding fault, straight along.
First it was with the mud.  He said, "It ain't muddy in a
Protestant canton when it rains." Then it was with the dogs:
"They don't have those lop-eared dogs in a Protestant canton."
Then it was with the roads: "They don't leave the roads
to make themselves in a Protestant canton, the people make
them--and they make a road that IS a road, too." Next it
was the goats: "You never see a goat shedding tears
in a Protestant canton--a goat, there, is one of the
cheerfulest objects in nature." Next it was the chamois:
"You never see a Protestant chamois act like one of these
--they take a bite or two and go; but these fellows camp
with you and stay." Then it was the guide-boards: "In
a Protestant canton you couldn't get lost if you wanted to,
but you never see a guide-board in a Catholic canton."
Next, "You never see any flower-boxes in the windows,
here--never anything but now and then a cat--a torpid one;
but you take a Protestant canton: windows perfectly lovely
with flowers--and as for cats, there's just acres of them.
These folks in this canton leave a road to make itself,
and then fine you three francs if you 'trot' over it
--as if a horse could trot over such a sarcasm of a road."
Next about the goiter: "THEY talk about goiter!--I haven't
seen a goiter in this whole canton that I couldn't put
in a hat."

He had growled at everything, but I judged it would puzzle
him to find anything the matter with this majestic glacier.
I intimated as much; but he was ready, and said with surly
discontent: "You ought to see them in the Protestant cantons."

This irritated me.  But I concealed the feeling, and asked:

"What is the matter with this one?"

"Matter? Why, it ain't in any kind of condition.
They never take any care of a glacier here.  The moraine
has been spilling gravel around it, and got it all dirty."

"Why, man, THEY can't help that."

"THEY? You're right.  That is, they WON'T. They could
if they wanted to.  You never see a speck of dirt
on a Protestant glacier.  Look at the Rhone glacier.
It is fifteen miles long, and seven hundred feet think.
If this was a Protestant glacier you wouldn't see it looking
like this, I can tell you."

"That is nonsense.  What would they do with it?"

"They would whitewash it.  They always do."

I did not believe a word of this, but rather than have
trouble I let it go; for it is a waste of breath to argue
with a bigot.  I even doubted if the Rhone glacier WAS
in a Protestant canton; but I did not know, so I could
not make anything by contradicting a man who would
probably put me down at once with manufactured evidence.

About nine miles from St. Nicholas we crossed a bridge
over the raging torrent of the Visp, and came to a log
strip of flimsy fencing which was pretending to secure
people from tumbling over a perpendicular wall forty feet
high and into the river.  Three children were approaching;
one of them, a little girl, about eight years old,
was running; when pretty close to us she stumbled and fell,
and her feet shot under the rail of the fence and for a
moment projected over the stream.  It gave us a sharp shock,
for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground slanted
steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer impossibility;
but she managed to scramble up, and ran by us laughing.

We went forward and examined the place and saw the long
tracks which her feet had made in the dirt when they
darted over the verge.  If she had finished her trip she
would have struck some big rocks in the edge of the water,
and then the torrent would have snatched her downstream
among the half-covered boulders and she would have been
pounded to pulp in two minutes.  We had come exceedingly
near witnessing her death.

And now Harris's contrary nature and inborn selfishness
were striking manifested.  He has no spirit of self-denial.
He began straight off, and continued for an hour,
to express his gratitude that the child was not destroyed.
I never saw such a man.  That was the kind of person he was;
just so HE was gratified, he never cared anything about
anybody else.  I had noticed that trait in him, over and
over again.  Often, of course, it was mere heedlessness,
mere want of reflection.  Doubtless this may have been
the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard
to bar on that account--and after all, its bottom,
its groundwork, was selfishness.  There is no avoiding
that conclusion.  In the instance under consideration,
I did think the indecency of running on in that way might
occur to him; but no, the child was saved and he was glad,
that was sufficient--he cared not a straw for MY feelings,
or my loss of such a literary plum, snatched from my
very mouth at the instant it was ready to drop into it.
His selfishness was sufficient to place his own gratification
in being spared suffering clear before all concern for me,
his friend.  Apparently, he did not once reflect upon the
valuable details which would have fallen like a windfall
to me: fishing the child out--witnessing the surprise of
the family and the stir the thing would have made among the
peasants--then a Swiss funeral--then the roadside monument,
to be paid for by us and have our names mentioned in it.
And we should have gone into Baedeker and been immortal.
I was silent.  I was too much hurt to complain.  If he could
act so, and be so heedless and so frivolous at such a time,
and actually seem to glory in it, after all I had done for him,
I would have cut my hand off before I would let him see
that I was wounded.

We were approaching Zermatt; consequently, we were
approaching the renowned Matterhorn.  A month before,
this mountain had been only a name to us, but latterly
we had been moving through a steadily thickening double
row of pictures of it, done in oil, water, chromo, wood,
steel, copper, crayon, and photography, and so it had at
length become a shape to us--and a very distinct, decided,
and familiar one, too.  We were expecting to recognize
that mountain whenever or wherever we should run across it.
We were not deceived.  The monarch was far away when we
first saw him, but there was no such thing as mistaking him.
He has the rare peculiarity of standing by himself;
he is peculiarly steep, too, and is also most oddly shaped.
He towers into the sky like a colossal wedge, with the
upper third of its blade bent a little to the left.
The broad base of this monster wedge is planted upon
a grand glacier-paved Alpine platform whose elevation
is ten thousand feet above sea-level; as the wedge itself
is some five thousand feet high, it follows that its
apex is about fifteen thousand feet above sea-level.
So the whole bulk of this stately piece of rock, this
sky-cleaving monolith, is above the line of eternal snow.
Yet while all its giant neighbors have the look of being
built of solid snow, from their waists up, the Matterhorn
stands black and naked and forbidding, the year round,
or merely powdered or streaked with white in places,
for its sides are so steep that the snow cannot stay there.
Its strange form, its august isolation, and its majestic
unkinship with its own kind, make it--so to speak--the Napoleon
of the mountain world.  "Grand, gloomy, and peculiar,"
is a phrase which fits it as aptly as it fitted the great
captain.

Think of a monument a mile high, standing on a pedestal
two miles high! This is what the Matterhorn is--a monument.
Its office, henceforth, for all time, will be to keep
watch and ward over the secret resting-place of the young
Lord Douglas, who, in 1865, was precipitated from the
summit over a precipice four thousand feet high, and never
seen again.  No man ever had such a monument as this before;
the most imposing of the world's other monuments are
but atoms compared to it; and they will perish, and their
places will pass from memory, but this will remain. [1]

1.  The accident which cost Lord Douglas his life (see
    Chapter xii) also cost the lives of three other men.
    These three fell four-fifths of a mile, and their bodies
    were afterward found, lying side by side, upon a glacier,
    whence they were borne to Zermatt and buried in the
churchyard.
    The remains of Lord Douglas have never been found.
    The secret of his sepulture, like that of Moses, must remain
    a mystery always.

A walk from St. Nicholas to Zermatt is a wonderful experience.
Nature is built on a stupendous plan in that region.
One marches continually between walls that are piled
into the skies, with their upper heights broken into
a confusion of sublime shapes that gleam white and cold
against the background of blue; and here and there one
sees a big glacier displaying its grandeurs on the top
of a precipice, or a graceful cascade leaping and flashing
down the green declivities.  There is nothing tame,
or cheap, or trivial--it is all magnificent.  That short
valley is a picture-gallery of a notable kind, for it
contains no mediocrities; from end to end the Creator
has hung it with His masterpieces.

We made Zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine hours out
from St. Nicholas.  Distance, by guide-book, twelve miles;
by pedometer seventy-two. We were in the heart and home
of the mountain-climbers, now, as all visible things
testified.  The snow-peaks did not hold themselves aloof,
in aristocratic reserve; they nestled close around,
in a friendly, sociable way; guides, with the ropes and
axes and other implements of their fearful calling slung
about their persons, roosted in a long line upon a stone
wall in front of the hotel, and waited for customers;
sun-burnt climbers, in mountaineering costume, and followed
by their guides and porters, arrived from time to time,
from breakneck expeditions among the peaks and glaciers
of the High Alps; male and female tourists, on mules,
filed by, in a continuous procession, hotelward-bound from
wild adventures which would grow in grandeur very time
they were described at the English or American fireside,
and at last outgrow the possible itself.

We were not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home
of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations;
no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous
Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine
summits without a guide.  I was not equal to imagining
a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize him,
while looking straight at him at short range.  I would rather
face whole Hyde Parks of artillery than the ghastly forms
of death which he has faced among the peaks and precipices
of the mountains.  There is probably no pleasure equal
to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is
a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can
find pleasure in it.  I have not jumped to this conclusion;
I have traveled to it per gravel-train, so to speak.
I have thought the thing all out, and am quite sure I
am right.  A born climber's appetite for climbing is hard
to satisfy; when it comes upon him he is like a starving
man with a feast before him; he may have other business
on hand, but it must wait.  Mr. Girdlestone had had
his usual summer holiday in the Alps, and had spent it
in his usual way, hunting for unique chances to break
his neck; his vacation was over, and his luggage packed
for England, but all of a sudden a hunger had come upon
him to climb the tremendous Weisshorn once more, for he
had heard of a new and utterly impossible route up it.
His baggage was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend,
laden with knapsacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens
of milk, were just setting out.  They would spend
the night high up among the snows, somewhere, and get
up at two in the morning and finish the enterprise.
I had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it down
--a feat which Mr. Girdlestone, with all his fortitude,
could not do.

Even ladies catch the climbing mania, and are unable to
throw it off.  A famous climber, of that sex, had attempted
the Weisshorn a few days before our arrival, and she
and her guides had lost their way in a snow-storm high up
among the peaks and glaciers and been forced to wander
around a good while before they could find a way down.
When this lady reached the bottom, she had been on her
feet twenty-three hours!

Our guides, hired on the Gemmi, were already at Zermatt
when we reached there.  So there was nothing to interfere
with our getting up an adventure whenever we should
choose the time and the object.  I resolved to devote
my first evening in Zermatt to studying up the subject
of Alpine climbing, by way of preparation.

I read several books, and here are some of the things
I found out.  One's shoes must be strong and heavy,
and have pointed hobnails in them.  The alpenstock
must be of the best wood, for if it should break,
loss of life might be the result.  One should carry an ax,
to cut steps in the ice with, on the great heights.
There must be a ladder, for there are steep bits of rock
which can be surmounted with this instrument--or this
utensil--but could not be surmounted without it;
such an obstruction has compelled the tourist to waste
hours hunting another route, when a ladder would have
saved him all trouble.  One must have from one hundred
and fifty to five hundred feet of strong rope, to be used
in lowering the party down steep declivities which are
too steep and smooth to be traversed in any other way.
One must have a steel hook, on another rope--a very
useful thing; for when one is ascending and comes to a low
bluff which is yet too high for the ladder, he swings
this rope aloft like a lasso, the hook catches at the top
of the bluff, and then the tourist climbs the rope,
hand over hand--being always particular to try and forget
that if the hook gives way he will never stop falling
till he arrives in some part of Switzerland where they
are not expecting him.  Another important thing--there
must be a rope to tie the whole party together with,
so that if one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless
chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the rope
and save him.  One must have a silk veil, to protect
his face from snow, sleet, hail and gale, and colored
goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous enemy,
snow-blindness. Finally, there must be some porters,
to carry provisions, wine and scientific instruments,
and also blanket bags for the party to sleep in.

I closed my readings with a fearful adventure which
Mr. Whymper once had on the Matterhorn when he was prowling
around alone, five thousand feet above the town of Breil.
He was edging his way gingerly around the corner of a
precipice where the upper edge of a sharp declivity
of ice-glazed snow joined it.  This declivity swept
down a couple of hundred feet, into a gully which curved
around and ended at a precipice eight hundred feet high,
overlooking a glacier.  His foot slipped, and he fell.

He says:

"My knapsack brought my head down first, and I pitched into
some rocks about a dozen feet below; they caught something,
and tumbled me off the edge, head over heels, into the gully;
the baton was dashed from my hands, and I whirled downward
in a series of bounds, each longer than the last; now over ice,
now into rocks, striking my head four or five times,
each time with increased force.  The last bound sent me
spinning through the air in a leap of fifty or sixty feet,
from one side of the gully to the other, and I struck
the rocks, luckily, with the whole of my left side.
They caught my clothes for a moment, and I fell back on
to the snow with motion arrested.  My head fortunately
came the right side up, and a few frantic catches brought
me to a halt, in the neck of the gully and on the verge
of the precipice.  Baton, hat, and veil skimmed by
and disappeared, and the crash of the rocks--which I had
started--as they fell on to the glacier, told how narrow
had been the escape from utter destruction.  As it was,
I fell nearly two hundred feet in seven or eight bounds.
Ten feet more would have taken me in one gigantic leaps
of eight hundred feet on to the glacier below.

"The situation was sufficiently serious.  The rocks could
not be let go for a moment, and the blood was spurting
out of more than twenty cuts.  The most serious ones were
in the head, and I vainly tried to close them with one hand,
while holding on with the other.  It was useless;
the blood gushed out in blinding jets at each pulsation.
At last, in a moment of inspiration, I kicked out a big
lump of snow and struck it as plaster on my head.
The idea was a happy one, and the flow of blood diminished.
Then, scrambling up, I got, not a moment too soon, to a
place of safety, and fainted away.  The sun was setting
when consciousness returned, and it was pitch-dark before
the Great Staircase was descended; but by a combination
of luck and care, the whole four thousand seven hundred
feet of descent to Breil was accomplished without a slip,
or once missing the way."

His wounds kept him abed some days.  Then he got up
and climbed that mountain again.  That is the way with
a true Alp-climber; the more fun he has, the more he wants.



CHAPTER XXXVII
[Our Imposing Column Starts Upward]

After I had finished my readings, I was no longer myself;
I was tranced, uplifted, intoxicated, by the almost
incredible perils and adventures I had been following
my authors through, and the triumphs I had been sharing
with them.  I sat silent some time, then turned to Harris
and said:

"My mind is made up."

Something in my tone struck him: and when he glanced
at my eye and read what was written there, his face
paled perceptibly.  He hesitated a moment, then said:

"Speak."

I answered, with perfect calmness:

"I will ascend the Riffelberg."

If I had shot my poor friend he could not have fallen from
his chair more suddenly.  If I had been his father he could
not have pleaded harder to get me to give up my purpose.
But I turned a deaf ear to all he said.  When he perceived
at last that nothing could alter my determination,
he ceased to urge, and for a while the deep silence was
broken only by his sobs.  I sat in marble resolution,
with my eyes fixed upon vacancy, for in spirit I was already
wrestling with the perils of the mountains, and my friend
sat gazing at me in adoring admiration through his tears.
At last he threw himself upon me in a loving embrace and
exclaimed in broken tones:

"Your Harris will never desert you.  We will die together."

I cheered the noble fellow with praises, and soon his
fears were forgotten and he was eager for the adventure.
He wanted to summon the guides at once and leave at
two in the morning, as he supposed the custom was;
but I explained that nobody was looking at that hour;
and that the start in the dark was not usually made from
the village but from the first night's resting-place
on the mountain side.  I said we would leave the village
at 3 or 4 P.M. on the morrow; meantime he could notify
the guides, and also let the public know of the attempt
which we proposed to make.

I went to bed, but not to sleep.  No man can sleep when he
is about to undertake one of these Alpine exploits.
I tossed feverishly all night long, and was glad enough
when I heard the clock strike half past eleven and knew it
was time to get up for dinner.  I rose, jaded and rusty,
and went to the noon meal, where I found myself the center
of interest and curiosity; for the news was already abroad.
It is not easy to eat calmly when you are a lion; but it is
very pleasant, nevertheless.

As usual, at Zermatt, when a great ascent is about to
be undertaken, everybody, native and foreign, laid aside
his own projects and took up a good position to observe
the start.  The expedition consisted of 198 persons,
including the mules; or 205, including the cows.
As follows:

CHIEFS OF SERVICE SUBORDINATES

Myself 1 Veterinary Surgeon Mr. Harris 1 Butler 17
Guides 12 Waiters 4 Surgeons 1 Footman 1 Geologist 1
Barber 1 Botanist 1 Head Cook 3 Chaplains 9 Assistants
15 Barkeepers 1 Confectionery Artist 1 Latinist

TRANSPORTATION, ETC.

27 Porters 3 Coarse Washers and Ironers 44 Mules 1 Fine
ditto 44 Muleteers 7 Cows 2 Milkers

Total, 154 men, 51 animals.  Grand Total, 205.

RATIONS, ETC.  APPARATUS

16 Cases Hams 25 Spring Mattresses 2 Barrels Flour 2
Hair ditto 22 Barrels Whiskey Bedding for same 1 Barrel
Sugar 2 Mosquito-nets 1 Keg Lemons 29 Tents 2,000 Cigars
Scientific Instruments 1 Barrel Pies 97 Ice-axes 1 Ton
of Pemmican 5 Cases Dynamite 143 Pair Crutches 7 Cans
Nitroglycerin 2 Barrels Arnica 22 40-foot Ladders 1 Bale
of Lint 2 Miles of Rope 27 Kegs Paregoric 154 Umbrellas

It was full four o'clock in the afternoon before my cavalcade
was entirely ready.  At that hour it began to move.
In point of numbers and spectacular effect, it was the most
imposing expedition that had ever marched from Zermatt.

I commanded the chief guide to arrange the men and animals
in single file, twelve feet apart, and lash them all
together on a strong rope.  He objected that the first
two miles was a dead level, with plenty of room, and that
the rope was never used except in very dangerous places.
But I would not listen to that.  My reading had taught
me that many serious accidents had happened in the Alps
simply from not having the people tied up soon enough;
I was not going to add one to the list.  The guide then
obeyed my order.

When the procession stood at ease, roped together,
and ready to move, I never saw a finer sight.  It was 3,122
feet long--over half a mile; every man and me was on foot,
and had on his green veil and his blue goggles, and his
white rag around his hat, and his coil of rope over one
shoulder and under the other, and his ice-ax in his belt,
and carried his alpenstock in his left hand, his umbrella
(closed) in his right, and his crutches slung at his back.
The burdens of the pack-mules and the horns of the cows
were decked with the Edelweiss and the Alpine rose.

I and my agent were the only persons mounted.  We were
in the post of danger in the extreme rear, and tied
securely to five guides apiece.  Our armor-bearers carried
our ice-axes, alpenstocks, and other implements for us.
We were mounted upon very small donkeys, as a measure
of safety; in time of peril we could straighten our legs
and stand up, and let the donkey walk from under.
Still, I cannot recommend this sort of animal--at least
for excursions of mere pleasure--because his ears interrupt
the view.  I and my agent possessed the regulation
mountaineering costumes, but concluded to leave them behind.
Out of respect for the great numbers of tourists of both
sexes who would be assembled in front of the hotels
to see us pass, and also out of respect for the many
tourists whom we expected to encounter on our expedition,
we decided to make the ascent in evening dress.

We watered the caravan at the cold stream which rushes
down a trough near the end of the village, and soon
afterward left the haunts of civilization behind us.
About half past five o'clock we arrived at a bridge which
spans the Visp, and after throwing over a detachment to see
if it was safe, the caravan crossed without accident.
The way now led, by a gentle ascent, carpeted with
fresh green grass, to the church at Winkelmatten.
Without stopping to examine this edifice, I executed
a flank movement to the right and crossed the bridge
over the Findelenbach, after first testing its strength.
Here I deployed to the right again, and presently entered
an inviting stretch of meadowland which was unoccupied save
by a couple of deserted huts toward the furthest extremity.
These meadows offered an excellent camping-place. We
pitched our tents, supped, established a proper grade,
recorded the events of the day, and then went to bed.

We rose at two in the morning and dressed by candle-light. It
was a dismal and chilly business.  A few stars were shining,
but the general heavens were overcast, and the great shaft
of the Matterhorn was draped in a cable pall of clouds.
The chief guide advised a delay; he said he feared it
was going to rain.  We waited until nine o'clock, and then
got away in tolerably clear weather.

Our course led up some terrific steeps, densely wooded with
larches and cedars, and traversed by paths which the rains
had guttered and which were obstructed by loose stones.
To add to the danger and inconvenience, we were constantly
meeting returning tourists on foot and horseback,
and as constantly being crowded and battered by ascending
tourists who were in a hurry and wanted to get by.

Our troubles thickened.  About the middle of the afternoon
the seventeen guides called a halt and held a consultation.
After consulting an hour they said their first suspicion
remained intact--that is to say, they believed they
were lost.  I asked if they did not KNOW it? No, they said,
they COULDN'T absolutely know whether they were lost or not,
because none of them had ever been in that part of the
country before.  They had a strong instinct that they
were lost, but they had no proofs--except that they
did not know where they were.  They had met no tourists
for some time, and they considered that a suspicious sign.

Plainly we were in an ugly fix.  The guides were naturally
unwilling to go alone and seek a way out of the difficulty;
so we all went together.  For better security we moved
slow and cautiously, for the forest was very dense.
We did not move up the mountain, but around it, hoping to
strike across the old trail.  Toward nightfall, when we
were about tired out, we came up against a rock as big
as a cottage.  This barrier took all the remaining spirit
out of the men, and a panic of fear and despair ensued.
They moaned and wept, and said they should never see
their homes and their dear ones again.  Then they began
to upbraid me for bringing them upon this fatal expedition.
Some even muttered threats against me.

Clearly it was no time to show weakness.  So I made
a speech in which I said that other Alp-climbers had been
in as perilous a position as this, and yet by courage
and perseverance had escaped.  I promised to stand by them,
I promised to rescue them.  I closed by saying we had plenty
of provisions to maintain us for quite a siege--and did they
suppose Zermatt would allow half a mile of men and mules
to mysteriously disappear during any considerable time,
right above their noses, and make no inquiries? No,
Zermatt would send out searching-expeditions and we should be
saved.

This speech had a great effect.  The men pitched the tents
with some little show of cheerfulness, and we were snugly
under cover when the night shut down.  I now reaped
the reward of my wisdom in providing one article which is
not mentioned in any book of Alpine adventure but this.
I refer to the paregoric.  But for that beneficent drug,
would have not one of those men slept a moment during that
fearful night.  But for that gentle persuader they must
have tossed, unsoothed, the night through; for the whiskey
was for me.  Yes, they would have risen in the morning
unfitted for their heavy task.  As it was, everybody slept
but my agent and me--only we and the barkeepers.
I would not permit myself to sleep at such a time.
I considered myself responsible for all those lives.
I meant to be on hand and ready, in case of avalanches
up there, but I did not know it then.

We watched the weather all through that awful night,
and kept an eye on the barometer, to be prepared for
the least change.  There was not the slightest change
recorded by the instrument, during the whole time.
Words cannot describe the comfort that that friendly,
hopeful, steadfast thing was to me in that season
of trouble.  It was a defective barometer, and had no hand
but the stationary brass pointer, but I did not know that
until afterward.  If I should be in such a situation again,
I should not wish for any barometer but that one.

All hands rose at two in the morning and took breakfast,
and as soon as it was light we roped ourselves together
and went at that rock.  For some time we tried the hook-rope
and other means of scaling it, but without success--that is,
without perfect success.  The hook caught once, and Harris
started up it hand over hand, but the hold broke and if
there had not happened to be a chaplain sitting underneath
at the time, Harris would certainly have been crippled.
As it was, it was the chaplain.  He took to his crutches,
and I ordered the hook-rope to be laid aside.
It was too dangerous an implement where so many people
are standing around.

We were puzzled for a while; then somebody thought of
the ladders.  One of these was leaned against the rock,
and the men went up it tied together in couples.
Another ladder was sent up for use in descending.
At the end of half an hour everybody was over, and that rock
was conquered.  We gave our first grand shout of triumph.
But the joy was short-lived, for somebody asked how we were
going to get the animals over.

This was a serious difficulty; in fact, it was an impossibility.
The courage of the men began to waver immediately; once more
we were threatened with a panic.  But when the danger
was most imminent, we were saved in a mysterious way.
A mule which had attracted attention from the beginning
by its disposition to experiment, tried to eat a five-pound
can of nitroglycerin.  This happened right alongside
the rock.  The explosion threw us all to the ground,
and covered us with dirt and debris; it frightened
us extremely, too, for the crash it made was deafening,
and the violence of the shock made the ground tremble.
However, we were grateful, for the rock was gone.
Its place was occupied by a new cellar, about thirty
feet across, by fifteen feet deep.  The explosion was
heard as far as Zermatt; and an hour and a half afterward,
many citizens of that town were knocked down and quite
seriously injured by descending portions of mule meat,
frozen solid.  This shows, better than any estimate
in figures, how high the experimenter went.

We had nothing to do, now, but bridge the cellar and proceed
on our way.  With a cheer the men went at their work.
I attended to the engineering, myself.  I appointed a strong
detail to cut down trees with ice-axes and trim them for
piers to support the bridge.  This was a slow business,
for ice-axes are not good to cut wood with.  I caused
my piers to be firmly set up in ranks in the cellar,
and upon them I laid six of my forty-foot ladders,
side by side, and laid six more on top of them.
Upon this bridge I caused a bed of boughs to be spread,
and on top of the boughs a bed of earth six inches deep.
I stretched ropes upon either side to serve as railings,
and then my bridge was complete.  A train of elephants
could have crossed it in safety and comfort.  By nightfall
the caravan was on the other side and the ladders were
taken up.

Next morning we went on in good spirits for a while,
though our way was slow and difficult, by reason of the
steep and rocky nature of the ground and the thickness
of the forest; but at last a dull despondency crept into
the men's faces and it was apparent that not only they,
but even the guides, were now convinced that we were lost.
The fact that we still met no tourists was a circumstance
that was but too significant.  Another thing seemed to
suggest that we were not only lost, but very badly lost;
for there must surely be searching-parties on the road
before this time, yet we had seen no sign of them.

Demoralization was spreading; something must be done,
and done quickly, too.  Fortunately, I am not unfertile
in expedients.  I contrived one now which commended itself
to all, for it promised well.  I took three-quarters
of a mile of rope and fastened one end of it around
the waist of a guide, and told him to go find the road,
while the caravan waited.  I instructed him to guide himself
back by the rope, in case of failure; in case of success,
he was to give the rope a series of violent jerks,
whereupon the Expedition would go to him at once.
He departed, and in two minutes had disappeared among
the trees.  I payed out the rope myself, while everybody
watched the crawling thing with eager eyes.  The rope
crept away quite slowly, at times, at other times with
some briskness.  Twice or thrice we seemed to get the signal,
and a shout was just ready to break from the men's lips
when they perceived it was a false alarm.  But at last,
when over half a mile of rope had slidden away, it stopped
gliding and stood absolutely still--one minute--two
minutes--three--while we held our breath and watched.

Was the guide resting? Was he scanning the country from
some high point? Was he inquiring of a chance mountaineer?
Stop,--had he fainted from excess of fatigue and anxiety?

This thought gave us a shock.  I was in the very first act
of detailing an Expedition to succor him, when the cord
was assailed with a series of such frantic jerks that I
could hardly keep hold of it.  The huzza that went up,
then, was good to hear.  "Saved! saved!" was the word
that rang out, all down the long rank of the caravan.

We rose up and started at once.  We found the route to be
good enough for a while, but it began to grow difficult,
by and by, and this feature steadily increased.  When we
judged we had gone half a mile, we momently expected
to see the guide; but no, he was not visible anywhere;
neither was he waiting, for the rope was still moving,
consequently he was doing the same.  This argued that he
had not found the road, yet, but was marching to it
with some peasant.  There was nothing for us to do but
plod along--and this we did.  At the end of three hours
we were still plodding.  This was not only mysterious,
but exasperating.  And very fatiguing, too; for we had
tried hard, along at first, to catch up with the guide,
but had only fagged ourselves, in vain; for although he
was traveling slowly he was yet able to go faster than the
hampered caravan over such ground.

At three in the afternoon we were nearly dead with
exhaustion--and still the rope was slowly gliding out.
The murmurs against the guide had been growing steadily,
and at last they were become loud and savage.
A mutiny ensued.  The men refused to proceed.  They declared
that we had been traveling over and over the same ground
all day, in a kind of circle.  They demanded that our
end of the rope be made fast to a tree, so as to halt
the guide until we could overtake him and kill him.
This was not an unreasonable requirement, so I gave the order.

As soon as the rope was tied, the Expedition moved
forward with that alacrity which the thirst for
vengeance usually inspires.  But after a tiresome march
of almost half a mile, we came to a hill covered thick
with a crumbly rubbish of stones, and so steep that no
man of us all was now in a condition to climb it.
Every attempt failed, and ended in crippling somebody.
Within twenty minutes I had five men on crutches.
Whenever a climber tried to assist himself by the rope,
it yielded and let him tumble backward.  The frequency
of this result suggested an idea to me.  I ordered
the caravan to 'bout face and form in marching order;
I then made the tow-rope fast to the rear mule, and gave
the command:

"Mark time--by the right flank--forward--march!"

The procession began to move, to the impressive strains
of a battle-chant, and I said to myself, "Now, if the rope
don't break I judge THIS will fetch that guide into the camp."
I watched the rope gliding down the hill, and presently
when I was all fixed for triumph I was confronted
by a bitter disappointment; there was no guide tied
to the rope, it was only a very indignant old black ram.
The fury of the baffled Expedition exceeded all bounds.
They even wanted to wreak their unreasoning vengeance on this
innocent dumb brute.  But I stood between them and their prey,
menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks,
and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder,
and it was directly over my corpse.  Even as I spoke I
saw that my doom was sealed, except a miracle supervened
to divert these madmen from their fell purpose.  I see
the sickening wall of weapons now; I see that advancing
host as I saw it then, I see the hate in those cruel eyes;
I remember how I drooped my head upon my breast,
I feel again the sudden earthquake shock in my rear,
administered by the very ram I was sacrificing myself to save;
I hear once more the typhoon of laughter that burst from
the assaulting column as I clove it from van to rear
like a Sepoy shot from a Rodman gun.

I was saved.  Yes, I was saved, and by the merciful instinct
of ingratitude which nature had planted in the breast
of that treacherous beast.  The grace which eloquence
had failed to work in those men's hearts, had been wrought
by a laugh.  The ram was set free and my life was spared.

We lived to find out that that guide had deserted us as soon
as he had placed a half-mile between himself and us.
To avert suspicion, he had judged it best that the line
should continue to move; so he caught that ram, and at
the time that he was sitting on it making the rope fast
to it, we were imagining that he was lying in a swoon,
overcome by fatigue and distress.  When he allowed the ram
to get up it fell to plunging around, trying to rid itself
of the rope, and this was the signal which we had risen
up with glad shouts to obey.  We had followed this ram
round and round in a circle all day--a thing which was
proven by the discovery that we had watered the Expedition
seven times at one and same spring in seven hours.
As expert a woodman as I am, I had somehow failed to notice
this until my attention was called to it by a hog.
This hog was always wallowing there, and as he was the
only hog we saw, his frequent repetition, together with
his unvarying similarity to himself, finally caused me
to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led
me to the deduction that this must be the same spring,
also--which indeed it was.

I made a note of this curious thing, as showing
in a striking manner the relative difference between
glacial action and the action of the hog.  It is now
a well-established fact that glaciers move; I consider
that my observations go to show, with equal conclusiveness,
that a hog in a spring does not move.  I shall be glad
to receive the opinions of other observers upon this point.

To return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide,
and then I shall be done with him.  After leaving the ram
tied to the rope, he had wandered at large a while,
and then happened to run across a cow.  Judging that
a cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took
her by the tail, and the result justified his judgment.
She nibbled her leisurely way downhill till it was near
milking-time, then she struck for home and towed him
into Zermatt.



CHAPTER XXXVIII
[I Conquer the Gorner Grat]

We went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram
had brought us.  The men were greatly fatigued.
Their conviction that we were lost was forgotten in the cheer
of a good supper, and before the reaction had a chance
to set in, I loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed.

Next morning I was considering in my mind our desperate
situation and trying to think of a remedy, when Harris
came to me with a Baedeker map which showed conclusively
that the mountain we were on was still in Switzerland--yes,
every part of it was in Switzerland.  So we were not lost,
after all.  This was an immense relief; it lifted the weight
of two such mountains from my breast.  I immediately
had the news disseminated and the map was exhibited.
The effect was wonderful.  As soon as the men saw with
their own eyes that they knew where they were, and that it
was only the summit that was lost and not themselves,
they cheered up instantly and said with one accord,
let the summit take care of itself.

Our distresses being at an end, I now determined to rest
the men in camp and give the scientific department of the
Expedition a chance.  First, I made a barometric observation,
to get our altitude, but I could not perceive that there
was any result.  I knew, by my scientific reading,
that either thermometers or barometers ought to be boiled,
to make them accurate; I did not know which it was,
so I boiled them both.  There was still no result;
so I examined these instruments and discovered that they
possessed radical blemishes: the barometer had no hand
but the brass pointer and the ball of the thermometer was
stuffed with tin-foil. I might have boiled those things
to rags, and never found out anything.

I hunted up another barometer; it was new and perfect.
I boiled it half an hour in a pot of bean soup which
the cooks were making.  The result was unexpected: the
instrument was not affecting at all, but there was such
a strong barometer taste to the soup that the head cook,
who was a most conscientious person, changed its name
in the bill of fare.  The dish was so greatly liked by all,
that I ordered the cook to have barometer soup every day.
It was believed that the barometer might eventually
be injured, but I did not care for that.  I had demonstrated
to my satisfaction that it could not tell how high
a mountain was, therefore I had no real use for it.
Changes in the weather I could take care of without it;
I did not wish to know when the weather was going to be good,
what I wanted to know was when it was going to be bad,
and this I could find out from Harris's corns.  Harris had
had his corns tested and regulated at the government
observatory in Heidelberg, and one could depend upon them
with confidence.  So I transferred the new barometer to
the cooking department, to be used for the official mess.
It was found that even a pretty fair article of soup could
be made from the defective barometer; so I allowed that one
to be transferred to the subordinate mess.

I next boiled the thermometer, and got a most excellent result;
the mercury went up to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
In the opinion of the other scientists of the Expedition,
this seemed to indicate that we had attained the extraordinary
altitude of two hundred thousand feet above sea-level.
Science places the line of eternal snow at about ten thousand
feet above sea-level. There was no snow where we were,
consequently it was proven that the eternal snow-line
ceases somewhere above the ten-thousand-foot level and
does not begin any more.  This was an interesting fact,
and one which had not been observed by any observer before.
It was as valuable as interesting, too, since it would open
up the deserted summits of the highest Alps to population
and agriculture.  It was a proud thing to be where we were,
yet it caused us a pang to reflect that but for that ram we
might just as well been two hundred thousand feet higher.

The success of my last experiment induced me to try an
experiment with my photographic apparatus.  I got it out,
and boiled one of my cameras, but the thing was a failure;
it made the wood swell up and burst, and I could not see
that the lenses were any better than they were before.

I now concluded to boil a guide.  It might improve him,
it could not impair his usefulness.  But I was not
allowed to proceed.  Guides have no feeling for science,
and this one would not consent to be made uncomfortable
in its interest.

In the midst of my scientific work, one of those
needless accidents happened which are always occurring
among the ignorant and thoughtless.  A porter shot
at a chamois and missed it and crippled the Latinist.
This was not a serious matter to me, for a Latinist's
duties are as well performed on crutches as otherwise
--but the fact remained that if the Latinist had not
happened to be in the way a mule would have got
that load.  That would have been quite another matter,
for when it comes down to a question of value there is
a palpable difference between a Latinist and a mule.
I could not depend on having a Latinist in the right
place every time; so, to make things safe, I ordered
that in the future the chamois must not be hunted within
limits of the camp with any other weapon than the forefinger.

My nerves had hardly grown quiet after this affair when
they got another shake-up--one which utterly unmanned
me for a moment: a rumor swept suddenly through the camp
that one of the barkeepers had fallen over a precipice!

However, it turned out that it was only a chaplain.
I had laid in an extra force of chaplains, purposely to
be prepared for emergencies like this, but by some
unaccountable oversight had come away rather short-handed
in the matter of barkeepers.

On the following morning we moved on, well refreshed and in
good spirits.  I remember this day with peculiar pleasure,
because it saw our road restored to us.  Yes, we found
our road again, and in quite an extraordinary way.
We had plodded along some two hours and a half, when we came
up against a solid mass of rock about twenty feet high.
I did not need to be instructed by a mule this time.
I was already beginning to know more than any mule in
the Expedition.  I at once put in a blast of dynamite,
and lifted that rock out of the way.  But to my surprise
and mortification, I found that there had been a chalet
on top of it.

I picked up such members of the family as fell in my vicinity,
and subordinates of my corps collected the rest.
None of these poor people were injured, happily, but they
were much annoyed.  I explained to the head chaleteer
just how the thing happened, and that I was only searching
for the road, and would certainly have given him timely
notice if I had known he was up there.  I said I had
meant no harm, and hoped I had not lowered myself in
his estimation by raising him a few rods in the air.
I said many other judicious things, and finally when I
offered to rebuild his chalet, and pay for the breakages,
and throw in the cellar, he was mollified and satisfied.
He hadn't any cellar at all, before; he would not have
as good a view, now, as formerly, but what he had lost
in view he had gained in cellar, by exact measurement.
He said there wasn't another hole like that in the mountains
--and he would have been right if the late mule had not tried
to eat up the nitroglycerin.

I put a hundred and sixteen men at work, and they rebuilt
the chalet from its own debris in fifteen minutes.
It was a good deal more picturesque than it was before,
too.  The man said we were now on the Feil-Stutz, above
the Schwegmatt--information which I was glad to get,
since it gave us our position to a degree of particularity
which we had not been accustomed to for a day or so.
We also learned that we were standing at the foot
of the Riffelberg proper, and that the initial chapter
of our work was completed.

We had a fine view, from here, of the energetic Visp,
as it makes its first plunge into the world from under a huge
arch of solid ice, worn through the foot-wall of the great
Gorner Glacier; and we could also see the Furggenbach,
which is the outlet of the Furggen Glacier.

The mule-road to the summit of the Riffelberg passed right
in front of the chalet, a circumstance which we almost
immediately noticed, because a procession of tourists was
filing along it pretty much all the time.  [1] The chaleteer's
business consisted in furnishing refreshments to tourists.
My blast had interrupted this trade for a few minutes,
by breaking all the bottles on the place; but I gave
the man a lot of whiskey to sell for Alpine champagne,
and a lot of vinegar which would answer for Rhine wine,
consequently trade was soon as brisk as ever.

1.  "Pretty much" may not be elegant English, but it is
    high time it was.  There is no elegant word or phrase
    which means just what it means.--M.T.

Leaving the Expedition outside to rest, I quartered myself
in the chalet, with Harris, proposing to correct my journals
and scientific observations before continuing the ascent.
I had hardly begun my work when a tall, slender, vigorous
American youth of about twenty-three, who was on his
way down the mountain, entered and came toward me with
that breeze self-complacency which is the adolescent's
idea of the well-bred ease of the man of the world.
His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle,
and he had all the look of an American person who would
be likely to begin his signature with an initial,
and spell his middle name out.  He introduced himself,
smiling a smirky smile borrowed from the courtiers
of the stage, extended a fair-skinned talon, and while
he gripped my hand in it he bent his body forward
three times at the hips, as the stage courtier does,
and said in the airiest and most condescending
and patronizing way--I quite remember his exact language:

"Very glad to make your acquaintance, 'm sure; very glad indeed,
assure you.  I've read all your little efforts and greatly
admired them, and when I heard you were here, I ..."

I indicated a chair, and he sat down.  This grandee was
the grandson of an American of considerable note in his day,
and not wholly forgotten yet--a man who came so near
being a great man that he was quite generally accounted
one while he lived.

I slowly paced the floor, pondering scientific problems,
and heard this conversation:

GRANDSON.  First visit to Europe?

HARRIS.  Mine? Yes.

G.S. (With a soft reminiscent sigh suggestive of bygone
joys that may be tasted in their freshness but once.)
Ah, I know what it is to you.  A first visit!--ah,
the romance of it! I wish I could feel it again.

H. Yes, I find it exceeds all my dreams.  It is enchantment.
I go...

G.S. (With a dainty gesture of the hand signifying "Spare
me your callow enthusiasms, good friend.") Yes, _I_ know,
I know; you go to cathedrals, and exclaim; and you drag
through league-long picture-galleries and exclaim; and you
stand here, and there, and yonder, upon historic ground,
and continue to exclaim; and you are permeated with
your first crude conceptions of Art, and are proud
and happy.  Ah, yes, proud and happy--that expresses it.
Yes-yes, enjoy it--it is right--it is an innocent revel.

H. And you? Don't you do these things now?

G.S. I! Oh, that is VERY good! My dear sir, when you
are as old a traveler as I am, you will not ask such
a question as that.  _I_ visit the regulation gallery,
moon around the regulation cathedral, do the worn round
of the regulation sights, YET?--Excuse me!

H. Well, what DO you do, then?

G.S. Do? I flit--and flit--for I am ever on the wing--but I
avoid the herd.  Today I am in Paris, tomorrow in Berlin,
anon in Rome; but you would look for me in vain in the
galleries of the Louvre or the common resorts of the
gazers in those other capitals.  If you would find me,
you must look in the unvisited nooks and corners where
others never think of going.  One day you will find me
making myself at home in some obscure peasant's cabin,
another day you will find me in some forgotten castle
worshiping some little gem or art which the careless eye
has overlooked and which the unexperienced would despise;
again you will find me as guest in the inner sanctuaries
of palaces while the herd is content to get a hurried
glimpse of the unused chambers by feeing a servant.

H. You are a GUEST in such places?

G.S. And a welcoming one.

H. It is surprising.  How does it come?

G.S. My grandfather's name is a passport to all the courts
in Europe.  I have only to utter that name and every
door is open to me.  I flit from court to court at my
own free will and pleasure, and am always welcome.
I am as much at home in the palaces of Europe as you are
among your relatives.  I know every titled person in Europe,
I think.  I have my pockets full of invitations all the time.
I am under promise to go to Italy, where I am to be the
guest of a succession of the noblest houses in the land.
In Berlin my life is a continued round of gaiety in the
imperial palace.  It is the same, wherever I go.

H. It must be very pleasant.  But it must make Boston
seem a little slow when you are at home.

G.S. Yes, of course it does.  But I don't go home much.
There's no life there--little to feed a man's higher nature.
Boston's very narrow, you know.  She doesn't know it, and you
couldn't convince her of it--so I say nothing when I'm
there: where's the use? Yes, Boston is very narrow, but she
has such a good opinion of herself that she can't see it.
A man who has traveled as much as I have, and seen as much
of the world, sees it plain enough, but he can't cure it,
you know, so the best is to leave it and seek a sphere
which is more in harmony with his tastes and culture.
I run across there, one a year, perhaps, when I have
nothing important on hand, but I'm very soon back again.
I spend my time in Europe.

H. I see.  You map out your plans and ...

G.S. No, excuse me.  I don't map out any plans.  I simply
follow the inclination of the day.  I am limited by no ties,
no requirements, I am not bound in any way.  I am too old
a traveler to hamper myself with deliberate purposes.
I am simply a traveler--an inveterate traveler--a man of
the world, in a word--I can call myself by no other name.
I do not say, "I am going here, or I am going there"--I
say nothing at all, I only act.  For instance, next week
you may find me the guest of a grandee of Spain, or you
may find me off for Venice, or flitting toward Dresden.
I shall probably go to Egypt presently; friends will say
to friends, "He is at the Nile cataracts"--and at that
very moment they will be surprised to learn that I'm away
off yonder in India somewhere.  I am a constant surprise
to people.  They are always saying, "Yes, he was in Jerusalem
when we heard of him last, but goodness knows where he
is now."

Presently the Grandson rose to leave--discovered he
had an appointment with some Emperor, perhaps.  He did
his graces over again: gripped me with one talon,
at arm's-length, pressed his hat against his stomach
with the other, bent his body in the middle three times,
murmuring:

"Pleasure, 'm sure; great pleasure, 'm sure.  Wish you
much success."

Then he removed his gracious presence.  It is a great
and solemn thing to have a grandfather.

I have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way,
for what little indignation he excited in me soon
passed and left nothing behind it but compassion.
One cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum.
I have tried to repeat this lad's very words;
if I have failed anywhere I have at least not failed
to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what he said.
He and the innocent chatterbox whom I met on the Swiss
lake are the most unique and interesting specimens of
Young America I came across during my foreign tramping.
I have made honest portraits of them, not caricatures.
The Grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five
or six times as an "old traveler," and as many as three
times (with a serene complacency which was maddening)
as a "man of the world." There was something very delicious
about his leaving Boston to her "narrowness," unreproved
and uninstructed.

I formed the caravan in marching order, presently,
and after riding down the line to see that it was
properly roped together, gave the command to proceed.
In a little while the road carried us to open, grassy land.
We were above the troublesome forest, now, and had an
uninterrupted view, straight before us, of our summit
--the summit of the Riffelberg.

We followed the mule-road, a zigzag course, now to the right,
now to the left, but always up, and always crowded and
incommoded by going and coming files of reckless tourists
who were never, in a single instance, tied together.
I was obliged to exert the utmost care and caution,
for in many places the road was not two yards wide,
and often the lower side of it sloped away in slanting
precipices eight and even nine feet deep.  I had to
encourage the men constantly, to keep them from giving
way to their unmanly fears.

We might have made the summit before night, but for a
delay caused by the loss of an umbrella.  I was allowing
the umbrella to remain lost, but the men murmured,
and with reason, for in this exposed region we stood
in peculiar need of protection against avalanches;
so I went into camp and detached a strong party to go
after the missing article.

The difficulties of the next morning were severe,
but our courage was high, for our goal was near.
At noon we conquered the last impediment--we stood
at last upon the summit, and without the loss of a
single man except the mule that ate the glycerin.
Our great achievement was achieved--the possibility of
the impossible was demonstrated, and Harris and I walked
proudly into the great dining-room of the Riffelberg
Hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner.

Yes, I had made the grand ascent; but it was a mistake
to do it in evening dress.  The plug hats were battered,
the swallow-tails were fluttering rags, mud added no grace,
the general effect was unpleasant and even disreputable.

There were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel
--mainly ladies and little children--and they gave us
an admiring welcome which paid us for all our privations
and sufferings.  The ascent had been made, and the names
and dates now stand recorded on a stone monument there
to prove it to all future tourists.

I boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with a most
curious result: THE SUMMIT WAS NOT AS HIGH AS THE POINT ON
THE MOUNTAINSIDE WHERE I HAD TAKEN THE FIRST ALTITUDE.
Suspecting that I had made an important discovery,
I prepared to verify it.  There happened to be a still
higher summit (called the Gorner Grat), above the hotel,
and notwithstanding the fact that it overlooks a glacier
from a dizzy height, and that the ascent is difficult
and dangerous, I resolved to venture up there and boil
a thermometer.  So I sent a strong party, with some
borrowed hoes, in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig
a stairway in the soil all the way up, and this I ascended,
roped to the guides.  This breezy height was the summit
proper--so I accomplished even more than I had originally
purposed to do.  This foolhardy exploit is recorded on
another stone monument.

I boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this spot,
which purported to be two thousand feet higher than the
locality of the hotel, turned out to be nine thousand
feet LOWER.  Thus the fact was clearly demonstrated that,
ABOVE A CERTAIN POINT, THE HIGHER A POINT SEEMS TO BE,
THE LOWER IT ACTUALLY IS.  Our ascent itself was a
great achievement, but this contribution to science was
an inconceivably greater matter.

Cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower
temperature the higher and higher you go, and hence the
apparent anomaly.  I answer that I do not base my theory
upon what the boiling water does, but upon what a boiled
thermometer says.  You can't go behind the thermometer.

I had a magnificent view of Monte Rosa, and apparently
all the rest of the Alpine world, from that high place.
All the circling horizon was piled high with a mighty
tumult of snowy crests.  One might have imagined he
saw before him the tented camps of a beleaguering host
of Brobdingnagians.

But lonely, conspicuous, and superb, rose that wonderful
upright wedge, the Matterhorn.  Its precipitous sides were
powdered over with snow, and the upper half hidden in thick
clouds which now and then dissolved to cobweb films and gave
brief glimpses of the imposing tower as through a veil.
[2] A little later the Matterhorn took to himself the
semblance of a volcano; he was stripped naked to his apex
--around this circled vast wreaths of white cloud which strung
slowly out and streamed away slantwise toward the sun,
a twenty-mile stretch of rolling and tumbling vapor,
and looking just as if it were pouring out of a crater.
Later again, one of the mountain's sides was clean and clear,
and another side densely clothed from base to summit in
thick smokelike cloud which feathered off and flew around
the shaft's sharp edge like the smoke around the corners of
a burning building.  The Matterhorn is always experimenting,
and always gets up fine effects, too.  In the sunset,
when all the lower world is palled in gloom, it points
toward heaven out of the pervading blackness like a finger
of fire.  In the sunrise--well, they say it is very fine
in the sunrise.

2.  NOTE.--I had the very unusual luck to catch one little
    momentary glimpse of the Matterhorn wholly unencumbered
    by clouds.  I leveled my photographic apparatus at it
    without the loss of an instant, and should have got
    an elegant picture if my donkey had not interfered.
    It was my purpose to draw this photograph all by myself
    for my book, but was obliged to put the mountain part
    of it into the hands of the professional artist because
    I found I could not do landscape well.

Authorities agree that there is no such tremendous "layout"
of snowy Alpine magnitude, grandeur, and sublimity to be
seen from any other accessible point as the tourist may see
from the summit of the Riffelberg.  Therefore, let the
tourist rope himself up and go there; for I have shown
that with nerve, caution, and judgment, the thing can be done.

I wish to add one remark, here--in parentheses, so to speak
--suggested by the word "snowy," which I have just used.
We have all seen hills and mountains and levels with snow
on them, and so we think we know all the aspects and
effects produced by snow.  But indeed we do not until
we have seen the Alps.  Possibly mass and distance add
something--at any rate, something IS added.  Among other
noticeable things, there is a dazzling, intense whiteness
about the distant Alpine snow, when the sun is on it,
which one recognizes as peculiar, and not familiar to
the eye.  The snow which one is accustomed to has a tint
to it--painters usually give it a bluish cast--but there
is no perceptible tint to the distant Alpine snow when it
is trying to look its whitest.  As to the unimaginable
splendor of it when the sun is blazing down on it--well,
it simply IS unimaginable.



CHAPTER XXXIX
[We Travel by Glacier]

A guide-book is a queer thing.  The reader has just seen
what a man who undertakes the great ascent from Zermatt
to the Riffelberg Hotel must experience.  Yet Baedeker
makes these strange statements concerning this matter:

1.  Distance--3 hours.
2.  The road cannot be mistaken.
3.  Guide unnecessary.
4.  Distance from Riffelberg Hotel to the Gorner Grat,
    one hour and a half.
5.  Ascent simple and easy.  Guide unnecessary.
6.  Elevation of Zermatt above sea-level, 5,315 feet.
7.  Elevation of Riffelberg Hotel above sea-level,
    8,429 feet.
8.  Elevation of the Gorner Grat above sea-level, 10,289 feet.

I have pretty effectually throttled these errors by sending
him the following demonstrated facts:

1.  Distance from Zermatt to Riffelberg Hotel, 7 days.
2.  The road CAN be mistaken.  If I am the first that did it,
    I want the credit of it, too.
3.  Guides ARE necessary, for none but a native can read
    those finger-boards.
4.  The estimate of the elevation of the several localities
    above sea-level is pretty correct--for Baedeker.
    He only misses it about a hundred and eighty or ninety
    thousand feet.

I found my arnica invaluable.  My men were suffering
excruciatingly, from the friction of sitting down so much.
During two or three days, not one of them was able to do
more than lie down or walk about; yet so effective was
the arnica, that on the fourth all were able to sit up.
I consider that, more than to anything else, I owe the
success of our great undertaking to arnica and paregoric.

My men are being restored to health and strength,
my main perplexity, now, was how to get them down
the mountain again.  I was not willing to expose the
brave fellows to the perils, fatigues, and hardships
of that fearful route again if it could be helped.
First I thought of balloons; but, of course, I had to
give that idea up, for balloons were not procurable.
I thought of several other expedients, but upon
consideration discarded them, for cause.  But at last
I hit it.  I was aware that the movement of glaciers
is an established fact, for I had read it in Baedeker;
so I resolved to take passage for Zermatt on the great
Gorner Glacier.

Very good.  The next thing was, how to get down the
glacier comfortably--for the mule-road to it was long,
and winding, and wearisome.  I set my mind at work,
and soon thought out a plan.  One looks straight down
upon the vast frozen river called the Gorner Glacier,
from the Gorner Grat, a sheer precipice twelve hundred
feet high.  We had one hundred and fifty-four umbrellas
--and what is an umbrella but a parachute?

I mentioned this noble idea to Harris, with enthusiasm,
and was about to order the Expedition to form on the
Gorner Grat, with their umbrellas, and prepare for
flight by platoons, each platoon in command of a guide,
when Harris stopped me and urged me not to be too hasty.
He asked me if this method of descending the Alps had
ever been tried before.  I said no, I had not heard
of an instance.  Then, in his opinion, it was a matter
of considerable gravity; in his opinion it would not be
well to send the whole command over the cliff at once;
a better way would be to send down a single individual,
first, and see how he fared.

I saw the wisdom in this idea instantly.  I said as much,
and thanked my agent cordially, and told him to take
his umbrella and try the thing right away, and wave
his hat when he got down, if he struck in a soft place,
and then I would ship the rest right along.

Harris was greatly touched with this mark of confidence,
and said so, in a voice that had a perceptible tremble in it;
but at the same time he said he did not feel himself worthy
of so conspicuous a favor; that it might cause jealousy
in the command, for there were plenty who would not hesitate
to say he had used underhanded means to get the appointment,
whereas his conscience would bear him witness that he
had not sought it at all, nor even, in his secret heart,
desired it.

I said these words did him extreme credit, but that he must not
throw away the imperishable distinction of being the first man
to descend an Alp per parachute, simply to save the feelings
of some envious underlings.  No, I said, he MUST accept
the appointment--it was no longer an invitation, it was a
command.

He thanked me with effusion, and said that putting
the thing in this form removed every objection.
He retired, and soon returned with his umbrella, his eye
flaming with gratitude and his cheeks pallid with joy.
Just then the head guide passed along.  Harris's expression
changed to one of infinite tenderness, and he said:

"That man did me a cruel injury four days ago, and I
said in my heart he should live to perceive and confess
that the only noble revenge a man can take upon his enemy
is to return good for evil.  I resign in his favor.
Appoint him."

I threw my arms around the generous fellow and said:

"Harris, you are the noblest soul that lives.  You shall
not regret this sublime act, neither shall the world
fail to know of it.  You shall have opportunity far
transcending this one, too, if I live--remember that."

I called the head guide to me and appointed him on
the spot.  But the thing aroused no enthusiasm in him.
He did not take to the idea at all.

He said:

"Tie myself to an umbrella and jump over the Gorner
Grat! Excuse me, there are a great many pleasanter roads
to the devil than that."

Upon a discussion of the subject with him, it appeared that he
considered the project distinctly and decidedly dangerous.
I was not convinced, yet I was not willing to try the
experiment in any risky way--that is, in a way that might
cripple the strength and efficiency of the Expedition.
I was about at my wits' end when it occurred to me to try
it on the Latinist.

He was called in.  But he declined, on the plea
of inexperience, diffidence in public, lack of curiosity,
and I didn't know what all.  Another man declined
on account of a cold in the head; thought he ought
to avoid exposure.  Another could not jump well--never
COULD jump well--did not believe he could jump so far
without long and patient practice.  Another was afraid it
was going to rain, and his umbrella had a hole in it.
Everybody had an excuse.  The result was what the reader
has by this time guessed: the most magnificent idea
that was ever conceived had to be abandoned, from sheer
lack of a person with enterprise enough to carry it out.
Yes, I actually had to give that thing up--while doubtless
I should live to see somebody use it and take all the credit from
me.

Well, I had to go overland--there was no other way.
I marched the Expedition down the steep and tedious mule-path
and took up as good a position as I could upon the middle
of the glacier--because Baedeker said the middle part
travels the fastest.  As a measure of economy, however,
I put some of the heavier baggage on the shoreward parts,
to go as slow freight.

I waited and waited, but the glacier did not move.
Night was coming on, the darkness began to gather--still we
did not budge.  It occurred to me then, that there might
be a time-table in Baedeker; it would be well to find out
the hours of starting.  I called for the book--it could not
be found.  Bradshaw would certainly contain a time-table;
but no Bradshaw could be found.

Very well, I must make the best of the situation.  So I
pitched the tents, picketed the animals, milked the cows,
had supper, paregoricked the men, established the watch,
and went to bed--with orders to call me as soon as we came
in sight of Zermatt.

I awoke about half past ten next morning, and looked around.
We hadn't budged a peg! At first I could not understand it;
then it occurred to me that the old thing must be aground.
So I cut down some trees and rigged a spar on the starboard
and another on the port side, and fooled away upward of
three hours trying to spar her off.  But it was no use.
She was half a mile wide and fifteen or twenty miles long,
and there was no telling just whereabouts she WAS aground.
The men began to show uneasiness, too, and presently they
came flying to me with ashy faces, saying she had sprung
a leak.

Nothing but my cool behavior at this critical time saved us
from another panic.  I order them to show me the place.
They led me to a spot where a huge boulder lay in a deep
pool of clear and brilliant water.  It did look like
a pretty bad leak, but I kept that to myself.  I made
a pump and set the men to work to pump out the glacier.
We made a success of it.  I perceived, then, that it was not
a leak at all.  This boulder had descended from a precipice
and stopped on the ice in the middle of the glacier,
and the sun had warmed it up, every day, and consequently
it had melted its way deeper and deeper into the ice,
until at last it reposed, as we had found it, in a deep
pool of the clearest and coldest water.

Presently Baedeker was found again, and I hunted eagerly
for the time-table. There was none.  The book simply said
the glacier was moving all the time.  This was satisfactory,
so I shut up the book and chose a good position to view
the scenery as we passed along.  I stood there some time
enjoying the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did
not seem to be gaining any on the scenery.  I said to myself,
"This confounded old thing's aground again, sure,"--and
opened Baedeker to see if I could run across any remedy
for these annoying interruptions.  I soon found a sentence
which threw a dazzling light upon the matter.  It said,
"The Gorner Glacier travels at an average rate of a little
less than an inch a day." I have seldom felt so outraged.
I have seldom had my confidence so wantonly betrayed.
I made a small calculation: One inch a day, say thirty
feet a year; estimated distance to Zermatt, three and
one-eighteenth miles.  Time required to go by glacier,
A LITTLE OVER FIVE HUNDRED YEARS! I said to myself, "I can
WALK it quicker--and before I will patronize such a fraud
as this, I will do it."

When I revealed to Harris the fact that the passenger part
of this glacier--the central part--the lightning-express part,
so to speak--was not due in Zermatt till the summer
of 2378, and that the baggage, coming along the slow edge,
would not arrive until some generations later, he burst
out with:

"That is European management, all over! An inch a day--think
of that! Five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles!
But I am not a bit surprised.  It's a Catholic glacier.
You can tell by the look of it.  And the management."

I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it
was in a Catholic canton.

"Well, then, it's a government glacier," said Harris.
"It's all the same.  Over here the government runs
everything--so everything's slow; slow, and ill-managed. But
with us, everything's done by private enterprise--and then
there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it.
I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old
slab once--you'd see it take a different gait from this."

I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there
was trade enough to justify it.

"He'd MAKE trade," said Harris.  "That's the difference
between governments and individuals.  Governments don't care,
individuals do.  Tom Scott would take all the trade;
in two years Gorner stock would go to two hundred,
and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers
under the hammer for taxes." After a reflective pause,
Harris added, "A little less than an inch a day; a little
less than an INCH, mind you.  Well, I'm losing my reverence
for glaciers."

I was feeling much the same way myself.  I have traveled
by canal-boat, ox-wagon, raft, and by the Ephesus and
Smyrna railway; but when it comes down to good solid
honest slow motion, I bet my money on the glacier.
As a means of passenger transportation, I consider
the glacier a failure; but as a vehicle of slow freight,
I think she fills the bill.  In the matter of putting
the fine shades on that line of business, I judge she
could teach the Germans something.

I ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land
journey to Zermatt.  At this moment a most interesting
find was made; a dark object, bedded in the glacial ice,
was cut out with the ice-axes, and it proved to be a piece
of the undressed skin of some animal--a hair trunk, perhaps;
but a close inspection disabled the hair-trunk theory,
and further discussion and examination exploded it
entirely--that is, in the opinion of all the scientists
except the one who had advanced it.  This one clung
to his theory with affectionate fidelity characteristic
of originators of scientific theories, and afterward won
many of the first scientists of the age to his view,
by a very able pamphlet which he wrote, entitled, "Evidences
going to show that the hair trunk, in a wild state,
belonged to the early glacial period, and roamed the wastes
of chaos in the company with the cave-bear, primeval man,
and the other Ooelitics of the Old Silurian family."

Each of our scientists had a theory of his own, and put
forward an animal of his own as a candidate for the skin.
I sided with the geologist of the Expedition in the
belief that this patch of skin had once helped to cover
a Siberian elephant, in some old forgotten age--but we
divided there, the geologist believing that this discovery
proved that Siberia had formerly been located where
Switzerland is now, whereas I held the opinion that it
merely proved that the primeval Swiss was not the dull
savage he is represented to have been, but was a being
of high intellectual development, who liked to go to the
menagerie.

We arrived that evening, after many hardships and adventures,
in some fields close to the great ice-arch where the mad
Visp boils and surges out from under the foot of the
great Gorner Glacier, and here we camped, our perils over
and our magnificent undertaking successfully completed.
We marched into Zermatt the next day, and were received
with the most lavish honors and applause.  A document,
signed and sealed by the authorities, was given to me
which established and endorsed the fact that I had made
the ascent of the Riffelberg.  This I wear around my neck,
and it will be buried with me when I am no more.



CHAPTER XL
[Piteous Relics at Chamonix]

I am not so ignorant about glacial movement, now, as I
was when I took passage on the Gorner Glacier.
I have "read up" since.  I am aware that these vast
bodies of ice do not travel at the same rate of speed;
while the Gorner Glacier makes less than an inch a day,
the Unter-Aar Glacier makes as much as eight; and still
other glaciers are said to go twelve, sixteen, and even
twenty inches a day.  One writer says that the slowest
glacier travels twenty-give feet a year, and the fastest
four hundred.

What is a glacier? It is easy to say it looks like a
frozen river which occupies the bed of a winding gorge
or gully between mountains.  But that gives no notion
of its vastness.  For it is sometimes six hundred
feet thick, and we are not accustomed to rivers six hundred
feet deep; no, our rivers are six feet, twenty feet,
and sometimes fifty feet deep; we are not quite able
to grasp so large a fact as an ice-river six hundred feet deep.

The glacier's surface is not smooth and level, but has
deep swales and swelling elevations, and sometimes has
the look of a tossing sea whose turbulent billows were
frozen hard in the instant of their most violent motion;
the glacier's surface is not a flawless mass, but is a river
with cracks or crevices, some narrow, some gaping wide.
Many a man, the victim of a slip or a misstep, has plunged
down on of these and met his death.  Men have been
fished out of them alive; but it was when they did not
go to a great depth; the cold of the great depths would
quickly stupefy a man, whether he was hurt or unhurt.
These cracks do not go straight down; one can seldom see
more than twenty to forty feet down them; consequently men
who have disappeared in them have been sought for,
in the hope that they had stopped within helping distance,
whereas their case, in most instances, had really been
hopeless from the beginning.

In 1864 a party of tourists was descending Mont Blanc,
and while picking their way over one of the mighty glaciers
of that lofty region, roped together, as was proper,
a young porter disengaged himself from the line and
started across an ice-bridge which spanned a crevice.
It broke under him with a crash, and he disappeared.
The others could not see how deep he had gone, so it might
be worthwhile to try and rescue him.  A brave young guide
named Michel Payot volunteered.

Two ropes were made fast to his leather belt and he bore
the end of a third one in his hand to tie to the victim
in case he found him.  He was lowered into the crevice,
he descended deeper and deeper between the clear blue
walls of solid ice, he approached a bend in the crack
and disappeared under it.  Down, and still down, he went,
into this profound grave; when he had reached a depth
of eighty feet he passed under another bend in the crack,
and thence descended eighty feet lower, as between
perpendicular precipices.  Arrived at this stage of one
hundred and sixty feet below the surface of the glacier,
he peered through the twilight dimness and perceived
that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at
a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its course was lost
in darkness.  What a place that was to be in--especially
if that leather belt should break! The compression
of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow;
he called to his friends to draw him up, but could not make
them hear.  They still lowered him, deeper and deeper.
Then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could;
his friends understood, and dragged him out of those icy jaws
of death.

Then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it down
two hundred feet, but it found no bottom.  It came up
covered with congelations--evidence enough that even if
the poor porter reached the bottom with unbroken bones,
a swift death from cold was sure, anyway.

A glacier is a stupendous, ever-progressing, resistless plow.
It pushes ahead of its masses of boulders which are
packed together, and they stretch across the gorge,
right in front of it, like a long grave or a long,
sharp roof.  This is called a moraine.  It also shoves
out a moraine along each side of its course.

Imposing as the modern glaciers are, they are not so
huge as were some that once existed.  For instance,
Mr. Whymper says:

"At some very remote period the Valley of Aosta was occupied
by a vast glacier, which flowed down its entire length from
Mont Blanc to the plain of Piedmont, remained stationary,
or nearly so, at its mouth for many centuries, and deposited
there enormous masses of debris.  The length of this
glacier exceeded EIGHTY MILES, and it drained a basin
twenty-five to thirty-five miles across, bounded by the
highest mountains in the Alps.  The great peaks rose
several thousand feet above the glaciers, and then, as now,
shattered by sun and frost, poured down their showers of
rocks and stones, in witness of which there are the immense
piles of angular fragments that constitute the moraines of Ivrea.

"The moraines around Ivrea are of extraordinary dimensions.
That which was on the left bank of the glacier is
about THIRTEEN MILES long, and in some places rises
to a height of TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FEET
above the floor of the valley! The terminal moraines
(those which are pushed in front of the glaciers)
cover something like twenty square miles of country.
At the mouth of the Valley of Aosta, the thickness of
the glacier must have been at least TWO THOUSAND feet,
and its width, at that part, FIVE MILES AND A QUARTER."

It is not easy to get at a comprehension of a mass of ice
like that.  If one could cleave off the butt end of such
a glacier--an oblong block two or three miles wide
by five and a quarter long and two thousand feet thick
--he could completely hide the city of New York under it,
and Trinity steeple would only stick up into it relatively
as far as a shingle-nail would stick up into the bottom
of a Saratoga trunk.

"The boulders from Mont Blanc, upon the plain below Ivrea,
assure us that the glacier which transported them existed
for a prodigious length of time.  Their present distance from
the cliffs from which they were derived is about 420,000 feet,
and if we assume that they traveled at the rate of 400 feet
per annum, their journey must have occupied them no less
than 1,055 years! In all probability they did not travel so
fast."

Glaciers are sometimes hurried out of their characteristic
snail-pace. A marvelous spectacle is presented then.
Mr. Whymper refers to a case which occurred in Iceland
in 1721:

"It seems that in the neighborhood of the mountain Kotlugja,
large bodies of water formed underneath, or within
the glaciers (either on account of the interior heat of
the earth, or from other causes), and at length acquired
irresistible power, tore the glaciers from their mooring on
the land, and swept them over every obstacle into the sea.
Prodigious masses of ice were thus borne for a distance
of about ten miles over land in the space of a few hours;
and their bulk was so enormous that they covered the sea
for seven miles from the shore, and remained aground
in six hundred feet of water! The denudation of the land
was upon a grand scale.  All superficial accumulations were
swept away, and the bedrock was exposed.  It was described,
in graphic language, how all irregularities and depressions
were obliterated, and a smooth surface of several miles'
area laid bare, and that this area had the appearance
of having been PLANED BY A PLANE."

The account translated from the Icelandic says that the
mountainlike ruins of this majestic glacier so covered
the sea that as far as the eye could reach no open water
was discoverable, even from the highest peaks.  A monster
wall or barrier of ice was built across a considerable
stretch of land, too, by this strange irruption:

"One can form some idea of the altitude of this barrier
of ice when it is mentioned that from Hofdabrekka farm,
which lies high up on a fjeld, one could not see
Hjorleifshofdi opposite, which is a fell six hundred and
forty feet in height; but in order to do so had to clamber
up a mountain slope east of Hofdabrekka twelve hundred feet
high."

These things will help the reader to understand why it is
that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel
tolerably insignificant by and by.  The Alps and the glaciers
together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man
and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only
remain within the influence of their sublime presence long
enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.

The Alpine glaciers move--that is granted, now, by everybody.
But there was a time when people scoffed at the idea;
they said you might as well expect leagues of solid rock
to crawl along the ground as expect leagues of ice to do it.
But proof after proof as furnished, and the finally the
world had to believe.

The wise men not only said the glacier moved, but they
timed its movement.  They ciphered out a glacier's gait,
and then said confidently that it would travel just
so far in so many years.  There is record of a striking
and curious example of the accuracy which may be attained
in these reckonings.

In 1820 the ascent of Mont Blanc was attempted by a Russian
and two Englishmen, with seven guides.  They had reached
a prodigious altitude, and were approaching the summit,
when an avalanche swept several of the party down a
sharp slope of two hundred feet and hurled five of them
(all guides) into one of the crevices of a glacier.
The life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer
which was strapped to his back--it bridged the crevice
and suspended him until help came.  The alpenstock
or baton of another saved its owner in a similar way.
Three men were lost--Pierre Balmat, Pierre Carrier,
and Auguste Tairraz.  They had been hurled down into the
fathomless great deeps of the crevice.

Dr. Forbes, the English geologist, had made frequent visits
to the Mont Blanc region, and had given much attention
to the disputed question of the movement of glaciers.
During one of these visits he completed his estimates
of the rate of movement of the glacier which had swallowed
up the three guides, and uttered the prediction that the
glacier would deliver up its dead at the foot of the
mountain thirty-five years from the time of the accident,
or possibly forty.

A dull, slow journey--a movement imperceptible to any eye
--but it was proceeding, nevertheless, and without cessation.
It was a journey which a rolling stone would make in a
few seconds--the lofty point of departure was visible
from the village below in the valley.

The prediction cut curiously close to the truth;
forty-one years after the catastrophe, the remains
were cast forth at the foot of the glacier.

I find an interesting account of the matter in the
HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC, by Stephen d'Arve. I will
condense this account, as follows:

On the 12th of August, 1861, at the hour of the close of mass,
a guide arrived out of breath at the mairie of Chamonix,
and bearing on his shoulders a very lugubrious burden.
It was a sack filled with human remains which he had gathered
from the orifice of a crevice in the Glacier des Bossons.
He conjectured that these were remains of the victims
of the catastrophe of 1820, and a minute inquest,
immediately instituted by the local authorities,
soon demonstrated the correctness of his supposition.
The contents of the sack were spread upon a long table,
and officially inventoried, as follows:

Portions of three human skulls.  Several tufts of black and
blonde hair.  A human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth.
A forearm and hand, all the fingers of the latter intact.
The flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand
preserved a degree of flexibility in the articulations.

The ring-finger had suffered a slight abrasion, and the
stain of the blood was still visible and unchanged after
forty-one years.  A left foot, the flesh white and fresh.

Along with these fragments were portions of waistcoats, hats,
hobnailed shoes, and other clothing; a wing of a pigeon,
with black feathers; a fragment of an alpenstock;
a tin lantern; and lastly, a boiled leg of mutton,
the only flesh among all the remains that exhaled an
unpleasant odor.  The guide said that the mutton had no
odor when he took it from the glacier; an hour's exposure
to the sun had already begun the work of decomposition upon it.

Persons were called for, to identify these poor pathetic relics,
and a touching scene ensured.  Two men were still living
who had witnessed the grim catastrophe of nearly half
a century before--Marie Couttet (saved by his baton)
and Julien Davouassoux (saved by the barometer). These aged
men entered and approached the table.  Davouassoux, more than
eighty years old, contemplated the mournful remains mutely
and with a vacant eye, for his intelligence and his memory
were torpid with age; but Couttet's faculties were still
perfect at seventy-two, and he exhibited strong emotion.  He
said:

"Pierre Balmat was fair; he wore a straw hat.  This bit of skull,
with the tuft of blond hair, was his; this is his hat.
Pierre Carrier was very dark; this skull was his, and this
felt hat.  This is Balmat's hand, I remember it so well!"
and the old man bent down and kissed it reverently,
then closed his fingers upon it in an affectionate grasp,
crying out, "I could never have dared to believe that
before quitting this world it would be granted me to
press once more the hand of one of those brave comrades,
the hand of my good friend Balmat."

There is something weirdly pathetic about the picture
of that white-haired veteran greeting with his loving
handshake this friend who had been dead forty years.
When these hands had met last, they were alike in the
softness and freshness of youth; now, one was brown and
wrinkled and horny with age, while the other was still
as young and fair and blemishless as if those forty years
had come and gone in a single moment, leaving no mark
of their passage.  Time had gone on, in the one case;
it had stood still in the other.  A man who has not seen
a friend for a generation, keeps him in mind always as he
saw him last, and is somehow surprised, and is also shocked,
to see the aging change the years have wrought when he
sees him again.  Marie Couttet's experience, in finding
his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he
had carried in his memory for forty years, is an experience
which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps.

Couttet identified other relics:

"This hat belonged to Auguste Tairraz.  He carried
the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon
the summit.  Here is the wing of one of those pigeons.
And here is the fragment of my broken baton; it was by
grace of that baton that my life was saved.  Who could
have told me that I should one day have the satisfaction
to look again upon this bit of wood that supported me above
the grave that swallowed up my unfortunate companions!"

No portions of the body of Tairraz, other than a piece
of the skull, had been found.  A diligent search was made,
but without result.  However, another search was
instituted a year later, and this had better success.
Many fragments of clothing which had belonged to the lost
guides were discovered; also, part of a lantern, and a
green veil with blood-stains on it.  But the interesting
feature was this:

One of the searchers came suddenly upon a sleeved arm
projecting from a crevice in the ice-wall, with the hand
outstretched as if offering greeting! "The nails of this white
hand were still rosy, and the pose of the extended fingers
seemed to express an eloquent welcome to the long-lost light of
day."

The hand and arm were alone; there was no trunk.
After being removed from the ice the flesh-tints quickly
faded out and the rosy nails took on the alabaster
hue of death.  This was the third RIGHT hand found;
therefore, all three of the lost men were accounted for,
beyond cavil or question.

Dr. Hamel was the Russian gentleman of the party which
made the ascent at the time of the famous disaster.
He left Chamonix as soon as he conveniently could after
the descent; and as he had shown a chilly indifference
about the calamity, and offered neither sympathy nor
assistance to the widows and orphans, he carried with
him the cordial execrations of the whole community.
Four months before the first remains were found,
a Chamonix guide named Balmat--a relative of one of
the lost men--was in London, and one day encountered
a hale old gentleman in the British Museum, who said:

"I overheard your name.  Are you from Chamonix,
Monsieur Balmat?"

"Yes, sir."

"Haven't they found the bodies of my three guides,
yet? I am Dr. Hamel."

"Alas, no, monsieur."

"Well, you'll find them, sooner or later."

"Yes, it is the opinion of Dr. Forbes and Mr. Tyndall,
that the glacier will sooner or later restore to us the
remains of the unfortunate victims."

"Without a doubt, without a doubt.  And it will be a great
thing for Chamonix, in the matter of attracting tourists.
You can get up a museum with those remains that will draw!"

This savage idea has not improved the odor of Dr. Hamel's
name in Chamonix by any means.  But after all, the man
was sound on human nature.  His idea was conveyed
to the public officials of Chamonix, and they gravely
discussed it around the official council-table. They
were only prevented from carrying it into execution by
the determined opposition of the friends and descendants
of the lost guides, who insisted on giving the remains
Christian burial, and succeeded in their purpose.

A close watch had to be kept upon all the poor remnants
and fragments, to prevent embezzlement.  A few accessory
odds and ends were sold.  Rags and scraps of the coarse
clothing were parted with at the rate equal to about
twenty dollars a yard; a piece of a lantern and one or
two other trifles brought nearly their weight in gold;
and an Englishman offered a pound sterling for a single
breeches-button.



CHAPTER XLI
[The Fearful Disaster of 1865]

One of the most memorable of all the Alpine catastrophes
was that of July, 1865, on the Matterhorn--already
sighted referred to, a few pages back.  The details
of it are scarcely known in America.  To the vast
majority of readers they are not known at all.
Mr. Whymper's account is the only authentic one.
I will import the chief portion of it into this book,
partly because of its intrinsic interest, and partly
because it gives such a vivid idea of what the perilous
pastime of Alp-climbing is.  This was Mr. Whymper's
NINTH attempt during a series of years, to vanquish
that steep and stubborn pillar or rock; it succeeded,
the other eight were failures.  No man had ever accomplished
the ascent before, though the attempts had been numerous.

MR. WHYMPER'S NARRATIVE

We started from Zermatt on the 13th of July, at half
past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless morning.
We were eight in number--Croz (guide), old Peter
Taugwalder (guide) and his two sons; Lord F. Douglas,
Mr. Hadow, Rev. Mr. Hudson, and I. To insure steady
motion, one tourist and one native walked together.
The youngest Taugwalder fell to my share.  The wine-bags
also fell to my lot to carry, and throughout the day,
after each drink, I replenished them secretly with water,
so that at the next halt they were found fuller than
before! This was considered a good omen, and little short
of miraculous.

On the first day we did not intend to ascend to any
great height, and we mounted, accordingly, very leisurely.
Before twelve o'clock we had found a good position
for the tent, at a height of eleven thousand feet.
We passed the remaining hours of daylight--some basking
in the sunshine, some sketching, some collecting;
Hudson made tea, I coffee, and at length we retired,
each one to his blanket bag.

We assembled together before dawn on the 14th
and started directly it was light enough to move.
One of the young Taugwalders returned to Zermatt.
In a few minutes we turned the rib which had intercepted
the view of the eastern face from our tent platform.
The whole of this great slope was now revealed, rising for
three thousand feet like a huge natural staircase.
Some parts were more, and others were less easy, but we
were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment,
for when an obstruction was met in front it could always
be turned to the right or to the left.  For the greater part
of the way there was no occasion, indeed, for the rope,
and sometimes Hudson led, sometimes myself.  At six-twenty we
had attained a height of twelve thousand eight hundred feet,
and halted for half an hour; we then continued the ascent
without a break until nine-fifty-five, when we stopped
for fifty minutes, at a height of fourteen thousand feet.

We had now arrived at the foot of that part which, seen from
the Riffelberg, seems perpendicular or overhanging.
We could no longer continue on the eastern side.  For a little
distance we ascended by snow upon the ARE^TE--that is,
the ridge--then turned over to the right, or northern side.
The work became difficult, and required caution.  In some places
there was little to hold; the general slope of the mountain
was LESS than forty degrees, and snow had accumulated in,
and had filled up, the interstices of the rock-face, leaving
only occasional fragments projecting here and there.
These were at times covered with a thin film of ice.
It was a place which any fair mountaineer might pass
in safety.  We bore away nearly horizontally for about four
hundred feet, then ascended directly toward the summit
for about sixty feet, then doubled back to the ridge
which descends toward Zermatt.  A long stride round
a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more.
That last doubt vanished! The Matterhorn was ours! Nothing
but two hundred feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted.

The higher we rose, the more intense became the excitement.
The slope eased off, at length we could be detached,
and Croz and I, dashed away, ran a neck-and-neck race,
which ended in a dead heat.  At 1:40 P.M., the world was at
our feet, and the Matterhorn was conquered!

The others arrived.  Croz now took the tent-pole, and
planted it in the highest snow.  "Yes," we said, "there is
the flag-staff, but where is the flag?" "Here it is,"
he answered, pulling off his blouse and fixing it to the stick.
It made a poor flag, and there was no wind to float it out,
yet it was seen all around.  They saw it at Zermatt--at
the Riffel--in the Val Tournanche... .

We remained on the summit for one hour--

One crowded hour of glorious life.

It passed away too quickly, and we began to prepare
for the descent.

Hudson and I consulted as to the best and safest arrangement
of the party.  We agreed that it was best for Croz
to go first, and Hadow second; Hudson, who was almost
equal to a guide in sureness of foot, wished to be third;
Lord Douglas was placed next, and old Peter, the strongest
of the remainder, after him.  I suggested to Hudson
that we should attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival
at the difficult bit, and hold it as we descended,
as an additional protection.  He approved the idea,
but it was not definitely decided that it should be done.
The party was being arranged in the above order while I
was sketching the summit, and they had finished,
and were waiting for me to be tied in line, when some one
remembered that our names had not been left in a bottle.
They requested me to write them down, and moved off
while it was being done.

A few minutes afterward I tied myself to young Peter,
ran down after the others, and caught them just as they
were commencing the descent of the difficult part.
Great care was being taken.  Only one man was moving at a time;
when he was firmly planted the next advanced, and so on.
They had not, however, attached the additional rope
to rocks, and nothing was said about it.  The suggestion
was not made for my own sake, and I am not sure that it
ever occurred to me again.  For some little distance we
two followed the others, detached from them, and should
have continued so had not Lord Douglas asked me, about 3
P.M., to tie on to old Peter, as he feared, he said,
that Taugwalder would not be able to hold his ground if a
slip occurred.

A few minutes later, a sharp-eyed lad ran into the Monte
Rosa Hotel, at Zermatt, saying that he had seen an avalanche
fall from the summit of the Matterhorn onto the Matterhorn
glacier.  The boy was reproved for telling idle stories;
he was right, nevertheless, and this was what he saw.

Michel Croz had laid aside his ax, and in order to give
Mr. Hadow greater security, was absolutely taking
hold of his legs, and putting his feet, one by one,
into their proper positions.  As far as I know, no one
was actually descending.  I cannot speak with certainty,
because the two leading men were partially hidden
from my sight by an intervening mass of rock, but it
is my belief, from the movements of their shoulders,
that Croz, having done as I said, was in the act
of turning round to go down a step or two himself;
at this moment Mr. Hadow slipped, fell against him,
and knocked him over.  I heard one startled exclamation
from Croz, then saw him and Mr. Hadow flying downward;
in another moment Hudson was dragged from his steps,
and Lord Douglas immediately after him.  All this was the
work of a moment.  Immediately we heard Croz's exclamation,
old Peter and I planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks
would permit; the rope was taut between us, and the jerk
came on us both as on one man.  We held; but the rope
broke midway between Taugwalder and Lord Francis Douglas.
For a few seconds we saw our unfortunate companions sliding
downward on their backs, and spreading out their hands,
endeavoring to save themselves.  They passed from our
sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from the
precipice to precipice onto the Matterhorn glacier below,
a distance of nearly four thousand feet in height.
From the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them.
So perished our comrades!

For more than two hours afterward I thought almost every
moment that the next would be my last; for the Taugwalders,
utterly unnerved, were not only incapable of giving assistance,
but were in such a state that a slip might have been
expected from them at any moment.  After a time we were able
to do that which should have been done at first, and fixed
rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together.
These ropes were cut from time to time, and were left behind.
Even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed,
and several times old Peter turned, with ashy face
and faltering limbs, and said, with terrible emphasis,
"I CANNOT!"

About 6 P.M., we arrived at the snow upon the ridge
descending toward Zermatt, and all peril was over.
We frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our
unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried
to them, but no sound returned.  Convinced at last that
they were neither within sight nor hearing, we ceased
from our useless efforts; and, too cast down for speech,
silently gathered up our things, and the little effects
of those who were lost, and then completed the descent.

----------

Such is Mr. Whymper's graphic and thrilling narrative.
Zermatt gossip darkly hints that the elder Taugwalder
cut the rope, when the accident occurred, in order
to preserve himself from being dragged into the abyss;
but Mr. Whymper says that the ends of the rope showed
no evidence of cutting, but only of breaking.  He adds
that if Taugwalder had had the disposition to cut the rope,
he would not have had time to do it, the accident was so
sudden and unexpected.

Lord Douglas' body has never been found.  It probably
lodged upon some inaccessible shelf in the face of the
mighty precipice.  Lord Douglas was a youth of nineteen.
The three other victims fell nearly four thousand feet,
and their bodies lay together upon the glacier when found
by Mr. Whymper and the other searchers the next morning.
Their graves are beside the little church in Zermatt.



CHAPTER XLII
[Chillon has a Nice, Roomy Dungeon]

Switzerland is simply a large, humpy, solid rock,
with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.  Consequently,
they do not dig graves, they blast them out with power
and fuse.  They cannot afford to have large graveyards,
the grass skin is too circumscribed and too valuable.
It is all required for the support of the living.

The graveyard in Zermatt occupies only about one-eighth
of an acre.  The graves are sunk in the living rock, and are
very permanent; but occupation of them is only temporary;
the occupant can only stay till his grave is needed
by a later subject, he is removed, then, for they do not
bury one body on top of another.  As I understand it,
a family owns a grave, just as it owns a house.  A man dies
and leaves his house to his son--and at the same time,
this dead father succeeds to his own father's grave.
He moves out of the house and into the grave, and his
predecessor moves out of the grave and into the cellar
of the chapel.  I saw a black box lying in the churchyard,
with skull and cross-bones painted on it, and was told that
this was used in transferring remains to the cellar.

In that cellar the bones and skulls of several hundred of
former citizens were compactly corded up.  They made a pile
eighteen feet long, seven feet high, and eight feet wide.
I was told that in some of the receptacles of this kind
in the Swiss villages, the skulls were all marked,
and if a man wished to find the skulls of his ancestors
for several generations back, he could do it by these marks,
preserved in the family records.

An English gentleman who had lived some years in this region,
said it was the cradle of compulsory education.
But he said that the English idea that compulsory
education would reduce bastardy and intemperance was an
error--it has not that effect.  He said there was more
seduction in the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons,
because the confessional protected the girls.  I wonder
why it doesn't protect married women in France and Spain?

This gentleman said that among the poorer peasants in the Valais,
it was common for the brothers in a family to cast lots
to determine which of them should have the coveted privilege
of marrying, and his brethren--doomed bachelors--heroically
banded themselves together to help support the new family.

We left Zermatt in a wagon--and in a rain-storm, too
--for St. Nicholas about ten o'clock one morning.
Again we passed between those grass-clad prodigious cliffs,
specked with wee dwellings peeping over at us from
velvety green walls ten and twelve hundred feet high.
It did not seem possible that the imaginary chamois
even could climb those precipices.  Lovers on opposite
cliffs probably kiss through a spy-glass, and correspond
with a rifle.

In Switzerland the farmer's plow is a wide shovel,
which scrapes up and turns over the thin earthy skin of his
native rock--and there the man of the plow is a hero.
Now here, by our St. Nicholas road, was a grave, and it
had a tragic story.  A plowman was skinning his farm
one morning--not the steepest part of it, but still
a steep part--that is, he was not skinning the front
of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves--when he
absent-mindedly let go of the plow-handles to moisten
his hands, in the usual way; he lost his balance and fell
out of his farm backward; poor fellow, he never touched
anything till he struck bottom, fifteen hundred feet below.
[1] We throw a halo of heroism around the life of the
soldier and the sailor, because of the deadly dangers they
are facing all the time.  But we are not used to looking
upon farming as a heroic occupation.  This is because we
have not lived in Switzerland.

1.  This was on a Sunday.--M.T.

From St. Nicholas we struck out for Visp--or Vispach--on foot.
The rain-storms had been at work during several days,
and had done a deal of damage in Switzerland and Savoy.
We came to one place where a stream had changed its
course and plunged down a mountain in a new place,
sweeping everything before it.  Two poor but precious farms
by the roadside were ruined.  One was washed clear away,
and the bed-rock exposed; the other was buried out of sight
under a tumbled chaos of rocks, gravel, mud, and rubbish.
The resistless might of water was well exemplified.
Some saplings which had stood in the way were bent to the ground,
stripped clean of their bark, and buried under rocky debris.
The road had been swept away, too.

In another place, where the road was high up on the mountain's
face, and its outside edge protected by flimsy masonry,
we frequently came across spots where this masonry had
carved off and left dangerous gaps for mules to get over;
and with still more frequency we found the masonry
slightly crumbled, and marked by mule-hoofs, thus showing
that there had been danger of an accident to somebody.
When at last we came to a badly ruptured bit of masonry,
with hoof-prints evidencing a desperate struggle
to regain the lost foothold, I looked quite hopefully
over the dizzy precipice.  But there was nobody down there.

They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in Switzerland
and other portions of Europe.  They wall up both banks
with slanting solid stone masonry--so that from end
to end of these rivers the banks look like the wharves
at St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi River.

It was during this walk from St. Nicholas, in the shadow
of the majestic Alps, that we came across some little
children amusing themselves in what seemed, at first,
a most odd and original way--but it wasn't; it was in
simply a natural and characteristic way.  They were roped
together with a string, they had mimic alpenstocks and
ice-axes, and were climbing a meek and lowly manure-pile
with a most blood-curdling amount of care and caution.
The "guide" at the head of the line cut imaginary steps,
in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a monkey
budged till the step above was vacated.  If we had waited
we should have witnessed an imaginary accident, no doubt;
and we should have heard the intrepid band hurrah when they
made the summit and looked around upon the "magnificent view,"
and seen them throw themselves down in exhausted attitudes
for a rest in that commanding situation.

In Nevada I used to see the children play at silver-mining.
Of course, the great thing was an accident in a mine,
and there were two "star" parts; that of the man
who fell down the mimic shaft, and that of the daring
hero who was lowered into the depths to bring him up.
I knew one small chap who always insisted on playing
BOTH of these parts--and he carried his point.
He would tumble into the shaft and die, and then come
to the surface and go back after his own remains.

It is the smartest boy that gets the hero part everywhere;
he is head guide in Switzerland, head miner in Nevada,
head bull-fighter in Spain, etc.; but I knew a preacher's son,
seven years old, who once selected a part for himself compared
to which those just mentioned are tame and unimpressive.
Jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginary
horse-cars one Sunday--stopped him from playing captain
of an imaginary steamboat next Sunday--stopped him
from leading an imaginary army to battle the following
Sunday--and so on.  Finally the little fellow said:

"I've tried everything, and they won't any of them do.
What CAN I play?"

"I hardly know, Jimmy; but you MUST play only things
that are suitable to the Sabbath-day."

Next Sunday the preacher stepped softly to a back-room
door to see if the children were rightly employed.
He peeped in.  A chair occupied the middle of the room,
and on the back of it hung Jimmy's cap; one of his little
sisters took the cap down, nibbled at it, then passed it
to another small sister and said, "Eat of this fruit,
for it is good." The Reverend took in the situation--alas,
they were playing the Expulsion from Eden! Yet he found
one little crumb of comfort.  He said to himself, "For once
Jimmy has yielded the chief role--I have been wronging him,
I did not believe there was so much modesty in him;
I should have expected him to be either Adam or Eve."
This crumb of comfort lasted but a very little while;
he glanced around and discovered Jimmy standing in an
imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown
on his face.  What that meant was very plain--HE WAS
IMPERSONATING THE DEITY! Think of the guileless sublimity of
that idea.

We reached Vispach at 8 P.M., only about seven hours
out from St. Nicholas.  So we must have made fully
a mile and a half an hour, and it was all downhill,
too, and very muddy at that.  We stayed all night at
the Ho^tel de Soleil; I remember it because the landlady,
the portier, the waitress, and the chambermaid were not
separate persons, but were all contained in one neat and
chipper suit of spotless muslin, and she was the prettiest
young creature I saw in all that region.  She was the
landlord's daughter.  And I remember that the only native
match to her I saw in all Europe was the young daughter
of the landlord of a village inn in the Black Forest.
Why don't more people in Europe marry and keep hotel?

Next morning we left with a family of English friends
and went by train to Brevet, and thence by boat across
the lake to Ouchy (Lausanne).

Ouchy is memorable to me, not on account of its beautiful
situation and lovely surroundings--although these would
make it stick long in one's memory--but as the place
where _I_ caught the London TIMES dropping into humor.
It was NOT aware of it, though.  It did not do it on purpose.
An English friend called my attention to this lapse,
and cut out the reprehensible paragraph for me.  Think of
encountering a grin like this on the face of that grim
journal:

ERRATUM.--We are requested by Reuter's Telegram Company
to correct an erroneous announcement made in their Brisbane
telegram of the 2d inst., published in our impression of the 5th
inst., stating that "Lady Kennedy had given birth to twins,
the eldest being a son." The Company explain that the message
they received contained the words "Governor of Queensland,
TWINS FIRST SON." Being, however, subsequently informed
that Sir Arthur Kennedy was unmarried and that there
must be some mistake, a telegraphic repetition was at
once demanded.  It has been received today (11th inst.)
and shows that the words really telegraphed by Reuter's
agent were "Governor Queensland TURNS FIRST SOD,"
alluding to the Maryborough-Gympic Railway in course
of construction.  The words in italics were mutilated by
the telegraph in transmission from Australia, and reaching
the company in the form mentioned above gave rise to the mistake.


I had always had a deep and reverent compassion
for the sufferings of the "prisoner of Chillon,"
whose story Byron had told in such moving verse; so I took
the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of the
Castle of Chillon, to see the place where poor Bonnivard
endured his dreary captivity three hundred years ago.
I am glad I did that, for it took away some of the pain
I was feeling on the prisoner's account.  His dungeon
was a nice, cool, roomy place, and I cannot see why he
should have been dissatisfied with it.  If he had been
imprisoned in a St. Nicholas private dwelling, where the
fertilizer prevails, and the goat sleeps with the guest,
and the chickens roost on him and the cow comes in and
bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have been
another matter altogether; but he surely could not have
had a very cheerless time of it in that pretty dungeon.
It has romantic window-slits that let in generous bars
of light, and it has tall, noble columns, carved apparently
from the living rock; and what is more, they are written
all over with thousands of names; some of them--like
Byron's and Victor Hugo's--of the first celebrity.
Why didn't he amuse himself reading these names? Then
there are the couriers and tourists--swarms of them every
day--what was to hinder him from having a good time
with them? I think Bonnivard's sufferings have been overrated.

Next, we took the train and went to Martigny, on the way
to Mont Blanc.  Next morning we started, about eight
o'clock, on foot.  We had plenty of company, in the way
of wagon-loads and mule-loads of tourists--and dust.
This scattering procession of travelers was perhaps a
mile long.  The road was uphill--interminable uphill--and
tolerably steep.  The weather was blisteringly hot,
and the man or woman who had to sit on a creeping mule,
or in a crawling wagon, and broil in the beating sun,
was an object to be pitied.  We could dodge among the bushes,
and have the relief of shade, but those people could not.
They paid for a conveyance, and to get their money's worth
they rode.

We went by the way of the Te^te Noir, and after we
reached high ground there was no lack of fine scenery.
In one place the road was tunneled through a shoulder
of the mountain; from there one looked down into a gorge
with a rushing torrent in it, and on every hand was a
charming view of rocky buttresses and wooded heights.
There was a liberal allowance of pretty waterfalls, too,
on the Te^te Noir route.

About half an hour before we reached the village of
Argentie`re a vast dome of snow with the sun blazing on it
drifted into view and framed itself in a strong V-shaped
gateway of the mountains, and we recognized Mont Blanc,
the "monarch of the Alps." With every step, after that,
this stately dome rose higher and higher into the blue sky,
and at last seemed to occupy the zenith.

Some of Mont Blanc's neighbors--bare, light-brown, steeplelike
rocks--were very peculiarly shaped.  Some were whittled
to a sharp point, and slightly bent at the upper end,
like a lady's finger; one monster sugar-loaf resembled
a bishop's hat; it was too steep to hold snow on its sides,
but had some in the division.

While we were still on very high ground, and before
the descent toward Argentie`re began, we looked up
toward a neighboring mountain-top, and saw exquisite
prismatic colors playing about some white clouds which
were so delicate as to almost resemble gossamer webs.
The faint pinks and greens were peculiarly beautiful;
none of the colors were deep, they were the lightest shades.
They were bewitching commingled.  We sat down to study and
enjoy this singular spectacle.  The tints remained during
several minutes--fitting, changing, melting into each other;
paling almost away for a moment, then reflushing--a shifting,
restless, unstable succession of soft opaline gleams,
shimmering over that air film of white cloud, and turning
it into a fabric dainty enough to clothe an angel with.

By and by we perceived what those super-delicate colors,
and their continuous play and movement, reminded us of;
it is what one sees in a soap-bubble that is drifting along,
catching changes of tint from the objects it passes.
A soap-bubble is the most beautiful thing, and the
most exquisite, in nature; that lovely phantom fabric
in the sky was suggestive of a soap-bubble split open,
and spread out in the sun.  I wonder how much it would take
to buy a soap-bubble, if there was only one in the world?
One could buy a hatful of Koh-i-Noors with the same money,
no doubt.

We made the tramp from Martigny to Argentie`re in eight hours.
We beat all the mules and wagons; we didn't usually do that.
We hired a sort of open baggage-wagon for the trip down
the valley to Chamonix, and then devoted an hour to dining.
This gave the driver time to get drunk.  He had a friend
with him, and this friend also had had time to get drunk.

When we drove off, the driver said all the tourists had
arrived and gone by while we were at dinner; "but," said he,
impressively, "be not disturbed by that--remain tranquil--give
yourselves no uneasiness--their dust rises far before us
--rest you tranquil, leave all to me--I am the king of drivers.
Behold!"

Down came his whip, and away we clattered.  I never had such
a shaking up in my life.  The recent flooding rains had
washed the road clear away in places, but we never stopped,
we never slowed down for anything.  We tore right along,
over rocks, rubbish, gullies, open fields--sometimes with
one or two wheels on the ground, but generally with none.
Every now and then that calm, good-natured madman would
bend a majestic look over his shoulder at us and say,
"Ah, you perceive? It is as I have said --I am the
king of drivers." Every time we just missed going
to destruction, he would say, with tranquil happiness,
"Enjoy it, gentlemen, it is very rare, it is very unusual
--it is given to few to ride with the king of drivers
--and observe, it is as I have said, _I_ am he."

He spoke in French, and punctuated with hiccoughs.
His friend was French, too, but spoke in German--using
the same system of punctuation, however.  The friend
called himself the "Captain of Mont Blanc," and wanted us
to make the ascent with him.  He said he had made more
ascents than any other man--forty seven--and his brother
had made thirty-seven. His brother was the best guide
in the world, except himself--but he, yes, observe him
well--he was the "Captain of Mont Blanc"--that title
belonged to none other.

The "king" was as good as his word--he overtook that long
procession of tourists and went by it like a hurricane.
The result was that we got choicer rooms at the hotel
in Chamonix than we should have done if his majesty
had been a slower artist--or rather, if he hadn't most
providentially got drunk before he left Argentie`re.



CHAPTER XLIII
[My Poor Sick Friend Disappointed]

Everybody was out-of-doors; everybody was in the
principal street of the village--not on the sidewalks,
but all over the street; everybody was lounging, loafing,
chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested--for it
was train-time. That is to say, it was diligence-time
--the half-dozen big diligences would soon be arriving
from Geneva, and the village was interested, in many ways,
in knowing how many people were coming and what sort of
folk they might be.  It was altogether the livest-looking
street we had seen in any village on the continent.

The hotel was by the side of a booming torrent, whose music
was loud and strong; we could not see this torrent, for it
was dark, now, but one could locate it without a light.
There was a large enclosed yard in front of the hotel,
and this was filled with groups of villagers waiting to see
the diligences arrive, or to hire themselves to excursionists
for the morrow.  A telescope stood in the yard, with its
huge barrel canted up toward the lustrous evening star.
The long porch of the hotel was populous with tourists,
who sat in shawls and wraps under the vast overshadowing
bulk of Mont Blanc, and gossiped or meditated.

Never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed
at one's very elbow, and its majestic dome, and the lofty
cluster of slender minarets that were its neighbors,
seemed to be almost over one's head.  It was night
in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling everywhere;
the broad bases and shoulders of the mountains were in
a deep gloom, but their summits swam in a strange rich
glow which was really daylight, and yet had a mellow
something about it which was very different from the hard
white glare of the kind of daylight I was used to.
Its radiance was strong and clear, but at the same time
it was singularly soft, and spiritual, and benignant.
No, it was not our harsh, aggressive, realistic daylight;
it seemed properer to an enchanted land--or to heaven.

I had seen moonlight and daylight together before, but I
had not seen daylight and black night elbow to elbow before.
At least I had not seen the daylight resting upon an object
sufficiently close at hand, before, to make the contrast
startling and at war with nature.

The daylight passed away.  Presently the moon rose up
behind some of those sky-piercing fingers or pinnacles
of bare rock of which I have spoken--they were a little
to the left of the crest of Mont Blanc, and right over
our heads--but she couldn't manage to climb high
enough toward heaven to get entirely above them.
She would show the glittering arch of her upper third,
occasionally, and scrape it along behind the comblike row;
sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuette
of ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed
to glide out of it by its own volition and power,
and become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle glided
into its place and blotted the spotless disk with the black
exclamation-point of its presence.  The top of one pinnacle
took the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head,
in the inkiest silhouette, while it rested against the moon.
The unillumined peaks and minarets, hovering vague and
phantom-like above us while the others were painfully
white and strong with snow and moonlight, made a peculiar effect.


But when the moon, having passed the line of pinnacles,
was hidden behind the stupendous white swell of Mont Blanc,
the masterpiece of the evening was flung on the canvas.
A rich greenish radiance sprang into the sky from behind
the mountain, and in this same airy shreds and ribbons of vapor
floated about, and being flushed with that strange tint,
went waving to and fro like pale green flames.  After a while,
radiating bars--vast broadening fan-shaped shadows--grew up
and stretched away to the zenith from behind the mountain.
It was a spectacle to take one's breath, for the wonder of it,
and the sublimity.

Indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and shadow
streaming up from behind that dark and prodigious form
and occupying the half of the dull and opaque heavens,
was the most imposing and impressive marvel I had ever
looked upon.  There is no simile for it, for nothing
is like it.  If a child had asked me what it was,
I should have said, "Humble yourself, in this presence,
it is the glory flowing from the hidden head of the Creator."
One falls shorter of the truth than that, sometimes,
in trying to explain mysteries to the little people.
I could have found out the cause of this awe-compelling
miracle by inquiring, for it is not infrequent at Mont
Blanc,--but I did not wish to know.  We have not the
reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has,
because we know how it is made.  We have lost as much as we
gained by prying into the matter.

We took a walk down street, a block or two, and a
place where four streets met and the principal shops
were clustered, found the groups of men in the roadway
thicker than ever--for this was the Exchange of Chamonix.
These men were in the costumes of guides and porters,
and were there to be hired.

The office of that great personage, the Guide-in-Chief
of the Chamonix Guild of Guides, was near by.  This guild
is a close corporation, and is governed by strict laws.
There are many excursion routes, some dangerous and
some not, some that can be made safely without a guide,
and some that cannot.  The bureau determines these things.
Where it decides that a guide is necessary, you are
forbidden to go without one.  Neither are you allowed to be
a victim of extortion: the law states what you are to pay.
The guides serve in rotation; you cannot select the man
who is to take your life into his hands, you must take
the worst in the lot, if it is his turn.  A guide's fee
ranges all the way up from a half-dollar (for some trifling
excursion of a few rods) to twenty dollars, according to
the distance traversed and the nature of the ground.
A guide's fee for taking a person to the summit of Mont
Blanc and back, is twenty dollars--and he earns it.
The time employed is usually three days, and there is
enough early rising in it to make a man far more "healthy
and wealthy and wise" than any one man has any right to be.
The porter's fee for the same trip is ten dollars.
Several fools--no, I mean several tourists--usually go together,
and divide up the expense, and thus make it light;
for if only one f--tourist, I mean--went, he would have
to have several guides and porters, and that would make the
matter costly.

We went into the Chief's office.  There were maps
of mountains on the walls; also one or two lithographs
of celebrated guides, and a portrait of the scientist
De Saussure.

In glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots
and batons, and other suggestive relics and remembrances
of casualties on Mount Blanc.  In a book was a record of all
the ascents which have ever been made, beginning with Nos.
1 and 2--being those of Jacques Balmat and De Saussure,
in 1787, and ending with No. 685, which wasn't cold yet.
In fact No. 685 was standing by the official table waiting
to receive the precious official diploma which should prove
to his German household and to his descendants that he had once
been indiscreet enough to climb to the top of Mont Blanc.
He looked very happy when he got his document; in fact,
he spoke up and said he WAS happy.

I tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at home
who had never traveled, and whose desire all his life has
been to ascend Mont Blanc, but the Guide-in-Chief rather
insolently refused to sell me one.  I was very much offended.
I said I did not propose to be discriminated against on
the account of my nationality; that he had just sold
a diploma to this German gentleman, and my money was
a good as his; I would see to it that he couldn't keep
his shop for Germans and deny his produce to Americans;
I would have his license taken away from him at the dropping
of a handkerchief; if France refused to break him, I would
make an international matter of it and bring on a war;
the soil should be drenched with blood; and not only that,
but I would set up an opposition show and sell diplomas
at half price.

For two cents I would have done these things, too;
but nobody offered me two cents.  I tried to move that
German's feelings, but it could not be done; he would
not give me his diploma, neither would he sell it to me.
I TOLD him my friend was sick and could not come himself,
but he said he did not care a VERDAMMTES PFENNIG,
he wanted his diploma for himself--did I suppose he was
going to risk his neck for that thing and then give it
to a sick stranger? Indeed he wouldn't, so he wouldn't.
I resolved, then, that I would do all I could to injure
Mont Blanc.

In the record-book was a list of all the fatal accidents
which happened on the mountain.  It began with the one
in 1820 when the Russian Dr. Hamel's three guides were
lost in a crevice of the glacier, and it recorded the
delivery of the remains in the valley by the slow-moving
glacier forty-one years later.  The latest catastrophe
bore the date 1877.

We stepped out and roved about the village awhile.
In front of the little church was a monument to the memory
of the bold guide Jacques Balmat, the first man who ever
stood upon the summit of Mont Blanc.  He made that wild
trip solitary and alone.  He accomplished the ascent
a number of times afterward.  A stretch of nearly half
a century lay between his first ascent and his last one.
At the ripe old age of seventy-two he was climbing
around a corner of a lofty precipice of the Pic du
Midi--nobody with him--when he slipped and fell.
So he died in the harness.

He had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go
off stealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible
gold among those perilous peaks and precipices.
He was on a quest of that kind when he lost his life.
There was a statue to him, and another to De Saussure,
in the hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door
of a room upstairs bore an inscription to the effect
that that room had been occupied by Albert Smith.
Balmat and De Saussure discovered Mont Blanc--so to
speak--but it was Smith who made it a paying property.
His articles in BLACKWOOD and his lectures on Mont Blanc
in London advertised it and made people as anxious to see it
as if it owed them money.

As we strolled along the road we looked up and saw a red
signal-light glowing in the darkness of the mountainside.
It seemed but a trifling way up--perhaps a hundred yards,
a climb of ten minutes.  It was a lucky piece of sagacity
in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met and get
a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb
to that lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose.
The man said that that lantern was on the Grands Mulets,
some sixty-five hundred feet above the valley! I know
by our Riffelberg experience, that it would have taken us
a good part of a week to go up there.  I would sooner not
smoke at all, than take all that trouble for a light.

Even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this
mountain's close proximity creates curious deceptions.
For instance, one sees with the naked eye a cabin up
there beside the glacier, and a little above and beyond
he sees the spot where that red light was located;
he thinks he could throw a stone from the one place to
the other.  But he couldn't, for the difference between
the two altitudes is more than three thousand feet.
It looks impossible, from below, that this can be true,
but it is true, nevertheless.

While strolling around, we kept the run of the moon all
the time, and we still kept an eye on her after we got back
to the hotel portico.  I had a theory that the gravitation
of refraction, being subsidiary to atmospheric compensation,
the refrangibility of the earth's surface would emphasize
this effect in regions where great mountain ranges occur,
and possibly so even-handed impact the odic and idyllic
forces together, the one upon the other, as to prevent
the moon from rising higher than 12,200 feet above
sea-level. This daring theory had been received with frantic
scorn by some of my fellow-scientists, and with an eager
silence by others.  Among the former I may mention
Prof. H----y; and among the latter Prof. T----l. Such
is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show
any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.
There is no feeling of brotherhood among these people.
Indeed, they always resent it when I call them brother.
To show how far their ungenerosity can carry them, I will
state that I offered to let Prof. H----y publish my great
theory as his own discovery; I even begged him to do it;
I even proposed to print it myself as his theory.
Instead of thanking me, he said that if I tried to
fasten that theory on him he would sue me for slander.
I was going to offer it to Mr. Darwin, whom I understood
to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to me
that perhaps he would not be interested in it since it did
not concern heraldry.

But I am glad now, that I was forced to father my intrepid
theory myself, for, on the night of which I am writing,
it was triumphantly justified and established.  Mont Blanc
is nearly sixteen thousand feet high; he hid the moon utterly;
near him is a peak which is 12,216 feet high; the moon slid
along behind the pinnacles, and when she approached that
one I watched her with intense interest, for my reputation
as a scientist must stand or fall by its decision.
I cannot describe the emotions which surged like tidal
waves through my breast when I saw the moon glide behind
that lofty needle and pass it by without exposing more
than two feet four inches of her upper rim above it;
I was secure, then.  I knew she could rise no higher,
and I was right.  She sailed behind all the peaks and
never succeeded in hoisting her disk above a single one
of them.

While the moon was behind one of those sharp fingers,
its shadow was flung athwart the vacant heavens
--a long, slanting, clean-cut, dark ray--with a streaming
and energetic suggestion of FORCE about it, such as the
ascending jet of water from a powerful fire-engine affords.
It was curious to see a good strong shadow of an earthly
object cast upon so intangible a field as the atmosphere.

We went to bed, at last, and went quickly to sleep, but I
woke up, after about three hours, with throbbing temples,
and a head which was physically sore, outside and in.
I was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy, unrefreshed.
I recognized the occasion of all this: it was that torrent.
In the mountain villages of Switzerland, and along the roads,
one has always the roar of the torrent in his ears.
He imagines it is music, and he thinks poetic things
about it; he lies in his comfortable bed and is lulled
to sleep by it.  But by and by he begins to notice
that his head is very sore--he cannot account for it;
in solitudes where the profoundest silence reigns,
he notices a sullen, distant, continuous roar in his ears,
which is like what he would experience if he had sea-shells
pressed against them--he cannot account for it; he is
drowsy and absent-minded; there is no tenacity to his mind,
he cannot keep hold of a thought and follow it out;
if he sits down to write, his vocabulary is empty,
no suitable words will come, he forgets what he started to do,
and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes closed,
listening painfully to the muffled roar of a distant train
in his ears; in his soundest sleep the strain continues,
he goes on listening, always listening intently, anxiously,
and wakes at last, harassed, irritable, unrefreshed.
He cannot manage to account for these things.
Day after day he feels as if he had spent his nights
in a sleeping-car. It actually takes him weeks to find
out that it is those persecuting torrents that have been
making all the mischief.  It is time for him to get out
of Switzerland, then, for as soon as he has discovered
the cause, the misery is magnified several fold.  The roar
of the torrent is maddening, then, for his imagination
is assisting; the physical pain it inflicts is exquisite.
When he finds he is approaching one of those streams,
his dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track
and avoid the implacable foe.

Eight or nine months after the distress of the torrents
had departed from me, the roar and thunder of the
streets of Paris brought it all back again.  I moved
to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for peace.
About midnight the noises dulled away, and I was
sinking to sleep, when I heard a new and curious sound;
I listened: evidently some joyous lunatic was softly
dancing a "double shuffle" in the room over my head.
I had to wait for him to get through, of course.  Five long,
long minutes he smoothly shuffled away--a pause followed,
then something fell with a thump on the floor.
I said to myself "There--he is pulling off his boots
--thank heavens he is done." Another slight pause--he went
to shuffling again! I said to myself, "Is he trying to see
what he can do with only one boot on?" Presently came
another pause and another thump on the floor.  I said
"Good, he has pulled off his other boot--NOW he is done."
But he wasn't. The next moment he was shuffling again.
I said, "Confound him, he is at it in his slippers!"
After a little came that same old pause, and right after
it that thump on the floor once more.  I said, "Hang him,
he had on TWO pair of boots!" For an hour that magician
went on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed
as many as twenty-five pair, and I was hovering on the verge
of lunacy.  I got my gun and stole up there.  The fellow
was in the midst of an acre of sprawling boots, and he had
a boot in his hand, shuffling it--no, I mean POLISHING it.
The mystery was explained.  He hadn't been dancing.
He was the "Boots" of the hotel, and was attending
to business.



CHAPTER XLIV
[I Scale Mont Blanc--by Telescope]

After breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix, we went
out in the yard and watched the gangs of excursioning
tourists arriving and departing with their mules and guides
and porters; then we took a look through the telescope
at the snowy hump of Mont Blanc.  It was brilliant
with sunshine, and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly
five hundred yards away.  With the naked eye we could
dimly make out the house at the Pierre Pointue, which is
located by the side of the great glacier, and is more
than three thousand feet above the level of the valley;
but with the telescope we could see all its details.
While I looked, a woman rode by the house on a mule, and I
saw her with sharp distinctness; I could have described
her dress.  I saw her nod to the people of the house,
and rein up her mule, and put her hand up to shield
her eyes from the sun.  I was not used to telescopes;
in fact, I had never looked through a good one before;
it seemed incredible to me that this woman could be
so far away.  I was satisfied that I could see all
these details with my naked eye; but when I tried it,
that mule and those vivid people had wholly vanished,
and the house itself was become small and vague.  I tried
the telescope again, and again everything was vivid.
The strong black shadows of the mule and the woman were
flung against the side of the house, and I saw the mule's
silhouette wave its ears.

The telescopulist--or the telescopulariat--I do not know
which is right--said a party were making a grand ascent,
and would come in sight on the remote upper heights,
presently; so we waited to observe this performance.
Presently I had a superb idea.  I wanted to stand with
a party on the summit of Mont Blanc, merely to be able
to say I had done it, and I believed the telescope
could set me within seven feet of the uppermost man.
The telescoper assured me that it could.  I then asked
him how much I owed him for as far as I had got? He said,
one franc.  I asked him how much it would cost to make
the entire ascent? Three francs.  I at once determined
to make the entire ascent.  But first I inquired
if there was any danger? He said no--not by telescope;
said he had taken a great many parties to the summit,
and never lost a man.  I asked what he would charge to let
my agent go with me, together with such guides and porters
as might be necessary.  He said he would let Harris go
for two francs; and that unless we were unusually timid,
he should consider guides and porters unnecessary;
it was not customary to take them, when going by telescope,
for they were rather an encumbrance than a help.
He said that the party now on the mountain were approaching
the most difficult part, and if we hurried we should
overtake them within ten minutes, and could then join them
and have the benefit of their guides and porters without
their knowledge, and without expense to us.

I then said we would start immediately.  I believe I
said it calmly, though I was conscious of a shudder
and of a paling cheek, in view of the nature of the
exploit I was so unreflectingly engaged in.  But the old
daredevil spirit was upon me, and I said that as I
had committed myself I would not back down; I would
ascend Mont Blanc if it cost me my life.  I told the man
to slant his machine in the proper direction and let us be off.

Harris was afraid and did not want to go, but I heartened
him up and said I would hold his hand all the way; so he
gave his consent, though he trembled a little at first.
I took a last pathetic look upon the pleasant summer scene
about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass and prepared
to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows.

We took our way carefully and cautiously across the great
Glacier des Bossons, over yawning and terrific crevices
and among imposing crags and buttresses of ice which were
fringed with icicles of gigantic proportions.  The desert
of ice that stretched far and wide about us was wild and
desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us
were so great that at times I was minded to turn back.
But I pulled my pluck together and pushed on.

We passed the glacier safely and began to mount
the steeps beyond, with great alacrity.  When we
were seven minutes out from the starting-point, we
reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect;
an apparently limitless continent of gleaming snow was
tilted heavenward before our faces.  As my eye followed
that awful acclivity far away up into the remote skies,
it seemed to me that all I had ever seen before of sublimity
and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this.

We rested a moment, and then began to mount with speed.
Within three minutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us,
and stopped to observe them.  They were toiling up a long,
slanting ridge of snow--twelve persons, roped together some
fifteen feet apart, marching in single file, and strongly
marked against the clear blue sky.  One was a woman.
We could see them lift their feet and put them down;
we saw them swing their alpenstocks forward in unison,
like so many pendulums, and then bear their weight
upon them; we saw the lady wave her handkerchief.
They dragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way,
for they had been climbing steadily from the Grand Mulets,
on the Glacier des Dossons, since three in the morning,
and it was eleven, now.  We saw them sink down in the
snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle.
After a while they moved on, and as they approached the final
short dash of the home-stretch we closed up on them and
joined them.

Presently we all stood together on the summit! What a view
was spread out below! Away off under the northwestern horizon
rolled the silent billows of the Farnese Oberland, their snowy
crests glinting softly in the subdued lights of distance;
in the north rose the giant form of the Wobblehorn,
draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds;
beyond him, to the right, stretched the grand processional
summits of the Cisalpine Cordillera, drowned in a
sensuous haze; to the east loomed the colossal masses
of the Yodelhorn, the Fuddelhorn, and the Dinnerhorn,
their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun;
beyond them shimmered the faint far line of the Ghauts
of Jubbelpore and the Aigulles des Alleghenies; in the
south towered the smoking peak of Popocatapetl and the
unapproachable altitudes of the peerless Scrabblehorn;
in the west-south the stately range of the Himalayas
lay dreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all around
the curving horizon the eye roved over a troubled sea
of sun-kissed Alps, and noted, here and there, the noble
proportions and the soaring domes of the Bottlehorn,
and the Saddlehorn, and the Shovelhorn, and the Powderhorn,
all bathed in the glory of noon and mottled with softly
gliding blots, the shadows flung from drifting clouds.

Overcome by the scene, we all raised a triumphant,
tremendous shout, in unison.  A startled man at my elbow
said:

"Confound you, what do you yell like that for, right here
in the street?"

That brought me down to Chamonix, like a flirt.
I gave that man some spiritual advice and disposed of him,
and then paid the telescope man his full fee, and said
that we were charmed with the trip and would remain down,
and not reascend and require him to fetch us down by telescope.
This pleased him very much, for of course we could have
stepped back to the summit and put him to the trouble
of bringing us home if we wanted to.

I judged we could get diplomas, now, anyhow; so we
went after them, but the Chief Guide put us off,
with one pretext or another, during all the time we stayed
in Chamonix, and we ended by never getting them at all.
So much for his prejudice against people's nationality.
However, we worried him enough to make him remember
us and our ascent for some time.  He even said, once,
that he wished there was a lunatic asylum in Chamonix.
This shows that he really had fears that we were going
to drive him mad.  It was what we intended to do,
but lack of time defeated it.

I cannot venture to advise the reader one way or the other,
as to ascending Mont Blanc.  I say only this: if he is at
all timid, the enjoyments of the trip will hardly make up
for the hardships and sufferings he will have to endure.
But, if he has good nerve, youth, health, and a bold,
firm will, and could leave his family comfortably provided
for in case the worst happened, he would find the ascent
a wonderful experience, and the view from the top a vision
to dream about, and tell about, and recall with exultation
all the days of his life.

While I do not advise such a person to attempt the ascent,
I do not advise him against it.  But if he elects to attempt it,
let him be warily careful of two things: chose a calm,
clear day; and do not pay the telescope man in advance.
There are dark stories of his getting advance payers on
the summit and then leaving them there to rot.

A frightful tragedy was once witnessed through the
Chamonix telescopes.  Think of questions and answers
like these, on an inquest:

CORONER.  You saw deceased lose his life?

WITNESS.  I did.

C. Where was he, at the time?

W. Close to the summit of Mont Blanc.

C. Where were you?

W. In the main street of Chamonix.

C. What was the distance between you?

W. A LITTLE OVER FIVE MILES, as the bird flies.

This accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the
disaster on the Matterhorn.  Three adventurous English gentlemen,
[1] of great experience in mountain-climbing, made up their
minds to ascend Mont Blanc without guides or porters.
All endeavors to dissuade them from their project failed.
Powerful telescopes are numerous in Chamonix.  These huge
brass tubes, mounted on their scaffoldings and pointed
skyward from every choice vantage-ground, have the
formidable look of artillery, and give the town the general
aspect of getting ready to repel a charge of angels.
The reader may easily believe that the telescopes
had plenty of custom on that August morning in 1866,
for everybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was
on foot, and all had fears that misfortune would result.
All the morning the tubes remained directed toward the
mountain heights, each with its anxious group around it;
but the white deserts were vacant.

1.  Sir George Young and his brothers James and Albert.

At last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who were
looking through the telescopes cried out "There they
are!"--and sure enough, far up, on the loftiest terraces
of the Grand Plateau, the three pygmies appeared,
climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit.  They disappeared
in the "Corridor," and were lost to sight during an hour.
Then they reappeared, and were presently seen standing together
upon the extreme summit of Mont Blanc.  So, all was well.
They remained a few minutes on that highest point of land
in Europe, a target for all the telescopes, and were then
seen to begin descent.  Suddenly all three vanished.
An instant after, they appeared again, TWO THOUSAND FEET
BELOW!

Evidently, they had tripped and been shot down an almost
perpendicular slope of ice to a point where it joined
the border of the upper glacier.  Naturally, the distant
witness supposed they were now looking upon three corpses;
so they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently saw
two of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third.
During two hours and a half they watched the two busying
themselves over the extended form of their brother,
who seemed entirely inert.  Chamonix's affairs stood still;
everybody was in the street, all interest was centered
upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stage
five miles away.  Finally the two--one of them walking
with great difficulty--were seen to begin descent,
abandoning the third, who was no doubt lifeless.
Their movements were followed, step by step, until they
reached the "Corridor" and disappeared behind its ridge.
Before they had had time to traverse the "Corridor"
and reappear, twilight was come, and the power of the
telescope was at an end.

The survivors had a most perilous journey before
them in the gathering darkness, for they must get
down to the Grands Mulets before they would find
a safe stopping-place--a long and tedious descent,
and perilous enough even in good daylight.  The oldest
guides expressed the opinion that they could not succeed;
that all the chances were that they would lose their lives.

Yet those brave men did succeed.  They reached the Grands
Mulets in safety.  Even the fearful shock which their nerves
had sustained was not sufficient to overcome their coolness
and courage.  It would appear from the official account
that they were threading their way down through those
dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o'clock
in the morning, or later, because the rescuing party from
Chamonix reached the Grand Mulets about three in the morning
and moved thence toward the scene of the disaster under
the leadership of Sir George Young, "who had only just arrived."

After having been on his feet twenty-four hours,
in the exhausting work of mountain-climbing, Sir George
began the reascent at the head of the relief party
of six guides, to recover the corpse of his brother.
This was considered a new imprudence, as the number
was too few for the service required.  Another relief
party presently arrived at the cabin on the Grands
Mulets and quartered themselves there to await events.
Ten hours after Sir George's departure toward the summit,
this new relief were still scanning the snowy altitudes
above them from their own high perch among the ice
deserts ten thousand feet above the level of the sea,
but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any
living thing appearing up there.

This was alarming.  Half a dozen of their number set out,
then early in the afternoon, to seek and succor Sir George
and his guides.  The persons remaining at the cabin saw
these disappear, and then ensued another distressing wait.
Four hours passed, without tidings.  Then at five
o'clock another relief, consisting of three guides,
set forward from the cabin.  They carried food and
cordials for the refreshment of their predecessors;
they took lanterns with them, too; night was coming on,
and to make matters worse, a fine, cold rain had begun
to fall.

At the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent,
the official Guide-in-Chief of the Mont Blanc region
undertook the dangerous descent to Chamonix, all alone,
to get reinforcements.  However, a couple of hours later,
at 7 P.M., the anxious solicitude came to an end,
and happily.  A bugle note was heard, and a cluster
of black specks was distinguishable against the snows
of the upper heights.  The watchers counted these specks
eagerly--fourteen--nobody was missing.  An hour and a half
later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin.
They had brought the corpse with them.  Sir George Young
tarried there but a few minutes, and then began the long
and troublesome descent from the cabin to Chamonix.
He probably reached there about two or three o'clock
in the morning, after having been afoot among the rocks
and glaciers during two days and two nights.  His endurance
was equal to his daring.

The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George and
the relief parties among the heights where the disaster
had happened was a thick fog--or, partly that and partly
the slow and difficult work of conveying the dead body
down the perilous steeps.

The corpse, upon being viewed at the inquest, showed
no bruises, and it was some time before the surgeons
discovered that the neck was broken.  One of the surviving
brothers had sustained some unimportant injuries,
but the other had suffered no hurt at all.  How these men
could fall two thousand feet, almost perpendicularly,
and live afterward, is a most strange and unaccountable thing.

A great many women have made the ascent of Mont Blanc.
An English girl, Miss Stratton, conceived the daring idea,
two or three years ago, of attempting the ascent in the
middle of winter.  She tried it--and she succeeded.
Moreover, she froze two of her fingers on the way up,
she fell in love with her guide on the summit,
and she married him when she got to the bottom again.
There is nothing in romance, in the way of a striking
"situation," which can beat this love scene in midheaven
on an isolated ice-crest with the thermometer at zero
and an Artic gale blowing.

The first woman who ascended Mont Blanc was a girl aged
twenty-two--Mlle. Maria Paradis--1809. Nobody was
with her but her sweetheart, and he was not a guide.
The sex then took a rest for about thirty years,
when a Mlle. d'Angeville made the ascent --1838. In
Chamonix I picked up a rude old lithograph of that day
which pictured her "in the act."

However, I value it less as a work of art than as a
fashion-plate. Miss d'Angeville put on a pair of men's
pantaloons to climb it, which was wise; but she cramped
their utility by adding her petticoat, which was idiotic.

One of the mournfulest calamities which men's disposition
to climb dangerous mountains has resulted in,
happened on Mont Blanc in September 1870.  M. D'Arve
tells the story briefly in his HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC.
In the next chapter I will copy its chief features.



CHAPTER XLV
A Catastrophe Which Cost Eleven Lives
[Perished at the Verge of Safety]

On the 5th of September, 1870, a caravan of eleven persons
departed from Chamonix to make the ascent of Mont Blanc.
Three of the party were tourists; Messrs.  Randall and Bean,
Americans, and Mr. George Corkindale, a Scotch gentleman;
there were three guides and five porters.  The cabin
on the Grands Mulets was reached that day; the ascent
was resumed early the next morning, September 6th.
The day was fine and clear, and the movements of the party
were observed through the telescopes of Chamonix; at two
o'clock in the afternoon they were seen to reach the summit.
A few minutes later they were seen making the first steps
of the descent; then a cloud closed around them and hid
them from view.

Eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night came,
no one had returned to the Grands Mulets.  Sylvain Couttet,
keeper of the cabin there, suspected a misfortune,
and sent down to the valley for help.  A detachment of
guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedious
trip and reached the cabin, a raging storm had set in.
They had to wait; nothing could be attempted in such
a tempest.

The wild storm lasted MORE THAN A WEEK, without ceasing;
but on the 17th, Couttet, with several guides, left the
cabin and succeeded in making the ascent.  In the snowy
wastes near the summit they came upon five bodies,
lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude which
suggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there,
while exhausted with fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold,
and never knew when death stole upon them.  Couttet moved
a few steps further and discovered five more bodies.
The eleventh corpse--that of a porter--was not found,
although diligent search was made for it.

In the pocket of Mr. Bean, one of the Americans, was found
a note-book in which had been penciled some sentences
which admit us, in flesh and spirit, as it were, to the
presence of these men during their last hours of life,
and to the grisly horrors which their fading vision looked
upon and their failing consciousness took cognizance of:

TUESDAY, SEPT.  6.  I have made the ascent of Mont Blanc,
with ten persons--eight guides, and Mr. Corkindale
and Mr. Randall.  We reached the summit at half past 2.
Immediately after quitting it, we were enveloped in clouds
of snow.  We passed the night in a grotto hollowed
in the snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and I
was ill all night.

SEPT.  7--MORNING. The cold is excessive.  The snow falls
heavily and without interruption.  The guides take no rest.

EVENING.  My Dear Hessie, we have been two days on
Mont Blanc, in the midst of a terrible hurricane of snow,
we have lost our way, and are in a hole scooped in the snow,
at an altitude of 15,000 feet.  I have no longer any hope
of descending.

They had wandered around, and around, in the blinding
snow-storm, hopelessly lost, in a space only a hundred
yards square; and when cold and fatigue vanquished them
at last, they scooped their cave and lay down there
to die by inches, UNAWARE THAT FIVE STEPS MORE WOULD HAVE
BROUGHT THEM INTO THE TRUTH PATH.  They were so near
to life and safety as that, and did not suspect it.
The thought of this gives the sharpest pang that the tragic
story conveys.

The author of the HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC introduced
the closing sentences of Mr. Bean's pathetic record thus:

"Here the characters are large and unsteady; the hand
which traces them is become chilled and torpid;
but the spirit survives, and the faith and resignation
of the dying man are expressed with a sublime simplicity."

Perhaps this note-book will be found and sent to you.
We have nothing to eat, my feet are already frozen,
and I am exhausted; I have strength to write only a few
words more.  I have left means for C's education; I know
you will employ them wisely.  I die with faith in God,
and with loving thoughts of you.  Farewell to all.
We shall meet again, in Heaven. ... I think of
you always.

It is the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims
with a merciful swiftness, but here the rule failed.
These men suffered the bitterest death that has been
recorded in the history of those mountains, freighted as
that history is with grisly tragedies.



CHAPTER XLVI
[Meeting a Hog on a Precipice]

Mr. Harris and I took some guides and porters and ascended
to the Ho^tel des Pyramides, which is perched on the
high moraine which borders the Glacier des Bossons.
The road led sharply uphill, all the way, through grass
and flowers and woods, and was a pleasant walk,
barring the fatigue of the climb.

From the hotel we could view the huge glacier at very
close range.  After a rest we followed down a path
which had been made in the steep inner frontage
of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself.
One of the shows of the place was a tunnel-like cavern,
which had been hewn in the glacier.  The proprietor
of this tunnel took candles and conducted us into it.
It was three or four feet wide and about six feet high.
Its walls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich
blue light that produced a lovely effect, and suggested
enchanted caves, and that sort of thing.  When we had
proceeded some yards and were entering darkness, we turned
about and had a dainty sunlit picture of distant woods
and heights framed in the strong arch of the tunnel and seen
through the tender blue radiance of the tunnel's atmosphere.

The cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and when we
reached its inner limit the proprietor stepped into a branch
tunnel with his candles and left us buried in the bowels
of the glacier, and in pitch-darkness. We judged his
purpose was murder and robbery; so we got out our matches
and prepared to sell our lives as dearly as possible
by setting the glacier on fire if the worst came to the
worst--but we soon perceived that this man had changed
his mind; he began to sing, in a deep, melodious voice,
and woke some curious and pleasing echoes.  By and by he
came back and pretended that that was what he had gone
behind there for.  We believed as much of that as we wanted to.

Thus our lives had been once more in imminent peril,
but by the exercise of the swift sagacity and cool courage
which had saved us so often, we had added another escape
to the long list.  The tourist should visit that ice-cavern,
by all means, for it is well worth the trouble; but I would
advise him to go only with a strong and well-armed force.
I do not consider artillery necessary, yet it would not be
unadvisable to take it along, if convenient.  The journey,
going and coming, is about three miles and a half, three of
which are on level ground.  We made it in less than a day,
but I would counsel the unpracticed--if not pressed
for time--to allow themselves two.  Nothing is gained
in the Alps by over-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding
two days' work into one for the poor sake of being able
to boast of the exploit afterward.  It will be found
much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days,
and then subtract one of them from the narrative.
This saves fatigue, and does not injure the narrative.
All the more thoughtful among the Alpine tourists
do this.

We now called upon the Guide-in-Chief, and asked for a squadron
of guides and porters for the ascent of the Montanvert.
This idiot glared at us, and said:

"You don't need guides and porters to go to the Montanvert."

"What do we need, then?"

"Such as YOU?--an ambulance!"

I was so stung by this brutal remark that I took
my custom elsewhere.

Betimes, next morning, we had reached an altitude of five
thousand feet above the level of the sea.  Here we camped
and breakfasted.  There was a cabin there--the spot is
called the Caillet--and a spring of ice-cold water.
On the door of the cabin was a sign, in French, to the effect
that "One may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes."
We did not invest; what we wanted was to see a dead one.

A little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the
new hotel on the Montanvert, and had a view of six miles,
right up the great glacier, the famous Mer de Glace.
At this point it is like a sea whose deep swales and long,
rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement and
frozen solid; but further up it is broken up into wildly
tossing billows of ice.

We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine,
and invaded the glacier.  There were tourists of both
sexes scattered far and wide over it, everywhere, and it
had the festive look of a skating-rink.

The Empress Josephine came this far, once.  She ascended
the Montanvert in 1810--but not alone; a small army
of men preceded her to clear the path--and carpet it,
perhaps--and she followed, under the protection
of SIXTY-EIGHT guides.

Her successor visited Chamonix later, but in far different style.

It was seven weeks after the first fall of the Empire,
and poor Marie Louise, ex-Empress was a fugitive.
She came at night, and in a storm, with only two attendants,
and stood before a peasant's hut, tired, bedraggled,
soaked with rain, "the red print of her lost crown still
girdling her brow," and implored admittance--and was
refused! A few days before, the adulations and applauses
of a nation were sounding in her ears, and now she was come to
this!

We crossed the Mer de Glace in safety, but we had misgivings.
The crevices in the ice yawned deep and blue and mysterious,
and it made one nervous to traverse them.  The huge
round waves of ice were slippery and difficult to climb,
and the chances of tripping and sliding down them and
darting into a crevice were too many to be comfortable.

In the bottom of a deep swale between two of the biggest
of the ice-waves, we found a fraud who pretended
to be cutting steps to insure the safety of tourists.
He was "soldiering" when we came upon him, but he hopped
up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough
for a cat, and charged us a franc or two for it.
Then he sat down again, to doze till the next party
should come along.  He had collected blackmail from two
or three hundred people already, that day, but had not
chipped out ice enough to impair the glacier perceptibly.
I have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it seems
to me that keeping toll-bridge on a glacier is the softest
one I have encountered yet.

That was a blazing hot day, and it brought a persistent
and persecuting thirst with it.  What an unspeakable luxury
it was to slake that thirst with the pure and limpid
ice-water of the glacier! Down the sides of every great rib
of pure ice poured limpid rills in gutters carved by their
own attrition; better still, wherever a rock had lain,
there was now a bowl-shaped hole, with smooth white sides
and bottom of ice, and this bowl was brimming with water
of such absolute clearness that the careless observer would
not see it at all, but would think the bowl was empty.
These fountains had such an alluring look that I often
stretched myself out when I was not thirsty and dipped my
face in and drank till my teeth ached.  Everywhere among
the Swiss mountains we had at hand the blessing--not
to be found in Europe EXCEPT in the mountains--of water
capable of quenching thirst.  Everywhere in the Swiss
highlands brilliant little rills of exquisitely cold water
went dancing along by the roadsides, and my comrade and I
were always drinking and always delivering our deep gratitude.

But in Europe everywhere except in the mountains, the water
is flat and insipid beyond the power of words to describe.
It is served lukewarm; but no matter, ice could not help it;
it is incurably flat, incurably insipid.  It is only good
to wash with; I wonder it doesn't occur to the average
inhabitant to try it for that.  In Europe the people
say contemptuously, "Nobody drinks water here." Indeed,
they have a sound and sufficient reason.  In many places
they even have what may be called prohibitory reasons.
In Paris and Munich, for instance, they say, "Don't drink
the water, it is simply poison."

Either America is healthier than Europe, notwithstanding her
"deadly" indulgence in ice-water, or she does not keep
the run of her death-rate as sharply as Europe does.
I think we do keep up the death statistics accurately;
and if we do, our cities are healthier than the cities
of Europe.  Every month the German government tabulates
the death-rate of the world and publishes it.  I scrap-booked
these reports during several months, and it was curious
to see how regular and persistently each city repeated
its same death-rate month after month.  The tables might
as well have been stereotyped, they varied so little.
These tables were based upon weekly reports showing the
average of deaths in each 1,000 population for a year.
Munich was always present with her 33 deaths in each
1,000 of her population (yearly average), Chicago was
as constant with her 15 or 17, Dublin with her 48--and
so on.

Only a few American cities appear in these tables, but they
are scattered so widely over the country that they furnish
a good general average of CITY health in the United States;
and I think it will be granted that our towns and villages
are healthier than our cities.

Here is the average of the only American cities reported
in the German tables:

Chicago, deaths in 1,000 population annually,
16; Philadelphia, 18; St. Louis, 18; San Francisco,
19; New York (the Dublin of America), 23.

See how the figures jump up, as soon as one arrives
at the transatlantic list:

Paris, 27; Glasgow, 27; London, 28; Vienna, 28;
Augsburg, 28; Braunschweig, 28; K"onigsberg, 29;
Cologne, 29; Dresden, 29; Hamburg, 29; Berlin, 30;
Bombay, 30; Warsaw, 31; Breslau, 31; Odessa, 32;
Munich, 33; Strasburg, 33, Pesth, 35; Cassel, 35;
Lisbon, 36; Liverpool, 36; Prague, 37; Madras, 37;
Bucharest, 39; St. Petersburg, 40; Trieste, 40;
Alexandria (Egypt), 43; Dublin, 48; Calcutta, 55.

Edinburgh is as healthy as New York--23; but there
is no CITY in the entire list which is healthier,
except Frankfort-on-the-Main--20. But Frankfort is not
as healthy as Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, or Philadelphia.


Perhaps a strict average of the world might develop the fact
that where one in 1,000 of America's population dies,
two in 1,000 of the other populations of the earth succumb.

I do not like to make insinuations, but I do think
the above statistics darkly suggest that these people
over here drink this detestable water "on the sly."

We climbed the moraine on the opposite side of the glacier,
and then crept along its sharp ridge a hundred yards or so,
in pretty constant danger of a tumble to the glacier below.
The fall would have been only one hundred feet, but it
would have closed me out as effectually as one thousand,
therefore I respected the distance accordingly, and was
glad when the trip was done.  A moraine is an ugly thing
to assault head-first. At a distance it looks like an endless
grave of fine sand, accurately shaped and nicely smoothed;
but close by, it is found to be made mainly of rough
boulders of all sizes, from that of a man's head to that of
a cottage.

By and by we came to the Mauvais Pas, or the Villainous Road,
to translate it feelingly.  It was a breakneck path
around the face of a precipice forty or fifty feet high,
and nothing to hang on to but some iron railings.
I got along, slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, and finally
reached the middle.  My hopes began to rise a little,
but they were quickly blighted; for there I met a hog--a
long-nosed, bristly fellow, that held up his snout
and worked his nostrils at me inquiringly.  A hog on
a pleasure excursion in Switzerland--think of it! It is
striking and unusual; a body might write a poem about it.
He could not retreat, if he had been disposed to do it.
It would have been foolish to stand upon our dignity
in a place where there was hardly room to stand upon
our feet, so we did nothing of the sort.  There were
twenty or thirty ladies and gentlemen behind us; we all
turned about and went back, and the hog followed behind.
The creature did not seem set up by what he had done;
he had probably done it before.

We reached the restaurant on the height called the Chapeau
at four in the afternoon.  It was a memento-factory, and
the stock was large, cheap, and varied.  I bought the usual
paper-cutter to remember the place by, and had Mont Blanc,
the Mauvais Pas, and the rest of the region branded on
my alpenstock; then we descended to the valley and walked
home without being tied together.  This was not dangerous,
for the valley was five miles wide, and quite level.

We reached the hotel before nine o'clock. Next
morning we left for Geneva on top of the diligence,
under shelter of a gay awning.  If I remember rightly,
there were more than twenty people up there.
It was so high that the ascent was made by ladder.
The huge vehicle was full everywhere, inside and out.
Five other diligences left at the same time, all full.
We had engaged our seats two days beforehand, to make sure,
and paid the regulation price, five dollars each; but the
rest of the company were wiser; they had trusted Baedeker,
and waited; consequently some of them got their seats
for one or two dollars.  Baedeker knows all about hotels,
railway and diligence companies, and speaks his mind freely.
He is a trustworthy friend of the traveler.

We never saw Mont Blanc at his best until we were many
miles away; then he lifted his majestic proportions
high into the heavens, all white and cold and solemn,
and made the rest of the world seem little and plebeian,
and cheap and trivial.

As he passed out of sight at last, an old Englishman
settled himself in his seat and said:

"Well, I am satisfied, I have seen the principal features
of Swiss scenery--Mont Blanc and the goiter--now for home!"



CHAPTER XLVII
[Queer European Manners]

We spent a few pleasant restful days at Geneva,
that delightful city where accurate time-pieces are made
for all the rest of the world, but whose own clocks
never give the correct time of day by any accident.

Geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are
filled with the most enticing gimacrackery, but if one
enters one of these places he is at once pounced upon,
and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this, that,
and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get
out again, and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment.
The shopkeepers of the smaller sort, in Geneva,
are as troublesome and persistent as are the salesmen
of that monster hive in Paris, the Grands Magasins du
Louvre--an establishment where ill-mannered pestering,
pursuing, and insistence have been reduced to a science.

In Geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very elastic
--that is another bad feature.  I was looking in at a window
at a very pretty string of beads, suitable for a child.
I was only admiring them; I had no use for them; I hardly
ever wear beads.  The shopwoman came out and offered
them to me for thirty-five francs.  I said it was cheap,
but I did not need them.

"Ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful!"

I confessed it, but said they were not suitable for one
of my age and simplicity of character.  She darted in and
brought them out and tried to force them into my hands,
saying:

"Ah, but only see how lovely they are! Surely monsieur will
take them; monsieur shall have them for thirty francs.
There, I have said it--it is a loss, but one must live."

I dropped my hands, and tried to move her to respect
my unprotected situation.  But no, she dangled the beads
in the sun before my face, exclaiming, "Ah, monsieur
CANNOT resist them!" She hung them on my coat button,
folded her hand resignedly, and said: "Gone,--and for
thirty francs, the lovely things--it is incredible!--but
the good God will sanctify the sacrifice to me."

I removed them gently, returned them, and walked away,
shaking my head and smiling a smile of silly embarrassment
while the passers-by halted to observe.  The woman leaned
out of her door, shook the beads, and screamed after me:

"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-eight!"

I shook my head.

"Twenty-seven! It is a cruel loss, it is ruin
--but take them, only take them."

I still retreated, still wagging my head.

"MON DIEU, they shall even go for twenty-six! There,
I have said it.  Come!"

I wagged another negative.  A nurse and a little English girl
had been near me, and were following me, now.  The shopwoman
ran to the nurse, thrust the beads into her hands, and said:

"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-five! Take them
to the hotel--he shall send me the money tomorrow
--next day--when he likes." Then to the child: "When thy
father sends me the money, come thou also, my angel,
and thou shall have something oh so pretty!"

I was thus providentially saved.  The nurse refused
the beads squarely and firmly, and that ended the matter.

The "sights" of Geneva are not numerous.  I made one
attempt to hunt up the houses once inhabited by those
two disagreeable people, Rousseau and Calvin, but I had
no success.  Then I concluded to go home.  I found it was
easier to propose to do that than to do it; for that town
is a bewildering place.  I got lost in a tangle of narrow
and crooked streets, and stayed lost for an hour or two.
Finally I found a street which looked somewhat familiar,
and said to myself, "Now I am at home, I judge." But I
was wrong; this was "HELL street." Presently I found
another place which had a familiar look, and said to myself,
"Now I am at home, sure." It was another error.  This was
"PURGATORY street." After a little I said, "NOW I've got the
right place, anyway ... no, this is 'PARADISE street';
I'm further from home than I was in the beginning."
Those were queer names--Calvin was the author of them,
likely.  "Hell" and "Purgatory" fitted those two streets
like a glove, but the "Paradise" appeared to be sarcastic.

I came out on the lake-front, at last, and then I knew
where I was.  I was walking along before the glittering
jewelry shops when I saw a curious performance.
A lady passed by, and a trim dandy lounged across the walk
in such an apparently carefully timed way as to bring
himself exactly in front of her when she got to him;
he made no offer to step out of the way; he did not apologize;
he did not even notice her.  She had to stop still and let
him lounge by.  I wondered if he had done that piece
of brutality purposely.  He strolled to a chair and seated
himself at a small table; two or three other males were
sitting at similar tables sipping sweetened water.
I waited; presently a youth came by, and this fellow got
up and served him the same trick.  Still, it did not seem
possible that any one could do such a thing deliberately.
To satisfy my curiosity I went around the block, and,
sure enough, as I approached, at a good round speed, he got
up and lounged lazily across my path, fouling my course
exactly at the right moment to receive all my weight.
This proved that his previous performances had not
been accidental, but intentional.

I saw that dandy's curious game played afterward, in Paris,
but not for amusement; not with a motive of any sort, indeed,
but simply from a selfish indifference to other people's
comfort and rights.  One does not see it as frequently
in Paris as he might expect to, for there the law says,
in effect, "It is the business of the weak to get out of
the way of the strong." We fine a cabman if he runs over
a citizen; Paris fines the citizen for being run over.
At least so everybody says--but I saw something which
caused me to doubt; I saw a horseman run over an old woman
one day--the police arrested him and took him away.
That looked as if they meant to punish him.

It will not do for me to find merit in American manners
--for are they not the standing butt for the jests
of critical and polished Europe? Still, I must venture
to claim one little matter of superiority in our manners;
a lady may traverse our streets all day, going and coming
as she chooses, and she will never be molested by any man;
but if a lady, unattended, walks abroad in the streets
of London, even at noonday, she will be pretty likely
to be accosted and insulted--and not by drunken sailors,
but by men who carry the look and wear the dress of gentlemen.
It is maintained that these people are not gentlemen,
but are a lower sort, disguised as gentlemen.  The case
of Colonel Valentine Baker obstructs that argument,
for a man cannot become an officer in the British army
except he hold the rank of gentleman.  This person,
finding himself alone in a railway compartment with
an unprotected girl--but it is an atrocious story,
and doubtless the reader remembers it well enough.
London must have been more or less accustomed to Bakers,
and the ways of Bakers, else London would have been
offended and excited.  Baker was "imprisoned"--in a parlor;
and he could not have been more visited, or more overwhelmed
with attentions, if he had committed six murders and then
--while the gallows was preparing--"got religion"--after
the manner of the holy Charles Peace, of saintly memory.
Arkansaw--it seems a little indelicate to be trumpeting forth
our own superiorities, and comparisons are always odious,
but still--Arkansaw would certainly have hanged Baker.
I do not say she would have tried him first, but she would have
hanged him, anyway.

Even the most degraded woman can walk our streets unmolested,
her sex and her weakness being her sufficient protection.
She will encounter less polish than she would in the
old world, but she will run across enough humanity to make
up for it.

The music of a donkey awoke us early in the morning,
and we rose up and made ready for a pretty formidable
walk--to Italy; but the road was so level that we took
the train.. We lost a good deal of time by this, but it
was no matter, we were not in a hurry.  We were four
hours going to Chamb`ery. The Swiss trains go upward
of three miles an hour, in places, but they are quite safe.

That aged French town of Chamb`ery was as quaint and crooked
as Heilbronn.  A drowsy reposeful quiet reigned in the back
streets which made strolling through them very pleasant,
barring the almost unbearable heat of the sun.
In one of these streets, which was eight feet wide,
gracefully curved, and built up with small antiquated houses,
I saw three fat hogs lying asleep, and a boy (also asleep)
taking care of them.  From queer old-fashioned windows
along the curve projected boxes of bright flowers, and over
the edge of one of these boxes hung the head and shoulders
of a cat--asleep. The five sleeping creatures were the
only living things visible in that street.  There was not
a sound; absolute stillness prevailed.  It was Sunday;
one is not used to such dreamy Sundays on the continent.
In our part of the town it was different that night.
A regiment of brown and battered soldiers had arrived home
from Algiers, and I judged they got thirsty on the way.
They sang and drank till dawn, in the pleasant open air.

We left for Turin at ten the next morning by a railway which
was profusely decorated with tunnels.  We forgot to take
a lantern along, consequently we missed all the scenery.
Our compartment was full.  A ponderous tow-headed Swiss woman,
who put on many fine-lady airs, but was evidently more
used to washing linen than wearing it, sat in a corner
seat and put her legs across into the opposite one,
propping them intermediately with her up-ended valise.
In the seat thus pirated, sat two Americans, greatly incommoded
by that woman's majestic coffin-clad feet.  One of them
begged, politely, to remove them.  She opened her wide eyes
and gave him a stare, but answered nothing.  By and by he
proferred his request again, with great respectfulness.
She said, in good English, and in a deeply offended tone,
that she had paid her passage and was not going to be
bullied out of her "rights" by ill-bred foreigners,
even if she was alone and unprotected.

"But I have rights, also, madam.  My ticket entitles me
to a seat, but you are occupying half of it."

"I will not talk with you, sir.  What right have you
to speak to me? I do not know you.  One would know
you came from a land where there are no gentlemen.
No GENTLEMAN would treat a lady as you have treated me."

"I come from a region where a lady would hardly give me
the same provocation."

"You have insulted me, sir! You have intimated that I am
not a lady--and I hope I am NOT one, after the pattern
of your country."

"I beg that you will give yourself no alarm on that head,
madam; but at the same time I must insist--always
respectfully--that you let me have my seat."

Here the fragile laundress burst into tears and sobs.

"I never was so insulted before! Never, never! It
is shameful, it is brutal, it is base, to bully and abuse
an unprotected lady who has lost the use of her limbs
and cannot put her feet to the floor without agony!"

"Good heavens, madam, why didn't you say that at first! I
offer a thousand pardons.  And I offer them most sincerely.
I did not know--I COULD not know--anything was the matter.
You are most welcome to the seat, and would have been
from the first if I had only known.  I am truly sorry it
all happened, I do assure you."

But he couldn't get a word of forgiveness out of her.
She simply sobbed and sniffed in a subdued but wholly
unappeasable way for two long hours, meantime crowding
the man more than ever with her undertaker-furniture
and paying no sort of attention to his frequent and
humble little efforts to do something for her comfort.
Then the train halted at the Italian line and she hopped
up and marched out of the car with as firm a leg as any
washerwoman of all her tribe! And how sick I was, to see
how she had fooled me.

Turin is a very fine city.  In the matter of roominess
it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of before,
I fancy.  It sits in the midst of a vast dead-level, and one
is obliged to imagine that land may be had for the asking,
and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it.
The streets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares
are prodigious, the houses are huge and handsome,
and compacted into uniform blocks that stretch away as
straight as an arrow, into the distance.  The sidewalks
are about as wide as ordinary European STREETS, and are
covered over with a double arcade supported on great stone
piers or columns.  One walks from one end to the other
of these spacious streets, under shelter all the time,
and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shops
and the most inviting dining-houses.

There is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with the
most wickedly enticing shops, which is roofed with glass,
high aloft overhead, and paved with soft-toned marbles
laid in graceful figures; and at night when the place
is brilliant with gas and populous with a sauntering
and chatting and laughing multitude of pleasure-seekers,
it is a spectacle worth seeing.

Everything is on a large scale; the public buildings,
for instance--and they are architecturally imposing,
too, as well as large.  The big squares have big bronze
monuments in them.  At the hotel they gave us rooms
that were alarming, for size, and parlor to match.
It was well the weather required no fire in the parlor,
for I think one might as well have tried to warm a park.
The place would have a warm look, though, in any weather,
for the window-curtains were of red silk damask,
and the walls were covered with the same fire-hued
goods--so, also, were the four sofas and the brigade
of chairs.  The furniture, the ornaments, the chandeliers,
the carpets, were all new and bright and costly.
We did not need a parlor at all, but they said it belonged
to the two bedrooms and we might use it if we chose.
Since it was to cost nothing, we were not averse to using it,
of course.

Turin must surely read a good deal, for it has more
book-stores to the square rod than any other town I
know of.  And it has its own share of military folk.
The Italian officers' uniforms are very much the most
beautiful I have ever seen; and, as a general thing,
the men in them were as handsome as the clothes.  They were
not large men, but they had fine forms, fine features,
rich olive complexions, and lustrous black eyes.

For several weeks I had been culling all the information
I could about Italy, from tourists.  The tourists were
all agreed upon one thing--one must expect to be cheated
at every turn by the Italians.  I took an evening walk
in Turin, and presently came across a little Punch and Judy
show in one of the great squares.  Twelve or fifteen
people constituted the audience.  This miniature theater
was not much bigger than a man's coffin stood on end;
the upper part was open and displayed a tinseled
parlor--a good-sized handkerchief would have answered
for a drop-curtain; the footlights consisted of a couple
of candle-ends an inch long; various manikins the size
of dolls appeared on the stage and made long speeches at
each other, gesticulating a good deal, and they generally
had a fight before they got through.  They were worked
by strings from above, and the illusion was not perfect,
for one saw not only the strings but the brawny hand
that manipulated them--and the actors and actresses all
talked in the same voice, too.  The audience stood in front
of the theater, and seemed to enjoy the performance heartily.

When the play was done, a youth in his shirt-sleeves started
around with a small copper saucer to make a collection.
I did not know how much to put in, but thought I would
be guided by my predecessors.  Unluckily, I only had two
of these, and they did not help me much because they
did not put in anything.  I had no Italian money,
so I put in a small Swiss coin worth about ten cents.
The youth finished his collection trip and emptied
the result on the stage; he had some very animated talk
with the concealed manager, then he came working his
way through the little crowd--seeking me, I thought.
I had a mind to slip away, but concluded I wouldn't;
I would stand my ground, and confront the villainy,
whatever it was.  The youth stood before me and held
up that Swiss coin, sure enough, and said something.
I did not understand him, but I judged he was requiring
Italian money of me.  The crowd gathered close,
to listen.  I was irritated, and said--in English,
of course:

"I know it's Swiss, but you'll take that or none.
I haven't any other."

He tried to put the coin in my hand, and spoke again.
I drew my hand away, and said:

"NO, sir.  I know all about you people.  You can't play
any of your fraudful tricks on me.  If there is a discount
on that coin, I am sorry, but I am not going to make
it good.  I noticed that some of the audience didn't pay
you anything at all.  You let them go, without a word,
but you come after me because you think I'm a stranger
and will put up with an extortion rather than have a scene.
But you are mistaken this time--you'll take that Swiss
money or none."

The youth stood there with the coin in his fingers,
nonplused and bewildered; of course he had not understood
a word.  An English-speaking Italian spoke up, now, and said:

"You are misunderstanding the boy.  He does not mean any harm.
He did not suppose you gave him so much money purposely,
so he hurried back to return you the coin lest you
might get away before you discovered your mistake.
Take it, and give him a penny--that will make everything
smooth again."

I probably blushed, then, for there was occasion.
Through the interpreter I begged the boy's pardon,
but I nobly refused to take back the ten cents.  I said
I was accustomed to squandering large sums in that way
--it was the kind of person I was.  Then I retired to make
a note to the effect that in Italy persons connected
with the drama do not cheat.

The episode with the showman reminds me of a dark chapter
in my history.  I once robbed an aged and blind beggar-woman
of four dollars--in a church.  It happened this way.
When I was out with the Innocents Abroad, the ship
stopped in the Russian port of Odessa and I went ashore,
with others, to view the town.  I got separated from the rest,
and wandered about alone, until late in the afternoon,
when I entered a Greek church to see what it was like.
When I was ready to leave, I observed two wrinkled old
women standing stiffly upright against the inner wall,
near the door, with their brown palms open to receive alms.
I contributed to the nearer one, and passed out.
I had gone fifty yards, perhaps, when it occurred to me
that I must remain ashore all night, as I had heard
that the ship's business would carry her away at four
o'clock and keep her away until morning.  It was a little
after four now.  I had come ashore with only two pieces
of money, both about the same size, but differing largely
in value--one was a French gold piece worth four dollars,
the other a Turkish coin worth two cents and a half.
With a sudden and horrified misgiving, I put my hand in
my pocket, now, and sure enough, I fetched out that Turkish
penny!

Here was a situation.  A hotel would require pay in
advance --I must walk the street all night, and perhaps
be arrested as a suspicious character.  There was but one
way out of the difficulty--I flew back to the church,
and softly entered.  There stood the old woman yet,
and in the palm of the nearest one still lay my gold piece.
I was grateful.  I crept close, feeling unspeakably mean;
I got my Turkish penny ready, and was extending a trembling
hand to make the nefarious exchange, when I heard a cough
behind me.  I jumped back as if I had been accused,
and stood quaking while a worshiper entered and passed up
the aisle.

I was there a year trying to steal that money; that is,
it seemed a year, though, of course, it must have been
much less.  The worshipers went and came; there were hardly
ever three in the church at once, but there was always one
or more.  Every time I tried to commit my crime somebody
came in or somebody started out, and I was prevented;
but at last my opportunity came; for one moment there
was nobody in the church but the two beggar-women and me.
I whipped the gold piece out of the poor old pauper's palm
and dropped my Turkish penny in its place.  Poor old thing,
she murmured her thanks--they smote me to the heart.
Then I sped away in a guilty hurry, and even when I was a mile
from the church I was still glancing back, every moment,
to see if I was being pursued.

That experience has been of priceless value and benefit
to me; for I resolved then, that as long as I lived I
would never again rob a blind beggar-woman in a church;
and I have always kept my word.  The most permanent lessons
in morals are those which come, not of booky teaching,
but of experience.



CHAPTER XLVIII
[Beauty of Women--and of Old Masters]

In Milan we spent most of our time in the vast and
beautiful Arcade or Gallery, or whatever it is called.
Blocks of tall new buildings of the most sumptuous sort,
rich with decoration and graced with statues, the streets
between these blocks roofed over with glass at a great height,
the pavements all of smooth and variegated marble,
arranged in tasteful patterns--little tables all over these
marble streets, people sitting at them, eating, drinking,
or smoking--crowds of other people strolling by--such
is the Arcade.  I should like to live in it all the time.
The windows of the sumptuous restaurants stand open,
and one breakfasts there and enjoys the passing show.

We wandered all over the town, enjoying whatever was going
on in the streets.  We took one omnibus ride, and as I
did not speak Italian and could not ask the price, I held
out some copper coins to the conductor, and he took two.
Then he went and got his tariff card and showed me that he
had taken only the right sum.  So I made a note--Italian
omnibus conductors do not cheat.

Near the Cathedral I saw another instance of probity.
An old man was peddling dolls and toy fans.  Two small
American children and one gave the old man a franc
and three copper coins, and both started away; but they
were called back, and the franc and one of the coppers
were restored to them.  Hence it is plain that in Italy,
parties connected with the drama and the omnibus and the toy
interests do not cheat.

The stocks of goods in the shops were not extensive, generally.
In the vestibule of what seemed to be a clothing store,
we saw eight or ten wooden dummies grouped together,
clothed in woolen business suits and each marked with its price.
One suit was marked forty-five francs--nine dollars.
Harris stepped in and said he wanted a suit like that.
Nothing easier: the old merchant dragged in the dummy,
brushed him off with a broom, stripped him, and shipped
the clothes to the hotel.  He said he did not keep two
suits of the same kind in stock, but manufactured a second
when it was needed to reclothe the dummy.

In another quarter we found six Italians engaged
in a violent quarrel.  They danced fiercely about,
gesticulating with their heads, their arms, their legs,
their whole bodies; they would rush forward occasionally
with a sudden access of passion and shake their fists
in each other's very faces.  We lost half an hour there,
waiting to help cord up the dead, but they finally embraced
each other affectionately, and the trouble was over.
The episode was interesting, but we could not have afforded
all the time to it if we had known nothing was going
to come of it but a reconciliation.  Note made--in Italy,
people who quarrel cheat the spectator.

We had another disappointment afterward.  We approached
a deeply interested crowd, and in the midst of it
found a fellow wildly chattering and gesticulating
over a box on the ground which was covered with a piece
of old blanket.  Every little while he would bend down
and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme
tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no
deception--chattering away all the while--but always,
just as I was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain,
he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further.
However, at last he uncovered the box and got out a spoon
with a liquid in it, and held it fair and frankly around,
for people to see that it was all right and he was taking
no advantage--his chatter became more excited than ever.
I supposed he was going to set fire to the liquid and
swallow it, so I was greatly wrought up and interested.
I got a cent ready in one hand and a florin in the other,
intending to give him the former if he survived and the
latter if he killed himself--for his loss would be my gain
in a literary way, and I was willing to pay a fair price
for the item --but this impostor ended his intensely
moving performance by simply adding some powder to the
liquid and polishing the spoon! Then he held it aloft,
and he could not have shown a wilder exultation if he
had achieved an immortal miracle.  The crowd applauded
in a gratified way, and it seemed to me that history
speaks the truth when it says these children of the south
are easily entertained.

We spent an impressive hour in the noble cathedral, where long
shafts of tinted light were cleaving through the solemn
dimness from the lofty windows and falling on a pillar here,
a picture there, and a kneeling worshiper yonder.
The organ was muttering, censers were swinging, candles were
glinting on the distant altar and robed priests were
filing silently past them; the scene was one to sweep all
frivolous thoughts away and steep the soul in a holy calm.
A trim young American lady paused a yard or two from me,
fixed her eyes on the mellow sparks flecking the far-off altar,
bent her head reverently a moment, then straightened up,
kicked her train into the air with her heel, caught it
deftly in her hand, and marched briskly out.

We visited the picture-galleries and the other regulation
"sights"
of Milan--not because I wanted to write about them again,
but to see if I had learned anything in twelve years.
I afterward visited the great galleries of Rome and
Florence for the same purpose.  I found I had learned
one thing.  When I wrote about the Old Masters before,
I said the copies were better than the originals.
That was a mistake of large dimensions.  The Old Masters
were still unpleasing to me, but they were truly divine
contrasted with the copies.  The copy is to the original
as the pallid, smart, inane new wax-work group is to
the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men
and women whom it professes to duplicate.  There is a
mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures,
which is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound
is to the ear.  That is the merit which is most loudly
praised in the old picture, and is the one which the copy
most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must
not hope to compass.  It was generally conceded by the
artists with whom I talked, that that subdued splendor,
that mellow richness, is imparted to the picture by AGE.
Then why should we worship the Old Master for it,
who didn't impart it, instead of worshiping Old Time,
who did? Perhaps the picture was a clanging bell,
until Time muffled it and sweetened it.

In conversation with an artist in Venice, I asked: "What
is it that people see in the Old Masters? I have been in the
Doge's palace and I saw several acres of very bad drawing,
very bad perspective, and very incorrect proportions.
Paul Veronese's dogs to not resemble dogs; all the horses
look like bladders on legs; one man had a RIGHT leg on
the left side of his body; in the large picture where
the Emperor (Barbarossa?) is prostrate before the Pope,
there are three men in the foreground who are over
thirty feet high, if one may judge by the size of a
kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground;
and according to the same scale, the Pope is seven feet
high and the Doge is a shriveled dwarf of four feet."

The artist said:

"Yes, the Old Masters often drew badly; they did not
care much for truth and exactness in minor details;
but after all, in spite of bad drawing, bad perspective,
bad proportions, and a choice of subjects which no longer
appeal to people as strongly as they did three hundred
years ago, there is a SOMETHING about their pictures
which is divine--a something which is above and beyond
the art of any epoch since--a something which would be
the despair of artists but that they never hope or expect
to attain it, and therefore do not worry about it."

That is what he said--and he said what he believed;
and not only believed, but felt.

Reasoning--especially reasoning, without technical
knowledge--must be put aside, in cases of this kind.
It cannot assist the inquirer.  It will lead him,
in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes
of artists, would be a most illogical conclusion.
Thus: bad drawing, bad proportion, bad perspective,
indifference to truthful detail, color which gets its
merit from time, and not from the artist--these things
constitute the Old Master; conclusion, the Old Master
was a bad painter, the Old Master was not an Old Master
at all, but an Old Apprentice.  Your friend the artist
will grant your premises, but deny your conclusion;
he will maintain that notwithstanding this formidable
list of confessed defects, there is still a something
that is divine and unapproachable about the Old Master,
and that there is no arguing the fact away by any system of
reasoning whatsoever.

I can believe that.  There are women who have an
indefinable charm in their faces which makes them
beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger
who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty
would fail.  He would say to one of these women: This
chin is too short, this nose is too long, this forehead
is too high, this hair is too red, this complexion is
too pallid, the perspective of the entire composition
is incorrect; conclusion, the woman is not beautiful.
But her nearest friend might say, and say truly,
"Your premises are right, your logic is faultless,
but your conclusion is wrong, nevertheless; she is an Old
Master--she is beautiful, but only to such as know her;
it is a beauty which cannot be formulated, but it is there, just
the same."

I found more pleasure in contemplating the Old Masters
this time than I did when I was in Europe in former years,
but still it was a calm pleasure; there was nothing
overheated about it.  When I was in Venice before,
I think I found no picture which stirred me much,
but this time there were two which enticed me to the Doge's
palace day after day, and kept me there hours at a time.
One of these was Tintoretto's three-acre picture in the
Great Council Chamber.  When I saw it twelve years ago I
was not strongly attracted to it--the guide told me it
was an insurrection in heaven--but this was an error.

The movement of this great work is very fine.  There are
ten thousand figures, and they are all doing something.
There is a wonderful "go" to the whole composition.
Some of the figures are driving headlong downward,
with clasped hands, others are swimming through the
cloud-shoals--some on their faces, some on their backs--great
processions of bishops, martyrs, and angels are pouring swiftly
centerward from various outlying directions--everywhere
is enthusiastic joy, there is rushing movement everywhere.
There are fifteen or twenty figures scattered here and there,
with books, but they cannot keep their attention on
their reading--they offer the books to others, but no
one wishes to read, now.  The Lion of St. Mark is there
with his book; St. Mark is there with his pen uplifted;
he and the Lion are looking each other earnestly in the face,
disputing about the way to spell a word--the Lion
looks up in rapt admiration while St. Mark spells.
This is wonderfully interpreted by the artist.
It is the master-stroke of this imcomparable painting.
[Figure 10]

I visited the place daily, and never grew tired of
looking at that grand picture.  As I have intimated,
the movement is almost unimaginable vigorous; the figures
are singing, hosannahing, and many are blowing trumpets.
So vividly is noise suggested, that spectators who become
absorbed in the picture almost always fall to shouting
comments in each other's ears, making ear-trumpets of their
curved hands, fearing they may not otherwise be heard.
One often sees a tourist, with the eloquent tears pouring
down his cheeks, funnel his hands at his wife's ear,
and hears him roar through them, "OH, TO BE THERE AND
AT REST!"

None but the supremely great in art can produce effects
like these with the silent brush.

Twelve years ago I could not have appreciated this picture.
One year ago I could not have appreciated it.  My study
of Art in Heidelberg has been a noble education to me.
All that I am today in Art, I owe to that.

The other great work which fascinated me was Bassano's
immortal Hair Trunk.  This is in the Chamber of the Council
of Ten.  It is in one of the three forty-foot pictures
which decorate the walls of the room.  The composition
of this picture is beyond praise.  The Hair Trunk is not
hurled at the stranger's head--so to speak--as the chief
feature of an immortal work so often is; no, it is
carefully guarded from prominence, it is subordinated,
it is restrained, it is most deftly and cleverly held
in reserve, it is most cautiously and ingeniously led up to,
by the master, and consequently when the spectator reaches
it at last, he is taken unawares, he is unprepared,
and it bursts upon him with a stupefying surprise.

One is lost in wonder at all the thought and care which
this elaborate planning must have cost.  A general glance
at the picture could never suggest that there was a hair
trunk in it; the Hair Trunk is not mentioned in the title
even--which is, "Pope Alexander III.  and the Doge Ziani,
the Conqueror of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa";
you see, the title is actually utilized to help
divert attention from the Trunk; thus, as I say,
nothing suggests the presence of the Trunk, by any hint,
yet everything studiedly leads up to it, step by step.
Let us examine into this, and observe the exquisitely
artful artlessness of the plan.

At the extreme left end of the picture are a couple of women,
one of them with a child looking over her shoulder at
a wounded man sitting with bandaged head on the ground.
These people seem needless, but no, they are there
for a purpose; one cannot look at them without seeing
the gorgeous procession of grandees, bishops, halberdiers,
and banner-bearers which is passing along behind them;
one cannot see the procession without feeling the curiosity
to follow it and learn whither it is going; it leads him
to the Pope, in the center of the picture, who is talking
with the bonnetless Doge--talking tranquilly, too,
although within twelve feet of them a man is beating a drum,
and not far from the drummer two persons are blowing horns,
and many horsemen are plunging and rioting about--indeed,
twenty-two feet of this great work is all a deep and
happy holiday serenity and Sunday-school procession,
and then we come suddenly upon eleven and one-half feet
of turmoil and racket and insubordination.  This latter
state of things is not an accident, it has its purpose.
But for it, one would linger upon the Pope and the Doge,
thinking them to be the motive and supreme feature of
the picture; whereas one is drawn along, almost unconsciously,
to see what the trouble is about.  Now at the very END
of this riot, within four feet of the end of the picture,
and full thirty-six feet from the beginning of it,
the Hair Trunk bursts with an electrifying suddenness
upon the spectator, in all its matchless perfection,
and the great master's triumph is sweeping and complete.
From that moment no other thing in those forty feet of canvas
has any charm; one sees the Hair Trunk, and the Hair Trunk
only--and to see it is to worship it.  Bassano even placed
objects in the immediate vicinity of the Supreme Feature
whose pretended purpose was to divert attention from it yet
a little longer and thus delay and augment the surprise;
for instance, to the right of it he has placed a stooping
man with a cap so red that it is sure to hold the eye
for a moment--to the left of it, some six feet away,
he has placed a red-coated man on an inflated horse,
and that coat plucks your eye to that locality the next
moment--then, between the Trunk and the red horseman he
has intruded a man, naked to his waist, who is carrying
a fancy flour-sack on the middle of his back instead
of on his shoulder--this admirable feat interests you,
of course--keeps you at bay a little longer, like a sock
or a jacket thrown to the pursuing wolf--but at last,
in spite of all distractions and detentions, the eye
of even the most dull and heedless spectator is sure
to fall upon the World's Masterpiece, and in that
moment he totters to his chair or leans upon his guide
for support.

Descriptions of such a work as this must necessarily
be imperfect, yet they are of value.  The top of the Trunk
is arched; the arch is a perfect half-circle, in the Roman
style of architecture, for in the then rapid decadence
of Greek art, the rising influence of Rome was already
beginning to be felt in the art of the Republic.
The Trunk is bound or bordered with leather all around
where the lid joins the main body.  Many critics consider
this leather too cold in tone; but I consider this
its highest merit, since it was evidently made so to
emphasize by contrast the impassioned fervor of the hasp.
The highlights in this part of the work are cleverly managed,
the MOTIF is admirably subordinated to the ground tints,
and the technique is very fine.  The brass nail-heads
are in the purest style of the early Renaissance.
The strokes, here, are very firm and bold--every nail-head
is a portrait.  The handle on the end of the Trunk has
evidently been retouched--I think, with a piece of chalk
--but one can still see the inspiration of the Old Master
in the tranquil, almost too tranquil, hang of it.  The hair
of this Trunk is REAL hair--so to speak--white in patched,
brown in patches.  The details are finely worked out;
the repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive
attitude is charmingly expressed.  There is a feeling
about this part of the work which lifts it to the highest
altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism vanishes
away--one recognizes that there is SOUL here.

View this Trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel,
it is a miracle.  Some of the effects are very daring,
approaching even to the boldest flights of the rococo,
the sirocco, and the Byzantine schools--yet the master's hand
never falters--it moves on, calm, majestic, confident--and,
with that art which conceals art, it finally casts over
the TOUT ENSEMBLE, by mysterious methods of its own,
a subtle something which refines, subdues, etherealizes the
arid components and endures them with the deep charm
and gracious witchery of poesy.

Among the art-treasures of Europe there are pictures
which approach the Hair Trunk--there are two which may
be said to equal it, possibly--but there is none that
surpasses it.  So perfect is the Hair Trunk that it moves
even persons who ordinarily have no feeling for art.
When an Erie baggagemaster saw it two years ago, he could
hardly keep from checking it; and once when a customs
inspector was brought into its presence, he gazed upon
it in silent rapture for some moments, then slowly
and unconsciously placed one hand behind him with the
palm uppermost, and got out his chalk with the other.
These facts speak for themselves.



CHAPTER XLIX
[Hanged with a Golden Rope]

One lingers about the Cathedral a good deal, in Venice.
There is a strong fascination about it--partly because
it is so old, and partly because it is so ugly.
Too many of the world's famous buildings fail of one
chief virtue--harmony; they are made up of a methodless
mixture of the ugly and the beautiful; this is bad;
it is confusing, it is unrestful.  One has a sense
of uneasiness, of distress, without knowing why.  But one
is calm before St. Mark's, one is calm in the cellar;
for its details are masterfully ugly, no misplaced
and impertinent beauties are intruded anywhere; and the
consequent result is a grand harmonious whole, of soothing,
entrancing, tranquilizing, soul-satisfying ugliness.
One's admiration of a perfect thing always grows,
never declines; and this is the surest evidence to him
that it IS perfect.  St. Mark's is perfect.  To me it
soon grew to be so nobly, so augustly ugly, that it was
difficult to stay away from it, even for a little while.
Every time its squat domes disappeared from my view,
I had a despondent feeling; whenever they reappeared,
I felt an honest rapture--I have not known any happier hours
than those I daily spent in front of Florian's, looking
across the Great Square at it.  Propped on its long row
of low thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes,
it seemed like a vast warty bug taking a meditative walk.

St. Mark's is not the oldest building in the world, of course,
but it seems the oldest, and looks the oldest--especially inside.

When the ancient mosaics in its walls become damaged,
they are repaired but not altered; the grotesque old
pattern is preserved.  Antiquity has a charm of its own,
and to smarten it up would only damage it.  One day I
was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule looking
up at an ancient piece of apprentice-work, in mosaic,
illustrative of the command to "multiply and replenish
the earth." The Cathedral itself had seemed very old;
but this picture was illustrating a period in history
which made the building seem young by comparison.
But I presently found an antique which was older than either
the battered Cathedral or the date assigned to the piece
of history; it was a spiral-shaped fossil as large as
the crown of a hat; it was embedded in the marble bench,
and had been sat upon by tourists until it was worn smooth.
Contrasted with the inconceivable antiquity of this
modest fossil, those other things were flippantly
modern--jejune--mere matters of day-before-yesterday.
The sense of the oldness of the Cathedral vanished away
under the influence of this truly venerable presence.

St. Mark's is monumental; it is an imperishable remembrancer
of the profound and simply piety of the Middle Ages.
Whoever could ravish a column from a pagan temple,
did it and contributed his swag to this Christian one.
So this fane is upheld by several hundred acquisitions
procured in that peculiar way.  In our day it would be
immoral to go on the highway to get bricks for a church,
but it was no sin in the old times.  St. Mark's was itself
the victim of a curious robbery once.  The thing is set
down in the history of Venice, but it might be smuggled
into the Arabian Nights and not seem out of place
there:

Nearly four hundred and fifty years ago, a Candian
named Stammato, in the suite of a prince of the house
of Este, was allowed to view the riches of St. Mark's.
His sinful eye was dazzled and he hid himself behind
an altar, with an evil purpose in his heart, but a priest
discovered him and turned him out.  Afterward he got
in again--by false keys, this time.  He went there,
night after night, and worked hard and patiently, all alone,
overcoming difficulty after difficulty with his toil,
and at last succeeded in removing a great brick of the marble
paneling which walled the lower part of the treasury;
this block he fixed so that he could take it out and put
it in at will.  After that, for weeks, he spent all
his midnights in his magnificent mine, inspecting it
in security, gloating over its marvels at his leisure,
and always slipping back to his obscure lodgings before dawn,
with a duke's ransom under his cloak.  He did not need
to grab, haphazard, and run--there was no hurry.
He could make deliberate and well-considered selections;
he could consult his esthetic tastes.  One comprehends
how undisturbed he was, and how safe from any danger
of interruption, when it is stated that he even carried off
a unicorn's horn--a mere curiosity--which would not pass
through the egress entire, but had to be sawn in two
--a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor.
He continued to store up his treasures at home until his
occupation lost the charm of novelty and became monotonous;
then he ceased from it, contented.  Well he might be;
for his collection, raised to modern values, represented nearly
fifty million dollars!

He could have gone home much the richest citizen of his country,
and it might have been years before the plunder was missed;
but he was human--he could not enjoy his delight alone,
he must have somebody to talk about it with.  So he
exacted a solemn oath from a Candian noble named Crioni,
then led him to his lodgings and nearly took his breath
away with a sight of his glittering hoard.  He detected
a look in his friend's face which excited his suspicion,
and was about to slip a stiletto into him when Crioni
saved himself by explaining that that look was only
an expression of supreme and happy astonishment.
Stammato made Crioni a present of one of the state's
principal jewels--a huge carbuncle, which afterward
figured in the Ducal cap of state--and the pair parted.
Crioni went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal,
and handed over the carbuncle as evidence.
Stammato was arrested, tried, and condemned, with the
old-time Venetian promptness.  He was hanged between
the two great columns in the Piazza--with a gilded rope,
out of compliment to his love of gold, perhaps.  He got
no good of his booty at all--it was ALL recovered.

In Venice we had a luxury which very seldom fell to our lot
on the continent--a home dinner with a private family.
If one could always stop with private families,
when traveling, Europe would have a charm which it
now lacks.  As it is, one must live in the hotels,
of course, and that is a sorrowful business.
A man accustomed to American food and American domestic
cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe;
but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.

He would have to do without his accustomed morning meal.
That is too formidable a change altogether; he would
necessarily suffer from it.  He could get the shadow,
the sham, the base counterfeit of that meal; but it would
do him no good, and money could not buy the reality.

To particularize: the average American's simplest and
commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak;
well, in Europe, coffee is an unknown beverage.  You can
get what the European hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it
resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness.
It is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff,
and almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an
American hotel.  The milk used for it is what the French
call "Christian" milk--milk which has been baptized.

After a few months' acquaintance with European "coffee,"
one's mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins
to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted
layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream,
after all, and a thing which never existed.

Next comes the European bread--fair enough, good enough,
after a fashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic;
and never any change, never any variety--always the same
tiresome thing.

Next, the butter--the sham and tasteless butter; no salt
in it, and made of goodness knows what.

Then there is the beefsteak.  They have it in Europe, but they
don't know how to cook it.  Neither will they cut it right.
It comes on the table in a small, round pewter platter.
It lies in the center of this platter, in a bordering
bed of grease-soaked potatoes; it is the size, shape,
and thickness of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers
cut off.  It is a little overdone, is rather dry,
it tastes pretty insipidly, it rouses no enthusiasm.

Imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing;
and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better
land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an
inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle;
dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with little
melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness
and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling
out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms;
a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing
an outlying district of this ample county of beefsteak;
the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the
tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel
also adds a great cup of American home-made coffee,
with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and
yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate
of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup--could
words describe the gratitude of this exile?

The European dinner is better than the European breakfast,
but it has its faults and inferiorities; it does not satisfy.
He comes to the table eager and hungry; he swallows his
soup--there is an undefinable lack about it somewhere;
thinks the fish is going to be the thing he wants
--eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps
the one that will hit the hungry place--tries it,
and is conscious that there was a something wanting
about it, also.  And thus he goes on, from dish to dish,
like a boy after a butterfly which just misses getting
caught every time it alights, but somehow doesn't get caught
after all; and at the end the exile and the boy have fared
about alike; the one is full, but grievously unsatisfied,
the other has had plenty of exercise, plenty of interest,
and a fine lot of hopes, but he hasn't got any butterfly.
There is here and there an American who will say he can remember
rising from a European table d'ho^te perfectly satisfied;
but we must not overlook the fact that there is also here
and there an American who will lie.

The number of dishes is sufficient; but then it is such
a monotonous variety of UNSTRIKING dishes.  It is an inane
dead-level of "fair-to-middling." There is nothing to
ACCENT it.  Perhaps if the roast of mutton or of beef--a big,
generous one--were brought on the table and carved in full
view of the client, that might give the right sense of
earnestness and reality to the thing; but they don't do that,
they pass the sliced meat around on a dish, and so you
are perfectly calm, it does not stir you in the least.
Now a vast roast turkey, stretched on the broad of his back,
with his heels in the air and the rich juices oozing
from his fat sides ... but I may as well stop there,
for they would not know how to cook him.  They can't
even cook a chicken respectably; and as for carving it,
they do that with a hatchet.

This is about the customary table d'ho^te bill in summer:

Soup (characterless).

Fish--sole, salmon, or whiting--usually tolerably good.

Roast--mutton or beef--tasteless--and some last year's potatoes.

A pa^te, or some other made dish--usually good--"considering."

One vegetable--brought on in state, and all alone--usually
insipid lentils, or string-beans, or indifferent asparagus.

Roast chicken, as tasteless as paper.

Lettuce-salad--tolerably good.

Decayed strawberries or cherries.

Sometimes the apricots and figs are fresh, but this is
no advantage, as these fruits are of no account anyway.

The grapes are generally good, and sometimes there
is a tolerably good peach, by mistake.

The variations of the above bill are trifling.  After a
fortnight one discovers that the variations are only apparent,
not real; in the third week you get what you had the first,
and in the fourth the week you get what you had the second.
Three or four months of this weary sameness will kill
the robustest appetite.

It has now been many months, at the present writing,
since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon
have one--a modest, private affair, all to myself.
I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill
of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me,
and be hot when I arrive--as follows:

Radishes. Baked apples, with cream
Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.
American coffee, with real cream.
American butter.
Fried chicken, Southern style.
Porter-house steak.
Saratoga potatoes.
Broiled chicken, American style.
Hot biscuits, Southern style.
Hot wheat-bread, Southern style.
Hot buckwheat cakes.
American toast. Clear maple syrup.
Virginia bacon, broiled.
Blue points, on the half shell.
Cherry-stone clams.
San Francisco mussels, steamed.
Oyster soup.   Clam Soup.
Philadelphia Terapin soup.
Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style.
Soft-shell crabs.   Connecticut shad.
Baltimore perch.
Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas.
Lake trout, from Tahoe.
Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans.
Black bass from the Mississippi.
American roast beef.
Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style.
Cranberry sauce. Celery.
Roast wild turkey.  Woodcock.
Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore.
Prairie liens, from Illinois.
Missouri partridges, broiled.
'Possum. Coon.
Boston bacon and beans.
Bacon and greens, Southern style.
Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips.
Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus.
Butter beans.  Sweet potatoes.
Lettuce. Succotash. String beans.
Mashed potatoes. Catsup.
Boiled potatoes, in their skins.
New potatoes, minus the skins.
Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot.
Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes.
Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper.
Green corn, on the ear.
Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style.
Hot hoe-cake, Southern style.
Hot egg-bread, Southern style.
Hot light-bread, Southern style.
Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk.
Apple dumplings, with real cream.
Apple pie.  Apple fritters.
Apple puffs, Southern style.
Peach cobbler, Southern style
Peach pie.  American mince pie.
Pumpkin pie.  Squash pie.
All sorts of American pastry.

Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which
are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more
liberal way. Ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet,
but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

Americans intending to spend a year or so in European hotels
will do well to copy this bill and carry it along.  They will
find it an excellent thing to get up an appetite with,
in the dispiriting presence of the squalid table d'ho^te.

Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we
can enjoy theirs.  It is not strange; for tastes are made,
not born.  I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired;
but after all, the Scotchman would shake his head and say,
"Where's your haggis?" and the Fijian would sigh and say,
"Where's your missionary?"

I have a neat talent in matters pertaining to nourishment.
This has met with professional recognition.  I have often
furnished recipes for cook-books. Here are some designs
for pies and things, which I recently prepared for a
friend's projected cook-book, but as I forgot to furnish
diagrams and perspectives, they had to be left out,
of course.

RECIPE FOR AN ASH-CAKE

Take a lot of water and add to it a lot of coarse
Indian-meal and about a quarter of a lot of salt.
Mix well together, knead into the form of a "pone," and let
the pone stand awhile--not on its edge, but the other way.
Rake away a place among the embers, lay it there,
and cover it an inch deep with hot ashes.  When it
is done, remove it; blow off all the ashes but one layer;
butter that one and eat.

N.B.--No household should ever be without this talisman.
It has been noticed that tramps never return for another
ash-cake.

----------

RECIPE FOR NEW ENGLISH PIE

To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as
follows: Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency
of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough.
Work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned
up some three-fourths of an inch.  Toughen and kiln-dry
in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature.
Construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and
of the same material.  Fill with stewed dried apples;
aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron;
add two portions of New Orleans sugars, then solder
on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies.
Serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy.

----------

RECIPE FOR GERMAN COFFEE

Take a barrel of water and bring it to a boil; rub a chicory
berry against a coffee berry, then convey the former
into the water.  Continue the boiling and evaporation
until the intensity of the flavor and aroma of the coffee
and chicory has been diminished to a proper degree;
then set aside to cool.  Now unharness the remains of a
once cow from the plow, insert them in a hydraulic press,
and when you shall have acquired a teaspoon of that
pale-blue juice which a German superstition regards
as milk, modify the malignity of its strength in a bucket
of tepid water and ring up the breakfast.  Mix the
beverage in a cold cup, partake with moderation, and keep
a wet rag around your head to guard against over-excitement.

----------

TO CARVE FOWLS IN THE GERMAN FASHION

Use a club, and avoid the joints.



CHAPTER L
[Titian Bad and Titian Good]

I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is allowed
as much indecent license today as in earlier times
--but the privileges of Literature in this respect have been
sharply curtailed within the past eighty or ninety years.
Fielding and Smollett could portray the beastliness
of their day in the beastliest language; we have plenty
of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are
not allowed to approach them very near, even with nice
and guarded forms of speech.  But not so with Art.
The brush may still deal freely with any subject,
however revolting or indelicate.  It makes a body ooze
sarcasm at every pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see
what this last generation has been doing with the statues.
These works, which had stood in innocent nakedness for ages,
are all fig-leaved now.  Yes, every one of them.
Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can
help noticing it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous.
But the comical thing about it all, is, that the fig-leaf
is confined to cold and pallid marble, which would be still
cold and unsuggestive without this sham and ostentatious
symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blood paintings which do
really need it have in no case been furnished with it.

At the door of the Uffizzi, in Florence, one is confronted
by statues of a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with
accumulated grime--they hardly suggest human beings
--yet these ridiculous creatures have been thoughtfully and
conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious generation.
You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little
gallery that exists in the world--the Tribune--and there,
against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf,
you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest,
the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian's Venus.
It isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no,
it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand.  If I
ventured to describe that attitude, there would be a fine
howl--but there the Venus lies, for anybody to gloat
over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie,
for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges.
I saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw
young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged,
infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest.
How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy
indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear
the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my
grossness and coarseness, and all that.  The world says
that no worded description of a moving spectacle is
a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacle seen
with one's own eyes--yet the world is willing to let its
son and its daughter and itself look at Titian's beast,
but won't stand a description of it in words.
Which shows that the world is not as consistent as it
might be.

There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure
thought--I am well aware of that.  I am not railing
at such.  What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that
Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort.
Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it
was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong.
In truth, it is too strong for any place but a public
Art Gallery.  Titian has two Venuses in the Tribune;
persons who have seen them will easily remember which one I am
referring to.

In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures
of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures
portraying intolerable suffering--pictures alive
with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful
detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas
every day and publicly exhibited--without a growl from
anybody--for they are innocent, they are inoffensive,
being works of art.  But suppose a literary artist ventured
to go into a painstaking and elaborate description
of one of these grisly things--the critics would skin
him alive.  Well, let it go, it cannot be helped;
Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers.
Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores
and the consistencies of it--I haven't got time.

Titian's Venus defiles and disgraces the Tribune, there is
no softening that fact, but his "Moses" glorifies it.
The simple truthfulness of its noble work wins the heart
and the applause of every visitor, be he learned or ignorant.
After wearying one's self with the acres of stuffy,
sappy, expressionless babies that populate the canvases
of the Old Masters of Italy, it is refreshing to stand
before this peerless child and feel that thrill which tells
you you are at last in the presence of the real thing.
This is a human child, this is genuine.  You have seen him
a thousand times--you have seen him just as he is here
--and you confess, without reserve, that Titian WAS a Master.
The doll-faces of other painted babes may mean one thing,
they may mean another, but with the "Moses" the case
is different.  The most famous of all the art-critics
has said, "There is no room for doubt, here--plainly this
child is in trouble."

I consider that the "Moses" has no equal among the works
of the Old Masters, except it be the divine Hair Trunk
of Bassano.  I feel sure that if all the other Old Masters
were lost and only these two preserved, the world would
be the gainer by it.

My sole purpose in going to Florence was to see this
immortal "Moses," and by good fortune I was just in time,
for they were already preparing to remove it to a more
private and better-protected place because a fashion
of robbing the great galleries was prevailing in Europe
at the time.

I got a capable artist to copy the picture; Pannemaker,
the engraver of Dor'e's books, engraved it for me,
and I have the pleasure of laying it before the reader
in this volume.

We took a turn to Rome and some other Italian cities
--then to Munich, and thence to Paris--partly for exercise,
but mainly because these things were in our projected program,
and it was only right that we should be faithful to it.

From Paris I branched out and walked through Holland and Belgium,
procuring an occasional lift by rail or canal when tired,
and I had a tolerably good time of it "by and large."
I worked Spain and other regions through agents to save
time and shoe-leather.

We crossed to England, and then made the homeward
passage in the Cunarder GALLIA, a very fine ship.
I was glad to get home--immeasurably glad; so glad,
in fact, that it did not seem possible that anything
could ever get me out of the country again.  I had not
enjoyed a pleasure abroad which seemed to me to compare
with the pleasure I felt in seeing New York harbor again.
Europe has many advantages which we have not, but they
do not compensate for a good many still more valuable
ones which exist nowhere but in our own country.
Then we are such a homeless lot when we are over
there! So are Europeans themselves, for the matter.
They live in dark and chilly vast tombs--costly enough,
maybe, but without conveniences.  To be condemned to live
as the average European family lives would make life
a pretty heavy burden to the average American family.

On the whole, I think that short visits to Europe are
better for us than long ones.  The former preserve us from
becoming Europeanized; they keep our pride of country intact,
and at the same time they intensify our affection for our
country and our people; whereas long visits have the effect
of dulling those feelings--at least in the majority
of cases.  I think that one who mixes much with Americans
long resident abroad must arrive at this conclusion.





APPENDIX ----------

Nothing gives such weight and dignity to a book
as an Appendix.  HERODOTUS



APPENDIX A
The Portier

Omar Khay'am, the poet-prophet of Persia, writing more
than eight hundred years ago, has said:

"In the four parts of the earth are many that are able
to write learned books, many that are able to lead armies,
and many also that are able to govern kingdoms and empires;
but few there be that can keep a hotel."

A word about the European hotel PORTIER.  He is a most
admirable invention, a most valuable convenience.
He always wears a conspicuous uniform; he can always
be found when he is wanted, for he sticks closely to
his post at the front door; he is as polite as a duke;
he speaks from four to ten languages; he is your surest
help and refuge in time of trouble or perplexity.
He is not the clerk, he is not the landlord; he ranks above
the clerk, and represents the landlord, who is seldom seen.
Instead of going to the clerk for information, as we do at home,
you go to the portier.  It is the pride of our average
hotel clerk to know nothing whatever; it is the pride
of the portier to know everything.  You ask the portier
at what hours the trains leave--he tells you instantly;
or you ask him who is the best physician in town; or what
is the hack tariff; or how many children the mayor has;
or what days the galleries are open, and whether a permit
is required, and where you are to get it, and what you
must pay for it; or when the theaters open and close,
what the plays are to be, and the price of seats;
or what is the newest thing in hats; or how the bills
of mortality average; or "who struck Billy Patterson."
It does not matter what you ask him: in nine cases
out of ten he knows, and in the tenth case he will find
out for you before you can turn around three times.
There is nothing he will not put his hand to.  Suppose you
tell him you wish to go from Hamburg to Peking by the way
of Jericho, and are ignorant of routes and prices
--the next morning he will hand you a piece of paper with
the whole thing worked out on it to the last detail.
Before you have been long on European soil, you find
yourself still SAYING you are relying on Providence,
but when you come to look closer you will see that in reality
you are relying on the portier.  He discovers what is
puzzling you, or what is troubling you, or what your need is,
before you can get the half of it out, and he promptly says,
"Leave that to me." Consequently, you easily drift into
the habit of leaving everything to him.  There is a certain
embarrassment about applying to the average American
hotel clerk, a certain hesitancy, a sense of insecurity
against rebuff; but you feel no embarrassment in your
intercourse with the portier; he receives your propositions
with an enthusiasm which cheers, and plunges into their
accomplishment with an alacrity which almost inebriates.
The more requirements you can pile upon him, the better he
likes it.  Of course the result is that you cease from doing
anything for yourself.  He calls a hack when you want one;
puts you into it; tells the driver whither to take you;
receives you like a long-lost child when you return;
sends you about your business, does all the quarreling
with the hackman himself, and pays him his money out
of his own pocket.  He sends for your theater tickets,
and pays for them; he sends for any possible article
you can require, be it a doctor, an elephant, or a
postage stamp; and when you leave, at last, you will
find a subordinate seated with the cab-driver who will
put you in your railway compartment, buy your tickets,
have your baggage weighed, bring you the printed tags,
and tell you everything is in your bill and paid for.
At home you get such elaborate, excellent, and willing
service as this only in the best hotels of our large cities;
but in Europe you get it in the mere back country-towns just
as well.

What is the secret of the portier's devotion? It is
very simple: he gets FEES, AND NO SALARY.  His fee
is pretty closely regulated, too.  If you stay a week,
you give him five marks--a dollar and a quarter, or about
eighteen cents a day.  If you stay a month, you reduce
this average somewhat.  If you stay two or three months
or longer, you cut it down half, or even more than half.
If you stay only one day, you give the portier a mark.

The head waiter's fee is a shade less than the portier's;
the Boots, who not only blacks your boots and brushes
your clothes, but is usually the porter and handles your
baggage, gets a somewhat smaller fee than the head waiter;
the chambermaid's fee ranks below that of the Boots.
You fee only these four, and no one else.  A German
gentleman told me that when he remained a week in a hotel,
he gave the portier five marks, the head waiter four,
the Boots three, and the chambermaid two; and if he
stayed three months he divided ninety marks among them,
in about the above proportions.  Ninety marks make
$22.50.

None of these fees are ever paid until you leave the hotel,
though it be a year--except one of these four servants
should go away in the mean time; in that case he will
be sure to come and bid you good-by and give you the
opportunity to pay him what is fairly coming to him.
It is considered very bad policy to fee a servant while you
are still to remain longer in the hotel, because if you
gave him too little he might neglect you afterward,
and if you gave him too much he might neglect somebody
else to attend to you.  It is considered best to keep his
expectations "on a string" until your stay is concluded.

I do not know whether hotel servants in New York get any
wages or not, but I do know that in some of the hotels there
the feeing system in vogue is a heavy burden.  The waiter
expects a quarter at breakfast--and gets it.  You have
a different waiter at luncheon, and so he gets a quarter.
Your waiter at dinner is another stranger--consequently
he gets a quarter.  The boy who carries your satchel
to your room and lights your gas fumbles around and hangs
around significantly, and you fee him to get rid of him.
Now you may ring for ice-water; and ten minutes later
for a lemonade; and ten minutes afterward, for a cigar;
and by and by for a newspaper--and what is the result? Why,
a new boy has appeared every time and fooled and fumbled
around until you have paid him something.  Suppose you
boldly put your foot down, and say it is the hotel's
business to pay its servants? You will have to ring your
bell ten or fifteen times before you get a servant there;
and when he goes off to fill your order you will grow old
and infirm before you see him again.  You may struggle nobly
for twenty-four hours, maybe, if you are an adamantine
sort of person, but in the mean time you will have been
so wretchedly served, and so insolently, that you will
haul down your colors, and go to impoverishing yourself
with fees.

It seems to me that it would be a happy idea to import
the European feeing system into America.  I believe it
would result in getting even the bells of the Philadelphia
hotels answered, and cheerful service rendered.

The greatest American hotels keep a number of clerks
and a cashier, and pay them salaries which mount up
to a considerable total in the course of a year.
The great continental hotels keep a cashier on a trifling
salary, and a portier WHO PAYS THE HOTEL A SALARY.
By the latter system both the hotel and the public
save money and are better served than by our system.
One of our consuls told me that a portier of a great Berlin
hotel paid five thousand dollars a year for his position,
and yet cleared six thousand dollars for himself.
The position of portier in the chief hotels of Saratoga,
Long Branch, New York, and similar centers of resort,
would be one which the holder could afford to pay even more
than five thousand dollars for, perhaps.

When we borrowed the feeing fashion from Europe a dozen
years ago, the salary system ought to have been discontinued,
of course.  We might make this correction now, I should think.
And we might add the portier, too.  Since I first began
to study the portier, I have had opportunities to observe
him in the chief cities of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy;
and the more I have seen of him the more I have wished
that he might be adopted in America, and become there,
as he is in Europe, the stranger's guardian angel.

Yes, what was true eight hundred years ago, is just
as true today: "Few there be that can keep a hotel."
Perhaps it is because the landlords and their subordinates
have in too many cases taken up their trade without first
learning it.  In Europe the trade of hotel-keeper is taught.
The apprentice begins at the bottom of the ladder
and masters the several grades one after the other.
Just as in our country printing-offices the apprentice
first learns how to sweep out and bring water;
then learns to "roll"; then to sort "pi"; then to set type;
and finally rounds and completes his education with
job-work and press-work; so the landlord-apprentice serves
as call-boy; then as under-waiter; then as a parlor waiter;
then as head waiter, in which position he often has
to make out all the bills; then as clerk or cashier;
then as portier.  His trade is learned now, and by and
by he will assume the style and dignity of landlord,
and be found conducting a hotel of his own.

Now in Europe, the same as in America, when a man has
kept a hotel so thoroughly well during a number of years
as to give it a great reputation, he has his reward.
He can live prosperously on that reputation.  He can let
his hotel run down to the last degree of shabbiness and
yet have it full of people all the time.  For instance,
there is the Ho^tel de Ville, in Milan.  It swarms with mice
and fleas, and if the rest of the world were destroyed
it could furnish dirt enough to start another one with.
The food would create an insurrection in a poorhouse;
and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel
makes up its loss by overcharging you on all sorts
of trifles--and without making any denials or excuses
about it, either.  But the Ho^tel de Ville's old excellent
reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded with travelers
who would be elsewhere if they had only some wise friend
to warn them.



APPENDIX B
Heidelberg Castle

Heidelberg Castle must have been very beautiful before
the French battered and bruised and scorched it two hundred
years ago.  The stone is brown, with a pinkish tint,
and does not seem to stain easily.  The dainty and elaborate
ornamentation upon its two chief fronts is as delicately
carved as if it had been intended for the interior of a
drawing-room rather than for the outside of a house.
Many fruit and flower clusters, human heads and grim
projecting lions' heads are still as perfect in every detail
as if they were new.  But the statues which are ranked
between the windows have suffered.  These are life-size
statues of old-time emperors, electors, and similar
grandees, clad in mail and bearing ponderous swords.
Some have lost an arm, some a head, and one poor fellow
is chopped off at the middle.  There is a saying that if
a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across
the court to the castle front without saying anything,
he can made a wish and it will be fulfilled.  But they
say that the truth of this thing has never had a chance
to be proved, for the reason that before any stranger can
walk from the drawbridge to the appointed place, the beauty
of the palace front will extort an exclamation of delight from
him.

A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective.
This one could not have been better placed.  It stands
upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green words,
there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary,
there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks
down through shining leaves into profound chasms and
abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude.
Nature knows how to garnish a ruin to get the best effect.
One of these old towers is split down the middle, and one
half has tumbled aside.  It tumbled in such a way as to
establish itself in a picturesque attitude.  Then all it
lacked was a fitting drapery, and Nature has furnished that;
she has robed the rugged mass in flowers and verdure,
and made it a charm to the eye.  The standing half
exposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like open,
toothless mouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have
done their work of grace.  The rear portion of the tower
has not been neglected, either, but is clothed with a
clinging garment of polished ivy which hides the wounds
and stains of time.  Even the top is not left bare, but is
crowned with a flourishing group of trees and shrubs.
Misfortune has done for this old tower what it has done
for the human character sometimes--improved it.

A gentleman remarked, one day, that it might have been
fine to live in the castle in the day of its prime,
but that we had one advantage which its vanished
inhabitants lacked--the advantage of having a charming
ruin to visit and muse over.  But that was a hasty idea.
Those people had the advantage of US.  They had the fine
castle to live in, and they could cross the Rhine valley
and muse over the stately ruin of Trifels besides.
The Trifels people, in their day, five hundred years ago,
could go and muse over majestic ruins that have vanished,
now, to the last stone.  There have always been ruins,
no doubt; and there have always been pensive people to sigh
over them, and asses to scratch upon them their names
and the important date of their visit.  Within a hundred
years after Adam left Eden, the guide probably gave
the usual general flourish with his hand and said: "Place
where the animals were named, ladies and gentlemen;
place where the tree of the forbidden fruit stood;
exact spot where Adam and Eve first met; and here,
ladies and gentlemen, adorned and hallowed by the names
and addresses of three generations of tourists, we have
the crumbling remains of Cain's altar--fine old ruin!"
Then, no doubt, he taxed them a shekel apiece and let
them go.

An illumination of Heidelberg Castle is one of the
sights of Europe.  The Castle's picturesque shape;
its commanding situation, midway up the steep and
wooded mountainside; its vast size--these features combine
to make an illumination a most effective spectacle.
It is necessarily an expensive show, and consequently
rather infrequent.  Therefore whenever one of these exhibitions
is to take place, the news goes about in the papers and
Heidelberg is sure to be full of people on that night.
I and my agent had one of these opportunities, and improved it.

About half past seven on the appointed evening we
crossed the lower bridge, with some American students,
in a pouring rain, and started up the road which borders
the Neunheim side of the river.  This roadway was densely
packed with carriages and foot-passengers; the former
of all ages, and the latter of all ages and both sexes.
This black and solid mass was struggling painfully onward,
through the slop, the darkness, and the deluge.
We waded along for three-quarters of a mile, and finally
took up a position in an unsheltered beer-garden directly
opposite the Castle.  We could not SEE the Castle--or
anything else, for that matter--but we could dimly
discern the outlines of the mountain over the way,
through the pervading blackness, and knew whereabouts
the Castle was located.  We stood on one of the hundred
benches in the garden, under our umbrellas; the other
ninety-nine were occupied by standing men and women,
and they also had umbrellas.  All the region round about,
and up and down the river-road, was a dense wilderness of
humanity hidden under an unbroken pavement of carriage tops
and umbrellas.  Thus we stood during two drenching hours.
No rain fell on my head, but the converging whalebone
points of a dozen neighboring umbrellas poured little
cooling steams of water down my neck, and sometimes into
my ears, and thus kept me from getting hot and impatient.
I had the rheumatism, too, and had heard that this was
good for it.  Afterward, however, I was led to believe
that the water treatment is NOT good for rheumatism.
There were even little girls in that dreadful place.
A men held one in his arms, just in front of me, for as much
as an hour, with umbrella-drippings soaking into her clothing
all the time.

In the circumstances, two hours was a good while for us
to have to wait, but when the illumination did at last come,
we felt repaid.  It came unexpectedly, of course--things
always do, that have been long looked and longed for.
With a perfectly breath-taking suddenness several mast
sheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out
of the black throats of the Castle towers, accompanied by
a thundering crash of sound, and instantly every detail of
the prodigious ruin stood revealed against the mountainside
and glowing with an almost intolerable splendor of fire
and color.  For some little time the whole building was
a blinding crimson mass, the towers continued to spout
thick columns of rockets aloft, and overhead the sky
was radiant with arrowy bolts which clove their way to
the zenith, paused, curved gracefully downward, then burst
into brilliant fountain-sprays of richly colored sparks.
The red fires died slowly down, within the Castle,
and presently the shell grew nearly black outside;
the angry glare that shone out through the broken arches
and innumerable sashless windows, now, reproduced the
aspect which the Castle must have borne in the old time
when the French spoilers saw the monster bonfire which
they had made there fading and spoiling toward extinction.

While we still gazed and enjoyed, the ruin was suddenly
enveloped in rolling and rumbling volumes of vaporous
green fire; then in dazzling purple ones; then a mixture
of many colors followed, then drowned the great fabric
in its blended splendors.  Meantime the nearest bridge
had been illuminated, and from several rafts anchored
in the river, meteor showers of rockets, Roman candles,
bombs, serpents, and Catharine wheels were being discharged
in wasteful profusion into the sky--a marvelous sight indeed
to a person as little used to such spectacles as I was.
For a while the whole region about us seemed as bright as day,
and yet the rain was falling in torrents all the time.
The evening's entertainment presently closed, and we
joined the innumerable caravan of half-drowned strangers,
and waded home again.

The Castle grounds are very ample and very beautiful;
and as they joined the Hotel grounds, with no fences
to climb, but only some nobly shaded stone stairways
to descend, we spent a part of nearly every day in
idling through their smooth walks and leafy groves.
There was an attractive spot among the trees where were
a great many wooden tables and benches; and there one could
sit in the shade and pretend to sip at his foamy beaker
of beer while he inspected the crowd.  I say pretend,
because I only pretended to sip, without really sipping.
That is the polite way; but when you are ready to go,
you empty the beaker at a draught.  There was a brass band,
and it furnished excellent music every afternoon.
Sometimes so many people came that every seat was occupied,
every table filled.  And never a rough in the assemblage--all
nicely dressed fathers and mothers, young gentlemen
and ladies and children; and plenty of university
students and glittering officers; with here and there
a gray professor, or a peaceful old lady with her knitting;
and always a sprinkling of gawky foreigners.
Everybody had his glass of beer before him, or his cup
of coffee, or his bottle of wine, or his hot cutlet
and potatoes; young ladies chatted, or fanned themselves,
or wrought at their crocheting or embroidering;
the students fed sugar to their dogs, or discussed duels,
or illustrated new fencing tricks with their little canes;
and everywhere was comfort and enjoyment, and everywhere
peace and good-will to men.  The trees were jubilant
with birds, and the paths with rollicking children.
One could have a seat in that place and plenty of music,
any afternoon, for about eight cents, or a family ticket
for the season for two dollars.

For a change, when you wanted one, you could stroll
to the Castle, and burrow among its dungeons, or climb
about its ruined towers, or visit its interior shows--the
great Heidelberg Tun, for instance.  Everybody has heard
of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it,
no doubt.  It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some
traditions say it holds eighteen thousand bottles, and other
traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels.
I think it likely that one of these statements is
a mistake, and the other is a lie.  However, the mere
matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence,
since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty,
history says.  An empty cask the size of a cathedral could
excite but little emotion in me.  I do not see any wisdom
in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in,
when you can get a better quality, outside, any day,
free of expense.  What could this cask have been
built for? The more one studies over that, the more
uncertain and unhappy he becomes.  Some historians say
that thirty couples, some say thirty thousand couples,
can dance on the head of this cask at the same time.
Even this does not seem to me to account for the building
of it.  It does not even throw light on it.  A profound
and scholarly Englishman--a specialist--who had made
the great Heidelberg Tun his sole study for fifteen years,
told me he had at last satisfied himself that the ancients
built it to make German cream in.  He said that the average
German cow yielded from one to two and half teaspoons of milk,
when she was not worked in the plow or the hay-wagon
more than eighteen or nineteen hours a day.  This milk
was very sweet and good, and a beautiful transparent
bluish tint; but in order to get cream from it in the
most economical way, a peculiar process was necessary.
Now he believed that the habit of the ancients was to collect
several milkings in a teacup, pour it into the Great Tun,
fill up with water, and then skim off the cream from
time to time as the needs of the German Empire demanded.

This began to look reasonable.  It certainly began
to account for the German cream which I had encountered
and marveled over in so many hotels and restaurants.
But a thought struck me--

"Why did not each ancient dairyman take his own teacup
of milk and his own cask of water, and mix them,
without making a government matter of it?'

"Where could he get a cask large enough to contain
the right proportion of water?"

Very true.  It was plain that the Englishman had studied
the matter from all sides.  Still I thought I might catch
him on one point; so I asked him why the modern empire
did not make the nation's cream in the Heidelberg Tun,
instead of leaving it to rot away unused.  But he answered
as one prepared--

"A patient and diligent examination of the modern German cream
had satisfied me that they do not use the Great Tun now,
because they have got a BIGGER one hid away somewhere.
Either that is the case or they empty the spring milkings
into the mountain torrents and then skim the Rhine
all summer."

There is a museum of antiquities in the Castle, and among
its most treasured relics are ancient manuscripts connected
with German history.  There are hundreds of these,
and their dates stretch back through many centuries.
One of them is a decree signed and sealed by the hand
of a successor of Charlemagne, in the year 896.
A signature made by a hand which vanished out of this life
near a thousand years ago, is a more impressive thing than
even a ruined castle.  Luther's wedding-ring was shown me;
also a fork belonging to a time anterior to our era,
and an early bootjack.  And there was a plaster cast
of the head of a man who was assassinated about sixty
years ago.  The stab-wounds in the face were duplicated
with unpleasant fidelity.  One or two real hairs
still remained sticking in the eyebrows of the cast.
That trifle seemed to almost change the counterfeit into
a corpse.

There are many aged portraits--some valuable, some worthless;
some of great interest, some of none at all.  I bought a
couple--one a gorgeous duke of the olden time, and the other
a comely blue-eyed damsel, a princess, maybe.  I bought
them to start a portrait-gallery of my ancestors with.
I paid a dollar and a half for the duke and a half
for the princess.  One can lay in ancestors at even
cheaper rates than these, in Europe, if he will mouse
among old picture shops and look out for chances.



APPENDIX C
The College Prison

It seems that the student may break a good many of the public
laws without having to answer to the public authorities.
His case must come before the University for trial
and punishment.  If a policeman catches him in an unlawful
act and proceeds to arrest him, the offender proclaims that
he is a student, and perhaps shows his matriculation card,
whereupon the officer asks for his address, then goes
his way, and reports the matter at headquarters.  If the
offense is one over which the city has no jurisdiction,
the authorities report the case officially to the University,
and give themselves no further concern about it.
The University court send for the student, listen to
the evidence, and pronounce judgment.  The punishment
usually inflicted is imprisonment in the University prison.
As I understand it, a student's case is often tried
without his being present at all.  Then something
like this happens: A constable in the service of the
University visits the lodgings of the said student,
knocks, is invited to come in, does so, and says politely--

"If you please, I am here to conduct you to prison."

"Ah," says the student, "I was not expecting it.
What have I been doing?"

"Two weeks ago the public peace had the honor to be
disturbed by you."

"It is true; I had forgotten it.  Very well: I have been
complained of, tried, and found guilty--is that it?"

"Exactly. You are sentenced to two days' solitary confinement
in the College prison, and I am sent to fetch you."

STUDENT.  "O, I can't go today."

OFFICER.  "If you please--why?"

STUDENT.  "Because I've got an engagement."

OFFICER.  "Tomorrow, then, perhaps?"

STUDENT.  "No, I am going to the opera, tomorrow."

OFFICER.  "Could you come Friday?"

STUDENT.  (Reflectively.) "Let me see--Friday--Friday.
I don't seem to have anything on hand Friday."

OFFICER.  "Then, if you please, I will expect you on Friday."

STUDENT.  "All right, I'll come around Friday."

OFFICER.  "Thank you.  Good day, sir."

STUDENT.  "Good day."

So on Friday the student goes to the prison of his
own accord, and is admitted.

It is questionable if the world's criminal history can
show a custom more odd than this.  Nobody knows, now,
how it originated.  There have always been many noblemen
among the students, and it is presumed that all students
are gentlemen; in the old times it was usual to mar
the convenience of such folk as little as possible;
perhaps this indulgent custom owes its origin to this.

One day I was listening to some conversation upon this
subject when an American student said that for some time he
had been under sentence for a slight breach of the peace
and had promised the constable that he would presently
find an unoccupied day and betake himself to prison.
I asked the young gentleman to do me the kindness to go
to jail as soon as he conveniently could, so that I might
try to get in there and visit him, and see what college
captivity was like.  He said he would appoint the very
first day he could spare.

His confinement was to endure twenty-four hours.  He shortly
chose his day, and sent me word.  I started immediately.
When I reached the University Place, I saw two gentlemen
talking together, and, as they had portfolios under
their arms, I judged they were tutors or elderly students;
so I asked them in English to show me the college jail.
I had learned to take it for granted that anybody in Germany
who knows anything, knows English, so I had stopped
afflicting people with my German.  These gentlemen seemed
a trifle amused--and a trifle confused, too--but one
of them said he would walk around the corner with me
and show me the place.  He asked me why I wanted to get
in there, and I said to see a friend--and for curiosity.
He doubted if I would be admitted, but volunteered to put
in a word or two for me with the custodian.

He rang the bell, a door opened, and we stepped into a paved
way and then up into a small living-room, where we were
received by a hearty and good-natured German woman of fifty.
She threw up her hands with a surprised "ACH GOTT,
HERR PROFESSOR!" and exhibited a mighty deference for my
new acquaintance.  By the sparkle in her eye I judged
she was a good deal amused, too.  The "Herr Professor"
talked to her in German, and I understood enough of it
to know that he was bringing very plausible reasons to bear
for admitting me.  They were successful.  So the Herr
Professor received my earnest thanks and departed.
The old dame got her keys, took me up two or three flights
of stairs, unlocked a door, and we stood in the presence
of the criminal.  Then she went into a jolly and eager
description of all that had occurred downstairs, and what
the Herr Professor had said, and so forth and so on.
Plainly, she regarded it as quite a superior joke that I had
waylaid a Professor and employed him in so odd a service.
But I wouldn't have done it if I had known he was a Professor;
therefore my conscience was not disturbed.

Now the dame left us to ourselves.  The cell was not a roomy one;
still it was a little larger than an ordinary prison cell.
It had a window of good size, iron-grated; a small stove;
two wooden chairs; two oaken tables, very old and
most elaborately carved with names, mottoes, faces,
armorial bearings, etc.--the work of several generations
of imprisoned students; and a narrow wooden bedstead
with a villainous straw mattress, but no sheets, pillows,
blankets, or coverlets--for these the student must furnish
at his own cost if he wants them.  There was no carpet, of
course.

The ceiling was completely covered with names, dates,
and monograms, done with candle-smoke. The walls were
thickly covered with pictures and portraits (in profile),
some done with ink, some with soot, some with a pencil,
and some with red, blue, and green chalks; and whenever
an inch or two of space had remained between the pictures,
the captives had written plaintive verses, or names
and dates.  I do not think I was ever in a more elaborately
frescoed apartment.

Against the wall hung a placard containing the prison laws.
I made a note of one or two of these.  For instance:
The prisoner must pay, for the "privilege" of entering,
a sum equivalent to 20 cents of our money; for the privilege
of leaving, when his term had expired, 20 cents; for every
day spent in the prison, 12 cents; for fire and light,
12 cents a day.  The jailer furnishes coffee, mornings,
for a small sum; dinners and suppers may be ordered
from outside if the prisoner chooses--and he is allowed
to pay for them, too.

Here and there, on the walls, appeared the names
of American students, and in one place the American
arms and motto were displayed in colored chalks.

With the help of my friend I translated many of the inscriptions.

Some of them were cheerful, others the reverse.
I will give the reader a few specimens:

"In my tenth semester (my best one), I am cast here
through the complaints of others.  Let those who follow
me take warning."

"III TAGE OHNE GRUND ANGEBLICH AUS NEUGIERDE." Which is to say,
he had a curiosity to know what prison life was like;
so he made a breach in some law and got three days for it.
It is more than likely that he never had the same
curiosity again.

(TRANSLATION.) "E. Glinicke, four days for being too eager
a spectator of a row."

"F. Graf Bismarck--27-29, II, '74." Which means that
Count Bismarck, son of the great statesman, was a prisoner
two days in 1874.

(TRANSLATION.) "R. Diergandt--for Love--4 days."
Many people in this world have caught it heavier than
for the same indiscretion.

This one is terse.  I translate:

"Four weeks for MISINTERPRETED GALLANTRY." I wish
the sufferer had explained a little more fully.
A four-week term is a rather serious matter.

There were many uncomplimentary references, on the walls,
to a certain unpopular dignitary.  One sufferer had got
three days for not saluting him.  Another had "here two days
slept and three nights lain awake," on account of this
same "Dr. K." In one place was a picture of Dr. K. hanging
on a gallows.

Here and there, lonesome prisoners had eased the heavy time
by altering the records left by predecessors.  Leaving the
name standing, and the date and length of the captivity,
they had erased the description of the misdemeanor,
and written in its place, in staring capitals, "FOR THEFT!"
or "FOR MURDER!" or some other gaudy crime.  In one place,
all by itself, stood this blood-curdling word:

"Rache!" [1]

1.  "Revenge!"

There was no name signed, and no date.  It was an
inscription well calculated to pique curiosity.
One would greatly like to know the nature of the wrong
that had been done, and what sort of vengeance was wanted,
and whether the prisoner ever achieved it or not.
But there was no way of finding out these things.

Occasionally, a name was followed simply by the remark,
"II days, for disturbing the peace," and without comment
upon the justice or injustice of the sentence.

In one place was a hilarious picture of a student of the
green cap corps with a bottle of champagne in each hand;
and below was the legend: "These make an evil fate endurable."

There were two prison cells, and neither had space left on
walls or ceiling for another name or portrait or picture.
The inside surfaces of the two doors were completely
covered with CARTES DE VISITE of former prisoners,
ingeniously let into the wood and protected from dirt
and injury by glass.

I very much wanted one of the sorry old tables which
the prisoners had spent so many years in ornamenting
with their pocket-knives, but red tape was in the way.
The custodian could not sell one without an order from
a superior; and that superior would have to get it from
HIS superior; and this one would have to get it from
a higher one--and so on up and up until the faculty
should sit on the matter and deliver final judgment.
The system was right, and nobody could find fault with it;
but it did not seem justifiable to bother so many people,
so I proceeded no further.  It might have cost me more than
I could afford, anyway; for one of those prison tables,
which was at the time in a private museum in Heidelberg,
was afterward sold at auction for two hundred and fifty dollars.
It was not worth more than a dollar, or possibly a dollar
and half, before the captive students began their work
on it.  Persons who saw it at the auction said it was
so curiously and wonderfully carved that it was worth
the money that was paid for it.

Among them many who have tasted the college prison's
dreary hospitality was a lively young fellow from one
of the Southern states of America, whose first year's
experience of German university life was rather peculiar.
The day he arrived in Heidelberg he enrolled his name
on the college books, and was so elated with the fact
that his dearest hope had found fruition and he was
actually a student of the old and renowned university,
that he set to work that very night to celebrate the event
by a grand lark in company with some other students.
In the course of his lark he managed to make a wide
breach in one of the university's most stringent laws.
Sequel: before noon, next day, he was in the college
prison--booked for three months.  The twelve long weeks
dragged slowly by, and the day of deliverance came at last.
A great crowd of sympathizing fellow-students received
him with a rousing demonstration as he came forth,
and of course there was another grand lark--in the course
of which he managed to make a wide breach of the CITY'S
most stringent laws.  Sequel: before noon, next day,
he was safe in the city lockup--booked for three months.
This second tedious captivity drew to an end in the course
of time, and again a great crowd of sympathizing fellow
students gave him a rousing reception as he came forth;
but his delight in his freedom was so boundless that he
could not proceed soberly and calmly, but must go hopping
and skipping and jumping down the sleety street from sheer
excess of joy.  Sequel: he slipped and broke his leg,
and actually lay in the hospital during the next three
months!

When he at last became a free man again, he said he believed
he would hunt up a brisker seat of learning; the Heidelberg
lectures might be good, but the opportunities of attending
them were too rare, the educational process too slow;
he said he had come to Europe with the idea that the
acquirement of an education was only a matter of time,
but if he had averaged the Heidelberg system correctly,
it was rather a matter of eternity.



APPENDIX D
The Awful German Language

A little learning makes the whole world kin.
        --Proverbs xxxii, 7.

I went often to look at the collection of curiosities
in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper
of it with my German.  I spoke entirely in that language.
He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while
he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique";
and wanted to add it to his museum.

If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art,
he would also have known that it would break any
collector to buy it.  Harris and I had been hard at
work on our German during several weeks at that time,
and although we had made good progress, it had been
accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance,
for three of our teachers had died in the mean time.
A person who has not studied German can form no idea
of what a perplexing language it is.

Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod
and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp.
One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most
helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured
a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid
the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech,
he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make
careful note of the following EXCEPTIONS." He runs his
eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the
rule than instances of it.  So overboard he goes again,
to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand.
Such has been, and continues to be, my experience.
Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing
"cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant
preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with
an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground
from under me.  For instance, my book inquires after
a certain bird--(it is always inquiring after things
which are of no sort of no consequence to anybody): "Where
is the bird?" Now the answer to this question--according
to the book--is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith
shop on account of the rain.  Of course no bird would
do that, but then you must stick to the book.  Very well,
I begin to cipher out the German for that answer.  I begin
at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea.
I say to myself, "REGEN (rain) is masculine--or maybe it
is feminine--or possibly neuter--it is too much trouble
to look now.  Therefore, it is either DER (the) Regen,
or DIE (the) Regen, or DAS (the) Regen, according to which
gender it may turn out to be when I look.  In the interest
of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it
is masculine.  Very well--then THE rain is DER Regen,
if it is simply in the quiescent state of being MENTIONED,
without enlargement or discussion--Nominative case;
but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general
way on the ground, it is then definitely located,
it is DOING SOMETHING--that is, RESTING (which is one
of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and
this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it
DEM Regen.  However, this rain is not resting, but is
doing something ACTIVELY,--it is falling--to interfere
with the bird, likely--and this indicates MOVEMENT,
which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case
and changing DEM Regen into DEN Regen." Having completed
the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up
confidently and state in German that the bird is staying
in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen."
Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark
that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence,
it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case,
regardless of consequences--and therefore this bird stayed in
the blacksmith shop "wegen DES Regens."

N.B.--I was informed, later, by a higher authority,
that there was an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen
DEN Regen" in certain peculiar and complex circumstances,
but that this exception is not extended to anything
BUT rain.

There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome.
An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime
and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column;
it contains all the ten parts of speech--not in regular order,
but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed
by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any
dictionary--six or seven words compacted into one,
without joint or seam--that is, without hyphens;
it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects,
each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and
there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally,
all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together
between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed
in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other
in the middle of the last line of it--AFTER WHICH COMES
THE VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man
has been talking about; and after the verb--merely by way
of ornament, as far as I can make out--the writer shovels
in "HABEN SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN,"
or words to that effect, and the monument is finished.
I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the
flourish to a man's signature--not necessary, but pretty.
German books are easy enough to read when you hold them
before the looking-glass or stand on your head--so as
to reverse the construction--but I think that to learn
to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing
which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.

Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks
of the Parenthesis distemper--though they are usually so mild
as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at
last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your
mind because you are able to remember a good deal of what
has gone before.  Now here is a sentence from a popular
and excellent German novel--which a slight parenthesis
in it.  I will make a perfectly literal translation,
and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens
for the assistance of the reader--though in the original
there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader
is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he
can:

"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-
now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed)
government counselor's wife MET," etc., etc. [1]

1.  Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide
    gehuellten jetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode
    gekleideten Regierungsrathin begegnet.

That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE'S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt.
And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved
German model.  You observe how far that verb is from
the reader's base of operations; well, in a German
newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page;
and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the
exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two,
they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting
to the verb at all.  Of course, then, the reader is left
in a very exhausted and ignorant state.

We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one
may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers:
but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed
writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans
it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen
and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual
fog which stands for clearness among these people.
For surely it is NOT clearness--it necessarily can't
be clearness.  Even a jury would have penetration enough
to discover that.  A writer's ideas must be a good
deal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence,
when he starts out to say that a man met a counselor's
wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this
so simple undertaking halts these approaching people
and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory
of the woman's dress.  That is manifestly absurd.
It reminds a person of those dentists who secure your instant
and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it
with the forceps, and then stand there and drawl through
a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk.
Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste.

The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they
make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it
at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the OTHER
HALF at the end of it.  Can any one conceive of anything
more confusing than that? These things are called
"separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered
all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two
portions of one of them are spread apart, the better
the author of the crime is pleased with his performance.
A favorite one is REISTE AB--which means departed.
Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced
to English:

"The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his
mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom
his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin,
with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich
brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale
from the terror and excitement of the past evening,
but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again
upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than
life itself, PARTED."

However, it is not well to dwell too much on the
separable verbs.  One is sure to lose his temper early;
and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned,
it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it.
Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance
in this language, and should have been left out.
For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE,
and it means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY,
and it means THEM.  Think of the ragged poverty of a
language which has to make one word do the work of six--and
a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that.
But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing
which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey.
This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me,
I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

Now observe the Adjective.  Here was a case where simplicity
would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason,
the inventor of this language complicated it all he could.
When we wish to speak of our "good friend or friends,"
in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have
no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the German
tongue it is different.  When a German gets his hands
on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining
it until the common sense is all declined out of it.
It is as bad as Latin.  He says, for instance:

SINGULAR

Nominative--Mein gutER Freund, my good friend.
Genitives--MeinES GutEN FreundES, of my good friend.
Dative--MeinEM gutEN Freund, to my good friend.
Accusative--MeinEN gutEN Freund, my good friend.

PLURAL

N.--MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends.  G.--MeinER gutEN
FreundE, of my good friends.  D.--MeinEN gutEN FreundEN,
to my good friends.  A.--MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends.

Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize
those variations, and see how soon he will be elected.
One might better go without friends in Germany than take
all this trouble about them.  I have shown what a bother
it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is
only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new
distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object
is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter.
Now there are more adjectives in this language than there
are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be as
elaborately declined as the examples above suggested.
Difficult?--troublesome?--these words cannot describe it.
I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of
his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks
than one German adjective.

The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure
in complicating it in every way he could think of.
For instance, if one is casually referring to a house,
HAUS, or a horse, PFERD, or a dog, HUND, he spells these
words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them
in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary
E and spells them HAUSE, PFERDE, HUNDE.  So, as an added
E often signifies the plural, as the S does with us,
the new student is likely to go on for a month making
twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake;
and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill
afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only
got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog
in the Dative singular when he really supposed he was
talking plural--which left the law on the seller's side,
of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore
a suit for recovery could not lie.

In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter.
Now that is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language,
is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness.  I consider
this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason
of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute
you see it.  You fall into error occasionally, because you
mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing,
and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning
out of it.  German names almost always do mean something,
and this helps to deceive the student.  I translated
a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress
broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest"
(Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins to doubt this,
I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a
man's name.

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system
in the distribution; so the gender of each must be
learned separately and by heart.  There is no other way.
To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book.
In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.
Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip,
and what callous disrespect for the girl.  See how it
looks in print--I translate this from a conversation
in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

"Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

"Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.

"Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English
maiden?

"Wilhelm.  It has gone to the opera."

To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds
are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless,
dogs are male, cats are female--tomcats included, of course;
a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet,
and body are of the male sex, and his head is male
or neuter according to the word selected to signify it,
and NOT according to the sex of the individual who wears
it--for in Germany all the women either male heads or
sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast,
hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair,
ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience
haven't any sex at all.  The inventor of the language
probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.

Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in
Germany a man may THINK he is a man, but when he comes to look
into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts;
he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture;
and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the
thought that he can at least depend on a third of this
mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second
thought will quickly remind him that in this respect
he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land.

In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor
of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib)
is not--which is unfortunate.  A Wife, here, has no sex;
she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish
is HE, his scales are SHE, but a fishwife is neither.
To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description;
that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse.
A German speaks of an Englishman as the ENGLAENDER; to change
the sex, he adds INN, and that stands for Englishwoman
--ENGLAENDERINN. That seems descriptive enough, but still
it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the
word with that article which indicates that the creature
to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die
Englaenderinn,"--which means "the she-Englishwoman."
I consider that that person is over-described.

Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great
number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he
finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer
to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which
it has been always accustomed to refer to it as "it."
When he even frames a German sentence in his mind,
with the hims and hers in the right places, and then works
up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use
--the moment he begins to speak his tongue files the track
and all those labored males and females come out as "its."
And even when he is reading German to himself, he always
calls those things "it," where as he ought to read in this way:

TALE OF THE FISHWIFE AND ITS SAD FATE [2]

2.  I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and
    ancient English) fashion.

It is a bleak Day.  Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail,
how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along,
and of the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife,
it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket
of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales
as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale
has even got into its Eye.  and it cannot get her out.
It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes
out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm.
And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she
will surely escape with him.  No, she bites off a Fin,
she holds her in her Mouth--will she swallow her? No,
the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and
rescues the Fin--which he eats, himself, as his Reward.
O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-basket;
he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the
doomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she
attacks the helpless Fishwife's Foot--she burns him up,
all but the big Toe, and even SHE is partly consumed;
and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues;
she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys IT; she attacks
its Hand and destroys HER also; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg
and destroys HER also; she attacks its Body and consumes HIM;
she wreathes herself about its Heart and IT is consumed;
next about its Breast, and in a Moment SHE is a Cinder;
now she reaches its Neck--He goes; now its Chin
--IT goes; now its Nose--SHE goes.  In another Moment,
except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more.
Time presses--is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy,
joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas,
the generous she-Female is too late: where now is
the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings,
it has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it
for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering
Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him
up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear
him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises
again it will be a Realm where he will have one good square
responsible Sex, and have it all to himself, instead of
having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all over him
in Spots.

----------

There, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun
business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue.
I suppose that in all languages the similarities of look
and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning
are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner.
It is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in
the German.  Now there is that troublesome word VERMAEHLT:
to me it has so close a resemblance--either real or
fancied--to three or four other words, that I never know
whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married;
until I look in the dictionary, and then I find it means
the latter.  There are lots of such words and they are
a great torment.  To increase the difficulty there are
words which SEEM to resemble each other, and yet do not;
but they make just as much trouble as if they did.
For instance, there is the word VERMIETHEN (to let,
to lease, to hire); and the word VERHEIRATHEN (another way
of saying to marry). I heard of an Englishman who knocked
at a man's door in Heidelberg and proposed, in the best
German he could command, to "verheirathen" that house.
Then there are some words which mean one thing when you
emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very
different if you throw the emphasis on the last syllable.
For instance, there is a word which means a runaway,
or the act of glancing through a book, according to the
placing of the emphasis; and another word which signifies
to ASSOCIATE with a man, or to AVOID him, according to
where you put the emphasis--and you can generally depend
on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble.

There are some exceedingly useful words in this language.
SCHLAG, for example; and ZUG.  There are three-quarters
of a column of SCHLAGS in the dictionary, and a column
and a half of ZUGS.  The word SCHLAG means Blow, Stroke,
Dash, Hit, Shock, Clap, Slap, Time, Bar, Coin, Stamp, Kind,
Sort, Manner, Way, Apoplexy, Wood-cutting, Enclosure,
Field, Forest-clearing. This is its simple and EXACT
meaning--that is to say, its restricted, its fettered meaning;
but there are ways by which you can set it free,
so that it can soar away, as on the wings of the morning,
and never be at rest.  You can hang any word you please
to its tail, and make it mean anything you want to.
You can begin with SCHLAG-ADER, which means artery,
and you can hang on the whole dictionary, word by word,
clear through the alphabet to SCHLAG-WASSER, which means
bilge-water--and including SCHLAG-MUTTER, which means
mother-in-law.

Just the same with ZUG.  Strictly speaking, ZUG means Pull,
Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction,
Expedition, Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line,
Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move,
Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation,
Disposition: but that thing which it does NOT mean--when
all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not been
discovered yet.

One cannot overestimate the usefulness of SCHLAG and ZUG.
Armed just with these two, and the word ALSO, what cannot
the foreigner on German soil accomplish? The German word
ALSO is the equivalent of the English phrase "You know,"
and does not mean anything at all--in TALK, though it
sometimes does in print.  Every time a German opens his
mouth an ALSO falls out; and every time he shuts it he bites
one in two that was trying to GET out.

Now, the foreigner, equipped with these three noble words,
is master of the situation.  Let him talk right along,
fearlessly; let him pour his indifferent German forth,
and when he lacks for a word, let him heave a SCHLAG into
the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it like a plug,
but if it doesn't let him promptly heave a ZUG after it;
the two together can hardly fail to bung the hole; but if,
by a miracle, they SHOULD fail, let him simply say ALSO!
and this will give him a moment's chance to think of the
needful word.  In Germany, when you load your conversational
gun it is always best to throw in a SCHLAG or two and a ZUG
or two, because it doesn't make any difference how much
the rest of the charge may scatter, you are bound to bag
something with THEM.  Then you blandly say ALSO, and load
up again.  Nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance
and unconstraint to a German or an English conversation
as to scatter it full of "Also's" or "You knows."

In my note-book I find this entry:

July 1.--In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen
syllables was successfully removed from a patient--a
North German from near Hamburg; but as most unfortunately
the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, under the
impression that he contained a panorama, he died.
The sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community.

That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about
one of the most curious and notable features of my
subject--the length of German words.  Some German words
are so long that they have a perspective.  Observe these
examples:

Freundschaftsbezeigungen.

Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten.

Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.

These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions.
And they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper
at any time and see them marching majestically across
the page--and if he has any imagination he can see
the banners and hear the music, too.  They impart
a martial thrill to the meekest subject.  I take a
great interest in these curiosities.  Whenever I come
across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum.
In this way I have made quite a valuable collection.
When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors,
and thus increase the variety of my stock.  Here rare
some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale
of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:

Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.

Alterthumswissenschaften.

Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.

Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.

Wiedererstellungbestrebungen.

Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.

Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes
stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles
that literary landscape--but at the same time it is a great
distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way;
he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel
through it.  So he resorts to the dictionary for help,
but there is no help there.  The dictionary must draw
the line somewhere--so it leaves this sort of words out.
And it is right, because these long things are hardly
legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words,
and the inventor of them ought to have been killed.
They are compound words with the hyphens left out.
The various words used in building them are in the dictionary,
but in a very scattered condition; so you can hunt
the materials out, one by one, and get at the meaning
at last, but it is a tedious and harassing business.
I have tried this process upon some of the above examples.
"Freundshaftsbezeigungen" seems to be "Friendship demonstrations,"
which is only a foolish and clumsy way of saying "demonstrations
of friendship." "Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen" seems
to be "Independencedeclarations," which is no improvement
upon "Declarations of Independence," so far as I can see.
"Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen" seems to be
"General-statesrepresentativesmeetings," as nearly as I
can get at it--a mere rhythmical, gushy euphemism for
"meetings of the legislature," I judge.  We used to have
a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature,
but it has gone out now.  We used to speak of a things as a
"never-to-be-forgotten" circumstance, instead of cramping
it into the simple and sufficient word "memorable" and then
going calmly about our business as if nothing had happened.
In those days we were not content to embalm the thing
and bury it decently, we wanted to build a monument over it.

But in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers
a little to the present day, but with the hyphens left out,
in the German fashion.  This is the shape it takes:
instead of saying "Mr. Simmons, clerk of the county and
district courts, was in town yesterday," the new form put
it thus: "Clerk of the County and District Courts Simmons
was in town yesterday." This saves neither time nor ink,
and has an awkward sound besides.  One often sees a remark
like this in our papers: "MRS. Assistant District Attorney
Johnson returned to her city residence yesterday for the season."
That is a case of really unjustifiable compounding;
because it not only saves no time or trouble, but confers
a title on Mrs. Johnson which she has no right to.
But these little instances are trifles indeed, contrasted
with the ponderous and dismal German system of piling
jumbled compounds together.  I wish to submit the following
local item, from a Mannheim journal, by way of illustration:

"In the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno'clock Night,
the inthistownstandingtavern called 'The Wagoner' was downburnt.
When the fire to the onthedownburninghouseresting Stork's
Nest reached, flew the parent Storks away.  But when
the bytheraging, firesurrounded Nest ITSELF caught Fire,
straightway plunged the quickreturning Mother-Stork into
the Flames and died, her Wings over her young ones outspread."

Even the cumbersome German construction is not able to
take the pathos out of that picture--indeed, it somehow
seems to strengthen it.  This item is dated away back
yonder months ago.  I could have used it sooner, but I
was waiting to hear from the Father-stork. I am still waiting.

"ALSO!" If I had not shown that the German is a
difficult language, I have at least intended to do so.
I have heard of an American student who was asked how he
was getting along with his German, and who answered
promptly: "I am not getting along at all.  I have worked
at it hard for three level months, and all I have got
to show for it is one solitary German phrase--'ZWEI GLAS'"
(two glasses of beer). He paused for a moment, reflectively;
then added with feeling: "But I've got that SOLID!"

And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing
and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault,
and not my intent.  I heard lately of a worn and sorely
tried American student who used to fly to a certain German
word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations
no longer--the only word whose sound was sweet and
precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit.
This was the word DAMIT.  It was only the SOUND that
helped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he
learned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable,
his only stay and support was gone, and he faded away
and died.

3.  It merely means, in its general sense, "herewith."

I think that a description of any loud, stirring,
tumultuous episode must be tamer in German than in English.
Our descriptive words of this character have such
a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their German
equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless.
Boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder,
explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, hell.
These are magnificent words; the have a force and magnitude
of sound befitting the things which they describe.
But their German equivalents would be ever so nice to sing
the children to sleep with, or else my awe-inspiring ears
were made for display and not for superior usefulness
in analyzing sounds.  Would any man want to die in a
battle which was called by so tame a term as a SCHLACHT?
Or would not a consumptive feel too much bundled up,
who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and a seal-ring,
into a storm which the bird-song word GEWITTER was employed
to describe? And observe the strongest of the several
German equivalents for explosion--AUSBRUCH.  Our word
Toothbrush is more powerful than that.  It seems to me
that the Germans could do worse than import it into their
language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with.
The German word for hell--Hoelle--sounds more like HELLY
than anything else; therefore, how necessary chipper,
frivolous, and unimpressive it is.  If a man were told
in German to go there, could he really rise to thee
dignity of feeling insulted?

Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of
this language, I now come to the brief and pleasant task
of pointing out its virtues.  The capitalizing of the nouns
I have already mentioned.  But far before this virtue stands
another--that of spelling a word according to the sound of it.
After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell
how any German word is pronounced without having to ask;
whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us,
"What does B, O, W, spell?" we should be obliged to reply,
"Nobody can tell what it spells when you set if off by itself;
you can only tell by referring to the context and finding
out what it signifies--whether it is a thing to shoot
arrows with, or a nod of one's head, or the forward end of a
boat."

There are some German words which are singularly
and powerfully effective.  For instance, those which
describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life;
those which deal with love, in any and all forms,
from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward
the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which
deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest
aspects--with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers,
the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight
of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with
any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also
which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland;
and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos,
is the language surpassingly rich and affective.  There are
German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.
That shows that the SOUND of the words is correct--it
interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness;
and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart.

The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word
when it is the right one.  They repeat it several times,
if they choose.  That is wise.  But in English, when we
have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph,
we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak
enough to exchange it for some other word which only
approximates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy
is a greater blemish.  Repetition may be bad, but surely
inexactness is worse.

-----------

There are people in the world who will take a great
deal of trouble to point out the faults in a religion
or a language, and then go blandly about their business
without suggesting any remedy.  I am not that kind
of person.  I have shown that the German language
needs reforming.  Very well, I am ready to reform it.
At least I am ready to make the proper suggestions.
Such a course as this might be immodest in another; but I
have devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last,
to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and thus
have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it
which no mere superficial culture could have conferred
upon me.

In the first place, I would leave out the Dative case.
It confuses the plurals; and, besides, nobody ever knows
when he is in the Dative case, except he discover it
by accident--and then he does not know when or where it
was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it,
or how he is going to get out of it again.  The Dative case
is but an ornamental folly--it is better to discard it.

In the next place, I would move the Verb further up
to the front.  You may load up with ever so good a Verb,
but I notice that you never really bring down a subject
with it at the present German range--you only cripple it.
So I insist that this important part of speech should be
brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen
with the naked eye.

Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English
tongue--to swear with, and also to use in describing
all sorts of vigorous things in a vigorous ways. [4]

4.  "Verdammt," and its variations and enlargements,
    are words which have plenty of meaning, but the SOUNDS
    are so mild and ineffectual that German ladies can use
    them without sin.  German ladies who could not be induced
    to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion, promptly rip
    out one of these harmless little words when they tear their
    dresses or don't like the soup.  It sounds about as wicked
    as our "My gracious." German ladies are constantly saying,
    "Ach! Gott!" "Mein Gott!" "Gott in Himmel!" "Herr Gott"
    "Der Herr Jesus!" etc.  They think our ladies have the
    same custom, perhaps; for I once heard a gentle and lovely
    old German lady say to a sweet young American girl:
    "The two languages are so alike--how pleasant that is;
    we say 'Ach! Gott!' you say 'Goddamn.'"

Fourthly, I would reorganizes the sexes, and distribute
them accordingly to the will of the creator.  This as
a tribute of respect, if nothing else.

Fifthly, I would do away with those great long
compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver
them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments.
To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are
more easily received and digested when they come one at
a time than when they come in bulk.  Intellectual food
is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial
to take it with a spoon than with a shovel.

Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done,
and not hang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen
gehabt haben geworden seins" to the end of his oration.
This sort of gewgaws undignify a speech, instead of adding
a grace.  They are, therefore, an offense, and should
be discarded.

Seventhly, I would discard the Parenthesis.  Also the reparenthesis,
the re-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses,
and likewise the final wide-reaching all-enclosing
king-parenthesis. I would require every individual,
be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforward tale,
or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace.
Infractions of this law should be punishable with death.

And eighthly, and last, I would retain ZUG and SCHLAG,
with their pendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary.
This would simplify the language.

I have now named what I regard as the most necessary
and important changes.  These are perhaps all I could
be expected to name for nothing; but there are other
suggestions which I can and will make in case my proposed
application shall result in my being formally employed
by the government in the work of reforming the language.

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person
ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing)
in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German
in thirty years.  It seems manifest, then, that the
latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired.
If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently
and reverently set aside among the dead languages,
for only the dead have time to learn it.

A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION IN THE GERMAN TONGUE, DELIVERED AT
A BANQUET OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN CLUB OF STUDENTS BY THE
AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK

Gentlemen: Since I arrived, a month ago, in this
old wonderland, this vast garden of Germany, my English
tongue has so often proved a useless piece of baggage
to me, and so troublesome to carry around, in a country
where they haven't the checking system for luggage, that I
finally set to work, and learned the German language.
Also! Es freut mich dass dies so ist, denn es muss,
in ein hauptsaechlich degree, hoeflich sein, dass man
auf ein occasion like this, sein Rede in die Sprache des
Landes worin he boards, aussprechen soll.  Dafuer habe ich,
aus reinische Verlegenheit--no, Vergangenheit--no, I
mean Hoflichkeit--aus reinishe Hoflichkeit habe ich
resolved to tackle this business in the German language,
um Gottes willen! Also! Sie muessen so freundlich sein,
und verzeih mich die interlarding von ein oder zwei
Englischer Worte, hie und da, denn ich finde dass die
deutsche is not a very copious language, and so when
you've really got anything to say, you've got to draw
on a language that can stand the strain.

Wenn haber man kann nicht meinem Rede Verstehen, so werde
ich ihm spaeter dasselbe uebersetz, wenn er solche Dienst
verlangen wollen haben werden sollen sein haette. (I don't
know what wollen haben werden sollen sein haette means,
but I notice they always put it at the end of a German
sentence--merely for general literary gorgeousness,
I suppose.)

This is a great and justly honored day--a day which is
worthy of the veneration in which it is held by the true
patriots of all climes and nationalities--a day which
offers a fruitful theme for thought and speech; und meinem
Freunde--no, meinEN FreundEN--meinES FreundES--well,
take your choice, they're all the same price; I don't
know which one is right--also! ich habe gehabt haben
worden gewesen sein, as Goethe says in his Paradise
Lost--ich--ich--that is to say--ich--but let us change cars.

Also! Die Anblich so viele Grossbrittanischer und Amerikanischer
hier zusammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist zwar
a welcome and inspiriting spectacle.  And what has moved you
to it? Can the terse German tongue rise to the expression of
this impulse? Is it Freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordneten-
versammlungenfamilieneigenthuemlichkeiten? Nein,
o nein! This is a crisp and noble word, but it fails
to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered
this friendly meeting and produced diese Anblick--eine
Anblich welche ist gut zu sehen--gut fuer die Augen
in a foreign land and a far country--eine Anblick solche
als in die gewoehnliche Heidelberger phrase nennt man ein
"schoenes Aussicht!" Ja, freilich natuerlich wahrscheinlich
ebensowohl! Also! Die Aussicht auf dem Koenigsstuhl
mehr groesser ist, aber geistlische sprechend nicht so
schoen, lob' Gott! Because sie sind hier zusammengetroffen,
in Bruderlichem concord, ein grossen Tag zu feirn,
whose high benefits were not for one land and one locality,
but have conferred a measure of good upon all lands
that know liberty today, and love it.  Hundert Jahre
vorueber, waren die Englaender und die Amerikaner Feinde;
aber heut sind sie herzlichen Freunde, Gott sei Dank!
May this good-fellowship endure; may these banners here
blended in amity so remain; may they never any more wave
over opposing hosts, or be stained with blood which
was kindred, is kindred, and always will be kindred,
until a line drawn upon a map shall be able to say:
"THIS bars the ancestral blood from flowing in the veins
of the descendant!"



APPENDIX E
Legend of the Castles

Called the "Swallow's Nest" and "The Brothers,"
as Condensed from the Captain's Tale

In the neighborhood of three hundred years ago the Swallow's
Nest and the larger castle between it and Neckarsteinach
were owned and occupied by two old knights who were
twin brothers, and bachelors.  They had no relatives.
They were very rich.  They had fought through the wars
and retired to private life--covered with honorable scars.
They were honest, honorable men in their dealings,
but the people had given them a couple of nicknames which
were very suggestive--Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless.
The old knights were so proud of these names that if
a burgher called them by their right ones they would
correct them.

The most renowned scholar in Europe, at the time, was the
Herr Doctor Franz Reikmann, who lived in Heidelberg.
All Germany was proud of the venerable scholar, who lived
in the simplest way, for great scholars are always poor.
He was poor, as to money, but very rich in his sweet
young daughter Hildegarde and his library.  He had been
all his life collecting his library, book and book,
and he lived it as a miser loves his hoarded gold.
He said the two strings of his heart were rooted,
the one in his daughter, the other in his books; and that
if either were severed he must die.  Now in an evil hour,
hoping to win a marriage portion for his child, this simple
old man had entrusted his small savings to a sharper to be
ventured in a glittering speculation.  But that was not
the worst of it: he signed a paper--without reading it.
That is the way with poets and scholars; they always sign
without reading.  This cunning paper made him responsible
for heaps of things.  The rest was that one night he
found himself in debt to the sharper eight thousand
pieces of gold!--an amount so prodigious that it simply
stupefied him to think of it.  It was a night of woe in
that house.

"I must part with my library--I have nothing else.
So perishes one heartstring," said the old man.

"What will it bring, father?" asked the girl.

"Nothing! It is worth seven hundred pieces of gold;
but by auction it will go for little or nothing."

"Then you will have parted with the half of your heart
and the joy of your life to no purpose, since so mighty
of burden of debt will remain behind."

"There is no help for it, my child.  Our darlings must
pass under the hammer.  We must pay what we can."

"My father, I have a feeling that the dear Virgin will
come to our help.  Let us not lose heart."

"She cannot devise a miracle that will turn NOTHING into
eight thousand gold pieces, and lesser help will bring
us little peace."

"She can do even greater things, my father.  She will
save us, I know she will."

Toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep
in his chair where he had been sitting before his books
as one who watches by his beloved dead and prints the
features on his memory for a solace in the aftertime
of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room
and gently woke him, saying--

"My presentiment was true! She will save us.
Three times has she appeared to me in my dreams, and said,
'Go to the Herr Givenaught, go to the Herr Heartless,
ask them to come and bid.' There, did I not tell you she
would save us, the thrice blessed Virgin!"

Sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh.

"Thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their
castles stand upon as to the harder ones that lie
in those men's breasts, my child.  THEY bid on books
writ in the learned tongues!--they can scarce read their own."

But Hildegarde's faith was in no wise shaken.
Bright and early she was on her way up the Neckar road,
as joyous as a bird.

Meantime Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless were having
an early breakfast in the former's castle--the Sparrow's
Nest--and flavoring it with a quarrel; for although
these twins bore a love for each other which almost
amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which they
could not touch without calling each other hard names
--and yet it was the subject which they oftenest touched upon.

"I tell you," said Givenaught, "you will beggar yourself
yet with your insane squanderings of money upon
what you choose to consider poor and worthy objects.
All these years I have implored you to stop this foolish
custom and husband your means, but all in vain.
You are always lying to me about these secret benevolences,
but you never have managed to deceive me yet.  Every time
a poor devil has been set upon his feet I have detected
your hand in it--incorrigible ass!"

"Every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself,
you mean.  Where I give one unfortunate a little private lift,
you do the same for a dozen.  The idea of YOUR swelling
around the country and petting yourself with the nickname
of Givenaught--intolerable humbug! Before I would be
such a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off.
Your life is a continual lie.  But go on, I have tried MY
best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous
charities--now for the thousandth time I wash my hands
of the consequences.  A maundering old fool! that's
what you are."

"And you a blethering old idiot!" roared Givenaught,
springing up.

"I won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more
delicacy than to call me such names.  Mannerless swine!"

So saying, Herr Heartless sprang up in a passion.
But some lucky accident intervened, as usual, to change
the subject, and the daily quarrel ended in the customary
daily living reconciliation.  The gray-headed old
eccentrics parted, and Herr Heartless walked off to his
own castle.

Half an hour later, Hildegarde was standing in the presence
of Herr Givenaught.  He heard her story, and said--

"I am sorry for you, my child, but I am very poor,
I care nothing for bookish rubbish, I shall not be there."

He said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor
Hildegarde's heart, nevertheless.  When she was gone
the old heartbreaker muttered, rubbing his hands--

"It was a good stroke.  I have saved my brother's pocket
this time, in spite of him.  Nothing else would have
prevented his rushing off to rescue the old scholar,
the pride of Germany, from his trouble.  The poor child
won't venture near HIM after the rebuff she has received
from his brother the Givenaught."

But he was mistaken.  The Virgin had commanded,
and Hildegarde would obey.  She went to Herr Heartless
and told her story.  But he said coldly--

"I am very poor, my child, and books are nothing to me.
I wish you well, but I shall not come."

When Hildegarde was gone, he chuckled and said--

"How my fool of a soft-headed soft-hearted brother would
rage if he knew how cunningly I have saved his pocket.
How he would have flown to the old man's rescue! But the
girl won't venture near him now."

When Hildegarde reached home, her father asked her how she
had prospered.  She said--

"The Virgin has promised, and she will keep her word;
but not in the way I thought.  She knows her own ways,
and they are best."

The old man patted her on the head, and smiled a doubting
smile, but he honored her for her brave faith, nevertheless.

II

Next day the people assembled in the great hall
of the Ritter tavern, to witness the auction--for
the proprietor had said the treasure of Germany's most
honored son should be bartered away in no meaner place.
Hildegarde and her father sat close to the books,
silent and sorrowful, and holding each other's hands.
There was a great crowd of people present.  The bidding began--

"How much for this precious library, just as it stands,
all complete?" called the auctioneer.

"Fifty pieces of gold!"

"A hundred!"

"Two hundred."

"Three!"

"Four!"

"Five hundred!"

"Five twenty-five."

A brief pause.

"Five forty!"

A longer pause, while the auctioneer redoubled his persuasions.

"Five-forty-five!"

A heavy drag--the auctioneer persuaded, pleaded,
implored--it was useless, everybody remained silent--

"Well, then--going, going--one--two--"

"Five hundred and fifty!"

This in a shrill voice, from a bent old man, all hung
with rags, and with a green patch over his left eye.
Everybody in his vicinity turned and gazed at him.
It was Givenaught in disguise.  He was using a disguised
voice, too.

"Good!" cried the auctioneer.  "Going, going--one--two--"

"Five hundred and sixty!"

This, in a deep, harsh voice, from the midst of the
crowd at the other end of the room.  The people near
by turned, and saw an old man, in a strange costume,
supporting himself on crutches.  He wore a long white beard,
and blue spectacles.  It was Herr Heartless, in disguise,
and using a disguised voice.

"Good again! Going, going--one--"

"Six hundred!"

Sensation.  The crowd raised a cheer, and some one
cried out, "Go it, Green-patch!" This tickled the audience
and a score of voices shouted, "Go it, Green-patch!"

"Going--going--going--third and last call--one--two--"

"Seven hundred!"

"Huzzah!--well done, Crutches!" cried a voice.  The crowd
took it up, and shouted altogether, "Well done, Crutches!"

"Splendid, gentlemen! you are doing magnificently.
Going, going--"

"A thousand!"

"Three cheers for Green-patch! Up and at him, Crutches!"

"Going--going--"

"Two thousand!"

And while the people cheered and shouted, "Crutches" muttered,
"Who can this devil be that is fighting so to get these
useless books?--But no matter, he sha'n't have them.
The pride of Germany shall have his books if it beggars
me to buy them for him."

"Going, going, going--"

"Three thousand!"

"Come, everybody--give a rouser for Green-patch!"

And while they did it, "Green-patch" muttered, "This cripple
is plainly a lunatic; but the old scholar shall have
his books, nevertheless, though my pocket sweat for it."

"Going--going--"

"Four thousand!"

"Huzza!"

"Five thousand!"

"Huzza!"

"Six thousand!"

"Huzza!"

"Seven thousand!"

"Huzza!"

"EIGHT thousand!"

"We are saved, father! I told you the Holy Virgin
would keep her word!" "Blessed be her sacred name!"
said the old scholar, with emotion.  The crowd roared,
"Huzza, huzza, huzza--at him again, Green-patch!"

"Going--going--"

"TEN thousand!" As Givenaught shouted this, his excitement
was so great that he forgot himself and used his
natural voice.  He brother recognized it, and muttered,
under cover of the storm of cheers--

"Aha, you are there, are you, besotted old fool? Take
the books, I know what you'll do with them!"

So saying, he slipped out of the place and the auction was
at an end.  Givenaught shouldered his way to Hildegarde,
whispered a word in her ear, and then he also vanished.
The old scholar and his daughter embraced, and the former said,
"Truly the Holy Mother has done more than she promised,
child, for she has give you a splendid marriage portion
--think of it, two thousand pieces of gold!"

"And more still," cried Hildegarde, "for she has give
you back your books; the stranger whispered me that he
would none of them--'the honored son of Germany must
keep them,' so he said.  I would I might have asked
his name and kissed his hand and begged his blessing;
but he was Our Lady's angel, and it is not meet that we
of earth should venture speech with them that dwell above."



APPENDIX F
German Journals

The daily journals of Hamburg, Frankfort, Baden, Munich,
and Augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan.
I speak of these because I am more familiar with them
than with any other German papers.  They contain no
"editorials" whatever; no "personals"--and this is rather
a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph column;
no police-court reports; no reports of proceedings
of higher courts; no information about prize-fights
or other dog-fights, horse-races, walking-machines,
yachting-contents, rifle-matches, or other sporting
matters of any sort; no reports of banquet speeches;
no department of curious odds and ends of floating fact
and gossip; no "rumors" about anything or anybody;
no prognostications or prophecies about anything or anybody;
no lists of patents granted or sought, or any reference
to such things; no abuse of public officials, big or little,
or complaints against them, or praises of them; no religious
columns Saturdays, no rehash of cold sermons Mondays;
no "weather indications"; no "local item" unveiling of
what is happening in town--nothing of a local nature,
indeed, is mentioned, beyond the movements of some prince,
or the proposed meeting of some deliberative body.

After so formidable a list of what one can't find
in a German daily, the question may well be asked,
What CAN be found in it? It is easily answered: A child's
handful of telegrams, mainly about European national and
international political movements; letter-correspondence about
the same things; market reports.  There you have it.
That is what a German daily is made of.  A German
daily is the slowest and saddest and dreariest of the
inventions of man.  Our own dailies infuriate the reader,
pretty often; the German daily only stupefies him.
Once a week the German daily of the highest class lightens
up its heavy columns--that is, it thinks it lightens
them up--with a profound, an abysmal, book criticism;
a criticism which carries you down, down, down into
the scientific bowels of the subject--for the German
critic is nothing if not scientific--and when you come
up at last and scent the fresh air and see the bonny
daylight once more, you resolve without a dissenting voice
that a book criticism is a mistaken way to lighten up
a German daily.  Sometimes, in place of the criticism,
the first-class daily gives you what it thinks is a gay
and chipper essay--about ancient Grecian funeral customs,
or the ancient Egyptian method of tarring a mummy,
or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples
who existed before the flood did not approve of cats.
These are not unpleasant subjects; they are not
uninteresting subjects; they are even exciting subjects
--until one of these massive scientists gets hold of them.
He soon convinces you that even these matters can
be handled in such a way as to make a person low-spirited.

As I have said, the average German daily is made up
solely of correspondences--a trifle of it by telegraph,
the rest of it by mail.  Every paragraph has the side-head,
"London," "Vienna," or some other town, and a date.
And always, before the name of the town, is placed a letter
or a sign, to indicate who the correspondent is, so that
the authorities can find him when they want to hang him.
Stars, crosses, triangles, squares, half-moons, suns
--such are some of the signs used by correspondents.

Some of the dailies move too fast, others too slowly.
For instance, my Heidelberg daily was always twenty-four
hours old when it arrived at the hotel; but one of my
Munich evening papers used to come a full twenty-four hours
before it was due.

Some of the less important dailies give one a tablespoonful
of a continued story every day; it is strung across
the bottom of the page, in the French fashion.
By subscribing for the paper for five years I judge that
a man might succeed in getting pretty much all of the story.

If you ask a citizen of Munich which is the best Munich
daily journal, he will always tell you that there is
only one good Munich daily, and that it is published
in Augsburg, forty or fifty miles away.  It is like saying
that the best daily paper in New York is published out
in New Jersey somewhere.  Yes, the Augsburg ALLGEMEINE
ZEITUNG is "the best Munich paper," and it is the one I
had in my mind when I was describing a "first-class
German daily" above.  The entire paper, opened out, is not
quite as large as a single page of the New York HERALD.
It is printed on both sides, of course; but in such large
type that its entire contents could be put, in HERALD type,
upon a single page of the HERALD--and there would still
be room enough on the page for the ZEITUNG's "supplement"
and some portion of the ZEITUNG's next day's contents.

Such is the first-class daily.  The dailies actually printed
in Munich are all called second-class by the public.
If you ask which is the best of these second-class
papers they say there is no difference; one is as good
as another.  I have preserved a copy of one of them;
it is called the MUENCHENER TAGES-ANZEIGER, and bears
date January 25, 1879.  Comparisons are odious,
but they need not be malicious; and without any malice
I wish to compare this journals of other countries.
I know of no other way to enable the reader to "size"
the thing.

A column of an average daily paper in America contains
from 1,800 to 2,500 words; the reading-matter in a
single issue consists of from 25,000 to 50,000 words.
The reading-matter in my copy of the Munich journal
consists of a total of 1,654 words --for I counted them.
That would be nearly a column of one of our dailies.
A single issue of the bulkiest daily newspaper in the
world--the London TIMES--often contains 100,000 words
of reading-matter. Considering that the DAILY ANZEIGER
issues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading
matter in a single number of the London TIMES would keep it
in "copy" two months and a half.

The ANZEIGER is an eight-page paper; its page is one
inch wider and one inch longer than a foolscap page;
that is to say, the dimensions of its page are somewhere
between those of a schoolboy's slate and a lady's
pocket handkerchief.  One-fourth of the first page is
taken up with the heading of the journal; this gives it
a rather top-heavy appearance; the rest of the first page
is reading-matter; all of the second page is reading-matter;
the other six pages are devoted to advertisements.

The reading-matter is compressed into two hundred
and five small-pica lines, and is lighted up with eight
pica headlines.  The bill of fare is as follows: First,
under a pica headline, to enforce attention and respect,
is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that,
although they are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs
of heaven; and that "When they depart from earth they soar
to heaven." Perhaps a four-line sermon in a Saturday paper
is the sufficient German equivalent of the eight or ten
columns of sermons which the New-Yorkers get in their
Monday morning papers.  The latest news (two days old)
follows the four-line sermon, under the pica headline
"Telegrams"--these are "telegraphed" with a pair of
scissors out of the AUGSBURGER ZEITUNG of the day before.
These telegrams consist of fourteen and two-thirds lines
from Berlin, fifteen lines from Vienna, and two and five-eights
lines from Calcutta.  Thirty-three small-pica lines news
in a daily journal in a King's Capital of one hundred and
seventy thousand inhabitants is surely not an overdose.
Next we have the pica heading, "News of the Day,"
under which the following facts are set forth: Prince
Leopold is going on a visit to Vienna, six lines;
Prince Arnulph is coming back from Russia, two lines;
the Landtag will meet at ten o'clock in the morning and
consider an election law, three lines and one word over;
a city government item, five and one-half lines;
prices of tickets to the proposed grand Charity Ball,
twenty-three lines--for this one item occupies almost
one-fourth of the entire first page; there is to be
a wonderful Wagner concert in Frankfurt-on-the-Main,
with an orchestra of one hundred and eight instruments,
seven and one-half lines.  That concludes the first page.
Eighty-five lines, altogether, on that page,
including three headlines.  About fifty of those lines,
as one perceives, deal with local matters; so the reporters
are not overworked.

Exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with
an opera criticism, fifty-three lines (three of them
being headlines), and "Death Notices," ten lines.

The other half of the second page is made up of two
paragraphs under the head of "Miscellaneous News."
One of these paragraphs tells about a quarrel between the Czar
of Russia and his eldest son, twenty-one and a half lines;
and the other tells about the atrocious destruction of a
peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth
of the total of the reading-matter contained in the paper.

Consider what a fifth part of the reading-matter of an American
daily paper issued in a city of one hundred and seventy
thousand inhabitants amounts to! Think what a mass it is.
Would any one suppose I could so snugly tuck away such a
mass in a chapter of this book that it would be difficult
to find it again in the reader lost his place? Surely not.
I will translate that child-murder word for word,
to give the reader a realizing sense of what a fifth
part of the reading-matter of a Munich daily actually
is when it comes under measurement of the eye:

"From Oberkreuzberg, January 21st, the DONAU ZEITUNG
receives a long account of a crime, which we shortened
as follows: In Rametuach, a village near Eppenschlag,
lived a young married couple with two children, one of which,
a boy aged five, was born three years before the marriage.
For this reason, and also because a relative at Iggensbach
had bequeathed M400 ($100) to the boy, the heartless
father considered him in the way; so the unnatural
parents determined to sacrifice him in the cruelest
possible manner.  They proceeded to starve him slowly
to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him--as the
village people now make known, when it is too late.
The boy was shut in a hole, and when people passed
by he cried, and implored them to give him bread.
His long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed
him at last, on the third of January.  The sudden (sic)
death of the child created suspicion, the more so as the
body was immediately clothed and laid upon the bier.
Therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest was held
on the 6th.  What a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then!
The body was a complete skeleton.  The stomach and intestines
were utterly empty; they contained nothing whatsoever.
The flesh on the corpse was not as thick as the back of
a knife, and incisions in it brought not one drop of blood.
There was not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar
on the whole body; wounds, scars, bruises, discolored
extravasated blood, everywhere--even on the soles of
the feet there were wounds.  The cruel parents asserted
that the boy had been so bad that they had been obliged
to use severe punishments, and that he finally fell over
a bench and broke his neck.  However, they were arrested
two weeks after the inquest and put in the prison at Deggendorf."

Yes, they were arrested "two weeks after the inquest."
What a home sound that has.  That kind of police briskness
rather more reminds me of my native land than German
journalism does.

I think a German daily journal doesn't do any good to
speak of, but at the same time it doesn't do any harm.
That is a very large merit, and should not be lightly
weighted nor lightly thought of.

The German humorous papers are beautifully printed upon
fine paper, and the illustrations are finely drawn,
finely engraved, and are not vapidly funny, but deliciously so.
So also, generally speaking, are the two or three terse
sentences which accompany the pictures.  I remember one
of these pictures: A most dilapidated tramp is ruefully
contemplating some coins which lie in his open palm.
He says: "Well, begging is getting played out.  Only about
five marks ($1.25) for the whole day; many an official
makes more!" And I call to mind a picture of a commercial
traveler who is about to unroll his samples:

MERCHANT (pettishly).--NO, don't. I don't want to buy anything!

DRUMMER.--If you please, I was only going to show you--

MERCHANT.--But I don't wish to see them!

DRUMMER (after a pause, pleadingly).--But do you you mind
letting ME look at them! I haven't seen them for three weeks!


End of Project Gutenberg's A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER

by Mark Twain




Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, to Lord Cromwell, on the birth of the
Prince of Wales (afterward Edward VI.).

From the National Manuscripts preserved by the British Government.

Ryght honorable, Salutem in Christo Jesu, and Syr here ys no lesse joynge
and rejossynge in thes partees for the byrth of our prynce, hoom we
hungurde for so longe, then ther was (I trow), inter vicinos att the
byrth of S. J. Baptyste, as thys berer, Master Erance, can telle you.
Gode gyffe us alle grace, to yelde dew thankes to our Lorde Gode, Gode of
Inglonde, for verely He hathe shoyd Hym selff Gode of Inglonde, or rather
an Inglyssh Gode, yf we consydyr and pondyr welle alle Hys procedynges
with us from tyme to tyme.  He hath over cumme alle our yllnesse with Hys
excedynge goodnesse, so that we are now moor then compellyd to serve Hym,
seke Hys glory, promott Hys wurde, yf the Devylle of alle Devylles be
natt in us.  We have now the stooppe of vayne trustes ande the stey of
vayne expectations; lett us alle pray for hys preservatione.  Ande I for
my partt wylle wyssh that hys Grace allways have, and evyn now from the
begynynge, Governares, Instructores and offyceres of ryght jugmente, ne
optimum ingenium non optima educatione deprevetur.

Butt whatt a grett fowlle am I!  So, whatt devotione shoyth many tymys
butt lytelle dyscretione!  Ande thus the Gode of Inglonde be ever with
you in alle your procedynges.

The 19 of October.

Youres, H. L. B. of Wurcestere, now att Hartlebury.

Yf you wolde excytt thys berere to be moore hartye ayen the abuse of
ymagry or mor forwarde to promotte the veryte, ytt myght doo goode.  Natt
that ytt came of me, butt of your selffe, etc.

(Addressed) To the Ryght Honorable Loorde P. Sealle hys synguler gode
Lorde.



To those good-mannered and agreeable children Susie and Clara Clemens
this book is affectionately inscribed by their father.



I will set down a tale as it was told to me by one who had it of his
father, which latter had it of HIS father, this last having in like
manner had it of HIS father--and so on, back and still back, three
hundred years and more, the fathers transmitting it to the sons and so
preserving it.  It may be history, it may be only a legend, a tradition.
It may have happened, it may not have happened:  but it COULD have
happened.  It may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old
days; it may be that only the unlearned and the simple loved it and
credited it.




Contents.

I.      The birth of the Prince and the Pauper.
II.     Tom's early life.
III.    Tom's meeting with the Prince.
IV.     The Prince's troubles begin.
V.      Tom as a patrician.
VI.     Tom receives instructions.
VII.    Tom's first royal dinner.
VIII.   The question of the Seal.
IX.     The river pageant.
X.      The Prince in the toils.
XI.     At Guildhall.
XII.    The Prince and his deliverer.
XIII.   The disappearance of the Prince.
XIV.    'Le Roi est mort--vive le Roi.'
XV.     Tom as King.
XVI.    The state dinner.
XVII.   Foo-foo the First.
XVIII.  The Prince with the tramps.
XIX.    The Prince with the peasants.
XX.     The Prince and the hermit.
XXI.    Hendon to the rescue.
XXII.   A victim of treachery.
XXIII.  The Prince a prisoner.
XXIV.   The escape.
XXV.    Hendon Hall.
XXVI.   Disowned.
XXVII.  In prison.
XXVIII. The sacrifice.
XXIX.   To London.
XXX.    Tom's progress.
XXXI.   The Recognition procession.
XXXII.  Coronation Day.
XXXIII. Edward as King.
Conclusion. Justice and Retribution.
Notes.



     'The quality of mercy . . . is twice bless'd;
      It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;
      'Tis mightiest in the mightiest:  it becomes
      The thron-ed monarch better than his crown'.
                                   Merchant of Venice.




Chapter I. The birth of the Prince and the Pauper.

In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second
quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the
name of Canty, who did not want him.  On the same day another English
child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him.
All England wanted him too.  England had so longed for him, and hoped for
him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the
people went nearly mad for joy.  Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed
each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich
and poor, feasted and danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they kept
this up for days and nights together.  By day, London was a sight to see,
with gay banners waving from every balcony and housetop, and splendid
pageants marching along.  By night, it was again a sight to see, with its
great bonfires at every corner, and its troops of revellers making merry
around them.  There was no talk in all England but of the new baby,
Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, who lay lapped in silks and satins,
unconscious of all this fuss, and not knowing that great lords and ladies
were tending him and watching over him--and not caring, either.  But
there was no talk about the other baby, Tom Canty, lapped in his poor
rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had just come to trouble
with his presence.



Chapter II. Tom's early life.

Let us skip a number of years.

London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town--for that day.
It had a hundred thousand inhabitants--some think double as many.  The
streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part
where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge.  The houses
were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the
third sticking its elbows out beyond the second.  The higher the houses
grew, the broader they grew.  They were skeletons of strong criss-cross
beams, with solid material between, coated with plaster.  The beams were
painted red or blue or black, according to the owner's taste, and this
gave the houses a very picturesque look.  The windows were small, glazed
with little diamond-shaped panes, and they opened outward, on hinges,
like doors.

The house which Tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called
Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane.  It was small, decayed, and rickety,
but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. Canty's tribe
occupied a room on the third floor.  The mother and father had a sort of
bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters,
Bet and Nan, were not restricted--they had all the floor to themselves,
and might sleep where they chose.  There were the remains of a blanket or
two, and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw, but these could not
rightly be called beds, for they were not organised; they were kicked
into a general pile, mornings, and selections made from the mass at
night, for service.

Bet and Nan were fifteen years old--twins.  They were good-hearted girls,
unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant.  Their mother was like
them.  But the father and the grandmother were a couple of fiends.  They
got drunk whenever they could; then they fought each other or anybody
else who came in the way; they cursed and swore always, drunk or sober;
John Canty was a thief, and his mother a beggar.  They made beggars of
the children, but failed to make thieves of them.  Among, but not of, the
dreadful rabble that inhabited the house, was a good old priest whom the
King had turned out of house and home with a pension of a few farthings,
and he used to get the children aside and teach them right ways secretly.
Father Andrew also taught Tom a little Latin, and how to read and write;
and would have done the same with the girls, but they were afraid of the
jeers of their friends, who could not have endured such a queer
accomplishment in them.

All Offal Court was just such another hive as Canty's house. Drunkenness,
riot and brawling were the order, there, every night and nearly all night
long.  Broken heads were as common as hunger in that place.  Yet little
Tom was not unhappy.  He had a hard time of it, but did not know it.  It
was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he
supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing.  When he came home
empty-handed at night, he knew his father would curse him and thrash him
first, and that when he was done the awful grandmother would do it all
over again and improve on it; and that away in the night his starving
mother would slip to him stealthily with any miserable scrap or crust she
had been able to save for him by going hungry herself, notwithstanding
she was often caught in that sort of treason and soundly beaten for it by
her husband.

No, Tom's life went along well enough, especially in summer.  He only
begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against mendicancy were
stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of his time
listening to good Father Andrew's charming old tales and legends about
giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles, and gorgeous
kings and princes.  His head grew to be full of these wonderful things,
and many a night as he lay in the dark on his scant and offensive straw,
tired, hungry, and smarting from a thrashing, he unleashed his
imagination and soon forgot his aches and pains in delicious picturings
to himself of the charmed life of a petted prince in a regal palace.  One
desire came in time to haunt him day and night:  it was to see a real
prince, with his own eyes.  He spoke of it once to some of his Offal
Court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so unmercifully that
he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that.

He often read the priest's old books and got him to explain and enlarge
upon them.  His dreamings and readings worked certain changes in him,
by-and-by.  His dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament his shabby
clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better clad.  He went
on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it, too; but, instead
of splashing around in the Thames solely for the fun of it, he began to
find an added value in it because of the washings and cleansings it
afforded.

Tom could always find something going on around the Maypole in Cheapside,
and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of London had a chance
to see a military parade when some famous unfortunate was carried
prisoner to the Tower, by land or boat. One summer's day he saw poor Anne
Askew and three men burned at the stake in Smithfield, and heard an
ex-Bishop preach a sermon to them which did not interest him.  Yes, Tom's
life was varied and pleasant enough, on the whole.

By-and-by Tom's reading and dreaming about princely life wrought such a
strong effect upon him that he began to ACT the prince, unconsciously.
His speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the
vast admiration and amusement of his intimates.  But Tom's influence
among these young people began to grow now, day by day; and in time he
came to be looked up to, by them, with a sort of wondering awe, as a
superior being.  He seemed to know so much! and he could do and say such
marvellous things! and withal, he was so deep and wise!  Tom's remarks,
and Tom's performances, were reported by the boys to their elders; and
these, also, presently began to discuss Tom Canty, and to regard him as a
most gifted and extraordinary creature.  Full-grown people brought their
perplexities to Tom for solution, and were often astonished at the wit
and wisdom of his decisions.  In fact he was become a hero to all who
knew him except his own family--these, only, saw nothing in him.

Privately, after a while, Tom organised a royal court!  He was the
prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries, lords
and ladies in waiting, and the royal family.  Daily the mock prince was
received with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by Tom from his romantic
readings; daily the great affairs of the mimic kingdom were discussed in
the royal council, and daily his mimic highness issued decrees to his
imaginary armies, navies, and viceroyalties.

After which, he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings, eat
his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then stretch
himself upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty grandeurs in
his dreams.

And still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in the flesh,
grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at last it absorbed
all other desires, and became the one passion of his life.

One January day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped despondently up
and down the region round about Mincing Lane and Little East Cheap, hour
after hour, bare-footed and cold, looking in at cook-shop windows and
longing for the dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed
there--for to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is,
judging by the smell, they were--for it had never been his good luck to
own and eat one. There was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was
murky; it was a melancholy day.  At night Tom reached home so wet and
tired and hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother
to observe his forlorn condition and not be moved--after their fashion;
wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed.  For
a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting going on
in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted away to
far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jewelled and
gilded princelings who live in vast palaces, and had servants salaaming
before them or flying to execute their orders.  And then, as usual, he
dreamed that HE was a princeling himself.

All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved
among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes,
drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of the
glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a smile,
and there a nod of his princely head.

And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about
him, his dream had had its usual effect--it had intensified the
sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.  Then came bitterness, and
heart-break, and tears.



Chapter III. Tom's meeting with the Prince.

Tom got up hungry, and sauntered hungry away, but with his thoughts busy
with the shadowy splendours of his night's dreams. He wandered here and
there in the city, hardly noticing where he was going, or what was
happening around him.  People jostled him, and some gave him rough
speech; but it was all lost on the musing boy.  By-and-by he found
himself at Temple Bar, the farthest from home he had ever travelled in
that direction.  He stopped and considered a moment, then fell into his
imaginings again, and passed on outside the walls of London.  The Strand
had ceased to be a country-road then, and regarded itself as a street,
but by a strained construction; for, though there was a tolerably compact
row of houses on one side of it, there were only some scattered great
buildings on the other, these being palaces of rich nobles, with ample
and beautiful grounds stretching to the river--grounds that are now
closely packed with grim acres of brick and stone.

Tom discovered Charing Village presently, and rested himself at the
beautiful cross built there by a bereaved king of earlier days; then
idled down a quiet, lovely road, past the great cardinal's stately
palace, toward a far more mighty and majestic palace beyond--Westminster.
Tom stared in glad wonder at the vast pile of masonry, the wide-spreading
wings, the frowning bastions and turrets, the huge stone gateway, with
its gilded bars and its magnificent array of colossal granite lions, and
other the signs and symbols of English royalty.  Was the desire of his
soul to be satisfied at last?  Here, indeed, was a king's palace.  Might
he not hope to see a prince now--a prince of flesh and blood, if Heaven
were willing?

At each side of the gilded gate stood a living statue--that is to say, an
erect and stately and motionless man-at-arms, clad from head to heel in
shining steel armour.  At a respectful distance were many country folk,
and people from the city, waiting for any chance glimpse of royalty that
might offer.  Splendid carriages, with splendid people in them and
splendid servants outside, were arriving and departing by several other
noble gateways that pierced the royal enclosure.

Poor little Tom, in his rags, approached, and was moving slowly and
timidly past the sentinels, with a beating heart and a rising hope, when
all at once he caught sight through the golden bars of a spectacle that
almost made him shout for joy.  Within was a comely boy, tanned and brown
with sturdy outdoor sports and exercises, whose clothing was all of
lovely silks and satins, shining with jewels; at his hip a little
jewelled sword and dagger; dainty buskins on his feet, with red heels;
and on his head a jaunty crimson cap, with drooping plumes fastened with
a great sparkling gem.  Several gorgeous gentlemen stood near--his
servants, without a doubt.  Oh! he was a prince--a prince, a living
prince, a real prince--without the shadow of a question; and the prayer
of the pauper-boy's heart was answered at last.

Tom's breath came quick and short with excitement, and his eyes grew big
with wonder and delight.  Everything gave way in his mind instantly to
one desire:  that was to get close to the prince, and have a good,
devouring look at him.  Before he knew what he was about, he had his face
against the gate-bars.  The next instant one of the soldiers snatched him
rudely away, and sent him spinning among the gaping crowd of country
gawks and London idlers.  The soldier said,--

"Mind thy manners, thou young beggar!"

The crowd jeered and laughed; but the young prince sprang to the gate
with his face flushed, and his eyes flashing with indignation, and cried
out,--

"How dar'st thou use a poor lad like that?  How dar'st thou use the King
my father's meanest subject so?  Open the gates, and let him in!"

You should have seen that fickle crowd snatch off their hats then. You
should have heard them cheer, and shout, "Long live the Prince of Wales!"

The soldiers presented arms with their halberds, opened the gates, and
presented again as the little Prince of Poverty passed in, in his
fluttering rags, to join hands with the Prince of Limitless Plenty.

Edward Tudor said--

"Thou lookest tired and hungry:  thou'st been treated ill.  Come with
me."

Half a dozen attendants sprang forward to--I don't know what; interfere,
no doubt.  But they were waved aside with a right royal gesture, and they
stopped stock still where they were, like so many statues.  Edward took
Tom to a rich apartment in the palace, which he called his cabinet.  By
his command a repast was brought such as Tom had never encountered before
except in books.  The prince, with princely delicacy and breeding, sent
away the servants, so that his humble guest might not be embarrassed by
their critical presence; then he sat near by, and asked questions while
Tom ate.

"What is thy name, lad?"

"Tom Canty, an' it please thee, sir."

"'Tis an odd one.  Where dost live?"

"In the city, please thee, sir.  Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane."

"Offal Court!  Truly 'tis another odd one.  Hast parents?"

"Parents have I, sir, and a grand-dam likewise that is but indifferently
precious to me, God forgive me if it be offence to say it--also twin
sisters, Nan and Bet."

"Then is thy grand-dam not over kind to thee, I take it?"

"Neither to any other is she, so please your worship.  She hath a wicked
heart, and worketh evil all her days."

"Doth she mistreat thee?"

"There be times that she stayeth her hand, being asleep or overcome with
drink; but when she hath her judgment clear again, she maketh it up to me
with goodly beatings."

A fierce look came into the little prince's eyes, and he cried out--

"What!  Beatings?"

"Oh, indeed, yes, please you, sir."

"BEATINGS!--and thou so frail and little.  Hark ye:  before the night
come, she shall hie her to the Tower.  The King my father"--

"In sooth, you forget, sir, her low degree.  The Tower is for the great
alone."

"True, indeed.  I had not thought of that.  I will consider of her
punishment.  Is thy father kind to thee?"

"Not more than Gammer Canty, sir."

"Fathers be alike, mayhap.  Mine hath not a doll's temper.  He smiteth
with a heavy hand, yet spareth me:  he spareth me not always with his
tongue, though, sooth to say.  How doth thy mother use thee?"

"She is good, sir, and giveth me neither sorrow nor pain of any sort.
And Nan and Bet are like to her in this."

"How old be these?"

"Fifteen, an' it please you, sir."

"The Lady Elizabeth, my sister, is fourteen, and the Lady Jane Grey, my
cousin, is of mine own age, and comely and gracious withal; but my sister
the Lady Mary, with her gloomy mien and--Look you:  do thy sisters forbid
their servants to smile, lest the sin destroy their souls?"

"They?  Oh, dost think, sir, that THEY have servants?"

The little prince contemplated the little pauper gravely a moment, then
said--

"And prithee, why not?  Who helpeth them undress at night?  Who attireth
them when they rise?"

"None, sir.  Would'st have them take off their garment, and sleep
without--like the beasts?"

"Their garment!  Have they but one?"

"Ah, good your worship, what would they do with more?  Truly they have
not two bodies each."

"It is a quaint and marvellous thought!  Thy pardon, I had not meant to
laugh.  But thy good Nan and thy Bet shall have raiment and lackeys enow,
and that soon, too:  my cofferer shall look to it.  No, thank me not;
'tis nothing.  Thou speakest well; thou hast an easy grace in it.  Art
learned?"

"I know not if I am or not, sir.  The good priest that is called Father
Andrew taught me, of his kindness, from his books."

"Know'st thou the Latin?"

"But scantly, sir, I doubt."

"Learn it, lad:  'tis hard only at first.  The Greek is harder; but
neither these nor any tongues else, I think, are hard to the Lady
Elizabeth and my cousin.  Thou should'st hear those damsels at it!  But
tell me of thy Offal Court.  Hast thou a pleasant life there?"

"In truth, yes, so please you, sir, save when one is hungry. There be
Punch-and-Judy shows, and monkeys--oh such antic creatures! and so
bravely dressed!--and there be plays wherein they that play do shout and
fight till all are slain, and 'tis so fine to see, and costeth but a
farthing--albeit 'tis main hard to get the farthing, please your
worship."

"Tell me more."

"We lads of Offal Court do strive against each other with the cudgel,
like to the fashion of the 'prentices, sometimes."

The prince's eyes flashed.  Said he--

"Marry, that would not I mislike.  Tell me more."

"We strive in races, sir, to see who of us shall be fleetest."

"That would I like also.  Speak on."

"In summer, sir, we wade and swim in the canals and in the river, and
each doth duck his neighbour, and splatter him with water, and dive and
shout and tumble and--"

"'Twould be worth my father's kingdom but to enjoy it once! Prithee go
on."

"We dance and sing about the Maypole in Cheapside; we play in the sand,
each covering his neighbour up; and times we make mud pastry--oh the
lovely mud, it hath not its like for delightfulness in all the world!--we
do fairly wallow in the mud, sir, saving your worship's presence."

"Oh, prithee, say no more, 'tis glorious!  If that I could but clothe me
in raiment like to thine, and strip my feet, and revel in the mud once,
just once, with none to rebuke me or forbid, meseemeth I could forego the
crown!"

"And if that I could clothe me once, sweet sir, as thou art clad--just
once--"

"Oho, would'st like it?  Then so shall it be.  Doff thy rags, and don
these splendours, lad!  It is a brief happiness, but will be not less
keen for that.  We will have it while we may, and change again before any
come to molest."

A few minutes later the little Prince of Wales was garlanded with Tom's
fluttering odds and ends, and the little Prince of Pauperdom was tricked
out in the gaudy plumage of royalty.  The two went and stood side by side
before a great mirror, and lo, a miracle: there did not seem to have been
any change made!  They stared at each other, then at the glass, then at
each other again.  At last the puzzled princeling said--

"What dost thou make of this?"

"Ah, good your worship, require me not to answer.  It is not meet that
one of my degree should utter the thing."

"Then will _I_ utter it.  Thou hast the same hair, the same eyes, the
same voice and manner, the same form and stature, the same face and
countenance that I bear.  Fared we forth naked, there is none could say
which was you, and which the Prince of Wales.  And, now that I am clothed
as thou wert clothed, it seemeth I should be able the more nearly to feel
as thou didst when the brute soldier--Hark ye, is not this a bruise upon
your hand?"

"Yes; but it is a slight thing, and your worship knoweth that the poor
man-at-arms--"

"Peace!  It was a shameful thing and a cruel!" cried the little prince,
stamping his bare foot.  "If the King--Stir not a step till I come again!
It is a command!"

In a moment he had snatched up and put away an article of national
importance that lay upon a table, and was out at the door and flying
through the palace grounds in his bannered rags, with a hot face and
glowing eyes.  As soon as he reached the great gate, he seized the bars,
and tried to shake them, shouting--

"Open!  Unbar the gates!"

The soldier that had maltreated Tom obeyed promptly; and as the prince
burst through the portal, half-smothered with royal wrath, the soldier
fetched him a sounding box on the ear that sent him whirling to the
roadway, and said--

"Take that, thou beggar's spawn, for what thou got'st me from his
Highness!"

The crowd roared with laughter.  The prince picked himself out of the
mud, and made fiercely at the sentry, shouting--

"I am the Prince of Wales, my person is sacred; and thou shalt hang for
laying thy hand upon me!"

The soldier brought his halberd to a present-arms and said mockingly--

"I salute your gracious Highness."  Then angrily--"Be off, thou crazy
rubbish!"

Here the jeering crowd closed round the poor little prince, and hustled
him far down the road, hooting him, and shouting--

"Way for his Royal Highness!  Way for the Prince of Wales!"



Chapter IV. The Prince's troubles begin.

After hours of persistent pursuit and persecution, the little prince was
at last deserted by the rabble and left to himself.  As long as he had
been able to rage against the mob, and threaten it royally, and royally
utter commands that were good stuff to laugh at, he was very
entertaining; but when weariness finally forced him to be silent, he was
no longer of use to his tormentors, and they sought amusement elsewhere.
He looked about him, now, but could not recognise the locality.  He was
within the city of London--that was all he knew.  He moved on, aimlessly,
and in a little while the houses thinned, and the passers-by were
infrequent.  He bathed his bleeding feet in the brook which flowed then
where Farringdon Street now is; rested a few moments, then passed on, and
presently came upon a great space with only a few scattered houses in it,
and a prodigious church.  He recognised this church.  Scaffoldings were
about, everywhere, and swarms of workmen; for it was undergoing elaborate
repairs.  The prince took heart at once--he felt that his troubles were
at an end, now.  He said to himself, "It is the ancient Grey Friars'
Church, which the king my father hath taken from the monks and given for
a home for ever for poor and forsaken children, and new-named it Christ's
Church.  Right gladly will they serve the son of him who hath done so
generously by them--and the more that that son is himself as poor and as
forlorn as any that be sheltered here this day, or ever shall be."

He was soon in the midst of a crowd of boys who were running, jumping,
playing at ball and leap-frog, and otherwise disporting themselves, and
right noisily, too.  They were all dressed alike, and in the fashion
which in that day prevailed among serving-men and 'prentices{1}--that is
to say, each had on the crown of his head a flat black cap about the size
of a saucer, which was not useful as a covering, it being of such scanty
dimensions, neither was it ornamental; from beneath it the hair fell,
unparted, to the middle of the forehead, and was cropped straight around;
a clerical band at the neck; a blue gown that fitted closely and hung as
low as the knees or lower; full sleeves; a broad red belt; bright yellow
stockings, gartered above the knees; low shoes with large metal buckles.
It was a sufficiently ugly costume.

The boys stopped their play and flocked about the prince, who said with
native dignity--

"Good lads, say to your master that Edward Prince of Wales desireth
speech with him."

A great shout went up at this, and one rude fellow said--

"Marry, art thou his grace's messenger, beggar?"

The prince's face flushed with anger, and his ready hand flew to his hip,
but there was nothing there.  There was a storm of laughter, and one boy
said--

"Didst mark that?  He fancied he had a sword--belike he is the prince
himself."

This sally brought more laughter.  Poor Edward drew himself up proudly
and said--

"I am the prince; and it ill beseemeth you that feed upon the king my
father's bounty to use me so."

This was vastly enjoyed, as the laughter testified.  The youth who had
first spoken, shouted to his comrades--

"Ho, swine, slaves, pensioners of his grace's princely father, where be
your manners?  Down on your marrow bones, all of ye, and do reverence to
his kingly port and royal rags!"

With boisterous mirth they dropped upon their knees in a body and did
mock homage to their prey.  The prince spurned the nearest boy with his
foot, and said fiercely--

"Take thou that, till the morrow come and I build thee a gibbet!"

Ah, but this was not a joke--this was going beyond fun.  The laughter
ceased on the instant, and fury took its place.  A dozen shouted--

"Hale him forth!  To the horse-pond, to the horse-pond!  Where be the
dogs?  Ho, there, Lion! ho, Fangs!"

Then followed such a thing as England had never seen before--the sacred
person of the heir to the throne rudely buffeted by plebeian hands, and
set upon and torn by dogs.

As night drew to a close that day, the prince found himself far down in
the close-built portion of the city.  His body was bruised, his hands
were bleeding, and his rags were all besmirched with mud.  He wandered on
and on, and grew more and more bewildered, and so tired and faint he
could hardly drag one foot after the other.  He had ceased to ask
questions of anyone, since they brought him only insult instead of
information.  He kept muttering to himself, "Offal Court--that is the
name; if I can but find it before my strength is wholly spent and I drop,
then am I saved--for his people will take me to the palace and prove that
I am none of theirs, but the true prince, and I shall have mine own
again."  And now and then his mind reverted to his treatment by those
rude Christ's Hospital boys, and he said, "When I am king, they shall not
have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full
belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart.  I will
keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day's lesson be not
lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning softeneth the
heart and breedeth gentleness and charity." {1}

The lights began to twinkle, it came on to rain, the wind rose, and a raw
and gusty night set in.  The houseless prince, the homeless heir to the
throne of England, still moved on, drifting deeper into the maze of
squalid alleys where the swarming hives of poverty and misery were massed
together.

Suddenly a great drunken ruffian collared him and said--

"Out to this time of night again, and hast not brought a farthing home, I
warrant me!  If it be so, an' I do not break all the bones in thy lean
body, then am I not John Canty, but some other."

The prince twisted himself loose, unconsciously brushed his profaned
shoulder, and eagerly said--

"Oh, art HIS father, truly?  Sweet heaven grant it be so--then wilt thou
fetch him away and restore me!"

"HIS father?  I know not what thou mean'st; I but know I am THY father,
as thou shalt soon have cause to--"

"Oh, jest not, palter not, delay not!--I am worn, I am wounded, I can
bear no more.  Take me to the king my father, and he will make thee rich
beyond thy wildest dreams.  Believe me, man, believe me!--I speak no lie,
but only the truth!--put forth thy hand and save me!  I am indeed the
Prince of Wales!"

The man stared down, stupefied, upon the lad, then shook his head and
muttered--

"Gone stark mad as any Tom o' Bedlam!"--then collared him once more, and
said with a coarse laugh and an oath, "But mad or no mad, I and thy
Gammer Canty will soon find where the soft places in thy bones lie, or
I'm no true man!"

With this he dragged the frantic and struggling prince away, and
disappeared up a front court followed by a delighted and noisy swarm of
human vermin.



Chapter V. Tom as a patrician.

Tom Canty, left alone in the prince's cabinet, made good use of his
opportunity.  He turned himself this way and that before the great
mirror, admiring his finery; then walked away, imitating the prince's
high-bred carriage, and still observing results in the glass.  Next he
drew the beautiful sword, and bowed, kissing the blade, and laying it
across his breast, as he had seen a noble knight do, by way of salute to
the lieutenant of the Tower, five or six weeks before, when delivering
the great lords of Norfolk and Surrey into his hands for captivity.  Tom
played with the jewelled dagger that hung upon his thigh; he examined the
costly and exquisite ornaments of the room; he tried each of the
sumptuous chairs, and thought how proud he would be if the Offal Court
herd could only peep in and see him in his grandeur.  He wondered if they
would believe the marvellous tale he should tell when he got home, or if
they would shake their heads, and say his overtaxed imagination had at
last upset his reason.

At the end of half an hour it suddenly occurred to him that the prince
was gone a long time; then right away he began to feel lonely; very soon
he fell to listening and longing, and ceased to toy with the pretty
things about him; he grew uneasy, then restless, then distressed.
Suppose some one should come, and catch him in the prince's clothes, and
the prince not there to explain.  Might they not hang him at once, and
inquire into his case afterward?  He had heard that the great were prompt
about small matters.  His fear rose higher and higher; and trembling he
softly opened the door to the antechamber, resolved to fly and seek the
prince, and, through him, protection and release.  Six gorgeous
gentlemen-servants and two young pages of high degree, clothed like
butterflies, sprang to their feet and bowed low before him.  He stepped
quickly back and shut the door.  He said--

"Oh, they mock at me!  They will go and tell.  Oh! why came I here to
cast away my life?"

He walked up and down the floor, filled with nameless fears, listening,
starting at every trifling sound.  Presently the door swung open, and a
silken page said--

"The Lady Jane Grey."

The door closed and a sweet young girl, richly clad, bounded toward him.
But she stopped suddenly, and said in a distressed voice--

"Oh, what aileth thee, my lord?"

Tom's breath was nearly failing him; but he made shift to stammer out--

"Ah, be merciful, thou!  In sooth I am no lord, but only poor Tom Canty
of Offal Court in the city.  Prithee let me see the prince, and he will
of his grace restore to me my rags, and let me hence unhurt.  Oh, be thou
merciful, and save me!"

By this time the boy was on his knees, and supplicating with his eyes and
uplifted hands as well as with his tongue.  The young girl seemed
horror-stricken.  She cried out--

"O my lord, on thy knees?--and to ME!"

Then she fled away in fright; and Tom, smitten with despair, sank down,
murmuring--

"There is no help, there is no hope.  Now will they come and take me."

Whilst he lay there benumbed with terror, dreadful tidings were speeding
through the palace.  The whisper--for it was whispered always--flew from
menial to menial, from lord to lady, down all the long corridors, from
story to story, from saloon to saloon, "The prince hath gone mad, the
prince hath gone mad!"  Soon every saloon, every marble hall, had its
groups of glittering lords and ladies, and other groups of dazzling
lesser folk, talking earnestly together in whispers, and every face had
in it dismay. Presently a splendid official came marching by these
groups, making solemn proclamation--

"IN THE NAME OF THE KING!

Let none list to this false and foolish matter, upon pain of death, nor
discuss the same, nor carry it abroad.  In the name of the King!"

The whisperings ceased as suddenly as if the whisperers had been stricken
dumb.

Soon there was a general buzz along the corridors, of "The prince! See,
the prince comes!"

Poor Tom came slowly walking past the low-bowing groups, trying to bow in
return, and meekly gazing upon his strange surroundings with bewildered
and pathetic eyes.  Great nobles walked upon each side of him, making him
lean upon them, and so steady his steps. Behind him followed the
court-physicians and some servants.

Presently Tom found himself in a noble apartment of the palace and heard
the door close behind him.  Around him stood those who had come with him.
Before him, at a little distance, reclined a very large and very fat man,
with a wide, pulpy face, and a stern expression.  His large head was very
grey; and his whiskers, which he wore only around his face, like a frame,
were grey also.  His clothing was of rich stuff, but old, and slightly
frayed in places.  One of his swollen legs had a pillow under it, and was
wrapped in bandages.  There was silence now; and there was no head there
but was bent in reverence, except this man's.  This stern-countenanced
invalid was the dread Henry VIII.  He said--and his face grew gentle as
he began to speak--

"How now, my lord Edward, my prince?  Hast been minded to cozen me, the
good King thy father, who loveth thee, and kindly useth thee, with a
sorry jest?"

Poor Tom was listening, as well as his dazed faculties would let him, to
the beginning of this speech; but when the words 'me, the good King' fell
upon his ear, his face blanched, and he dropped as instantly upon his
knees as if a shot had brought him there. Lifting up his hands, he
exclaimed--

"Thou the KING?  Then am I undone indeed!"

This speech seemed to stun the King.  His eyes wandered from face to face
aimlessly, then rested, bewildered, upon the boy before him.  Then he
said in a tone of deep disappointment--

"Alack, I had believed the rumour disproportioned to the truth; but I
fear me 'tis not so."  He breathed a heavy sigh, and said in a gentle
voice, "Come to thy father, child:  thou art not well."

Tom was assisted to his feet, and approached the Majesty of England,
humble and trembling.  The King took the frightened face between his
hands, and gazed earnestly and lovingly into it awhile, as if seeking
some grateful sign of returning reason there, then pressed the curly head
against his breast, and patted it tenderly.  Presently he said--

"Dost not know thy father, child?  Break not mine old heart; say thou
know'st me.  Thou DOST know me, dost thou not?"

"Yea:  thou art my dread lord the King, whom God preserve!"

"True, true--that is well--be comforted, tremble not so; there is none
here would hurt thee; there is none here but loves thee. Thou art better
now; thy ill dream passeth--is't not so?  Thou wilt not miscall thyself
again, as they say thou didst a little while agone?"

"I pray thee of thy grace believe me, I did but speak the truth, most
dread lord; for I am the meanest among thy subjects, being a pauper born,
and 'tis by a sore mischance and accident I am here, albeit I was therein
nothing blameful.  I am but young to die, and thou canst save me with one
little word.  Oh speak it, sir!"

"Die?  Talk not so, sweet prince--peace, peace, to thy troubled heart
--thou shalt not die!"

Tom dropped upon his knees with a glad cry--

"God requite thy mercy, O my King, and save thee long to bless thy land!"
Then springing up, he turned a joyful face toward the two lords in
waiting, and exclaimed, "Thou heard'st it!  I am not to die:  the King
hath said it!"  There was no movement, save that all bowed with grave
respect; but no one spoke.  He hesitated, a little confused, then turned
timidly toward the King, saying, "I may go now?"

"Go?  Surely, if thou desirest.  But why not tarry yet a little? Whither
would'st go?"

Tom dropped his eyes, and answered humbly--

"Peradventure I mistook; but I did think me free, and so was I moved to
seek again the kennel where I was born and bred to misery, yet which
harboureth my mother and my sisters, and so is home to me; whereas these
pomps and splendours whereunto I am not used--oh, please you, sir, to let
me go!"

The King was silent and thoughtful a while, and his face betrayed a
growing distress and uneasiness.  Presently he said, with something of
hope in his voice--

"Perchance he is but mad upon this one strain, and hath his wits unmarred
as toucheth other matter.  God send it may be so!  We will make trial."

Then he asked Tom a question in Latin, and Tom answered him lamely in the
same tongue.  The lords and doctors manifested their gratification also.
The King said--

"'Twas not according to his schooling and ability, but showeth that his
mind is but diseased, not stricken fatally.  How say you, sir?"

The physician addressed bowed low, and replied--

"It jumpeth with my own conviction, sire, that thou hast divined aright."

The King looked pleased with this encouragement, coming as it did from so
excellent authority, and continued with good heart--

"Now mark ye all:  we will try him further."

He put a question to Tom in French.  Tom stood silent a moment,
embarrassed by having so many eyes centred upon him, then said
diffidently--

"I have no knowledge of this tongue, so please your majesty."

The King fell back upon his couch.  The attendants flew to his
assistance; but he put them aside, and said--

"Trouble me not--it is nothing but a scurvy faintness.  Raise me! There,
'tis sufficient.  Come hither, child; there, rest thy poor troubled head
upon thy father's heart, and be at peace.  Thou'lt soon be well:  'tis
but a passing fantasy.  Fear thou not; thou'lt soon be well."  Then he
turned toward the company:  his gentle manner changed, and baleful
lightnings began to play from his eyes.  He said--

"List ye all!  This my son is mad; but it is not permanent.  Over-study
hath done this, and somewhat too much of confinement.  Away with his
books and teachers! see ye to it.  Pleasure him with sports, beguile him
in wholesome ways, so that his health come again."  He raised himself
higher still, and went on with energy, "He is mad; but he is my son, and
England's heir; and, mad or sane, still shall he reign!  And hear ye
further, and proclaim it: whoso speaketh of this his distemper worketh
against the peace and order of these realms, and shall to the gallows!
. . . Give me to drink--I burn:  this sorrow sappeth my strength. . . .
There, take away the cup. . . . Support me.  There, that is well.  Mad,
is he?  Were he a thousand times mad, yet is he Prince of Wales, and I the
King will confirm it.  This very morrow shall he be installed in his
princely dignity in due and ancient form.  Take instant order for it, my
lord Hertford."

One of the nobles knelt at the royal couch, and said--

"The King's majesty knoweth that the Hereditary Great Marshal of England
lieth attainted in the Tower.  It were not meet that one attainted--"

"Peace!  Insult not mine ears with his hated name.  Is this man to live
for ever?  Am I to be baulked of my will?  Is the prince to tarry
uninstalled, because, forsooth, the realm lacketh an Earl Marshal free of
treasonable taint to invest him with his honours? No, by the splendour of
God!  Warn my Parliament to bring me Norfolk's doom before the sun rise
again, else shall they answer for it grievously!" {1}

Lord Hertford said--

"The King's will is law;" and, rising, returned to his former place.

Gradually the wrath faded out of the old King's face, and he said--

"Kiss me, my prince.  There . . . what fearest thou?  Am I not thy loving
father?"

"Thou art good to me that am unworthy, O mighty and gracious lord: that
in truth I know.  But--but--it grieveth me to think of him that is to
die, and--"

"Ah, 'tis like thee, 'tis like thee!  I know thy heart is still the same,
even though thy mind hath suffered hurt, for thou wert ever of a gentle
spirit.  But this duke standeth between thee and thine honours:  I will
have another in his stead that shall bring no taint to his great office.
Comfort thee, my prince:  trouble not thy poor head with this matter."

"But is it not I that speed him hence, my liege?  How long might he not
live, but for me?"

"Take no thought of him, my prince:  he is not worthy.  Kiss me once
again, and go to thy trifles and amusements; for my malady distresseth
me.  I am aweary, and would rest.  Go with thine uncle Hertford and thy
people, and come again when my body is refreshed."

Tom, heavy-hearted, was conducted from the presence, for this last
sentence was a death-blow to the hope he had cherished that now he would
be set free.  Once more he heard the buzz of low voices exclaiming, "The
prince, the prince comes!"

His spirits sank lower and lower as he moved between the glittering files
of bowing courtiers; for he recognised that he was indeed a captive now,
and might remain for ever shut up in this gilded cage, a forlorn and
friendless prince, except God in his mercy take pity on him and set him
free.

And, turn where he would, he seemed to see floating in the air the
severed head and the remembered face of the great Duke of Norfolk, the
eyes fixed on him reproachfully.

His old dreams had been so pleasant; but this reality was so dreary!



Chapter VI. Tom receives instructions.

Tom was conducted to the principal apartment of a noble suite, and made
to sit down--a thing which he was loth to do, since there were elderly
men and men of high degree about him.  He begged them to be seated also,
but they only bowed their thanks or murmured them, and remained standing.
He would have insisted, but his 'uncle' the Earl of Hertford whispered in
his ear--

"Prithee, insist not, my lord; it is not meet that they sit in thy
presence."

The Lord St. John was announced, and after making obeisance to Tom, he
said--

"I come upon the King's errand, concerning a matter which requireth
privacy.  Will it please your royal highness to dismiss all that attend
you here, save my lord the Earl of Hertford?"

Observing that Tom did not seem to know how to proceed, Hertford
whispered him to make a sign with his hand, and not trouble himself to
speak unless he chose.  When the waiting gentlemen had retired, Lord St.
John said--

"His majesty commandeth, that for due and weighty reasons of state, the
prince's grace shall hide his infirmity in all ways that be within his
power, till it be passed and he be as he was before.  To wit, that he
shall deny to none that he is the true prince, and heir to England's
greatness; that he shall uphold his princely dignity, and shall receive,
without word or sign of protest, that reverence and observance which unto
it do appertain of right and ancient usage; that he shall cease to speak
to any of that lowly birth and life his malady hath conjured out of the
unwholesome imaginings of o'er-wrought fancy; that he shall strive with
diligence to bring unto his memory again those faces which he was wont to
know--and where he faileth he shall hold his peace, neither betraying by
semblance of surprise or other sign that he hath forgot; that upon
occasions of state, whensoever any matter shall perplex him as to the
thing he should do or the utterance he should make, he shall show nought
of unrest to the curious that look on, but take advice in that matter of
the Lord Hertford, or my humble self, which are commanded of the King to
be upon this service and close at call, till this commandment be
dissolved. Thus saith the King's majesty, who sendeth greeting to your
royal highness, and prayeth that God will of His mercy quickly heal you
and have you now and ever in His holy keeping."

The Lord St. John made reverence and stood aside.  Tom replied
resignedly--

"The King hath said it.  None may palter with the King's command, or fit
it to his ease, where it doth chafe, with deft evasions. The King shall
be obeyed."

Lord Hertford said--

"Touching the King's majesty's ordainment concerning books and such like
serious matters, it may peradventure please your highness to ease your
time with lightsome entertainment, lest you go wearied to the banquet and
suffer harm thereby."

Tom's face showed inquiring surprise; and a blush followed when he saw
Lord St. John's eyes bent sorrowfully upon him.  His lordship said--

"Thy memory still wrongeth thee, and thou hast shown surprise--but suffer
it not to trouble thee, for 'tis a matter that will not bide, but depart
with thy mending malady.  My Lord of Hertford speaketh of the city's
banquet which the King's majesty did promise, some two months flown, your
highness should attend.  Thou recallest it now?"

"It grieves me to confess it had indeed escaped me," said Tom, in a
hesitating voice; and blushed again.

At this moment the Lady Elizabeth and the Lady Jane Grey were announced.
The two lords exchanged significant glances, and Hertford stepped quickly
toward the door.  As the young girls passed him, he said in a low voice--

"I pray ye, ladies, seem not to observe his humours, nor show surprise
when his memory doth lapse--it will grieve you to note how it doth stick
at every trifle."

Meantime Lord St. John was saying in Tom's ear--

"Please you, sir, keep diligently in mind his majesty's desire. Remember
all thou canst--SEEM to remember all else.  Let them not perceive that
thou art much changed from thy wont, for thou knowest how tenderly thy
old play-fellows bear thee in their hearts and how 'twould grieve them.
Art willing, sir, that I remain?--and thine uncle?"

Tom signified assent with a gesture and a murmured word, for he was
already learning, and in his simple heart was resolved to acquit himself
as best he might, according to the King's command.

In spite of every precaution, the conversation among the young people
became a little embarrassing at times.  More than once, in truth, Tom was
near to breaking down and confessing himself unequal to his tremendous
part; but the tact of the Princess Elizabeth saved him, or a word from
one or the other of the vigilant lords, thrown in apparently by chance,
had the same happy effect.  Once the little Lady Jane turned to Tom and
dismayed him with this question,--

"Hast paid thy duty to the Queen's majesty to-day, my lord?"

Tom hesitated, looked distressed, and was about to stammer out something
at hazard, when Lord St. John took the word and answered for him with the
easy grace of a courtier accustomed to encounter delicate difficulties
and to be ready for them--

"He hath indeed, madam, and she did greatly hearten him, as touching his
majesty's condition; is it not so, your highness?"

Tom mumbled something that stood for assent, but felt that he was getting
upon dangerous ground.  Somewhat later it was mentioned that Tom was to
study no more at present, whereupon her little ladyship exclaimed--

"'Tis a pity, 'tis a pity!  Thou wert proceeding bravely.  But bide thy
time in patience:  it will not be for long.  Thou'lt yet be graced with
learning like thy father, and make thy tongue master of as many languages
as his, good my prince."

"My father!" cried Tom, off his guard for the moment.  "I trow he cannot
speak his own so that any but the swine that kennel in the styes may tell
his meaning; and as for learning of any sort soever--"

He looked up and encountered a solemn warning in my Lord St. John's eyes.

He stopped, blushed, then continued low and sadly: "Ah, my malady
persecuteth me again, and my mind wandereth.  I meant the King's grace no
irreverence."

"We know it, sir," said the Princess Elizabeth, taking her 'brother's'
hand between her two palms, respectfully but caressingly; "trouble not
thyself as to that.  The fault is none of thine, but thy distemper's."

"Thou'rt a gentle comforter, sweet lady," said Tom, gratefully, "and my
heart moveth me to thank thee for't, an' I may be so bold."

Once the giddy little Lady Jane fired a simple Greek phrase at Tom.  The
Princess Elizabeth's quick eye saw by the serene blankness of the
target's front that the shaft was overshot; so she tranquilly delivered a
return volley of sounding Greek on Tom's behalf, and then straightway
changed the talk to other matters.

Time wore on pleasantly, and likewise smoothly, on the whole. Snags and
sandbars grew less and less frequent, and Tom grew more and more at his
ease, seeing that all were so lovingly bent upon helping him and
overlooking his mistakes.  When it came out that the little ladies were
to accompany him to the Lord Mayor's banquet in the evening, his heart
gave a bound of relief and delight, for he felt that he should not be
friendless, now, among that multitude of strangers; whereas, an hour
earlier, the idea of their going with him would have been an
insupportable terror to him.

Tom's guardian angels, the two lords, had had less comfort in the
interview than the other parties to it.  They felt much as if they were
piloting a great ship through a dangerous channel; they were on the alert
constantly, and found their office no child's play. Wherefore, at last,
when the ladies' visit was drawing to a close and the Lord Guilford
Dudley was announced, they not only felt that their charge had been
sufficiently taxed for the present, but also that they themselves were
not in the best condition to take their ship back and make their anxious
voyage all over again.  So they respectfully advised Tom to excuse
himself, which he was very glad to do, although a slight shade of
disappointment might have been observed upon my Lady Jane's face when she
heard the splendid stripling denied admittance.

There was a pause now, a sort of waiting silence which Tom could not
understand.  He glanced at Lord Hertford, who gave him a sign--but he
failed to understand that also.  The ready Elizabeth came to the rescue
with her usual easy grace.  She made reverence and said--

"Have we leave of the prince's grace my brother to go?"

Tom said--

"Indeed your ladyships can have whatsoever of me they will, for the
asking; yet would I rather give them any other thing that in my poor
power lieth, than leave to take the light and blessing of their presence
hence.  Give ye good den, and God be with ye!" Then he smiled inwardly at
the thought, "'Tis not for nought I have dwelt but among princes in my
reading, and taught my tongue some slight trick of their broidered and
gracious speech withal!"

When the illustrious maidens were gone, Tom turned wearily to his keepers
and said--

"May it please your lordships to grant me leave to go into some corner
and rest me?"

Lord Hertford said--

"So please your highness, it is for you to command, it is for us to obey.
That thou should'st rest is indeed a needful thing, since thou must
journey to the city presently."

He touched a bell, and a page appeared, who was ordered to desire the
presence of Sir William Herbert.  This gentleman came straightway, and
conducted Tom to an inner apartment.  Tom's first movement there was to
reach for a cup of water; but a silk-and-velvet servitor seized it,
dropped upon one knee, and offered it to him on a golden salver.

Next the tired captive sat down and was going to take off his buskins,
timidly asking leave with his eye, but another silk-and-velvet
discomforter went down upon his knees and took the office from him.  He
made two or three further efforts to help himself, but being promptly
forestalled each time, he finally gave up, with a sigh of resignation and
a murmured "Beshrew me, but I marvel they do not require to breathe for
me also!"  Slippered, and wrapped in a sumptuous robe, he laid himself
down at last to rest, but not to sleep, for his head was too full of
thoughts and the room too full of people.  He could not dismiss the
former, so they stayed; he did not know enough to dismiss the latter, so
they stayed also, to his vast regret--and theirs.


Tom's departure had left his two noble guardians alone.  They mused a
while, with much head-shaking and walking the floor, then Lord St. John
said--

"Plainly, what dost thou think?"

"Plainly, then, this.  The King is near his end; my nephew is mad--mad
will mount the throne, and mad remain.  God protect England, since she
will need it!"

"Verily it promiseth so, indeed.  But . . . have you no misgivings as to
. . . as to . . ."

The speaker hesitated, and finally stopped.  He evidently felt that he
was upon delicate ground.  Lord Hertford stopped before him, looked into
his face with a clear, frank eye, and said--

"Speak on--there is none to hear but me.  Misgivings as to what?"

"I am full loth to word the thing that is in my mind, and thou so near to
him in blood, my lord.  But craving pardon if I do offend, seemeth it not
strange that madness could so change his port and manner?--not but that
his port and speech are princely still, but that they DIFFER, in one
unweighty trifle or another, from what his custom was aforetime.  Seemeth
it not strange that madness should filch from his memory his father's
very lineaments; the customs and observances that are his due from such
as be about him; and, leaving him his Latin, strip him of his Greek and
French?  My lord, be not offended, but ease my mind of its disquiet and
receive my grateful thanks.  It haunteth me, his saying he was not the
prince, and so--"

"Peace, my lord, thou utterest treason!  Hast forgot the King's command?
Remember I am party to thy crime if I but listen."

St. John paled, and hastened to say--

"I was in fault, I do confess it.  Betray me not, grant me this grace out
of thy courtesy, and I will neither think nor speak of this thing more.
Deal not hardly with me, sir, else am I ruined."

"I am content, my lord.  So thou offend not again, here or in the ears of
others, it shall be as though thou hadst not spoken.  But thou need'st
not have misgivings.  He is my sister's son; are not his voice, his face,
his form, familiar to me from his cradle? Madness can do all the odd
conflicting things thou seest in him, and more.  Dost not recall how that
the old Baron Marley, being mad, forgot the favour of his own countenance
that he had known for sixty years, and held it was another's; nay, even
claimed he was the son of Mary Magdalene, and that his head was made of
Spanish glass; and, sooth to say, he suffered none to touch it, lest by
mischance some heedless hand might shiver it?  Give thy misgivings
easement, good my lord.  This is the very prince--I know him well--and
soon will be thy king; it may advantage thee to bear this in mind, and
more dwell upon it than the other."

After some further talk, in which the Lord St. John covered up his
mistake as well as he could by repeated protests that his faith was
thoroughly grounded now, and could not be assailed by doubts again, the
Lord Hertford relieved his fellow-keeper, and sat down to keep watch and
ward alone.  He was soon deep in meditation, and evidently the longer he
thought, the more he was bothered.  By-and-by he began to pace the floor
and mutter.

"Tush, he MUST be the prince!  Will any he in all the land maintain there
can be two, not of one blood and birth, so marvellously twinned?  And
even were it so, 'twere yet a stranger miracle that chance should cast
the one into the other's place. Nay, 'tis folly, folly, folly!"

Presently he said--

"Now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you THAT would be
natural; that would be reasonable.  But lived ever an impostor yet, who,
being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by all,
DENIED his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation?  NO!  By the soul
of St. Swithin, no!  This is the true prince, gone mad!"



Chapter VII. Tom's first royal dinner.

Somewhat after one in the afternoon, Tom resignedly underwent the ordeal
of being dressed for dinner.  He found himself as finely clothed as
before, but everything different, everything changed, from his ruff to
his stockings.  He was presently conducted with much state to a spacious
and ornate apartment, where a table was already set for one.  Its
furniture was all of massy gold, and beautified with designs which
well-nigh made it priceless, since they were the work of Benvenuto.  The
room was half-filled with noble servitors.  A chaplain said grace, and
Tom was about to fall to, for hunger had long been constitutional with
him, but was interrupted by my lord the Earl of Berkeley, who fastened a
napkin about his neck; for the great post of Diaperers to the Prince of
Wales was hereditary in this nobleman's family.  Tom's cupbearer was
present, and forestalled all his attempts to help himself to wine.  The
Taster to his highness the Prince of Wales was there also, prepared to
taste any suspicious dish upon requirement, and run the risk of being
poisoned.  He was only an ornamental appendage at this time, and was
seldom called upon to exercise his function; but there had been times,
not many generations past, when the office of taster had its perils, and
was not a grandeur to be desired.  Why they did not use a dog or a
plumber seems strange; but all the ways of royalty are strange.  My Lord
d'Arcy, First Groom of the Chamber, was there, to do goodness knows what;
but there he was--let that suffice.  The Lord Chief Butler was there, and
stood behind Tom's chair, overseeing the solemnities, under command of
the Lord Great Steward and the Lord Head Cook, who stood near.  Tom had
three hundred and eighty-four servants beside these; but they were not
all in that room, of course, nor the quarter of them; neither was Tom
aware yet that they existed.

All those that were present had been well drilled within the hour to
remember that the prince was temporarily out of his head, and to be
careful to show no surprise at his vagaries.  These 'vagaries' were soon
on exhibition before them; but they only moved their compassion and their
sorrow, not their mirth.  It was a heavy affliction to them to see the
beloved prince so stricken.

Poor Tom ate with his fingers mainly; but no one smiled at it, or even
seemed to observe it.  He inspected his napkin curiously, and with deep
interest, for it was of a very dainty and beautiful fabric, then said
with simplicity--

"Prithee, take it away, lest in mine unheedfulness it be soiled."

The Hereditary Diaperer took it away with reverent manner, and without
word or protest of any sort.

Tom examined the turnips and the lettuce with interest, and asked what
they were, and if they were to be eaten; for it was only recently that
men had begun to raise these things in England in place of importing them
as luxuries from Holland. {1}  His question was answered with grave
respect, and no surprise manifested.  When he had finished his dessert,
he filled his pockets with nuts; but nobody appeared to be aware of it,
or disturbed by it.  But the next moment he was himself disturbed by it,
and showed discomposure; for this was the only service he had been
permitted to do with his own hands during the meal, and he did not doubt
that he had done a most improper and unprincely thing.  At that moment
the muscles of his nose began to twitch, and the end of that organ to
lift and wrinkle.  This continued, and Tom began to evince a growing
distress.  He looked appealingly, first at one and then another of the
lords about him, and tears came into his eyes.  They sprang forward with
dismay in their faces, and begged to know his trouble.  Tom said with
genuine anguish--

"I crave your indulgence:  my nose itcheth cruelly.  What is the custom
and usage in this emergence?  Prithee, speed, for 'tis but a little time
that I can bear it."

None smiled; but all were sore perplexed, and looked one to the other in
deep tribulation for counsel.  But behold, here was a dead wall, and
nothing in English history to tell how to get over it.  The Master of
Ceremonies was not present:  there was no one who felt safe to venture
upon this uncharted sea, or risk the attempt to solve this solemn
problem.  Alas! there was no Hereditary Scratcher.  Meantime the tears
had overflowed their banks, and begun to trickle down Tom's cheeks.  His
twitching nose was pleading more urgently than ever for relief.  At last
nature broke down the barriers of etiquette:  Tom lifted up an inward
prayer for pardon if he was doing wrong, and brought relief to the
burdened hearts of his court by scratching his nose himself.

His meal being ended, a lord came and held before him a broad, shallow,
golden dish with fragrant rosewater in it, to cleanse his mouth and
fingers with; and my lord the Hereditary Diaperer stood by with a napkin
for his use.  Tom gazed at the dish a puzzled moment or two, then raised
it to his lips, and gravely took a draught.  Then he returned it to the
waiting lord, and said--

"Nay, it likes me not, my lord:  it hath a pretty flavour, but it wanteth
strength."

This new eccentricity of the prince's ruined mind made all the hearts
about him ache; but the sad sight moved none to merriment.

Tom's next unconscious blunder was to get up and leave the table just
when the chaplain had taken his stand behind his chair, and with uplifted
hands, and closed, uplifted eyes, was in the act of beginning the
blessing.  Still nobody seemed to perceive that the prince had done a
thing unusual.

By his own request our small friend was now conducted to his private
cabinet, and left there alone to his own devices.  Hanging upon hooks in
the oaken wainscoting were the several pieces of a suit of shining steel
armour, covered all over with beautiful designs exquisitely inlaid in
gold.  This martial panoply belonged to the true prince--a recent present
from Madam Parr the Queen. Tom put on the greaves, the gauntlets, the
plumed helmet, and such other pieces as he could don without assistance,
and for a while was minded to call for help and complete the matter, but
bethought him of the nuts he had brought away from dinner, and the joy it
would be to eat them with no crowd to eye him, and no Grand Hereditaries
to pester him with undesired services; so he restored the pretty things
to their several places, and soon was cracking nuts, and feeling almost
naturally happy for the first time since God for his sins had made him a
prince.  When the nuts were all gone, he stumbled upon some inviting
books in a closet, among them one about the etiquette of the English
court.  This was a prize. He lay down upon a sumptuous divan, and
proceeded to instruct himself with honest zeal.  Let us leave him there
for the present.



Chapter VIII. The question of the Seal.

About five o'clock Henry VIII. awoke out of an unrefreshing nap, and
muttered to himself, "Troublous dreams, troublous dreams! Mine end is now
at hand:  so say these warnings, and my failing pulses do confirm it."
Presently a wicked light flamed up in his eye, and he muttered, "Yet will
not I die till HE go before."

His attendants perceiving that he was awake, one of them asked his
pleasure concerning the Lord Chancellor, who was waiting without.

"Admit him, admit him!" exclaimed the King eagerly.

The Lord Chancellor entered, and knelt by the King's couch, saying--

"I have given order, and, according to the King's command, the peers of
the realm, in their robes, do now stand at the bar of the House, where,
having confirmed the Duke of Norfolk's doom, they humbly wait his
majesty's further pleasure in the matter."

The King's face lit up with a fierce joy.  Said he--

"Lift me up!  In mine own person will I go before my Parliament, and with
mine own hand will I seal the warrant that rids me of--"

His voice failed; an ashen pallor swept the flush from his cheeks; and
the attendants eased him back upon his pillows, and hurriedly assisted
him with restoratives.  Presently he said sorrowfully--

"Alack, how have I longed for this sweet hour! and lo, too late it
cometh, and I am robbed of this so coveted chance.  But speed ye, speed
ye! let others do this happy office sith 'tis denied to me. I put my
Great Seal in commission:  choose thou the lords that shall compose it,
and get ye to your work.  Speed ye, man!  Before the sun shall rise and
set again, bring me his head that I may see it."

"According to the King's command, so shall it be.  Will't please your
majesty to order that the Seal be now restored to me, so that I may forth
upon the business?"

"The Seal?  Who keepeth the Seal but thou?"

"Please your majesty, you did take it from me two days since, saying it
should no more do its office till your own royal hand should use it upon
the Duke of Norfolk's warrant."

"Why, so in sooth I did:  I do remember . . . What did I with it?. . . I
am very feeble . . . So oft these days doth my memory play the traitor
with me . . . 'Tis strange, strange--"

The King dropped into inarticulate mumblings, shaking his grey head
weakly from time to time, and gropingly trying to recollect what he had
done with the Seal.  At last my Lord Hertford ventured to kneel and offer
information--

"Sire, if that I may be so bold, here be several that do remember with me
how that you gave the Great Seal into the hands of his highness the
Prince of Wales to keep against the day that--"

"True, most true!" interrupted the King.  "Fetch it!  Go:  time flieth!"

Lord Hertford flew to Tom, but returned to the King before very long,
troubled and empty-handed.  He delivered himself to this effect--

"It grieveth me, my lord the King, to bear so heavy and unwelcome
tidings; but it is the will of God that the prince's affliction abideth
still, and he cannot recall to mind that he received the Seal.  So came I
quickly to report, thinking it were waste of precious time, and little
worth withal, that any should attempt to search the long array of
chambers and saloons that belong unto his royal high--"

A groan from the King interrupted the lord at this point.  After a little
while his majesty said, with a deep sadness in his tone--

"Trouble him no more, poor child.  The hand of God lieth heavy upon him,
and my heart goeth out in loving compassion for him, and sorrow that I
may not bear his burden on mine old trouble-weighted shoulders, and so
bring him peace."

He closed his eyes, fell to mumbling, and presently was silent. After a
time he opened his eyes again, and gazed vacantly around until his glance
rested upon the kneeling Lord Chancellor. Instantly his face flushed with
wrath--

"What, thou here yet!  By the glory of God, an' thou gettest not about
that traitor's business, thy mitre shall have holiday the morrow for lack
of a head to grace withal!"

The trembling Chancellor answered--

"Good your Majesty, I cry you mercy!  I but waited for the Seal."

"Man, hast lost thy wits?  The small Seal which aforetime I was wont to
take with me abroad lieth in my treasury.  And, since the Great Seal hath
flown away, shall not it suffice?  Hast lost thy wits?  Begone!  And hark
ye--come no more till thou do bring his head."

The poor Chancellor was not long in removing himself from this dangerous
vicinity; nor did the commission waste time in giving the royal assent to
the work of the slavish Parliament, and appointing the morrow for the
beheading of the premier peer of England, the luckless Duke of Norfolk.
{1}



Chapter IX. The river pageant.

At nine in the evening the whole vast river-front of the palace was
blazing with light.  The river itself, as far as the eye could reach
citywards, was so thickly covered with watermen's boats and with
pleasure-barges, all fringed with coloured lanterns, and gently agitated
by the waves, that it resembled a glowing and limitless garden of flowers
stirred to soft motion by summer winds.  The grand terrace of stone steps
leading down to the water, spacious enough to mass the army of a German
principality upon, was a picture to see, with its ranks of royal
halberdiers in polished armour, and its troops of brilliantly costumed
servitors flitting up and down, and to and fro, in the hurry of
preparation.

Presently a command was given, and immediately all living creatures
vanished from the steps.  Now the air was heavy with the hush of suspense
and expectancy.  As far as one's vision could carry, he might see the
myriads of people in the boats rise up, and shade their eyes from the
glare of lanterns and torches, and gaze toward the palace.

A file of forty or fifty state barges drew up to the steps.  They were
richly gilt, and their lofty prows and sterns were elaborately carved.
Some of them were decorated with banners and streamers; some with
cloth-of-gold and arras embroidered with coats-of-arms; others with
silken flags that had numberless little silver bells fastened to them,
which shook out tiny showers of joyous music whenever the breezes
fluttered them; others of yet higher pretensions, since they belonged to
nobles in the prince's immediate service, had their sides picturesquely
fenced with shields gorgeously emblazoned with armorial bearings.  Each
state barge was towed by a tender.  Besides the rowers, these tenders
carried each a number of men-at-arms in glossy helmet and breastplate,
and a company of musicians.

The advance-guard of the expected procession now appeared in the great
gateway, a troop of halberdiers.  'They were dressed in striped hose of
black and tawny, velvet caps graced at the sides with silver roses, and
doublets of murrey and blue cloth, embroidered on the front and back with
the three feathers, the prince's blazon, woven in gold.  Their halberd
staves were covered with crimson velvet, fastened with gilt nails, and
ornamented with gold tassels.  Filing off on the right and left, they
formed two long lines, extending from the gateway of the palace to the
water's edge.  A thick rayed cloth or carpet was then unfolded, and laid
down between them by attendants in the gold-and-crimson liveries of the
prince.  This done, a flourish of trumpets resounded from within.  A
lively prelude arose from the musicians on the water; and two ushers with
white wands marched with a slow and stately pace from the portal.  They
were followed by an officer bearing the civic mace, after whom came
another carrying the city's sword; then several sergeants of the city
guard, in their full accoutrements, and with badges on their sleeves;
then the Garter King-at-arms, in his tabard; then several Knights of the
Bath, each with a white lace on his sleeve; then their esquires; then the
judges, in their robes of scarlet and coifs; then the Lord High
Chancellor of England, in a robe of scarlet, open before, and purfled
with minever; then a deputation of aldermen, in their scarlet cloaks; and
then the heads of the different civic companies, in their robes of state.
Now came twelve French gentlemen, in splendid habiliments, consisting
of pourpoints of white damask barred with gold, short mantles of
crimson velvet lined with violet taffeta, and carnation coloured
hauts-de-chausses, and took their way down the steps.  They were of the
suite of the French ambassador, and were followed by twelve cavaliers of
the suite of the Spanish ambassador, clothed in black velvet, unrelieved
by any ornament.  Following these came several great English nobles with
their attendants.'

There was a flourish of trumpets within; and the Prince's uncle, the
future great Duke of Somerset, emerged from the gateway, arrayed in a
'doublet of black cloth-of-gold, and a cloak of crimson satin flowered
with gold, and ribanded with nets of silver.'  He turned, doffed his
plumed cap, bent his body in a low reverence, and began to step backward,
bowing at each step.  A prolonged trumpet-blast followed, and a
proclamation, "Way for the high and mighty the Lord Edward, Prince of
Wales!"  High aloft on the palace walls a long line of red tongues of
flame leapt forth with a thunder-crash; the massed world on the river
burst into a mighty roar of welcome; and Tom Canty, the cause and hero of
it all, stepped into view and slightly bowed his princely head.

He was 'magnificently habited in a doublet of white satin, with a
front-piece of purple cloth-of-tissue, powdered with diamonds, and edged
with ermine.  Over this he wore a mantle of white cloth-of-gold, pounced
with the triple-feathered crest, lined with blue satin, set with pearls
and precious stones, and fastened with a clasp of brilliants.  About his
neck hung the order of the Garter, and several princely foreign orders;'
and wherever light fell upon him jewels responded with a blinding flash.
O Tom Canty, born in a hovel, bred in the gutters of London, familiar
with rags and dirt and misery, what a spectacle is this!



Chapter X. The Prince in the toils.

We left John Canty dragging the rightful prince into Offal Court, with a
noisy and delighted mob at his heels.  There was but one person in it who
offered a pleading word for the captive, and he was not heeded; he was
hardly even heard, so great was the turmoil.  The Prince continued to
struggle for freedom, and to rage against the treatment he was suffering,
until John Canty lost what little patience was left in him, and raised
his oaken cudgel in a sudden fury over the Prince's head.  The single
pleader for the lad sprang to stop the man's arm, and the blow descended
upon his own wrist.  Canty roared out--

"Thou'lt meddle, wilt thou?  Then have thy reward."

His cudgel crashed down upon the meddler's head:  there was a groan, a
dim form sank to the ground among the feet of the crowd, and the next
moment it lay there in the dark alone.  The mob pressed on, their
enjoyment nothing disturbed by this episode.

Presently the Prince found himself in John Canty's abode, with the door
closed against the outsiders.  By the vague light of a tallow candle
which was thrust into a bottle, he made out the main features of the
loathsome den, and also the occupants of it.  Two frowsy girls and a
middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one corner, with the aspect
of animals habituated to harsh usage, and expecting and dreading it now.
From another corner stole a withered hag with streaming grey hair and
malignant eyes.  John Canty said to this one--

"Tarry!  There's fine mummeries here.  Mar them not till thou'st enjoyed
them:  then let thy hand be heavy as thou wilt.  Stand forth, lad.  Now
say thy foolery again, an thou'st not forgot it. Name thy name.  Who art
thou?"

The insulted blood mounted to the little prince's cheek once more, and he
lifted a steady and indignant gaze to the man's face and said--

"'Tis but ill-breeding in such as thou to command me to speak.  I tell
thee now, as I told thee before, I am Edward, Prince of Wales, and none
other."

The stunning surprise of this reply nailed the hag's feet to the floor
where she stood, and almost took her breath.  She stared at the Prince in
stupid amazement, which so amused her ruffianly son, that he burst into a
roar of laughter.  But the effect upon Tom Canty's mother and sisters was
different.  Their dread of bodily injury gave way at once to distress of
a different sort.  They ran forward with woe and dismay in their faces,
exclaiming--

"Oh, poor Tom, poor lad!"

The mother fell on her knees before the Prince, put her hands upon his
shoulders, and gazed yearningly into his face through her rising tears.
Then she said--

"Oh, my poor boy!  Thy foolish reading hath wrought its woeful work at
last, and ta'en thy wit away.  Ah! why did'st thou cleave to it when I so
warned thee 'gainst it?  Thou'st broke thy mother's heart."

The Prince looked into her face, and said gently--

"Thy son is well, and hath not lost his wits, good dame.  Comfort thee:
let me to the palace where he is, and straightway will the King my father
restore him to thee."

"The King thy father!  Oh, my child! unsay these words that be freighted
with death for thee, and ruin for all that be near to thee.  Shake of
this gruesome dream.  Call back thy poor wandering memory.  Look upon me.
Am not I thy mother that bore thee, and loveth thee?"

The Prince shook his head and reluctantly said--

"God knoweth I am loth to grieve thy heart; but truly have I never looked
upon thy face before."

The woman sank back to a sitting posture on the floor, and, covering her
eyes with her hands, gave way to heart-broken sobs and wailings.

"Let the show go on!" shouted Canty.  "What, Nan!--what, Bet! mannerless
wenches! will ye stand in the Prince's presence?  Upon your knees, ye
pauper scum, and do him reverence!"

He followed this with another horse-laugh.  The girls began to plead
timidly for their brother; and Nan said--

"An thou wilt but let him to bed, father, rest and sleep will heal his
madness:  prithee, do."

"Do, father," said Bet; "he is more worn than is his wont.  To-morrow
will he be himself again, and will beg with diligence, and come not empty
home again."

This remark sobered the father's joviality, and brought his mind to
business.  He turned angrily upon the Prince, and said--

"The morrow must we pay two pennies to him that owns this hole; two
pennies, mark ye--all this money for a half-year's rent, else out of this
we go.  Show what thou'st gathered with thy lazy begging."

The Prince said--

"Offend me not with thy sordid matters.  I tell thee again I am the
King's son."

A sounding blow upon the Prince's shoulder from Canty's broad palm sent
him staggering into goodwife Canty's arms, who clasped him to her breast,
and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps by interposing
her own person.  The frightened girls retreated to their corner; but the
grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son.  The Prince sprang
away from Mrs. Canty, exclaiming--

"Thou shalt not suffer for me, madam.  Let these swine do their will upon
me alone."

This speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set about
their work without waste of time.  Between them they belaboured the boy
right soundly, and then gave the girls and their mother a beating for
showing sympathy for the victim.

"Now," said Canty, "to bed, all of ye.  The entertainment has tired me."

The light was put out, and the family retired.  As soon as the snorings
of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were asleep, the
young girls crept to where the Prince lay, and covered him tenderly from
the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept to him also, and
stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering broken words of comfort
and compassion in his ear the while.  She had saved a morsel for him to
eat, also; but the boy's pains had swept away all appetite--at least for
black and tasteless crusts.  He was touched by her brave and costly
defence of him, and by her commiseration; and he thanked her in very
noble and princely words, and begged her to go to her sleep and try to
forget her sorrows.  And he added that the King his father would not let
her loyal kindness and devotion go unrewarded.  This return to his
'madness' broke her heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again
and again, and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed.

As she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her
mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was
lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane.  She could not describe it, she could
not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to
detect it and perceive it.  What if the boy were really not her son,
after all?  Oh, absurd!  She almost smiled at the idea, spite of her
griefs and troubles.  No matter, she found that it was an idea that would
not 'down,' but persisted in haunting her.  It pursued her, it harassed
her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored.  At last she
perceived that there was not going to be any peace for her until she
should devise a test that should prove, clearly and without question,
whether this lad was her son or not, and so banish these wearing and
worrying doubts.  Ah, yes, this was plainly the right way out of the
difficulty; therefore she set her wits to work at once to contrive that
test.  But it was an easier thing to propose than to accomplish.  She
turned over in her mind one promising test after another, but was obliged
to relinquish them all--none of them were absolutely sure, absolutely
perfect; and an imperfect one could not satisfy her.  Evidently she was
racking her head in vain--it seemed manifest that she must give the
matter up.  While this depressing thought was passing through her mind,
her ear caught the regular breathing of the boy, and she knew he had
fallen asleep.  And while she listened, the measured breathing was broken
by a soft, startled cry, such as one utters in a troubled dream.  This
chance occurrence furnished her instantly with a plan worth all her
laboured tests combined.  She at once set herself feverishly, but
noiselessly, to work to relight her candle, muttering to herself, "Had I
but seen him THEN, I should have known!  Since that day, when he was
little, that the powder burst in his face, he hath never been startled of
a sudden out of his dreams or out of his thinkings, but he hath cast his
hand before his eyes, even as he did that day; and not as others would do
it, with the palm inward, but always with the palm turned outward--I have
seen it a hundred times, and it hath never varied nor ever failed.  Yes,
I shall soon know, now!"

By this time she had crept to the slumbering boy's side, with the candle,
shaded, in her hand.  She bent heedfully and warily over him, scarcely
breathing in her suppressed excitement, and suddenly flashed the light in
his face and struck the floor by his ear with her knuckles.  The
sleeper's eyes sprang wide open, and he cast a startled stare about him
--but he made no special movement with his hands.

The poor woman was smitten almost helpless with surprise and grief; but
she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep again;
then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon the
disastrous result of her experiment.  She tried to believe that her Tom's
madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do
it.  "No," she said, "his HANDS are not mad; they could not unlearn so
old a habit in so brief a time.  Oh, this is a heavy day for me!"

Still, hope was as stubborn now as doubt had been before; she could not
bring herself to accept the verdict of the test; she must try the thing
again--the failure must have been only an accident; so she startled the
boy out of his sleep a second and a third time, at intervals--with the
same result which had marked the first test; then she dragged herself to
bed, and fell sorrowfully asleep, saying, "But I cannot give him up--oh
no, I cannot, I cannot--he MUST be my boy!"

The poor mother's interruptions having ceased, and the Prince's pains
having gradually lost their power to disturb him, utter weariness at last
sealed his eyes in a profound and restful sleep. Hour after hour slipped
away, and still he slept like the dead. Thus four or five hours passed.
Then his stupor began to lighten. Presently, while half asleep and half
awake, he murmured--

"Sir William!"

After a moment--

"Ho, Sir William Herbert!  Hie thee hither, and list to the strangest
dream that ever . . . Sir William! dost hear?  Man, I did think me
changed to a pauper, and . . . Ho there!  Guards! Sir William!  What! is
there no groom of the chamber in waiting? Alack! it shall go hard with--"

"What aileth thee?" asked a whisper near him.  "Who art thou calling?"

"Sir William Herbert.  Who art thou?"

"I?  Who should I be, but thy sister Nan?  Oh, Tom, I had forgot! Thou'rt
mad yet--poor lad, thou'rt mad yet:  would I had never woke to know it
again!  But prithee master thy tongue, lest we be all beaten till we
die!"

The startled Prince sprang partly up, but a sharp reminder from his
stiffened bruises brought him to himself, and he sank back among his foul
straw with a moan and the ejaculation--

"Alas! it was no dream, then!"

In a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished were
upon him again, and he realised that he was no longer a petted prince in
a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but a pauper, an
outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for beasts, and
consorting with beggars and thieves.

In the midst of his grief he began to be conscious of hilarious noises
and shoutings, apparently but a block or two away.  The next moment there
were several sharp raps at the door; John Canty ceased from snoring and
said--

"Who knocketh?  What wilt thou?"

A voice answered--

"Know'st thou who it was thou laid thy cudgel on?"

"No.  Neither know I, nor care."

"Belike thou'lt change thy note eftsoons.  An thou would save thy neck,
nothing but flight may stead thee.  The man is this moment delivering up
the ghost.  'Tis the priest, Father Andrew!"

"God-a-mercy!" exclaimed Canty.  He roused his family, and hoarsely
commanded, "Up with ye all and fly--or bide where ye are and perish!"

Scarcely five minutes later the Canty household were in the street and
flying for their lives.  John Canty held the Prince by the wrist, and
hurried him along the dark way, giving him this caution in a low voice--

"Mind thy tongue, thou mad fool, and speak not our name.  I will choose
me a new name, speedily, to throw the law's dogs off the scent.  Mind thy
tongue, I tell thee!"

He growled these words to the rest of the family--

"If it so chance that we be separated, let each make for London Bridge;
whoso findeth himself as far as the last linen-draper's shop on the
bridge, let him tarry there till the others be come, then will we flee
into Southwark together."

At this moment the party burst suddenly out of darkness into light; and
not only into light, but into the midst of a multitude of singing,
dancing, and shouting people, massed together on the river frontage.
There was a line of bonfires stretching as far as one could see, up and
down the Thames; London Bridge was illuminated; Southwark Bridge
likewise; the entire river was aglow with the flash and sheen of coloured
lights; and constant explosions of fireworks filled the skies with an
intricate commingling of shooting splendours and a thick rain of dazzling
sparks that almost turned night into day; everywhere were crowds of
revellers; all London seemed to be at large.

John Canty delivered himself of a furious curse and commanded a retreat;
but it was too late.  He and his tribe were swallowed up in that swarming
hive of humanity, and hopelessly separated from each other in an instant.
We are not considering that the Prince was one of his tribe; Canty still
kept his grip upon him.  The Prince's heart was beating high with hopes
of escape, now.  A burly waterman, considerably exalted with liquor,
found himself rudely shoved by Canty in his efforts to plough through the
crowd; he laid his great hand on Canty's shoulder and said--

"Nay, whither so fast, friend?  Dost canker thy soul with sordid business
when all that be leal men and true make holiday?"

"Mine affairs are mine own, they concern thee not," answered Canty,
roughly; "take away thy hand and let me pass."

"Sith that is thy humour, thou'lt NOT pass, till thou'st drunk to the
Prince of Wales, I tell thee that," said the waterman, barring the way
resolutely.

"Give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed!"

Other revellers were interested by this time.  They cried out--

"The loving-cup, the loving-cup! make the sour knave drink the
loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes."

So a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman, grasping it by one of its
handles, and with the other hand bearing up the end of an imaginary
napkin, presented it in due and ancient form to Canty, who had to grasp
the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off the lid with the
other, according to ancient custom. {1} This left the Prince hand-free
for a second, of course.  He wasted no time, but dived among the forest
of legs about him and disappeared.  In another moment he could not have
been harder to find, under that tossing sea of life, if its billows had
been the Atlantic's and he a lost sixpence.

He very soon realised this fact, and straightway busied himself about his
own affairs without further thought of John Canty.  He quickly realised
another thing, too.  To wit, that a spurious Prince of Wales was being
feasted by the city in his stead.  He easily concluded that the pauper
lad, Tom Canty, had deliberately taken advantage of his stupendous
opportunity and become a usurper.

Therefore there was but one course to pursue--find his way to the
Guildhall, make himself known, and denounce the impostor.  He also made
up his mind that Tom should be allowed a reasonable time for spiritual
preparation, and then be hanged, drawn and quartered, according to the
law and usage of the day in cases of high treason.



Chapter XI. At Guildhall.

The royal barge, attended by its gorgeous fleet, took its stately way
down the Thames through the wilderness of illuminated boats. The air was
laden with music; the river banks were beruffled with joy-flames; the
distant city lay in a soft luminous glow from its countless invisible
bonfires; above it rose many a slender spire into the sky, incrusted with
sparkling lights, wherefore in their remoteness they seemed like jewelled
lances thrust aloft; as the fleet swept along, it was greeted from the
banks with a continuous hoarse roar of cheers and the ceaseless flash and
boom of artillery.

To Tom Canty, half buried in his silken cushions, these sounds and this
spectacle were a wonder unspeakably sublime and astonishing. To his
little friends at his side, the Princess Elizabeth and the Lady Jane
Grey, they were nothing.

Arrived at the Dowgate, the fleet was towed up the limpid Walbrook (whose
channel has now been for two centuries buried out of sight under acres of
buildings) to Bucklersbury, past houses and under bridges populous with
merry-makers and brilliantly lighted, and at last came to a halt in a
basin where now is Barge Yard, in the centre of the ancient city of
London.  Tom disembarked, and he and his gallant procession crossed
Cheapside and made a short march through the Old Jewry and Basinghall
Street to the Guildhall.

Tom and his little ladies were received with due ceremony by the Lord
Mayor and the Fathers of the City, in their gold chains and scarlet robes
of state, and conducted to a rich canopy of state at the head of the
great hall, preceded by heralds making proclamation, and by the Mace and
the City Sword.  The lords and ladies who were to attend upon Tom and his
two small friends took their places behind their chairs.

At a lower table the Court grandees and other guests of noble degree were
seated, with the magnates of the city; the commoners took places at a
multitude of tables on the main floor of the hall.  From their lofty
vantage-ground the giants Gog and Magog, the ancient guardians of the
city, contemplated the spectacle below them with eyes grown familiar to
it in forgotten generations.  There was a bugle-blast and a proclamation,
and a fat butler appeared in a high perch in the leftward wall, followed
by his servitors bearing with impressive solemnity a royal baron of beef,
smoking hot and ready for the knife.

After grace, Tom (being instructed) rose--and the whole house with him
--and drank from a portly golden loving-cup with the Princess Elizabeth;
from her it passed to the Lady Jane, and then traversed the general
assemblage.  So the banquet began.

By midnight the revelry was at its height.  Now came one of those
picturesque spectacles so admired in that old day.  A description of it
is still extant in the quaint wording of a chronicler who witnessed it:

'Space being made, presently entered a baron and an earl appareled after
the Turkish fashion in long robes of bawdkin powdered with gold; hats on
their heads of crimson velvet, with great rolls of gold, girded with two
swords, called scimitars, hanging by great bawdricks of gold.  Next came
yet another baron and another earl, in two long gowns of yellow satin,
traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of
crimson satin, after the fashion of Russia, with furred hats of gray on
their heads; either of them having an hatchet in their hands, and boots
with pykes' (points a foot long), 'turned up.  And after them came a
knight, then the Lord High Admiral, and with him five nobles, in doublets
of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the cannell-bone,
laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and over that, short cloaks
of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after the dancers' fashion,
with pheasants' feathers in them.  These were appareled after the fashion
of Prussia.  The torchbearers, which were about an hundred, were
appareled in crimson satin and green, like Moors, their faces black.
Next came in a mommarye. Then the minstrels, which were disguised,
danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also, that it was a
pleasure to behold.'

And while Tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this 'wild' dancing,
lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colours
which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the
ragged but real little Prince of Wales was proclaiming his rights and his
wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamouring for admission at the
gates of Guildhall! The crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously, and
pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter.
Presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him
into a higher and still more entertaining fury.  Tears of mortification
sprang to his eyes, but he stood his ground and defied the mob right
royally.  Other taunts followed, added mockings stung him, and he
exclaimed--

"I tell ye again, you pack of unmannerly curs, I am the Prince of Wales!
And all forlorn and friendless as I be, with none to give me word of
grace or help me in my need, yet will not I be driven from my ground, but
will maintain it!"

"Though thou be prince or no prince, 'tis all one, thou be'st a gallant
lad, and not friendless neither!  Here stand I by thy side to prove it;
and mind I tell thee thou might'st have a worser friend than Miles Hendon
and yet not tire thy legs with seeking. Rest thy small jaw, my child; I
talk the language of these base kennel-rats like to a very native."

The speaker was a sort of Don Caesar de Bazan in dress, aspect, and
bearing.  He was tall, trim-built, muscular.  His doublet and trunks were
of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace
adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the
plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and
disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron
sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the
camp.  The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion
of jeers and laughter.  Some cried, "'Tis another prince in disguise!"
"'Ware thy tongue, friend:  belike he is dangerous!"  "Marry, he looketh
it--mark his eye!"  "Pluck the lad from him--to the horse-pond wi' the
cub!"

Instantly a hand was laid upon the Prince, under the impulse of this
happy thought; as instantly the stranger's long sword was out and the
meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it.
The next moment a score of voices shouted, "Kill the dog!  Kill him!
Kill him!" and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself
against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a
madman.  His victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured
over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with
undiminished fury.  His moments seemed numbered, his destruction certain,
when suddenly a trumpet-blast sounded, a voice shouted, "Way for the
King's messenger!" and a troop of horsemen came charging down upon the
mob, who fled out of harm's reach as fast as their legs could carry them.
The bold stranger caught up the Prince in his arms, and was soon far away
from danger and the multitude.

Return we within the Guildhall.  Suddenly, high above the jubilant roar
and thunder of the revel, broke the clear peal of a bugle-note.  There
was instant silence--a deep hush; then a single voice rose--that of the
messenger from the palace--and began to pipe forth a proclamation, the
whole multitude standing listening.

The closing words, solemnly pronounced, were--

"The King is dead!"

The great assemblage bent their heads upon their breasts with one accord;
remained so, in profound silence, a few moments; then all sank upon their
knees in a body, stretched out their hands toward Tom, and a mighty shout
burst forth that seemed to shake the building--

"Long live the King!"

Poor Tom's dazed eyes wandered abroad over this stupefying spectacle, and
finally rested dreamily upon the kneeling princesses beside him, a
moment, then upon the Earl of Hertford. A sudden purpose dawned in his
face.  He said, in a low tone, at Lord Hertford's ear--

"Answer me truly, on thy faith and honour!  Uttered I here a command, the
which none but a king might hold privilege and prerogative to utter,
would such commandment be obeyed, and none rise up to say me nay?"

"None, my liege, in all these realms.  In thy person bides the majesty of
England.  Thou art the king--thy word is law."

Tom responded, in a strong, earnest voice, and with great animation--

"Then shall the king's law be law of mercy, from this day, and never more
be law of blood!  Up from thy knees and away!  To the Tower, and say the
King decrees the Duke of Norfolk shall not die!" {1}

The words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and wide
over the hall, and as Hertford hurried from the presence, another
prodigious shout burst forth--

"The reign of blood is ended!  Long live Edward, King of England!"



Chapter XII. The Prince and his deliverer.

As soon as Miles Hendon and the little prince were clear of the mob, they
struck down through back lanes and alleys toward the river.  Their way
was unobstructed until they approached London Bridge; then they ploughed
into the multitude again, Hendon keeping a fast grip upon the Prince's
--no, the King's--wrist.  The tremendous news was already abroad, and the
boy learned it from a thousand voices at once--"The King is dead!"  The
tidings struck a chill to the heart of the poor little waif, and sent a
shudder through his frame.  He realised the greatness of his loss, and
was filled with a bitter grief; for the grim tyrant who had been such a
terror to others had always been gentle with him.  The tears sprang to
his eyes and blurred all objects.  For an instant he felt himself the
most forlorn, outcast, and forsaken of God's creatures--then another cry
shook the night with its far-reaching thunders:  "Long live King Edward
the Sixth!" and this made his eyes kindle, and thrilled him with pride to
his fingers' ends. "Ah," he thought, "how grand and strange it seems--I
AM KING!"

Our friends threaded their way slowly through the throngs upon the
bridge.  This structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and had
been a noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious
affair, for a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family
quarters overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of the
river to the other.  The Bridge was a sort of town to itself; it had its
inn, its beer-houses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food markets,
its manufacturing industries, and even its church.  It looked upon the
two neighbours which it linked together--London and Southwark--as being
well enough as suburbs, but not otherwise particularly important.  It was
a close corporation, so to speak; it was a narrow town, of a single
street a fifth of a mile long, its population was but a village
population and everybody in it knew all his fellow-townsmen intimately,
and had known their fathers and mothers before them--and all their little
family affairs into the bargain.  It had its aristocracy, of course--its
fine old families of butchers, and bakers, and what-not, who had occupied
the same old premises for five or six hundred years, and knew the great
history of the Bridge from beginning to end, and all its strange legends;
and who always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied
in a long, level, direct, substantial bridgy way.  It was just the sort
of population to be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. Children were
born on the Bridge, were reared there, grew to old age, and finally died
without ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but London
Bridge alone.  Such people would naturally imagine that the mighty and
interminable procession which moved through its street night and day,
with its confused roar of shouts and cries, its neighings and bellowing
and bleatings and its muffled thunder-tramp, was the one great thing in
this world, and themselves somehow the proprietors of it.  And so they
were, in effect--at least they could exhibit it from their windows, and
did--for a consideration--whenever a returning king or hero gave it a
fleeting splendour, for there was no place like it for affording a long,
straight, uninterrupted view of marching columns.

Men born and reared upon the Bridge found life unendurably dull and inane
elsewhere.  History tells of one of these who left the Bridge at the age
of seventy-one and retired to the country.  But he could only fret and
toss in his bed; he could not go to sleep, the deep stillness was so
painful, so awful, so oppressive.  When he was worn out with it, at last,
he fled back to his old home, a lean and haggard spectre, and fell
peacefully to rest and pleasant dreams under the lulling music of the
lashing waters and the boom and crash and thunder of London Bridge.

In the times of which we are writing, the Bridge furnished 'object
lessons' in English history for its children--namely, the livid and
decaying heads of renowned men impaled upon iron spikes atop of its
gateways.  But we digress.

Hendon's lodgings were in the little inn on the Bridge.  As he neared the
door with his small friend, a rough voice said--

"So, thou'rt come at last!  Thou'lt not escape again, I warrant thee; and
if pounding thy bones to a pudding can teach thee somewhat, thou'lt not
keep us waiting another time, mayhap"--and John Canty put out his hand to
seize the boy.

Miles Hendon stepped in the way and said--

"Not too fast, friend.  Thou art needlessly rough, methinks.  What is the
lad to thee?"

"If it be any business of thine to make and meddle in others' affairs, he
is my son."

"'Tis a lie!" cried the little King, hotly.

"Boldly said, and I believe thee, whether thy small headpiece be sound or
cracked, my boy.  But whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father or no,
'tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse, according to
his threat, so thou prefer to bide with me."

"I do, I do--I know him not, I loathe him, and will die before I will go
with him."

"Then 'tis settled, and there is nought more to say."

"We will see, as to that!" exclaimed John Canty, striding past Hendon to
get at the boy; "by force shall he--"

"If thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, I will spit thee like a
goose!" said Hendon, barring the way and laying his hand upon his sword
hilt.  Canty drew back.  "Now mark ye," continued Hendon, "I took this
lad under my protection when a mob of such as thou would have mishandled
him, mayhap killed him; dost imagine I will desert him now to a worser
fate?--for whether thou art his father or no--and sooth to say, I think
it is a lie--a decent swift death were better for such a lad than life in
such brute hands as thine.  So go thy ways, and set quick about it, for I
like not much bandying of words, being not over-patient in my nature."

John Canty moved off, muttering threats and curses, and was swallowed
from sight in the crowd.  Hendon ascended three flights of stairs to his
room, with his charge, after ordering a meal to be sent thither.  It was
a poor apartment, with a shabby bed and some odds and ends of old
furniture in it, and was vaguely lighted by a couple of sickly candles.
The little King dragged himself to the bed and lay down upon it, almost
exhausted with hunger and fatigue.  He had been on his feet a good part
of a day and a night (for it was now two or three o'clock in the
morning), and had eaten nothing meantime.  He murmured drowsily--

"Prithee call me when the table is spread," and sank into a deep sleep
immediately.

A smile twinkled in Hendon's eye, and he said to himself--

"By the mass, the little beggar takes to one's quarters and usurps one's
bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned them--with never a
by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort.  In his
diseased ravings he called himself the Prince of Wales, and bravely doth
he keep up the character.  Poor little friendless rat, doubtless his mind
has been disordered with ill-usage.  Well, I will be his friend; I have
saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already I love the
bold-tongued little rascal.  How soldier-like he faced the smutty rabble
and flung back his high defiance!  And what a comely, sweet and gentle
face he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its
griefs. I will teach him; I will cure his malady; yea, I will be his
elder brother, and care for him and watch over him; and whoso would shame
him or do him hurt may order his shroud, for though I be burnt for it he
shall need it!"

He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest,
tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls
with his great brown hand.  A slight shiver passed over the boy's form.
Hendon muttered--

"See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill
his body with deadly rheums.  Now what shall I do? 'twill wake him to
take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep."

He looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet
and wrapped the lad in it, saying, "I am used to nipping air and scant
apparel, 'tis little I shall mind the cold!"--then walked up and down the
room, to keep his blood in motion, soliloquising as before.

"His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; 'twill be odd to
have a Prince of Wales still with us, now that he that WAS the prince is
prince no more, but king--for this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy,
and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince and call
itself the king. . . If my father liveth still, after these seven years
that I have heard nought from home in my foreign dungeon, he will welcome
the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so will my good
elder brother, Arthur; my other brother, Hugh--but I will crack his crown
an HE interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned animal! Yes, thither
will we fare--and straightway, too."

A servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal
table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap
lodgers as these to wait upon themselves.  The door slammed after him,
and the noise woke the boy, who sprang to a sitting posture, and shot a
glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he
murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, "Alack, it was but a dream, woe is
me!"  Next he noticed Miles Hendon's doublet--glanced from that to
Hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said,
gently--

"Thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me.  Take it and put it
on--I shall not need it more."

Then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner and stood there,
waiting.  Hendon said in a cheery voice--

"We'll have a right hearty sup and bite, now, for everything is savoury
and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little
man again, never fear!"

The boy made no answer, but bent a steady look, that was filled with
grave surprise, and also somewhat touched with impatience, upon the tall
knight of the sword.  Hendon was puzzled, and said--

"What's amiss?"

"Good sir, I would wash me."

"Oh, is that all?  Ask no permission of Miles Hendon for aught thou
cravest.  Make thyself perfectly free here, and welcome, with all that
are his belongings."

Still the boy stood, and moved not; more, he tapped the floor once or
twice with his small impatient foot.  Hendon was wholly perplexed.  Said
he--

"Bless us, what is it?"

"Prithee pour the water, and make not so many words!"

Hendon, suppressing a horse-laugh, and saying to himself, "By all the
saints, but this is admirable!" stepped briskly forward and did the small
insolent's bidding; then stood by, in a sort of stupefaction, until the
command, "Come--the towel!" woke him sharply up.  He took up a towel,
from under the boy's nose, and handed it to him without comment.  He now
proceeded to comfort his own face with a wash, and while he was at it his
adopted child seated himself at the table and prepared to fall to.
Hendon despatched his ablutions with alacrity, then drew back the other
chair and was about to place himself at table, when the boy said,
indignantly--

"Forbear!  Wouldst sit in the presence of the King?"

This blow staggered Hendon to his foundations.  He muttered to himself,
"Lo, the poor thing's madness is up with the time!  It hath changed with
the great change that is come to the realm, and now in fancy is he KING!
Good lack, I must humour the conceit, too--there is no other way--faith,
he would order me to the Tower, else!"

And pleased with this jest, he removed the chair from the table, took his
stand behind the King, and proceeded to wait upon him in the courtliest
way he was capable of.

While the King ate, the rigour of his royal dignity relaxed a little, and
with his growing contentment came a desire to talk. He said--"I think
thou callest thyself Miles Hendon, if I heard thee aright?"

"Yes, Sire," Miles replied; then observed to himself, "If I MUST humour
the poor lad's madness, I must 'Sire' him, I must 'Majesty' him, I must
not go by halves, I must stick at nothing that belongeth to the part I
play, else shall I play it ill and work evil to this charitable and
kindly cause."

The King warmed his heart with a second glass of wine, and said--"I would
know thee--tell me thy story.  Thou hast a gallant way with thee, and a
noble--art nobly born?"

"We are of the tail of the nobility, good your Majesty.  My father is a
baronet--one of the smaller lords by knight service {2}--Sir Richard
Hendon of Hendon Hall, by Monk's Holm in Kent."

"The name has escaped my memory.  Go on--tell me thy story."

"'Tis not much, your Majesty, yet perchance it may beguile a short
half-hour for want of a better.  My father, Sir Richard, is very rich,
and of a most generous nature.  My mother died whilst I was yet a boy.  I
have two brothers:  Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father's;
and Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious,
underhanded--a reptile.  Such was he from the cradle; such was he ten
years past, when I last saw him--a ripe rascal at nineteen, I being
twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two.  There is none other of us but the
Lady Edith, my cousin--she was sixteen then--beautiful, gentle, good, the
daughter of an earl, the last of her race, heiress of a great fortune and
a lapsed title.  My father was her guardian.  I loved her and she loved
me; but she was betrothed to Arthur from the cradle, and Sir Richard
would not suffer the contract to be broken.  Arthur loved another maid,
and bade us be of good cheer and hold fast to the hope that delay and
luck together would some day give success to our several causes.  Hugh
loved the Lady Edith's fortune, though in truth he said it was herself he
loved--but then 'twas his way, alway, to say the one thing and mean the
other.  But he lost his arts upon the girl; he could deceive my father,
but none else.  My father loved him best of us all, and trusted and
believed him; for he was the youngest child, and others hated him--these
qualities being in all ages sufficient to win a parent's dearest love;
and he had a smooth persuasive tongue, with an admirable gift of lying
--and these be qualities which do mightily assist a blind affection to
cozen itself.  I was wild--in troth I might go yet farther and say VERY
wild, though 'twas a wildness of an innocent sort, since it hurt none but
me, brought shame to none, nor loss, nor had in it any taint of crime or
baseness, or what might not beseem mine honourable degree.

"Yet did my brother Hugh turn these faults to good account--he seeing
that our brother Arthur's health was but indifferent, and hoping the
worst might work him profit were I swept out of the path--so--but 'twere
a long tale, good my liege, and little worth the telling.  Briefly, then,
this brother did deftly magnify my faults and make them crimes; ending
his base work with finding a silken ladder in mine apartments--conveyed
thither by his own means--and did convince my father by this, and
suborned evidence of servants and other lying knaves, that I was minded
to carry off my Edith and marry with her in rank defiance of his will.

"Three years of banishment from home and England might make a soldier and
a man of me, my father said, and teach me some degree of wisdom.  I
fought out my long probation in the continental wars, tasting sumptuously
of hard knocks, privation, and adventure; but in my last battle I was
taken captive, and during the seven years that have waxed and waned since
then, a foreign dungeon hath harboured me.  Through wit and courage I won
to the free air at last, and fled hither straight; and am but just
arrived, right poor in purse and raiment, and poorer still in knowledge
of what these dull seven years have wrought at Hendon Hall, its people
and belongings.  So please you, sir, my meagre tale is told."

"Thou hast been shamefully abused!" said the little King, with a flashing
eye.  "But I will right thee--by the cross will I!  The King hath said
it."

Then, fired by the story of Miles's wrongs, he loosed his tongue and
poured the history of his own recent misfortunes into the ears of his
astonished listener.  When he had finished, Miles said to himself--

"Lo, what an imagination he hath!  Verily, this is no common mind; else,
crazed or sane, it could not weave so straight and gaudy a tale as this
out of the airy nothings wherewith it hath wrought this curious romaunt.
Poor ruined little head, it shall not lack friend or shelter whilst I
bide with the living.  He shall never leave my side; he shall be my pet,
my little comrade.  And he shall be cured!--ay, made whole and sound
--then will he make himself a name--and proud shall I be to say, 'Yes, he
is mine--I took him, a homeless little ragamuffin, but I saw what was in
him, and I said his name would be heard some day--behold him, observe
him--was I right?'"

The King spoke--in a thoughtful, measured voice--

"Thou didst save me injury and shame, perchance my life, and so my crown.
Such service demandeth rich reward.  Name thy desire, and so it be within
the compass of my royal power, it is thine."

This fantastic suggestion startled Hendon out of his reverie.  He was
about to thank the King and put the matter aside with saying he had only
done his duty and desired no reward, but a wiser thought came into his
head, and he asked leave to be silent a few moments and consider the
gracious offer--an idea which the King gravely approved, remarking that
it was best to be not too hasty with a thing of such great import.

Miles reflected during some moments, then said to himself, "Yes, that is
the thing to do--by any other means it were impossible to get at it--and
certes, this hour's experience has taught me 'twould be most wearing and
inconvenient to continue it as it is. Yes, I will propose it; 'twas a
happy accident that I did not throw the chance away."  Then he dropped
upon one knee and said--

"My poor service went not beyond the limit of a subject's simple duty,
and therefore hath no merit; but since your Majesty is pleased to hold it
worthy some reward, I take heart of grace to make petition to this
effect.  Near four hundred years ago, as your grace knoweth, there being
ill blood betwixt John, King of England, and the King of France, it was
decreed that two champions should fight together in the lists, and so
settle the dispute by what is called the arbitrament of God.  These two
kings, and the Spanish king, being assembled to witness and judge the
conflict, the French champion appeared; but so redoubtable was he, that
our English knights refused to measure weapons with him.  So the matter,
which was a weighty one, was like to go against the English monarch by
default.  Now in the Tower lay the Lord de Courcy, the mightiest arm in
England, stripped of his honours and possessions, and wasting with long
captivity.  Appeal was made to him; he gave assent, and came forth
arrayed for battle; but no sooner did the Frenchman glimpse his huge
frame and hear his famous name but he fled away, and the French king's
cause was lost.  King John restored De Courcy's titles and possessions,
and said, 'Name thy wish and thou shalt have it, though it cost me half
my kingdom;' whereat De Courcy, kneeling, as I do now, made answer,
'This, then, I ask, my liege; that I and my successors may have and hold
the privilege of remaining covered in the presence of the kings of
England, henceforth while the throne shall last.' The boon was granted,
as your Majesty knoweth; and there hath been no time, these four hundred
years, that that line has failed of an heir; and so, even unto this day,
the head of that ancient house still weareth his hat or helm before the
King's Majesty, without let or hindrance, and this none other may do. {3}
Invoking this precedent in aid of my prayer, I beseech the King to grant
to me but this one grace and privilege--to my more than sufficient
reward--and none other, to wit:  that I and my heirs, for ever, may SIT
in the presence of the Majesty of England!"

"Rise, Sir Miles Hendon, Knight," said the King, gravely--giving the
accolade with Hendon's sword--"rise, and seat thyself.  Thy petition is
granted.  Whilst England remains, and the crown continues, the privilege
shall not lapse."

His Majesty walked apart, musing, and Hendon dropped into a chair at
table, observing to himself, "'Twas a brave thought, and hath wrought me
a mighty deliverance; my legs are grievously wearied. An I had not
thought of that, I must have had to stand for weeks, till my poor lad's
wits are cured."  After a little, he went on, "And so I am become a
knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows! A most odd and strange
position, truly, for one so matter-of-fact as I.  I will not laugh--no,
God forbid, for this thing which is so substanceless to me is REAL to
him.  And to me, also, in one way, it is not a falsity, for it reflects
with truth the sweet and generous spirit that is in him."  After a pause:
"Ah, what if he should call me by my fine title before folk!--there'd be
a merry contrast betwixt my glory and my raiment!  But no matter, let him
call me what he will, so it please him; I shall be content."



Chapter XIII. The disappearance of the Prince.

A heavy drowsiness presently fell upon the two comrades.  The King said--

"Remove these rags"--meaning his clothing.

Hendon disapparelled the boy without dissent or remark, tucked him up in
bed, then glanced about the room, saying to himself, ruefully, "He hath
taken my bed again, as before--marry, what shall _I_ do?"  The little
King observed his perplexity, and dissipated it with a word.  He said,
sleepily--

"Thou wilt sleep athwart the door, and guard it."  In a moment more he
was out of his troubles, in a deep slumber.

"Dear heart, he should have been born a king!" muttered Hendon,
admiringly; "he playeth the part to a marvel."

Then he stretched himself across the door, on the floor, saying
contentedly--

"I have lodged worse for seven years; 'twould be but ill gratitude to Him
above to find fault with this."

He dropped asleep as the dawn appeared.  Toward noon he rose, uncovered
his unconscious ward--a section at a time--and took his measure with a
string.  The King awoke, just as he had completed his work, complained of
the cold, and asked what he was doing.

"'Tis done, now, my liege," said Hendon; "I have a bit of business
outside, but will presently return; sleep thou again--thou needest it.
There--let me cover thy head also--thou'lt be warm the sooner."

The King was back in dreamland before this speech was ended. Miles
slipped softly out, and slipped as softly in again, in the course of
thirty or forty minutes, with a complete second-hand suit of boy's
clothing, of cheap material, and showing signs of wear; but tidy, and
suited to the season of the year.  He seated himself, and began to
overhaul his purchase, mumbling to himself--

"A longer purse would have got a better sort, but when one has not the
long purse one must be content with what a short one may do--

"'There was a woman in our town, In our town did dwell--'

"He stirred, methinks--I must sing in a less thunderous key; 'tis not
good to mar his sleep, with this journey before him, and he so wearied
out, poor chap . . . This garment--'tis well enough--a stitch here and
another one there will set it aright.  This other is better, albeit a
stitch or two will not come amiss in it, likewise . . . THESE be very
good and sound, and will keep his small feet warm and dry--an odd new
thing to him, belike, since he has doubtless been used to foot it bare,
winters and summers the same . . . Would thread were bread, seeing one
getteth a year's sufficiency for a farthing, and such a brave big needle
without cost, for mere love.  Now shall I have the demon's own time to
thread it!"

And so he had.  He did as men have always done, and probably always will
do, to the end of time--held the needle still, and tried to thrust the
thread through the eye, which is the opposite of a woman's way.  Time and
time again the thread missed the mark, going sometimes on one side of the
needle, sometimes on the other, sometimes doubling up against the shaft;
but he was patient, having been through these experiences before, when he
was soldiering.  He succeeded at last, and took up the garment that had
lain waiting, meantime, across his lap, and began his work.

"The inn is paid--the breakfast that is to come, included--and there is
wherewithal left to buy a couple of donkeys and meet our little costs for
the two or three days betwixt this and the plenty that awaits us at
Hendon Hall--

"'She loved her hus--'

"Body o' me!  I have driven the needle under my nail! . . . It matters
little--'tis not a novelty--yet 'tis not a convenience, neither . . .We
shall be merry there, little one, never doubt it! Thy troubles will
vanish there, and likewise thy sad distemper--

"'She loved her husband dearilee, But another man--'

"These be noble large stitches!"--holding the garment up and viewing it
admiringly--"they have a grandeur and a majesty that do cause these small
stingy ones of the tailor-man to look mightily paltry and plebeian--

"'She loved her husband dearilee, But another man he loved she,--'

"Marry, 'tis done--a goodly piece of work, too, and wrought with
expedition.  Now will I wake him, apparel him, pour for him, feed him,
and then will we hie us to the mart by the Tabard Inn in Southwark and
--be pleased to rise, my liege!--he answereth not--what ho, my liege!--of a
truth must I profane his sacred person with a touch, sith his slumber is
deaf to speech.  What!"

He threw back the covers--the boy was gone!

He stared about him in speechless astonishment for a moment; noticed for
the first time that his ward's ragged raiment was also missing; then he
began to rage and storm and shout for the innkeeper.  At that moment a
servant entered with the breakfast.

"Explain, thou limb of Satan, or thy time is come!" roared the man of
war, and made so savage a spring toward the waiter that this latter could
not find his tongue, for the instant, for fright and surprise.  "Where is
the boy?"

In disjointed and trembling syllables the man gave the information
desired.

"You were hardly gone from the place, your worship, when a youth came
running and said it was your worship's will that the boy come to you
straight, at the bridge-end on the Southwark side.  I brought him hither;
and when he woke the lad and gave his message, the lad did grumble some
little for being disturbed 'so early,' as he called it, but straightway
trussed on his rags and went with the youth, only saying it had been
better manners that your worship came yourself, not sent a stranger--and
so--"

"And so thou'rt a fool!--a fool and easily cozened--hang all thy breed!
Yet mayhap no hurt is done.  Possibly no harm is meant the boy.  I will
go fetch him.  Make the table ready.  Stay! the coverings of the bed were
disposed as if one lay beneath them--happened that by accident?"

"I know not, good your worship.  I saw the youth meddle with them--he
that came for the boy."

"Thousand deaths!  'Twas done to deceive me--'tis plain 'twas done to
gain time.  Hark ye!  Was that youth alone?"

"All alone, your worship."

"Art sure?"

"Sure, your worship."

"Collect thy scattered wits--bethink thee--take time, man."

After a moment's thought, the servant said--

"When he came, none came with him; but now I remember me that as the two
stepped into the throng of the Bridge, a ruffian-looking man plunged out
from some near place; and just as he was joining them--"

"What THEN?--out with it!" thundered the impatient Hendon, interrupting.

"Just then the crowd lapped them up and closed them in, and I saw no
more, being called by my master, who was in a rage because a joint that
the scrivener had ordered was forgot, though I take all the saints to
witness that to blame ME for that miscarriage were like holding the
unborn babe to judgment for sins com--"

"Out of my sight, idiot!  Thy prating drives me mad!  Hold! Whither art
flying?  Canst not bide still an instant?  Went they toward Southwark?"

"Even so, your worship--for, as I said before, as to that detestable
joint, the babe unborn is no whit more blameless than--"

"Art here YET!  And prating still!  Vanish, lest I throttle thee!" The
servitor vanished.  Hendon followed after him, passed him, and plunged
down the stairs two steps at a stride, muttering, "'Tis that scurvy
villain that claimed he was his son.  I have lost thee, my poor little
mad master--it is a bitter thought--and I had come to love thee so!  No!
by book and bell, NOT lost!  Not lost, for I will ransack the land till I
find thee again.  Poor child, yonder is his breakfast--and mine, but I
have no hunger now; so, let the rats have it--speed, speed! that is the
word!"  As he wormed his swift way through the noisy multitudes upon the
Bridge he several times said to himself--clinging to the thought as if it
were a particularly pleasing one--"He grumbled, but he WENT--he went,
yes, because he thought Miles Hendon asked it, sweet lad--he would ne'er
have done it for another, I know it well."



Chapter XIV. 'Le Roi est mort--vive le Roi.'

Toward daylight of the same morning, Tom Canty stirred out of a heavy
sleep and opened his eyes in the dark.  He lay silent a few moments,
trying to analyse his confused thoughts and impressions, and get some
sort of meaning out of them; then suddenly he burst out in a rapturous
but guarded voice--

"I see it all, I see it all!  Now God be thanked, I am indeed awake at
last!  Come, joy! vanish, sorrow!  Ho, Nan! Bet! kick off your straw and
hie ye hither to my side, till I do pour into your unbelieving ears the
wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to
astonish the soul of man withal! . . . Ho, Nan, I say!  Bet!"

A dim form appeared at his side, and a voice said--

"Wilt deign to deliver thy commands?"

"Commands? . . . O, woe is me, I know thy voice!  Speak thou--who am I?"

"Thou?  In sooth, yesternight wert thou the Prince of Wales; to-day art
thou my most gracious liege, Edward, King of England."

Tom buried his head among his pillows, murmuring plaintively--

"Alack, it was no dream!  Go to thy rest, sweet sir--leave me to my
sorrows."

Tom slept again, and after a time he had this pleasant dream.  He thought
it was summer, and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow called
Goodman's Fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red whiskers
and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, "Dig by that
stump."  He did so, and found twelve bright new pennies--wonderful
riches!  Yet this was not the best of it; for the dwarf said--

"I know thee.  Thou art a good lad, and a deserving; thy distresses shall
end, for the day of thy reward is come.  Dig here every seventh day, and
thou shalt find always the same treasure, twelve bright new pennies.
Tell none--keep the secret."

Then the dwarf vanished, and Tom flew to Offal Court with his prize,
saying to himself, "Every night will I give my father a penny; he will
think I begged it, it will glad his heart, and I shall no more be beaten.
One penny every week the good priest that teacheth me shall have; mother,
Nan, and Bet the other four. We be done with hunger and rags, now, done
with fears and frets and savage usage."

In his dream he reached his sordid home all out of breath, but with eyes
dancing with grateful enthusiasm; cast four of his pennies into his
mother's lap and cried out--

"They are for thee!--all of them, every one!--for thee and Nan and Bet
--and honestly come by, not begged nor stolen!"

The happy and astonished mother strained him to her breast and exclaimed--

"It waxeth late--may it please your Majesty to rise?"

Ah! that was not the answer he was expecting.  The dream had snapped
asunder--he was awake.

He opened his eyes--the richly clad First Lord of the Bedchamber was
kneeling by his couch.  The gladness of the lying dream faded away--the
poor boy recognised that he was still a captive and a king.  The room was
filled with courtiers clothed in purple mantles--the mourning colour--and
with noble servants of the monarch.  Tom sat up in bed and gazed out from
the heavy silken curtains upon this fine company.

The weighty business of dressing began, and one courtier after another
knelt and paid his court and offered to the little King his condolences
upon his heavy loss, whilst the dressing proceeded.  In the beginning, a
shirt was taken up by the Chief Equerry in Waiting, who passed it to the
First Lord of the Buckhounds, who passed it to the Second Gentleman of
the Bedchamber, who passed it to the Head Ranger of Windsor Forest, who
passed it to the Third Groom of the Stole, who passed it to the
Chancellor Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, who passed it to the Master
of the Wardrobe, who passed it to Norroy King-at-Arms, who passed it to
the Constable of the Tower, who passed it to the Chief Steward of the
Household, who passed it to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, who passed it
to the Lord High Admiral of England, who passed it to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who passed it to the First Lord of the Bedchamber, who took
what was left of it and put it on Tom.  Poor little wondering chap, it
reminded him of passing buckets at a fire.

Each garment in its turn had to go through this slow and solemn process;
consequently Tom grew very weary of the ceremony; so weary that he felt
an almost gushing gratefulness when he at last saw his long silken hose
begin the journey down the line and knew that the end of the matter was
drawing near.  But he exulted too soon.  The First Lord of the Bedchamber
received the hose and was about to encase Tom's legs in them, when a
sudden flush invaded his face and he hurriedly hustled the things back
into the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury with an astounded look and
a whispered, "See, my lord!" pointing to a something connected with the
hose.  The Archbishop paled, then flushed, and passed the hose to the
Lord High Admiral, whispering, "See, my lord!"  The Admiral passed the
hose to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, and had hardly breath enough in
his body to ejaculate, "See, my lord!"  The hose drifted backward along
the line, to the Chief Steward of the Household, the Constable of the
Tower, Norroy King-at-Arms, the Master of the Wardrobe, the Chancellor
Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Third Groom of the Stole, the Head
Ranger of Windsor Forest, the Second Gentleman of the Bedchamber, the
First Lord of the Buckhounds,--accompanied always with that amazed and
frightened "See! see!"--till they finally reached the hands of the Chief
Equerry in Waiting, who gazed a moment, with a pallid face, upon what had
caused all this dismay, then hoarsely whispered, "Body of my life, a tag
gone from a truss-point!--to the Tower with the Head Keeper of the King's
Hose!"--after which he leaned upon the shoulder of the First Lord of the
Buckhounds to regather his vanished strength whilst fresh hose, without
any damaged strings to them, were brought.

But all things must have an end, and so in time Tom Canty was in a
condition to get out of bed.  The proper official poured water, the
proper official engineered the washing, the proper official stood by with
a towel, and by-and-by Tom got safely through the purifying stage and was
ready for the services of the Hairdresser-royal.  When he at length
emerged from this master's hands, he was a gracious figure and as pretty
as a girl, in his mantle and trunks of purple satin, and purple-plumed
cap.  He now moved in state toward his breakfast-room, through the midst
of the courtly assemblage; and as he passed, these fell back, leaving his
way free, and dropped upon their knees.

After breakfast he was conducted, with regal ceremony, attended by his
great officers and his guard of fifty Gentlemen Pensioners bearing gilt
battle-axes, to the throne-room, where he proceeded to transact business
of state.  His 'uncle,' Lord Hertford, took his stand by the throne, to
assist the royal mind with wise counsel.

The body of illustrious men named by the late King as his executors
appeared, to ask Tom's approval of certain acts of theirs--rather a form,
and yet not wholly a form, since there was no Protector as yet.  The
Archbishop of Canterbury made report of the decree of the Council of
Executors concerning the obsequies of his late most illustrious Majesty,
and finished by reading the signatures of the Executors, to wit:  the
Archbishop of Canterbury; the Lord Chancellor of England; William Lord
St. John; John Lord Russell; Edward Earl of Hertford; John Viscount
Lisle; Cuthbert Bishop of Durham--

Tom was not listening--an earlier clause of the document was puzzling
him.  At this point he turned and whispered to Lord Hertford--

"What day did he say the burial hath been appointed for?"

"The sixteenth of the coming month, my liege."

"'Tis a strange folly.  Will he keep?"

Poor chap, he was still new to the customs of royalty; he was used to
seeing the forlorn dead of Offal Court hustled out of the way with a very
different sort of expedition.  However, the Lord Hertford set his mind at
rest with a word or two.

A secretary of state presented an order of the Council appointing the
morrow at eleven for the reception of the foreign ambassadors, and
desired the King's assent.

Tom turned an inquiring look toward Hertford, who whispered--

"Your Majesty will signify consent.  They come to testify their royal
masters' sense of the heavy calamity which hath visited your Grace and
the realm of England."

Tom did as he was bidden.  Another secretary began to read a preamble
concerning the expenses of the late King's household, which had amounted
to 28,000 pounds during the preceding six months--a sum so vast that it
made Tom Canty gasp; he gasped again when the fact appeared that 20,000
pounds of this money was still owing and unpaid; {4} and once more when
it appeared that the King's coffers were about empty, and his twelve
hundred servants much embarrassed for lack of the wages due them.  Tom
spoke out, with lively apprehension--

"We be going to the dogs, 'tis plain.  'Tis meet and necessary that we
take a smaller house and set the servants at large, sith they be of no
value but to make delay, and trouble one with offices that harass the
spirit and shame the soul, they misbecoming any but a doll, that hath nor
brains nor hands to help itself withal.  I remember me of a small house
that standeth over against the fish-market, by Billingsgate--"

A sharp pressure upon Tom's arm stopped his foolish tongue and sent a
blush to his face; but no countenance there betrayed any sign that this
strange speech had been remarked or given concern.

A secretary made report that forasmuch as the late King had provided in
his will for conferring the ducal degree upon the Earl of Hertford and
raising his brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, to the peerage, and likewise
Hertford's son to an earldom, together with similar aggrandisements to
other great servants of the Crown, the Council had resolved to hold a
sitting on the 16th of February for the delivering and confirming of
these honours, and that meantime, the late King not having granted, in
writing, estates suitable to the support of these dignities, the Council,
knowing his private wishes in that regard, had thought proper to grant to
Seymour '500 pound lands,' and to Hertford's son '800 pound lands, and
300 pound of the next bishop's lands which should fall vacant,'--his
present Majesty being willing. {5}

Tom was about to blurt out something about the propriety of paying the
late King's debts first, before squandering all this money, but a timely
touch upon his arm, from the thoughtful Hertford, saved him this
indiscretion; wherefore he gave the royal assent, without spoken comment,
but with much inward discomfort.  While he sat reflecting a moment over
the ease with which he was doing strange and glittering miracles, a happy
thought shot into his mind:  why not make his mother Duchess of Offal
Court, and give her an estate?  But a sorrowful thought swept it
instantly away: he was only a king in name, these grave veterans and
great nobles were his masters; to them his mother was only the creature
of a diseased mind; they would simply listen to his project with
unbelieving ears, then send for the doctor.

The dull work went tediously on.  Petitions were read, and proclamations,
patents, and all manner of wordy, repetitious, and wearisome papers
relating to the public business; and at last Tom sighed pathetically and
murmured to himself, "In what have I offended, that the good God should
take me away from the fields and the free air and the sunshine, to shut
me up here and make me a king and afflict me so?"  Then his poor muddled
head nodded a while and presently drooped to his shoulder; and the
business of the empire came to a standstill for want of that august
factor, the ratifying power.  Silence ensued around the slumbering child,
and the sages of the realm ceased from their deliberations.

During the forenoon, Tom had an enjoyable hour, by permission of his
keepers, Hertford and St. John, with the Lady Elizabeth and the little
Lady Jane Grey; though the spirits of the princesses were rather subdued
by the mighty stroke that had fallen upon the royal house; and at the end
of the visit his 'elder sister'--afterwards the 'Bloody Mary' of history
--chilled him with a solemn interview which had but one merit in his eyes,
its brevity.  He had a few moments to himself, and then a slim lad of
about twelve years of age was admitted to his presence, whose clothing,
except his snowy ruff and the laces about his wrists, was of black,
--doublet, hose, and all.  He bore no badge of mourning but a knot of
purple ribbon on his shoulder.  He advanced hesitatingly, with head bowed
and bare, and dropped upon one knee in front of Tom. Tom sat still and
contemplated him soberly a moment.  Then he said--

"Rise, lad.  Who art thou.  What wouldst have?"

The boy rose, and stood at graceful ease, but with an aspect of concern
in his face.  He said--

"Of a surety thou must remember me, my lord.  I am thy whipping-boy."

"My WHIPPING-boy?"

"The same, your Grace.  I am Humphrey--Humphrey Marlow."

Tom perceived that here was someone whom his keepers ought to have posted
him about.  The situation was delicate.  What should he do?--pretend he
knew this lad, and then betray by his every utterance that he had never
heard of him before?  No, that would not do.  An idea came to his relief:
accidents like this might be likely to happen with some frequency, now
that business urgencies would often call Hertford and St. John from his
side, they being members of the Council of Executors; therefore perhaps
it would be well to strike out a plan himself to meet the requirements of
such emergencies.  Yes, that would be a wise course--he would practise on
this boy, and see what sort of success he might achieve.  So he stroked
his brow perplexedly a moment or two, and presently said--

"Now I seem to remember thee somewhat--but my wit is clogged and dim with
suffering--"

"Alack, my poor master!" ejaculated the whipping-boy, with feeling;
adding, to himself, "In truth 'tis as they said--his mind is gone--alas,
poor soul!  But misfortune catch me, how am I forgetting!  They said one
must not seem to observe that aught is wrong with him."

"'Tis strange how my memory doth wanton with me these days," said Tom.
"But mind it not--I mend apace--a little clue doth often serve to bring
me back again the things and names which had escaped me.  (And not they,
only, forsooth, but e'en such as I ne'er heard before--as this lad shall
see.)  Give thy business speech."

"'Tis matter of small weight, my liege, yet will I touch upon it, an' it
please your Grace.  Two days gone by, when your Majesty faulted thrice in
your Greek--in the morning lessons,--dost remember it?"

"Y-e-s--methinks I do.  (It is not much of a lie--an' I had meddled with
the Greek at all, I had not faulted simply thrice, but forty times.)
Yes, I do recall it, now--go on."

"The master, being wroth with what he termed such slovenly and doltish
work, did promise that he would soundly whip me for it--and--"

"Whip THEE!" said Tom, astonished out of his presence of mind. "Why
should he whip THEE for faults of mine?"

"Ah, your Grace forgetteth again.  He always scourgeth me when thou dost
fail in thy lessons."

"True, true--I had forgot.  Thou teachest me in private--then if I fail,
he argueth that thy office was lamely done, and--"

"Oh, my liege, what words are these?  I, the humblest of thy servants,
presume to teach THEE?"

"Then where is thy blame?  What riddle is this?  Am I in truth gone mad,
or is it thou?  Explain--speak out."

"But, good your Majesty, there's nought that needeth simplifying.--None
may visit the sacred person of the Prince of Wales with blows; wherefore,
when he faulteth, 'tis I that take them; and meet it is and right, for
that it is mine office and my livelihood." {1}

Tom stared at the tranquil boy, observing to himself, "Lo, it is a
wonderful thing,--a most strange and curious trade; I marvel they have
not hired a boy to take my combings and my dressings for me--would heaven
they would!--an' they will do this thing, I will take my lashings in mine
own person, giving God thanks for the change." Then he said aloud--

"And hast thou been beaten, poor friend, according to the promise?"

"No, good your Majesty, my punishment was appointed for this day, and
peradventure it may be annulled, as unbefitting the season of mourning
that is come upon us; I know not, and so have made bold to come hither
and remind your Grace about your gracious promise to intercede in my
behalf--"

"With the master?  To save thee thy whipping?"

"Ah, thou dost remember!"

"My memory mendeth, thou seest.  Set thy mind at ease--thy back shall go
unscathed--I will see to it."

"Oh, thanks, my good lord!" cried the boy, dropping upon his knee again.
"Mayhap I have ventured far enow; and yet--"

Seeing Master Humphrey hesitate, Tom encouraged him to go on, saying he
was "in the granting mood."

"Then will I speak it out, for it lieth near my heart.  Sith thou art no
more Prince of Wales but King, thou canst order matters as thou wilt,
with none to say thee nay; wherefore it is not in reason that thou wilt
longer vex thyself with dreary studies, but wilt burn thy books and turn
thy mind to things less irksome. Then am I ruined, and mine orphan
sisters with me!"

"Ruined?  Prithee how?"

"My back is my bread, O my gracious liege! if it go idle, I starve.  An'
thou cease from study mine office is gone thou'lt need no whipping-boy.
Do not turn me away!"

Tom was touched with this pathetic distress.  He said, with a right royal
burst of generosity--

"Discomfort thyself no further, lad.  Thine office shall be permanent in
thee and thy line for ever."  Then he struck the boy a light blow on the
shoulder with the flat of his sword, exclaiming, "Rise, Humphrey Marlow,
Hereditary Grand Whipping-Boy to the Royal House of England!  Banish
sorrow--I will betake me to my books again, and study so ill that they
must in justice treble thy wage, so mightily shall the business of thine
office be augmented."

The grateful Humphrey responded fervidly--

"Thanks, O most noble master, this princely lavishness doth far surpass
my most distempered dreams of fortune.  Now shall I be happy all my days,
and all the house of Marlow after me."

Tom had wit enough to perceive that here was a lad who could be useful to
him.  He encouraged Humphrey to talk, and he was nothing loath.  He was
delighted to believe that he was helping in Tom's 'cure'; for always, as
soon as he had finished calling back to Tom's diseased mind the various
particulars of his experiences and adventures in the royal school-room
and elsewhere about the palace, he noticed that Tom was then able to
'recall' the circumstances quite clearly.  At the end of an hour Tom
found himself well freighted with very valuable information concerning
personages and matters pertaining to the Court; so he resolved to draw
instruction from this source daily; and to this end he would give order
to admit Humphrey to the royal closet whenever he might come, provided
the Majesty of England was not engaged with other people.  Humphrey had
hardly been dismissed when my Lord Hertford arrived with more trouble for
Tom.

He said that the Lords of the Council, fearing that some overwrought
report of the King's damaged health might have leaked out and got abroad,
they deemed it wise and best that his Majesty should begin to dine in
public after a day or two--his wholesome complexion and vigorous step,
assisted by a carefully guarded repose of manner and ease and grace of
demeanour, would more surely quiet the general pulse--in case any evil
rumours HAD gone about--than any other scheme that could be devised.

Then the Earl proceeded, very delicately, to instruct Tom as to the
observances proper to the stately occasion, under the rather thin
disguise of 'reminding' him concerning things already known to him; but
to his vast gratification it turned out that Tom needed very little help
in this line--he had been making use of Humphrey in that direction, for
Humphrey had mentioned that within a few days he was to begin to dine in
public; having gathered it from the swift-winged gossip of the Court.
Tom kept these facts to himself, however.

Seeing the royal memory so improved, the Earl ventured to apply a few
tests to it, in an apparently casual way, to find out how far its
amendment had progressed.  The results were happy, here and there, in
spots--spots where Humphrey's tracks remained--and on the whole my lord
was greatly pleased and encouraged.  So encouraged was he, indeed, that
he spoke up and said in a quite hopeful voice--

"Now am I persuaded that if your Majesty will but tax your memory yet a
little further, it will resolve the puzzle of the Great Seal--a loss
which was of moment yesterday, although of none to-day, since its term of
service ended with our late lord's life. May it please your Grace to make
the trial?"

Tom was at sea--a Great Seal was something which he was totally
unacquainted with.  After a moment's hesitation he looked up innocently
and asked--

"What was it like, my lord?"

The Earl started, almost imperceptibly, muttering to himself, "Alack, his
wits are flown again!--it was ill wisdom to lead him on to strain them"
--then he deftly turned the talk to other matters, with the purpose of
sweeping the unlucky seal out of Tom's thoughts--a purpose which easily
succeeded.



Chapter XV. Tom as King.

The next day the foreign ambassadors came, with their gorgeous trains;
and Tom, throned in awful state, received them.  The splendours of the
scene delighted his eye and fired his imagination at first, but the
audience was long and dreary, and so were most of the addresses
--wherefore, what began as a pleasure grew into weariness and home-sickness
by-and-by.  Tom said the words which Hertford put into his mouth from
time to time, and tried hard to acquit himself satisfactorily, but he was
too new to such things, and too ill at ease to accomplish more than a
tolerable success.  He looked sufficiently like a king, but he was ill
able to feel like one.  He was cordially glad when the ceremony was
ended.

The larger part of his day was 'wasted'--as he termed it, in his own
mind--in labours pertaining to his royal office.  Even the two hours
devoted to certain princely pastimes and recreations were rather a burden
to him than otherwise, they were so fettered by restrictions and
ceremonious observances.  However, he had a private hour with his
whipping-boy which he counted clear gain, since he got both entertainment
and needful information out of it.

The third day of Tom Canty's kingship came and went much as the others
had done, but there was a lifting of his cloud in one way--he felt less
uncomfortable than at first; he was getting a little used to his
circumstances and surroundings; his chains still galled, but not all the
time; he found that the presence and homage of the great afflicted and
embarrassed him less and less sharply with every hour that drifted over
his head.

But for one single dread, he could have seen the fourth day approach
without serious distress--the dining in public; it was to begin that day.
There were greater matters in the programme--for on that day he would
have to preside at a council which would take his views and commands
concerning the policy to be pursued toward various foreign nations
scattered far and near over the great globe; on that day, too, Hertford
would be formally chosen to the grand office of Lord Protector; other
things of note were appointed for that fourth day, also; but to Tom they
were all insignificant compared with the ordeal of dining all by himself
with a multitude of curious eyes fastened upon him and a multitude of
mouths whispering comments upon his performance,--and upon his mistakes,
if he should be so unlucky as to make any.

Still, nothing could stop that fourth day, and so it came.  It found poor
Tom low-spirited and absent-minded, and this mood continued; he could not
shake it off.  The ordinary duties of the morning dragged upon his hands,
and wearied him.  Once more he felt the sense of captivity heavy upon
him.

Late in the forenoon he was in a large audience-chamber, conversing with
the Earl of Hertford and dully awaiting the striking of the hour
appointed for a visit of ceremony from a considerable number of great
officials and courtiers.

After a little while, Tom, who had wandered to a window and become
interested in the life and movement of the great highway beyond the
palace gates--and not idly interested, but longing with all his heart to
take part in person in its stir and freedom--saw the van of a hooting and
shouting mob of disorderly men, women, and children of the lowest and
poorest degree approaching from up the road.

"I would I knew what 'tis about!" he exclaimed, with all a boy's
curiosity in such happenings.

"Thou art the King!" solemnly responded the Earl, with a reverence.
"Have I your Grace's leave to act?"

"O blithely, yes!  O gladly, yes!" exclaimed Tom excitedly, adding to
himself with a lively sense of satisfaction, "In truth, being a king is
not all dreariness--it hath its compensations and conveniences."

The Earl called a page, and sent him to the captain of the guard with the
order--

"Let the mob be halted, and inquiry made concerning the occasion of its
movement.  By the King's command!"

A few seconds later a long rank of the royal guards, cased in flashing
steel, filed out at the gates and formed across the highway in front of
the multitude.  A messenger returned, to report that the crowd were
following a man, a woman, and a young girl to execution for crimes
committed against the peace and dignity of the realm.

Death--and a violent death--for these poor unfortunates!  The thought
wrung Tom's heart-strings.  The spirit of compassion took control of him,
to the exclusion of all other considerations; he never thought of the
offended laws, or of the grief or loss which these three criminals had
inflicted upon their victims; he could think of nothing but the scaffold
and the grisly fate hanging over the heads of the condemned.  His concern
made him even forget, for the moment, that he was but the false shadow of
a king, not the substance; and before he knew it he had blurted out the
command--

"Bring them here!"

Then he blushed scarlet, and a sort of apology sprung to his lips; but
observing that his order had wrought no sort of surprise in the Earl or
the waiting page, he suppressed the words he was about to utter.  The
page, in the most matter-of-course way, made a profound obeisance and
retired backwards out of the room to deliver the command.  Tom
experienced a glow of pride and a renewed sense of the compensating
advantages of the kingly office. He said to himself, "Truly it is like
what I was used to feel when I read the old priest's tales, and did
imagine mine own self a prince, giving law and command to all, saying 'Do
this, do that,' whilst none durst offer let or hindrance to my will."

Now the doors swung open; one high-sounding title after another was
announced, the personages owning them followed, and the place was quickly
half-filled with noble folk and finery.  But Tom was hardly conscious of
the presence of these people, so wrought up was he and so intensely
absorbed in that other and more interesting matter.  He seated himself
absently in his chair of state, and turned his eyes upon the door with
manifestations of impatient expectancy; seeing which, the company forbore
to trouble him, and fell to chatting a mixture of public business and
court gossip one with another.

In a little while the measured tread of military men was heard
approaching, and the culprits entered the presence in charge of an
under-sheriff and escorted by a detail of the king's guard.  The civil
officer knelt before Tom, then stood aside; the three doomed persons
knelt, also, and remained so; the guard took position behind Tom's chair.
Tom scanned the prisoners curiously. Something about the dress or
appearance of the man had stirred a vague memory in him.  "Methinks I
have seen this man ere now . . . but the when or the where fail me"--such
was Tom's thought. Just then the man glanced quickly up and quickly
dropped his face again, not being able to endure the awful port of
sovereignty; but the one full glimpse of the face which Tom got was
sufficient.  He said to himself: "Now is the matter clear; this is the
stranger that plucked Giles Witt out of the Thames, and saved his life,
that windy, bitter, first day of the New Year--a brave good deed--pity he
hath been doing baser ones and got himself in this sad case . . . I have
not forgot the day, neither the hour; by reason that an hour after, upon
the stroke of eleven, I did get a hiding by the hand of Gammer Canty
which was of so goodly and admired severity that all that went before or
followed after it were but fondlings and caresses by comparison."

Tom now ordered that the woman and the girl be removed from the presence
for a little time; then addressed himself to the under-sheriff, saying--

"Good sir, what is this man's offence?"

The officer knelt, and answered--

"So please your Majesty, he hath taken the life of a subject by poison."

Tom's compassion for the prisoner, and admiration of him as the daring
rescuer of a drowning boy, experienced a most damaging shock.

"The thing was proven upon him?" he asked.

"Most clearly, sire."

Tom sighed, and said--

"Take him away--he hath earned his death.  'Tis a pity, for he was a
brave heart--na--na, I mean he hath the LOOK of it!"

The prisoner clasped his hands together with sudden energy, and wrung
them despairingly, at the same time appealing imploringly to the 'King'
in broken and terrified phrases--

"O my lord the King, an' thou canst pity the lost, have pity upon me!  I
am innocent--neither hath that wherewith I am charged been more than but
lamely proved--yet I speak not of that; the judgment is gone forth
against me and may not suffer alteration; yet in mine extremity I beg a
boon, for my doom is more than I can bear. A grace, a grace, my lord the
King! in thy royal compassion grant my prayer--give commandment that I be
hanged!"

Tom was amazed.  This was not the outcome he had looked for.

"Odds my life, a strange BOON!  Was it not the fate intended thee?"

"O good my liege, not so!  It is ordered that I be BOILED ALIVE!"

The hideous surprise of these words almost made Tom spring from his
chair.  As soon as he could recover his wits he cried out--

"Have thy wish, poor soul! an' thou had poisoned a hundred men thou
shouldst not suffer so miserable a death."

The prisoner bowed his face to the ground and burst into passionate
expressions of gratitude--ending with--

"If ever thou shouldst know misfortune--which God forefend!--may thy
goodness to me this day be remembered and requited!"

Tom turned to the Earl of Hertford, and said--

"My lord, is it believable that there was warrant for this man's
ferocious doom?"

"It is the law, your Grace--for poisoners.  In Germany coiners be boiled
to death in OIL--not cast in of a sudden, but by a rope let down into the
oil by degrees, and slowly; first the feet, then the legs, then--"

"O prithee no more, my lord, I cannot bear it!" cried Tom, covering his
eyes with his hands to shut out the picture.  "I beseech your good
lordship that order be taken to change this law--oh, let no more poor
creatures be visited with its tortures."

The Earl's face showed profound gratification, for he was a man of
merciful and generous impulses--a thing not very common with his class in
that fierce age.  He said--

"These your Grace's noble words have sealed its doom.  History will
remember it to the honour of your royal house."

The under-sheriff was about to remove his prisoner; Tom gave him a sign
to wait; then he said--

"Good sir, I would look into this matter further.  The man has said his
deed was but lamely proved.  Tell me what thou knowest."

"If the King's grace please, it did appear upon the trial that this man
entered into a house in the hamlet of Islington where one lay sick--three
witnesses say it was at ten of the clock in the morning, and two say it
was some minutes later--the sick man being alone at the time, and
sleeping--and presently the man came forth again and went his way.  The
sick man died within the hour, being torn with spasms and retchings."

"Did any see the poison given?  Was poison found?"

"Marry, no, my liege."

"Then how doth one know there was poison given at all?"

"Please your Majesty, the doctors testified that none die with such
symptoms but by poison."

Weighty evidence, this, in that simple age.  Tom recognised its
formidable nature, and said--

"The doctor knoweth his trade--belike they were right.  The matter hath
an ill-look for this poor man."

"Yet was not this all, your Majesty; there is more and worse. Many
testified that a witch, since gone from the village, none know whither,
did foretell, and speak it privately in their ears, that the sick man
WOULD DIE BY POISON--and more, that a stranger would give it--a stranger
with brown hair and clothed in a worn and common garb; and surely this
prisoner doth answer woundily to the bill.  Please your Majesty to give
the circumstance that solemn weight which is its due, seeing it was
FORETOLD."

This was an argument of tremendous force in that superstitious day.  Tom
felt that the thing was settled; if evidence was worth anything, this
poor fellow's guilt was proved.  Still he offered the prisoner a chance,
saying--

"If thou canst say aught in thy behalf, speak."

"Nought that will avail, my King.  I am innocent, yet cannot I make it
appear.  I have no friends, else might I show that I was not in Islington
that day; so also might I show that at that hour they name I was above a
league away, seeing I was at Wapping Old Stairs; yea more, my King, for I
could show, that whilst they say I was TAKING life, I was SAVING it.  A
drowning boy--"

"Peace!  Sheriff, name the day the deed was done!"

"At ten in the morning, or some minutes later, the first day of the New
Year, most illustrious--"

"Let the prisoner go free--it is the King's will!"

Another blush followed this unregal outburst, and he covered his
indecorum as well as he could by adding--

"It enrageth me that a man should be hanged upon such idle, hare-brained
evidence!"

A low buzz of admiration swept through the assemblage.  It was not
admiration of the decree that had been delivered by Tom, for the
propriety or expediency of pardoning a convicted poisoner was a thing
which few there would have felt justified in either admitting or
admiring--no, the admiration was for the intelligence and spirit which
Tom had displayed.  Some of the low-voiced remarks were to this effect--

"This is no mad king--he hath his wits sound."

"How sanely he put his questions--how like his former natural self was
this abrupt imperious disposal of the matter!"

"God be thanked, his infirmity is spent!  This is no weakling, but a
king.  He hath borne himself like to his own father."

The air being filled with applause, Tom's ear necessarily caught a little
of it.  The effect which this had upon him was to put him greatly at his
ease, and also to charge his system with very gratifying sensations.

However, his juvenile curiosity soon rose superior to these pleasant
thoughts and feelings; he was eager to know what sort of deadly mischief
the woman and the little girl could have been about; so, by his command,
the two terrified and sobbing creatures were brought before him.

"What is it that these have done?" he inquired of the sheriff.

"Please your Majesty, a black crime is charged upon them, and clearly
proven; wherefore the judges have decreed, according to the law, that
they be hanged.  They sold themselves to the devil--such is their crime."

Tom shuddered.  He had been taught to abhor people who did this wicked
thing.  Still, he was not going to deny himself the pleasure of feeding
his curiosity for all that; so he asked--

"Where was this done?--and when?"

"On a midnight in December, in a ruined church, your Majesty."

Tom shuddered again.

"Who was there present?"

"Only these two, your grace--and THAT OTHER."

"Have these confessed?"

"Nay, not so, sire--they do deny it."

"Then prithee, how was it known?"

"Certain witness did see them wending thither, good your Majesty; this
bred the suspicion, and dire effects have since confirmed and justified
it.  In particular, it is in evidence that through the wicked power so
obtained, they did invoke and bring about a storm that wasted all the
region round about.  Above forty witnesses have proved the storm; and
sooth one might have had a thousand, for all had reason to remember it,
sith all had suffered by it."

"Certes this is a serious matter."  Tom turned this dark piece of
scoundrelism over in his mind a while, then asked--

"Suffered the woman also by the storm?"

Several old heads among the assemblage nodded their recognition of the
wisdom of this question.  The sheriff, however, saw nothing consequential
in the inquiry; he answered, with simple directness--

"Indeed did she, your Majesty, and most righteously, as all aver. Her
habitation was swept away, and herself and child left shelterless."

"Methinks the power to do herself so ill a turn was dearly bought. She
had been cheated, had she paid but a farthing for it; that she paid her
soul, and her child's, argueth that she is mad; if she is mad she knoweth
not what she doth, therefore sinneth not."

The elderly heads nodded recognition of Tom's wisdom once more, and one
individual murmured, "An' the King be mad himself, according to report,
then is it a madness of a sort that would improve the sanity of some I
wot of, if by the gentle providence of God they could but catch it."

"What age hath the child?" asked Tom.

"Nine years, please your Majesty."

"By the law of England may a child enter into covenant and sell itself,
my lord?" asked Tom, turning to a learned judge.

"The law doth not permit a child to make or meddle in any weighty matter,
good my liege, holding that its callow wit unfitteth it to cope with the
riper wit and evil schemings of them that are its elders.  The DEVIL may
buy a child, if he so choose, and the child agree thereto, but not an
Englishman--in this latter case the contract would be null and void."

"It seemeth a rude unchristian thing, and ill contrived, that English law
denieth privileges to Englishmen to waste them on the devil!" cried Tom,
with honest heat.

This novel view of the matter excited many smiles, and was stored away in
many heads to be repeated about the Court as evidence of Tom's
originality as well as progress toward mental health.

The elder culprit had ceased from sobbing, and was hanging upon Tom's
words with an excited interest and a growing hope.  Tom noticed this, and
it strongly inclined his sympathies toward her in her perilous and
unfriended situation.  Presently he asked--

"How wrought they to bring the storm?"

"BY PULLING OFF THEIR STOCKINGS, sire."

This astonished Tom, and also fired his curiosity to fever heat. He said,
eagerly--

"It is wonderful!  Hath it always this dread effect?"

"Always, my liege--at least if the woman desire it, and utter the needful
words, either in her mind or with her tongue."

Tom turned to the woman, and said with impetuous zeal--

"Exert thy power--I would see a storm!"

There was a sudden paling of cheeks in the superstitious assemblage, and
a general, though unexpressed, desire to get out of the place--all of
which was lost upon Tom, who was dead to everything but the proposed
cataclysm.  Seeing a puzzled and astonished look in the woman's face, he
added, excitedly--

"Never fear--thou shalt be blameless.  More--thou shalt go free--none
shall touch thee.  Exert thy power."

"Oh, my lord the King, I have it not--I have been falsely accused."

"Thy fears stay thee.  Be of good heart, thou shalt suffer no harm.  Make
a storm--it mattereth not how small a one--I require nought great or
harmful, but indeed prefer the opposite--do this and thy life is spared
--thou shalt go out free, with thy child, bearing the King's pardon, and
safe from hurt or malice from any in the realm."

The woman prostrated herself, and protested, with tears, that she had no
power to do the miracle, else she would gladly win her child's life
alone, and be content to lose her own, if by obedience to the King's
command so precious a grace might be acquired.

Tom urged--the woman still adhered to her declarations.  Finally he said--

"I think the woman hath said true.  An' MY mother were in her place and
gifted with the devil's functions, she had not stayed a moment to call
her storms and lay the whole land in ruins, if the saving of my forfeit
life were the price she got!  It is argument that other mothers are made
in like mould.  Thou art free, goodwife--thou and thy child--for I do
think thee innocent.  NOW thou'st nought to fear, being pardoned--pull
off thy stockings!--an' thou canst make me a storm, thou shalt be rich!"

The redeemed creature was loud in her gratitude, and proceeded to obey,
whilst Tom looked on with eager expectancy, a little marred by
apprehension; the courtiers at the same time manifesting decided
discomfort and uneasiness.  The woman stripped her own feet and her
little girl's also, and plainly did her best to reward the King's
generosity with an earthquake, but it was all a failure and a
disappointment.  Tom sighed, and said--

"There, good soul, trouble thyself no further, thy power is departed out
of thee.  Go thy way in peace; and if it return to thee at any time,
forget me not, but fetch me a storm." {13}



Chapter XVI. The State Dinner.

The dinner hour drew near--yet strangely enough, the thought brought but
slight discomfort to Tom, and hardly any terror.  The morning's
experiences had wonderfully built up his confidence; the poor little
ash-cat was already more wonted to his strange garret, after four days'
habit, than a mature person could have become in a full month.  A child's
facility in accommodating itself to circumstances was never more
strikingly illustrated.

Let us privileged ones hurry to the great banqueting-room and have a
glance at matters there whilst Tom is being made ready for the imposing
occasion.  It is a spacious apartment, with gilded pillars and pilasters,
and pictured walls and ceilings.  At the door stand tall guards, as rigid
as statues, dressed in rich and picturesque costumes, and bearing
halberds.  In a high gallery which runs all around the place is a band of
musicians and a packed company of citizens of both sexes, in brilliant
attire.  In the centre of the room, upon a raised platform, is Tom's
table. Now let the ancient chronicler speak:

"A gentleman enters the room bearing a rod, and along with him another
bearing a tablecloth, which, after they have both kneeled three times
with the utmost veneration, he spreads upon the table, and after kneeling
again they both retire; then come two others, one with the rod again, the
other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; when they have kneeled as
the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they too
retire with the same ceremonies performed by the first; at last come two
nobles, richly clothed, one bearing a tasting-knife, who, after
prostrating themselves three times in the most graceful manner, approach
and rub the table with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the King
had been present." {6}

So end the solemn preliminaries.  Now, far down the echoing corridors we
hear a bugle-blast, and the indistinct cry, "Place for the King!  Way for
the King's most excellent majesty!"  These sounds are momently repeated
--they grow nearer and nearer--and presently, almost in our faces, the
martial note peals and the cry rings out, "Way for the King!"  At this
instant the shining pageant appears, and files in at the door, with a
measured march. Let the chronicler speak again:--

"First come Gentlemen, Barons, Earls, Knights of the Garter, all richly
dressed and bareheaded; next comes the Chancellor, between two, one of
which carries the royal sceptre, the other the Sword of State in a red
scabbard, studded with golden fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards; next
comes the King himself--whom, upon his appearing, twelve trumpets and
many drums salute with a great burst of welcome, whilst all in the
galleries rise in their places, crying 'God save the King!'  After him
come nobles attached to his person, and on his right and left march his
guard of honour, his fifty Gentlemen Pensioners, with gilt battle-axes."

This was all fine and pleasant.  Tom's pulse beat high, and a glad light
was in his eye.  He bore himself right gracefully, and all the more so
because he was not thinking of how he was doing it, his mind being
charmed and occupied with the blithe sights and sounds about him--and
besides, nobody can be very ungraceful in nicely-fitting beautiful
clothes after he has grown a little used to them--especially if he is for
the moment unconscious of them. Tom remembered his instructions, and
acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of his plumed head,
and a courteous "I thank ye, my good people."

He seated himself at table, without removing his cap; and did it without
the least embarrassment; for to eat with one's cap on was the one
solitary royal custom upon which the kings and the Cantys met upon common
ground, neither party having any advantage over the other in the matter
of old familiarity with it.  The pageant broke up and grouped itself
picturesquely, and remained bareheaded.

Now to the sound of gay music the Yeomen of the Guard entered,--"the
tallest and mightiest men in England, they being carefully selected in
this regard"--but we will let the chronicler tell about it:--

"The Yeomen of the Guard entered, bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with
golden roses upon their backs; and these went and came, bringing in each
turn a course of dishes, served in plate.  These dishes were received by
a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the
table, while the taster gave to each guard a mouthful to eat of the
particular dish he had brought, for fear of any poison."

Tom made a good dinner, notwithstanding he was conscious that hundreds of
eyes followed each morsel to his mouth and watched him eat it with an
interest which could not have been more intense if it had been a deadly
explosive and was expected to blow him up and scatter him all about the
place.  He was careful not to hurry, and equally careful not to do
anything whatever for himself, but wait till the proper official knelt
down and did it for him.  He got through without a mistake--flawless and
precious triumph.

When the meal was over at last and he marched away in the midst of his
bright pageant, with the happy noises in his ears of blaring bugles,
rolling drums, and thundering acclamations, he felt that if he had seen
the worst of dining in public it was an ordeal which he would be glad to
endure several times a day if by that means he could but buy himself free
from some of the more formidable requirements of his royal office.



Chapter XVII. Foo-foo the First.

Miles Hendon hurried along toward the Southwark end of the bridge,
keeping a sharp look-out for the persons he sought, and hoping and
expecting to overtake them presently.  He was disappointed in this,
however.  By asking questions, he was enabled to track them part of the
way through Southwark; then all traces ceased, and he was perplexed as to
how to proceed.  Still, he continued his efforts as best he could during
the rest of the day.  Nightfall found him leg-weary, half-famished, and
his desire as far from accomplishment as ever; so he supped at the Tabard
Inn and went to bed, resolved to make an early start in the morning, and
give the town an exhaustive search.  As he lay thinking and planning, he
presently began to reason thus:  The boy would escape from the ruffian,
his reputed father, if possible; would he go back to London and seek his
former haunts?  No, he would not do that, he would avoid recapture.
What, then, would he do?  Never having had a friend in the world, or a
protector, until he met Miles Hendon, he would naturally try to find that
friend again, provided the effort did not require him to go toward London
and danger.  He would strike for Hendon Hall, that is what he would do,
for he knew Hendon was homeward bound and there he might expect to find
him.  Yes, the case was plain to Hendon--he must lose no more time in
Southwark, but move at once through Kent, toward Monk's Holm, searching
the wood and inquiring as he went.  Let us return to the vanished little
King now.

The ruffian whom the waiter at the inn on the bridge saw 'about to join'
the youth and the King did not exactly join them, but fell in close
behind them and followed their steps.  He said nothing. His left arm was
in a sling, and he wore a large green patch over his left eye; he limped
slightly, and used an oaken staff as a support.  The youth led the King a
crooked course through Southwark, and by-and-by struck into the high road
beyond.  The King was irritated, now, and said he would stop here--it was
Hendon's place to come to him, not his to go to Hendon.  He would not
endure such insolence; he would stop where he was.  The youth said--

"Thou'lt tarry here, and thy friend lying wounded in the wood yonder?  So
be it, then."

The King's manner changed at once.  He cried out--

"Wounded?  And who hath dared to do it?  But that is apart; lead on, lead
on!  Faster, sirrah!  Art shod with lead?  Wounded, is he?  Now though
the doer of it be a duke's son he shall rue it!"

It was some distance to the wood, but the space was speedily traversed.
The youth looked about him, discovered a bough sticking in the ground,
with a small bit of rag tied to it, then led the way into the forest,
watching for similar boughs and finding them at intervals; they were
evidently guides to the point he was aiming at.  By-and-by an open place
was reached, where were the charred remains of a farm-house, and near
them a barn which was falling to ruin and decay.  There was no sign of
life anywhere, and utter silence prevailed.  The youth entered the barn,
the King following eagerly upon his heels.  No one there! The King shot a
surprised and suspicious glance at the youth, and asked--

"Where is he?"

A mocking laugh was his answer.  The King was in a rage in a moment; he
seized a billet of wood and was in the act of charging upon the youth
when another mocking laugh fell upon his ear.  It was from the lame
ruffian who had been following at a distance. The King turned and said
angrily--

"Who art thou?  What is thy business here?"

"Leave thy foolery," said the man, "and quiet thyself.  My disguise is
none so good that thou canst pretend thou knowest not thy father through
it."

"Thou art not my father.  I know thee not.  I am the King.  If thou hast
hid my servant, find him for me, or thou shalt sup sorrow for what thou
hast done."

John Canty replied, in a stern and measured voice--

"It is plain thou art mad, and I am loath to punish thee;  but if thou
provoke me, I must.  Thy prating doth no harm here, where there are no
ears that need to mind thy follies; yet it is well to practise thy tongue
to wary speech, that it may do no hurt when our quarters change.  I have
done a murder, and may not tarry at home--neither shalt thou, seeing I
need thy service.  My name is changed, for wise reasons; it is Hobbs
--John Hobbs; thine is Jack--charge thy memory accordingly.  Now, then,
speak.  Where is thy mother?  Where are thy sisters?  They came not to
the place appointed--knowest thou whither they went?"

The King answered sullenly--

"Trouble me not with these riddles.  My mother is dead; my sisters are in
the palace."

The youth near by burst into a derisive laugh, and the King would have
assaulted him, but Canty--or Hobbs, as he now called himself--prevented
him, and said--

"Peace, Hugo, vex him not; his mind is astray, and thy ways fret him.
Sit thee down, Jack, and quiet thyself; thou shalt have a morsel to eat,
anon."

Hobbs and Hugo fell to talking together, in low voices, and the King
removed himself as far as he could from their disagreeable company.  He
withdrew into the twilight of the farther end of the barn, where he found
the earthen floor bedded a foot deep with straw.  He lay down here, drew
straw over himself in lieu of blankets, and was soon absorbed in
thinking.  He had many griefs, but the minor ones were swept almost into
forgetfulness by the supreme one, the loss of his father.  To the rest of
the world the name of Henry VIII. brought a shiver, and suggested an ogre
whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand dealt scourgings and
death; but to this boy the name brought only sensations of pleasure; the
figure it invoked wore a countenance that was all gentleness and
affection.  He called to mind a long succession of loving passages
between his father and himself, and dwelt fondly upon them, his unstinted
tears attesting how deep and real was the grief that possessed his heart.
As the afternoon wasted away, the lad, wearied with his troubles, sank
gradually into a tranquil and healing slumber.

After a considerable time--he could not tell how long--his senses
struggled to a half-consciousness, and as he lay with closed eyes vaguely
wondering where he was and what had been happening, he noted a murmurous
sound, the sullen beating of rain upon the roof. A snug sense of comfort
stole over him, which was rudely broken, the next moment, by a chorus of
piping cackles and coarse laughter.  It startled him disagreeably, and he
unmuffled his head to see whence this interruption proceeded.  A grim and
unsightly picture met his eye.  A bright fire was burning in the middle
of the floor, at the other end of the barn; and around it, and lit
weirdly up by the red glare, lolled and sprawled the motliest company of
tattered gutter-scum and ruffians, of both sexes, he had ever read or
dreamed of.  There were huge stalwart men, brown with exposure,
long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there were middle-sized
youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly clad; there were blind
mendicants, with patched or bandaged eyes; crippled ones, with wooden
legs and crutches; diseased ones, with running sores peeping from
ineffectual wrappings; there was a villain-looking pedlar with his pack;
a knife-grinder, a tinker, and a barber-surgeon, with the implements of
their trades; some of the females were hardly-grown girls, some were at
prime, some were old and wrinkled hags, and all were loud, brazen,
foul-mouthed; and all soiled and slatternly; there were three sore-faced
babies; there were a couple of starveling curs, with strings about their
necks, whose office was to lead the blind.

The night was come, the gang had just finished feasting, an orgy was
beginning; the can of liquor was passing from mouth to mouth. A general
cry broke forth--

"A song! a song from the Bat and Dick and Dot-and-go-One!"

One of the blind men got up, and made ready by casting aside the patches
that sheltered his excellent eyes, and the pathetic placard which recited
the cause of his calamity.  Dot-and-go-One disencumbered himself of his
timber leg and took his place, upon sound and healthy limbs, beside his
fellow-rascal; then they roared out a rollicking ditty, and were
reinforced by the whole crew, at the end of each stanza, in a rousing
chorus.  By the time the last stanza was reached, the half-drunken
enthusiasm had risen to such a pitch, that everybody joined in and sang
it clear through from the beginning, producing a volume of villainous
sound that made the rafters quake.  These were the inspiring words:--

'Bien Darkman's then, Bouse Mort and Ken, The bien Coves bings awast, On
Chates to trine by Rome Coves dine For his long lib at last. Bing'd out
bien Morts and toure, and toure, Bing out of the Rome vile bine, And
toure the Cove that cloy'd your duds, Upon the Chates to trine.' (From
'The English Rogue.' London, 1665.)

Conversation followed; not in the thieves' dialect of the song, for that
was only used in talk when unfriendly ears might be listening.  In the
course of it, it appeared that 'John Hobbs' was not altogether a new
recruit, but had trained in the gang at some former time.  His later
history was called for, and when he said he had 'accidentally' killed a
man, considerable satisfaction was expressed; when he added that the man
was a priest, he was roundly applauded, and had to take a drink with
everybody.  Old acquaintances welcomed him joyously, and new ones were
proud to shake him by the hand.  He was asked why he had 'tarried away so
many months.'  He answered--

"London is better than the country, and safer, these late years, the laws
be so bitter and so diligently enforced.  An' I had not had that
accident, I had stayed there.  I had resolved to stay, and never more
venture country-wards--but the accident has ended that."

He inquired how many persons the gang numbered now.  The 'ruffler,' or
chief, answered--

"Five and twenty sturdy budges, bulks, files, clapperdogeons and
maunders, counting the dells and doxies and other morts. {7}  Most are
here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay. We follow at
dawn."

"I do not see the Wen among the honest folk about me.  Where may he be?"

"Poor lad, his diet is brimstone, now, and over hot for a delicate taste.
He was killed in a brawl, somewhere about midsummer."

"I sorrow to hear that; the Wen was a capable man, and brave."

"That was he, truly.  Black Bess, his dell, is of us yet, but absent on
the eastward tramp; a fine lass, of nice ways and orderly conduct, none
ever seeing her drunk above four days in the seven."

"She was ever strict--I remember it well--a goodly wench and worthy all
commendation.  Her mother was more free and less particular; a
troublesome and ugly-tempered beldame, but furnished with a wit above the
common."

"We lost her through it.  Her gift of palmistry and other sorts of
fortune-telling begot for her at last a witch's name and fame. The law
roasted her to death at a slow fire.  It did touch me to a sort of
tenderness to see the gallant way she met her lot--cursing and reviling
all the crowd that gaped and gazed around her, whilst the flames licked
upward toward her face and catched her thin locks and crackled about her
old gray head--cursing them! why an' thou should'st live a thousand years
thoud'st never hear so masterful a cursing.  Alack, her art died with
her.  There be base and weakling imitations left, but no true blasphemy."

The Ruffler sighed; the listeners sighed in sympathy; a general
depression fell upon the company for a moment, for even hardened outcasts
like these are not wholly dead to sentiment, but are able to feel a
fleeting sense of loss and affliction at wide intervals and under
peculiarly favouring circumstances--as in cases like to this, for
instance, when genius and culture depart and leave no heir.  However, a
deep drink all round soon restored the spirits of the mourners.

"Have any others of our friends fared hardly?" asked Hobbs.

"Some--yes.  Particularly new comers--such as small husbandmen turned
shiftless and hungry upon the world because their farms were taken from
them to be changed to sheep ranges.  They begged, and were whipped at the
cart's tail, naked from the girdle up, till the blood ran; then set in
the stocks to be pelted; they begged again, were whipped again, and
deprived of an ear; they begged a third time--poor devils, what else
could they do?--and were branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, then
sold for slaves; they ran away, were hunted down, and hanged.  'Tis a
brief tale, and quickly told.  Others of us have fared less hardly. Stand
forth, Yokel, Burns, and Hodge--show your adornments!"

These stood up and stripped away some of their rags, exposing their
backs, criss-crossed with ropy old welts left by the lash; one turned up
his hair and showed the place where a left ear had once been; another
showed a brand upon his shoulder--the letter V--and a mutilated ear; the
third said--

"I am Yokel, once a farmer and prosperous, with loving wife and kids--now
am I somewhat different in estate and calling; and the wife and kids are
gone; mayhap they are in heaven, mayhap in--in the other place--but the
kindly God be thanked, they bide no more in ENGLAND!  My good old
blameless mother strove to earn bread by nursing the sick; one of these
died, the doctors knew not how, so my mother was burnt for a witch,
whilst my babes looked on and wailed.  English law!--up, all, with your
cups!--now all together and with a cheer!--drink to the merciful English
law that delivered HER from the English hell!  Thank you, mates, one and
all.  I begged, from house to house--I and the wife--bearing with us the
hungry kids--but it was crime to be hungry in England--so they stripped
us and lashed us through three towns.  Drink ye all again to the merciful
English law!--for its lash drank deep of my Mary's blood and its blessed
deliverance came quick.  She lies there, in the potter's field, safe from
all harms.  And the kids--well, whilst the law lashed me from town to
town, they starved. Drink, lads--only a drop--a drop to the poor kids,
that never did any creature harm.  I begged again--begged, for a crust,
and got the stocks and lost an ear--see, here bides the stump; I begged
again, and here is the stump of the other to keep me minded of it. And
still I begged again, and was sold for a slave--here on my cheek under
this stain, if I washed it off, ye might see the red S the branding-iron
left there!  A SLAVE!  Do you understand that word?  An English SLAVE!
--that is he that stands before ye.  I have run from my master, and when I
am found--the heavy curse of heaven fall on the law of the land that hath
commanded it!--I shall hang!" {1}

A ringing voice came through the murky air--

"Thou shalt NOT!--and this day the end of that law is come!"

All turned, and saw the fantastic figure of the little King approaching
hurriedly; as it emerged into the light and was clearly revealed, a
general explosion of inquiries broke out--

"Who is it?  WHAT is it?  Who art thou, manikin?"

The boy stood unconfused in the midst of all those surprised and
questioning eyes, and answered with princely dignity--

"I am Edward, King of England."

A wild burst of laughter followed, partly of derision and partly of
delight in the excellence of the joke.  The King was stung.  He said
sharply--

"Ye mannerless vagrants, is this your recognition of the royal boon I
have promised?"

He said more, with angry voice and excited gesture, but it was lost in a
whirlwind of laughter and mocking exclamations.  'John Hobbs' made
several attempts to make himself heard above the din, and at last
succeeded--saying--

"Mates, he is my son, a dreamer, a fool, and stark mad--mind him not--he
thinketh he IS the King."

"I AM the King," said Edward, turning toward him, "as thou shalt know to
thy cost, in good time.  Thou hast confessed a murder--thou shalt swing
for it."

"THOU'LT betray me?--THOU?  An' I get my hands upon thee--"

"Tut-tut!" said the burley Ruffler, interposing in time to save the King,
and emphasising this service by knocking Hobbs down with his fist, "hast
respect for neither Kings NOR Rufflers?  An' thou insult my presence so
again, I'll hang thee up myself."  Then he said to his Majesty, "Thou
must make no threats against thy mates, lad; and thou must guard thy
tongue from saying evil of them elsewhere.  BE King, if it please thy mad
humour, but be not harmful in it.  Sink the title thou hast uttered--'tis
treason; we be bad men in some few trifling ways, but none among us is so
base as to be traitor to his King; we be loving and loyal hearts, in that
regard.  Note if I speak truth.  Now--all together:  'Long live Edward,
King of England!'"

"LONG LIVE EDWARD, KING OF ENGLAND!"

The response came with such a thundergust from the motley crew that the
crazy building vibrated to the sound.  The little King's face lighted
with pleasure for an instant, and he slightly inclined his head, and said
with grave simplicity--

"I thank you, my good people."

This unexpected result threw the company into convulsions of merriment.
When something like quiet was presently come again, the Ruffler said,
firmly, but with an accent of good nature--

"Drop it, boy, 'tis not wise, nor well.  Humour thy fancy, if thou must,
but choose some other title."

A tinker shrieked out a suggestion--

"Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!"

The title 'took,' at once, every throat responded, and a roaring shout
went up, of--

"Long live Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!" followed by
hootings, cat-calls, and peals of laughter.

"Hale him forth, and crown him!"

"Robe him!"

"Sceptre him!"

"Throne him!"

These and twenty other cries broke out at once! and almost before the
poor little victim could draw a breath he was crowned with a tin basin,
robed in a tattered blanket, throned upon a barrel, and sceptred with the
tinker's soldering-iron.  Then all flung themselves upon their knees
about him and sent up a chorus of ironical wailings, and mocking
supplications, whilst they swabbed their eyes with their soiled and
ragged sleeves and aprons--

"Be gracious to us, O sweet King!"

"Trample not upon thy beseeching worms, O noble Majesty!"

"Pity thy slaves, and comfort them with a royal kick!"

"Cheer us and warm us with thy gracious rays, O flaming sun of
sovereignty!"

"Sanctify the ground with the touch of thy foot, that we may eat the dirt
and be ennobled!"

"Deign to spit upon us, O Sire, that our children's children may tell of
thy princely condescension, and be proud and happy for ever!"

But the humorous tinker made the 'hit' of the evening and carried off the
honours.  Kneeling, he pretended to kiss the King's foot, and was
indignantly spurned; whereupon he went about begging for a rag to paste
over the place upon his face which had been touched by the foot, saying
it must be preserved from contact with the vulgar air, and that he should
make his fortune by going on the highway and exposing it to view at the
rate of a hundred shillings a sight.  He made himself so killingly funny
that he was the envy and admiration of the whole mangy rabble.

Tears of shame and indignation stood in the little monarch's eyes; and
the thought in his heart was, "Had I offered them a deep wrong they could
not be more cruel--yet have I proffered nought but to do them a kindness
--and it is thus they use me for it!"



Chapter XVIII. The Prince with the tramps.

The troop of vagabonds turned out at early dawn, and set forward on their
march.  There was a lowering sky overhead, sloppy ground under foot, and
a winter chill in the air.  All gaiety was gone from the company; some
were sullen and silent, some were irritable and petulant, none were
gentle-humoured, all were thirsty.

The Ruffler put 'Jack' in Hugo's charge, with some brief instructions,
and commanded John Canty to keep away from him and let him alone; he also
warned Hugo not to be too rough with the lad.

After a while the weather grew milder, and the clouds lifted somewhat.
The troop ceased to shiver, and their spirits began to improve.  They
grew more and more cheerful, and finally began to chaff each other and
insult passengers along the highway.  This showed that they were awaking
to an appreciation of life and its joys once more.  The dread in which
their sort was held was apparent in the fact that everybody gave them the
road, and took their ribald insolences meekly, without venturing to talk
back. They snatched linen from the hedges, occasionally in full view of
the owners, who made no protest, but only seemed grateful that they did
not take the hedges, too.

By-and-by they invaded a small farmhouse and made themselves at home
while the trembling farmer and his people swept the larder clean to
furnish a breakfast for them.  They chucked the housewife and her
daughters under the chin whilst receiving the food from their hands, and
made coarse jests about them, accompanied with insulting epithets and
bursts of horse-laughter.  They threw bones and vegetables at the farmer
and his sons, kept them dodging all the time, and applauded uproariously
when a good hit was made. They ended by buttering the head of one of the
daughters who resented some of their familiarities.  When they took their
leave they threatened to come back and burn the house over the heads of
the family if any report of their doings got to the ears of the
authorities.

About noon, after a long and weary tramp, the gang came to a halt behind
a hedge on the outskirts of a considerable village.  An hour was allowed
for rest, then the crew scattered themselves abroad to enter the village
at different points to ply their various trades--'Jack' was sent with
Hugo.  They wandered hither and thither for some time, Hugo watching for
opportunities to do a stroke of business, but finding none--so he finally
said--

"I see nought to steal; it is a paltry place.  Wherefore we will beg."

"WE, forsooth!  Follow thy trade--it befits thee.  But _I_ will not beg."

"Thou'lt not beg!" exclaimed Hugo, eyeing the King with surprise.
"Prithee, since when hast thou reformed?"

"What dost thou mean?"

"Mean?  Hast thou not begged the streets of London all thy life?"

"I?  Thou idiot!"

"Spare thy compliments--thy stock will last the longer.  Thy father says
thou hast begged all thy days.  Mayhap he lied. Peradventure you will
even make so bold as to SAY he lied," scoffed Hugo.

"Him YOU call my father?  Yes, he lied."

"Come, play not thy merry game of madman so far, mate; use it for thy
amusement, not thy hurt.  An' I tell him this, he will scorch thee finely
for it."

"Save thyself the trouble.  I will tell him."

"I like thy spirit, I do in truth; but I do not admire thy judgment.
Bone-rackings and bastings be plenty enow in this life, without going out
of one's way to invite them.  But a truce to these matters; _I_ believe
your father.  I doubt not he can lie; I doubt not he DOTH lie, upon
occasion, for the best of us do that; but there is no occasion here.  A
wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for nought.  But
come; sith it is thy humour to give over begging, wherewithal shall we
busy ourselves?  With robbing kitchens?"

The King said, impatiently--

"Have done with this folly--you weary me!"

Hugo replied, with temper--

"Now harkee, mate; you will not beg, you will not rob; so be it. But I
will tell you what you WILL do.  You will play decoy whilst _I_ beg.
Refuse, an' you think you may venture!"

The King was about to reply contemptuously, when Hugo said, interrupting--

"Peace!  Here comes one with a kindly face.  Now will I fall down in a
fit.  When the stranger runs to me, set you up a wail, and fall upon your
knees, seeming to weep; then cry out as all the devils of misery were in
your belly, and say, 'Oh, sir, it is my poor afflicted brother, and we be
friendless; o' God's name cast through your merciful eyes one pitiful
look upon a sick, forsaken, and most miserable wretch; bestow one little
penny out of thy riches upon one smitten of God and ready to perish!'
--and mind you, keep you ON wailing, and abate not till we bilk him of his
penny, else shall you rue it."

Then immediately Hugo began to moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and
reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he
sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in the
dirt, in seeming agony.

"O, dear, O dear!" cried the benevolent stranger, "O poor soul, poor
soul, how he doth suffer!  There--let me help thee up."

"O noble sir, forbear, and God love you for a princely gentleman--but it
giveth me cruel pain to touch me when I am taken so.  My brother there
will tell your worship how I am racked with anguish when these fits be
upon me.  A penny, dear sir, a penny, to buy a little food; then leave me
to my sorrows."

"A penny! thou shalt have three, thou hapless creature"--and he fumbled
in his pocket with nervous haste and got them out. "There, poor lad, take
them and most welcome.  Now come hither, my boy, and help me carry thy
stricken brother to yon house, where--"

"I am not his brother," said the King, interrupting.

"What! not his brother?"

"Oh, hear him!" groaned Hugo, then privately ground his teeth. "He denies
his own brother--and he with one foot in the grave!"

"Boy, thou art indeed hard of heart, if this is thy brother.  For shame!
--and he scarce able to move hand or foot.  If he is not thy brother, who
is he, then?"

"A beggar and a thief!  He has got your money and has picked your pocket
likewise.  An' thou would'st do a healing miracle, lay thy staff over his
shoulders and trust Providence for the rest."

But Hugo did not tarry for the miracle.  In a moment he was up and off
like the wind, the gentleman following after and raising the hue and cry
lustily as he went.  The King, breathing deep gratitude to Heaven for his
own release, fled in the opposite direction, and did not slacken his pace
until he was out of harm's reach.  He took the first road that offered,
and soon put the village behind him.  He hurried along, as briskly as he
could, during several hours, keeping a nervous watch over his shoulder
for pursuit; but his fears left him at last, and a grateful sense of
security took their place.  He recognised, now, that he was hungry, and
also very tired.  So he halted at a farmhouse; but when he was about to
speak, he was cut short and driven rudely away.  His clothes were against
him.

He wandered on, wounded and indignant, and was resolved to put himself in
the way of like treatment no more.  But hunger is pride's master; so, as
the evening drew near, he made an attempt at another farmhouse; but here
he fared worse than before; for he was called hard names and was promised
arrest as a vagrant except he moved on promptly.

The night came on, chilly and overcast; and still the footsore monarch
laboured slowly on.  He was obliged to keep moving, for every time he sat
down to rest he was soon penetrated to the bone with the cold.  All his
sensations and experiences, as he moved through the solemn gloom and the
empty vastness of the night, were new and strange to him.  At intervals
he heard voices approach, pass by, and fade into silence; and as he saw
nothing more of the bodies they belonged to than a sort of formless
drifting blur, there was something spectral and uncanny about it all that
made him shudder.  Occasionally he caught the twinkle of a light--always
far away, apparently--almost in another world; if he heard the tinkle of
a sheep's bell, it was vague, distant, indistinct; the muffled lowing of
the herds floated to him on the night wind in vanishing cadences, a
mournful sound; now and then came the complaining howl of a dog over
viewless expanses of field and forest; all sounds were remote; they made
the little King feel that all life and activity were far removed from
him, and that he stood solitary, companionless, in the centre of a
measureless solitude.

He stumbled along, through the gruesome fascinations of this new
experience, startled occasionally by the soft rustling of the dry leaves
overhead, so like human whispers they seemed to sound; and by-and-by he
came suddenly upon the freckled light of a tin lantern near at hand.  He
stepped back into the shadows and waited.  The lantern stood by the open
door of a barn.  The King waited some time--there was no sound, and
nobody stirring.  He got so cold, standing still, and the hospitable barn
looked so enticing, that at last he resolved to risk everything and
enter. He started swiftly and stealthily, and just as he was crossing the
threshold he heard voices behind him.  He darted behind a cask, within
the barn, and stooped down.  Two farm-labourers came in, bringing the
lantern with them, and fell to work, talking meanwhile.  Whilst they
moved about with the light, the King made good use of his eyes and took
the bearings of what seemed to be a good-sized stall at the further end
of the place, purposing to grope his way to it when he should be left to
himself.  He also noted the position of a pile of horse blankets, midway
of the route, with the intent to levy upon them for the service of the
crown of England for one night.

By-and-by the men finished and went away, fastening the door behind them
and taking the lantern with them.  The shivering King made for the
blankets, with as good speed as the darkness would allow; gathered them
up, and then groped his way safely to the stall.  Of two of the blankets
he made a bed, then covered himself with the remaining two.  He was a
glad monarch, now, though the blankets were old and thin, and not quite
warm enough; and besides gave out a pungent horsey odour that was almost
suffocatingly powerful.

Although the King was hungry and chilly, he was also so tired and
so drowsy that these latter influences soon began to get the
advantage of the former, and he presently dozed off into a state of
semi-consciousness.  Then, just as he was on the point of losing himself
wholly, he distinctly felt something touch him!  He was broad awake in a
moment, and gasping for breath.  The cold horror of that mysterious touch
in the dark almost made his heart stand still.  He lay motionless, and
listened, scarcely breathing. But nothing stirred, and there was no
sound.  He continued to listen, and wait, during what seemed a long time,
but still nothing stirred, and there was no sound.  So he began to drop
into a drowse once more, at last; and all at once he felt that mysterious
touch again!  It was a grisly thing, this light touch from this noiseless
and invisible presence; it made the boy sick with ghostly fears.  What
should he do?  That was the question; but he did not know how to answer
it.  Should he leave these reasonably comfortable quarters and fly from
this inscrutable horror?  But fly whither?  He could not get out of the
barn; and the idea of scurrying blindly hither and thither in the dark,
within the captivity of the four walls, with this phantom gliding after
him, and visiting him with that soft hideous touch upon cheek or shoulder
at every turn, was intolerable.  But to stay where he was, and endure
this living death all night--was that better?  No.  What, then, was there
left to do?  Ah, there was but one course; he knew it well--he must put
out his hand and find that thing!

It was easy to think this; but it was hard to brace himself up to try it.
Three times he stretched his hand a little way out into the dark,
gingerly; and snatched it suddenly back, with a gasp--not because it had
encountered anything, but because he had felt so sure it was just GOING
to.  But the fourth time, he groped a little further, and his hand
lightly swept against something soft and warm.  This petrified him,
nearly, with fright; his mind was in such a state that he could imagine
the thing to be nothing else than a corpse, newly dead and still warm.
He thought he would rather die than touch it again.  But he thought this
false thought because he did not know the immortal strength of human
curiosity. In no long time his hand was tremblingly groping again
--against his judgment, and without his consent--but groping persistently
on, just the same.  It encountered a bunch of long hair; he shuddered,
but followed up the hair and found what seemed to be a warm rope;
followed up the rope and found an innocent calf!--for the rope was not a
rope at all, but the calf's tail.

The King was cordially ashamed of himself for having gotten all that
fright and misery out of so paltry a matter as a slumbering calf; but he
need not have felt so about it, for it was not the calf that frightened
him, but a dreadful non-existent something which the calf stood for; and
any other boy, in those old superstitious times, would have acted and
suffered just as he had done.

The King was not only delighted to find that the creature was only a
calf, but delighted to have the calf's company; for he had been feeling
so lonesome and friendless that the company and comradeship of even this
humble animal were welcome.  And he had been so buffeted, so rudely
entreated by his own kind, that it was a real comfort to him to feel that
he was at last in the society of a fellow-creature that had at least a
soft heart and a gentle spirit, whatever loftier attributes might be
lacking.  So he resolved to waive rank and make friends with the calf.

While stroking its sleek warm back--for it lay near him and within easy
reach--it occurred to him that this calf might be utilised in more ways
than one.  Whereupon he re-arranged his bed, spreading it down close to
the calf; then he cuddled himself up to the calf's back, drew the covers
up over himself and his friend, and in a minute or two was as warm and
comfortable as he had ever been in the downy couches of the regal palace
of Westminster.

Pleasant thoughts came at once; life took on a cheerfuller seeming.  He
was free of the bonds of servitude and crime, free of the companionship
of base and brutal outlaws; he was warm; he was sheltered; in a word, he
was happy.  The night wind was rising; it swept by in fitful gusts that
made the old barn quake and rattle, then its forces died down at
intervals, and went moaning and wailing around corners and projections
--but it was all music to the King, now that he was snug and comfortable:
let it blow and rage, let it batter and bang, let it moan and wail, he
minded it not, he only enjoyed it.  He merely snuggled the closer to his
friend, in a luxury of warm contentment, and drifted blissfully out of
consciousness into a deep and dreamless sleep that was full of serenity
and peace.  The distant dogs howled, the melancholy kine complained, and
the winds went on raging, whilst furious sheets of rain drove along the
roof; but the Majesty of England slept on, undisturbed, and the calf did
the same, it being a simple creature, and not easily troubled by storms
or embarrassed by sleeping with a king.



Chapter XIX. The Prince with the peasants.

When the King awoke in the early morning, he found that a wet but
thoughtful rat had crept into the place during the night and made a cosy
bed for itself in his bosom.  Being disturbed now, it scampered away.
The boy smiled, and said, "Poor fool, why so fearful?  I am as forlorn as
thou.  'Twould be a sham in me to hurt the helpless, who am myself so
helpless.  Moreover, I owe you thanks for a good omen; for when a king
has fallen so low that the very rats do make a bed of him, it surely
meaneth that his fortunes be upon the turn, since it is plain he can no
lower go."

He got up and stepped out of the stall, and just then he heard the sound
of children's voices.  The barn door opened and a couple of little girls
came in.  As soon as they saw him their talking and laughing ceased, and
they stopped and stood still, gazing at him with strong curiosity; they
presently began to whisper together, then they approached nearer, and
stopped again to gaze and whisper.  By-and-by they gathered courage and
began to discuss him aloud.  One said--

"He hath a comely face."

The other added--

"And pretty hair."

"But is ill clothed enow."

"And how starved he looketh."

They came still nearer, sidling shyly around and about him, examining him
minutely from all points, as if he were some strange new kind of animal,
but warily and watchfully the while, as if they half feared he might be a
sort of animal that would bite, upon occasion.  Finally they halted
before him, holding each other's hands for protection, and took a good
satisfying stare with their innocent eyes; then one of them plucked up
all her courage and inquired with honest directness--

"Who art thou, boy?"

"I am the King," was the grave answer.

The children gave a little start, and their eyes spread themselves wide
open and remained so during a speechless half minute.  Then curiosity
broke the silence--

"The KING?  What King?"

"The King of England."

The children looked at each other--then at him--then at each other again
--wonderingly, perplexedly; then one said--

"Didst hear him, Margery?--he said he is the King.  Can that be true?"

"How can it be else but true, Prissy?  Would he say a lie?  For look you,
Prissy, an' it were not true, it WOULD be a lie.  It surely would be.
Now think on't.  For all things that be not true, be lies--thou canst
make nought else out of it."

It was a good tight argument, without a leak in it anywhere; and it left
Prissy's half-doubts not a leg to stand on.  She considered a moment,
then put the King upon his honour with the simple remark--

"If thou art truly the King, then I believe thee."

"I am truly the King."

This settled the matter.  His Majesty's royalty was accepted without
further question or discussion, and the two little girls began at once to
inquire into how he came to be where he was, and how he came to be so
unroyally clad, and whither he was bound, and all about his affairs.  It
was a mighty relief to him to pour out his troubles where they would not
be scoffed at or doubted; so he told his tale with feeling, forgetting
even his hunger for the time; and it was received with the deepest and
tenderest sympathy by the gentle little maids.  But when he got down to
his latest experiences and they learned how long he had been without
food, they cut him short and hurried him away to the farmhouse to find a
breakfast for him.

The King was cheerful and happy now, and said to himself, "When I am come
to mine own again, I will always honour little children, remembering how
that these trusted me and believed in me in my time of trouble; whilst
they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held
me for a liar."

The children's mother received the King kindly, and was full of pity; for
his forlorn condition and apparently crazed intellect touched her womanly
heart.  She was a widow, and rather poor; consequently she had seen
trouble enough to enable her to feel for the unfortunate.  She imagined
that the demented boy had wandered away from his friends or keepers; so
she tried to find out whence he had come, in order that she might take
measures to return him; but all her references to neighbouring towns and
villages, and all her inquiries in the same line went for nothing--the
boy's face, and his answers, too, showed that the things she was talking
of were not familiar to him.  He spoke earnestly and simply about court
matters, and broke down, more than once, when speaking of the late King
'his father'; but whenever the conversation changed to baser topics, he
lost interest and became silent.

The woman was mightily puzzled; but she did not give up.  As she
proceeded with her cooking, she set herself to contriving devices to
surprise the boy into betraying his real secret.  She talked about
cattle--he showed no concern; then about sheep--the same result:  so her
guess that he had been a shepherd boy was an error; she talked about
mills; and about weavers, tinkers, smiths, trades and tradesmen of all
sorts; and about Bedlam, and jails, and charitable retreats:  but no
matter, she was baffled at all points.  Not altogether, either; for she
argued that she had narrowed the thing down to domestic service.  Yes,
she was sure she was on the right track, now; he must have been a house
servant.  So she led up to that.  But the result was discouraging. The
subject of sweeping appeared to weary him; fire-building failed to stir
him; scrubbing and scouring awoke no enthusiasm. The goodwife touched,
with a perishing hope, and rather as a matter of form, upon the subject
of cooking.  To her surprise, and her vast delight, the King's face
lighted at once!  Ah, she had hunted him down at last, she thought; and
she was right proud, too, of the devious shrewdness and tact which had
accomplished it.

Her tired tongue got a chance to rest, now; for the King's, inspired by
gnawing hunger and the fragrant smells that came from the sputtering pots
and pans, turned itself loose and delivered itself up to such an eloquent
dissertation upon certain toothsome dishes, that within three minutes the
woman said to herself, "Of a truth I was right--he hath holpen in a
kitchen!"  Then he broadened his bill of fare, and discussed it with such
appreciation and animation, that the goodwife said to herself, "Good
lack! how can he know so many dishes, and so fine ones withal?  For these
belong only upon the tables of the rich and great.  Ah, now I see! ragged
outcast as he is, he must have served in the palace before his reason
went astray; yes, he must have helped in the very kitchen of the King
himself!  I will test him."

Full of eagerness to prove her sagacity, she told the King to mind the
cooking a moment--hinting that he might manufacture and add a dish or
two, if he chose; then she went out of the room and gave her children a
sign to follow after.  The King muttered--

"Another English king had a commission like to this, in a bygone time--it
is nothing against my dignity to undertake an office which the great
Alfred stooped to assume.  But I will try to better serve my trust than
he; for he let the cakes burn."

The intent was good, but the performance was not answerable to it, for
this King, like the other one, soon fell into deep thinkings concerning
his vast affairs, and the same calamity resulted--the cookery got burned.
The woman returned in time to save the breakfast from entire destruction;
and she promptly brought the King out of his dreams with a brisk and
cordial tongue-lashing. Then, seeing how troubled he was over his
violated trust, she softened at once, and was all goodness and gentleness
toward him.

The boy made a hearty and satisfying meal, and was greatly refreshed and
gladdened by it.  It was a meal which was distinguished by this curious
feature, that rank was waived on both sides; yet neither recipient of the
favour was aware that it had been extended.  The goodwife had intended to
feed this young tramp with broken victuals in a corner, like any other
tramp or like a dog; but she was so remorseful for the scolding she had
given him, that she did what she could to atone for it by allowing him to
sit at the family table and eat with his betters, on ostensible terms of
equality with them; and the King, on his side, was so remorseful for
having broken his trust, after the family had been so kind to him, that
he forced himself to atone for it by humbling himself to the family
level, instead of requiring the woman and her children to stand and wait
upon him, while he occupied their table in the solitary state due to his
birth and dignity.  It does us all good to unbend sometimes.  This good
woman was made happy all the day long by the applauses which she got out
of herself for her magnanimous condescension to a tramp; and the King was
just as self-complacent over his gracious humility toward a humble
peasant woman.

When breakfast was over, the housewife told the King to wash up the
dishes.  This command was a staggerer, for a moment, and the King came
near rebelling; but then he said to himself, "Alfred the Great watched
the cakes; doubtless he would have washed the dishes too--therefore will
I essay it."

He made a sufficiently poor job of it; and to his surprise too, for the
cleaning of wooden spoons and trenchers had seemed an easy thing to do.
It was a tedious and troublesome piece of work, but he finished it at
last.  He was becoming impatient to get away on his journey now; however,
he was not to lose this thrifty dame's society so easily.  She furnished
him some little odds and ends of employment, which he got through with
after a fair fashion and with some credit.  Then she set him and the
little girls to paring some winter apples; but he was so awkward at this
service that she retired him from it and gave him a butcher knife to
grind. Afterwards she kept him carding wool until he began to think he
had laid the good King Alfred about far enough in the shade for the
present in the matter of showy menial heroisms that would read
picturesquely in story-books and histories, and so he was half-minded to
resign.  And when, just after the noonday dinner, the goodwife gave him a
basket of kittens to drown, he did resign.  At least he was just going to
resign--for he felt that he must draw the line somewhere, and it seemed
to him that to draw it at kitten-drowning was about the right thing--when
there was an interruption.  The interruption was John Canty--with a
peddler's pack on his back--and Hugo.

The King discovered these rascals approaching the front gate before they
had had a chance to see him; so he said nothing about drawing the line,
but took up his basket of kittens and stepped quietly out the back way,
without a word.  He left the creatures in an out-house, and hurried on,
into a narrow lane at the rear.



Chapter XX. The Prince and the hermit.

The high hedge hid him from the house, now; and so, under the impulse of
a deadly fright, he let out all his forces and sped toward a wood in the
distance.  He never looked back until he had almost gained the shelter of
the forest; then he turned and descried two figures in the distance.
That was sufficient; he did not wait to scan them critically, but hurried
on, and never abated his pace till he was far within the twilight depths
of the wood. Then he stopped; being persuaded that he was now tolerably
safe. He listened intently, but the stillness was profound and solemn
--awful, even, and depressing to the spirits.  At wide intervals his
straining ear did detect sounds, but they were so remote, and hollow, and
mysterious, that they seemed not to be real sounds, but only the moaning
and complaining ghosts of departed ones.  So the sounds were yet more
dreary than the silence which they interrupted.

It was his purpose, in the beginning, to stay where he was the rest of
the day; but a chill soon invaded his perspiring body, and he was at last
obliged to resume movement in order to get warm. He struck straight
through the forest, hoping to pierce to a road presently, but he was
disappointed in this.  He travelled on and on; but the farther he went,
the denser the wood became, apparently.  The gloom began to thicken,
by-and-by, and the King realised that the night was coming on.  It made
him shudder to think of spending it in such an uncanny place; so he tried
to hurry faster, but he only made the less speed, for he could not now
see well enough to choose his steps judiciously; consequently he kept
tripping over roots and tangling himself in vines and briers.

And how glad he was when at last he caught the glimmer of a light! He
approached it warily, stopping often to look about him and listen.  It
came from an unglazed window-opening in a shabby little hut.  He heard a
voice, now, and felt a disposition to run and hide; but he changed his
mind at once, for this voice was praying, evidently.  He glided to the
one window of the hut, raised himself on tiptoe, and stole a glance
within.  The room was small; its floor was the natural earth, beaten hard
by use; in a corner was a bed of rushes and a ragged blanket or two; near
it was a pail, a cup, a basin, and two or three pots and pans; there was
a short bench and a three-legged stool; on the hearth the remains of a
faggot fire were smouldering; before a shrine, which was lighted by a
single candle, knelt an aged man, and on an old wooden box at his side
lay an open book and a human skull.  The man was of large, bony frame;
his hair and whiskers were very long and snowy white; he was clothed in a
robe of sheepskins which reached from his neck to his heels.

"A holy hermit!" said the King to himself; "now am I indeed fortunate."

The hermit rose from his knees; the King knocked.  A deep voice
responded--

"Enter!--but leave sin behind, for the ground whereon thou shalt stand is
holy!"

The King entered, and paused.  The hermit turned a pair of gleaming,
unrestful eyes upon him, and said--

"Who art thou?"

"I am the King," came the answer, with placid simplicity.

"Welcome, King!" cried the hermit, with enthusiasm.  Then, bustling about
with feverish activity, and constantly saying, "Welcome, welcome," he
arranged his bench, seated the King on it, by the hearth, threw some
faggots on the fire, and finally fell to pacing the floor with a nervous
stride.

"Welcome!  Many have sought sanctuary here, but they were not worthy, and
were turned away.  But a King who casts his crown away, and despises the
vain splendours of his office, and clothes his body in rags, to devote
his life to holiness and the mortification of the flesh--he is worthy, he
is welcome!--here shall he abide all his days till death come."  The King
hastened to interrupt and explain, but the hermit paid no attention to
him--did not even hear him, apparently, but went right on with his talk,
with a raised voice and a growing energy.  "And thou shalt be at peace
here.  None shall find out thy refuge to disquiet thee with supplications
to return to that empty and foolish life which God hath moved thee to
abandon.  Thou shalt pray here; thou shalt study the Book; thou shalt
meditate upon the follies and delusions of this world, and upon the
sublimities of the world to come; thou shalt feed upon crusts and herbs,
and scourge thy body with whips, daily, to the purifying of thy soul.
Thou shalt wear a hair shirt next thy skin; thou shalt drink water only;
and thou shalt be at peace; yes, wholly at peace; for whoso comes to seek
thee shall go his way again, baffled; he shall not find thee, he shall
not molest thee."

The old man, still pacing back and forth, ceased to speak aloud, and
began to mutter.  The King seized this opportunity to state his case; and
he did it with an eloquence inspired by uneasiness and apprehension.  But
the hermit went on muttering, and gave no heed.  And still muttering, he
approached the King and said impressively--

"'Sh!  I will tell you a secret!"  He bent down to impart it, but checked
himself, and assumed a listening attitude.  After a moment or two he went
on tiptoe to the window-opening, put his head out, and peered around in
the gloaming, then came tiptoeing back again, put his face close down to
the King's, and whispered--

"I am an archangel!"

The King started violently, and said to himself, "Would God I were with
the outlaws again; for lo, now am I the prisoner of a madman!"  His
apprehensions were heightened, and they showed plainly in his face.  In a
low excited voice the hermit continued--

"I see you feel my atmosphere!  There's awe in your face!  None may be in
this atmosphere and not be thus affected; for it is the very atmosphere
of heaven.  I go thither and return, in the twinkling of an eye.  I was
made an archangel on this very spot, it is five years ago, by angels sent
from heaven to confer that awful dignity.  Their presence filled this
place with an intolerable brightness.  And they knelt to me, King! yes,
they knelt to me! for I was greater than they.  I have walked in the
courts of heaven, and held speech with the patriarchs.  Touch my hand--be
not afraid--touch it.  There--now thou hast touched a hand which has been
clasped by Abraham and Isaac and Jacob!  For I have walked in the golden
courts; I have seen the Deity face to face!"  He paused, to give this
speech effect; then his face suddenly changed, and he started to his feet
again saying, with angry energy, "Yes, I am an archangel; A MERE
ARCHANGEL!--I that might have been pope!  It is verily true.  I was told
it from heaven in a dream, twenty years ago; ah, yes, I was to be pope!
--and I SHOULD have been pope, for Heaven had said it--but the King
dissolved my religious house, and I, poor obscure unfriended monk, was
cast homeless upon the world, robbed of my mighty destiny!" Here he began
to mumble again, and beat his forehead in futile rage, with his fist; now
and then articulating a venomous curse, and now and then a pathetic
"Wherefore I am nought but an archangel--I that should have been pope!"

So he went on, for an hour, whilst the poor little King sat and suffered.
Then all at once the old man's frenzy departed, and he became all
gentleness.  His voice softened, he came down out of his clouds, and fell
to prattling along so simply and so humanly, that he soon won the King's
heart completely.  The old devotee moved the boy nearer to the fire and
made him comfortable; doctored his small bruises and abrasions with a
deft and tender hand; and then set about preparing and cooking a supper
--chatting pleasantly all the time, and occasionally stroking the lad's
cheek or patting his head, in such a gently caressing way that in a
little while all the fear and repulsion inspired by the archangel were
changed to reverence and affection for the man.

This happy state of things continued while the two ate the supper; then,
after a prayer before the shrine, the hermit put the boy to bed, in a
small adjoining room, tucking him in as snugly and lovingly as a mother
might; and so, with a parting caress, left him and sat down by the fire,
and began to poke the brands about in an absent and aimless way.
Presently he paused; then tapped his forehead several times with his
fingers, as if trying to recall some thought which had escaped from his
mind.  Apparently he was unsuccessful.  Now he started quickly up, and
entered his guest's room, and said--

"Thou art King?"

"Yes," was the response, drowsily uttered.

"What King?"

"Of England."

"Of England?  Then Henry is gone!"

"Alack, it is so.  I am his son."

A black frown settled down upon the hermit's face, and he clenched his
bony hands with a vindictive energy.  He stood a few moments, breathing
fast and swallowing repeatedly, then said in a husky voice--

"Dost know it was he that turned us out into the world houseless and
homeless?"

There was no response.  The old man bent down and scanned the boy's
reposeful face and listened to his placid breathing.  "He sleeps--sleeps
soundly;" and the frown vanished away and gave place to an expression of
evil satisfaction.  A smile flitted across the dreaming boy's features.
The hermit muttered, "So--his heart is happy;" and he turned away.  He
went stealthily about the place, seeking here and there for something;
now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around and
casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always
mumbling to himself.  At last he found what he seemed to want--a rusty
old butcher knife and a whetstone.  Then he crept to his place by the
fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone,
still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating.  The winds sighed around the
lonely place, the mysterious voices of the night floated by out of the
distances.  The shining eyes of venturesome mice and rats peered out at
the old man from cracks and coverts, but he went on with his work, rapt,
absorbed, and noted none of these things.

At long intervals he drew his thumb along the edge of his knife, and
nodded his head with satisfaction.  "It grows sharper," he said; "yes, it
grows sharper."

He took no note of the flight of time, but worked tranquilly on,
entertaining himself with his thoughts, which broke out occasionally in
articulate speech--

"His father wrought us evil, he destroyed us--and is gone down into the
eternal fires!  Yes, down into the eternal fires!  He escaped us--but it
was God's will, yes it was God's will, we must not repine.  But he hath
not escaped the fires!  No, he hath not escaped the fires, the consuming,
unpitying, remorseless fires--and THEY are everlasting!"

And so he wrought, and still wrought--mumbling, chuckling a low rasping
chuckle at times--and at times breaking again into words--

"It was his father that did it all.  I am but an archangel; but for him I
should be pope!"

The King stirred.  The hermit sprang noiselessly to the bedside, and went
down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife
uplifted.  The boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but
there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his
tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more.

The hermit watched and listened, for a time, keeping his position and
scarcely breathing; then he slowly lowered his arms, and presently crept
away, saying,--

"It is long past midnight; it is not best that he should cry out, lest by
accident someone be passing."

He glided about his hovel, gathering a rag here, a thong there, and
another one yonder; then he returned, and by careful and gentle handling
he managed to tie the King's ankles together without waking him.  Next he
essayed to tie the wrists; he made several attempts to cross them, but
the boy always drew one hand or the other away, just as the cord was
ready to be applied; but at last, when the archangel was almost ready to
despair, the boy crossed his hands himself, and the next moment they were
bound. Now a bandage was passed under the sleeper's chin and brought up
over his head and tied fast--and so softly, so gradually, and so deftly
were the knots drawn together and compacted, that the boy slept
peacefully through it all without stirring.



Chapter XXI. Hendon to the rescue.

The old man glided away, stooping, stealthy, cat-like, and brought the
low bench.  He seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and
flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving
eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there,
heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled
and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as
a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay
bound and helpless in his web.

After a long while, the old man, who was still gazing,--yet not seeing,
his mind having settled into a dreamy abstraction,--observed, on a
sudden, that the boy's eyes were open! wide open and staring!--staring up
in frozen horror at the knife.  The smile of a gratified devil crept over
the old man's face, and he said, without changing his attitude or his
occupation--

"Son of Henry the Eighth, hast thou prayed?"

The boy struggled helplessly in his bonds, and at the same time forced a
smothered sound through his closed jaws, which the hermit chose to
interpret as an affirmative answer to his question.

"Then pray again.  Pray the prayer for the dying!"

A shudder shook the boy's frame, and his face blenched.  Then he
struggled again to free himself--turning and twisting himself this way
and that; tugging frantically, fiercely, desperately--but uselessly--to
burst his fetters; and all the while the old ogre smiled down upon him,
and nodded his head, and placidly whetted his knife; mumbling, from time
to time, "The moments are precious, they are few and precious--pray the
prayer for the dying!"

The boy uttered a despairing groan, and ceased from his struggles,
panting.  The tears came, then, and trickled, one after the other, down
his face; but this piteous sight wrought no softening effect upon the
savage old man.

The dawn was coming now; the hermit observed it, and spoke up sharply,
with a touch of nervous apprehension in his voice--

"I may not indulge this ecstasy longer!  The night is already gone.  It
seems but a moment--only a moment; would it had endured a year!  Seed of
the Church's spoiler, close thy perishing eyes, an' thou fearest to look
upon--"

The rest was lost in inarticulate mutterings.  The old man sank upon his
knees, his knife in his hand, and bent himself over the moaning boy.

Hark!  There was a sound of voices near the cabin--the knife dropped from
the hermit's hand; he cast a sheepskin over the boy and started up,
trembling.  The sounds increased, and presently the voices became rough
and angry; then came blows, and cries for help; then a clatter of swift
footsteps, retreating.  Immediately came a succession of thundering
knocks upon the cabin door, followed by--

"Hullo-o-o!  Open!  And despatch, in the name of all the devils!"

Oh, this was the blessedest sound that had ever made music in the King's
ears; for it was Miles Hendon's voice!

The hermit, grinding his teeth in impotent rage, moved swiftly out of the
bedchamber, closing the door behind him; and straightway the King heard a
talk, to this effect, proceeding from the 'chapel':--

"Homage and greeting, reverend sir!  Where is the boy--MY boy?"

"What boy, friend?"

"What boy!  Lie me no lies, sir priest, play me no deceptions!--I am not
in the humour for it.  Near to this place I caught the scoundrels who I
judged did steal him from me, and I made them confess; they said he was
at large again, and they had tracked him to your door.  They showed me
his very footprints.  Now palter no more; for look you, holy sir, an'
thou produce him not--Where is the boy?"

"O good sir, peradventure you mean the ragged regal vagrant that tarried
here the night.  If such as you take an interest in such as he, know,
then, that I have sent him of an errand.  He will be back anon."

"How soon?  How soon?  Come, waste not the time--cannot I overtake him?
How soon will he be back?"

"Thou need'st not stir; he will return quickly."

"So be it, then.  I will try to wait.  But stop!--YOU sent him of an
errand?--you!  Verily this is a lie--he would not go.  He would pull thy
old beard, an' thou didst offer him such an insolence. Thou hast lied,
friend; thou hast surely lied!  He would not go for thee, nor for any
man."

"For any MAN--no; haply not.  But I am not a man."

"WHAT!  Now o' God's name what art thou, then?"

"It is a secret--mark thou reveal it not.  I am an archangel!"

There was a tremendous ejaculation from Miles Hendon--not altogether
unprofane--followed by--

"This doth well and truly account for his complaisance!  Right well I
knew he would budge nor hand nor foot in the menial service of any
mortal; but, lord, even a king must obey when an archangel gives the word
o' command!  Let me--'sh!  What noise was that?"

All this while the little King had been yonder, alternately quaking with
terror and trembling with hope; and all the while, too, he had thrown all
the strength he could into his anguished moanings, constantly expecting
them to reach Hendon's ear, but always realising, with bitterness, that
they failed, or at least made no impression.  So this last remark of his
servant came as comes a reviving breath from fresh fields to the dying;
and he exerted himself once more, and with all his energy, just as the
hermit was saying--

"Noise?  I heard only the wind."

"Mayhap it was.  Yes, doubtless that was it.  I have been hearing it
faintly all the--there it is again!  It is not the wind!  What an odd
sound!  Come, we will hunt it out!"

Now the King's joy was nearly insupportable.  His tired lungs did their
utmost--and hopefully, too--but the sealed jaws and the muffling
sheepskin sadly crippled the effort.  Then the poor fellow's heart sank,
to hear the hermit say--

"Ah, it came from without--I think from the copse yonder.  Come, I will
lead the way."

The King heard the two pass out, talking; heard their footsteps die
quickly away--then he was alone with a boding, brooding, awful silence.

It seemed an age till he heard the steps and voices approaching again
--and this time he heard an added sound,--the trampling of hoofs,
apparently.  Then he heard Hendon say--

"I will not wait longer.  I CANNOT wait longer.  He has lost his way in
this thick wood.  Which direction took he?  Quick--point it out to me."

"He--but wait; I will go with thee."

"Good--good!  Why, truly thou art better than thy looks.  Marry I do not
think there's not another archangel with so right a heart as thine.  Wilt
ride?  Wilt take the wee donkey that's for my boy, or wilt thou fork thy
holy legs over this ill-conditioned slave of a mule that I have provided
for myself?--and had been cheated in too, had he cost but the indifferent
sum of a month's usury on a brass farthing let to a tinker out of work."

"No--ride thy mule, and lead thine ass; I am surer on mine own feet, and
will walk."

"Then prithee mind the little beast for me while I take my life in my
hands and make what success I may toward mounting the big one."

Then followed a confusion of kicks, cuffs, tramplings and plungings,
accompanied by a thunderous intermingling of volleyed curses, and finally
a bitter apostrophe to the mule, which must have broken its spirit, for
hostilities seemed to cease from that moment.

With unutterable misery the fettered little King heard the voices and
footsteps fade away and die out.  All hope forsook him, now, for the
moment, and a dull despair settled down upon his heart. "My only friend
is deceived and got rid of," he said; "the hermit will return and--"  He
finished with a gasp; and at once fell to struggling so frantically with
his bonds again, that he shook off the smothering sheepskin.

And now he heard the door open!  The sound chilled him to the marrow
--already he seemed to feel the knife at his throat.  Horror made him close
his eyes; horror made him open them again--and before him stood John
Canty and Hugo!

He would have said "Thank God!" if his jaws had been free.

A moment or two later his limbs were at liberty, and his captors, each
gripping him by an arm, were hurrying him with all speed through the
forest.



Chapter XXII. A victim of treachery.

Once more 'King Foo-foo the First' was roving with the tramps and
outlaws, a butt for their coarse jests and dull-witted railleries, and
sometimes the victim of small spitefulness at the hands of Canty and Hugo
when the Ruffler's back was turned.  None but Canty and Hugo really
disliked him.  Some of the others liked him, and all admired his pluck
and spirit.  During two or three days, Hugo, in whose ward and charge the
King was, did what he covertly could to make the boy uncomfortable; and
at night, during the customary orgies, he amused the company by putting
small indignities upon him--always as if by accident.  Twice he stepped
upon the King's toes--accidentally--and the King, as became his royalty,
was contemptuously unconscious of it and indifferent to it; but the third
time Hugo entertained himself in that way, the King felled him to the
ground with a cudgel, to the prodigious delight of the tribe.  Hugo,
consumed with anger and shame, sprang up, seized a cudgel, and came at
his small adversary in a fury.  Instantly a ring was formed around the
gladiators, and the betting and cheering began.  But poor Hugo stood no
chance whatever.  His frantic and lubberly 'prentice-work found but a
poor market for itself when pitted against an arm which had been trained
by the first masters of Europe in single-stick, quarter-staff, and every
art and trick of swordsmanship.  The little King stood, alert but at
graceful ease, and caught and turned aside the thick rain of blows with a
facility and precision which set the motley on-lookers wild with
admiration; and every now and then, when his practised eye detected an
opening, and a lightning-swift rap upon Hugo's head followed as a result,
the storm of cheers and laughter that swept the place was something
wonderful to hear.  At the end of fifteen minutes, Hugo, all battered,
bruised, and the target for a pitiless bombardment of ridicule, slunk
from the field; and the unscathed hero of the fight was seized and borne
aloft upon the shoulders of the joyous rabble to the place of honour
beside the Ruffler, where with vast ceremony he was crowned King of the
Game-Cocks; his meaner title being at the same time solemnly cancelled
and annulled, and a decree of banishment from the gang pronounced against
any who should thenceforth utter it.

All attempts to make the King serviceable to the troop had failed. He had
stubbornly refused to act; moreover, he was always trying to escape.  He
had been thrust into an unwatched kitchen, the first day of his return;
he not only came forth empty-handed, but tried to rouse the housemates.
He was sent out with a tinker to help him at his work; he would not work;
moreover, he threatened the tinker with his own soldering-iron; and
finally both Hugo and the tinker found their hands full with the mere
matter of keeping his from getting away.  He delivered the thunders of
his royalty upon the heads of all who hampered his liberties or tried to
force him to service.  He was sent out, in Hugo's charge, in company with
a slatternly woman and a diseased baby, to beg; but the result was not
encouraging--he declined to plead for the mendicants, or be a party to
their cause in any way.

Thus several days went by; and the miseries of this tramping life, and
the weariness and sordidness and meanness and vulgarity of it, became
gradually and steadily so intolerable to the captive that he began at
last to feel that his release from the hermit's knife must prove only a
temporary respite from death, at best.

But at night, in his dreams, these things were forgotten, and he was on
his throne, and master again.  This, of course, intensified the
sufferings of the awakening--so the mortifications of each succeeding
morning of the few that passed between his return to bondage and the
combat with Hugo, grew bitterer and bitterer, and harder and harder to
bear.

The morning after that combat, Hugo got up with a heart filled with
vengeful purposes against the King.  He had two plans, in particular.
One was to inflict upon the lad what would be, to his proud spirit and
'imagined' royalty, a peculiar humiliation; and if he failed to
accomplish this, his other plan was to put a crime of some kind upon the
King, and then betray him into the implacable clutches of the law.

In pursuance of the first plan, he purposed to put a 'clime' upon the
King's leg; rightly judging that that would mortify him to the last and
perfect degree; and as soon as the clime should operate, he meant to get
Canty's help, and FORCE the King to expose his leg in the highway and beg
for alms.  'Clime' was the cant term for a sore, artificially created.
To make a clime, the operator made a paste or poultice of unslaked lime,
soap, and the rust of old iron, and spread it upon a piece of leather,
which was then bound tightly upon the leg.  This would presently fret off
the skin, and make the flesh raw and angry-looking; blood was then rubbed
upon the limb, which, being fully dried, took on a dark and repulsive
colour.  Then a bandage of soiled rags was put on in a cleverly careless
way which would allow the hideous ulcer to be seen, and move the
compassion of the passer-by. {8}

Hugo got the help of the tinker whom the King had cowed with the
soldering-iron; they took the boy out on a tinkering tramp, and as soon
as they were out of sight of the camp they threw him down and the tinker
held him while Hugo bound the poultice tight and fast upon his leg.

The King raged and stormed, and promised to hang the two the moment the
sceptre was in his hand again; but they kept a firm grip upon him and
enjoyed his impotent struggling and jeered at his threats.  This
continued until the poultice began to bite; and in no long time its work
would have been perfected, if there had been no interruption.  But there
was; for about this time the 'slave' who had made the speech denouncing
England's laws, appeared on the scene, and put an end to the enterprise,
and stripped off the poultice and bandage.

The King wanted to borrow his deliverer's cudgel and warm the jackets of
the two rascals on the spot; but the man said no, it would bring trouble
--leave the matter till night; the whole tribe being together, then, the
outside world would not venture to interfere or interrupt.  He marched
the party back to camp and reported the affair to the Ruffler, who
listened, pondered, and then decided that the King should not be again
detailed to beg, since it was plain he was worthy of something higher and
better--wherefore, on the spot he promoted him from the mendicant rank
and appointed him to steal!

Hugo was overjoyed.  He had already tried to make the King steal, and
failed; but there would be no more trouble of that sort, now, for of
course the King would not dream of defying a distinct command delivered
directly from head-quarters.  So he planned a raid for that very
afternoon, purposing to get the King in the law's grip in the course of
it; and to do it, too, with such ingenious strategy, that it should seem
to be accidental and unintentional; for the King of the Game-Cocks was
popular now, and the gang might not deal over-gently with an unpopular
member who played so serious a treachery upon him as the delivering him
over to the common enemy, the law.

Very well.  All in good time Hugo strolled off to a neighbouring village
with his prey; and the two drifted slowly up and down one street after
another, the one watching sharply for a sure chance to achieve his evil
purpose, and the other watching as sharply for a chance to dart away and
get free of his infamous captivity for ever.

Both threw away some tolerably fair-looking opportunities; for both, in
their secret hearts, were resolved to make absolutely sure work this
time, and neither meant to allow his fevered desires to seduce him into
any venture that had much uncertainty about it.

Hugo's chance came first.  For at last a woman approached who carried a
fat package of some sort in a basket.  Hugo's eyes sparkled with sinful
pleasure as he said to himself, "Breath o' my life, an' I can but put
THAT upon him, 'tis good-den and God keep thee, King of the Game-Cocks!"
He waited and watched--outwardly patient, but inwardly consuming with
excitement--till the woman had passed by, and the time was ripe; then
said, in a low voice--

"Tarry here till I come again," and darted stealthily after the prey.

The King's heart was filled with joy--he could make his escape, now, if
Hugo's quest only carried him far enough away.

But he was to have no such luck.  Hugo crept behind the woman, snatched
the package, and came running back, wrapping it in an old piece of
blanket which he carried on his arm.  The hue and cry was raised in a
moment, by the woman, who knew her loss by the lightening of her burden,
although she had not seen the pilfering done.  Hugo thrust the bundle
into the King's hands without halting, saying--

"Now speed ye after me with the rest, and cry 'Stop thief!' but mind ye
lead them astray!"

The next moment Hugo turned a corner and darted down a crooked alley--and
in another moment or two he lounged into view again, looking innocent and
indifferent, and took up a position behind a post to watch results.

The insulted King threw the bundle on the ground; and the blanket fell
away from it just as the woman arrived, with an augmenting crowd at her
heels; she seized the King's wrist with one hand, snatched up her bundle
with the other, and began to pour out a tirade of abuse upon the boy
while he struggled, without success, to free himself from her grip.

Hugo had seen enough--his enemy was captured and the law would get him,
now--so he slipped away, jubilant and chuckling, and wended campwards,
framing a judicious version of the matter to give to the Ruffler's crew
as he strode along.

The King continued to struggle in the woman's strong grasp, and now and
then cried out in vexation--

"Unhand me, thou foolish creature; it was not I that bereaved thee of thy
paltry goods."

The crowd closed around, threatening the King and calling him names; a
brawny blacksmith in leather apron, and sleeves rolled to his elbows,
made a reach for him, saying he would trounce him well, for a lesson; but
just then a long sword flashed in the air and fell with convincing force
upon the man's arm, flat side down, the fantastic owner of it remarking
pleasantly, at the same time--

"Marry, good souls, let us proceed gently, not with ill blood and
uncharitable words.  This is matter for the law's consideration, not
private and unofficial handling.  Loose thy hold from the boy, goodwife."

The blacksmith averaged the stalwart soldier with a glance, then went
muttering away, rubbing his arm; the woman released the boy's wrist
reluctantly; the crowd eyed the stranger unlovingly, but prudently closed
their mouths.  The King sprang to his deliverer's side, with flushed
cheeks and sparkling eyes, exclaiming--

"Thou hast lagged sorely, but thou comest in good season, now, Sir Miles;
carve me this rabble to rags!"



Chapter XXIII. The Prince a prisoner.

Hendon forced back a smile, and bent down and whispered in the King's
ear--

"Softly, softly, my prince, wag thy tongue warily--nay, suffer it not to
wag at all.  Trust in me--all shall go well in the end." Then he added to
himself:  "SIR Miles!  Bless me, I had totally forgot I was a knight!
Lord, how marvellous a thing it is, the grip his memory doth take upon
his quaint and crazy fancies! . . . An empty and foolish title is mine,
and yet it is something to have deserved it; for I think it is more
honour to be held worthy to be a spectre-knight in his Kingdom of Dreams
and Shadows, than to be held base enough to be an earl in some of the
REAL kingdoms of this world."

The crowd fell apart to admit a constable, who approached and was about
to lay his hand upon the King's shoulder, when Hendon said--

"Gently, good friend, withhold your hand--he shall go peaceably; I am
responsible for that.  Lead on, we will follow."

The officer led, with the woman and her bundle; Miles and the King
followed after, with the crowd at their heels.  The King was inclined to
rebel; but Hendon said to him in a low voice--

"Reflect, Sire--your laws are the wholesome breath of your own royalty;
shall their source resist them, yet require the branches to respect them?
Apparently one of these laws has been broken; when the King is on his
throne again, can it ever grieve him to remember that when he was
seemingly a private person he loyally sank the king in the citizen and
submitted to its authority?"

"Thou art right; say no more; thou shalt see that whatsoever the King of
England requires a subject to suffer, under the law, he will himself
suffer while he holdeth the station of a subject."

When the woman was called upon to testify before the justice of the
peace, she swore that the small prisoner at the bar was the person who
had committed the theft; there was none able to show the contrary, so the
King stood convicted.  The bundle was now unrolled, and when the contents
proved to be a plump little dressed pig, the judge looked troubled,
whilst Hendon turned pale, and his body was thrilled with an electric
shiver of dismay; but the King remained unmoved, protected by his
ignorance.  The judge meditated, during an ominous pause, then turned to
the woman, with the question--

"What dost thou hold this property to be worth?"

The woman courtesied and replied--

"Three shillings and eightpence, your worship--I could not abate a penny
and set forth the value honestly."

The justice glanced around uncomfortably upon the crowd, then nodded to
the constable, and said--

"Clear the court and close the doors."

It was done.  None remained but the two officials, the accused, the
accuser, and Miles Hendon.  This latter was rigid and colourless, and on
his forehead big drops of cold sweat gathered, broke and blended
together, and trickled down his face.  The judge turned to the woman
again, and said, in a compassionate voice--

"'Tis a poor ignorant lad, and mayhap was driven hard by hunger, for
these be grievous times for the unfortunate; mark you, he hath not an
evil face--but when hunger driveth--Good woman! dost know that when one
steals a thing above the value of thirteenpence ha'penny the law saith he
shall HANG for it?"

The little King started, wide-eyed with consternation, but controlled
himself and held his peace; but not so the woman.  She sprang to her
feet, shaking with fright, and cried out--

"Oh, good lack, what have I done!  God-a-mercy, I would not hang the poor
thing for the whole world!  Ah, save me from this, your worship--what
shall I do, what CAN I do?"

The justice maintained his judicial composure, and simply said--

"Doubtless it is allowable to revise the value, since it is not yet writ
upon the record."

"Then in God's name call the pig eightpence, and heaven bless the day
that freed my conscience of this awesome thing!"

Miles Hendon forgot all decorum in his delight; and surprised the King
and wounded his dignity, by throwing his arms around him and hugging him.
The woman made her grateful adieux and started away with her pig; and
when the constable opened the door for her, he followed her out into the
narrow hall.  The justice proceeded to write in his record book.  Hendon,
always alert, thought he would like to know why the officer followed the
woman out; so he slipped softly into the dusky hall and listened.  He
heard a conversation to this effect--

"It is a fat pig, and promises good eating; I will buy it of thee; here
is the eightpence."

"Eightpence, indeed!  Thou'lt do no such thing.  It cost me three
shillings and eightpence, good honest coin of the last reign, that old
Harry that's just dead ne'er touched or tampered with.  A fig for thy
eightpence!"

"Stands the wind in that quarter?  Thou wast under oath, and so swore
falsely when thou saidst the value was but eightpence.  Come straightway
back with me before his worship, and answer for the crime!--and then the
lad will hang."

"There, there, dear heart, say no more, I am content.  Give me the
eightpence, and hold thy peace about the matter."

The woman went off crying:  Hendon slipped back into the court room, and
the constable presently followed, after hiding his prize in some
convenient place.  The justice wrote a while longer, then read the King a
wise and kindly lecture, and sentenced him to a short imprisonment in the
common jail, to be followed by a public flogging.  The astounded King
opened his mouth, and was probably going to order the good judge to be
beheaded on the spot; but he caught a warning sign from Hendon, and
succeeded in closing his mouth again before he lost anything out of it.
Hendon took him by the hand, now, made reverence to the justice, and the
two departed in the wake of the constable toward the jail.  The moment
the street was reached, the inflamed monarch halted, snatched away his
hand, and exclaimed--

"Idiot, dost imagine I will enter a common jail ALIVE?"

Hendon bent down and said, somewhat sharply--

"WILL you trust in me?  Peace! and forbear to worsen our chances with
dangerous speech.  What God wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it,
thou canst not alter it; therefore wait, and be patient--'twill be time
enow to rail or rejoice when what is to happen has happened." {1}



Chapter XXIV. The escape.

The short winter day was nearly ended.  The streets were deserted, save
for a few random stragglers, and these hurried straight along, with the
intent look of people who were only anxious to accomplish their errands
as quickly as possible, and then snugly house themselves from the rising
wind and the gathering twilight. They looked neither to the right nor to
the left; they paid no attention to our party, they did not even seem to
see them. Edward the Sixth wondered if the spectacle of a king on his way
to jail had ever encountered such marvellous indifference before.
By-and-by the constable arrived at a deserted market-square, and
proceeded to cross it.  When he had reached the middle of it, Hendon
laid his hand upon his arm, and said in a low voice--

"Bide a moment, good sir, there is none in hearing, and I would say a
word to thee."

"My duty forbids it, sir; prithee hinder me not, the night comes on."

"Stay, nevertheless, for the matter concerns thee nearly.  Turn thy back
a moment and seem not to see:  LET THIS POOR LAD ESCAPE."

"This to me, sir!  I arrest thee in--"

"Nay, be not too hasty.  See thou be careful and commit no foolish
error"--then he shut his voice down to a whisper, and said in the man's
ear--"the pig thou hast purchased for eightpence may cost thee thy neck,
man!"

The poor constable, taken by surprise, was speechless, at first, then
found his tongue and fell to blustering and threatening; but Hendon was
tranquil, and waited with patience till his breath was spent; then said--

"I have a liking to thee, friend, and would not willingly see thee come
to harm.  Observe, I heard it all--every word.  I will prove it to thee."
Then he repeated the conversation which the officer and the woman had had
together in the hall, word for word, and ended with--

"There--have I set it forth correctly?  Should not I be able to set it
forth correctly before the judge, if occasion required?"

The man was dumb with fear and distress, for a moment; then he rallied,
and said with forced lightness--

"'Tis making a mighty matter, indeed, out of a jest; I but plagued the
woman for mine amusement."

"Kept you the woman's pig for amusement?"

The man answered sharply--

"Nought else, good sir--I tell thee 'twas but a jest."

"I do begin to believe thee," said Hendon, with a perplexing mixture of
mockery and half-conviction in his tone; "but tarry thou here a moment
whilst I run and ask his worship--for nathless, he being a man
experienced in law, in jests, in--"

He was moving away, still talking; the constable hesitated, fidgeted,
spat out an oath or two, then cried out--

"Hold, hold, good sir--prithee wait a little--the judge!  Why, man, he
hath no more sympathy with a jest than hath a dead corpse!--come, and we
will speak further.  Ods body!  I seem to be in evil case--and all for an
innocent and thoughtless pleasantry. I am a man of family; and my wife
and little ones--List to reason, good your worship: what wouldst thou
of me?"

"Only that thou be blind and dumb and paralytic whilst one may count a
hundred thousand--counting slowly," said Hendon, with the expression of a
man who asks but a reasonable favour, and that a very little one.

"It is my destruction!" said the constable despairingly.  "Ah, be
reasonable, good sir; only look at this matter, on all its sides, and see
how mere a jest it is--how manifestly and how plainly it is so.  And even
if one granted it were not a jest, it is a fault so small that e'en the
grimmest penalty it could call forth would be but a rebuke and warning
from the judge's lips."

Hendon replied with a solemnity which chilled the air about him--

"This jest of thine hath a name, in law,--wot you what it is?"

"I knew it not!  Peradventure I have been unwise.  I never dreamed it had
a name--ah, sweet heaven, I thought it was original."

"Yes, it hath a name.  In the law this crime is called Non compos mentis
lex talionis sic transit gloria mundi."

"Ah, my God!"

"And the penalty is death!"

"God be merciful to me a sinner!"

"By advantage taken of one in fault, in dire peril, and at thy mercy,
thou hast seized goods worth above thirteenpence ha'penny, paying but a
trifle for the same; and this, in the eye of the law, is constructive
barratry, misprision of treason, malfeasance in office, ad hominem
expurgatis in statu quo--and the penalty is death by the halter, without
ransom, commutation, or benefit of clergy."

"Bear me up, bear me up, sweet sir, my legs do fail me!  Be thou
merciful--spare me this doom, and I will turn my back and see nought that
shall happen."

"Good! now thou'rt wise and reasonable.  And thou'lt restore the pig?"

"I will, I will indeed--nor ever touch another, though heaven send it and
an archangel fetch it.  Go--I am blind for thy sake--I see nothing.  I
will say thou didst break in and wrest the prisoner from my hands by
force.  It is but a crazy, ancient door--I will batter it down myself
betwixt midnight and the morning."

"Do it, good soul, no harm will come of it; the judge hath a loving
charity for this poor lad, and will shed no tears and break no jailer's
bones for his escape."



Chapter XXV. Hendon Hall.

As soon as Hendon and the King were out of sight of the constable, his
Majesty was instructed to hurry to a certain place outside the town, and
wait there, whilst Hendon should go to the inn and settle his account.
Half an hour later the two friends were blithely jogging eastward on
Hendon's sorry steeds.  The King was warm and comfortable, now, for he
had cast his rags and clothed himself in the second-hand suit which
Hendon had bought on London Bridge.

Hendon wished to guard against over-fatiguing the boy; he judged that
hard journeys, irregular meals, and illiberal measures of sleep would be
bad for his crazed mind; whilst rest, regularity, and moderate exercise
would be pretty sure to hasten its cure; he longed to see the stricken
intellect made well again and its diseased visions driven out of the
tormented little head; therefore he resolved to move by easy stages
toward the home whence he had so long been banished, instead of obeying
the impulse of his impatience and hurrying along night and day.

When he and the King had journeyed about ten miles, they reached a
considerable village, and halted there for the night, at a good inn.
The former relations were resumed; Hendon stood behind the King's chair,
while he dined, and waited upon him; undressed him when he was ready for
bed; then took the floor for his own quarters, and slept athwart the
door, rolled up in a blanket.

The next day, and the day after, they jogged lazily along talking over
the adventures they had met since their separation, and mightily enjoying
each other's narratives.  Hendon detailed all his wide wanderings in
search of the King, and described how the archangel had led him a fool's
journey all over the forest, and taken him back to the hut, finally, when
he found he could not get rid of him.  Then--he said--the old man went
into the bedchamber and came staggering back looking broken-hearted, and
saying he had expected to find that the boy had returned and laid down in
there to rest, but it was not so.  Hendon had waited at the hut all day;
hope of the King's return died out, then, and he departed upon the quest
again.

"And old Sanctum Sanctorum WAS truly sorry your highness came not back,"
said Hendon; "I saw it in his face."

"Marry I will never doubt THAT!" said the King--and then told his own
story; after which, Hendon was sorry he had not destroyed the archangel.

During the last day of the trip, Hendon's spirits were soaring. His
tongue ran constantly.  He talked about his old father, and his brother
Arthur, and told of many things which illustrated their high and generous
characters; he went into loving frenzies over his Edith, and was so
glad-hearted that he was even able to say some gentle and brotherly
things about Hugh.  He dwelt a deal on the coming meeting at Hendon Hall;
what a surprise it would be to everybody, and what an outburst of
thanksgiving and delight there would be.

It was a fair region, dotted with cottages and orchards, and the road led
through broad pasture lands whose receding expanses, marked with gentle
elevations and depressions, suggested the swelling and subsiding
undulations of the sea.  In the afternoon the returning prodigal made
constant deflections from his course to see if by ascending some hillock
he might not pierce the distance and catch a glimpse of his home.  At
last he was successful, and cried out excitedly--

"There is the village, my Prince, and there is the Hall close by! You may
see the towers from here; and that wood there--that is my father's park.
Ah, NOW thou'lt know what state and grandeur be! A house with seventy
rooms--think of that!--and seven and twenty servants!  A brave lodging
for such as we, is it not so?  Come, let us speed--my impatience will not
brook further delay."

All possible hurry was made; still, it was after three o'clock before the
village was reached.  The travellers scampered through it, Hendon's
tongue going all the time.  "Here is the church--covered with the same
ivy--none gone, none added."  "Yonder is the inn, the old Red Lion,--and
yonder is the market-place."  "Here is the Maypole, and here the pump
--nothing is altered; nothing but the people, at any rate; ten years make a
change in people; some of these I seem to know, but none know me."  So
his chat ran on. The end of the village was soon reached; then the
travellers struck into a crooked, narrow road, walled in with tall
hedges, and hurried briskly along it for half a mile, then passed into a
vast flower garden through an imposing gateway, whose huge stone pillars
bore sculptured armorial devices.  A noble mansion was before them.

"Welcome to Hendon Hall, my King!" exclaimed Miles.  "Ah, 'tis a great
day!  My father and my brother, and the Lady Edith will be so mad with
joy that they will have eyes and tongue for none but me in the first
transports of the meeting, and so thou'lt seem but coldly welcomed--but
mind it not; 'twill soon seem otherwise; for when I say thou art my ward,
and tell them how costly is my love for thee, thou'lt see them take thee
to their breasts for Miles Hendon's sake, and make their house and hearts
thy home for ever after!"

The next moment Hendon sprang to the ground before the great door, helped
the King down, then took him by the hand and rushed within. A few steps
brought him to a spacious apartment; he entered, seated the King with
more hurry than ceremony, then ran toward a young man who sat at a
writing-table in front of a generous fire of logs.

"Embrace me, Hugh," he cried, "and say thou'rt glad I am come again! and
call our father, for home is not home till I shall touch his hand, and
see his face, and hear his voice once more!"

But Hugh only drew back, after betraying a momentary surprise, and bent a
grave stare upon the intruder--a stare which indicated somewhat of
offended dignity, at first, then changed, in response to some inward
thought or purpose, to an expression of marvelling curiosity, mixed with
a real or assumed compassion.  Presently he said, in a mild voice--

"Thy wits seem touched, poor stranger; doubtless thou hast suffered
privations and rude buffetings at the world's hands; thy looks and dress
betoken it.  Whom dost thou take me to be?"

"Take thee?  Prithee for whom else than whom thou art?  I take thee to be
Hugh Hendon," said Miles, sharply.

The other continued, in the same soft tone--

"And whom dost thou imagine thyself to be?"

"Imagination hath nought to do with it!  Dost thou pretend thou knowest
me not for thy brother Miles Hendon?"

An expression of pleased surprise flitted across Hugh's face, and he
exclaimed--

"What! thou art not jesting? can the dead come to life?  God be praised
if it be so!  Our poor lost boy restored to our arms after all these
cruel years!  Ah, it seems too good to be true, it IS too good to be
true--I charge thee, have pity, do not trifle with me!  Quick--come to
the light--let me scan thee well!"

He seized Miles by the arm, dragged him to the window, and began to
devour him from head to foot with his eyes, turning him this way and
that, and stepping briskly around him and about him to prove him from all
points of view; whilst the returned prodigal, all aglow with gladness,
smiled, laughed, and kept nodding his head and saying--

"Go on, brother, go on, and fear not; thou'lt find nor limb nor feature
that cannot bide the test.  Scour and scan me to thy content, my good old
Hugh--I am indeed thy old Miles, thy same old Miles, thy lost brother,
is't not so?  Ah, 'tis a great day--I SAID 'twas a great day!  Give me
thy hand, give me thy cheek--lord, I am like to die of very joy!"

He was about to throw himself upon his brother; but Hugh put up his hand
in dissent, then dropped his chin mournfully upon his breast, saying with
emotion--

"Ah, God of his mercy give me strength to bear this grievous
disappointment!"

Miles, amazed, could not speak for a moment; then he found his tongue,
and cried out--

"WHAT disappointment?  Am I not thy brother?"

Hugh shook his head sadly, and said--

"I pray heaven it may prove so, and that other eyes may find the
resemblances that are hid from mine.  Alack, I fear me the letter spoke
but too truly."

"What letter?"

"One that came from over sea, some six or seven years ago.  It said my
brother died in battle."

"It was a lie!  Call thy father--he will know me."

"One may not call the dead."

"Dead?" Miles's voice was subdued, and his lips trembled.  "My father
dead!--oh, this is heavy news.  Half my new joy is withered now.  Prithee
let me see my brother Arthur--he will know me; he will know me and
console me."

"He, also, is dead."

"God be merciful to me, a stricken man!  Gone,--both gone--the worthy
taken and the worthless spared, in me!  Ah! I crave your mercy!--do not
say the Lady Edith--"

"Is dead?  No, she lives."

"Then, God be praised, my joy is whole again!  Speed thee, brother--let
her come to me!  An' SHE say I am not myself--but she will not; no, no,
SHE will know me, I were a fool to doubt it. Bring her--bring the old
servants; they, too, will know me."

"All are gone but five--Peter, Halsey, David, Bernard, and Margaret."

So saying, Hugh left the room.  Miles stood musing a while, then began to
walk the floor, muttering--

"The five arch-villains have survived the two-and-twenty leal and honest
--'tis an odd thing."

He continued walking back and forth, muttering to himself; he had
forgotten the King entirely.  By-and-by his Majesty said gravely, and
with a touch of genuine compassion, though the words themselves were
capable of being interpreted ironically--

"Mind not thy mischance, good man; there be others in the world whose
identity is denied, and whose claims are derided.  Thou hast company."

"Ah, my King," cried Hendon, colouring slightly, "do not thou condemn me
--wait, and thou shalt see.  I am no impostor--she will say it; you shall
hear it from the sweetest lips in England.  I an impostor?  Why, I know
this old hall, these pictures of my ancestors, and all these things that
are about us, as a child knoweth its own nursery.  Here was I born and
bred, my lord; I speak the truth; I would not deceive thee; and should
none else believe, I pray thee do not THOU doubt me--I could not bear
it."

"I do not doubt thee," said the King, with a childlike simplicity and
faith.

"I thank thee out of my heart!" exclaimed Hendon with a fervency which
showed that he was touched.  The King added, with the same gentle
simplicity--

"Dost thou doubt ME?"

A guilty confusion seized upon Hendon, and he was grateful that the door
opened to admit Hugh, at that moment, and saved him the necessity of
replying.

A beautiful lady, richly clothed, followed Hugh, and after her came
several liveried servants.  The lady walked slowly, with her head bowed
and her eyes fixed upon the floor.  The face was unspeakably sad.  Miles
Hendon sprang forward, crying out--

"Oh, my Edith, my darling--"

But Hugh waved him back, gravely, and said to the lady--

"Look upon him.  Do you know him?"

At the sound of Miles's voice the woman had started slightly, and her
cheeks had flushed; she was trembling now.  She stood still, during an
impressive pause of several moments; then slowly lifted up her head and
looked into Hendon's eyes with a stony and frightened gaze; the blood
sank out of her face, drop by drop, till nothing remained but the grey
pallor of death; then she said, in a voice as dead as the face, "I know
him not!" and turned, with a moan and a stifled sob, and tottered out of
the room.

Miles Hendon sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
After a pause, his brother said to the servants--

"You have observed him.  Do you know him?"

They shook their heads; then the master said--

"The servants know you not, sir.  I fear there is some mistake. You have
seen that my wife knew you not."

"Thy WIFE!"  In an instant Hugh was pinned to the wall, with an iron grip
about his throat.  "Oh, thou fox-hearted slave, I see it all!  Thou'st
writ the lying letter thyself, and my stolen bride and goods are its
fruit.  There--now get thee gone, lest I shame mine honourable
soldiership with the slaying of so pitiful a mannikin!"

Hugh, red-faced, and almost suffocated, reeled to the nearest chair, and
commanded the servants to seize and bind the murderous stranger.  They
hesitated, and one of them said--

"He is armed, Sir Hugh, and we are weaponless."

"Armed!  What of it, and ye so many?  Upon him, I say!"

But Miles warned them to be careful what they did, and added--

"Ye know me of old--I have not changed; come on, an' it like you."

This reminder did not hearten the servants much; they still held back.

"Then go, ye paltry cowards, and arm yourselves and guard the doors,
whilst I send one to fetch the watch!" said Hugh.  He turned at the
threshold, and said to Miles, "You'll find it to your advantage to offend
not with useless endeavours at escape."

"Escape?  Spare thyself discomfort, an' that is all that troubles thee.
For Miles Hendon is master of Hendon Hall and all its belongings.  He
will remain--doubt it not."



Chapter XXVI. Disowned.

The King sat musing a few moments, then looked up and said--

"'Tis strange--most strange.  I cannot account for it."

"No, it is not strange, my liege.  I know him, and this conduct is but
natural.  He was a rascal from his birth."

"Oh, I spake not of HIM, Sir Miles."

"Not of him?  Then of what?  What is it that is strange?"

"That the King is not missed."

"How?  Which?  I doubt I do not understand."

"Indeed?  Doth it not strike you as being passing strange that the land
is not filled with couriers and proclamations describing my person and
making search for me?  Is it no matter for commotion and distress that
the Head of the State is gone; that I am vanished away and lost?"

"Most true, my King, I had forgot."  Then Hendon sighed, and muttered to
himself, "Poor ruined mind--still busy with its pathetic dream."

"But I have a plan that shall right us both--I will write a paper, in
three tongues--Latin, Greek and English--and thou shalt haste away with
it to London in the morning.  Give it to none but my uncle, the Lord
Hertford; when he shall see it, he will know and say I wrote it.  Then he
will send for me."

"Might it not be best, my Prince, that we wait here until I prove myself
and make my rights secure to my domains?  I should be so much the better
able then to--"

The King interrupted him imperiously--

"Peace!  What are thy paltry domains, thy trivial interests, contrasted
with matters which concern the weal of a nation and the integrity of a
throne?"  Then, he added, in a gentle voice, as if he were sorry for his
severity, "Obey, and have no fear; I will right thee, I will make thee
whole--yes, more than whole.  I shall remember, and requite."

So saying, he took the pen, and set himself to work.  Hendon contemplated
him lovingly a while, then said to himself--

"An' it were dark, I should think it WAS a king that spoke; there's no
denying it, when the humour's upon on him he doth thunder and lighten
like your true King; now where got he that trick?  See him scribble and
scratch away contentedly at his meaningless pot-hooks, fancying them to
be Latin and Greek--and except my wit shall serve me with a lucky device
for diverting him from his purpose, I shall be forced to pretend to post
away to-morrow on this wild errand he hath invented for me."

The next moment Sir Miles's thoughts had gone back to the recent episode.
So absorbed was he in his musings, that when the King presently handed
him the paper which he had been writing, he received it and pocketed it
without being conscious of the act. "How marvellous strange she acted,"
he muttered.  "I think she knew me--and I think she did NOT know me.
These opinions do conflict, I perceive it plainly; I cannot reconcile
them, neither can I, by argument, dismiss either of the two, or even
persuade one to outweigh the other.  The matter standeth simply thus:
she MUST have known my face, my figure, my voice, for how could it be
otherwise?  Yet she SAID she knew me not, and that is proof perfect, for
she cannot lie.  But stop--I think I begin to see. Peradventure he hath
influenced her, commanded her, compelled her to lie.  That is the
solution.  The riddle is unriddled.  She seemed dead with fear--yes, she
was under his compulsion.  I will seek her; I will find her; now that he
is away, she will speak her true mind.  She will remember the old times
when we were little playfellows together, and this will soften her heart,
and she will no more betray me, but will confess me.  There is no
treacherous blood in her--no, she was always honest and true.  She has
loved me, in those old days--this is my security; for whom one has loved,
one cannot betray."

He stepped eagerly toward the door; at that moment it opened, and the
Lady Edith entered.  She was very pale, but she walked with a firm step,
and her carriage was full of grace and gentle dignity. Her face was as
sad as before.

Miles sprang forward, with a happy confidence, to meet her, but she
checked him with a hardly perceptible gesture, and he stopped where he
was.  She seated herself, and asked him to do likewise. Thus simply did
she take the sense of old comradeship out of him, and transform him into
a stranger and a guest.  The surprise of it, the bewildering
unexpectedness of it, made him begin to question, for a moment, if he WAS
the person he was pretending to be, after all.  The Lady Edith said--

"Sir, I have come to warn you.  The mad cannot be persuaded out of their
delusions, perchance; but doubtless they may be persuaded to avoid
perils.  I think this dream of yours hath the seeming of honest truth to
you, and therefore is not criminal--but do not tarry here with it; for
here it is dangerous."  She looked steadily into Miles's face a moment,
then added, impressively, "It is the more dangerous for that you ARE much
like what our lost lad must have grown to be if he had lived."

"Heavens, madam, but I AM he!"

"I truly think you think it, sir.  I question not your honesty in that; I
but warn you, that is all.  My husband is master in this region; his
power hath hardly any limit; the people prosper or starve, as he wills.
If you resembled not the man whom you profess to be, my husband might bid
you pleasure yourself with your dream in peace; but trust me, I know him
well; I know what he will do; he will say to all that you are but a mad
impostor, and straightway all will echo him."  She bent upon Miles that
same steady look once more, and added:  "If you WERE Miles Hendon, and he
knew it and all the region knew it--consider what I am saying, weigh it
well--you would stand in the same peril, your punishment would be no less
sure; he would deny you and denounce you, and none would be bold enough
to give you countenance."

"Most truly I believe it," said Miles, bitterly.  "The power that can
command one life-long friend to betray and disown another, and be obeyed,
may well look to be obeyed in quarters where bread and life are on the
stake and no cobweb ties of loyalty and honour are concerned."

A faint tinge appeared for a moment in the lady's cheek, and she dropped
her eyes to the floor; but her voice betrayed no emotion when she
proceeded--

"I have warned you--I must still warn you--to go hence.  This man will
destroy you, else.  He is a tyrant who knows no pity.  I, who am his
fettered slave, know this.  Poor Miles, and Arthur, and my dear guardian,
Sir Richard, are free of him, and at rest:  better that you were with
them than that you bide here in the clutches of this miscreant.  Your
pretensions are a menace to his title and possessions; you have assaulted
him in his own house:  you are ruined if you stay.  Go--do not hesitate.
If you lack money, take this purse, I beg of you, and bribe the servants
to let you pass. Oh, be warned, poor soul, and escape while you may."

Miles declined the purse with a gesture, and rose up and stood before
her.

"Grant me one thing," he said.  "Let your eyes rest upon mine, so that I
may see if they be steady.  There--now answer me.  Am I Miles Hendon?"

"No.  I know you not."

"Swear it!"

The answer was low, but distinct--

"I swear."

"Oh, this passes belief!"

"Fly!  Why will you waste the precious time?  Fly, and save yourself."

At that moment the officers burst into the room, and a violent struggle
began; but Hendon was soon overpowered and dragged away. The King was
taken also, and both were bound and led to prison.



Chapter XXVII. In prison.

The cells were all crowded; so the two friends were chained in a large
room where persons charged with trifling offences were commonly kept.
They had company, for there were some twenty manacled and fettered
prisoners here, of both sexes and of varying ages,--an obscene and noisy
gang.  The King chafed bitterly over the stupendous indignity thus put
upon his royalty, but Hendon was moody and taciturn.  He was pretty
thoroughly bewildered; he had come home, a jubilant prodigal, expecting
to find everybody wild with joy over his return; and instead had got the
cold shoulder and a jail.  The promise and the fulfilment differed so
widely that the effect was stunning; he could not decide whether it was
most tragic or most grotesque.  He felt much as a man might who had
danced blithely out to enjoy a rainbow, and got struck by lightning.

But gradually his confused and tormenting thoughts settled down into some
sort of order, and then his mind centred itself upon Edith.  He turned
her conduct over, and examined it in all lights, but he could not make
anything satisfactory out of it.  Did she know him--or didn't she know
him?  It was a perplexing puzzle, and occupied him a long time; but he
ended, finally, with the conviction that she did know him, and had
repudiated him for interested reasons.  He wanted to load her name with
curses now; but this name had so long been sacred to him that he found he
could not bring his tongue to profane it.

Wrapped in prison blankets of a soiled and tattered condition, Hendon and
the King passed a troubled night.  For a bribe the jailer had furnished
liquor to some of the prisoners; singing of ribald songs, fighting,
shouting, and carousing was the natural consequence.  At last, a while
after midnight, a man attacked a woman and nearly killed her by beating
her over the head with his manacles before the jailer could come to the
rescue.  The jailer restored peace by giving the man a sound clubbing
about the head and shoulders--then the carousing ceased; and after that,
all had an opportunity to sleep who did not mind the annoyance of the
moanings and groanings of the two wounded people.

During the ensuing week, the days and nights were of a monotonous
sameness as to events; men whose faces Hendon remembered more or less
distinctly, came, by day, to gaze at the 'impostor' and repudiate and
insult him; and by night the carousing and brawling went on with
symmetrical regularity.  However, there was a change of incident at last.
The jailer brought in an old man, and said to him--

"The villain is in this room--cast thy old eyes about and see if thou
canst say which is he."

Hendon glanced up, and experienced a pleasant sensation for the first
time since he had been in the jail.  He said to himself, "This is Blake
Andrews, a servant all his life in my father's family--a good honest
soul, with a right heart in his breast. That is, formerly.  But none are
true now; all are liars.  This man will know me--and will deny me, too,
like the rest."

The old man gazed around the room, glanced at each face in turn, and
finally said--

"I see none here but paltry knaves, scum o' the streets.  Which is he?"

The jailer laughed.

"Here," he said; "scan this big animal, and grant me an opinion."

The old man approached, and looked Hendon over, long and earnestly, then
shook his head and said--

"Marry, THIS is no Hendon--nor ever was!"

"Right!  Thy old eyes are sound yet.  An' I were Sir Hugh, I would take
the shabby carle and--"

The jailer finished by lifting himself a-tip-toe with an imaginary
halter, at the same time making a gurgling noise in his throat suggestive
of suffocation.  The old man said, vindictively--

"Let him bless God an' he fare no worse.  An' _I_ had the handling o' the
villain he should roast, or I am no true man!"

The jailer laughed a pleasant hyena laugh, and said--

"Give him a piece of thy mind, old man--they all do it.  Thou'lt find it
good diversion."

Then he sauntered toward his ante-room and disappeared.  The old man
dropped upon his knees and whispered--

"God be thanked, thou'rt come again, my master!  I believed thou wert
dead these seven years, and lo, here thou art alive!  I knew thee the
moment I saw thee; and main hard work it was to keep a stony countenance
and seem to see none here but tuppenny knaves and rubbish o' the streets.
I am old and poor, Sir Miles; but say the word and I will go forth and
proclaim the truth though I be strangled for it."

"No," said Hendon; "thou shalt not.  It would ruin thee, and yet help but
little in my cause.  But I thank thee, for thou hast given me back
somewhat of my lost faith in my kind."

The old servant became very valuable to Hendon and the King; for he
dropped in several times a day to 'abuse' the former, and always smuggled
in a few delicacies to help out the prison bill of fare; he also
furnished the current news.  Hendon reserved the dainties for the King;
without them his Majesty might not have survived, for he was not able to
eat the coarse and wretched food provided by the jailer.  Andrews was
obliged to confine himself to brief visits, in order to avoid suspicion;
but he managed to impart a fair degree of information each time
--information delivered in a low voice, for Hendon's benefit, and
interlarded with insulting epithets delivered in a louder voice for the
benefit of other hearers.

So, little by little, the story of the family came out.  Arthur had been
dead six years.  This loss, with the absence of news from Hendon,
impaired the father's health; he believed he was going to die, and he
wished to see Hugh and Edith settled in life before he passed away; but
Edith begged hard for delay, hoping for Miles's return; then the letter
came which brought the news of Miles's death; the shock prostrated Sir
Richard; he believed his end was very near, and he and Hugh insisted upon
the marriage; Edith begged for and obtained a month's respite, then
another, and finally a third; the marriage then took place by the
death-bed of Sir Richard.  It had not proved a happy one.  It was
whispered about the country that shortly after the nuptials the bride
found among her husband's papers several rough and incomplete drafts of
the fatal letter, and had accused him of precipitating the marriage--and
Sir Richard's death, too--by a wicked forgery. Tales of cruelty to the
Lady Edith and the servants were to be heard on all hands; and since the
father's death Sir Hugh had thrown off all soft disguises and become a
pitiless master toward all who in any way depended upon him and his
domains for bread.

There was a bit of Andrew's gossip which the King listened to with a
lively interest--

"There is rumour that the King is mad.  But in charity forbear to say _I_
mentioned it, for 'tis death to speak of it, they say."

His Majesty glared at the old man and said--

"The King is NOT mad, good man--and thou'lt find it to thy advantage to
busy thyself with matters that nearer concern thee than this seditious
prattle."

"What doth the lad mean?" said Andrews, surprised at this brisk assault
from such an unexpected quarter.  Hendon gave him a sign, and he did not
pursue his question, but went on with his budget--

"The late King is to be buried at Windsor in a day or two--the 16th of
the month--and the new King will be crowned at Westminster the 20th."

"Methinks they must needs find him first," muttered his Majesty; then
added, confidently, "but they will look to that--and so also shall I."

"In the name of--"

But the old man got no further--a warning sign from Hendon checked his
remark.  He resumed the thread of his gossip--

"Sir Hugh goeth to the coronation--and with grand hopes.  He confidently
looketh to come back a peer, for he is high in favour with the Lord
Protector."

"What Lord Protector?" asked his Majesty.

"His Grace the Duke of Somerset."

"What Duke of Somerset?"

"Marry, there is but one--Seymour, Earl of Hertford."

The King asked sharply--

"Since when is HE a duke, and Lord Protector?"

"Since the last day of January."

"And prithee who made him so?"

"Himself and the Great Council--with help of the King."

His Majesty started violently.  "The KING!" he cried.  "WHAT king, good
sir?"

"What king, indeed! (God-a-mercy, what aileth the boy?)  Sith we have but
one, 'tis not difficult to answer--his most sacred Majesty King Edward
the Sixth--whom God preserve!  Yea, and a dear and gracious little urchin
is he, too; and whether he be mad or no--and they say he mendeth daily
--his praises are on all men's lips; and all bless him, likewise, and offer
prayers that he may be spared to reign long in England; for he began
humanely with saving the old Duke of Norfolk's life, and now is he bent
on destroying the cruellest of the laws that harry and oppress the
people."

This news struck his Majesty dumb with amazement, and plunged him into so
deep and dismal a reverie that he heard no more of the old man's gossip.
He wondered if the 'little urchin' was the beggar-boy whom he left
dressed in his own garments in the palace.  It did not seem possible that
this could be, for surely his manners and speech would betray him if he
pretended to be the Prince of Wales--then he would be driven out, and
search made for the true prince.  Could it be that the Court had set up
some sprig of the nobility in his place?  No, for his uncle would not
allow that--he was all-powerful and could and would crush such a
movement, of course.  The boy's musings profited him nothing; the more he
tried to unriddle the mystery the more perplexed he became, the more his
head ached, and the worse he slept.  His impatience to get to London grew
hourly, and his captivity became almost unendurable.

Hendon's arts all failed with the King--he could not be comforted; but a
couple of women who were chained near him succeeded better. Under their
gentle ministrations he found peace and learned a degree of patience.  He
was very grateful, and came to love them dearly and to delight in the
sweet and soothing influence of their presence.  He asked them why they
were in prison, and when they said they were Baptists, he smiled, and
inquired--

"Is that a crime to be shut up for in a prison?  Now I grieve, for I
shall lose ye--they will not keep ye long for such a little thing."

They did not answer; and something in their faces made him uneasy. He
said, eagerly--

"You do not speak; be good to me, and tell me--there will be no other
punishment?  Prithee tell me there is no fear of that."

They tried to change the topic, but his fears were aroused, and he
pursued it--

"Will they scourge thee?  No, no, they would not be so cruel!  Say they
would not.  Come, they WILL not, will they?"

The women betrayed confusion and distress, but there was no avoiding an
answer, so one of them said, in a voice choked with emotion--

"Oh, thou'lt break our hearts, thou gentle spirit!--God will help us to
bear our--"

"It is a confession!" the King broke in.  "Then they WILL scourge thee,
the stony-hearted wretches!  But oh, thou must not weep, I cannot bear
it.  Keep up thy courage--I shall come to my own in time to save thee
from this bitter thing, and I will do it!"

When the King awoke in the morning, the women were gone.

"They are saved!" he said, joyfully; then added, despondently, "but woe
is me!--for they were my comforters."

Each of them had left a shred of ribbon pinned to his clothing, in token
of remembrance.  He said he would keep these things always; and that soon
he would seek out these dear good friends of his and take them under his
protection.

Just then the jailer came in with some subordinates, and commanded that
the prisoners be conducted to the jail-yard.  The King was overjoyed--it
would be a blessed thing to see the blue sky and breathe the fresh air
once more.  He fretted and chafed at the slowness of the officers, but
his turn came at last, and he was released from his staple and ordered to
follow the other prisoners with Hendon.

The court or quadrangle was stone-paved, and open to the sky.  The
prisoners entered it through a massive archway of masonry, and were
placed in file, standing, with their backs against the wall. A rope was
stretched in front of them, and they were also guarded by their officers.
It was a chill and lowering morning, and a light snow which had fallen
during the night whitened the great empty space and added to the general
dismalness of its aspect. Now and then a wintry wind shivered through the
place and sent the snow eddying hither and thither.

In the centre of the court stood two women, chained to posts.  A glance
showed the King that these were his good friends.  He shuddered, and said
to himself, "Alack, they are not gone free, as I had thought.  To think
that such as these should know the lash!--in England!  Ay, there's the
shame of it--not in Heathennesse, Christian England!  They will be
scourged; and I, whom they have comforted and kindly entreated, must look
on and see the great wrong done; it is strange, so strange, that I, the
very source of power in this broad realm, am helpless to protect them.
But let these miscreants look well to themselves, for there is a day
coming when I will require of them a heavy reckoning for this work.  For
every blow they strike now, they shall feel a hundred then."

A great gate swung open, and a crowd of citizens poured in.  They flocked
around the two women, and hid them from the King's view. A clergyman
entered and passed through the crowd, and he also was hidden.  The King
now heard talking, back and forth, as if questions were being asked and
answered, but he could not make out what was said.  Next there was a deal
of bustle and preparation, and much passing and repassing of officials
through that part of the crowd that stood on the further side of the
women; and whilst this proceeded a deep hush gradually fell upon the
people.

Now, by command, the masses parted and fell aside, and the King saw a
spectacle that froze the marrow in his bones.  Faggots had been piled
about the two women, and a kneeling man was lighting them!

The women bowed their heads, and covered their faces with their hands;
the yellow flames began to climb upward among the snapping and crackling
faggots, and wreaths of blue smoke to stream away on the wind; the
clergyman lifted his hands and began a prayer--just then two young girls
came flying through the great gate, uttering piercing screams, and threw
themselves upon the women at the stake.  Instantly they were torn away by
the officers, and one of them was kept in a tight grip, but the other
broke loose, saying she would die with her mother; and before she could
be stopped she had flung her arms about her mother's neck again.  She was
torn away once more, and with her gown on fire.  Two or three men held
her, and the burning portion of her gown was snatched off and thrown
flaming aside, she struggling all the while to free herself, and saying
she would be alone in the world, now; and begging to be allowed to die
with her mother.  Both the girls screamed continually, and fought for
freedom; but suddenly this tumult was drowned under a volley of
heart-piercing shrieks of mortal agony--the King glanced from the frantic
girls to the stake, then turned away and leaned his ashen face against
the wall, and looked no more.  He said, "That which I have seen, in that
one little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will abide
there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights,
till I die.  Would God I had been blind!"

Hendon was watching the King.  He said to himself, with satisfaction,
"His disorder mendeth; he hath changed, and groweth gentler.  If he had
followed his wont, he would have stormed at these varlets, and said he
was King, and commanded that the women be turned loose unscathed.  Soon
his delusion will pass away and be forgotten, and his poor mind will be
whole again.  God speed the day!"

That same day several prisoners were brought in to remain over night, who
were being conveyed, under guard, to various places in the kingdom, to
undergo punishment for crimes committed.  The King conversed with these
--he had made it a point, from the beginning, to instruct himself for the
kingly office by questioning prisoners whenever the opportunity offered
--and the tale of their woes wrung his heart.  One of them was a poor
half-witted woman who had stolen a yard or two of cloth from a weaver
--she was to be hanged for it.  Another was a man who had been accused of
stealing a horse; he said the proof had failed, and he had imagined that
he was safe from the halter; but no--he was hardly free before he was
arraigned for killing a deer in the King's park; this was proved against
him, and now he was on his way to the gallows.  There was a tradesman's
apprentice whose case particularly distressed the King; this youth said
he found a hawk, one evening, that had escaped from its owner, and he
took it home with him, imagining himself entitled to it; but the court
convicted him of stealing it, and sentenced him to death.

The King was furious over these inhumanities, and wanted Hendon to break
jail and fly with him to Westminster, so that he could mount his throne
and hold out his sceptre in mercy over these unfortunate people and save
their lives.  "Poor child," sighed Hendon, "these woeful tales have
brought his malady upon him again; alack, but for this evil hap, he would
have been well in a little time."

Among these prisoners was an old lawyer--a man with a strong face and a
dauntless mien.  Three years past, he had written a pamphlet against the
Lord Chancellor, accusing him of injustice, and had been punished for it
by the loss of his ears in the pillory, and degradation from the bar, and
in addition had been fined 3,000 pounds and sentenced to imprisonment for
life.  Lately he had repeated his offence; and in consequence was now
under sentence to lose WHAT REMAINED OF HIS EARS, pay a fine of 5,000
pounds, be branded on both cheeks, and remain in prison for life.

"These be honourable scars," he said, and turned back his grey hair and
showed the mutilated stubs of what had once been his ears.

The King's eye burned with passion.  He said--

"None believe in me--neither wilt thou.  But no matter--within the
compass of a month thou shalt be free; and more, the laws that have
dishonoured thee, and shamed the English name, shall be swept from the
statute books.  The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to
their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy." {1}



Chapter XXVIII. The sacrifice.

Meantime Miles was growing sufficiently tired of confinement and
inaction.  But now his trial came on, to his great gratification, and he
thought he could welcome any sentence provided a further imprisonment
should not be a part of it.  But he was mistaken about that.  He was in a
fine fury when he found himself described as a 'sturdy vagabond' and
sentenced to sit two hours in the stocks for bearing that character and
for assaulting the master of Hendon Hall.  His pretensions as to
brothership with his prosecutor, and rightful heirship to the Hendon
honours and estates, were left contemptuously unnoticed, as being not
even worth examination.

He raged and threatened on his way to punishment, but it did no good; he
was snatched roughly along by the officers, and got an occasional cuff,
besides, for his irreverent conduct.

The King could not pierce through the rabble that swarmed behind; so he
was obliged to follow in the rear, remote from his good friend and
servant.  The King had been nearly condemned to the stocks himself for
being in such bad company, but had been let off with a lecture and a
warning, in consideration of his youth.  When the crowd at last halted,
he flitted feverishly from point to point around its outer rim, hunting a
place to get through; and at last, after a deal of difficulty and delay,
succeeded.  There sat his poor henchman in the degrading stocks, the
sport and butt of a dirty mob--he, the body servant of the King of
England!  Edward had heard the sentence pronounced, but he had not
realised the half that it meant.  His anger began to rise as the sense of
this new indignity which had been put upon him sank home; it jumped to
summer heat, the next moment, when he saw an egg sail through the air and
crush itself against Hendon's cheek, and heard the crowd roar its
enjoyment of the episode.  He sprang across the open circle and
confronted the officer in charge, crying--

"For shame!  This is my servant--set him free!  I am the--"

"Oh, peace!" exclaimed Hendon, in a panic, "thou'lt destroy thyself.
Mind him not, officer, he is mad."

"Give thyself no trouble as to the matter of minding him, good man, I
have small mind to mind him; but as to teaching him somewhat, to that I
am well inclined."  He turned to a subordinate and said, "Give the little
fool a taste or two of the lash, to mend his manners."

"Half a dozen will better serve his turn," suggested Sir Hugh, who had
ridden up, a moment before, to take a passing glance at the proceedings.

The King was seized.  He did not even struggle, so paralysed was he with
the mere thought of the monstrous outrage that was proposed to be
inflicted upon his sacred person.  History was already defiled with the
record of the scourging of an English king with whips--it was an
intolerable reflection that he must furnish a duplicate of that shameful
page.  He was in the toils, there was no help for him; he must either
take this punishment or beg for its remission.  Hard conditions; he would
take the stripes--a king might do that, but a king could not beg.

But meantime, Miles Hendon was resolving the difficulty.  "Let the child
go," said he; "ye heartless dogs, do ye not see how young and frail he
is?  Let him go--I will take his lashes."

"Marry, a good thought--and thanks for it," said Sir Hugh, his face
lighting with a sardonic satisfaction.  "Let the little beggar go, and
give this fellow a dozen in his place--an honest dozen, well laid on."
The King was in the act of entering a fierce protest, but Sir Hugh
silenced him with the potent remark, "Yes, speak up, do, and free thy
mind--only, mark ye, that for each word you utter he shall get six
strokes the more."

Hendon was removed from the stocks, and his back laid bare; and whilst
the lash was applied the poor little King turned away his face and
allowed unroyal tears to channel his cheeks unchecked. "Ah, brave good
heart," he said to himself, "this loyal deed shall never perish out of my
memory.  I will not forget it--and neither shall THEY!" he added, with
passion.  Whilst he mused, his appreciation of Hendon's magnanimous
conduct grew to greater and still greater dimensions in his mind, and so
also did his gratefulness for it.  Presently he said to himself, "Who
saves his prince from wounds and possible death--and this he did for me
--performs high service; but it is little--it is nothing--oh, less than
nothing!--when 'tis weighed against the act of him who saves his prince
from SHAME!"

Hendon made no outcry under the scourge, but bore the heavy blows with
soldierly fortitude.  This, together with his redeeming the boy by taking
his stripes for him, compelled the respect of even that forlorn and
degraded mob that was gathered there; and its gibes and hootings died
away, and no sound remained but the sound of the falling blows.  The
stillness that pervaded the place, when Hendon found himself once more in
the stocks, was in strong contrast with the insulting clamour which had
prevailed there so little a while before.  The King came softly to
Hendon's side, and whispered in his ear--

"Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher
than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility
to men."  He picked up the scourge from the ground, touched Hendon's
bleeding shoulders lightly with it, and whispered, "Edward of England
dubs thee Earl!"

Hendon was touched.  The water welled to his eyes, yet at the same time
the grisly humour of the situation and circumstances so undermined his
gravity that it was all he could do to keep some sign of his inward mirth
from showing outside.  To be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory, from the
common stocks to the Alpine altitude and splendour of an Earldom, seemed
to him the last possibility in the line of the grotesque.  He said to
himself, "Now am I finely tinselled, indeed!  The spectre-knight of the
Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows is become a spectre-earl--a dizzy flight
for a callow wing!  An' this go on, I shall presently be hung like a very
maypole with fantastic gauds and make-believe honours.  But I shall value
them, all valueless as they are, for the love that doth bestow them.
Better these poor mock dignities of mine, that come unasked, from a clean
hand and a right spirit, than real ones bought by servility from grudging
and interested power."

The dreaded Sir Hugh wheeled his horse about, and as he spurred away, the
living wall divided silently to let him pass, and as silently closed
together again.  And so remained; nobody went so far as to venture a
remark in favour of the prisoner, or in compliment to him; but no matter
--the absence of abuse was a sufficient homage in itself.  A late comer
who was not posted as to the present circumstances, and who delivered a
sneer at the 'impostor,' and was in the act of following it with a dead
cat, was promptly knocked down and kicked out, without any words, and
then the deep quiet resumed sway once more.



Chapter XXIX. To London.

When Hendon's term of service in the stocks was finished, he was released
and ordered to quit the region and come back no more. His sword was
restored to him, and also his mule and his donkey. He mounted and rode
off, followed by the King, the crowd opening with quiet respectfulness to
let them pass, and then dispersing when they were gone.

Hendon was soon absorbed in thought.  There were questions of high import
to be answered.  What should he do?  Whither should he go? Powerful help
must be found somewhere, or he must relinquish his inheritance and remain
under the imputation of being an impostor besides.  Where could he hope
to find this powerful help?  Where, indeed!  It was a knotty question.
By-and-by a thought occurred to him which pointed to a possibility--the
slenderest of slender possibilities, certainly, but still worth
considering, for lack of any other that promised anything at all.  He
remembered what old Andrews had said about the young King's goodness and
his generous championship of the wronged and unfortunate.  Why not go and
try to get speech of him and beg for justice?  Ah, yes, but could so
fantastic a pauper get admission to the august presence of a monarch?
Never mind--let that matter take care of itself; it was a bridge that
would not need to be crossed till he should come to it.  He was an old
campaigner, and used to inventing shifts and expedients:  no doubt he
would be able to find a way.  Yes, he would strike for the capital.
Maybe his father's old friend Sir Humphrey Marlow would help him--'good
old Sir Humphrey, Head Lieutenant of the late King's kitchen, or stables,
or something'--Miles could not remember just what or which.  Now that he
had something to turn his energies to, a distinctly defined object to
accomplish, the fog of humiliation and depression which had settled down
upon his spirits lifted and blew away, and he raised his head and looked
about him.  He was surprised to see how far he had come; the village was
away behind him.  The King was jogging along in his wake, with his head
bowed; for he, too, was deep in plans and thinkings.  A sorrowful
misgiving clouded Hendon's new-born cheerfulness:  would the boy be
willing to go again to a city where, during all his brief life, he had
never known anything but ill-usage and pinching want?  But the question
must be asked; it could not be avoided; so Hendon reined up, and called
out--

"I had forgotten to inquire whither we are bound.  Thy commands, my
liege!"

"To London!"

Hendon moved on again, mightily contented with the answer--but astounded
at it too.

The whole journey was made without an adventure of importance. But it
ended with one.  About ten o'clock on the night of the 19th of February
they stepped upon London Bridge, in the midst of a writhing, struggling
jam of howling and hurrahing people, whose beer-jolly faces stood out
strongly in the glare from manifold torches--and at that instant the
decaying head of some former duke or other grandee tumbled down between
them, striking Hendon on the elbow and then bounding off among the
hurrying confusion of feet. So evanescent and unstable are men's works in
this world!--the late good King is but three weeks dead and three days in
his grave, and already the adornments which he took such pains to select
from prominent people for his noble bridge are falling.  A citizen
stumbled over that head, and drove his own head into the back of somebody
in front of him, who turned and knocked down the first person that came
handy, and was promptly laid out himself by that person's friend.  It was
the right ripe time for a free fight, for the festivities of the morrow
--Coronation Day--were already beginning; everybody was full of strong
drink and patriotism; within five minutes the free fight was occupying a
good deal of ground; within ten or twelve it covered an acre of so, and
was become a riot.  By this time Hendon and the King were hopelessly
separated from each other and lost in the rush and turmoil of the roaring
masses of humanity.  And so we leave them.



Chapter XXX. Tom's progress.

Whilst the true King wandered about the land poorly clad, poorly fed,
cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and
murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all
impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed quite a different
experience.

When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side
for him.  This bright side went on brightening more and more every day:
in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and
delightfulness.  He lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died;
his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident
bearing.  He worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit.

He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his presence when
he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with them,
with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances.  It no
longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at
parting.

He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed
with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning.  It came to be a proud
pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of
officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he
doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred.  He
liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the
distant voices responding, "Way for the King!"

He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and seeming
to be something more than the Lord Protector's mouthpiece. He liked to
receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen to the
affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who called
him brother.  O happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!

He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more:  he found his four
hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them.  The
adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears.  He
remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all
that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws:  yet upon
occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and
give him a look that would make him tremble.  Once, when his royal
'sister,' the grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with him
against the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would
otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that their
august late father's prisons had sometimes contained as high as sixty
thousand convicts at one time, and that during his admirable reign he had
delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers over to death by the
executioner, {9} the boy was filled with generous indignation, and
commanded her to go to her closet, and beseech God to take away the stone
that was in her breast, and give her a human heart.

Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince
who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to avenge
him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate? Yes; his first royal
days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts about
the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return, and happy
restoration to his native rights and splendours.  But as time wore on,
and the prince did not come, Tom's mind became more and more occupied
with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the
vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he
did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome spectre,
for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed.

Tom's poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his mind.
At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but
later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and
betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty
place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums,
made him shudder.  At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost
wholly.  And he was content, even glad:  for, whenever their mournful and
accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more
despicable than the worms that crawl.

At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to sleep in
his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded
by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for tomorrow was the day appointed
for his solemn crowning as King of England. At that same hour, Edward,
the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with travel,
and clothed in rags and shreds--his share of the results of the riot--was
wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest
certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of Westminster
Abbey, busy as ants:  they were making the last preparation for the royal
coronation.



Chapter XXXI. The Recognition procession.

When Tom Canty awoke the next morning, the air was heavy with a
thunderous murmur:  all the distances were charged with it.  It was music
to him; for it meant that the English world was out in its strength to
give loyal welcome to the great day.

Presently Tom found himself once more the chief figure in a wonderful
floating pageant on the Thames; for by ancient custom the 'recognition
procession' through London must start from the Tower, and he was bound
thither.

When he arrived there, the sides of the venerable fortress seemed
suddenly rent in a thousand places, and from every rent leaped a red
tongue of flame and a white gush of smoke; a deafening explosion
followed, which drowned the shoutings of the multitude, and made the
ground tremble; the flame-jets, the smoke, and the explosions, were
repeated over and over again with marvellous celerity, so that in a few
moments the old Tower disappeared in the vast fog of its own smoke, all
but the very top of the tall pile called the White Tower; this, with its
banners, stood out above the dense bank of vapour as a mountain-peak
projects above a cloud-rack.

Tom Canty, splendidly arrayed, mounted a prancing war-steed, whose rich
trappings almost reached to the ground; his 'uncle,' the Lord Protector
Somerset, similarly mounted, took place in his rear; the King's Guard
formed in single ranks on either side, clad in burnished armour; after
the Protector followed a seemingly interminable procession of resplendent
nobles attended by their vassals; after these came the lord mayor and the
aldermanic body, in crimson velvet robes, and with their gold chains
across their breasts; and after these the officers and members of all the
guilds of London, in rich raiment, and bearing the showy banners of the
several corporations.  Also in the procession, as a special guard of
honour through the city, was the Ancient and Honourable Artillery
Company--an organisation already three hundred years old at that time,
and the only military body in England possessing the privilege (which it
still possesses in our day) of holding itself independent of the commands
of Parliament.  It was a brilliant spectacle, and was hailed with
acclamations all along the line, as it took its stately way through the
packed multitudes of citizens. The chronicler says, 'The King, as he
entered the city, was received by the people with prayers, welcomings,
cries, and tender words, and all signs which argue an earnest love of
subjects toward their sovereign; and the King, by holding up his glad
countenance to such as stood afar off, and most tender language to those
that stood nigh his Grace, showed himself no less thankful to receive the
people's goodwill than they to offer it.  To all that wished him well, he
gave thanks.  To such as bade "God save his Grace," he said in return,
"God save you all!" and added that "he thanked them with all his heart."
Wonderfully transported were the people with the loving answers and
gestures of their King.'

In Fenchurch Street a 'fair child, in costly apparel,' stood on a stage
to welcome his Majesty to the city.  The last verse of his greeting was
in these words--

'Welcome, O King! as much as hearts can think; Welcome, again, as much as
tongue can tell,--Welcome to joyous tongues, and hearts that will not
shrink: God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well.'

The people burst forth in a glad shout, repeating with one voice what the
child had said.  Tom Canty gazed abroad over the surging sea of eager
faces, and his heart swelled with exultation; and he felt that the one
thing worth living for in this world was to be a king, and a nation's
idol.  Presently he caught sight, at a distance, of a couple of his
ragged Offal Court comrades--one of them the lord high admiral in his
late mimic court, the other the first lord of the bedchamber in the same
pretentious fiction; and his pride swelled higher than ever.  Oh, if they
could only recognise him now!  What unspeakable glory it would be, if
they could recognise him, and realise that the derided mock king of the
slums and back alleys was become a real King, with illustrious dukes and
princes for his humble menials, and the English world at his feet!  But
he had to deny himself, and choke down his desire, for such a recognition
might cost more than it would come to:  so he turned away his head, and
left the two soiled lads to go on with their shoutings and glad
adulations, unsuspicious of whom it was they were lavishing them upon.

Every now and then rose the cry, "A largess! a largess!" and Tom
responded by scattering a handful of bright new coins abroad for the
multitude to scramble for.

The chronicler says, 'At the upper end of Gracechurch Street, before the
sign of the Eagle, the city had erected a gorgeous arch, beneath which
was a stage, which stretched from one side of the street to the other.
This was an historical pageant, representing the King's immediate
progenitors.  There sat Elizabeth of York in the midst of an immense
white rose, whose petals formed elaborate furbelows around her; by her
side was Henry VII., issuing out of a vast red rose, disposed in the same
manner:  the hands of the royal pair were locked together, and the
wedding-ring ostentatiously displayed.  From the red and white roses
proceeded a stem, which reached up to a second stage, occupied by Henry
VIII., issuing from a red and white rose, with the effigy of the new
King's mother, Jane Seymour, represented by his side.  One branch sprang
from this pair, which mounted to a third stage, where sat the effigy of
Edward VI. himself, enthroned in royal majesty; and the whole pageant was
framed with wreaths of roses, red and white.'

This quaint and gaudy spectacle so wrought upon the rejoicing people,
that their acclamations utterly smothered the small voice of the child
whose business it was to explain the thing in eulogistic rhymes.  But Tom
Canty was not sorry; for this loyal uproar was sweeter music to him than
any poetry, no matter what its quality might be.  Whithersoever Tom
turned his happy young face, the people recognised the exactness of his
effigy's likeness to himself, the flesh and blood counterpart; and new
whirlwinds of applause burst forth.

The great pageant moved on, and still on, under one triumphal arch after
another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical
tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or
merit, of the little King's.  'Throughout the whole of Cheapside, from
every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest
carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streets--specimens of
the great wealth of the stores within; and the splendour of this
thoroughfare was equalled in the other streets, and in some even
surpassed.'

"And all these wonders and these marvels are to welcome me--me!" murmured
Tom Canty.

The mock King's cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes were
flashing, his senses swam in a delirium of pleasure.  At this point, just
as he was raising his hand to fling another rich largess, he caught sight
of a pale, astounded face, which was strained forward out of the second
rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted upon him.  A sickening
consternation struck through him; he recognised his mother! and up flew
his hand, palm outward, before his eyes--that old involuntary gesture,
born of a forgotten episode, and perpetuated by habit.  In an instant
more she had torn her way out of the press, and past the guards, and was
at his side.  She embraced his leg, she covered it with kisses, she
cried, "O my child, my darling!" lifting toward him a face that was
transfigured with joy and love.  The same instant an officer of the
King's Guard snatched her away with a curse, and sent her reeling back
whence she came with a vigorous impulse from his strong arm.  The words
"I do not know you, woman!" were falling from Tom Canty's lips when this
piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the heart to see her treated
so; and as she turned for a last glimpse of him, whilst the crowd was
swallowing her from his sight, she seemed so wounded, so broken-hearted,
that a shame fell upon him which consumed his pride to ashes, and
withered his stolen royalty.  His grandeurs were stricken valueless:
they seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags.

The procession moved on, and still on, through ever augmenting splendours
and ever augmenting tempests of welcome; but to Tom Canty they were as if
they had not been.  He neither saw nor heard.  Royalty had lost its grace
and sweetness; its pomps were become a reproach.  Remorse was eating his
heart out.  He said, "Would God I were free of my captivity!"

He had unconsciously dropped back into the phraseology of the first days
of his compulsory greatness.

The shining pageant still went winding like a radiant and interminable
serpent down the crooked lanes of the quaint old city, and through the
huzzaing hosts; but still the King rode with bowed head and vacant eyes,
seeing only his mother's face and that wounded look in it.

"Largess, largess!"  The cry fell upon an unheeding ear.

"Long live Edward of England!"  It seemed as if the earth shook with the
explosion; but there was no response from the King.  He heard it only as
one hears the thunder of the surf when it is blown to the ear out of a
great distance, for it was smothered under another sound which was still
nearer, in his own breast, in his accusing conscience--a voice which kept
repeating those shameful words, "I do not know you, woman!"

The words smote upon the King's soul as the strokes of a funeral bell
smite upon the soul of a surviving friend when they remind him of secret
treacheries suffered at his hands by him that is gone.

New glories were unfolded at every turning; new wonders, new marvels,
sprang into view; the pent clamours of waiting batteries were released;
new raptures poured from the throats of the waiting multitudes:  but the
King gave no sign, and the accusing voice that went moaning through his
comfortless breast was all the sound he heard.

By-and-by the gladness in the faces of the populace changed a little, and
became touched with a something like solicitude or anxiety:  an abatement
in the volume of the applause was observable too.  The Lord Protector was
quick to notice these things:  he was as quick to detect the cause.  He
spurred to the King's side, bent low in his saddle, uncovered, and said--

"My liege, it is an ill time for dreaming.  The people observe thy
downcast head, thy clouded mien, and they take it for an omen.  Be
advised:  unveil the sun of royalty, and let it shine upon these boding
vapours, and disperse them.  Lift up thy face, and smile upon the
people."

So saying, the Duke scattered a handful of coins to right and left, then
retired to his place.  The mock King did mechanically as he had been
bidden.  His smile had no heart in it, but few eyes were near enough or
sharp enough to detect that.  The noddings of his plumed head as he
saluted his subjects were full of grace and graciousness; the largess
which he delivered from his hand was royally liberal:  so the people's
anxiety vanished, and the acclamations burst forth again in as mighty a
volume as before.

Still once more, a little before the progress was ended, the Duke was
obliged to ride forward, and make remonstrance.  He whispered--

"O dread sovereign! shake off these fatal humours; the eyes of the world
are upon thee."  Then he added with sharp annoyance, "Perdition catch
that crazy pauper! 'twas she that hath disturbed your Highness."

The gorgeous figure turned a lustreless eye upon the Duke, and said in a
dead voice--

"She was my mother!"

"My God!" groaned the Protector as he reined his horse backward to his
post, "the omen was pregnant with prophecy.  He is gone mad again!"



Chapter XXXII. Coronation Day.

Let us go backward a few hours, and place ourselves in Westminster Abbey,
at four o'clock in the morning of this memorable Coronation Day.  We are
not without company; for although it is still night, we find the
torch-lighted galleries already filling up with people who are well
content to sit still and wait seven or eight hours till the time shall
come for them to see what they may not hope to see twice in their lives
--the coronation of a King.  Yes, London and Westminster have been astir
ever since the warning guns boomed at three o'clock, and already crowds
of untitled rich folk who have bought the privilege of trying to find
sitting-room in the galleries are flocking in at the entrances reserved
for their sort.

The hours drag along tediously enough.  All stir has ceased for some
time, for every gallery has long ago been packed.  We may sit, now, and
look and think at our leisure.  We have glimpses, here and there and
yonder, through the dim cathedral twilight, of portions of many galleries
and balconies, wedged full with other people, the other portions of these
galleries and balconies being cut off from sight by intervening pillars
and architectural projections.  We have in view the whole of the great
north transept--empty, and waiting for England's privileged ones.  We see
also the ample area or platform, carpeted with rich stuffs, whereon the
throne stands.  The throne occupies the centre of the platform, and is
raised above it upon an elevation of four steps. Within the seat of the
throne is enclosed a rough flat rock--the stone of Scone--which many
generations of Scottish kings sat on to be crowned, and so it in time
became holy enough to answer a like purpose for English monarchs.  Both
the throne and its footstool are covered with cloth of gold.

Stillness reigns, the torches blink dully, the time drags heavily. But at
last the lagging daylight asserts itself, the torches are extinguished,
and a mellow radiance suffuses the great spaces. All features of the
noble building are distinct now, but soft and dreamy, for the sun is
lightly veiled with clouds.

At seven o'clock the first break in the drowsy monotony occurs; for on
the stroke of this hour the first peeress enters the transept, clothed
like Solomon for splendour, and is conducted to her appointed place by an
official clad in satins and velvets, whilst a duplicate of him gathers up
the lady's long train, follows after, and, when the lady is seated,
arranges the train across her lap for her.  He then places her footstool
according to her desire, after which he puts her coronet where it will be
convenient to her hand when the time for the simultaneous coroneting of
the nobles shall arrive.

By this time the peeresses are flowing in in a glittering stream, and the
satin-clad officials are flitting and glinting everywhere, seating them
and making them comfortable.  The scene is animated enough now.  There is
stir and life, and shifting colour everywhere.  After a time, quiet
reigns again; for the peeresses are all come and are all in their places,
a solid acre or such a matter, of human flowers, resplendent in
variegated colours, and frosted like a Milky Way with diamonds.  There
are all ages here: brown, wrinkled, white-haired dowagers who are able to
go back, and still back, down the stream of time, and recall the crowning
of Richard III. and the troublous days of that old forgotten age; and
there are handsome middle-aged dames; and lovely and gracious young
matrons; and gentle and beautiful young girls, with beaming eyes and
fresh complexions, who may possibly put on their jewelled coronets
awkwardly when the great time comes; for the matter will be new to them,
and their excitement will be a sore hindrance. Still, this may not
happen, for the hair of all these ladies has been arranged with a special
view to the swift and successful lodging of the crown in its place when
the signal comes.

We have seen that this massed array of peeresses is sown thick with
diamonds, and we also see that it is a marvellous spectacle--but now we
are about to be astonished in earnest.  About nine, the clouds suddenly
break away and a shaft of sunshine cleaves the mellow atmosphere, and
drifts slowly along the ranks of ladies; and every rank it touches flames
into a dazzling splendour of many-coloured fires, and we tingle to our
finger-tips with the electric thrill that is shot through us by the
surprise and the beauty of the spectacle!  Presently a special envoy from
some distant corner of the Orient, marching with the general body of
foreign ambassadors, crosses this bar of sunshine, and we catch our
breath, the glory that streams and flashes and palpitates about him is so
overpowering; for he is crusted from head to heel with gems, and his
slightest movement showers a dancing radiance all around him.

Let us change the tense for convenience.  The time drifted along--one
hour--two hours--two hours and a half; then the deep booming of artillery
told that the King and his grand procession had arrived at last; so the
waiting multitude rejoiced.  All knew that a further delay must follow,
for the King must be prepared and robed for the solemn ceremony; but this
delay would be pleasantly occupied by the assembling of the peers of the
realm in their stately robes.  These were conducted ceremoniously to
their seats, and their coronets placed conveniently at hand; and
meanwhile the multitude in the galleries were alive with interest, for
most of them were beholding for the first time, dukes, earls, and barons,
whose names had been historical for five hundred years.  When all were
finally seated, the spectacle from the galleries and all coigns of
vantage was complete; a gorgeous one to look upon and to remember.

Now the robed and mitred great heads of the church, and their attendants,
filed in upon the platform and took their appointed places; these were
followed by the Lord Protector and other great officials, and these again
by a steel-clad detachment of the Guard.

There was a waiting pause; then, at a signal, a triumphant peal of music
burst forth, and Tom Canty, clothed in a long robe of cloth of gold,
appeared at a door, and stepped upon the platform.  The entire multitude
rose, and the ceremony of the Recognition ensued.

Then a noble anthem swept the Abbey with its rich waves of sound; and
thus heralded and welcomed, Tom Canty was conducted to the throne.  The
ancient ceremonies went on, with impressive solemnity, whilst the
audience gazed; and as they drew nearer and nearer to completion, Tom
Canty grew pale, and still paler, and a deep and steadily deepening woe
and despondency settled down upon his spirits and upon his remorseful
heart.

At last the final act was at hand.  The Archbishop of Canterbury lifted
up the crown of England from its cushion and held it out over the
trembling mock-King's head.  In the same instant a rainbow-radiance
flashed along the spacious transept; for with one impulse every
individual in the great concourse of nobles lifted a coronet and poised
it over his or her head--and paused in that attitude.

A deep hush pervaded the Abbey.  At this impressive moment, a startling
apparition intruded upon the scene--an apparition observed by none in the
absorbed multitude, until it suddenly appeared, moving up the great
central aisle.  It was a boy, bareheaded, ill shod, and clothed in coarse
plebeian garments that were falling to rags.  He raised his hand with a
solemnity which ill comported with his soiled and sorry aspect, and
delivered this note of warning--

"I forbid you to set the crown of England upon that forfeited head.  I am
the King!"

In an instant several indignant hands were laid upon the boy; but in the
same instant Tom Canty, in his regal vestments, made a swift step
forward, and cried out in a ringing voice--

"Loose him and forbear!  He IS the King!"

A sort of panic of astonishment swept the assemblage, and they partly
rose in their places and stared in a bewildered way at one another and at
the chief figures in this scene, like persons who wondered whether they
were awake and in their senses, or asleep and dreaming.  The Lord
Protector was as amazed as the rest, but quickly recovered himself, and
exclaimed in a voice of authority--

"Mind not his Majesty, his malady is upon him again--seize the vagabond!"

He would have been obeyed, but the mock-King stamped his foot and cried
out--

"On your peril!  Touch him not, he is the King!"

The hands were withheld; a paralysis fell upon the house; no one moved,
no one spoke; indeed, no one knew how to act or what to say, in so
strange and surprising an emergency.  While all minds were struggling to
right themselves, the boy still moved steadily forward, with high port
and confident mien; he had never halted from the beginning; and while the
tangled minds still floundered helplessly, he stepped upon the platform,
and the mock-King ran with a glad face to meet him; and fell on his knees
before him and said--

"Oh, my lord the King, let poor Tom Canty be first to swear fealty to
thee, and say, 'Put on thy crown and enter into thine own again!'"

The Lord Protector's eye fell sternly upon the new-comer's face; but
straightway the sternness vanished away, and gave place to an expression
of wondering surprise.  This thing happened also to the other great
officers.  They glanced at each other, and retreated a step by a common
and unconscious impulse.  The thought in each mind was the same:  "What a
strange resemblance!"

The Lord Protector reflected a moment or two in perplexity, then he said,
with grave respectfulness--

"By your favour, sir, I desire to ask certain questions which--"

"I will answer them, my lord."

The Duke asked him many questions about the Court, the late King, the
prince, the princesses--the boy answered them correctly and without
hesitating.  He described the rooms of state in the palace, the late
King's apartments, and those of the Prince of Wales.

It was strange; it was wonderful; yes, it was unaccountable--so all said
that heard it.  The tide was beginning to turn, and Tom Canty's hopes to
run high, when the Lord Protector shook his head and said--

"It is true it is most wonderful--but it is no more than our lord the
King likewise can do."  This remark, and this reference to himself as
still the King, saddened Tom Canty, and he felt his hopes crumbling from
under him.  "These are not PROOFS," added the Protector.

The tide was turning very fast now, very fast indeed--but in the wrong
direction; it was leaving poor Tom Canty stranded on the throne, and
sweeping the other out to sea.  The Lord Protector communed with himself
--shook his head--the thought forced itself upon him, "It is perilous to
the State and to us all, to entertain so fateful a riddle as this; it
could divide the nation and undermine the throne."  He turned and said--

"Sir Thomas, arrest this--No, hold!"  His face lighted, and he confronted
the ragged candidate with this question--

"Where lieth the Great Seal?  Answer me this truly, and the riddle is
unriddled; for only he that was Prince of Wales CAN so answer! On so
trivial a thing hang a throne and a dynasty!"

It was a lucky thought, a happy thought.  That it was so considered by
the great officials was manifested by the silent applause that shot from
eye to eye around their circle in the form of bright approving glances.
Yes, none but the true prince could dissolve the stubborn mystery of the
vanished Great Seal--this forlorn little impostor had been taught his
lesson well, but here his teachings must fail, for his teacher himself
could not answer THAT question--ah, very good, very good indeed; now we
shall be rid of this troublesome and perilous business in short order!
And so they nodded invisibly and smiled inwardly with satisfaction, and
looked to see this foolish lad stricken with a palsy of guilty confusion.
How surprised they were, then, to see nothing of the sort happen--how
they marvelled to hear him answer up promptly, in a confident and
untroubled voice, and say--

"There is nought in this riddle that is difficult."  Then, without so
much as a by-your-leave to anybody, he turned and gave this command, with
the easy manner of one accustomed to doing such things: "My Lord St.
John, go you to my private cabinet in the palace--for none knoweth the
place better than you--and, close down to the floor, in the left corner
remotest from the door that opens from the ante-chamber, you shall find
in the wall a brazen nail-head; press upon it and a little jewel-closet
will fly open which not even you do know of--no, nor any soul else in
all the world but me and the trusty artisan that did contrive it for me.
The first thing that falleth under your eye will be the Great Seal--fetch
it hither."

All the company wondered at this speech, and wondered still more to see
the little mendicant pick out this peer without hesitancy or apparent
fear of mistake, and call him by name with such a placidly convincing air
of having known him all his life.  The peer was almost surprised into
obeying.  He even made a movement as if to go, but quickly recovered his
tranquil attitude and confessed his blunder with a blush.  Tom Canty
turned upon him and said, sharply--

"Why dost thou hesitate?  Hast not heard the King's command?  Go!"

The Lord St. John made a deep obeisance--and it was observed that it was
a significantly cautious and non-committal one, it not being delivered at
either of the kings, but at the neutral ground about half-way between the
two--and took his leave.

Now began a movement of the gorgeous particles of that official group
which was slow, scarcely perceptible, and yet steady and persistent--a
movement such as is observed in a kaleidoscope that is turned slowly,
whereby the components of one splendid cluster fall away and join
themselves to another--a movement which, little by little, in the present
case, dissolved the glittering crowd that stood about Tom Canty and
clustered it together again in the neighbourhood of the new-comer.  Tom
Canty stood almost alone. Now ensued a brief season of deep suspense and
waiting--during which even the few faint hearts still remaining near Tom
Canty gradually scraped together courage enough to glide, one by one,
over to the majority.  So at last Tom Canty, in his royal robes and
jewels, stood wholly alone and isolated from the world, a conspicuous
figure, occupying an eloquent vacancy.

Now the Lord St. John was seen returning.  As he advanced up the
mid-aisle the interest was so intense that the low murmur of conversation
in the great assemblage died out and was succeeded by a profound hush, a
breathless stillness, through which his footfalls pulsed with a dull and
distant sound.  Every eye was fastened upon him as he moved along.  He
reached the platform, paused a moment, then moved toward Tom Canty with a
deep obeisance, and said--

"Sire, the Seal is not there!"

A mob does not melt away from the presence of a plague-patient with more
haste than the band of pallid and terrified courtiers melted away from
the presence of the shabby little claimant of the Crown.  In a moment he
stood all alone, without friend or supporter, a target upon which was
concentrated a bitter fire of scornful and angry looks.  The Lord
Protector called out fiercely--

"Cast the beggar into the street, and scourge him through the town--the
paltry knave is worth no more consideration!"

Officers of the guard sprang forward to obey, but Tom Canty waved them
off and said--

"Back!  Whoso touches him perils his life!"

The Lord Protector was perplexed in the last degree.  He said to the Lord
St. John--

"Searched you well?--but it boots not to ask that.  It doth seem passing
strange.  Little things, trifles, slip out of one's ken, and one does not
think it matter for surprise; but how so bulky a thing as the Seal of
England can vanish away and no man be able to get track of it again--a
massy golden disk--"

Tom Canty, with beaming eyes, sprang forward and shouted--

"Hold, that is enough!  Was it round?--and thick?--and had it letters and
devices graved upon it?--yes?  Oh, NOW I know what this Great Seal is
that there's been such worry and pother about. An' ye had described it to
me, ye could have had it three weeks ago.  Right well I know where it
lies; but it was not I that put it there--first."

"Who, then, my liege?" asked the Lord Protector.

"He that stands there--the rightful King of England.  And he shall tell
you himself where it lies--then you will believe he knew it of his own
knowledge.  Bethink thee, my King--spur thy memory--it was the last, the
very LAST thing thou didst that day before thou didst rush forth from the
palace, clothed in my rags, to punish the soldier that insulted me."

A silence ensued, undisturbed by a movement or a whisper, and all eyes
were fixed upon the new-comer, who stood, with bent head and corrugated
brow, groping in his memory among a thronging multitude of valueless
recollections for one single little elusive fact, which, found, would
seat him upon a throne--unfound, would leave him as he was, for good and
all--a pauper and an outcast.  Moment after moment passed--the moments
built themselves into minutes--still the boy struggled silently on, and
gave no sign.  But at last he heaved a sigh, shook his head slowly, and
said, with a trembling lip and in a despondent voice--

"I call the scene back--all of it--but the Seal hath no place in it."  He
paused, then looked up, and said with gentle dignity, "My lords and
gentlemen, if ye will rob your rightful sovereign of his own for lack of
this evidence which he is not able to furnish, I may not stay ye, being
powerless.  But--"

"Oh, folly, oh, madness, my King!" cried Tom Canty, in a panic, "wait!
--think!  Do not give up!--the cause is not lost!  Nor SHALL be, neither!
List to what I say--follow every word--I am going to bring that morning
back again, every hap just as it happened.  We talked--I told you of my
sisters, Nan and Bet--ah, yes, you remember that; and about mine old
grandam--and the rough games of the lads of Offal Court--yes, you
remember these things also; very well, follow me still, you shall recall
everything.  You gave me food and drink, and did with princely courtesy
send away the servants, so that my low breeding might not shame me before
them--ah, yes, this also you remember."

As Tom checked off his details, and the other boy nodded his head in
recognition of them, the great audience and the officials stared in
puzzled wonderment; the tale sounded like true history, yet how could
this impossible conjunction between a prince and a beggar-boy have come
about?  Never was a company of people so perplexed, so interested, and so
stupefied, before.

"For a jest, my prince, we did exchange garments.  Then we stood before a
mirror; and so alike were we that both said it seemed as if there had
been no change made--yes, you remember that.  Then you noticed that the
soldier had hurt my hand--look! here it is, I cannot yet even write with
it, the fingers are so stiff.  At this your Highness sprang up, vowing
vengeance upon that soldier, and ran towards the door--you passed a
table--that thing you call the Seal lay on that table--you snatched it up
and looked eagerly about, as if for a place to hide it--your eye caught
sight of--"

"There, 'tis sufficient!--and the good God be thanked!" exclaimed the
ragged claimant, in a mighty excitement.  "Go, my good St. John--in an
arm-piece of the Milanese armour that hangs on the wall, thou'lt find the
Seal!"

"Right, my King! right!" cried Tom Canty; "NOW the sceptre of England is
thine own; and it were better for him that would dispute it that he had
been born dumb!  Go, my Lord St. John, give thy feet wings!"

The whole assemblage was on its feet now, and well-nigh out of its mind
with uneasiness, apprehension, and consuming excitement.  On the floor
and on the platform a deafening buzz of frantic conversation burst forth,
and for some time nobody knew anything or heard anything or was
interested in anything but what his neighbour was shouting into his ear,
or he was shouting into his neighbour's ear.  Time--nobody knew how much
of it--swept by unheeded and unnoted.  At last a sudden hush fell upon
the house, and in the same moment St. John appeared upon the platform,
and held the Great Seal aloft in his hand.  Then such a shout went up--

"Long live the true King!"

For five minutes the air quaked with shouts and the crash of musical
instruments, and was white with a storm of waving handkerchiefs; and
through it all a ragged lad, the most conspicuous figure in England,
stood, flushed and happy and proud, in the centre of the spacious
platform, with the great vassals of the kingdom kneeling around him.

Then all rose, and Tom Canty cried out--

"Now, O my King, take these regal garments back, and give poor Tom, thy
servant, his shreds and remnants again."

The Lord Protector spoke up--

"Let the small varlet be stripped and flung into the Tower."

But the new King, the true King, said--

"I will not have it so.  But for him I had not got my crown again--none
shall lay a hand upon him to harm him.  And as for thee, my good uncle,
my Lord Protector, this conduct of thine is not grateful toward this poor
lad, for I hear he hath made thee a duke"--the Protector blushed--"yet he
was not a king; wherefore what is thy fine title worth now?  To-morrow
you shall sue to me, THROUGH HIM, for its confirmation, else no duke, but
a simple earl, shalt thou remain."

Under this rebuke, his Grace the Duke of Somerset retired a little from
the front for the moment.  The King turned to Tom, and said kindly--"My
poor boy, how was it that you could remember where I hid the Seal when I
could not remember it myself?"

"Ah, my King, that was easy, since I used it divers days."

"Used it--yet could not explain where it was?"

"I did not know it was THAT they wanted.  They did not describe it, your
Majesty."

"Then how used you it?"

The red blood began to steal up into Tom's cheeks, and he dropped his
eyes and was silent.

"Speak up, good lad, and fear nothing," said the King.  "How used you the
Great Seal of England?"

Tom stammered a moment, in a pathetic confusion, then got it out--

"To crack nuts with!"

Poor child, the avalanche of laughter that greeted this nearly swept him
off his feet.  But if a doubt remained in any mind that Tom Canty was not
the King of England and familiar with the august appurtenances of
royalty, this reply disposed of it utterly.

Meantime the sumptuous robe of state had been removed from Tom's
shoulders to the King's, whose rags were effectually hidden from sight
under it.  Then the coronation ceremonies were resumed; the true King was
anointed and the crown set upon his head, whilst cannon thundered the
news to the city, and all London seemed to rock with applause.



Chapter XXXIII. Edward as King.

Miles Hendon was picturesque enough before he got into the riot on London
Bridge--he was more so when he got out of it.  He had but little money
when he got in, none at all when he got out.  The pickpockets had
stripped him of his last farthing.

But no matter, so he found his boy.  Being a soldier, he did not go at
his task in a random way, but set to work, first of all, to arrange his
campaign.

What would the boy naturally do?  Where would he naturally go? Well
--argued Miles--he would naturally go to his former haunts, for that is the
instinct of unsound minds, when homeless and forsaken, as well as of
sound ones.  Whereabouts were his former haunts?  His rags, taken
together with the low villain who seemed to know him and who even claimed
to be his father, indicated that his home was in one or another of the
poorest and meanest districts of London.  Would the search for him be
difficult, or long?  No, it was likely to be easy and brief.  He would
not hunt for the boy, he would hunt for a crowd; in the centre of a big
crowd or a little one, sooner or later, he should find his poor little
friend, sure; and the mangy mob would be entertaining itself with
pestering and aggravating the boy, who would be proclaiming himself King,
as usual.  Then Miles Hendon would cripple some of those people, and
carry off his little ward, and comfort and cheer him with loving words,
and the two would never be separated any more.

So Miles started on his quest.  Hour after hour he tramped through back
alleys and squalid streets, seeking groups and crowds, and finding no end
of them, but never any sign of the boy.  This greatly surprised him, but
did not discourage him.  To his notion, there was nothing the matter with
his plan of campaign; the only miscalculation about it was that the
campaign was becoming a lengthy one, whereas he had expected it to be
short.

When daylight arrived, at last, he had made many a mile, and canvassed
many a crowd, but the only result was that he was tolerably tired, rather
hungry and very sleepy.  He wanted some breakfast, but there was no way
to get it.  To beg for it did not occur to him; as to pawning his sword,
he would as soon have thought of parting with his honour; he could spare
some of his clothes--yes, but one could as easily find a customer for a
disease as for such clothes.

At noon he was still tramping--among the rabble which followed after the
royal procession, now; for he argued that this regal display would
attract his little lunatic powerfully.  He followed the pageant through
all its devious windings about London, and all the way to Westminster and
the Abbey.  He drifted here and there amongst the multitudes that were
massed in the vicinity for a weary long time, baffled and perplexed, and
finally wandered off, thinking, and trying to contrive some way to better
his plan of campaign.  By-and-by, when he came to himself out of his
musings, he discovered that the town was far behind him and that the day
was growing old.  He was near the river, and in the country; it was a
region of fine rural seats--not the sort of district to welcome clothes
like his.

It was not at all cold; so he stretched himself on the ground in the lee
of a hedge to rest and think.  Drowsiness presently began to settle upon
his senses; the faint and far-off boom of cannon was wafted to his ear,
and he said to himself, "The new King is crowned," and straightway fell
asleep.  He had not slept or rested, before, for more than thirty hours.
He did not wake again until near the middle of the next morning.

He got up, lame, stiff, and half famished, washed himself in the river,
stayed his stomach with a pint or two of water, and trudged off toward
Westminster, grumbling at himself for having wasted so much time.  Hunger
helped him to a new plan, now; he would try to get speech with old Sir
Humphrey Marlow and borrow a few marks, and--but that was enough of a
plan for the present; it would be time enough to enlarge it when this
first stage should be accomplished.

Toward eleven o'clock he approached the palace; and although a host of
showy people were about him, moving in the same direction, he was not
inconspicuous--his costume took care of that.  He watched these people's
faces narrowly, hoping to find a charitable one whose possessor might be
willing to carry his name to the old lieutenant--as to trying to get into
the palace himself, that was simply out of the question.

Presently our whipping-boy passed him, then wheeled about and scanned his
figure well, saying to himself, "An' that is not the very vagabond his
Majesty is in such a worry about, then am I an ass--though belike I was
that before.  He answereth the description to a rag--that God should make
two such would be to cheapen miracles by wasteful repetition.  I would I
could contrive an excuse to speak with him."

Miles Hendon saved him the trouble; for he turned about, then, as a man
generally will when somebody mesmerises him by gazing hard at him from
behind; and observing a strong interest in the boy's eyes, he stepped
toward him and said--

"You have just come out from the palace; do you belong there?"

"Yes, your worship."

"Know you Sir Humphrey Marlow?"

The boy started, and said to himself, "Lord! mine old departed father!"
Then he answered aloud, "Right well, your worship."

"Good--is he within?"

"Yes," said the boy; and added, to himself, "within his grave."

"Might I crave your favour to carry my name to him, and say I beg to say
a word in his ear?"

"I will despatch the business right willingly, fair sir."

"Then say Miles Hendon, son of Sir Richard, is here without--I shall be
greatly bounden to you, my good lad."

The boy looked disappointed.  "The King did not name him so," he said to
himself; "but it mattereth not, this is his twin brother, and can give
his Majesty news of t'other Sir-Odds-and-Ends, I warrant."  So he said to
Miles, "Step in there a moment, good sir, and wait till I bring you
word."

Hendon retired to the place indicated--it was a recess sunk in the palace
wall, with a stone bench in it--a shelter for sentinels in bad weather.
He had hardly seated himself when some halberdiers, in charge of an
officer, passed by.  The officer saw him, halted his men, and commanded
Hendon to come forth.  He obeyed, and was promptly arrested as a
suspicious character prowling within the precincts of the palace.  Things
began to look ugly.  Poor Miles was going to explain, but the officer
roughly silenced him, and ordered his men to disarm him and search him.

"God of his mercy grant that they find somewhat," said poor Miles; "I
have searched enow, and failed, yet is my need greater than theirs."

Nothing was found but a document.  The officer tore it open, and Hendon
smiled when he recognised the 'pot-hooks' made by his lost little friend
that black day at Hendon Hall.  The officer's face grew dark as he read
the English paragraph, and Miles blenched to the opposite colour as he
listened.

"Another new claimant of the Crown!" cried the officer.  "Verily they
breed like rabbits, to-day.  Seize the rascal, men, and see ye keep him
fast whilst I convey this precious paper within and send it to the King."

He hurried away, leaving the prisoner in the grip of the halberdiers.

"Now is my evil luck ended at last," muttered Hendon, "for I shall dangle
at a rope's end for a certainty, by reason of that bit of writing.  And
what will become of my poor lad!--ah, only the good God knoweth."

By-and-by he saw the officer coming again, in a great hurry; so he
plucked his courage together, purposing to meet his trouble as became a
man.  The officer ordered the men to loose the prisoner and return his
sword to him; then bowed respectfully, and said--

"Please you, sir, to follow me."

Hendon followed, saying to himself, "An' I were not travelling to death
and judgment, and so must needs economise in sin, I would throttle this
knave for his mock courtesy."

The two traversed a populous court, and arrived at the grand entrance of
the palace, where the officer, with another bow, delivered Hendon into
the hands of a gorgeous official, who received him with profound respect
and led him forward through a great hall, lined on both sides with rows
of splendid flunkeys (who made reverential obeisance as the two passed
along, but fell into death-throes of silent laughter at our stately
scarecrow the moment his back was turned), and up a broad staircase,
among flocks of fine folk, and finally conducted him into a vast room,
clove a passage for him through the assembled nobility of England, then
made a bow, reminded him to take his hat off, and left him standing in
the middle of the room, a mark for all eyes, for plenty of indignant
frowns, and for a sufficiency of amused and derisive smiles.

Miles Hendon was entirely bewildered.  There sat the young King, under a
canopy of state, five steps away, with his head bent down and aside,
speaking with a sort of human bird of paradise--a duke, maybe.  Hendon
observed to himself that it was hard enough to be sentenced to death in
the full vigour of life, without having this peculiarly public
humiliation added.  He wished the King would hurry about it--some of the
gaudy people near by were becoming pretty offensive.  At this moment the
King raised his head slightly, and Hendon caught a good view of his face.
The sight nearly took his breath away!--He stood gazing at the fair young
face like one transfixed; then presently ejaculated--

"Lo, the Lord of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows on his throne!"

He muttered some broken sentences, still gazing and marvelling; then
turned his eyes around and about, scanning the gorgeous throng and the
splendid saloon, murmuring, "But these are REAL--verily these are REAL
--surely it is not a dream."

He stared at the King again--and thought, "IS it a dream . . . or IS he
the veritable Sovereign of England, and not the friendless poor Tom o'
Bedlam I took him for--who shall solve me this riddle?"

A sudden idea flashed in his eye, and he strode to the wall, gathered up
a chair, brought it back, planted it on the floor, and sat down in it!

A buzz of indignation broke out, a rough hand was laid upon him and a
voice exclaimed--

"Up, thou mannerless clown! would'st sit in the presence of the King?"

The disturbance attracted his Majesty's attention, who stretched forth
his hand and cried out--

"Touch him not, it is his right!"

The throng fell back, stupefied.  The King went on--

"Learn ye all, ladies, lords, and gentlemen, that this is my trusty and
well-beloved servant, Miles Hendon, who interposed his good sword and
saved his prince from bodily harm and possible death--and for this he is
a knight, by the King's voice.  Also learn, that for a higher service, in
that he saved his sovereign stripes and shame, taking these upon himself,
he is a peer of England, Earl of Kent, and shall have gold and lands meet
for the dignity.  More--the privilege which he hath just exercised is his
by royal grant; for we have ordained that the chiefs of his line shall
have and hold the right to sit in the presence of the Majesty of England
henceforth, age after age, so long as the crown shall endure.  Molest him
not."

Two persons, who, through delay, had only arrived from the country during
this morning, and had now been in this room only five minutes, stood
listening to these words and looking at the King, then at the scarecrow,
then at the King again, in a sort of torpid bewilderment.  These were Sir
Hugh and the Lady Edith.  But the new Earl did not see them.  He was
still staring at the monarch, in a dazed way, and muttering--

"Oh, body o' me!  THIS my pauper!  This my lunatic!  This is he whom _I_
would show what grandeur was, in my house of seventy rooms and
seven-and-twenty servants!  This is he who had never known aught but rags
for raiment, kicks for comfort, and offal for diet!  This is he whom _I_
adopted and would make respectable! Would God I had a bag to hide my head
in!"

Then his manners suddenly came back to him, and he dropped upon his
knees, with his hands between the King's, and swore allegiance and did
homage for his lands and titles.  Then he rose and stood respectfully
aside, a mark still for all eyes--and much envy, too.

Now the King discovered Sir Hugh, and spoke out with wrathful voice and
kindling eye--

"Strip this robber of his false show and stolen estates, and put him
under lock and key till I have need of him."

The late Sir Hugh was led away.

There was a stir at the other end of the room, now; the assemblage fell
apart, and Tom Canty, quaintly but richly clothed, marched down, between
these living walls, preceded by an usher.  He knelt before the King, who
said--

"I have learned the story of these past few weeks, and am well pleased
with thee.  Thou hast governed the realm with right royal gentleness and
mercy.  Thou hast found thy mother and thy sisters again?  Good; they
shall be cared for--and thy father shall hang, if thou desire it and the
law consent.  Know, all ye that hear my voice, that from this day, they
that abide in the shelter of Christ's Hospital and share the King's
bounty shall have their minds and hearts fed, as well as their baser
parts; and this boy shall dwell there, and hold the chief place in its
honourable body of governors, during life.  And for that he hath been a
king, it is meet that other than common observance shall be his due;
wherefore note this his dress of state, for by it he shall be known, and
none shall copy it; and wheresoever he shall come, it shall remind the
people that he hath been royal, in his time, and none shall deny him his
due of reverence or fail to give him salutation.  He hath the throne's
protection, he hath the crown's support, he shall be known and called by
the honourable title of the King's Ward."

The proud and happy Tom Canty rose and kissed the King's hand, and was
conducted from the presence.  He did not waste any time, but flew to his
mother, to tell her and Nan and Bet all about it and get them to help him
enjoy the great news. {1}



Conclusion. Justice and retribution.

When the mysteries were all cleared up, it came out, by confession of
Hugh Hendon, that his wife had repudiated Miles by his command, that day
at Hendon Hall--a command assisted and supported by the perfectly
trustworthy promise that if she did not deny that he was Miles Hendon,
and stand firmly to it, he would have her life; whereupon she said, "Take
it!"--she did not value it--and she would not repudiate Miles; then the
husband said he would spare her life but have Miles assassinated!  This
was a different matter; so she gave her word and kept it.

Hugh was not prosecuted for his threats or for stealing his brother's
estates and title, because the wife and brother would not testify against
him--and the former would not have been allowed to do it, even if she had
wanted to.  Hugh deserted his wife and went over to the continent, where
he presently died; and by-and-by the Earl of Kent married his relict.
There were grand times and rejoicings at Hendon village when the couple
paid their first visit to the Hall.

Tom Canty's father was never heard of again.

The King sought out the farmer who had been branded and sold as a slave,
and reclaimed him from his evil life with the Ruffler's gang, and put him
in the way of a comfortable livelihood.

He also took that old lawyer out of prison and remitted his fine. He
provided good homes for the daughters of the two Baptist women whom he
saw burned at the stake, and roundly punished the official who laid the
undeserved stripes upon Miles Hendon's back.

He saved from the gallows the boy who had captured the stray falcon, and
also the woman who had stolen a remnant of cloth from a weaver; but he
was too late to save the man who had been convicted of killing a deer in
the royal forest.

He showed favour to the justice who had pitied him when he was supposed
to have stolen a pig, and he had the gratification of seeing him grow in
the public esteem and become a great and honoured man.

As long as the King lived he was fond of telling the story of his
adventures, all through, from the hour that the sentinel cuffed him away
from the palace gate till the final midnight when he deftly mixed himself
into a gang of hurrying workmen and so slipped into the Abbey and climbed
up and hid himself in the Confessor's tomb, and then slept so long, next
day, that he came within one of missing the Coronation altogether.  He
said that the frequent rehearsing of the precious lesson kept him strong
in his purpose to make its teachings yield benefits to his people; and
so, whilst his life was spared he should continue to tell the story, and
thus keep its sorrowful spectacles fresh in his memory and the springs of
pity replenished in his heart.

Miles Hendon and Tom Canty were favourites of the King, all through his
brief reign, and his sincere mourners when he died. The good Earl of Kent
had too much sense to abuse his peculiar privilege; but he exercised it
twice after the instance we have seen of it before he was called from
this world--once at the accession of Queen Mary, and once at the
accession of Queen Elizabeth.  A descendant of his exercised it at the
accession of James I.  Before this one's son chose to use the privilege,
near a quarter of a century had elapsed, and the 'privilege of the Kents'
had faded out of most people's memories; so, when the Kent of that day
appeared before Charles I. and his court and sat down in the sovereign's
presence to assert and perpetuate the right of his house, there was a
fine stir indeed!  But the matter was soon explained, and the right
confirmed.  The last Earl of the line fell in the wars of the
Commonwealth fighting for the King, and the odd privilege ended with him.

Tom Canty lived to be a very old man, a handsome, white-haired old
fellow, of grave and benignant aspect.  As long as he lasted he was
honoured; and he was also reverenced, for his striking and peculiar
costume kept the people reminded that 'in his time he had been royal;'
so, wherever he appeared the crowd fell apart, making way for him, and
whispering, one to another, "Doff thy hat, it is the King's Ward!"--and
so they saluted, and got his kindly smile in return--and they valued it,
too, for his was an honourable history.

Yes, King Edward VI. lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them
worthily.  More than once, when some great dignitary, some gilded vassal
of the crown, made argument against his leniency, and urged that some law
which he was bent upon amending was gentle enough for its purpose, and
wrought no suffering or oppression which any one need mightily mind, the
young King turned the mournful eloquence of his great compassionate eyes
upon him and answered--

"What dost THOU know of suffering and oppression?  I and my people know,
but not thou."

The reign of Edward VI. was a singularly merciful one for those harsh
times.  Now that we are taking leave of him, let us try to keep this in
our minds, to his credit.




FOOTNOTES AND TWAIN'S NOTES

{1}  For Mark Twain's note see below under the relevant chapter heading.

{2}  He refers to the order of baronets, or baronettes; the barones
minores, as distinct from the parliamentary barons--not, it need hardly
be said, to the baronets of later creation.

{3}  The lords of Kingsale, descendants of De Courcy, still enjoy this
curious privilege.

{4}  Hume.

{5}  Ib.

{6}  Leigh Hunt's 'The Town,' p.408, quotation from an early tourist.

{7}  Canting terms for various kinds of thieves, beggars and vagabonds,
and their female companions.

{8}  From 'The English Rogue.'  London, 1665.

{9}  Hume's England.

{10}  See Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False, p. 11.



NOTE 1, Chapter IV. Christ's Hospital Costume.

It is most reasonable to regard the dress as copied from the costume of
the citizens of London of that period, when long blue coats were the
common habit of apprentices and serving-men, and yellow stockings were
generally worn; the coat fits closely to the body, but has loose sleeves,
and beneath is worn a sleeveless yellow under-coat; around the waist is a
red leathern girdle; a clerical band around the neck, and a small flat
black cap, about the size of a saucer, completes the costume.--Timbs'
Curiosities of London.



NOTE 2, Chapter IV.

It appears that Christ's Hospital was not originally founded as a SCHOOL;
its object was to rescue children from the streets, to shelter, feed,
clothe them.--Timbs' Curiosities of London.



NOTE 3, Chapter V. The Duke of Norfolk's Condemnation commanded.

The King was now approaching fast towards his end; and fearing lest
Norfolk should escape him, he sent a message to the Commons, by which he
desired them to hasten the Bill, on pretence that Norfolk enjoyed the
dignity of Earl Marshal, and it was necessary to appoint another, who
might officiate at the ensuing ceremony of installing his son Prince of
Wales.--Hume's History of England, vol. iii. p. 307.



NOTE 4, Chapter VII.

It was not till the end of this reign (Henry VIII.) that any salads,
carrots, turnips, or other edible roots were produced in England.  The
little of these vegetables that was used was formerly imported from
Holland and Flanders.  Queen Catherine, when she wanted a salad, was
obliged to despatch a messenger thither on purpose.--Hume's History of
England, vol. iii. p. 314.



NOTE 5, Chapter VIII. Attainder of Norfolk.

The House of Peers, without examining the prisoner, without trial or
evidence, passed a Bill of Attainder against him and sent it down to the
Commons . . . The obsequious Commons obeyed his (the King's) directions;
and the King, having affixed the Royal assent to the Bill by
commissioners, issued orders for the execution of Norfolk on the morning
of January 29 (the next day).--Hume's History of England, vol iii. p 306.



NOTE 6, Chapter X. The Loving-cup.

The loving-cup, and the peculiar ceremonies observed in drinking from it,
are older than English history.  It is thought that both are Danish
importations.  As far back as knowledge goes, the loving-cup has always
been drunk at English banquets.  Tradition explains the ceremonies in
this way.  In the rude ancient times it was deemed a wise precaution to
have both hands of both drinkers employed, lest while the pledger pledged
his love and fidelity to the pledgee, the pledgee take that opportunity
to slip a dirk into him!



NOTE 7, Chapter XI. The Duke of Norfolk's narrow Escape.

Had Henry VIII. survived a few hours longer, his order for the duke's
execution would have been carried into effect. 'But news being carried to
the Tower that the King himself had expired that night, the lieutenant
deferred obeying the warrant; and it was not thought advisable by the
Council to begin a new reign by the death of the greatest nobleman in the
kingdom, who had been condemned by a sentence so unjust and tyrannical.'
--Hume's History of England, vol. iii, p. 307.



NOTE 8, Chapter XIV. The Whipping-boy.

James I. and Charles II. had whipping-boys, when they were little
fellows, to take their punishment for them when they fell short in their
lessons; so I have ventured to furnish my small prince with one, for my
own purposes.



NOTES to Chapter XV.

Character of Hertford.

The young King discovered an extreme attachment to his uncle, who was, in
the main, a man of moderation and probity.--Hume's History of England,
vol. iii, p324.

But if he (the Protector) gave offence by assuming too much state, he
deserves great praise on account of the laws passed this session, by
which the rigour of former statutes was much mitigated, and some security
given to the freedom of the constitution.  All laws were repealed which
extended the crime of treason beyond the statute of the twenty-fifth of
Edward III.; all laws enacted during the late reign extending the crime
of felony; all the former laws against Lollardy or heresy, together with
the statute of the Six Articles.  None were to be accused for words, but
within a month after they were spoken.  By these repeals several of the
most rigorous laws that ever had passed in England were annulled; and
some dawn, both of civil and religious liberty, began to appear to the
people.  A repeal also passed of that law, the destruction of all laws,
by which the King's proclamation was made of equal force with a statute.
--Ibid. vol. iii. p. 339.



Boiling to Death.

In the reign of Henry VIII. poisoners were, by Act of Parliament,
condemned to be BOILED TO DEATH.  This Act was repealed in the following
reign.

In Germany, even in the seventeenth century, this horrible punishment was
inflicted on coiners and counterfeiters.  Taylor, the Water Poet,
describes an execution he witnessed in Hamburg in 1616.  The judgment
pronounced against a coiner of false money was that he should 'BE BOILED
TO DEATH IN OIL; not thrown into the vessel at once, but with a pulley or
rope to be hanged under the armpits, and then let down into the oil BY
DEGREES; first the feet, and next the legs, and so to boil his flesh from
his bones alive.'--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False,
p. 13.



The Famous Stocking Case.

A woman and her daughter, NINE YEARS OLD, were hanged in Huntingdon for
selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off
their stockings!--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False, p.
20.



NOTE 10, Chapter XVII. Enslaving.

So young a King and so ignorant a peasant were likely to make mistakes;
and this is an instance in point.  This peasant was suffering from this
law BY ANTICIPATION; the King was venting his indignation against a law
which was not yet in existence; for this hideous statute was to have
birth in this little King's OWN REIGN. However, we know, from the
humanity of his character, that it could never have been suggested by
him.



NOTES to Chapter XXIII. Death for Trifling Larcenies.

When Connecticut and New Haven were framing their first codes, larceny
above the value of twelve pence was a capital crime in England--as it had
been since the time of Henry I.--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws,
True and False, p. 17.

The curious old book called The English Rogue makes the limit thirteen
pence ha'penny:  death being the portion of any who steal a thing 'above
the value of thirteen pence ha'penny.'



NOTES to Chapter XXVII.

From many descriptions of larceny the law expressly took away the benefit
of clergy:  to steal a horse, or a HAWK, or woollen cloth from the
weaver, was a hanging matter.  So it was to kill a deer from the King's
forest, or to export sheep from the kingdom.--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's
Blue Laws, True and False, p.13.

William Prynne, a learned barrister, was sentenced (long after Edward
VI.'s time) to lose both his ears in the pillory, to degradation from the
bar, a fine of 3,000 pounds, and imprisonment for life.  Three years
afterwards he gave new offence to Laud by publishing a pamphlet against
the hierarchy.  He was again prosecuted, and was sentenced to lose WHAT
REMAINED OF HIS EARS, to pay a fine of 5,000 pounds, to be BRANDED ON
BOTH HIS CHEEKS with the letters S. L. (for Seditious Libeller), and to
remain in prison for life.  The severity of this sentence was equalled by
the savage rigour of its execution.--Ibid. p. 12.



NOTES to Chapter XXXIII.

Christ's Hospital, or Bluecoat School, 'the noblest institution in the
world.'

The ground on which the Priory of the Grey Friars stood was conferred by
Henry VIII. on the Corporation of London (who caused the institution
there of a home for poor boys and girls). Subsequently, Edward VI. caused
the old Priory to be properly repaired, and founded within it that noble
establishment called the Bluecoat School, or Christ's Hospital, for the
EDUCATION and maintenance of orphans and the children of indigent persons
. . . Edward would not let him (Bishop Ridley) depart till the letter was
written (to the Lord Mayor), and then charged him to deliver it himself,
and signify his special request and commandment that no time might be
lost in proposing what was convenient, and apprising him of the
proceedings.  The work was zealously undertaken, Ridley himself engaging
in it; and the result was the founding of Christ's Hospital for the
education of poor children. (The King endowed several other charities at
the same time.) "Lord God," said he, "I yield Thee most hearty thanks
that Thou hast given me life thus long to finish this work to the glory
of Thy name!"  That innocent and most exemplary life was drawing rapidly
to its close, and in a few days he rendered up his spirit to his Creator,
praying God to defend the realm from Papistry.--J. Heneage Jesse's
London:  its Celebrated Characters and Places.

In the Great Hall hangs a large picture of King Edward VI. seated on his
throne, in a scarlet and ermined robe, holding the sceptre in his left
hand, and presenting with the other the Charter to the kneeling Lord
Mayor.  By his side stands the Chancellor, holding the seals, and next to
him are other officers of state.  Bishop Ridley kneels before him with
uplifted hands, as if supplicating a blessing on the event; whilst the
Aldermen, etc., with the Lord Mayor, kneel on both sides, occupying the
middle ground of the picture; and lastly, in front, are a double row of
boys on one side and girls on the other, from the master and matron down
to the boy and girl who have stepped forward from their respective rows,
and kneel with raised hands before the King.--Timbs' Curiosities of
London, p. 98.

Christ's Hospital, by ancient custom, possesses the privilege of
addressing the Sovereign on the occasion of his or her coming into the
City to partake of the hospitality of the Corporation of London.--Ibid.

The Dining Hall, with its lobby and organ-gallery, occupies the entire
storey, which is 187 feet long, 51 feet wide, and 47 feet high; it is lit
by nine large windows, filled with stained glass on the south side; and
is, next to Westminster Hall, the noblest room in the metropolis.  Here
the boys, now about 800 in number, dine; and here are held the 'Suppings
in Public,' to which visitors are admitted by tickets issued by the
Treasurer and by the Governors of Christ's Hospital.  The tables are laid
with cheese in wooden bowls, beer in wooden piggins, poured from leathern
jacks, and bread brought in large baskets.  The official company enter;
the Lord Mayor, or President, takes his seat in a state chair made of oak
from St. Catherine's Church, by the Tower; a hymn is sung, accompanied by
the organ; a 'Grecian,' or head boy, reads the prayers from the pulpit,
silence being enforced by three drops of a wooden hammer.  After prayer
the supper commences, and the visitors walk between the tables.  At its
close the 'trade-boys' take up the baskets, bowls, jacks, piggins, and
candlesticks, and pass in procession, the bowing to the Governors being
curiously formal.  This spectacle was witnessed by Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert in 1845.

Among the more eminent Bluecoat boys are Joshua Barnes, editor of
Anacreon and Euripides; Jeremiah Markland, the eminent critic,
particularly in Greek Literature; Camden, the antiquary; Bishop
Stillingfleet; Samuel Richardson, the novelist; Thomas Mitchell, the
translator of Aristophanes; Thomas Barnes, many years editor of the
London Times; Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt.

No boy is admitted before he is seven years old, or after he is nine; and
no boy can remain in the school after he is fifteen, King's boys and
'Grecians' alone excepted.  There are about 500 Governors, at the head of
whom are the Sovereign and the Prince of Wales.  The qualification for a
Governor is payment of 500 pounds.--Ibid.


GENERAL NOTE.


One hears much about the 'hideous Blue Laws of Connecticut,' and is
accustomed to shudder piously when they are mentioned.  There are people
in America--and even in England!--who imagine that they were a very
monument of malignity, pitilessness, and inhumanity; whereas in reality
they were about the first SWEEPING DEPARTURE FROM JUDICIAL ATROCITY which
the 'civilised' world had seen.  This humane and kindly Blue Law Code, of
two hundred and forty years ago, stands all by itself, with ages of
bloody law on the further side of it, and a century and three-quarters of
bloody English law on THIS side of it.

There has never been a time--under the Blue Laws or any other--when above
FOURTEEN crimes were punishable by death in Connecticut.  But in England,
within the memory of men who are still hale in body and mind, TWO HUNDRED
AND TWENTY-THREE crimes were punishable by death! {10}  These facts are
worth knowing--and worth thinking about, too.


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prince and The Pauper, Complete
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI

BY MARK TWAIN



THE 'BODY OF THE NATION'

BUT the basin of the Mississippi is the BODY OF THE NATION. All the
other parts are but members, important in themselves, yet more important
in their relations to this.  Exclusive of the Lake basin and of 300,000
square miles in Texas and New Mexico, which in many aspects form a part
of it, this basin contains about 1,250,000 square miles.  In extent it
is the second great valley of the world, being exceeded only by that of
the Amazon. The valley of the frozen Obi approaches it in extent; that
of La Plata comes next in space, and probably in habitable capacity,
having about eight-ninths of its area; then comes that of the Yenisei,
with about seven-ninths; the Lena, Amoor, Hoang-ho, Yang-tse-kiang, and
Nile, five-ninths; the Ganges, less than one-half; the Indus, less than
one-third; the Euphrates, one-fifth; the Rhine, one-fifteenth. It
exceeds in extent the whole of Europe, exclusive of Russia, Norway, and
Sweden. IT WOULD CONTAIN AUSTRIA FOUR TIMES, GERMANY OR SPAIN FIVE
TIMES, FRANCE SIX TIMES, THE BRITISH ISLANDS OR ITALY TEN TIMES.
Conceptions formed from the river-basins of Western Europe are rudely
shocked when we consider the extent of the valley of the Mississippi;
nor are those formed from the sterile basins of the great rivers of
Siberia, the lofty plateaus of Central Asia, or the mighty sweep of the
swampy Amazon more adequate. Latitude, elevation, and rainfall all
combine to render every part of the Mississippi Valley capable of
supporting a dense population. AS A DWELLING-PLACE FOR CIVILIZED MAN IT
IS BY FAR THE FIRST UPON OUR GLOBE.

EDITOR'S TABLE, HARPER'S MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1863



Chapter 1 The River and Its History

THE Mississippi is well worth reading about.  It is not a commonplace
river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. Considering the
Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in the world--four
thousand three hundred miles. It seems safe to say that it is also the
crookedest river in the world, since in one part of its journey it uses
up one thousand three hundred miles to cover the same ground that the
crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five. It discharges three
times as much water as the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as
the Rhine, and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the
Thames. No other river has so vast a drainage-basin:  it draws its water
supply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from Delaware, on the
Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idaho on
the Pacific slope--a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude. The
Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from fifty-four
subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats, and from some
hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels. The area of its
drainage-basin is as great as the combined areas of England, Wales,
Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, and
Turkey; and almost all this wide region is fertile; the Mississippi
valley, proper, is exceptionally so.

It is a remarkable river in this:  that instead of widening toward its
mouth, it grows narrower; grows narrower and deeper.  From the junction
of the Ohio to a point half way down to the sea, the width averages a
mile in high water: thence to the sea the width steadily diminishes,
until, at the 'Passes,' above the mouth, it is but little over half a
mile.  At the junction of the Ohio the Mississippi's depth is eighty-
seven feet; the depth increases gradually, reaching one hundred and
twenty-nine just above the mouth.

The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable--not in the upper,
but in the lower river.  The rise is tolerably uniform down to Natchez
(three hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)--about fifty feet. But
at Bayou La Fourche the river rises only twenty-four feet; at New
Orleans only fifteen, and just above the mouth only two and one half.

An article in the New Orleans 'Times-Democrat,' based upon reports of
able engineers, states that the river annually empties four hundred and
six million tons of mud into the Gulf of Mexico--which brings to mind
Captain Marryat's rude name for the Mississippi--'the Great Sewer.' This
mud, solidified, would make a mass a mile square and two hundred and
forty-one feet high.

The mud deposit gradually extends the land--but only gradually; it has
extended it not quite a third of a mile in the two hundred years which
have elapsed since the river took its place in history. The belief of
the scientific people is, that the mouth used to be at Baton Rouge,
where the hills cease, and that the two hundred miles of land between
there and the Gulf was built by the river. This gives us the age of that
piece of country, without any trouble at all--one hundred and twenty
thousand years. Yet it is much the youthfullest batch of country that
lies around there anywhere.

The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way--its disposition to
make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrow necks of land, and thus
straightening and shortening itself. More than once it has shortened
itself thirty miles at a single jump!  These cut-offs have had curious
effects: they have thrown several river towns out into the rural
districts, and built up sand bars and forests in front of them. The town
of Delta used to be three miles below Vicksburg: a recent cutoff has
radically changed the position, and Delta is now TWO MILES ABOVE
Vicksburg.

Both of these river towns have been retired to the country by that cut-
off. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines and jurisdictions: for
instance, a man is living in the State of Mississippi to-day, a cut-off
occurs to-night, and to-morrow the man finds himself and his land over
on the other side of the river, within the boundaries and subject to the
laws of the State of Louisiana! Such a thing, happening in the upper
river in the old times, could have transferred a slave from Missouri to
Illinois and made a free man of him.

The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut-offs alone: it is
always changing its habitat BODILY--is always moving bodily SIDEWISE. At
Hard Times, La., the river is two miles west of the region it used to
occupy.  As a result, the original SITE of that settlement is not now in
Louisiana at all, but on the other side of the river, in the State of
Mississippi.  NEARLY THE WHOLE OF THAT ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED MILES
OF OLD MISSISSIPPI RIVER WHICH LA SALLE FLOATED DOWN IN HIS CANOES, TWO
HUNDRED YEARS AGO, IS GOOD SOLID DRY GROUND NOW. The river lies to the
right of it, in places, and to the left of it in other places.

Although the Mississippi's mud builds land but slowly, down at the
mouth, where the Gulfs billows interfere with its work, it builds fast
enough in better protected regions higher up: for instance, Prophet's
Island contained one thousand five hundred acres of land thirty years
ago; since then the river has added seven hundred acres to it.

But enough of these examples of the mighty stream's eccentricities for
the present--I will give a few more of them further along in the book.

Let us drop the Mississippi's physical history, and say a word about its
historical history--so to speak.  We can glance briefly at its slumbrous
first epoch in a couple of short chapters; at its second and wider-awake
epoch in a couple more; at its flushest and widest-awake epoch in a good
many succeeding chapters; and then talk about its comparatively tranquil
present epoch in what shall be left of the book.

The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and over-use, the word
'new' in connection with our country, that we early get and permanently
retain the impression that there is nothing old about it. We do of
course know that there are several comparatively old dates in American
history, but the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea, no
distinct realization, of the stretch of time which they represent. To
say that De Soto, the first white man who ever saw the Mississippi
River, saw it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact without
interpreting it: it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset
by astronomical measurements, and cataloguing the colors by their
scientific names;--as a result, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but
you don't see the sunset. It would have been better to paint a picture
of it.

The date 1542, standing by itself, means little or nothing to us; but
when one groups a few neighboring historical dates and facts around it,
he adds perspective and color, and then realizes that this is one of the
American dates which is quite respectable for age.

For instance, when the Mississippi was first seen by a white man, less
than a quarter of a century had elapsed since Francis I.'s defeat at
Pavia; the death of Raphael; the death of Bayard, SANS PEUR ET SANS
REPROCHE; the driving out of the Knights-Hospitallers from Rhodes by the
Turks; and the placarding of the Ninety-Five Propositions,--the act
which began the Reformation.  When De Soto took his glimpse of the
river, Ignatius Loyola was an obscure name; the order of the Jesuits was
not yet a year old; Michael Angelo's paint was not yet dry on the Last
Judgment in the Sistine Chapel; Mary Queen of Scots was not yet born,
but would be before the year closed.  Catherine de Medici was a child;
Elizabeth of England was not yet in her teens; Calvin, Benvenuto
Cellini, and the Emperor Charles V. were at the top of their fame, and
each was manufacturing history after his own peculiar fashion; Margaret
of Navarre was writing the 'Heptameron' and some religious books,--the
first survives, the others are forgotten, wit and indelicacy being
sometimes better literature preservers than holiness; lax court morals
and the absurd chivalry business were in full feather, and the joust and
the tournament were the frequent pastime of titled fine gentlemen who
could fight better than they could spell, while religion was the passion
of their ladies, and classifying their offspring into children of full
rank and children by brevet their pastime. In fact, all around, religion
was in a peculiarly blooming condition: the Council of Trent was being
called; the Spanish Inquisition was roasting, and racking, and burning,
with a free hand; elsewhere on the continent the nations were being
persuaded to holy living by the sword and fire; in England, Henry VIII.
had suppressed the monasteries, burnt Fisher and another bishop or two,
and was getting his English reformation and his harem effectively
started.  When De Soto stood on the banks of the Mississippi, it was
still two years before Luther's death; eleven years before the burning
of Servetus; thirty years before the St. Bartholomew slaughter; Rabelais
was not yet published; 'Don Quixote' was not yet written; Shakespeare
was not yet born; a hundred long years must still elapse before
Englishmen would hear the name of Oliver Cromwell.

Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datable fact which
considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newness of our country, and
gives her a most respectable outside-aspect of rustiness and antiquity.

De Soto merely glimpsed the river, then died and was buried in it by his
priests and soldiers.  One would expect the priests and the soldiers to
multiply the river's dimensions by ten--the Spanish custom of the day--
and thus move other adventurers to go at once and explore it.  On the
contrary, their narratives when they reached home, did not excite that
amount of curiosity. The Mississippi was left unvisited by whites during
a term of years which seems incredible in our energetic days. One may
'sense' the interval to his mind, after a fashion, by dividing it up in
this way:  After De Soto glimpsed the river, a fraction short of a
quarter of a century elapsed, and then Shakespeare was born; lived a
trifle more than half a century, then died; and when he had been in his
grave considerably more than half a century, the SECOND white man saw
the Mississippi. In our day we don't allow a hundred and thirty years to
elapse between glimpses of a marvel.  If somebody should discover a
creek in the county next to the one that the North Pole is in, Europe
and America would start fifteen costly expeditions thither: one to
explore the creek, and the other fourteen to hunt for each other.

For more than a hundred and fifty years there had been white settlements
on our Atlantic coasts.  These people were in intimate communication
with the Indians:  in the south the Spaniards were robbing,
slaughtering, enslaving and converting them; higher up, the English were
trading beads and blankets to them for a consideration, and throwing in
civilization and whiskey, 'for lagniappe;' and in Canada the French were
schooling them in a rudimentary way, missionarying among them, and
drawing whole populations of them at a time to Quebec, and later to
Montreal, to buy furs of them.  Necessarily, then, these various
clusters of whites must have heard of the great river of the far west;
and indeed, they did hear of it vaguely,--so vaguely and indefinitely,
that its course, proportions, and locality were hardly even guessable.
The mere mysteriousness of the matter ought to have fired curiosity and
compelled exploration; but this did not occur. Apparently nobody
happened to want such a river, nobody needed it, nobody was curious
about it; so, for a century and a half the Mississippi remained out of
the market and undisturbed. When De Soto found it, he was not hunting
for a river, and had no present occasion for one; consequently he did
not value it or even take any particular notice of it.

But at last La Salle the Frenchman conceived the idea of seeking out
that river and exploring it.  It always happens that when a man seizes
upon a neglected and important idea, people inflamed with the same
notion crop up all around. It happened so in this instance.

Naturally the question suggests itself, Why did these people want the
river now when nobody had wanted it in the five preceding generations?
Apparently it was because at this late day they thought they had
discovered a way to make it useful; for it had come to be believed that
the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of California, and therefore
afforded a short cut from Canada to China. Previously the supposition
had been that it emptied into the Atlantic, or Sea of Virginia.





Chapter 2 The River and Its Explorers

LA SALLE himself sued for certain high privileges, and they were
graciously accorded him by Louis XIV of inflated memory. Chief among
them was the privilege to explore, far and wide, and build forts, and
stake out continents, and hand the same over to the king, and pay the
expenses himself; receiving, in return, some little advantages of one
sort or another; among them the monopoly of buffalo hides.  He spent
several years and about all of his money, in making perilous and painful
trips between Montreal and a fort which he had built on the Illinois,
before he at last succeeded in getting his expedition in such a shape
that he could strike for the Mississippi.

And meantime other parties had had better fortune. In 1673 Joliet the
merchant, and Marquette the priest, crossed the country and reached the
banks of the Mississippi. They went by way of the Great Lakes; and from
Green Bay, in canoes, by way of Fox River and the Wisconsin.  Marquette
had solemnly contracted, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, that
if the Virgin would permit him to discover the great river, he would
name it Conception, in her honor.  He kept his word. In that day, all
explorers traveled with an outfit of priests. De Soto had twenty-four
with him.  La Salle had several, also. The expeditions were often out of
meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other
requisites for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint
chroniclers of the time phrased it, to 'explain hell to the savages.'

On the 17th of June, 1673, the canoes of Joliet and Marquette and their
five subordinates reached the junction of the Wisconsin with the
Mississippi. Mr. Parkman says:  'Before them a wide and rapid current
coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in
forests.' He continues:  'Turning southward, they paddled down the
stream, through a solitude unrelieved by the faintest trace of man.'

A big cat-fish collided with Marquette's canoe, and startled him; and
reasonably enough, for he had been warned by the Indians that he was on
a foolhardy journey, and even a fatal one, for the river contained a
demon 'whose roar could be heard at a great distance, and who would
engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.' I have seen a Mississippi cat-
fish that was more than six feet long, and weighed two hundred and fifty
pounds; and if Marquette's fish was the fellow to that one, he had a
fair right to think the river's roaring demon was come.

'At length the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on the great
prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette describes the
fierce and stupid look of the old bulls as they stared at the intruders
through the tangled mane which nearly blinded them.'

The voyagers moved cautiously:  'Landed at night and made a fire to cook
their evening meal; then extinguished it, embarked again, paddled some
way farther, and anchored in the stream, keeping a man on the watch till
morning.'

They did this day after day and night after night; and at the end of two
weeks they had not seen a human being. The river was an awful solitude,
then.  And it is now, over most of its stretch.

But at the close of the fortnight they one day came upon the footprints
of men in the mud of the western bank--a Robinson Crusoe experience
which carries an electric shiver with it yet, when one stumbles on it in
print.  They had been warned that the river Indians were as ferocious
and pitiless as the river demon, and destroyed all comers without
waiting for provocation; but no matter, Joliet and Marquette struck into
the country to hunt up the proprietors of the tracks.  They found them,
by and by, and were hospitably received and well treated--if to be
received by an Indian chief who has taken off his last rag in order to
appear at his level best is to be received hospitably; and if to be
treated abundantly to fish, porridge, and other game, including dog, and
have these things forked into one's mouth by the ungloved fingers of
Indians is to be well treated. In the morning the chief and six hundred
of his tribesmen escorted the Frenchmen to the river and bade them a
friendly farewell.

On the rocks above the present city of Alton they found some rude and
fantastic Indian paintings, which they describe. A short distance below
'a torrent of yellow mud rushed furiously athwart the calm blue current
of the Mississippi, boiling and surging and sweeping in its course logs,
branches, and uprooted trees.' This was the mouth of the Missouri, 'that
savage river,' which 'descending from its mad career through a vast
unknown of barbarism, poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its
gentle sister.'

By and by they passed the mouth of the Ohio; they passed cane-brakes;
they fought mosquitoes; they floated along, day after day, through the
deep silence and loneliness of the river, drowsing in the scant shade of
makeshift awnings, and broiling with the heat; they encountered and
exchanged civilities with another party of Indians; and at last they
reached the mouth of the Arkansas (about a month out from their
starting-point), where a tribe of war-whooping savages swarmed out to
meet and murder them; but they appealed to the Virgin for help; so in
place of a fight there was a feast, and plenty of pleasant palaver and
fol-de-rol.

They had proved to their satisfaction, that the Mississippi did not
empty into the Gulf of California, or into the Atlantic. They believed
it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. They turned back, now, and carried
their great news to Canada.

But belief is not proof.  It was reserved for La Salle to furnish the
proof. He was provokingly delayed, by one misfortune after another, but
at last got his expedition under way at the end of the year 1681.  In
the dead of winter he and Henri de Tonty, son of Lorenzo Tonty, who
invented the tontine, his lieutenant, started down the Illinois, with a
following of eighteen Indians brought from New England, and twenty-three
Frenchmen. They moved in procession down the surface of the frozen
river, on foot, and dragging their canoes after them on sledges.

At Peoria Lake they struck open water, and paddled thence to the
Mississippi and turned their prows southward. They plowed through the
fields of floating ice, past the mouth of the Missouri; past the mouth
of the Ohio, by-and-by; 'and, gliding by the wastes of bordering swamp,
landed on the 24th of February near the Third Chickasaw Bluffs,' where
they halted and built Fort Prudhomme.

'Again,' says Mr. Parkman, 'they embarked; and with every stage of their
adventurous progress, the mystery of this vast new world was more and
more unveiled.  More and more they entered the realms of spring. The
hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy air, the tender foliage, the opening
flowers, betokened the reviving life of nature.'

Day by day they floated down the great bends, in the shadow of the dense
forests, and in time arrived at the mouth of the Arkansas.  First, they
were greeted by the natives of this locality as Marquette had before
been greeted by them--with the booming of the war drum and the flourish
of arms. The Virgin composed the difficulty in Marquette's case; the
pipe of peace did the same office for La Salle.  The white man and the
red man struck hands and entertained each other during three days.
Then, to the admiration of the savages, La Salle set up a cross with the
arms of France on it, and took possession of the whole country for the
king--the cool fashion of the time--while the priest piously consecrated
the robbery with a hymn. The priest explained the mysteries of the faith
'by signs,' for the saving of the savages; thus compensating them with
possible possessions in Heaven for the certain ones on earth which they
had just been robbed of.  And also, by signs, La Salle drew from these
simple children of the forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the
Putrid, over the water. Nobody smiled at these colossal ironies.

These performances took place on the site of the future town of
Napoleon, Arkansas, and there the first confiscation-cross was raised on
the banks of the great river.  Marquette's and Joliet's voyage of
discovery ended at the same spot--the site of the future town of
Napoleon. When De Soto took his fleeting glimpse of the river, away back
in the dim early days, he took it from that same spot--the site of the
future town of Napoleon, Arkansas.  Therefore, three out of the four
memorable events connected with the discovery and exploration of the
mighty river, occurred, by accident, in one and the same place.  It is a
most curious distinction, when one comes to look at it and think about
it. France stole that vast country on that spot, the future Napoleon;
and by and by Napoleon himself was to give the country back again!--make
restitution, not to the owners, but to their white American heirs.

The voyagers journeyed on, touching here and there; 'passed the sites,
since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf,' and visited an
imposing Indian monarch in the Teche country, whose capital city was a
substantial one of sun-baked bricks mixed with straw--better houses than
many that exist there now. The chiefs house contained an audience room
forty feet square; and there he received Tonty in State, surrounded by
sixty old men clothed in white cloaks.  There was a temple in the town,
with a mud wall about it ornamented with skulls of enemies sacrificed to
the sun.

The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the present
city of that name, where they found a 'religious and political
despotism, a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a
sacred fire.' It must have been like getting home again; it was home
with an advantage, in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV.

A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle stood in the shadow of
his confiscating cross, at the meeting of the waters from Delaware, and
from Itaska, and from the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific, with
the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his task finished, his prodigy
achieved. Mr. Parkman, in closing his fascinating narrative, thus sums
up:

'On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous
accession.  The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the
Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of
the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of
the Rocky Mountains--a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked
deserts and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a
thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of
Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half
a mile.'




Chapter 3 Frescoes from the Past

APPARENTLY the river was ready for business, now.  But no, the
distribution of a population along its banks was as calm and deliberate
and time-devouring a process as the discovery and exploration had been.

Seventy years elapsed, after the exploration, before the river's borders
had a white population worth considering; and nearly fifty more before
the river had a commerce. Between La Salle's opening of the river and
the time when it may be said to have become the vehicle of anything like
a regular and active commerce, seven sovereigns had occupied the throne
of England, America had become an independent nation, Louis XIV. and
Louis XV. had rotted and died, the French monarchy had gone down in the
red tempest of the revolution, and Napoleon was a name that was
beginning to be talked about.  Truly, there were snails in those days.

The river's earliest commerce was in great barges--keelboats,
broadhorns. They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New
Orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled back
by hand.  A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine months. In time
this commerce increased until it gave employment to hordes of rough and
hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, suffering terrific hardships with
sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarse frolickers in moral sties
like the Natchez-under-the-hill of that day, heavy fighters, reckless
fellows, every one, elephantinely jolly, foul-witted, profane; prodigal
of their money, bankrupt at the end of the trip, fond of barbaric
finery, prodigious braggarts; yet, in the main, honest, trustworthy,
faithful to promises and duty, and often picturesquely magnanimous.

By and by the steamboat intruded.  Then for fifteen or twenty years,
these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream, and the steamers
did all of the upstream business, the keelboatmen selling their boats in
New Orleans, and returning home as deck passengers in the steamers.

But after a while the steamboats so increased in number and in speed
that they were able to absorb the entire commerce; and then keelboating
died a permanent death.  The keelboatman became a deck hand, or a mate,
or a pilot on the steamer; and when steamer-berths were not open to him,
he took a berth on a Pittsburgh coal-flat, or on a pine-raft constructed
in the forests up toward the sources of the Mississippi.

In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from end to end
was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts, all managed by hand, and
employing hosts of the rough characters whom I have been trying to
describe.  I remember the annual processions of mighty rafts that used
to glide by Hannibal when I was a boy,--an acre or so of white, sweet-
smelling boards in each raft, a crew of two dozen men or more, three or
four wigwams scattered about the raft's vast level space for storm-
quarters,--and I remember the rude ways and the tremendous talk of their
big crews, the ex-keelboatmen and their admiringly patterning
successors; for we used to swim out a quarter or third of a mile and get
on these rafts and have a ride.

By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and that now-departed
and hardly-remembered raft-life, I will throw in, in this place, a
chapter from a book which I have been working at, by fits and starts,
during the past five or six years, and may possibly finish in the course
of five or six more. The book is a story which details some passages in
the life of an ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard
of my time out west, there.  He has run away from his persecuting
father, and from a persecuting good widow who wishes to make a nice,
truth-telling, respectable boy of him; and with him a slave of the
widow's has also escaped. They have found a fragment of a lumber raft
(it is high water and dead summer time), and are floating down the river
by night, and hiding in the willows by day,--bound for Cairo,--whence
the negro will seek freedom in the heart of the free States. But in a
fog, they pass Cairo without knowing it. By and by they begin to suspect
the truth, and Huck Finn is persuaded to end the dismal suspense by
swimming down to a huge raft which they have seen in the distance ahead
of them, creeping aboard under cover of the darkness, and gathering the
needed information by eavesdropping:--

But you know a young person can't wait very well when he is impatient to
find a thing out.  We talked it over, and by and by Jim said it was such
a black night, now, that it wouldn't be no risk to swim down to the big
raft and crawl aboard and listen--they would talk about Cairo, because
they would be calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or
anyway they would send boats ashore to buy whiskey or fresh meat or
something. Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger:  he could most
always start a good plan when you wanted one.

I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, and struck
out for the raft's light.  By and by, when I got down nearly to her, I
eased up and went slow and cautious. But everything was all right--
nobody at the sweeps. So I swum down along the raft till I was most
abreast the camp fire in the middle, then I crawled aboard and inched
along and got in amongst some bundles of shingles on the weather side of
the fire. There was thirteen men there--they was the watch on deck of
course. And a mighty rough-looking lot, too.  They had a jug, and tin
cups, and they kept the jug moving.  One man was singing--roaring, you
may say; and it wasn't a nice song--for a parlor anyway.  He roared
through his nose, and strung out the last word of every line very long.
When he was done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then
another was sung.  It begun:--

'There was a woman in our towdn, In our towdn did dwed'l (dwell,) She
loved her husband dear-i-lee, But another man twyste as wed'l.

Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo, Ri-too, riloo, rilay - - - e, She
loved her husband dear-i-lee, But another man twyste as wed'l.

And so on--fourteen verses.  It was kind of poor, and when he was going
to start on the next verse one of them said it was the tune the old cow
died on; and another one said, 'Oh, give us a rest.' And another one
told him to take a walk.  They made fun of him till he got mad and
jumped up and begun to cuss the crowd, and said he could lame any thief
in the lot.

They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest man there
jumped up and says--

'Set whar you are, gentlemen.  Leave him to me; he's my meat.'

Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his heels together
every time.  He flung off a buckskin coat that was all hung with
fringes, and says, 'You lay thar tell the chawin-up's done;' and flung
his hat down, which was all over ribbons, and says, 'You lay thar tell
his sufferin's is over.'

Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together again and
shouted out--

'Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-
bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!--Look at me! I'm the
man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane,
dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to
the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me!  I take nineteen
alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust
health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing!  I
split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder
when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my
strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music
to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!--and lay low and hold your
breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose!'

All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head and
looking fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little circle, tucking
up his wrist-bands, and now and then straightening up and beating his
breast with his fist, saying, 'Look at me, gentlemen!' When he got
through, he jumped up and cracked his heels together three times, and
let off a roaring 'Whoo-oop! I'm the bloodiest son of a wildcat that
lives!'

Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch hat down
over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with his back sagged
and his south end sticking out far, and his fists a-shoving out and
drawing in in front of him, and so went around in a little circle about
three times, swelling himself up and breathing hard.  Then he
straightened, and jumped up and cracked his heels together three times,
before he lit again (that made them cheer), and he begun to shout like
this--

'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow's a-
coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a-working! whoo-
oop! I'm a child of sin, don't let me get a start! Smoked glass, here,
for all!  Don't attempt to look at me with the naked eye, gentlemen!
When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of
latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales!  I scratch
my head with the lightning, and purr myself to sleep with the thunder!
When I'm cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when I'm hot I
fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm thirsty I reach up and
suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the earth hungry, famine
follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and spread!  I put my hand
on the sun's face and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of
the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the
mountains! Contemplate me through leather--don't use the naked eye! I'm
the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massacre of
isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction
of nationalities the serious business of my life! The boundless vastness
of the great American desert is my enclosed property, and I bury my dead
on my own premises!' He jumped up and cracked his heels together three
times before he lit (they cheered him again), and as he come down he
shouted out: 'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the pet child of
calamity's a-coming! '

Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again--the first
one--the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in
again, bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time,
swelling round and round each other and punching their fists most into
each other's faces, and whooping and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called
the Child names, and the Child called him names back again:  next, Bob
called him a heap rougher names and the Child come back at him with the
very worst kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child's hat off, and
the Child picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbony hat about six foot; Bob
went and got it and said never mind, this warn't going to be the last of
this thing, because he was a man that never forgot and never forgive,
and so the Child better look out, for there was a time a-coming, just as
sure as he was a living man, that he would have to answer to him with
the best blood in his body. The Child said no man was willinger than he
was for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warning, now,
never to cross his path again, for he could never rest till he had waded
in his blood, for such was his nature, though he was sparing him now on
account of his family, if he had one.

Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling and
shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do; but a
little black-whiskered chap skipped up and says--

'Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and I'll thrash
the two of ye!'

And he done it, too.  He snatched them, he jerked them this way and
that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they
could get up.  Why, it warn't two minutes till they begged like dogs--
and how the other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the
way through, and shout 'Sail in, Corpse-Maker!' 'Hi! at him again, Child
of Calamity!' 'Bully for you, little Davy!'  Well, it was a perfect pow-
wow for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes when
they got through. Little Davy made them own up that they were sneaks and
cowards and not fit to eat with a dog or drink with a nigger; then Bob
and the Child shook hands with each other, very solemn, and said they
had always respected each other and was willing to let bygones be
bygones.  So then they washed their faces in the river; and just then
there was a loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went
forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to handle the
after-sweeps.

I laid still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a
pipe that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and
they stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing
again. Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played and another
patted juba, and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old-
fashioned keel-boat break-down. They couldn't keep that up very long
without getting winded, so by and by they settled around the jug again.

They sung 'jolly, jolly raftman's the life for me,' with a musing
chorus, and then they got to talking about differences betwixt hogs, and
their different kind of habits; and next about women and their different
ways:  and next about the best ways to put out houses that was afire;
and next about what ought to be done with the Injuns; and next about
what a king had to do, and how much he got; and next about how to make
cats fight; and next about what to do when a man has fits; and next
about differences betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones. The
man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water was wholesomer to
drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you let a pint of
this yaller Mississippi water settle, you would have about a half to
three-quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom, according to the stage
of the river, and then it warn't no better than Ohio water--what you
wanted to do was to keep it stirred up--and when the river was low, keep
mud on hand to put in and thicken the water up the way it ought to be.

The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousness
in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in
his stomach if he wanted to.  He says--

'You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale.  Trees won't grow
worth chucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard
they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high. It's all on account of the
water the people drunk before they laid up. A Cincinnati corpse don't
richen a soil any.'

And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix with Mississippi
water.  Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise when the Ohio is
low, you'll find a wide band of clear water all the way down the east
side of the Mississippi for a hundred mile or more, and the minute you
get out a quarter of a mile from shore and pass the line, it is all
thick and yaller the rest of the way across. Then they talked about how
to keep tobacco from getting moldy, and from that they went into ghosts
and told about a lot that other folks had seen; but Ed says--

'Why don't you tell something that you've seen yourselves? Now let me
have a say.  Five years ago I was on a raft as big as this, and right
along here it was a bright moonshiny night, and I was on watch and boss
of the stabboard oar forrard, and one of my pards was a man named Dick
Allbright, and he come along to where I was sitting, forrard--gaping and
stretching, he was--and stooped down on the edge of the raft and washed
his face in the river, and come and set down by me and got out his pipe,
and had just got it filled, when he looks up and says--

'"Why looky-here," he says, "ain't that Buck Miller's place, over yander
in the bend."

'"Yes," says I, "it is--why."  He laid his pipe down and leant his head
on his hand, and says--

'"I thought we'd be furder down."  I says--

'"I thought it too, when I went off watch"--we was standing six hours on
and six off--"but the boys told me," I says, "that the raft didn't seem
to hardly move, for the last hour," says I, "though she's a slipping
along all right, now," says I. He give a kind of a groan, and says--

'"I've seed a raft act so before, along here," he says, "'pears to me
the current has most quit above the head of this bend durin' the last
two years," he says.

'Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off and around
on the water.  That started me at it, too.  A body is always doing what
he sees somebody else doing, though there mayn't be no sense in it.
Pretty soon I see a black something floating on the water away off to
stabboard and quartering behind us. I see he was looking at it, too.  I
says--

'"What's that?"  He says, sort of pettish,--

'"Tain't nothing but an old empty bar'l."

'"An empty bar'l!" says I, "why," says I, "a spy-glass is a fool to your
eyes.  How can you tell it's an empty bar'l?" He says--

'"I don't know; I reckon it ain't a bar'l, but I thought it might be,"
says he.

'"Yes," I says, "so it might be, and it might be anything else, too; a
body can't tell nothing about it, such a distance as that," I says.

'We hadn't nothing else to do, so we kept on watching it. By and by I
says--

'"Why looky-here, Dick Allbright, that thing's a-gaining on us, I
believe."

'He never said nothing.  The thing gained and gained, and I judged it
must be a dog that was about tired out. Well, we swung down into the
crossing, and the thing floated across the bright streak of the
moonshine, and, by George, it was bar'l. Says I--

'"Dick Allbright, what made you think that thing was a bar'l, when it
was a half a mile off," says I. Says he--

'"I don't know."  Says I--

'"You tell me, Dick Allbright."  He says--

'"Well, I knowed it was a bar'l; I've seen it before; lots has seen it;
they says it's a haunted bar'l."

'I called the rest of the watch, and they come and stood there, and I
told them what Dick said.  It floated right along abreast, now, and
didn't gain any more.  It was about twenty foot off. Some was for having
it aboard, but the rest didn't want to. Dick Allbright said rafts that
had fooled with it had got bad luck by it.  The captain of the watch
said he didn't believe in it. He said he reckoned the bar'l gained on us
because it was in a little better current than what we was.  He said it
would leave by and by.

'So then we went to talking about other things, and we had a song, and
then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the watch called for
another song; but it was clouding up, now, and the bar'l stuck right
thar in the same place, and the song didn't seem to have much warm-up to
it, somehow, and so they didn't finish it, and there warn't any cheers,
but it sort of dropped flat, and nobody said anything for a minute. Then
everybody tried to talk at once, and one chap got off a joke, but it
warn't no use, they didn't laugh, and even the chap that made the joke
didn't laugh at it, which ain't usual. We all just settled down glum,
and watched the bar'l, and was oneasy and oncomfortable.  Well, sir, it
shut down black and still, and then the wind begin to moan around, and
next the lightning begin to play and the thunder to grumble.  And pretty
soon there was a regular storm, and in the middle of it a man that was
running aft stumbled and fell and sprained his ankle so that he had to
lay up. This made the boys shake their heads.  And every time the
lightning come, there was that bar'l with the blue lights winking around
it. We was always on the look-out for it.  But by and by, towards dawn,
she was gone.  When the day come we couldn't see her anywhere, and we
warn't sorry, neither.

'But next night about half-past nine, when there was songs and high
jinks going on, here she comes again, and took her old roost on the
stabboard side.  There warn't no more high jinks.  Everybody got solemn;
nobody talked; you couldn't get anybody to do anything but set around
moody and look at the bar'l. It begun to cloud up again. When the watch
changed, the off watch stayed up, 'stead of turning in. The storm ripped
and roared around all night, and in the middle of it another man tripped
and sprained his ankle, and had to knock off. The bar'l left towards
day, and nobody see it go.

'Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day.  I don't mean the
kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone--not that. They was
quiet, but they all drunk more than usual--not together--but each man
sidled off and took it private, by himself.

'After dark the off watch didn't turn in; nobody sung, nobody talked;
the boys didn't scatter around, neither; they sort of huddled together,
forrard; and for two hours they set there, perfectly still, looking
steady in the one direction, and heaving a sigh once in a while.  And
then, here comes the bar'l again. She took up her old place.  She staid
there all night; nobody turned in.  The storm come on again, after
midnight. It got awful dark; the rain poured down; hail, too; the
thunder boomed and roared and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane; and
the lightning spread over everything in big sheets of glare, and showed
the whole raft as plain as day; and the river lashed up white as milk as
far as you could see for miles, and there was that bar'l jiggering
along, same as ever. The captain ordered the watch to man the after
sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go--no more sprained ankles for
them, they said. They wouldn't even walk aft.  Well then, just then the
sky split wide open, with a crash, and the lightning killed two men of
the after watch, and crippled two more.  Crippled them how, says you?
Why, sprained their ankles!

'The bar'l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, towards dawn. Well, not
a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning. After that the men loafed
around, in twos and threes, and talked low together.  But none of them
herded with Dick Allbright. They all give him the cold shake.  If he
come around where any of the men was, they split up and sidled away.
They wouldn't man the sweeps with him.  The captain had all the skiffs
hauled up on the raft, alongside of his wigwam, and wouldn't let the
dead men be took ashore to be planted; he didn't believe a man that got
ashore would come back; and he was right.

'After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was going to be
trouble if that bar'l come again; there was such a muttering going on. A
good many wanted to kill Dick Allbright, because he'd seen the bar'l on
other trips, and that had an ugly look.  Some wanted to put him ashore.
Some said, let's all go ashore in a pile, if the bar'l comes again.

'This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being bunched
together forrard watching for the bar'l, when, lo and behold you, here
she comes again.  Down she comes, slow and steady, and settles into her
old tracks.  You could a heard a pin drop. Then up comes the captain,
and says:--

'"Boys, don't be a pack of children and fools; I don't want this bar'l
to be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and YOU don't; well, then,
how's the best way to stop it? Burn it up,--that's the way.  I'm going
to fetch it aboard," he says. And before anybody could say a word, in he
went.

'He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread to
one side.  But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head, and
there was a baby in it!  Yes, sir, a stark naked baby. It was Dick
Allbright's baby; he owned up and said so.

'"Yes," he says, a-leaning over it, "yes, it is my own lamented darling,
my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased," says he,--for he could
curl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a
mind to, and lay them before you without a jint started, anywheres.
Yes, he said he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night
he choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it,--which
was prob'ly a lie,--and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar'l,
before his wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail
and went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar'l had
chased him. He said the bad luck always begun light, and lasted till
four men was killed, and then the bar'l didn't come any more after that.
He said if the men would stand it one more night,--and was a-going on
like that,--but the men had got enough. They started to get out a boat
to take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little child all of
a sudden and jumped overboard with it hugged up to his breast and
shedding tears, and we never see him again in this life, poor old
suffering soul, nor Charles William neither.'

'WHO was shedding tears?' says Bob; 'was it Allbright or the baby?'

'Why, Allbright, of course; didn't I tell you the baby was dead. Been
dead three years--how could it cry?'

'Well, never mind how it could cry--how could it KEEP all that time?'
says Davy.  'You answer me that.'

'I don't know how it done it,' says Ed.  'It done it though--that's all
I know about it.'

'Say--what did they do with the bar'l?' says the Child of Calamity.

'Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead.'

'Edward, did the child look like it was choked?' says one.

'Did it have its hair parted?' says another.

'What was the brand on that bar'l, Eddy?' says a fellow they called
Bill.

'Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?' says Jimmy.

'Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the lightning.'
says Davy.

'Him?  O, no, he was both of 'em,' says Bob.  Then they all haw-hawed.

'Say, Edward, don't you reckon you'd better take a pill? You look bad--
don't you feel pale?' says the Child of Calamity.

'O, come, now, Eddy,' says Jimmy, 'show up; you must a kept part of that
bar'l to prove the thing by.  Show us the bunghole--do--and we'll all
believe you.'

'Say, boys,' says Bill, 'less divide it up.  Thar's thirteen of us. I
can swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest.'

Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he ripped
out pretty savage, and then walked off aft cussing to himself, and they
yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so you could hear
them a mile.

'Boys, we'll split a watermelon on that,' says the Child of Calamity;
and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles
where I was, and put his hand on me.  I was warm and soft and naked; so
he says 'Ouch!' and jumped back.

'Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys--there's a snake here as
big as a cow!'

So they run there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in on me.

'Come out of that, you beggar!' says one.

'Who are you?' says another.

'What are you after here?  Speak up prompt, or overboard you go.

'Snake him out, boys.  Snatch him out by the heels.'

I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They looked me
over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says--

'A cussed thief!  Lend a hand and less heave him overboard!'

'No,' says Big Bob, 'less get out the paint-pot and paint him a sky blue
all over from head to heel, and then heave him over!'

'Good, that 's it.  Go for the paint, Jimmy.'

When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin,
the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that
sort of worked on Davy, and he says--

''Vast there!  He 's nothing but a cub.  'I'll paint the man that
tetches him!'

So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled, and
Bob put down the paint, and the others didn't take it up.

'Come here to the fire, and less see what you're up to here,' says Davy.
'Now set down there and give an account of yourself. How long have you
been aboard here?'

'Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,' says I.

'How did you get dry so quick?'

'I don't know, sir.  I'm always that way, mostly.'

'Oh, you are, are you.  What's your name?'

I warn't going to tell my name.  I didn't know what to say, so I just
says--

'Charles William Allbright, sir.'

Then they roared--the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that,
because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor.

When they got done laughing, Davy says--

'It won't hardly do, Charles William.  You couldn't have growed this
much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar'l,
you know, and dead at that.  Come, now, tell a straight story, and
nobody'll hurt you, if you ain't up to anything wrong. What IS your
name?'

'Aleck Hopkins, sir.  Aleck James Hopkins.'

'Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?'

'From a trading scow.  She lays up the bend yonder. I was born on her.
Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim off
here, because when you went by he said he would like to get some of you
to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him--'

'Oh, come!'

'Yes, sir; it's as true as the world; Pap he says--'

'Oh, your grandmother!'

They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in on me and
stopped me.

'Now, looky-here,' says Davy; 'you're scared, and so you talk wild.
Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?'

'Yes, sir, in a trading scow.  She lays up at the head of the bend. But
I warn't born in her.  It's our first trip.'

'Now you're talking!  What did you come aboard here, for?  To steal?'

'No, sir, I didn't.--It was only to get a ride on the raft. All boys
does that.'

'Well, I know that.  But what did you hide for?'

'Sometimes they drive the boys off.'

'So they do.  They might steal.  Looky-here; if we let you off this
time, will you keep out of these kind of scrapes hereafter?'

''Deed I will, boss.  You try me.'

'All right, then.  You ain't but little ways from shore. Overboard with
you, and don't you make a fool of yourself another time this way.--Blast
it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you till you were black and blue!'

I didn't wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboard and broke for shore.
When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight around
the point.  I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home
again.


The boy did not get the information he was after, but his adventure has
furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and keelboatman which I
desire to offer in this place.

I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the flush times
of steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full examination--the
marvelous science of piloting, as displayed there. I believe there has
been nothing like it elsewhere in the world.




Chapter 4 The Boys' Ambition

WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades
in our village{footnote [1. Hannibal, Missouri]} on the west bank of the
Mississippi River.  That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient
ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus
came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro
minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that
kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good,
God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in
its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.

Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis, and
another downward from Keokuk.  Before these events, the day was glorious
with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead and empty thing.  Not
only the boys, but the whole village, felt this. After all these years I
can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then:  the white
town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets empty,
or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water
Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the
wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep--with
shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and a
litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in
watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles
scattered about the 'levee;' a pile of 'skids' on the slope of the
stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow
of them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to
listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great
Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its
mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the
other side; the 'point' above the town, and the 'point' below, bounding
the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very
still and brilliant and lonely one.  Presently a film of dark smoke
appears above one of those remote 'points;' instantly a negro drayman,
famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, 'S-t-e-
a-m-boat a-comin'!' and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the
clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and
store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead
town is alive and moving.  Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from
many quarters to a common center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people
fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing
for the first time. And the boat IS rather a handsome sight, too.  She
is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped
chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung between them; a
fanciful pilot-house, a glass and 'gingerbread', perched on top of the
'texas' deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture
or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the
hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean
white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff;
the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper
decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell,
calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the blackest smoke are
rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys--a husbanded grandeur created
with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are
grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port
bow, and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a
coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the gauge-
cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then
they turn back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest.
Then such a scramble as there is to get aboard, and to get ashore, and
to take in freight and to discharge freight, all at one and the same
time; and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all
with! Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on
the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten
more minutes the town is dead again, and the town drunkard asleep by the
skids once more.

My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he possessed the
power of life and death over all men and could hang anybody that
offended him.  This was distinction enough for me as a general thing;
but the desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, nevertheless. I
first wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a white
apron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comrades
could see me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stood
on the end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, because
he was particularly conspicuous.  But these were only day-dreams,--they
were too heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities. By and by
one of our boys went away.  He was not heard of for a long time. At last
he turned up as apprentice engineer or 'striker' on a steamboat. This
thing shook the bottom out of all my Sunday-school teachings. That boy
had been notoriously worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he was exalted
to this eminence, and I left in obscurity and misery. There was nothing
generous about this fellow in his greatness. He would always manage to
have a rusty bolt to scrub while his boat tarried at our town, and he
would sit on the inside guard and scrub it, where we could all see him
and envy him and loathe him. And whenever his boat was laid up he would
come home and swell around the town in his blackest and greasiest
clothes, so that nobody could help remembering that he was a
steamboatman; and he used all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his
talk, as if he were so used to them that he forgot common people could
not understand them. He would speak of the 'labboard' side of a horse in
an easy, natural way that would make one wish he was dead.  And he was
always talking about 'St. Looy' like an old citizen; he would refer
casually to occasions when he 'was coming down Fourth Street,' or when
he was 'passing by the Planter's House,' or when there was a fire and he
took a turn on the brakes of 'the old Big Missouri;' and then he would
go on and lie about how many towns the size of ours were burned down
there that day. Two or three of the boys had long been persons of
consideration among us because they had been to St. Louis once and had a
vague general knowledge of its wonders, but the day of their glory was
over now. They lapsed into a humble silence, and learned to disappear
when the ruthless 'cub'-engineer approached.  This fellow had money,
too, and hair oil. Also an ignorant silver watch and a showy brass watch
chain. He wore a leather belt and used no suspenders.  If ever a youth
was cordially admired and hated by his comrades, this one was. No girl
could withstand his charms.  He 'cut out' every boy in the village. When
his boat blew up at last, it diffused a tranquil contentment among us
such as we had not known for months.  But when he came home the next
week, alive, renowned, and appeared in church all battered up and
bandaged, a shining hero, stared at and wondered over by everybody, it
seemed to us that the partiality of Providence for an undeserving
reptile had reached a point where it was open to criticism.

This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily
followed.  Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son
became an engineer.  The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud
clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat;
four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge,
became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all.  The pilot, even
in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary--from a hundred
and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay.
Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now
some of us were left disconsolate.  We could not get on the river--at
least our parents would not let us.

So by and by I ran away.  I said I never would come home again till I
was a pilot and could come in glory.  But somehow I could not manage it.
I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed together like
sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and very humbly inquired for the
pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and short words from mates and
clerks. I had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the time
being, but I had comforting daydreams of a future when I should be a
great and honored pilot, with plenty of money, and could kill some of
these mates and clerks and pay for them.




Chapter 5 I Want to be a Cub-pilot

MONTHS afterward the hope within me struggled to a reluctant death, and
I found myself without an ambition.  But I was ashamed to go home. I was
in Cincinnati, and I set to work to map out a new career. I had been
reading about the recent exploration of the river Amazon by an
expedition sent out by our government.  It was said that the expedition,
owing to difficulties, had not thoroughly explored a part of the country
lying about the head-waters, some four thousand miles from the mouth of
the river.  It was only about fifteen hundred miles from Cincinnati to
New Orleans, where I could doubtless get a ship. I had thirty dollars
left; I would go and complete the exploration of the Amazon.  This was
all the thought I gave to the subject. I never was great in matters of
detail.  I packed my valise, and took passage on an ancient tub called
the 'Paul Jones,' for New Orleans. For the sum of sixteen dollars I had
the scarred and tarnished splendors of 'her' main saloon principally to
myself, for she was not a creature to attract the eye of wiser
travelers.

When we presently got under way and went poking down the broad Ohio, I
became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration. I was a
traveler!  A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. I had an
exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes
which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since. I was in such a
glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I
was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had
hardly a trace of contempt in it. Still, when we stopped at villages and
wood-yards, I could not help lolling carelessly upon the railings of the
boiler deck to enjoy the envy of the country boys on the bank.  If they
did not seem to discover me, I presently sneezed to attract their
attention, or moved to a position where they could not help seeing me.
And as soon as I knew they saw me I gaped and stretched, and gave other
signs of being mightily bored with traveling.

I kept my hat off all the time, and stayed where the wind and the sun
could strike me, because I wanted to get the bronzed and weather-beaten
look of an old traveler. Before the second day was half gone I
experienced a joy which filled me with the purest gratitude; for I saw
that the skin had begun to blister and peel off my face and neck. I
wished that the boys and girls at home could see me now.

We reached Louisville in time--at least the neighborhood of it. We stuck
hard and fast on the rocks in the middle of the river, and lay there
four days.  I was now beginning to feel a strong sense of being a part
of the boat's family, a sort of infant son to the captain and younger
brother to the officers. There is no estimating the pride I took in this
grandeur, or the affection that began to swell and grow in me for those
people.  I could not know how the lordly steamboatman scorns that sort
of presumption in a mere landsman. I particularly longed to acquire the
least trifle of notice from the big stormy mate, and I was on the alert
for an opportunity to do him a service to that end.  It came at last.
The riotous powwow of setting a spar was going on down on the
forecastle, and I went down there and stood around in the way--or mostly
skipping out of it--till the mate suddenly roared a general order for
somebody to bring him a capstan bar. I sprang to his side and said:
'Tell me where it is--I'll fetch it!'

If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperor
of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate
was. He even stopped swearing.  He stood and stared down at me. It took
him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed remains together again. Then he
said impressively:  'Well, if this don't beat hell!' and turned to his
work with the air of a man who had been confronted with a problem too
abstruse for solution.

I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of the day. I did not go
to dinner; I stayed away from supper until everybody else had finished.
I did not feel so much like a member of the boat's family now as before.
However, my spirits returned, in installments, as we pursued our way
down the river.  I was sorry I hated the mate so, because it was not in
(young) human nature not to admire him. He was huge and muscular, his
face was bearded and whiskered all over; he had a red woman and a blue
woman tattooed on his right arm,--one on each side of a blue anchor with
a red rope to it; and in the matter of profanity he was sublime.  When
he was getting out cargo at a landing, I was always where I could see
and hear. He felt all the majesty of his great position, and made the
world feel it, too.  When he gave even the simplest order, he discharged
it like a blast of lightning, and sent a long, reverberating peal of
profanity thundering after it.  I could not help contrasting the way in
which the average landsman would give an order, with the mate's way of
doing it.  If the landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a foot
farther forward, he would probably say: 'James, or William, one of you
push that plank forward, please;' but put the mate in his place and he
would roar out:  'Here, now, start that gang-plank for'ard! Lively, now!
WHAT're you about!  Snatch it! SNATCH it!  There! there!  Aft again! aft
again! don't you hear me. Dash it to dash! are you going to SLEEP over
it!  'VAST heaving. 'Vast heaving, I tell you!  Going to heave it clear
astern? WHERE're you going with that barrel!  FOR'ARD with it 'fore I
make you swallow it, you dash-dash-dash-DASHED split between a tired
mud-turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!'

I wished I could talk like that.

When the soreness of my adventure with the mate had somewhat worn off, I
began timidly to make up to the humblest official connected with the
boat--the night watchman.  He snubbed my advances at first, but I
presently ventured to offer him a new chalk pipe; and that softened him.
So he allowed me to sit with him by the big bell on the hurricane deck,
and in time he melted into conversation. He could not well have helped
it, I hung with such homage on his words and so plainly showed that I
felt honored by his notice. He told me the names of dim capes and
shadowy islands as we glided by them in the solemnity of the night,
under the winking stars, and by and by got to talking about himself.  He
seemed over-sentimental for a man whose salary was six dollars a week--
or rather he might have seemed so to an older person than I. But I drank
in his words hungrily, and with a faith that might have moved mountains
if it had been applied judiciously. What was it to me that he was soiled
and seedy and fragrant with gin? What was it to me that his grammar was
bad, his construction worse, and his profanity so void of art that it
was an element of weakness rather than strength in his conversation?  He
was a wronged man, a man who had seen trouble, and that was enough for
me. As he mellowed into his plaintive history his tears dripped upon the
lantern in his lap, and I cried, too, from sympathy. He said he was the
son of an English nobleman--either an earl or an alderman, he could not
remember which, but believed was both; his father, the nobleman, loved
him, but his mother hated him from the cradle; and so while he was still
a little boy he was sent to 'one of them old, ancient colleges'--he
couldn't remember which; and by and by his father died and his mother
seized the property and 'shook' him as he phrased it.  After his mother
shook him, members of the nobility with whom he was acquainted used
their influence to get him the position of 'loblolly-boy in a ship;' and
from that point my watchman threw off all trammels of date and locality
and branched out into a narrative that bristled all along with
incredible adventures; a narrative that was so reeking with bloodshed
and so crammed with hair-breadth escapes and the most engaging and
unconscious personal villainies, that I sat speechless, enjoying,
shuddering, wondering, worshipping.

It was a sore blight to find out afterwards that he was a low, vulgar,
ignorant, sentimental, half-witted humbug, an untraveled native of the
wilds of Illinois, who had absorbed wildcat literature and appropriated
its marvels, until in time he had woven odds and ends of the mess into
this yarn, and then gone on telling it to fledglings like me, until he
had come to believe it himself.




Chapter 6 A Cub-pilot's Experience

WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and some other
delays, the poor old 'Paul Jones' fooled away about two weeks in making
the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans. This gave me a chance to get
acquainted with one of the pilots, and he taught me how to steer the
boat, and thus made the fascination of river life more potent than ever
for me.

It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a youth who had taken
deck passage--more's the pity; for he easily borrowed six dollars of me
on a promise to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day after
we should arrive.  But he probably died or forgot, for he never came. It
was doubtless the former, since he had said his parents were wealthy,
and he only traveled deck passage because it was cooler.{footnote [1.
'Deck' Passage, i.e. steerage passage.]}

I soon discovered two things.  One was that a vessel would not be likely
to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve years; and the
other was that the nine or ten dollars still left in my pocket would not
suffice for so imposing an exploration as I had planned, even if I could
afford to wait for a ship. Therefore it followed that I must contrive a
new career. The 'Paul Jones' was now bound for St. Louis.  I planned a
siege against my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he
surrendered. He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New
Orleans to St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the first
wages I should receive after graduating.  I entered upon the small
enterprise of 'learning' twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great
Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life. If I had
really known what I was about to require of my faculties, I should not
have had the courage to begin.  I supposed that all a pilot had to do
was to keep his boat in the river, and I did not consider that that
could be much of a trick, since it was so wide.

The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in the afternoon, and it
was 'our watch' until eight.  Mr. Bixby, my chief, 'straightened her
up,' plowed her along past the sterns of the other boats that lay at the
Levee, and then said, 'Here, take her; shave those steamships as close
as you'd peel an apple.' I took the wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered
up into the hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were about to scrape
the side off every ship in the line, we were so close. I held my breath
and began to claw the boat away from the danger; and I had my own
opinion of the pilot who had known no better than to get us into such
peril, but I was too wise to express it. In half a minute I had a wide
margin of safety intervening between the 'Paul Jones' and the ships; and
within ten seconds more I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was
going into danger again and flaying me alive with abuse of my cowardice.
I was stung, but I was obliged to admire the easy confidence with which
my chief loafed from side to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so
closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent. When he had cooled a
little he told me that the easy water was close ashore and the current
outside, and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream, to get the
benefit of the former, and stay well out, down-stream, to take advantage
of the latter. In my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot and
leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence.

Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things. Said he,
'This is Six-Mile Point.'  I assented.  It was pleasant enough
information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious
that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another time he said, 'This
is Nine-Mile Point.' Later he said, 'This is Twelve-Mile Point.'  They
were all about level with the water's edge; they all looked about alike
to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would
change the subject.  But no; he would crowd up around a point, hugging
the shore with affection, and then say:  'The slack water ends here,
abreast this bunch of China-trees; now we cross over.'  So he crossed
over. He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either
came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too
far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and got abused.

The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed. At
midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night watchman
said--

'Come! turn out!'

And then he left.  I could not understand this extraordinary procedure;
so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon
the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. I was annoyed.
I said:--

'What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle of the
night for.  Now as like as not I'll not get to sleep again to-night.'

The watchman said--

'Well, if this an't good, I'm blest.'

The 'off-watch' was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter
from them, and such remarks as 'Hello, watchman! an't the new cub turned
out yet?  He's delicate, likely. Give him some sugar in a rag and send
for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-baby to him.'

About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute
later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on
and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting.  Here
was something fresh--this thing of getting up in the middle of the night
to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me
at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never
happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run
them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had
imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this
new phase of it.

It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number of stars were out.
The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub pointed at a star
and was holding her straight up the middle of the river. The shores on
either hand were not much more than half a mile apart, but they seemed
wonderfully far away and ever so vague and indistinct. The mate said:--

'We've got to land at Jones's plantation, sir.'

The vengeful spirit in me exulted.  I said to myself, I wish you joy of
your job, Mr. Bixby; you'll have a good time finding Mr. Jones's
plantation such a night as this; and I hope you never WILL find it as
long as you live.

Mr. Bixby said to the mate:--

'Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?'

'Upper.'

'I can't do it.  The stumps there are out of water at this stage: It's
no great distance to the lower, and you'll have to get along with that.'

'All right, sir.  If Jones don't like it he'll have to lump it, I
reckon.'

And then the mate left.  My exultation began to cool and my wonder to
come up.  Here was a man who not only proposed to find this plantation
on such a night, but to find either end of it you preferred. I
dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying about as many
short answers as my cargo-room would admit of, so I held my peace. All I
desired to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he was ass
enough to really imagine he was going to find that plantation on a night
when all plantations were exactly alike and all the same color. But I
held in.  I used to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days.

Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just the same as
if it had been daylight.  And not only that, but singing--

'Father in heaven, the day is declining,' etc.

It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarly
reckless outcast.  Presently he turned on me and said:--

'What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?'

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't know.

'Don't KNOW?'

This manner jolted me.  I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I
had to say just what I had said before.

'Well, you're a smart one,' said Mr. Bixby.  'What's the name of the
NEXT point?'

Once more I didn't know.

'Well, this beats anything.  Tell me the name of ANY point or place I
told you.'

I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.

'Look here!  What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to
cross over?'

'I--I--don't know.'

'You--you--don't know?' mimicking my drawling manner of speech. 'What DO
you know?'

'I--I--nothing, for certain.'

'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you!  You're the stupidest
dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of
you being a pilot--you!  Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down
a lane.'

Oh, but his wrath was up!  He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from
one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would
boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.

'Look here!  What do you suppose I told you the names of those points
for?'

I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation
provoked me to say:--

'Well--to--to--be entertaining, I thought.'

This was a red rag to the bull.  He raged and stormed so (he was
crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because
he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders
sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as
Mr. Bixby was: because he was brim full, and here were subjects who
would TALK BACK.  He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such
an irruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and
farther away the scowmen's curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted
his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew.  When he closed the
window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and
not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with.  Presently he said
to me in the gentlest way--

'My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time I tell
you a thing, put it down right away.  There's only one way to be a
pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know
it just like A B C.'

That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with
anything but blank cartridges.  However, I did not feel discouraged
long.  I judged that it was best to make some allowances, for doubtless
Mr. Bixby was 'stretching.' Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few
strokes on the big bell. The stars were all gone now, and the night was
as black as ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I was
not entirely certain that I could see the shore.  The voice of the
invisible watchman called up from the hurricane deck--

'What's this, sir?'

'Jones's plantation.'

I said to myself, I wish I might venture to offer a small bet that it
isn't. But I did not chirp.  I only waited to see. Mr. Bixby handled the
engine bells, and in due time the boat's nose came to the land, a torch
glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped ashore, a darky's voice on the
bank said, 'Gimme de k'yarpet-bag, Mars' Jones,' and the next moment we
were standing up the river again, all serene.  I reflected deeply
awhile, and then said--but not aloud--'Well, the finding of that
plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened; but it couldn't
happen again in a hundred years.'  And I fully believed it was an
accident, too.

By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the river, I had
learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream steersman, in daylight, and
before we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of progress in night-
work, but only a trifle. I had a note-book that fairly bristled with the
names of towns, 'points,' bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc.; but the
information was to be found only in the notebook--none of it was in my
head. It made my heart ache to think I had only got half of the river
set down; for as our watch was four hours off and four hours on, day and
night, there was a long four-hour gap in my book for every time I had
slept since the voyage began.

My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat, and I
packed my satchel and went with him.  She was a grand affair.  When I
stood in her pilot-house I was so far above the water that I seemed
perched on a mountain; and her decks stretched so far away, fore and
aft, below me, that I wondered how I could ever have considered the
little 'Paul Jones' a large craft.  There were other differences, too.
The 'Paul Jones's' pilot-house was a cheap, dingy, battered rattle-trap,
cramped for room: but here was a sumptuous glass temple; room enough to
have a dance in; showy red and gold window-curtains; an imposing sofa;
leather cushions and a back to the high bench where visiting pilots sit,
to spin yarns and 'look at the river;' bright, fanciful 'cuspadores'
instead of a broad wooden box filled with sawdust; nice new oil-cloth on
the floor; a hospitable big stove for winter; a wheel as high as my
head, costly with inlaid work; a wire tiller-rope; bright brass knobs
for the bells; and a tidy, white-aproned, black 'texas-tender,' to bring
up tarts and ices and coffee during mid-watch, day and night. Now this
was 'something like,' and so I began to take heart once more to believe
that piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after all. The moment we
were under way I began to prowl about the great steamer and fill myself
with joy.  She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room; when I
looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing through a
splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter, on
every stateroom door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringed
chandeliers; the clerk's office was elegant, the bar was marvelous, and
the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost. The
boiler deck (i.e. the second story of the boat, so to speak) was as
spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and there
was no pitiful handful of deckhands, firemen, and roustabouts down
there, but a whole battalion of men.  The fires were fiercely glaring
from a long row of furnaces, and over them were eight huge boilers! This
was unutterable pomp.  The mighty engines--but enough of this. I had
never felt so fine before.  And when I found that the regiment of natty
servants respectfully 'sir'd' me, my satisfaction was complete.




Chapter 7 A Daring Deed

WHEN I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was gone and I was lost.
Here was a piece of river which was all down in my book, but I could
make neither head nor tail of it:  you understand, it was turned around.
I had seen it when coming up-stream, but I had never faced about to see
how it looked when it was behind me. My heart broke again, for it was
plain that I had got to learn this troublesome river BOTH WAYS.

The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to 'look at the river.'
What is called the 'upper river' (the two hundred miles between St.
Louis and Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and the Mississippi
changes its channel so constantly that the pilots used to always find it
necessary to run down to Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boats
were to lie in port a week; that is, when the water was at a low stage.
A deal of this 'looking at the river' was done by poor fellows who
seldom had a berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in their
being always freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the shoes
of some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on account of such pilot's
sudden illness, or some other necessity.  And a good many of them
constantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not because they ever
really hoped to get a berth, but because (they being guests of the boat)
it was cheaper to 'look at the river' than stay ashore and pay board. In
time these fellows grew dainty in their tastes, and only infested boats
that had an established reputation for setting good tables. All visiting
pilots were useful, for they were always ready and willing, winter or
summer, night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoy the channel or
assist the boat's pilots in any way they could. They were likewise
welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers, when gathered together,
and as they talk only about the river they are always understood and are
always interesting.  Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on
earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride
of kings.

We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this trip. There
were eight or ten; and there was abundance of room for them in our great
pilot-house. Two or three of them wore polished silk hats, elaborate
shirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins, kid gloves, and patent-leather boots.
They were choice in their English, and bore themselves with a dignity
proper to men of solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots. The
others were more or less loosely clad, and wore upon their heads tall
felt cones that were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth.

I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not to say
torpid. I was not even of sufficient consequence to assist at the wheel
when it was necessary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry; the guest
that stood nearest did that when occasion required--and this was pretty
much all the time, because of the crookedness of the channel and the
scant water. I stood in a corner; and the talk I listened to took the
hope all out of me. One visitor said to another--

'Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?'

'It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one of the boys on the
"Diana" told me; started out about fifty yards above the wood pile on
the false point, and held on the cabin under Plum Point till I raised
the reef--quarter less twain--then straightened up for the middle bar
till I got well abreast the old one-limbed cotton-wood in the bend, then
got my stern on the cotton-wood and head on the low place above the
point, and came through a-booming--nine and a half.'

'Pretty square crossing, an't it?'

'Yes, but the upper bar 's working down fast.'

Another pilot spoke up and said--

'I had better water than that, and ran it lower down; started out from
the false point--mark twain--raised the second reef abreast the big snag
in the bend, and had quarter less twain.'

One of the gorgeous ones remarked--

'I don't want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that's a good deal
of water for Plum Point, it seems to me.'

There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub dropped on the
boaster and 'settled' him.  And so they went on talk-talk-talking.
Meantime, the thing that was running in my mind was, 'Now if my ears
hear aright, I have not only to get the names of all the towns and
islands and bends, and so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm
personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood
and obscure wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve
hundred miles; and more than that, I must actually know where these
things are in the dark, unless these guests are gifted with eyes that
can pierce through two miles of solid blackness; I wish the piloting
business was in Jericho and I had never thought of it.'

At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times (the signal to land),
and the captain emerged from his drawing-room in the forward end of the
texas, and looked up inquiringly. Mr. Bixby said--

'We will lay up here all night, captain.'

'Very well, sir.'

That was all.  The boat came to shore and was tied up for the night. It
seemed to me a fine thing that the pilot could do as he pleased, without
asking so grand a captain's permission.  I took my supper and went
immediately to bed, discouraged by my day's observations and
experiences. My late voyage's note-booking was but a confusion of
meaningless names. It had tangled me all up in a knot every time I had
looked at it in the daytime.  I now hoped for respite in sleep; but no,
it reveled all through my head till sunrise again, a frantic and
tireless nightmare.

Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited. We went booming
along, taking a good many chances, for we were anxious to 'get out of
the river' (as getting out to Cairo was called) before night should
overtake us. But Mr. Bixby's partner, the other pilot, presently
grounded the boat, and we lost so much time in getting her off that it
was plain that darkness would overtake us a good long way above the
mouth.  This was a great misfortune, especially to certain of our
visiting pilots, whose boats would have to wait for their return, no
matter how long that might be. It sobered the pilot-house talk a good
deal.  Coming up-stream, pilots did not mind low water or any kind of
darkness; nothing stopped them but fog. But down-stream work was
different; a boat was too nearly helpless, with a stiff current pushing
behind her; so it was not customary to run down-stream at night in low
water.

There seemed to be one small hope, however:  if we could get through the
intricate and dangerous Hat Island crossing before night, we could
venture the rest, for we would have plainer sailing and better water.
But it would be insanity to attempt Hat Island at night. So there was a
deal of looking at watches all the rest of the day, and a constant
ciphering upon the speed we were making; Hat Island was the eternal
subject; sometimes hope was high and sometimes we were delayed in a bad
crossing, and down it went again. For hours all hands lay under the
burden of this suppressed excitement; it was even communicated to me,
and I got to feeling so solicitous about Hat Island, and under such an
awful pressure of responsibility, that I wished I might have five
minutes on shore to draw a good, full, relieving breath, and start over
again. We were standing no regular watches.  Each of our pilots ran such
portions of the river as he had run when coming up-stream, because of
his greater familiarity with it; but both remained in the pilot house
constantly.

An hour before sunset, Mr. Bixby took the wheel and Mr. W----stepped
aside.  For the next thirty minutes every man held his watch in his hand
and was restless, silent, and uneasy. At last somebody said, with a
doomful sigh--

'Well, yonder's Hat Island--and we can't make it.' All the watches
closed with a snap, everybody sighed and muttered something about its
being 'too bad, too bad--ah, if we could only have got here half an hour
sooner!' and the place was thick with the atmosphere of disappointment.
Some started to go out, but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land. The
sun dipped behind the horizon, the boat went on. Inquiring looks passed
from one guest to another; and one who had his hand on the door-knob and
had turned it, waited, then presently took away his hand and let the
knob turn back again.  We bore steadily down the bend. More looks were
exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration--but no words.  Insensibly
the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby, as the sky darkened and one or
two dim stars came out. The dead silence and sense of waiting became
oppressive. Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, mellow notes from
the big bell floated off on the night.  Then a pause, and one more note
was struck.  The watchman's voice followed, from the hurricane deck--

'Labboard lead, there!  Stabboard lead!'

The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance, and were
gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck.

'M-a-r-k three!.... M-a-r-k three!.... Quarter-less three! .... Half
twain! .... Quarter twain! .... M-a-r-k twain! .... Quarter-less--'

Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faint jinglings far
below in the engine room, and our speed slackened. The steam began to
whistle through the gauge-cocks. The cries of the leadsmen went on--and
it is a weird sound, always, in the night. Every pilot in the lot was
watching now, with fixed eyes, and talking under his breath.  Nobody was
calm and easy but Mr. Bixby. He would put his wheel down and stand on a
spoke, and as the steamer swung into her (to me) utterly invisible
marks--for we seemed to be in the midst of a wide and gloomy sea--he
would meet and fasten her there. Out of the murmur of half-audible talk,
one caught a coherent sentence now and then--such as--

'There; she's over the first reef all right!'

After a pause, another subdued voice--

'Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by George!'

'Now she's in the marks; over she goes!'

Somebody else muttered--

'Oh, it was done beautiful--BEAUTIFUL!'

Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we drifted with the
current.  Not that I could see the boat drift, for I could not, the
stars being all gone by this time. This drifting was the dismalest work;
it held one's heart still. Presently I discovered a blacker gloom than
that which surrounded us. It was the head of the island.  We were
closing right down upon it. We entered its deeper shadow, and so
imminent seemed the peril that I was likely to suffocate; and I had the
strongest impulse to do SOMETHING, anything, to save the vessel. But
still Mr. Bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent as a cat, and all the
pilots stood shoulder to shoulder at his back.

'She'll not make it!' somebody whispered.

The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leadsman's cries, till it was
down to--

'Eight-and-a-half!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... Seven-
and--'

Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube to the engineer--

'Stand by, now!'

'Aye-aye, sir!'

'Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet!  Six-and--'

We touched bottom!  Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells ringing,
shouted through the tube, 'NOW, let her have it--every ounce you've
got!' then to his partner, 'Put her hard down! snatch her! snatch her!'
The boat rasped and ground her way through the sand, hung upon the apex
of disaster a single tremendous instant, and then over she went! And
such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never loosened the roof of a
pilot-house before!

There was no more trouble after that.  Mr. Bixby was a hero that night;
and it was some little time, too, before his exploit ceased to be talked
about by river men.

Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in laying the great
steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water, one should know that
not only must she pick her intricate way through snags and blind reefs,
and then shave the head of the island so closely as to brush the
overhanging foliage with her stern, but at one place she must pass
almost within arm's reach of a sunken and invisible wreck that would
snatch the hull timbers from under her if she should strike it, and
destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steam-boat and cargo in
five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fifty human lives into the
bargain.

The last remark I heard that night was a compliment to Mr. Bixby,
uttered in soliloquy and with unction by one of our guests.  He said--

'By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning pilot!'




Chapter 8 Perplexing Lessons

At the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack my head
full of islands, towns, bars, 'points,' and bends; and a curiously
inanimate mass of lumber it was, too.  However, inasmuch as I could shut
my eyes and reel off a good long string of these names without leaving
out more than ten miles of river in every fifty, I began to feel that I
could take a boat down to New Orleans if I could make her skip those
little gaps.  But of course my complacency could hardly get start enough
to lift my nose a trifle into the air, before Mr. Bixby would think of
something to fetch it down again. One day he turned on me suddenly with
this settler--

'What is the shape of Walnut Bend?'

He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm. I
reflected respectfully, and then said I didn't know it had any
particular shape.  My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course,
and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives.

I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many rounds of
ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very placable and even
remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone. That word
'old' is merely affectionate; he was not more than thirty-four. I
waited.  By and by he said--

'My boy, you've got to know the SHAPE of the river perfectly. It is all
there is left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything else is
blotted out and gone.  But mind you, it hasn't the same shape in the
night that it has in the day-time.'

'How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?'

'How do you follow a hall at home in the dark.  Because you know the
shape of it.  You can't see it.'

'Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling
variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I
know the shape of the front hall at home?'

'On my honor, you've got to know them BETTER than any man ever did know
the shapes of the halls in his own house.'

'I wish I was dead!'

'Now I don't want to discourage you, but--'

'Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time.'

'You see, this has got to be learned; there isn't any getting around it.
A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that if you didn't
know the shape of a shore perfectly you would claw away from every bunch
of timber, because you would take the black shadow of it for a solid
cape; and you see you would be getting scared to death every fifteen
minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all the time
when you ought to be within fifty feet of it.  You can't see a snag in
one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the shape of
the river tells you when you are coming to it. Then there's your pitch-
dark night; the river is a very different shape on a pitch-dark night
from what it is on a starlight night. All shores seem to be straight
lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too; and you'd RUN them for straight
lines only you know better. You boldly drive your boat right into what
seems to be a solid, straight wall (you knowing very well that in
reality there is a curve there), and that wall falls back and makes way
for you. Then there's your gray mist.  You take a night when there's one
of these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then there isn't any
particular shape to a shore.  A gray mist would tangle the head of the
oldest man that ever lived.  Well, then, different kinds of MOONLIGHT
change the shape of the river in different ways. You see--'

'Oh, don't say any more, please!  Have I got to learn the shape of the
river according to all these five hundred thousand different ways?  If I
tried to carry all that cargo in my head it would make me stoop-
shouldered.'

'NO! you only learn THE shape of the river, and you learn it with such
absolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape that's IN YOUR
HEAD, and never mind the one that's before your eyes.'

'Very well, I'll try it; but after I have learned it can I depend on it.
Will it keep the same form and not go fooling around?'

Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W---- came in to take the watch, and
he said--

'Bixby, you'll have to look out for President's Island and all that
country clear away up above the Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are
caving and the shape of the shores changing like everything.  Why, you
wouldn't know the point above 40. You can go up inside the old sycamore-
snag, now.{footnote [1. It may not be necessary, but still it can do no
harm to explain that 'inside' means between the snag and the shore.--
M.T.]}

So that question was answered.  Here were leagues of shore changing
shape. My spirits were down in the mud again.  Two things seemed pretty
apparent to me.  One was, that in order to be a pilot a man had got to
learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other
was, that he must learn it all over again in a different way every
twenty-four hours.

That night we had the watch until twelve.  Now it was an ancient river
custom for the two pilots to chat a bit when the watch changed. While
the relieving pilot put on his gloves and lit his cigar, his partner,
the retiring pilot, would say something like this--

'I judge the upper bar is making down a little at Hale's Point; had
quarter twain with the lower lead and mark twain {footnote [Two fathoms.
'Quarter twain' is two-and-a-quarter fathoms, thirteen-and-a-half feet.
'Mark three' is three fathoms.]} with the other.'

'Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last trip. Meet any boats?'

'Met one abreast the head of 21, but she was away over hugging the bar,
and I couldn't make her out entirely.  I took her for the "Sunny South"-
-hadn't any skylights forward of the chimneys.'

And so on.  And as the relieving pilot took the wheel his
partner{footnote ['Partner' is a technical term for 'the other pilot'.]}
would mention that we were in such-and-such a bend, and say we were
abreast of such-and-such a man's wood-yard or plantation.  This was
courtesy; I supposed it was necessity. But Mr. W---- came on watch full
twelve minutes late on this particular night,--a tremendous breach of
etiquette; in fact, it is the unpardonable sin among pilots. So Mr.
Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simply surrendered the wheel
and marched out of the pilot-house without a word. I was appalled; it
was a villainous night for blackness, we were in a particularly wide and
blind part of the river, where there was no shape or substance to
anything, and it seemed incredible that Mr. Bixby should have left that
poor fellow to kill the boat trying to find out where he was. But I
resolved that I would stand by him any way. He should find that he was
not wholly friendless. So I stood around, and waited to be asked where
we were. But Mr. W---- plunged on serenely through the solid firmament
of black cats that stood for an atmosphere, and never opened his mouth.
Here is a proud devil, thought I; here is a limb of Satan that would
rather send us all to destruction than put himself under obligations to
me, because I am not yet one of the salt of the earth and privileged to
snub captains and lord it over everything dead and alive in a steamboat.
I presently climbed up on the bench; I did not think it was safe to go
to sleep while this lunatic was on watch.

However, I must have gone to sleep in the course of time, because the
next thing I was aware of was the fact that day was breaking, Mr. W----
gone, and Mr. Bixby at the wheel again. So it was four o'clock and all
well--but me; I felt like a skinful of dry bones and all of them trying
to ache at once.

Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there for.  I confessed that it
was to do Mr. W---- a benevolence,--tell him where he was. It took five
minutes for the entire preposterousness of the thing to filter into Mr.
Bixby's system, and then I judge it filled him nearly up to the chin;
because he paid me a compliment--and not much of a one either.  He said,

'Well, taking you by-and-large, you do seem to be more different kinds
of an ass than any creature I ever saw before. What did you suppose he
wanted to know for?'

I said I thought it might be a convenience to him.

'Convenience D-nation! Didn't I tell you that a man's got to know the
river in the night the same as he'd know his own front hall?'

'Well, I can follow the front hall in the dark if I know it IS the front
hall; but suppose you set me down in the middle of it in the dark and
not tell me which hall it is; how am I to know?'

'Well you've GOT to, on the river!'

'All right.  Then I'm glad I never said anything to Mr. W---- '

'I should say so.  Why, he'd have slammed you through the window and
utterly ruined a hundred dollars' worth of window-sash and stuff.'

I was glad this damage had been saved, for it would have made me
unpopular with the owners.  They always hated anybody who had the name
of being careless, and injuring things.

I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the
eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands
on, that was the chief.  I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, wooded
point that projected far into the river some miles ahead of me, and go
to laboriously photographing its shape upon my brain; and just as I was
beginning to succeed to my satisfaction, we would draw up toward it and
the exasperating thing would begin to melt away and fold back into the
bank!  If there had been a conspicuous dead tree standing upon the very
point of the cape, I would find that tree inconspicuously merged into
the general forest, and occupying the middle of a straight shore, when I
got abreast of it! No prominent hill would stick to its shape long
enough for me to make up my mind what its form really was, but it was as
dissolving and changeful as if it had been a mountain of butter in the
hottest corner of the tropics. Nothing ever had the same shape when I
was coming downstream that it had borne when I went up.  I mentioned
these little difficulties to Mr. Bixby. He said--

'That's the very main virtue of the thing.  If the shapes didn't change
every three seconds they wouldn't be of any use. Take this place where
we are now, for instance. As long as that hill over yonder is only one
hill, I can boom right along the way I'm going; but the moment it splits
at the top and forms a V, I know I've got to scratch to starboard in a
hurry, or I'll bang this boat's brains out against a rock; and then the
moment one of the prongs of the V swings behind the other, I've got to
waltz to larboard again, or I'll have a misunderstanding with a snag
that would snatch the keelson out of this steamboat as neatly as if it
were a sliver in your hand. If that hill didn't change its shape on bad
nights there would be an awful steamboat grave-yard around here inside
of a year.'

It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of the river in all the
different ways that could be thought of,--upside down, wrong end first,
inside out, fore-and-aft, and 'thortships,'--and then know what to do on
gray nights when it hadn't any shape at all. So I set about it.  In the
course of time I began to get the best of this knotty lesson, and my
self-complacency moved to the front once more. Mr. Bixby was all fixed,
and ready to start it to the rear again. He opened on me after this
fashion--

'How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-the-Wall,
trip before last?'

I considered this an outrage.  I said--

'Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing through that tangled
place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch. How do you reckon I
can remember such a mess as that?'

'My boy, you've got to remember it.  You've got to remember the exact
spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest water,
in everyone of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis and New
Orleans; and you mustn't get the shoal soundings and marks of one trip
mixed up with the shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for
they're not often twice alike. You must keep them separate.'

When I came to myself again, I said--

'When I get so that I can do that, I'll be able to raise the dead, and
then I won't have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I want to
retire from this business.  I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I'm only
fit for a roustabout.  I haven't got brains enough to be a pilot; and if
I had I wouldn't have strength enough to carry them around, unless I
went on crutches.'

'Now drop that!  When I say I'll learn {footnote ['Teach' is not in the
river vocabulary.]} a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on
it, I'll learn him or kill him.'




Chapter 9 Continued Perplexities

THERE was no use in arguing with a person like this.  I promptly put
such a strain on my memory that by and by even the shoal water and the
countless crossing-marks began to stay with me. But the result was just
the same.  I never could more than get one knotty thing learned before
another presented itself. Now I had often seen pilots gazing at the
water and pretending to read it as if it were a book; but it was a book
that told me nothing. A time came at last, however, when Mr. Bixby
seemed to think me far enough advanced to bear a lesson on water-
reading. So he began--

'Do you see that long slanting line on the face of the water?  Now,
that's a reef.  Moreover, it's a bluff reef.  There is a solid sand-bar
under it that is nearly as straight up and down as the side of a house.
There is plenty of water close up to it, but mighty little on top of it.
If you were to hit it you would knock the boat's brains out. Do you see
where the line fringes out at the upper end and begins to fade away?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the reef. You can climb
over there, and not hurt anything.  Cross over, now, and follow along
close under the reef--easy water there--not much current.'

I followed the reef along till I approached the fringed end. Then Mr.
Bixby said--

'Now get ready.  Wait till I give the word.  She won't want to mount the
reef; a boat hates shoal water.  Stand by--wait--WAIT--keep her well in
hand. NOW cramp her down!  Snatch her! snatch her!'

He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to spin it around until
it was hard down, and then we held it so. The boat resisted, and refused
to answer for a while, and next she came surging to starboard, mounted
the reef, and sent a long, angry ridge of water foaming away from her
bows.

'Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'll get away from you. When
she fights strong and the tiller slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort
of way, let up on her a trifle; it is the way she tells you at night
that the water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, little by little,
toward the point. You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under
every point, because the water that comes down around it forms an eddy
and allows the sediment to sink.  Do you see those fine lines on the
face of the water that branch out like the ribs of a fan. Well, those
are little reefs; you want to just miss the ends of them, but run them
pretty close.  Now look out--look out! Don't you crowd that slick,
greasy-looking place; there ain't nine feet there; she won't stand it.
She begins to smell it; look sharp, I tell you!  Oh blazes, there you
go! Stop the starboard wheel!  Quick!  Ship up to back! Set her back!

The engine bells jingled and the engines answered promptly, shooting
white columns of steam far aloft out of the 'scape pipes, but it was too
late.  The boat had 'smelt' the bar in good earnest; the foamy ridges
that radiated from her bows suddenly disappeared, a great dead swell
came rolling forward and swept ahead of her, she careened far over to
larboard, and went tearing away toward the other shore as if she were
about scared to death. We were a good mile from where we ought to have
been, when we finally got the upper hand of her again.

During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby asked me if I knew
how to run the next few miles.  I said--

'Go inside the first snag above the point, outside the next one, start
out from the lower end of Higgins's wood-yard, make a square crossing
and--'

'That's all right.  I'll be back before you close up on the next point.'

But he wasn't. He was still below when I rounded it and entered upon a
piece of river which I had some misgivings about.  I did not know that
he was hiding behind a chimney to see how I would perform. I went gaily
along, getting prouder and prouder, for he had never left the boat in my
sole charge such a length of time before. I even got to 'setting' her
and letting the wheel go, entirely, while I vaingloriously turned my
back and inspected the stem marks and hummed a tune, a sort of easy
indifference which I had prodigiously admired in Bixby and other great
pilots.  Once I inspected rather long, and when I faced to the front
again my heart flew into my mouth so suddenly that if I hadn't clapped
my teeth together I should have lost it.  One of those frightful bluff
reefs was stretching its deadly length right across our bows! My head
was gone in a moment; I did not know which end I stood on; I gasped and
could not get my breath; I spun the wheel down with such rapidity that
it wove itself together like a spider's web; the boat answered and
turned square away from the reef, but the reef followed her! I fled, and
still it followed, still it kept--right across my bows! I never looked
to see where I was going, I only fled. The awful crash was imminent--why
didn't that villain come! If I committed the crime of ringing a bell, I
might get thrown overboard. But better that than kill the boat.  So in
blind desperation I started such a rattling 'shivaree' down below as
never had astounded an engineer in this world before, I fancy.  Amidst
the frenzy of the bells the engines began to back and fill in a furious
way, and my reason forsook its throne--we were about to crash into the
woods on the other side of the river. Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly
into view on the hurricane deck. My soul went out to him in gratitude.
My distress vanished; I would have felt safe on the brink of Niagara,
with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck. He blandly and sweetly took his
tooth-pick out of his mouth between his fingers, as if it were a cigar--
we were just in the act of climbing an overhanging big tree, and the
passengers were scudding astern like rats--and lifted up these commands
to me ever so gently--

'Stop the starboard.  Stop the larboard.  Set her back on both.'

The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughs a critical
instant, then reluctantly began to back away.

'Stop the larboard.  Come ahead on it.  Stop the starboard. Come ahead
on it.  Point her for the bar.'

I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning Mr. Bixby came in and
said, with mock simplicity--

'When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap the big bell three times
before you land, so that the engineers can get ready.'

I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn't had any hail.

'Ah!  Then it was for wood, I suppose.  The officer of the watch will
tell you when he wants to wood up.'

I went on consuming and said I wasn't after wood.

'Indeed?  Why, what could you want over here in the bend, then? Did you
ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at this stage of the
river?'

'No sir,--and I wasn't trying to follow it.  I was getting away from a
bluff reef.'

'No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within three miles of where
you were.'

'But I saw it.  It was as bluff as that one yonder.'

'Just about.  Run over it!'

'Do you give it as an order?'

'Yes.  Run over it.'

'If I don't, I wish I may die.'

'All right; I am taking the responsibility.'  I was just as anxious to
kill the boat, now, as I had been to save her before. I impressed my
orders upon my memory, to be used at the inquest, and made a straight
break for the reef.  As it disappeared under our bows I held my breath;
but we slid over it like oil.

'Now don't you see the difference?  It wasn't anything but a WIND reef.
The wind does that.'

'So I see.  But it is exactly like a bluff reef. How am I ever going to
tell them apart?'

'I can't tell you.  It is an instinct.  By and by you will just
naturally KNOW one from the other, but you never will be able to explain
why or how you know them apart'

It turned out to be true.  The face of the water, in time, became a
wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated
passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its
most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice.
And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new
story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there
was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could
leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip,
thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There
never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest
was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every
reperusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar
sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did
not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an ITALICIZED
passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest
capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it;
for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the
life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest
and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a
pilot's eye.  In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw
nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and
shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures
at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know
every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I
knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But
I had lost something, too.  I had lost something which could never be
restored to me while I lived.  All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had
gone out of the majestic river!  I still keep in mind a certain
wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A
broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance
the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came
floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay
sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling,
tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy
flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful
circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our
left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this
forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like
silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a
single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor
that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected
images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and
near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every
passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.

I stood like one bewitched.  I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The
world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.
But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the
glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight
wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether
to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should
have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it,
inwardly, after this fashion:  This sun means that we are going to have
wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small
thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef
which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it
keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a
dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in
the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is
shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest
is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very
best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead
tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then
how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night
without the friendly old landmark.

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the
value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it
could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat.  Since
those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely
flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a 'break' that ripples
above some deadly disease. Are not all her visible charms sown thick
with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay?  Does he
ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her
professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to
himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or
lost most by learning his trade?




Chapter 10 Completing My Education

WHOSOEVER has done me the courtesy to read my chapters which have
preceded this may possibly wonder that I deal so minutely with piloting
as a science. It was the prime purpose of those chapters; and I am not
quite done yet. I wish to show, in the most patient and painstaking way,
what a wonderful science it is.  Ship channels are buoyed and lighted,
and therefore it is a comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run
them; clear-water rivers, with gravel bottoms, change their channels
very gradually, and therefore one needs to learn them but once; but
piloting becomes another matter when you apply it to vast streams like
the Mississippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial banks cave and change
constantly, whose snags are always hunting up new quarters, whose
sandbars are never at rest, whose channels are for ever dodging and
shirking, and whose obstructions must be confronted in all nights and
all weathers without the aid of a single light-house or a single buoy;
for there is neither light nor buoy to be found anywhere in all this
three or four thousand miles of villainous river.{footnote [True at the
time referred to; not true now (1882).]}  I feel justified in enlarging
upon this great science for the reason that I feel sure no one has ever
yet written a paragraph about it who had piloted a steamboat himself,
and so had a practical knowledge of the subject. If the theme were
hackneyed, I should be obliged to deal gently with the reader; but since
it is wholly new, I have felt at liberty to take up a considerable
degree of room with it.

When I had learned the name and position of every visible feature of the
river; when I had so mastered its shape that I could shut my eyes and
trace it from St. Louis to New Orleans; when I had learned to read the
face of the water as one would cull the news from the morning paper; and
finally, when I had trained my dull memory to treasure up an endless
array of soundings and crossing-marks, and keep fast hold of them, I
judged that my education was complete:  so I got to tilting my cap to
the side of my head, and wearing a tooth-pick in my mouth at the wheel.
Mr. Bixby had his eye on these airs. One day he said--

'What is the height of that bank yonder, at Burgess's?'

'How can I tell, sir.  It is three-quarters of a mile away.'

'Very poor eye--very poor.  Take the glass.'

I took the glass, and presently said--'I can't tell. I suppose that that
bank is about a foot and a half high.'

'Foot and a half!  That's a six-foot bank.  How high was the bank along
here last trip?'

'I don't know; I never noticed.'

'You didn't? Well, you must always do it hereafter.'

'Why?'

'Because you'll have to know a good many things that it tells you. For
one thing, it tells you the stage of the river--tells you whether
there's more water or less in the river along here than there was last
trip.'

'The leads tell me that.'  I rather thought I had the advantage of him
there.

'Yes, but suppose the leads lie?  The bank would tell you so, and then
you'd stir those leadsmen up a bit.  There was a ten-foot bank here last
trip, and there is only a six-foot bank now. What does that signify?'

'That the river is four feet higher than it was last trip.'

'Very good.  Is the river rising or falling?'

'Rising.'

'No it ain't.'

'I guess I am right, sir.  Yonder is some drift-wood floating down the
stream.'

'A rise starts the drift-wood, but then it keeps on floating a while
after the river is done rising.  Now the bank will tell you about this.
Wait till you come to a place where it shelves a little.  Now here; do
you see this narrow belt of fine sediment That was deposited while the
water was higher. You see the driftwood begins to strand, too.  The bank
helps in other ways. Do you see that stump on the false point?'

'Ay, ay, sir.'

'Well, the water is just up to the roots of it. You must make a note of
that.'

'Why?'

'Because that means that there's seven feet in the chute of 103.'

'But 103 is a long way up the river yet.'

'That's where the benefit of the bank comes in.  There is water enough
in 103 NOW, yet there may not be by the time we get there; but the bank
will keep us posted all along.  You don't run close chutes on a falling
river, up-stream, and there are precious few of them that you are
allowed to run at all down-stream. There's a law of the United States
against it.  The river may be rising by the time we get to 103, and in
that case we'll run it. We are drawing--how much?'

'Six feet aft,--six and a half forward.'

'Well, you do seem to know something.'

'But what I particularly want to know is, if I have got to keep up an
everlasting measuring of the banks of this river, twelve hundred miles,
month in and month out?'

'Of course!'

My emotions were too deep for words for a while. Presently I said--'

And how about these chutes.  Are there many of them?'

'I should say so.  I fancy we shan't run any of the river this trip as
you've ever seen it run before--so to speak.  If the river begins to
rise again, we'll go up behind bars that you've always seen standing out
of the river, high and dry like the roof of a house; we'll cut across
low places that you've never noticed at all, right through the middle of
bars that cover three hundred acres of river; we'll creep through cracks
where you've always thought was solid land; we'll dart through the woods
and leave twenty-five miles of river off to one side; we'll see the
hind-side of every island between New Orleans and Cairo.'

'Then I've got to go to work and learn just as much more river as I
already know.'

'Just about twice as much more, as near as you can come at it.'

'Well, one lives to find out.  I think I was a fool when I went into
this business.'

'Yes, that is true.  And you are yet.  But you'll not be when you've
learned it.'

'Ah, I never can learn it.'

'I will see that you DO.'

By and by I ventured again--

'Have I got to learn all this thing just as I know the rest of the
river--shapes and all--and so I can run it at night?'

'Yes.  And you've got to have good fair marks from one end of the river
to the other, that will help the bank tell you when there is water
enough in each of these countless places--like that stump, you know.
When the river first begins to rise, you can run half a dozen of the
deepest of them; when it rises a foot more you can run another dozen;
the next foot will add a couple of dozen, and so on: so you see you have
to know your banks and marks to a dead moral certainty, and never get
them mixed; for when you start through one of those cracks, there's no
backing out again, as there is in the big river; you've got to go
through, or stay there six months if you get caught on a falling river.
There are about fifty of these cracks which you can't run at all except
when the river is brim full and over the banks.'

'This new lesson is a cheerful prospect.'

'Cheerful enough.  And mind what I've just told you; when you start into
one of those places you've got to go through. They are too narrow to
turn around in, too crooked to back out of, and the shoal water is
always up at the head; never elsewhere. And the head of them is always
likely to be filling up, little by little, so that the marks you reckon
their depth by, this season, may not answer for next.'

'Learn a new set, then, every year?'

'Exactly.  Cramp her up to the bar!  What are you standing up through
the middle of the river for?'

The next few months showed me strange things.  On the same day that we
held the conversation above narrated, we met a great rise coming down
the river. The whole vast face of the stream was black with drifting
dead logs, broken boughs, and great trees that had caved in and been
washed away. It required the nicest steering to pick one's way through
this rushing raft, even in the day-time, when crossing from point to
point; and at night the difficulty was mightily increased; every now and
then a huge log, lying deep in the water, would suddenly appear right
under our bows, coming head-on; no use to try to avoid it then; we could
only stop the engines, and one wheel would walk over that log from one
end to the other, keeping up a thundering racket and careening the boat
in a way that was very uncomfortable to passengers. Now and then we
would hit one of these sunken logs a rattling bang, dead in the center,
with a full head of steam, and it would stun the boat as if she had hit
a continent.  Sometimes this log would lodge, and stay right across our
nose, and back the Mississippi up before it; we would have to do a
little craw-fishing, then, to get away from the obstruction. We often
hit WHITE logs, in the dark, for we could not see them till we were
right on them; but a black log is a pretty distinct object at night. A
white snag is an ugly customer when the daylight is gone.

Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm of prodigious timber-
rafts from the head waters of the Mississippi, coal barges from
Pittsburgh, little trading scows from everywhere, and broad-horns from
'Posey County,' Indiana, freighted with 'fruit and furniture'--the usual
term for describing it, though in plain English the freight thus
aggrandized was hoop-poles and pumpkins. Pilots bore a mortal hatred to
these craft; and it was returned with usury.  The law required all such
helpless traders to keep a light burning, but it was a law that was
often broken. All of a sudden, on a murky night, a light would hop up,
right under our bows, almost, and an agonized voice, with the backwoods
'whang' to it, would wail out--

'Whar'n the ---- you goin' to!  Cain't you see nothin', you dash-dashed
aig-suckin', sheep-stealin', one-eyed son of a stuffed monkey!'

Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red glare from our furnaces
would reveal the scow and the form of the gesticulating orator as if
under a lightning-flash, and in that instant our firemen and deck-hands
would send and receive a tempest of missiles and profanity, one of our
wheels would walk off with the crashing fragments of a steering-oar, and
down the dead blackness would shut again. And that flatboatman would be
sure to go into New Orleans and sue our boat, swearing stoutly that he
had a light burning all the time, when in truth his gang had the lantern
down below to sing and lie and drink and gamble by, and no watch on
deck.  Once, at night, in one of those forest-bordered crevices (behind
an island) which steamboatmen intensely describe with the phrase 'as
dark as the inside of a cow,' we should have eaten up a Posey County
family, fruit, furniture, and all, but that they happened to be fiddling
down below, and we just caught the sound of the music in time to sheer
off, doing no serious damage, unfortunately, but coming so near it that
we had good hopes for a moment. These people brought up their lantern,
then, of course; and as we backed and filled to get away, the precious
family stood in the light of it--both sexes and various ages--and cursed
us till everything turned blue. Once a coalboatman sent a bullet through
our pilot-house, when we borrowed a steering oar of him in a very narrow
place.




Chapter 11 The River Rises

DURING this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable nuisance.
We were running chute after chute,--a new world to me,--and if there was
a particularly cramped place in a chute, we would be pretty sure to meet
a broad-horn there; and if he failed to be there, we would find him in a
still worse locality, namely, the head of the chute, on the shoal water.
And then there would be no end of profane cordialities exchanged.

Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feeling our way cautiously
along through a fog, the deep hush would suddenly be broken by yells and
a clamor of tin pans, and all in instant a log raft would appear vaguely
through the webby veil, close upon us; and then we did not wait to swap
knives, but snatched our engine bells out by the roots and piled on all
the steam we had, to scramble out of the way! One doesn't hit a rock or
a solid log craft with a steamboat when he can get excused.

You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks always carried a
large assortment of religious tracts with them in those old departed
steamboating days.  Indeed they did. Twenty times a day we would be
cramping up around a bar, while a string of these small-fry rascals were
drifting down into the head of the bend away above and beyond us a
couple of miles. Now a skiff would dart away from one of them, and come
fighting its laborious way across the desert of water.  It would 'ease
all,' in the shadow of our forecastle, and the panting oarsmen would
shout, 'Gimme a pa-a-per!' as the skiff drifted swiftly astern. The
clerk would throw over a file of New Orleans journals. If these were
picked up without comment, you might notice that now a dozen other
skiffs had been drifting down upon us without saying anything. You
understand, they had been waiting to see how No. 1 was going to fare.
No. 1 making no comment, all the rest would bend to their oars and come
on, now; and as fast as they came the clerk would heave over neat
bundles of religious tracts, tied to shingles. The amount of hard
swearing which twelve packages of religious literature will command when
impartially divided up among twelve raftsmen's crews, who have pulled a
heavy skiff two miles on a hot day to get them, is simply incredible.

As I have said, the big rise brought a new world under my vision. By the
time the river was over its banks we had forsaken our old paths and were
hourly climbing over bars that had stood ten feet out of water before;
we were shaving stumpy shores, like that at the foot of Madrid Bend,
which I had always seen avoided before; we were clattering through
chutes like that of 82, where the opening at the foot was an unbroken
wall of timber till our nose was almost at the very spot.  Some of these
chutes were utter solitudes. The dense, untouched forest overhung both
banks of the crooked little crack, and one could believe that human
creatures had never intruded there before. The swinging grape-vines, the
grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we swept by, the flowering creepers
waving their red blossoms from the tops of dead trunks, and all the
spendthrift richness of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrown away
there.  The chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep,
except at the head; the current was gentle; under the 'points' the water
was absolutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that where the
tender willow thickets projected you could bury your boat's broadside in
them as you tore along, and then you seemed fairly to fly.

Behind other islands we found wretched little farms, and wretcheder
little log-cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking a foot or two
above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-racked, yellow-faced
male miserables roosting on the top-rail, elbows on knees, jaws in
hands, grinding tobacco and discharging the result at floating chips
through crevices left by lost teeth; while the rest of the family and
the few farm-animals were huddled together in an empty wood-flat riding
at her moorings close at hand. In this flat-boat the family would have
to cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or greater number of days (or
possibly weeks), until the river should fall two or three feet and let
them get back to their log-cabin and their chills again--chills being a
merciful provision of an all-wise Providence to enable them to take
exercise without exertion. And this sort of watery camping out was a
thing which these people were rather liable to be treated to a couple of
times a year: by the December rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise
out of the Mississippi.  And yet these were kindly dispensations, for
they at least enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and
then, and look upon life when a steamboat went by. They appreciated the
blessing, too, for they spread their mouths and eyes wide open and made
the most of these occasions. Now what COULD these banished creatures
find to do to keep from dying of the blues during the low-water season!

Once, in one of these lovely island chutes, we found our course
completely bridged by a great fallen tree. This will serve to show how
narrow some of the chutes were. The passengers had an hour's recreation
in a virgin wilderness, while the boat-hands chopped the bridge away;
for there was no such thing as turning back, you comprehend.

From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is over its banks, you have no
particular trouble in the night, for the thousand-mile wall of dense
forest that guards the two banks all the way is only gapped with a farm
or wood-yard opening at intervals, and so you can't 'get out of the
river' much easier than you could get out of a fenced lane; but from
Baton Rouge to New Orleans it is a different matter.  The river is more
than a mile wide, and very deep--as much as two hundred feet, in places.
Both banks, for a good deal over a hundred miles, are shorn of their
timber and bordered by continuous sugar plantations, with only here and
there a scattering sapling or row of ornamental China-trees. The timber
is shorn off clear to the rear of the plantations, from two to four
miles. When the first frost threatens to come, the planters snatch off
their crops in a hurry.  When they have finished grinding the cane, they
form the refuse of the stalks (which they call BAGASSE) into great piles
and set fire to them, though in other sugar countries the bagasse is
used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugar mills. Now the piles of damp
bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like Satan's own kitchen.

An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both banks of the
Mississippi all the way down that lower end of the river, and this
embankment is set back from the edge of the shore from ten to perhaps a
hundred feet, according to circumstances; say thirty or forty feet, as a
general thing. Fill that whole region with an impenetrable gloom of
smoke from a hundred miles of burning bagasse piles, when the river is
over the banks, and turn a steamboat loose along there at midnight and
see how she will feel. And see how you will feel, too!  You find
yourself away out in the midst of a vague dim sea that is shoreless,
that fades out and loses itself in the murky distances; for you cannot
discern the thin rib of embankment, and you are always imagining you see
a straggling tree when you don't. The plantations themselves are
transformed by the smoke, and look like a part of the sea.  All through
your watch you are tortured with the exquisite misery of uncertainty.
You hope you are keeping in the river, but you do not know. All that you
are sure about is that you are likely to be within six feet of the bank
and destruction, when you think you are a good half-mile from shore. And
you are sure, also, that if you chance suddenly to fetch up against the
embankment and topple your chimneys overboard, you will have the small
comfort of knowing that it is about what you were expecting to do. One
of the great Vicksburg packets darted out into a sugar plantation one
night, at such a time, and had to stay there a week.  But there was no
novelty about it; it had often been done before.

I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wish to add a curious
thing, while it is in my mind. It is only relevant in that it is
connected with piloting. There used to be an excellent pilot on the
river, a Mr. X., who was a somnambulist.  It was said that if his mind
was troubled about a bad piece of river, he was pretty sure to get up
and walk in his sleep and do strange things. He was once fellow-pilot
for a trip or two with George Ealer, on a great New Orleans passenger
packet.  During a considerable part of the first trip George was uneasy,
but got over it by and by, as X. seemed content to stay in his bed when
asleep. Late one night the boat was approaching Helena, Arkansas; the
water was low, and the crossing above the town in a very blind and
tangled condition.  X. had seen the crossing since Ealer had, and as the
night was particularly drizzly, sullen, and dark, Ealer was considering
whether he had not better have X. called to assist in running the place,
when the door opened and X. walked in. Now on very dark nights, light is
a deadly enemy to piloting; you are aware that if you stand in a lighted
room, on such a night, you cannot see things in the street to any
purpose; but if you put out the lights and stand in the gloom you can
make out objects in the street pretty well.  So, on very dark nights,
pilots do not smoke; they allow no fire in the pilot-house stove if
there is a crack which can allow the least ray to escape; they order the
furnaces to be curtained with huge tarpaulins and the sky-lights to be
closely blinded. Then no light whatever issues from the boat.  The
undefinable shape that now entered the pilot-house had Mr. X.'s voice.
This said--

'Let me take her, George; I've seen this place since you have, and it is
so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself easier than I could tell
you how to do it.'

'It is kind of you, and I swear _I_ am willing. I haven't got another
drop of perspiration left in me. I have been spinning around and around
the wheel like a squirrel. It is so dark I can't tell which way she is
swinging till she is coming around like a whirligig.'

So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and breathless. The black
phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything, steadied the waltzing
steamer with a turn or two, and then stood at ease, coaxing her a little
to this side and then to that, as gently and as sweetly as if the time
had been noonday. When Ealer observed this marvel of steering, he wished
he had not confessed!  He stared, and wondered, and finally said--

'Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat, but that was another
mistake of mine.'

X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work.  He rang for the
leads; he rang to slow down the steam; he worked the boat carefully and
neatly into invisible marks, then stood at the center of the wheel and
peered blandly out into the blackness, fore and aft, to verify his
position; as the leads shoaled more and more, he stopped the engines
entirely, and the dead silence and suspense of 'drifting' followed when
the shoalest water was struck, he cracked on the steam, carried her
handsomely over, and then began to work her warily into the next system
of shoal marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines
followed, the boat slipped through without touching bottom, and entered
upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing; imperceptibly she
moved through the gloom, crept by inches into her marks, drifted
tediously till the shoalest water was cried, and then, under a
tremendous head of steam, went swinging over the reef and away into deep
water and safety!

Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great, relieving sigh, and
said--

'That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done on the
Mississippi River!  I wouldn't believed it could be done, if I hadn't
seen it.'

There was no reply, and he added--

'Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run down and get
a cup of coffee.'

A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the 'texas,' and
comforting himself with coffee.  Just then the night watchman happened
in, and was about to happen out again, when he noticed Ealer and
exclaimed--

'Who is at the wheel, sir?'

'X.'

'Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!'

The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house companion way,
three steps at a jump!  Nobody there!  The great steamer was whistling
down the middle of the river at her own sweet will! The watchman shot
out of the place again; Ealer seized the wheel, set an engine back with
power, and held his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a
'towhead' which she was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf of
Mexico!

By and by the watchman came back and said--

'Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep, when he first came up
here?'

'NO.'

'Well, he was.  I found him walking along on top of the railings just as
unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement; and I put him to bed;
now just this minute there he was again, away astern, going through that
sort of tight-rope deviltry the same as before.'

'Well, I think I'll stay by, next time he has one of those fits. But I
hope he'll have them often.  You just ought to have seen him take this
boat through Helena crossing.  I never saw anything so gaudy before. And
if he can do such gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond-breastpin piloting when
he is sound asleep, what COULDN'T he do if he was dead!'




Chapter 12 Sounding

WHEN the river is very low, and one's steamboat is 'drawing all the
water' there is in the channel,--or a few inches more, as was often the
case in the old times,--one must be painfully circumspect in his
piloting. We used to have to 'sound' a number of particularly bad places
almost every trip when the river was at a very low stage.

Sounding is done in this way.  The boat ties up at the shore, just above
the shoal crossing; the pilot not on watch takes his 'cub' or steersman
and a picked crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and goes out in
the yawl--provided the boat has not that rare and sumptuous luxury, a
regularly-devised 'sounding-boat'--and proceeds to hunt for the best
water, the pilot on duty watching his movements through a spy-glass,
meantime, and in some instances assisting by signals of the boat's
whistle, signifying 'try higher up' or 'try lower down;' for the surface
of the water, like an oil-painting, is more expressive and intelligible
when inspected from a little distance than very close at hand. The
whistle signals are seldom necessary, however; never, perhaps, except
when the wind confuses the significant ripples upon the water's surface.
When the yawl has reached the shoal place, the speed is slackened, the
pilot begins to sound the depth with a pole ten or twelve feet long, and
the steersman at the tiller obeys the order to 'hold her up to
starboard;' or, 'let her fall off to larboard;'{footnote [The term
'larboard' is never used at sea now, to signify the left hand; but was
always used on the river in my time]} or 'steady--steady as you go.'

When the measurements indicate that the yawl is approaching the shoalest
part of the reef, the command is given to 'ease all!' Then the men stop
rowing and the yawl drifts with the current. The next order is, 'Stand
by with the buoy!'  The moment the shallowest point is reached, the
pilot delivers the order, 'Let go the buoy!' and over she goes.  If the
pilot is not satisfied, he sounds the place again; if he finds better
water higher up or lower down, he removes the buoy to that place. Being
finally satisfied, he gives the order, and all the men stand their oars
straight up in the air, in line; a blast from the boat's whistle
indicates that the signal has been seen; then the men 'give way' on
their oars and lay the yawl alongside the buoy; the steamer comes
creeping carefully down, is pointed straight at the buoy, husbands her
power for the coming struggle, and presently, at the critical moment,
turns on all her steam and goes grinding and wallowing over the buoy and
the sand, and gains the deep water beyond. Or maybe she doesn't; maybe
she 'strikes and swings.' Then she has to while away several hours (or
days) sparring herself off.

Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead, hunting
the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake. Often there
is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding, especially if it is a
glorious summer day, or a blustering night. But in winter the cold and
the peril take most of the fun out of it.

A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long, with one end
turned up; it is a reversed school-house bench, with one of the supports
left and the other removed. It is anchored on the shoalest part of the
reef by a rope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of it. But for
the resistance of the turned-up end of the reversed bench, the current
would pull the buoy under water.  At night, a paper lantern with a
candle in it is fastened on top of the buoy, and this can be seen a mile
or more, a little glimmering spark in the waste of blackness.

Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out sounding.
There is such an air of adventure about it; often there is danger; it is
so gaudy and man-of-war-like to sit up in the stern-sheets and steer a
swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the
boat when an experienced old sailor crew throw their souls into the
oars; it is lovely to see the white foam stream away from the bows;
there is music in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating,
in summer, to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the
world of wavelets is dancing in the sun.  It is such grandeur, too, to
the cub, to get a chance to give an order; for often the pilot will
simply say, 'Let her go about!' and leave the rest to the cub, who
instantly cries, in his sternest tone of command, 'Ease starboard!
Strong on the larboard! Starboard give way!  With a will, men!'  The cub
enjoys sounding for the further reason that the eyes of the passengers
are watching all the yawl's movements with absorbing interest if the
time be daylight; and if it be night he knows that those same wondering
eyes are fastened upon the yawl's lantern as it glides out into the
gloom and dims away in the remote distance.

One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our pilot-house with
her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long.  I fell in love with
her.  So did Mr. Thornburg's cub, Tom G----.  Tom and I had been bosom
friends until this time; but now a coolness began to arise. I told the
girl a good many of my river adventures, and made myself out a good deal
of a hero; Tom tried to make himself appear to be a hero, too, and
succeeded to some extent, but then he always had a way of embroidering.
However, virtue is its own reward, so I was a barely perceptible trifle
ahead in the contest. About this time something happened which promised
handsomely for me: the pilots decided to sound the crossing at the head
of 21. This would occur about nine or ten o'clock at night, when the
passengers would be still up; it would be Mr. Thornburg's watch,
therefore my chief would have to do the sounding.  We had a perfect love
of a sounding-boat--long, trim, graceful, and as fleet as a greyhound;
her thwarts were cushioned; she carried twelve oarsmen; one of the mates
was always sent in her to transmit orders to her crew, for ours was a
steamer where no end of 'style' was put on.

We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready.  It was a foul night,
and the river was so wide, there, that a landsman's uneducated eyes
could discern no opposite shore through such a gloom. The passengers
were alert and interested; everything was satisfactory. As I hurried
through the engine-room, picturesquely gotten up in storm toggery, I met
Tom, and could not forbear delivering myself of a mean speech--

'Ain't you glad YOU don't have to go out sounding?'

Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and said--

'Now just for that, you can go and get the sounding-pole yourself. I was
going after it, but I'd see you in Halifax, now, before I'd do it.'

'Who wants you to get it?  I don't. It's in the sounding-boat.'

'It ain't, either.  It's been new-painted; and it's been up on the
ladies' cabin guards two days, drying.'

I flew back, and shortly arrived among the crowd of watching and
wondering ladies just in time to hear the command:

'Give way, men!'

I looked over, and there was the gallant sounding-boat booming away, the
unprincipled Tom presiding at the tiller, and my chief sitting by him
with the sounding-pole which I had been sent on a fool's errand to
fetch. Then that young girl said to me--

'Oh, how awful to have to go out in that little boat on such a night! Do
you think there is any danger?'

I would rather have been stabbed.  I went off, full of venom, to help in
the pilot-house. By and by the boat's lantern disappeared, and after an
interval a wee spark glimmered upon the face of the water a mile away.
Mr. Thornburg blew the whistle, in acknowledgment, backed the steamer
out, and made for it.  We flew along for a while, then slackened steam
and went cautiously gliding toward the spark. Presently Mr. Thornburg
exclaimed--

'Hello, the buoy-lantern's out!'

He stopped the engines.  A moment or two later he said--

'Why, there it is again!'

So he came ahead on the engines once more, and rang for the leads.
Gradually the water shoaled up, and then began to deepen again! Mr.
Thornburg muttered--

'Well, I don't understand this.  I believe that buoy has drifted off the
reef.  Seems to be a little too far to the left. No matter, it is safest
to run over it anyhow.'

So, in that solid world of darkness we went creeping down on the light.
Just as our bows were in the act of plowing over it, Mr. Thornburg
seized the bell-ropes, rang a startling peal, and exclaimed--

'My soul, it's the sounding-boat!'

A sudden chorus of wild alarms burst out far below--a pause--and then
the sound of grinding and crashing followed. Mr. Thornburg exclaimed--

'There! the paddle-wheel has ground the sounding-boat to lucifer
matches!  Run!  See who is killed!'

I was on the main deck in the twinkling of an eye.  My chief and the
third mate and nearly all the men were safe.  They had discovered their
danger when it was too late to pull out of the way; then, when the great
guards overshadowed them a moment later, they were prepared and knew
what to do; at my chiefs order they sprang at the right instant, seized
the guard, and were hauled aboard.  The next moment the sounding-yawl
swept aft to the wheel and was struck and splintered to atoms.  Two of
the men and the cub Tom, were missing--a fact which spread like wildfire
over the boat. The passengers came flocking to the forward gangway,
ladies and all, anxious-eyed, white-faced, and talked in awed voices of
the dreadful thing. And often and again I heard them say, 'Poor fellows!
poor boy, poor boy!'

By this time the boat's yawl was manned and away, to search for the
missing.  Now a faint call was heard, off to the left. The yawl had
disappeared in the other direction.  Half the people rushed to one side
to encourage the swimmer with their shouts; the other half rushed the
other way to shriek to the yawl to turn about. By the callings, the
swimmer was approaching, but some said the sound showed failing
strength.  The crowd massed themselves against the boiler-deck railings,
leaning over and staring into the gloom; and every faint and fainter cry
wrung from them such words as, 'Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! is there
no way to save him?'

But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and presently the voice
said pluckily--

'I can make it!  Stand by with a rope!'

What a rousing cheer they gave him!  The chief mate took his stand in
the glare of a torch-basket, a coil of rope in his hand, and his men
grouped about him.  The next moment the swimmer's face appeared in the
circle of light, and in another one the owner of it was hauled aboard,
limp and drenched, while cheer on cheer went up. It was that devil Tom.

The yawl crew searched everywhere, but found no sign of the two men.
They probably failed to catch the guard, tumbled back, and were struck
by the wheel and killed.  Tom had never jumped for the guard at all, but
had plunged head-first into the river and dived under the wheel. It was
nothing; I could have done it easy enough, and I said so; but everybody
went on just the same, making a wonderful to do over that ass, as if he
had done something great.  That girl couldn't seem to have enough of
that pitiful 'hero' the rest of the trip; but little I cared; I loathed
her, any way.

The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat's lantern for the buoy-
light was this.  My chief said that after laying the buoy he fell away
and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he took up a position a
hundred yards below it and a little to one side of the steamer's course,
headed the sounding-boat up-stream, and waited. Having to wait some
time, he and the officer got to talking; he looked up when he judged
that the steamer was about on the reef; saw that the buoy was gone, but
supposed that the steamer had already run over it; he went on with his
talk; he noticed that the steamer was getting very close on him, but
that was the correct thing; it was her business to shave him closely,
for convenience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her to sheer off,
until the last moment; then it flashed upon him that she was trying to
run him down, mistaking his lantern for the buoy-light; so he sang out,
'Stand by to spring for the guard, men!' and the next instant the jump
was made.




Chapter 13 A Pilot's Needs

BUT I am wandering from what I was intending to do, that is, make
plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chapters, some of the
peculiar requirements of the science of piloting. First of all, there is
one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has
brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing short of perfection will do.
That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is
so and so; he must know it; for this is eminently one of the 'exact'
sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, if
he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase 'I think,' instead of the
vigorous one 'I know!'  One cannot easily realize what a tremendous
thing it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of
river and know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest
street in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features
patiently until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post
and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you
can instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at
random in that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will
then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a
pilot's knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And
then if you will go on until you know every street crossing, the
character, size, and position of the crossing-stones, and the varying
depth of mud in each of those numberless places, you will have some idea
of what the pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out
of trouble.  Next, if you will take half of the signs in that long
street, and CHANGE THEIR PLACES once a month, and still manage to know
their new positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these
repeated changes without making any mistakes, you will understand what
is required of a pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi.

I think a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world.
To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them
glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book and
recite both ways and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant
mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot's
massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility in the
handling of it.  I make this comparison deliberately, and believe I am
not expanding the truth when I do it. Many will think my figure too
strong, but pilots will not.

And how easily and comfortably the pilot's memory does its work; how
placidly effortless is its way; how UNCONSCIOUSLY it lays up its vast
stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single
valuable package of them all!  Take an instance. Let a leadsman cry,
'Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!' until it
become as monotonous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be
going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking,
and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst of
this endless string of half twains let a single 'quarter twain!' be
interjected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go on again,
just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with
precision the boat's position in the river when that quarter twain was
uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks, and side-
marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to take the boat there and
put her in that same spot again yourself! The cry of 'quarter twain' did
not really take his mind from his talk, but his trained faculties
instantly photographed the bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid
up the important details for future reference without requiring any
assistance from him in the matter. If you were walking and talking with
a friend, and another friend at your side kept up a monotonous
repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple of blocks, and then in the
midst interjected an R, thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave
the R no emphasis, you would not be able to state, two or three weeks
afterward, that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell what objects
you were passing at the moment it was done.  But you could if your
memory had been patiently and laboriously trained to do that sort of
thing mechanically.

Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and piloting will
develop it into a very colossus of capability. But ONLY IN THE MATTERS
IT IS DAILY DRILLED IN. A time would come when the man's faculties could
not help noticing landmarks and soundings, and his memory could not help
holding on to them with the grip of a vise; but if you asked that same
man at noon what he had had for breakfast, it would be ten chances to
one that he could not tell you. Astonishing things can be done with the
human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of
business.

At the time that wages soared so high on the Missouri River, my chief,
Mr. Bixby, went up there and learned more than a thousand miles of that
stream with an ease and rapidity that were astonishing. When he had seen
each division once in the daytime and once at night, his education was
so nearly complete that he took out a 'daylight' license; a few trips
later he took out a full license, and went to piloting day and night--
and he ranked A 1, too.

Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot whose feats
of memory were a constant marvel to me.  However, his memory was born in
him, I think, not built.  For instance, somebody would mention a name.
Instantly Mr. Brown would break in--

'Oh, I knew HIM.  Sallow-faced, red-headed fellow, with a little scar on
the side of his throat, like a splinter under the flesh.  He was only in
the Southern trade six months. That was thirteen years ago.  I made a
trip with him. There was five feet in the upper river then; the "Henry
Blake" grounded at the foot of Tower Island drawing four and a half; the
"George Elliott" unshipped her rudder on the wreck of the "Sunflower"--'

'Why, the "Sunflower" didn't sink until--'

'I know when she sunk; it was three years before that, on the 2nd of
December; Asa Hardy was captain of her, and his brother John was first
clerk; and it was his first trip in her, too; Tom Jones told me these
things a week afterward in New Orleans; he was first mate of the
"Sunflower." Captain Hardy stuck a nail in his foot the 6th of July of
the next year, and died of the lockjaw on the 15th.  His brother died
two years after 3rd of March,--erysipelas.  I never saw either of the
Hardys,--they were Alleghany River men,--but people who knew them told
me all these things. And they said Captain Hardy wore yarn socks winter
and summer just the same, and his first wife's name was Jane Shook--she
was from New England--and his second one died in a lunatic asylum.  It
was in the blood. She was from Lexington, Kentucky.  Name was Horton
before she was married.'

And so on, by the hour, the man's tongue would go. He could NOT forget
any thing.  It was simply impossible. The most trivial details remained
as distinct and luminous in his head, after they had lain there for
years, as the most memorable events. His was not simply a pilot's
memory; its grasp was universal. If he were talking about a trifling
letter he had received seven years before, he was pretty sure to deliver
you the entire screed from memory.  And then without observing that he
was departing from the true line of his talk, he was more than likely to
hurl in a long-drawn parenthetical biography of the writer of that
letter; and you were lucky indeed if he did not take up that writer's
relatives, one by one, and give you their biographies, too.

Such a memory as that is a great misfortune.  To it, all occurrences are
of the same size.  Its possessor cannot distinguish an interesting
circumstance from an uninteresting one.  As a talker, he is bound to
clog his narrative with tiresome details and make himself an
insufferable bore.  Moreover, he cannot stick to his subject. He picks
up every little grain of memory he discerns in his way, and so is led
aside.  Mr. Brown would start out with the honest intention of telling
you a vastly funny anecdote about a dog. He would be 'so full of laugh'
that he could hardly begin; then his memory would start with the dog's
breed and personal appearance; drift into a history of his owner; of his
owner's family, with descriptions of weddings and burials that had
occurred in it, together with recitals of congratulatory verses and
obituary poetry provoked by the same:  then this memory would recollect
that one of these events occurred during the celebrated 'hard winter' of
such and such a year, and a minute description of that winter would
follow, along with the names of people who were frozen to death, and
statistics showing the high figures which pork and hay went up to. Pork
and hay would suggest corn and fodder; corn and fodder would suggest
cows and horses; cows and horses would suggest the circus and certain
celebrated bare-back riders; the transition from the circus to the
menagerie was easy and natural; from the elephant to equatorial Africa
was but a step; then of course the heathen savages would suggest
religion; and at the end of three or four hours' tedious jaw, the watch
would change, and Brown would go out of the pilot-house muttering
extracts from sermons he had heard years before about the efficacy of
prayer as a means of grace. And the original first mention would be all
you had learned about that dog, after all this waiting and hungering.

A pilot must have a memory; but there are two higher qualities which he
must also have.  He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and
a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake. Give a man the merest
trifle of pluck to start with, and by the time he has become a pilot he
cannot be unmanned by any danger a steamboat can get into; but one
cannot quite say the same for judgment. Judgment is a matter of brains,
and a man must START with a good stock of that article or he will never
succeed as a pilot.

The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time, but it
does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until some time after
the young pilot has been 'standing his own watch,' alone and under the
staggering weight of all the responsibilities connected with the
position.  When an apprentice has become pretty thoroughly acquainted
with the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his
steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that it is
HIS courage that animates him; but the first time the pilot steps out
and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it was the other man's.
He discovers that the article has been left out of his own cargo
altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment; he
is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet them; all his
knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes he is as white as a
sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore pilots wisely train these
cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little
more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon
the candidate.

Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years afterward I used
to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it. I had become a good
steersman; so good, indeed, that I had all the work to do on our watch,
night and day; Mr. Bixby seldom made a suggestion to me; all he ever did
was to take the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly bad
crossings, land the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentleman of
leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower river
was about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my ability to run any
crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction, I
should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any
crossing in the lot, in the DAY-TIME, was a thing too preposterous for
contemplation. Well, one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the
bend above island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my nose as
high as a giraffe's, when Mr. Bixby said--

'I am going below a while.  I suppose you know the next crossing?'

This was almost an affront.  It was about the plainest and simplest
crossing in the whole river.  One couldn't come to any harm, whether he
ran it right or not; and as for depth, there never had been any bottom
there. I knew all this, perfectly well.

'Know how to RUN it?  Why, I can run it with my eyes shut.'

'How much water is there in it?'

'Well, that is an odd question.  I couldn't get bottom there with a
church steeple.'

'You think so, do you?'

The very tone of the question shook my confidence. That was what Mr.
Bixby was expecting.  He left, without saying anything more.  I began to
imagine all sorts of things. Mr. Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent
somebody down to the forecastle with some mysterious instructions to the
leadsmen, another messenger was sent to whisper among the officers, and
then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a smoke-stack where he could
observe results.  Presently the captain stepped out on the hurricane
deck; next the chief mate appeared; then a clerk. Every moment or two a
straggler was added to my audience; and before I got to the head of the
island I had fifteen or twenty people assembled down there under my
nose. I began to wonder what the trouble was.  As I started across, the
captain glanced aloft at me and said, with a sham uneasiness in his
voice--

'Where is Mr. Bixby?'

'Gone below, sir.'

But that did the business for me.  My imagination began to construct
dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keep the
run of them.  All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead! The wave
of coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocating every
joint in me.  All my confidence in that crossing vanished. I seized the
bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized it again; dropped it once more;
clutched it tremblingly one again, and pulled it so feebly that I could
hardly hear the stroke myself. Captain and mate sang out instantly, and
both together--

'Starboard lead there! and quick about it!'

This was another shock.  I began to climb the wheel like a squirrel; but
I would hardly get the boat started to port before I would see new
dangers on that side, and away I would spin to the other; only to find
perils accumulating to starboard, and be crazy to get to port again.
Then came the leadsman's sepulchral cry--

'D-e-e-p four!'

Deep four in a bottomless crossing!  The terror of it took my breath
away.

'M-a-r-k three!... M-a-r-k three... Quarter less three!... Half twain!'

This was frightful!  I seized the bell-ropes and stopped the engines.

'Quarter twain!  Quarter twain!  MARK twain!'

I was helpless.  I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking
from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck
out so far.

'Quarter LESS twain!  Nine and a HALF!'

We were DRAWING nine!  My hands were in a nerveless flutter. I could not
ring a bell intelligibly with them.  I flew to the speaking-tube and
shouted to the engineer--

'Oh, Ben, if you love me, BACK her!  Quick, Ben!  Oh, back the immortal
SOUL out of her!'

I heard the door close gently.  I looked around, and there stood Mr.
Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet smile.  Then the audience on the hurricane
deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter. I saw it all, now,
and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human history.  I laid in the
lead, set the boat in her marks, came ahead on the engines, and said--

'It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, WASN'T it? I suppose I'll
never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at the
head of 66.'

'Well, no, you won't, maybe.  In fact I hope you won't; for I want you
to learn something by that experience. Didn't you KNOW there was no
bottom in that crossing?'

'Yes, sir, I did.'

'Very well, then.  You shouldn't have allowed me or anybody else to
shake your confidence in that knowledge.  Try to remember that. And
another thing:  when you get into a dangerous place, don't turn coward.
That isn't going to help matters any.'

It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet about the
hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase
which I had conceived a particular distaste for. It was, 'Oh, Ben, if
you love me, back her!'




Chapter 14 Rank and Dignity of Piloting

IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the minutiae of the
science of piloting, to carry the reader step by step to a comprehension
of what the science consists of; and at the same time I have tried to
show him that it is a very curious and wonderful science, too, and very
worthy of his attention. If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no
surprising thing, for I loved the profession far better than any I have
followed since, and I took a measureless pride in it.  The reason is
plain: a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely
independent human being that lived in the earth. Kings are but the
hampered servants of parliament and people; parliaments sit in chains
forged by their constituency; the editor of a newspaper cannot be
independent, but must work with one hand tied behind him by party and
patrons, and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind; no
clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole truth, regardless of his
parish's opinions; writers of all kinds are manacled servants of the
public.  We write frankly and fearlessly, but then we 'modify' before we
print.  In truth, every man and woman and child has a master, and
worries and frets in servitude; but in the day I write of, the
Mississippi pilot had none. The captain could stand upon the hurricane
deck, in the pomp of a very brief authority, and give him five or six
orders while the vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper's
reign was over.  The moment that the boat was under way in the river,
she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot. He could
do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when and whither he chose,
and tie her up to the bank whenever his judgment said that that course
was best.  His movements were entirely free; he consulted no one, he
received commands from nobody, he promptly resented even the merest
suggestions.  Indeed, the law of the United States forbade him to listen
to commands or suggestions, rightly considering that the pilot
necessarily knew better how to handle the boat than anybody could tell
him. So here was the novelty of a king without a keeper, an absolute
monarch who was absolute in sober truth and not by a fiction of words. I
have seen a boy of eighteen taking a great steamer serenely into what
seemed almost certain destruction, and the aged captain standing mutely
by, filled with apprehension but powerless to interfere.  His
interference, in that particular instance, might have been an excellent
thing, but to permit it would have been to establish a most pernicious
precedent.  It will easily be guessed, considering the pilot's boundless
authority, that he was a great personage in the old steamboating days.
He was treated with marked courtesy by the captain and with marked
deference by all the officers and servants; and this deferential spirit
was quickly communicated to the passengers, too.  I think pilots were
about the only people I ever knew who failed to show, in some degree,
embarrassment in the presence of traveling foreign princes.  But then,
people in one's own grade of life are not usually embarrassing objects.

By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes in the form of
commands. It 'gravels' me, to this day, to put my will in the weak shape
of a request, instead of launching it in the crisp language of an order.
In those old days, to load a steamboat at St. Louis, take her to New
Orleans and back, and discharge cargo, consumed about twenty-five days,
on an average.  Seven or eight of these days the boat spent at the
wharves of St. Louis and New Orleans, and every soul on board was hard
at work, except the two pilots; they did nothing but play gentleman up
town, and receive the same wages for it as if they had been on duty. The
moment the boat touched the wharf at either city, they were ashore; and
they were not likely to be seen again till the last bell was ringing and
everything in readiness for another voyage.

When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly high reputation, he
took pains to keep him.  When wages were four hundred dollars a month on
the Upper Mississippi, I have known a captain to keep such a pilot in
idleness, under full pay, three months at a time, while the river was
frozen up.  And one must remember that in those cheap times four hundred
dollars was a salary of almost inconceivable splendor.  Few men on shore
got such pay as that, and when they did they were mightily looked up to.
When pilots from either end of the river wandered into our small
Missouri village, they were sought by the best and the fairest, and
treated with exalted respect.  Lying in port under wages was a thing
which many pilots greatly enjoyed and appreciated; especially if they
belonged in the Missouri River in the heyday of that trade (Kansas
times), and got nine hundred dollars a trip, which was equivalent to
about eighteen hundred dollars a month. Here is a conversation of that
day.  A chap out of the Illinois River, with a little stern-wheel tub,
accosts a couple of ornate and gilded Missouri River pilots--

'Gentlemen, I've got a pretty good trip for the upcountry, and shall
want you about a month.  How much will it be?'

'Eighteen hundred dollars apiece.'

'Heavens and earth!  You take my boat, let me have your wages, and I'll
divide!'

I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboatmen were important
in landsmen's eyes (and in their own, too, in a degree) according to the
dignity of the boat they were on. For instance, it was a proud thing to
be of the crew of such stately craft as the 'Aleck Scott' or the 'Grand
Turk.' Negro firemen, deck hands, and barbers belonging to those boats
were distinguished personages in their grade of life, and they were well
aware of that fact too.  A stalwart darkey once gave offense at a negro
ball in New Orleans by putting on a good many airs. Finally one of the
managers bustled up to him and said--

'Who IS you, any way?  Who is you? dat's what I wants to know!'

The offender was not disconcerted in the least, but swelled himself up
and threw that into his voice which showed that he knew he was not
putting on all those airs on a stinted capital.

'Who IS I?  Who IS I?  I let you know mighty quick who I is! I want you
niggers to understan' dat I fires de middle do'{footnote [Door]} on de
"Aleck Scott!"'

That was sufficient.

The barber of the 'Grand Turk' was a spruce young negro, who aired his
importance with balmy complacency, and was greatly courted by the circle
in which he moved. The young colored population of New Orleans were much
given to flirting, at twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets.
Somebody saw and heard something like the following, one evening, in one
of those localities.  A middle-aged negro woman projected her head
through a broken pane and shouted (very willing that the neighbors
should hear and envy), 'You Mary Ann, come in de house dis minute!
Stannin' out dah foolin' 'long wid dat low trash, an' heah's de barber
offn de "Gran' Turk" wants to conwerse wid you!'

My reference, a moment ago, to the fact that a pilot's peculiar official
position placed him out of the reach of criticism or command, brings
Stephen W---- naturally to my mind.  He was a gifted pilot, a good
fellow, a tireless talker, and had both wit and humor in him. He had a
most irreverent independence, too, and was deliciously easy-going and
comfortable in the presence of age, official dignity, and even the most
august wealth.  He always had work, he never saved a penny, he was a
most persuasive borrower, he was in debt to every pilot on the river,
and to the majority of the captains. He could throw a sort of splendor
around a bit of harum-scarum, devil-may-care piloting, that made it
almost fascinating--but not to everybody.  He made a trip with good old
Captain Y----once, and was 'relieved' from duty when the boat got to New
Orleans. Somebody expressed surprise at the discharge.  Captain Y----
shuddered at the mere mention of Stephen.  Then his poor, thin old voice
piped out something like this:--

'Why, bless me!  I wouldn't have such a wild creature on my boat for the
world--not for the whole world!  He swears, he sings, he whistles, he
yells--I never saw such an Injun to yell. All times of the night--it
never made any difference to him. He would just yell that way, not for
anything in particular, but merely on account of a kind of devilish
comfort he got out of it. I never could get into a sound sleep but he
would fetch me out of bed, all in a cold sweat, with one of those
dreadful war-whoops. A queer being--very queer being; no respect for
anything or anybody.  Sometimes he called me "Johnny." And he kept a
fiddle, and a cat.  He played execrably. This seemed to distress the
cat, and so the cat would howl. Nobody could sleep where that man--and
his family--was. And reckless.  There never was anything like it. Now
you may believe it or not, but as sure as I am sitting here, he brought
my boat a-tilting down through those awful snags at Chicot under a
rattling head of steam, and the wind a-blowing like the very nation, at
that!  My officers will tell you so. They saw it.  And, sir, while he
was a-tearing right down through those snags, and I a-shaking in my
shoes and praying, I wish I may never speak again if he didn't pucker up
his mouth and go to WHISTLING!  Yes, sir; whistling "Buffalo gals, can't
you come out tonight, can't you come out to-night, can't you come out
to-night;" and doing it as calmly as if we were attending a funeral and
weren't related to the corpse. And when I remonstrated with him about
it, he smiled down on me as if I was his child, and told me to run in
the house and try to be good, and not be meddling with my superiors!'

Once a pretty mean captain caught Stephen in New Orleans out of work and
as usual out of money.  He laid steady siege to Stephen, who was in a
very 'close place,' and finally persuaded him to hire with him at one
hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, just half wages, the captain
agreeing not to divulge the secret and so bring down the contempt of all
the guild upon the poor fellow.  But the boat was not more than a day
out of New Orleans before Stephen discovered that the captain was
boasting of his exploit, and that all the officers had been told.
Stephen winced, but said nothing.  About the middle of the afternoon the
captain stepped out on the hurricane deck, cast his eye around, and
looked a good deal surprised.  He glanced inquiringly aloft at Stephen,
but Stephen was whistling placidly, and attending to business. The
captain stood around a while in evident discomfort, and once or twice
seemed about to make a suggestion; but the etiquette of the river taught
him to avoid that sort of rashness, and so he managed to hold his peace.
He chafed and puzzled a few minutes longer, then retired to his
apartments. But soon he was out again, and apparently more perplexed
than ever. Presently he ventured to remark, with deference--

'Pretty good stage of the river now, ain't it, sir?'

'Well, I should say so!  Bank-full IS a pretty liberal stage.'

'Seems to be a good deal of current here.'

'Good deal don't describe it!  It's worse than a mill-race.'

'Isn't it easier in toward shore than it is out here in the middle?'

'Yes, I reckon it is; but a body can't be too careful with a steamboat.
It's pretty safe out here; can't strike any bottom here, you can depend
on that.'

The captain departed, looking rueful enough.  At this rate, he would
probably die of old age before his boat got to St. Louis. Next day he
appeared on deck and again found Stephen faithfully standing up the
middle of the river, fighting the whole vast force of the Mississippi,
and whistling the same placid tune. This thing was becoming serious.  In
by the shore was a slower boat clipping along in the easy water and
gaining steadily; she began to make for an island chute; Stephen stuck
to the middle of the river. Speech was WRUNG from the captain.
He said--

'Mr. W----, don't that chute cut off a good deal of distance?'

'I think it does, but I don't know.'

'Don't know!  Well, isn't there water enough in it now to go through?'

'I expect there is, but I am not certain.'

'Upon my word this is odd!  Why, those pilots on that boat yonder are
going to try it.  Do you mean to say that you don't know as much as they
do?'

'THEY!  Why, THEY are two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pilots! But don't you
be uneasy; I know as much as any man can afford to know for a hundred
and twenty-five!'

The captain surrendered.

Five minutes later Stephen was bowling through the chute and showing the
rival boat a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pair of heels.




Chapter 15 The Pilots' Monopoly

ONE day, on board the 'Aleck Scott,' my chief, Mr. Bixby, was crawling
carefully through a close place at Cat Island, both leads going, and
everybody holding his breath.  The captain, a nervous, apprehensive man,
kept still as long as he could, but finally broke down and shouted from
the hurricane deck--

'For gracious' sake, give her steam, Mr. Bixby! give her steam! She'll
never raise the reef on this headway!'

For all the effect that was produced upon Mr. Bixby, one would have
supposed that no remark had been made.  But five minutes later, when the
danger was past and the leads laid in, he burst instantly into a
consuming fury, and gave the captain the most admirable cursing I ever
listened to. No bloodshed ensued; but that was because the captain's
cause was weak; for ordinarily he was not a man to take correction
quietly.

Having now set forth in detail the nature of the science of piloting,
and likewise described the rank which the pilot held among the
fraternity of steamboatmen, this seems a fitting place to say a few
words about an organization which the pilots once formed for the
protection of their guild. It was curious and noteworthy in this, that
it was perhaps the compactest, the completest, and the strongest
commercial organization ever formed among men.

For a long time wages had been two hundred and fifty dollars a month;
but curiously enough, as steamboats multiplied and business increased,
the wages began to fall little by little.  It was easy to discover the
reason of this.  Too many pilots were being 'made.'  It was nice to have
a 'cub,' a steersman, to do all the hard work for a couple of years,
gratis, while his master sat on a high bench and smoked; all pilots and
captains had sons or nephews who wanted to be pilots.  By and by it came
to pass that nearly every pilot on the river had a steersman. When a
steersman had made an amount of progress that was satisfactory to any
two pilots in the trade, they could get a pilot's license for him by
signing an application directed to the United States Inspector. Nothing
further was needed; usually no questions were asked, no proofs of
capacity required.

Very well, this growing swarm of new pilots presently began to undermine
the wages, in order to get berths. Too late--apparently--the knights of
the tiller perceived their mistake.  Plainly, something had to be done,
and quickly; but what was to be the needful thing.  A close
organization. Nothing else would answer.  To compass this seemed an
impossibility; so it was talked, and talked, and then dropped. It was
too likely to ruin whoever ventured to move in the matter.  But at last
about a dozen of the boldest--and some of them the best--pilots on the
river launched themselves into the enterprise and took all the chances.
They got a special charter from the legislature, with large powers,
under the name of the Pilots' Benevolent Association; elected their
officers, completed their organization, contributed capital, put
'association' wages up to two hundred and fifty dollars at once--and
then retired to their homes, for they were promptly discharged from
employment. But there were two or three unnoticed trifles in their by-
laws which had the seeds of propagation in them.  For instance, all idle
members of the association, in good standing, were entitled to a pension
of twenty-five dollars per month. This began to bring in one straggler
after another from the ranks of the new-fledged pilots, in the dull
(summer) season. Better have twenty-five dollars than starve; the
initiation fee was only twelve dollars, and no dues required from the
unemployed.

Also, the widows of deceased members in good standing could draw twenty-
five dollars per month, and a certain sum for each of their children.
Also, the said deceased would be buried at the association's expense.
These things resurrected all the superannuated and forgotten pilots in
the Mississippi Valley. They came from farms, they came from interior
villages, they came from everywhere.  They came on crutches, on drays,
in ambulances,--any way, so they got there.  They paid in their twelve
dollars, and straightway began to draw out twenty-five dollars a month,
and calculate their burial bills.

By and by, all the useless, helpless pilots, and a dozen first-class
ones, were in the association, and nine-tenths of the best pilots out of
it and laughing at it.  It was the laughing-stock of the whole river.
Everybody joked about the by-law requiring members to pay ten per cent.
of their wages, every month, into the treasury for the support of the
association, whereas all the members were outcast and tabooed, and no
one would employ them.  Everybody was derisively grateful to the
association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the way and
leaving the whole field to the excellent and the deserving; and
everybody was not only jocularly grateful for that, but for a result
which naturally followed, namely, the gradual advance of wages as the
busy season approached.  Wages had gone up from the low figure of one
hundred dollars a month to one hundred and twenty-five, and in some
cases to one hundred and fifty; and it was great fun to enlarge upon the
fact that this charming thing had been accomplished by a body of men not
one of whom received a particle of benefit from it. Some of the jokers
used to call at the association rooms and have a good time chaffing the
members and offering them the charity of taking them as steersmen for a
trip, so that they could see what the forgotten river looked like.
However, the association was content; or at least it gave no sign to the
contrary.  Now and then it captured a pilot who was 'out of luck,' and
added him to its list; and these later additions were very valuable, for
they were good pilots; the incompetent ones had all been absorbed
before.  As business freshened, wages climbed gradually up to two
hundred and fifty dollars--the association figure--and became firmly
fixed there; and still without benefiting a member of that body, for no
member was hired. The hilarity at the association's expense burst all
bounds, now. There was no end to the fun which that poor martyr had to
put up with.

However, it is a long lane that has no turning.  Winter approached,
business doubled and trebled, and an avalanche of Missouri, Illinois and
Upper Mississippi River boats came pouring down to take a chance in the
New Orleans trade.  All of a sudden pilots were in great demand, and
were correspondingly scarce. The time for revenge was come.  It was a
bitter pill to have to accept association pilots at last, yet captains
and owners agreed that there was no other way.  But none of these
outcasts offered! So there was a still bitterer pill to be swallowed:
they must be sought out and asked for their services. Captain ---- was
the first man who found it necessary to take the dose, and he had been
the loudest derider of the organization. He hunted up one of the best of
the association pilots and said--

'Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for a little while, so
I'll give in with as good a grace as I can. I've come to hire you; get
your trunk aboard right away. I want to leave at twelve o'clock.'

'I don't know about that.  Who is your other pilot?'

'I've got I. S----. Why?'

'I can't go with him.  He don't belong to the association.'

'What!'

'It's so.'

'Do you mean to tell me that you won't turn a wheel with one of the very
best and oldest pilots on the river because he don't belong to your
association?'

'Yes, I do.'

'Well, if this isn't putting on airs!  I supposed I was doing you a
benevolence; but I begin to think that I am the party that wants a favor
done.  Are you acting under a law of the concern?'

'Yes.'

'Show it to me.'

So they stepped into the association rooms, and the secretary soon
satisfied the captain, who said--

'Well, what am I to do?  I have hired Mr. S---- for the entire season.'

'I will provide for you,' said the secretary.  'I will detail a pilot to
go with you, and he shall be on board at twelve o'clock.'

'But if I discharge S----, he will come on me for the whole season's
wages.'

'Of course that is a matter between you and Mr. S----, captain. We
cannot meddle in your private affairs.'

The captain stormed, but to no purpose.  In the end he had to discharge
S----, pay him about a thousand dollars, and take an association pilot
in his place.  The laugh was beginning to turn the other way now. Every
day, thenceforward, a new victim fell; every day some outraged captain
discharged a non-association pet, with tears and profanity, and
installed a hated association man in his berth.  In a very little while,
idle non-associationists began to be pretty plenty, brisk as business
was, and much as their services were desired. The laugh was shifting to
the other side of their mouths most palpably. These victims, together
with the captains and owners, presently ceased to laugh altogether, and
began to rage about the revenge they would take when the passing
business 'spurt' was over.

Soon all the laughers that were left were the owners and crews of boats
that had two non-association pilots. But their triumph was not very
long-lived. For this reason: It was a rigid rule of the association that
its members should never, under any circumstances whatever, give
information about the channel to any 'outsider.'  By this time about
half the boats had none but association pilots, and the other half had
none but outsiders. At the first glance one would suppose that when it
came to forbidding information about the river these two parties could
play equally at that game; but this was not so. At every good-sized town
from one end of the river to the other, there was a 'wharf-boat' to land
at, instead of a wharf or a pier. Freight was stored in it for
transportation; waiting passengers slept in its cabins.  Upon each of
these wharf-boats the association's officers placed a strong box
fastened with a peculiar lock which was used in no other service but
one--the United States mail service. It was the letter-bag lock, a
sacred governmental thing. By dint of much beseeching the government had
been persuaded to allow the association to use this lock. Every
association man carried a key which would open these boxes. That key, or
rather a peculiar way of holding it in the hand when its owner was asked
for river information by a stranger--for the success of the St. Louis
and New Orleans association had now bred tolerably thriving branches in
a dozen neighboring steamboat trades--was the association man's sign and
diploma of membership; and if the stranger did not respond by producing
a similar key and holding it in a certain manner duly prescribed, his
question was politely ignored.  From the association's secretary each
member received a package of more or less gorgeous blanks, printed like
a billhead, on handsome paper, properly ruled in columns; a bill-head
worded something like this--

                         STEAMER GREAT REPUBLIC.

                            JOHN SMITH MASTER

                PILOTS, JOHN JONES AND THOMAS BROWN.

  + ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- +

   |   CROSSINGS.   |   SOUNDINGS.   |   MARKS.   |   REMARKS.   |

  + ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- +

These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the voyage progressed, and
deposited in the several wharf-boat boxes. For instance, as soon as the
first crossing, out from St. Louis, was completed, the items would be
entered upon the blank, under the appropriate headings, thus--

'St. Louis.  Nine and a half (feet). Stern on court-house, head on dead
cottonwood above wood-yard, until you raise the first reef, then pull up
square.'  Then under head of Remarks:  'Go just outside the wrecks; this
is important.  New snag just where you straighten down; go above it.'

The pilot who deposited that blank in the Cairo box (after adding to it
the details of every crossing all the way down from St. Louis) took out
and read half a dozen fresh reports (from upward-bound steamers)
concerning the river between Cairo and Memphis, posted himself
thoroughly, returned them to the box, and went back aboard his boat
again so armed against accident that he could not possibly get his boat
into trouble without bringing the most ingenious carelessness to his
aid.

Imagine the benefits of so admirable a system in a piece of river twelve
or thirteen hundred miles long, whose channel was shifting every day!
The pilot who had formerly been obliged to put up with seeing a shoal
place once or possibly twice a month, had a hundred sharp eyes to watch
it for him, now, and bushels of intelligent brains to tell him how to
run it. His information about it was seldom twenty-four hours old.  If
the reports in the last box chanced to leave any misgivings on his mind
concerning a treacherous crossing, he had his remedy; he blew his steam-
whistle in a peculiar way as soon as he saw a boat approaching; the
signal was answered in a peculiar way if that boat's pilots were
association men; and then the two steamers ranged alongside and all
uncertainties were swept away by fresh information furnished to the
inquirer by word of mouth and in minute detail.

The first thing a pilot did when he reached New Orleans or St. Louis was
to take his final and elaborate report to the association parlors and
hang it up there,--after which he was free to visit his family. In these
parlors a crowd was always gathered together, discussing changes in the
channel, and the moment there was a fresh arrival, everybody stopped
talking till this witness had told the newest news and settled the
latest uncertainty.  Other craftsmen can 'sink the shop,' sometimes, and
interest themselves in other matters.  Not so with a pilot; he must
devote himself wholly to his profession and talk of nothing else; for it
would be small gain to be perfect one day and imperfect the next. He has
no time or words to waste if he would keep 'posted.'

But the outsiders had a hard time of it.  No particular place to meet
and exchange information, no wharf-boat reports, none but chance and
unsatisfactory ways of getting news. The consequence was that a man
sometimes had to run five hundred miles of river on information that was
a week or ten days old. At a fair stage of the river that might have
answered; but when the dead low water came it was destructive.

Now came another perfectly logical result.  The outsiders began to
ground steamboats, sink them, and get into all sorts of trouble, whereas
accidents seemed to keep entirely away from the association men.
Wherefore even the owners and captains of boats furnished exclusively
with outsiders, and previously considered to be wholly independent of
the association and free to comfort themselves with brag and laughter,
began to feel pretty uncomfortable. Still, they made a show of keeping
up the brag, until one black day when every captain of the lot was
formally ordered to immediately discharge his outsiders and take
association pilots in their stead. And who was it that had the dashing
presumption to do that?  Alas, it came from a power behind the throne
that was greater than the throne itself. It was the underwriters!

It was no time to 'swap knives.'  Every outsider had to take his trunk
ashore at once.  Of course it was supposed that there was collusion
between the association and the underwriters, but this was not so. The
latter had come to comprehend the excellence of the 'report' system of
the association and the safety it secured, and so they had made their
decision among themselves and upon plain business principles.

There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the camp of the
outsiders now.  But no matter, there was but one course for them to
pursue, and they pursued it. They came forward in couples and groups,
and proffered their twelve dollars and asked for membership.  They were
surprised to learn that several new by-laws had been long ago added. For
instance, the initiation fee had been raised to fifty dollars; that sum
must be tendered, and also ten per cent. of the wages which the
applicant had received each and every month since the founding of the
association.  In many cases this amounted to three or four hundred
dollars.  Still, the association would not entertain the application
until the money was present. Even then a single adverse vote killed the
application. Every member had to vote 'Yes' or 'No' in person and before
witnesses; so it took weeks to decide a candidacy, because many pilots
were so long absent on voyages.  However, the repentant sinners scraped
their savings together, and one by one, by our tedious voting process,
they were added to the fold. A time came, at last, when only about ten
remained outside. They said they would starve before they would apply.
They remained idle a long while, because of course nobody could venture
to employ them.

By and by the association published the fact that upon a certain date
the wages would be raised to five hundred dollars per month. All the
branch associations had grown strong, now, and the Red River one had
advanced wages to seven hundred dollars a month. Reluctantly the ten
outsiders yielded, in view of these things, and made application.  There
was another new by-law, by this time, which required them to pay dues
not only on all the wages they had received since the association was
born, but also on what they would have received if they had continued at
work up to the time of their application, instead of going off to pout
in idleness. It turned out to be a difficult matter to elect them, but
it was accomplished at last.  The most virulent sinner of this batch had
stayed out and allowed 'dues' to accumulate against him so long that he
had to send in six hundred and twenty-five dollars with his application.

The association had a good bank account now, and was very strong. There
was no longer an outsider.  A by-law was added forbidding the reception
of any more cubs or apprentices for five years; after which time a
limited number would be taken, not by individuals, but by the
association, upon these terms:  the applicant must not be less than
eighteen years old, and of respectable family and good character; he
must pass an examination as to education, pay a thousand dollars in
advance for the privilege of becoming an apprentice, and must remain
under the commands of the association until a great part of the
membership (more than half, I think) should be willing to sign his
application for a pilot's license.

All previously-articled apprentices were now taken away from their
masters and adopted by the association.  The president and secretary
detailed them for service on one boat or another, as they chose, and
changed them from boat to boat according to certain rules. If a pilot
could show that he was in infirm health and needed assistance, one of
the cubs would be ordered to go with him.

The widow and orphan list grew, but so did the association's financial
resources.  The association attended its own funerals in state, and paid
for them.  When occasion demanded, it sent members down the river upon
searches for the bodies of brethren lost by steamboat accidents; a
search of this kind sometimes cost a thousand dollars.

The association procured a charter and went into the insurance business,
also.  It not only insured the lives of its members, but took risks on
steamboats.

The organization seemed indestructible.  It was the tightest monopoly in
the world.  By the United States law, no man could become a pilot unless
two duly licensed pilots signed his application; and now there was
nobody outside of the association competent to sign.  Consequently the
making of pilots was at an end. Every year some would die and others
become incapacitated by age and infirmity; there would be no new ones to
take their places. In time, the association could put wages up to any
figure it chose; and as long as it should be wise enough not to carry
the thing too far and provoke the national government into amending the
licensing system, steamboat owners would have to submit, since there
would be no help for it.

The owners and captains were the only obstruction that lay between the
association and absolute power; and at last this one was removed.
Incredible as it may seem, the owners and captains deliberately did it
themselves.  When the pilots' association announced, months beforehand,
that on the first day of September, 1861, wages would be advanced to
five hundred dollars per month, the owners and captains instantly put
freights up a few cents, and explained to the farmers along the river
the necessity of it, by calling their attention to the burdensome rate
of wages about to be established. It was a rather slender argument, but
the farmers did not seem to detect it. It looked reasonable to them that
to add five cents freight on a bushel of corn was justifiable under the
circumstances, overlooking the fact that this advance on a cargo of
forty thousand sacks was a good deal more than necessary to cover the
new wages.

So, straightway the captains and owners got up an association of their
own, and proposed to put captains' wages up to five hundred dollars,
too, and move for another advance in freights. It was a novel idea, but
of course an effect which had been produced once could be produced
again.  The new association decreed (for this was before all the
outsiders had been taken into the pilots' association) that if any
captain employed a non-association pilot, he should be forced to
discharge him, and also pay a fine of five hundred dollars.  Several of
these heavy fines were paid before the captains' organization grew
strong enough to exercise full authority over its membership; but that
all ceased, presently.  The captains tried to get the pilots to decree
that no member of their corporation should serve under a non-association
captain; but this proposition was declined. The pilots saw that they
would be backed up by the captains and the underwriters anyhow, and so
they wisely refrained from entering into entangling alliances.

As I have remarked, the pilots' association was now the compactest
monopoly in the world, perhaps, and seemed simply indestructible. And
yet the days of its glory were numbered.  First, the new railroad
stretching up through Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, to Northern
railway centers, began to divert the passenger travel from the steamers;
next the war came and almost entirely annihilated the steamboating
industry during several years, leaving most of the pilots idle, and the
cost of living advancing all the time; then the treasurer of the St.
Louis association put his hand into the till and walked off with every
dollar of the ample fund; and finally, the railroads intruding
everywhere, there was little for steamers to do, when the war was over,
but carry freights; so straightway some genius from the Atlantic coast
introduced the plan of towing a dozen steamer cargoes down to New
Orleans at the tail of a vulgar little tug-boat; and behold, in the
twinkling of an eye, as it were, the association and the noble science
of piloting were things of the dead and pathetic past!




Chapter 16 Racing Days

IT was always the custom for the boats to leave New Orleans between four
and five o'clock in the afternoon. From three o'clock onward they would
be burning rosin and pitch pine (the sign of preparation), and so one
had the picturesque spectacle of a rank, some two or three miles long,
of tall, ascending columns of coal-black smoke; a colonnade which
supported a sable roof of the same smoke blended together and spreading
abroad over the city. Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at
the jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge staff astern. Two
or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with more than
usual emphasis; countless processions of freight barrels and boxes were
spinning athwart the levee and flying aboard the stage-planks, belated
passengers were dodging and skipping among these frantic things, hoping
to reach the forecastle companion way alive, but having their doubts
about it; women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with
husbands freighted with carpet-sacks and crying babies, and making a
failure of it by losing their heads in the whirl and roar and general
distraction; drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither
in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together,
and then during ten seconds one could not see them for the profanity,
except vaguely and dimly; every windlass connected with every forehatch,
from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping
up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the
half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring
such songs as 'De Las' Sack! De Las' Sack!'--inspired to unimaginable
exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that was driving everybody
else mad. By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of the steamers
would be packed and black with passengers.  The 'last bells' would begin
to clang, all down the line, and then the powwow seemed to double; in a
moment or two the final warning came,--a simultaneous din of Chinese
gongs, with the cry, 'All dat ain't goin', please to git asho'!'--and
behold, the powwow quadrupled!
The Complete Works of Mark Twain - Part 6
