Bot-S: The Complete Works of Mark Twain

  But Tracy's movements had
been watched, and in a few minutes the tormentors came straggling one
after another to the roof, where they began to stroll up and down in an
apparently purposeless way.  But presently they fell to dropping remarks
that were evidently aimed at Tracy, and some of them at the tinner.
The ringleader of this little mob was a short-haired bully and amateur
prize-fighter named Allen, who was accustomed to lording it over the
upper floor, and had more than once shown a disposition to make trouble
with Tracy.  Now there was an occasional cat-call, and hootings, and
whistlings, and finally the diversion of an exchange of connected remarks
was introduced:

"How many does it take to make a pair?"

"Well, two generally makes a pair, but sometimes there ain't stuff enough
in them to make a whole pair."  General laugh.

"What were you saying about the English a while ago?"

"Oh, nothing, the English are all right, only--I--"

"What was it you said about them?"

"Oh, I only said they swallow well."

"Swallow better than other people?"

"Oh, yes, the English swallow a good deal better than other people."

"What is it they swallow best?"

"Oh, insults."  Another general laugh.

"Pretty hard to make 'em fight, ain't it?"

"No, taint hard to make 'em fight."

"Ain't it, really?"

"No, taint hard.  It's impossible."  Another laugh.

"This one's kind of spiritless, that's certain."

"Couldn't be the other way--in his case."

"Why?"

"Don't you know the secret of his birth?"

"No! has he got a secret of his birth?"

"You bet he has."

"What is it?"

"His father was a wax-figger."

Allen came strolling by where the pair were sitting; stopped, and said to
the tinner;

"How are you off for friends, these days?"

"Well enough off."

"Got a good many?"

"Well, as many as I need."

"A friend is valuable, sometimes--as a protector, you know.  What do you
reckon would happen if I was to snatch your cap off and slap you in the
face with it?"

"Please don't trouble me, Mr.  Allen, I ain't doing anything to you."

You answer me!  What do you reckon would happen?"

"Well, I don't know."

Tracy spoke up with a good deal of deliberation and said:

"Don't trouble the young fellow, I can tell you what would happen."

"Oh, you can, can you?  Boys, Johnny Bull can tell us what would happen
if I was to snatch this chump's cap off and slap him in the face with it.
Now you'll see."

He snatched the cap and struck the youth in the face, and before he could
inquire what was going to happen, it had already happened, and he was
warming the tin with the broad of his back.  Instantly there was a rush,
and shouts of:

"A ring, a ring, make a ring!  Fair play all round!  Johnny's grit; give
him a chance."

The ring was quickly chalked on the tin, and Tracy found himself as eager
to begin as he could have been if his antagonist had been a prince
instead of a mechanic.  At bottom he was a little surprised at this,
because although his theories had been all in that direction for some
time, he was not prepared to find himself actually eager to measure
strength with quite so common a man as this ruffian.  In a moment all the
windows in the neighborhood were filled with people, and the roofs also.
The men squared off, and the fight began.  But Allen stood no chance
whatever, against the young Englishman.  Neither in muscle nor in science
was he his equal.  He measured his length on the tin time and again;
in fact, as fast as he could get up he went down again, and the applause
was kept up in liberal fashion from all the neighborhood around.
Finally, Allen had to be helped up.  Then Tracy declined to punish him
further and the fight was at an end.  Allen was carried off by some of
his friends in a very much humbled condition, his face black and blue and
bleeding, and Tracy was at once surrounded by the young fellows, who
congratulated him, and told him that he had done the whole house a
service, and that from this out Mr. Allen would be a little more
particular about how he handled slights and insults and maltreatment
around amongst the boarders.

Tracy was a hero now, and exceedingly popular.  Perhaps nobody had ever
been quite so popular on that upper floor before.  But if being
discountenanced by these young fellows had been hard to bear, their
lavish commendations and approval and hero-worship was harder still to
endure.  He felt degraded, but he did not allow himself to analyze the
reasons why, too closely.  He was content to satisfy himself with the
suggestion that he looked upon himself as degraded by the public
spectacle which he had made of himself, fighting on a tin roof, for the
delectation of everybody a block or two around.  But he wasn't entirely
satisfied with that explanation of it.  Once he went a little too far and
wrote in his diary that his case was worse than that of the prodigal son.
He said the prodigal son merely fed swine, he didn't have to chum with
them.  But he struck that out, and said "All men are equal.  I will not
disown my principles.  These men are as good as I am."

Tracy was become popular on the lower floors also.  Everybody was
grateful for Allen's reduction to the ranks, and for his transformation
from a doer of outrages to a mere threatener of them.  The young girls,
of whom there were half a dozen, showed many attentions to Tracy,
particularly that boarding house pet Hattie, the landlady's daughter.
She said to him, very sweetly,

"I think you're ever so nice."

And when he said, "I'm glad you think so, Miss Hattie," she said, still
more sweetly,

"Don't call me Miss Hattie--call me Puss."

Ah, here was promotion!  He had struck the summit.  There were no higher
heights to climb in that boarding house.  His popularity was complete.

In the presence of people, Tracy showed a tranquil outside, but his heart
was being eaten out of him by distress and despair.

In a little while he should be out of money, and then what should he do?
He wished, now, that he had borrowed a little more liberally from that
stranger's store.  He found it impossible to sleep.  A single torturing,
terrifying thought went racking round and round in his head, wearing a
groove in his brain: What should he do--What was to become of him?  And
along with it began to intrude a something presently which was very like
a wish that he had not joined the great and noble ranks of martyrdom, but
had stayed at home and been content to be merely an earl and nothing
better, with nothing more to do in this world of a useful sort than an
earl finds to do.  But he smothered that part of his thought as well as
he could; he made every effort to drive it away, and with fair keep it
from intruding a little  success, but he couldn't now and then, and when
it intruded it came suddenly and nipped him like a bite, a sting, a burn.
He recognized that thought by the peculiar sharpness of its pang.  The
others were painful enough, but that one cut to the quick when it calm.
Night after night he lay tossing to the music of the hideous snoring of
the honest bread-winners until two and three o'clock in the morning,
then got up and took refuge on the roof, where he sometimes got a nap and
sometimes failed entirely.  His appetite was leaving him and the zest of
life was going along with it.  Finally, owe day, being near the imminent
verge of total discouragement, he said to himself--and took occasion to
blush privately when he said it, "If my father knew what my American name
is,--he--well, my duty to my father rather requires that I furnish him my
name.  I have no right to make his days and nights unhappy, I can do
enough unhappiness for the family all by myself.  Really he ought to know
what my American name is."  He thought over it a while and framed a
cablegram in his mind to this effect:

"My American name is Howard Tracy."

That wouldn't be suggesting anything.  His father could understand that
as he chose, and doubtless he would understand it as it was meant, as a
dutiful and affectionate desire on the part of a son to make his old
father happy for a moment.  Continuing his train of thought, Tracy said
to himself, "Ah, but if he should cable me to come home!  I--I--couldn't
do that--I mustn't do that.  I've started out on a mission, and I mustn't
turn my back on it in cowardice.  No, no, I couldn't go home, at--at--
least I shouldn't want to go home."  After a reflective pause: "Well,
maybe--perhaps--it would be my duty to go in the circumstances; he's very
old and he does need me by him to stay his footsteps down the long hill
that inclines westward toward the sunset of his life.  Well, I'll think
about that.  Yes, of course it wouldn't be right to stay here.  If I--
well, perhaps I could just drop him a line and put it off a little while
and satisfy him in that way.  It would be--well, it would mar everything
to have him require me to come instantly."  Another reflective pause--
then: "And yet if he should do that I don't know but--oh, dear me--home!
how good it sounds! and a body is excusable for wanting to see his home
again, now and then, anyway."

He went to one of the telegraph offices in the avenue and got the first
end of what Barrow called the "usual Washington courtesy," where "they
treat you as a tramp until they find out you're a congressman, and then
they slobber all over you."  There was a boy of seventeen on duty there,
tying his shoe.  He had his foot on a chair and his back turned towards
the wicket.  He glanced over his shoulder, took Tracy's measure, turned
back, and went on tying his shoe.  Tracy finished writing his telegram
and waited, still waited, and still waited, for that performance to
finish, but there didn't seem to be any finish to it; so finally Tracy
said:

"Can't you take my telegram?"

The youth looked over his shoulder and said, by his manner, not his
words:

"Don't you think you could wait a minute, if you tried?"

However, he got the shoe tied at last, and came and took the telegram,
glanced over it, then looked up surprised, at Tracy.  There was something
in his look that bordered upon respect, almost reverence, it seemed to
Tracy, although he had been so long without anything of this kind he was
not sure that he knew the signs of it.

The boy read the address aloud, with pleased expression in face and
voice.

"The Earl of Rossmore!  Cracky!  Do you know him?"

"Yes."

"Is that so!  Does he know you?"

"Well--yes."

"Well, I swear!  Will he answer you?"

"I think he will."

"Will he though?  Where'll you have it sent?"

"Oh, nowhere.  I'll call here and get it.  When shall I call?"

"Oh, I don't know--I'll send it to you.  Where shall I send it?  Give me
your address; I'll send it to you soon's it comes."

But Tracy didn't propose to do this.  He had acquired the boy's
admiration and deferential respect, and he wasn't willing to throw these
precious things away, a result sure to follow if he should give the
address of that boarding house.  So he said again that he would call and
get the telegram, and went his way.

He idled along, reflecting.  He said to himself, "There is something
pleasant about being respected.  I have acquired the respect of Mr.
Allen and some of those others, and almost the deference of some of them
on pure merit, for having thrashed Allen.  While their respect and their
deference--if it is deference--is pleasant, a deference based upon a
sham, a shadow, does really seem pleasanter still.  It's no real merit to
be in correspondence with an earl, and yet after all, that boy makes me
feel as if there was."

The cablegram was actually gone home! the thought of it gave him an
immense uplift.  He walked with a lighter tread.  His heart was full of
happiness.  He threw aside all hesitances and confessed to himself that
he was glad through and through that he was going to give up this
experiment and go back to his home again.  His eagerness to get his
father's answer began to grow, now, and it grew with marvelous celerity,
after it began.  He waited an hour, walking about, putting in his time as
well as he could, but interested in nothing that came under his eye, and
at last he presented himself at the office again and asked if any answer
had come yet.  The boy said,

"No, no answer yet," then glanced at the clock and added, "I don't think
it's likely you'll get one to-day."

"Why not?"

"Well, you see it's getting pretty late.  You can't always tell where
'bouts a man is when he's on the other side, and you can't always find
him just the minute you want him, and you see it's getting about six
o'clock now, and over there it's pretty late at night."

"Why yes," said Tracy, "I hadn't thought of that."

"Yes, pretty late, now, half past ten or eleven.  Oh yes, you probably
won't get any answer to-night."




CHAPTER XIV.

So Tracy went home to supper.  The odors in that supper room seemed more
strenuous and more horrible than ever before, and he was happy in the
thought that he was so soon to be free from them again.  When the supper
was over he hardly knew whether he had eaten any of it or not, and he
certainly hadn't heard any of the conversation.  His heart had been
dancing all the time, his thoughts had been faraway from these things,
and in the visions of his mind the sumptuous appointments of his father's
castle had risen before him without rebuke.  Even the plushed flunkey,
that walking symbol of a sham inequality, had not been unpleasant to his
dreaming view.  After the meal Barrow said,

"Come with me.  I'll give you a jolly evening."

"Very good.  Where are you going?"

"To my club."

"What club is that?"

"Mechanics' Debating Club."

Tracy shuddered, slightly.  He didn't say anything about having visited
that place himself.  Somehow he didn't quite relish the memory of that
time.  The sentiments which had made his former visit there so enjoyable,
and filled him with such enthusiasm, had undergone a gradual change, and
they had rotted away to such a degree that he couldn't contemplate
another visit there with anything strongly resembling delight.  In fact
he was a little ashamed to go; he didn't want to go there and find out by
the rude impact of the thought of those people upon his reorganized
condition of mind, how sharp the change had been.  He would have
preferred to stay away.  He expected that now he should hear nothing
except sentiments which would be a reproach to him in his changed mental
attitude, and he rather wished he might be excused.  And yet he didn't
quite want to say that, he didn't want to show how he did feel, or show
any disinclination to go, and so he forced himself to go along with
Barrow, privately purposing to take an early opportunity to get away.

After the essayist of the evening had read his paper, the chairman
announced that the debate would now be upon the subject of the previous
meeting, "The American Press."  It saddened the backsliding disciple to
hear this announcement.  It brought up too many reminiscences.  He wished
he had happened upon some other subject.  But the debate began, and he
sat still and listened.

In the course of the discussion one of the speakers--a blacksmith named
Tompkins--arraigned all monarchs and all lords in the earth for their
cold selfishness in retaining their unearned dignities.  He said that no
monarch and no son of a monarch, no lord and no son of a lord ought to be
able to look his fellow man in the face without shame.  Shame for
consenting to keep his unearned titles, property, and privileges--at the
expense of other people; shame for consenting to remain, on any terms, in
dishonourable possession of these things, which represented bygone
robberies and wrongs inflicted upon the general people of the nation.
He said, "if there were a laid or the son of a lord here, I would like to
reason with him, and try to show him how unfair and how selfish his
position is.  I would try to persuade him to relinquish it, take his
place among men on equal terms, earn the bread he eats, and hold of
slight value all deference paid him because of artificial position, all
reverence not the just due of his own personal merits."

Tracy seemed to be listening to utterances of his own made in talks with
his radical friends in England.  It was as if some eavesdropping
phonograph had treasured up his words and brought them across the
Atlantic to accuse him with them in the hour of his defection and
retreat.  Every word spoken by this stranger seemed to leave a blister on
Tracy's conscience, and by the time the speech was finished he felt that
he was all conscience and one blister.  This man's deep compassion for
the enslaved and oppressed millions in Europe who had to bear with the
contempt of that small class above them, throned upon shining heights
whose paths were shut against them, was the very thing he had often
uttered himself.  The pity in this man's voice and words was the very
twin of the pity that used to reside in his own heart and come from his
own lips when he thought of these oppressed peoples.

The homeward tramp was accomplished in brooding silence.  It was a
silence most grateful to Tracy's feelings.  He wouldn't have broken it
for anything; for he was ashamed of himself all the way through to his
spine.  He kept saying to himself:

"How unanswerable it all is--how absolutely unanswerable!  It is basely,
degradingly selfish to keep those unearned honors, and--and--oh, hang
it, nobody but a cur--"

"What an idiotic damned speech that Tompkins made!"

This outburst was from Barrow.  It flooded Tracy's demoralized soul with
waters of refreshment.  These were the darlingest words the poor
vacillating young apostate had ever heard--for they whitewashed his shame
for him, and that is a good service to have when you can't get the best
of all verdicts, self-acquittal.

"Come up to my room and smoke a pipe, Tracy."

Tracy had been expecting this invitation, and had had his declination all
ready: but he was glad enough to accept, now.  Was it possible that a
reasonable argument could be made against that man's desolating speech?
He was burning to hear Barrow try it.  He knew how to start him, and keep
him going: it was to seem to combat his positions--a process effective
with most people.

"What is it you object to in Tompkins's speech, Barrow?"

"Oh, the leaving out of the factor of human nature; requiring another man
to do what you wouldn't do yourself."

"Do you mean--"

"Why here's what I mean; it's very simple.  Tompkins is a blacksmith; has
a family; works for wages; and hard, too--fooling around won't furnish
the bread.  Suppose it should turn out that by the death of somebody in
England he is suddenly an earl--income, half a million dollars a year.
What would he do?"

"Well, I--I suppose he would have to decline to--"

"Man, he would grab it in a second!"

"Do you really think he would?"

"Think?--I don't think anything about it, I know it."

"Why?"

"Because he's not a fool."

"So you think that if he were a fool, he--"

"No, I don't.  Fool or no fool, he would grab it.  Anybody would.
Anybody that's alive.  And I've seen dead people that would get up and go
for it.  I would myself."

"This was balm, this was healing, this was rest and peace and comfort."

"But I thought you were opposed to nobilities."

"Transmissible ones, yes.  But that's nothing.  I'm opposed to
millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"You'd take it?"

"I would leave the funeral of my dearest enemy to go and assume its
burdens and responsibilities."

Tracy thought a while, then said:

"I don't know that I quite get the bearings of your position.  You say
you are opposed to hereditary nobilities, and yet if you had the chance
you would--"

"Take one?  In a minute I would.  And there isn't a mechanic in that
entire club that wouldn't.  There isn't a lawyer, doctor, editor, author,
tinker, loafer, railroad president, saint-land, there isn't a human being
in the United States that wouldn't jump at the chance!"

"Except me," said Tracy softly.

"Except you!"   Barrow could hardly get the words out, his scorn so
choked him.  And he couldn't get any further than that form of words;
it seemed to dam his flow, utterly.  He got up and came and glared upon
Tracy in a kind of outraged and unappeasable way, and said again, "Except
you!"  He walked around him--inspecting him from one point of view and
then another, and relieving his soul now and then by exploding that
formula at him; "Except you!"  Finally he slumped down into his chair
with the air of one who gives it up, and said:

"He's straining his viscera and he's breaking his heart trying to get
some low-down job that a good dog wouldn't have, and yet wants to let on
that if he had a chance to scoop an earldom he wouldn't do it.  Tracy,
don't put this kind of a strain on me.  Lately I'm not as strong as I
was."

"Well, I wasn't meaning to put--a strain on you, Barrow, I was only
meaning to intimate that if an earldom ever does fall in my way--"

"There--I wouldn't give myself any worry about that, if I was you.  And
besides, I can settle what you would do.  Are you any different from me?"

"Well--no."

"Are you any better than me?"

"O,--er--why, certainly not."

"Are you as good?  Come!"

"Indeed, I--the fact is you take me so suddenly--"

"Suddenly?  What is there sudden about it?  It isn't a difficult question
is it?  Or doubtful?  Just measure us on the only fair lines--the lines
of merit--and of course you'll admit that a journeyman chairmaker that
earns his twenty dollars a week, and has had the good and genuine culture
of contact with men, and care, and hardship, and failure, and success,
and downs and ups and ups and downs, is just a trifle the superior of a
young fellow like you, who doesn't know how to do anything that's
valuable, can't earn his living in any secure and steady way, hasn't had
any experience of life and its seriousness, hasn't any culture but the
artificial culture of books, which adorns but doesn't really educate
--come! if I wouldn't scorn an earldom, what the devil right have you
to do it!"

Tracy dissembled his joy, though he wanted to thank the chair-maker for
that last remark.  Presently a thought struck him, and he spoke up
briskly and said:

"But look here, I really can't quite get the hang of your notions--your,
principles, if they are principles.  You are inconsistent.  You are
opposed to aristocracies, yet you'd take an earldom if you could.  Am I
to understand that you don't blame an earl for being and remaining an
earl?"

"I certainly don't."

"And you wouldn't blame Tompkins, or yourself, or me, or anybody, for
accepting an earldom if it was offered?"

"Indeed I wouldn't."

"Well, then, who would you blame?"

"The whole nation--any bulk and mass of population anywhere, in any
country, that will put up with the infamy, the outrage, the insult of a
hereditary aristocracy which they can't enter--and on absolutely free and
equal terms."

"Come, aren't you beclouding yourself with distinctions that are not
differences?"

"Indeed I am not.  I am entirely clear-headed about this thing.  If I
could extirpate an aristocratic system by declining its honors, then I
should be a rascal to accept them.  And if enough of the mass would join
me to make the extirpation possible, then I should be a rascal to do
otherwise than help in the attempt."

"I believe I understand--yes, I think I get the idea.  You have no blame
for the lucky few who naturally decline to vacate the pleasant nest they
were born into, you only despise the all-powerful and stupid mass of the
nation for allowing the nest to exist."

"That's it, that's it!  You can get a simple thing through your head if
you work at it long enough."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it.  And I'll give you some sound advice: when you go
back; if you find your nation up and ready to abolish that hoary affront,
lend a hand; but if that isn't the state of things and you get a chance
at an earldom, don't you be a fool--you take it."

Tracy responded with earnestness and enthusiasm:

"As I live, I'll do it!"

Barrow laughed.

"I never saw such a fellow.  I begin to think you've got a good deal of
imagination.  With you, the idlest-fancy freezes into a reality at a
breath.  Why, you looked, then, as if it wouldn't astonish you if you did
tumble into an earldom."

Tracy blushed.  Barrow added: "Earldom!  Oh, yes, take it, if it offers;
but meantime we'll go on looking around, in a modest way, and if you get
a chance to superintend a sausage-stuffer at six or eight dollars a week,
you just trade off the earldom for a last year's almanac and stick to the
sausage-stuffing,"




CHAPTER XV.

Tracy went to bed happy once more, at rest in his mind once more.  He had
started out on a high emprise--that was to his credit, he argued; he had
fought the best fight he could, considering the odds against him--that
was to his credit; he had been defeated--certainly there was nothing
discreditable in that.  Being defeated, he had a right to retire with the
honors of war and go back without prejudice to the position in the
world's society to which he had been born.  Why not? even the rabid
republican chair-maker would do that.  Yes, his conscience was
comfortable once more.

He woke refreshed, happy, and eager for his cablegram.  He had been born
an aristocrat, he had been a democrat for a time, he was now an
aristocrat again.  He marveled to find that this final change was not
merely intellectual, it had invaded his feeling; and he also marveled to
note that this feeling seemed a good deal less artificial than any he had
entertained in his system for a long time.  He could also have noted,
if he had thought of it, that his bearing had stiffened, over night,
and that his chin had lifted itself a shade.  Arrived in the basement,
he was about to enter the breakfast room when he saw old Marsh in the dim
light of a corner of the hall, beckoning him with his finger to approach.
The blood welled slowly up in Tracy's cheek, and he said with a grade of
injured dignity almost ducal:

"Is that for me?"

"Yes."

"What is the purpose of it?"

"I want to speak to you--in private."

"This spot is private enough for me."

Marsh was surprised; and not particularly pleased.  He approached and
said:

"Oh, in public, then, if you prefer.  Though it hasn't been my way."

The boarders gathered to the spot, interested.

"Speak out," said Tracy.  "What is it you want?"

"Well, haven't you--er--forgot something?"

"I?  I'm not aware of it."

"Oh, you're not?  Now you stop and think, a minute."

"I refuse to stop and think.  It doesn't interest me.  If it interests
you, speak out."

"Well, then," said Marsh, raising his voice to a slightly angry pitch,
"You forgot to pay your board yesterday--if you're bound to have it
public."

Oh, yes, this heir to an annual million or so had been dreaming and
soaring, and had forgotten that pitiful three or four dollars.  For
penalty he must have it coarsely flung in his face in the presence of
these people--people in whose countenances was already beginning to dawn
an uncharitable enjoyment of the situation.

"Is that all!  Take your money and give your terrors a rest."

Tracy's hand went down into his pocket with angry decision.  But--it
didn't come out.  The color began to ebb out of his face.  The
countenances about him showed a growing interest; and some of them a
heightened satisfaction.  There was an uncomfortable pause--then he
forced out, with difficulty, the words:

"I've--been robbed!"

Old Marsh's eyes flamed up with Spanish fire, and he exclaimed:

"Robbed, is it?  That's your tune?  It's too old--been played in this
house too often; everybody plays it that can't get work when he wants it,
and won't work when he can get it.  Trot out Mr. Allen, somebody, and let
him take a toot at it.  It's his turn next, he forgot, too, last night.
I'm laying for him."

One of the negro women came scrambling down stairs as pale as a sorrel
horse with consternation and excitement:

"Misto Marsh, Misto Allen's skipped out!"

"What!"

"Yes-sah, and cleaned out his room clean; tuck bofe towels en de soap!"

"You lie, you hussy!"

"It's jes' so, jes' as I tells you--en Misto Summer's socks is gone, en
Misto Naylor's yuther shirt."

Mr. Marsh was at boiling point by this time.  He turned upon Tracy:

"Answer up now--when are you going to settle?"

"To-day--since you seem to be in a hurry."

"To-day is it?  Sunday--and you out of work?  I like that.  Come--where
are you going to get the money?"

Tracy's spirit was rising again.  He proposed to impress these people:

"I am expecting a cablegram from home."

Old Marsh was caught out, with the surprise of it.  The idea was so
immense, so extravagant, that he couldn't get his breath at first.  When
he did get it, it came rancid with sarcasm.

"A cablegram--think of it, ladies and gents, he's expecting a cablegram!
He's expecting a cablegram--this duffer, this scrub, this bilk!  From his
father--eh?  Yes--without a doubt.  A dollar or two a word--oh, that's
nothing--they don't mind a little thing like that--this kind's fathers
don't.  Now his father is--er--well, I reckon his father--"

"My father is an English earl!"

The crowd fell back aghast-aghast at the sublimity of the young loafer's
"cheek."  Then they burst into a laugh that made the windows rattle.
Tracy was too angry to realize that he had done a foolish thing.  He
said:

"Stand aside, please.  I--"

"Wait a minute, your lordship," said Marsh, bowing low, "where is your
lordship going?"

"For the cablegram.  Let me pass."

"Excuse me, your lordship, you'll stay right where you are."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that I didn't begin to keep boarding-house yesterday.  It means
that I am not the kind that can be taken in by every hack-driver's son
that comes loafing over here because he can't bum a living at home.  It
means that you can't skip out on any such--"

Tracy made a step toward the old man, but Mrs.  Marsh sprang between, and
said:

"Don't, Mr. Tracy, please."  She turned to her husband and said, "Do
bridle your tongue.  What has he done to be treated so?  Can't you see he
has lost his mind, with trouble and distress?  He's not responsible."

"Thank your kind heart, madam, but I've not lost my mind; and if I can
have the mere privilege of stepping to the telegraph office--"

"Well, you can't," cried Marsh.

"--or sending--"

"Sending!  That beats everything.  If there's anybody that's fool enough
to go on such a chuckle-headed errand--"

"Here comes Mr. Barrow--he will go for me.  Barrow--"

A brisk fire of exclamations broke out--

"Say, Barrow, he's expecting a cablegram!"

"Cablegram from his father, you know!"

"Yes--cablegram from the wax-figger!"

"And say, Barrow, this fellow's an earl--take off your hat, pull down
your vest!"

"Yes, he's come off and forgot his crown, that he wears Sundays.  He's
cabled over to his pappy to send it."

"You step out and get that cablegram, Barrow; his majesty's a little lame
to-day."

"Oh stop," cried Barrow; "give the man a chance."  He turned, and said
with some severity, "Tracy, what's the matter with you?  What kind of
foolishness is this you've been talking.  You ought to have more sense."

"I've not been talking foolishness; and if you'll go to the telegraph
office--"

"Oh; don't talk so.  I'm your friend in trouble and out of it, before
your face and behind your back, for anything in reason; but you've lost
your head, you see, and this moonshine about a cablegram--"

"I'll go there and ask for it!"

"Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Brady.  Here, I'll give you a
Written order for it.  Fly, now, and fetch it.  We'll soon see!"

Brady flew.  Immediately the sort of quiet began to steal over the crowd
which means dawning doubt, misgiving; and might be translated into the
words, "Maybe he is expecting a cablegram--maybe he has got a father
somewhere--maybe we've been just a little too fresh, just a shade too
'previous'!"

Loud talk ceased; then the mutterings and low murmurings and whisperings
died out.  The crowd began to crumble apart.  By ones and twos the
fragments drifted to the breakfast table.  Barrow tried to bring Tracy
in; but he said:

"Not yet, Barrow--presently."

Mrs. Marsh and Hattie tried, offering gentle and kindly persuasions; but
he said;

"I would rather wait--till he comes."

Even old Marsh began to have suspicions that maybe he had been a trifle
too "brash," as he called it in the privacy of his soul, and he pulled
himself together and started toward Tracy with invitation in his eyes;
but Tracy warned him off with a gesture which was quite positive and
eloquent.  Then followed the stillest quarter of an hour which had ever
been known in that house at that time of day.  It was so still, and so
solemn withal, that when somebody's cup slipped from his fingers and
landed in his plate the shock made people start, and the sharp sound
seemed as indecorous there and as out of place as if a coffin and
mourners were imminent and being waited for.  And at last when Brady's
feet came clattering down the stairs the sacrilege seemed unbearable.
Everybody rose softly and turned toward the door, where stood Tracy;
then with a common impulse, moved a step or two in that direction, and
stopped.  While they gazed, young Brady arrived, panting, and put into
Tracy's hand,--sure enough--an envelope.  Tracy fastened a bland
victorious eye upon the gazers, and kept it there till one by one they
dropped their eyes, vanquished and embarrassed.  Then he tore open the
telegram and glanced at its message.  The yellow paper fell from his
fingers and fluttered to the floor, and his face turned white.  There was
nothing there but one word--

"Thanks."

The humorist of the house, the tall, raw-boned Billy Nash, caulker from
the navy yard, was standing in the rear of the crowd.  In the midst of
the pathetic silence that was now brooding over the place and moving some
few hearts there toward compassion, he began to whimper, then he put his
handkerchief to his eyes and buried his face in the neck of the
bashfulest young fellow in the company, a navy-yard blacksmith, shrieked
"Oh, pappy, how could you!" and began to bawl like a teething baby, if
one may imagine a baby with the energy and the devastating voice of a
jackass.

So perfect was that imitation of a child's cry, and so vast the scale of
it and so ridiculous the aspect of the performer, that all gravity was
swept from the place as if by a hurricane, and almost everybody there
joined in the crash of laughter provoked by the exhibition.  Then the
small mob began to take its revenge--revenge for the discomfort and
apprehension it had brought upon itself by its own too rash freshness of
a little while before.  It guyed its poor victim, baited him, worried
him, as dogs do with a cornered cat.  The victim answered back with
defiances and challenges which included everybody, and which only gave
the sport new spirit and variety; but when he changed his tactics and
began to single out individuals and invite them by name, the fun lost its
funniness and the interest of the show died out, along with the noise.

Finally Marsh was about to take an innings, but Barrow said:

"Never mind, now--leave him alone.  You've no account with him but a
money account.  I'll take care of that myself."

The distressed and worried landlady gave Barrow a fervently grateful look
for his championship of the abused stranger; and the pet of the house, a
very prism in her cheap but ravishing Sunday rig, blew him a kiss from
the tips of her fingers and said, with the darlingest smile and a sweet
little toss of her head:

"You're the only man here, and I'm going to set my cap for you, you dear
old thing!"

"For shame, Puss!  How you talk!  I never saw such a child!"

It took a good deal of argument and persuasion--that is to say, petting,
under these disguises--to get Tracy to entertain the idea of breakfast.
He at first said he would never eat again in that house; and added that
he had enough firmness of character, he trusted, to enable him to starve
like a man when the alternative was to eat insult with his bread.

When he had finished his breakfast, Barrow took him to his room,
furnished him a pipe, and said cheerily:

"Now, old fellow, take in your battle-flag out of the wet, you're not in
the hostile camp any more.  You're a little upset by your troubles,
and that's natural enough, but don't let your mind run on them anymore
than you can help; drag your thoughts away from your troubles by the
ears, by the heels, or any other way, so you manage it; it's the
healthiest thing a body can do; dwelling on troubles is deadly, just
deadly--and that's the softest name there is for it.  You must keep your
mind amused--you must, indeed."

"Oh, miserable me!"

"Don't!  There's just pure heart-break in that tone.  It's just as I say;
you've got to get right down to it and amuse your mind, as if it was
salvation."

"They're easy words to say, Barrow, but how am I going to amuse,
entertain, divert a mind that finds itself suddenly assaulted and
overwhelmed by disasters of a sort not dreamed of and not provided for?
No--no, the bare idea of amusement is repulsive to my feelings: Let us
talk of death and funerals."

"No--not yet.  That would be giving up the ship.  We'll not give up the
ship yet.  I'm going to amuse you; I sent Brady out for the wherewithal
before you finished breakfast."

"You did?  What is it?"

"Come, this is a good sign--curiosity.  Oh, there's hope for you yet."




CHAPTER XVI.

Brady arrived with a box, and departed, after saying,  "They're finishing
one up, but they'll be along as soon as it's done."

Barrow took a frameless oil portrait a foot square from the box, set it
up in a good light, without comment, and reached for another, taking a
furtive glance at Tracy, meantime. The stony solemnity in Tracy's face
remained as it was, and gave out no sign of interest.  Barrow placed the
second portrait beside the first, and stole another glance while reaching
for a third.  The stone image softened, a shade.  No. 3 forced the ghost
of a smile, No. 4 swept indifference wholly away, and No. 5 started a
laugh which was still in good and hearty condition when No. 14 took its
place in the row.

"Oh, you're all right, yet," said Barrow.  "You see you're not past
amusement."

The pictures were fearful, as to color, and atrocious as to drawing and
expression; but the feature which squelched animosity and made them funny
was a feature which could not achieve its full force in a single picture,
but required the wonder-working assistance of repetition.  One loudly
dressed mechanic in stately attitude, with his hand on a cannon, ashore,
and a ship riding at anchor in the offing,--this is merely odd; but when
one sees the same cannon and the same ship in fourteen pictures in a row,
and a different mechanic standing watch in each, the thing gets to be
funny.

"Explain--explain these aberrations," said Tracy.

"Well, they are not the achievement of a single intellect, a single
talent--it takes two to do these miracles.  They are collaborations;
the one artist does the figure, the other the accessories.  The
figure-artist is a German shoemaker with an untaught passion for art,
the other is a simple hearted old Yankee sailor-man whose possibilities
are strictly limited to his ship, his cannon and his patch of petrified
sea. They work these things up from twenty-five-cent tintypes; they get
six dollars apiece for them, and they can grind out a couple a day when
they strike what they call a boost--that is, an inspiration."

"People actually pay money for these calumnies?"

"They actually do--and quite willingly, too.  And these abortionists
could double their trade and work the women in, if Capt. Saltmarsh could
whirl a horse in, or a piano, or a guitar, in place of his cannon.  The
fact is, he fatigues the market with that cannon.  Even the male market,
I mean.  These fourteen in the procession are not all satisfied.  One is
an old "independent" fireman, and he wants an engine in place of the
cannon; another is a mate of a tug, and wants a tug in place of the ship
--and so on, and so on.  But the captain can't make a tug that is
deceptive, and a fire engine is many flights beyond his power."

"This is a most extraordinary form of robbery, I never have heard of
anything like it.  It's interesting."

"Yes, and so are the artists.  They are perfectly honest men, and
sincere.  And the old sailor-man is full of sound religion, and is as
devoted a student of the Bible and misquoter of it as you can find
anywhere.  I don't know a better man or kinder hearted old soul than
Saltmarsh, although he does swear a little, sometimes."

"He seems to be perfect.  I want to know him, Barrow."

"You'll have the chance.  I guess I hear them coming, now.  We'll draw
them out on their art, if you like."

The artists arrived and shook hands with great heartiness.  The German
was forty and a little fleshy, with a shiny bald head and a kindly face
and deferential manner.  Capt.  Saltmarsh was sixty, tall, erect,
powerfully built, with coal-black hair and whiskers, and he had a well
tanned complexion, and a gait and countenance that were full of command,
confidence and decision.  His horny hands and wrists were covered with
tattoo-marks, and when his lips parted, his teeth showed up white and
blemishless.  His voice was the effortless deep bass of a church organ,
and would disturb the tranquility of a gas flame fifty yards away.

"They're wonderful pictures," said Barrow.  "We've been examining them."

"It is very bleasant dot you like dem," said Handel, the German, greatly
pleased.  "Und you, Herr Tracy, you haf peen bleased mit dem too,
alretty?"

"I can honestly say I have never seen anything just like them before."

"Schon!" cried the German, delighted.  "You hear, Gaptain?  Here is a
chentleman, yes, vot abbreviate unser aart."

The captain was charmed, and said:

"Well, sir, we're thankful for a compliment yet, though they're not as
scarce now as they used to be before we made a reputation."

"Getting the reputation is the up-hill time in most things, captain."

"It's so.  It ain't enough to know how to reef a gasket, you got to make
the mate know you know it.  That's reputation.  The good word, said at
the right time, that's the word that makes us; and evil be to him that
evil thinks, as Isaiah says."

"It's very relevant, and hits the point exactly," said Tracy.

"Where did you study art, Captain?"

"I haven't studied; it's a natural gift."

"He is born mit dose cannon in him.  He tondt haf to do noding, his
chenius do all de vork.  Of he is asleep, and take a pencil in his hand,
out come a cannon.  Py crashus, of he could do a clavier, of he could do
a guitar, of he could do a vashtub, it is a fortune, heiliger Yohanniss
it is yoost a fortune!"

"Well, it is an immense pity that the business is hindered and limited in
this unfortunate way."

The captain grew a trifle excited, himself, now:

"You've said it, Mr. Tracy!--Hindered?  well, I should say so.  Why, look
here.  This fellow here, No. 11, he's a hackman,--a flourishing hackman,
I may say.  He wants his hack in this picture.  Wants it where the cannon
is.  I got around that difficulty, by telling him the cannon's our
trademark, so to speak--proves that the picture's our work, and I was
afraid if we left it out people wouldn't know for certain if it was a
Saltmarsh--Handel--now you wouldn't yourself--"

"What, Captain?  You wrong yourself, indeed you do.  Anyone who has once
seen a genuine Saltmarsh-Handel is safe from imposture forever.  Strip
it, flay it, skin it out of every detail but the bare color and
expression, and that man will still recognize it--still stop to
worship--"

"Oh, how it makes me feel to hear dose oxpressions!--"

--"still say to himself again as he had, said a hundred times before, the
art of the Saltmarsh-Handel is an art apart, there is nothing in the
heavens above or in the earth beneath that resembles it,--"

"Py chiminy, nur horen Sie einmal!  In my life day haf I never heard so
brecious worts."

"So I talked him out of the hack, Mr. Tracy, and he let up on that, and
said put in a hearse, then--because he's chief mate of a hearse but don't
own it--stands a watch for wages, you know.  But I can't do a hearse any
more than I can a hack; so here we are--becalmed, you see.  And it's the
same with women and such.  They come and they want a little johnry
picture--"

"It's the accessories that make it a 'genre?'"

"Yes--cannon, or cat, or any little thing like that, that you heave into
whoop up the effect.  We could do a prodigious trade with the women if we
could foreground the things they like, but they don't give a damn for
artillery.  Mine's the lack," continued the captain with a sigh, "Andy's
end of the business is all right I tell you he's an artist from way
back!"

"Yoost hear dot old man!  He always talk 'poud me like dot," purred the
pleased German.

"Look at his work yourself!  Fourteen portraits in a row.  And no two of
them alike."

"Now that you speak of it, it is true; I hadn't noticed it before.  It is
very remarkable.  Unique, I suppose."

"I should say so.  That's the very thing about Andy--he discriminates.
Discrimination's the thief of time--forty-ninth Psalm; but that ain't any
matter, it's the honest thing, and it pays in the end."

"Yes, he certainly is great in that feature, one is obliged to admit it;
but--now mind, I'm not really criticising--don't you think he is just a
trifle overstrong in technique?"

The captain's face was knocked expressionless by this remark.  It
remained quite vacant while he muttered to himself--  "Technique--
technique--polytechnique--pyro-technique; that's it, likely--fireworks too
much color."  Then he spoke up with serenity and confidence, and said:

"Well, yes, he does pile it on pretty loud; but they all like it, you
know--fact is, it's the life of the business.  Take that No. 9, there,
Evans the butcher.  He drops into the stoodio as sober-colored as
anything you ever see: now look at him.  You can't tell him from scarlet
fever.  Well, it pleases that butcher to death.  I'm making a study of a
sausage-wreath to hang on the cannon, and I don't really reckon I can do
it right, but if I can, we can break the butcher."

"Unquestionably your confederate--I mean your--your fellow-craftsman--
is a great colorist--"

"Oh, danke schon!--"

--"in fact a quite extraordinary colorist; a colorist, I make bold to
say, without imitator here or abroad--and with a most bold and effective
touch, a touch like a battering ram; and a manner so peculiar and
romantic, and extraneous, and ad libitum, and heart-searching, that--
that--he--he is an impressionist, I presume?"

"No," said the captain simply, "he is a Presbyterian."

"It accounts for it all--all--there's something divine about his art,--
soulful, unsatisfactory, yearning, dim hearkening on the void horizon,
vague--murmuring to the spirit out of ultra-marine distances and
far-sounding cataclysms of uncreated space--oh, if he--if, he--has he
ever tried distemper?"

The captain answered up with energy:

"Not if he knows himself!  But his dog has, and--"

"Oh, no, it vas not my dog."

"Why, you said it was your dog."

"Oh, no, gaptain, I--"

"It was a white dog, wasn't it, with his tail docked, and one ear gone,
and--"

"Dot's him, dot's him!--der fery dog.  Wy, py Chorge, dot dog he would
eat baint yoost de same like--"

"Well, never mind that, now--'vast heaving--I never saw such a man.  You
start him on that dog and he'll dispute a year.  Blamed if I haven't seen
him keep it up a level two hours and a half."

"Why captain!" said Barrow.  "I guess that must be hearsay."

"No, sir, no hearsay about it--he disputed with me."

"I don't see how you stood it."

"Oh, you've got to--if you run with Andy.  But it's the only fault he's
got."

"Ain't you afraid of acquiring it?"

"Oh, no," said the captain, tranquilly, "no danger of that, I reckon."

The artists presently took their leave.  Then Barrow put his hands on
Tracy's shoulders and said:

"Look me in the eye, my boy.  Steady, steady.  There--it's just as I
thought--hoped, anyway; you're all right, thank goodness.  Nothing the
matter with your mind.  But don't do that again--even for fun.  It isn't
wise.  They wouldn't have believed you if you'd been an earl's son.
Why, they couldn't--don't you know that?  What ever possessed you to take
such a freak?  But never mind about that; let's not talk of it.  It was a
mistake; you see that yourself."

"Yes--it was a mistake."

"Well, just drop it out of your, mind; it's no harm; we all make them.
Pull your courage together, and don't brood, and don't give up.  I'm at
your back, and we'll pull through, don't you be afraid."

When he was gone, Barrow walked the floor a good while, uneasy in his
mind.  He said to himself, "I'm troubled about him.  He never would have
made a break like that if he hadn't been a little off his balance.
But I know what being out of work and no prospect ahead can do for a man.
First it knocks the pluck out of him and drags his pride in the dirt;
worry does the rest, and his mind gets shaky.  I must talk to these
people.  No--if there's any humanity in them--and there is, at bottom--
they'll be easier on him if they think his troubles have disturbed his
reason.  But I've got to find him some work; work's the only medicine for
his disease. Poor devil! away off here, and not a friend."




CHAPTER XVII

The moment Tracy was alone his spirits vanished away, and all the misery
of his situation was manifest to him.  To be moneyless and an object of
the chairmaker's charity--this was bad enough, but his folly in
proclaiming himself an earl's son to that scoffing and unbelieving crew,
and, on top of that, the humiliating result--the recollection of these
things was a sharper torture still.  He made up his mind that he would
never play earl's son again before a doubtful audience.

His father's answer was a blow he could not understand.  At times he
thought his father imagined he could get work to do in America without
any trouble, and was minded to let him try it and cure himself of his
radicalism by hard, cold, disenchanting experience.  That seemed the most
plausible theory, yet he could not content himself with it.  A theory
that pleased him better was, that this cablegram would be followed by
another, of a gentler sort, requiring him to come home.  Should he write
and strike his flag, and ask for a ticket home?  Oh, no, that he couldn't
ever do.  At least, not yet.  That cablegram would come, it certainly
would.  So he went from one telegraph office to another every day for
nearly a week, and asked if there was a cablegram for Howard Tracy.
No, there wasn't any.  So they answered him at first.  Later, they said
it before he had a chance to ask.  Later still they merely shook their
heads impatiently as soon as he came in sight.  After that he was ashamed
to go any more.

He was down in the lowest depths of despair, now; for the harder Barrow
tried to find work for him the more hopeless the possibilities seemed to
grow.  At last he said to Barrow:

"Look here.  I want to make a confession.  I have got down, now, to where
I am not only willing to acknowledge to myself that I am a shabby
creature and full of false pride, but am willing to acknowledge it to
you.  Well, I've been allowing you to wear yourself out hunting for work
for me when there's been a chance open to me all the time.  Forgive my
pride--what was left of it.  It is all gone, now, and I've come to
confess that if those ghastly artists want another confederate, I'm their
man--for at last I am dead to shame."

"No?  Really, can you paint?"

"Not as badly as they.  No, I don't claim that, for I am not a genius;
in fact, I am a very indifferent amateur, a slouchy dabster, a mere
artistic sarcasm; but drunk or asleep I can beat those buccaneers."

"Shake!  I want to shout!  Oh, I tell you, I am immensely delighted and
relieved.  Oh, just to work--that is life!  No matter what the work is--
that's of no consequence.  Just work itself is bliss when a man's been
starving for it.  I've been there!  Come right along; we'll hunt the old
boys up.  Don't you feel good?  I tell you I do."

The freebooters were not at home.  But their "works" were, displayed in
profusion all about the little ratty studio.  Cannon to the right of
them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front--it was Balaclava come
again.

"Here's the uncontented hackman, Tracy.  Buckle to--deepen the sea-green
to turf, turn the ship into a hearse.  Let the boys have a taste of your
quality."

The artists arrived just as the last touch was put on.  They stood
transfixed with admiration.

"My souls but she's a stunner, that hearse!  The hackman will just go all
to pieces when he sees that won't he Andy?"

"Oh, it is sphlennid, sphlennid!  Herr Tracy, why haf you not said you
vas a so sublime aartist?  Lob' Gott, of you had lif'd in Paris you would
be a Pree de Rome, dot's votes de matter!"

The arrangements were soon made.  Tracy was taken into full and equal
partnership, and he went straight to work, with dash and energy, to
reconstructing gems of art whose accessories had failed to satisfy.
Under his hand, on that and succeeding days, artillery disappeared and
the emblems of peace and commerce took its place--cats, hacks, sausages,
tugs, fire engines, pianos, guitars, rocks, gardens, flower-pots,
landscapes--whatever was wanted, he flung it in; and the more out of
place and absurd the required object was, the more joy he got out of
fabricating it.  The pirates were delighted, the customers applauded, the
sex began to flock in, great was the prosperity of the firm.  Tracy was
obliged to confess to himself that there was something about work,--even
such grotesque and humble work as this--which most pleasantly satisfied a
something in his nature which had never been satisfied before, and also
gave him a strange new dignity in his own private view of himself.

                    .......................

The Unqualified Member from Cherokee Strip was in a state of deep
dejection.  For a good while, now, he had been leading a sort of life
which was calculated to kill; for it had consisted in regularly
alternating days of brilliant hope and black disappointment.  The
brilliant hopes were created by the magician Sellers, and they always
promised that now he had got the trick, sure, and would effectively
influence that materialized cowboy to call at the Towers before night.
The black disappointments consisted in the persistent and monotonous
failure of these prophecies.

At the date which this history has now reached, Sellers was appalled to
find that the usual remedy was inoperative, and that Hawkins's low
spirits refused absolutely to lift.  Something must be done, he
reflected; it was heart-breaking, this woe, this smileless misery,
this dull despair that looked out from his poor friend's face.  Yes, he
must be cheered up.  He mused a while, then he saw his way.  He said in
his most conspicuously casual vein:

"Er--uh--by the way, Hawkins, we are feeling disappointed about this
thing--the way the materializee is acting, I mean--we are disappointed;
you concede that?"

"Concede it?  Why, yes, if you like the term."

"Very well; so far, so good.  Now for the basis of the feeling.  It is
not that your heart, your affections are concerned; that is to say, it is
not that you want the materializee Itself.  You concede that?"

"Yes, I concede that, too--cordially."

"Very well, again; we are making progress.  To sum up: The feeling, it is
conceded, is not engendered by the mere conduct of the materializee; it
is conceded that it does not arise from any pang which the personality of
the materializee could assuage.  Now then," said the earl, with the light
of triumph in his eye, "the inexorable logic of the situation narrows us
down to this: our feeling has its source in the money-loss involved.
Come--isn't that so?"

"Goodness knows I concede that, with all my heart."

"Very well.  When you've found out the source of a disease, you've also
found out what remedy is required--just as in this case.  In this case
money is required.  And only money."

The old, old seduction was in that airy, confident tone and those
significant words--usually called pregnant words in books.  The old
answering signs of faith and hope showed up in Hawkins's countenance,
and he said:

"Only money?  Do you mean that you know a way to--"

"Washington, have you the impression that I have no resources but those
I allow the public and my intimate friends to know about?"

"Well, I--er--"

"Is it likely, do you think, that a man moved by nature and taught by
experience to keep his affairs to himself and a cautious and reluctant
tongue in his head, wouldn't be thoughtful enough to keep a few resources
in reserve for a rainy day, when he's got as many as I have to select
from?"

"Oh, you make me feel so much better already, Colonel!"

"Have you ever been in my laboratory?"

"Why, no."

"That's it.  You see you didn't even know that I had one.  Come along.
I've got a little trick there that I want to show you.  I've kept it
perfectly quiet, not fifty people know anything about it.  But that's my
way, always been my way.  Wait till you're ready, that's the idea; and
when you're ready, zzip!--let her go!"

"Well, Colonel, I've never seen a man that I've had such unbounded
confidence in as you.  When you say a thing right out, I always feel as
if that ends it; as if that is evidence, and proof, and everything else."

The old earl was profoundly pleased and touched.

"I'm glad you believe in me, Washington; not everybody is so just."

"I always have believed in you; and I always shall as long as I live."

"Thank you, my boy.  You shan't repent it.  And you can't."  Arrived in
the "laboratory," the earl continued, "Now, cast your eye around this
room--what do you see?  Apparently a junk-shop; apparently a hospital
connected with a patent office--in reality, the mines of Golconda in
disguise!  Look at that thing there.  Now what would you take that thing
to be?"

"I don't believe I could ever imagine."

"Of course you couldn't.  It's my grand adaptation of the phonograph to
the marine service.  You store up profanity in it for use at sea.
You know that sailors don't fly around worth a cent unless you swear
at them--so the mate that can do the best job of swearing is the most
valuable man.  In great emergencies his talent saves the ship.  But a
ship is a large thing, and he can't be everywhere at once; so there have
been times when one mate has lost a ship which could have been saved if
they had had a hundred.  Prodigious storms, you know.  Well, a ship can't
afford a hundred mates; but she can afford a hundred Cursing Phonographs,
and distribute them all over the vessel--and there, you see, she's armed
at every point.  Imagine a big storm, and a hundred of my machines all
cursing away at once--splendid spectacle, splendid!--you couldn't hear
yourself think.  Ship goes through that storm perfectly serene--she's
just as safe as she'd be on shore."

"It's a wonderful idea.  How do you prepare the thing?"

"Load it--simply load it."

"How?"

"Why you just stand over it and swear into it."

"That loads it, does it?"

"Yes--because every word it collars, it keeps--keeps it forever.  Never
wears out.  Any time you turn the crank, out it'll come.  In times of
great peril, you can reverse it, and it'll swear backwards.  That makes a
sailor hump himself!"

"O, I see.  Who loads them?--the mate?"

"Yes, if he chooses.  Or I'll furnish them already loaded.  I can hire an
expert for $75 a month who will load a hundred and fifty phonographs in
150 hours, and do it easy.  And an expert can furnish a stronger article,
of course, than the mere average uncultivated mate could.  Then you see,
all the ships of the world will buy them ready loaded--for I shall have
them loaded in any language a customer wants.  Hawkins, it will work the
grandest moral reform of the 19th century.  Five years from now, all the
swearing will be done by machinery--you won't ever hear a profane word
come from human lips on a ship.  Millions of dollars have been spent by
the churches, in the effort to abolish profanity in the commercial
marine.  Think of it--my name will live forever in the affections of good
men as the man, who, solitary and alone, accomplished this noble and
elevating reform."

"O, it is grand and beneficent and beautiful.  How did you ever come to
think of it?  You have a wonderful mind.  How did you say you loaded the
machine?"

"O, it's no trouble--perfectly simple.  If you want to load it up loud and
strong, you stand right over it and shout.  But if you leave it open and
all set, it'll eavesdrop, so to speak--that is to say, it will load
itself up with any sounds that are made within six feet of it.  Now I'll
show you how it works.  I had an expert come and load this one up
yesterday.  Hello, it's been left open--it's too bad--still I reckon it
hasn't had much chance to collect irrelevant stuff.  All you do is to
press this button in the floor--so."

The phonograph began to sing in a plaintive voice:

          There is a boarding-house, far far away,
          Where they have ham and eggs, 3 times a day.

"Hang it, that ain't it.  Somebody's been singing around here."

The plaintive song began again, mingled with a low, gradually rising wail
of cats slowly warming up toward a fight;

          O, how the boarders yell,
          When they hear that dinner bell
          They give that landlord--

(momentary outburst of terrific catfight which drowns out one word.)

          Three times a day.

(Renewal of furious catfight for a moment.  The plaintive voice on a high
fierce key, "Scat, you devils"--and a racket as of flying missiles.)

"Well, never mind--let it go.  I've got some sailor-profanity down in
there somewhere, if I could get to it.  But it isn't any matter; you see
how the machine works."

Hawkins responded with enthusiasm:

"O, it works admirably!  I know there's a hundred fortunes in it."

"And mind, the Hawkins family get their share, Washington."

"O, thanks, thanks; you are just as generous as ever.  Ah, it's the
grandest invention of the age!"

"Ah, well; we live in wonderful times.  The elements are crowded full of
beneficent forces--always have been--and ours is the first generation to
turn them to account and make them work for us.  Why Hawkins, everything
is useful--nothing ought ever to be wasted.  Now look at sewer gas, for
instance.  Sewer gas has always been wasted, heretofore; nobody tried to
save up sewer-gas--you can't name me a man.  Ain't that so? you know
perfectly well it's so."

"Yes it is so--but I never--er--I don't quite see why a body--"

"Should want to save it up?  Well, I'll tell you.  Do you see this little
invention here?--it's a decomposer--I call it a decomposer.  I give you
my word of honor that if you show me a house that produces a given
quantity of sewer-gas in a day, I'll engage to set up my decomposer there
and make that house produce a hundred times that quantity of sewer-gas in
less than half an hour."

"Dear me, but why should you want to?"

"Want to?  Listen, and you'll see.  My boy, for illuminating purposes
and economy combined, there's nothing in the world that begins with
sewer-gas.  And really, it don't cost a cent.  You put in a good inferior
article of plumbing,--such as you find everywhere--and add my decomposer,
and there you are.  Just use the ordinary gas pipes--and there your
expense ends.  Think of it.  Why, Major, in five years from now you won't
see a house lighted with anything but sewer-gas.  Every physician I talk
to, recommends it; and every plumber."

"But isn't it dangerous?"

"O, yes, more or less, but everything is--coal gas, candles, electricity
--there isn't anything that ain't."

"It lights up well, does it?"

"O, magnificently."

"Have you given it a good trial?"

"Well, no, not a first rate one.  Polly's prejudiced, and she won't let
me put it in here; but I'm playing my cards to get it adopted in the
President's house, and then it'll go--don't you doubt it.  I shall not
need this one for the present, Washington; you may take it down to some
boarding-house and give it a trial if you like."




CHAPTER XVIII.

Washington shuddered slightly at the suggestion, then his face took on a
dreamy look and he dropped into a trance of thought.  After a little,
Sellers asked him what he was grinding in his mental mill.

"Well, this.  Have you got some secret project in your head which
requires a Bank of England back of it to make it succeed?"

The Colonel showed lively astonishment, and said:

"Why, Hawkins, are you a mind-reader?"

"I?  I never thought of such a thing."

"Well, then how did you happen to drop onto that idea in this curious
fashion?  It's just mind-reading, that's what it is, though you may not
know it.  Because I have got a private project that requires a Bank of
England at its back.  How could you divine that?  What was the process?
This is interesting."

"There wasn't any process.  A thought like this happened to slip through
my head by accident: How much would make you or me comfortable?
A hundred thousand.  Yet you are expecting two or three of--these
inventions of yours to turn out some billions of money--and you are
wanting them to do that.  If you wanted ten millions, I could understand
that--it's inside the human limits.  But billions!  That's clear outside
the limits.  There must be a definite project back of that somewhere."

The earl's interest and surprise augmented with every word, and when
Hawkins finished, he said with strong admiration:

"It's wonderfully reasoned out, Washington, it certainly is.  It shows
what I think is quite extraordinary penetration.  For you've hit it;
you've driven the centre, you've plugged the bulls-eye of my dream.  Now
I'll tell you the whole thing, and you'll understand it.  I don't need to
ask you to keep it to yourself, because you'll see that the project will
prosper all the better for being kept in the background till the right
time.  Have you noticed how many pamphlets and books I've got lying
around relating to Russia?"

"Yes, I think most anybody would notice that--anybody who wasn't dead."

"Well, I've been posting myself a good while.  That's a great and,
splendid nation, and deserves to be set free."  He paused, then added in
a quite matter-of-fact way, "When I get this money I'm going to set it
free."

"Great guns!"

"Why, what makes you jump like that?"

"Dear me, when you are going to drop a remark under a man's chair that is
likely to blow him out through the roof, why don't you put some
expression, some force, some noise unto it that will prepare him?  You
shouldn't flip out such a gigantic thing as this in that colorless kind
of a way.  You do jolt a person up, so.  Go on, now, I'm all right again.
Tell me all about it.  I'm all interest--yes, and sympathy, too."

"Well, I've looked the ground over, and concluded that the methods of the
Russian patriots, while good enough considering the way the boys are
hampered, are not the best; at least not the quickest.  They are trying
to revolutionize Russia from within; that's pretty slow, you know, and
liable to interruption all the time, and is full of perils for the
workers.  Do you know how Peter the Great started his army?  He didn't
start it on the family premises under the noses of the Strelitzes; no, he
started it away off yonder, privately,--only just one regiment, you know,
and he built to that.  The first thing the Strelitzes knew, the regiment
was an army, their position was turned, and they had to take a walk.
Just that little idea made the biggest and worst of all the despotisms
the world has seen.  The same idea can unmake it.  I'm going to prove it.
I'm going to get out to one side and work my scheme the way Peter did."

"This is mighty interesting, Rossmore.  What is it you are, going to do?"

"I am going to buy Siberia and start a republic."

"There,--bang you go again, without giving any notice!  Going to buy it?"

"Yes, as soon as I get the money.  I don't care what the price is, I
shall take it.  I can afford it, and I will.  Now then, consider this--
and you've never thought of it, I'll warrant.  Where is the place where
there is twenty-five times more manhood, pluck, true heroism,
unselfishness, devotion to high and noble ideals, adoration of liberty,
wide education, and brains, per thousand of population, than any other
domain in the whole world can show?"

"Siberia!"

"Right."

"It is true; it certainly is true, but I never thought of it before."

"Nobody ever thinks of it.  But it's so, just the same.  In those mines
and prisons are gathered together the very finest and noblest and
capablest multitude of human beings that God is able to create.  Now if
you had that kind of a population to sell, would you offer it to a
despotism?  No, the despotism has no use for it; you would lose money.
A despotism has no use for anything but human cattle.  But suppose you
want to start a republic?"

"Yes, I see.  It's just the material for it."

"Well, I should say so!  There's Siberia with just the very finest and
choicest material on the globe for a republic, and more coming--more
coming all the time, don't you see!  It is being daily, weekly, monthly
recruited by the most perfectly devised system that has ever been
invented, perhaps.  By this system the whole of the hundred millions of
Russia are being constantly and patiently sifted, sifted, sifted, by
myriads of trained experts, spies appointed by the Emperor personally;
and whenever they catch a man, woman or child that has got any brains or
education or character, they ship that person straight to Siberia.  It is
admirable, it is wonderful.  It is so searching and so effective that it
keeps the general level of Russian intellect and education down to that
of the Czar."

"Come, that sounds like exaggeration."

"Well, it's what they say anyway.  But I think, myself, it's a lie.  And
it doesn't seem right to slander a whole nation that way, anyhow.  Now,
then, you see what the material is, there in Siberia, for a republic."
He paused, and his breast began to heave and his eye to burn, under the
impulse of strong emotion.  Then his words began to stream forth, with
constantly increasing energy and fire, and he rose to his feet as if to
give himself larger freedom.  "The minute I organize that republic, the
light of liberty, intelligence, justice, humanity, bursting from it,
flooding from it, flaming from it, will concentrate the gaze of the whole
astonished world as upon the miracle of a new sun; Russia's countless
multitudes of slaves will rise up and march, march!--eastward, with that
great light transfiguring their faces as they come, and far back of them
you will see-what will you see?--a vacant throne in an empty land!  It
can be done, and by God I will do it!"

He stood a moment bereft of earthy consciousness by his exaltation; then
consciousness returned, bringing him a slight shock, and he said with
grave earnestness:

"I must ask you to pardon me, Major Hawkins.  I have never used that
expression before, and I beg you will forgive it this time."

Hawkins was quite willing.

"You see, Washington, it is an error which I am by nature not liable to.
Only excitable people, impulsive people, are exposed to it.  But the
circumstances of the present case--I being a democrat by birth and
preference, and an aristocrat by inheritance and relish--"

The earl stopped suddenly, his frame stiffened, and he began to stare
speechless through the curtainless window.  Then he pointed, and gasped
out a single rapturous word:

"Look!"

"What is it, Colonel?"

"IT!"

"No!"

"Sure as you're born.  Keep perfectly still.  I'll apply the influence--
I'll turn on all my force.  I've brought It thus far--I'll fetch It right
into the house.  You'll see."

He was making all sorts of passes in the air with his hands.

"There!  Look at that.  I've made It smile!  See?"

Quite true.  Tracy, out for an afternoon stroll, had come unexpectantly
upon his family arms displayed upon this shabby house-front.  The
hatchments made him smile; which was nothing, they had made the
neighborhood cats do that.

"Look, Hawkins, look!  I'm drawing It over!"

"You're drawing it sure, Rossmore.  If I ever had any doubts about
materialization, they're gone, now, and gone for good.  Oh, this is a
joyful day!"

Tracy was sauntering over to read the door-plate.  Before he was half way
over he was saying to himself, "Why, manifestly these are the American
Claimant's quarters."

"It's coming--coming right along.  I'll slide, down and pull It in.  You
follow after me."

Sellers, pale and a good deal agitated, opened the door and confronted
Tracy.  The old man could not at once get his voice: then he pumped out a
scattering and hardly coherent salutation, and followed it with--

"Walk in, walk right in, Mr.--er--"

"Tracy--Howard Tracy."

"Tracy--thanks--walk right in, you're expected."

Tracy entered, considerably puzzled, and said:

"Expected?  I think there must be some mistake."

"Oh, I judge not," said Sellers, who--noticing that Hawkins had arrived,
gave him a sidewise glance intended to call his close attention to a
dramatic effect which he was proposing to produce by his next remark.
Then he said, slowly and impressively--"I am--YOU KNOW WHO."

To the astonishment of both conspirators the remark produced no dramatic
effect at all; for the new-comer responded with a quite innocent and
unembarrassed air--

"No, pardon me.  I don't know who you are.  I only suppose--but no doubt
correctly--that you are the gentleman whose title is on the doorplate."

"Right, quite right--sit down, pray sit down."  The earl was rattled,
thrown off his bearings, his head was in a whirl.  Then he noticed
Hawkins standing apart and staring idiotically at what to him was the
apparition of a defunct man, and a new idea was born to him.  He said to
Tracy briskly:

"But a thousand pardons, dear sir, I am forgetting courtesies due to a
guest and stranger.  Let me introduce my friend General Hawkins--General
Hawkins, our new Senator--Senator from the latest and grandest addition to
the radiant galaxy of sovereign States, Cherokee Strip"--(to himself,
"that name will shrivel him up!"--but it didn't, in the least, and the
Colonel resumed the introduction piteously disheartened and amazed),--
"Senator Hawkins, Mr.  Howard Tracy, of--er--"

"England."

"England!--Why that's im--"

"England, yes, native of England."

"Recently from there?"

"Yes, quite recently."

Said the Colonel to himself, "This phantom lies like an expert.
Purifying this kind by fire don't work.  I'll sound him a little further,
give him another chance or two to work his gift."  Then aloud--with deep
irony--

"Visiting our great country for recreation and amusement, no doubt.
I suppose you find that traveling in the majestic expanses of our Far
West is--"

"I haven't been West, and haven't been devoting myself to amusement with
any sort of exclusiveness, I assure you.  In fact, to merely live, an
artist has got to work, not play."

"Artist!" said Hawkins to himself, thinking of the rifled bank; "that is
a name for it!"

"Are you an artist?" asked the colonel; and added to himself, "now I'm
going to catch him."

"In a humble way, yes."

"What line?" pursued the sly veteran.

"Oils."

"I've got him!" said Sellers to himself.  Then aloud, "This is fortunate.
Could I engage you to restore some of my paintings that need that
attention?"

"I shall be very glad.  Pray let me see them."

No shuffling, no evasion, no embarrassment, even under this crucial test.
The Colonel was nonplussed.  He led Tracy to a chromo which had suffered
damage in a former owner's hands through being used as a lamp mat, and
said, with a flourish of his hand toward the picture--

"This del Sarto--"

"Is that a del Sarto?"

The colonel bent a look of reproach upon Tracy, allowed it to sink home,
then resumed as if there had been no interruption--

"This del Sarto is perhaps the only original of that sublime master in
our country.  You see, yourself, that the work is of such exceeding
delicacy that the risk--could--er--would you mind giving me a little
example of what you can do before we--"

"Cheerfully, cheerfully.  I will copy one of these marvels."

Water-color materials--relics of Miss Sally's college life--were brought.
Tracy said he was better in oils, but would take a chance with these.
So he was left alone.  He began his work, but the attractions of the
place were too strong for him, and he got up and went drifting about,
fascinated; also amazed.




CHAPTER XIX.

Meantime the earl and Hawkins were holding a troubled and anxious private
consultation.  The earl said:

"The mystery that bothers me, is, where did It get its other arm?"

"Yes--it worries me, too.  And another thing troubles me--the apparition
is English.  How do you account for that, Colonel?"

"Honestly, I don't know, Hawkins, I don't really know.  It is very
confusing and awful."

"Don't you think maybe we've waked up the wrong one?"

"The wrong one?  How do you account for the clothes?"

"The clothes are right, there's no getting around it.  What are we going
to do?  We can't collect, as I see.  The reward is for a one-armed
American.  This is a two-armed Englishman."

"Well, it may be that that is not objectionable.  You see it isn't less
than is called for, it is more, and so,--"

But he saw that this argument was weak, and dropped it.  The friends sat
brooding over their perplexities some time in silence.  Finally the
earl's face began to glow with an inspiration, and he said, impressively:

"Hawkins, this materialization is a grander and nobler science than we
have dreamed of.  We have little imagined what a solemn and stupendous
thing we have done.  The whole secret is perfectly clear to me, now,
clear as day.  Every man is made up of heredities, long-descended atoms
and particles of his ancestors.  This present materialization is
incomplete.  We have only brought it down to perhaps the beginning of
this century."

"What do you mean, Colonel!" cried Hawkins, filled with vague alarms by
the old man's awe-compelling words and manner.

"This.  We've materialized this burglar's ancestor!"

"Oh, don't--don't say that.  It's hideous."

"But it's true, Hawkins, I know it.  Look at the facts.  This apparition
is distinctly English--note that.  It uses good grammar--note that.  It is
an Artist--note that.  It has the manners and carriage of a gentleman--
note that.  Where's your cow-boy?  Answer me that."

"Rossmore, this is dreadful--it's too dreadful to think of!"

"Never resurrected a rag of that burglar but the clothes, not a solitary
rag of him but the clothes."

"Colonel, do you really mean--"

The Colonel brought his fist down with emphasis and said:

"I mean exactly this.  The materialization was immature, the burglar has
evaded us, this is nothing but a damned ancestor!"

He rose and walked the floor in great excitement.

Hawkins said plaintively:

"It's a bitter disappointment--bitter."

"I know it.  I know it, Senator; I feel it as deeply as anybody could.
But we've got to submit--on moral grounds.  I need money, but God knows
I am not poor enough or shabby enough to be an accessory to the punishing
of a man's ancestor for crimes committed by that ancestor's posterity."

"But Colonel!" implored Hawkins; "stop and think; don't be rash; you know
it's the only chance we've got to get the money; and besides, the Bible
itself says posterity to the fourth generation shall be punished for the
sins and crimes committed by ancestors four generations back that hadn't
anything to do with them; and so it's only fair to turn the rule around
and make it work both ways."

The Colonel was struck with the strong logic of this position.  He strode
up and down, and thought it painfully over.  Finally he said:

"There's reason in it; yes, there's reason in it.  And so, although it
seems a piteous thing to sweat this poor ancient devil for a burglary he
hadn't the least hand in, still if duty commands I suppose we must give
him up to the authorities."

"I would," said Hawkins, cheered and relieved, "I'd give him up if he was
a thousand ancestors compacted into one."

"Lord bless me, that's just what he is," said Sellers, with something
like a groan, "it's exactly what he is; there's a contribution in him
from every ancestor he ever had.  In him there's atoms of priests,
soldiers, crusaders, poets, and sweet and gracious women--all kinds and
conditions of folk who trod this earth in old, old centuries, and
vanished out of it ages ago, and now by act of ours they are summoned
from their holy peace to answer for gutting a one-horse bank away out on
the borders of Cherokee Strip, and it's just a howling outrage!"

"Oh, don't talk like that, Colonel; it takes the heart all out of me, and
makes me ashamed of the part I am proposing to--"

"Wait--I've got it!"

"A saving hope?  Shout it out, I am perishing."

"It's perfectly simple; a child would have thought of it.  He is all
right, not a flaw in him, as far as I have carried the work.  If I've
been able to bring him as far as the beginning of this century, what's to
stop me now?  I'll go on and materialize him down to date."

"Land, I never thought of that!" said Hawkins all ablaze with joy again.
"It's the very thing.  What a brain you have got!  And will he shed the
superfluous arm?"

"He will."

"And lose his English accent?"

"It will wholly disappear.  He will speak Cherokee Strip--and other forms
of profanity."

"Colonel, maybe he'll confess!"

"Confess?  Merely that bank robbery?"

"Merely?  Yes, but why 'merely'?"

The Colonel said in his most impressive manner: "Hawkins, he will be
wholly under my command.  I will make him confess every crime he ever
committed.  There must be a thousand.  Do you get the idea?"

"Well--not quite."

"The rewards will come to us."

"Prodigious conception!  I never saw such ahead for seeing with a
lightning glance all the outlying ramifications and possibilities of a
central idea."

"It is nothing; it comes natural to me.  When his time is out in one jail
he goes to the next and the next, and we shall have nothing to do but
collect the rewards as he goes along.  It is a perfectly steady income as
long as we live, Hawkins.  And much better than other kinds of
investments, because he is indestructible."

"It looks--it really does look the way you say; it does indeed."

"Look?--why it is.  It will not be denied that I have had a pretty wide
and comprehensive financial experience, and I do not hesitate to say that
I consider this one of the most valuable properties I have ever
controlled."

"Do you really think so?"

"I do, indeed."

"O, Colonel, the wasting grind and grief of poverty!  If we could realize
immediately.  I don't mean sell it all, but sell part--enough, you know,
to--"

"See how you tremble with excitement.  That comes of lack of experience.
My boy, when you have been familiar with vast operations as long as I
have, you'll be different.  Look at me; is my eye dilated? do you notice
a quiver anywhere?  Feel my pulse: plunk-plunk-plunk--same as if I were
asleep.  And yet, what is passing through my calm cold mind?  A
procession of figures which would make a financial novice drunk just the
sight of them.  Now it is by keeping cool, and looking at a thing all
around, that a man sees what's really in it, and saves himself from the
novice's unfailing mistake--the one you've just suggested--eagerness to
realize.  Listen to me.  Your idea is to sell a part of him for ready
cash.  Now mine is--guess."

"I haven't an idea.  What is it?"

"Stock him--of course."

"Well, I should never have thought of that."

"Because you are not a financier.  Say he has committed a thousand
crimes.  Certainly that's a low estimate.  By the look of him, even in
his unfinished condition, he has committed all of a million.  But call it
only a thousand to be perfectly safe; five thousand reward, multiplied by
a thousand, gives us a dead sure cash basis of--what?  Five million
dollars!"

"Wait--let me get my breath."

"And the property indestructible.  Perpetually fruitful--perpetually; for
a property with his disposition will go on committing crimes and winning
rewards."

"You daze me, you make my head whirl!"

"Let it whirl, it won't do it any harm.  Now that matter is all fixed--
leave it alone.  I'll get up the company and issue the stock, all in good
time.  Just leave it in my hands.  I judge you don't doubt my ability to
work it up for all it is worth."

"Indeed I don't.  I can say that with truth."

"All right, then.  That's disposed of.  Everything in its turn.  We old
operators, go by order and system--no helter-skelter business with us.
What's the next thing on the docket?  The carrying on of the
materialization--the bringing it down to date.  I will begin on that at
once.  I think--

"Look here, Rossmore.  You didn't lock It in.  A hundred to one it has
escaped!"

"Calm yourself, as to that; don't give yourself any uneasiness."

"But why shouldn't it escape?"

"Let it, if it wants to?  What of it?"

"Well, I should consider it a pretty serious calamity."

"Why, my dear boy, once in my power, always in my power.  It may go and
come freely.  I can produce it here whenever I want it, just by the
exercise of my will."

"Well, I am truly glad to hear that, I do assure you."

"Yes, I shall give it all the painting it wants to do, and we and the
family will make it as comfortable and contented as we can.  No occasion
to restrain its movements.  I hope to persuade it to remain pretty quiet,
though, because a materialization which is in a state of arrested
development must of necessity be pretty soft and flabby and
substanceless, and--er--by the way, I wonder where It comes from?"

"How?  What do you mean?"

The earl pointed significantly--and interrogatively toward the sky.
Hawkins started; then settled into deep reflection; finally shook his
head sorrowfully and pointed downwards.

"What makes you think so, Washington?"

"Well, I hardly know, but really you can see, yourself, that he doesn't
seem to be pining for his last place."

"It's well thought!  Soundly deduced.  We've done that Thing a favor.
But I believe I will pump it a little, in a quiet way, and find out if we
are right."

"How long is it going to take to finish him off and fetch him down to
date, Colonel?"

"I wish I knew, but I don't.  I am clear knocked out by this new detail--
this unforeseen necessity of working a subject down gradually from his
condition of ancestor to his ultimate result as posterity.  But I'll make
him hump himself, anyway."

"Rossmore!"

"Yes, dear.  We're in the laboratory.  Come--Hawkins is here.  Mind, now
Hawkins--he's a sound, living, human being to all the family--don't
forget that.  Here she comes."

"Keep your seats, I'm not coming in.  I just wanted to ask, who is it
that's painting down there?"

"That?  Oh, that's a young artist; young Englishman, named Tracy; very
promising--favorite pupil of Hans Christian Andersen or one of the other
old masters--Andersen I'm pretty sure it is; he's going to half-sole some
of our old Italian masterpieces.  Been talking to him?"

"Well, only a word.  I stumbled right in on him without expecting anybody
was there.  I tried to be polite to him; offered him a snack"--(Sellers
delivered a large wink to Hawkins from behind his hand), "but he
declined, and said he wasn't hungry" (another sarcastic wink); "so I
brought some apples" (doublewink), "and he ate a couple of--"

"What!" and the colonel sprang some yards toward the ceiling and came
down quaking with astonishment.

Lady Rossmore was smitten dumb with amazement.  She gazed at the sheepish
relic of Cherokee Strip, then at her husband, and then at the guest
again.  Finally she said:

"What is the matter with you, Mulberry?"

He did not answer immediately.  His back was turned; he was bending over
his chair, feeling the seat of it.  But he answered next moment, and
said:

"Ah, there it is; it was a tack."

The lady contemplated him doubtfully a moment, then said, pretty
snappishly:

"All that for a tack!  Praise goodness it wasn't a shingle nail, it would
have landed you in the Milky Way.  I do hate to have my nerves shook up
so."  And she turned on her heel and went her way.

As soon as she was safely out, the Colonel said, in a suppressed voice:

"Come--we must see for ourselves.  It must be a mistake."

They hurried softly down and peeped in.  Sellers whispered, in a sort of
despair--

It is eating!  What a grisly spectacle!  Hawkins it's horrible!  Take me
away--I can't stand--

They tottered back to the laboratory.




CHAPTER XX.

Tracy made slow progress with his work, for his mind wandered a good
deal.  Many things were puzzling him.  Finally a light burst upon him all
of a sudden--seemed to, at any rate--and he said to himself, "I've got
the clew at last--this man's mind is off its balance; I don't know how
much, but it's off a point or two, sure; off enough to explain this mess
of perplexities, anyway.  These dreadful chromos which he takes for old
masters; these villainous portraits--which to his frantic mind represent
Rossmores; the hatchments; the pompous name of this ramshackle old crib--
Rossmore Towers; and that odd assertion of his, that I was expected.  How
could I be expected? that is, Lord Berkeley.  He knows by the papers that
that person was burned up in the New Gadsby.  Why, hang it, he really
doesn't know who he was expecting; for his talk showed that he was not
expecting an Englishman, or yet an artist, yet I answer his requirements
notwithstanding.  He seems sufficiently satisfied with me.  Yes, he is a
little off; in fact I am afraid he is a good deal off, poor old
gentleman.  But he's interesting--all people in about his condition are,
I suppose.  I hope he'll like my work; I would like to come every day and
study him.  And when I write my father--ah, that hurts!  I mustn't get on
that subject; it isn't good for my spirits.  Somebody coming--I must get
to work.  It's the old gentleman again.  He looks bothered.  Maybe my
clothes are suspicious; and they are--for an artist.  If my conscience
would allow me to make a change, but that is out of the question.
I wonder what he's making those passes in the air for, with his hands.
I seem to be the object of them.  Can he be trying to mesmerize me?
I don't quite like it.  There's something uncanny about it."

The colonel muttered to himself, "It has an effect on him, I can see it
myself.  That's enough for one time, I reckon.  He's not very solid, yet,
I suppose, and I might disintegrate him.  I'll just put a sly question or
two at him, now, and see if I can find out what his condition is, and
where he's from."

He approached and said affably:

"Don't let me disturb you, Mr.  Tracy; I only want to take a little
glimpse of your work.  Ah, that's fine--that's very fine indeed.  You are
doing it elegantly.  My daughter will be charmed with this.  May I sit
down by you?"

"Oh, do; I shall be glad."

"It won't disturb you?  I mean, won't dissipate your inspirations?"

Tracy laughed and said they were not ethereal enough to be very easily
discommoded.

The colonel asked a number of cautious and well-considered questions--
questions which seemed pretty odd and flighty to Tracy--but the answers
conveyed the information desired, apparently, for the colonel said to
himself, with mixed pride and gratification:

"It's a good job as far as I've got, with it.  He's solid.  Solid and
going to last, solid as the real thing."

"It's wonderful--wonderful.  I believe I could--petrify him."  After a
little he asked, warily "Do you prefer being here, or--or there?"

"There?  Where?"

"Why--er--where you've been?"

Tracy's thought flew to his boarding-house, and he answered with decision.

"Oh, here, much!"

The colonel was startled, and said to himself, "There's no uncertain ring
about that.  It indicates where he's been to, poor fellow.  Well, I am
satisfied, now.  I'm glad I got him out."

He sat thinking, and thinking, and watching the brush go.  At length he
said to himself, "Yes, it certainly seems to account for the failure of
my endeavors in poor Berkeley's case.  He went in the other direction.
Well, it's all right.  He's better off."

Sally Sellers entered from the street, now, looking her divinest, and the
artist was introduced to her.  It was a violent case of mutual love at
first sight, though neither party was entirely aware of the fact,
perhaps.  The Englishman made this irrelevant remark to himself, "Perhaps
he is not insane, after all."  Sally sat down, and showed an interest in
Tracy's work which greatly pleased him, and a benevolent forgiveness of
it which convinced him that the girl's nature was cast in a large mould.
Sellers was anxious to report his discoveries to Hawkins; so he took his
leave, saying that if the two "young devotees of the colored Muse"
thought they could manage without him, he would go and look after his
affairs.  The artist said to himself, "I think he is a little eccentric,
perhaps, but that is all."  He reproached himself for having injuriously
judged a man without giving him any fair chance to show what he really
was.

Of course the stranger was very soon at his ease and chatting along
comfortably.  The average American girl possesses the valuable qualities
of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness; she is
nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities,
consequently her presence and her ways are unembarrassing, and one is
acquainted with her and on the pleasantest terms with her before he knows
how it came about.  This new acquaintanceship--friendship, indeed--
progressed swiftly; and the unusual swiftness of it, and the thoroughness
of it are sufficiently evidenced and established by one noteworthy fact--
that within the first half hour both parties had ceased to be conscious
of Tracy's clothes.  Later this consciousness was re-awakened; it was
then apparent to Gwendolen that she was almost reconciled to them, and it
was apparent to Tracy that he wasn't.  The re-awakening was brought about
by Gwendolen's inviting the artist to stay to dinner.  He had to decline,
because he wanted to live, now--that is, now that there was something to
live for--and he could not survive in those clothes at a gentleman's
table.  He thought he knew that.  But he went away happy, for he saw that
Gwendolen was disappointed.

And whither did he go?  He went straight to a slopshop and bought as neat
and reasonably well-fitting a suit of clothes as an Englishman could be
persuaded to wear.  He said--to himself, but at his conscience--"I know
it's wrong; but it would be wrong not to do it; and two wrongs do not
make a right."

This satisfied him, and made his heart light.  Perhaps it will also
satisfy the reader--if he can make out what it means.

The old people were troubled about Gwendolen at dinner, because she was
so distraught and silent.  If they had noticed, they would have found
that she was sufficiently alert and interested whenever the talk stumbled
upon the artist and his work; but they didn't notice, and so the chat
would swap around to some other subject, and then somebody would
presently be privately worrying about Gwendolen again, and wondering if
she were not well, or if something had gone wrong in the millinery line.
Her mother offered her various reputable patent medicines, and tonics
with iron and other hardware in them, and her father even proposed to
send out for wine, relentless prohibitionist and head of the order in the
District of Columbia as he was, but these kindnesses were all declined--
thankfully, but with decision.  At bedtime, when the family were breaking
up for the night, she privately looted one of the brushes, saying to
herself, "It's the one he has used, the most."

The next morning Tracy went forth wearing his new suit, and equipped with
a pink in his button-hole--a daily attention from Puss.  His whole soul
was full of Gwendolen Sellers, and this condition was an inspiration,
art-wise.  All the morning his brush pawed nimbly away at the canvases,
almost without his awarity--awarity, in this sense being the sense of
being aware, though disputed by some authorities--turning out marvel upon
marvel, in the way of decorative accessories to the portraits, with a
felicity and celerity which amazed the veterans of the firm and fetched
out of them continuous explosions of applause.

Meantime Gwendolen was losing her morning, and many dollars.  She
supposed Tracy was coming in the forenoon--a conclusion which she had
jumped to without outside help.  So she tripped down stairs every little
while from her work-parlor to arrange the brushes and things over again,
and see if he had arrived.  And when she was in her work-parlor it was
not profitable, but just the other way--as she found out to her sorrow.

She had put in her idle moments during the last little while back, in
designing a particularly rare and capable gown for herself, and this
morning she set about making it up; but she was absent minded, and made
an irremediable botch of it.  When she saw what she had done, she knew
the reason of it and the meaning of it; and she put her work away from
her and said she would accept the sign.  And from that time forth she
came no more away from the Audience Chamber, but remained there and
waited.  After luncheon she waited again.  A whole hour.  Then a great
joy welled up in her heart, for she saw him coming.  So she flew back up
stairs thankful, and could hardly wait for him to miss the principal
brush, which she had mislaid down there, but knew where she had mislaid
it.  However, all in good time the others were called in and couldn't
find the brush, and then she was sent for, and she couldn't find it
herself for some little time; but then she found it when the others had
gone away to hunt in the kitchen and down cellar and in the woodshed,
and all those other places where people look for things whose ways they
are not familiar with.  So she gave him the brush, and remarked that she
ought to have seen that everything was ready for him, but it hadn't
seemed necessary, because it was so early that she wasn't expecting--but
she stopped there, surprised at herself for what she was saying; and he
felt caught and ashamed, and said to himself, "I knew my impatience would
drag me here before I was expected, and betray me, and that is just what
it has done; she sees straight through me--and is laughing at me, inside,
of course."

Gwendolen was very much pleased, on one account, and a little the other
way in another; pleased with the new clothes and the improvement which
they had achieved; less pleased by the pink in the buttonhole.
Yesterday's pink had hardly interested her; this one was just like it,
but somehow it had got her immediate attention, and kept it.  She wished
she could think of some way of getting at its history in a properly
colorless and indifferent way.  Presently she made a venture.  She said:

"Whatever a man's age may be, he can reduce it several years by putting a
bright-colored flower in his button-hole.  I have often noticed that.
Is that your sex's reason for wearing a boutonniere?"

"I fancy not, but certainly that reason would be a sufficient one.  I've
never heard of the idea before."

"You seem to prefer pinks.  Is it on account of the color, or the form?"

"Oh no," he said, simply, "they are given to me.  I don't think I have
any preference."

"They are given to him," she said to herself, and she felt a coldness
toward that pink.  "I wonder who it is, and what she is like."  The
flower began to take up a good deal of room; it obtruded itself
everywhere, it intercepted all views, and marred them; it was becoming
exceedingly annoying and conspicuous for a little thing.  "I wonder if he
cares for her."  That thought gave her a quite definite pain.




CHAPTER XXI.

She had made everything comfortable for the artist; there was no further
pretext for staying.  So she said she would go, now, and asked him to
summon the servants in case he should need anything.  She went away
unhappy; and she left unhappiness behind her; for she carried away all
the sunshine.  The time dragged heavily for both, now.  He couldn't paint
for thinking of her; she couldn't design or millinerize with any heart,
for thinking of him.  Never before had painting seemed so empty to him,
never before had millinerizing seemed so void of interest to her.  She
had gone without repeating that dinner-invitation--an almost unendurable
disappointment to him.  On her part-well, she was suffering, too; for she
had found she couldn't invite him.  It was not hard yesterday, but it was
impossible to-day.  A thousand innocent privileges seemed to have been
filched from her unawares in the past twenty-four hours.  To-day she felt
strangely hampered, restrained of her liberty.  To-day she couldn't
propose to herself to do anything or say anything concerning this young
man without being instantly paralyzed into non-action by the fear that he
might "suspect."  Invite him to dinner to-day?  It made her shiver to
think of it.

And so her afternoon was one long fret.  Broken at intervals.  Three
times she had to go down stairs on errands--that is, she thought she had
to go down stairs on errands.  Thus, going and coming, she had six
glimpses of him, in the aggregate, without seeming to look in his
direction; and she tried to endure these electric ecstasies without
showing any sign, but they fluttered her up a good deal, and she felt
that the naturalness she was putting on was overdone and quite too
frantically sober and hysterically calm to deceive.

The painter had his share of the rapture; he had his six glimpses, and
they smote him with waves of pleasure that assaulted him, beat upon him,
washed over him deliciously, and drowned out all consciousness of what he
was doing with his brush.  So there were six places in his canvas which
had to be done over again.

At last Gwendolen got some peace of mind by sending word to the
Thompsons, in the neighborhood, that she was coming there to dinner.
She wouldn't be reminded, at that table, that there was an absentee who
ought to be a presentee--a word which she meant to look out in the
dictionary at a calmer time.

About this time the old earl dropped in for a chat with the artist, and
invited him to stay to dinner.  Tracy cramped down his joy and gratitude
by a sudden and powerful exercise of all his forces; and he felt that now
that he was going to be close to Gwendolen, and hear her voice and watch
her face during several precious hours, earth had nothing valuable to add
to his life for the present.

The earl said to himself, "This spectre can eat apples, apparently.
We shall find out, now, if that is a specialty.  I think, myself, it's a
specialty.  Apples, without doubt, constitute the spectral limit.  It was
the case with our first parents.  No, I am wrong--at least only partly
right.  The line was drawn at apples, just as in the present case, but it
was from the other direction."  The new clothes gave him a thrill of
pleasure and pride.  He said to himself, "I've got part of him down to
date, anyway."

Sellers said he was pleased with Tracy's work; and he went on and engaged
him to restore his old masters, and said he should also want him to paint
his portrait and his wife's and possibly his daughter's.  The tide of the
artist's happiness was at flood, now.  The chat flowed pleasantly along
while Tracy painted and Sellers carefully unpacked a picture which he had
brought with him.  It was a chromo; a new one, just out.  It was the
smirking, self-satisfied portrait of a man who was inundating the Union
with advertisements inviting everybody to buy his specialty, which was a
three-dollar shoe or a dress-suit or something of that kind.  The old
gentleman rested the chromo flat upon his lap and gazed down tenderly
upon it, and became silent and meditative.  Presently Tracy noticed that
he was dripping tears on it.  This touched the young fellow's sympathetic
nature, and at the same time gave him the painful sense of being an
intruder upon a sacred privacy, an observer of emotions which a stranger
ought not to witness.  But his pity rose superior to other
considerations, and compelled him to try to comfort the old mourner with
kindly words and a show of friendly interest.  He said:

"I am very sorry--is it a friend whom--"

"Ah, more than that, far more than that--a relative, the dearest I had on
earth, although I was never permitted to see him.  Yes, it is young Lord
Berkeley, who perished so heroically in the awful conflagration, what is
the matter?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing."

"It was a little startling to be so suddenly brought face to face, so to
speak, with a person one has heard so much talk about.  Is it a good
likeness?"

"Without doubt, yes.  I never saw him, but you can easily see the
resemblance to his father," said Sellers, holding up the chromo and
glancing from it to the chromo misrepresenting the Usurping Earl and back
again with an approving eye.

"Well, no--I am not sure that I make out the likeness.  It is plain that
the Usurping Earl there has a great deal of character and a long face
like a horse's, whereas his heir here is smirky, moon-faced and
characterless."

"We are all that way in the beginning--all the line," said Sellers,
undisturbed.  "We all start as moonfaced fools, then later we tadpole
along into horse-faced marvels of intellect and character.  It is by that
sign and by that fact that I detect the resemblance here and know this
portrait to be genuine and perfect.  Yes, all our family are fools at
first."

"This young man seems to meet the hereditary requirement, certainly."

"Yes, yes, he was a fool, without any doubt.  Examine the face, the shape
of the head, the expression.  It's all fool, fool, fool, straight
through."

"Thanks,--" said Tracy, involuntarily.

"Thanks?"

"I mean for explaining it to me.  Go on, please."

"As I was saying, fool is printed all over the face."

"A body can even read the details."

"What do they say?"

"Well, added up, he is a wobbler."

"A which?"

"Wobbler.  A person that's always taking a firm stand about something or
other--kind of a Gibraltar stand, he thinks, for unshakable fidelity and
everlastingness--and then, inside of a little while, he begins to wobble;
no more Gibraltar there; no, sir, a mighty ordinary commonplace weakling
wobbling--around on stilts.  That's Lord Berkeley to a dot, you can see
it look at that sheep!  But,--why are you blushing like sunset!  Dear
sir, have I unwittingly offended in some way?"

"Oh, no indeed, no indeed.  Far from it.  But it always makes me blush to
hear a man revile his own blood."  He said to himself, "How strangely his
vagrant and unguided fancies have hit upon the truth.  By accident, he
has described me.  I am that contemptible thing.  When I left England I
thought I knew myself; I thought I was a very Frederick the Great for
resolution and staying capacity; whereas in truth I am just a Wobbler,
simply a Wobbler.  Well--after all, it is at least creditable to have
high ideals and give birth to lofty resolutions; I will allow myself that
comfort."  Then he said, aloud, "Could this sheep, as you call him, breed
a great and self-sacrificing idea in his head, do you think?  Could he
meditate such a thing, for instance, as the renunciation of the earldom
and its wealth and its glories, and voluntary retirement to the ranks of
the commonalty, there to rise by his own merit or remain forever poor and
obscure?"

"Could he?  Why, look at him--look at this simpering self-righteous mug!
There is your answer.  It's the very thing he would think of.  And he
would start in to do it, too."

"And then?"

"He'd wobble."

"And back down?"

"Every time."

"Is that to happen with all my--I mean would that happen to all his high
resolutions?"

"Oh certainly--certainly.  It's the Rossmore of it."

"Then this creature was fortunate to die!  Suppose, for argument's sake,
that I was a Rossmore, and--"

"It can't be done."

"Why?"

"Because it's not a supposable case.  To be a Rossmore at your age, you'd
have to be a fool, and you're not a fool.  And you'd have to be a
Wobbler, whereas anybody that is an expert in reading character can see
at a glance that when you set your foot down once, it's there to stay;
and earthquake can't wobble it."  He added to himself, "That's enough to
say to him, but it isn't half strong enough for the facts.  The more
I observe him, now, the more remarkable I find him.  It is the strongest
face I have ever examined.  There is almost superhuman firmness here,
immovable purpose, iron steadfastness of will.  A most extraordinary
young man."

He presently said, aloud:

"Some time I want to ask your advice about a little matter, Mr.  Tracy.
You see, I've got that young lord's remaims--my goodness, how you jump!"

"Oh, it's nothing, pray go on.  You've got his remains?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure they are his, and not somebody else's?"

"Oh, perfectly sure.  Samples, I mean.  Not all of him."

"Samples?"

"Yes--in baskets.  Some time you will be going home; and if you wouldn't
mind taking them along--"

"Who?  I?"

"Yes--certainly.  I don't mean now; but after a while; after--but look
here, would you like to see them?"

"No!  Most certainly not.  I don't want to see them."

"O, very well.  I only thought--hey, where are you going, dear?"

"Out to dinner, papa."

Tracy was aghast.  The colonel said, in a disappointed voice:

"Well, I'm sorry.  Sho, I didn't know she was going out, Mr.  Tracy."

Gwendolen's face began to take on a sort of apprehensive 'What-have-I-
done expression.'

"Three old people to one young one--well, it isn't a good team, that's a
fact."

Gwendolen's face betrayed a dawning hopefulness and she said--with a tone
of reluctance which hadn't the hall-mark on it:

"If you prefer, I will send word to the Thompsons that I--"

"Oh, is it the Thompsons?  That simplifies it--sets everything right.
We can fix it without spoiling your arrangements, my child.  You've got
your heart set on--"

"But papa, I'd just as soon go there some other--"

"No--I won't have it.  You are a good hard-working darling child, and
your father is not the man to disappoint you when you--"

"But papa, I--"

"Go along, I won't hear a word.  We'll get along, dear."

Gwendolen was ready to cry with venation.  But there was nothing to do
but start; which she was about to do when her father hit upon an idea
which filled him with delight because it so deftly covered all the
difficulties of the situation and made things smooth and satisfactory:

"I've got it, my love, so that you won't be robbed of your holiday and at
the same time we'll be pretty satisfactorily fixed for a good time here.
You send Belle Thompson here--perfectly beautiful creature, Tracy,
perfectly beautiful; I want you to see that girl; why, you'll just go
mad; you'll go mad inside of a minute; yes, you send her right along,
Gwendolen, and tell her--why, she's gone!"  He turned--she was already
passing out at the gate.  He muttered, "I wonder what's the matter; I
don't know what her mouth's doing, but I think her shoulders are
swearing.  Well," said Sellers blithely to Tracy, "I shall miss her--
parents always miss the children as soon as they're out of sight, it's
only a natural and wisely ordained partiality--but you'll be all right,
because Miss Belle will supply the youthful element for you and to your
entire content; and we old people will do our best, too.  We shall have a
good enough time.  And you'll have a chance to get better acquainted with
Admiral Hawkins.  That's a rare character, Mr. Tracy--one of the rarest
and most engaging characters the world has produced.  You'll find him
worth studying.  I've studied him ever since he was a child and have
always found him developing.  I really consider that one of the main
things that has enabled me to master the difficult science of
character-reading was the livid interest I always felt in that boy
and the baffling inscrutabilities of his ways and inspirations."

Tracy was not hearing a word.  His spirits were gone, he was desolate.

"Yes, a most wonderful character.  Concealment--that's the basis of it.
Always the first thing you want to do is to find the keystone a man's
character is built on--then you've got it.  No misleading and apparently
inconsistent peculiarities can fool you then.  What do you read on the
Senator's surface?  Simplicity; a kind of rank and protuberant
simplicity; whereas, in fact, that's one of the deepest minds in the
world.  A perfectly honest man--an absolutely honest and honorable man--
and yet without doubt the profoundest master of dissimulation the world
has ever seen."

"O, it's devilish!"  This was wrung from the unlistening Tracy by the
anguished thought of what might have been if only the dinner arrangements
hadn't got mixed.

"No, I shouldn't call it that," said Sellers, who was now placidly
walking up and down the room with his hands under his coat-tails and
listening to himself talk.  "One could quite properly call it devilish
in another man, but not in the Senator.  Your term is right--perfectly
right--I grant that--but the application is wrong.  It makes a great
difference.  Yes, he is a marvelous character.  I do not suppose that any
other statesman ever had such a colossal sense of humor, combined with
the ability to totally conceal it.  I may except George Washington and
Cromwell, and perhaps Robespierre, but I draw the line there.  A person
not an expert might be in Judge Hawkins's company a lifetime and never
find out he had any more sense of humor than a cemetery."

A deep-drawn yard-long sigh from the distraught and dreaming artist,
followed by a murmured, "Miserable, oh, miserable!"

"Well, no, I shouldn't say that about it, quite.  On the contrary, I
admire his ability to conceal his humor even more if possible than I
admire the gift itself, stupendous as it is.  Another thing--General
Hawkins is a thinker; a keen, logical, exhaustive, analytical thinker--
perhaps the ablest of modern times.  That is, of course, upon themes
suited to his size, like the glacial period, and the correlation of
forces, and the evolution of the Christian from the caterpillar--any of
those things; give him a subject according to his size, and just stand
back and watch him think!  Why you can see the place rock!  Ah, yes, you
must know him; you must get on the inside of him.  Perhaps the most
extraordinary mind since Aristotle."

Dinner was kept waiting for a while for Miss Thompson, but as Gwendolen
had not delivered the invitation to her the waiting did no good, and the
household presently went to the meal without her.  Poor old Sellers tried
everything his hospitable soul could devise to make the occasion an
enjoyable one for the guest, and the guest tried his honest best to be
cheery and chatty and happy for the old gentleman's sake; in fact all
hands worked hard in the interest of a mutual good time, but the thing
was a failure from the start; Tracy's heart was lead in his bosom, there
seemed to be only one prominent feature in the landscape and that was a
vacant chair, he couldn't drag his mind away from Gwendolen and his hard
luck; consequently his distractions allowed deadly pauses to slip in
every now and then when it was his turn to say something, and of course
this disease spread to the rest of the conversation--wherefore, instead
of having a breezy sail in sunny waters, as anticipated, everybody was
bailing out and praying for land.  What could the matter be?  Tracy alone
could have told, the others couldn't even invent a theory.

Meanwhile they were having a similarly dismal time at the Thompson house;
in fact a twin experience.  Gwendolen was ashamed of herself for allowing
her disappointment to so depress her spirits and make her so strangely
and profoundly miserable; but feeling ashamed of herself didn't improve
the matter any; it only seemed to aggravate the suffering.  She explained
that she was not feeling very well, and everybody could see that this was
true; so she got sincere sympathy and commiseration; but that didn't help
the case.  Nothing helps that kind of a case.  It is best to just stand
off and let it fester.  The moment the dinner was over the girl excused
herself, and she hurried home feeling unspeakably grateful to get away
from that house and that intolerable captivity and suffering.

Will he be gone?  The thought arose in her brain, but took effect in her
heels.  She slipped into the house, threw off her things and made
straight for the dining room.  She stopped and listened.  Her father's
voice--with no life in it; presently her mother's--no life in that;
a considerable vacancy, then a sterile remark from Washington Hawkins.
Another silence; then, not Tracy's but her father's voice again.

"He's gone," she said to herself despairingly, and listlessly opened the
door and stepped within.

"Why, my child," cried the mother, "how white you are!  Are you--has
anything--"

"White?" exclaimed Sellers.  "It's gone like a flash; 'twasn't serious.
Already she's as red as the soul of a watermelon!  Sit down, dear, sit
down--goodness knows you're welcome.  Did you have a good time?  We've
had great times here--immense.  Why didn't Miss Belle come?  Mr. Tracy is
not feeling well, and she'd have made him forget it."

She was content now; and out from her happy eyes there went a light that
told a secret to another pair of eyes there and got a secret in return.
In just that infinitely small fraction of a second those two great
confessions were made, received, and perfectly understood.  All anxiety,
apprehension, uncertainty, vanished out of these young people's hearts
and left them filled with a great peace.

Sellers had had the most confident faith that with the new reinforcement
victory would be at this last moment snatched from the jaws of defeat,
but it was an error.  The talk was as stubbornly disjointed as ever.
He was proud of Gwendolen, and liked to show her off, even against Miss
Belle Thompson, and here had been a great opportunity, and what had she
made of it?  He felt a good deal put out.  It vexed him to think that
this Englishman, with the traveling Briton's everlasting disposition to
generalize whole mountain ranges from single sample-grains of sand, would
jump to the conclusion that American girls were as dumb as himself--
generalizing the whole tribe from this single sample and she at her
poorest, there being nothing at that table to inspire her, give her a
start, keep her from going to sleep.  He made up his mind that for the
honor of the country he would bring these two together again over the
social board before long.  There would be a different result another
time, he judged.  He said to himself, with a deep sense of injury,
"He'll put in his diary--they all keep diaries--he'll put in his diary
that she was miraculously uninteresting--dear, dear, but wasn't she!
I never saw the like--and yet looking as beautiful as Satan, too--and
couldn't seem to do anything but paw bread crumbs, and pick flowers to
pieces, and look fidgety.  And it isn't any better here in the Hall of
Audience.  I've had enough; I'll haul down my flag--the others may fight
it out if they want to."

He shook hands all around and went off to do some work which he said was
pressing.  The idolaters were the width of the room apart; and apparently
unconscious of each other's presence.  The distance got shortened a
little, now.  Very soon the mother withdrew.  The distance narrowed
again.  Tracy stood before a chromo of some Ohio politician which had
been retouched and chain-mailed for a crusading Rossmore, and Gwendolen
was sitting on the sofa not far from his elbow artificially absorbed in
examining a photograph album that hadn't any photographs in it.

The "Senator" still lingered.  He was sorry for the young people; it had
been a dull evening for them.  In the goodness of his heart he tried to
make it pleasant for them now; tried to remove the ill impression
necessarily left by the general defeat; tried to be chatty, even tried to
be gay.  But the responses were sickly, there was no starting any
enthusiasm; he would give it up and quit--it was a day specially picked
out and consecrated to failures.

But when Gwendolen rose up promptly and smiled a glad smile and said with
thankfulness and blessing, "Must you go?" it seemed cruel to desert, and
he sat down again.

He was about to begin a remark when--when he didn't.  We have all been
there.  He didn't know how he knew his concluding to stay longer had been
a mistake, he merely knew it; and knew it for dead certain, too.  And so
he bade goodnight, and went mooning out, wondering what he could have
done that changed the atmosphere that way.  As the door closed behind him
those two were standing side by side, looking at that door--looking at it
in a waiting, second-counting, but deeply grateful kind of way.  And the
instant it closed they flung their arms about each other's necks, and
there, heart to heart and lip to lip--

"Oh, my God, she's kissing it!"

Nobody heard this remark, because Hawkins, who bred it, only thought it,
he didn't utter it.  He had turned, the moment he had closed the door,
and had pushed it open a little, intending to re-enter and ask what
ill-advised thing he had done or said, and apologize for it.  But he
didn't re-enter; he staggered off stunned, terrified, distressed.




CHAPTER XXII.

Five minutes later he was sitting in his room, with his head bowed within
the circle of his arms, on the table--final attitude of grief and despair.
His tears were flowing fast, and now and then a sob broke upon the
stillness.  Presently he said:

"I knew her when she was a little child and used to climb about my knees;
I love her as I love my own, and now--oh, poor thing, poor thing, I
cannot bear it!--she's gone and lost her heart to this mangy
materializee!  Why didn't we see that that might happen?  But how could
we?  Nobody could; nobody could ever have dreamed of such a thing.  You
couldn't expect a person would fall in love with a wax-work.  And this
one doesn't even amount to that."

He went on grieving to himself, and now and then giving voice to his
lamentations.

"It's done, oh, it's done, and there's no help for it, no undoing the
miserable business.  If I had the nerve, I would kill it.  But that
wouldn't do any good.  She loves it; she thinks it's genuine and
authentic.  If she lost it she would grieve for it just as she would for
a real person.  And who's to break it to the family!  Not I--I'll die
first.  Sellers is the best human being I ever knew and I wouldn't any
more think of--oh, dear, why it'll break his heart when he finds it out.
And Polly's too.  This comes of meddling with such infernal matters!
But for this, the creature would still be roasting in Sheol where it
belongs.  How is it that these people don't smell the brimstone?
Sometimes I can't come into the same room with him without nearly
suffocating."

After a while he broke out again:

"Well, there's one thing, sure.  The materializing has got to stop right
where it is.  If she's got to marry a spectre, let her marry a decent one
out of the Middle Ages, like this one--not a cowboy and a thief such as
this protoplasmic tadpole's going to turn into if Sellers keeps on
fussing at it.  It costs five thousand dollars cash and shuts down on the
incorporated company to stop the works at this point, but Sally Sellers's
happiness is worth more than that."

He heard Sellers coming, and got himself to rights.  Sellers took a seat,
and said:

"Well, I've got to confess I'm a good deal puzzled.  It did certainly
eat, there's no getting around it.  Not eat, exactly, either, but it
nibbled; nibbled in an appetiteless way, but still it nibbled; and that's
just a marvel.  Now the question is, what does it do with those
nibblings?  That's it--what does it do with them?  My idea is that we
don't begin to know all there is to this stupendous discovery yet.
But time will show--time and science--give us a chance, and don't get
impatient."

But he couldn't get Hawkins interested; couldn't make him talk to amount
to anything; couldn't drag him out of his depression.  But at last he
took a turn that arrested Hawkins's attention.

"I'm coming to like him, Hawkins.  He is a person of stupendous
character--absolutely gigantic.  Under that placid exterior is concealed
the most dare-devil spirit that was ever put into a man--he's just a
Clive over again.  Yes, I'm all admiration for him, on account of his
character, and liking naturally follows admiration, you know.  I'm coming
to like him immensely.  Do you know, I haven't the heart to degrade such
a character as that down to the burglar estate for money or for anything
else; and I've come to ask if you are willing to let the reward go, and
leave this poor fellow--"

"Where he is?"

"Yes--not bring him down to date."

"Oh, there's my hand; and my heart's in it, too!"

"I'll never forget you for this, Hawkins," said the old gentleman in a
voice which he found it hard to control.  "You are making a great
sacrifice for me, and one which you can ill afford, but I'll never forget
your generosity, and if I live you shall not suffer for it, be sure of
that."

Sally Sellers immediately and vividly realized that she was become a new
being; a being of a far higher and worthier sort than she had been such a
little while before; an earnest being, in place of a dreamer; and
supplied with a reason for her presence in the world, where merely a
wistful and troubled curiosity about it had existed before.  So great and
so comprehensive was the change which had been wrought, that she seemed
to herself to be a real person who had lately been a shadow; a something
which had lately been a nothing; a purpose, which had lately been a
fancy; a finished temple, with the altar-fires lit and the voice of
worship ascending, where before had been but an architect's confusion of
arid working plans, unintelligible to the passing eye and prophesying
nothing.

"Lady" Gwendolen!  The pleasantness of that sound was all gone; it was an
offense to her ear now.  She said:

"There--that sham belongs to the past; I will not be called by it any
more."

"I may call you simply Gwendolen?  You will allow me to drop the
formalities straightway and name you by your dear first name without
additions?"

She was dethroning the pink and replacing it with a rosebud.

"There--that is better.  I hate pinks--some pinks.  Indeed yes, you are to
call me by my first name without additions--that is,--well, I don't mean
without additions entirely, but--"

It was as far as she could get.  There was a pause; his intellect was
struggling to comprehend; presently it did manage to catch the idea in
time to save embarrassment all around, and he said gratefully--

"Dear Gwendolen!  I may say that?"

"Yes--part of it.  But--don't kiss me when I am talking, it makes me
forget what I was going to say.  You can call me by part of that form,
but not the last part.  Gwendolen is not my name."

"Not your name?" This in a tone of wonder and surprise.

The girl's soul was suddenly invaded by a creepy apprehension, a quite
definite sense of suspicion and alarm.  She put his arms away from her,
looked him searchingly in the eye, and said:

"Answer me truly, on your honor.  You are not seeking to marry me on
account of my rank?"

The shot almost knocked him through the wall, he was so little prepared
for it.  There was something so finely grotesque about the question and
its parent suspicion, that he stopped to wonder and admire, and thus was
he saved from laughing.  Then, without wasting precious time, he set
about the task of convincing her that he had been lured by herself alone,
and had fallen in love with her only, not her title and position; that he
loved her with all his heart, and could not love her more if she were a
duchess, or less if she were without home, name or family.  She watched
his face wistfully, eagerly, hopefully, translating his words by its
expression; and when he had finished there was gladness in her heart--
a tumultuous gladness, indeed, though outwardly she was calm, tranquil,
even judicially austere.  She prepared a surprise for him, now,
calculated to put a heavy strain upon those disinterested protestations
of his; and thus she delivered it, burning it away word by word as the
fuse burns down to a bombshell, and watching to see how far the explosion
would lift him:

"Listen--and do not doubt me, for I shall speak the exact truth.  Howard
Tracy, I am no more an earl's child than you are!"

To her joy--and secret surprise, also--it never phased him.  He was
ready, this time, and saw his chance.  He cried out with enthusiasm,
"Thank heaven for that!" and gathered her to his arms.

To express her happiness was almost beyond her gift of speech.

"You make me the proudest girl in all the earth," she said, with her head
pillowed on his shoulder.  "I thought it only natural that you should be
dazzled by the title--maybe even unconsciously, you being English--and
that you might be deceiving yourself in thinking you loved only me, and
find you didn't love me when the deception was swept away; so it makes me
proud that the revelation stands for nothing and that you do love just
me, only me--oh, prouder than any words can tell!"

"It is only you, sweetheart, I never gave one envying glance toward your
father's earldom.  That is utterly true, dear Gwendolen."

"There--you mustn't call me that.  I hate that false name.  I told you it
wasn't mine.  My name is Sally Sellers--or Sarah, if you like.  From this
time I banish dreams, visions, imaginings, and will no more of them.
I am going to be myself--my genuine self, my honest self, my natural
self, clear and clean of sham and folly and fraud, and worthy of you.
There is no grain of social inequality between us; I, like you, am poor;
I, like you, am without position or distinction; you are a struggling
artist, I am that, too, in my humbler way.  Our bread is honest bread,
we work for our living.  Hand in hand we will walk hence to the grave,
helping each other in all ways, living for each other, being and
remaining one in heart and purpose, one in hope and aspiration,
inseparable to the end.  And though our place is low, judged by the
world's eye, we will make it as high as the highest in the great
essentials of honest work for what we eat and wear, and conduct above
reproach.  We live in a land, let us be thankful, where this is
all-sufficient, and no man is better than his neighbor by the grace
of God, but only by his own merit."

Tracy tried to break in, but she stopped him and kept the floor herself.

"I am not through yet.  I am going to purge myself of the last vestiges
of artificiality and pretence, and then start fair on your own honest
level and be worthy mate to you thenceforth.  My father honestly thinks
he is an earl.  Well, leave him his dream, it pleases him and does no one
any harm: It was the dream of his ancestors before him.  It has made
fools of the house of Sellers for generations, and it made something of a
fool of me, but took no deep root.  I am done with it now, and for good.
Forty-eight hours ago I was privately proud of being the daughter of a
pinchbeck earl, and thought the proper mate for me must be a man of like
degree; but to-day--oh, how grateful I am for your love which has healed
my sick brain and restored my sanity!--I could make oath that no earl's
son in all the world--"

"Oh,--well, but--but--"

"Why, you look like a person in a panic.  What is it?  What is the
matter?"

"Matter?  Oh, nothing--nothing.  I was only going to say"--but in his
flurry nothing occurred to him to say, for a moment; then by a lucky
inspiration he thought of something entirely sufficient for the occasion,
and brought it out with eloquent force: "Oh, how beautiful you are!  You
take my breath away when you look like that."

It was well conceived, well timed, and cordially delivered--and it got
its reward.

"Let me see.  Where was I?  Yes, my father's earldom is pure moonshine.
Look at those dreadful things on the wall.  You have of course supposed
them to be portraits of his ancestors, earls of Rossmore.  Well, they are
not.  They are chromos of distinguished Americans--all moderns; but he
has carried them back a thousand years by re-labeling them.  Andrew
Jackson there, is doing what he can to be the late American earl; and the
newest treasure in the collection is supposed to be the young English
heir--I mean the idiot with the crape; but in truth it's a shoemaker, and
not Lord Berkeley at all."

"Are you sure?"

"Why of course I am.  He wouldn't look like that."

"Why?"

"Because his conduct in his last moments, when the fire was sweeping
around him shows that he was a man.  It shows that he was a fine,
high-souled young creature."

Tracy was strongly moved by these compliments, and it seemed to him that
the girl's lovely lips took on anew loveliness when they were delivering
them.  He said, softly:

"It is a pity he could not know what a gracious impression his behavior
was going to leave with the dearest and sweetest stranger in the
land of--"

"Oh, I almost loved him!  Why, I think of him every day.  He is always
floating about in my mind."

Tracy felt that this was a little more than was necessary.  He was
conscious of the sting of jealousy.  He said:

"It is quite right to think of him--at least now and then--that is, at
intervals--in perhaps an admiring way--but it seems to me that--"

"Howard Tracy, are you jealous of that dead man?"

He was ashamed--and at the same time not ashamed.  He was jealous--and at
the same time he was not jealous.  In a sense the dead man was himself;
in that case compliments and affection lavished upon that corpse went
into his own till and were clear profit.  But in another sense the dead
man was not himself; and in that case all compliments and affection
lavished there were wasted, and a sufficient basis for jealousy.  A tiff
was the result of the dispute between the two.  Then they made it up, and
were more loving than ever.  As an affectionate clincher of the
reconciliation, Sally declared that she had now banished Lord Berkeley
from her mind; and added, "And in order to make sure that he shall never
make trouble between us again, I will teach myself to detest that name
and all that have ever borne it or ever shall bear it."

This inflicted another pang, and Tracy was minded to ask her to modify
that a little just on general principles, and as practice in not
overdoing a good thing--perhaps he might better leave things as they were
and not risk bringing on another tiff.  He got away from that particular,
and sought less tender ground for conversation.

"I suppose you disapprove wholly of aristocracies and nobilities, now
that you have renounced your title and your father's earldom."

"Real ones?  Oh, dear no--but I've thrown aside our sham one for good."

This answer fell just at the right time and just in the right place, to
save the poor unstable young man from changing his political complexion
once more.  He had been on the point of beginning to totter again, but
this prop shored him up and kept him from floundering back into democracy
and re-renouncing aristocracy.  So he went home glad that he had asked
the fortunate question.  The girl would accept a little thing like a
genuine earldom, she was merely prejudiced against the brummagem article.
Yes, he could have his girl and have his earldom, too: that question was
a fortunate stroke.

Sally went to bed happy, too; and remained happy, deliriously happy, for
nearly two hours; but at last, just as she was sinking into a contented
and luxurious unconsciousness, the shady devil who lives and lurks and
hides and watches inside of human beings and is always waiting for a
chance to do the proprietor a malicious damage, whispered to her soul and
said, "That question had a harmless look, but what was back of it?--what
was the secret motive of it?--what suggested it?"

The shady devil had knifed her, and could retire, now, and take a rest;
the wound would attend to business for him.  And it did.

Why should Howard Tracy ask that question?  If he was not trying to marry
her for the sake of her rank, what should suggest that question to him?
Didn't he plainly look gratified when she said her objections to
aristocracy had their limitations?  Ah, he is after that earldom, that
gilded sham--it isn't poor me he wants.

So she argued, in anguish and tears.  Then she argued the opposite
theory, but made a weak, poor business of it, and lost the case.  She
kept the arguing up, one side and then the other, the rest of the night,
and at last fell asleep at dawn; fell in the fire at dawn, one may say;
for that kind of sleep resembles fire, and one comes out of it with his
brain baked and his physical forces fried out of him.




CHAPTER XXIII.

Tracy wrote his father before he sought his bed.  He wrote a letter which
he believed would get better treatment than his cablegram received, for
it contained what ought to be welcome news; namely, that he had tried
equality and working for a living; had made a fight which he could find
no reason to be ashamed of, and in the matter of earning a living had
proved that he was able to do it; but that on the whole he had arrived at
the conclusion that he could not reform the world single-handed, and was
willing to retire from the conflict with the fair degree of honor which
he had gained, and was also willing to return home and resume his
position and be content with it and thankful for it for the future,
leaving further experiment of a missionary sort to other young people
needing the chastening and quelling persuasions of experience, the only
logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and restore it to rugged
health.  Then he approached the subject of marriage with the daughter of
the American Claimant with a good deal of caution and much painstaking
art.  He said praiseful and appreciative things about the girl, but
didn't dwell upon that detail or make it prominent.  The thing which he
made prominent was the opportunity now so happily afforded, to reconcile
York and Lancaster, graft the warring roses upon one stem, and end
forever a crying injustice which had already lasted far too long.  One
could infer that he had thought this thing all out and chosen this way of
making all things fair and right because it was sufficiently fair and
considerably wiser than the renunciation-scheme which he had brought with
him from England.  One could infer that, but he didn't say it.  In fact
the more he read his letter over, the more he got to inferring it
himself.

When the old earl received that letter, the first part of it filled him
with a grim and snarly satisfaction; but the rest of it brought a snort
or two out of him that could be translated differently.  He wasted no ink
in this emergency, either in cablegrams or letters; he promptly took ship
for America to look into the matter himself.  He had staunchly held his
grip all this long time, and given no sign of the hunger at his heart to
see his son; hoping for the cure of his insane dream, and resolute that
the process should go through all the necessary stages without assuaging
telegrams or other nonsense from home, and here was victory at last.
Victory, but stupidly marred by this idiotic marriage project.  Yes, he
would step over and take a hand in this matter himself.

During the first ten days following the mailing of the letter Tracy's
spirits had no idle time; they were always climbing up into the clouds or
sliding down into the earth as deep as the law of gravitation reached.
He was intensely happy or intensely miserable by turns, according to Miss
Sally's moods.  He never could tell when the mood was going to change,
and when it changed he couldn't tell what it was that had changed it.
Sometimes she was so in love with him that her love was tropical, torrid,
and she could find no language fervent enough for its expression; then
suddenly, and without warning or any apparent reason, the weather would
change, and the victim would find himself adrift among the icebergs and
feeling as lonesome and friendless as the north pole.  It sometimes
seemed to him that a man might better be dead than exposed to these
devastating varieties of climate.

The case was simple.  Sally wanted to believe that Tracy's preference was
disinterested; so she was always applying little tests of one sort or
another, hoping and expecting that they would bring out evidence which
would confirm or fortify her belief.  Poor Tracy did not know that these
experiments were being made upon him, consequently he walked promptly
into all the traps the girl set for him.  These traps consisted in
apparently casual references to social distinction, aristocratic title
and privilege, and such things.  Often Tracy responded to these
references heedlessly and not much caring what he said provided it kept
the talk going and prolonged the seance.  He didn't suspect that the girl
was watching his face and listening for his words as one who watches the
judge's face and listens for the words which will restore him to home and
friends and freedom or shut him away from the sun and human companionship
forever.  He didn't suspect that his careless words were being weighed,
and so he often delivered sentence of death when it would have been just
as handy and all the same to him to pronounce acquittal.  Daily he broke
the girl's heart, nightly he sent her to the rack for sleep.  He couldn't
understand it.

Some people would have put this and that together and perceived that the
weather never changed until one particular subject was introduced,
and that then it always changed.  And they would have looked further,
and perceived that that subject was always introduced by the one party,
never the other.  They would have argued, then, that this was done for a
purpose.  If they could not find out what that purpose was in any simpler
or easier way, they would ask.

But Tracy was not deep enough or suspicious enough to think of these
things.  He noticed only one particular; that the weather was always
sunny when a visit began.  No matter how much it might cloud up later,
it always began with a clear sky.  He couldn't explain this curious fact
to himself, he merely knew it to be a fact.  The truth of the matter was,
that by the time Tracy had been out of Sally's sight six hours she was so
famishing for a sight of him that her doubts and suspicions were all
consumed away in the fire of that longing, and so always she came into
his presence as surprisingly radiant and joyous as she wasn't when she
went out of it.

In circumstances like these a growing portrait runs a good many risks.
The portrait of Sellers, by Tracy, was fighting along, day by day,
through this mixed weather, and daily adding to itself ineradicable signs
of the checkered life it was leading.  It was the happiest portrait, in
spots, that was ever seen; but in other spots a damned soul looked out
from it; a soul that was suffering all the different kinds of distress
there are, from stomach ache to rabies.  But Sellers liked it.  He said it
was just himself all over--a portrait that sweated moods from every pore,
and no two moods alike.  He said he had as many different kinds of
emotions in him as a jug.

It was a kind of a deadly work of art, maybe, but it was a starchy
picture for show; for it was life size, full length, and represented the
American earl in a peer's scarlet robe, with the three ermine bars
indicative of an earl's rank, and on the gray head an earl's coronet,
tilted just a wee bit to one side in a most gallus and winsome way.  When
Sally's weather was sunny the portrait made Tracy chuckle, but when her
weather was overcast it disordered his mind and stopped the circulation
of his blood.

Late one night when the sweethearts had been having a flawless visit
together, Sally's interior devil began to work his specialty, and soon
the conversation was drifting toward the customary rock.  Presently, in
the midst of Tracy's serene flow of talk, he felt a shudder which he knew
was not his shudder, but exterior to his breast although immediately
against it.  After the shudder came sobs; Sally was crying.

"Oh, my darling, what have I done--what have I said?  It has happened
again!  What have I done to wound you?"

She disengaged herself from his arms and gave him a look of deep
reproach.

"What have you done?  I will tell you what you have done.  You have
unwittingly revealed--oh, for the twentieth time, though I could not
believe it, would not believe it!--that it is not me you love, but that
foolish sham my father's imitation earldom; and you have broken my
heart!"

"Oh, my child, what are you saying!  I never dreamed of such a thing."

"Oh, Howard, Howard, the things you have uttered when you were forgetting
to guard your tongue, have betrayed you."

"Things I have uttered when I was forgetting to guard my tongue?  These
are hard words.  When have I remembered to guard it?  Never in one
instance.  It has no office but to speak the truth.  It needs no guarding
for that."

"Howard, I have noted your words and weighed them, when you were not
thinking of their significance--and they have told me more than you meant
they should."

"Do you mean to say you have answered the trust I had in you by using it
as an ambuscade from which you could set snares for my unsuspecting
tongue and be safe from detection while you did it?  You have not done
this--surely you have not done this thing.  Oh, one's enemy could not do
it."

This was an aspect of the girl's conduct which she had not clearly
perceived before.  Was it treachery?  Had she abused a trust?  The
thought crimsoned her cheeks with shame and remorse.

"Oh, forgive me," she said, "I did not know what I was doing.  I have
been so tortured--you will forgive me, you must; I have suffered so much,
and I am so sorry and so humble; you do forgive me, don't you?--don't
turn away, don't refuse me; it is only my love that is at fault, and you
know I love you, love you with all my heart; I couldn't bear to--oh,
dear, dear, I am so miserable, and I sever meant any harm, and I didn't
see where this insanity was carrying me, and how it was wronging and
abusing the dearest heart in all the world to me--and--and--oh, take me
in your arms again, I have no other refuge, no other home and hope!"

There was reconciliation again--immediate, perfect, all-embracing--and
with it utter happiness.  This would have been a good time to adjourn.
But no, now that the cloud-breeder was revealed at last; now that it was
manifest that all the sour weather had come from this girl's dread that
Tracy was lured by her rank and not herself, he resolved to lay that
ghost immediately and permanently by furnishing the best possible proof
that he couldn't have had back of him at any time the suspected motive.
So he said:

"Let me whisper a little secret in your ear--a secret which I have kept
shut up in my breast all this time.  Your rank couldn't ever have been an
enticement.  I am son and heir to an English earl!"

The girl stared at him--one, two, three moments, maybe a dozen--then her
lips parted:

"You?" she said, and moved away from him, still gazing at him in a kind
of blank amazement.

"Why--why, certainly I am.  Why do you act like this?  What have I done
now?"

"What have you done?  You have certainly made a most strange statement.
You must see that yourself."

"Well," with a timid little laugh, "it may be a strange enough statement;
but of what consequence is that, if it is true?"

"If it is true.  You are already retiring from it."

"Oh, not for a moment!  You should not say that.  I have not deserved it.
I have spoken the truth; why do you doubt it?"

Her reply was prompt.

"Simply because you didn't speak it earlier!"

"Oh!" It wasn't a groan, exactly, but it was an intelligible enough
expression of the fact that he saw the point and recognized that there
was reason in it.

"You have seemed to conceal nothing from me that I ought to know
concerning yourself, and you were not privileged to keep back such a
thing as this from me a moment after--after--well, after you had
determined to pay your court to me."

"Its true, it's true, I know it!  But there were circumstances--in--
in the way--circumstances which--"

She waved the circumstances aside.

"Well, you see," he said, pleadingly, "you seemed so bent on our
traveling the proud path of honest labor and honorable poverty, that I
was terrified--that is, I was afraid--of--of--well, you know how you
talked."

"Yes, I know how I talked.  And I also know that before the talk was
finished you inquired how I stood as regards aristocracies, and my answer
was calculated to relieve your fears."

He was silent a while.  Then he said, in a discouraged way:

"I don't see any way out of it.  It was a mistake.  That is in truth all
it was, just a mistake.  No harm was meant, no harm in the world.
I didn't see how it might some time look.  It is my way.  I don't seem to
see far."

The girl was almost disarmed, for a moment.  Then she flared up again.

"An Earl's son!  Do earls' sons go about working in lowly callings for
their bread and butter?"

"God knows they don't!  I have wished they did."

"Do earls' sons sink their degree in a country like this, and come sober
and decent to sue for the hand of a born child of poverty when they can
go drunk, profane, and steeped in dishonorable debt and buy the pick and
choice of the millionaires' daughters of America?  You an earl's son!
Show me the signs."

"I thank God I am not able--if those are the signs.  But yet I am an
earl's son and heir.  It is all I can say.  I wish you would believe me,
but you will not.  I know no way to persuade you."

She was about to soften again, but his closing remark made her bring her
foot down with smart vexation, and she cried out:

"Oh, you drive all patience out of me!  Would you have one believe that
you haven't your proofs at hand, and yet are what you say you are?
You do not put your hand in your pocket now--for you have nothing there.
You make a claim like this, and then venture to travel without
credentials.  These are simply incredibilities.  Don't you see that,
yourself?"

He cast about in his mind for a defence of some kind or other--hesitated
a little, and then said, with difficulty and diffidence:

"I will tell you just the truth, foolish as it will seem to you--
to anybody, I suppose--but it is the truth.  I had an ideal--call it
a dream, a folly, if you will--but I wanted to renounce the privileges
and unfair advantages enjoyed by the nobility and wrung from the nation
by force and fraud, and purge myself of my share of those crimes against
right and reason, by thenceforth comrading with the poor and humble on
equal terms, earning with my own hands the bread I ate, and rising by my
own merit if I rose at all."

The young girl scanned his face narrowly while he spoke; and there was
something about his simplicity of manner and statement which touched her
--touched her almost to the danger point; but she set her grip on the
yielding spirit and choked it to quiescence; it could not be wise to
surrender to compassion or any kind of sentiment, yet; she must ask one
or two more questions.  Tracy was reading her face; and what he read
there lifted his drooping hopes a little.

"An earl's son to do that!  Why, he were a man!  A man to love!--oh,
more, a man to worship!"

"Why?"

"But he never lived!  He is not born, he will not be born.  The
self-abnegation that could do that--even in utter folly, and hopeless of
conveying benefit to any, beyond the mere example--could be mistaken for
greatness; why, it would be greatness in this cold age of sordid ideals!
A moment--wait--let me finish; I have one question more.  Your father is
earl of what?"

"Rossmore--and I am Viscount Berkeley!"

The fat was in the fire again.  The girl felt so outraged that it was
difficult for her to speak.

"How can you venture such a brazen thing!  You know that he is dead,
and you know that I know it.  Oh, to rob the living of name and honors
for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the
defenceless dead--why it is more than crime, it degrades crime!"

"Oh, listen to me--just a word--don't turn away like that.  Don't go--
don't leave me, so--stay one moment.  On my honor--"

"Oh, on your honor!"

"On my honor I am what I say!  And I will prove it, and you will believe,
I know you will.  I will bring you a message--a cablegram--"

"When?"

"To-morrow--next day--"

"Signed 'Rossmore'?"

"Yes--signed Rossmore."

"What will that prove?"

"What will it prove?  What should it prove?"

"If you force me to say it--possibly the presence of a confederate
somewhere."

This was a hard blow, and staggered him.  He said, dejectedly:

"It is true.  I did not think of it.  Oh, my God, I do not know any way
to do; I do everything wrong.  You are going?--and you won't say even
good-night--or good-bye?  Ah, we have not parted like this before."

"Oh, I want to run and--no, go, now."  A pause--then she said, "You may
bring the message when it comes."

"Oh, may I?  God bless you."

He was gone; and none too soon; her lips were already quivering, and now
she broke down.  Through her sobbings her words broke from time to time.

"Oh, he is gone.  I have lost him, I shall never see him any more.  And
he didn't kiss me good-bye; never even offered to force a kiss from me,
and he knowing it was the very, very last, and I expecting he would, and
never dreaming he would treat me so after all we have been to each other.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, what shall I do, what shall I do!  He is a dear, poor,
miserable, good-hearted, transparent liar and humbug, but oh, I do love
him so--!"  After a little she broke into speech again.  "How dear he is!
and I shall miss him so, I shall miss him so!  Why won't he ever think to
forge a message and fetch it?--but no, he never will, he never thinks of
anything; he's so honest and simple it wouldn't ever occur to him.
Oh, what did possess him to think he could succeed as a fraud--and he
hasn't the first requisite except duplicity that I can see.  Oh, dear,
I'll go to bed and give it all up.  Oh, I wish I had told him to come and
tell me whenever he didn't get any telegram--and now it's all my own
fault if I never see him again.  How my eyes must look!"




CHAPTER XXIV.

Next day, sure enough, the cablegram didn't come.  This was an immense
disaster; for Tracy couldn't go into the presence without that ticket,
although it wasn't going to possess any value as evidence.  But if the
failure of the cablegram on that first day may be called an immense
disaster, where is the dictionary that can turn out a phrase sizeable
enough to describe the tenth day's failure?  Of course every day that the
cablegram didn't come made Tracy all of twenty-four hours' more ashamed
of himself than he was the day before, and made Sally fully twenty-four
hours more certain than ever that he not only hadn't any father anywhere,
but hadn't even a confederate--and so it followed that he was a
double-dyed humbug and couldn't be otherwise.

These were hard days for Barrow and the art firm.  All these had their
hands full, trying to comfort Tracy.  Barrow's task was particularly
hard, because he was made a confidant in full, and therefore had to humor
Tracy's delusion that he had a father, and that the father was an earl,
and that he was going to send a cablegram.  Barrow early gave up the idea
of trying to convince Tracy that he hadn't any father, because this had
such a bad effect on the patient, and worked up his temper to such an
alarming degree.  He had tried, as an experiment, letting Tracy think he
had a father; the result was so good that he went further, with proper
caution, and tried letting him think his father was an earl; this wrought
so well, that he grew bold, and tried letting him think he had two
fathers, if he wanted to, but he didn't want to, so Barrow withdrew one
of them and substituted letting him think he was going to get a
cablegram--which Barrow judged he wouldn't, and was right; but Barrow
worked the cablegram daily for all it was worth, and it was the one thing
that kept Tracy alive; that was Barrow's opinion.

And these were bitter hard days for poor Sally, and mainly delivered up
to private crying.  She kept her furniture pretty damp, and so caught
cold, and the dampness and the cold and the sorrow together undermined
her appetite, and she was a pitiful enough object, poor thing.  Her state
was bad enough, as per statement of it above quoted; but all the forces
of nature and circumstance seemed conspiring to make it worse--and
succeeding.  For instance, the morning after her dismissal of Tracy,
Hawkins and Sellers read in the associated press dispatches that a toy
puzzle called Pigs in the Clover, had come into sudden favor within the
past few weeks, and that from the Atlantic to the Pacific all the
populations of all the States had knocked off work to play with it,
and that the business of the country had now come to a standstill by
consequence; that judges, lawyers, burglars, parsons, thieves, merchants,
mechanics, murderers, women, children, babies--everybody, indeed, could
be seen from morning till midnight, absorbed in one deep project and
purpose, and only one--to pen those pigs, work out that puzzle
successfully; that all gayety, all cheerfulness had departed from the
nation, and in its place care, preoccupation and anxiety sat upon every
countenance, and all faces were drawn, distressed, and furrowed with the
signs of age and trouble, and marked with the still sadder signs of
mental decay and incipient madness; that factories were at work night and
day in eight cities, and yet to supply the demand for the puzzle was thus
far impossible.  Hawkins was wild with joy, but Sellers was calm.  Small
matters could not disturb his serenity.  He said--

"That's just the way things go.  A man invents a thing which could
revolutionize the arts, produce mountains of money, and bless the earth,
and who will bother with it or show any interest in it?--and so you are
just as poor as you were before.  But you invent some worthless thing to
amuse yourself with, and would throw it away if let alone, and all of a
sudden the whole world makes a snatch for it and out crops a fortune.
Hunt up that Yankee and collect, Hawkins--half is yours, you know.
Leave me to potter at my lecture."

This was a temperance lecture.  Sellers was head chief in the Temperance
camp, and had lectured, now and then in that interest, but had been
dissatisfied with his efforts; wherefore he was now about to try a new
plan.  After much thought he had concluded that a main reason why his
lectures lacked fire or something, was, that they were too transparently
amateurish; that is to say, it was probably too plainly perceptible that
the lecturer was trying to tell people about the horrid effects of liquor
when he didn't really know anything about those effects except from
hearsay, since he had hardly ever tasted an intoxicant in his life.
His scheme, now, was to prepare himself to speak from bitter experience.
Hawkins was to stand by with the bottle, calculate the doses, watch the
effects, make notes of results, and otherwise assist in the preparation.
Time was short, for the ladies would be along about noon--that is to say,
the temperance organization called the Daughters of Siloam--and Sellers
must be ready to head the procession.

The time kept slipping along--Hawkins did not return--Sellers could not
venture to wait longer; so he attacked the bottle himself, and proceeded
to note the effects.  Hawkins got back at last; took one comprehensive
glance at the lecturer, and went down and headed off the procession.
The ladies were grieved to hear that the champion had been taken suddenly
ill and violently so, but glad to hear that it was hoped he would be out
again in a few days.

As it turned out, the old gentleman didn't turn over or show any signs of
life worth speaking of for twenty-four hours.  Then he asked after the
procession, and learned what had happened about it.  He was sorry; said
he had been "fixed" for it.  He remained abed several days, and his wife
and daughter took turns in sitting with him and ministering to his wants.
Often he patted Sally's head and tried to comfort her.

"Don't cry, my child, don't cry so; you know your old father did it by
mistake and didn't mean a bit of harm; you know he wouldn't intentionally
do anything to make you ashamed for the world; you know he was trying to
do good and only made the mistake through ignorance, not knowing the
right doses and Washington not there to help.  Don't cry so, dear, it
breaks my old heart to see you, and think I've brought this humiliation
on you and you so dear to me and so good.  I won't ever do it again,
indeed I won't; now be comforted, honey, that's a good child."

But when she wasn't on duty at the bedside the crying went on just the
same; then the mother would try to comfort her, and say:

"Don't cry, dear, he never meant any harm; it was all one of those
happens that you can't guard against when you are trying experiments,
that way.  You see I don't cry.  It's because I know him so well.
I could never look anybody in the face again if he had got into such an
amazing condition as that a-purpose; but bless you his intention was
pure and high, and that makes the act pure, though it was higher than was
necessary.  We're not humiliated, dear, he did it under a noble impulse
and we don't need to be ashamed.  There, don't cry any more, honey."

Thus, the old gentleman was useful to Sally, during several days, as an
explanation of her tearfulness.  She felt thankful to him for the shelter
he was affording her, but often said to herself, "It's a shame to let him
see in my cryings a reproach--as if he could ever do anything that could
make me reproach him!  But I can't confess; I've got to go on using him
for a pretext, he's the only one I've got in the world, and I do need one
so much."

As soon as Sellers was out again, and found that stacks of money had been
placed in bank for him and Hawkins by the Yankee, he said, "Now we'll
soon see who's the Claimant and who's the Authentic.  I'll just go over
there and warm up that House of Lords."  During the next few days he and
his wife were so busy with preparations for the voyage that Sally had all
the privacy she needed, and all the chance to cry that was good for her.
Then the old pair left for New York--and England.

Sally had also had a chance to do another thing.  That was, to make up
her mind that life was not worth living upon the present terms.  If she
must give up her impostor and die; doubtless she must submit; but might
she not lay her whole case before some disinterested person, first, and
see if there wasn't perhaps some saving way out of the matter?  She
turned this idea over in her mind a good deal.  In her first visit with
Hawkins after her parents were gone, the talk fell upon Tracy, and she
was impelled to set her case before the statesman and take his counsel.
So she poured out her heart, and he listened with painful solicitude.
She concluded, pleadingly, with--

"Don't tell me he is an impostor.  I suppose he is, but doesn't it look
to you as if he isn't?  You are cool, you know, and outside; and so,
maybe it can look to you as if he isn't one, when it can't to me.
Doesn't it look to you as if he isn't?  Couldn't you--can't it look to
you that way--for--for my sake?"

The poor man was troubled, but he felt obliged to keep in the
neighborhood of the truth.  He fought around the present detail a little
while, then gave it up and said he couldn't really see his way to
clearing Tracy.

"No," he said, "the truth is, he's an impostor."

"That is, you--you feel a little certain, but not entirely--oh, not
entirely, Mr. Hawkins!"

"It's a pity to have to say it--I do hate to say it, but I don't think
anything about it, I know he's an impostor."

"Oh, now, Mr.  Hawkins, you can't go that far.  A body can't really know
it, you know.  It isn't proved that he's not what he says he is."

Should he come out and make a clean breast of the whole wretched
business?  Yes--at least the most of it--it ought to be done.  So he set
his teeth and went at the matter with determination, but purposing to
spare the girl one pain--that of knowing that Tracy was a criminal.

"Now I am going to tell you a plain tale; one not pleasant for me to tell
or for you to hear, but we've got to stand it.  I know all about that
fellow; and I know he is no earl's son."

The girl's eyes flashed, and she said:

"I don't care a snap for that--go on!"

This was so wholly unexpected that it at once obstructed the narrative;
Hawkins was not even sure that he had heard aright.  He said:

"I don't know that I quite understand.  Do you mean to say that if he was
all right and proper otherwise you'd be indifferent about the earl part
of the business?"

"Absolutely."

"You'd be entirely satisfied with him and wouldn't care for his not being
an earl's son,--that being an earl's son wouldn't add any value to him?"

"Not the least value that I would care for.  Why, Mr.  Hawkins, I've
gotten over all that day-dreaming about earldoms and aristocracies and
all such nonsense and am become just a plain ordinary nobody and content
with it; and it is to him I owe my cure.  And as to anything being able
to add a value to him, nothing can do that.  He is the whole world to me,
just as he is; he comprehends all the values there are--then how can you
add one?"

"She's pretty far gone."  He said that to himself.  He continued, still
to himself, "I must change my plan again; I can't seem to strike one that
will stand the requirements of this most variegated emergency five
minutes on a stretch.  Without making this fellow a criminal, I believe
I will invent a name and a character for him calculated to disenchant
her.  If it fails to do it, then I'll know that the next rightest thing
to do will be to help her to her fate, poor thing, not hinder her."
Then he said aloud:

"Well, Gwendolen--"

"I want to be called Sally."

"I'm glad of it; I like it better, myself.  Well, then, I'll tell you
about this man Snodgrass."

"Snodgrass!  Is that his name?"

"Yes--Snodgrass.  The other's his nom de plume."

"It's hideous!"

"I know it is, but we can't help our names."

"And that is truly his real name--and not Howard Tracy?"

Hawkins answered, regretfully:

"Yes, it seems a pity."

The girl sampled the name musingly, once or twice--

"Snodgrass.  Snodgrass.  No, I could not endure that.  I could not get
used to it.  No, I should call him by his first name.  What is his first
name?"

"His--er--his initials are S. M."

"His initials?  I don't care anything about his initials.  I can't call
him by his initials.  What do they stand for?"

"Well, you see, his father was a physician, and he--he--well he was an
idolater of his profession, and he--well, he was a very eccentric man,
and--"

"What do they stand for!  What are you shuffling about?"

"They--well they stand for Spinal Meningitis.  His father being a phy--"

"I never heard such an infamous name!  Nobody can ever call a person
that--a person they love.  I wouldn't call an enemy by such a name.
It sounds like an epithet."  After a moment, she added with a kind of
consternation, "Why, it would be my name!  Letters would come with it
on."

"Yes--Mrs. Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass."

"Don't repeat it--don't; I can't bear it.  Was the father a lunatic?"

"No, that is not charged."

"I am glad of that, because that is transmissible.  What do you think was
the matter with him, then?"

"Well, I don't really know.  The family used to run a good deal to
idiots, and so, maybe--"

"Oh, there isn't any maybe about it.  This one was an idiot."

"Well, yes--he could have been.  He was suspected."

"Suspected!" said Sally, with irritation.  "Would one suspect there was
going to be a dark time if he saw the constellations fall out of the sky?
But that is enough about the idiot, I don't take any interest in idiots;
tell me about the son."

Very well, then, this one was the eldest, but not the favorite.  His
brother, Zylobalsamum--"

"Wait--give me a chance to realize that.  It is perfectly stupefying.
Zylo--what did you call it?"

"Zylobalsamum."

"I never heard such a name: It sounds like a disease.  Is it a disease?"

"No, I don't think it's a disease.  It's either Scriptural or--"

"Well, it's not Scriptural."

"Then it's anatomical.  I knew it was one or the other.  Yes, I remember,
now, it is anatomical.  It's a ganglion--a nerve centre--it is what is
called the zylobalsamum process."

"Well, go on; and if you come to any more of them, omit the names; they
make one feel so uncomfortable."

"Very well, then.  As I said, this one was not a favorite in the family,
and so he was neglected in every way, never sent to school, always
allowed to associate with the worst and coarsest characters, and so of
course he has grown up a rude, vulgar, ignorant, dissipated ruffian,
and--"

"He?  It's no such thing!  You ought to be more generous than to make
such a statement as that about a poor young stranger who--who--why, he is
the very opposite of that!  He is considerate, courteous, obliging,
modest, gentle, refined, cultivated-oh, for shame!  how can you say such
things about him?"

"I don't blame you, Sally--indeed I haven't a word of blame for you for
being blinded by--your affection--blinded to these minor defects which
are so manifest to others who--"

"Minor defects?  Do you call these minor defects?  What are murder and
arson, pray?"

"It is a difficult question to answer straight off--and of course
estimates of such things vary with environment.  With us, out our way,
they would not necessarily attract as much attention as with you, yet
they are often regarded with disapproval--"

"Murder and arson are regarded with disapproval?"

"Oh, frequently."

"With disapproval.  Who are those Puritans you are talking about?
But wait--how did you come to know so much about this family?  Where did
you get all this hearsay evidence?"

"Sally, it isn't hearsay evidence.  That is the serious part of it.
I knew that family--personally."

This was a surprise.

"You?  You actually knew them?"

"Knew Zylo, as we used to call him, and knew his father, Dr. Snodgrass.
I didn't know your own Snodgrass, but have had glimpses of him from time
to time, and I heard about him all the time.  He was the common talk, you
see, on account of his--"

"On account of his not being a house-burner or an assassin, I suppose.
That would have made him commonplace.  Where did you know these people?"

"In Cherokee Strip."

"Oh, how preposterous!  There are not enough people in Cherokee Strip to
give anybody a reputation, good or bad.  There isn't a quorum.  Why the
whole population consists of a couple of wagon loads of horse thieves."

Hawkins answered placidly--

"Our friend was one of those wagon loads."

Sally's eyes burned and her breath came quick and fast, but she kept a
fairly good grip on her anger and did not let it get the advantage of her
tongue.  The statesman sat still and waited for developments.  He was
content with his work.  It was as handsome a piece of diplomatic art as
he had ever turned out, he thought; and now, let the girl make her own
choice.  He judged she would let her spectre go; he hadn't a doubt of it
in fact; but anyway, let the choice be made, and he was ready to ratify
it and offer no further hindrance.

Meantime Sally had thought her case out and made up her mind.  To the
major's disappointment the verdict was against him.  Sally said:

"He has no friend but me, and I will not desert him now.  I will not
marry him if his moral character is bad; but if he can prove that it
isn't, I will--and he shall have the chance.  To me he seems utterly good
and dear; I've never seen anything about him that looked otherwise--
except, of course, his calling himself an earl's son.  Maybe that is only
vanity, and no real harm, when you get to the bottom of it.  I do not
believe he is any such person as you have painted him.  I want to see
him.  I want you to find him and send him to me.  I will implore him to
be honest with me, and tell me the whole truth, and not be afraid."

"Very well; if that is your decision I will do it.  But Sally, you know,
he's poor, and--"

"Oh, I don't care anything about that.  That's neither here nor there.
Will you bring him to me?"

"I'll do it.  When?--"

"Oh, dear, it's getting toward dark, now, and so you'll have to put it
off till morning.  But you will find him in the morning, won't you?
Promise."

"I'll have him here by daylight."

"Oh, now you're your own old self again--and lovelier than ever!"

"I couldn't ask fairer than that.  Good-bye, dear."

Sally mused a moment alone, then said earnestly, "I love him in spite of
his name!" and went about her affairs with a light heart.




CHAPTER XXV.

Hawkins went straight to the telegraph office and disburdened his
conscience.  He said to himself, "She's not going to give this galvanized
cadaver up, that's plain.  Wild horses can't pull her away from him.
I've done my share; it's for Sellers to take an innings, now."  So he
sent this message to New York:

"Come back.  Hire special train.  She's going to marry the materializee."

Meantime a note came to Rossmore Towers to say that the Earl of Rossmore
had just arrived from England, and would do himself the pleasure of
calling in the evening.  Sally said to herself, "It is a pity he didn't
stop in New York; but it's no matter; he can go up to-morrow and see my
father.  He has come over here to tomahawk papa, very likely--or buy out
his claim.  This thing would have excited me, a while back; but it has
only one interest for me now, and only one value.  I can say to--to--
Spine, Spiny, Spinal--I don't like any form of that name!--I can say to
him to-morrow, 'Don't try to keep it up any more, or I shall have to tell
you whom I have been talking with last night, and then you will be
embarrassed.'"

Tracy couldn't know he was to be invited for the morrow, or he might have
waited.  As it was, he was too miserable to wait any longer; for his last
hope--a letter--had failed him.  It was fully due to-day; it had not
come.  Had his father really flung him away?  It looked so.  It was not
like his father, but it surely looked so.  His father was a rather tough
nut, in truth, but had never been so with his son--still, this implacable
silence had a calamitous look.  Anyway, Tracy would go to the Towers and
--then what?  He didn't know; his head was tired out with thinking--
he wouldn't think about what he must do or say--let it all take care of
itself.  So that he saw Sally once more, he would be satisfied, happen
what might; he wouldn't care.

He hardly knew how he got to the Towers, or when.  He knew and cared for
only one thing--he was alone with Sally.  She was kind, she was gentle,
there was moisture in her eyes, and a yearning something in her face and
manner which she could not wholly hide--but she kept her distance.  They
talked.  Bye and bye she said--watching his downcast countenance out of
the corner of her eye--

"It's so lonesome--with papa and mamma gone.  I try to read, but I can't
seem to get interested in any book.  I try the newspapers, but they do
put such rubbish in them.  You take up a paper and start to read
something you thinks interesting, and it goes on and on and on about how
somebody--well, Dr. Snodgrass, for instance--"

Not a movement from Tracy, not the quiver of a muscle.  Sally was amazed
--what command of himself he must have!  Being disconcerted, she paused
so long that Tracy presently looked up wearily and said:

"Well?"

"Oh, I thought you were not listening.  Yes, it goes on and on about this
Doctor Snodgrass, till you are so tired, and then about his younger son--
the favorite son--Zylobalsamum Snodgrass--"

Not a sign from Tracy, whose head was drooping again.  What supernatural
self-possession!  Sally fixed her eye on him and began again, resolved to
blast him out of his serenity this time if she knew how to apply the
dynamite that is concealed in certain forms of words when those words are
properly loaded with unexpected meanings.

"And next it goes on and on and on about the eldest son--not the
favorite, this one--and how he is neglected in his poor barren boyhood,
and allowed to grow up unschooled, ignorant, coarse, vulgar, the comrade
of the community's scum, and become in his completed manhood a rude,
profane, dissipated ruffian--"

That head still drooped!  Sally rose, moved softly and solemnly a step or
two, and stood before Tracy--his head came slowly up, his meek eyes met
her intense ones--then she finished with deep impressiveness--

"--named Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass!"

Tracy merely exhibited signs of increased fatigue.  The girl was outraged
by this iron indifference and callousness, and cried out--

"What are you made of?"

"I?  Why?"

"Haven't you any sensitiveness?  Don't these things touch any poor
remnant of delicate feeling in you?"

"N--no," he said wonderingly, "they don't seem to.  Why should they?"

"O, dear me, how can you look so innocent, and foolish, and good, and
empty, and gentle, and all that, right in the hearing of such things as
those!  Look me in the eye--straight in the eye.  There, now then, answer
me without a flinch.  Isn't Doctor Snodgrass your father, and isn't
Zylobalsamum your brother," [here Hawkins was about to enter the room,
but changed his mind upon hearing these words, and elected for a walk
down town, and so glided swiftly away], "and isn't your name Spinal
Meningitis, and isn't your father a doctor and an idiot, like all the
family for generations, and doesn't he name all his children after
poisons and pestilences and abnormal anatomical eccentricities of the
human body?  Answer me, some way or somehow--and quick.  Why do you sit
there looking like an envelope without any address on it and see me going
mad before your face with suspense!"

"Oh, I wish I could do--do--I wish I could do something, anything that
would give you peace again and make you happy; but I know of nothing--
I know of no way.  I have never heard of these awful people before."

"What?  Say it again!"

"I have never--never in my life till now."

"Oh, you do look so honest when you say that!  It must be true--surely
you couldn't look that way, you wouldn't look that way if it were not
true--would you?"

"I couldn't and wouldn't.  It is true.  Oh, let us end this suffering--
take me back into your heart and confidence--"

"Wait--one more thing.  Tell me you told that falsehood out of mere
vanity and are sorry for it; that you're not expecting to ever wear the
coronet of an earl--"

"Truly I am cured--cured this very day--I am not expecting it!"

"O, now you are mine!  I've got you back in the beauty and glory of your
unsmirched poverty and your honorable obscurity, and nobody shall ever
take you from me again but the grave!  And if--"

"De earl of Rossmore, fum Englan'!"

"My father!"  The young man released the girl and hung his head.

The old gentleman stood surveying the couple--the one with a strongly
complimentary right eye, the other with a mixed expression done with the
left.  This is difficult, and not often resorted to.  Presently his face
relaxed into a kind of constructive gentleness, and he said to his son:

"Don't you think you could embrace me, too?"

The young man did it with alacrity.  "Then you are the son of an earl,
after all," said Sally, reproachfully.

"Yes, I--"

"Then I won't have you!"

"O, but you know--"

"No, I will not.  You've told me another fib."

"She's right.  Go away and leave us.  I want to talk with her."

Berkeley was obliged to go.  But he did not go far.  He remained on the
premises.  At midnight the conference between the old gentleman and the
young girl was still going blithely on, but it presently drew to a close,
and the former said:

"I came all the way over here to inspect you, my dear, with the general
idea of breaking off this match if there were two fools of you, but as
there's only one, you can have him if you'll take him."

"Indeed I will, then!  May I kiss you?"

"You may.  Thank you.  Now you shall have that privilege whenever you are
good."

Meantime Hawkins had long ago returned and slipped up into the
laboratory.  He was rather disconcerted to find his late invention,
Snodgrass, there.  The news was told him that the English Rossmore was
come,

--"and I'm his son, Viscount Berkeley, not Howard Tracy any more."

Hawkins was aghast.  He said:

"Good gracious, then you're dead!"

"Dead?"

"Yes you are--we've got your ashes."

"Hang those ashes, I'm tired of them; I'll give them to my father."

Slowly and painfully the statesman worked the truth into his head that
this was really a flesh and blood young man, and not the insubstantial
resurrection he and Sellers had so long supposed him to be.  Then he said
with feeling--

"I'm so glad; so glad on Sally's account, poor thing.  We took you for a
departed materialized bank thief from Tahlequah.  This will be a heavy
blow to Sellers."  Then he explained the whole matter to Berkeley, who
said:

"Well, the Claimant must manage to stand the blow, severe as it is.
But he'll get over the disappointment."

"Who--the colonel?  He'll get over it the minute he invents a new miracle
to take its place.  And he's already at it by this time.  But look here--
what do you suppose became of the man you've been representing all this
time?"

"I don't know.  I saved his clothes--it was all I could do.  I am afraid
he lost his life."

"Well, you must have found twenty or thirty thousand dollars in those
clothes, in money or certificates of deposit."

"No, I found only five hundred and a trifle.  I borrowed the trifle and
banked the five hundred."

"What'll we do about it?"

"Return it to the owner."

"It's easy said, but not easy to manage.  Let's leave it alone till we
get Sellers's advice.  And that reminds me.  I've got to run and meet
Sellers and explain who you are not and who you are, or he'll come
thundering in here to stop his daughter from marrying a phantom.  But--
suppose your father came over here to break off the match?"

"Well, isn't he down stairs getting acquainted with Sally?  That's all
safe."

So Hawkins departed to meet and prepare the Sellerses.

Rossmore Towers saw great times and late hours during the succeeding
week.  The two earls were such opposites in nature that they fraternized
at once.  Sellers said privately that Rossmore was the most extraordinary
character he had ever met--a man just made out of the condensed milk of
human kindness, yet with the ability to totally hide the fact from any
but the most practised character-reader; a man whose whole being was
sweetness, patience and charity, yet with a cunning so profound, an
ability so marvelous in the acting of a double part, that many a person
of considerable intelligence might live with him for centuries and never
suspect the presence in him of these characteristics.


Finally there was a quiet wedding at the Towers, instead of a big one at
the British embassy, with the militia and the fire brigades and the
temperance organizations on hand in torchlight procession, as at first
proposed by one of the earls.  The art-firm and Barrow were present at
the wedding, and the tinner and Puss had been invited, but the tinner was
ill and Puss was nursing him--for they were engaged.

The Sellerses were to go to England with their new allies for a brief
visit, but when it was time to take the train from Washington,
the colonel was missing.

Hawkins was going as far as New York with the party, and said he would
explain the matter on the road.

The explanation was in a letter left by the colonel in Hawkins's hands.
In it he promised to join Mrs. Sellers later, in England, and then went
on to say:

The truth is, my dear Hawkins, a mighty idea has been born to me within
the hour, and I must not even stop to say goodbye to my dear ones.
A man's highest duty takes precedence of all minor ones, and must be
attended to with his best promptness and energy, at whatsoever cost to
his affections or his convenience.  And first of all a man's duties is
his duty to his own honor--he must keep that spotless.  Mine is
threatened.  When I was feeling sure of my imminent future solidity,
I forwarded to the Czar of Russia--perhaps prematurely--an offer for the
purchase of Siberia, naming a vast sum.  Since then an episode has warned
me that the method by which I was expecting to acquire this money--
materialization upon a scale of limitless magnitude--is marred by a taint
of temporary uncertainty.  His imperial majesty may accept my offer at
any moment.  If this should occur now, I should find myself painfully
embarrassed, in fact financially inadequate.  I could not take Siberia.
This would become known, and my credit would suffer.

Recently my private hours have been dark indeed, but the sun shines main,
now; I see my way; I shall be able to meet my obligation, and without
having to ask an extension of the stipulated time, I think.  This grand
new idea of mine--the sublimest I have ever conceived, will save me
whole, I am sure.  I am leaving for San Francisco this moment, to test
it, by the help of the great Lick telescope.  Like all of my more notable
discoveries and inventions, it is based upon hard, practical scientific
laws; all other bases are unsound and hence untrustworthy.  In brief,
then, I have conceived the stupendous idea of reorganizing the climates
of the earth according to the desire of the populations interested.
That is to say, I will furnish climates to order, for cash or negotiable
paper, taking the old climates in part payment, of course, at a fair
discount, where they are in condition to be repaired at small cost and
let out for hire to poor and remote communities not able to afford a good
climate and not caring for an expensive one for mere display.  My studies
have convinced me that the regulation of climates and the breeding of new
varieties at will from the old stock is a feasible thing.  Indeed I am
convinced that it has been done before; done in prehistoric times by now
forgotten and unrecorded civilizations.  Everywhere I find hoary
evidences of artificial manipulation of climates in bygone times.  Take
the glacial period.  Was that produced by accident?  Not at all; it was
done for money.  I have a thousand proofs of it, and will some day reveal
them.

I will confide to you an outline of my idea.  It is to utilize the spots
on the sun--get control of them, you understand, and apply the stupendous
energies which they wield to beneficent purposes in the reorganizing of
our climates.  At present they merely make trouble and do harm in the
evoking of cyclones and other kinds of electric storms; but once under
humane and intelligent control this will cease and they will become a
boon to man.

I have my plan all mapped out, whereby I hope and expect to acquire
complete and perfect control of the sun-spots, also details of the method
whereby I shall employ the same commercially; but I will not venture to
go into particulars before the patents shall have been issued.  I shall
hope and expect to sell shop-rights to the minor countries at a
reasonable figure and supply a good business article of climate to the
great empires at special rates, together with fancy brands for
coronations, battles and other great and particular occasions.  There are
billions of money in this enterprise, no expensive plant is required, and
I shall begin to realize in a few days--in a few weeks at furthest.
I shall stand ready to pay cash for Siberia the moment it is delivered,
and thus save my honor and my credit.  I am confident of this.

I would like you to provide a proper outfit and start north as soon as I
telegraph you, be it night or be it day.  I wish you to take up all the
country stretching away from the north pole on all sides for many degrees
south, and buy Greenland and Iceland at the best figure you can get now
while they are cheap.  It is my intention to move one of the tropics up
there and transfer the frigid zone to the equator.  I will have the
entire Arctic Circle in the market as a summer resort next year, and will
use the surplusage of the old climate, over and above what can be
utilized on the equator, to reduce the temperature of opposition resorts.
But I have said enough to give you an idea of the prodigious nature of my
scheme and the feasible and enormously profitable character of it.
I shall join all you happy people in England as soon as I shall have sold
out some of my principal climates and arranged with the Czar about
Siberia.

Meantime, watch for a sign from me.  Eight days from now, we shall be
wide asunder; for I shall be on the border of the Pacific, and you far
out on the Atlantic, approaching England.  That day, if I am alive and my
sublime discovery is proved and established, I will send you greeting,
and my messenger shall deliver it where you are, in the solitudes of the
sea; for I will waft a vast sun-spot across the disk like drifting smoke,
and you will know it for my love-sign, and will say "Mulberry Sellers
throws us a kiss across the universe."






APPENDIX.

WEATHER FOR USE IN THIS BOOK.

Selected from the Best Authorities.

A brief though violent thunderstorm which had raged over the city was
passing away; but still, though the rain had ceased more than an hour
before, wild piles of dark and coppery clouds, in which a fierce and
rayless glow was laboring, gigantically overhung the grotesque and
huddled vista of dwarf houses, while in the distance, sheeting high over
the low, misty confusion of gables and chimneys, spread a pall of dead,
leprous blue, suffused with blotches of dull, glistening yellow, and with
black plague-spots of vapor floating and faint lightnings crinkling on
its surface.  Thunder, still muttering in the close and sultry air, kept
the scared dwellers in the street within, behind their closed shutters;
and all deserted, cowed, dejected, squalid, like poor, stupid, top-heavy
things that had felt the wrath of the summer tempest, stood the drenched
structures on either side of the narrow and crooked way, ghastly and
picturesque, under the giant canopy.  Rain dripped wretchedly in slow
drops of melancholy sound from their projecting eaves upon the broken
flagging, lay there in pools or trickled into the swollen drains, where
the fallen torrent sullenly gurgled on its way to the river.
                              "The Brazen Android."-W.  D.  O'Connor.


          The fiery mid-March sun a moment hung
          Above the bleak Judean wilderness;
          Then darkness swept upon us, and 't was night.
                    "Easter-Eve at Kerak-Moab."--Clinton Scollard.


The quick-coming winter twilight was already at hand.  Snow was again
falling, sifting delicately down, incidentally as it were.
                    "Felicia."  Fanny N. D. Murfree.


Merciful heavens!  The whole west, from right to left, blazes up with a
fierce light, and next instant the earth reels and quivers with the awful
shock of ten thousand batteries of artillery.  It is the signal for the
Fury to spring--for a thousand demons to scream and shriek--for
innumerable serpents of fire to writhe and light up the blackness.

Now the rain falls--now the wind is let loose with a terrible shriek--now
the lightning is so constant that the eyes burn, and the thunder-claps
merge into an awful roar, as did the 800 cannon at Gettysburg.  Crash!
Crash!  Crash!  It is the cottonwood trees falling to earth.  Shriek!
Shriek!  Shriek!  It is the Demon racing along the plain and uprooting
even the blades of grass.  Shock!  Shock!  Shock!  It is the Fury
flinging his fiery bolts into the bosom of the earth.--
                    "The Demon and the Fury."  M. Quad.


Away up the gorge all diurnal fancies trooped into the wide liberties of
endless luminous vistas of azure sunlit mountains beneath the shining
azure heavens.  The sky, looking down in deep blue placidities, only here
and there smote the water to azure emulations of its tint.--
                    "In the Stranger's Country." Charles Egbert Craddock.


There was every indication of a dust-storm, though the sun still shone
brilliantly.  The hot wind had become wild and rampant.  It was whipping
up the sandy coating of the plain in every direction.  High in the air
were seen whirling spires and cones of sand--a curious effect against the
deep-blue sky.  Below, puffs of sand were breaking out of the plain in
every direction, as though the plain were alive with invisible horsemen.
These sandy cloudlets were instantly dissipated by the wind; it was the
larger clouds that were lifted whole into the air, and the larger clouds
of sand were becoming more and more the rule.

Alfred's eye, quickly scanning the horizon, descried the roof of the
boundary-rider's hut still gleaming in the sunlight.  He remembered the
hut well.  It could not be farther than four miles, if as much as that,
from this point of the track.  He also knew these dust-storms of old;
Bindarra was notorious for them: Without thinking twice, Alfred put
spurs to his horse and headed for the hut.  Before he had ridden half the
distance the detached clouds of sand banded together in one dense
whirlwind, and it was only owing to his horse's instinct that he did not
ride wide of the hut altogether; for during the last half-mile he never
saw the hut, until its outline loomed suddenly over his horse's ears; and
by then the sun was invisible.--
                    "A Bride from the Bush."


It rained forty days and forty nights.--Genesis.


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The American Claimant
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY

Translated from the original MS.

by Mark Twain



[NOTE.--I translated a portion of this diary some years ago, and
a friend of mine printed a few copies in an incomplete form, but
the public never got them.  Since then I have deciphered some more
of Adam's hieroglyphics, and think he has now become sufficiently
important as a public character to justify this publication.--M. T.]




Monday

This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way.
It is always hanging around and following me about.  I don't like
this; I am not used to company.  I wish it would stay with the
other animals.  Cloudy to-day, wind in the east; think we shall
have rain....  Where did I get that word?...  I remember now
--the new creature uses it.

Tuesday

Been examining the great waterfall.  It is the finest thing on the
estate, I think.  The new creature calls it Niagara Falls--why,
I am sure I do not know.  Says it looks like Niagara Falls.  That
is not a reason; it is mere waywardness and imbecility.  I get no
chance to name anything myself.  The new creature names everything
that comes along, before I can get in a protest.  And always that
same pretext is offered--it looks like the thing.  There is the
dodo, for instance.  Says the moment one looks at it one sees at
a glance that it "looks like a dodo."  It will have to keep that
name, no doubt.  It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no
good, anyway.  Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than I do.

Wednesday

Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to
myself in peace.  The new creature intruded.  When I tried to put
it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it
away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of
the other animals make when they are in distress.  I wish it would
not talk; it is always talking.  That sounds like a cheap fling
at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so.  I have never
heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound
intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming
solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note.  And this new
sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my
ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only
to sounds that are more or less distant from me.

Friday

The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do.  I
had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty
--GARDEN-OF-EDEN.  Privately, I continue to call it that, but not
any longer publicly.  The new creature says it is all woods and
rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden.
Says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a
park.  Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named
--NIAGARA FALLS PARK.  This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to
me.  And already there is a sign up:

                         KEEP OFF
                         THE GRASS

My life is not as happy as it was.

Saturday

The new creature eats too much fruit.  We are going to run short,
most likely.  "We" again--that is its word; mine too, now, from
hearing it so much.  Good deal of fog this morning.  I do not go
out in the fog myself.  The new creature does.  It goes out in
all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet.  And talks.
It used to be so pleasant and quiet here.

Sunday

Pulled through.  This day is getting to be more and more trying.
It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest.  I
already had six of them per week, before.  This morning found the
new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.

Monday

The new creature says its name is Eve.  That is all right, I have
no objections.  Says it is to call it by when I want it to come.
I said it was superfluous, then.  The word evidently raised me in
its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word, and will bear
repetition.  It says it is not an It, it is a She.  This is probably
doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me
if she would but go by herself and not talk.

Tuesday

She has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive
signs:

THIS WAY TO THE WHIRLPOOL.

THIS WAY TO GOAT ISLAND.

CAVE OF THE WINDS THIS WAY.

She says this park would make a tidy summer resort, if there was
any custom for it.  Summer resort--another invention of hers--just
words, without any meaning.  What is a summer resort? But it is
best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining.

Friday

She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls.  What
harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder.  I wonder why.  I have
always done it--always liked the plunge, and the excitement, and
the coolness.  I supposed it was what the Falls were for.  They
have no other use that I can see, and they must have been made for
something.  She says they were only made for scenery--like the
rhinoceros and the mastodon.

I went over the Falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her.  Went
over in a tub--still not satisfactory.  Swam the Whirlpool and the
Rapids in a fig-leaf suit.  It got much damaged.  Hence, tedious
complaints about my extravagance.  I am too much hampered here.
What I need is change of scene.

Saturday

I escaped last Tuesday night, and travelled two days, and built
me another shelter, in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks
as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which
she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise
again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with.
I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again,
when occasion offers.  She engages herself in many foolish things:
among others, trying to study out why the animals called lions and
tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of
teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each
other.  This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each
other, and that would introduce what, as I understand it, is called
"death;" and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the
Park.  Which is a pity, on some accounts.

Sunday

Pulled through.

Monday

I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest
up from the weariness of Sunday.  It seems a good idea....  She
has been climbing that tree again.  Clodded her out of it.  She
said nobody was looking.  Seems to consider that a sufficient
justification for chancing any dangerous thing.  Told her that.
The word justification moved her admiration--and envy too, I
thought.  It is a good word.

Thursday

She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body.  This
is at least doubtful, if not more than that.  I have not missed
any rib....  She is in much trouble about the buzzard; says
grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks
it was intended to live on decayed flesh.  The buzzard must get
along the best it can with what is provided.  We cannot overturn
the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard.

Saturday

She fell in the pond yesterday, when she was looking at herself
in it, which she is always doing.  She nearly strangled, and said
it was most uncomfortable.  This made her sorry for the creatures
which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to
fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when
they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to
her, as she is such a numskull anyway; so she got a lot of them
out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep
warm, but I have noticed them now and then all day, and I don't
see that they are any happier there than they were before, only
quieter.  When night comes I shall throw them out-doors.  I will
not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant
to lie among when a person hasn't anything on.

Sunday

Pulled through.

Tuesday

She has taken up with a snake now.  The other animals are glad,
for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them;
and I am glad, because the snake talks, and this enables me to
get a rest.

Friday

She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and
says the result will be a great and fine and noble education.  I
told her there would be another result, too--it would introduce
death into the world.  That was a mistake--it had been better to
keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea--she could
save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent
lions and tigers.  I advised her to keep away from the tree.  She
said she wouldn't.  I foresee trouble.  Will emigrate.

Wednesday

I have had a variegated time.  I escaped that night, and rode a
horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear out of
the Park and hide in some other country before the trouble should
begin; but it was not to be.  About an hour after sunup, as I was
riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were
grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their
wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises,
and in one moment the plain was in a frantic commotion and every
beast was destroying its neighbor.  I knew what it meant--Eve had
eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world....  The
tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when I ordered them to
desist,  and they would even have eaten me if I had stayed--which
I didn't, but went away in much haste....  I found this place,
outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but
she has found me out.  Found me out, and has named the place
Tonawanda--says it looks like that.  In fact, I was not sorry she
came, for there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some
of those apples.  I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry.  It
was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real
force except when one is well fed....  She came curtained in
boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she meant
by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she
tittered and blushed.  I had never seen a person titter and blush
before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic.  She said I
would soon know how it was myself.  This was correct.  Hungry as
I was, I laid down the apple half eaten--certainly the best one I
ever saw, considering the lateness of the season--and arrayed
myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her
with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not
make such a spectacle of herself.  She did it, and after this we
crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected
some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper
for public occasions.  They are uncomfortable, it is true, but
stylish, and that is the main point about clothes.  ...  I find
she is a good deal of a companion.  I see I should be lonesome and
depressed without her, now that I have lost my property.  Another
thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter.
She will be useful.  I will superintend.

Ten Days Later

She accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with
apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that
the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts.  I said I
was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts.  She said
the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term
meaning an aged and mouldy joke.  I turned pale at that, for I
have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could
have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they
were new when I made them.  She asked me if I had made one just
at the time of the catastrophe.  I was obliged to admit that I had
made one to myself, though not aloud.  It was this.  I was thinking
about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful it is to see
that vast body of water tumble down there!" Then in an instant a
bright thought flashed into my head, and I let it fly, saying, "It
would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up there!"--and I
was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature
broke loose in war and death, and I had to flee for my life.
"There," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the Serpent
mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, and
said it was coeval with the creation."  Alas, I am indeed to blame.
Would that I were not witty; oh, would that I had never had that
radiant thought!

Next Year

We have named it Cain.  She caught it while I was up country
trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber
a couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four,
she isn't certain which.  It resembles us in some ways, and may
be a relation.  That is what she thinks, but this is an error,
in my judgment.  The difference in size warrants the conclusion
that it is a different and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps,
though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged
in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the
experiment to determine the matter.  I still think it is a fish,
but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have
it to try.  I do not understand this.  The coming of the creature
seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable
about experiments.  She thinks more of it than she does of any of
the other animals, but is not able to explain why.  Her mind is
disordered--everything shows it.  Sometimes she carries the fish
in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to
the water.  At such times the water comes out of the places in
her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back
and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays
sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways.  I have never seen her
do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly.  She
used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them,
before we lost our property; but it was only play; she never took
on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them.

Sunday

She doesn't work Sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes
to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to
amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh.
I have not seen a fish before that could laugh.  This makes me
doubt....  I have come to like Sunday myself.  Superintending
all the week tires a body so.  There ought to be more Sundays.
In the old days they were tough, but now they come handy.

Wednesday

It isn't a fish.  I cannot quite make out what it is.  It makes
curious, devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo"
when it is.  It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not
a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop;
it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a
fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim
or not.  It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its
feet up.  I have not seen any other animal do that before.  I said
I believed it was an enigma, but she only admired the word without
understanding it.  In my judgment it is either an enigma or some
kind of a bug.  If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its
arrangements are.  I never had a thing perplex me so.

Three Months Later

The perplexity augments instead of diminishing.  I sleep but little.
It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs
now.  Yet it differs from the other four-legged animals in that
its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the
main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air,
and this is not attractive.  It is built much as we are, but its
method of travelling shows that it is not of our breed.  The short
front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is of the kangaroo
family, but it is a marked variation of the species, since the
true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does.  Still, it is a
curious and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued before.
As I discovered it, I have felt justified in securing the credit
of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called
it Kangaroorum Adamiensis....  It must have been a young one
when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since.  It must be five
times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented is able
to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made
at first.  Coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary
effect.  For this reason I discontinued the system.  She reconciles
it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously
told it she wouldn't give it.  As already observed, I was not at
home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods.
It seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so,
for I have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another
one to add to my collection, and for this one to play with; for
surely then it would be quieter, and we could tame it more easily.
But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no
tracks.  It has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself;
therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? I have
set a dozen traps, but they do no good.  I catch all small animals
except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of
curiosity, I think, to see what the milk is there for.  They never
drink it.

Three Months Later

The kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and
perplexing.  I never knew one to be so long getting its growth.
It has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly
like our hair, except that it is much finer and softer, and instead
of being black is red.  I am like to lose my mind over the capricious
and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak.
If I could catch another one--but that is hopeless; it is a new
variety, and the only sample; this is plain.  But I caught a true
kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome,
would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any
animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its
forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways
or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among friends;
but it was a mistake--it went into such fits at the sight of the
kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen one before.  I
pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing I can do
to make it happy.  If I could tame it--but that is out of the
question; the more I try, the worse I seem to make it.  It grieves
me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and
passion.  I wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it.  That
seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right.  It might
be lonelier than ever; for since I cannot find another one, how
could it?

Five Months Later

It is not a kangaroo.  No, for it supports itself by holding to
her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then
falls down.  It is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has
no tail--as yet--and no fur, except on its head.  It still keeps
on growing--that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their
growth earlier than this.  Bears are dangerous--since our
catastrophe--and I shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling
about the place much longer without a muzzle on.  I have offered
to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no
good--she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks,
I think.  She was not like this before she lost her mind.

A Fortnight Later

I examined its mouth.  There is no danger yet; it has only one
tooth.  It has no tail yet.  It makes more noise now than it ever
did before--and mainly at night.  I have moved out.  But I shall
go over, mornings, to breakfast, and to see if it has more teeth.
If it gets a mouthful of teeth, it will be time for it to go, tail
or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be
dangerous.

Four Months Later

I have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that
she calls Buffalo; I don't know why, unless it is because there
are not any buffaloes there.  Meantime the bear has learned to
paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa"
and "momma."  It is certainly a new species.  This resemblance to
words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose
or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and
is a thing which no other bear can do.  This imitation of speech,
taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of
tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear.  The
further study of it will be exceedingly interesting.  Meantime I
will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the North and
make an exhaustive search.  There must certainly be another one
somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company
of its own species.  I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this
one first.

Three Months Later

It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no success.  In
the mean time, without stirring from the home estate, she has
caught another one!  I never saw such luck.  I might have hunted
these woods a hundred years, I never should have run across that
thing.

Next Day

I have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is
perfectly plain that they are the same breed.  I was going to stuff
one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it
for some reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though
I think it is a mistake.  It would be an irreparable loss to science
if they should get away.  The old one is tamer than it was, and
can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt,
from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty
in a highly developed degree.  I shall be astonished if it turns
out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought not to be astonished,
for it has already been everything else it could think of, since
those first days when it was a fish.  The new one is as ugly now
as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat
complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it.  She
calls it Abel.

Ten Years Later

They are boys; we found it out long ago.  It was their coming in
that small, immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it.
There are some girls now.  Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had
stayed a bear it would have improved him.  After all these years,
I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better
to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.
At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry
to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life.  Blessed
be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to
know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit!


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Extracts From Adam's Diary
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

by Mark Twain



I

I have committed sins, of course; but I have not committed enough of them
to entitle me to the punishment of reduction to the bread and water of
ordinary literature during six years when I might have been living on the
fat diet spread for the righteous in Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley,
if I had been justly dealt with.

During these six years I have been living a life of peaceful ignorance.
I was not aware that Shelley's first wife was unfaithful to him, and that
that was why he deserted her and wiped the stain from his sensitive honor
by entering into soiled relations with Godwin's young daughter.  This was
all new to me when I heard it lately, and was told that the proofs of it
were in this book, and that this book's verdict is accepted in the girls'
colleges of America and its view taught in their literary classes.

In each of these six years multitudes of young people in our country have
arrived at the Shelley-reading age.  Are these six multitudes
unacquainted with this life of Shelley?  Perhaps they are; indeed, one
may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them are.  To these, then, I
address myself, in the hope that some account of this romantic historical
fable and the fabulist's manner of constructing and adorning it may
interest them.

First, as to its literary style.  Our negroes in America have several
ways of entertaining themselves which are not found among the whites
anywhere.  Among these inventions of theirs is one which is particularly
popular with them.  It is a competition in elegant deportment.  They hire
a hall and bank the spectators' seats in rising tiers along the two
sides, leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free.  A cake is
provided as a prize for the winner in the competition, and a bench of
experts in deportment is appointed to award it.  Sometimes there are as
many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators.
One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in
what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the
vacant central space and back again with that multitude of critical eyes
on them.  All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws
into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he throws
into his countenance.  He may use all the helps he can devise: watch-
chain to twirl with his fingers, cane to do graceful things with, snowy
handkerchief to flourish and get artful effects out of, shiny new
stovepipe hat to assist in his courtly bows; and the colored lady may
have a fan to work up her effects with, and smile over and blush behind,
and she may add other helps, according to her judgment.  When the review
by individual detail is over, a grand review of all the contestants in
procession follows, with all the airs and graces and all the bowings and
smirkings on exhibition at once, and this enables the bench of experts to
make the necessary comparisons and arrive at a verdict.  The successful
competitor gets the prize which I have before mentioned, and an abundance
of applause and envy along with it.  The negroes have a name for this
grave deportment-tournament; a name taken from the prize contended for.
They call it a Cakewalk.

This Shelley biography is a literary cake-walk.  The ordinary forms of
speech are absent from it.  All the pages, all the paragraphs, walk by
sedately, elegantly, not to say mincingly, in their Sunday-best, shiny
and sleek, perfumed, and with boutonnieres in their button-holes; it is
rare to find even a chance sentence that has forgotten to dress.  If the
book wishes to tell us that Mary Godwin, child of sixteen, had known
afflictions, the fact saunters forth in this nobby outfit: "Mary was
herself not unlearned in the lore of pain"--meaning by that that she had
not always traveled on asphalt; or, as some authorities would frame it,
that she had "been there herself," a form which, while preferable to the
book's form, is still not to be recommended.  If the book wishes to tell
us that Harriet Shelley hired a wet-nurse, that commonplace fact gets
turned into a dancing-master, who does his professional bow before us in
pumps and knee-breeches, with his fiddle under one arm and his crush-hat
under the other, thus: "The beauty of Harriet's motherly relation to her
babe was marred in Shelley's eyes by the introduction into his house of a
hireling nurse to whom was delegated the mother's tenderest office."

This is perhaps the strangest book that has seen the light since
Frankenstein.  Indeed, it is a Frankenstein itself; a Frankenstein with
the original infirmity supplemented by a new one; a Frankenstein with the
reasoning faculty wanting.  Yet it believes it can reason, and is always
trying.  It is not content to leave a mountain of fact standing in the
clear sunshine, where the simplest reader can perceive its form, its
details, and its relation to the rest of the landscape, but thinks it
must help him examine it and understand it; so its drifting mind settles
upon it with that intent, but always with one and the same result: there
is a change of temperature and the mountain is hid in a fog.  Every time
it sets up a premise and starts to reason from it, there is a surprise in
store for the reader.  It is strangely nearsighted, cross-eyed, and
purblind.  Sometimes when a mastodon walks across the field of its vision
it takes it for a rat; at other times it does not see it at all.

The materials of this biographical fable are facts, rumors, and poetry.
They are connected together and harmonized by the help of suggestion,
conjecture, innuendo, perversion, and semi-suppression.

The fable has a distinct object in view, but this object is not
acknowledged in set words.  Percy Bysshe Shelley has done something which
in the case of other men is called a grave crime; it must be shown that
in his case it is not that, because he does not think as other men do
about these things.

Ought not that to be enough, if the fabulist is serious?  Having proved
that a crime is not a crime, was it worth while to go on and fasten the
responsibility of a crime which was not a crime upon somebody else?  What
is the use of hunting down and holding to bitter account people who are
responsible for other people's innocent acts?

Still, the fabulist thinks it a good idea to do that.  In his view
Shelley's first wife, Harriet, free of all offense as far as we have
historical facts for guidance, must be held unforgivably responsible for
her husband's innocent act in deserting her and taking up with another
woman.

Any one will suspect that this task has its difficulties.  Any one will
divine that nice work is necessary here, cautious work, wily work, and
that there is entertainment to be had in watching the magician do it.
There is indeed entertainment in watching him.  He arranges his facts,
his rumors, and his poems on his table in full view of the house, and
shows you that everything is there--no deception, everything fair and
above board.  And this is apparently true, yet there is a defect, for
some of his best stock is hid in an appendix-basket behind the door, and
you do not come upon it until the exhibition is over and the enchantment
of your mind accomplished--as the magician thinks.

There is an insistent atmosphere of candor and fairness about this book
which is engaging at first, then a little burdensome, then a trifle
fatiguing, then progressively suspicious, annoying, irritating, and
oppressive.  It takes one some little time to find out that phrases which
seem intended to guide the reader aright are there to mislead him; that
phrases which seem intended to throw light are there to throw darkness;
that phrases which seem intended to interpret a fact are there to
misinterpret it; that phrases which seem intended to forestall prejudice
are there to create it; that phrases which seem antidotes are poisons in
disguise.  The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelley's guilt
in that one episode which disfigures his otherwise superlatively lofty
and beautiful life; but the historian's careful and methodical
misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wife's
shoulders as he persuades himself.  The few meagre facts of Harriet
Shelley's life, as furnished by the book, acquit her of offense; but by
calling in the forbidden helps of rumor, gossip, conjecture, insinuation,
and innuendo he destroys her character and rehabilitates Shelley's--as he
believes.  And in truth his unheroic work has not been barren of the
results he aimed at; as witness the assertion made to me that girls in
the colleges of America are taught that Harriet Shelley put a stain upon
her husband's honor, and that that was what stung him into repurifying
himself by deserting her and his child and entering into scandalous
relations with a school-girl acquaintance of his.

If that assertion is true, they probably use a reduction of this work in
those colleges, maybe only a sketch outlined from it.  Such a thing as
that could be harmful and misleading.  They ought to cast it out and put
the whole book in its place.  It would not deceive.  It would not deceive
the janitor.

All of this book is interesting on account of the sorcerer's methods and
the attractiveness of some of his characters and the repulsiveness of the
rest, but no part of it is so much so as are the chapters wherein he
tries to think he thinks he sets forth the causes which led to Shelley's
desertion of his wife in 1814.

Harriet Westbrook was a school-girl sixteen years old.  Shelley was
teeming with advanced thought.  He believed that Christianity was a
degrading and selfish superstition, and he had a deep and sincere desire
to rescue one of his sisters from it.  Harriet was impressed by his
various philosophies and looked upon him as an intellectual wonder--
which indeed he was.  He had an idea that she could give him valuable
help in his scheme regarding his sister; therefore he asked her to
correspond with him.  She was quite willing.  Shelley was not thinking of
love, for he was just getting over a passion for his cousin, Harriet
Grove, and just getting well steeped in one for Miss Hitchener, a school-
teacher.  What might happen to Harriet Westbrook before the letter-
writing was ended did not enter his mind.  Yet an older person could have
made a good guess at it, for in person Shelley was as beautiful as an
angel, he was frank, sweet, winning, unassuming, and so rich in
unselfishness, generosities, and magnanimities that he made his whole
generation seem poor in these great qualities by comparison.  Besides,
he was in distress.  His college had expelled him for writing an
atheistical pamphlet and afflicting the reverend heads of the university
with it, his rich father and grandfather had closed their purses against
him, his friends were cold.  Necessarily, Harriet fell in love with him;
and so deeply, indeed, that there was no way for Shelley to save her from
suicide but to marry her.  He believed himself to blame for this state of
things, so the marriage took place.  He was pretty fairly in love with
Harriet, although he loved Miss Hitchener better.  He wrote and explained
the case to Miss Hitchener after the wedding, and he could not have been
franker or more naive and less stirred up about the circumstance if the
matter in issue had been a commercial transaction involving thirty-five
dollars.

Shelley was nineteen.  He was not a youth, but a man.  He had never had
any youth.  He was an erratic and fantastic child during eighteen years,
then he stepped into manhood, as one steps over a door-sill.  He was
curiously mature at nineteen in his ability to do independent thinking
on the deep questions of life and to arrive at sharply definite decisions
regarding them, and stick to them--stick to them and stand by them at
cost of bread, friendships, esteem, respect, and approbation.

For the sake of his opinions he was willing to sacrifice all these
valuable things, and did sacrifice them; and went on doing it, too, when
he could at any moment have made himself rich and supplied himself with
friends and esteem by compromising with his father, at the moderate
expense of throwing overboard one or two indifferent details of his cargo
of principles.

He and Harriet eloped to Scotland and got married.  They took lodgings in
Edinburgh of a sort answerable to their purse, which was about empty, and
there their life was a happy, one and grew daily more so.  They had only
themselves for company, but they needed no additions to it.  They were as
cozy and contented as birds in a nest.  Harriet sang evenings or read
aloud; also she studied and tried to improve her mind, her husband
instructing her in Latin.  She was very beautiful, she was modest, quiet,
genuine, and, according to her husband's testimony, she had no fine lady
airs or aspirations about her.  In Matthew Arnold's judgment, she was
"a pleasing figure."

The pair remained five weeks in Edinburgh, and then took lodgings in
York, where Shelley's college mate, Hogg, lived.  Shelley presently ran
down to London, and Hogg took this opportunity to make love to the young
wife.  She repulsed him, and reported the fact to her husband when he got
back.  It seems a pity that Shelley did not copy this creditable conduct
of hers some time or other when under temptation, so that we might have
seen the author of his biography hang the miracle in the skies and squirt
rainbows at it.

At the end of the first year of marriage--the most trying year for any
young couple, for then the mutual failings are coming one by one to
light, and the necessary adjustments are being made in pain and
tribulation--Shelley was able to recognize that his marriage venture had
been a safe one.  As we have seen, his love for his wife had begun in a
rather shallow way and with not much force, but now it was become deep
and strong, which entitles his wife to a broad credit mark, one may
admit.  He addresses a long and loving poem to her, in which both passion
and worship appear:

Exhibit A

                                        "O thou
          Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path
          Which this lone spirit travelled,
          . . . . . . . . . . . . .
          . . .  wilt thou not turn
          Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me.
          Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven
          And Heaven is Earth?
           . . . . . . . .
          Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,
          But ours shall not be mortal."


Shelley also wrote a sonnet to her in August of this same year in
celebration of her birthday:

Exhibit B

         "Ever as now with hove and Virtue's glow
          May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,
          Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow
          Which force from mine such quick and warm return."


Was the girl of seventeen glad and proud and happy?  We may conjecture
that she was.

That was the year 1812.  Another year passed still happily, still
successfully--a child was born in June, 1813, and in September, three
months later, Shelley addresses a poem to this child, Ianthe, in which he
points out just when the little creature is most particularly dear to
him:

Exhibit C

          "Dearest when most thy tender traits express
          The image of thy mother's loveliness."


Up to this point the fabulist counsel for Shelley and prosecutor of his
young wife has had easy sailing, but now his trouble begins, for Shelley
is getting ready to make some unpleasant history for himself, and it will
be necessary to put the blame of it on the wife.

Shelley had made the acquaintance of a charming gray-haired, young-
hearted Mrs. Boinville, whose face "retained a certain youthful beauty";
she lived at Bracknell, and had a young daughter named Cornelia Turner,
who was equipped with many fascinations.  Apparently these people were
sufficiently sentimental.  Hogg says of Mrs. Boinville:

          "The greater part of her associates were odious.  I generally
          found there two or three sentimental young butchers, an
          eminently philosophical tinker, and several very
          unsophisticated medical practitioners or medical students, all
          of low origin and vulgar and offensive manners.  They sighed,
          turned up their eyes, retailed philosophy, such as it was,"
          etc.

Shelley moved to Bracknell, July 27th (this is still 1813) purposely to
be near this unwholesome prairie-dogs' nest.  The fabulist says: "It was
the entrance into a world more amiable and exquisite than he had yet
known."

"In this acquaintance the attraction was mutual"--and presently it grew
to be very mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they
got to studying the Italian poets together.  Shelley, "responding like a
tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment," had his
chance here.  It took only four days for Cornelia's attractions to begin
to dim Harriet's.  Shelley arrived on the 27th of July; on the 31st he
wrote a sonnet to Harriet in which "one detects already the little rift
in the lover's lute which had seemed to be healed or never to have gaped
at all when the later and happier sonnet to Ianthe was written"--in
September, we remember:

Exhibit D

          "EVENING.  TO HARRIET

          "O thou bright Sun!  Beneath the dark blue line
          Of western distance that sublime descendest,
          And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,
          Thy million hues to every vapor lendest,
          And over cobweb, lawn, and grove, and stream
          Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,
          Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor bright,
          Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream;
          What gazer now with astronomic eye
          Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?
          Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly
          The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,
          And turning senseless from thy warm caress
          Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness."


I cannot find the "rift"; still it may be there.  What the poem seems to
say is, that a person would be coldly ungrateful who could consent to
count and consider little spots and flaws in such a warm, great,
satisfying sun as Harriet is.  It is a "little rift which had seemed to
be healed, or never to have gaped at all."  That is, "one detects" a
little rift which perhaps had never existed.  How does one do that?
How does one see the invisible?  It is the fabulist's secret; he knows
how to detect what does not exist, he knows how to see what is not
seeable; it is his gift, and he works it many a time to poor dead Harriet
Shelley's deep damage.

"As yet, however, if there was a speck upon Shelley's happiness it was no
more than a speck"--meaning the one which one detects where "it may never
have gaped at all"--"nor had Harriet cause for discontent."

Shelley's Latin instructions to his wife had ceased.  "From a teacher he
had now become a pupil."  Mrs. Boinville and her young married daughter
Cornelia were teaching him Italian poetry; a fact which warns one to
receive with some caution that other statement that Harriet had no
"cause for discontent."

Shelley had stopped instructing Harriet in Latin, as before mentioned.
The biographer thinks that the busy life in London some time back, and
the intrusion of the baby, account for this.  These were hindrances, but
were there no others?  He is always overlooking a detail here and there
that might be valuable in helping us understand a situation.  For
instance, when a man has been hard at work at the Italian poets with a
pretty woman, hour after hour, and responding like a tremulous instrument
to every breath of passion or of sentiment in the meantime, that man is
dog-tired when he gets home, and he can't teach his wife Latin; it would
be unreasonable to expect it.

Up to this time we have submitted to having Mrs. Boinville pushed upon
us as ostensibly concerned in these Italian lessons, but the biographer
drops her now, of his own accord.  Cornelia "perhaps" is sole teacher.
Hogg says she was a prey to a kind of sweet melancholy, arising from
causes purely imaginary; she required consolation, and found it in
Petrarch.  He also says, "Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and
caught the soft infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest
melancholy, as every true poet ought."

Then the author of the book interlards a most stately and fine compliment
to Cornelia, furnished by a man of approved judgment who knew her well
"in later years."  It is a very good compliment indeed, and she no doubt
deserved it in her "later years," when she had for generations ceased to
be sentimental and lackadaisical, and was no longer engaged in enchanting
young husbands and sowing sorrow for young wives.  But why is that
compliment to that old gentlewoman intruded there?  Is it to make the
reader believe she was well-chosen and safe society for a young,
sentimental husband?  The biographer's device was not well planned.  That
old person was not present--it was her other self that was there, her
young, sentimental, melancholy, warm-blooded self, in those early sweet
times before antiquity had cooled her off and mossed her back.

"In choosing for friends such women as Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and
Cornelia Turner, Shelley gave good proof of his insight and
discrimination."  That is the fabulist's opinion--Harriet Shelley's is
not reported.

Early in August, Shelley was in London trying to raise money.  In
September he wrote the poem to the baby, already quoted from.  In
the first week of October Shelley and family went to Warwick, then
to Edinburgh, arriving there about the middle of the month.

"Harriet was happy."  Why?  The author furnishes a reason, but hides from
us whether it is history or conjecture; it is because "the babe had borne
the journey well."  It has all the aspect of one of his artful devices--
flung in in his favorite casual way--the way he has when he wants to draw
one's attention away from an obvious thing and amuse it with some trifle
that is less obvious but more useful--in a history like this.  The
obvious thing is, that Harriet was happy because there was much territory
between her husband and Cornelia Turner now; and because the perilous
Italian lessons were taking a rest; and because, if there chanced to be
any respondings like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or
of sentiment in stock in these days, she might hope to get a share of
them herself; and because, with her husband liberated, now, from the
fetid fascinations of that sentimental retreat so pitilessly described by
Hogg, who also dubbed it "Shelley's paradise" later, she might hope to
persuade him to stay away from it permanently; and because she might also
hope that his brain would cool, now, and his heart become healthy, and
both brain and heart consider the situation and resolve that it would be
a right and manly thing to stand by this girl-wife and her child and see
that they were honorably dealt with, and cherished and protected and
loved by the man that had promised these things, and so be made happy and
kept so.  And because, also--may we conjecture this?--we may hope for
the privilege of taking up our cozy Latin lessons again, that used to be
so pleasant, and brought us so near together--so near, indeed, that often
our heads touched, just as heads do over Italian lessons; and our hands
met in casual and unintentional, but still most delicious and thrilling
little contacts and momentary clasps, just as they inevitably do over
Italian lessons.  Suppose one should say to any young wife: "I find that
your husband is poring over the Italian poets and being instructed in the
beautiful Italian language by the lovely Cornelia Robinson"--would that
cozy picture fail to rise before her mind? would its possibilities fail
to suggest themselves to her? would there be a pang in her heart and a
blush on her face? or, on the contrary, would the remark give her
pleasure, make her joyous and gay?  Why, one needs only to make the
experiment--the result will not be uncertain.

However, we learn--by authority of deeply reasoned and searching
conjecture--that the baby bore the journey well, and that that was why
the young wife was happy.  That accounts for two per cent. of the
happiness, but it was not right to imply that it accounted for the other
ninety-eight also.

Peacock, a scholar, poet, and friend of the Shelleys, was of their party
when they went away.  He used to laugh at the Boinville menagerie, and
"was not a favorite."  One of the Boinville group, writing to Hogg, said,
"The Shelleys have made an addition to their party in the person of a
cold scholar, who, I think, has neither taste nor feeling.  This, Shelley
will perceive sooner or later, for his warm nature craves sympathy."
True, and Shelley will fight his way back there to get it--there will be
no way to head him off.

Towards the end of November it was necessary for Shelley to pay a
business visit to London, and he conceived the project of leaving Harriet
and the baby in Edinburgh with Harriet's sister, Eliza Westbrook,
a sensible, practical maiden lady about thirty years old, who had spent
a great part of her time with the family since the marriage.  She was
an estimable woman, and Shelley had had reason to like her, and did like
her; but along about this time his feeling towards her changed.  Part of
Shelley's plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend his London evenings with
the Newtons--members of the Boinville Hysterical Society.  But, alas,
when he arrived early in December, that pleasant game was partially
blocked, for Eliza and the family arrived with him.  We are left
destitute of conjectures at this point by the biographer, and it is my
duty to supply one.  I chance the conjecture that it was Eliza who
interfered with that game.  I think she tried to do what she could
towards modifying the Boinville connection, in the interest of her young
sister's peace and honor.

If it was she who blocked that game, she was not strong enough to block
the next one.  Before the month and year were out--no date given, let us
call it Christmas--Shelley and family were nested in a furnished house in
Windsor, "at no great distance from the Boinvilles"--these decoys still
residing at Bracknell.

What we need, now, is a misleading conjecture.  We get it with
characteristic promptness and depravity:

          "But Prince Athanase found not the aged Zonoras, the friend of
          his boyhood, in any wanderings to Windsor.  Dr. Lind had died
          a year since, and with his death Windsor must have lost, for
          Shelley, its chief attraction."

Still, not to mention Shelley's wife, there was Bracknell, at any rate.
While Bracknell remains, all solace is not lost.  Shelley is represented
by this biographer as doing a great many careless things, but to my mind
this hiring a furnished house for three months in order to be with a man
who has been dead a year, is the carelessest of them all.  One feels for
him--that is but natural, and does us honor besides--yet one is vexed,
for all that.  He could have written and asked about the aged Zonoras
before taking the house.  He may not have had the address, but that is
nothing--any postman would know the aged Zonoras; a dead postman would
remember a name like that.

And yet, why throw a rag like this to us ravening wolves?  Is it
seriously supposable that we will stop to chew it and let our prey
escape?  No, we are getting to expect this kind of device, and to give it
merely a sniff for certainty's sake and then walk around it and leave it
lying.  Shelley was not after the aged Zonoras; he was pointed for
Cornelia and the Italian lessons, for his warm nature was craving
sympathy.


II

The year 1813 is just ended now, and we step into 1814.

To recapitulate, how much of Cornelia's society has Shelley had, thus
far?  Portions of August and September, and four days of July.  That is
to say, he has had opportunity to enjoy it, more or less, during that
brief period.  Did he want some more of it?  We must fall back upon
history, and then go to conjecturing.

          "In the early part of the year 1814, Shelley was a frequent
          visitor at Bracknell."

"Frequent" is a cautious word, in this author's mouth; the very
cautiousness of it, the vagueness of it, provokes suspicion; it makes one
suspect that this frequency was more frequent than the mere common
everyday kinds of frequency which one is in the habit of averaging up
with the unassuming term "frequent."  I think so because they fixed up a
bedroom for him in the Boinville house.  One doesn't need a bedroom if
one is only going to run over now and then in a disconnected way to
respond like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of
sentiment and rub up one's Italian poetry a little.

The young wife was not invited, perhaps.  If she was, she most certainly
did not come, or she would have straightened the room up; the most
ignorant of us knows that a wife would not endure a room in the condition
in which Hogg found this one when he occupied it one night.  Shelley was
away--why, nobody can divine.  Clothes were scattered about, there were
books on every side: "Wherever a book could be laid was an open book
turned down on its face to keep its place."  It seems plain that the wife
was not invited.  No, not that; I think she was invited, but said to
herself that she could not bear to go there and see another young woman
touching heads with her husband over an Italian book and making thrilling
hand-contacts with him accidentally.

As remarked, he was a frequent visitor there, "where he found an easeful
resting-place in the house of Mrs. Boinville--the white-haired Maimuna--
and of her daughter, Mrs. Turner."  The aged Zonoras was deceased, but
the white-haired Maimuna was still on deck, as we see.  "Three charming
ladies entertained the mocker (Hogg) with cups of tea, late hours,
Wieland's Agathon, sighs and smiles, and the celestial manna of refined
sentiment."

"Such," says Hogg, "were the delights of Shelley's paradise in
Bracknell."

The white-haired Maimuna presently writes to Hogg:

          "I will not have you despise home-spun pleasures.  Shelley is
          making a trial of them with us--"

A trial of them.  It may be called that.  It was March 11, and he had
been in the house a month.  She continues:

          Shelley "likes then so well that he is resolved to leave off
          rambling--"

But he has already left it off.  He has been there a month.

          "And begin a course of them himself."

But he has already begun it.  He has been at it a month.  He likes it so
well that he has forgotten all about his wife, as a letter of his
reveals.

          "Seriously, I think his mind and body want rest."

Yet he has been resting both for a month, with Italian, and tea, and
manna of sentiment, and late hours, and every restful thing a young
husband could need for the refreshment of weary limbs and a sore
conscience, and a nagging sense of shabbiness and treachery.

          "His journeys after what he has never found have racked his
          purse and his tranquillity.  He is resolved to take a little
          care of the former, in pity to the latter, which I applaud, and
          shall second with all, my might."

But she does not say whether the young wife, a stranger and lonely
yonder, wants another woman and her daughter Cornelia to be lavishing so
much inflamed interest on her husband or not.  That young wife is always
silent--we are never allowed to hear from her.  She must have opinions
about such things, she cannot be indifferent, she must be approving or
disapproving, surely she would speak if she were allowed--even to-day and
from her grave she would, if she could, I think--but we get only the
other side, they keep her silent always.

          "He has deeply interested us.  In the course of your intimacy
          he must have made you feel what we now feel for him.  He is
          seeking a house close to us--"

Ah! he is not close enough yet, it seems--

          "and if he succeeds we shall have an additional motive to
          induce you to come among us in the summer."

The reader would puzzle a long time and not guess the biographer's
comment upon the above letter.  It is this:

          "These sound like words of s considerate and judicious friend."

That is what he thinks.  That is, it is what he thinks he thinks.  No,
that is not quite it: it is what he thinks he can stupefy a particularly
and unspeakably dull reader into thinking it is what he thinks.  He makes
that comment with the knowledge that Shelley is in love with this woman's
daughter, and that it is because of the fascinations of these two that
Shelley has deserted his wife--for this month, considering all the
circumstances, and his new passion, and his employment of the time,
amounted to desertion; that is its rightful name.  We cannot know how the
wife regarded it and felt about it; but if she could have read the letter
which Shelley was writing to Hogg four or five days later, we could guess
her thought and how she felt.  Hear him:
          . . . . . . .
          "I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the last month;
          I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and
          friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself."

It is fair to conjecture that he was feeling ashamed.

          "They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life.
          I have felt myself translated to a paradise which has nothing
          of mortality but its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the
          view of that necessity which will quickly divide me from the
          delightful tranquillity of this happy home--for it has become
          my home.
          . . . . . . .
          "Eliza is still with us--not here!--but will be with me when
          the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart."

Eliza is she who blocked that game--the game in London--the one where we
were purposing to dine every night with one of the "three charming
ladies" who fed tea and manna and late hours to Hogg at Bracknell.

Shelley could send Eliza away, of course; could have cleared her out long
ago if so minded, just as he had previously done with a predecessor of
hers whom he had first worshipped and then turned against; but perhaps
she was useful there as a thin excuse for staying away himself.

          "I am now but little inclined to contest this point.
          I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul .  .  .  .

          "It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of
          disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe,
          in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy.
          I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the
          overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable
          wretch.  But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm,
          that cannot see to sting.

          "I have begun to learn Italian again .  .  .  .  Cornelia
          assists me in this language.  Did I not once tell you that I
          thought her cold and reserved?  She is the reverse of this, as
          she is the reverse of everything bad.  She inherits all the
          divinity of her mother .  .  .  .  I have sometimes forgotten
          that I am not an inmate of this delightful home--that a time
          will come which will cast me again into the boundless ocean of
          abhorred society.

          "I have written nothing but one stanza, which has no meaning,
          and that I have only written in thought:

                    "Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;
                    Thy gentle words stir poison there;
                    Thou hast disturbed the only rest
                    That was the portion of despair.
                    Subdued to duty's hard control,
                    I could have borne my wayward lot:
                    The chains that bind this rained soul
                    Had cankered then, but crushed it not.

          "This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which
          passes away at the cold clear light of morning.  Its surpassing
          excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than
          the color of an autumnal sunset."

Then it did not refer to his wife.  That is plain; otherwise he would
have said so.  It is well that he explained that it has no meaning, for
if he had not done that, the previous soft references to Cornelia and the
way he has come to feel about her now would make us think she was the
person who had inspired it while teaching him how to read the warm and
ruddy Italian poets during a month.

The biography observes that portions of this letter "read like the tired
moaning of a wounded creature."  Guesses at the nature of the wound are
permissible; we will hazard one.

Read by the light of Shelley's previous history, his letter seems to be
the cry of a tortured conscience.  Until this time it was a conscience
that had never felt a pang or known a smirch.  It was the conscience of
one who, until this time, had never done a dishonorable thing, or an
ungenerous, or cruel, or treacherous thing, but was now doing all of
these, and was keenly aware of it.  Up to this time Shelley had been
master of his nature, and it was a nature which was as beautiful and as
nearly perfect as any merely human nature may be.  But he was drunk now,
with a debasing passion, and was not himself.  There is nothing in his
previous history that is in character with the Shelley of this letter.
He had done boyish things, foolish things, even crazy things, but never
a thing to be ashamed of.  He had done things which one might laugh at,
but the privilege of laughing was limited always to the thing itself;
you could not laugh at the motive back of it--that was high, that was
noble.  His most fantastic and quixotic acts had a purpose back of them
which made them fine, often great, and made the rising laugh seem
profanation and quenched it; quenched it, and changed the impulse to
homage.

Up to this time he had been loyalty itself, where his obligations lay--
treachery was new to him; he had never done an ignoble thing--baseness
was new to him; he had never done an unkind thing that also was new to
him.

This was the author of that letter, this was the man who had deserted his
young wife and was lamenting, because he must leave another woman's house
which had become a "home" to him, and go away.  Is he lamenting mainly
because he must go back to his wife and child?  No, the lament is mainly
for what he is to leave behind him.  The physical comforts of the house?
No, in his life he had never attached importance to such things.  Then
the thing which he grieves to leave is narrowed down to a person--to the
person whose "dewy looks" had sunk into his breast, and whose seducing
words had "stirred poison there."

He was ashamed of himself, his conscience was upbraiding him.  He was the
slave of a degrading love; he was drunk with his passion, the real
Shelley was in temporary eclipse.  This is the verdict which his previous
history must certainly deliver upon this episode, I think.

One must be allowed to assist himself with conjectures like these when
trying to find his way through a literary swamp which has so many
misleading finger-boards up as this book is furnished with.

We have now arrived at a part of the swamp where the difficulties and
perplexities are going to be greater than any we have yet met with--
where, indeed, the finger-boards are multitudinous, and the most of them
pointing diligently in the wrong direction.  We are to be told by the
biography why Shelley deserted his wife and child and took up with
Cornelia Turner and Italian.  It was not on account of Cornelia's sighs
and sentimentalities and tea and manna and late hours and soft and sweet
and industrious enticements; no, it was because "his happiness in his
home had been wounded and bruised almost to death."

It had been wounded and bruised almost to death in this way:

1st.  Harriet persuaded him to set up a carriage.

2d.  After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet stopped reading aloud and
studying.

3d.  Harriet's walks with Hogg "commonly conducted us to some fashionable
bonnet-shop."

4th.  Harriet hired a wet-nurse.

5th.  When an operation was being performed upon the baby, "Harriet stood
by, narrowly observing all that was done, but, to the astonishment of the
operator, betraying not the smallest sign of emotion."

6th.  Eliza Westbrook, sister-in-law, was still of the household.

The evidence against Harriet Shelley is all in; there is no more.  Upon
these six counts she stands indicted of the crime of driving her husband
into that sty at Bracknell; and this crime, by these helps, the
biographical prosecuting attorney has set himself the task of proving
upon her.

Does the biographer call himself the attorney for the prosecution?
No, only to himself, privately; publicly he is the passionless,
disinterested, impartial judge on the bench.  He holds up his judicial
scales before the world, that all may see; and it all tries to look so
fair that a blind person would sometimes fail to see him slip the false
weights in.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, first, because Harriet had persuaded him to set up a carriage.
I cannot discover that any evidence is offered that she asked him to set
up a carriage.  Still, if she did, was it a heavy offence?  Was it
unique?  Other young wives had committed it before, others have committed
it since.  Shelley had dearly loved her in those London days; possibly he
set up the carriage gladly to please her; affectionate young husbands do
such things.  When Shelley ran away with another girl, by-and-by, this
girl persuaded him to pour the price of many carriages and many horses
down the bottomless well of her father's debts, but this impartial judge
finds no fault with that.  Once she appeals to Shelley to raise money--
necessarily by borrowing, there was no other way--to pay her father's
debts with at a time when Shelley was in danger of being arrested and
imprisoned for his own debts; yet the good judge finds no fault with her
even for this.

First and last, Shelley emptied into that rapacious mendicant's lap a sum
which cost him--for he borrowed it at ruinous rates--from eighty to one
hundred thousand dollars.  But it was Mary Godwin's papa, the
supplications were often sent through Mary, the good judge is Mary's
strenuous friend, so Mary gets no censures.  On the Continent Mary rode
in her private carriage, built, as Shelley boasts, "by one of the best
makers in Bond Street," yet the good judge makes not even a passing
comment on this iniquity.  Let us throw out Count No. 1 against Harriet
Shelley as being far-fetched, and frivolous.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, secondly, because Harriet's studies "had dwindled away to nothing,
Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them."  At what time was
this?  It was when Harriet "had fully recovered from the fatigue of her
first effort of maternity .  .  .  and was now in full force, vigor, and
effect."  Very well, the baby was born two days before the close of June.
It took the mother a month to get back her full force, vigor, and effect;
this brings us to July 27th and the deadly Cornelia.  If a wife of
eighteen is studying with her husband and he gets smitten with another
woman, isn't he likely to lose interest in his wife's studies for that
reason, and is not his wife's interest in her studies likely to languish
for the same reason?  Would not the mere sight of those books of hers
sharpen the pain that is in her heart?  This sudden breaking down of a
mutual intellectual interest of two years' standing is coincident with
Shelley's re-encounter with Cornelia; and we are allowed to gather from
that time forth for nearly two months he did all his studying in that
person's society.  We feel at liberty to rule out Count No. 2 from the
indictment against Harriet.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, thirdly, because Harriet's walks with Hogg commonly led to some
fashionable bonnet-shop.  I offer no palliation; I only ask why the
dispassionate, impartial judge did not offer one himself--merely, I mean,
to offset his leniency in a similar case or two where the girl who ran
away with Harriet's husband was the shopper.  There are several occasions
where she interested herself with shopping--among them being walks which
ended at the bonnet-shop--yet in none of these cases does she get a word
of blame from the good judge, while in one of them he covers the deed
with a justifying remark, she doing the shopping that time to find
easement for her mind, her child having died.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, fourthly, by the introduction there of a wet-nurse.  The wet-nurse
was introduced at the time of the Edinburgh sojourn, immediately after
Shelley had been enjoying the two months of study with Cornelia which
broke up his wife's studies and destroyed his personal interest in them.
Why, by this time, nothing that Shelley's wife could do would have been
satisfactory to him, for he was in love with another woman, and was never
going to be contented again until he got back to her.  If he had been
still in love with his wife it is not easily conceivable that he would
care much who nursed the baby, provided the baby was well nursed.
Harriet's jealousy was assuredly voicing itself now, Shelley's conscience
was assuredly nagging him, pestering him, persecuting him.  Shelley
needed excuses for his altered attitude towards his wife; Providence
pitied him and sent the wet-nurse.  If Providence had sent him a cotton
doughnut it would have answered just as well; all he wanted was something
to find fault with.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, fifthly, because Harriet narrowly watched a surgical operation
which was being performed upon her child, and, "to the astonishment of
the operator," who was watching Harriet instead of attending to his
operation, she betrayed "not the smallest sign of emotion."  The author
of this biography was not ashamed to set down that exultant slander.
He was apparently not aware that it was a small business to bring into
his court a witness whose name he does not know, and whose character and
veracity there is none to vouch for, and allow him to strike this blow at
the mother-heart of this friendless girl.  The biographer says, "We may
not infer from this that Harriet did not feel"--why put it in, then?--
"but we learn that those about her could believe her to be hard and
insensible."  Who were those who were about her?  Her husband?  He hated
her now, because he was in love elsewhere.  Her sister?  Of course that
is not charged.  Peacock?  Peacock does not testify.  The wet-nurse?  She
does not testify.  If any others were there we have no mention of them.
"Those about her" are reduced to one person--her husband.  Who reports
the circumstance?  It is Hogg.  Perhaps he was there--we do not know.
But if he was, he still got his information at second-hand, as it was the
operator who noticed Harriet's lack of emotion, not himself.  Hogg is not
given to saying kind things when Harriet is his subject.  He may have
said them the time that he tried to tempt her to soil her honor, but
after that he mentions her usually with a sneer.  "Among those who were
about her" was one witness well equipped to silence all tongues, abolish
all doubts, set our minds at rest; one witness, not called, and not
callable, whose evidence, if we could but get it, would outweigh the
oaths of whole battalions of hostile Hoggs and nameless surgeons--the
baby.  I wish we had the baby's testimony; and yet if we had it it would
not do us any good--a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious
"if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of
judicial investigation, and its positiveness would wilt into dubiety.

The biographer says of Harriet, "If words of tender affection and
motherly pride proved the reality of love, then undoubtedly she loved her
firstborn child."  That is, if mere empty words can prove it, it stands
proved--and in this way, without committing himself, he gives the reader
a chance to infer that there isn't any extant evidence but words, and
that he doesn't take much stock in them.  How seldom he shows his hand!
He is always lurking behind a non-committal "if" or something of that
kind; always gliding and dodging around, distributing colorless poison
here and there and everywhere, but always leaving himself in a position
to say that his language will be found innocuous if taken to pieces and
examined.  He clearly exhibits a steady and never-relaxing purpose to
make Harriet the scapegoat for her husband's first great sin--but it is
in the general view that this is revealed, not in the details.  His
insidious literature is like blue water; you know what it is that makes
it blue, but you cannot produce and verify any detail of the cloud of
microscopic dust in it that does it.  Your adversary can dip up a
glassful and show you that it is pure white and you cannot deny it; and
he can dip the lake dry, glass by glass, and show that every glassful is
white, and prove it to any one's eye--and yet that lake was blue and you
can swear it.  This book is blue--with slander in solution.

Let the reader examine, for example, the paragraph of comment which
immediately follows the letter containing Shelley's self-exposure which
we have been considering.  This is it.  One should inspect the individual
sentences as they go by, then pass them in procession and review the
cake-walk as a whole:

          "Shelley's happiness in his home, as is evident from this
          pathetic letter, had been fatally stricken; it is evident,
          also, that he knew where duty lay; he felt that his part was to
          take up his burden, silently and sorrowfully, and to bear it
          henceforth with the quietness of despair.  But we can perceive
          that he scarcely possessed the strength and fortitude needful
          for success in such an attempt.  And clearly Shelley himself
          was aware how perilous it was to accept that respite of
          blissful ease which he enjoyed in the Boinville household; for
          gentle voices and dewy looks and words of sympathy could not
          fail to remind him of an ideal of tranquillity or of joy which
          could never be his, and which he must henceforth sternly
          exclude from his imagination."

That paragraph commits the author in no way.  Taken sentence by sentence
it asserts nothing against anybody or in favor of anybody, pleads for
nobody, accuses nobody.  Taken detail by detail, it is as innocent as
moonshine.  And yet, taken as a whole, it is a design against the reader;
its intent is to remove the feeling which the letter must leave with him
if let alone, and put a different one in its place--to remove a feeling
justified by the letter and substitute one not justified by it.  The
letter itself gives you no uncertain picture--no lecturer is needed to
stand by with a stick and point out its details and let on to explain
what they mean.  The picture is the very clear and remorsefully faithful
picture of a fallen and fettered angel who is ashamed of himself; an
angel who beats his soiled wings and cries, who complains to the woman
who enticed him that he could have borne his wayward lot, he could have
stood by his duty if it had not been for her beguilements; an angel who
rails at the "boundless ocean of abhorred society," and rages at his poor
judicious sister-in-law.  If there is any dignity about this spectacle it
will escape most people.

Yet when the paragraph of comment is taken as a whole, the picture is
full of dignity and pathos; we have before us a blameless and noble
spirit stricken to the earth by malign powers, but not conquered;
tempted, but grandly putting the temptation away; enmeshed by subtle
coils, but sternly resolved to rend them and march forth victorious, at
any peril of life or limb.  Curtain--slow music.

Was it the purpose of the paragraph to take the bad taste of Shelley's
letter out of the reader's mouth?  If that was not it, good ink was
wasted; without that, it has no relevancy--the multiplication table would
have padded the space as rationally.

We have inspected the six reasons which we are asked to believe drove a
man of conspicuous patience, honor, justice, fairness, kindliness, and
iron firmness, resolution, and steadfastness, from the wife whom he loved
and who loved him, to a refuge in the mephitic paradise of Bracknell.
These are six infinitely little reasons; but there were six colossal
ones, and these the counsel for the destruction of Harriet Shelley
persists in not considering very important.

Moreover, the colossal six preceded the little six and had done the
mischief before they were born.  Let us double-column the twelve; then we
shall see at a glance that each little reason is in turn answered by a
retorting reason of a size to overshadow it and make it insignificant:

1.  Harriet sets up carriage.      1.  CORNELIA TURNER.
2.  Harriet stops studying.        2.  CORNELIA TURNER.
3.  Harriet goes to bonnet-shop.   3.  CORNELIA TURNER.
4.  Harriet takes a wet-nurse.     4.  CORNELIA TURNER.
5.  Harriet has too much nerve.    5.  CORNELIA TURNER.
6.  Detested sister-in-law         6.  CORNELIA TURNER.

As soon as we comprehend that Cornelia Turner and the Italian lessons
happened before the little six had been discovered to be grievances,
we understand why Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and
bruised almost to death, and no one can persuade us into laying it on
Harriet.  Shelley and Cornelia are the responsible persons, and we cannot
in honor and decency allow the cruelties which they practised upon the
unoffending wife to be pushed aside in order to give us a chance to waste
time and tears over six sentimental justifications of an offence which
the six can't justify, nor even respectably assist in justifying.

Six?  There were seven; but in charity to the biographer the seventh
ought not to be exposed.  Still, he hung it out himself, and not only
hung it out, but thought it was a good point in Shelley's favor.  For two
years Shelley found sympathy and intellectual food and all that at home;
there was enough for spiritual and mental support, but not enough for
luxury; and so, at the end of the contented two years, this latter detail
justifies him in going bag and baggage over to Cornelia Turner and
supplying the rest of his need in the way of surplus sympathy and
intellectual pie unlawfully.  By the same reasoning a man in merely
comfortable circumstances may rob a bank without sin.


III

It is 1814, it is the 16th of March, Shelley has, written his letter, he
has been in the Boinville paradise a month, his deserted wife is in her
husbandless home.  Mischief had been wrought.  It is the biographer who
concedes this.  We greatly need some light on Harriet's side of the case
now; we need to know how she enjoyed the month, but there is no way to
inform ourselves; there seems to be a strange absence of documents and
letters and diaries on that side.  Shelley kept a diary, the approaching
Mary Godwin kept a diary, her father kept one, her half-sister by
marriage, adoption, and the dispensation of God kept one, and the entire
tribe and all its friends wrote and received letters, and the letters
were kept and are producible when this biography needs them; but there
are only three or four scraps of Harriet's writing, and no diary.
Harriet wrote plenty of letters to her husband--nobody knows where they
are, I suppose; she wrote plenty of letters to other people--apparently
they have disappeared, too.  Peacock says she wrote good letters, but
apparently interested people had sagacity enough to mislay them in time.
After all her industry she went down into her grave and lies silent
there--silent, when she has so much need to speak.  We can only wonder at
this mystery, not account for it.

No, there is no way of finding out what Harriet's state of feeling was
during the month that Shelley was disporting himself in the Bracknell
paradise.  We have to fall back upon conjecture, as our fabulist does
when he has nothing more substantial to work with.  Then we easily
conjecture that as the days dragged by Harriet's heart grew heavier and
heavier under its two burdens--shame and resentment: the shame of being
pointed at and gossiped about as a deserted wife, and resentment against
the woman who had beguiled her husband from her and now kept him in a
disreputable captivity.  Deserted wives--deserted whether for cause or
without cause--find small charity among the virtuous and the discreet.
We conjecture that one after another the neighbors ceased to call; that
one after another they got to being "engaged" when Harriet called; that
finally they one after the other cut her dead on the street; that after
that she stayed in the house daytimes, and brooded over her sorrows, and
nighttimes did the same, there being nothing else to do with the heavy
hours and the silence and solitude and the dreary intervals which sleep
should have charitably bridged, but didn't.

Yes, mischief had been wrought.  The biographer arrives at this
conclusion, and it is a most just one.  Then, just as you begin to half
hope he is going to discover the cause of it and launch hot bolts of
wrath at the guilty manufacturers of it, you have to turn away
disappointed.  You are disappointed, and you sigh.  This is what he says
--the italics [''] are mine:

          "However the mischief may have been wrought--'and at this day
          no one can wish to heap blame an any buried head'--"

So it is poor Harriet, after all.  Stern justice must take its course--
justice tempered with delicacy, justice tempered with compassion, justice
that pities a forlorn dead girl and refuses to strike her.  Except in the
back.  Will not be ignoble and say the harsh thing, but only insinuate
it.  Stern justice knows about the carriage and the wet-nurse and the
bonnet-shop and the other dark things that caused this sad mischief, and
may not, must not blink them; so it delivers judgment where judgment
belongs, but softens the blow by not seeming to deliver judgment at all.
To resume--the italics are mine:

          "However the mischief may have been wrought--and at this day no
          one can wish to heap blame on any buried head--'it is certain
          that some cause or causes of deep division between Shelley and
          his wife were in operation during the early part of the year
          1814'."

This shows penetration.  No deduction could be more accurate than this.
There were indeed some causes of deep division.  But next comes another
disappointing sentence:

          "To guess at the precise nature of these cafes, in the absence
          of definite statement, were useless."

Why, he has already been guessing at them for several pages, and we have
been trying to outguess him, and now all of a sudden he is tired of it
and won't play any more.  It is not quite fair to us.  However, he will
get over this by-and-by, when Shelley commits his next indiscretion and
has to be guessed out of it at Harriet's expense.

"We may rest content with Shelley's own words"--in a Chancery paper drawn
up by him three years later.  They were these: "Delicacy forbids me to
say more than that we were disunited by incurable dissensions."

As for me, I do not quite see why we should rest content with anything of
the sort.  It is not a very definite statement.  It does not necessarily
mean anything more than that he did not wish to go into the tedious
details of those family quarrels.  Delicacy could quite properly excuse
him from saying, "I was in love with Cornelia all that time; my wife kept
crying and worrying about it and upbraiding me and begging me to cut
myself free from a connection which was wronging her and disgracing us
both; and I being stung by these reproaches retorted with fierce and
bitter speeches--for it is my nature to do that when I am stirred,
especially if the target of them is a person whom I had greatly loved and
respected before, as witness my various attitudes towards Miss Hitchener,
the Gisbornes, Harriet's sister, and others--and finally I did not
improve this state of things when I deserted my wife and spent a whole
month with the woman who had infatuated me."

No, he could not go into those details, and we excuse him; but,
nevertheless, we do not rest content with this bland proposition to puff
away that whole long disreputable episode with a single mean, meaningless
remark of Shelley's.

We do admit that "it is certain that some cause or causes of deep
division were in operation."  We would admit it just the same if the
grammar of the statement were as straight as a string, for we drift into
pretty indifferent grammar ourselves when we are absorbed in historical
work; but we have to decline to admit that we cannot guess those cause or
causes.

But guessing is not really necessary.  There is evidence attainable--
evidence from the batch discredited by the biographer and set out at the
back door in his appendix-basket; and yet a court of law would think
twice before throwing it out, whereas it would be a hardy person who
would venture to offer in such a place a good part of the material which
is placed before the readers of this book as "evidence," and so treated
by this daring biographer.  Among some letters (in the appendix-basket)
from Mrs. Godwin, detailing the Godwinian share in the Shelleyan events
of 1814, she tells how Harriet Shelley came to her and her husband,
agitated and weeping, to implore them to forbid Shelley the house, and
prevent his seeing Mary Godwin.

          "She related that last November he had fallen in love with Mrs.
          Turner and paid her such marked attentions Mr. Turner, the
          husband, had carried off his wife to Devonshire."

The biographer finds a technical fault in this; "the Shelleys were in
Edinburgh in November."  What of that?  The woman is recalling a
conversation which is more than two months old; besides, she was probably
more intent upon the central and important fact of it than upon its
unimportant date.  Harriet's quoted statement has some sense in it; for
that reason, if for no other, it ought to have been put in the body of
the book.  Still, that would not have answered; even the biographer's
enemy could not be cruel enough to ask him to let this real grievance,
this compact and substantial and picturesque figure, this rawhead-and-
bloody-bones, come striding in there among those pale shams, those
rickety spectres labeled WET-NURSE, BONNET-SHOP, and so on--no, the
father of all malice could not ask the biographer to expose his pathetic
goblins to a competition like that.

The fabulist finds fault with the statement because it has a technical
error in it; and he does this at the moment that he is furnishing us an
error himself, and of a graver sort.  He says:

          "If Turner carried off his wife to Devonshire he brought her
          back and Shelley was staying with her and her mother on terms
          of cordial intimacy in March, 1814."

We accept the "cordial intimacy"--it was the very thing Harriet was
complaining of--but there is nothing to show that it was Turner who
brought his wife back.  The statement is thrown in as if it were not only
true, but was proof that Turner was not uneasy.  Turner's movements are
proof of nothing.  Nothing but a statement from Turner's mouth would have
any value here, and he made none.

Six days after writing his letter Shelley and his wife were together
again for a moment--to get remarried according to the rites of the
English Church.

Within three weeks the new husband and wife were apart again, and the
former was back in his odorous paradise.  This time it is the wife who
does the deserting.  She finds Cornelia too strong for her, probably.
At any rate, she goes away with her baby and sister, and we have a
playful fling at her from good Mrs. Boinville, the "mysterious spinner
Maimuna"; she whose "face was as a damsel's face, and yet her hair was
gray"; she of whom the biographer has said, "Shelley was indeed caught in
an almost invisible thread spun around him, but unconsciously, by this
subtle and benignant enchantress."  The subtle and benignant enchantress
writes to Hogg, April 18: "Shelley is again a widower; his beauteous half
went to town on Thursday."

Then Shelley writes a poem--a chant of grief over the hard fate which
obliges him now to leave his paradise and take up with his wife again.
It seems to intimate that the paradise is cooling towards him; that he is
warned off by acclamation; that he must not even venture to tempt with
one last tear his friend Cornelia's ungentle mood, for her eye is glazed
and cold and dares not entreat her lover to stay:

Exhibit E

          "Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries 'Away!'
          Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood;
          Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy
          stay:
          Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude."

Back to the solitude of his now empty home, that is!

          "Away! away! to thy sad and silent home;
          Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth."
          . . . . . . . .

But he will have rest in the grave by-and-by.  Until that time comes,
the charms of Bracknell will remain in his memory, along with Mrs.
Boinville's voice and Cornelia Turner's smile:

     "Thou in the grave shalt rest--yet, till the phantoms flee
     Which that house and hearth and garden made dear to thee ere while,
     Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are not free
     From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile."

We cannot wonder that Harriet could not stand it.  Any of us would have
left.  We would not even stay with a cat that was in this condition.
Even the Boinvilles could not endure it; and so, as we have seen, they
gave this one notice.

          "Early in May, Shelley was in London.  He did not yet despair
          of reconciliation with Harriet, nor had he ceased to love her."

Shelley's poems are a good deal of trouble to his biographer.  They are
constantly inserted as "evidence," and they make much confusion.  As soon
as one of them has proved one thing, another one follows and proves quite
a different thing.  The poem just quoted shows that he was in love with
Cornelia, but a month later he is in love with Harriet again, and there
is a poem to prove it.

          "In this piteous appeal Shelley declares that he has now no
          grief but one--the grief of having known and lost his wife's
          love."

Exhibit F

               "Thy look of love has power to calm
               The stormiest passion of my soul."


But without doubt she had been reserving her looks of love a good part of
the time for ten months, now--ever since he began to lavish his own on
Cornelia Turner at the end of the previous July.  He does really seem to
have already forgotten Cornelia's merits in one brief month, for he
eulogizes Harriet in a way which rules all competition out:

               "Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,
               Amid a world of hate."

He complains of her hardness, and begs her to make the concession of
a "slight endurance"--of his waywardness, perhaps--for the sake of
"a fellow-being's lasting weal."  But the main force of his appeal is
in his closing stanza, and is strongly worded:

               "O tract for once no erring guide!
               Bid the remorseless feeling flee;
               'Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride,
               'Tis anything but thee;
               I deign a nobler pride to prove,
               And pity if thou canst not love."

This is in May--apparently towards the end of it.  Harriet and Shelley
were corresponding all the time.  Harriet got the poem--a copy exists in
her own handwriting; she being the only gentle and kind person amid a
world of hate, according to Shelley's own testimony in the poem, we are
permitted to think that the daily letters would presently have melted
that kind and gentle heart and brought about the reconciliation, if there
had been time but there wasn't; for in a very few days--in fact, before
the 8th of June--Shelley was in love with another woman.

And so--perhaps while Harriet was walking the floor nights, trying to get
her poem by heart--her husband was doing a fresh one--for the other girl
--Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin--with sentiments like these in it:

Exhibit G

               To spend years thus and be rewarded,
               As thou, sweet love, requited me
               When none were near.
               .  .  .  thy lips did meet
               Mine tremblingly; .  .  ,

               "Gentle and good and mild thou art,
               Nor can I live if thou appear
               Aught but thyself." .  .  .


And so on.  "Before the close of June it was known and felt by Mary and
Shelley that each was inexpressibly dear to the other."  Yes, Shelley had
found this child of sixteen to his liking, and had wooed and won her in
the graveyard.  But that is nothing; it was better than wooing her in her
nursery, at any rate, where it might have disturbed the other children.

However, she was a child in years only.  From the day that she set her
masculine grip on Shelley he was to frisk no more.  If she had occupied
the only kind and gentle Harriet's place in March it would have been a
thrilling spectacle to see her invade the Boinville rookery and read the
riot act.  That holiday of Shelley's would have been of short duration,
and Cornelia's hair would have been as gray as her mother's when the
services were over.

Hogg went to the Godwin residence in Skinner Street with Shelley on that
8th of June.  They passed through Godwin's little debt-factory of a book-
shop and went up-stairs hunting for the proprietor.  Nobody there.
Shelley strode about the room impatiently, making its crazy floor quake
under him.  Then a door "was partially and softly opened.  A thrilling
voice called 'Shelley!'  A thrilling voice answered, 'Mary!'  And he
darted out of the room like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting
King.  A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale, indeed, and with
a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at
that time, had called him out of the room."

This is Mary Godwin, as described by Hogg.  The thrill of the voices
shows that the love of Shelley and Mary was already upward of a fortnight
old; therefore it had been born within the month of May--born while
Harriet was still trying to get her poem by heart, we think.  I must not
be asked how I know so much about that thrill; it is my secret.  The
biographer and I have private ways of finding out things when it is
necessary to find them out and the customary methods fail.

Shelley left London that day, and was gone ten days.  The biographer
conjectures that he spent this interval with Harriet in Bath.  It would
be just like him.  To the end of his days he liked to be in love with two
women at once.  He was more in love with Miss Hitchener when he married
Harriet than he was with Harriet, and told the lady so with simple and
unostentatious candor.  He was more in love with Cornelia than he was
with Harriet in the end of 1813 and the beginning of 1814, yet he
supplied both of them with love poems of an equal temperature meantime;
he loved Mary and Harriet in June, and while getting ready to run off
with the one, it is conjectured that he put in his odd time trying to get
reconciled to the other; by-and-by, while still in love with Mary, he
will make love to her half-sister by marriage, adoption, and the
visitation of God, through the medium of clandestine letters, and she
will answer with letters that are for no eye but his own.

When Shelley encountered Mary Godwin he was looking around for another
paradise.  He had, tastes of his own, and there were features about the
Godwin establishment that strongly recommended it.  Godwin was an
advanced thinker and an able writer.  One of his romances is still read,
but his philosophical works, once so esteemed, are out of vogue now;
their authority was already declining when Shelley made his acquaintance
--that is, it was declining with the public, but not with Shelley.  They
had been his moral and political Bible, and they were that yet.  Shelley
the infidel would himself have claimed to be less a work of God than a
work of Godwin.  Godwin's philosophies had formed his mind and interwoven
themselves into it and become a part of its texture; he regarded himself
as Godwin's spiritual son.  Godwin was not without self-appreciation;
indeed, it may be conjectured that from his point of view the last
syllable of his name was surplusage.  He lived serene in his lofty world
of philosophy, far above the mean interests that absorbed smaller men,
and only came down to the ground at intervals to pass the hat for alms to
pay his debts with, and insult the man that relieved him.  Several of his
principles were out of the ordinary.  For example, he was opposed to
marriage.  He was not aware that his preachings from this text were but
theory and wind; he supposed he was in earnest in imploring people to
live together without marrying, until Shelley furnished him a working
model of his scheme and a practical example to analyze, by applying the
principle in his own family; the matter took a different and surprising
aspect then.  The late Matthew Arnold said that the main defect in
Shelley's make-up was that he was destitute of the sense of humor.  This
episode must have escaped Mr. Arnold's attention.

But we have said enough about the head of the new paradise.  Mrs. Godwin
is described as being in several ways a terror; and even when her soul
was in repose she wore green spectacles.  But I suspect that her main
unattractiveness was born of the fact that she wrote the letters that are
out in the appendix-basket in the back yard--letters which are an outrage
and wholly untrustworthy, for they say some kind things about poor
Harriet and tell some disagreeable truths about her husband; and these
things make the fabulist grit his teeth a good deal.

Next we have Fanny Godwin--a Godwin by courtesy only; she was Mrs.
Godwin's natural daughter by a former friend.  She was a sweet and
winning girl, but she presently wearied of the Godwin paradise, and
poisoned herself.

Last in the list is Jane (or Claire, as she preferred to call herself)
Clairmont, daughter of Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage.  She was very
young and pretty and accommodating, and always ready to do what she could
to make things pleasant.  After Shelley ran off with her part-sister
Mary, she became the guest of the pair, and contributed a natural child
to their nursery--Allegra.  Lord Byron was the father.

We have named the several members and advantages of the new paradise in
Skinner Street, with its crazy book-shop underneath.  Shelley was all
right now, this was a better place than the other; more variety anyway,
and more different kinds of fragrance.  One could turn out poetry here
without any trouble at all.

The way the new love-match came about was this:

Shelley told Mary all his aggravations and sorrows and griefs, and about
the wet-nurse and the bonnetshop and the surgeon and the carriage, and
the sister-in-law that blocked the London game, and about Cornelia and
her mamma, and how they had turned him out of the house after making so
much of him; and how he had deserted Harriet and then Harriet had
deserted him, and how the reconciliation was working along and Harriet
getting her poem by heart; and still he was not happy, and Mary pitied
him, for she had had trouble herself.  But I am not satisfied with this.
It reads too much like statistics.  It lacks smoothness and grace, and is
too earthy and business-like.  It has the sordid look of a trades-union
procession out on strike.  That is not the right form for it.  The book
does it better; we will fall back on the book and have a cake-walk:

          "It was easy to divine that some restless grief possessed him;
          Mary herself was not unlearned in the lore of pain.  His
          generous zeal in her father's behalf, his spiritual sonship to
          Godwin, his reverence for her mother's memory, were guarantees
          with Mary of his excellence.--[What she was after was
          guarantees of his excellence.  That he stood ready to desert
          his wife and child was one of them, apparently.]--The new
          friends could not lack subjects of discourse, and underneath
          their words about Mary's mother, and 'Political Justice,' and
          'Rights of Woman,' were two young hearts, each feeling towards
          the other, each perhaps unaware, trembling in the direction of
          the other.  The desire to assuage the suffering of one whose
          happiness has grown precious to us may become a hunger of the
          spirit as keen as any other, and this hunger now possessed
          Mary's heart; when her eyes rested unseen on Shelley, it was
          with a look full of the ardor of a 'soothing pity.'"

Yes, that is better and has more composure.  That is just the way it
happened.  He told her about the wet-nurse, she told him about political
justice; he told her about the deadly sister-in-law, she told him about
her mother; he told her about the bonnet-shop, she murmured back about
the rights of woman; then he assuaged her, then she assuaged him; then he
assuaged her some more, next she assuaged him some more; then they both
assuaged one another simultaneously; and so they went on by the hour
assuaging and assuaging and assuaging, until at last what was the result?
They were in love.  It will happen so every time.

          "He had married a woman who, as he now persuaded himself, had
          never truly loved him, who loved only his fortune and his rank,
          and who proved her selfishness by deserting him in his misery."

I think that that is not quite fair to Harriet.  We have no certainty
that she knew Cornelia had turned him out of the house.  He went back to
Cornelia, and Harriet may have supposed that he was as happy with her as
ever.  Still, it was judicious to begin to lay on the whitewash, for
Shelley is going to need many a coat of it now, and the sooner the reader
becomes used to the intrusion of the brush the sooner he will get
reconciled to it and stop fretting about it.

After Shelley's (conjectured) visit to Harriet at Bath--8th of June to
18th--"it seems to have been arranged that Shelley should henceforth
join the Skinner Street household each day at dinner."

Nothing could be handier than this; things will swim along now.

          "Although now Shelley was coming to believe that his wedded
          union with Harriet was a thing of the past, he had not ceased
          to regard her with affectionate consideration; he wrote to her
          frequently, and kept her informed of his whereabouts."

We must not get impatient over these curious inharmoniousnesses and
irreconcilabilities in Shelley's character.  You can see by the
biographer's attitude towards them that there is nothing objectionable
about them.  Shelley was doing his best to make two adoring young
creatures happy: he was regarding the one with affectionate consideration
by mail, and he was assuaging the other one at home.

          "Unhappy Harriet, residing at Bath, had perhaps never desired
          that the breach between herself and her husband should be
          irreparable and complete."

I find no fault with that sentence except that the "perhaps" is not
strictly warranted.  It should have been left out.  In support--or shall
we say extenuation?--of this opinion I submit that there is not
sufficient evidence to warrant the uncertainty which it implies.  The
only "evidence" offered that Harriet was hard and proud and standing out
against a reconciliation is a poem--the poem in which Shelley beseeches
her to "bid the remorseless feeling flee" and "pity" if she "cannot
love."  We have just that as "evidence," and out of its meagre materials
the biographer builds a cobhouse of conjectures as big as the Coliseum;
conjectures which convince him, the prosecuting attorney, but ought to
fall far short of convincing any fair-minded jury.

Shelley's love-poems may be very good evidence, but we know well that
they are "good for this day and train only."  We are able to believe that
they spoke the truth for that one day, but we know by experience that
they could not be depended on to speak it the next.  The very
supplication for a rewarming of Harriet's chilled love was followed so
suddenly by the poet's plunge into an adoring passion for Mary Godwin
that if it had been a check it would have lost its value before a lazy
person could have gotten to the bank with it.

Hardness, stubbornness, pride, vindictiveness--these may sometimes reside
in a young wife and mother of nineteen, but they are not charged against
Harriet Shelley outside of that poem, and one has no right to insert them
into her character on such shadowy "evidence" as that.  Peacock knew
Harriet well, and she has a flexible and persuadable look, as painted by
him:

          "Her manners were good, and her whole aspect and demeanor such
          manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature that to be once
          in her company was to know her thoroughly.  She was fond of her
          husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes.
          If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in
          retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed
          the change of scene."

"Perhaps" she had never desired that the breach should be irreparable and
complete.  The truth is, we do not even know that there was any breach at
all at this time.  We know that the husband and wife went before the
altar and took a new oath on the 24th of March to love and cherish each
other until death--and this may be regarded as a sort of reconciliation
itself, and a wiping out of the old grudges.  Then Harriet went away, and
the sister-in-law removed herself from her society.  That was in April.
Shelley wrote his "appeal" in May, but the corresponding went right along
afterwards.  We have a right to doubt that the subject of it was a
"reconciliation," or that Harriet had any suspicion that she needed to be
reconciled and that her husband was trying to persuade her to it--as the
biographer has sought to make us believe, with his Coliseum of
conjectures built out of a waste-basket of poetry.  For we have
"evidence" now--not poetry and conjecture.  When Shelley had been dining
daily in the Skinner Street paradise fifteen days and continuing the
love-match which was already a fortnight old twenty-five days earlier,
he forgot to write Harriet; forgot it the next day and the next.  During
four days Harriet got no letter from him.  Then her fright and anxiety
rose to expression-heat, and she wrote a letter to Shelley's publisher
which seems to reveal to us that Shelley's letters to her had been the
customary affectionate letters of husband to wife, and had carried no
appeals for reconciliation and had not needed to:

                                   "BATH (postmark July 7, 1814).
          "MY DEAR SIR,--You will greatly oblige me by giving the
          enclosed to Mr.  Shelley.  I would not trouble you, but it is
          now four days since I have heard from him, which to me is an
          age.  Will you write by return of post and tell me what has
          become of him? as I always fancy something dreadful has
          happened if I do not hear from him.  If you tell me that he is
          well I shall not come to London, but if I do not hear from you
          or him I shall certainly come, as I cannot endure this dreadful
          state of suspense.  You are his friend and you can feel for me.
                              "I remain yours truly,
                                                  "H. S."


Even without Peacock's testimony that "her whole aspect and demeanor were
manifest emanations of a pure and truthful nature," we should hold this
to be a truthful letter, a sincere letter, a loving letter; it bears
those marks; I think it is also the letter of a person accustomed to
receiving letters from her husband frequently, and that they have been of
a welcome and satisfactory sort, too, this long time back--ever since the
solemn remarriage and reconciliation at the altar most likely.

The biographer follows Harriet's letter with a conjecture.
He conjectures that she "would now gladly have retraced her steps."
Which means that it is proven that she had steps to retrace--proven by
the poem.  Well, if the poem is better evidence than the letter, we must
let it stand at that.

Then the biographer attacks Harriet Shelley's honor--by authority of
random and unverified gossip scavengered from a group of people whose
very names make a person shudder: Mary Godwin, mistress to Shelley; her
part-sister, discarded mistress of Lord Byron; Godwin, the philosophical
tramp, who gathers his share of it from a shadow--that is to say, from a
person whom he shirks out of naming.  Yet the biographer dignifies this
sorry rubbish with the name of "evidence."

Nothing remotely resembling a distinct charge from a named person
professing to know is offered among this precious "evidence."

1.  "Shelley believed" so and so.

2.  Byron's discarded mistress says that Shelley told Mary Godwin so and
so, and Mary told her.

3.  "Shelley said" so and so--and later "admitted over and over again
that he had been in error."

4.  The unspeakable Godwin "wrote to Mr. Baxter" that he knew so and so
"from unquestionable authority"--name not furnished.

How-any man in his right mind could bring himself to defile the grave of
a shamefully abused and defenceless girl with these baseless
fabrications, this manufactured filth, is inconceivable.  How any man, in
his right mind or out of it, could sit down and coldly try to persuade
anybody to believe it, or listen patiently to it, or, indeed, do anything
but scoff at it and deride it, is astonishing.

The charge insinuated by these odious slanders is one of the most
difficult of all offences to prove; it is also one which no man has a
right to mention even in a whisper about any woman, living or dead,
unless he knows it to be true, and not even then unless he can also prove
it to be true.  There is no justification for the abomination of putting
this stuff in the book.

Against Harriet Shelley's good name there is not one scrap of tarnishing
evidence, and not even a scrap of evil gossip, that comes from a source
that entitles it to a hearing.

On the credit side of the account we have strong opinions from the people
who knew her best.  Peacock says:

          "I feel it due to the memory of Harriet to state my most
          decided conviction that her conduct as a wife was as pure, as
          true, as absolutely faultless, as that of any who for such
          conduct are held most in honor."

Thornton Hunt, who had picked and published slight flaws in Harriet's
character, says, as regards this alleged large one:

          "There is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal
          against her before her voluntary departure from Shelley."

Trelawney says:

          "I was assured by the evidence of the few friends who knew both
          Shelley and his wife--Hookham, Hogg, Peacock, and one of the
          Godwins--that Harriet was perfectly innocent of all offence."

What excuse was there for raking up a parcel of foul rumors from
malicious and discredited sources and flinging them at this dead girl's
head?  Her very defencelessness should have been her protection.  The
fact that all letters to her or about her, with almost every scrap of her
own writing, had been diligently mislaid, leaving her case destitute of a
voice, while every pen-stroke which could help her husband's side had
been as diligently preserved, should have excused her from being brought
to trial.  Her witnesses have all disappeared, yet we see her summoned in
her grave-clothes to plead for the life of her character, without the
help of an advocate, before a disqualified judge and a packed jury.

Harriet Shelley wrote her distressed letter on the 7th of July.  On the
28th her husband ran away with Mary Godwin and her part-sister Claire to
the Continent.  He deserted his wife when her confinement was
approaching.  She bore him a child at the end of November, his mistress
bore him another one something over two months later.  The truants were
back in London before either of these events occurred.

On one occasion, presently, Shelley was so pressed for money to support
his mistress with that he went to his wife and got some money of his that
was in her hands--twenty pounds.  Yet the mistress was not moved to
gratitude; for later, when the wife was troubled to meet her engagements,
the mistress makes this entry in her diary:

          "Harriet sends her creditors here; nasty woman.  Now we shall
          have to change our lodgings."

The deserted wife bore the bitterness and obloquy of her situation two
years and a quarter; then she gave up, and drowned herself.  A month
afterwards the body was found in the water.  Three weeks later Shelley
married his mistress.

I must here be allowed to italicize a remark of the biographer's
concerning Harriet Shelley:

          "That no act of Shelley's during the two years which
          immediately preceded her death tended to cause the rash act
          which brought her life to its close seems certain."

Yet her husband had deserted her and her children, and was living with a
concubine all that time!  Why should a person attempt to write biography
when the simplest facts have no meaning to him?  This book is littered
with as crass stupidities as that one--deductions by the page which bear
no discoverable kinship to their premises.

The biographer throws off that extraordinary remark without any
perceptible disturbance to his serenity; for he follows it with a
sentimental justification of Shelley's conduct which has not a pang of
conscience in it, but is silky and smooth and undulating and pious--
a cake-walk with all the colored brethren at their best.  There may be
people who can read that page and keep their temper, but it is doubtful.
Shelley's life has the one indelible blot upon it, but is otherwise
worshipfully noble and beautiful.  It even stands out indestructibly
gracious and lovely from the ruck of these disastrous pages, in spite of
the fact that they expose and establish his responsibility for his
forsaken wife's pitiful fate--a responsibility which he himself tacitly
admits in a letter to Eliza Westbrook, wherein he refers to his taking up
with Mary Godwin as an act which Eliza "might excusably regard as the
cause of her sister's ruin."


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Defense of Harriet Shelley
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES

by Mark Twain



          The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's
          novels as artistic creations.  There are others of his works
          which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and
          scenes even more thrilling.  Not one can be compared with
          either of them as a finished whole.

          The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight.
          They were pure works of art.--Prof. Lounsbury.


          The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.
          .  .  .  One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty
          Bumppo .  .  .  .

          The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the
          delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his
          youth up.--Prof. Brander Matthews.

          Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction
          yet produced by America.--Wilkie Collins.


It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English
Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and
Wilkie Collies to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having
read some of it.  It would have been much more decorous to keep silent
and let persons talk who have read Cooper.

Cooper's art has some defects.  In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the
restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences
against literary art out of a possible 115.  It breaks the record.

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic
fiction--some say twenty-two.  In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of
them.  These eighteen require:

1.  That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.  But the
Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

2.  They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of
the tale, and shall help to develop it.  But as the Deerslayer tale is
not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes
have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to
develop.

3.  They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in
the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the
corpses from the others.  But this detail has often been overlooked in
the Deerslayer tale.

4.  They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive,
shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.  But this detail also
has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

5.  They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation,
the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings
would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a
discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of
relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be
interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the
people cannot think of anything more to say.  But this requirement has
been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.

6.  They require that when the author describes the character of a
personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage
shall justify said description.  But this law gets little or no attention
in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.

7.  They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated,
gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering
in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel
in the end of it.  But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the
Deerslayer tale.

8.  They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the
reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by
either the author or the people in the tale.  But this rule is
persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.

9.  They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves
to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle,
the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and
reasonable.  But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.

10.  They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep
interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he
shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad
ones.  But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in
it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned
together.

11.  They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly
defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given
emergency.  But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated.

In addition to these large rules there are some little ones.  These
require that the author shall:

12.  Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13.  Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14.  Eschew surplusage.

15.  Not omit necessary details.

16.  Avoid slovenliness of form.

17.  Use good grammar.

18.  Employ a simple and straightforward style.

Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Deerslayer
tale.

Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such
as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and
indeed he did some quite sweet things with it.  In his little box of
stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices
for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with,
and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things
and seeing them go.  A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread
in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail.
Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick.
Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently
was his broken twig.  He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his
effects, and worked it the hardest.  It is a restful chapter in any book
of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds
and whites for two hundred yards around.  Every time a Cooper person is
in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure
to step on a dry twig.  There may be a hundred handier things to step on,
but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper.  Cooper requires him to turn out and
find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one.  In fact, the
Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.

I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the
delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the
other Cooperian experts.  Perhaps we may venture two or three samples.
Cooper was a sailor--a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a
vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a
particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there
which will hold her back against the gale and save her.  For just pure
woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat?  For
several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought
to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either
buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet
or so--and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls.  Now in one place
he loses some "females"--as he always calls women--in the edge of a wood
near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to
show off the delicate art of the forest before the reader.  These mislaid
people are hunting for a fort.  They hear a cannonblast, and a
cannon-ball presently comes rolling into the wood and stops at their
feet.  To the females this suggests nothing.  The case is very different
with the admirable Bumppo.  I wish I may never know peace again if he
doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball
across the plain through the dense fog and find the fort.  Isn't it a
daisy?  If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of doing
things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact.  For
instance: one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook (pronounced
Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through
the forest.  Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost.  Neither you nor
I could ever have guessed out the way to find it.  It was very different
with Chicago.  Chicago was not stumped for long.  He turned a running
stream out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were
that person's moccasin-tracks. The current did not wash them away, as it
would have done in all other like cases--no, even the eternal laws of
Nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of
woodcraft on the reader.

We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's
books "reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention."  As a rule, I am
quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and applaud
his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that particular statement
needs to be taken with a few tons of salt.  Bless your heart, Cooper
hadn't any more invention than a horse; and I don't mean a high-class
horse, either; I mean a clothes-horse.  It would be very difficult to
find a really clever "situation" in Cooper's books, and still more
difficult to find one of any kind which he has failed to render absurd by
his handling of it.  Look at the episodes of "the caves"; and at the
celebrated scuffle between Maqua and those others on the table-land a few
days later; and at Hurry Harry's queer water-transit from the castle to
the ark; and at Deerslayer's half-hour with his first corpse; and at the
quarrel between Hurry Harry and Deerslayer later; and at--but choose for
yourself; you can't go amiss.

If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked
better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly.
Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" suffer noticeably
from the absence of the observer's protecting gift.  Cooper's eye was
splendidly inaccurate.  Cooper seldom saw anything correctly.  He saw
nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly.  Of course a man who
cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working
at a disadvantage when he is constructing a "situation."  In the
Deerslayer tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it
flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to twenty as it meanders along
for no given reason; and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be
required to explain itself.  Fourteen pages later the width of the
brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty feet, and become
"the narrowest part of the stream." This shrinkage is not accounted for.
The stream has bends in it, a sure indication that it has alluvial banks
and cuts them; yet these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long.  If
Cooper had been a nice and punctilious observer he would have noticed
that the bends were oftener nine hundred feet long than short of it.

Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty feet wide, in the first place,
for no particular reason; in the second place, he narrowed it to less
than twenty to accommodate some Indians.  He bends a "sapling" to the
form of an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its
foliage.  They are "laying" for a settler's scow or ark which is coming
up the stream on its way to the lake; it is being hauled against the
stiff current by a rope whose stationary end is anchored in the lake; its
rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour.  Cooper describes
the ark, but pretty obscurely.  In the matter of dimensions "it was
little more than a modern canal-boat." Let us guess, then, that it was
about one hundred and forty feet long.  It was of "greater breadth than
common."  Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen feet wide.  This
leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as long as
itself, and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of space
to spare on each side.  We cannot too much admire this miracle.
A low-roofed log dwelling occupies "two-thirds of the ark's length"--a
dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say a kind of
vestibule train.  The dwelling has two rooms--each forty-five feet long
and sixteen feet wide, let us guess.  One of them is the bedroom of the
Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime,
at night it is papa's bedchamber.  The ark is arriving at the stream's
exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to
accommodate the Indians--say to eighteen.  There is a foot to spare on
each side of the boat.  Did the Indians notice that there was going to
be a tight squeeze there?  Did they notice that they could make money by
climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when
the ark scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things,
but Cooper's Indians never notice anything.  Cooper thinks they are
marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error
about his Indians.  There was seldom a sane one among them.

The ark is one hundred and forty feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet
long.  The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the
arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the
rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family.  It will take the ark a
minute and a half to pass under.  It will take the ninety foot dwelling a
minute to pass under.  Now, then, what did the six Indians do?  It would
take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it
up, I believe.  Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did.  Their
chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian,
warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when he
had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he
judged, he let go and dropped.  And missed the house!  That is actually
what he did.  He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow.
It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly.  He lay there
unconscious.  If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have
made the trip.  The fault was Cooper's, not his.  The error lay in the
construction of the house.  Cooper was no architect.

There still remained in the roost five Indians.

The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach.  Let me explain
what the five did--you would not be able to reason it out for yourself.
No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it.  Then No.
2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it.
Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it.  Then
No, 4.  jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern.  Then
even No. 5 made a jump for the boat--for he was a Cooper Indian.  In the
matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the
Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious.  The scow
episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill,
because the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of
fictitiousness and general improbability over it.  This comes of Cooper's
inadequacy as an observer.

The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for inaccurate
observation in the account of the shooting-match in The Pathfinder.

          "A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its
          head having been first touched with paint."

The color of the paint is not stated--an important omission, but Cooper
deals freely in important omissions.  No, after all, it was not an
important omission; for this nail-head is a hundred yards from the
marksmen, and could not be seen by them at that distance, no matter what
its color might be.

How far can the best eyes see a common house-fly?  A hundred yards?  It
is quite impossible.  Very well; eyes that cannot see a house-fly that is
a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nailhead at that distance,
for the size of the two objects is the same.  It takes a keen eye to see
a fly or a nailhead at fifty yards--one hundred and fifty feet.  Can the
reader do it?

The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called.  Then the
Cooper miracles began.  The bullet of the first marksman chipped an edge
off the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little way into
the target--and removed all the paint.  Haven't the miracles gone far
enough now?  Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is
to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer Hawkeye--Long-Rifle-Leather-Stocking-
Pathfinder-Bumppo before the ladies.

          "'Be all ready to clench it, boys I' cried out Pathfinder,
          stepping into his friend's tracks the instant they were vacant.
          'Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is
          gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though
          it were only a mosquito's eye.  Be ready to clench!'

"The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was
buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead."

There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and command a
ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day if we had him back with us.

The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands; but it is
not surprising enough for Cooper.  Cooper adds a touch.  He has made
Pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rifle; and not only that,
but Pathfinder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself.  He
had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot; and not
only made it, but did it with absolute confidence, saying, "Be ready to
clench."  Now a person like that would have undertaken that same feat
with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too.

Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies.  His very
first feat was a thing which no Wild West show can touch.  He was
standing with the group of marksmen, observing--a hundred yards from the
target, mind; one jasper raised his rifle and drove the centre of the
bull's-eye.  Then the Quartermaster fired.  The target exhibited no
result this time.  There was a laugh.  "It's a dead miss," said Major
Lundie.  Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two; then said, in
that calm, indifferent, know-it-all way of his, "No, Major, he has
covered jasper's bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trouble
to examine the target."

Wasn't it remarkable!  How could he see that little pellet fly through
the air and enter that distant bullet-hole?  Yet that is what he did; for
nothing is impossible to a Cooper person.  Did any of those people have
any deep-seated doubts about this thing?  No; for that would imply
sanity, and these were all Cooper people.

          "The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his 'quickness and
          accuracy of sight'" (the italics [''] are mine) "was so
          profound and general, that the instant he made this declaration
          the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a
          dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact.
          There, sure enough, it was found that the Quartermaster's
          bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper's, and that,
          too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be
          certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly
          established by discovering one bullet over the other in the
          stump against which the target was placed."

They made a "minute" examination; but never mind, how could they know
that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one
out?  for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any more
than one bullet.  Did they dig?  No; as we shall see.  It is the
Pathfinder's turn now; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and
fires.

But, alas! here is a disappointment; an incredible, an unimaginable
disappointment--for the target's aspect is unchanged; there is nothing
there but that same old bullet-hole!

          "'If one dared to hint at such a thing,' cried Major Duncan, 'I
          should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target!'"

As nobody had missed it yet, the "also" was not necessary; but never mind
about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.

          "'No, no, Major,' said he, confidently, 'that would be a risky
          declaration.  I didn't load the piece, and can't say what was
          in it; but if it was lead, you will find the bullet driving
          down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper, else is not my name
          Pathfinder.'

          "A shout from the target announced the truth of this
          assertion."

Is the miracle sufficient as it stands?  Not for Cooper.  The Pathfinder
speaks again, as he "now slowly advances towards the stage occupied by
the females":

          "'That's not all, boys, that's not all; if you find the target
          touched at all, I'll own to a miss.  The Quartermaster cut the
          wood, but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger."

The miracle is at last complete.  He knew--doubtless saw--at the distance
of a hundred yards--that his bullet had passed into the hole without
fraying the edges.  There were now three bullets in that one hole--three
bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of the
target.  Everybody knew this--somehow or other--and yet nobody had dug
any of them out to make sure.  Cooper is not a close observer, but he is
interesting.  He is certainly always that, no matter what happens.  And
he is more interesting when he is not noticing what he is about than when
he is.  This is a considerable merit.

The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern
ears.  To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths
would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a
person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to
spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a
rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs
of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by
attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk
wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted
mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy
with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.

Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue.
Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many
other enterprises of his.  He even failed to notice that the man who
talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on the
seventh, and can't help himself.  In the Deerslayer story he lets
Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other
times the basest of base dialects.  For instance, when some one asks him
if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his majestic
answer:

          "'She's in the forest-hanging from the boughs of the trees, in
          a soft rain--in the dew on the open grass--the clouds that
          float about in the blue heavens--the birds that sing in the
          woods--the sweet springs where I slake my thirst--and in all
          the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!'"

And he preceded that, a little before, with this:

          "'It consarns me as all things that touches a fri'nd consarns a
          fri'nd.'"

And this is another of his remarks:

          "'If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in
          the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; or
          if my inimy had only been a bear'"--and so on.

We cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander-in-Chief
comporting himself in the field like a windy melodramatic actor, but
Cooper could.  On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the
French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort:

          "'Point de quartier aux coquins!' cried an eager pursuer, who
          seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.

          "'Stand firm and be ready, my gallant Goths!' suddenly
          exclaimed a voice above them; wait to see the enemy; fire low,
          and sweep the glacis.'

          "'Father? father!' exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist;
          it is I!  Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!'

          "'Hold!' shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of
          parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and
          rolling back in solemn echo.  ''Tis she! God has restored me my
          children! Throw open the sally-port; to the field, Goths, to
          the field! pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs!  Drive
          off these dogs of France with your steel!'"

Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull.  When a person has a poor ear
for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it.  He
keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune.  When a person has a poor
ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you
perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he
doesn't say it.  This is Cooper.  He was not a word-musician.  His ear
was satisfied with the approximate word.  I will furnish some
circumstantial evidence in support of this charge.  My instances are
gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer.  He uses
"verbal," for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for
"marvels"; "necessary," for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated," for
"primitive"; "preparation," for "expectancy"; "rebuked," for "subdued";
"dependent on," for "resulting from"; "fact," for "condition"; "fact,"
for "conjecture"; "precaution," for "caution"; "explain," for
"determine"; "mortified," for "disappointed"; "meretricious," for
"factitious"; "materially," for "considerably"; "decreasing," for
"deepening"; "increasing," for "disappearing"; "embedded," for
"enclosed"; "treacherous;" for "hostile"; "stood," for "stooped";
"softened," for "replaced"; "rejoined," for "remarked"; "situation," for
"condition"; "different," for "differing"; "insensible," for
"unsentient"; "brevity," for "celerity"; "distrusted," for "suspicious";
"mental imbecility," for "imbecility"; "eyes," for "sight";
"counteracting," for "opposing"; "funeral obsequies," for "obsequies."

There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could
write English, but they are all dead now--all dead but Lounsbury.
I don't remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still
he makes it, for he says that Deerslayer is a "pure work of art."
Pure, in that connection, means faultless--faultless in all details and
language is a detail.  If Mr. Lounsbury had only compared Cooper's
English with the English which he writes himself--but it is plain that he
didn't; and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's
is as clean and compact as his own.  Now I feel sure, deep down in my
heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our
language, and that the English of Deerslayer is the very worst that even
Cooper ever wrote.

I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work
of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every
detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me
that Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens.

A work of art?  It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence,
or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of
reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words
they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that
they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations
are--oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime
against the language.

Counting these out, what is left is Art.  I think we must all admit that.


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offences
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET

by Mark Twain



CONTENTS:
     WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
     A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET




WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US

He reports the American joke correctly.  In Boston they ask, How much
does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who
were his parents?  And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon
us--advertisedly in our own special interest--a natural apprehension
moves us to ask, What is the diameter of his reflector?

I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I know by the
newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a
whole education out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that
our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon
the land.

          "His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well
          timed."

          "He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and
          profitably studied."

These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore
public confidence, which had been disquieted by questionings as to
whether so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as
70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse as America, and
pull it through without assistance.

I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament,
and not easily disturbed.  I feared for my country.  And I was not wholly
tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above.  It seemed to me that
there was still room for doubt.  In fact, in looking the ground over I
became more disturbed than I was before.  Many worrying questions came up
in my mind.  Two were prominent.  Where had the teacher gotten his
equipment?  What was his method?

He had gotten his equipment in France.

Then as to his method!  I saw by his own intimations that he was an
Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and other scientists.
The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and
studies their ways a long time patiently.  By this means he is presently
able to group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families
by nice shadings of differences observable in their characters.  Then he
labels all those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group
names, and is now happy, for his great work is completed, and as a result
he intimately knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out.
It may be true, but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer
about it if he had the opinion of the bug.  I think it is a pleasant
System, but subject to error.

The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a
Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, first and last, a Thinker.  He has to
be all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often
able to prove competency.  But history has shown that when he is abroad
observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him.  He is
then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's
chance of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no
more than a naturalist's chance of being able to teach it any new ways
which it will prefer to its own.

To return to that first question.  M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply
be France teaching America.  It seemed to me that the outlook was dark
--almost Egyptian, in fact.  What would the new teacher, representing
France, teach us?  Railroading?  No.  France knows nothing valuable about
railroading.  Steamshipping?  No.  France has no superiorities over us in
that matter.  Steamboating?  No.  French steamboating is still of
Fulton's date--1809.  Postal service?  No.  France is a back number
there.  Telegraphy?  No, we taught her that ourselves.  Journalism?  No.
Magazining?  No, that is our own specialty.  Government?  No; Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery the system is too
variegated for our climate.  Religion?  No, not variegated enough for our
climate.  Morals?  No, we cannot rob the poor to enrich ourselves.
Novel-writing?  No.  M. Bourget and the others know only one plan, and
when that is expurgated there is nothing left of the book.

I wish I could think what he is going to teach us.  Can it be Deportment?
But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction,
except to a few.  Those few are pleased.  They are enjoying their joy as
well as they can.  They confess their happiness to the interviewer.  They
feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that
they had sugar between the cuts.  True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar.
And true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was
sand, because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a
gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have
been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened.  Yes, they are
pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may
say, with little recurrent shivers of joy--subdued joy, so to speak, not
the overdone kind.  And they commune together, these, and massage each
other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and
thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar
and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the
interviewer: "It was severe--yes, it was bitterly severe; but oh, how
true it was; and it will do us so much good!"

If it isn't Deportment, what is left?  It was at this point that I seemed
to get on the right track at last.  M. Bourget would teach us to know
ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves.  That would be
an education.  He would explain us to ourselves.  Then we should
understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.

It seemed a doubtful scheme.  He could explain us to himself--that would
be easy.  That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug to
himself.  But to explain the bug to the bug--that is quite a different
matter.  The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows himself
better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.

A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
that is as far as he can get.  I think that no foreigner can report its
interior--its soul, its life, its speech, its thought.  I think that a
knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four
or six--absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years and
years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed;
sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its
loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and
shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion,
its adorations--of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the national
name.  Observation?  Of what real value is it?  One learns peoples
through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.

There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the
life of a people and make a valuable report--the native novelist.  This
expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have fifteen
conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time.  This
native specialist is not qualified to begin work until he has been
absorbing during twenty-five years.  How much of his competency is
derived from conscious "observation"?  The amount is so slight that it
counts for next to nothing in the equipment.  Almost the whole capital
of the novelist is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation
--absorption.  The native expert's intentional observation of manners,
speech, character, and ways of life can have value, for the native knows
what they mean without having to cipher out the meaning.  But I should be
astonished to see a foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the
elusive shades of these subtle things.  Even the native novelist becomes
a foreigner, with a foreigner's limitations, when he steps from the State
whose life is familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived.
Bret Harte got his California and his Californians by unconscious
absorption, and put both of them into his tales alive.  But when he came
from the Pacific to the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from
study-conscious observation--his failure was absolutely monumental.
Newport is a disastrous place for the unacclimated observer, evidently.

To return to novel-building.  Does the native novelist try to generalize
the nation?  No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life
of a few people grouped in a certain place--his own place--and that is
one book.  In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and
the people of the whole nation--the life of a group in a New England
village; in a New York village; in a Texan village; in an Oregon village;
in villages in fifty States and Territories; then the farm-life in fifty
States and Territories; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in
a dozen widely separated cities.  And the Indians will be attended to;
and the cowboys; and the gold and silver miners; and the negroes; and the
Idiots and Congressmen; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the
Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the
Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the
Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the
Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists,
the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moonshiners.
And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the
soul of the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and
not anywhere else can these be had.  And the shadings of character,
manners, feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.

          "'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its
          vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor.
          'It is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover',
          and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the
          church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the
          suggestions of a revolutionary leader.  I am therefore quite
          sure that this 'American soul', the principal interest and the
          great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of
          Newport for those who choose to see it."--M. Paul Bourget.

[The italics ('') are mine.]  It is a large contract which he has
undertaken.  "Records" is a pretty poor word there, but I think the use
of it is due to hasty translation.  In the original the word is 'fastes'.
I think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he expected to find the great
"American soul" secreted behind the ostentatious of Newport; and that he
was going to get it out and examine it, and generalize it, and
psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its hidden vast mystery: "the
nature of the people" of the United States of America.  We have been
accused of being a nation addicted to inventing wild schemes.  I trust
that we shall be allowed to retire to second place now.

There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled
"American."  There isn't a single human ambition, or religious trend,
or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code of principles,
or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference for a
particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head or
face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or
disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can
rationally be generalized as "American."

Whenever you have found what seems to be an "American" peculiarity, you
have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in the social
scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared.  And you can cross the
Atlantic and find it again.  There may be a Newport religious drift, or
sporting drift, or conversational style or complexion, or cut of face,
but there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and west,
where you could not find your duplicates.  It is the same with everything
else which one might propose to call "American."  M. Bourget thinks he
has found the American Coquette.  If he had really found her he would
also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she exists in
other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart and the
same ways and impulses.  I think this because I have seen our coquette;
I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our novels,
and seen her twin in foreign novels.  I wish M. Bourget had seen ours.
He thought he saw her.  And so he applied his System to her.  She was a
Species.  So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her,
and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls
"types," and labeled them in his usual scientific way with "formulas"
--brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a person blink, sometimes,
they are so sudden and vivid.  As a rule they are pretty far-fetched,
but that is not an important matter; they surprise, they compel
admiration, and I notice by some of the comments which his efforts have
called forth that they deceive the unwary.  Here are a few of the
coquette variants which he has grouped and labeled:

     THE COLLECTOR.
     THE EQUILIBREE.
     THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.
     THE BLUFFER.
     THE GIRL-BOY.

If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been
obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen
them and spoken with them.  But he did not stop there; he went further
and furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also
light-throwing samples of their speeches.  He entered those things in his
note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the
world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them
genuine.  They throw altogether too much light.  They reveal to the
native the origin of his find.  I suppose he knows how he came to make
that novel and captivating discovery, by this time.  If he does not, any
American can tell him--any American to whom he will show his anecdotes.
It was "put up" on him, as we say.  It was a jest--to be plain, it was a
series of frauds.  To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless and
contemptible.  The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they
have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies.
M. Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a
type of practical joker.  One may say the type of practical joker, for
these people are exactly alike all over the world.  Their equipment is
always the same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a
rule, and always the spirit of treachery.

In his Chapter IV.  M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted
to the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little
frauds.  One is not moved to laugh.  There is nothing funny in the
situation; it is only pathetic.  The stranger gave those people his
confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.

But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame
himself.  Even a practical joker has some little judgment.  He has to
exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save
himself from getting into trouble.  In my time I have seldom seen such
daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have
worked off at par on this confiding observer.  It compels the conviction
that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite
unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in
his behalf.  They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted
was "significant" facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine the
source whence they proceeded.  It is plain that there was a sort of
conspiracy against him almost from the start--a conspiracy to freight him
up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed brains could
invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to incredible.  They told him
things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but they
did not excite his.  Consider this:

          "There is not in all the United States an entirely nude
          statue."

If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a
reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and inquire a
little further before he added it to his catch.  What does the present
observer do?  Adds it.  Adds it at once.  Adds it, and labels it with
this innocent comment:

          "This small fact is strangely significant."

It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.

Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present
of.  I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his
suspicion a little, but it didn't.  It was a note from a fog-horn for
strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it.
If he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters:

          "If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he
          is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in
          a tribute."

Again, this is defective observation.  It is human to like to be praised;
one can even notice it in the French.  But it is not human to like to be
ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a "tribute."  I think a
little psychologizing ought to have come in there.  Something like this:
A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be
ridiculed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not
like to be ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this
formula: the American's grade being higher than these, and the chain-of
argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for
suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed,
and regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.

I feel persuaded that in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is
too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great
art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks.  Every now and then, at
half-hour intervals, M.  Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies
and dissolves them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the
charge into a mould and turns you out a compact principle which will
explain an American girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn
for old things, or any other impossible riddle which a person wants
answered.

It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can
be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the
name of the nation where they are found.  I wonder what they are.
Perhaps one of them is temperament.  One speaks of French vivacity and
German gravity and English stubbornness.  There is no American
temperament.  The nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two
--the composed Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in
other countries.  Morals?  Purity of women may fairly be called universal
with us, but that is the case in some other countries.  We have no
monopoly of it; it cannot be named American.  I think that there is but a
single specialty with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide
name "American."  That is the national devotion to ice-water.  All
Germans drink beer, but the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither
of those peoples is the beer-drinking nation.  I suppose we do stand
alone in having a drink that nobody likes but ourselves.  When we have
been a month in Europe we lose our craving for it, and we finally tell
the hotel folk that they needn't provide it any more.  Yet we hardly
touch our native shore again, winter or summer, before we are eager for
it.  The reasons for this state of things have not been psychologized
yet.  I drop the hint and say no more.

It is my belief that there are some "national" traits and things
scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that have
lived so long that they have the solid look of facts.  One of them is the
dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world.  Ever
since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts
about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a
few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it.  If
people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our
women, and psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them
how to behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot
tell them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those
missionaries are qualified or not.  A nation ought always to examine into
this detail before engaging the teacher for good.  This last one has let
fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it:

          "In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied
          to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all
          the weaknesses of the French soul."

You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession;
a science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high
Parisian existence.  I do not quite like the look of it.  I question if
it can be taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those
pathetic, neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the
education which M.  Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene
summits of our high Parisian life.

I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have
been parading the world as facts this long time.  For instance, consider
the Dollar.  The world seems to think that the love of money is
"American"; and that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is "American."
I believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not
American monopolies at all.  The love of money is natural to all nations,
for money is a good and strong friend.  I think that this love has
existed everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil.

I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying
to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising
efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out
of all proportion to the European experience.  For eighty years this
opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after
another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic
coast to the Pacific.  When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on
tolerably long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and
reasonably expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he
gave for them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no
matter what his nationality was.  He would have done it in Europe or
China if he had had the same chance.

In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble
worker stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money
risked in a stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no
matter what his or her nationality might be.  I was there, and saw it.

But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so
there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is
almost an unknown thing--and has been, from the beginning.

Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but
when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between
European eagerness and American.  England saw this in the wild days of
the Railroad King; France saw it in 1720--time of Law and the Mississippi
Bubble.  I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any
madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely
comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day.  If I had a
cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and satisfy nearly
anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more "American" than
it is French.  And if I could furnish an American opportunity to staid
Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire.

But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions.
When M. Bourget is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is
peculiarly and particularly himself.  His ways are wholly original when
he encounters a trait or a custom which is new to him.  Another person
would merely examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it
go; but that is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he always wants to know
why that thing exists, he wants to know how it came to happen; and he
will not let go of it until he has found out.  And in every instance he
will find that reason where no one but himself would have thought of
looking for it.  He does not seem to care for a reason that is not
picturesquely located; one might almost say picturesquely and impossibly
located.

He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married
women.  At once, as usual, he wanted to know why.  Any one could have
told him.  He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of
the country.  But no, he preferred to find out for himself.  He has a
trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is
not particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the
character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding
out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but
himself.

In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women
are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question:  What is it
that protects her?

It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties
to any but a trained philosopher.  Nearly any person would have said to
M. Bourget: "Oh, that is very simple.  It is very seldom in America that
a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the
beginning, have been made for love; and where love is there is no room
for the corruptor."

Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went
at that poor, humble little thing.  He moved upon it in column--three
columns--and with artillery.

"Two reasons of a very different kind explain"--that fact.

And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two
reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them.  But I will not
retreat now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I
am honest and not trying to deceive any one.

1.  Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer
in New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created
by a Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished
adultery with death.

2.  And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are
protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce.

If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian
irruptions of philosophy.  But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of
'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself.  Let us examine this paralyzing
Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.

1.  This universality of "protection" has existed in our country from the
beginning; before the death penalty existed in New England, and during
all the generations that have dragged by since it was annulled.

2.  Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that
any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet
been thought of.

Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty
years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business
thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population.
Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were
"protected" by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan scare--what
is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the 20,000,000?
They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was no easy
divorce law to protect them.

Awhile ago I said that M.  Bourget's method of truth-seeking--hunting for
it in out-of-the-way places--was new; but that was an error.  I remember
that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other
astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion
which M. Bourget employs in his seasonings about American social facts
and their origin.  Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way
was caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo,
which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific
gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure--by the
natural processes of animal decay--of the phosphorus contained in them.

This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much
thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final.  His
own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs;
and he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that
the locusts do like that in Egypt.

Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's important
contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined to regard
it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced
against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a
detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso
suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join
their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards
burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.

These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received
with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,
who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to
account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that
the Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was
because God "wanted to hev it so," the admirable idea fell perfectly
flat.

As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a
scientific one.  He says, "Above all, I do not believe much in
anecdotes."

Why?  "In history they are all false"--a sufficiently broad statement
--"in literature all libelous"--also a sufficiently sweeping statement,
coming from a critic who notes that we are "a people who are peculiarly
extravagant in our language--" and when it is a matter of social life,
"almost all biased."  It seems to amount to stultification, almost.  He
has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes--
mainly "biased" ones, I suppose; and, as they occur "in literature,"
furnished by his pen, they must be "all libelous."  Or did he mean not in
literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people?  I am not
able to answer that.  Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have
only the translation of this installment by me.  I think the remark had
an intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that
either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the
confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got
side-tracked.

"But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on divorces
appear to me to be most conclusive."  And he sets himself the task of
explaining--in a couple of columns--the process by which Easy-Divorce
conceived, invented, originated, developed, and perfected an
empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States.  IN 40 YEARS.
No, he doesn't state the interval.  With all his passion for statistics
he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic miracle.

I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns,
but I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was.
I was not even able to find out where it left off.  It seemed to
gradually dissolve and flow off into other matters.  I followed it with
interest, for I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery
in America, but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it.
I only know it didn't.  But that is not valuable; I knew it before.

Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all.  The minute
it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and
resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.  And so,
when M. Bourget said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke
all up.  I remember exploding its American countermine once, under that
grand hero, Napoleon.  He was only First Consul then, and I was
Consul-General--for the United States, of course; but we were very
intimate, notwithstanding the difference in rank, for I waived that.
One day something offered the opening, and he said:

"Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an
American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his
time he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his
grandfather was!"

I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was
back at him as quick as a flash--"Right, your Excellency!  But I reckon
a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too; because when
all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't find out who
his father was!"

Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on!
He reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says:

"Land, but it's good!  It's im-mensely good!  I'George, I never heard it
said so good in my life before!  Say it again."

So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and
then he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it,
and doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same.
In my opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those
dear old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of
a fresh sort of original way.

But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came.  It is
the only way to thoroughly understand a people.  When I found I was
coming to Paris, I read 'La Terre'.






A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET

          [The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review
          in an article entitled "Mark Twain and Paul Bourget," by Max
          O'Rell.  The following little note is a Rejoinder to that
          article.  It is possible that the position assumed here--that
          M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself--is untenable.]

You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation,
if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may
say it without hurt--and certainly I mean no offence--I believe you would
have acquitted yourself better with the pen.  With the pen you are at
home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm,
persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect
when they have earned a castigation.  But I am sure I see signs in the
above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of
practice.  If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it
lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that
it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it
wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any
more.  There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I
have named the main ones.  I feel sure that they are all due to your lack
of practice in dictating.

Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you
had not dictated it.  But only for a moment.  Certain quite simple and
definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the
reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific
invitation from you or from me.  I mean, it could not except as an
intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into
a private dispute between friends, unasked.

Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in
this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck
strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other.  No one,
of course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized
representative.  I asked some questions--asked them of myself.
I answered them myself.  My article was thirteen pages long, and all
devoted to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of
guesses as to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one
page of doubts as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and
our ways; two or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain
results which it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show
the justness of these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of
slight fault-findings with certain minor details of your literary
workmanship, of extracts from your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them;
then I closed with an anecdote.  I repeat--for certain reasons--that I
closed with an anecdote.

When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to "answer" a "reply" to
that article of mine, I said "yes," and waited in Paris for the
proof-sheets of the "reply" to come.  I already knew, by the cablegram,
that the "reply" would not be signed by you, but upon reflection I knew
it would be dictated by you, because no volunteer would feel himself at
liberty to assume your championship in a private dispute, unasked, in
view of the fact that you are quite well able to take care of your
matters of that sort yourself and are not in need of any one's help. No,
a volunteer could not make such a venture.  It would be too immodest.
Also too gratuitously generous.  And a shade too self-sufficient.  No,
he could not venture it.  It would look too much like anxiety to get in
at a feast where no plate had been provided for him.  In fact he could
not get in at all, except by the back way, and with a false key; that is
to say, a pretext--a pretext invented for the occasion by putting into
my mouth words which I did not use, and by wresting sayings of mine from
their plain and true meaning.  Would he resort to methods like those to
get in?  No; there are no people of that kind.  So then I knew for a
certainty that you dictated the Reply yourself.  I knew you did it to
save yourself manual labor.

And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content--perfectly
content.

Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me,
if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.

Because then it would have replied--and that is really what a Reply is
for.  Broadly speaking, its function is to refute--as you will easily
concede.  That leaves something for the other person to take hold of:
he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the
refutation.  This would have happened if you had written it out instead
of dictating.  Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's
mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into using
one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set.
Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A
SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON--as in the present case--when he ought to
employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER.  The
great foundation-rule and basic principle of discussion with a
fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas
the great foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation
between a shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent
desertion of the topic in hand.  If I may be allowed to illustrate by
quoting example IV., section from chapter ix. of "Revised Rules for
Conducting Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person," it will
assist us in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets
of rules:

Shouter.  Did you say his name is WETHERBY?

Deaf Person.  Change?  Yes, I think it will.  Though if it should clear
off I--

Shouter.  It's his NAME I want--his NAME.

Deaf Person.  Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.

Shouter.  No, no, no!--you have quite misunderSTOOD me.  If--

Deaf Person.  Ah!  GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go.  But call again,
and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.


You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated.  It is
really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours;
in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand.
I talk twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your
doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of
nonexistent things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your
disloyal attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe
statistics and far facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and
come back at me with eight pages of weather.

I do not see how a person can act so.  It is good of you to repeat, with
change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own
article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons
on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with
a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed.  It is
weather; and of almost the worst sort.  It pleases me greatly to hear you
discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:

"A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
is as far as he can get.  I think that no foreigner can report its
interior;"--[And you say: "A man of average intelligence, who has passed
six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth jotting
down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating.  For my part,
I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting than native
opinions.  After all, such impressions merely mean 'how the country
struck the foreigner.'"]--which is a quite clear way of saying that a
foreigner's report is only valuable when it restricts itself to
impressions.  It pleases me to have you follow my lead in that glowing
way, but it leaves me nothing to combat.  You should give me something to
deny and refute; I would do as much for you.

It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of
your books seriously.--[When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I
wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: "If ever you should insist in
seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and of your
countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be
exploded."]--Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier
days.  I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer.


                         NOTICE.

          Persons attempting to find a motive in
          this narrative will be prosecuted;
          persons attempting to find a moral in it
          will be banished; persons attempting to
          find a plot in it will be shot.
                              BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
                              PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.


The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see--the public must
not take us too seriously.  If we remove that kernel we remove the
life-principle, and the preface is a corpse.  Yes, it pleases me to have
you use that idea, for it is a high compliment.  But is leaves me
nothing to combat; and that is damage to me.

Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget?
If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping.  For you have furnished a
general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you--can teach us.
--["What could France teach America!" exclaims Mark Twain.  France can
teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic
feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many
avenues inhabited by American millionaires.  She can teach her, not
perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy.
She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that
money-making is only a means to obtain an end.  She can teach her that
wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and
confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by
their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness.
These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular
and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by
whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards,
and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.

I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his
club would immediately see his name canceled from membership.  A man who
had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would
be refused admission into any decent society.  Many a Frenchman has blown
his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt.  Now would Mark
Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a creditor
stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following
day.  When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from
business?']--It is a good answer.

It relates to manners, customs, and morals--three things concerning which
we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the
verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be
subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly
as any one could do it, in the circumstances.  But why did you choose a
detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay
evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly
facts?--facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute.
I asked what France could teach us about government.  I laid myself
pretty wide open, there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too,
when I did it.  France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes
which distribute the burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness
than is the case in any other land; and she can teach us the wisest and
surest system of collecting them that exists.  She can teach us how to
elect a President in a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing
the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass
business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful
people wish the term extended to thirty years.  France can teach us--but
enough of that part of the question.  And what else can France teach us?
She can teach us all the fine arts--and does.  She throws open her
hospitable art academies, and says to us, "Come"--and we come, troops and
troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest masters
in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us all that
we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us with
prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and
when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home
and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come
with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill--there is nothing
to pay.  And in return for this imperial generosity, what does America
do?  She charges a duty on French works of art!

I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth
talking about.  If you would only furnish me something to argue,
something to refute--but you persistently won't.  You leave good chances
unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing
unimportant things.  For instance, you have proven and established these
eight facts here following--a good score as to number, but not worth
while:

Mark Twain is--

1.  "Insulting."

2.  (Sarcastically speaking) "This refined humor, 1st."

3.  Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.

4.  Has uttered "an ill-natured sneer."

5.  Is "nasty."

6.  Needs a "lesson in politeness and good manners."

7.  Has published a "nasty article."

8.  Has made remarks "unworthy of a gentleman."--["It is more funny than
his" (Mark Twain's) "anecdote, and would have been less insulting."]

A quoted remark of mine "is a gross insult to a nation friendly to
America."

"He has read La Terre, this refined humorist."

"When Mark Twain visits a garden .  .  .  he goes in the far-away corner
where the soil is prepared."

"Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them" (the
Frenchwomen).

"When he" (Mark Twain) "takes his revenge he is unkind, unfair, bitter,
nasty."

"But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark," etc.

"Mark might certainly have derived from it" (M. Bourget's book) "a lesson
in politeness and good manners."

A quoted remark of mine is "unworthy of a gentleman."--

These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much
for such finds.  In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress
them.  We avoid naming them.  American writers never allow themselves to
name them.  It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that
exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very
young and inexperienced.  And even if we had the disposition to name
them, in order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and
arguments, our magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think
that such words sully their pages.  This present magazine is particularly
strenuous about it.  Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your
proof-sheets to France closed thus--for your protection:

"It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider as
personal."

It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not
needed.  You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you
any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your
unoffending and dearest ones present.

Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you
would consider exaggerated.  For instance, we should not write notes like
that one of yours to a lady for a small fault--or a large one.--[When M.
Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the
Americans, "who can always get away with a few years' trying to find out
who their grandfathers were,"] he merely makes an allusion to an American
foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is
when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards!  How the
Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in
their name!

Snobbery .  .  .  .  I could give Mark Twain an example of the American
specimen.  It is a piquant story.  I never published it because I feared
my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of
American character instead of a rare exception.

I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of
a New York millionaire.  I accepted with reluctance.  I do not like
private engagements.  At five o'clock on the day the causerie was to be
given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to
arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour.  Then she wrote a
postscript.  Many women are unfortunate there.  Their minds are full of
after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is generally
to be found after their signature.  This lady's P. S. ran thus: "I
suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the lecture."

I fairly shorted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in
a bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash:

"Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had
the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy
of France.  I have also many times had the pleasure of being entertained
by the members of the old aristocracy of England.  If it may interest
you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being
entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as to
expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New
York.  No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to
expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to
keep the engagement."

Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort,
adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique
scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the
gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not!
[But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do
it.]--We should not think it kind.  No matter how much we might have
associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to
crush her with it and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for
we have a saying, "Who humiliates my mother includes his own."

Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter,
M. Bourget?  Indeed I do not.  I believe it to have been surreptitiously
inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned.  I think he did it
with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your
article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve
you when you see it.  I also think he interlarded many other things which
you will disapprove of when you see them.  I am certain that all the
harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you.  No doubt you could
have proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him
to do it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a
higher quality.

Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent
information about Balzac and those others.--["Now the style of M.
Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to
Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone.  Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian,
Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan?  Has he read
Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those books which leave
for a long time a perfume about you?  Has he read the novels of Alexandre
Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac?  Has he read Victor Hugo's
'Les Miserables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'?  Has he read or heard the
plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of
modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world
for hundreds of years to come?  He has read La Terre--this kind-hearted,
refined humorist!  When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the
violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle?  No, he goes in the
far-away corner where the soil is prepared.  Hear what he says: 'I wish M.
Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came.  It is the only
way to thoroughly understand a people.  When I found I was coming to
Paris I read La Terre.'"]--All this in simple justice to you--and to me;
for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong
your head and heart, and at the same time convict myself of being
equipped with a vacancy where my penetration ought to be lodged.

And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which
the Reply grew--the anecdote which closed my recent article--and consider
how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions.
If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that
anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hundreds of
times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back
way.  But I accuse you of nothing--nothing but error.  When you say that
I "retort by calling France a nation of bastards," it is an error.  And
not a small one, but a large one.  I made no such remark, nor anything
resembling it.  Moreover, the magazine would not have allowed me to use
so gross a word as that.

You told an anecdote.  A funny one--I admit that.  It hit a foible of our
American aristocracy, and it stung me--I admit that; it stung me sharply.
It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the
gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:

"He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his grandfather?"
That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.

Now that hits only a few of us, I grant--just the upper crust only--but
it hits exceedingly hard.

I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you.  In one of your
chapters I found this chance:

"In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to arts
and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of
the French soul."

You see?  Your "higher Parisian" class--not everybody, not the nation,
but only the top crust of the Ovation--applies to debauchery all the
powers of its soul.

I argued to myself that that energy must produce results.  So I built an
anecdote out of your remark.  In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me
--but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed)
in paragraph eleven of your Reply.--[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not
like M. Paul Bourget's book.  So long as he makes light fun of the great
French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humorist
we know.  When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking
a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.]

For example:
See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:

"I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because
whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can
always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather
was."

Hear the answer:

"I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull time, too;
because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see if he can't
find out who his father was."

The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery.
I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a
gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women--a remark
unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman,
a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark
Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it
is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to
you.

If Mark Twain was hard up in search of, a French "chestnut," I might have
told him the following little anecdote.  It is more funny than his, and
would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are abusing each
other.  "Ah, hold your tongue," says one, "you ain't got no father."

"Ain't got no father!" replies the other; "I've got more fathers than
you."

Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me.  Why?  Because
it had a point.  It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point.  You
wouldn't have wasted space on it if it hadn't had point.

My anecdote has hurt you.  Why?  Because it had point, I suppose.  It
wouldn't have hurt you if it hadn't had point.  I judged from your remark
about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it
would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had
struck.  I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the
entire nation; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and
if you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment.
But you are to blame, your own self.  Your remark misled me.  I supposed
the industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.

Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can
to undo it.  There must be a way, M.  Bourget, and I am willing to do
anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.

I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.

We will swap anecdotes.  I will take your anecdote and you take mine.  I
will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of
France:

"Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your
grandfathers were?"

They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can
trace their lineage back through centuries.

And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation,
saying:

"And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your fathers
were."  They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel hurt, because
they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers.

Do you get the idea?  The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point,
you see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven't any.

That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it.
I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing
that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your
amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so.
And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with
another one--on the give-and-take principle, you know--which is American.
I didn't know that with the French it was all give and no take, and you
didn't tell me.  But now that I have made everything comfortable again,
and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any point any more, I
know you will forgive me.


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays on Paul Bourget
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)







TOM SAWYER ABROAD




CHAPTER I. TOM SEEKS NEW ADVENTURES

DO you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? I mean
the adventures we had down the river, and the time we set the darky Jim
free and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn't. It only just p'isoned
him for more. That was all the effect it had. You see, when we three came
back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and
the village received us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and
everybody hurrah'd and shouted, it made us heroes, and that was what Tom
Sawyer had always been hankering to be.

For a while he WAS satisfied. Everybody made much of him, and he tilted
up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. Some
called him Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and that just swelled him up fit to
bust. You see he laid over me and Jim considerable, because we only went
down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but Tom went by
the steamboat both ways. The boys envied me and Jim a good deal, but
land! they just knuckled to the dirt before TOM.

Well, I don't know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn't been
for old Nat Parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and slim,
and kind o' good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account of his
age, and about the talkiest old cretur I ever see. For as much as thirty
years he'd been the only man in the village that had a reputation--I mean
a reputation for being a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud of
it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had
told about that journey over a million times and enjoyed it every time.
And now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring
and gawking over HIS travels, and it just give the poor old man the high
strikes. It made him sick to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say
"My land!" "Did you ever!" "My goodness sakes alive!" and all such
things; but he couldn't pull away from it, any more than a fly that's got
its hind leg fast in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a rest,
the poor old cretur would chip in on HIS same old travels and work them
for all they were worth; but they were pretty faded, and didn't go for
much, and it was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another innings,
and then the old man again--and so on, and so on, for an hour and more,
each trying to beat out the other.

You see, Parsons' travels happened like this: When he first got to be
postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for
somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village.
Well, he didn't know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter
stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave
him a conniption. The postage wasn't paid on it, and that was another
thing to worry about. There wasn't any way to collect that ten cents, and
he reckon'd the gov'ment would hold him responsible for it and maybe turn
him out besides, when they found he hadn't collected it. Well, at last he
couldn't stand it any longer. He couldn't sleep nights, he couldn't eat,
he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he da'sn't ask anybody's advice,
for the very person he asked for advice might go back on him and let the
gov'ment know about the letter. He had the letter buried under the floor,
but that did no good; if he happened to see a person standing over the
place it'd give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with suspicions,
and he would sit up that night till the town was still and dark, and then
he would sneak there and get it out and bury it in another place. Of
course, people got to avoiding him and shaking their heads and
whispering, because, the way he was looking and acting, they judged he
had killed somebody or done something terrible, they didn't know what,
and if he had been a stranger they would've lynched him.

Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn't stand it any longer; so he
made up his mind to pull out for Washington, and just go to the President
of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not
keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it before the
whole gov'ment, and say, "Now, there she is--do with me what you're a
mind to; though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent man and not
deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind me a family
that must starve and yet hadn't had a thing to do with it, which is the
whole truth and I can swear to it."

So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some
stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took
him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of
villages and four cities. He was gone 'most eight weeks, and there never
was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His travels
made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most talked about;
and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country, and
from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him--and there
they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. You never see anything like it.

Well, there wasn't any way now to settle which was the greatest traveler;
some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed that Nat
had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever Tom
was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and climate. It was
about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up their dangerous
adventures, and try to get ahead THAT way. That bullet-wound in Tom's leg
was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck against, but he bucked the best
he could; and at a disadvantage, too, for Tom didn't set still as he'd
orter done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked
his limp while Nat was painting up the adventure that HE had in
Washington; for Tom never let go that limp when his leg got well, but
practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right along.

Nat's adventure was like this; I don't know how true it is; maybe he got
it out of a paper, or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that he DID
know how to tell it. He could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he'd turn
pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls
got so faint they couldn't stick it out. Well, it was this way, as near
as I can remember:

He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to
the President's house with his letter, and they told him the President
was up to the Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia--not a
minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat 'most dropped, it made him
so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. But just
then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his
chance. He rushes out and shouts: "A half a dollar if you git me to the
Capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty
minutes!"

"Done!" says the darky.

Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping and
a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it
was something awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on
for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in
the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nat's feet was on
the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn't
keep up with the hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid into his work
for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs
fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the
crowds along the street, for they could see his legs spinning along under
the coach, and his head and shoulders bobbing inside through the windows,
and he was in awful danger; but the more they all shouted the more the
nigger whooped and yelled and lashed the horses and shouted, "Don't you
fret, I'se gwine to git you dah in time, boss; I's gwine to do it, sho'!"
for you see he thought they were all hurrying him up, and, of course, he
couldn't hear anything for the racket he was making. And so they went
ripping along, and everybody just petrified to see it; and when they got
to the Capitol at last it was the quickest trip that ever was made, and
everybody said so. The horses laid down, and Nat dropped, all tuckered
out, and he was all dust and rags and barefooted; but he was in time and
just in time, and caught the President and give him the letter, and
everything was all right, and the President give him a free pardon on the
spot, and Nat give the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because
he could see that if he hadn't had the hack he wouldn't'a' got there in
time, nor anywhere near it.

It WAS a powerful good adventure, and Tom Sawyer had to work his
bullet-wound mighty lively to hold his own against it.

Well, by and by Tom's glory got to paling down gradu'ly, on account of
other things turning up for the people to talk about--first a horse-race,
and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and on
top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival, same as it always
does, and by that time there wasn't any more talk about Tom, so to speak,
and you never see a person so sick and disgusted.

Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day
out, and when I asked him what WAS he in such a state about, he said it
'most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him
getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a
name for himself that he could see. Now that is the way boys is always
thinking, but he was the first one I ever heard come out and say it.

So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and
pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer
was always free and generous that way. There's a-plenty of boys that's
mighty good and friendly when YOU'VE got a good thing, but when a good
thing happens to come their way they don't say a word to you, and try to
hog it all. That warn't ever Tom Sawyer's way, I can say that for him.
There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you
when you've got an apple and beg the core off of you; but when they've
got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a
core one time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going
to be no core. But I notice they always git come up with; all you got to
do is to wait.

Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was.
It was a crusade.

"What's a crusade?" I says.

He looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a
person, and says:

"Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?"

"No," says I, "I don't. And I don't care to, nuther. I've lived till now
and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me,
I'll know, and that's soon enough. I don't see any use in finding out
things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any
occasion to use 'em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk
Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what's a
crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a
patent-right, there's no money in it. Bill Thompson he--"

"Patent-right!" says he. "I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is a
kind of war."

I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest, and
went right on, perfectly ca'm.

"A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."

"Which Holy Land?"

"Why, the Holy Land--there ain't but one."

"What do we want of it?"

"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our
duty to take it away from them."

"How did we come to let them git hold of it?"

"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it."

"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"

"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"

I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I
says:

"It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and
another person wanted it, would it be right for him to--"

"Oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn.
It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They
own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they DO own; but it was
our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they
haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we ought
not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away
from them."

"Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now, if
I had a farm and another person--"

"Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is
business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you
can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally
different."

"Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"

"Certainly; it's always been considered so."

Jim he shook his head, and says:

"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers--dey mos' sholy is.
I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't
run across none dat acts like dat."

It made Tom hot, and he says:

"Well, it's enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance! If
either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that Richard Cur
de Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lots more of the most
noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the
paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land away
from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time--and yet here's a
couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of Missouri
setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it than
they did! Talk about cheek!"

Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and Jim
felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn't been quite so
chipper. I couldn't say nothing, and Jim he couldn't for a while; then he
says:

"Well, den, I reckon it's all right; beca'se ef dey didn't know, dey
ain't no use for po' ignorant folks like us to be trying to know; en so,
ef it's our duty, we got to go en tackle it en do de bes' we can. Same
time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as Mars Tom. De hard part gwine to
be to kill folks dat a body hain't been 'quainted wid and dat hain't done
him no harm. Dat's it, you see. Ef we wuz to go 'mongst 'em, jist we
three, en say we's hungry, en ast 'em for a bite to eat, why, maybe dey's
jist like yuther people. Don't you reckon dey is? Why, DEY'D give it, I
know dey would, en den--"

"Then what?"

"Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain't no use, we CAN'T kill dem
po' strangers dat ain't doin' us no harm, till we've had practice--I
knows it perfectly well, Mars Tom--'deed I knows it perfectly well. But
ef we takes a' axe or two, jist you en me en Huck, en slips acrost de
river to-night arter de moon's gone down, en kills dat sick fam'ly dat's
over on the Sny, en burns dey house down, en--"

"Oh, you make me tired!" says Tom. "I don't want to argue any more with
people like you and Huck Finn, that's always wandering from the subject,
and ain't got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing that's
pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!"

Now that's just where Tom Sawyer warn't fair. Jim didn't mean no harm,
and I didn't mean no harm. We knowed well enough that he was right and we
was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the HOW of it, and that was
all; and the only reason he couldn't explain it so we could understand it
was because we was ignorant--yes, and pretty dull, too, I ain't denying
that; but, land! that ain't no crime, I should think.

But he wouldn't hear no more about it--just said if we had tackled the
thing in the proper spirit, he would 'a' raised a couple of thousand
knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a
lieutenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed the
whole paynim outfit into the sea like flies and come back across the
world in a glory like sunset. But he said we didn't know enough to take
the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer it again. And he
didn't. When he once got set, you couldn't budge him.

But I didn't care much. I am peaceable, and don't get up rows with people
that ain't doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I
was, and we would let it stand at that.

Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott's book, which he was
always reading. And it WAS a wild notion, because in my opinion he never
could've raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would've got
licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near as I could
make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a
mighty rocky time of it.



 CHAPTER II. THE BALLOON ASCENSION

WELL, Tom got up one thing after another, but they all had tender spots
about 'em somewheres, and he had to shove 'em aside. So at last he was
about in despair. Then the St. Louis papers begun to talk a good deal
about the balloon that was going to sail to Europe, and Tom sort of
thought he wanted to go down and see what it looked like, but couldn't
make up his mind. But the papers went on talking, and so he allowed that
maybe if he didn't go he mightn't ever have another chance to see a
balloon; and next, he found out that Nat Parsons was going down to see
it, and that decided him, of course. He wasn't going to have Nat Parsons
coming back bragging about seeing the balloon, and him having to listen
to it and keep quiet. So he wanted me and Jim to go too, and we went.

It was a noble big balloon, and had wings and fans and all sorts of
things, and wasn't like any balloon you see in pictures. It was away out
toward the edge of town, in a vacant lot, corner of Twelfth street; and
there was a big crowd around it, making fun of it, and making fun of the
man,--a lean pale feller with that soft kind of moonlight in his eyes,
you know,--and they kept saying it wouldn't go. It made him hot to hear
them, and he would turn on them and shake his fist and say they was
animals and blind, but some day they would find they had stood face to
face with one of the men that lifts up nations and makes civilizations,
and was too dull to know it; and right here on this spot their own
children and grandchildren would build a monument to him that would
outlast a thousand years, but his name would outlast the monument. And
then the crowd would burst out in a laugh again, and yell at him, and ask
him what was his name before he was married, and what he would take to
not do it, and what was his sister's cat's grandmother's name, and all
the things that a crowd says when they've got hold of a feller that they
see they can plague. Well, some things they said WAS funny,--yes, and
mighty witty too, I ain't denying that,--but all the same it warn't fair
nor brave, all them people pitching on one, and they so glib and sharp,
and him without any gift of talk to answer back with. But, good land!
what did he want to sass back for? You see, it couldn't do him no good,
and it was just nuts for them. They HAD him, you know. But that was his
way. I reckon he couldn't help it; he was made so, I judge. He was a good
enough sort of cretur, and hadn't no harm in him, and was just a genius,
as the papers said, which wasn't his fault. We can't all be sound: we've
got to be the way we're made. As near as I can make out, geniuses think
they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go
their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and
that is perfectly natural. If they was humbler, and listened and tried to
learn, it would be better for them.

The part the professor was in was like a boat, and was big and roomy, and
had water-tight lockers around the inside to keep all sorts of things in,
and a body could sit on them, and make beds on them, too. We went aboard,
and there was twenty people there, snooping around and examining, and old
Nat Parsons was there, too. The professor kept fussing around getting
ready, and the people went ashore, drifting out one at a time, and old
Nat he was the last. Of course it wouldn't do to let him go out behind
US. We mustn't budge till he was gone, so we could be last ourselves.

But he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. I heard a big
shout, and turned around--the city was dropping from under us like a
shot! It made me sick all through, I was so scared. Jim turned gray and
couldn't say a word, and Tom didn't say nothing, but looked excited. The
city went on dropping down, and down, and down; but we didn't seem to be
doing nothing but just hang in the air and stand still. The houses got
smaller and smaller, and the city pulled itself together, closer and
closer, and the men and wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling
around, and the streets like threads and cracks; and then it all kind of
melted together, and there wasn't any city any more it was only a big
scar on the earth, and it seemed to me a body could see up the river and
down the river about a thousand miles, though of course it wasn't so
much. By and by the earth was a ball--just a round ball, of a dull color,
with shiny stripes wriggling and winding around over it, which was
rivers. The Widder Douglas always told me the earth was round like a
ball, but I never took any stock in a lot of them superstitions o' hers,
and of course I paid no attention to that one, because I could see myself
that the world was the shape of a plate, and flat. I used to go up on the
hill, and take a look around and prove it for myself, because I reckon
the best way to get a sure thing on a fact is to go and examine for
yourself, and not take anybody's say-so. But I had to give in now that
the widder was right. That is, she was right as to the rest of the world,
but she warn't right about the part our village is in; that part is the
shape of a plate, and flat, I take my oath!

The professor had been quiet all this time, as if he was asleep; but he
broke loose now, and he was mighty bitter. He says something like this:

"Idiots! They said it wouldn't go; and they wanted to examine it, and spy
around and get the secret of it out of me. But I beat them. Nobody knows
the secret but me. Nobody knows what makes it move but me; and it's a new
power--a new power, and a thousand times the strongest in the earth!
Steam's foolishness to it! They said I couldn't go to Europe. To Europe!
Why, there's power aboard to last five years, and feed for three months.
They are fools! What do they know about it? Yes, and they said my
air-ship was flimsy. Why, she's good for fifty years! I can sail the
skies all my life if I want to, and steer where I please, though they
laughed at that, and said I couldn't. Couldn't steer! Come here, boy;
we'll see. You press these buttons as I tell you."

He made Tom steer the ship all about and every which way, and learnt him
the whole thing in nearly no time; and Tom said it was perfectly easy. He
made him fetch the ship down 'most to the earth, and had him spin her
along so close to the Illinois prairies that a body could talk to the
farmers, and hear everything they said perfectly plain; and he flung out
printed bills to them that told about the balloon, and said it was going
to Europe. Tom got so he could steer straight for a tree till he got
nearly to it, and then dart up and skin right along over the top of it.
Yes, and he showed Tom how to land her; and he done it first-rate, too,
and set her down in the prairies as soft as wool. But the minute we
started to skip out the professor says, "No, you don't!" and shot her up
in the air again. It was awful. I begun to beg, and so did Jim; but it
only give his temper a rise, and he begun to rage around and look wild
out of his eyes, and I was scared of him.

Well, then he got on to his troubles again, and mourned and grumbled
about the way he was treated, and couldn't seem to git over it, and
especially people's saying his ship was flimsy. He scoffed at that, and
at their saying she warn't simple and would be always getting out of
order. Get out of order! That graveled him; he said that she couldn't any
more get out of order than the solar sister.

He got worse and worse, and I never see a person take on so. It give me
the cold shivers to see him, and so it did Jim. By and by he got to
yelling and screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn't ever have
his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean. He said he would sail
his balloon around the globe just to show what he could do, and then he
would sink it in the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. Well, it
was the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming on!

He give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat,
and he laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works, and put
his old pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if anybody come
fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him.

We set scrunched up together, and thought considerable, but didn't say
much--only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something
or bust, we was so scared and worried. The night dragged along slow and
lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft
and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear
the farm sounds, and wished we could be down there; but, laws! we just
slipped along over them like a ghost, and never left a track.

Away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a
late feel, and a late smell, too--about a two-o'clock feel, as near as I
could make out--Tom said the professor was so quiet this time he must be
asleep, and we'd better--

"Better what?" I says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over, because I
knowed what he was thinking about.

"Better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship," he says.

I says: "No, sir! Don' you budge, Tom Sawyer."

And Jim--well, Jim was kind o' gasping, he was so scared. He says:

"Oh, Mars Tom, DON'T! Ef you teches him, we's gone--we's gone sho'! I
ain't gwine anear him, not for nothin' in dis worl'. Mars Tom, he's plumb
crazy."

Tom whispers and says--"That's WHY we've got to do something. If he
wasn't crazy I wouldn't give shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn't
hire me to get out--now that I've got used to this balloon and over the
scare of being cut loose from the solid ground--if he was in his right
mind. But it's no good politics, sailing around like this with a person
that's out of his head, and says he's going round the world and then
drown us all. We've GOT to do something, I tell you, and do it before he
wakes up, too, or we mayn't ever get another chance. Come!"

But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said we
wouldn't budge. So Tom was for slipping back there by himself to see if
he couldn't get at the steering-gear and land the ship. We begged and
begged him not to, but it warn't no use; so he got down on his hands and
knees, and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we a-holding our breath and
watching. After he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower than
ever, and it did seem like years to me. But at last we see him get to the
professor's head, and sort of raise up soft and look a good spell in his
face and listen. Then we see him begin to inch along again toward the
professor's feet where the steering-buttons was. Well, he got there all
safe, and was reaching slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked
down something that made a noise, and we see him slump down flat an' soft
in the bottom, and lay still. The professor stirred, and says, "What's
that?" But everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he begun to mutter
and mumble and nestle, like a person that's going to wake up, and I
thought I was going to die, I was so worried and scared.

Then a cloud slid over the moon, and I 'most cried, I was so glad. She
buried herself deeper and deeper into the cloud, and it got so dark we
couldn't see Tom. Then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear the
professor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing the weather. We was
afraid every minute he would touch Tom, and then we would be goners, and
no help; but Tom was already on his way back, and when we felt his hands
on our knees my breath stopped sudden, and my heart fell down 'mongst my
other works, because I couldn't tell in the dark but it might be the
professor! which I thought it WAS.

Dear! I was so glad to have him back that I was just as near happy as a
person could be that was up in the air that way with a deranged man. You
can't land a balloon in the dark, and so I hoped it would keep on
raining, for I didn't want Tom to go meddling any more and make us so
awful uncomfortable. Well, I got my wish. It drizzled and drizzled along
the rest of the night, which wasn't long, though it did seem so; and at
daybreak it cleared, and the world looked mighty soft and gray and
pretty, and the forests and fields so good to see again, and the horses
and cattle standing sober and thinking. Next, the sun come a-blazing up
gay and splendid, and then we began to feel rusty and stretchy, and first
we knowed we was all asleep.



 CHAPTER III. TOM EXPLAINS

WE went to sleep about four o'clock, and woke up about eight. The
professor was setting back there at his end, looking glum. He pitched us
some breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass.
That was about the middle of the boat. Well, when you are sharp-set, and
you eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what
it done before. It makes a body feel pretty near comfortable, even when
he is up in a balloon with a genius. We got to talking together.

There was one thing that kept bothering me, and by and by I says:

"Tom, didn't we start east?"

"Yes."

"How fast have we been going?"

"Well, you heard what the professor said when he was raging round.
Sometimes, he said, we was making fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety,
sometimes a hundred; said that with a gale to help he could make three
hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale, and wanted it blowing
the right direction, he only had to go up higher or down lower to find
it."

"Well, then, it's just as I reckoned. The professor lied."

"Why?"

"Because if we was going so fast we ought to be past Illinois, oughtn't
we?"

"Certainly."

"Well, we ain't."

"What's the reason we ain't?"

"I know by the color. We're right over Illinois yet. And you can see for
yourself that Indiana ain't in sight."

"I wonder what's the matter with you, Huck. You know by the COLOR?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"What's the color got to do with it?"

"It's got everything to do with it. Illinois is green, Indiana is pink.
You show me any pink down here, if you can. No, sir; it's green."

"Indiana PINK? Why, what a lie!"

"It ain't no lie; I've seen it on the map, and it's pink."

You never see a person so aggravated and disgusted. He says:

"Well, if I was such a numbskull as you, Huck Finn, I would jump over.
Seen it on the map! Huck Finn, did you reckon the States was the same
color out-of-doors as they are on the map?"

"Tom Sawyer, what's a map for? Ain't it to learn you facts?"

"Of course."

"Well, then, how's it going to do that if it tells lies? That's what I
want to know."

"Shucks, you muggins! It don't tell lies."

"It don't, don't it?"

"No, it don't."

"All right, then; if it don't, there ain't no two States the same color.
You git around THAT if you can, Tom Sawyer."

He see I had him, and Jim see it too; and I tell you, I felt pretty good,
for Tom Sawyer was always a hard person to git ahead of. Jim slapped his
leg and says:

"I tell YOU! dat's smart, dat's right down smart. Ain't no use, Mars Tom;
he got you DIS time, sho'!" He slapped his leg again, and says, "My LAN',
but it was smart one!"

I never felt so good in my life; and yet I didn't know I was saying
anything much till it was out. I was just mooning along, perfectly
careless, and not expecting anything was going to happen, and never
THINKING of such a thing at all, when, all of a sudden, out it came. Why,
it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to any of them. It was
just the same way it is when a person is munching along on a hunk of
corn-pone, and not thinking about anything, and all of a sudden bites
into a di'mond. Now all that HE knows first off is that it's some kind of
gravel he's bit into; but he don't find out it's a di'mond till he gits
it out and brushes off the sand and crumbs and one thing or another, and
has a look at it, and then he's surprised and glad--yes, and proud too;
though when you come to look the thing straight in the eye, he ain't
entitled to as much credit as he would 'a' been if he'd been HUNTING
di'monds. You can see the difference easy if you think it over. You see,
an accident, that way, ain't fairly as big a thing as a thing that's done
a-purpose. Anybody could find that di'mond in that corn-pone; but mind
you, it's got to be somebody that's got THAT KIND OF A CORN-PONE. That's
where that feller's credit comes in, you see; and that's where mine comes
in. I don't claim no great things--I don't reckon I could 'a' done it
again--but I done it that time; that's all I claim. And I hadn't no more
idea I could do such a thing, and warn't any more thinking about it or
trying to, than you be this minute. Why, I was just as ca'm, a body
couldn't be any ca'mer, and yet, all of a sudden, out it come. I've often
thought of that time, and I can remember just the way everything looked,
same as if it was only last week. I can see it all: beautiful rolling
country with woods and fields and lakes for hundreds and hundreds of
miles all around, and towns and villages scattered everywheres under us,
here and there and yonder; and the professor mooning over a chart on his
little table, and Tom's cap flopping in the rigging where it was hung up
to dry. And one thing in particular was a bird right alongside, not ten
foot off, going our way and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the
time; and a railroad train doing the same thing down there, sliding among
the trees and farms, and pouring out a long cloud of black smoke and now
and then a little puff of white; and when the white was gone so long you
had almost forgot it, you would hear a little faint toot, and that was
the whistle. And we left the bird and the train both behind, 'WAY behind,
and done it easy, too.

But Tom he was huffy, and said me and Jim was a couple of ignorant
blatherskites, and then he says:

"Suppose there's a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist is
making a picture of them. What is the MAIN thing that that artist has got
to do? He has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute you
look at them, hain't he? Of course. Well, then, do you want him to go and
paint BOTH of them brown? Certainly you don't. He paints one of them
blue, and then you can't make no mistake. It's just the same with the
maps. That's why they make every State a different color; it ain't to
deceive you, it's to keep you from deceiving yourself."

But I couldn't see no argument about that, and neither could Jim. Jim
shook his head, and says:

"Why, Mars Tom, if you knowed what chuckle-heads dem painters is, you'd
wait a long time before you'd fetch one er DEM in to back up a fac'. I's
gwine to tell you, den you kin see for you'self. I see one of 'em
a-paintin' away, one day, down in ole Hank Wilson's back lot, en I went
down to see, en he was paintin' dat old brindle cow wid de near horn
gone--you knows de one I means. En I ast him what he's paintin' her for,
en he say when he git her painted, de picture's wuth a hundred dollars.
Mars Tom, he could a got de cow fer fifteen, en I tole him so. Well, sah,
if you'll b'lieve me, he jes' shuck his head, dat painter did, en went on
a-dobbin'. Bless you, Mars Tom, DEY don't know nothin'."

Tom lost his temper. I notice a person 'most always does that's got laid
out in an argument. He told us to shut up, and maybe we'd feel better.
Then he see a town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the glass
and looked at it, and then looked at his silver turnip, and then at the
clock, and then at the turnip again, and says:

"That's funny! That clock's near about an hour fast."

So he put up his turnip. Then he see another clock, and took a look, and
it was an hour fast too. That puzzled him.

"That's a mighty curious thing," he says. "I don't understand it."

Then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, and sure enough it
was an hour fast too. Then his eyes began to spread and his breath to
come out kinder gaspy like, and he says:

"Ger-reat Scott, it's the LONGITUDE!"

I says, considerably scared:

"Well, what's been and gone and happened now?"

"Why, the thing that's happened is that this old bladder has slid over
Illinois and Indiana and Ohio like nothing, and this is the east end of
Pennsylvania or New York, or somewheres around there."

"Tom Sawyer, you don't mean it!"

"Yes, I do, and it's dead sure. We've covered about fifteen degrees of
longitude since we left St. Louis yesterday afternoon, and them clocks
are right. We've come close on to eight hundred miles."

I didn't believe it, but it made the cold streaks trickle down my back
just the same. In my experience I knowed it wouldn't take much short of
two weeks to do it down the Mississippi on a raft. Jim was working his
mind and studying. Pretty soon he says:

"Mars Tom, did you say dem clocks uz right?"

"Yes, they're right."

"Ain't yo' watch right, too?"

"She's right for St. Louis, but she's an hour wrong for here."

"Mars Tom, is you tryin' to let on dat de time ain't de SAME
everywheres?"

"No, it ain't the same everywheres, by a long shot."

Jim looked distressed, and says:

"It grieves me to hear you talk like dat, Mars Tom; I's right down
ashamed to hear you talk like dat, arter de way you's been raised.
Yassir, it'd break yo' Aunt Polly's heart to hear you."

Tom was astonished. He looked Jim over wondering, and didn't say nothing,
and Jim went on:

"Mars Tom, who put de people out yonder in St. Louis? De Lord done it.
Who put de people here whar we is? De Lord done it. Ain' dey bofe his
children? 'Cose dey is. WELL, den! is he gwine to SCRIMINATE 'twixt 'em?"

"Scriminate! I never heard such ignorance. There ain't no discriminating
about it. When he makes you and some more of his children black, and
makes the rest of us white, what do you call that?"

Jim see the p'int. He was stuck. He couldn't answer. Tom says:

"He does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; but this case HERE
ain't no discrimination of his, it's man's. The Lord made the day, and he
made the night; but he didn't invent the hours, and he didn't distribute
them around. Man did that."

"Mars Tom, is dat so? Man done it?"

"Certainly."

"Who tole him he could?"

"Nobody. He never asked."

Jim studied a minute, and says:

"Well, dat do beat me. I wouldn't 'a' tuck no sich resk. But some people
ain't scared o' nothin'. Dey bangs right ahead; DEY don't care what
happens. So den dey's allays an hour's diff'unce everywhah, Mars Tom?"

"An hour? No! It's four minutes difference for every degree of longitude,
you know. Fifteen of 'em's an hour, thirty of 'em's two hours, and so on.
When it's one clock Tuesday morning in England, it's eight o'clock the
night before in New York."

Jim moved a little way along the locker, and you could see he was
insulted. He kept shaking his head and muttering, and so I slid along to
him and patted him on the leg, and petted him up, and got him over the
worst of his feelings, and then he says:

"Mars Tom talkin' sich talk as dat! Choosday in one place en Monday in
t'other, bofe in the same day! Huck, dis ain't no place to joke--up here
whah we is. Two days in one day! How you gwine to get two days inter one
day? Can't git two hours inter one hour, kin you? Can't git two niggers
inter one nigger skin, kin you? Can't git two gallons of whisky inter a
one-gallon jug, kin you? No, sir, 'twould strain de jug. Yes, en even den
you couldn't, I don't believe. Why, looky here, Huck, s'posen de Choosday
was New Year's--now den! is you gwine to tell me it's dis year in one
place en las' year in t'other, bofe in de identical same minute? It's de
beatenest rubbage! I can't stan' it--I can't stan' to hear tell 'bout
it." Then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and Tom says:

"NOW what's the matter? What's the trouble?"

Jim could hardly speak, but he says:

"Mars Tom, you ain't jokin', en it's SO?"

"No, I'm not, and it is so."

Jim shivered again, and says:

"Den dat Monday could be de las' day, en dey wouldn't be no las' day in
England, en de dead wouldn't be called. We mustn't go over dah, Mars Tom.
Please git him to turn back; I wants to be whah--"

All of a sudden we see something, and all jumped up, and forgot
everything and begun to gaze. Tom says:

"Ain't that the--" He catched his breath, then says: "It IS, sure as you
live! It's the ocean!"

That made me and Jim catch our breath, too. Then we all stood petrified
but happy, for none of us had ever seen an ocean, or ever expected to.
Tom kept muttering:

"Atlantic Ocean--Atlantic. Land, don't it sound great! And that's IT--and
WE are looking at it--we! Why, it's just too splendid to believe!"

Then we see a big bank of black smoke; and when we got nearer, it was a
city--and a monster she was, too, with a thick fringe of ships around one
edge; and we wondered if it was New York, and begun to jaw and dispute
about it, and, first we knowed, it slid from under us and went flying
behind, and here we was, out over the very ocean itself, and going like a
cyclone. Then we woke up, I tell you!

We made a break aft and raised a wail, and begun to beg the professor to
turn back and land us, but he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back,
and we went, but nobody will ever know how bad we felt.

The land was gone, all but a little streak, like a snake, away off on the
edge of the water, and down under us was just ocean, ocean,
ocean--millions of miles of it, heaving and pitching and squirming, and
white sprays blowing from the wave-tops, and only a few ships in sight,
wallowing around and laying over, first on one side and then on t'other,
and sticking their bows under and then their sterns; and before long
there warn't no ships at all, and we had the sky and the whole ocean all
to ourselves, and the roomiest place I ever see and the lonesomest.



 CHAPTER IV. STORM

AND it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the big sky up there, empty
and awful deep; and the ocean down there without a thing on it but just
the waves. All around us was a ring, where the sky and the water come
together; yes, a monstrous big ring it was, and we right in the dead
center of it--plumb in the center. We was racing along like a prairie
fire, but it never made any difference, we couldn't seem to git past that
center no way. I couldn't see that we ever gained an inch on that ring.
It made a body feel creepy, it was so curious and unaccountable.

Well, everything was so awful still that we got to talking in a very low
voice, and kept on getting creepier and lonesomer and less and less
talky, till at last the talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there
and "thunk," as Jim calls it, and never said a word the longest time.

The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead, then he stood up
and put a kind of triangle to his eye, and Tom said it was a sextant and
he was taking the sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. Then he
ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he begun to carry on
again. He said lots of wild things, and, among others, he said he would
keep up this hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow afternoon,
and then he'd land in London.

We said we would be humbly thankful.

He was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give us
a long look of his blackest kind--one of the maliciousest and
suspiciousest looks I ever see. Then he says:

"You want to leave me. Don't try to deny it."

We didn't know what to say, so we held in and didn't say nothing at all.

He went aft and set down, but he couldn't seem to git that thing out of
his mind. Every now and then he would rip out something about it, and try
to make us answer him, but we dasn't.

It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me I
couldn't stand it. It was still worse when night begun to come on. By and
by Tom pinched me and whispers:

"Look!"

I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a bottle.
I didn't like the looks of that. By and by he took another drink, and
pretty soon he begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black and
stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to
mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether
it was awful. It got so black we couldn't see him any more, and wished we
couldn't hear him, but we could. Then he got still; but he warn't still
ten minutes till we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his
noise again, so we could tell where he was. By and by there was a flash
of lightning, and we see him start to get up, but he staggered and fell
down. We heard him scream out in the dark:

"They don't want to go to England. All right, I'll change the course.
They want to leave me. I know they do. Well, they shall--and NOW!"

I 'most died when he said that. Then he was still again--still so long I
couldn't bear it, and it did seem to me the lightning wouldn't EVER come
again. But at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his
hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. My, but his eyes was
terrible! He made a lunge for Tom, and says, "Overboard YOU go!" but it
was already pitch-dark again, and I couldn't see whether he got him or
not, and Tom didn't make a sound.

There was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and I see
Tom's head sink down outside the boat and disappear. He was on the
rope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The professor
let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark
again, and Jim groaned out, "Po' Mars Tom, he's a goner!" and made a jump
for the professor, but the professor warn't there.

Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so loud,
and then another that was 'way below, and you could only JUST hear it;
and I heard Jim say, "Po' Mars Tom!"

Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could 'a' counted four
thousand before the next flash come. When it come I see Jim on his knees,
with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was
crying. Before I could look over the edge it was all dark again, and I
was glad, because I didn't want to see. But when the next flash come, I
was watching, and down there I see somebody a-swinging in the wind on the
ladder, and it was Tom!

"Come up!" I shouts; "come up, Tom!"

His voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, I couldn't make out what
he said, but I thought he asked was the professor up there. I shouts:

"No, he's down in the ocean! Come up! Can we help you?"

Of course, all this in the dark.

"Huck, who is you hollerin' at?"

"I'm hollerin' at Tom."

"Oh, Huck, how kin you act so, when you know po' Mars Tom--" Then he let
off an awful scream, and flung his head and his arms back and let off
another one, because there was a white glare just then, and he had raised
up his face just in time to see Tom's, as white as snow, rise above the
gunnel and look him right in the eye. He thought it was Tom's ghost, you
see.

Tom clumb aboard, and when Jim found it WAS him, and not his ghost, he
hugged him, and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on like
he was gone crazy, he was so glad. Says I:

"What did you wait for, Tom? Why didn't you come up at first?"

"I dasn't, Huck. I knowed somebody plunged down past me, but I didn't
know who it was in the dark. It could 'a' been you, it could 'a' been
Jim."

That was the way with Tom Sawyer--always sound. He warn't coming up till
he knowed where the professor was.

The storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was dreadful
the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared out, and
the wind sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come down. One
second you couldn't see your hand before you, and the next you could
count the threads in your coat-sleeve, and see a whole wide desert of
waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. A storm like
that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain't at its best when you
are up in the sky and lost, and it's wet and lonesome, and there's just
been a death in the family.

We set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor
professor; and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made
fun of him and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could,
and hadn't a friend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him from
brooding his mind away and going deranged. There was plenty of clothes
and blankets and everything at the other end, but we thought we'd ruther
take the rain than go meddling back there.



 CHAPTER V. LAND

WE tried to make some plans, but we couldn't come to no agreement. Me and
Jim was for turning around and going back home, but Tom allowed that by
the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far
toward England that we might as well go there, and come back in a ship,
and have the glory of saying we done it.

About midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the ocean,
and we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the
lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again till sun-up. The sea
was sparkling like di'monds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon our
things was all dry again.

We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was
that there was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood.
Then Tom was disturbed. He says:

"You know what that means, easy enough. It means that somebody has got to
stay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she'll
wander around and go wherever the wind wants her to."

"Well," I says, "what's she been doing since--er--since we had the
accident?"

"Wandering," he says, kinder troubled--"wandering, without any doubt.
She's in a wind now that's blowing her south of east. We don't know how
long that's been going on, either."

So then he p'inted her east, and said he would hold her there till we
rousted out the breakfast. The professor had laid in everything a body
could want; he couldn't 'a' been better fixed. There wasn't no milk for
the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you could want, and
a charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and
matches; and wine and liquor, which warn't in our line; and books, and
maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end of
rubbish, like brass beads and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure
sign that he had an idea of visiting among savages. There was money, too.
Yes, the professor was well enough fixed.

After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all
up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was
out I took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens and
wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had
happened to us, and dated it "IN THE WELKIN, APPROACHING ENGLAND," and
folded it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it,
and wrote above the direction, in big writing, "FROM TOM SAWYER, THE
ERRONORT," and said it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when
it come along in the mail. I says:

"Tom Sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon."

"Well, now, who SAID it was a welkin, smarty?"

"You've wrote it on the letter, anyway."

"What of it? That don't mean that the balloon's the welkin."

"Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a welkin?"

I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and scraped around in his mind,
but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say:

"I don't know, and nobody don't know. It's just a word, and it's a mighty
good word, too. There ain't many that lays over it. I don't believe
there's ANY that does."

"Shucks!" I says. "But what does it MEAN?--that's the p'int."

"I don't know what it means, I tell you. It's a word that people uses
for--for--well, it's ornamental. They don't put ruffles on a shirt to
keep a person warm, do they?"

"Course they don't."

"But they put them ON, don't they?"

"Yes."

"All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the
ruffle on it."

I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did.

"Now, Mars Tom, it ain't no use to talk like dat; en, moreover, it's
sinful. You knows a letter ain't no shirt, en dey ain't no ruffles on it,
nuther. Dey ain't no place to put 'em on; you can't put em on, and dey
wouldn't stay ef you did."

"Oh DO shut up, and wait till something's started that you know something
about."

"Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can't mean to say I don't know about shirts,
when, goodness knows, I's toted home de washin' ever sence--"

"I tell you, this hasn't got anything to do with shirts. I only--"

"Why, Mars Tom, you said yo'self dat a letter--"

"Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I only used it as a
metaphor."

That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says--rather timid,
because he see Tom was getting pretty tetchy:

"Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?"

"A metaphor's a--well, it's a--a--a metaphor's an illustration." He see
THAT didn't git home, so he tried again. "When I say birds of a feather
flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying--"

"But dey DON'T, Mars Tom. No, sir, 'deed dey don't. Dey ain't no feathers
dat's more alike den a bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits till you
catches dem birds together, you'll--"

"Oh, give us a rest! You can't get the simplest little thing through your
thick skull. Now don't bother me any more."

Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased with himself for
catching Tom out. The minute Tom begun to talk about birds I judged he
was a goner, because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put
together. You see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and
that's the way to find out about birds. That's the way people does that
writes books about birds, and loves them so that they'll go hungry and
tired and take any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it.
Their name is ornithologers, and I could have been an ornithologer
myself, because I always loved birds and creatures; and I started out to
learn how to be one, and I see a bird setting on a limb of a high tree,
singing with its head tilted back and its mouth open, and before I
thought I fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down from the
limb, all limp like a rag, and I run and picked him up and he was dead,
and his body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and
that, like his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin over his
eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side of his head; and, laws! I
couldn't see nothing more for the tears; and I hain't never murdered no
creature since that warn't doing me no harm, and I ain't going to.

But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted to know. I got the
subject up again, and then Tom explained, the best he could. He said when
a person made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of the people
made the welkin ring. He said they always said that, but none of them
ever told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high.
Well, that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and said so. That
pleased Tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says:

"Well, it's all right, then; and we'll let bygones be bygones. I don't
know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land in London we'll make
it ring, anyway, and don't you forget it."

He said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and said
it was a mighty sight finer to be Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be Tom
Sawyer the Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if we
pulled through all right, and so he wouldn't give shucks to be a traveler
now.

Toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and
we felt pretty good, too, and proud; and we kept watching with the
glasses, like Columbus discovering America. But we couldn't see nothing
but ocean. The afternoon wasted out and the sun shut down, and still
there warn't no land anywheres. We wondered what was the matter, but
reckoned it would come out all right, so we went on steering east, but
went up on a higher level so we wouldn't hit any steeples or mountains in
the dark.

It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim's; but Tom stayed up,
because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land,
and didn't stand no regular watch.

Well, when daylight come, Jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked
over, and there was the land sure enough--land all around, as far as you
could see, and perfectly level and yaller. We didn't know how long we'd
been over it. There warn't no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and
Tom and Jim had took it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a dead
ca'm; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea and
rough, it would 'a' looked smooth, all the same, in the night, that way.

We was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and
hunted everywheres for London, but couldn't find hair nor hide of it, nor
any other settlement--nor any sign of a lake or a river, either. Tom was
clean beat. He said it warn't his notion of England; he thought England
looked like America, and always had that idea. So he said we better have
breakfast, and then drop down and inquire the quickest way to London. We
cut the breakfast pretty short, we was so impatient. As we slanted along
down, the weather began to moderate, and pretty soon we shed our furs.
But it kept ON moderating, and in a precious little while it was 'most
too moderate. We was close down now, and just blistering!

We settled down to within thirty foot of the land--that is, it was land
if sand is land; for this wasn't anything but pure sand. Tom and me clumb
down the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt amazing
good--that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our feet like
hot embers. Next, we see somebody coming, and started to meet him; but we
heard Jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly dancing, and making
signs, and yelling. We couldn't make out what he said, but we was scared
anyway, and begun to heel it back to the balloon. When we got close
enough, we understood the words, and they made me sick:

"Run! Run fo' yo' life! Hit's a lion; I kin see him thoo de glass! Run,
boys; do please heel it de bes' you kin. He's bu'sted outen de menagerie,
en dey ain't nobody to stop him!"

It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. I could
only just gasp along the way you do in a dream when there's a ghost
gaining on you.

Tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and waited for me; and as
soon as I got a foothold on it he shouted to Jim to soar away. But Jim
had clean lost his head, and said he had forgot how. So Tom shinned along
up and told me to follow; but the lion was arriving, fetching a most
ghastly roar with every lope, and my legs shook so I dasn't try to take
one of them out of the rounds for fear the other one would give way under
me.

But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a little,
and stopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or twelve
feet above ground. And there was the lion, a-ripping around under me, and
roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder, and only missing it
about a quarter of an inch, it seemed to me. It was delicious to be out
of his reach, perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and thankful all
up one side; but I was hanging there helpless and couldn't climb, and
that made me feel perfectly wretched and miserable all down the other. It
is most seldom that a person feels so mixed like that; and it is not to
be recommended, either.

Tom asked me what he'd better do, but I didn't know. He asked me if I
could hold on whilst he sailed away to a safe place and left the lion
behind. I said I could if he didn't go no higher than he was now; but if
he went higher I would lose my head and fall, sure. So he said, "Take a
good grip," and he started.

"Don't go so fast," I shouted. "It makes my head swim."

He had started like a lightning express. He slowed down, and we glided
over the sand slower, but still in a kind of sickening way; for it IS
uncomfortable to see things sliding and gliding under you like that, and
not a sound.

But pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the lion was catching up.
His noise fetched others. You could see them coming on the lope from
every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them
under me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each
other; and so we went skimming along over the sand, and these fellers
doing what they could to help us to not forgit the occasion; and then
some other beasts come, without an invite, and they started a regular
riot down there.

We see this plan was a mistake. We couldn't ever git away from them at
this gait, and I couldn't hold on forever. So Tom took a think, and
struck another idea. That was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box
revolver, and then sail away while the others stopped to fight over the
carcass. So he stopped the balloon still, and done it, and then we sailed
off while the fuss was going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off,
and they helped me aboard; but by the time we was out of reach again,
that gang was on hand once more. And when they see we was really gone and
they couldn't get us, they sat down on their hams and looked up at us so
kind of disappointed that it was as much as a person could do not to see
THEIR side of the matter.



 CHAPTER VI. IT'S A CARAVAN

I WAS so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so I
made straight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a
body couldn't get back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give
the command to soar, and Jim started her aloft.

We had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it was
breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon I was all straight
again. Tom had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and
says:

"I bet you a thousand to one I know where we are. We're in the Great
Sahara, as sure as guns!"

He was so excited he couldn't hold still; but I wasn't. I says:

"Well, then, where's the Great Sahara? In England or in Scotland?"

"'Tain't in either; it's in Africa."

Jim's eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end of
interest, because that was where his originals come from; but I didn't
more than half believe it. I couldn't, you know; it seemed too awful far
away for us to have traveled.

But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions
and the sand meant the Great Desert, sure. He said he could 'a' found
out, before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if
he had thought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said:

"These clocks. They're chronometers. You always read about them in sea
voyages. One of them is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping
St. Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it was four in the
afternoon by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this
Grinnage clock. Well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about
seven o'clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went
down, and it was half-past five o'clock by the Grinnage clock, and half
past 11 A.M. by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun rose and
set by my watch in St. Louis, and the Grinnage clock was six hours fast;
but we've come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of
setting by the Grinnage clock now, and I'm away out--more than four
hours and a half out. You see, that meant that we was closing up on the
longitude of Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was p'inted
right--which we wasn't. No, sir, we've been a-wandering--wandering 'way
down south of east, and it's my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this
map. You see how the shoulder of Africa sticks out to the west. Think how
fast we've traveled; if we had gone straight east we would be long past
England by this time. You watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up,
and when we can't cast a shadow we'll find that this Grinnage clock is
coming mighty close to marking twelve. Yes, sir, I think we're in Africa;
and it's just bully."

Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his head and says:

"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake som'er's, hain't seen no niggers
yit."

"That's nothing; they don't live in the desert. What is that, 'way off
yonder? Gimme a glass."

He took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched across
the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was.

"Well," I says, "I reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out
whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these
lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and
we can drop down and look at its number, and--"

"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunkhead as you. Did you
s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the EARTH?"

"Tom Sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly well,
and here they are, and you can see for yourself."

"Of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on the
GROUND."

"Tom, do you know that to be so?"

"Certainly I do."

"Well, then, that map's a liar again. I never see such a liar as that
map."

He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his
opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument,
if Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac
and sing out:

"Camels!--Camels!"

So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, but I was
disappointed, and says:

"Camels your granny; they're spiders."

"Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking in a procession? You
don't ever reflect, Huck Finn, and I reckon you really haven't got
anything to reflect WITH. Don't you know we're as much as a mile up in
the air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away?
Spiders, good land! Spiders as big as a cow? Perhaps you'd like to go
down and milk one of 'em. But they're camels, just the same. It's a
caravan, that's what it is, and it's a mile long."

"Well, then, let's go down and look at it. I don't believe in it, and
ain't going to till I see it and know it."

"All right," he says, and give the command:

"Lower away."

As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was
camels, sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with
bales strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and
a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with tassels
and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some
was riding and some was walking. And the weather--well, it was just
roasting. And how slow they did creep along! We swooped down now, all of
a sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads.

The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their stomachs,
some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and scampered
every which way, and so did the camels.

We see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to
the cool weather, and watched them from there. It took them an hour to
get together and form the procession again; then they started along, but
we could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to
anything but us. We poked along, looking down at them with the glasses,
and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the
other side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the
mound that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be
watching the caravan or us, we didn't know which. As the caravan got
nearer, he sneaked down on the other side and rushed to the other men and
horses--for that is what they was--and we see them mount in a hurry; and
next, here they come, like a house afire, some with lances and some with
long guns, and all of them yelling the best they could.

They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both
sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another
popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you
could only catch glimpses of them struggling together. There must 'a'
been six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then
they broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and
scurrying and scampering around, and laying into each other like
everything; and whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead
and wounded people and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and
camels racing off in every direction.

At last the robbers see they couldn't win, so their chief sounded a
signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering
across the plain. The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it
off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging
after him, and followed him away off across the plain till she was
separated a long ways from her people; but it warn't no use, and she had
to give it up, and we see her sink down on the sand and cover her face
with her hands. Then Tom took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and
we come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked him out of the
saddle, child and all; and he was jarred considerable, but the child
wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a
tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. The man went
staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him,
for we was three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time.

We judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. We
could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head
bowed down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance,
and thought her child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly a half
a mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child,
which was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her
before the caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and besides,
we reckoned they had enough business on their hands for one while,
anyway, with the wounded. We thought we'd chance it, and we did. We
swooped down and stopped, and Jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up
the kid, which was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor,
too, considering it was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a
horse; and then we started for the mother, and stopped back of her and
tolerable near by, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he
was close back of her the child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she
heard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for
the kid and snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged Jim, and
then snatched off a gold chain and hung it around Jim's neck, and hugged
him again, and jerked up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all
the time; and Jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we
was back up in the sky and the woman was staring up, with the back of her
head between her shoulders and the child with its arms locked around her
neck. And there she stood, as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in
the sky.



 CHAPTER VII. TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA

"NOON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his
feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the
difference didn't amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north
of us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the
weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles
north, too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.

Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the
world, unless it might be some kinds of birds--a wild pigeon, maybe, or a
railroad.

But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a
hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in
the world that could do that--except one, and that was a flea.

"A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he ain't a bird, strickly
speakin'--"

"He ain't a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?"

"I don't rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he's only jist a' animal.
No, I reckon dat won't do, nuther, he ain't big enough for a' animal. He
mus' be a bug. Yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug."

"I bet he ain't, but let it go. What's your second place?"

"Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but a
flea don't."

"He don't, don't he? Come, now, what IS a long distance, if you know?"

"Why, it's miles, and lots of 'em--anybody knows dat."

"Can't a man walk miles?"

"Yassir, he kin."

"As many as a railroad?"

"Yassir, if you give him time."

"Can't a flea?"

"Well--I s'pose so--ef you gives him heaps of time."

"Now you begin to see, don't you, that DISTANCE ain't the thing to judge
by, at all; it's the time it takes to go the distance IN that COUNTS,
ain't it?"

"Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn't 'a' b'lieved it, Mars Tom."

"It's a matter of PROPORTION, that's what it is; and when you come to
gauge a thing's speed by its size, where's your bird and your man and
your railroad, alongside of a flea? The fastest man can't run more than
about ten miles in an hour--not much over ten thousand times his own
length. But all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can
jump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make five
jumps a second too--seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in one
little second--for he don't fool away any time stopping and starting--he
does them both at the same time; you'll see, if you try to put your
finger on him. Now that's a common, ordinary, third-class flea's gait;
but you take an Eyetalian FIRST-class, that's been the pet of the
nobility all his life, and hasn't ever knowed what want or sickness or
exposure was, and he can jump more than three hundred times his own
length, and keep it up all day, five such jumps every second, which is
fifteen hundred times his own length. Well, suppose a man could go
fifteen hundred times his own length in a second--say, a mile and a half.
It's ninety miles a minute; it's considerable more than five thousand
miles an hour. Where's your man NOW?--yes, and your bird, and your
railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they don't amount to shucks 'longside
of a flea. A flea is just a comet b'iled down small."

Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said:

"Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, Mars Tom?"

"Yes, they are; they're perfectly true."

"Well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. I ain't had no respec'
for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, dey do deserve
it, dat's certain."

"Well, I bet they do. They've got ever so much more sense, and brains,
and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in the
world. A person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn it quicker
than any other cretur, too. They've been learnt to haul little carriages
in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other way according to
their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as
exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They've been learnt to
do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S'pose you could cultivate a
flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartness a-growing
and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener and keener,
in the same proportion--where'd the human race be, do you reckon? That
flea would be President of the United States, and you couldn't any more
prevent it than you can prevent lightning."

"My lan', Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much TO de beas'. No, sir,
I never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'."

"There's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other cretur,
man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingest of them all.
People have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an elephant's,
and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. He can lift two
or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them can come anywhere
near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and is very
particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his judgment, or
whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a
mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain't so.
There's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and I'm one of
them. I've never had one of them on me in my life."

"Mars Tom!"

"It's so; I ain't joking."

"Well, sah, I hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." Jim couldn't
believe it, and I couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a
supply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand,
but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn't no explaining it, but
there it was and there warn't no getting around it. He said it had always
been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them
as not; they'd never touch him nor bother him.

We went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little
spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying
along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing for
the last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that
solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed
down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to
feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it. So
we had cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a most
noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes
stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap.

It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to find
land and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that--clean over it.
We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't want
to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it 'most seemed as
if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And
always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering
of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and
sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do this, and making
me do that and t'other, and always selecting out the things I didn't want
to do, and then giving me Sam Hill because I shirked and done something
else, and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up
here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to
eat, and plenty of sleep, and strange things to see, and no nagging and
no pestering, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. Land, I
warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at civilization again. Now, one of
the worst things about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter
with trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel
bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over
the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal 'most all the time, and
it's such a heavy load for a person. I hate them newspapers; and I hate
letters; and if I had my way I wouldn't allow nobody to load his troubles
on to other folks he ain't acquainted with, on t'other side of the world,
that way. Well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that, and it's the
darlingest place there is.

We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever see.
The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we see
a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it
seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of
ink. That's the kind of moonlight to have.

Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep.
Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said it
was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened;
so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain't
anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has
talked about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel,
and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says:

"Have you run across a stray camel to-day?"

And the man says:

"Was he blind in his left eye?"

"Yes."

"Had he lost an upper front tooth?"

"Yes."

"Was his off hind leg lame?"

"Yes."

"Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?"

"Yes, but you needn't go into no more details--that's the one, and I'm
in a hurry. Where did you see him?"

"I hain't seen him at all," the man says.

"Hain't seen him at all? How can you describe him so close, then?"

"Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got a
meaning to it; but most people's eyes ain't any good to them. I knowed a
camel had been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he was lame in
his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it,
and his track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side because
he only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I knowed he had
lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod his
teeth-print showed it. The millet-seed sifted out on one side--the ants
told me that; the honey leaked out on the other--the flies told me that.
I know all about your camel, but I hain't seen him."

Jim says:

"Go on, Mars Tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin'."

"That's all," Tom says.

"ALL?" says Jim, astonished. "What 'come o' de camel?"

"I don't know."

"Mars Tom, don't de tale say?"

"No."

Jim puzzled a minute, then he says:

"Well! Ef dat ain't de beatenes' tale ever I struck. Jist gits to de
place whah de intrust is gittin' red-hot, en down she breaks. Why, Mars
Tom, dey ain't no SENSE in a tale dat acts like dat. Hain't you got no
IDEA whether de man got de camel back er not?"

"No, I haven't."

I see myself there warn't no sense in the tale, to chop square off that
way before it come to anything, but I warn't going to say so, because I
could see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out and
the way Jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and I don't think it's
fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he's down. But Tom he
whirls on me and says:

"What do YOU think of the tale?"

Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean breast and say it did
seem to me, too, same as it did to Jim, that as long as the tale stopped
square in the middle and never got to no place, it really warn't worth
the trouble of telling.

Tom's chin dropped on his breast, and 'stead of being mad, as I reckoned
he'd be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to be only sad;
and he says:

"Some people can see, and some can't--just as that man said. Let alone a
camel, if a cyclone had gone by, YOU duffers wouldn't 'a' noticed the
track."

I don't know what he meant by that, and he didn't say; it was just one of
his irrulevances, I reckon--he was full of them, sometimes, when he was
in a close place and couldn't see no other way out--but I didn't mind.
We'd spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he couldn't git
away from that little fact. It graveled him like the nation, too, I
reckon, much as he tried not to let on.



 CHAPTER VIII. THE DISAPPEARING LAKE

WE had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the
desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn't
high up. You have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the
desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting
toward dawn, you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand.

We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and
now and then gazing off across the desert to see if anything was
stirring, and then down on the shadder again, when all of a sudden almost
right under us we see a lot of men and camels laying scattered about,
perfectly quiet, like they was asleep.

We shut off the power, and backed up and stood over them, and then we see
that they was all dead. It give us the cold shivers. And it made us hush
down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. We dropped down slow
and stopped, and me and Tom clumb down and went among them. There was
men, and women, and children. They was dried by the sun and dark and
shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books.
And yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just
like they was asleep.

Some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand, but most of
them not, for the sand was thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard.
Most of the clothes had rotted away; and when you took hold of a rag, it
tore with a touch, like spiderweb. Tom reckoned they had been laying
there for years.

Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had swords on and had shawl
belts with long, silver-mounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels had
their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the
freight out on the ground. We didn't reckon the swords was any good to
the dead people any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. We
took a small box, too, because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and
then we wanted to bury the people; but there warn't no way to do it that
we could think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that would
blow away again, of course.

Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot on
the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people
again in this world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how
they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't
make it out. First we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around
and about till their food and water give out and they starved to death;
but Tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them, and
so that guess wouldn't do. So at last we give it up, and judged we
wouldn't think about it no more, because it made us low-spirited.

Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile,
and some little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes
made out of curious gold money that we warn't acquainted with. We
wondered if we better go and try to find them again and give it back; but
Tom thought it over and said no, it was a country that was full of
robbers, and they would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on
us for putting the temptation in their way. So we went on; but I wished
we had took all they had, so there wouldn't 'a' been no temptation at all
left.

We had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was dreadful
thirsty when we got aboard again. We went straight for the water, but it
was spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to scald
your mouth. We couldn't drink it. It was Mississippi river water, the
best in the world, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that would
help, but no, the mud wasn't any better than the water. Well, we hadn't
been so very, very thirsty before, while we was interested in the lost
people, but we was now, and as soon as we found we couldn't have a drink,
we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter of a
minute before. Why, in a little while we wanted to hold our mouths open
and pant like a dog.

Tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, everywheres, because we'd
got to find an oasis or there warn't no telling what would happen. So we
done it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms
got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours--three hours--just
gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see
the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know
what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain
he ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't
stand it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down on the locker,
and give it up.

But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she was! A lake, wide and
shiny, with pa'm-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the
water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything
look so good. It was a long ways off, but that warn't anything to us; we
just slapped on a hundred-mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven
minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we
couldn't seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like
a dream; but we couldn't get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she
was gone!

Tom's eyes took a spread, and he says:

"Boys, it was a MYridge!" Said it like he was glad. I didn't see nothing
to be glad about. I says:

"Maybe. I don't care nothing about its name, the thing I want to know is,
what's become of it?"

Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn't speak, but he
wanted to ask that question himself if he could 'a' done it. Tom says:

"What's BECOME of it? Why, you see yourself it's gone."

"Yes, I know; but where's it gone TO?"

He looked me over and says:

"Well, now, Huck Finn, where WOULD it go to! Don't you know what a
myridge is?"

"No, I don't. What is it?"

"It ain't anything but imagination. There ain't anything TO it."

It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and I says:

"What's the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom Sawyer? Didn't I see
the lake?"

"Yes--you think you did."

"I don't think nothing about it, I DID see it."

"I tell you you DIDN'T see it either--because it warn't there to see."

It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of
pleading and distressed:

"Mars Tom, PLEASE don't say sich things in sich an awful time as dis. You
ain't only reskin' yo' own self, but you's reskin' us--same way like Anna
Nias en Siffra. De lake WUZ dah--I seen it jis' as plain as I sees you en
Huck dis minute."

I says:

"Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one that seen it first. NOW,
then!"

"Yes, Mars Tom, hit's so--you can't deny it. We all seen it, en dat PROVE
it was dah."

"Proves it! How does it prove it?"

"Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, Mars Tom. One pusson might
be drunk, or dreamy or suthin', en he could be mistaken; en two might,
maybe; but I tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, drunk er sober, it's
SO. Dey ain't no gittin' aroun' dat, en you knows it, Mars Tom."

"I don't know nothing of the kind. There used to be forty thousand
million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the
other every day. Did that prove that the sun DONE it?"

"Course it did. En besides, dey warn't no 'casion to prove it. A body
'at's got any sense ain't gwine to doubt it. Dah she is now--a sailin'
thoo de sky, like she allays done."

Tom turned on me, then, and says:

"What do YOU say--is the sun standing still?"

"Tom Sawyer, what's the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody that
ain't blind can see it don't stand still."

"Well," he says, "I'm lost in the sky with no company but a passel of
low-down animals that don't know no more than the head boss of a
university did three or four hundred years ago."

It warn't fair play, and I let him know it. I says:

"Throwin' mud ain't arguin', Tom Sawyer."

"Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah's de lake agi'n!" yelled
Jim, just then. "NOW, Mars Tom, what you gwine to say?"

Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert,
perfectly plain, trees and all, just the same as it was before. I says:

"I reckon you're satisfied now, Tom Sawyer."

But he says, perfectly ca'm:

"Yes, satisfied there ain't no lake there."

Jim says:

"DON'T talk so, Mars Tom--it sk'yers me to hear you. It's so hot, en
you's so thirsty, dat you ain't in yo' right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but
don't she look good! 'clah I doan' know how I's gwine to wait tell we
gits dah, I's SO thirsty."

"Well, you'll have to wait; and it won't do you no good, either, because
there ain't no lake there, I tell you."

I says:

"Jim, don't you take your eye off of it, and I won't, either."

"'Deed I won't; en bless you, honey, I couldn't ef I wanted to."

We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like
nothing, but never gaining an inch on it--and all of a sudden it was
gone again! Jim staggered, and 'most fell down. When he got his breath he
says, gasping like a fish:

"Mars Tom, hit's a GHOS', dat's what it is, en I hopes to goodness we
ain't gwine to see it no mo'. Dey's BEEN a lake, en suthin's happened, en
de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's
proof. De desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le''s git
outen it; I'd ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag'in en de
ghos' er dat lake come a-mournin' aroun' us en we asleep en doan' know de
danger we's in."

"Ghost, you gander! It ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness
pasted together by a person's imagination. If I--gimme the glass!"

He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.

"It's a flock of birds," he says. "It's getting toward sundown, and
they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean
business--maybe they're going for food or water, or both. Let her go to
starboard!--Port your hellum! Hard down! There--ease up--steady, as you
go."

We shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out
after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and
when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty
discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says:

"Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the
birds."

Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. He was
most crying, and says:

"She's dah ag'in, Mars Tom, she's dah ag'in, en I knows I's gwine to die,
'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. I
wisht I'd never come in dis balloon, dat I does."

He wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because I
knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so then
I wouldn't look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off and
go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant
superstitious blatherskites. Yes, and he'll git come up with, one of
these days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. They'll stand it
for a while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that
knows about ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they
are.

So we was all quiet and still, Jim and me being scared, and Tom busy. By
and by Tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says:

"NOW get up and look, you sapheads."

We done it, and there was the sure-enough water right under us!--clear,
and blue, and cool, and deep, and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest
sight that ever was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and
shady groves of big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so
peaceful and comfortable--enough to make a body cry, it was so
beautiful.

Jim DID cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out
of his mind for joy. It was my watch, so I had to stay by the works, but
Tom and Jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a
lot, and I've tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that
ever begun with that water.

Then we went down and had a swim, and then Tom came up and spelled me,
and me and Jim had a swim, and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a
foot-race and a boxing-mill, and I don't reckon I ever had such a good
time in my life. It warn't so very hot, because it was close on to
evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in
school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them
when there ain't no civilization nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness
around.

"Lions a-comin'!--lions! Quick, Mars Tom! Jump for yo' life, Huck!"

Oh, and didn't we! We never stopped for clothes, but waltzed up the
ladder just so. Jim lost his head straight off--he always done it
whenever he got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing the
ladder up from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he
turned on a raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in
the sky before he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he
was doing. Then he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next;
so there we was, so high that the lions looked like pups, and we was
drifting off on the wind.

But Tom he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her down,
and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a
camp-meeting, and I judged he had lost HIS head, too; for he knowed I was
too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and
things?

But no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. He swooped down
to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over the
center, and sung out:

"Leggo, and drop!"

I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile
toward the bottom; and when I come up, he says:

"Now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck
back, then I'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard."

I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, because if he had started
off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a'
come along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till I got
tuckered out and fell.

And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and
trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a
misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying
to hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you
never see anything like it in the world. There must 'a' been fifty of
them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting
and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was
which, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was
dead and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around
on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others
looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and
have some fun, but which we didn't want any.

As for the clothes, they warn't any, any more. Every last rag of them was
inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don't
reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there
was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk
and marbles and fishhooks and things. But I wasn't caring. All that was
bothering me was, that all we had now was the professor's clothes, a big
enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came
across any, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats
and things according. Still, there was everything a tailor needed, and
Jim was a kind of jack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a
suit or two down for us that would answer.



 CHAPTER IX. TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT

STILL, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another
errand. Most of the professor's cargo of food was put up in cans, in the
new way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. When you
fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular
and stay up in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would drop down
into the lion market and see how we could make out there.

We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the reach
of the animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled
up a dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub tiger. We had to
keep the congregation off with the revolver, or they would 'a' took a
hand in the proceedings and helped.

We carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the rest
overboard. Then we baited some of the professor's hooks with the fresh
meat and went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a convenient
distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever
see. It was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak,
fried fish, and hot corn-pone. I don't want nothing better than that.

We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out of the top of a
monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim tree that hadn't a branch on it
from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a
feather-duster. It was a pa'm-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa'm-tree
the minute he see it, by the pictures. We went for cocoanuts in this one,
but there warn't none. There was only big loose bunches of things like
oversized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because he said they
answered the description in the Arabian Nights and the other books. Of
course they mightn't be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a
spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. They done it; so we done
it, too, and they was most amazing good.

By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and settle on the dead
animals. They was plucky creturs; they would tackle one end of a lion
that was being gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion drove
the bird away, it didn't do no good; he was back again the minute the
lion was busy.

The big birds come out of every part of the sky--you could make them out
with the glass while they was still so far away you couldn't see them
with your naked eye. Tom said the birds didn't find out the meat was
there by the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. Oh, but ain't
that an eye for you! Tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of
dead lions couldn't look any bigger than a person's finger-nail, and he
couldn't imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so far
off.

It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe
they warn't kin. But Jim said that didn't make no difference. He said a
hog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned
maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. He
thought likely a lion wouldn't eat his own father, if he knowed which was
him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was uncommon
hungry, and eat his mother-in-law any time. But RECKONING don't settle
nothing. You can reckon till the cows come home, but that don't fetch you
to no decision. So we give it up and let it drop.

Generly it was very still in the Desert nights, but this time there was
music. A lot of other animals come to dinner; sneaking yelpers that Tom
allowed was jackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and
all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the time. They made a
picture in the moonlight that was more different than any picture I ever
see. We had a line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn't
stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but I was up two or three
times to look down at the animals and hear the music. It was like having
a front seat at a menagerie for nothing, which I hadn't ever had before,
and so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the most of it; I mightn't
ever have such a chance again.

We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all day
in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see that
none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for
dinner. We was going to leave the next day, but couldn't, it was too
lovely.

The day after, when we rose up toward the sky and sailed off eastward, we
looked back and watched that place till it warn't nothing but just a
speck in the Desert, and I tell you it was like saying good-bye to a
friend that you ain't ever going to see any more.

Jim was thinking to himself, and at last he says:

"Mars Tom, we's mos' to de end er de Desert now, I speck."

"Why?"

"Well, hit stan' to reason we is. You knows how long we's been a-skimmin'
over it. Mus' be mos' out o' san'. Hit's a wonder to me dat it's hilt out
as long as it has."

"Shucks, there's plenty sand, you needn't worry."

"Oh, I ain't a-worryin', Mars Tom, only wonderin', dat's all. De Lord's
got plenty san', I ain't doubtin' dat; but nemmine, He ain't gwyne to
WAS'E it jist on dat account; en I allows dat dis Desert's plenty big
enough now, jist de way she is, en you can't spread her out no mo' 'dout
was'in' san'."

"Oh, go 'long! we ain't much more than fairly STARTED across this Desert
yet. The United States is a pretty big country, ain't it? Ain't it,
Huck?"

"Yes," I says, "there ain't no bigger one, I don't reckon."

"Well," he says, "this Desert is about the shape of the United States,
and if you was to lay it down on top of the United States, it would cover
the land of the free out of sight like a blanket. There'd be a little
corner sticking out, up at Maine and away up northwest, and Florida
sticking out like a turtle's tail, and that's all. We've took California
away from the Mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of the
Pacific coast is ours now, and if you laid the Great Sahara down with her
edge on the Pacific, she would cover the United States and stick out past
New York six hundred miles into the Atlantic ocean."

I say:

"Good land! have you got the documents for that, Tom Sawyer?"

"Yes, and they're right here, and I've been studying them. You can look
for yourself. From New York to the Pacific is 2,600 miles. From one end
of the Great Desert to the other is 3,200. The United States contains
3,600,000 square miles, the Desert contains 4,162,000. With the Desert's
bulk you could cover up every last inch of the United States, and in
under where the edges projected out, you could tuck England, Scotland,
Ireland, France, Denmark, and all Germany. Yes, sir, you could hide the
home of the brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under the
Great Sahara, and you would still have 2,000 square miles of sand left."

"Well," I says, "it clean beats me. Why, Tom, it shows that the Lord took
as much pains makin' this Desert as makin' the United States and all them
other countries."

Jim says: "Huck, dat don' stan' to reason. I reckon dis Desert wa'n't
made at all. Now you take en look at it like dis--you look at it, and see
ef I's right. What's a desert good for? 'Taint good for nuthin'. Dey
ain't no way to make it pay. Hain't dat so, Huck?"

"Yes, I reckon."

"Hain't it so, Mars Tom?"

"I guess so. Go on."

"Ef a thing ain't no good, it's made in vain, ain't it?"

"Yes."

"NOW, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain? You answer me dat."

"Well--no, He don't."

"Den how come He make a desert?"

"Well, go on. How DID He come to make it?"

"Mars Tom, I b'lieve it uz jes like when you's buildin' a house; dey's
allays a lot o' truck en rubbish lef' over. What does you do wid it?
Doan' you take en k'yart it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot?
'Course. Now, den, it's my opinion hit was jes like dat--dat de Great
Sahara warn't made at all, she jes HAPPEN'."

I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it was the best one
Jim ever made. Tom he said the same, but said the trouble about arguments
is, they ain't nothing but THEORIES, after all, and theories don't prove
nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell, when you are
tuckered out butting around and around trying to find out something there
ain't no way TO find out. And he says:

"There's another trouble about theories: there's always a hole in them
somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. It's just so with this one of
Jim's. Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How does it
come that there was just exactly enough star-stuff, and none left over?
How does it come there ain't no sand-pile up there?"

But Jim was fixed for him and says:

"What's de Milky Way?--dat's what I want to know. What's de Milky Way?
Answer me dat!"

In my opinion it was just a sockdologer. It's only an opinion, it's only
MY opinion and others may think different; but I said it then and I stand
to it now--it was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landed Tom
Sawyer. He couldn't say a word. He had that stunned look of a person
that's been shot in the back with a kag of nails. All he said was, as for
people like me and Jim, he'd just as soon have intellectual intercourse
with a catfish. But anybody can say that--and I notice they always do,
when somebody has fetched them a lifter. Tom Sawyer was tired of that end
of the subject.

  So we got back to talking about the size of the Desert again, and the
more we compared it with this and that and t'other thing, the more nobler
and bigger and grander it got to look right along. And so, hunting among
the figgers, Tom found, by and by, that it was just the same size as the
Empire of China. Then he showed us the spread the Empire of China made on
the map, and the room she took up in the world. Well, it was wonderful to
think of, and I says:

"Why, I've heard talk about this Desert plenty of times, but I never
knowed before how important she was."

Then Tom says:

"Important! Sahara important! That's just the way with some people. If a
thing's big, it's important. That's all the sense they've got. All they
can see is SIZE. Why, look at England. It's the most important country in
the world; and yet you could put it in China's vest-pocket; and not only
that, but you'd have the dickens's own time to find it again the next
time you wanted it. And look at Russia. It spreads all around and
everywhere, and yet ain't no more important in this world than Rhode
Island is, and hasn't got half as much in it that's worth saving."

Away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just on the edge of the
world. Tom broke off his talk, and reached for a glass very much excited,
and took a look, and says:

"That's it--it's the one I've been looking for, sure. If I'm right, it's
the one the dervish took the man into and showed him all the treasures."

So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the Arabian
Nights.



 CHAPTER X. THE TREASURE-HILL

TOM said it happened like this.

A dervish was stumping it along through the Desert, on foot, one blazing
hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and
hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now he run
across a camel-driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some a'ms.
But the cameldriver he asked to be excused. The dervish said:

"Don't you own these camels?"

"Yes, they're mine."

"Are you in debt?"

"Who--me? No."

"Well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain't in debt is rich--and
not only rich, but very rich. Ain't it so?"

The camel-driver owned up that it was so. Then the dervish says:

"God has made you rich, and He has made me poor. He has His reasons, and
they are wise, blessed be His name. But He has willed that His rich shall
help His poor, and you have turned away from me, your brother, in my
need, and He will remember this, and you will lose by it."

That made the camel-driver feel shaky, but all the same he was born
hoggish after money and didn't like to let go a cent; so he begun to
whine and explain, and said times was hard, and although he had took a
full freight down to Balsora and got a fat rate for it, he couldn't git
no return freight, and so he warn't making no great things out of his
trip. So the dervish starts along again, and says:

"All right, if you want to take the risk; but I reckon you've made a
mistake this time, and missed a chance."

Of course the camel-driver wanted to know what kind of a chance he had
missed, because maybe there was money in it; so he run after the dervish,
and begged him so hard and earnest to take pity on him that at last the
dervish gave in, and says:

"Do you see that hill yonder? Well, in that hill is all the treasures of
the earth, and I was looking around for a man with a particular good kind
heart and a noble, generous disposition, because if I could find just
that man, I've got a kind of a salve I could put on his eyes and he could
see the treasures and get them out."

So then the camel-driver was in a sweat; and he cried, and begged, and
took on, and went down on his knees, and said he was just that kind of a
man, and said he could fetch a thousand people that would say he wasn't
ever described so exact before.

"Well, then," says the dervish, "all right. If we load the hundred
camels, can I have half of them?"

The driver was so glad he couldn't hardly hold in, and says:

"Now you're shouting."

So they shook hands on the bargain, and the dervish got out his box and
rubbed the salve on the driver's right eye, and the hill opened and he
went in, and there, sure enough, was piles and piles of gold and jewels
sparkling like all the stars in heaven had fell down.

So him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded every camel till he
couldn't carry no more; then they said good-bye, and each of them started
off with his fifty. But pretty soon the camel-driver come a-running and
overtook the dervish and says:

"You ain't in society, you know, and you don't really need all you've
got. Won't you be good, and let me have ten of your camels?"

"Well," the dervish says, "I don't know but what you say is reasonable
enough."

So he done it, and they separated and the dervish started off again with
his forty. But pretty soon here comes the camel-driver bawling after him
again, and whines and slobbers around and begs another ten off of him,
saying thirty camel loads of treasures was enough to see a dervish
through, because they live very simple, you know, and don't keep house,
but board around and give their note.

But that warn't the end yet. That ornery hound kept coming and coming
till he had begged back all the camels and had the whole hundred. Then he
was satisfied, and ever so grateful, and said he wouldn't ever forgit the
dervish as long as he lived, and nobody hadn't been so good to him
before, and liberal. So they shook hands good-bye, and separated and
started off again.

But do you know, it warn't ten minutes till the camel-driver was
unsatisfied again--he was the lowdownest reptyle in seven counties--and
he come a-running again. And this time the thing he wanted was to get the
dervish to rub some of the salve on his other eye.

"Why?" said the dervish.

"Oh, you know," says the driver.

"Know what?"

"Well, you can't fool me," says the driver. "You're trying to keep back
something from me, you know it mighty well. You know, I reckon, that if I
had the salve on the other eye I could see a lot more things that's
valuable. Come--please put it on."

The dervish says:

"I wasn't keeping anything back from you. I don't mind telling you what
would happen if I put it on. You'd never see again. You'd be stone-blind
the rest of your days."

But do you know that beat wouldn't believe him. No, he begged and begged,
and whined and cried, till at last the dervish opened his box and told
him to put it on, if he wanted to. So the man done it, and sure enough he
was as blind as a bat in a minute.

Then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him and made fun of him;
and says:

"Good-bye--a man that's blind hain't got no use for jewelry."

And he cleared out with the hundred camels, and left that man to wander
around poor and miserable and friendless the rest of his days in the
Desert.

Jim said he'd bet it was a lesson to him.

"Yes," Tom says, "and like a considerable many lessons a body gets. They
ain't no account, because the thing don't ever happen the same way
again--and can't. The time Hen Scovil fell down the chimbly and crippled
his back for life, everybody said it would be a lesson to him. What kind
of a lesson? How was he going to use it? He couldn't climb chimblies no
more, and he hadn't no more backs to break."

"All de same, Mars Tom, dey IS sich a thing as learnin' by expe'ence. De
Good Book say de burnt chile shun de fire."

"Well, I ain't denying that a thing's a lesson if it's a thing that can
happen twice just the same way. There's lots of such things, and THEY
educate a person, that's what Uncle Abner always said; but there's forty
MILLION lots of the other kind--the kind that don't happen the same way
twice--and they ain't no real use, they ain't no more instructive than
the small-pox. When you've got it, it ain't no good to find out you ought
to been vaccinated, and it ain't no good to git vaccinated afterward,
because the small-pox don't come but once. But, on the other hand, Uncle
Abner said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had
learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a
person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting
knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever
going to grow dim or doubtful. But I can tell you, Jim, Uncle Abner was
down on them people that's all the time trying to dig a lesson out of
everything that happens, no matter whether--"

But Jim was asleep. Tom looked kind of ashamed, because you know a person
always feels bad when he is talking uncommon fine and thinks the other
person is admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that way. Of
course he oughtn't to go to sleep, because it's shabby; but the finer a
person talks the certainer it is to make you sleep, and so when you come
to look at it it ain't nobody's fault in particular; both of them's to
blame.

Jim begun to snore--soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a
stronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones like the last water
sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power
to it, and some big coughs and snorts flung in, the way a cow does that
is choking to death; and when the person has got to that point he is at
his level best, and can wake up a man that is in the next block with a
dipperful of loddanum in him, but can't wake himself up although all that
awful noise of his'n ain't but three inches from his own ears. And that
is the curiosest thing in the world, seems to me. But you rake a match to
light the candle, and that little bit of a noise will fetch him. I wish I
knowed what was the reason of that, but there don't seem to be no way to
find out. Now there was Jim alarming the whole Desert, and yanking the
animals out, for miles and miles around, to see what in the nation was
going on up there; there warn't nobody nor nothing that was as close to
the noise as HE was, and yet he was the only cretur that wasn't disturbed
by it. We yelled at him and whooped at him, it never done no good; but
the first time there come a little wee noise that wasn't of a usual kind
it woke him up. No, sir, I've thought it all over, and so has Tom, and
there ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore.

Jim said he hadn't been asleep; he just shut his eyes so he could listen
better.

Tom said nobody warn't accusing him.

That made him look like he wished he hadn't said anything. And he wanted
to git away from the subject, I reckon, because he begun to abuse the
camel-driver, just the way a person does when he has got catched in
something and wants to take it out of somebody else. He let into the
camel-driver the hardest he knowed how, and I had to agree with him; and
he praised up the dervish the highest he could, and I had to agree with
him there, too. But Tom says:

"I ain't so sure. You call that dervish so dreadful liberal and good and
unselfish, but I don't quite see it. He didn't hunt up another poor
dervish, did he? No, he didn't. If he was so unselfish, why didn't he go
in there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go along and be
satisfied? No, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with a
hundred camels. He wanted to get away with all the treasure he could."

"Why, Mars Tom, he was willin' to divide, fair and square; he only struck
for fifty camels."

"Because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by."

"Mars Tom, he TOLE de man de truck would make him bline."

"Yes, because he knowed the man's character. It was just the kind of a
man he was hunting for--a man that never believes in anybody's word or
anybody's honorableness, because he ain't got none of his own. I reckon
there's lots of people like that dervish. They swindle, right and left,
but they always make the other person SEEM to swindle himself. They keep
inside of the letter of the law all the time, and there ain't no way to
git hold of them. THEY don't put the salve on--oh, no, that would be
sin; but they know how to fool YOU into putting it on, then it's you that
blinds yourself. I reckon the dervish and the camel-driver was just a
pair--a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and a dull, coarse, ignorant one, but
both of them rascals, just the same."

"Mars Tom, does you reckon dey's any o' dat kind o' salve in de worl'
now?"

"Yes, Uncle Abner says there is. He says they've got it in New York, and
they put it on country people's eyes and show them all the railroads in
the world, and they go in and git them, and then when they rub the salve
on the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with their
railroads. Here's the treasure-hill now. Lower away!"

We landed, but it warn't as interesting as I thought it was going to be,
because we couldn't find the place where they went in to git the
treasure. Still, it was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere
hill itself where such a wonderful thing happened. Jim said he wou'dn't
'a' missed it for three dollars, and I felt the same way.

And to me and Jim, as wonderful a thing as any was the way Tom could come
into a strange big country like this and go straight and find a little
hump like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps that
was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but only his own
learning and his own natural smartness. We talked and talked it over
together, but couldn't make out how he done it. He had the best head on
him I ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself
equal to Captain Kidd or George Washington. I bet you it would 'a'
crowded either of THEM to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it
warn't nothing to Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and put his finger on
it as easy as you could pick a nigger out of a bunch of angels.

We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt
around the edges, and loaded up the lion's skin and the tiger's so as
they would keep till Jim could tan them.



 CHAPTER XI. THE SAND-STORM

WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full moon
was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a string
of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. You could see
them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It was another
caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after it, just to have
company, though it warn't going our way. It was a rattler, that caravan,
and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun come
a-streaming across the desert and flung the long shadders of the camels
on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-long-legses marching in
procession. We never went very near it, because we knowed better now than
to act like that and scare people's camels and break up their caravans.
It was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style.
Some of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very
tall, and they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and they rock
the man that is on them pretty violent and churn up his dinner
considerable, I bet you, but they make noble good time, and a camel ain't
nowheres with them for speed.

The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started
again about the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to
look very curious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper,
and after that it begun to look like a blood-red ball, and the air got
hot and close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and
looked thick and foggy, but fiery and dreadful--like it looks through a
piece of red glass, you know. We looked down and see a big confusion
going on in the caravan, and a rushing every which way like they was
scared; and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and laid there
perfectly still.

Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide
wall, and reached from the Desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it
was coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us,
and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our
faces and sting like fire, and Tom sung out:

"It's a sand-storm--turn your backs to it!"

We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand
beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we
couldn't see a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we was
setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads
out and could hardly breathe.

Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off
across the desert, awful to look at, I tell you. We dug ourselves out and
looked down, and where the caravan was before there wasn't anything but
just the sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people and
camels was smothered and dead and buried--buried under ten foot of sand,
we reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered
them, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of
that caravan. Tom said:

"NOW we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords
and pistols from."

Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried
in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind
never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't fit
to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a
person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this
last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder. You see,
the others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted
with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching
the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We was huvvering
around them a whole night and 'most a whole day, and had got to feeling
real friendly with them, and acquainted. I have found out that there
ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than
to travel with them. Just so with these. We kind of liked them from the
start, and traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer we
traveled with them, and the more we got used to their ways, the better
and better we liked them, and the gladder and gladder we was that we run
across them. We had come to know some of them so well that we called them
by name when we was talking about them, and soon got so familiar and
sociable that we even dropped the Miss and Mister and just used their
plain names without any handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just
the right thing. Of course, it wasn't their own names, but names we give
them. There was Mr. Elexander Robinson and Miss Adaline Robinson, and
Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah
Butler and young Bushrod Butler, and these was big chiefs mostly that
wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and dressed like the Grand
Mogul, and their families. But as soon as we come to know them good, and
like them very much, it warn't Mister, nor Judge, nor nothing, any more,
but only Elleck, and Addy, and Jake, and Hattie, and Jerry, and Buck, and
so on.

And you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their
sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. Now we warn't
cold and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right down
friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was going,
and the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it didn't
make no difference what it was.

When they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet
up in the air. When they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so
much home-liker to have their company. When they had a wedding that
night, and Buck and Addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very
starchiest of the professor's duds for the blow-out, and when they danced
we jined in and shook a foot up there.

But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a
funeral that done it with us. It was next morning, just in the still
dawn. We didn't know the diseased, and he warn't in our set, but that
never made no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was
enough, and there warn't no more sincerer tears shed over him than the
ones we dripped on him from up there eleven hundred foot on high.

Yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to part
with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so long,
anyway. We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them, too,
and now to have death snatch them from right before our faces while we
was looking, and leave us so lonesome and friendless in the middle of
that big desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we mightn't ever make any
more friends on that voyage if we was going to lose them again like that.

We couldn't keep from talking about them, and they was all the time
coming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was
all alive and happy together. We could see the line marching, and the
shiny spearheads a-winking in the sun; we could see the dromedaries
lumbering along; we could see the wedding and the funeral; and more
oftener than anything else we could see them praying, because they don't
allow nothing to prevent that; whenever the call come, several times a
day, they would stop right there, and stand up and face to the east, and
lift back their heads, and spread out their arms and begin, and four or
five times they would go down on their knees, and then fall forward and
touch their forehead to the ground.

Well, it warn't good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was in
their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it
didn't do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going
to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a
better world; and Tom kept still and didn't tell him they was only
Mohammedans; it warn't no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad
enough just as it was.

When we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had
had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed
there is, and I don't see why people that can afford it don't have it
more. And it's terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon so
steady before.

Tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do with
it; it was good sand, and it didn't seem good sense to throw it away. Jim
says:

"Mars Tom, can't we tote it back home en sell it? How long'll it take?"

"Depends on the way we go."

"Well, sah, she's wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en I reckon
we's got as much as twenty loads, hain't we? How much would dat be?"

"Five dollars."

"By jings, Mars Tom, le's shove for home right on de spot! Hit's more'n a
dollar en a half apiece, hain't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, ef dat ain't makin' money de easiest ever I struck! She jes'
rained in--never cos' us a lick o' work. Le's mosey right along, Mars
Tom."

But Tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never
heard him. Pretty soon he says:

"Five dollars--sho! Look here, this sand's worth--worth--why, it's worth
no end of money."

"How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!"

"Well, the minute people knows it's genuwyne sand from the genuwyne
Desert of Sahara, they'll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold
of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a
curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all
over the United States and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. We've got
all of ten thousand dollars' worth of sand in this boat."

Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout
whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says:

"And we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and
fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we've carted this whole
Desert over there and sold it out; and there ain't ever going to be any
opposition, either, because we'll take out a patent."

"My goodness," I says, "we'll be as rich as Creosote, won't we, Tom?"

"Yes--Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was hunting in that little
hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn't know he was walking over
the real ones for a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made the
driver."

"Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?"

"Well, I don't know yet. It's got to be ciphered, and it ain't the
easiest job to do, either, because it's over four million square miles of
sand at ten cents a vial."

Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook
his head and says:

"Mars Tom, we can't 'ford all dem vials--a king couldn't. We better not
try to take de whole Desert, Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho'."

Tom's excitement died out, too, now, and I reckoned it was on account of
the vials, but it wasn't. He set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer,
and at last he says:

"Boys, it won't work; we got to give it up."

"Why, Tom?"

"On account of the duties."

I couldn't make nothing out of that, neither could Jim. I says:

"What IS our duty, Tom? Because if we can't git around it, why can't we
just DO it? People often has to."

But he says:

"Oh, it ain't that kind of duty. The kind I mean is a tax. Whenever you
strike a frontier--that's the border of a country, you know--you find a
custom-house there, and the gov'ment officers comes and rummages among
your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it's
their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don't pay the duty they'll
hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don't deceive nobody,
it's just hogging, and that's all it is. Now if we try to carry this sand
home the way we're pointed now, we got to climb fences till we git
tired--just frontier after frontier--Egypt, Arabia, Hindostan, and so
on, and they'll all whack on a duty, and so you see, easy enough, we
CAN'T go THAT road."

"Why, Tom," I says, "we can sail right over their old frontiers; how are
THEY going to stop us?"

He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave:

"Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?"

I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said nothing, and he went on:

"Well, we're shut off the other way, too. If we go back the way we've
come, there's the New York custom-house, and that is worse than all of
them others put together, on account of the kind of cargo we've got."

"Why?"

"Well, they can't raise Sahara sand in America, of course, and when they
can't raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand per
cent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it."

"There ain't no sense in that, Tom Sawyer."

"Who said there WAS? What do you talk to me like that for, Huck Finn? You
wait till I say a thing's got sense in it before you go to accusing me of
saying it."

"All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. Go on."

Jim says:

"Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything we can't raise in America,
en don't make no 'stinction 'twix' anything?"

"Yes, that's what they do."

"Mars Tom, ain't de blessin' o' de Lord de mos' valuable thing dey is?"

"Yes, it is."

"Don't de preacher stan' up in de pulpit en call it down on de people?"

"Yes."

"Whah do it come from?"

"From heaven."

"Yassir! you's jes' right, 'deed you is, honey--it come from heaven, en
dat's a foreign country. NOW, den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin'?"

"No, they don't."

"Course dey don't; en so it stan' to reason dat you's mistaken, Mars Tom.
Dey wouldn't put de tax on po' truck like san', dat everybody ain't
'bleeged to have, en leave it off'n de bes' thing dey is, which nobody
can't git along widout."

Tom Sawyer was stumped; he see Jim had got him where he couldn't budge.
He tried to wiggle out by saying they had FORGOT to put on that tax, but
they'd be sure to remember about it, next session of Congress, and then
they'd put it on, but that was a poor lame come-off, and he knowed it. He
said there warn't nothing foreign that warn't taxed but just that one,
and so they couldn't be consistent without taxing it, and to be
consistent was the first law of politics. So he stuck to it that they'd
left it out unintentional and would be certain to do their best to fix it
before they got caught and laughed at.

But I didn't feel no more interest in such things, as long as we couldn't
git our sand through, and it made me low-spirited, and Jim the same. Tom
he tried to cheer us up by saying he would think up another speculation
for us that would be just as good as this one and better, but it didn't
do no good, we didn't believe there was any as big as this. It was mighty
hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could 'a' bought a
country and started a kingdom and been celebrated and happy, and now we
was so poor and ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands. The
sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold and di'monds, and the
feel of it was so soft and so silky and nice, but now I couldn't bear the
sight of it, it made me sick to look at it, and I knowed I wouldn't ever
feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, and I didn't have it there
no more to remind us of what we had been and what we had got degraded
down to. The others was feeling the same way about it that I was. I
knowed it, because they cheered up so, the minute I says le's throw this
truck overboard.

Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so
Tom he divided it up according to fairness and strength. He said me and
him would clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three-fifths. Jim
he didn't quite like that arrangement. He says:

"Course I's de stronges', en I's willin' to do a share accordin', but by
jings you's kinder pilin' it onto ole Jim, Mars Tom, hain't you?"

"Well, I didn't think so, Jim, but you try your hand at fixing it, and
let's see."

So Jim reckoned it wouldn't be no more than fair if me and Tom done a
TENTH apiece. Tom he turned his back to git room and be private, and then
he smole a smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara to the
westward, back to the Atlantic edge of it where we come from. Then he
turned around again and said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was
satisfied if Jim was. Jim said he was.

So then Tom measured off our two-tenths in the bow and left the rest for
Jim, and it surprised Jim a good deal to see how much difference there
was and what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said he was
powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time and got the first
arrangement altered, for he said that even the way it was now, there was
more sand than enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed.

Then we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and tough; so hot we had to
move up into cooler weather or we couldn't 'a' stood it. Me and Tom took
turn about, and one worked while t'other rested, but there warn't nobody
to spell poor old Jim, and he made all that part of Africa damp, he
sweated so. We couldn't work good, we was so full of laugh, and Jim he
kept fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and we had to keep
making up things to account for it, and they was pretty poor inventions,
but they done well enough, Jim didn't see through them. At last when we
got done we was 'most dead, but not with work but with laughing. By and
by Jim was 'most dead, too, but: it was with work; then we took turns and
spelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could be, and would set on the
gunnel and swab the sweat, and heave and pant, and say how good we was to
a poor old nigger, and he wouldn't ever forgit us. He was always the
gratefulest nigger I ever see, for any little thing you done for him. He
was only nigger outside; inside he was as white as you be.



 CHAPTER XII. JIM STANDING SIEGE

THE next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don't make no difference
when you are hungry; and when you ain't it ain't no satisfaction to eat,
anyway, and so a little grit in the meat ain't no particular drawback, as
far as I can see.

Then we struck the east end of the Desert at last, sailing on a northeast
course. Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see
three little sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says:

"It's the pyramids of Egypt."

It made my heart fairly jump. You see, I had seen a many and a many a
picture of them, and heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to
come on them all of a sudden, that way, and find they was REAL, 'stead of
imaginations, 'most knocked the breath out of me with surprise. It's a
curious thing, that the more you hear about a grand and big and bully
thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and
gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing
solid to it. It's just so with George Washington, and the same with them
pyramids.

And moreover, besides, the thing they always said about them seemed to me
to be stretchers. There was a feller come to the Sunday-school once, and
had a picture of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest pyramid
covered thirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep
mountain, all built out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up
in perfectly regular layers, like stair-steps. Thirteen acres, you see,
for just one building; it's a farm. If it hadn't been in Sunday-school, I
would 'a' judged it was a lie; and outside I was certain of it. And he
said there was a hole in the pyramid, and you could go in there with
candles, and go ever so far up a long slanting tunnel, and come to a
large room in the stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would
find a big stone chest with a king in it, four thousand years old. I said
to myself, then, if that ain't a lie I will eat that king if they will
fetch him, for even Methusalem warn't that old, and nobody claims it.

As we come a little nearer we see the yaller sand come to an end in a
long straight edge like a blanket, and on to it was joined, edge to edge,
a wide country of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through it,
and Tom said it was the Nile. It made my heart jump again, for the Nile
was another thing that wasn't real to me. Now I can tell you one thing
which is dead certain: if you will fool along over three thousand miles
of yaller sand, all glimmering with heat so that it makes your eyes water
to look at it, and you've been a considerable part of a week doing it,
the green country will look so like home and heaven to you that it will
make your eyes water AGAIN.

It was just so with me, and the same with Jim.

And when Jim got so he could believe it WAS the land of Egypt he was
looking at, he wouldn't enter it standing up, but got down on his knees
and took off his hat, because he said it wasn't fitten' for a humble poor
nigger to come any other way where such men had been as Moses and Joseph
and Pharaoh and the other prophets. He was a Presbyterian, and had a most
deep respect for Moses which was a Presbyterian, too, he said. He was all
stirred up, and says:

"Hit's de lan' of Egypt, de lan' of Egypt, en I's 'lowed to look at it
wid my own eyes! En dah's de river dat was turn' to blood, en I's looking
at de very same groun' whah de plagues was, en de lice, en de frogs, en
de locus', en de hail, en whah dey marked de door-pos', en de angel o' de
Lord come by in de darkness o' de night en slew de fust-born in all de
lan' o' Egypt. Ole Jim ain't worthy to see dis day!"

And then he just broke down and cried, he was so thankful. So between him
and Tom there was talk enough, Jim being excited because the land was so
full of history--Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the bulrushers, Jacob
coming down into Egypt to buy corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all
them interesting things; and Tom just as excited too, because the land
was so full of history that was in HIS line, about Noureddin, and
Bedreddin, and such like monstrous giants, that made Jim's wool rise, and
a raft of other Arabian Nights folks, which the half of them never done
the things they let on they done, I don't believe.

Then we struck a disappointment, for one of them early morning fogs
started up, and it warn't no use to sail over the top of it, because we
would go by Egypt, sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass
straight for the place where the pyramids was gitting blurred and blotted
out, and then drop low and skin along pretty close to the ground and keep
a sharp lookout. Tom took the hellum, I stood by to let go the anchor,
and Jim he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his eyes and
watch out for danger ahead. We went along a steady gait, but not very
fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that Jim looked dim
and ragged and smoky through it. It was awful still, and we talked low
and was anxious. Now and then Jim would say:

"Highst her a p'int, Mars Tom, highst her!" and up she would skip, a foot
or two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with
people that had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap and
stretch; and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he could
gap and stretch better, we took him a blip in the back and knocked him
off. By and by, after about an hour, and everything dead still and we
a-straining our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a
little, very sudden, and Jim sung out in an awful scare:

"Oh, for de lan's sake, set her back, Mars Tom, here's de biggest giant
outen de 'Rabian Nights a-comin' for us!" and he went over backwards in
the boat.

Tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill a man's
face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a
house looks out of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must 'a' been
clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then I come to, and
Tom had hitched a boat-hook on to the lower lip of the giant and was
holding the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head back and got
a good long look up at that awful face.

Jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in a
begging way, and working his lips, but not getting anything out. I took
only just a glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says:

"He ain't alive, you fools; it's the Sphinx!"

I never see Tom look so little and like a fly; but that was because the
giant's head was so big and awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but not
dreadful any more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind of
sad, and not thinking about you, but about other things and larger. It
was stone, reddish stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that give
it an abused look, and you felt sorrier for it for that.

We stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just
grand. It was a man's head, or maybe a woman's, on a tiger's body a
hundred and twenty-five foot long, and there was a dear little temple
between its front paws. All but the head used to be under the sand, for
hundreds of years, maybe thousands, but they had just lately dug the sand
away and found that little temple. It took a power of sand to bury that
cretur; most as much as it would to bury a steamboat, I reckon.

We landed Jim on top of the head, with an American flag to protect him,
it being a foreign land; then we sailed off to this and that and t'other
distance, to git what Tom called effects and perspectives and
proportions, and Jim he done the best he could, striking all the
different kinds of attitudes and positions he could study up, but
standing on his head and working his legs the way a frog does was the
best. The further we got away, the littler Jim got, and the grander the
Sphinx got, till at last it was only a clothespin on a dome, as you might
say. That's the way perspective brings out the correct proportions, Tom
said; he said Julus Cesar's niggers didn't know how big he was, they was
too close to him.

Then we sailed off further and further, till we couldn't see Jim at all
any more, and then that great figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out
over the Nile Valley so still and solemn and lonesome, and all the little
shabby huts and things that was scattered about it clean disappeared and
gone, and nothing around it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet,
which was the sand.

That was the right place to stop, and we done it. We set there a-looking
and a-thinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made
us feel quiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking over
that valley just that same way, and thinking its awful thoughts all to
itself for thousands of years, and nobody can't find out what they are to
this day.

At last I took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering
around on that velvet carpet, and some more a-climbing up the cretur's
back, and then I see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told Tom
to look. He done it, and says:

"They're bugs. No--hold on; they--why, I believe they're men. Yes, it's
men--men and horses both. They're hauling a long ladder up onto the
Sphinx's back--now ain't that odd? And now they're trying to lean it up
a--there's some more puffs of smoke--it's guns! Huck, they're after Jim."

We clapped on the power, and went for them a-biling. We was there in no
time, and come a-whizzing down amongst them, and they broke and scattered
every which way, and some that was climbing the ladder after Jim let go
all holts and fell. We soared up and found him laying on top of the head
panting and most tuckered out, partly from howling for help and partly
from scare. He had been standing a siege a long time--a week, HE said,
but it warn't so, it only just seemed so to him because they was crowding
him so. They had shot at him, and rained the bullets all around him, but
he warn't hit, and when they found he wouldn't stand up and the bullets
couldn't git at him when he was laying down, they went for the ladder,
and then he knowed it was all up with him if we didn't come pretty quick.
Tom was very indignant, and asked him why he didn't show the flag and
command them to GIT, in the name of the United States. Jim said he done
it, but they never paid no attention. Tom said he would have this thing
looked into at Washington, and says:

"You'll see that they'll have to apologize for insulting the flag, and
pay an indemnity, too, on top of it even if they git off THAT easy."

Jim says:

"What's an indemnity, Mars Tom?"

"It's cash, that's what it is."

"Who gits it, Mars Tom?"

"Why, WE do."

"En who gits de apology?"

"The United States. Or, we can take whichever we please. We can take the
apology, if we want to, and let the gov'ment take the money."

"How much money will it be, Mars Tom?"

"Well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least three
dollars apiece, and I don't know but more."

"Well, den, we'll take de money, Mars Tom, blame de 'pology. Hain't dat
yo' notion, too? En hain't it yourn, Huck?"

We talked it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as
any, so we agreed to take the money. It was a new business to me, and I
asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he
says:

"Yes; the little ones does."

We was sailing around examining the pyramids, you know, and now we soared
up and roosted on the flat top of the biggest one, and found it was just
like what the man said in the Sunday-school. It was like four pairs of
stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up and comes together
in a point at the top, only these stair-steps couldn't be clumb the way
you climb other stairs; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and
you have to be boosted up from behind. The two other pyramids warn't far
away, and the people moving about on the sand between looked like bugs
crawling, we was so high above them.

Tom he couldn't hold himself he was so worked up with gladness and
astonishment to be in such a celebrated place, and he just dripped
history from every pore, seemed to me. He said he couldn't scarcely
believe he was standing on the very identical spot the prince flew from
on the Bronze Horse. It was in the Arabian Night times, he said. Somebody
give the prince a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could
git on him and fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the
world, and steer it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land
wherever he wanted to.

When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences
that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you
feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the
subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don't see no way, and
before you can pull your mind together and DO something, that silence has
got in and spread itself and done the business. I was embarrassed, Jim he
was embarrassed, and neither of us couldn't say a word. Well, Tom he
glowered at me a minute, and says:

"Come, out with it. What do you think?"

I says:

"Tom Sawyer, YOU don't believe that, yourself."

"What's the reason I don't? What's to hender me?"

"There's one thing to hender you: it couldn't happen, that's all."

"What's the reason it couldn't happen?"

"You tell me the reason it COULD happen."

"This balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, I should reckon."

"WHY is it?"

"WHY is it? I never saw such an idiot. Ain't this balloon and the bronze
horse the same thing under different names?"

"No, they're not. One is a balloon and the other's a horse. It's very
different. Next you'll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing."

"By Jackson, Huck's got him ag'in! Dey ain't no wigglin' outer dat!"

"Shut your head, Jim; you don't know what you're talking about. And Huck
don't. Look here, Huck, I'll make it plain to you, so you can understand.
You see, it ain't the mere FORM that's got anything to do with their
being similar or unsimilar, it's the PRINCIPLE involved; and the
principle is the same in both. Don't you see, now?"

I turned it over in my mind, and says:

"Tom, it ain't no use. Principles is all very well, but they don't git
around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain't no
sort of proof of what a horse can do."

"Shucks, Huck, you don't get the idea at all. Now look here a
minute--it's perfectly plain. Don't we fly through the air?"

"Yes."

"Very well. Don't we fly high or fly low, just as we please?"

"Yes."

"Don't we steer whichever way we want to?"

"Yes."

"And don't we land when and where we please?"

"Yes."

"How do we move the balloon and steer it?"

"By touching the buttons."

"NOW I reckon the thing is clear to you at last. In the other case the
moving and steering was done by turning a peg. We touch a button, the
prince turned a peg. There ain't an atom of difference, you see. I knowed
I could git it through your head if I stuck to it long enough."

He felt so happy he begun to whistle. But me and Jim was silent, so he
broke off surprised, and says:

"Looky here, Huck Finn, don't you see it YET?"

I says:

"Tom Sawyer, I want to ask you some questions."

"Go ahead," he says, and I see Jim chirk up to listen.

"As I understand it, the whole thing is in the buttons and the peg--the
rest ain't of no consequence. A button is one shape, a peg is another
shape, but that ain't any matter?"

"No, that ain't any matter, as long as they've both got the same power."

"All right, then. What is the power that's in a candle and in a match?"

"It's the fire."

"It's the same in both, then?"

"Yes, just the same in both."

"All right. Suppose I set fire to a carpenter shop with a match, what
will happen to that carpenter shop?"

"She'll burn up."

"And suppose I set fire to this pyramid with a candle--will she burn up?"

"Of course she won't."

"All right. Now the fire's the same, both times. WHY does the shop burn,
and the pyramid don't?"

"Because the pyramid CAN'T burn."

"Aha! and A HORSE CAN'T FLY!"

"My lan', ef Huck ain't got him ag'in! Huck's landed him high en dry dis
time, I tell you! Hit's de smartes' trap I ever see a body walk inter--en
ef I--"

But Jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and couldn't go on, and
Tom was that mad to see how neat I had floored him, and turned his own
argument ag'in him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it, that
all he could manage to say was that whenever he heard me and Jim try to
argue it made him ashamed of the human race. I never said nothing; I was
feeling pretty well satisfied. When I have got the best of a person that
way, it ain't my way to go around crowing about it the way some people
does, for I consider that if I was in his place I wouldn't wish him to
crow over me. It's better to be generous, that's what I think.



 CHAPTER XIII. GOING FOR TOM'S PIPE:

BY AND BY we left Jim to float around up there in the neighborhood of the
pyramids, and we clumb down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and
went in with some Arabs and candles, and away in there in the middle of
the pyramid we found a room and a big stone box in it where they used to
keep that king, just as the man in the Sunday-school said; but he was
gone, now; somebody had got him. But I didn't take no interest in the
place, because there could be ghosts there, of course; not fresh ones,
but I don't like no kind.

So then we come out and got some little donkeys and rode a piece, and
then went in a boat another piece, and then more donkeys, and got to
Cairo; and all the way the road was as smooth and beautiful a road as
ever I see, and had tall date-pa'ms on both sides, and naked children
everywhere, and the men was as red as copper, and fine and strong and
handsome. And the city was a curiosity. Such narrow streets--why, they
were just lanes, and crowded with people with turbans, and women with
veils, and everybody rigged out in blazing bright clothes and all sorts
of colors, and you wondered how the camels and the people got by each
other in such narrow little cracks, but they done it--a perfect jam, you
see, and everybody noisy. The stores warn't big enough to turn around in,
but you didn't have to go in; the storekeeper sat tailor fashion on his
counter, smoking his snaky long pipe, and had his things where he could
reach them to sell, and he was just as good as in the street, for the
camel-loads brushed him as they went by.

Now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage with fancy dressed men
running and yelling in front of it and whacking anybody with a long rod
that didn't get out of the way. And by and by along comes the Sultan
riding horseback at the head of a procession, and fairly took your breath
away his clothes was so splendid; and everybody fell flat and laid on his
stomach while he went by. I forgot, but a feller helped me to remember.
He was one that had a rod and run in front.

There was churches, but they don't know enough to keep Sunday; they keep
Friday and break the Sabbath. You have to take off your shoes when you go
in. There was crowds of men and boys in the church, setting in groups on
the stone floor and making no end of noise--getting their lessons by
heart, Tom said, out of the Koran, which they think is a Bible, and
people that knows better knows enough to not let on. I never see such a
big church in my life before, and most awful high, it was; it made you
dizzy to look up; our village church at home ain't a circumstance to it;
if you was to put it in there, people would think it was a drygoods box.

What I wanted to see was a dervish, because I was interested in dervishes
on accounts of the one that played the trick on the camel-driver. So we
found a lot in a kind of a church, and they called themselves Whirling
Dervishes; and they did whirl, too. I never see anything like it. They
had tall sugar-loaf hats on, and linen petticoats; and they spun and spun
and spun, round and round like tops, and the petticoats stood out on a
slant, and it was the prettiest thing I ever see, and made me drunk to
look at it. They was all Moslems, Tom said, and when I asked him what a
Moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn't a Presbyterian. So there
is plenty of them in Missouri, though I didn't know it before.

We didn't see half there was to see in Cairo, because Tom was in such a
sweat to hunt out places that was celebrated in history. We had a most
tiresome time to find the granary where Joseph stored up the grain before
the famine, and when we found it it warn't worth much to look at, being
such an old tumble-down wreck; but Tom was satisfied, and made more fuss
over it than I would make if I stuck a nail in my foot. How he ever found
that place was too many for me. We passed as much as forty just like it
before we come to it, and any of them would 'a' done for me, but none but
just the right one would suit him; I never see anybody so particular as
Tom Sawyer. The minute he struck the right one he reconnized it as easy
as I would reconnize my other shirt if I had one, but how he done it he
couldn't any more tell than he could fly; he said so himself.

Then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived that learned
the cadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones, and said
it was out of the Arabian Nights, and he would tell me and Jim about it
when he got time. Well, we hunted and hunted till I was ready to drop,
and I wanted Tom to give it up and come next day and git somebody that
knowed the town and could talk Missourian and could go straight to the
place; but no, he wanted to find it himself, and nothing else would
answer. So on we went. Then at last the remarkablest thing happened I
ever see. The house was gone--gone hundreds of years ago--every last rag
of it gone but just one mud brick. Now a person wouldn't ever believe
that a backwoods Missouri boy that hadn't ever been in that town before
could go and hunt that place over and find that brick, but Tom Sawyer
done it. I know he done it, because I see him do it. I was right by his
very side at the time, and see him see the brick and see him reconnize
it. Well, I says to myself, how DOES he do it? Is it knowledge, or is it
instink?

Now there's the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain it
their own way. I've ciphered over it a good deal, and it's my opinion
that some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. The
reason is this: Tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum with
his name on it and the facts when he went home, and I slipped it out and
put another brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn't know
the difference--but there was a difference, you see. I think that settles
it--it's mostly instink, not knowledge. Instink tells him where the exact
PLACE is for the brick to be in, and so he reconnizes it by the place
it's in, not by the look of the brick. If it was knowledge, not instink,
he would know the brick again by the look of it the next time he seen
it--which he didn't. So it shows that for all the brag you hear about
knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it for
real unerringness. Jim says the same.

When we got back Jim dropped down and took us in, and there was a young
man there with a red skullcap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket
and baggy trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it that
could talk English and wanted to hire to us as guide and take us to Mecca
and Medina and Central Africa and everywheres for a half a dollar a day
and his keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the power, and by
the time we was through dinner we was over the place where the Israelites
crossed the Red Sea when Pharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught by
the waters. We stopped, then, and had a good look at the place, and it
done Jim good to see it. He said he could see it all, now, just the way
it happened; he could see the Israelites walking along between the walls
of water, and the Egyptians coming, from away off yonder, hurrying all
they could, and see them start in as the Israelites went out, and then
when they was all in, see the walls tumble together and drown the last
man of them. Then we piled on the power again and rushed away and
huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw the place where Moses broke the tables
of stone, and where the children of Israel camped in the plain and
worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as interesting as could
be, and the guide knowed every place as well as I knowed the village at
home.

But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to a
standstill. Tom's old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelled and
warped that she couldn't hold together any longer, notwithstanding the
strings and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom he didn't know
WHAT to do. The professor's pipe wouldn't answer; it warn't anything but
a mershum, and a person that's got used to a cob pipe knows it lays a
long ways over all the other pipes in this world, and you can't git him
to smoke any other. He wouldn't take mine, I couldn't persuade him. So
there he was.

He thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we could
roust out one in Egypt or Arabia or around in some of these countries,
but the guide said no, it warn't no use, they didn't have them. So Tom
was pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said he'd got
the idea and knowed what to do. He says:

"I've got another corn-cob pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearly
new. It's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove at
home in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me
and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till you come back."

"But, Mars Tom, we couldn't ever find de village. I could find de pipe,
'case I knows de kitchen, but my lan', we can't ever find de village, nur
Sent Louis, nur none o' dem places. We don't know de way, Mars Tom."

That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said:

"Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I'll tell you how. You set your
compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the United
States. It ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strike
the other side of the Atlantic. If it's daytime when you strike it, bulge
right on, straight west from the upper part of the Florida coast, and in
an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of the Mississippi--at
the speed that I'm going to send you. You'll be so high up in the air
that the earth will be curved considerable--sorter like a washbowl turned
upside down--and you'll see a raft of rivers crawling around every which
way, long before you get there, and you can pick out the Mississippi
without any trouble. Then you can follow the river north nearly, an hour
and three quarters, till you see the Ohio come in; then you want to look
sharp, because you're getting near. Away up to your left you'll see
another thread coming in--that's the Missouri and is a little above St.
Louis. You'll come down low then, so as you can examine the villages as
you spin along. You'll pass about twenty-five in the next fifteen
minutes, and you'll recognize ours when you see it--and if you don't, you
can yell down and ask."

"Ef it's dat easy, Mars Tom, I reckon we kin do it--yassir, I knows we
kin."

The guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he could learn to stand
his watch in a little while.

"Jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an hour," Tom said. "This
balloon's as easy to manage as a canoe."

Tom got out the chart and marked out the course and measured it, and
says:

"To go back west is the shortest way, you see. It's only about seven
thousand miles. If you went east, and so on around, it's over twice as
far." Then he says to the guide, "I want you both to watch the tell-tale
all through the watches, and whenever it don't mark three hundred miles
an hour, you go higher or drop lower till you find a storm-current that's
going your way. There's a hundred miles an hour in this old thing without
any wind to help. There's two-hundred-mile gales to be found, any time
you want to hunt for them."

"We'll hunt for them, sir."

"See that you do. Sometimes you may have to go up a couple of miles, and
it'll be p'ison cold, but most of the time you'll find your storm a good
deal lower. If you can only strike a cyclone--that's the ticket for you!
You'll see by the professor's books that they travel west in these
latitudes; and they travel low, too."

Then he ciphered on the time, and says--

"Seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an hour--you can make the trip
in a day--twenty-four hours. This is Thursday; you'll be back here
Saturday afternoon. Come, now, hustle out some blankets and food and
books and things for me and Huck, and you can start right along. There
ain't no occasion to fool around--I want a smoke, and the quicker you
fetch that pipe the better."

All hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was out
and the balloon was ready for America. So we shook hands good-bye, and
Tom gave his last orders:

"It's 10 minutes to 2 P.M. now, Mount Sinai time. In 24 hours you'll be
home, and it'll be 6 to-morrow morning, village time. When you strike the
village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in the woods, out of
sight; then you rush down, Jim, and shove these letters in the
post-office, and if you see anybody stirring, pull your slouch down over
your face so they won't know you. Then you go and slip in the back way to
the kitchen and git the pipe, and lay this piece of paper on the kitchen
table, and put something on it to hold it, and then slide out and git
away, and don't let Aunt Polly catch a sight of you, nor nobody else.
Then you jump for the balloon and shove for Mount Sinai three hundred
miles an hour. You won't have lost more than an hour. You'll start back
at 7 or 8 A.M., village time, and be here in 24 hours, arriving at 2 or 3
P.M., Mount Sinai time."

Tom he read the piece of paper to us. He had wrote on it:

     "THURSDAY AFTERNOON. Tom Sawyer the Erro-nort
     sends his love to Aunt Polly from Mount Sinai
     where the Ark was, and so does Huck Finn, and she
     will get it to-morrow morning half-past six." *

  [* This misplacing of the Ark is probably Huck's   error, not
Tom's.--M.T.]

"That'll make her eyes bulge out and the tears come," he says. Then he
says:

"Stand by! One--two--three--away you go!"

And away she DID go! Why, she seemed to whiz out of sight in a second.

Then we found a most comfortable cave that looked out over the whole big
plain, and there we camped to wait for the pipe.

The balloon come hack all right, and brung the pipe; but Aunt Polly had
catched Jim when he was getting it, and anybody can guess what happened:
she sent for Tom. So Jim he says:

"Mars Tom, she's out on de porch wid her eye sot on de sky a-layin' for
you, en she say she ain't gwyne to budge from dah tell she gits hold of
you. Dey's gwyne to be trouble, Mars Tom, 'deed dey is."

So then we shoved for home, and not feeling very gay, neither.

END.


End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Sawyer Abroad, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD'NHEAD WILSON

by Mark Twain




A WHISPER TO THE READER

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed
by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance:
his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the
humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to.  Instead of
feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

A person who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable to make
mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his pen; and so I
was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go to press without
first subjecting them to rigid and exhausting revision and correction by
a trained barrister--if that is what they are called.  These chapters are
right, now, in every detail, for they were rewritten under the immediate
eye of William Hicks, who studied law part of a while in southwest
Missouri thirty-five years ago and then came over here to Florence for
his health and is still helping for exercise and board in Macaroni
Vermicelli's horse-feed shed, which is up the back alley as you turn
around the corner out of the Piazza del Duomo just beyond the house where
that stone that Dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into
the wall when he let on to be watching them build Giotto's campanile and
yet always got tired looking as Beatrice passed along on her way to get a
chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a Ghibelline
outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand where they sell
the same old cake to this day and it is just as light and good as it was
then, too, and this is not flattery, far from it. He was a little rusty
on his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and those two or three legal
chapters are right and straight, now. He told me so himself.

Given under my hand this second day of January, 1893, at the Villa
Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back of Florence, on the
hills--the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found
on this planet, and with it the most dreamlike and enchanting sunsets to
be found in any planet or even in any solar system--and given, too, in
the swell room of the house, with the busts of Cerretani senators and
other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me, as they
used to look down upon Dante, and mutely asking me to adopt them into my
family, which I do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but
spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it
will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will.

Mark Twain.




CHAPTER 1

Pudd'nhead Wins His Name

Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the
Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat,
below St. Louis.

In 1830 it was a snug collection of modest one- and two- story frame
dwellings, whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight
by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning glories.
Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white
palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots,
prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the
windowsills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss rose plants
and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of
intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad
house-front like an explosion of flame.  When there was room on the ledge
outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there--in sunny
weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry
belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was
complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world
by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat--and
a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat--may be a perfect
home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick
sidewalks, stood locust trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and
these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrancer in spring, when
the clusters of buds came forth.  The main street, one block back from
the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business street.
It was six blocks long, and in each block two or three brick stores,
three stories high, towered above interjected bunches of little frame
shops.  Swinging signs creaked in the wind the street's whole length.
The candy-striped pole, which indicates nobility proud and ancient along
the palace-bordered canals of Venice, indicated merely the humble
barbershop along the main street of Dawson's Landing. On a chief corner
stood a lofty unpainted pole wreathed from top to bottom with tin pots
and pans and cups, the chief tinmonger's noisy notice to the world (when
the wind blew) that his shop was on hand for business at that corner.

The hamlet's front was washed by the clear waters of the great river; its
body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its most rearward
border fringed itself out and scattered its houses about its base line of
the hills; the hills rose high, enclosing the town in a half-moon curve,
clothed with forests from foot to summit.

Steamboats passed up and down every hour or so.  Those belonging to the
little Cairo line and the little Memphis line always stopped; the big
Orleans liners stopped for hails only, or to land passengers or freight;
and this was the case also with the great flotilla of "transients."
These latter came out of a dozen rivers--the Illinois, the Missouri, the
Upper Mississippi, the Ohio, the Monongahela, the Tennessee, the Red
River, the White River, and so on--and were bound every whither and
stocked with every imaginable comfort or necessity, which the
Mississippi's communities could want, from the frosty Falls of St.
Anthony down through nine climates to torrid New Orleans.

Dawson's Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich, slave-worked grain
and pork country back of it.  The town was sleepy and comfortable and
contented.  It was fifty years old, and was growing slowly--very slowly,
in fact, but still it was growing.

The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty years old,
judge of the county court.  He was very proud of his old Virginian
ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately
manners, he kept up its traditions.  He was fine and just and generous.
To be a gentleman--a gentleman without stain or blemish--was his only
religion, and to it he was always faithful.  He was respected, esteemed,
and beloved by all of the community.  He was well off, and was gradually
adding to his store.  He and his wife were very nearly happy, but not
quite, for they had no children.  The longing for the treasure of a child
had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away, but the
blessing never came--and was never to come.

With this pair lived the judge's widowed sister, Mrs. Rachel Pratt, and
she also was childless--childless, and sorrowful for that reason, and not
to be comforted.  The women were good and commonplace people, and did
their duty, and had their reward in clear consciences and the community's
approbation.  They were Presbyterians, the judge was a freethinker.

Pembroke Howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged almost forty, was another old
Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First Families. He was a
fine, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest requirements
of the Virginia rule, a devoted Presbyterian, an authority on the "code",
and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if
any act or word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious to you, and
explain it with any weapon you might prefer from bradawls to artillery.
He was very popular with the people, and was the judge's dearest friend.

Then there was Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, another F.F.V. of formidable
caliber--however, with him we have no concern.

Percy Northumberland Driscoll, brother to the judge, and younger than he
by five years, was a married man, and had had children around his
hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by measles, croup, and
scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a chance with his effective
antediluvian methods; so the cradles were empty.  He was a prosperous
man, with a good head for speculations, and his fortune was growing.  On
the first of February, 1830, two boy babes were born in his house; one to
him, one to one of his slave girls, Roxana by name. Roxana was twenty
years old.  She was up and around the same day, with her hands full, for
she was tending both babes.

Mrs. Percy Driscoll died within the week.  Roxy remained in charge of the
children.  She had her own way, for Mr. Driscoll soon absorbed himself in
his speculations and left her to her own devices.

In that same month of February, Dawson's Landing gained a new citizen.
This was Mr. David Wilson, a young fellow of Scotch parentage. He had
wandered to this remote region from his birthplace in the interior of the
State of New York, to seek his fortune.  He was twenty-five years old,
college bred, and had finished a post-college course in an Eastern law
school a couple of years before.

He was a homely, freckled, sandy-haired young fellow, with an intelligent
blue eye that had frankness and comradeship in it and a covert twinkle of
a pleasant sort.  But for an unfortunate remark of his, he would no doubt
have entered at once upon a successful career at Dawson's Landing. But he
made his fatal remark the first day he spent in the village, and it
"gaged" him.  He had just made the acquaintance of a group of citizens
when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl and make himself
very comprehensively disagreeable, whereupon young Wilson said, much as
one who is thinking aloud:

"I wish I owned half of that dog."

"Why?" somebody asked.

"Because I would kill my half."

The group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even, but found
no light there, no expression that they could read. They fell away from
him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him.  One
said:

"'Pears to be a fool."

"'Pears?" said another.  "_Is,_ I reckon you better say."

"Said he wished he owned _half_ of the dog, the idiot," said a third.
"What did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half?
Do you reckon he thought it would live?"

"Why, he must have thought it, unless he IS the downrightest fool in the
world; because if he hadn't thought it, he would have wanted to own the
whole dog, knowing that if he killed his half and the other half died, he
would be responsible for that half just the same as if he had killed that
half instead of his own.  Don't it look that way to you, gents?"

"Yes, it does.  If he owned one half of the general dog, it would be so;
if he owned one end of the dog and another person owned the other end, it
would be so, just the same; particularly in the first case, because if
you kill one half of a general dog, there ain't any man that can tell
whose half it was; but if he owned one end of the dog, maybe he could
kill his end of it and--"

"No, he couldn't either; he couldn't and not be responsible if the other
end died, which it would.  In my opinion that man ain't in his right
mind."

"In my opinion he hain't _got_ any mind."

No. 3 said:  "Well, he's a lummox, anyway."

"That's what he is;" said No. 4.  "He's a labrick--just a Simon-pure
labrick, if there was one."

"Yes, sir, he's a dam fool.  That's the way I put him up," said No. 5.
"Anybody can think different that wants to, but those are my sentiments."

"I'm with you, gentlemen," said No. 6.  "Perfect jackass--yes, and it
ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. If he ain't a pudd'nhead,
I ain't no judge, that's all."

Mr. Wilson stood elected.  The incident was told all over the town, and
gravely discussed by everybody.  Within a week he had lost his first
name;  Pudd'nhead took its place.  In time he came to be liked, and well
liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it
stayed.  That first day's verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to
get it set aside, or even modified.  The nickname soon ceased to carry
any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was
to continue to hold its place for twenty long years.




CHAPTER 2

Driscoll Spares His Slaves

Adam was but human--this explains it all.  He did not want the apple for
the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake
was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Pudd'nhead Wilson had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he bought a
small house on the extreme western verge of the town. Between it and
Judge Driscoll's house there was only a grassy yard, with a paling fence
dividing the properties in the middle. He hired a small office down in
the town and hung out a tin sign with these words on it:

D A V I D   W I L S O N

ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW

SURVEYING, CONVEYANCING, ETC.

But his deadly remark had ruined his chance--at least in the law. No
clients came.  He took down his sign, after a while, and put it up on his
own house with the law features knocked out of it. It offered his
services now in the humble capacities of land surveyor and expert
accountant.  Now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and
then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. With Scotch patience
and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his way into
the legal field yet.  Poor fellow, he could foresee that it was going to
take him such a weary long time to do it.

He had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy on his
hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was born into
the universe of ideas, and studied it, and experimented upon it at his
house. One of his pet fads was palmistry.  To another one he gave no
name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose was, but
merely said it was an amusement.  In fact, he had found that his fads
added to his reputation as a pudd'nhead; there, he was growing chary of
being too communicative about them.  The fad without a name was one which
dealt with people's finger marks.  He carried in his coat pocket a
shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five
inches long and three inches wide.  Along the lower edge of each strip
was pasted a slip of white paper.  He asked people to pass their hands
through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the
natural oil) and then making a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it
with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession.  Under this row
of faint grease prints he would write a record on the strip of white
paper--thus:

JOHN SMITH, right hand--

and add the day of the month and the year, then take Smith's left hand on
another glass strip, and add name and date and the words "left hand." The
strips were now returned to the grooved box, and took their place among
what Wilson called his "records."

He often studied his records, examining and poring over them with
absorbing interest until far into the night; but what he found there--if
he found anything--he revealed to no one.  Sometimes he copied on paper
the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of the finger, and
then vastly enlarged it with a pantograph so that he could examine its
web of curving lines with ease and convenience.

One sweltering afternoon--it was the first day of July, 1830--he was at
work over a set of tangled account books in his workroom, which looked
westward over a stretch of vacant lots, when a conversation outside
disturbed him.  It was carried on in yells, which showed that the people
engaged in it were not close together.

"Say, Roxy, how does yo' baby come on?"  This from the distant voice.

"Fust-rate.  How does _you_ come on, Jasper?"  This yell was from close
by.

"Oh, I's middlin'; hain't got noth'n' to complain of, I's gwine to come
a-court'n you bimeby, Roxy."

"_You_ is, you black mud cat!  Yah--yah--yah!  I got somep'n' better to
do den 'sociat'n' wid niggers as black as you is.  Is ole Miss Cooper's
Nancy done give you de mitten?"  Roxy followed this sally with another
discharge of carefree laughter.

"You's jealous, Roxy, dat's what's de matter wid you, you
hussy--yah--yah--yah!  Dat's de time I got you!"

"Oh, yes, _you_ got me, hain't you.  'Clah to goodness if dat conceit o'
yo'n strikes in, Jasper, it gwine to kill you sho'.  If you b'longed to
me, I'd sell you down de river 'fo' you git too fur gone. Fust time I
runs acrost yo' marster, I's gwine to tell him so."

This idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties enjoying the
friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share of the wit
exchanged--for wit they considered it.

Wilson stepped to the window to observe the combatants; he could not work
while their chatter continued.  Over in the vacant lots was Jasper,
young, coal black, and of magnificent build, sitting on a wheelbarrow in
the pelting sun--at work, supposably, whereas he was in fact only
preparing for it by taking an hour's rest before beginning.  In front of
Wilson's porch stood Roxy, with a local handmade baby wagon, in which sat
her two charges--one at each end and facing each other. From Roxy's
manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but she
was not.  Only one sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did not
show.  She was of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were imposing
and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble
and stately grace.  Her complexion was very fair, with the rosy glow of
vigorous health in her cheeks, her face was full of character and
expression, her eyes were brown and liquid, and she had a heavy suit of
fine soft hair which was also brown, but the fact was not apparent
because her head was bound about with a checkered handkerchief and the
hair was concealed under it.  Her face was shapely, intelligent, and
comely--even beautiful.  She had an easy, independent carriage--when she
was among her own caste--and a high and "sassy" way, withal; but of
course she was meek and humble enough where white people were.

To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one
sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and
made her a Negro.  She was a slave, and salable as such.  Her child was
thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law
and custom a Negro.  He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white
comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the
children apart--little as he had commerce with them--by their clothes;
for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while
the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to
its knees, and no jewelry.

The white child's name was Thomas a Becket Driscoll, the other's name was
Valet de Chambre:  no surname--slaves hadn't the privilege. Roxana had
heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her ear,
and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded it on to her darling.
It soon got shorted to "Chambers," of course.

Wilson knew Roxy by sight, and when the duel of wits begun to play out,
he stepped outside to gather in a record or two.  Jasper went to work
energetically, at once, perceiving that his leisure was observed. Wilson
inspected the children and asked:

"How old are they, Roxy?"

"Bofe de same age, sir--five months.  Bawn de fust o' Feb'uary."

"They're handsome little chaps.  One's just as handsome as the other,
too."

A delighted smile exposed the girl's white teeth, and she said:

"Bless yo' soul, Misto Wilson, it's pow'ful nice o' you to say dat,
'ca'se one of 'em ain't on'y a nigger.  Mighty prime little nigger, _I_
al'ays says, but dat's 'ca'se it's mine, o' course."

"How do you tell them apart, Roxy, when they haven't any clothes on?"

Roxy laughed a laugh proportioned to her size, and said:

"Oh, _I_ kin tell 'em 'part, Misto Wilson, but I bet Marse Percy
couldn't, not to save his life."

Wilson chatted along for awhile, and presently got Roxy's fingerprints
for his collection--right hand and left--on a couple of his glass strips;
then labeled and dated them, and took the "records" of both children, and
labeled and dated them also.

Two months later, on the third of September, he took this trio of finger
marks again.  He liked to have a "series," two or three "takings" at
intervals during the period of childhood, these to be followed at
intervals of several years.

The next day--that is to say, on the fourth of September--something
occurred which profoundly impressed Roxana.  Mr. Driscoll missed another
small sum of money--which is a way of saying that this was not a new
thing, but had happened before.  In truth, it had happened three times
before. Driscoll's patience was exhausted.  He was a fairly humane man
toward slaves and other animals; he was an exceedingly humane man toward
the erring of his own race.  Theft he could not abide, and plainly there
was a thief in his house.  Necessarily the thief must be one of his
Negros. Sharp measures must be taken.  He called his servants before him.
There were three of these, besides Roxy:  a man, a woman, and a boy
twelve years old.  They were not related.  Mr. Driscoll said:

"You have all been warned before.  It has done no good.  This time I will
teach you a lesson.  I will sell the thief.  Which of you is the guilty
one?"

They all shuddered at the threat, for here they had a good home, and a
new one was likely to be a change for the worse.  The denial was general.
None had stolen anything--not money, anyway--a little sugar, or cake, or
honey, or something like that, that "Marse Percy wouldn't mind or miss"
but not money--never a cent of money.  They were eloquent in their
protestations, but Mr. Driscoll was not moved by them. He answered each
in turn with a stern "Name the thief!"

The truth was, all were guilty but Roxana; she suspected that the others
were guilty, but she did not know them to be so.  She was horrified to
think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she had been saved
in the nick of time by a revival in the colored Methodist Church, a
fortnight before, at which time and place she "got religion." The very
next day after that gracious experience, while her change of style was
fresh upon her and she was vain of her purified condition, her master
left a couple dollars unprotected on his desk, and she happened upon that
temptation when she was polishing around with a dustrag. She looked at
the money awhile with a steady rising resentment, then she burst out
with:

"Dad blame dat revival, I wisht it had 'a' be'n put off till tomorrow!"

Then she covered the tempter with a book, and another member of the
kitchen cabinet got it.  She made this sacrifice as a matter of religious
etiquette; as a thing necessary just now, but by no means to be wrested
into a precedent; no, a week or two would limber up her piety, then she
would be rational again, and the next two dollars that got left out in
the cold would find a comforter--and she could name the comforter.

Was she bad?  Was she worse than the general run of her race?  No. They
had an unfair show in the battle of life, and they held it no sin to take
military advantage of the enemy--in a small way; in a small way, but not
in a large one.  They would smouch provisions from the pantry whenever
they got a chance; or a brass thimble, or a cake of wax, or an emery bag,
or a paper of needles, or a silver spoon, or a dollar bill, or small
articles of clothing, or any other property of light value; and so far
were they from considering such reprisals sinful, that they would go to
church and shout and pray the loudest and sincerest with their plunder in
their pockets.  A farm smokehouse had to be kept heavily padlocked, or
even the colored deacon himself could not resist a ham when Providence
showed him in a dream, or otherwise, where such a thing hung lonesome,
and longed for someone to love.  But with a hundred hanging before him,
the deacon would not take two--that is, on the same night. On frosty
nights the humane Negro prowler would warm the end of the plank and put
it up under the cold claws of chickens roosting in a tree; a drowsy hen
would step on to the comfortable board, softly clucking her gratitude,
and the prowler would dump her into his bag, and later into his stomach,
perfectly sure that in taking this trifle from the man who daily robbed
him of an inestimable treasure--his liberty--he was not committing any
sin that God would remember against him in the Last Great Day.

"Name the thief!"

For the fourth time Mr. Driscoll had said it, and always in the same hard
tone.  And now he added these words of awful import:

"I give you one minute."  He took out his watch.  "If at the end of that
time, you have not confessed, I will not only sell all four of you,
BUT--I will sell you DOWN THE RIVER!"

It was equivalent to condemning them to hell!  No Missouri Negro doubted
this.  Roxy reeled in her tracks, and the color vanished out of her face;
the others dropped to their knees as if they had been shot; tears gushed
from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up, and three answers came
in the one instant.

"I done it!"

"I done it!"

"I done it!--have mercy, marster--Lord have mercy on us po' niggers!"

"Very good," said the master, putting up his watch, "I will sell you
_here_ though you don't deserve it.  You ought to be sold down the
river."

The culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of gratitude, and
kissed his feet, declaring that they would never forget his goodness and
never cease to pray for him as long as they lived. They were sincere, for
like a god he had stretched forth his mighty hand and closed the gates of
hell against them.  He knew, himself, that he had done a noble and
gracious thing, and was privately well pleased with his magnanimity; and
that night he set the incident down in his diary, so that his son might
read it in after years, and be thereby moved to deeds of gentleness and
humanity himself.




CHAPTER 3

Roxy Plays a Shrewd Trick

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a
debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race.
He brought death into the world.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Percy Driscoll slept well the night he saved his house minions from
going down the river, but no wink of sleep visited Roxy's eyes. A
profound terror had taken possession of her.  Her child could grow up and
be sold down the river!  The thought crazed her with horror. If she dozed
and lost herself for a moment, the next moment she was on her feet flying
to her child's cradle to see if it was still there. Then she would gather
it to her heart and pour out her love upon it in a frenzy of kisses,
moaning, crying, and saying, "Dey sha'n't, oh, dey _sha'nt'!'_--yo' po'
mammy will kill you fust!"

Once, when she was tucking him back in its cradle again, the other child
nestled in its sleep and attracted her attention.  She went and stood
over it a long time communing with herself.

"What has my po' baby done, dat he couldn't have yo' luck? He hain't done
nuth'n.  God was good to you; why warn't he good to him? Dey can't sell
_you_ down de river.  I hates yo' pappy; he hain't got no heart--for
niggers, he hain't, anyways.  I hates him, en I could kill him!"  She
paused awhile, thinking; then she burst into wild sobbings again, and
turned away, saying, "Oh, I got to kill my chile, dey ain't no yuther
way--killin' _him_ wouldn't save de chile fum goin' down de river.  Oh, I
got to do it, yo' po' mammy's got to kill you to save you, honey."  She
gathered her baby to her bosom now, and began to smother it with
caresses.  "Mammy's got to kill you--how _kin_ I do it! But yo' mammy
ain't gwine to desert you--no, no, _dah_, don't cry--she gwine _wid_
you, she gwine to kill herself too.  Come along, honey, come along wid
mammy; we gwine to jump in de river, den troubles o' dis worl' is all
over--dey don't sell po' niggers down the river over _yonder_."

She stared toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing it; midway
she stopped, suddenly.  She had caught sight of her new Sunday gown--a
cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic
figures.  She surveyed it wistfully, longingly.

"Hain't ever wore it yet," she said, "en it's just lovely." Then she
nodded her head in response to a pleasant idea, and added, "No, I ain't
gwine to be fished out, wid everybody lookin' at me, in dis mis'able ole
linsey-woolsey."

She put down the child and made the change.  She looked in the glass and
was astonished at her beauty.  She resolved to make her death toilet
perfect. She took off her handkerchief turban and dressed her glossy
wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of rather
lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious artificial flowers; finally she
threw over her shoulders a fluffy thing called a "cloud" in that day,
which was of a blazing red complexion.  Then she was ready for the tomb.

She gathered up her baby once more; but when her eye fell upon its
miserably short little gray tow-linen shirt and noted the contrast
between its pauper shabbiness and her own volcanic eruption of infernal
splendors, her mother-heart was touched, and she was ashamed.

"No, dolling mammy ain't gwine to treat you so.  De angels is gwine to
'mire you jist as much as dey does yo' mammy.  Ain't gwine to have 'em
putt'n dey han's up 'fo' dey eyes en sayin' to David and Goliah en dem
yuther prophets, 'Dat chile is dress' to indelicate fo' dis place.'"

By this time she had stripped off the shirt.  Now she clothed the naked
little creature in one of Thomas `a Becket's snowy, long baby gowns, with
its bright blue bows and dainty flummery of ruffles.

"Dah--now you's fixed."  She propped the child in a chair and stood off
to inspect it.  Straightway her eyes begun to widen with astonishment and
admiration, and she clapped her hands and cried out, "Why, it do beat
all!  I _never_ knowed you was so lovely. Marse Tommy ain't a bit
puttier--not a single bit."

She stepped over and glanced at the other infant; she flung a glance
back at her own; then one more at the heir of the house.  Now a strange
light dawned in her eyes, and in a moment she was lost in thought. She
seemed in a trance; when she came out of it, she muttered, "When I 'uz
a-washin' 'em in de tub, yistiddy, he own pappy asked me which of 'em was
his'n."

She began to move around like one in a dream.  She undressed Thomas `a
Becket, stripping him of everything, and put the tow-linen shirt on him.
She put his coral necklace on her own child's neck. Then she placed the
children side by side, and after earnest inspection she muttered:

"Now who would b'lieve clo'es could do de like o' dat?  Dog my cats if it
ain't all _I_ kin do to tell t' other fum which, let alone his pappy."

She put her cub in Tommy's elegant cradle and said:

"You's young Marse _Tom_ fum dis out, en I got to practice and git used
to 'memberin' to call you dat, honey, or I's gwine to make a mistake
sometime en git us bofe into trouble.  Dah--now you lay still en don't
fret no mo', Marse Tom.  Oh, thank de lord in heaven, you's saved, you's
saved!  Dey ain't no man kin ever sell mammy's po' little honey down de
river now!"

She put the heir of the house in her own child's unpainted pine cradle,
and said, contemplating its slumbering form uneasily:

"I's sorry for you, honey; I's sorry, God knows I is--but what _kin_ I
do, what _could_ I do?  Yo' pappy would sell him to somebody, sometime,
en den he'd go down de river, sho', en I couldn't, couldn't, _couldn't_
stan' it."

She flung herself on her bed and began to think and toss, toss and think.
By and by she sat suddenly upright, for a comforting thought had flown
through her worried mind--

"'T ain't no sin--_white_ folks has done it!  It ain't no sin, glory to
goodness it ain't no sin!  _Dey's_ done it--yes, en dey was de biggest
quality in de whole bilin', too--_kings!"_

She began to muse; she was trying to gather out of her memory the dim
particulars of some tale she had heard some time or other. At last she
said--

"Now I's got it; now I 'member.  It was dat ole nigger preacher dat tole
it, de time he come over here fum Illinois en preached in de nigger
church.  He said dey ain't nobody kin save his own self--can't do it by
faith, can't do it by works, can't do it no way at all. Free grace is de
_on'y_ way, en dat don't come fum nobody but jis' de Lord; en _he_ kin
give it to anybody He please, saint or sinner--_he_ don't kyer. He do
jis' as He's a mineter.  He s'lect out anybody dat suit Him, en put
another one in his place, and make de fust one happy forever en leave t'
other one to burn wid Satan.  De preacher said it was jist like dey done
in Englan' one time, long time ago.  De queen she lef' her baby layin'
aroun' one day, en went out callin'; an one 'o de niggers roun'bout de
place dat was 'mos' white, she come in en see de chile layin' aroun', en
tuck en put her own chile's clo's on de queen's chile, en put de queen's
chile's clo'es on her own chile, en den lef' her own chile layin' aroun',
en tuck en toted de queen's chile home to de nigger quarter, en nobody
ever foun' it out, en her chile was de king bimeby, en sole de queen's
chile down de river one time when dey had to settle up de estate.  Dah,
now--de preacher said it his own self, en it ain't no sin, 'ca'se white
folks done it. DEY done it--yes, DEY done it; en not on'y jis' common
white folks nuther, but de biggest quality dey is in de whole bilin'.
_Oh_, I's _so_ glad I 'member 'bout dat!"

She got lighthearted and happy, and went to the cradles, and spent what
was left of the night "practicing."  She would give her own child a light
pat and say humbly, "Lay still, Marse Tom," then give the real Tom a pat
and say with severity, "Lay _still_, Chambers!  Does you want me to take
somep'n _to_ you?"

As she progressed with her practice, she was surprised to see how
steadily and surely the awe which had kept her tongue reverent and her
manner humble toward her young master was transferring itself to her
speech and manner toward the usurper, and how similarly handy she was
becoming in transferring her motherly curtness of speech and
peremptoriness of manner to the unlucky heir of the ancient house of
Driscoll.

She took occasional rests from practicing, and absorbed herself in
calculating her chances.

"Dey'll sell dese niggers today fo' stealin' de money, den dey'll buy
some mo' dat don't now de chillen--so _dat's_ all right.  When I takes de
chillen out to git de air, de minute I's roun' de corner I's gwine to
gaum dey mouths all roun' wid jam, den dey can't _nobody_ notice dey's
changed.  Yes, I gwine ter do dat till I's safe, if it's a year.

"Dey ain't but one man dat I's afeard of, en dat's dat Pudd'nhead Wilson.
Dey calls him a pudd'nhead, en says he's a fool.  My lan, dat man ain't
no mo' fool den I is!  He's de smartes' man in dis town, lessn' it's
Jedge Driscoll or maybe Pem Howard.  Blame dat man, he worries me wid dem
ornery glasses o' his'n; _I_ b'lieve he's a witch. But nemmine, I's gwine
to happen aroun' dah one o' dese days en let on dat I reckon he wants to
print a chillen's fingers ag'in; en if HE don't notice dey's changed, I
bound dey ain't nobody gwine to notice it, en den I's safe, sho'.  But I
reckon I'll tote along a hoss-shoe to keep off de witch work."

The new Negros gave Roxy no trouble, of course.  The master gave her
none, for one of his speculations was in jeopardy, and his mind was so
occupied that he hardly saw the children when he looked at them, and all
Roxy had to do was to get them both into a gale of laughter when he came
about;  then their faces were mainly cavities exposing gums, and he was
gone again before the spasm passed and the little creatures resumed a
human aspect.

Within a few days the fate of the speculation became so dubious that Mr.
Percy went away with his brother, the judge, to see what could be done
with it.  It was a land speculation as usual, and it had gotten
complicated with a lawsuit.  The men were gone seven weeks.  Before they
got back, Roxy had paid her visit to Wilson, and was satisfied. Wilson
took the fingerprints, labeled them with the names and with the date
--October the first--put them carefully away, and continued his chat with
Roxy, who seemed very anxious that he should admire the great advance in
flesh and beauty which the babes had made since he took their
fingerprints a month before.  He complimented their improvement to her
contentment; and as they were without any disguise of jam or other stain,
she trembled all the while and was miserably frightened lest at any
moment he--

But he didn't.  He discovered nothing; and she went home jubilant, and
dropped all concern about the matter permanently out of her mind.




CHAPTER 4

The Ways of the Changelings

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they
escaped teething.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

There is this trouble about special providences--namely, there is so
often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In
the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more
real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they
got the children.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar



This history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change which
Roxana has consummated, and call the real heir "Chambers" and the
usurping little slave, "Thomas `a Becket"--shortening this latter name to
"Tom," for daily use, as the people about him did.

"Tom" was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. He would
cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper without
notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall, then
climax the thing with "holding his breath"--that frightful specialty of
the teething nursling, in the throes of which the creature exhausts its
lungs, then is convulsed with noiseless squirmings and twistings and
kickings in the effort to get its breath, while the lips turn blue and
the mouth stands wide and rigid, offering for inspection one wee tooth
set in the lower rim of a hoop of red gums; and when the appalling
stillness has endured until one is sure the lost breath will never
return, a nurse comes flying, and dashes water in the child's face,
and--presto! the lungs fill, and instantly discharge a shriek, or a yell,
or a howl which bursts the listening ear and surprises the owner of it
into saying words which would not go well with a halo if he had one.  The
baby Tom would claw anybody who came within reach of his nails, and pound
anybody he could reach with his rattle.  He would scream for water until
he got it, and then throw cup and all on the floor and scream for more.
He was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever troublesome and
exasperating they might be; he was allowed to eat anything he wanted,
particularly things that would give him the stomach-ache.

When he got to be old enough to begin to toddle about and say broken
words and get an idea of what his hands were for, he was a more
consummate pest than ever.  Roxy got no rest while he was awake. He would
call for anything and everything he saw, simply saying, "Awnt it!" (want
it), which was a command.  When it was brought, he said in a frenzy, and
motioning it away with his hands, "Don't awnt it! don't awnt it!" and the
moment it was gone he set up frantic yells of "Awnt it! awnt it!" and
Roxy had to give wings to her heels to get that thing back to him again
before he could get time to carry out his intention of going into
convulsions about it.

What he preferred above all other things was the tongs. This was because
his "father" had forbidden him to have them lest he break windows and
furniture with them.  The moment Roxy's back was turned he would toddle
to the presence of the tongs and say, "Like it!" and cock his eye to one
side or see if Roxy was observed; then, "Awnt it!" and cock his eye
again; then, "Hab it!" with another furtive glace; and finally, "Take
it!"--and the prize was his. The next moment the heavy implement was
raised aloft; the next, there was a crash and a squall, and the cat was
off on three legs to meet an engagement; Roxy would arrive just as the
lamp or a window went to irremediable smash.

Tom got all the petting, Chambers got none.  Tom got all the delicacies,
Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar.  In consequence
Tom was a sickly child and Chambers wasn't.  Tom was "fractious," as Roxy
called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek and docile.

With all her splendid common sense and practical everyday ability, Roxy
was a doting fool of a mother.  She was this toward her child--and she
was also more than this:  by the fiction created by herself, he was
become her master; the necessity of recognizing this relation outwardly
and of perfecting herself in the forms required to express the
recognition, had moved her to such diligence and faithfulness in
practicing these forms that this exercise soon concreted itself into
habit; it became automatic and unconscious; then a natural result
followed: deceptions intended solely for others gradually grew
practically into self-deceptions as well; the mock reverence became real
reverence, the mock homage real homage; the little counterfeit rift of
separation between imitation-slave and imitation-master widened and
widened, and became an abyss, and a very real one--and on one side of it
stood Roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on the other stood her
child, no longer a usurper to her, but her accepted and recognized
master.  He was her darling, her master, and her deity all in one, and in
her worship of him she forgot who she was and what he had been.

In babyhood Tom cuffed and banged and scratched Chambers unrebuked, and
Chambers early learned that between meekly bearing it and resenting it,
the advantage all lay with the former policy. The few times that his
persecutions had moved him beyond control and made him fight back had
cost him very dear at headquarters; not at the hands of Roxy, for if she
ever went beyond scolding him sharply for "forgett'n' who his young
marster was," she at least never extended her punishment beyond a box on
the ear. No, Percy Driscoll was the person.  He told Chambers that under
no provocation whatever was he privileged to lift his hand against his
little master.  Chambers overstepped the line three times, and got three
such convincing canings from the man who was his father and didn't know
it, that he took Tom's cruelties in all humility after that, and made no
more experiments.

Outside the house the two boys were together all through their boyhood.
Chambers was strong beyond his years, and a good fighter; strong because
he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the house, and a good fighter
because Tom furnished him plenty of practice--on white boys whom he
hated and was afraid of.  Chambers was his constant bodyguard, to and
from school; he was present on the playground at recess to protect his
charge.  He fought himself into such a formidable reputation, by and by,
that Tom could have changed clothes with him, and "ridden in peace," like
Sir Kay in Launcelot's armor.

He was good at games of skill, too.  Tom staked him with marbles to play
"keeps" with, and then took all the winnings away from him. In the winter
season Chambers was on hand, in Tom's worn-out clothes, with "holy" red
mittens, and "holy" shoes, and pants "holy" at the knees and seat, to
drag a sled up the hill for Tom, warmly clad, to ride down on; but he
never got a ride himself.  He built snowmen and snow fortifications under
Tom's directions.  He was Tom's patient target when Tom wanted to do some
snowballing, but the target couldn't fire back.  Chambers carried Tom's
skates to the river and strapped them on him, then trotted around after
him on the ice, so as to be on hand when he wanted; but he wasn't ever
asked to try the skates himself.

In summer the pet pastime of the boys of Dawson's Landing was to steal
apples, peaches, and melons from the farmer's fruit wagons--mainly on
account of the risk they ran of getting their heads laid open with the
butt of the farmer's whip.  Tom was a distinguished adept at these
thefts--by proxy.  Chambers did his stealing, and got the peach stones,
apple cores, and melon rinds for his share.

Tom always made Chambers go in swimming with him, and stay by him as a
protection.  When Tom had had enough, he would slip out and tie knots in
Chamber's shirt, dip the knots in the water and make them hard to undo,
then dress himself and sit by and laugh while the naked shiverer tugged
at the stubborn knots with his teeth.

Tom did his humble comrade these various ill turns partly out of native
viciousness, and partly because he hated him for his superiorities of
physique and pluck, and for his manifold cleverness. Tom couldn't dive,
for it gave him splitting headaches. Chambers could dive without
inconvenience, and was fond of doing it. He excited so much admiration,
one day, among a crowd of white boys, by throwing back somersaults from
the stern of a canoe, that it wearied Tom's spirit, and at last he shoved
the canoe underneath Chambers while he was in the air--so he came down on
his head in the canoe bottom; and while he lay unconscious, several of
Tom's ancient adversaries saw that their long-desired opportunity was
come, and they gave the false heir such a drubbing that with Chamber's
best help he was hardly able to drag himself home afterward.

When the boys was fifteen and upward, Tom was "showing off" in the river
one day, when he was taken with a cramp, and shouted for help. It was a
common trick with the boys--particularly if a stranger was present--to
pretend a cramp and howl for help; then when the stranger came tearing
hand over hand to the rescue, the howler would go on struggling and
howling till he was close at hand, then replace the howl with a sarcastic
smile and swim blandly away, while the town boys assailed the dupe with a
volley of jeers and laughter. Tom had never tried this joke as yet, but
was supposed to be trying it now, so the boys held warily back; but
Chambers believed his master was in earnest; therefore, he swam out, and
arrived in time, unfortunately, and saved his life.

This was the last feather.  Tom had managed to endure everything else,
but to have to remain publicly and permanently under such an obligation
as this to a nigger, and to this nigger of all niggers--this was too
much. He heaped insults upon Chambers for "pretending" to think he was in
earnest in calling for help, and said that anybody but a blockheaded
nigger would have known he was funning and left him alone.

Tom's enemies were in strong force here, so they came out with their
opinions quite freely.  The laughed at him, and called him coward, liar,
sneak, and other sorts of pet names, and told him they meant to call
Chambers by a new name after this, and make it common in the town--"Tom
Driscoll's nigger pappy,"--to signify that he had had a second birth into
this life, and that Chambers was the author of his new being.  Tom grew
frantic under these taunts, and shouted:

"Knock their heads off, Chambers!  Knock their heads off! What do you
stand there with your hands in your pockets for?"

Chambers expostulated, and said, "But, Marse Tom, dey's too many of
'em--dey's--"

"Do you hear me?"

"Please, Marse Tom, don't make me!  Dey's so many of 'em dat--"

Tom sprang at him and drove his pocketknife into him two or three times
before the boys could snatch him away and give the wounded lad a chance
to escape.  He was considerably hurt, but not seriously. If the blade had
been a little longer, his career would have ended there.

Tom had long ago taught Roxy "her place."  It had been many a day now
since she had ventured a caress or a fondling epithet in his quarter.
Such things, from a "nigger," were repulsive to him, and she had been
warned to keep her distance and remember who she was.  She saw her
darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw THAT detail perish
utterly; all that was left was master--master, pure and simple, and it
was not a gentle mastership, either.  She saw herself sink from the
sublime height of motherhood to the somber depths of unmodified slavery,
the abyss of separation between her and her boy was complete. She was
merely his chattel now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing and
helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious
temper and vicious nature.

Sometimes she could not go to sleep, even when worn out with fatigue,
because her rage boiled so high over the day's experiences with her boy.
She would mumble and mutter to herself:

"He struck me en I warn't no way to blame--struck me in de face, right
before folks.  En he's al'ays callin' me nigger wench, en hussy, en all
dem mean names, when I's doin' de very bes' I kin. Oh, Lord, I done so
much for him--I lif' him away up to what he is--en dis is what I git for
it."

Sometimes when some outrage of peculiar offensiveness stung her to the
heart, she would plan schemes of vengeance and revel in the fancied
spectacle of his exposure to the world as an imposter and a slave; but in
the midst of these joys fear would strike her; she had made him too
strong; she could prove nothing, and--heavens, she might get sold down
the river for her pains!  So her schemes always went for nothing, and she
laid them aside in impotent rage against the fates, and against herself
for playing the fool on that fatal September day in not providing herself
with a witness for use in the day when such a thing might be needed for
the appeasing of her vengeance-hungry heart.

And yet the moment Tom happened to be good to her, and kind--and this
occurred every now and then--all her sore places were healed, and she was
happy; happy and proud, for this was her son, her nigger son, lording it
among the whites and securely avenging their crimes against her race.

There were two grand funerals in Dawson's Landing that fall--the fall of
1845.  One was that of Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, the other that of
Percy Driscoll.

On his deathbed Driscoll set Roxy free and delivered his idolized
ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother, the judge, and
his wife.  Those childless people were glad to get him. Childless people
are not difficult to please.

Judge Driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month before, and
bought Chambers.  He had heard that Tom had been trying to get his father
to sell the boy down the river, and he wanted to prevent the scandal--for
public sentiment did not approve of that way of treating family servants
for light cause or for no cause.

Percy Driscoll had worn himself out in trying to save his great
speculative landed estate, and had died without succeeding. He was hardly
in his grave before the boom collapsed and left his envied young devil of
an heir a pauper.  But that was nothing; his uncle told him he should be
his heir and have all his fortune when he died; so Tom was comforted.

Roxy had no home now; so she resolved to go around and say good-by to her
friends and then clear out and see the world--that is to say, she would
go chambermaiding on a steamboat, the darling ambition of her race and
sex.

Her last call was on the black giant, Jasper.  She found him chopping
Pudd'nhead Wilson's winter provision of wood.

Wilson was chatting with him when Roxy arrived.  He asked her how she
could bear to go off chambermaiding and leave her boys; and chaffingly
offered to copy off a series of their fingerprints, reaching up to their
twelfth year, for her to remember them by; but she sobered in a moment,
wondering if he suspected anything; then she said she believed she didn't
want them.  Wilson said to himself, "The drop of black blood in her is
superstitious; she thinks there's some devilry, some witch business about
my glass mystery somewhere; she used to come here with an old horseshoe
in her hand; it could have been an accident, but I doubt it."




CHAPTER 5

The Twins Thrill Dawson's Landing

Training is everything.  The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower
is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Remark of Dr. Baldwin's, concerning upstarts:  We don't care to eat
toadstools that think they are truffles.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Mrs. York Driscoll enjoyed two years of bliss with that prize,
Tom--bliss that was troubled a little at times, it is true, but bliss
nevertheless; then she died, and her husband and his childless sister,
Mrs. Pratt, continued this bliss-business at the old stand.  Tom was
petted and indulged and spoiled to his entire content--or nearly that.
This went on till he was nineteen, then he was sent to Yale.  He went
handsomely equipped with "conditions," but otherwise he was not an object
of distinction there. He remained at Yale two years, and then threw up
the struggle. He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had
lost his surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and
smooth, now; he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech,
and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a
good-natured semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him
from getting into trouble.  He was as indolent as ever and showed no very
strenuous desire to hunt up an occupation.  People argued from this that
he preferred to be supported by his uncle until his uncle's shoes should
become vacant.  He brought back one or two new habits with him, one of
which he rather openly practiced--tippling--but concealed another, which
was gambling.  It would not do to gamble where his uncle could hear of
it; he knew that quite well.

Tom's Eastern polish was not popular among the young people. They could
have endured it, perhaps, if Tom had stopped there; but he wore gloves,
and that they couldn't stand, and wouldn't; so he was mainly without
society.  He brought home with him a suit of clothes of such exquisite
style and cut in fashion--Eastern fashion, city fashion--that it filled
everybody with anguish and was regarded as a peculiarly wanton affront.
He enjoyed the feeling which he was exciting, and paraded the town serene
and happy all day; but the young fellows set a tailor to work that night,
and when Tom started out on his parade next morning, he found the old
deformed Negro bell ringer straddling along in his wake tricked out in a
flamboyant curtain-calico exaggeration of his finery, and imitating his
fancy Eastern graces as well as he could.

Tom surrendered, and after that clothed himself in the local fashion. But
the dull country town was tiresome to him, since his acquaintanceship
with livelier regions, and it grew daily more and more so.  He began to
make little trips to St. Louis for refreshment. There he found
companionship to suit him, and pleasures to his taste, along with more
freedom, in some particulars, than he could have at home. So, during the
next two years, his visits to the city grew in frequency and his
tarryings there grew steadily longer in duration.

He was getting into deep waters.  He was taking chances, privately, which
might get him into trouble some day--in fact, _did_.

Judge Driscoll had retired from the bench and from all business
activities in 1850, and had now been comfortably idle three years. He was
president of the Freethinkers' Society, and Pudd'nhead Wilson was the
other member.  The society's weekly discussions were now the old lawyer's
main interest in life.  Pudd'nhead was still toiling in obscurity at the
bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that unlucky remark which he
had let fall twenty-three years before about the dog.

Judge Driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind above the
average, but that was regarded as one of the judge's whims, and it failed
to modify the public opinion.  Or rather, that was one of the reason why
it failed, but there was another and better one. If the judge had stopped
with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made
the mistake of trying to prove his position. For some years Wilson had
been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement--a
calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical
form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and
fancies of Wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful
of them around one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens.  But
irony was not for those people; their mental vision was not focused for
it.  They read those playful trifles in the solidest terms, and decided
without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson
was a pudd'nhead--which there hadn't--this revelation removed that doubt
for good and all. That is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly
ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete
the thing and make it perfect.  After this the judge felt tenderer than
ever toward Wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit.

Judge Driscoll could be a freethinker and still hold his place in society
because he was the person of most consequence to the community, and
therefore could venture to go his own way and follow out his own notions.
The other member of his pet organization was allowed the like liberty
because he was a cipher in the estimation of the public, and nobody
attached any importance to what he thought or did. He was liked, he was
welcome enough all around, but he simply didn't count for anything.

The Widow Cooper--affectionately called "Aunt Patsy" by everybody--lived
in a snug and comely cottage with her daughter Rowena, who was nineteen,
romantic, amiable, and very pretty, but otherwise of no consequence.
Rowena had a couple of young brothers--also of no consequence.

The widow had a large spare room, which she let to a lodger, with board,
when she could find one, but this room had been empty for a year now, to
her sorrow.  Her income was only sufficient for the family support, and
she needed the lodging money for trifling luxuries.  But now, at last, on
a flaming June day, she found herself happy; her tedious wait was ended;
her year-worn advertisement had been answered; and not by a village
applicant, no, no!--this letter was from away off yonder in the dim great
world to the North; it was from St. Louis.  She sat on her porch gazing
out with unseeing eyes upon the shining reaches of the mighty
Mississippi, her thoughts steeped in her good fortune.  Indeed it was
specially good fortune, for she was to have two lodgers instead of one.

She had read the letter to the family, and Rowena had danced away to see
to the cleaning and airing of the room by the slave woman, Nancy, and the
boys had rushed abroad in the town to spread the great news, for it was a
matter of public interest, and the public would wonder and not be pleased
if not informed.  Presently Rowena returned, all ablush with joyous
excitement, and begged for a rereading of the letter. It was framed thus:

HONORED MADAM:  My brother and I have seen your advertisement, by chance,
and beg leave to take the room you offer.  We are twenty-four years of
age and twins.  We are Italians by birth, but have lived long in the
various countries of Europe, and several years in the United States. Our
names are Luigi and Angelo Capello.  You desire but one guest; but, dear
madam, if you will allow us to pay for two, we will not incommode you.
We shall be down Thursday.

"Italians!  How romantic!  Just think, Ma--there's never been one in this
town, and everybody will be dying to see them, and they're all OURS!
Think of that!"

"Yes, I reckon they'll make a grand stir."

"Oh, indeed they will.  The whole town will be on its head!
Think--they've been in Europe and everywhere!  There's never been a
traveler in this town before, Ma, I shouldn't wonder if they've seen
kings!"

"Well, a body can't tell, but they'll make stir enough, without that."

"Yes, that's of course.  Luigi--Angelo.  They're lovely names; and so
grand and foreign--not like Jones and Robinson and such. Thursday they
are coming, and this is only Tuesday; it's a cruel long time to wait.
Here comes Judge Driscoll in at the gate. He's heard about it.  I'll go
and open the door."

The judge was full of congratulations and curiosity.  The letter was read
and discussed.  Soon Justice Robinson arrived with more congratulations,
and there was a new reading and a new discussion. This was the beginning.
Neighbor after neighbor, of both sexes, followed, and the procession
drifted in and out all day and evening and all Wednesday and Thursday.
The letter was read and reread until it was nearly worn out; everybody
admired its courtly and gracious tone, and smooth and practiced style,
everybody was sympathetic and excited, and the Coopers were steeped in
happiness all the while.

The boats were very uncertain in low water in these primitive times. This
time the Thursday boat had not arrived at ten at night--so the people
had waited at the landing all day for nothing; they were driven to their
homes by a heavy storm without having had a view of the illustrious
foreigners.

Eleven o'clock came; and the Cooper house was the only one in the town
that still had lights burning.  The rain and thunder were booming yet,
and the anxious family were still waiting, still hoping. At last there
was a knock at the door, and the family jumped to open it. Two Negro men
entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded upstairs toward the guest
room.  Then entered the twins--the handsomest, the best dressed, the most
distinguished-looking pair of young fellows the West had ever seen.  One
was a little fairer than the other, but otherwise they were exact
duplicates.




CHAPTER 6

Swimming in Glory

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker
will be sorry.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but
coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

At breakfast in the morning, the twins' charm of manner and easy and
polished bearing made speedy conquest of the family's good graces. All
constraint and formality quickly disappeared, and the friendliest feeling
succeeded.  Aunt Patsy called them by their Christian names almost from
the beginning.  She was full of the keenest curiosity about them, and
showed it; they responded by talking about themselves, which pleased her
greatly.  It presently appeared that in their early youth they had known
poverty and hardship.  As the talk wandered along, the old lady watched
for the right place to drop in a question or two concerning that matter,
and when she found it, she said to the blond twin, who was now doing the
biographies in his turn while the brunette one rested:

"If it ain't asking what I ought not to ask, Mr. Angelo, how did you come
to be so friendless and in such trouble when you were little? Do you mind
telling?  But don't, if you do."

"Oh, we don't mind it at all, madam; in our case it was merely
misfortune, and nobody's fault.  Our parents were well to do, there in
Italy, and we were their only child.  We were of the old Florentine
nobility"--Rowena's heart gave a great bound, her nostrils expanded, and
a fine light played in her eyes--"and when the war broke out, my father
was on the losing side and had to fly for his life. His estates were
confiscated, his personal property seized, and there we were, in Germany,
strangers, friendless, and in fact paupers. My brother and I were ten
years old, and well educated for that age, very studious, very fond of
our books, and well grounded in the German, French, Spanish, and English
languages.  Also, we were marvelous musical prodigies--if you will allow
me to say it, it being only the truth.

"Our father survived his misfortunes only a month, our mother soon
followed him, and we were alone in the world.  Our parents could have
made themselves comfortable by exhibiting us as a show, and they had many
and large offers; but the thought revolted their pride, and they said
they would starve and die first.  But what they wouldn't consent to do,
we had to do without the formality of consent. We were seized for the
debts occasioned by their illness and their funerals, and placed among
the attractions of a cheap museum in Berlin to earn the liquidation
money.  It took us two years to get out of that slavery. We traveled all
about Germany, receiving no wages, and not even our keep. We had to be
exhibited for nothing, and beg our bread.

"Well, madam, the rest is not of much consequence.  When we escaped from
that slavery at twelve years of age, we were in some respects men.
Experience had taught us some valuable things; among others, how to take
care of ourselves, how to avoid and defeat sharks and sharpers, and how
to conduct our own business for our own profit and without other people's
help.  We traveled everywhere--years and years--picking up smatterings
of strange tongues, familiarizing ourselves with strange sights and
strange customs, accumulating an education of a wide and varied and
curious sort.  It was a pleasant life. We went to Venice--to London,
Paris, Russia, India, China, Japan--"

At this point Nancy, the slave woman, thrust her head in at the door and
exclaimed:

"Ole Missus, de house is plum' jam full o' people, en dey's jes
a-spi'lin' to see de gen'lemen!"  She indicated the twins with a nod of
her head, and tucked it back out of sight again.

It was a proud occasion for the widow, and she promised herself high
satisfaction in showing off her fine foreign birds before her neighbors
and friends--simple folk who had hardly ever seen a foreigner of any
kind, and never one of any distinction or style. Yet her feeling was
moderate indeed when contrasted with Rowena's. Rowena was in the clouds,
she walked on air; this was to be the greatest day, the most romantic
episode in the colorless history of that dull country town.  She was to
be familiarly near the source of its glory and feel the full flood of it
pour over her and about her; the other girls could only gaze and envy,
not partake.

The widow was ready, Rowena was ready, so also were the foreigners.

The party moved along the hall, the twins in advance, and entered the
open parlor door, whence issued a low hum of conversation. The twins took
a position near the door, the widow stood at Luigi's side, Rowena stood
beside Angelo, and the march-past and the introductions began. The widow
was all smiles and contentment.  She received the procession and passed
it on to Rowena.

"Good mornin', Sister Cooper"--handshake.

"Good morning, Brother Higgins--Count Luigi Capello, Mr. Higgins"
--handshake, followed by a devouring stare and "I'm glad to see ye,"
on the part of Higgins, and a courteous inclination of the head and a
pleasant "Most happy!" on the part of Count Luigi.

"Good mornin', Roweny"--handshake.

"Good morning, Mr. Higgins--present you to Count Angelo Capello."
Handshake, admiring stare, "Glad to see ye"--courteous nod, smily "Most
happy!" and Higgins passes on.

None of these visitors was at ease, but, being honest people, they didn't
pretend to be.  None of them had ever seen a person bearing a title of
nobility before, and none had been expecting to see one now, consequently
the title came upon them as a kind of pile-driving surprise and caught
them unprepared.  A few tried to rise to the emergency, and got out an
awkward "My lord," or "Your lordship," or something of that sort, but the
great majority were overwhelmed by the unaccustomed word and its dim and
awful associations with gilded courts and stately ceremony and anointed
kingship, so they only fumbled through the handshake and passed on,
speechless.  Now and then, as happens at all receptions everywhere, a
more than ordinary friendly soul blocked the procession and kept it
waiting while he inquired how the brothers liked the village, and how
long they were going to stay, and if their family was well, and dragged
in the weather, and hoped it would get cooler soon, and all that sort of
thing, so as to be able to say, when he got home, "I had quite a long
talk with them"; but nobody did or said anything of a regrettable kind,
and so the great affair went through to the end in a creditable and
satisfactory fashion.

General conversation followed, and the twins drifted about from group to
group, talking easily and fluently and winning approval, compelling
admiration and achieving favor from all. The widow followed their
conquering march with a proud eye, and every now and then Rowena said to
herself with deep satisfaction, "And to think they are ours--all ours!"

There were no idle moments for mother or daughter.  Eager inquiries
concerning the twins were pouring into their enchanted ears all the time;
each was the constant center of a group of breathless listeners; each
recognized that she knew now for the first time the real meaning of that
great word Glory, and perceived the stupendous value of it, and
understood why men in all ages had been willing to throw away meaner
happiness, treasure, life itself, to get a taste of its sublime and
supreme joy.  Napoleon and all his kind stood accounted for--and
justified.

When Rowena had at last done all her duty by the people in the parlor,
she went upstairs to satisfy the longings of an overflow meeting there,
for the parlor was not big enough to hold all the comers. Again she was
besieged by eager questioners, and again she swam in sunset seas of
glory.  When the forenoon was nearly gone, she recognized with a pang
that this most splendid episode of her life was almost over, that nothing
could prolong it, that nothing quite its equal could ever fall to her
fortune again.  But never mind, it was sufficient unto itself, the grand
occasion had moved on an ascending scale from the start, and was a noble
and memorable success.  If the twins could but do some crowning act now
to climax it, something usual, something startling, something to
concentrate upon themselves the company's loftiest admiration, something
in the nature of an electric surprise--

Here a prodigious slam-banging broke out below, and everybody rushed down
to see.  It was the twins, knocking out a classic four-handed piece on
the piano in great style.  Rowena was satisfied--satisfied down to the
bottom of her heart.

The young strangers were kept long at the piano.  The villagers were
astonished and enchanted with the magnificence of their performance, and
could not bear to have them stop.  All the music that they had ever heard
before seemed spiritless prentice-work and barren of grace and charm when
compared with these intoxicating floods of melodious sound. They realized
that for once in their lives they were hearing masters.




CHAPTER 7

The Unknown Nymph

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a
cat has only nine lives.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The company broke up reluctantly, and drifted toward their several
homes, chatting with vivacity and all agreeing that it would be many a
long day before Dawson's Landing would see the equal of this one again.
The twins had accepted several invitations while the reception was in
progress, and had also volunteered to play some duets at an amateur
entertainment for the benefit of a local charity. Society was eager to
receive them to its bosom.  Judge Driscoll had the good fortune to secure
them for an immediate drive, and to be the first to display them in
public.  They entered his buggy with him and were paraded down the main
street, everybody flocking to the windows and sidewalks to see.

The judge showed the strangers the new graveyard, and the jail, and where
the richest man lived, and the Freemasons' hall, and the Methodist
church, and the Presbyterian church, and where the Baptist church was
going to be when they got some money to build it with, and showed them
the town hall and the slaughterhouse, and got out of the independent fire
company in uniform and had them put out an imaginary fire; then he let
them inspect the muskets of the militia company, and poured out an
exhaustless stream of enthusiasm over all these splendors, and seemed
very well satisfied with the responses he got, for the twins admired his
admiration, and paid him back the best they could, though they could have
done better if some fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand previous
experiences of this sort in various countries had not already rubbed off
a considerable part of the novelty in it.

The judge laid himself out hospitality to make them have a good time, and
if there was a defect anywhere, it was not his fault. He told them a good
many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub, but they were always
able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a pretty early vintage, and
they had had many a rejuvenating pull at them before.  And he told them
all about his several dignities, and how he had held this and that and
the other place of honor or profit, and had once been to the legislature,
and was now president of the Society of Freethinkers.  He said the
society had been in existence four years, and already had two members,
and was firmly established. He would call for the brothers in the
evening, if they would like to attend a meeting of it.

Accordingly he called for them, and on the way he told them all about
Pudd'nhead Wilson, in order that they might get a favorable impression of
him in advance and be prepared to like him.  This scheme succeeded--the
favorable impression was achieved.  Later it was confirmed and solidified
when Wilson proposed that out of courtesy to the strangers the usual
topics be put aside and the hour be devoted to conversation upon ordinary
subjects and the cultivation of friendly relations and good-fellowship--a
proposition which was put to vote and carried.

The hour passed quickly away in lively talk, and when it was ended, the
lonesome and neglected Wilson was richer by two friends than he had been
when it began.  He invited the twins to look in at his lodgings
presently, after disposing of an intervening engagement, and they
accepted with pleasure.

Toward the middle of the evening, they found themselves on the road to
his house.  Pudd'nhead was at home waiting for them and putting in his
time puzzling over a thing which had come under his notice that morning.
The matter was this:  He happened to be up very early--at dawn, in fact;
and he crossed the hall, which divided his cottage through the center,
and entered a room to get something there. The window of the room had no
curtains, for that side of the house had long been unoccupied, and
through this window he caught sight of something which surprised and
interested him.  It was a young woman--a young woman where properly no
young woman belonged; for she was in Judge Driscoll's house, and in the
bedroom over the judge's private study or sitting room.  This was young
Tom Driscoll's bedroom. He and the judge, the judge's widowed sister Mrs.
Pratt, and three Negro servants were the only people who belonged in the
house.  Who, then, might this young lady be?  The two houses were
separated by an ordinary yard, with a low fence running back through its
middle from the street in front to the lane in the rear.  The distance
was not great, and Wilson was able to see the girl very well, the window
shades of the room she was in being up, and the window also. The girl had
on a neat and trim summer dress, patterned in broad stripes of pink and
white, and her bonnet was equipped with a pink veil. She was practicing
steps, gaits and attitudes, apparently; she was doing the thing
gracefully, and was very much absorbed in her work. Who could she be, and
how came she to be in young Tom Driscoll's room?

Wilson had quickly chosen a position from which he could watch the girl
without running much risk of being seen by her, and he remained there
hoping she would raise her veil and betray her face.  But she
disappointed him.  After a matter of twenty minutes she disappeared and
although he stayed at his post half an hour longer, she came no more.

Toward noon he dropped in at the judge's and talked with Mrs. Pratt about
the great event of the day, the levee of the distinguished foreigners at
Aunt Patsy Cooper's.  He asked after her nephew Tom, and she said he was
on his way home and that she was expecting him to arrive a little before
night, and added that she and the judge were gratified to gather from his
letters that he was conducting himself very nicely and creditably--at
which Wilson winked to himself privately. Wilson did not ask if there was
a newcomer in the house, but he asked questions that would have brought
light-throwing answers as to that matter if Mrs. Pratt had had any light
to throw; so he went away satisfied that he knew of things that were
going on in her house of which she herself was not aware.

He was now awaiting for the twins, and still puzzling over the problem of
who that girl might be, and how she happened to be in that young fellow's
room at daybreak in the morning.




CHAPTER 8

Marse Tom Tramples His Chance

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not
asked to lend money.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Consider well the proportions of things.  It is better to be a young June
bug than an old bird of paradise.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

It is necessary now to hunt up Roxy.

At the time she was set free and went away chambermaiding, she was
thirty-five.  She got a berth as second chambermaid on a Cincinnati boat
in the New Orleans trade, the _Grand Mogul_. A couple of trips made her
wonted and easygoing at the work, and infatuated her with the stir and
adventure and independence of steamboat life.  Then she was promoted and
become head chambermaid. She was a favorite with the officers, and
exceedingly proud of their joking and friendly way with her.

During eight years she served three parts of the year on that boat, and
the winters on a Vicksburg packet.  But now for two months, she had had
rheumatism in her arms, and was obliged to let the washtub alone.  So she
resigned.  But she was well fixed--rich, as she would have described it;
for she had lived a steady life, and had banked four dollars every month
in New Orleans as a provision for her old age.  She said in the start
that she had "put shoes on one bar'footed nigger to tromple on her with,"
and that one mistake like that was enough; she would be independent of
the human race thenceforth forevermore if hard work and economy could
accomplish it. When the boat touched the levee at New Orleans she bade
good-by to her comrades on the _Grand Mogul_ and moved her kit ashore.

But she was back in a hour.  The bank had gone to smash and carried her
four hundred dollars with it.  She was a pauper and homeless. Also
disabled bodily, at least for the present.  The officers were full of
sympathy for her in her trouble, and made up a little purse for her.  She
resolved to go to her birthplace; she had friends there among the Negros,
and the unfortunate always help the unfortunate, she was well aware of
that; those lowly comrades of her youth would not let her starve.

She took the little local packet at Cairo, and now she was on the
homestretch.  Time had worn away her bitterness against her son, and she
was able to think of him with serenity.  She put the vile side of him out
of her mind, and dwelt only on recollections of his occasional acts of
kindness to her.  She gilded and otherwise decorated these, and made them
very pleasant to contemplate.  She began to long to see him. She would go
and fawn upon him slavelike--for this would have to be her attitude, of
course--and maybe she would find that time had modified him, and that he
would be glad to see his long-forgotten old nurse and treat her gently.
That would be lovely; that would make her forget her woes and her
poverty.

Her poverty!  That thought inspired her to add another castle to her
dream: maybe he would give her a trifle now and then--maybe a dollar,
once a month, say; any little thing like that would help, oh, ever so
much.

By the time she reached Dawson's Landing, she was her old self again; her
blues were gone, she was in high feather.  She would get along, surely;
there were many kitchens where the servants would share their meals with
her, and also steal sugar and apples and other dainties for her to carry
home--or give her a chance to pilfer them herself, which would answer
just as well.  And there was the church. She was a more rabid and devoted
Methodist than ever, and her piety was no sham, but was strong and
sincere.  Yes, with plenty of creature comforts and her old place in the
amen corner in her possession again, she would be perfectly happy and at
peace thenceforward to the end.

She went to Judge Driscoll's kitchen first of all.  She was received
there in great form and with vast enthusiasm.  Her wonderful travels, and
the strange countries she had seen, and the adventures she had had, made
her a marvel and a heroine of romance.  The Negros hung enchanted upon a
great story of her experiences, interrupting her all along with eager
questions, with laughter, exclamations of delight, and expressions of
applause; and she was obliged to confess to herself that if there was
anything better in this world than steamboating, it was the glory to be
got by telling about it.  The audience loaded her stomach with their
dinners, and then stole the pantry bare to load up her basket.

Tom was in St. Louis.  The servants said he had spent the best part of
his time there during the previous two years.  Roxy came every day, and
had many talks about the family and its affairs.  Once she asked why Tom
was away so much.  The ostensible "Chambers" said:

"De fac' is, ole marster kin git along better when young marster's away
den he kin when he's in de town; yes, en he love him better, too; so he
gives him fifty dollahs a month--"

"No, is dat so?  Chambers, you's a-jokin', ain't you?"

"'Clah to goodness I ain't, Mammy; Marse Tom tole me so his own self. But
nemmine, 'tain't enough."

"My lan', what de reason 'tain't enough?"

"Well, I's gwine to tell you, if you gimme a chanst, Mammy. De reason it
ain't enough is 'ca'se Marse Tom gambles."

Roxy threw up her hands in astonishment, and Chambers went on:

"Ole marster found it out, 'ca'se he had to pay two hundred dollahs for
Marse Tom's gamblin' debts, en dat's true, Mammy, jes as dead certain as
you's bawn."

"Two--hund'd dollahs!  Why, what is you talkin' 'bout?
Two--hund'd--dollahs.  Sakes alive, it's 'mos' enough to buy a tol'able
good secondhand nigger wid.  En you ain't lyin', honey? You wouldn't lie
to you' old Mammy?"

"It's God's own truth, jes as I tell you--two hund'd dollahs--I wisht I
may never stir outen my tracks if it ain't so. En, oh, my lan', ole Marse
was jes a-hoppin'!  He was b'ilin' mad, I tell you!  He tuck 'n'
dissenhurrit him."

"Disen_whiched_ him?"

"Dissenhurrit him."

"What's dat?  What do you mean?"

"Means he bu'sted de will."

"Bu's--ted de will!  He wouldn't _ever_ treat him so!  Take it back, you
mis'able imitation nigger dat I bore in sorrow en tribbilation."

Roxy's pet castle--an occasional dollar from Tom's pocket--was tumbling
to ruin before her eyes.  She could not abide such a disaster as that;
she couldn't endure the thought of it. Her remark amused Chambers.

"Yah-yah-yah!  Jes listen to dat!  If I's imitation, what is you? Bofe of
us is imitation _white_--dat's what we is--en pow'ful good imitation,
too.  Yah-yah-yah!  We don't 'mount to noth'n as imitation _niggers_; en
as for--"

"Shet up yo' foolin', 'fo' I knock you side de head, en tell me 'bout de
will.  Tell me 'tain't bu'sted--do, honey, en I'll never forgit you."

"Well, _'tain't_--'ca'se dey's a new one made, en Marse Tom's all right
ag'in.  But what is you in sich a sweat 'bout it for, Mammy?  'Tain't
none o' your business I don't reckon."

"'Tain't none o' my business?  Whose business is it den, I'd like to
know?  Wuz I his mother tell he was fifteen years old, or wusn't I?--you
answer me dat.  En you speck I could see him turned out po' and ornery on
de worl' en never care noth'n' 'bout it?  I reckon if you'd ever be'n a
mother yo'self, Valet de Chambers, you wouldn't talk sich foolishness as
dat."

"Well, den, ole Marse forgive him en fixed up de will ag'in--do dat
satisfy you?"

Yes, she was satisfied now, and quite happy and sentimental over it. She
kept coming daily, and at last she was told that Tom had come home. She
began to tremble with emotion, and straightway sent to beg him to let his
"po' ole nigger Mammy have jes one sight of him en die for joy."

Tom was stretched at his lazy ease on a sofa when Chambers brought the
petition.  Time had not modified his ancient detestation of the humble
drudge and protector of his boyhood; it was still bitter and
uncompromising.  He sat up and bent a severe gaze upon the face of the
young fellow whose name he was unconsciously using and whose family
rights he was enjoying.  He maintained the gaze until the victim of it
had become satisfactorily pallid with terror, then he said:

"What does the old rip want with me?"

The petition was meekly repeated.

"Who gave you permission to come and disturb me with the social
attentions of niggers?"

Tom had risen.  The other young man was trembling now, visibly. He saw
what was coming, and bent his head sideways, and put up his left arm to
shield it.  Tom rained cuffs upon the head and its shield, saying no
word:  the victim received each blow with a beseeching, "Please, Marse
Tom!--oh, please, Marse Tom!"  Seven blows--then Tom said, "Face the
door--march!"  He followed behind with one, two, three solid kicks.  The
last one helped the pure-white slave over the door-sill, and he limped
away mopping his eyes with his old, ragged sleeve.  Tom shouted after
him, "Send her in!"

Then he flung himself panting on the sofa again, and rasped out the
remark, "He arrived just at the right moment; I was full to the brim with
bitter thinkings, and nobody to take it out of.  How refreshing it was!
I feel better."

Tom's mother entered now, closing the door behind her, and approached her
son with all the wheedling and supplication servilities that fear and
interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave. She
stopped a yard from her boy and made two or three admiring exclamations
over his manly stature and general handsomeness, and Tom put an arm under
his head and hoisted a leg over the sofa back in order to look properly
indifferent.

"My lan', how you is growed, honey!  'Clah to goodness, I wouldn't
a-knowed you, Marse Tom!  'Deed I wouldn't!  Look at me good; does you
'member old Roxy?  Does you know yo' old nigger mammy, honey? Well now, I
kin lay down en die in peace, 'ca'se I'se seed--"

"Cut it short, Goddamn it, cut it short!  What is it you want?"

"You heah dat?  Jes the same old Marse Tom, al'ays so gay and funnin' wid
de ole mammy.  I'uz jes as shore--"

"Cut it short, I tell you, and get along!  What do you want?"

This was a bitter disappointment.  Roxy had for so many days nourished
and fondled and petted her notion that Tom would be glad to see his old
nurse, and would make her proud and happy to the marrow with a cordial
word or two, that it took two rebuffs to convince her that he was not
funning, and that her beautiful dream was a fond and foolish variety, a
shabby and pitiful mistake.  She was hurt to the heart, and so ashamed
that for a moment she did not quite know what to do or how to act.  Then
her breast began to heave, the tears came, and in her forlornness she was
moved to try that other dream of hers--an appeal to her boy's charity;
and so, upon the impulse, and without reflection, she offered her
supplication:

"Oh, Marse Tom, de po' ole mammy is in sich hard luck dese days; en she's
kinder crippled in de arms and can't work, en if you could gimme a
dollah--on'y jes one little dol--"

Tom was on his feet so suddenly that the supplicant was startled into a
jump herself.

"A dollar!--give you a dollar!  I've a notion to strangle you! Is _that_
your errand here?  Clear out!  And be quick about it!"

Roxy backed slowly toward the door.  When she was halfway she stopped,
and said mournfully:

"Marse Tom, I nussed you when you was a little baby, en I raised you all
by myself tell you was 'most a young man; en now you is young en rich, en
I is po' en gitt'n ole, en I come heah b'leavin' dat you would he'p de
ole mammy 'long down de little road dat's lef' 'twix' her en de grave,
en--"

Tom relished this tune less than any that he preceded it, for it began to
wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he interrupted and said with
decision, though without asperity, that he was not in a situation to help
her, and wasn't going to do it.

"Ain't you ever gwine to he'p me, Marse Tom?"

"No!  Now go away and don't bother me any more."

Roxy's head was down, in an attitude of humility.  But now the fires of
her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely. She
raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at the same time her
great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and masterful attitude, with
all the majesty and grace of her vanished youth in it. She raised her
finger and punctuated with it.

"You has said de word.  You has had yo' chance, en you has trompled it
under yo' foot.  When you git another one, you'll git down on yo' knees
en _beg_ for it!"

A cold chill went to Tom's heart, he didn't know why; for he did not
reflect that such words, from such an incongruous source, and so solemnly
delivered, could not easily fail of that effect. However, he did the
natural thing: he replied with bluster and mockery.

"_You'll_ give me a chance--_you_!  Perhaps I'd better get down on my
knees now!  But in case I don't--just for argument's sake--what's going
to happen, pray?"

"Dis is what is gwine to happen, I's gwine as straight to yo' uncle as I
kin walk, en tell him every las' thing I knows 'bout you."

Tom's cheek blenched, and she saw it.  Disturbing thoughts began to chase
each other through his head.  "How can she know? And yet she must have
found out--she looks it.  I've had the will back only three months, and
am already deep in debt again, and moving heaven and earth to save myself
from exposure and destruction, with a reasonably fair show of getting the
thing covered up if I'm let alone, and now this fiend has gone and found
me out somehow or other. I wonder how much she knows?  Oh, oh, oh, it's
enough to break a body's heart!  But I've got to humor her--there's no
other way."

Then he worked up a rather sickly sample of a gay laugh and a hollow
chipperness of manner, and said:

"Well, well, Roxy dear, old friends like you and me mustn't quarrel.
Here's your dollar--now tell me what you know."

He held out the wildcat bill; she stood as she was, and made no movement.
It was her turn to scorn persuasive foolery now, and she did not waste
it.  She said, with a grim implacability in voice and manner which made
Tom almost realize that even a former slave can remember for ten minutes
insults and injuries returned for compliments and flatteries received,
and can also enjoy taking revenge for them when the opportunity offers:

"What does I know?  I'll tell you what I knows, I knows enough to bu'st
dat will to flinders--en more, mind you, _more!_"

Tom was aghast.

"More?" he said, "What do you call more?  Where's there any room for
more?"

Roxy laughed a mocking laugh, and said scoffingly, with a toss of her
head, and her hands on her hips:

"Yes!--oh, I reckon!  _co'se_ you'd like to know--wid yo' po' little ole
rag dollah.  What you reckon I's gwine to tell _you_ for?--you ain't got
no money.  I's gwine to tell yo' uncle--en I'll do it dis minute,
too--he'll gimme FIVE dollahs for de news, en mighty glad, too."

She swung herself around disdainfully, and started away. Tom was in a
panic.  He seized her skirts, and implored her to wait. She turned and
said, loftily:

"Look-a-heah, what 'uz it I tole you?"

"You--you--I don't remember anything.  What was it you told me?"

"I tole you dat de next time I give you a chance you'd git down on yo'
knees en beg for it."

Tom was stupefied for a moment.  He was panting with excitement. Then he
said:

"Oh, Roxy, you wouldn't require your young master to do such a horrible
thing.  You can't mean it."

"I'll let you know mighty quick whether I means it or not! You call me
names, en as good as spit on me when I comes here, po' en ornery en
'umble, to praise you for bein' growed up so fine and handsome, en tell
you how I used to nuss you en tend you en watch you when you 'uz sick en
hadn't no mother but me in de whole worl', en beg you to give de po' ole
nigger a dollah for to get her som'n' to eat, en you call me
names--_names_, dad blame you!  Yassir, I gives you jes one chance mo',
and dat's _now_, en it las' on'y half a second--you hear?"

Tom slumped to his knees and began to beg, saying:

"You see I'm begging, and it's honest begging, too!  Now tell me, Roxy,
tell me."

The heir of two centuries of unatoned insult and outrage looked down on
him and seemed to drink in deep draughts of satisfaction. Then she said:

"Fine nice young white gen'l'man kneelin' down to a nigger wench! I's
wanted to see dat jes once befo' I's called.  Now, Gabr'el, blow de hawn,
I's ready . . .  Git up!"

Tom did it.  He said, humbly:

"Now, Roxy, don't punish me any more.  I deserved what I've got, but be
good and let me off with that.  Don't go to uncle.  Tell me--I'll give
you the five dollars."

"Yes, I bet you will; en you won't stop dah, nuther.  But I ain't gwine
to tell you heah--"

"Good gracious, no!"

"Is you 'feared o' de ha'nted house?"

"N-no."

"Well, den, you come to de ha'nted house 'bout ten or 'leven tonight, en
climb up de ladder, 'ca'se de sta'rsteps is broke down, en you'll find
me.  I's a-roostin' in de ha'nted house 'ca'se I can't 'ford to roos'
nowher's else."  She started toward the door, but stopped and said,
"Gimme de dollah bill!"  He gave it to her. She examined it and said,
"H'm--like enough de bank's bu'sted." She started again, but halted
again.  "Has you got any whisky?"

"Yes, a little."

"Fetch it!"

He ran to his room overhead and brought down a bottle which was
two-thirds full.  She tilted it up and took a drink. Her eyes sparkled
with satisfaction, and she tucked the bottle under her shawl, saying,
"It's prime.  I'll take it along."

Tom humbly held the door for her, and she marched out as grim and erect
as a grenadier.




CHAPTER 9

Tom Practices Sycophancy

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition.  There was once a
man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained
that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands,
and rested his elbows on his knees.  He rocked himself back and forth and
moaned.

"I've knelt to a nigger wench!" he muttered.  "I thought I had struck the
deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to
this. . . .   Well, there is one consolation, such as it is--I've struck
bottom this time; there's nothing lower."

But that was a hasty conclusion.

At ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak,
and wretched.  Roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms,
waiting, for she had heard him.

This was a two-story log house which had acquired the reputation a few
years ago of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness.
Nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most
people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime. As it had no
competition, it was called _the_ haunted house. It was getting crazy and
ruinous now, from long neglect. It stood three hundred yards beyond
Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, with nothing between but vacancy.  It was the
last house in the town at that end.

Tom followed Roxy into the room.  She had a pile of clean straw in the
corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the
wall, there was a tin lantern freckling the floor with little spots of
light, and there were various soap and candle boxes scattered about,
which served for chairs.  The two sat down.  Roxy said:

"Now den, I'll tell you straight off, en I'll begin to k'leck de money
later on; I ain't in no hurry.  What does you reckon I's gwine to tell
you?"

"Well, you--you--oh, Roxy, don't make it too hard for me! Come right out
and tell me you've found out somehow what a shape I'm in on account of
dissipation and foolishness."

"Disposition en foolishness!  NO sir, dat ain't it.  Dat jist ain't
nothin' at all, 'longside o' what _I_ knows."

Tom stared at her, and said:

"Why, Roxy, what do you mean?"

She rose, and gloomed above him like a Fate.

"I means dis--en it's de Lord's truth.  You ain't no more kin to ole
Marse Driscoll den I is!  _dat's_  what I means!" and her eyes flamed
with triumph.

"What?"

"Yassir, en _dat_ ain't all!  You's a _nigger!_--_bawn_ a nigger and a
_slave!_--en you's a nigger en a slave dis minute; en if I opens my mouf
ole Marse Driscoll'll sell you down de river befo' you is two days older
den what you is now!"

"It's a thundering lie, you miserable old blatherskite!"

"It ain't no lie, nuther.  It's just de truth, en nothin' _but_ de truth,
so he'p me.  Yassir--you's my _son_--"

"You devil!"

"En dat po' boy dat you's be'n a-kickin' en a-cuffin' today is Percy
Driscoll's son en yo' _marster_--"

"You beast!"

"En _his_ name is Tom Driscoll, en _yo's_ name's Valet de Chambers, en
you ain't GOT no fambly name, beca'se niggers don't _have_ em!"

Tom sprang up and seized a billet of wood and raised it, but his mother
only laughed at him, and said:

"Set down, you pup!  Does you think you kin skyer me?  It ain't in you,
nor de likes of you.  I reckon you'd shoot me in de back, maybe, if you
got a chance, for dat's jist yo' style--_I_ knows you, throo en
throo--but I don't mind gitt'n killed, beca'se all dis is down in writin'
and it's in safe hands, too, en de man dat's got it knows whah to look
for de right man when I gits killed. Oh, bless yo' soul, if you puts yo'
mother up for as big a fool as _you_ is, you's pow'ful mistaken, I kin
tell you! Now den, you set still en behave yo'self; en don't you git up
ag'in till I tell you!"

Tom fretted and chafed awhile in a whirlwind of disorganizing sensations
and emotions, and finally said, with something like settled conviction:

"The whole thing is moonshine; now then, go ahead and do your worst; I'm
done with you."

Roxy made no answer.  She took the lantern and started for the door. Tom
was in a cold panic in a moment.

"Come back, come back!" he wailed.  "I didn't mean it, Roxy; I take it
all back, and I'll never say it again!  Please come back, Roxy!"

The woman stood a moment, then she said gravely:

"Dat's one thing you's got to stop, Valet de Chambers.  You can't call me
_Roxy_, same as if you was my equal.  Chillen don't speak to dey mammies
like dat.  You'll call me ma or mammy, dat's what you'll call
me--leastways when de ain't nobody aroun'.  _Say_ it!"

It cost Tom a struggle, but he got it out.

"Dat's all right, don't you ever forgit it ag'in, if you knows what's
good for you.  Now den, you had said you wouldn't ever call it lies en
moonshine ag'in.  I'll tell you dis, for a warnin': if you ever does say
it ag'in, it's de LAS' time you'll ever say it to me; I'll tramp as
straight to de judge as I kin walk, en tell him who you is, en _prove_
it.  Does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"

"Oh," groaned Tom, "I more than believe it; I _know_ it."

Roxy knew her conquest was complete.  She could have proved nothing to
anybody, and her threat of writings was a lie; but she knew the person
she was dealing with, and had made both statements without any doubt as
to the effect they would produce.

She went and sat down on her candle box, and the pride and pomp of her
victorious attitude made it a throne.  She said:

"Now den, Chambers, we's gwine to talk business, en dey ain't gwine to be
no mo' foolishness.  In de fust place, you gits fifty dollahs a month;
you's gwine to han' over half of it to yo' ma.  Plank it out!"

But Tom had only six dollars in the world.  He gave her that, and
promised to start fair on next month's pension.

"Chambers, how much is you in debt?"

Tom shuddered, and said:

"Nearly three hundred dollars."

"How is you gwine to pay it?"

Tom groaned out:  "Oh, I don't know; don't ask me such awful questions."

But she stuck to her point until she wearied a confession out of him: he
had been prowling about in disguise, stealing small valuables from
private houses; in fact, he made a good deal of a raid on his fellow
villagers a fortnight before, when he was supposed to be in St. Louis;
but he doubted if he had sent away enough stuff to realize the required
amount, and was afraid to make a further venture in the present excited
state of the town.  His mother approved of his conduct, and offered to
help, but this frightened him.  He tremblingly ventured to say that if
she would retire from the town he should feel better and safer, and could
hold his head higher--and was going on to make an argument, but she
interrupted and surprised him pleasantly by saying she was ready; it
didn't make any difference to her where she stayed, so that she got her
share of the pension regularly.  She said she would not go far, and would
call at the haunted house once a month for her money. Then she said:

"I don't hate you so much now, but I've hated you a many a year--and
anybody would.  Didn't I change you off, en give you a good fambly en a
good name, en made you a white gen'l'man en rich, wid store clothes
on--en what did I git for it?  You despised me all de time, en was al'ays
sayin' mean hard things to me befo' folks, en wouldn't ever let me forgit
I's a nigger--en--en--"

She fell to sobbing, and broke down.  Tom said:  "But you know I didn't
know you were my mother; and besides--"

"Well, nemmine 'bout dat, now; let it go.  I's gwine to fo'git it." Then
she added fiercely, "En don't ever make me remember it ag'in, or you'll
be sorry, _I_ tell you."

When they were parting, Tom said, in the most persuasive way he could
command:

"Ma, would you mind telling me who was my father?"

He had supposed he was asking an embarrassing question.  He was mistaken.
Roxy drew herself up with a proud toss of her head, and said:

"Does I mine tellin' you?  No, dat I don't!  You ain't got no 'casion to
be shame' o' yo' father, _I_ kin tell you.  He wuz de highest quality in
dis whole town--ole Virginny stock.  Fust famblies, he wuz. Jes as good
stock as de Driscolls en de Howards, de bes' day dey ever seed."  She put
on a little prouder air, if possible, and added impressively:  "Does you
'member Cunnel Cecil Burleigh Essex, dat died de same year yo' young
Marse Tom Driscoll's pappy died, en all de Masons en Odd Fellers en
Churches turned out en give him de bigges' funeral dis town ever seed?
Dat's de man."

Under the inspiration of her soaring complacency the departed graces of
her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to itself a
dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her surroundings
had been a little more in keeping with it.

"Dey ain't another nigger in dis town dat's as highbawn as you is. Now
den, go 'long!  En jes you hold yo' head up as high as you want to--you
has de right, en dat I kin swah."




CHAPTER 10

The Nymph Revealed

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Every now and then, after Tom went to bed, he had sudden wakings out of
his sleep, and his first thought was, "Oh, joy, it was all a dream!"
Then he laid himself heavily down again, with a groan and the muttered
words, "A nigger!  I am a nigger!  Oh, I wish I was dead!"

He woke at dawn with one more repetition of this horror, and then he
resolved to meddle no more with that treacherous sleep. He began to
think.  Sufficiently bitter thinkings they were. They wandered along
something after this fashion:

"Why were niggers _and_ whites made?  What crime did the uncreated first
nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for him? And why is
this awful difference made between white and black? . . . How hard the
nigger's fate seems, this morning!--yet until last night such a thought
never entered my head."

He sighed and groaned an hour or more away.  Then "Chambers" came humbly
in to say that breakfast was nearly ready.  "Tom" blushed scarlet to see
this aristocratic white youth cringe to him, a nigger, and call him
"Young Marster."  He said roughly:

"Get out of my sight!" and when the youth was gone, he muttered, "He has
done me no harm, poor wretch, but he is an eyesore to me now, for he is
Driscoll, the young gentleman, and I am a--oh, I wish I was dead!"

A gigantic eruption, like that of Krakatoa a few years ago, with the
accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of volcanic dust,
changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond recognition,
bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where
deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before.
The tremendous catastrophe which had befallen Tom had changed his moral
landscape in much the same way. Some of his low places he found lifted to
ideals, some of his ideas had sunk to the valleys, and lay there with the
sackcloth and ashes of pumice stone and sulphur on their ruined heads.

For days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking, thinking
--trying to get his bearings.  It was new work.  If he met a friend, he
found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished
--his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a
shake. It was the "nigger" in him asserting its humility,  and he blushed
and was abashed.  And the "nigger" in him was surprised when the white
friend put out his hand for a shake with him.  He found the "nigger" in
him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to a white rowdy and
loafer.  When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his
secret worship, invited him in, the "nigger" in him made an embarrassed
excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on
equal terms.  The "nigger" in him went shrinking and skulking here and
there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe detection in
all faces, tones, and gestures.  So strange and uncharacteristic was
Tom's conduct that people noticed it, and turned to look after him when
he passed on; and when he glanced back--as he could not help doing, in
spite of his best resistance--and caught that puzzled expression in a
person's face, it gave him a sick feeling, and he took himself out of
view as quickly as he could.  He presently came to have a hunted sense
and a hunted look, and then he fled away to the hilltops and the
solitudes. He said to himself that the curse of Ham was upon him.

He dreaded his meals; the "nigger" in him was ashamed to sit at the white
folk's table, and feared discovery all the time; and once when Judge
Driscoll said, "What's the matter with you?  You look as meek as a
nigger," he felt as secret murderers are said to feel when the accuser
says, "Thou art the man!"  Tom said he was not well, and left the table.

His ostensible "aunt's" solicitudes and endearments were become a terror
to him, and he avoided them.

And all the time, hatred of his ostensible "uncle" was steadily growing
in his heart; for he said to himself, "He is white; and I am his chattel,
his property, his goods, and he can sell me, just as he could his dog."

For as much as a week after this, Tom imagined that his character had
undergone a pretty radical change.  But that was because he did not know
himself.

In several ways his opinions were totally changed, and would never go
back to what they were before, but the main structure of his character
was not changed, and could not be changed.  One or two very important
features of it were altered, and in time effects would result from this,
if opportunity offered--effects of a quite serious nature, too. Under the
influence of a great mental and moral upheaval, his character and his
habits had taken on the appearance of complete change, but after a while
with the subsidence of the storm, both began to settle toward their
former places.  He dropped gradually back into his old frivolous and
easygoing ways and conditions of feeling and manner of speech, and no
familiar of his could have detected anything in him that differentiated
him from the weak and careless Tom of other days.

The theft raid which he had made upon the village turned out better than
he had ventured to hope.  It produced the sum necessary to pay his gaming
debts, and saved him from exposure to his uncle and another smashing of
the will.  He and his mother learned to like each other fairly well.  She
couldn't love him, as yet, because there "warn't nothing _to_ him," as
she expressed it, but her nature needed something or somebody to rule
over, and he was better than nothing.  Her strong character and
aggressive and commanding ways compelled Tom's admiration in spite of the
fact that he got more illustrations of them than he needed for his
comfort. However, as a rule her conversation was made up of racy tales
about the privacies of the chief families of the town (for she went
harvesting among their kitchens every time she came to the village), and
Tom enjoyed this.  It was just in his line.  She always collected her
half of his pension punctually, and he was always at the haunted house to
have a chat with her on these occasions.  Every now and then, she paid
him a visit there on between-days also.

Occasions he would run up to St. Louis for a few weeks, and at last
temptation caught him again.  He won a lot of money, but lost it, and
with it a deal more besides, which he promised to raise as soon as
possible.

For this purpose he projected a new raid on his town.  He never meddled
with any other town, for he was afraid to venture into houses whose ins
and outs he did not know and the habits of whose households he was not
acquainted with.  He arrived at the haunted house in disguise on the
Wednesday before the advent of the twins--after writing his Aunt Pratt
that he would not arrive until two days after--and laying in hiding there
with his mother until toward daylight Friday morning, when he went to his
uncle's house and entered by the back way with his own key, and slipped
up to his room where he could have the use of the mirror and toilet
articles.  He had a suit of girl's clothes with him in a bundle as a
disguise for his raid, and was wearing a suit of his mother's clothing,
with black gloves and veil.  By dawn he was tricked out for his raid, but
he caught a glimpse of Pudd'nhead Wilson through the window over the way,
and knew that Pudd'nhead had caught a glimpse of him. So he entertained
Wilson with some airs and graces and attitudes for a while, then stepped
out of sight and resumed the other disguise, and by and by went down and
out the back way and started downtown to reconnoiter the scene of his
intended labors.

But he was ill at ease.  He had changed back to Roxy's dress, with the
stoop of age added to the disguise, so that Wilson would not bother
himself about a humble old women leaving a neighbor's house by the back
way in the early morning, in case he was still spying.  But supposing
Wilson had seen him leave, and had thought it suspicious, and had also
followed him? The thought made Tom cold.  He gave up the raid for the
day, and hurried back to the haunted house by the obscurest route he
knew. His mother was gone; but she came back, by and by, with the news of
the grand reception at Patsy Cooper's, and soon persuaded him that the
opportunity was like a special Providence, it was so inviting and
perfect.  So he went raiding, after all, and made a nice success of it
while everybody was gone to Patsy Cooper's. Success gave him nerve and
even actual intrepidity; insomuch, indeed, that after he had conveyed his
harvest to his mother in a back alley, he went to the reception himself,
and added several of the valuables of that house to his takings.

After this long digression we have now arrived once more at the point
where Pudd'nhead Wilson, while waiting for the arrival of the twins on
that same Friday evening, sat puzzling over the strange apparition of
that morning--a girl in young Tom Driscoll's bedroom; fretting, and
guessing, and puzzling over it, and wondering who the shameless creature
might be.




CHAPTER 11

Pudd'nhead's Thrilling Discovery

There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three
form a rising scale of compliment:  1--to tell him you have read one of
his books; 2--to tell him you have read all of his books; 3--to ask him
to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you
to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you
clear into his heart.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The twins arrived presently, and talk began.  It flowed along chattily
and sociably, and under its influence the new friendship gathered ease
and strength.  Wilson got out his Calendar, by request, and read a
passage or two from it, which the twins praised quite cordially. This
pleased the author so much that he complied gladly when they asked him to
lend them a batch of the work to read at home.  In the course of their
wide travels, they had found out that there are three sure ways of
pleasing an author; they were now working the best of the three.

There was an interruption now.  Young Driscoll appeared, and joined the
party.  He pretended to be seeing the distinguished strangers for the
first time when they rose to shake hands; but this was only a blind, as
he had already had a glimpse of them, at the reception, while robbing the
house.  The twins made mental note that he was smooth-faced and rather
handsome, and smooth and undulatory in his movements--graceful, in fact.
Angelo thought he had a good eye; Luigi thought there was something
veiled and sly about it.  Angelo thought he had a pleasant free-and-easy
way of talking; Luigi thought it was more so than was agreeable. Angelo
thought he was a sufficiently nice young man; Luigi reserved his
decision.  Tom's first contribution to the conversation was a question
which he had put to Wilson a hundred times before. It was always cheerily
and good-natured put, and always inflicted a little pang, for it touched
a secret sore; but this time the pang was sharp, since strangers were
present.

"Well, how does the law come on?  Had a case yet?"

Wilson bit his lip, but answered, "No--not yet," with as much
indifference as he could assume.  Judge Driscoll had generously left the
law feature out of Wilson's biography which he had furnished to the
twins.  Young Tom laughed pleasantly, and said:

"Wilson's a lawyer, gentlemen, but he doesn't practice now."

The sarcasm bit, but Wilson kept himself under control, and said without
passion:

"I don't practice, it is true.  It is true that I have never had a case,
and have had to earn a poor living for twenty years as an expert
accountant in a town where I can't get a hold of a set of books to
untangle as often as I should like.  But it is also true that I did
myself well for the practice of the law.  By the time I was your age,
Tom, I had chosen a profession, and was soon competent to enter upon it."
Tom winced.  "I never got a chance to try my hand at it, and I may never
get a chance; and yet if I ever do get it, I shall be found ready, for I
have kept up my law studies all these years."

"That's it; that's good grit!  I like to see it.  I've a notion to throw
all my business your way.  My business and your law practice ought to
make a pretty gay team, Dave," and the young fellow laughed again.

"If you will throw--"  Wilson had thought of the girl in Tom's bedroom,
and was going to say, "If you will throw the surreptitious and
disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to something,"
but thought better of it and said,

"However, this matter doesn't fit well in a general conversation."

"All right, we'll change the subject; I guess you were about to give me
another dig, anyway, so I'm willing to change. How's the Awful Mystery
flourishing these days?  Wilson's got a scheme for driving plain window
glass panes out of the market by decorating it with greasy finger marks,
and getting rich by selling it at famine prices to the crowned heads over
in Europe to outfit their palaces with. Fetch it out, Dave."

Wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said:

"I get the subject to pass the fingers of his right hand through his hair,
so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on them, and then press
the balls of them on the glass.  A fine and delicate print of the lines
in the skin results, and is permanent, if it doesn't come in contact with
something able to rub it off. You begin, Tom."

"Why, I think you took my finger marks once or twice before."

"Yes, but you were a little boy the last time, only about twelve years
old."

"That's so.  Of course, I've changed entirely since then, and variety is
what the crowned heads want, I guess."

He passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and pressed them
one at a time on the glass.  Angelo made a print of his fingers on
another glass, and Luigi followed with a third.  Wilson marked the
glasses with names and dates, and put them away.  Tom gave one of his
little laughs, and said:

"I thought I wouldn't say anything, but if variety is what you are after,
you have wasted a piece of glass.  The hand print of one twin is the same
as the hand print of the fellow twin."

"Well, it's done now, and I like to have them both, anyway," said Wilson,
returned to his place.

"But look here, Dave," said Tom, "you used to tell people's fortunes, too,
when you took their finger marks.  Dave's just an all-round genius--a
genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great scientist running to seed
here in this village, a prophet with the kind of honor that prophets
generally get at home--for here they don't give shucks for his
scientifics, and they call his skull a notion factory--hey, Dave, ain't
it so?  But never mind, he'll make his mark someday--finger mark, you
know, he-he!  But really, you want to let him take a shy at your palms
once; it's worth twice the price of admission or your money's returned at
the door.  Why, he'll read your wrinkles as easy as a book, and not only
tell you fifty or sixty things that's going to happen to you, but fifty
or sixty thousand that ain't.  Come, Dave, show the gentlemen what an
inspired jack-at-all-science we've got in this town, and don't know it."

Wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff, and the
twins suffered with him and for him.  They rightly judged, now, that the
best way to relieve him would be to take the thing in earnest and
treat it with respect, ignoring Tom's rather overdone raillery; so Luigi
said:

"We have seen something of palmistry in our wanderings, and know very
well what astonishing things it can do.  If it isn't a science, and one
of the greatest of them too, I don't know what its other name ought to
be.  In the Orient--"

Tom looked surprised and incredulous.  He said:

"That juggling a science?  But really, you ain't serious, are you?"

"Yes, entirely so.  Four years ago we had our hands read out to us as if
our plans had been covered with print."

"Well, do you mean to say there was actually anything in it?" asked Tom,
his incredulity beginning to weaken a little.

"There was this much in it," said Angelo:  "what was told us of our
characters was minutely exact--we could have not have bettered it
ourselves.  Next, two or three memorable things that have happened to us
were laid bare--things which no one present but ourselves could have
known about."

"Why, it's rank sorcery!" exclaimed Tom, who was now becoming very much
interested.  "And how did they make out with what was going to happen to
you in the future?"

"On the whole, quite fairly," said Luigi.  "Two or three of the most
striking things foretold have happened since; much the most striking one
of all happened within that same year.  Some of the minor prophesies have
come true; some of the minor and some of the major ones have not been
fulfilled yet, and of course may never be:  still, I should be more
surprised if they failed to arrive than if they didn't."

Tom was entirely sobered, and profoundly impressed.  He said,
apologetically:

"Dave, I wasn't meaning to belittle that science; I was only chaffing
--chattering, I reckon I'd better say.  I wish you would look at their
palms. Come, won't you?"

"Why certainly, if you want me to; but you know I've had no chance to
become an expert, and don't claim to be one.  When a past event is
somewhat prominently recorded in the palm, I can generally detect that,
but minor ones often escape me--not always, of course, but often--but I
haven't much confidence in myself when it comes to reading the future.  I
am talking as if palmistry was a daily study with me, but that is not so.
I haven't examined half a dozen hands in the last half dozen years; you
see, the people got to joking about it, and I stopped to let the talk die
down.  I'll tell you what we'll do, Count Luigi:  I'll make a try at your
past, and if I have any success there--no, on the whole, I'll let the
future alone; that's really the affair of an expert."

He took Luigi's hand.  Tom said:

"Wait--don't look yet, Dave!  Count Luigi, here's paper and pencil. Set
down that thing that you said was the most striking one that was foretold
to you, and happened less than a year afterward, and give it to me so I
can see if Dave finds it in your hand."

Luigi wrote a line privately, and folded up the piece of paper, and
handed it to Tom, saying:

"I'll tell you when to look at it, if he finds it."

Wilson began to study Luigi's palm, tracing life lines, heart lines, head
lines, and so on, and noting carefully their relations with the cobweb of
finer and more delicate marks and lines that enmeshed them on all sides;
he felt of the fleshy cushion at the base of the thumb and noted its
shape; he felt of the fleshy side of the hand between the wrist and the
base of the little finger and noted its shape also; he painstakingly
examined the fingers, observing their form, proportions, and natural
manner of disposing themselves when in repose. All this process was
watched by the three spectators with absorbing interest, their heads bent
together over Luigi's palm, and nobody disturbing the stillness with a
word.  Wilson now entered upon a close survey of the palm again, and his
revelations began.

He mapped out Luigi's character and disposition, his tastes, aversions,
proclivities, ambitions, and eccentricities in a way which sometimes made
Luigi wince and the others laugh, but both twins declared that the chart
was artistically drawn and was correct.

Next, Wilson took up Luigi's history.  He proceeded cautiously and with
hesitation now, moving his finger slowly along the great lines of the
palm, and now and then halting it at a "star" or some such landmark, and
examining that neighborhood minutely. He proclaimed one or two past
events, Luigi confirmed his correctness, and the search went on.
Presently Wilson glanced up suddenly with a surprised expression.

"Here is a record of an incident which you would perhaps not wish me
to--"

"Bring it out," said Luigi, good-naturedly.  "I promise you sha'n't
embarrass me."

But Wilson still hesitated, and did not seem quite to know what to do.
Then he said:

"I think it is too delicate a matter to--to--I believe I would rather
write it or whisper it to you, and let you decide for yourself whether
you want it talked out or not."

"That will answer," said Luigi.  "Write it."

Wilson wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to Luigi, who
read it to himself and said to Tom:

"Unfold your slip and read it, Mr. Driscoll."

Tom said:

"'IT WAS PROPHESIED THAT I WOULD KILL A MAN.  IT CAME TRUE BEFORE THE
YEAR WAS OUT.'"

Tom added, "Great Scott!"

Luigi handed Wilson's paper to Tom, and said:

"Now read this one."

Tom read:

"'YOU HAVE KILLED SOMEONE, BUT WHETHER MAN, WOMAN, OR CHILD, I DO NOT
MAKE OUT.'"

"Caesar's ghost!" commented Tom, with astonishment. "It beats anything
that was ever heard of!  Why, a man's own hand is his deadliest enemy!
Just think of that--a man's own hand keeps a record of the deepest and
fatalest secrets of his life, and is treacherously ready to expose
himself to any black-magic stranger that comes along.  But what do you
let a person look at your hand for, with that awful thing printed on it?"

"Oh," said Luigi, reposefully, "I don't mind it.  I killed the man for
good reasons, and I don't regret it."

"What were the reasons?"

"Well, he needed killing."

"I'll tell you why he did it, since he won't say himself," said Angelo,
warmly.  "He did it to save my life, that's what he did it for. So it was
a noble act, and not a thing to be hid in the dark."

"So it was, so it was," said Wilson.  "To do such a thing to save a
brother's life is a great and fine action."

"Now come," said Luigi, "it is very pleasant to hear you say these
things, but for unselfishness, or heroism, or magnanimity, the
circumstances won't stand scrutiny.  You overlook one detail; suppose I
hadn't saved Angelo's life, what would have become of mine? If I had let
the man kill him, wouldn't he have killed me, too? I saved my own life,
you see."

"Yes, that is your way of talking," said Angelo, "but I know you--I
don't believe you thought of yourself at all.  I keep that weapon yet
that Luigi killed the man with, and I'll show it to you sometime. That
incident makes it interesting, and it had a history before it came into
Luigi's hands which adds to its interest.  It was given to Luigi by a
great Indian prince, the Gaikowar of Baroda, and it had been in his
family two or three centuries.  It killed a good many disagreeable people
who troubled the hearthstone at one time or another.  It isn't much too
look at, except it isn't shaped like other knives, or dirks, or whatever
it may be called--here, I'll draw it for you."  He took a sheet of paper
and made a rapid sketch.  "There it is--a broad and murderous blade, with
edges like a razor for sharpness. The devices engraved on it are the
ciphers or names of its long line of possessors--I had Luigi's name added
in Roman letters myself with our coat of arms, as you see.  You notice
what a curious handle the thing has.  It is solid ivory, polished like a
mirror, and is four or five inches long--round, and as thick as a large
man's wrist, with the end squared off flat, for your thumb to rest on;
for you grasp it, with your thumb resting on the blunt end--so--and lift
it along and strike downward.  The Gaikowar showed us how the thing was
done when he gave it to Luigi, and before that night was ended, Luigi had
used the knife, and the Gaikowar was a man short by reason of it.  The
sheath is magnificently ornamented with gems of great value.  You will
find a sheath more worth looking at than the knife itself, of course."

Tom said to himself:

"It's lucky I came here.  I would have sold that knife for a song; I
supposed the jewels were glass."

"But go on; don't stop," said Wilson.  "Our curiosity is up now, to hear
about the homicide.  Tell us about that."

"Well, briefly, the knife was to blame for that, all around. A native
servant slipped into our room in the palace in the night, to kill us and
steal the knife on account of the fortune encrusted on its sheath,
without a doubt.  Luigi had it under his pillow; we were in bed together.
There was a dim night-light burning. I was asleep, but Luigi was awake,
and he thought he detected a vague form nearing the bed.  He slipped the
knife out of the sheath and was ready and unembarrassed by hampering
bedclothes, for the weather was hot and we hadn't any.  Suddenly that
native rose at the bedside, and bent over me with his right hand lifted
and a dirk in it aimed at my throat; but Luigi grabbed his wrist, pulled
him downward, and drove his own knife into the man's neck. That is the
whole story."

Wilson and Tom drew deep breaths, and after some general chat about the
tragedy, Pudd'nhead said, taking Tom's hand:

"Now, Tom, I've never had a look at your palms, as it happens; perhaps
you've got some little questionable privacies that need--hel-lo!"

Tom had snatched away his hand, and was looking a good deal confused.

"Why, he's blushing!" said Luigi.

Tom darted an ugly look at him, and said sharply:

"Well, if I am, it ain't because I'm a murderer!"  Luigi's dark face
flushed, but before he could speak or move, Tom added with anxious haste:
"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons.  I didn't mean that; it was out before I
thought, and I'm very, very sorry--you must forgive me!"

Wilson came to the rescue, and smoothed things down as well as he could;
and in fact was entirely successful as far as the twins were concerned,
for they felt sorrier for the affront put upon him by his guest's
outburst of ill manners than for the insult offered to Luigi. But the
success was not so pronounced with the offender.  Tom tried to seem at
his ease, and he went through the motions fairly well, but at bottom he
felt resentful toward all the three witnesses of his exhibition; in fact,
he felt so annoyed at them for having witnessed it and noticed it that he
almost forgot to feel annoyed at himself for placing it before them.
However, something presently happened which made him almost comfortable,
and brought him nearly back to a state of charity and friendliness.  This
was a little spat between the twins; not much of a spat, but still a
spat; and before they got far with it, they were in a decided condition
of irritation while pretending to be actuated by more respectable
motives.  By his help the fire got warmed up to the blazing point, and he
might have had the happiness of seeing the flames show up in another
moment, but for the interruption of a knock on the door--an interruption
which fretted him as much as it gratified Wilson.  Wilson opened the
door.

The visitor was a good-natured, ignorant, energetic middle-aged Irishman
named John Buckstone, who was a great politician in a small way, and
always took a large share in public matters of every sort.  One of the
town's chief excitements, just now, was over the matter of rum.  There
was a strong rum party and a strong anti-rum party.  Buckstone was
training with the rum party, and he had been sent to hunt up the twins
and invite them to attend a mass meeting of that faction.  He delivered
his errand, and said the clans were already gathering in the big hall
over the market house. Luigi accepted the invitation cordially.  Angelo
less cordially, since he disliked crowds, and did not drink the powerful
intoxicants of America.  In fact, he was even a teetotaler sometimes
--when it was judicious to be one.

The twins left with Buckstone, and Tom Driscoll joined the company with
them uninvited.

In the distance, one could see a long wavering line of torches drifting
down the main street, and could hear the throbbing of the bass drum, the
clash of cymbals, the squeaking of a fife or two, and the faint roar of
remote hurrahs.  The tail end of this procession was climbing the market
house stairs when the twins arrived in its neighborhood; when they
reached the hall, it was full of people, torches, smoke, noise, and
enthusiasm. They were conducted to the platform by Buckstone--Tom
Driscoll still following--and were delivered to the chairman in the midst
of a prodigious explosion of welcome.  When the noise had moderated a
little, the chair proposed that "our illustrious guests be at once
elected, by complimentary acclamation, to membership in our ever-glorious
organization, the paradise of the free and the perdition of the slave."

This eloquent discharge opened the floodgates of enthusiasm again, and
the election was carried with thundering unanimity.  Then arose a storm
of cries:

"Wet them down!  Wet them down!  Give them a drink!"

Glasses of whisky were handed to the twins.  Luigi waves his aloft, then
brought it to his lips; but Angelo set his down. There was another storm
of cries.

"What's the matter with the other one?"  "What is the blond one going
back on us for?"  "Explain!  Explain!"

The chairman inquired, and then reported:

"We have made an unfortunate mistake, gentlemen.  I find that the Count
Angelo Capello is opposed to our creed--is a teetotaler, in fact, and was
not intending to apply for membership with us.  He desires that we
reconsider the vote by which he was elected.  What is the pleasure of the
house?"

There was a general burst of laughter, plentifully accented with
whistlings and catcalls, but the energetic use of the gavel presently
restored something like order.  Then a man spoke from the crowd, and said
that while he was very sorry that the mistake had been made, it would not
be possible to rectify it at the present meeting.  According to the
bylaws, it must go over to the next regular meeting for action.  He would
not offer a motion, as none was required.  He desired to apologize to the
gentlemen in the name of the house, and begged to assure him that as far
as it might lie in the power of the Sons of Liberty, his temporary
membership in the order would be made pleasant to him.

This speech was received with great applause, mixed with cries of:

"That's the talk!"  "He's a good fellow, anyway, if he _is_ a teetotaler!"
"Drink his health!"  "Give him a rouser, and no heeltaps!"

Glasses were handed around, and everybody on the platform drank Angelo's
health, while the house bellowed forth in song:


     For he's a jolly good fel-low,
     For he's a jolly good fel-low,
     For he's a jolly good fe-el-low,
     Which nobody can deny.

Tom Driscoll drank.  It was his second glass, for he had drunk Angelo's
the moment that Angelo had set it down.  The two drinks made him very
merry--almost idiotically so, and he began to take a most lively and
prominent part in the proceedings, particularly in the music and catcalls
and side remarks.

The chairman was still standing at the front, the twins at his side. The
extraordinarily close resemblance of the brothers to each other suggested
a witticism to Tom Driscoll, and just as the chairman began a speech he
skipped forward and said, with an air of tipsy confidence, to the
audience:

"Boys, I move that he keeps still and lets this human philopena snip you
out a speech."

The descriptive aptness of the phrase caught the house, and a mighty
burst of laughter followed.

Luigi's southern blood leaped to the boiling point in a moment under the
sharp humiliation of this insult delivered in the presence of four
hundred strangers.  It was not in the young man's nature to let the
matter pass, or to delay the squaring of the account. He took a couple of
strides and halted behind the unsuspecting joker. Then he drew back and
delivered a kick of such titanic vigor that it lifted Tom clear over the
footlights and landed him on the heads of the front row of the Sons of
Liberty.

Even a sober person does not like to have a human being emptied on him
when he is not going any harm; a person who is not sober cannot endure
such an attention at all.  The nest of Sons of Liberty that Driscoll
landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there was probably not an
entirely sober one in the auditorium.  Driscoll was promptly and
indignantly flung on the heads of Sons in the next row, and these Sons
passed him on toward the rear, and then immediately began to pummel the
front row Sons who had passed him to them.  This course was strictly
followed by bench after bench as Driscoll traveled in his tumultuous and
airy flight toward the door; so he left behind him an ever-lengthening
wake of raging and plunging and fighting and swearing humanity. Down went
group after group of torches, and presently above the deafening clatter
of the gavel, roar of angry voices, and crash of succumbing benches, rose
the paralyzing cry of "_fire!_"

The fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased; for one distinctly
defined moment, there was a dead hush, a motionless calm, where the
tempest had been; then with one impulse the multitude awoke to life and
energy again, and went surging and struggling and swaying, this way and
that, its outer edges melting away through windows and doors and
gradually lessening the pressure and relieving the mass.

The fireboys were never on hand so suddenly before; for there was no
distance to go this time, their quarters being in the rear end of the
market house,  There was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company.
Half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies,
after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the
frontier town of the period. Enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters
to man the engine and the ladders.  In two minutes they had their red
shirts and helmets on--they never stirred officially in unofficial
costume--and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row of
windows and poured out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were
ready for them with a powerful stream of water, which washed some of them
off the roof and nearly drowned the rest.  But water was preferable to
fire, and still the stampede from the windows continued, and still the
pitiless drenching assailed it until the building was empty; then the
fireboys mounted to the hall and flooded it with water enough to
annihilate forty times as much fire as there was there; for a village
fire company does not often get a chance to show off, and so when it does
get a chance, it makes the most of it. Such citizens of that village as
were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did not insure against
fire; they insured against the fire company.




CHAPTER 12

The Shame of Judge Driscoll

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear.
Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is
brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the
flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance
of fear were courage.  Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack
you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him
as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both
day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the
immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man
who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten
centuries before.  When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who
"didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and put him
at the head of the procession.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Judge Driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on Friday night, and
he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the morning with his
friend Pembroke Howard.  These two had been boys together in Virginia
when that state still ranked as the chief and most imposing member of the
Union, and they still coupled the proud and affectionate adjective "old"
with her name when they spoke of her. In Missouri a recognized
superiority attached to any person who hailed from Old Virginia; and this
superiority was exalted to supremacy when a person of such nativity could
also prove descent from the First Families of that great commonwealth.
The Howards and Driscolls were of this aristocracy.  In their eyes, it
was a nobility. It had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly
defined and as strict as any that could be found among the printed
statues of the land. The F.F.V. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in
life was to watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched. He
must keep his honor spotless.  Those laws were his chart; his course was
marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as half a point of the
compass, it meant shipwreck to his honor; that is to say, degradation
from his rank as a gentleman. These laws required certain things of him
which his religion might forbid: then his religion must yield--the laws
could not be relaxed to accommodate religions or anything else.  Honor
stood first; and the laws defined what it was and wherein it differed in
certain details from honor as defined by church creeds and by the social
laws and customs of some of the minor divisions of the globe that had got
crowded out when the sacred boundaries of Virginia were staked out.

If Judge Driscoll was the recognized first citizen of Dawson's Landing,
Pembroke Howard was easily its recognized second citizen. He was called
"the great lawyer"--an earned title.  He and Driscoll were of the same
age--a year or two past sixty.

Although Driscoll was a freethinker and Howard a strong and determined
Presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment in consequence.
They were men whose opinions were their own property and not subject to
revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their
friends.

The day's fishing finished, they came floating downstream in their skiff,
talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met a
skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said:

"I reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a kicking last
night, Judge?"

"Did WHAT?"

"Gave him a kicking."

The old judge's lips paled, and his eyes began to flame.  He choked with
anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to say:

"Well--well--go on!  Give me the details!"

The man did it.  At the finish the judge was silent a minute, turning
over in his mind the shameful picture of Tom's flight over the
footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud,

"H'm--I don't understand it.  I was asleep at home.  He didn't wake me.
Thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, I reckon."
His face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said with
a cheery complacency, "I like that--it's the true old blood--hey,
Pembroke?"

Howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly. Then the
news-bringer spoke again.

"But Tom beat the twin on the trial."

The judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said:

"The trial?  What trial?"

"Why, Tom had him up before Judge Robinson for assault and battery."

The old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received a death
stroke.  Howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon, and took
him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat. He sprinkled
water in his face, and said to the startled visitor:

"Go, now--don't let him come to and find you here.  You see what an
effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been more
considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as that."

"I'm right down sorry I did it now, Mr. Howard, and I wouldn't have done
it if I had thought; but it ain't slander; it's perfectly true, just as I
told him."

He rowed away.  Presently the old judge came out of his faint and looked
up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over him.

"Say it ain't true, Pembroke; tell me it ain't true!" he said in a weak
voice.

There was nothing weak in the deep organ tones that responded:

"You know it's a lie as well as I do, old friend.  He is of the best
blood of the Old Dominion."

"God bless you for saying it!" said the old gentleman, fervently. "Ah,
Pembroke, it was such a blow!"

Howard stayed by his friend, and saw him home, and entered the house with
him.  It was dark, and past supper-time, but the judge was not thinking
of supper; he was eager to hear the slander refuted from headquarters,
and as eager to have Howard hear it, too. Tom was sent for, and he came
immediately.  He was bruised and lame, and was not a happy-looking
object.  His uncle made him sit down, and said:

"We have been hearing about your adventure, Tom, with a handsome lie
added for embellishment.  Now pulverize that lie to dust! What measures
have you taken?  How does the thing stand?"

Tom answered guilelessly:  "It don't stand at all; it's all over. I had
him up in court and beat him.  Pudd'nhead Wilson defended him--first
case he ever had, and lost it.  The judge fined the miserable hound five
dollars for the assault."

Howard and the judge sprang to their feet with the opening sentence
--why, neither knew; then they stood gazing vacantly at each other.
Howard stood a moment, then sat mournfully down without saying anything.
The judge's wrath began to kindle, and he burst out:

"You cur!  You scum!  You vermin!  Do you mean to tell me that blood of
my race has suffered a blow and crawled to a court of law about it?
Answer me!"

Tom's head drooped, and he answered with an eloquent silence. His uncle
stared at him with a mixed expression of amazement and shame and
incredulity that was sorrowful to see.  At last he said:

"Which of the twins was it?"

"Count Luigi."

"You have challenged him?"

"N--no," hesitated Tom, turning pale.

"You will challenge him tonight.  Howard will carry it."

Tom began to turn sick, and to show it.  He turned his hat round and
round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as
the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and said
piteously:

"Oh, please, don't ask me to do it, uncle!  He is a murderous devil--I
never could--I--I'm afraid of him!"

Old Driscoll's mouth opened and closed three times before he could get it
to perform its office; then he stormed out:

"A coward in my family!  A Driscoll a coward!  Oh, what have I done to
deserve this infamy!"  He tottered to his secretary in the corner,
repeated that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones, and got out
of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits, scattering the bits
absently in his track as he walked up and down the room, still grieving
and lamenting.  At last he said:

"There it is, shreds and fragments once more--my will.  Once more you
have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most noble father!
Leave my sight!  Go--before I spit on you!"

The young man did not tarry.  Then the judge turned to Howard:

"You will be my second, old friend?"

"Of course."

"There is pen and paper.  Draft the cartel, and lose no time."

"The Count shall have it in his hands in fifteen minutes," said Howard.

Tom was very heavyhearted.  His appetite was gone with his property and
his self-respect.  He went out the back way and wandered down the obscure
lane grieving, and wondering if any course of future conduct, however
discreet and carefully perfected and watched over, could win back his
uncle's favor and persuade him to reconstruct once more that generous
will which had just gone to ruin before his eyes. He finally concluded
that it could.  He said to himself that he had accomplished this sort of
triumph once already, and that what had been done once could be done
again.  He would set about it.  He would bend every energy to the task,
and he would score that triumph once more, cost what it might to his
convenience, limit as it might his frivolous and liberty-loving life.

"To begin," he says to himself, "I'll square up with the proceeds of my
raid, and then gambling has got to be stopped--and stopped short off.
It's the worst vice I've got--from my standpoint, anyway, because it's
the one he can most easily find out, through the impatience of my
creditors.  He thought it expensive to have to pay two hundred dollars to
them for me once.  Expensive--_that!_  Why, it cost me the whole of his
fortune--but, of course, he never thought of that; some people can't
think of any but their own side of a case. If he had known how deep I am
in now, the will would have gone to pot without waiting for a duel to
help.  Three hundred dollars! It's a pile!  But he'll never hear of it,
I'm thankful to say. The minute I've cleared it off, I'm safe; and I'll
never touch a card again.  Anyway, I won't while he lives, I make oath to
that. I'm entering on my last reform--I know it--yes, and I'll win; but
after that, if I ever slip again I'm gone."




CHAPTER 13

Tom Stares at Ruin

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have
gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

October.  This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in
stocks in.  The others are July, January, September, April, November,
May, March, June, December, August, and February.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Thus mournfully communing with himself, Tom moped along the lane past
Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, and still on and on between fences enclosing
vacant country on each hand till he neared the haunted house, then he
came moping back again, with many sighs and heavy with trouble. He sorely
wanted cheerful company.  Rowena!  His heart gave a bound at the thought,
but the next thought quieted it--the detested twins would be there.

He was on the inhabited side of Wilson's house, and now as he approached
it, he noticed that the sitting room was lighted. This would do; others
made him feel unwelcome sometimes, but Wilson never failed in courtesy
toward him, and a kindly courtesy does at least save one's feelings, even
if it is not professing to stand for a welcome. Wilson heard footsteps at
his threshold, then the clearing of a throat.

"It's that fickle-tempered, dissipated young goose--poor devil, he find
friends pretty scarce today, likely, after the disgrace of carrying a
personal assault case into a law-court."

A dejected knock.  "Come in!"

Tom entered, and dropped into a chair, without saying anything. Wilson
said kindly:

"Why, my boy, you look desolate.  Don't take it so hard. Try and forget
you have been kicked."

"Oh, dear," said Tom, wretchedly, "it's not that, Pudd'nhead--it's not
that.  It's a thousand times worse than that--oh, yes, a million times
worse."

"Why, Tom, what do you mean?  Has Rowena--"

"Flung me?  _No_, but the old man has."

Wilson said to himself, "Aha!" and thought of the mysterious girl in the
bedroom.  "The Driscolls have been making discoveries!" Then he said
aloud, gravely:

"Tom, there are some kinds of dissipation which--"

"Oh, shucks, this hasn't got anything to do with dissipation. He wanted
me to challenge that derned Italian savage, and I wouldn't do it."

"Yes, of course he would do that," said Wilson in a meditative
matter-of-course way, "but the thing that puzzled me was, why he didn't
look to that last night, for one thing, and why he let you carry such a
matter into a court of law at all, either before the duel or after it.
It's no place for it. It was not like him.  I couldn't understand it.
How did it happen?"

"It happened because he didn't know anything about it.  He was asleep
when I got home last night."

"And you didn't wake him?  Tom, is that possible?"

Tom was not getting much comfort here.  He fidgeted a moment, then said:

"I didn't choose to tell him--that's all.  He was going a-fishing before
dawn, with Pembroke Howard, and if I got the twins into the common
calaboose--and I thought sure I could--I never dreamed of their slipping
out on a paltry fine for such an outrageous offense--well, once in the
calaboose they would be disgraced, and uncle wouldn't want any duels with
that sort of characters, and wouldn't allow any.

"Tom, I am ashamed of you!  I don't see how you could treat your good old
uncle so.  I am a better friend of his than you are; for if I had known
the circumstances I would have kept that case out of court until I got
word to him and let him have the gentleman's chance."

"You would?" exclaimed Tom, with lively surprise.  "And it your first
case!  And you know perfectly well there never would have _been_ any case
if he had got that chance, don't you?  And you'd have finished your days
a pauper nobody, instead of being an actually launched and recognized
lawyer today.  And you would really have done that, would you?"

"Certainly."

Tom looked at him a moment or two, then shook his head sorrowfully and
said:

"I believe you--upon my word I do.  I don't know why I do, but I do.
Pudd'nhead Wilson, I think you're the biggest fool I ever saw."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

"Well, he has been requiring you to fight the Italian, and you have
refused.  You degenerate remnant of an honorable line! I'm thoroughly
ashamed of you, Tom!"

"Oh, that's nothing!  I don't care for anything, now that the will's torn
up again."

"Tom, tell me squarely--didn't he find any fault with you for anything
but those two things--carrying the case into court and refusing to
fight?"

He watched the young fellow's face narrowly, but it was entirely
reposeful, and so also was the voice that answered:

"No, he didn't find any other fault with me.  If he had had any to find,
he would have begun yesterday, for he was just in the humor for it. He
drove that jack-pair around town and showed them the sights, and when he
came home he couldn't find his father's old silver watch that don't keep
time and he thinks so much of, and couldn't remember what he did with it
three or four days ago when he saw it last, and when I suggested that it
probably wasn't lost but stolen, it put him in a regular passion, and he
said I was a fool--which convinced me, without any trouble, that that
was just what he was afraid _had_ happened, himself, but did not want to
believe it, because lost things stand a better chance of being found
again than stolen ones."

"Whe-ew!" whistled Wilson.  "Score another one the list."

"Another what?"

"Another theft!"

"Theft?"

"Yes, theft.  That watch isn't lost, it's stolen.  There's been another
raid on the town--and just the same old mysterious sort of thing that has
happened once before, as you remember."

"You don't mean it!"

"It's as sure as you are born!  Have you missed anything yourself?"

"No.  That is, I did miss a silver pencil case that Aunt Mary Pratt gave
me last birthday--"

"You'll find it stolen--that's what you'll find."

"No, I sha'n't; for when I suggested theft about the watch and got such a
rap, I went and examined my room, and the pencil case was missing, but it
was only mislaid, and I found it again."

"You are sure you missed nothing else?"

"Well, nothing of consequence.  I missed a small plain gold ring worth
two or three dollars, but that will turn up.  I'll look again."

"In my opinion you'll not find it.  There's been a raid, I tell you. Come
_in!_"

Mr. Justice Robinson entered, followed by Buckstone and the town
constable, Jim Blake.  They sat down, and after some wandering and
aimless weather-conversation Wilson said:

"By the way, We've just added another to the list of thefts, maybe two.
Judge Driscoll's old silver watch is gone, and Tom here has missed a gold
ring."

"Well, it is a bad business," said the justice, "and gets worse the
further it goes.  The Hankses, the Dobsons, the Pilligrews, the Ortons,
the Grangers, the Hales, the Fullers, the Holcombs, in fact everybody
that lives around about Patsy Cooper's had been robbed of little things
like trinkets and teaspoons and suchlike small valuables that are easily
carried off.  It's perfectly plain that the thief took advantage of the
reception at Patsy Cooper's when all the neighbors were in her house and
all their niggers hanging around her fence for a look at the show, to
raid the vacant houses undisturbed. Patsy is miserable about it;
miserable on account of the neighbors, and particularly miserable on
account of her foreigners, of course; so miserable on their account that
she hasn't any room to worry about her own little losses."

"It's the same old raider," said Wilson.  "I suppose there isn't any
doubt about that."

"Constable Blake doesn't think so."

"No, you're wrong there," said Blake.  "The other times it was a man;
there was plenty of signs of that, as we know, in the profession, thought
we never got hands on him; but this time it's a woman."

Wilson thought of the mysterious girl straight off.  She was always in
his mind now.  But she failed him again.  Blake continued:

"She's a stoop-shouldered old woman with a covered basket on her arm, in
a black veil, dressed in mourning.  I saw her going aboard the ferryboat
yesterday.  Lives in Illinois, I reckon; but I don't care where she
lives, I'm going to get her--she can make herself sure of that."

"What makes you think she's the thief?"

"Well, there ain't any other, for one thing; and for another, some nigger
draymen that happened to be driving along saw her coming out of or going
into houses, and told me so--and it just happens that they was _robbed_,
every time."

It was granted that this was plenty good enough circumstantial evidence.
A pensive silence followed, which lasted some moments, then Wilson said:

"There's one good thing, anyway.  She can't either pawn or sell Count
Luigi's costly Indian dagger."

"My!" said Tom.  "Is _that_ gone?"

"Yes."

"Well, that was a haul!  But why can't she pawn it or sell it?"

"Because when the twins went home from the Sons of Liberty meeting last
night, news of the raid was sifting in from everywhere, and Aunt Patsy
was in distress to know if they had lost anything. They found that the
dagger was gone, and they notified the police and pawnbrokers everywhere.
It was a great haul, yes, but the old woman won't get anything out of it,
because she'll get caught."

"Did they offer a reward?" asked Buckstone.

"Yes, five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred more for the
thief."

"What a leather-headed idea!" exclaimed the constable. "The thief das'n't
go near them, nor send anybody. Whoever goes is going to get himself
nabbed, for their ain't any pawnbroker that's going to lose the chance
to--"

If anybody had noticed Tom's face at that time, the gray-green color of
it might have provoked curiosity; but nobody did. He said to himself:
"I'm gone!  I never can square up; the rest of the plunder won't pawn or
sell for half of the bill.  Oh, I know it--I'm gone, I'm gone--and this
time it's for good.  Oh, this is awful--I don't know what to do, nor
which way to turn!"

"Softly, softly," said Wilson to Blake.  "I planned their scheme for them
at midnight last night, and it was all finished up shipshape by two this
morning.  They'll get their dagger back, and then I'll explain to you how
the thing was done."

There were strong signs of a general curiosity, and Buckstone said:

"Well, you have whetted us up pretty sharp.  Wilson, and I'm free to say
that if you don't mind telling us in confidence--"

"Oh, I'd as soon tell as not, Buckstone, but as long as the twins and I
agreed to say nothing about it, we must let it stand so. But you can take
my word for it, you won't be kept waiting three days. Somebody will apply
for that reward pretty promptly, and I'll show you the thief and the
dagger both very soon afterward."

The constable was disappointed, and also perplexed.  He said:

"It may all be--yes, and I hope it will, but I'm blamed if I can see my
way through it.  It's too many for yours truly."

The subject seemed about talked out.  Nobody seemed to have anything
further to offer.  After a silence the justice of the peace informed
Wilson that he and Buckstone and the constable had come as a committee,
on the part of the Democratic party, to ask him to run for mayor--for the
little town was about to become a city and the first charter election was
approaching.  It was the first attention which Wilson had ever received
at the hands of any party; it was a sufficiently humble one, but it was a
recognition of his debut into the town's life and activities at last; it
was a step upward, and he was deeply gratified. He accepted, and the
committee departed, followed by young Tom.




CHAPTER 14

Roxana Insists Upon Reform

The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned
with commoner things.  It is chief of this world's luxuries, king by the
grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he
knows what the angels eat.  It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve
took:  we know it because she repented.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

About the time that Wilson was bowing the committee out, Pembroke Howard
was entering the next house to report. He found the old judge sitting
grim and straight in his chair, waiting.

"Well, Howard--the news?"

"The best in the world."

"Accepts, does he?"  and the light of battle gleamed joyously in the
Judge's eye.

"Accepts?  Why he jumped at it."

"Did, did he?  Now that's fine--that's very fine.  I like that. When is
it to be?"

"Now!  Straight off!  Tonight!  An admirable fellow--admirable!"

"Admirable?  He's a darling!  Why, it's an honor as well as a pleasure to
stand up before such a man.  Come--off with you! Go and arrange
everything--and give him my heartiest compliments. A rare fellow, indeed;
an admirable fellow, as you have said!"

"I'll have him in the vacant stretch between Wilson's and the haunted
house within the hour, and I'll bring my own pistols."

Judge Driscoll began to walk the floor in a state of pleased excitement;
but presently he stopped, and began to think--began to think of Tom.
Twice he moved toward the secretary, and twice he turned away again; but
finally he said:

"This may be my last night in the world--I must not take the chance. He
is worthless and unworthy, but it is largely my fault. He was entrusted
to me by my brother on his dying bed, and I have indulged him to his
hurt, instead of training him up severely, and making a man of him, I
have violated my trust, and I must not add the sin of desertion to that.
I have forgiven him once already, and would subject him to a long and
hard trial before forgiving him again, if I could live; but I must not
run that risk. No, I must restore the will.  But if I survive the duel, I
will hide it away, and he will not know, and I will not tell him until he
reforms, and I see that his reformation is going to be permanent."

He redrew the will, and his ostensible nephew was heir to a fortune
again.  As he was finishing his task, Tom, wearied with another brooding
tramp, entered the house and went tiptoeing past the sitting room door.
He glanced in, and hurried on, for the sight of his uncle was nothing but
terrors for him tonight.  But his uncle was writing!  That was unusual at
this late hour.  What could he be writing?  A chill of anxiety settled
down upon Tom's heart. Did that writing concern him?  He was afraid so.
He reflected that when ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles,
but in showers. He said he would get a glimpse of that document or know
the reason why. He heard someone coming, and stepped out of sight and
hearing. It was Pembroke Howard.  What could be hatching?

Howard said, with great satisfaction:

"Everything's right and ready.  He's gone to the battleground with his
second and the surgeon--also with his brother.  I've arranged it all with
Wilson--Wilson's his second.  We are to have three shots apiece."

"Good!  How is the moon?"

"Bright as day, nearly.  Perfect, for the distance--fifteen yards. No
wind--not a breath; hot and still."

"All good; all first-rate.  Here, Pembroke, read this, and witness it."

Pembroke read and witnessed the will, then gave the old man's hand a
hearty shake and said:

"Now that's right, York--but I knew you would do it.  You couldn't leave
that poor chap to fight along without means or profession, with certain
defeat before him, and I knew you wouldn't, for his father's sake if not
for his own."

"For his dead father's sake, I couldn't, I know; for poor Percy--but you
know what Percy was to me.  But mind--Tom is not to know of this unless I
fall tonight."

"I understand.  I'll keep the secret."

The judge put the will away, and the two started for the battleground. In
another minute the will was in Tom's hands. His misery vanished, his
feelings underwent a tremendous revulsion. He put the will carefully back
in its place, and spread his mouth and swung his hat once, twice, three
times around his head, in imitation of three rousing huzzahs, no sound
issuing from his lips. He fell to communing with himself excitedly and
joyously, but every now and then he let off another volley of dumb
hurrahs.

He said to himself:  "I've got the fortune again, but I'll not let on
that I know about it.  And this time I'm gong to hang on to it. I take no
more risks.  I'll gamble no more, I'll drink no more, because--well,
because I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on,
again.  It's the sure way, and the only sure way; I might have thought of
that sooner--well, yes, if I had wanted to. But now--dear me, I've had a
scare this time, and I'll take no more chances.  Not a single chance
more. Land!  I persuaded myself this evening that I could fetch him
around without any great amount of effort, but I've been getting more and
more heavyhearted and doubtful straight along, ever since.  If he tells
me about this thing, all right; but if he doesn't, I sha'n't let on.
I--well, I'd like to tell Pudd'nhead Wilson, but--no, I'll think about
that; perhaps I won't." He whirled off another dead huzzah, and said,
"I'm reformed, and this time I'll stay so, sure!"

He was about to close with a final grand silent demonstration, when he
suddenly recollected that Wilson had put it out of his power to pawn or
sell the Indian knife, and that he was once more in awful peril of
exposure by his creditors for that reason. His joy collapsed utterly, and
he turned away and moped toward the door moaning and lamenting over the
bitterness of his luck. He dragged himself upstairs, and brooded in his
room a long time, disconsolate and forlorn, with Luigi's Indian knife for
a text. At last he sighed and said:

"When I supposed these stones were glass and this ivory bone, the thing
hadn't any interest for me because it hadn't any value, and couldn't help
me out of my trouble.  But now--why, now it is full of interest; yes, and
of a sort to break a body's heart. It's a bag of gold that has turned to
dirt and ashes in my hands. It could save me, and save me so easily, and
yet I've got to go to ruin. It's like drowning with a life preserver in
my reach.  All the hard luck comes to me, and all the good luck goes to
other people--Pudd'nhead Wilson, for instance; even his career has got a
sort of a little start at last, and what has he done to deserve it, I
should like to know?  Yes, he has opened his own road, but he isn't
content with that, but must block mine. It's a sordid, selfish world, and
I wish I was out of it." He allowed the light of the candle to play upon
the jewels of the sheath, but the flashings and sparklings had no charm
for his eye; they were only just so many pangs to his heart.  "I must not
say anything to Roxy about this thing," he said.  "She is too daring. She
would be for digging these stones out and selling them, and then--why,
she would be arrested and the stones traced, and then--" The thought made
him quake, and he hid the knife away, trembling all over and glancing
furtively about, like a criminal who fancies that the accuser is already
at hand.

Should he try to sleep?  Oh, no, sleep was not for him; his trouble was
too haunting, too afflicting for that.  He must have somebody to mourn
with.  He would carry his despair to Roxy.

He had heard several distant gunshots, but that sort of thing was not
uncommon, and they had made no impression upon him. He went out at the
back door, and turned westward.  He passed Wilson's house and proceeded
along the lane, and presently saw several figures approaching Wilson's
place through the vacant lots. These were the duelists returning from the
fight; he thought he recognized them, but as he had no desire for white
people's company, he stooped down behind the fence until they were out of
his way.

Roxy was feeling fine.  She said:

"Whah was you, child?  Warn't you in it?"

"In what?"

"In de duel."

"Duel?  Has there been a duel?"

"Co'se dey has.  De ole Jedge has be'n havin' a duel wid one o' dem
twins."

"Great Scott!"  Then he added to himself:  "That's what made him remake
the will; he thought he might get killed, and it softened him toward me.
And that's what he and Howard were so busy about. . . . Oh dear, if the
twin had only killed him, I should be out of my--"

"What is you mumblin' 'bout, Chambers?  Whah was you? Didn't you know dey
was gwine to be a duel?"

"No, I didn't.  The old man tried to get me to fight one with Count
Luigi, but he didn't succeed, so I reckon he concluded to patch up the
family honor himself."

He laughed at the idea, and went rambling on with a detailed account of
his talk with the judge, and how shocked and ashamed the judge was to
find that he had a coward in his family.  He glanced up at last, and got
a shock himself.  Roxana's bosom was heaving with suppressed passion, and
she was glowering down upon him with measureless contempt written in her
face.

"En you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin' at de
chance!  En you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell me, dat
fetched sich a po' lowdown ornery rabbit into de worl'!  Pah! it make me
sick!  It's de nigger in you, dat's what it is.  Thirty-one parts o' you
is white, en on'y one part nigger, en dat po' little one part is yo'
_soul_.  'Tain't wuth savin'; 'tain't wuth totin' out on a shovel en
throwin' en de gutter.  You has disgraced yo' birth.  What would yo' pa
think o' you?  It's enough to make him turn in his grave."

The last three sentences stung Tom into a fury, and he said to himself
that if his father were only alive and in reach of assassination his
mother would soon find that he had a very clear notion of the size of his
indebtedness to that man, and was willing to pay it up in full, and would
do it too, even at risk of his life; but he kept this thought to himself;
that was safest in his mother's present state.

"Whatever has come o' yo' Essex blood?  Dat's what I can't understan'.
En it ain't on'y jist Essex blood dat's in you, not by a long
sight--'deed it ain't!  My great-great-great-gran'father en yo'
great-great-great-great-gran'father was Ole Cap'n John Smith, de highest
blood dat Ole Virginny ever turned out, en _his_ great-great-gran'mother,
or somers along back dah, was Pocahontas de Injun queen, en her husbun'
was a nigger king outen Africa--en yit here you is, a slinkin' outen a
duel en disgracin' our whole line like a ornery lowdown hound!  Yes, it's
de nigger in you!"

She sat down on her candle box and fell into a reverie. Tom did not
disturb her; he sometimes lacked prudence, but it was not in
circumstances of this kind, Roxana's storm went gradually down, but it
died hard, and even when it seemed to be quite gone, it would now and
then break out in a distant rumble, so to speak, in the form of muttered
ejaculations.  One of these was, "Ain't nigger enough in him to show in
his fingernails, en dat takes mighty little--yit dey's enough to pain
his soul."

Presently she muttered.  "Yassir, enough to paint a whole thimbleful of
'em."  At last her ramblings ceased altogether, and her countenance began
to clear--a welcome sight to Tom, who had learned her moods, and knew she
was on the threshold of good humor now. He noticed that from time to time
she unconsciously carried her finger to the end of her nose.  He looked
closer and said:

"Why, Mammy, the end of your nose is skinned.  How did that come?"

She sent out the sort of wholehearted peal of laughter which God had
vouchsafed in its perfection to none but the happy angels in heaven and
the bruised and broken black slave on the earth, and said:

"Dad fetch dat duel, I be'n in it myself."

"Gracious! did a bullet to that?"

"Yassir, you bet it did!"

"Well, I declare!  Why, how did that happen?"

"Happened dis-away.  I 'uz a-sett'n' here kinder dozin' in de dark, en
_che-bang!_ goes a gun, right out dah.  I skips along out towards t'other
end o' de house to see what's gwine on, en stops by de ole winder on de
side towards Pudd'nhead Wilson's house dat ain't got no sash in it--but
dey ain't none of 'em got any sashes, for as dat's concerned--en I stood
dah in de dark en look out, en dar in the moonlight, right down under me
'uz one o' de twins a-cussin'--not much, but jist a-cussin' soft--it 'uz
de brown one dat 'uz cussin,' 'ca'se he 'uz hit in de shoulder.  En
Doctor Claypool he 'uz a-workin' at him, en Pudd'nhead Wilson he 'uz
a-he'pin', en ole Jedge Driscoll en Pem Howard 'uz a-standin' out yonder
a little piece waitin' for 'em to get ready agin.  En treckly dey squared
off en give de word, en _bang-bang_ went de pistols, en de twin he say,
'Ouch!'--hit him on de han' dis time--en I hear dat same bullet go
_spat!_ ag'in de logs under de winder; en de nex' time dey shoot, de twin
say, 'Ouch!' ag'in, en I done it too, 'ca'se de bullet glance' on his
cheekbone en skip up here en glance' on de side o' de winder en whiz
right acrost my face en tuck de hide off'n my nose--why, if I'd 'a'
be'n jist a inch or a inch en a half furder 't would 'a' tuck de whole
nose en disfiggered me.  Here's de bullet; I hunted her up."

"Did you stand there all the time?"

"Dat's a question to ask, ain't it!  What else would I do? Does I git a
chance to see a duel every day?"

"Why, you were right in range!  Weren't you afraid?"

The woman gave a sniff of scorn.

"'Fraid!  De Smith-Pocahontases ain't 'fraid o' nothin', let alone
bullets."

"They've got pluck enough, I suppose; what they lack is judgment. _I_
wouldn't have stood there."

"Nobody's accusin' you!"

"Did anybody else get hurt?"

"Yes, we all got hit 'cep' de blon' twin en de doctor en de seconds. De
Jedge didn't git hurt, but I hear Pudd'nhead say de bullet snip some o'
his ha'r off."

"'George!" said Tom to himself, "to come so near being out of my trouble,
and miss it by an inch.  Oh dear, dear, he will live to find me out and
sell me to some nigger trader yet--yes, and he would do it in a minute."
Then he said aloud, in a grave tone:

"Mother, we are in an awful fix."

Roxana caught her breath with a spasm, and said:

"Chile!  What you hit a body so sudden for, like dat? What's be'n en gone
en happen'?"

"Well, there's one thing I didn't tell you.  When I wouldn't fight, he
tore up the will again, and--"

Roxana's face turned a dead white, and she said:

"Now you's _done!_--done forever!  Dat's de end.  Bofe un us is gwine to
starve to--"

"Wait and hear me through, can't you!  I reckon that when he resolved to
fight, himself, he thought he might get killed and not have a chance to
forgive me any more in this life, so he made the will again, and I've
seen it, and it's all right.  But--"

"Oh, thank goodness, den we's safe ag'in!--safe! en so what did you want
to come here en talk sich dreadful--"

"Hold ON, I tell you, and let me finish.  The swag I gathered won't half
square me up, and the first thing we know, my creditors--well, you know
what'll happen."

Roxana dropped her chin, and told her son to leave her alone--she must
think this matter out.  Presently she said impressively:

"You got to go mighty keerful now, I tell you!  En here's what you got to
do.  He didn't git killed, en if you gives him de least reason, he'll
bust de will ag'in, en dat's de _las'_ time, now you hear me! So--you's
got to show him what you kin do in de nex' few days. You got to be pison
good, en let him see it; you got to do everything dat'll make him b'lieve
in you, en you got to sweeten aroun' ole Aunt Pratt, too--she's pow'ful
strong with de Jedge, en de bes' frien' you got. Nex', you'll go 'long
away to Sent Louis, en dat'll _keep_ him in yo' favor. Den you go en make
a bargain wid dem people.  You tell 'em he ain't gwine to live long--en
dat's de fac', too--en tell 'em you'll pay 'em intrust, en big intrust,
too--ten per--what you call it?"

"Ten percent a month?"

"Dat's it.  Den you take and sell yo' truck aroun', a little at a time,
en pay de intrust.  How long will it las'?"

"I think there's enough to pay the interest five or six months." "Den
you's all right.  If he don't die in six months, dat don't make no
diff'rence--Providence'll provide.  You's gwine to be safe--if you
behaves."  She bent an austere eye on him and added, "En you IS gwine to
behave--does you know dat?"

He laughed and said he was going to try, anyway.  She did not unbend. She
said gravely:

"Tryin' ain't de thing.  You's gwine to _do_ it.  You ain't gwine to
steal a pin--'ca'se it ain't safe no mo'; en you ain't gwine into no bad
comp'ny--not even once, you understand; en you ain't gwine to drink a
drop--nary a single drop; en you ain't gwine to gamble one single
gamble--not one!  Dis ain't what you's gwine to try to do, it's what
you's gwine to DO.  En I'll tell you how I knows it. Dis is how.  I's
gwine to foller along to Sent Louis my own self; en you's gwine to come
to me every day o' your life, en I'll look you over; en if you fails in
one single one o' dem things--jist _one_--I take my oath I'll come
straight down to dis town en tell de Jedge you's a nigger en a slave--en
_prove_ it!"  She paused to let her words sink home.  Then she added,
"Chambers, does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"

Tom was sober enough now.  There was no levity in his voice when he
answered:

"Yes, Mother, I know, now, that I am reformed--and permanently.
Permanently--and beyond the reach of any human temptation."

"Den g'long home en begin!"




CHAPTER 15

The Robber Robbed

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"
--which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your
attention"; but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket
and--_watch that basket!_"

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

What a time of it Dawson's Landing was having!  All its life it had been
asleep, but now it hardly got a chance for a nod, so swiftly did big
events and crashing surprises come along in one another's wake:  Friday
morning, first glimpse of Real Nobility, also grand reception at Aunt
Patsy Cooper's, also great robber raid; Friday evening, dramatic kicking
of the heir of the chief citizen in presence of four hundred people;
Saturday morning, emergence as practicing lawyer of the long-submerged
Pudd'nhead Wilson; Saturday night, duel between chief citizen and titled
stranger.

The people took more pride in the duel than in all the other events put
together, perhaps.  It was a glory to their town to have such a thing
happen there.  In their eyes the principals had reached the summit of
human honor.  Everybody paid homage to their names; their praises were in
all mouths.  Even the duelists' subordinates came in for a handsome share
of the public approbation: wherefore Pudd'nhead Wilson was suddenly
become a man of consequence. When asked to run for the mayoralty Saturday
night, he was risking defeat, but Sunday morning found him a made man and
his success assured.

The twins were prodigiously great now; the town took them to its bosom
with enthusiasm.  Day after day, and night after night, they went dining
and visiting from house to house, making friends, enlarging and
solidifying their popularity, and charming and surprising all with their
musical prodigies, and now and then heightening the effects with samples
of what they could do in other directions, out of their stock of rare and
curious accomplishments.  They were so pleased that they gave the
regulation thirty days' notice, the required preparation for citizenship,
and resolved to finish their days in this pleasant place.  That was the
climax. The delighted community rose as one man and applauded; and when
the twins were asked to stand for seats in the forthcoming aldermanic
board, and consented, the public contentment was rounded and complete.

Tom Driscoll was not happy over these things; they sunk deep, and hurt
all the way down.  He hated the one twin for kicking him, and the other
one for being the kicker's brother.

Now and then the people wondered why nothing was heard of the raider, or
of the stolen knife or the other plunder, but nobody was able to throw
any light on that matter.  Nearly a week had drifted by, and still the
thing remained a vexed mystery.

On Sunday Constable Blake and Pudd'nhead Wilson met on the street, and
Tom Driscoll joined them in time to open their conversation for them. He
said to Blake:  "You are not looking  well, Blake; you seem to be annoyed
about something.  Has anything gone wrong in the detective business?  I
believe you fairly and justifiably claim to have a pretty good reputation
in that line, isn't it so?"--which made Blake feel good, and look it;
but Tom added, "for a country detective"--which made Blake feel the other
way, and not only look it, but betray it in his voice.

"Yes, sir, I _have_ got a reputation; and it's as good as anybody's in
the profession, too, country or no country."

"Oh, I beg pardon; I didn't mean any offense.  What I started out to ask
was only about the old woman that raided the town--the stoop-shouldered
old woman, you know, that you said you were going to catch; and I knew
you would, too, because you have the reputation of never boasting,
and--well, you--you've caught the old woman?"

"Damn the old woman!"

"Why, sho! you don't mean to say you haven't caught her?"

"No, I haven't caught her.  If anybody could have caught her, I could;
but nobody couldn't, I don't care who he is."

I am sorry, real sorry--for your sake; because, when it gets around that
a detective has expressed himself confidently, and then--"

"Don't you worry, that's all--don't you worry; and as for the town, the
town needn't worry either.  She's my meat--make yourself easy about that.
I'm on her track; I've got clues that--"

"That's good!  Now if you could get an old veteran detective down from
St. Louis to help you find out what the clues mean, and where they lead
to, and then--"

"I'm plenty veteran enough myself, and I don't need anybody's help. I'll
have her inside of a we--inside of a month.  That I'll swear to!"

Tom said carelessly:

"I suppose that will answer--yes, that will answer.  But I reckon she is
pretty old, and old people don't often outlive the cautious pace of the
professional detective when he has got his clues together and is out on
his still-hunt."

Blake's dull face flushed under this gibe, but before he could set his
retort in order Tom had turned to Wilson, and was saying, with placid
indifference of manner and voice:

"Who got the reward, Pudd'nhead?"

Wilson winced slightly, and saw that his own turn was come.

"What reward?"

"Why, the reward for the thief, and the other one for the knife."

Wilson answered--and rather uncomfortably, to judge by his hesitating
fashion of delivering himself:

"Well, the--well, in face, nobody has claimed it yet."

Tom seemed surprised.

"Why, is that so?"

Wilson showed a trifle of irritation when he replied:

"Yes, it's so.  And what of it?"

"Oh, nothing.  Only I thought you had struck out a new idea, and invented
a scheme that was going to revolutionize the timeworn and ineffectual
methods of the--"  He stopped, and turned to Blake, who was happy now
that another had taken his place on the gridiron. "Blake, didn't you
understand him to intimate that it wouldn't be necessary for you to hunt
the old woman down?"

"'B'George, he said he'd have thief and swag both inside of three days
--he did, by hokey! and that's just about a week ago. Why, I said at the
time that no thief and no thief's pal was going to try to pawn or sell a
thing where he knowed the pawnbroker could get both rewards by taking HIM
into camp _with_ the swag. It was the blessedest idea that ever I
struck!"

"You'd change your mind," said Wilson, with irritated bluntness, "if you
knew the entire scheme instead of only part of it."

"Well," said the constable, pensively, "I had the idea that it wouldn't
work, and up to now I'm right anyway."

"Very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further show. It
has worked at least as well as your own methods, you perceive."

The constable hadn't anything handy to hit back with, so he discharged a
discontented sniff, and said nothing.

After the night that Wilson had partly revealed his scheme at his house,
Tom had tried for several days to guess out the secret of the rest of it,
but had failed.  Then it occurred to him to give Roxana's smarter head a
chance at it.  He made up a supposititious case, and laid it before
her.  She thought it over, and delivered her verdict upon it.  Tom said
to himself, "She's hit it, sure!"  He thought he would test that verdict
now, and watch Wilson's face; so he said reflectively:

"Wilson, you're not a fool--a fact of recent discovery. Whatever your
scheme was, it had sense in it, Blake's opinion to the contrary
notwithstanding.  I don't ask you to reveal it, but I will suppose a
case--a case which you will answer as a starting point for the real thing
I am going to come at, and that's all I want. You offered five hundred
dollars for the knife, and five hundred for the thief.  We will suppose,
for argument's sake, that the first reward is _advertised_ and the second
offered by _private letter_ to pawnbrokers and--"

Blake slapped his thigh, and cried out:

"By Jackson, he's got you, Pudd'nhead!  Now why couldn't I or _any_ fool
have thought of that?"

Wilson said to himself, "Anybody with a reasonably good head would have
thought of it.  I am not surprised that Blake didn't detect it; I am only
surprised that Tom did.  There is more to him than I supposed."  He said
nothing aloud, and Tom went on:

"Very well.  The thief would not suspect that there was a trap, and he
would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a song, or found
it in the road, or something like that, and try to collect the reward,
and be arrested--wouldn't he?"

"Yes," said Wilson.

"I think so," said Tom.  "There can't be any doubt of it. Have you ever
seen that knife?"

"No."

"Has any friend of yours?"

"Not that I know of."

"Well, I begin to think I understand why your scheme failed."

"What do you mean, Tom?  What are you driving at?" asked Wilson, with a
dawning sense of discomfort.

"Why, that there _isn't_ any such knife."

"Look here, Wilson," said Blake, "Tom Driscoll's right, for a thousand
dollars--if I had it."

Wilson's blood warmed a little, and he wondered if he had been played
upon by those strangers; it certainly had something of that look. But
what could they gain by it?  He threw out that suggestion. Tom replied:

"Gain?  Oh, nothing that you would value, maybe.  But they are strangers
making their way in a new community.  Is it nothing to them to appear as
pets of an Oriental prince--at no expense?  Is it nothing to them to be
able to dazzle this poor town with thousand-dollar rewards--at no
expense?  Wilson, there isn't any such knife, or your scheme would have
fetched it to light.  Or if there is any such knife, they've got it yet.
I believe, myself, that they've seen such a knife, for Angelo pictured it
out with his pencil too swiftly and handily for him to have been
inventing it, and of course I can't swear that they've never had it; but
this I'll go bail for--if they had it when they came to this town,
they've got it yet."

Blake said:

"It looks mighty reasonable, the way Tom puts it; it most certainly
does."

Tom responded, turning to leave:

"You find the old woman, Blake, and if she can't furnish the knife, go
and search the twins!"

Tom sauntered away.  Wilson felt a good deal depressed.  He hardly knew
what to think.  He was loath to withdraw his faith from the twins, and
was resolved not to do it on the present indecisive evidence; but--well,
he would think, and then decide how to act.

"Blake, what do you think of this matter?"

"Well, Pudd'nhead, I'm bound to say I put it up the way Tom does. They
hadn't the knife; or if they had it, they've got it yet."

The men parted.  Wilson said to himself:

"I believe they had it; if it had been stolen, the scheme would have
restored it, that is certain.  And so I believe they've got it."

Tom had no purpose in his mind when he encountered those two men. When he
began his talk he hoped to be able to gall them a little and get a trifle
of malicious entertainment out of it. But when he left, he left in great
spirits, for he perceived that just by pure luck and no troublesome labor
he had accomplished several delightful things:  he had touched both men
on a raw spot and seen them squirm; he had modified Wilson's sweetness
for the twins with one small bitter taste that he wouldn't be able to get
out of his mouth right away; and, best of all, he had taken the hated
twins down a peg with the community; for Blake would gossip around
freely, after the manner of detectives, and within a week the town would
be laughing at them in its sleeve for offering a gaudy reward for a
bauble which they either never possessed or hadn't lost. Tom was very
well satisfied with himself.

Tom's behavior at home had been perfect during the entire week. His uncle
and aunt had seen nothing like it before.  They could find no fault with
him anywhere.

Saturday evening he said to the Judge:

"I've had something preying on my mind, uncle, and as I am going away,
and might never see you again, I can't bear it any longer. I made you
believe I was afraid to fight that Italian adventurer. I had to get out
of it on some pretext or other, and maybe I chose badly, being taken
unawares, but no honorable person could consent to meet him in the field,
knowing what I knew about him."

"Indeed?  What was that?"

"Count Luigi is a confessed assassin."

"Incredible."

"It's perfectly true.  Wilson detected it in his hand, by palmistry, and
charged him with it, and cornered him up so close that he had to confess;
but both twins begged us on their knees to keep the secret, and swore
they would lead straight lives here; and it was all so pitiful that we
gave our word of honor never to expose them while they kept the promise.
You would have done it yourself, uncle."

"You are right, my boy; I would.  A man's secret is still his own
property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like that.
You did well, and I am proud of you." Then he added mournfully, "But I
wish I could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the
field on honor."

"It couldn't be helped, uncle.  If I had known you were going to
challenge him, I should have felt obliged to sacrifice my pledged word in
order to stop it, but Wilson couldn't be expected to do otherwise than
keep silent."

"Oh, no, Wilson did right, and is in no way to blame.  Tom, Tom, you have
lifted a heavy load from my heart; I was stung to the very soul when I
seemed to have discovered that I had a coward in my family."

"You may imagine what it cost ME to assume such a part, uncle."

"Oh, I know it, poor boy, I know it.  And I can understand how much it
has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time. But it is
all right now, and no harm is done.  You have restored my comfort of
mind, and with it your own; and both of us had suffered enough."

The old man sat awhile plunged in thought; then he looked up with a
satisfied light in his eye, and said:  "That this assassin should have
put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the field of honor as
if he were a gentleman is a matter which I will presently settle--but not
now.  I will not shoot him until after election. I see a way to ruin them
both before; I will attend to that first. Neither of them shall be
elected, that I promise. You are sure that the fact that he is an
assassin has not got abroad?"

"Perfectly certain of it, sir."

"It will be a good card.  I will fling a hint at it from the stump on the
polling day.  It will sweep the ground from under both of them."

"There's not a doubt of it.  It will finish them."

"That and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty. I want you
to come down here by and by and work privately among the rag-tag and
bobtail.  You shall spend money among them; I will furnish it."

Another point scored against the detested twins!  Really it was a great
day for Tom.  He was encouraged to chance a parting shot, now, at the
same target, and did it.

"You know that wonderful Indian knife that the twins have been making
such a to-do about?  Well, there's no track or trace of it yet; so the
town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh. Half the people believe
they never had any such knife, the other half believe they had it and
have got it still. I've heard twenty people talking like that today."

Yes, Tom's blemishless week had restored him to the favor of his aunt and
uncle.

His mother was satisfied with him, too.  Privately, she believed she was
coming to love him, but she did not say so.  She told him to go along to
St. Louis now, and she would get ready and follow. Then she smashed her
whisky bottle and said:

"Dah now!  I's a-gwine to make you walk as straight as a string,
Chambers, en so I's bown, you ain't gwine to git no bad example out o'
yo' mammy.  I tole you you couldn't go into no bad comp'ny. Well, you's
gwine into my comp'ny, en I's gwine to fill de bill. Now, den, trot
along, trot along!"

Tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with his heavy
satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep of the unjust,
which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the
hanging-eve history of a million rascals. But when he got up in the
morning, luck was against him again: a brother thief had robbed him while
he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing.




CHAPTER 16

Sold Down the River

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you.  This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of
the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster.  It
seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for
studying the oyster.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

When Roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that
her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her.  He was
ruined past hope now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and he
would be an outcast and friendless. That was reason enough for a mother
to love a child; so she loved him, and told him so.  It made him wince,
secretly--for she was a "nigger."  That he was one himself was far from
reconciling him to that despised race.

Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded
uncomfortably, but as well as he could. And she tried to comfort him, but
that was not possible. These intimacies quickly became horrible to him,
and within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to tell her
so, and require that they be discontinued or very considerably modified.
But he was afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull now, for she had
begun to think.  She was trying to invent a saving plan. Finally she
started up, and said she had found a way out.  Tom was almost suffocated
by the joy of this sudden good news.  Roxana said:

"Here is de plan, en she'll win, sure.  I's a nigger, en nobody ain't
gwine to doubt it dat hears me talk. I's wuth six hund'd dollahs.  Take
en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers."

Tom was dazed.  He was not sure he had heard aright. He was dumb for a
moment; then he said:

"Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?"

"Ain't you my chile?  En does you know anything dat a mother won't do for
her chile?  Day ain't nothin' a white mother won't do for her chile.  Who
made 'em so?  De Lord done it. En who made de niggers?  De Lord made 'em.
In de inside, mothers is all de same.  De good lord he made 'em so.  I's
gwine to be sole into slavery, en in a year you's gwine to buy yo' ole
mammy free ag'in. I'll show you how.  Dat's de plan."

Tom's hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them.  He said:

"It's lovely of you, Mammy--it's just--"

"Say it ag'in!  En keep on sayin' it!  It's all de pay a body kin want in
dis worl', en it's mo' den enough. Laws bless you, honey, when I's slav'
aroun', en dey 'buses me, if I knows you's a-sayin' dat, 'way off yonder
somers, it'll heal up all de sore places, en I kin stan' 'em."

"I DO say it again, Mammy, and I'll keep on saying it, too. But how am I
going to sell you?  You're free, you know."

"Much diff'rence dat make!  White folks ain't partic'lar. De law kin sell
me now if dey tell me to leave de state in six months en I don't go.  You
draw up a paper--bill o' sale--en put it 'way off yonder, down in de
middle o' Kaintuck somers, en sign some names to it, en say you'll sell
me cheap 'ca'se you's hard up; you'll find you ain't gwine to have no
trouble. You take me up de country a piece, en sell me on a farm; dem
people ain't gwine to ask no questions if I's a bargain."

Tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an Arkansas cotton
planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars. He did not want to commit
this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved him the
necessity of going up-country to hunt up a purchaser, with the added risk
of having to answer a lot of questions, whereas this planter was so
pleased with Roxy that he asked next to none at all.  Besides, the
planter insisted that Roxy wouldn't know where she was, at first, and
that by the time she found out she would already have been contented.

So Tom argued with himself that it was an immense advantaged for Roxy to
have a master who was pleased with her, as this planter manifestly was.
In almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point of even
half believing he was doing Roxy a splendid surreptitious service in
selling her "down the river." And then he kept diligently saying to
himself all the time: "It's for only a year.  In a year I buy her free
again; she'll keep that in mind, and it'll reconcile her."  Yes; the
little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out right
and pleasant in the end, anyway.  By agreement, the conversation in
Roxy's presence was all about the man's "up-country" farm, and how
pleasant a place it was, and how happy the slaves were there; so poor
Roxy was entirely deceived; and easily, for she was not dreaming that her
own son could be guilty of treason to a mother who, in voluntarily going
into slavery--slavery of any kind, mild or severe, or of any duration,
brief or long--was making a sacrifice for him compared with which death
would have been a poor and commonplace one.  She lavished tears and
loving caresses upon him privately, and then went away with her owner
--went away brokenhearted, and yet proud to do it.

Tom scored his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very letter of his
reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again.  He had three
hundred dollars left.  According to his mother's plan, he was to put that
safely away, and add her half of his pension to it monthly.  In one year
this fund would buy her free again.

For a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the villainy
which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his rag of
conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was
presently able to sleep like any other miscreant.

The boat bore Roxy away from St. Louis at four in the afternoon, and she
stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle box and watched Tom through a
blur of tears until he melted into the throng of people and disappeared;
then she looked no more, but sat there on a coil of cable crying till far
into the night. When she went to her foul steerage bunk at last, between
the clashing engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for the
morning, and, waiting, grieve.

It had been imagined that she "would not know," and would think she was
traveling upstream.  She!  Why, she had been steamboating for years.  At
dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on the cable coil again.
She passed many a snag whose "break" could have told her a thing to break
her heart, for it showed a current moving in the same direction that the
boat was going; but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she did not notice.
But at last the roar of a bigger and nearer break than usual brought her
out of her torpor, and she looked up, and her practiced eye fell upon
that telltale rush of water. For one moment her petrified gaze fixed
itself there. Then her head dropped upon her breast, and she said:

"Oh, de good Lord God have mercy on po' sinful me--I'S SOLE DOWN DE
RIVER!"




CHAPTER 17

The Judge Utters Dire Prophesy

Even popularity can be overdone.  In Rome, along at first, you are full
of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by, you only regret that
you didn't see him do it.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

JULY 4.  Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all
the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left
in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country
has grown so.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The summer weeks dragged by, and then the political campaign opened
--opened in pretty warm fashion, and waxed hotter and hotter daily. The
twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart, for their
self-love was engaged.  Their popularity, so general at first, had
suffered afterward; mainly because they had been TOO popular, and so a
natural reaction had followed. Besides, it had been diligently whispered
around that it was curious--indeed, VERY curious--that that wonderful
knife of theirs did not turn up--IF it was so valuable, or IF it had ever
existed. And with the whisperings went chucklings and nudgings and winks,
and such things have an effect.  The twins considered that success in the
election would reinstate them, and that defeat would work them
irreparable damage.  Therefore they worked hard, but not harder than
Judge Driscoll and Tom worked against them in the closing days of the
canvass.  Tom's conduct had remained so letter-perfect during two whole
months now, that his uncle not only trusted him with money with which to
persuade voters, but trusted him to go and get it himself out of the safe
in the private sitting room.

The closing speech of the campaign was made by Judge Driscoll, and he
made it against both of the foreigners.  It was disastrously effective.
He poured out rivers of ridicule upon them, and forced the big mass
meeting to laugh and applaud. He scoffed at them as adventures,
mountebanks, sideshow riffraff, dime museum freaks; he assailed their
showy titles with measureless derision; he said they were back-alley
barbers disguised as nobilities, peanut peddlers masquerading as
gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their brother monkey. At last he
stopped and stood still.  He waited until the place had become absolutely
silent and expectant, then he delivered his deadliest shot; delivered it
with ice-cold seriousness and deliberation, with a significant emphasis
upon the closing words: he said he believed that the reward offered for
the lost knife was humbug and bunkum, and that its owner would know where
to find it whenever he should have occasion TO ASSASSINATE SOMEBODY.

Then he stepped from the stand, leaving a startled and impressive hush
behind him instead of the customary explosion of cheers and party cries.

The strange remark flew far and wide over the town and made an
extraordinary sensation.  Everybody was asking, "What could he mean by
that?"  And everybody went on asking that question, but in vain; for the
judge only said he knew what he was talking about, and stopped there; Tom
said he hadn't any idea what his uncle meant, and Wilson, whenever he was
asked what he thought it meant, parried the question by asking the
questioner what HE thought it meant.

Wilson was elected, the twins were defeated--crushed, in fact, and left
forlorn and substantially friendless. Tom went back to St. Louis happy.

Dawson's Landing had a week of repose now, and it needed it. But it was
in an expectant state, for the air was full of rumors of a new duel.
Judge Driscoll's election labors had prostrated him, but it was said that
as soon as he was well enough to entertain a challenge he would get one
from Count Luigi.

The brothers withdrew entirely from society, and nursed their humiliation
in privacy.  They avoided the people, and went out for exercise only late
at night, when the streets were deserted.




CHAPTER 18

Roxana Commands

Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same
procession.  You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the
band and the gaudy officials have gone by.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

THANKSGIVING DAY.  Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks
now, but the turkeys.  In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys;
they use plumbers.  It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The Friday after the election was a rainy one in St. Louis. It rained
all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its best to wash that
soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding.  Toward midnight
Tom Driscoll arrived at his lodgings from the theater in the heavy
downpour, and closed his umbrella and let himself in; but when he would
have shut the door, he found that there was another person
entering--doubtless another lodger; this person closed the door and
tramped upstairs behind Tom. Tom found his door in the dark, and entered
it, and turned up the gas.  When he faced about, lightly whistling, he
saw the back of a man.  The man was closing and locking his door from
him. His whistle faded out and he felt uneasy.  The man turned around, a
wreck of shabby old clothes, sodden with rain and all a-drip, and showed
a black face under an old slouch hat.  Tom was frightened. He tried to
order the man out, but the words refused to come, and the other man got
the start.  He said, in a low voice:

"Keep still--I's yo' mother!"

Tom sunk in a heap on a chair, and gasped out:

"It was mean of me, and base--I know it; but I meant it for the best, I
did indeed--I can swear it."

Roxana stood awhile looking mutely down on him while he writhed in shame
and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful
attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime; then she seated
herself and took off her hat, and her unkept masses of long brown hair
tumbled down about her shoulders.

"It warn't no fault o' yo'n dat dat ain't gray," she said sadly, noticing
the hair.

"I know it, I know it!  I'm a scoundrel.  But I swear I meant it for the
best.  It was a mistake, of course, but I thought it was for the best, I
truly did."

Roxana began to cry softly, and presently words began to find their way
out between her sobs.  They were uttered lamentingly, rather than
angrily.

"Sell a pusson down de river--DOWN DE RIVER!--for de bes'! I wouldn't
treat a dog so!  I is all broke down en wore out now, en so I reckon
it ain't in me to storm aroun' no mo', like I used to when I 'uz trompled
on en 'bused.  I don't know--but maybe it's so.  Leastways, I's suffered
so much dat mournin' seem to come mo' handy to me now den stormin'."

These words should have touched Tom Driscoll, but if they did, that
effect was obliterated by a stronger one--one which removed the heavy
weight of fear which lay upon him, and gave his crushed spirit a most
grateful rebound, and filled all his small soul with a deep sense of
relief.  But he kept prudently still, and ventured no comment.  There was
a voiceless interval of some duration now, in which no sounds were heard
but the beating of the rain upon the panes, the sighing and complaining
of the winds, and now and then a muffled sob from Roxana. The sobs became
more and more infrequent, and at last ceased. Then the refugee began to
talk again.

"Shet down dat light a little.  More.  More yit.  A pusson dat is hunted
don't like de light.  Dah--dat'll do.  I kin see whah you is, en dat's
enough.  I's gwine to tell you de tale, en cut it jes as short as I kin,
en den I'll tell you what you's got to do. Dat man dat bought me ain't a
bad man; he's good enough, as planters goes; en if he could 'a' had his
way I'd 'a' be'n a house servant in his fambly en be'n comfortable:  but
his wife she was a Yank, en not right down good lookin', en she riz up
agin me straight off; so den dey sent me out to de quarter 'mongst de
common fiel' han's.  Dat woman warn't satisfied even wid dat, but she
worked up de overseer ag'in' me, she 'uz dat jealous en hateful; so de
overseer he had me out befo' day in de mawnin's en worked me de whole
long day as long as dey'uz any light to see by; en many's de lashin's I
got 'ca'se I couldn't come up to de work o' de stronges'.  Dat overseer
wuz a Yank too, outen New Englan', en anybody down South kin tell you
what dat mean. DEY knows how to work a nigger to death, en dey knows how
to whale 'em too--whale 'em till dey backs is welted like a washboard.
'Long at fust my marster say de good word for me to de overseer, but dat
'uz bad for me; for de mistis she fine it out, en arter dat I jist
ketched it at every turn--dey warn't no mercy for me no mo'."

Tom's heart was fired--with fury against the planter's wife; and he said
to himself, "But for that meddlesome fool, everything would have gone all
right."  He added a deep and bitter curse against her.

The expression of this sentiment was fiercely written in his face, and
stood thus revealed to Roxana by a white glare of lightning which turned
the somber dusk of the room into dazzling day at that moment.  She was
pleased--pleased and grateful; for did not that expression show that her
child was capable of grieving for his mother's wrongs and a feeling
resentment toward her persecutors?--a thing which she had been doubting.
But her flash of happiness was only a flash, and went out again and left
her spirit dark; for she said to herself, "He sole me down de river--he
can't feel for a body long; dis'll pass en go." Then she took up her tale
again.

"'Bout ten days ago I 'uz sayin' to myself dat I couldn't las' many mo'
weeks I 'uz so wore out wid de awful work en de lashin's, en so
downhearted en misable.  En I didn't care no mo', nuther--life warn't
wuth noth'n' to me, if I got to go on like dat.  Well, when a body is in
a frame o' mine like dat, what do a body care what a body do?  Dey was a
little sickly nigger wench 'bout ten year ole dat 'uz good to me, en
hadn't no mammy, po' thing, en I loved her en she loved me; en she come
out whah I 'uz workin' en she had a roasted tater, en tried to slip it to
me--robbin' herself, you see, 'ca'se she knowed de overseer didn't give
me enough to eat--en he ketched her at it, en giver her a lick acrost de
back wid his stick, which 'uz as thick as a broom handle, en she drop'
screamin' on de groun', en squirmin' en wallerin' aroun' in de dust like
a spider dat's got crippled. I couldn't stan' it.  All de hellfire dat
'uz ever in my heart flame' up, en I snatch de stick outen his han' en
laid him flat. He laid dah moanin' en cussin', en all out of his head,
you know, en de niggers 'uz plumb sk'yred to death.  Dey gathered roun'
him to he'p him, en I jumped on his hoss en took out for de river as
tight as I could go.  I knowed what dey would do wid me.  Soon as he got
well he would start in en work me to death if marster let him; en if dey
didn't do dat, they'd sell me furder down de river, en dat's de same
thing, so I 'lowed to drown myself en git out o' my troubles.  It 'uz
gitt'n' towards dark.  I 'uz at de river in two minutes.  Den I see a
canoe, en I says dey ain't no use to drown myself tell I got to; so I
ties de hoss in de edge o' de timber en shove out down de river, keepin'
in under de shelter o' de bluff bank en prayin' for de dark to shet down
quick. I had a pow'ful good start, 'ca'se de big house 'uz three mile
back f'om de river en on'y de work mules to ride dah on, en on'y niggers
ride 'em, en DEY warn't gwine to hurry--dey'd gimme all de chance dey
could.  Befo' a body could go to de house en back it would be long pas'
dark, en dey couldn't track de hoss en fine out which way I went tell
mawnin', en de niggers would tell 'em all de lies dey could 'bout it.

"Well, de dark come, en I went on a-spinnin' down de river. I paddled
mo'n two hours, den I warn't worried no mo', so I quit paddlin' en
floated down de current, considerin' what I 'uz gwine to do if I didn't
have to drown myself.  I made up some plans, en floated along, turnin'
'em over in my mine.  Well, when it 'uz a little pas' midnight, as I
reckoned, en I had come fifteen or twenty mile, I see de lights o' a
steamboat layin' at de bank, whah dey warn't no town en no woodyard, en
putty soon I ketched de shape o' de chimbly tops ag'in' de stars, en den
good gracious me, I 'most jumped out o' my skin for joy!  It 'uz de GRAN'
MOGUL--I 'uz chambermaid on her for eight seasons in de Cincinnati en
Orleans trade. I slid 'long pas'--don't see nobody stirrin' nowhah--hear
'em a-hammerin' away in de engine room, den I knowed what de matter
was--some o' de machinery's broke.  I got  asho' below de boat and turn'
de canoe loose, den I goes 'long up, en dey 'uz jes one plank out, en I
step' 'board de boat.  It 'uz pow'ful hot, deckhan's en roustabouts 'uz
sprawled aroun' asleep on de fo'cas'l', de second mate, Jim Bangs, he sot
dah on de bitts wid his head down, asleep--'ca'se dat's de way de second
mate stan' de cap'n's watch!--en de ole watchman, Billy Hatch, he 'uz
a-noddin' on de companionway;--en I knowed 'em all; en, lan', but dey did
look good!  I says to myself, I wished old marster'd come along NOW en
try to take me--bless yo' heart, I's 'mong frien's, I is.  So I tromped
right along 'mongst 'em, en went up on de b'iler deck en 'way back aft to
de ladies' cabin guard, en sot down dah in de same cheer dat I'd sot in
'mos' a hund'd million times, I reckon; en it 'uz jist home ag'in, I tell
you!

"In 'bout an hour I heard de ready bell jingle, en den de racket begin.
Putty soon I hear de gong strike.  'Set her back on de outside,' I says
to myself.  'I reckon I knows dat music!' I hear de gong ag'in.  'Come
ahead on de inside,' I says. Gong ag'in.  'Stop de outside.'  gong ag'in.
'Come ahead on de outside--now we's pinted for Sent Louis, en I's outer
de woods en ain't got to drown myself at all.'  I knowed de MOGUL 'uz in
de Sent Louis trade now, you see.  It 'uz jes fair daylight when we
passed our plantation, en I seed a gang o' niggers en white folks huntin'
up en down de sho', en troublin' deyselves a good deal 'bout me; but I
warn't troublin' myself none 'bout dem.

"'Bout dat time Sally Jackson, dat used to be my second chambermaid en
'uz head chambermaid now, she come out on de guard, en 'uz pow'ful glad
to see me, en so 'uz all de officers; en I tole 'em I'd got kidnapped en
sole down de river, en dey made me up twenty dollahs en give it to me, en
Sally she rigged me out wid good clo'es, en when I got here I went
straight to whah you used to wuz, en den I come to dis house, en dey say
you's away but 'spected back every day; so I didn't dast to go down de
river to Dawson's, 'ca'se I might miss you.

"Well, las' Monday I 'uz pass'n by one o' dem places in fourth street
whah deh sticks up runaway nigger bills, en he'ps to ketch 'em, en I seed
my marster!  I 'mos' flopped down on de groun', I felt so gone.  He had
his back to me, en 'uz talkin' to de man en givin' him some bills--nigger
bills, I reckon, en I's de nigger.  He's offerin' a reward--dat's it.
Ain't I right, don't you reckon?"

Tom had been gradually sinking into a state of ghastly terror, and he
said to himself, now:  "I'm lost, no matter what turn things take!  This
man has said to me that he thinks there was something suspicious about
that sale; he said he had a letter from a passenger on the GRAND MOGUL
saying that Roxy came here on that boat and that everybody on board knew
all about the case; so he says that her coming here instead of flying to
a free state looks bad for me, and that if I don't find her for him, and
that pretty soon, he will make trouble for me.  I never believed that
story; I couldn't believe she would be so dead to all motherly instincts
as to come here, knowing the risk she would run of getting me into
irremediable trouble.  And after all, here she is!  And I stupidly swore
I would help find her, thinking it was a perfectly safe thing to promise.
If I venture to deliver her up, she--she--but how can I help myself?
I've got to do that or pay the money, and where's the money to come from?
I--I--well, I should think that if he would swear to treat her kindly
hereafter--and she says, herself, that he is a good man--and if he would
swear to never allow her to be overworked, or ill fed, or--"

A flash of lightning exposed Tom's pallid face, drawn and rigid with
these worrying thoughts.  Roxana spoke up sharply now, and there was
apprehension in her voice.

"Turn up dat light!  I want to see yo' face better.  Dah now--lemme look
at you.  Chambers, you's as white as yo' shirt! Has you see dat man?  Has
he be'n to see you?"

"Ye-s."

"When?"

"Monday noon."

"Monday noon!  Was he on my track?"

"He--well, he thought he was.  That is, he hoped he was. This is the bill
you saw."  He took it out of his pocket.

"Read it to me!"

She was panting with excitement, and there was a dusky glow in her eyes
that Tom could not translate with certainty, but there seemed to be
something threatening about it. The handbill had the usual rude woodcut
of a turbaned Negro woman running, with the customary bundle on a stick
over her shoulder, and the heading in bold type, "$100 REWARD."  Tom read
the bill aloud--at least the part that described Roxana and named the
master and his St. Louis address and the address of the Fourth street
agency; but he left out the item that applicants for the reward might
also apply to Mr. Thomas Driscoll.

"Gimme de bill!"

Tom had folded it and was putting it in his pocket. He felt a chilly
streak creeping down his back, but said as carelessly as he could:

"The bill?  Why, it isn't any use to you, you can't read it. What do you
want with it?"

"Gimme de bill!"  Tom gave it to her, but with a reluctance which he
could not entirely disguise.  "Did you read it ALL to me?"

"Certainly I did."

"Hole up yo' han' en swah to it."

Tom did it.  Roxana put the bill carefully away in her pocket, with her
eyes fixed upon Tom's face all the while; then she said:

"Yo's lyin'!"

"What would I want to lie about it for?"

"I don't know--but you is.  Dat's my opinion, anyways. But nemmine 'bout
dat.  When I seed dat man I 'uz dat sk'yerd dat I could sca'cely wobble
home.  Den I give a nigger man a dollar for dese clo'es, en I ain't be'in
in a house sence, night ner day, till now. I blacked my face en laid hid
in de cellar of a ole house dat's burnt down, daytimes, en robbed de
sugar hogsheads en grain sacks on de wharf, nights, to git somethin' to
eat, en never dast to try to buy noth'n', en I's 'mos' starved. En I
never dast to come near dis place till dis rainy night, when dey ain't no
people roun' sca'cely.  But tonight I be'n a-stanin' in de dark alley
ever sence night come, waitin' for you to go by. En here I is."

She fell to thinking.  Presently she said:

"You seed dat man at noon, las' Monday?"

"Yes."

"I seed him de middle o' dat arternoon.  He hunted you up, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Did he give you de bill dat time?"

"No, he hadn't got it printed yet."

Roxana darted a suspicious glance at him.

"Did you he'p him fix up de bill?"

Tom cursed himself for making that stupid blunder, and tried to rectify
it by saying he remember now that it WAS at noon Monday that the man gave
him the bill.  Roxana said:

"You's lyin' ag'in, sho."  Then she straightened up and raised her
finger:

"Now den!  I's gwine to ask you a question, en I wants to know how you's
gwine to git aroun' it.  You knowed he 'uz arter me; en if you run off,
'stid o' stayin' here to he'p him, he'd know dey 'uz somethin' wrong
'bout dis business, en den he would inquire 'bout you, en dat would take
him to yo' uncle, en yo' uncle would read de bill en see dat you be'n
sellin' a free nigger down de river, en you know HIM, I reckon!  He'd
t'ar up de will en kick you outen de house.  Now, den, you answer me dis
question:  hain't you tole dat man dat I would be sho' to come here, en
den you would fix it so he could set a trap en ketch me?"

Tom recognized that neither lies nor arguments could help him any
longer--he was in a vise, with the screw turned on, and out of it there
was no budging.  His face began to take on an ugly look, and presently he
said, with a snarl:

"Well, what could I do?  You see, yourself, that I was in his grip and
couldn't get out."

Roxy scorched him with a scornful gaze awhile, then she said:

"What could you do?  You could be Judas to yo' own mother to save yo'
wuthless hide!  Would anybody b'lieve it? No--a dog couldn't!  You is de
lowdownest orneriest hound dat was ever pup'd into dis worl'--en I's
'sponsible for it!"--and she spat on him.

He made no effort to resent this.  Roxy reflected a moment, then she
said:

"Now I'll tell you what you's gwine to do.  You's gwine to give dat man
de money dat you's got laid up, en make him wait till you kin go to de
judge en git de res' en buy me free agin."

"Thunder!  What are you thinking of?  Go and ask him for three hundred
dollars and odd?  What would I tell him I want it for, pray?"

Roxy's answer was delivered in a serene and level voice.

"You'll tell him you's sole me to pay yo' gamblin' debts en dat you lied
to me en was a villain, en dat I 'quires you to git dat money en buy me
back ag'in."

"Why, you've gone stark mad!  He would tear the will to shreds in a
minute--don't you know that?"

"Yes, I does."

"Then you don't believe I'm idiot enough to go to him, do you?"

"I don't b'lieve nothin' 'bout it--I KNOWS you's a-goin'. I knows it
'ca'se you knows dat if you don't raise dat money I'll go to him myself,
en den he'll sell YOU down de river, en you kin see how you like it!"

Tom rose, trembling and excited, and there was an evil light in his eye.
He strode to the door and said he must get out of this suffocating place
for a moment and clear his brain in the fresh air so that he could
determine what to do. The door wouldn't open.  Roxy smiled grimly, and
said:

"I's got the key, honey--set down.  You needn't cle'r up yo' brain none
to fine out what you gwine to do--_I_ knows what you's gwine to do."  Tom
sat down and began to pass his hands through his hair with a helpless and
desperate air. Roxy said, "Is dat man in dis house?"

Tom glanced up with a surprised expression, and asked:

"What gave you such an idea?"

"You done it.  Gwine out to cle'r yo' brain!  In de fust place you ain't
got none to cle'r, en in de second place yo' ornery eye tole on you.
You's de lowdownest hound dat ever--but I done told you dat befo'.  Now
den, dis is Friday. You kin fix it up wid dat man, en tell him you's
gwine away to git de res' o' de money, en dat you'll be back wid it nex'
Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday. You understan'?"

Tom answered sullenly:  "Yes."

"En when you gits de new bill o' sale dat sells me to my own self, take
en send it in de mail to Mr. Pudd'nhead Wilson, en write on de back dat
he's to keep it tell I come.  You understan'?"

"Yes."

"Dat's all den.  Take yo' umbreller, en put on yo' hat."

"Why?"

"Beca'se you's gwine to see me home to de wharf.  You see dis knife? I's
toted it aroun' sence de day I seed dat man en bought dese clo'es en it.
If he ketch me, I's gwine to kill myself wid it.  Now start along, en go
sof', en lead de way; en if you gives a sign in dis house, or if anybody
comes up to you in de street, I's gwine to jam it right into you.
Chambers, does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"

"It's no use to bother me with that question.  I know your word's good."

"Yes, it's diff'rent from yo'n!  Shet de light out en move along--here's
de key."

They were not followed.  Tom trembled every time a late straggler brushed
by them on the street, and half expected to feel the cold steel in his
back.  Roxy was right at his heels and always in reach.  After tramping a
mile they reached a wide vacancy on the deserted wharves, and in this
dark and rainy desert they parted.

As Tom trudged home his mind was full of dreary thoughts and wild plans;
but at last he said to himself, wearily:

"There is but the one way out.  I must follow her plan. But with a
variation--I will not ask for the money and ruin myself; I will ROB the
old skinflint."




CHAPTER 19

The Prophesy Realized

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good
example.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of
opinion that makes horse races.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Dawson's Landing was comfortably finishing its season of dull repose and
waiting patiently for the duel. Count Luigi was waiting, too; but not
patiently, rumor said. Sunday came, and Luigi insisted on having his
challenge conveyed. Wilson carried it.  Judge Driscoll declined to fight
with an assassin--"that is," he added significantly, "in the field of
honor."

Elsewhere, of course, he would be ready.  Wilson tried to convince him
that if he had been present himself when Angelo told him about the
homicide committed by Luigi, he would not have considered the act
discreditable to Luigi; but the obstinate old man was not to be moved.

Wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure of his
mission.  Luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be that the old
gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his trifling nephew's
evidence in inferences to be of more value than Wilson's. But Wilson
laughed, and said:

"That is quite simple; that is easily explicable. I am not his doll--his
baby--his infatuation:  his nature is. The judge and his late wife never
had any children. The judge and his wife were past middle age when this
treasure fell into their lap.  One must make allowances for a parental
instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is
famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely
satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it
can't tell mud cat from shad.  A devil born to a young couple is
measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil
adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through
thick and thin.  Tom is this old man's angel; he is infatuated with him.
Tom can persuade him into things which other people can't--not all
things; I don't mean that, but a good many--particularly one class of
things:  the things that create or abolish personal partialities or
prejudices in the old man's mind.  The old man liked both of you.  Tom
conceived a hatred for you.  That was enough; it turned the old man
around at once. The oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground
when one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it."

"It's a curious philosophy," said Luigi.

"It ain't philosophy at all--it's a fact.  And there is something
pathetic and beautiful about it, too.  I think there is nothing more
pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless couples taking a
menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their hearts; and then
adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a jackass-voiced macaw; and
next a couple of hundred screeching songbirds, and presently some fetid
guinea pigs and rabbits, and a howling colony of cats.  It is all a
groping and ignorant effort to construct out of base metal and brass
filings, so to speak, something to take the place of that golden treasure
denied them by Nature, a child.  But this is a digression. The unwritten
law of this region requires you to kill Judge Driscoll on sight, and he
and the community will expect that attention at your hands--though of
course your own death by his bullet will answer every purpose.  Look out
for him!  Are you healed--that is, fixed?"

"Yes, he shall have his opportunity.  If he attacks me, I will respond."

As Wilson was leaving, he said:

"The judge is still a little used up by his campaign work, and will not
get out for a day or so; but when he does get out, you want to be on the
alert."

About eleven at night the twins went out for exercise, and started on a
long stroll in the veiled moonlight.

Tom Driscoll had landed at Hackett's Store, two miles below Dawson's,
just about half an hour earlier, the only passenger for that lonely spot,
and had walked up the shore road and entered Judge Driscoll's house
without having encountered anyone either on the road or under the roof.

He pulled down his window blinds and lighted his candle. He laid off his
coat and hat and began his preparations. He unlocked his trunk and got
his suit of girl's clothes out from under the male attire in it, and laid
it by.  Then he blacked his face with burnt cork and put the cork in his
pocket. His plan was to slip down to his uncle's private sitting room
below, pass into the bedroom, steal the safe key from the old gentleman's
clothes, and then go back and rob the safe.  He took up his candle to
start.  His courage and confidence were high, up to this point, but both
began to waver a little now. Suppose he should make a noise, by some
accident, and get caught--say, in the act of opening the safe?  Perhaps
it would be well to go armed. He took the Indian knife from its hiding
place, and felt a pleasant return of his wandering courage.  He slipped
stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising and his pulses halting
at the slightest creak.  When he was halfway down, he was disturbed to
perceive that the landing below was touched by a faint glow of light.
What could that mean?  Was his uncle still up? No, that was not likely;
he must have left his night taper there when he went to bed.  Tom crept
on down, pausing at every step to listen. He found the door standing
open, and glanced it. What he saw pleased him beyond measure.  His uncle
was asleep on the sofa; on a small table at the head of the sofa a lamp
was burning low, and by it stood the old man's small cashbox, closed.
Near the box was a pile of bank notes and a piece of paper covered with
figured in pencil.  The safe door was not open. Evidently the sleeper had
wearied himself with work upon his finances, and was taking a rest.

Tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way toward the
pile of notes, stooping low as he went. When he was passing his uncle,
the old man stirred in his sleep, and Tom stopped instantly--stopped, and
softly drew the knife from its sheath, with his heart thumping, and his
eyes fastened upon his benefactor's face.  After a moment or two he
ventured forward again--one step--reached for his prize and seized it,
dropping the knife sheath.  Then he felt the old man's strong grip upon
him, and a wild cry of "Help! help!" rang in his ear. Without hesitation
he drove the knife home--and was free. Some of the notes escaped from his
left hand and fell in the blood on the floor.  He dropped the knife and
snatched them up and started to fly; transferred them to his left hand,
and seized the knife again, in his fright and confusion, but remembered
himself and flung it from him, as being a dangerous witness to carry away
with him.

He jumped for the stair-foot, and closed the door behind him; and as he
snatched his candle and fled upward, the stillness of the night was
broken by the sound of urgent footsteps approaching the house. In another
moment he was in his room, and the twins were standing aghast over the
body of the murdered man!

Tom put on his coat, buttoned his hat under it, threw on his suit of
girl's clothes, dropped the veil, blew out his light, locked the room
door by which he had just entered, taking the key, passed through his
other door into the black hall, locked that door and kept the key, then
worked his way along in the dark and descended the black stairs.  He was
not expecting to meet anybody, for all interest was centered in the other
part of the house now; his calculation proved correct.  By the time he
was passing through the backyard, Mrs. Pratt, her servants, and a dozen
half-dressed neighbors had joined the twins and the dead, and accessions
were still arriving at the front door.

As Tom, quaking as with a palsy, passed out at the gate, three women came
flying from the house on the opposite side of the lane. They rushed by
him and in at the gate, asking him what the trouble was there, but not
waiting for an answer. Tom said to himself, "Those old maids waited to
dress--they did the same thing the night Stevens's house burned down next
door." In a few minutes he was in the haunted house.  He lighted a candle
and took off his girl-clothes.  There was blood on him all down his left
side, and his right hand was red with the stains of the blood-soaked
notes which he has crushed in it; but otherwise he was free from this
sort of evidence.  He cleansed his hand on the straw, and cleaned most of
the smut from his face.  Then he burned the male and female attire to
ashes, scattered the ashes, and put on a disguise proper for a tramp.  He
blew out his light, went below, and was soon loafing down the river road
with the intent to borrow and use one of Roxy's devices.  He found a
canoe and paddled down downstream, setting the canoe adrift as dawn
approached, and making his way by land to the next village, where he kept
out of sight till a transient steamer came along, and then took deck
passage for St. Louis.  He was ill at ease Dawson's Landing was behind
him; then he said to himself, "All the detectives on earth couldn't trace
me now; there's not a vestige of a clue left in the world; that homicide
will take its place with the permanent mysteries, and people won't get
done trying to guess out the secret of it for fifty years."

In St. Louis, next morning, he read this brief telegram in the
papers--dated at Dawson's Landing:

     Judge Driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated
     here about midnight by a profligate Italian nobleman or a
     barber on account of a quarrel growing out of the recent
     election. The assassin will probably be lynched.

"One of the twins!" soliloquized Tom.  "How lucky! It is the knife that
has done him this grace.  We never know when fortune is trying to favor
us.  I actually cursed Pudd'nhead Wilson in my heart for putting it out
of my power to sell that knife. I take it back now."

Tom was now rich and independent.  He arranged with the planter, and
mailed to Wilson the new bill of sale which sold Roxana to herself; then
he telegraphed his Aunt Pratt:

     Have seen the awful news in the papers and am almost
     prostrated with grief.  Shall start by packet today. Try to
     bear up till I come.

When Wilson reached the house of mourning and had gathered such details
as Mrs. Pratt and the rest of the crowd could tell him, he took command
as mayor, and gave orthat nothing should be touched, but everything
left as it was until Justice Robinson should arrive and take the proper
measures as coroner. He cleared everybody out of the room but the twins
and himself. The sheriff soon arrived and took the twins away to jail.
Wilson told them to keep heart, and promised to do it best in their
defense when the case should come to trial.  Justice Robinson came
presently, and with him Constable Blake.  They examined the room
thoroughly.  They found the knife and the sheath. Wilson noticed that
there were fingerprints on the knife's handle. That pleased him, for the
twins had required the earliest comers to make a scrutiny of their hands
and clothes, and neither these people nor Wilson himself had found any
bloodstains upon them. Could there be a possibility that the twins had
spoken the truth when they had said they found the man dead when they ran
into the house in answer to the cry for help?  He thought of that
mysterious girl at once.  But this was not the sort of work for a girl to
be engaged in.  No matter; Tom Driscoll's room must be examined.

After the coroner's jury had viewed the body and its surroundings, Wilson
suggested a search upstairs, and he went along. The jury forced an
entrance to Tom's room, but found nothing, of course.

The coroner's jury found that the homicide was committed by Luigi, and
that Angelo was accessory to it.

The town was bitter against he misfortunates, and for the first few days
after the murder they were in constant danger of being lynched.  The
grand jury presently indicted Luigi for murder in the first degree, and
Angelo as accessory before the fact. The twins were transferred from the
city jail to the county prison to await trial.

Wilson examined the finger marks on the knife handle and said to himself,
"Neither of the twins made those marks.  Then manifestly there was
another person concerned, either in his own interest or as hired
assassin."

But who could it be?  That, he must try to find out. The safe was not
opened, the cashbox was closed, and had three thousand dollars in it.
Then robbery was not the motive, and revenge was.  Where had the murdered
man an enemy except Luigi? There was but that one person in the world
with a deep grudge against him.

The mysterious girl!  The girl was a great trial to Wilson. If the motive
had been robbery, the girl might answer; but there wasn't any girl that
would want to take this old man's life for revenge. He had no quarrels
with girls; he was a gentleman.

Wilson had perfect tracings of the finger marks of the knife handle; and
among his glass records he had a great array of fingerprints of women and
girls, collected during the last fifteen or eighteen years, but he
scanned them in vain, they successfully withstood every test; among them
were no duplicates of the prints on the knife.

The presence of the knife on the stage of the murder was a worrying
circumstance for Wilson.  A week previously he had as good as admitted to
himself that he believed Luigi had possessed such a knife, and that he
still possessed it notwithstanding his pretense that it had been stolen.
And now here was the knife, and with it the twins.  Half the town had
said the twins were humbugging when they claimed they had lost their
knife, and now these people were joyful, and said, "I told you so!"

If their fingerprints had been on the handle--but useless to bother any
further about that; the fingerprints on the handle were NOT theirs--that
he knew perfectly.

Wilson refused to suspect Tom; for first, Tom couldn't murder anybody--he
hadn't character enough; secondly, if he could murder a person he
wouldn't select his doting benefactor and nearest relative; thirdly,
self-interest was in the way; for while the uncle lived, Tom was sure of
a free support and a chance to get the destroyed will revived again, but
with the uncle gone, that chance was gone too.  It was true the will had
really been revived, as was now discovered, but Tom could not have been
aware of it, or he would have spoken of it, in his native talky,
unsecretive way.  Finally, Tom was in St. Louis when the murder was done,
and got the news out of the morning journals, as was shown by his
telegram to his aunt. These speculations were unemphasized sensations
rather than articulated thoughts, for Wilson would have laughed at the
idea of seriously connecting Tom with the murder.

Wilson regarded the case of the twins as desperate--in fact, about
hopeless.  For he argued that if a confederate was not found, an
enlightened Missouri jury would hang them; sure; if a confederate was
found, that would not improve the matter, but simply furnish one more
person for the sheriff to hang. Nothing could save the twins but the
discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal account--an
undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible.  Still, the
person who made the fingerprints must be sought.  The twins might have no
case WITH them, but they certainly would have none without him.

So Wilson mooned around, thinking, thinking, guessing, guessing, day and
night, and arriving nowhere.  Whenever he ran across a girl or a woman he
was not acquainted with, he got her fingerprints, on one pretext or
another; and they always cost him a sigh when he got home, for they never
tallied with the finger marks on the knife handle.

As to the mysterious girl, Tom swore he knew no such girl, and did not
remember ever seeing a girl wearing a dress like the one described by
Wilson.  He admitted that he did not always lock his room, and that
sometimes the servants forgot to lock the house doors; still, in his
opinion the girl must have made but few visits or she would have been
discovered.  When Wilson tried to connect her with the stealing raid, and
thought she might have been the old woman's confederate, if not the very
thief disguised as an old woman, Tom seemed stuck, and also much
interested, and said he would keep a sharp eye out for this person or
persons, although he was afraid that she or they would be too smart to
venture again into a town where everybody would now be on the watch for a
good while to come.

Everybody was pitying Tom, he looked so quiet and sorrowful, and seemed
to feel his great loss so deeply.  He was playing a part, but it was not
all a part.  The picture of his alleged uncle, as he had last seen him,
was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when he was away, and
called again in his dreams, when he was asleep.  He wouldn't go into the
room where the tragedy had happened.  This charmed the doting Mrs. Pratt,
who realized now, "as she had never done before," she said, what a
sensitive and delicate nature her darling had, and how he adored his poor
uncle.




CHAPTER 20

The Murderer Chuckles

Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to
be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great
caution.  Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you
have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take
simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The weeks dragged along, no friend visiting the jailed twins but their
counsel and Aunt Patsy Cooper, and the day of trial came at last--the
heaviest day in Wilson's life; for with all his tireless diligence he had
discovered no sign or trace of the missing confederate.  "Confederate"
was the term he had long ago privately accepted for that person--not as
being unquestionably the right term, but as being the least possibly the
right one, though he was never able to understand why the twins did not
vanish and escape, as the confederate had done, instead of remaining by
the murdered man and getting caught there.

The courthouse was crowded, of course, and would remain so to the finish,
for not only in the town itself, but in the country for miles around, the
trial was the one topic of conversation among the people.  Mrs. Pratt, in
deep mourning, and Tom with a weed on his hat, had seats near Pembroke
Howard, the public prosecutor, and back of them sat a great array of
friends of the family.  The twins had but one friend present to keep
their counsel in countenance, their poor old sorrowing landlady. She sat
near Wilson, and looked her friendliest.  In the "nigger corner" sat
Chambers; also Roxy, with good clothes on, and her bill of sale in her
pocket.  It was her most precious possession, and she never parted with
it, day or night.  Tom had allowed her thirty-five dollars a month ever
since he came into his property, and had said that he and she ought to be
grateful to the twins for making them rich; but had roused such a temper
in her by this speech that he did not repeat the argument afterward.  She
said the old judge had treated her child a thousand times better than he
deserved, and had never done her an unkindness in his life; so she hated
these outlandish devils for killing him, and shouldn't ever sleep
satisfied till she saw them hanged for it. She was here to watch the
trial now, and was going to lift up just one "hooraw" over it if the
county judge put her in jail a year for it. She gave her turbaned head a
toss and said, "When dat verdic' comes, I's gwine to lif' dat ROOF, now,
I TELL you."

Pembroke Howard briefly sketched the state's case. He said he would show
by a chain of circumstantial evidence without break or fault in it
anywhere, that the principal prisoner at the bar committed the murder;
that the motive was partly revenge, and partly a desire to take his own
life out of jeopardy, and that his brother, by his presence, was a
consenting accessory to the crime; a crime which was the basest known to
the calendar of human misdeeds--assassination; that it was conceived by
the blackest of hearts and consummated by the cowardliest of hands; a
crime which had broken a loving sister's heart, blighted the happiness of
a young nephew who was as dear as a son, brought inconsolable grief to
many friends, and sorrow and loss to the whole community.  The utmost
penalty of the outraged law would be exacted, and upon the accused, now
present at the bar, that penalty would unquestionably be executed.  He
would reserve further remark until his closing speech.

He was strongly moved, and so also was the whole house; Mrs. Pratt and
several other women were weeping when he sat down, and many an eye that
was full of hate was riveted upon the unhappy prisoners.

Witness after witness was called by the state, and questioned at length;
but the cross questioning was brief. Wilson knew they could furnish
nothing valuable for his side. People were sorry for Pudd'nhead Wilson;
his budding career would get hurt by this trial.

Several witnesses swore they heard Judge Driscoll say in his public
speech that the twins would be able to find their lost knife again when
they needed it to assassinate somebody with. This was not news, but now
it was seen to have been sorrowfully prophetic, and a profound sensation
quivered through the hushed courtroom when those dismal words were
repeated.

The public prosecutor rose and said that it was within his knowledge,
through a conversation held with Judge Driscoll on the last day of his
life, that counsel for the defense had brought him a challenge from the
person charged at the bar with murder; that he had refused to fight with
a confessed assassin--"that is, on the field of honor," but had added
significantly, that he would be ready for him elsewhere.  Presumably
the person here charged with murder was warned that he must kill or be
killed the first time he should meet Judge Driscoll.  If counsel for the
defense chose to let the statement stand so, he would not call him to the
witness stand.  Mr. Wilson said he would offer no denial. [Murmurs in the
house:  "It is getting worse and worse for Wilson's case."]

Mrs. Pratt testified that she heard no outcry, and did not know what woke
her up, unless it was the sound of rapid footsteps approaching the front
door.  She jumped up and ran out in the hall just as she was, and heard
the footsteps flying up the front steps and then following behind her as
she ran to the sitting room. There she found the accused standing over
her murdered brother. [Here she broke down and sobbed.  Sensation in the
court.] Resuming, she said the persons entered behind her were Mr. Rogers
and Mr. Buckstone.

Cross-examined by Wilson, she said the twins proclaimed their innocence;
declared that they had been taking a walk, and had hurried to the house
in response to a cry for help which was so loud and strong that they had
heard it at a considerable distance; that they begged her and the
gentlemen just mentioned to examine their hands and clothes--which was
done, and no blood stains found.

Confirmatory evidence followed from Rogers and Buckstone.

The finding of the knife was verified, the advertisement minutely
describing it and offering a reward for it was put in evidence, and its
exact correspondence with that description proved. Then followed a few
minor details, and the case for the state was closed.

Wilson said that he had three witnesses, the Misses Clarkson, who would
testify that they met a veiled young woman leaving Judge Driscoll's
premises by the back gate a few minutes after the cries for help were
heard, and that their evidence, taken with certain circumstantial
evidence which he would call the court's attention to, would in his
opinion convince the court that there was still one person concerned in
this crime who had not yet been found, and also that a stay of
proceedings ought to be granted, in justice to his clients, until that
person should be discovered.  As it was late, he would ask leave to defer
the examination of his three witnesses until the next morning.

The crowd poured out of the place and went flocking away in excited
groups and couples, taking the events of the session over with vivacity
and consuming interest, and everybody seemed to have had a satisfactory
and enjoyable day except the accused, their counsel, and their old lady
friend.  There was no cheer among these, and no substantial hope.

In parting with the twins Aunt Patsy did attempt a good-night with a gay
pretense of hope and cheer in it, but broke down without finishing.

Absolutely secure as Tom considered himself to be, the opening
solemnities of the trial had nevertheless oppressed him with a vague
uneasiness, his being a nature sensitive to even the smallest alarms; but
from the moment that the poverty and weakness of Wilson's case lay
exposed to the court, he was comfortable once more, even jubilant.  He
left the courtroom sarcastically sorry for Wilson.  "The Clarksons met an
unknown woman in the back lane," he said to himself, "THAT is his case!
I'll give him a century to find her in--a couple of them if he likes. A
woman who doesn't exist any longer, and the clothes that gave her her sex
burnt up and the ashes thrown away--oh, certainly, he'll find HER easy
enough!"  This reflection set him to admiring, for the hundredth time,
the shrewd ingenuities by which he had insured himself against
detection--more, against even suspicion.

"Nearly always in cases like this there is some little detail or other
overlooked, some wee little track or trace left behind, and detection
follows; but here there's not even the faintest suggestion of a trace
left.  No more than a bird leaves when it flies through the air--yes,
through the night, you may say. The man that can track a bird through the
air in the dark and find that bird is the man to track me out and find
the judge's assassin--no other need apply.  And that is the job that has
been laid out for poor Pudd'nhead Wilson, of all people in the world!
Lord, it will be pathetically funny to see him grubbing and groping after
that woman that don't exist, and the right person sitting under his very
nose all the time!" The more he thought the situation over, the more the
humor of it struck him.  Finally he said, "I'll never let him hear the
last of that woman.  Every time I catch him in company, to his dying day,
I'll ask him in the guileless affectionate way that used to gravel him so
when I inquired how his unborn law business was coming along, 'Got on her
track yet--hey, Pudd'nhead?'"  He wanted to laugh, but that would not
have answered; there were people about, and he was mourning for his
uncle.  He made up his mind that it would be good entertainment to look
in on Wilson that night and watch him worry over his barren law case and
goad him with an exasperating word or two of sympathy and commiseration
now and then.

Wilson wanted no supper, he had no appetite.  He got out all the
fingerprints of girls and women in his collection of records and pored
gloomily over them an hour or more, trying to convince himself that that
troublesome girl's marks were there somewhere and had been overlooked.
But it was not so.  He drew back his chair, clasped his hands over his
head, and gave himself up to dull and arid musings.

Tom Driscoll dropped in, an hour after dark, and said with a pleasant
laugh as he took a seat:

"Hello, we've gone back to the amusements of our days of neglect and
obscurity for consolation, have we?" and he took up one of the glass
strips and held it against the light to inspect it. "Come, cheer up, old
man; there's no use in losing your grip and going back to this child's
play merely because this big sunspot is drifting across your shiny new
disk.  It'll pass, and you'll be all right again"--and he laid the glass
down. "Did you think you could win always?"

"Oh, no," said Wilson, with a sigh, "I didn't expect that, but I can't
believe Luigi killed your uncle, and I feel very sorry for him.  It makes
me blue.  And you would feel as I do, Tom, if you were not prejudiced
against those young fellows."

"I don't know about that," and Tom's countenance darkened, for his memory
reverted to his kicking.  "I owe them no good will, considering the
brunet one's treatment of me that night. Prejudice or no prejudice,
Pudd'nhead, I don't like them, and when they get their deserts you're not
going to find me sitting on the mourner's bench."

He took up another strip of glass, and exclaimed:

"Why, here's old Roxy's label!  Are you going to ornament the royal
palaces with nigger paw marks, too?  By the date here, I was seven months
old when this was done, and she was nursing me and her little nigger cub.
There's a line straight across her thumbprint. How comes that?" and Tom
held out the piece of glass to Wilson.

"That is common," said the bored man, wearily. "Scar of a cut or a
scratch, usually"--and he took the strip of glass indifferently, and
raised it toward the lamp.

All the blood sank suddenly out of his face; his hand quaked, and he
gazed at the polished surface before him with the glassy stare of a
corpse.

"Great heavens, what's the matter with you, Wilson? Are you going to
faint?"

Tom sprang for a glass of water and offered it, but Wilson shrank
shuddering from him and said:

"No, no!--take it away!"  His breast was rising and falling, and he moved
his head about in a dull and wandering way, like a person who had been
stunned.  Presently he said, "I shall feel better when I get to bed; I
have been overwrought today; yes, and overworked for many days."

"Then I'll leave you and let you get to your rest. Good night, old man."
But as Tom went out he couldn't deny himself a small parting gibe:
"Don't take it so hard; a body can't win every time; you'll hang somebody
yet."

Wilson muttered to himself, "It is no lie to say I am sorry I have to
begin with you, miserable dog though you are!"

He braced himself up with a glass of cold whisky, and went to work again.
He did not compare the new finger marks unintentionally left by Tom a few
minutes before on Roxy's glass with the tracings of the marks left on the
knife handle, there being no need for that (for his trained eye), but
busied himself with another matter, muttering from time to time, "Idiot
that I was!--Nothing but a GIRL would do me--a man in girl's clothes
never occurred to me."  First, he hunted out the plate containing the
fingerprints made by Tom when he was twelve years old, and laid it by
itself; then he brought forth the marks made by Tom's baby fingers when
he was a suckling of seven months, and placed these two plates with the
one containing this subject's newly (and unconsciously) made record.

"Now the series is complete," he said with satisfaction, and sat down to
inspect these things and enjoy them.

But his enjoyment was brief.  He stared a considerable time at the three
strips, and seemed stupefied with astonishment. At last he put them down
and said, "I can't make it out at all--hang it, the baby's don't tally
with the others!"

He walked the floor for half an hour puzzling over his enigma, then he
hunted out the other glass plates.

He sat down and puzzled over these things a good while, but kept
muttering, "It's no use; I can't understand it. They don't tally right,
and yet I'll swear the names and dates are right, and so of course they
OUGHT to tally.  I never labeled one of these thing carelessly in my
life.  There is a most extraordinary mystery here."

He was tired out now, and his brains were beginning to clog. He said he
would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do with this
riddle.  He slept through a troubled and unrestful hour, then
unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a
sitting posture.  "Now what was that dream?" he said, trying to recall
it.  "What was that dream?  It seemed to unravel that puz--"

He landed in the middle of the floor at a bound, without finishing the
sentence, and ran and turned up his light and seized his "records."  He
took a single swift glance at them and cried out:

"It's so!  Heavens, what a revelation!  And for twenty-three years no man
has ever suspected it!"




CHAPTER 21

Doom

He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring
the cabbages.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

APRIL 1.  This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on
the other three hundred and sixty-four.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Wilson put on enough clothes for business purposes and went to work
under a high pressure of steam.  He was awake all over. All sense of
weariness had been swept away by the invigorating refreshment of the
great and hopeful discovery which he had made. He made fine and accurate
reproductions of a number of his "records," and then enlarged them on a
scale of ten to one with his pantograph.  He did these pantograph
enlargements on sheets of white cardboard, and made each individual line
of the bewildering maze of whorls or curves or loops which consisted of
the "pattern" of a "record" stand out bold and black by reinforcing it
with ink.  To the untrained eye the collection of delicate originals made
by the human finger on the glass plates looked about alike; but when
enlarged ten times they resembled the markings of a block of wood that
has been sawed across the grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a
glance, and at a distance of many feet, that no two of the patterns were
alike. When Wilson had at last finished his tedious and difficult work,
he arranged his results according to a plan in which a progressive order
and sequence was a principal feature; then he added to the batch several
pantograph enlargements which he had made from time to time in bygone
years.

The night was spent and the day well advanced now.  By the time he had
snatched a trifle of breakfast, it was nine o'clock, and the court was
ready to begin its sitting.  He was in his place twelve minutes later
with his "records."

Tom Driscoll caught a slight glimpse of the records, and nudged his
nearest friend and said, with a wink, "Pudd'nhead's got a rare eye to
business--thinks that as long as he can't win his case it's at least a
noble good chance to advertise his window palace decorations without any
expense."  Wilson was informed that his witnesses had been delayed, but
would arrive presently; but he rose and said he should probably not have
occasion to make use of their testimony.  [An amused murmur ran through
the room:  "It's a clean backdown! he gives up without hitting a lick!"]
Wilson continued:  "I have other testimony--and better.  [This compelled
interest, and evoked murmurs of surprise that had a detectable ingredient
of disappointment in them.] If I seem to be springing this evidence upon
the court, I offer as my justification for this, that I did not discover
its existence until late last night, and have been engaged in examining
and classifying it ever since, until half an hour ago. I shall offer it
presently; but first I wish to say a few preliminary words.

"May it please the court, the claim given the front place, the claim most
persistently urged, the claim most strenuously and I may even say
aggressively and defiantly insisted upon by the prosecution is this--that
the person whose hand left the bloodstained fingerprints upon the handle
of the Indian knife is the person who committed the murder."  Wilson
paused, during several moments, to give impressiveness to what he was
about to say, and then added tranquilly, "WE GRANT THAT CLAIM."

It was an electrical surprise.  No one was prepared for such an
admission.  A buzz of astonishment rose on all sides, and people were
heard to intimate that the overworked lawyer had lost his mind.  Even the
veteran judge, accustomed as he was to legal ambushes and masked
batteries in criminal procedure, was not sure that his ears were not
deceiving him, and asked counsel what it was he had said.  Howard's
impassive face betrayed no sign, but his attitude and bearing lost
something of their careless confidence for a moment.  Wilson resumed:

"We not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and strongly endorse it.
Leaving that matter for the present, we will now proceed to consider
other points in the case which we propose to establish by evidence, and
shall include that one in the chain in its proper place."

He had made up his mind to try a few hardy guesses, in mapping out his
theory of the origin and motive of the murder--guesses designed to fill
up gaps in it--guesses which could help if they hit, and would probably
do no harm if they didn't.

"To my mind, certain circumstances of the case before the court seem to
suggest a motive for the homicide quite different from the one insisted
on by the state.  It is my conviction that the motive was not revenge,
but robbery.  It has been urged that the presence of the accused brothers
in that fatal room, just after notification that one of them must take
the life  of Judge Driscoll or lose his own the moment the parties should
meet, clearly signifies that the natural instinct of self-preservation 
moved my clients to go there secretly and save Count Luigi by destroying
his adversary.

"Then why did they stay there, after the deed was done? Mrs. Pratt had
time, although she did not hear the cry for help, but woke up some
moments later, to run to that room--and there she found these men
standing and making no effort to escape. If they were guilty, they ought
to have been running out of the house at the same time that she was
running to that room. If they had had such a strong instinct toward
self-preservation as to move them to kill that unarmed man, what had
become of it now, when it should have been more alert than ever.  Would
any of us have remained there?  Let us not slander our intelligence to
that degree.

"Much stress has been laid upon the fact that the accused offered a very
large reward for the knife with which this murder was done; that no thief
came forward to claim that extraordinary reward; that the latter fact was
good circumstantial evidence that the claim that the knife had been
stolen was a vanity and a fraud; that these details taken in connection
with the memorable and apparently prophetic speech of the deceased
concerning that knife, and the finally discovery of that very knife in
the fatal room where no living person was found present with the
slaughtered man but the owner of the knife and his brother, form an
indestructible chain of evidence which fixed the crime upon those
unfortunate strangers.

"But I shall presently ask to be sworn, and shall testify that there was
a large reward offered for the THIEF, also; and it was offered secretly
and not advertised; that this fact was indiscreetly mentioned--or at
least tacitly admitted--in what was supposed to be safe circumstances,
but may NOT have been. The thief may have been present himself.  [Tom
Driscoll had been looking at the speaker, but dropped his eyes at this
point.] In that case he would retain the knife in his possession, not
daring to offer it for sale, or for pledge in a pawnshop.  [There was a
nodding of heads among the audience by way of admission that this was not
a bad stroke.]  I shall prove to the satisfaction of the jury that there
WAS a person in Judge Driscoll's room several minutes before the accused
entered it.  [This produced a strong sensation; the last drowsy head in
the courtroom roused up now, and made preparation to listen.]  If it
shall seem necessary, I will prove by the Misses Clarkson that they met a
veiled person--ostensibly a woman--coming out of the back gate a few
minutes after the cry for help was heard.  This person was not a woman,
but a man dressed in woman's clothes."  Another sensation. Wilson had his
eye on Tom when he hazarded this guess, to see what effect it would
produce.  He was satisfied with the result, and said to himself, "It was
a success--he's hit!"

The object of that person in that house was robbery, not murder.  It is
true that the safe was not open, but there was an ordinary cashbox on the
table, with three thousand dollars in it. It is easily supposable that
the thief was concealed in the house; that he knew of this box, and of
its owner's habit of counting its contents and arranging his accounts at
night--if he had that habit, which I do not assert, of course--that he
tried to take the box while its owner slept, but made a noise and was
seized, and had to use the knife to save himself from capture; and that
he fled without his booty because he heard help coming.

"I have now done with my theory, and will proceed to the evidences by
which I propose to try to prove its soundness." Wilson took up several of
his strips of glass.  When the audience recognized these familiar
mementos of Pudd'nhead's old time childish "puttering" and folly, the
tense and funereal interest vanished out of their faces, and the house
burst into volleys of relieving and refreshing laughter, and Tom chirked
up and joined in the fun himself; but Wilson was apparently not
disturbed. He arranged his records on the table before him, and said:

"I beg the indulgence of the court while I make a few remarks in
explanation of some evidence which I am about to introduce, and which I
shall presently ask to be allowed to verify under oath on the witness
stand.  Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave
certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which
he can always be identified--and that without shade of doubt or question.
These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak,
and this autograph can not be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or
hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of
time. This signature is not his face--age can change that beyond
recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his
height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates
of that exist also, whereas this signature is each man's very own--there
is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe!  [The
audience were interested once more.]

"This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which
Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet.  If you
will look at the balls of your fingers--you that have very sharp
eyesight--you will observe that these dainty curving lines lie close
together, like those that indicate the borders of oceans in maps, and
that they form various clearly defined patterns, such as arches, circles,
long curves, whorls, etc., and that these patterns differ on the different
fingers.  [Every man in the room had his hand up to the light now, and
his head canted to one side, and was minutely scrutinizing the balls of
his fingers; there were whispered ejaculations of "Why, it's so--I never
noticed that before!"] The patterns on the right hand are not the same as
those on the left. [Ejaculations of "Why, that's so, too!"]  Taken finger
for finger, your patterns differ from your neighbor's.  [Comparisons were
made all over the house--even the judge and jury were absorbed in this
curious work.]  The patterns of a twin's right hand are not the same as
those on his left.  One twin's patters are never the same as his fellow
twin's patters--the jury will find that the patterns upon the finger
balls of the twins' hands follow this rule.  [An examination of the
twins' hands was begun at once.] You have often heard of twins who were
so exactly alike that when dressed alike their own parents could not tell
them apart. Yet there was never a twin born in to this world that did not
carry from birth to death a sure identifier in this mysterious and
marvelous natal autograph.  That once known to you, his fellow twin could
never personate him and deceive you."

Wilson stopped and stood silent.  Inattention dies a quick and sure death
when a speaker does that.  The stillness gives warning that something is
coming.  All palms and finger balls went down now, all slouching forms
straightened, all heads came up, all eyes were fastened upon Wilson's
face.  He waited yet one, two, three moments, to let his pause complete
and perfect its spell upon the house; then, when through the profound
hush he could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, he put out his
hand and took the Indian knife by the blade and held it aloft where all
could see the sinister spots upon its ivory handle; then he said, in a
level and passionless voice:

"Upon this haft stands the assassin's natal autograph, written in the
blood of that helpless and unoffending old man who loved you and whom you
all loved.  There is but one man in the whole earth whose hand can
duplicate that crimson sign"--he paused and raised his eyes to the
pendulum swinging back and forth--"and please God we will produce that
man in this room before the clock strikes noon!"

Stunned, distraught, unconscious of its own movement, the house half
rose, as if expecting to see the murderer appear at the door, and a
breeze of muttered ejaculations swept the place. "Order in the
court!--sit down!"  This from the sheriff.  He was obeyed, and quiet
reigned again.  Wilson stole a glance at Tom, and said to himself, "He is
flying signals of distress now; even people who despise him are pitying
him; they think this is a hard ordeal for a young fellow who has lost his
benefactor by so cruel a stroke--and they are right."  He resumed his
speech:

"For more than twenty years I have amused my compulsory leisure with
collecting these curious physical signatures in this town. At my house I
have hundreds upon hundreds of them. Each and every one is labeled with
name and date; not labeled the next day or even the next hour, but in the
very minute that the impression was taken.  When I go upon the witness
stand I will repeat under oath the things which I am now saying.  I have
the fingerprints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury.
There is hardly a person in this room, white or black, whose natal
signature I cannot produce, and not one of them can so disguise himself
that I cannot pick him out from a multitude of his fellow creatures and
unerringly identify him by his hands. And if he and I should live to be a
hundred I could still do it. [The interest of the audience was steadily
deepening now.]

"I have studied some of these signatures so much that I know them as well
as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his oldest customer.  While I
turn my back now, I beg that several persons will be so good as to pass
their fingers through their hair, and then press them upon one of the
panes of the window near the jury, and that among them the accused may
set THEIR finger marks.  Also, I beg that these experimenters, or others,
will set their fingers upon another pane, and add again the marks of the
accused, but not placing them in the same order or relation to the other
signatures as before--for, by one chance in a million, a person might
happen upon the right marks by pure guesswork, ONCE, therefore I wish to
be tested twice."

He turned his back, and the two panes were quickly covered with
delicately lined oval spots, but visible only to such persons as could
get a dark background for them--the foliage of a tree, outside, for
instance.  Then upon call, Wilson went to the window, made his
examination, and said:

"This is Count Luigi's right hand; this one, three signatures below, is
his left.  Here is Count Angelo's right; down here is his left.  Now for
the other pane:  here and here are Count Luigi's, here and here are his
brother's."  He faced about. "Am I right?"

A deafening explosion of applause was the answer. The bench said:

"This certainly approaches the miraculous!"

Wilson turned to the window again and remarked, pointing with his finger:

"This is the signature of Mr. Justice Robinson.  [Applause.] This, of
Constable Blake.  [Applause.]  This of John Mason, juryman. [Applause.]
This, of the sheriff.  [Applause.] I cannot name the others, but I have
them all at home, named and dated, and could identify them all by my
fingerprint records."

He moved to his place through a storm of applause--which the sheriff
stopped, and also made the people sit down, for they were all standing
and struggling to see, of course.  Court, jury, sheriff, and everybody
had been too absorbed in observing Wilson's performance to attend to the
audience earlier.

"Now then," said Wilson, "I have here the natal autographs of the two
children--thrown up to ten times the natural size by the pantograph, so
that anyone who can see at all can tell the markings apart at a glance.
We will call the children A and B. Here are A's finger marks, taken at
the age of five months. Here they are again taken at seven months.  [Tom
started.] They are alike, you see.  Here are B's at five months, and also
at seven months.  They, too, exactly copy each other, but the patterns
are quite different from A's, you observe.  I shall refer to these again
presently, but we will turn them face down now.

"Here, thrown up ten sizes, are the natal autographs of the two persons
who are here before you accused of murdering Judge Driscoll. I made these
pantograph copies last night, and will so swear when I go upon the
witness stand.  I ask the jury to compare them with the finger marks of
the accused upon the windowpanes, and tell the court if they are the
same."

He passed a powerful magnifying glass to the foreman.

One juryman after another took the cardboard and the glass and made the
comparison.  Then the foreman said to the judge:

"Your honor, we are all agreed that they are identical."

Wilson said to the foreman:

"Please turn that cardboard face down, and take this one, and compare it
searchingly, by the magnifier, with the fatal signature upon the knife
handle, and report your finding to the court."

Again the jury made minute examinations, and again reported:

"We find them to be exactly identical, your honor."

Wilson turned toward the counsel for the prosecution, and there was a
clearly recognizable note of warning in his voice when he said:

"May it please the court, the state has claimed, strenuously and
persistently, that the bloodstained fingerprints upon that knife handle
were left there by the assassin of Judge Driscoll. You have heard us
grant that claim, and welcome it."  He turned to the jury:  "Compare the
fingerprints of the accused with the fingerprints left by the
assassin--and report."

The comparison began.  As it proceeded, all movement and all sound
ceased, and the deep silence of an absorbed and waiting suspense settled
upon the house; and when at last the words came, "THEY DO NOT EVEN
RESEMBLE," a thundercrash of applause followed and the house sprang to
its feet, but was quickly repressed by official force and brought to
order again.  Tom was altering his position every few minutes now, but
none of his changes brought repose nor any small trifle of comfort.  When
the house's attention was become fixed once more, Wilson said gravely,
indicating the twins with a gesture:

"These men are innocent--I have no further concern with them. [Another
outbreak of applause began, but was promptly checked.] We will now
proceed to find the guilty.  [Tom's eyes were starting from their
sockets--yes, it was a cruel day for the bereaved youth, everybody
thought.]  We will return to the infant autographs of A and B.  I will
ask the jury to take these large pantograph facsimilies of A's marked
five months and seven months. Do they tally?"

The foreman responded:  "Perfectly."

"Now examine this pantograph, taken at eight months, and also marked A.
Does it tally with the other two?"

The surprised response was:

"NO--THEY DIFFER WIDELY!"

"You are quite right.  Now take these two pantographs of B's autograph,
marked five months and seven months.  Do they tally with each other?"

"Yes--perfectly."

"Take this third pantograph marked B, eight months. Does it tally with
B's other two?"

"BY NO MEANS!"

"Do you know how to account for those strange discrepancies? I will tell
you.  For a purpose unknown to us, but probably a selfish one, somebody
changed those children in the cradle."

This produced a vast sensation, naturally; Roxana was astonished at this
admirable guess, but not disturbed by it. To guess the exchange was one
thing, to guess who did it quite another. Pudd'nhead Wilson could do
wonderful things, no doubt, but he couldn't do impossible ones.  Safe?
She was perfectly safe. She smiled privately.

"Between the ages of seven months and eight months those children were
changed in the cradle"--he made one of this effect--collecting pauses,
and added--"and the person who did it is in this house!"

Roxy's pulses stood still!  The house was thrilled as with an electric
shock, and the people half rose as if to seek a glimpse of the person who
had made that exchange.  Tom was growing limp; the life seemed oozing out
of him.  Wilson resumed:

"A was put into B's cradle in the nursery; B was transferred to the
kitchen and became a Negro and a slave [Sensation--confusion of angry
ejaculations]--but within a quarter of an hour he will stand before you
white and free!  [Burst of applause, checked by the officers.]  From
seven months onward until now, A has still been a usurper, and in my
finger record he bears B's name. Here is his pantograph at the age of
twelve. Compare it with the assassin's signature upon the knife handle.
Do they tally?"

The foreman answered:

"TO THE MINUTEST DETAIL!"

Wilson said, solemnly:

"The murderer of your friend and mine--York Driscoll of the generous hand
and the kindly spirit--sits in among you. Valet de Chambre, Negro and
slave--falsely called Thomas a Becket Driscoll--make upon the window the
fingerprints that will hang you!"

Tom turned his ashen face imploring toward the speaker, made some
impotent movements with his white lips, then slid limp and lifeless to
the floor.

Wilson broke the awed silence with the words:

"There is no need.  He has confessed."

Roxy flung herself upon her knees, covered her face with her hands, and
out through her sobs the words struggled:

"De Lord have mercy on me, po' misasble sinner dat I is!"

The clock struck twelve.

The court rose; the new prisoner, handcuffed, was removed.



CONCLUSION

It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the
best judge of one.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

OCTOBER 12, THE DISCOVERY.  It was wonderful to find America, but it
would have been more wonderful to miss it.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of the day and
swap guesses as to when Tom's trial would begin. Troop after troop of
citizens came to serenade Wilson, and require a speech, and shout
themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips--for all
his sentences were golden, now, all were marvelous.  His long fight
against hard luck and prejudice was ended; he was a made man for good.
And as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away, some
remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his voice and say:

"And this is the man the likes of us have called a pudd'nhead for more
than twenty years.  He has resigned from that position, friends."

"Yes, but it isn't vacant--we're elected."

The twins were heroes of romance, now, and with rehabilitated
reputations.  But they were weary of Western adventure, and straightway
retired to Europe.

Roxy's heart was broken.  The young fellow upon whom she had inflicted
twenty-three years of slavery continued the false heir's pension of
thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her hurts were too deep for money
to heal; the spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed
with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land.  In her church
and its affairs she found her only solace.

The real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most
embarrassing situation.  He could neither read nor write, and his speech
was the basest dialect of the Negro quarter. His gait, his attitudes, his
gestures, his bearing, his laugh--all were vulgar and uncouth; his
manners were the manners of a slave. Money and fine clothes could not
mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them more glaring and
the more pathetic. The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the
white man's parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the
kitchen. The family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter
into the solacing refuge of the "nigger gallery"--that was closed to him
for good and all.  But we cannot follow his curious fate further--that
would be a long story.

The false heir made a full confession and was sentenced to imprisonment
for life.  But now a complication came up. The Percy Driscoll estate was
in such a crippled shape when its owner died that it could pay only sixty
percent of its great indebtedness, and was settled at that rate.  But the
creditors came forward now, and complained that inasmuch as through an
error for which THEY were in no way to blame the false heir was not
inventoried at the time with the rest of the property, great wrong and
loss had thereby been inflicted upon them. They rightly claimed that
"Tom" was lawfully their property and had been so for eight years; that
they had already lost sufficiently in being deprived of his services
during that long period, and ought not to be required to add anything to
that loss; that if he had been delivered up to them in the first place,
they would have sold him and he could not have murdered Judge Driscoll;
therefore it was not that he had really committed the murder, the guilt
lay with the erroneous inventory.  Everybody saw that there was reason in
this.  Everybody granted that if "Tom" were white and free it would be
unquestionably right to punish him--it would be no loss to anybody; but
to shut up a valuable slave for life--that was quite another matter.

As soon as the Governor understood the case, he pardoned Tom at once, and
the creditors sold him down the river.





Author's Note to THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS

A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time
of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience.  He
has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story.  He merely has
some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he
trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting
results. So he goes to work.  To write a novel?  No--that is a thought
which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little
tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale.  But as it is a tale which he
is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as
it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on
till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has
happened to me so many times.

And I have noticed another thing:  that as the short tale grows into the
long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and
find itself superseded by a quite different one.  It was so in the case
of a magazine sketch which I once started to write--a funny and fantastic
sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a grave cast of
its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out into a book. Much
the same thing happened with PUDD'NHEAD WILSON.  I had a sufficiently
hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a farce to a
tragedy while I was going along with it--a most embarrassing
circumstance.  But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one
story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and
interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and
annoyance.  I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid
it would unseat the reader's reason, I did not know what was the matter
with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one.
It took me months to make that discovery.  I carried the manuscript back
and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read it and studied
over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the difficulty lay.  I had
no further trouble.  I pulled one of the stories out by the roots, and
left the other--a kind of literary Caesarean operation.

Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled
out?  He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist
works; won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him
how the jackleg does it?

Originally the story was called THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS. I meant to
make it very short.  I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian
"freak"--or "freaks"--which was--or which were--on exhibition in our
cities--a combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a
single body and a single pair of legs--and I thought I would write an
extravagantly fantastic little story with this freak of nature for
hero--or heroes--a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and
two boys for the minor parts.  I lavishly elaborated these people and
their doings, of course.  But the take kept spreading along and spreading
along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more
and more room with their talk and their affairs. Among them came a
stranger named Pudd'nhead Wilson, and woman named Roxana; and presently
the doings of these two pushed up into prominence a young fellow named
Tom Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure background.
Before the book was half finished those three were taking things almost
entirely into their own hands and working the whole tale as a private
venture of their own--a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by
rights.

When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had
become of the team I had originally started out with--Aunt Patsy Cooper,
Aunt Betsy Hale, and two boys, and Rowena the lightweight heroine--they
were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time or
other.  I hunted about and found them--found them stranded, idle,
forgotten, and permanently useless.  It was very awkward.  It was awkward
all around, but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there
was a love match on, between her and one of the twins that constituted
the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in a
quite dramatic love quarrel, wherein Rowena scathingly denounced her
betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed at his explanation of how it had
happened, and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in the
usual "forever" way; and now here she sat crying and brokenhearted; for
she had found that he had spoken only the truth; that is was not he, but
the other of the freak that had drunk the liquor that made him drunk;
that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop in his
life, and altogether tight as a brick three days in the week, was wholly
innocent of blame; and indeed, when sober, was constantly doing all he
could to reform his brother, the other half, who never got any
satisfaction out of drinking, anyway, because liquor never affected him.
Yes, here she was, stranded with that deep injustice of hers torturing
her poor torn heart.

I didn't know what to do with her.  I was as sorry for her as anybody
could be, but the campaign was over, the book was finished, she was
sidetracked, and there was no possible way of crowding her in, anywhere.
I could not leave her there, of course; it would not do.  After spreading
her out so, and making such a to-do over her affairs, it would be
absolutely necessary to account to the reader for her.  I thought and
thought and studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing.  I finally saw
plainly that there was really no way but one--I must simply give her the
grand bounce.  It grieved me to do it, for after associating with her so
much I had come to kind of like her after a fashion, notwithstanding
things and was so nauseatingly sentimental. Still it had to be done.  So
at the top of Chapter XVII I put a "Calendar" remark concerning July the
Fourth, and began the chapter with this statistic:

"Rowena went out in the backyard after supper to see the fireworks and
fell down the well and got drowned."

It seemed abrupt, but I thought maybe the reader wouldn't notice it,
because I changed the subject right away to something else. Anyway it
loosened up Rowena from where she was stuck and got her out of the way,
and that was the main thing.  It seemed a prompt good way of weeding out
people that had got stalled, and a plenty good enough way for those
others; so I hunted up the two boys and said, "They went out back one
night to stone the cat and fell down the well and got drowned."  Next I
searched around and found old Aunt Patsy and Aunt Betsy Hale where they
were around, and said, "They went out back one night to visit the sick
and fell down the well and got drowned."  I was going to drown some
others, but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if I kept
that up it would arouse attention, and perhaps sympathy with those people,
and partly because it was not a large well and would not hold any more
anyway.

Still the story was unsatisfactory.  Here was a set of new characters who
were become inordinately prominent and who persisted in remaining so to
the end; and back yonder was an older set who made a large noise and a
great to-do for a little while and then suddenly played out utterly and
fell down the well. There was a radical defect somewhere, and I must
search it out and cure it.

The defect turned out to be the one already spoken of--two stories in
one, a farce and a tragedy.  So I pulled out the farce and left the
tragedy.  This left the original team in, but only as mere names, not as
characters.  Their prominence was wholly gone; they were not even worth
drowning; so I removed that detail. Also I took the twins apart and made
two separate men of them. They had no occasion to have foreign names now,
but it was too much trouble to remove them all through, so I left them
christened as they were and made no explanation.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)





THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS

by Mark Twain



A man who is born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of
it when he tries to build a novel.  I know this from experience.  He has
no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story.  He merely has some
people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality.  He knows
these people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts that he can
plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results.  So he
goes to work.  To write a novel?  No--that is a thought which comes
later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale; a
very little tale; a six-page tale.  But as it is a tale which he is not
acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes
along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it
spreads itself into a book.  I know about this, because it has happened
to me so many times.

And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into the
long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and
find itself superseded by a quite different one.  It was so in the case
of a magazine sketch which I once started to write--a funny and fantastic
sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a grave cast of
its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out into a book.
Much the same thing happened with "Pudd'nhead Wilson."  I had a
sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a
farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it--a most embarrassing
circumstance.  But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one
story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and
interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and
annoyance.  I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid
it would unseat the reader's reason.  I did not know what was the matter
with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one.
It took me months to make that discovery.  I carried the manuscript back
and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read it and studied
over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the difficulty lay.  I had
no further trouble.  I pulled one of the stories out by the roots, and
left the other one--a kind of literary Caesarean operation.

Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled
out?  He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist
works.  Won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him
how the jack-leg does it?

Originally the story was called "Those Extraordinary Twins."  I meant to
make it very short.  I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian "freak"
or "freaks" which was--or which were--on exhibition in our cities--a
combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a single body
and a single pair of legs--and I thought I would write an extravagantly
fantastic little story with this freak of nature for hero--or heroes
--a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and two boys for the
minor parts.  I lavishly elaborated these people and their doings, of
course.  But the tale kept spreading along, and spreading along, and
other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more and more room
with their talk and their affairs.  Among them came a stranger named
Pudd'nhead Wilson, and a woman named Roxana; and presently the doings of
these two pushed up into prominence a young fellow named Tom Driscoll,
whose proper place was away in the obscure background.  Before the book
was half finished those three were taking things almost entirely into
their own hands and working the whole tale as a private venture of their
own--a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by rights.

When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had
become of the team I had originally started out with--Aunt Patsy Cooper,
Aunt Betsy Hale, the two boys, and Rowena the light-weight heroine--they
were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time or
other.  I hunted about and found them found them stranded, idle,
forgotten, and permanently useless.  It was very awkward.  It was awkward
all around; but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there
was a love-match on, between her and one of the twins that constituted
the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in a
quite dramatic love-quarrel, wherein Rowena scathingly denounced her
betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed at his explanation of how it had
happened, and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in the
usual "forever" way; and now here she sat crying and broken-hearted; for
she had found that he had spoken only the truth; that it was not he, but
the other half of the freak, that had drunk the liquor that made him
drunk; that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop in
his life, and, although tight as a brick three days in the week, was
wholly innocent of blame; and indeed, when sober, was constantly doing
all he could to reform his brother, the other half, who never got any
satisfaction out of drinking, anyway, because liquor never affected him.
Yes, here she was, stranded with that deep injustice of hers torturing
her poor torn heart.

I didn't know what to do with her.  I was as sorry for her as anybody
could be, but the campaign was over, the book was finished, she was
sidetracked, and there was no possible way of crowding her in, anywhere.
I could not leave her there, of course; it would not do.  After spreading
her out so, and making such a to-do over her affairs, it would be
absolutely necessary to account to the reader for her.  I thought and
thought and studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing.  I finally saw
plainly that there was really no way but one--I must simply give her the
grand bounce.  It grieved me to do it, for after associating with her so
much I had come to kind of like her after a fashion, notwithstanding she
was such an ass and said such stupid irritating things and was so
nauseatingly sentimental.  Still it had to be done.  So, at the top of
Chapter XVII, I put in a "Calendar" remark concerning July Fourth, and
began the chapter with this statistic:

"Rowena went out in the back yard after supper to see the fireworks and
fell down the well and got drowned."

It seemed abrupt, but I thought maybe the reader wouldn't notice it,
because I changed the subject right away to something else.  Anyway it
loosened up Rowena from where she was stuck and got her out of the way,
and that was the main thing.  It seemed a prompt good way of weeding out
people that had got stalled, and a plenty good enough way for those
others; so I hunted up the two boys and said "they went out back one
night to stone the cat and fell down the well and got drowned."  Next I
searched around and found old Aunt Patsy Cooper and Aunt Betsy Hale where
they were aground, and said "they went out back one night to visit the
sick and fell down the well and got drowned."  I was going to drown some
of the others, but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if
I kept that up it would arouse attention, and perhaps sympathy with those
people, and partly because it was not a large well and would not hold any
more anyway.

Still the story was unsatisfactory.  Here was a set of new characters who
were become inordinately prominent and who persisted in remaining so to
the end; and back yonder was an older set who made a large noise and a
great to-do for a little while and then suddenly played out utterly and
fell down the well.  There was a radical defect somewhere, and I must
search it out and cure it.

The defect turned out to be the one already spoken of--two stories in
one, a farce and a tragedy.  So I pulled out the farce and left the
tragedy.  This left the original team in, but only as mere names, not as
characters.  Their prominence was wholly gone; they were not even worth
drowning; so I removed that detail.  Also I took those twins apart and
made two separate men of them.  They had no occasion to have foreign
names now, but it was too much trouble to remove them all through, so I
left them christened as they were and made no explanation.






CHAPTER I

THE TWINS AS THEY REALLY WERE

The conglomerate twins were brought on the the stage in Chapter I of the
original extravaganza.  Aunt Patsy Cooper has received their letter
applying for board and lodging, and Rowena, her daughter, insane with
joy, is begging for a hearing of it:

"Well, set down then, and be quiet a minute and don't fly around so; it
fairly makes me tired to see you.  It starts off so: 'HONORED MADAM'--"

"I like that, ma, don't you?  It shows they're high-bred."

"Yes, I noticed that when I first read it.  'My brother and I have seen
your advertisement, by chance, in a copy of your local journal--'

"It's so beautiful and smooth, ma-don't you think so?"

"Yes, seems so to me--'and beg leave to take the room you offer.  We are
twenty-four years of age, and twins--'"

"Twins!  How sweet!  I do hope they are handsome, and I just know they
are!  Don't you hope they are, ma?"

"Land, I ain't particular.  'We are Italians by birth--'"

"It's so romantic!  Just think there's never been one in this town, and
everybody will want to see them, and they're all ours!  Think of that!"

"--'but have lived long in the various countries of Europe, and several
years in the United States.'"

"Oh, just think what wonders they've seen, ma!  Won't it be good to hear
them talk?"

"I reckon so; yes, I reckon so.  'Our names are Luigi and Angelo
Capello--'"

"Beautiful, perfectly beautiful!  Not like Jones and Robinson and those
horrible names."

"'You desire but one guest, but dear madam, if you will allow us to pay
for two we will not discommode you.  We will sleep together in the same
bed.  We have always been used to this, and prefer it.  And then he goes
on to say they will be down Thursday."

"And this is Tuesday--I don't know how I'm ever going to wait, ma!  The
time does drag along so, and I'm so dying to see them!  Which of them do
you reckon is the tallest, ma?"

"How do you s'pose I can tell, child?  Mostly they are the same
size-twins are."

"'Well then, which do you reckon is the best looking?"

"Goodness knows--I don't."

"I think Angelo is; it's the prettiest name, anyway.  Don't you think
it's a sweet name, ma?"

"Yes, it's well enough.  I'd like both of them better if I knew the way
to pronounce them--the Eyetalian way, I mean.  The Missouri way and the
Eyetalian way is different, I judge."

"Maybe--yes.  It's Luigi that writes the letter.  What do you reckon is
the reason Angelo didn't write it?"

"Why, how can I tell?  What's the difference who writes it, so long as
it's done?"

"Oh, I hope it wasn't because he is sick!  You don't think he is sick, do
you, ma?"

"Sick your granny; what's to make him sick?"

"Oh, there's never any telling.  These foreigners with that kind of names
are so delicate, and of course that kind of names are not suited to our
climate--you wouldn't expect it."


[And so-on and so-on, no end.  The time drags along; Thursday comes: the
boat arrives in a pouring storm toward midnight.]


At last there was a knock at the door and the anxious family jumped to
open it.  Two negro men entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded
upstairs toward the guest-room.  Then followed a stupefying apparition
--a double-headed human creature with four arms, one body, and a single
pair of legs!  It--or they, as you please--bowed with elaborate foreign
formality, but the Coopers could not respond immediately; they were
paralyzed.  At this moment there came from the rear of the group a
fervent ejaculation--"My lan'!"--followed by a crash of crockery, and the
slave-wench Nancy stood petrified and staring, with a tray of wrecked
tea-things at her feet.  The incident broke the spell, and brought the
family to consciousness.  The beautiful heads of the new-comer bowed
again, and one of them said with easy grace and dignity:

"I crave the honor, madam and miss, to introduce to you my brother, Count
Luigi Capello," (the other head bowed) "and myself--Count Angelo; and at
the same time offer sincere apologies for the lateness of our coming,
which was unavoidable," and both heads bowed again.

The poor old lady was in a whirl of amazement and confusion, but she
managed to stammer out:

"I'm sure I'm glad to make your acquaintance, sir--I mean, gentlemen.
As for the delay, it is nothing, don't mention it.  This is my daughter
Rowena, sir--gentlemen.  Please step into the parlor and sit down and
have a bite and sup; you are dreadful wet and must be uncomfortable
--both of you, I mean."

But to the old lady's relief they courteously excused themselves, saying
it would be wrong to keep the family out of their beds longer; then each
head bowed in turn and uttered a friendly good night, and the singular
figure moved away in the wake of Rowena's small brothers, who bore
candles, and disappeared up the stairs.

The widow tottered into the parlor and sank into a chair with a gasp,
and Rowena followed, tongue-tied and dazed.  The two sat silent in the
throbbing summer heat unconscious of the million-voiced music of the
mosquitoes, unconscious of the roaring gale, the lashing and thrashing of
the rain along the windows and the roof, the white glare of the
lightning, the tumultuous booming and bellowing of the thunder; conscious
of nothing but that prodigy, that uncanny apparition that had come and
gone so suddenly--that weird strange thing that was so soft-spoken and so
gentle of manner and yet had shaken them up like an earthquake with the
shock of its gruesome aspect.  At last a cold little shudder quivered
along down the widow's meager frame and she said in a weak voice:

"Ugh, it was awful just the mere look of that phillipene!"

Rowena did not answer.  Her faculties were still caked; she had not yet
found her voice.  Presently the widow said, a little resentfully:

"Always been used to sleeping together--in-fact, prefer it.  And I was
thinking it was to accommodate me.  I thought it was very good of them,
whereas a person situated as that young man is--"

"Ma, you oughtn't to begin by getting up a prejudice against him.
I'm sure he is good-hearted and means well.  Both of his faces show it."

"I'm not so certain about that.  The one on the left--I mean the one on
it's left--hasn't near as good a face, in my opinion, as its brother."

"That's Luigi."

"Yes, Luigi; anyway it's the dark-skinned one; the one that was west of
his brother when they stood in the door.  Up to all kinds of mischief and
disobedience when he was a boy, I'll be bound.  I lay his mother had
trouble to lay her hand on him when she wanted him.  But the one on the
right is as good as gold, I can see that."

"That's Angelo."

"Yes, Angelo, I reckon, though I can't tell t'other from which by their
names, yet awhile.  But it's the right-hand one--the blond one.  He has
such kind blue eyes, and curly copper hair and fresh complexion--"

"And such a noble face!--oh, it is a noble face, ma, just royal, you may
say!  And beautiful deary me, how beautiful!  But both are that; the dark
one's as beautiful as--a picture.  There's no such wonderful faces and
handsome heads in this town none that even begin.  And such hands,
especially Angelo's--so shapely and--"

"Stuff, how could you tell which they belonged to?--they had gloves on."

"Why, didn't I see them take off their hats?"

"That don't signify.  They might have taken off each other's hats.
Nobody could tell.  There was just a wormy squirming of arms in the air
--seemed to be a couple of dozen of them, all writhing at once, and it
just made me dizzy to see them go."

"Why, ma, I hadn't any difficulty.  There's two arms on each shoulder--"

"There, now.  One arm on each shoulder belongs to each of the creatures,
don't it?  For a person to have two arms on one shoulder wouldn't do him
any good, would it?  Of course not.  Each has an arm on each shoulder.
Now then, you tell me which of them belongs to which, if you can.  They
don't know, themselves--they just work whichever arm comes handy.  Of
course they do; especially if they are in a hurry and can't stop to think
which belongs to which."

The mother seemed to have the rights of the argument, so the daughter
abandoned the struggle.  Presently the widow rose with a yawn and said:

"Poor thing, I hope it won't catch cold; it was powerful wet, just
drenched, you may say.  I hope it has left its boots outside, so they can
be dried."

Then she gave a little start, and looked perplexed.

"Now I remember I heard one of them ask Joe to call him at half after
seven--I think it was the one on the left--no, it was the one to the east
of the other one--but I didn't hear the other one say any thing.  I
wonder if he wants to be called too.  Do you reckon it's too late to
ask?"

"Why, ma, it's not necessary.  Calling one is calling both.  If one gets
up, the other's got to."

"Sho, of course; I never thought of that.  Well, come along, maybe we can
get some sleep, but I don't know, I'm so shook up with what we've been
through."

The stranger had made an impression on the boys, too.  They had a word of
talk as they were getting to bed.  Henry, the gentle, the humane, said:

"I feel ever so sorry for it, don't you, Joe?"

But Joe was a boy of this world, active, enterprising, and had a
theatrical side to him:

"Sorry?  Why, how you talk!  It can't stir a step without attracting
attention.  It's just grand!"

Henry said, reproachfully:

"Instead of pitying it, Joe, you talk as if--"

"Talk as if what?  I know one thing mighty certain: if you can fix me so
I can eat for two and only have to stub toes for one, I ain't going to
fool away no such chance just for sentiment."

The twins were wet and tired, and they proceeded to undress without-any
preliminary remarks.  The abundance of sleeve made the partnership coat
hard to get off, for it was like skinning a tarantula; but it came at
last, after much tugging and perspiring.  The mutual vest followed.  Then
the brothers stood up before the glass, and each took off his own cravat
and collar.  The collars were of the standing kind, and came high up
under the ears, like the sides of a wheelbarrow, as required by the
fashion of the day.  The cravats were as broad as a bank-bill, with
fringed ends which stood far out to right and left like the wings of a
dragon-fly, and this also was strictly in accordance with the fashion of
the time.  Each cravat, as to color, was in perfect taste, so far as its
owner's complexion was concerned--a delicate pink, in the case of the
blond brother, a violent scarlet in the case of the brunette--but as a
combination they broke all the laws of taste known to civilization.
Nothing more fiendish and irreconcilable than those shrieking and
blaspheming colors could have been contrived, The wet boots gave no end
of trouble--to Luigi.  When they were off at last, Angelo said, with
bitterness:

"I wish you wouldn't wear such tight boots, they hurt my feet."

Luigi answered with indifference:

"My friend, when I am in command of our body, I choose my apparel
according to my own convenience, as I have remarked more than several
times already.  When you are in command, I beg you will do as you
please."

Angelo was hurt, and the tears came into his eyes.  There was gentle
reproach in his voice, but, not anger, when he replied:

"Luigi, I often consult your wishes, but you never consult mine.  When I
am in command I treat you as a guest; I try to make you feel at home;
when you are in command you treat me as an intruder, you make me feel
unwelcome.  It embarrasses me cruelly in company, for I can, see that
people notice it and comment on it."

"Oh, damn the people," responded the brother languidly, and with the air
of one who is tired of the subject.

A slight shudder shook the frame of Angelo, but he said nothing and the
conversation ceased.  Each buttoned his own share of the nightshirt in
silence; then Luigi, with Paine's Age of Reason in his hand, sat down in
one chair and put his feet in another and lit his pipe, while Angelo took
his Whole Duty of Man, and both began to read.  Angelo presently began to
cough; his coughing increased and became mixed with gaspings for breath,
and he was finally obliged to make an appeal to his brother's humanity:

"Luigi, if you would only smoke a little milder tobacco, I am sure I
could learn not to mind it in time, but this is so strong, and the pipe
is so rank that--"

"Angelo, I wouldn't be such a baby!  I have learned to smoke in a week,
and the trouble is already over with me; if you would try, you could
learn too, and then you would stop spoiling my comfort with your
everlasting complaints."

"Ah, brother, that is a strong word--everlasting--and isn't quite fair.
I only complain when I suffocate; you know I don't complain when we are
in the open air."

"Well, anyway, you could learn to smoke yourself."

"But my principles, Luigi, you forget my principles.  You would not have
me do a thing which I regard as a sin?"

"Oh, bosh!"

The conversation ceased again, for Angelo was sick and discouraged and
strangling; but after some time he closed his book and asked Luigi to
sing "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" with him, but he would not, and
when he tried to sing by himself Luigi did his best to drown his
plaintive tenor with a rude and rollicking song delivered in a thundering
bass.

After the singing there was silence, and neither brother was happy.
Before blowing the light out Luigi swallowed half a tumbler of whisky,
and Angelo, whose sensitive organization could not endure intoxicants of
any kind, took a pill to keep it from giving him the headache.




CHAPTER II

MA COOPER GETS ALL MIXED UP

The family sat in the breakfast-room waiting for the twins to come down.
The widow was quiet, the daughter was alive with happy excitement.  She
said:

"Ah, they're a boon, ma, just a boon! on't you think so?"

"Laws, I hope so, I don't know."

"Why, ma, yes you do.  They're so fine and handsome, and high-bred and
polite, so every way superior to our gawks here in this village; why,
they'll make life different from what it was--so humdrum and commonplace,
you know--oh, you may be sure they're full of accomplishments, and
knowledge of the world, and all that, that will be an immense advantage
to society here.  Don't you think so, ma?"

"Mercy on me, how should I know, and I've hardly set eyes on them yet."
After a pause she added, "They made considerable noise after they went
up."

"Noise?  Why, ma, they were singing!  And it was beautiful, too."

"Oh, it was well enough, but too mixed-up, seemed to me."

"Now, ma, honor bright, did you ever hear 'Greenland's Icy Mountains'
sung sweeter--now did you?"

"If it had been sung by itself, it would have been uncommon sweet, I
don't deny it; but what they wanted to mix it up with 'Old Bob Ridley'
for, I can't make out.  Why, they don't go together, at all.  They are
not of the same nature.  'Bob Ridley' is a common rackety slam-bang
secular song, one of the rippingest and rantingest and noisiest there is.
I am no judge of music, and I don't claim it, but in my opinion nobody
can make those two songs go together right."

"Why, ma, I thought--"

"It don't make any difference what you thought, it can't be done.  They
tried it, and to my mind it was a failure.  I never heard such a crazy
uproar; seemed to me, sometimes, the roof would come off; and as for the
cats--well, I've lived a many a year, and seen cats aggravated in more
ways than one, but I've never seen cats take on the way they took on last
night."

"Well, I don't think that that goes for anything, ma, because it is the
nature of cats that any sound that is unusual--"

"Unusual!  You may well call it so.  Now if they are going to sing duets
every night, I do hope they will both sing the same tune at the same
time, for in my opinion a duet that is made up of two different tunes is
a mistake; especially when the tunes ain't any kin to one another, that
way."

"But, ma, I think it must be a foreign custom; and it must be right too;
and the best way, because they have had every opportunity to know what is
right, and it don't stand to reason that with their education they would
do anything but what the highest musical authorities have sanctioned.
You can't help but admit that, ma."

The argument was formidably strong; the old lady could not find any way
around it; so, after thinking it over awhile she gave in with a sigh of
discontent, and admitted that the daughter's position was probably
correct.  Being vanquished, she had no mind to continue the topic at that
disadvantage, and was about to seek a change when a change came of
itself.  A footstep was heard on the stairs, and she said:

"There-he's coming!"

"They, ma--you ought to say they--it's nearer right."

The new lodger, rather shoutingly dressed but looking superbly handsome,
stepped with courtly carnage into the trim little breakfast-room and put
out all his cordial arms at once, like one of those pocket-knives with a
multiplicity of blades, and shook hands with the whole family
simultaneously.  He was so easy and pleasant and hearty that all
embarrassment presently thawed away and disappeared, and a cheery feeling
of friendliness and comradeship took its place.  He--or preferably they
--were asked to occupy the seat of honor at the foot of the table.  They
consented with thanks, and carved the beefsteak with one set of their
hands while they distributed it at the same time with the other set.

"Will you have coffee, gentlemen, or tea?"

"Coffee for Luigi, if you please, madam, tea for me."

"Cream and sugar?"

"For me, yes, madam; Luigi takes his coffee, black.  Our natures differ a
good deal from each other, and our tastes also."

The first time the negro girl Nancy appeared in the door and saw the two
heads turned in opposite directions and both talking at once, then saw
the commingling arms feed potatoes into one mouth and coffee into the
other at the same time, she had to pause and pull herself out of a
faintness that came over her; but after that she held her grip and was
able to wait on the table with fair courage.

Conversation fell naturally into the customary grooves.  It was a little
jerky, at first, because none of the family could get smoothly through a
sentence without a wabble in it here and a break there, caused by some
new surprise in the way of attitude or gesture on the part of the twins.
The weather suffered the most.  The weather was all finished up and
disposed of, as a subject, before the simple Missourians had gotten
sufficiently wonted to the spectacle of one body feeding two heads to
feel composed and reconciled in the presence of so bizarre a miracle.
And even after everybody's mind became tranquilized there was still one
slight distraction left: the hand that picked up a biscuit carried it to
the wrong head, as often as any other way, and the wrong mouth devoured
it.  This was a puzzling thing, and marred the talk a little.  It
bothered the widow to such a degree that she presently dropped out of the
conversation without knowing it, and fell to watching and guessing and
talking to herself:

"Now that hand is going to take that coffee to no, it's gone to the other
mouth; I can't understand it; and how, here is the dark-complected hand
with a potato in its fork, I'll see what goes with it--there, the
light-complected head's got it, as sure as I live!"

Finally Rowena said:

"Ma, what is the matter with you?  Are you dreaming about something?"

The old lady came to herself and blushed; then she explained with the
first random thing that came into her mind: "I saw Mr. Angelo take up Mr.
Luigi's coffee, and I thought maybe he--sha'n't I give you a cup, Mr.
Angelo?"

"Oh no, madam, I am very much obliged, but I never drink coffee, much as
I would like to.  You did see me take up Luigi's cup, it is true, but if
you noticed, I didn't carry it to my mouth, but to his."

"Y-es, I thought you did: Did you mean to?"

"How?"

The widow was a little embarrassed again.  She said:

"I don't know but what I'm foolish, and you mustn't mind; but you see,
he got the coffee I was expecting to see you drink, and you got a potato
that I thought he was going to get.  So I thought it might be a mistake
all around, and everybody getting what wasn't intended for him."

Both twins laughed and Luigi said:

"Dear madam, there wasn't any mistake.  We are always helping each other
that way.  It is a great economy for us both; it saves time and labor.
We have a system of signs which nobody can notice or understand but
ourselves.  If I am using both my hands and want some coffee, I make the
sign and Angelo furnishes it to me; and you saw that when he needed a
potato I delivered it."

"How convenient!"

"Yes, and often of the extremest value.  Take the Mississippi boats, for
instance.  They are always overcrowded.  There is table-room for only
half of the passengers, therefore they have to set a second table for the
second half.  The stewards rush both parties, they give them no time to
eat a satisfying meal, both divisions leave the table hungry.  It isn't
so with us.  Angelo books himself for the one table, I book myself for
the other.  Neither of us eats anything at the other's table, but just
simply works--works.  Thus, you see there are four hands to feed Angelo,
and the same four to feed me.  Each of us eats two meals."

The old lady was dazed with admiration, and kept saying, "It is perfectly
wonderful, perfectly wonderful" and the boy Joe licked his chops
enviously, but said nothing--at least aloud.

"Yes," continued Luigi, "our construction may have its disadvantages--in
fact, has but it also has its compensations of one sort and another. Take
travel, for instance.  Travel is enormously expensive, in all countries;
we have been obliged to do a vast deal of it--come, Angelo, don't put any
more sugar in your tea, I'm just over one indigestion and don't want
another right away--been obliged to do a deal of it, as I was saying.
Well, we always travel as one person, since we occupy but one seat; so we
save half the fare."

"How romantic!" interjected Rowena, with effusion.

"Yes, my dear young lady, and how practical too, and economical.  In
Europe, beds in the hotels are not charged with the board, but
separately--another saving, for we stood to our rights and paid for the
one bed only.  The landlords often insisted that as both of us occupied
the bed we ought--"

"No, they didn't," said Angelo.  "They did it only twice, and in both
cases it was a double bed--a rare thing in Europe--and the double bed
gave them some excuse.  Be fair to the landlords; twice doesn't
constitute 'often.'"

"Well, that depends--that depends.  I knew a man who fell down a well
twice.  He said he didn't mind the first time, but he thought the second
time was once too often.  Have I misused that word, Mrs. Cooper?"

"To tell the truth, I was afraid you had, but it seems to look, now, like
you hadn't."  She stopped, and was evidently struggling with the
difficult problem a moment, then she added in the tone of one who is
convinced without being converted, "It seems so, but I can't somehow tell
why."

Rowena thought Luigi's retort was wonderfully quick and bright, and she
remarked to herself with satisfaction that there wasn't any young native
of Dawson's Landing that could have risen to the occasion like that.
Luigi detected the applause in her face, and expressed his pleasure and
his thanks with his eyes; and so eloquently withal, that the girl was
proud and pleased, and hung out the delicate sign of it on her cheeks.
Luigi went on, with animation:

"Both of us get a bath for one ticket, theater seat for one ticket,
pew-rent is on the same basis, but at peep-shows we pay double."

"We have much to' be thankful for," said Angelo, impressively, with a
reverent light in his eye and a reminiscent tone in his voice, "we have
been greatly blessed.  As a rule, what one of us has lacked, the other,
by the bounty of Providence, has been able to supply.  My brother is
hardy, I am not; he is very masculine, assertive, aggressive; I am much
less so.  I am subject to illness, he is never ill.  I cannot abide
medicines, and cannot take them, but he has no prejudice against them,
and--"

"Why, goodness gracious," interrupted the widow, "when you are sick, does
he take the medicine for you?"

"Always, madam."

"Why, I never heard such a thing in my life!  I think it's beautiful of
you."

"Oh, madam, it's nothing, don't mention it, it's really nothing at all."

"But I say it's beautiful, and I stick to it!" cried the widow, with a
speaking moisture in her eye.

"A well brother to take the medicine for his poor sick brother--I wish I
had such a son," and she glanced reproachfully at her boys.  "I declare
I'll never rest till I've shook you by the hand," and she scrambled out
of her chair in a fever of generous enthusiasm, and made for the twins,
blind with her tears, and began to shake.  The boy Joe corrected her:
"You're shaking the wrong one, ma."

This flurried her, but she made a swift change and went on shaking.

"Got the wrong one again, ma," said the boy.

"Oh, shut up, can't you!" said the widow, embarrassed and irritated.
"Give me all your hands, I want to shake them all; for I know you are
both just as good as you can be."

It was a victorious thought, a master-stroke of diplomacy, though that
never occurred to her and she cared nothing for diplomacy.  She shook the
four hands in turn cordially, and went back to her place in a state of
high and fine exultation that made her look young and handsome.

"Indeed I owe everything to Luigi," said Angelo, affectionately.
"But for him I could not have survived our boyhood days, when we were
friendless and poor--ah, so poor!  We lived from hand to mouth-lived on
the coarse fare of unwilling charity, and for weeks and weeks together
not a morsel of food passed my lips, for its character revolted me and I
could not eat it.  But for Luigi I should have died.  He ate for us
both."

"How noble!" sighed Rowena.

"Do you hear that?" said the widow, severely, to her boys.  "Let it be an
example to you--I mean you, Joe."

Joe gave his head a barely perceptible disparaging toss and said: "Et for
both.  It ain't anything I'd 'a' done it."

"Hush, if you haven't got any better manners than that.  You don't see
the point at all.  It wasn't good food."

"I don't care--it was food, and I'd 'a' et it if it was rotten."

"Shame!  Such language!  Can't you understand?  They were starving
--actually starving--and he ate for both, and--"

"Shucks! you gimme a chance and I'll--"

"There, now--close your head! and don't you open it again till you're
asked."

     [Angelo goes on and tells how his parents the Count and Countess had
     to fly from Florence for political reasons, and died poor in Berlin
     bereft of their great property by confiscation; and how he and Luigi
     had to travel with a freak-show during two years and suffer
     semi-starvation.]

"That hateful black-bread; but I seldom ate anything during that time;
that was poor Luigi's affair--"

"I'll never Mister him again!" cried the widow, with strong emotion,
"he's Luigi to me, from this out!"

"Thank you a thousand times, madam, a thousand times! though in truth I
don't deserve it."

"Ah, Luigi is always the fortunate one when honors are showering," said
Angelo, plaintively; "now what have I done, Mrs.  Cooper, that you leave
me out?  Come, you must strain a point in my favor."

"Call you Angelo?  Why, certainly I will; what are you thinking of!  In
the case of twins, why--"

"But, ma, you're breaking up the story--do let him go on."

"You keep still, Rowena Cooper, and he can go on all the better, I
reckon.  One interruption don't hurt, it's two that makes the trouble."

"But you've added one, now, and that is three."

"Rowena!  I will not allow you to talk back at me when you have got
nothing rational to say."




CHAPTER III

ANGELO IS BLUE

[After breakfast the whole village crowded in, and there was a grand
reception in honor of the twins; and at the close of it the gifted
"freak" captured everybody's admiration by sitting down at the piano and
knocking out a classic four-handed piece in great style.  Then the judge
took it--or them--driving in his buggy and showed off his village.]

All along the streets the people crowded the windows and stared at the
amazing twins.  Troops of small boys flocked after the buggy, excited and
yelling.  At first the dogs showed no interest.  They thought they merely
saw three men in a buggy--a matter of no consequence; but when they found
out the facts of the case, they altered their opinion pretty radically,
and joined the boys, expressing their minds as they came.  Other dogs got
interested; indeed, all the dogs.  It was a spirited sight to see them
come leaping fences, tearing around corners, swarming out of every
bystreet and alley.  The noise they made was something beyond belief
--or praise.  They did not seem to be moved by malice but only by
prejudice, the common human prejudice against lack of conformity.  If the
twins turned their heads, they broke and fled in every direction, but
stopped at a safe distance and faced about; and then formed and came on
again as soon as the strangers showed them their back.  Negroes and
farmers' wives took to the woods when the buggy came upon them suddenly,
and altogether the drive was pleasant and animated, and a refreshment all
around.

     [It was a long and lively drive.  Angelo was a Methodist, Luigi was
     a Free-thinker.  The judge was very proud of his Freethinkers'
     Society, which was flourishing along in a most prosperous way and
     already had two members--himself and the obscure and neglected
     Pudd'nhead Wilson.  It was to meet that evening, and he invited
     Luigi to join; a thing which Luigi was glad to do, partly because it
     would please himself, and partly because it would gravel Angelo.]

They had now arrived at the widow's gate, and the excursion was ended.
The twins politely expressed their obligations for the pleasant outing
which had been afforded them; to which the judge bowed his thanks,
and then said he would now go and arrange for the Free-thinkers' meeting,
and would call for Count Luigi in the evening.

"For you also, dear sir," he added hastily, turning to Angelo and bowing.
"In addressing myself particularly to your brother, I was not meaning to
leave you out.  It was an unintentional rudeness, I assure you, and due
wholly to accident--accident and preoccupation.  I beg you to forgive
me."

His quick eye had seen the sensitive blood mount into Angelo's face,
betraying the wound that had been inflicted.  The sting of the slight had
gone deep, but the apology was so prompt, and so evidently sincere, that
the hurt was almost immediately healed, and a forgiving smile testified
to the kindly judge that all was well again.

Concealed behind Angelo's modest and unassuming exterior, and unsuspected
by any but his intimates, was a lofty pride, a pride of almost abnormal
proportions, indeed, and this rendered him ever the prey of slights; and
although they were almost always imaginary ones, they hurt none the less
on that account.  By ill fortune judge Driscoll had happened to touch his
sorest point, i.e., his conviction that his brother's presence was
welcomer everywhere than his own; that he was often invited, out of mere
courtesy, where only his brother was wanted, and that in a majority of
cases he would not be included in an invitation if he could be left out
without offense.  A sensitive nature like this is necessarily subject to
moods; moods which traverse the whole gamut of feeling; moods which know
all the climes of emotion, from the sunny heights of joy to the black
abysses of despair.  At times, in his seasons of deepest depressions,
Angelo almost wished that he and his brother might become segregated from
each other and be separate individuals, like other men.  But of course as
soon as his mind cleared and these diseased imaginings passed away, he
shuddered at the repulsive thought, and earnestly prayed that it might
visit him no more.  To be separate, and as other men are!  How awkward it
would seem; how unendurable.  What would he do with his hands, his arms?
How would his legs feel?  How odd, and strange, and grotesque every
action, attitude, movement, gesture would be.  To sleep by himself, eat
by himself, walk by himself--how lonely, how unspeakably lonely!  No, no,
any fate but that.  In every way and from every point, the idea was
revolting.

This was of course natural; to have felt otherwise would have been
unnatural.  He had known no life but a combined one; he had been familiar
with it from his birth; he was not able to conceive of any other as being
agreeable, or even bearable.  To him, in the privacy of his secret
thoughts, all other men were monsters, deformities: and during
three-fourths of his life their aspect had filled him with what promised
to be an unconquerable aversion.  But at eighteen his eye began to take
note of female beauty; and little by little, undefined longings grew up
in his heart, under whose softening influences the old stubborn aversion
gradually diminished, and finally disappeared.  Men were still
monstrosities to him, still deformities, and in his sober moments he had
no desire to be like them, but their strange and unsocial and uncanny
construction was no longer offensive to him.

This had been a hard day for him, physically and mentally.  He had been
called in the morning before he had quite slept off the effects of the
liquor which Luigi had drunk; and so, for the first half-hour had had the
seedy feeling, and languor, the brooding depression, the cobwebby mouth
and druggy taste that come of dissipation and are so ill a preparation
for bodily or intellectual activities; the long violent strain of the
reception had followed; and this had been followed, in turn, by the
dreary sight-seeing, the judge's wearying explanations and laudations of
the sights, and the stupefying clamor of the dogs.  As a congruous
conclusion, a fitting end, his feelings had been hurt, a slight had been
put upon him.  He would have been glad to forego dinner and betake
himself to rest and sleep, but he held his peace and said no word, for he
knew his brother, Luigi, was fresh, unweary, full of life, spirit,
energy; he would have scoffed at the idea of wasting valuable time on a
bed or a sofa, and would have refused permission.




CHAPTER IV

SUPERNATURAL CHRONOMETRY

Rowena was dining out, Joe and Harry were belated at play, there
were but three chairs and four persons that noon at the home
dinner-table--the twins, the widow, and her chum, Aunt Betsy Hale.  The
widow soon perceived that Angelo's spirits were as low as Luigi's were
high, and also that he had a jaded look.  Her motherly solicitude was
aroused, and she tried to get him interested in the talk and win him
to a happier frame of mind, but the cloud of sadness remained on his
countenance. Luigi lent his help, too.  He used a form and a phrase which
he was always accustomed to employ in these circumstances.  He gave his
brother an affectionate slap on the shoulder and said, encouragingly:

"Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!"

But this did no good.  It never did.  If anything, it made the matter
worse, as a rule, because it irritated Angelo.  This made it a favorite
with Luigi.  By and by the widow said:

"Angelo, you are tired, you've overdone yourself; you go right to bed
after dinner, and get a good nap and a rest, then you'll be all right."

"Indeed, I would give anything if I could do that, madam."

"And what's to hender, I'd like to know?  Land, the room's yours to do
what you please with!  The idea that you can't do what you like with your
own!"

"But, you see, there's one prime essential--an essential of the very
first importance--which isn't my own."

"What is that?"

"My body."

The old ladies looked puzzled, and Aunt Betsy Hale said:

"Why bless your heart, how is that?"

"It's my brother's."

"Your brother's!  I don't quite understand.  I supposed it belonged to
both of you."

"So it does.  But not to both at the same time."

"That is mighty curious; I don't see how it can be.  I shouldn't think it
could be managed that way."

"Oh, it's a good enough arrangement, and goes very well; in fact, it
wouldn't do to have it otherwise.  I find that the teetotalers and the
anti-teetotalers hire the use of the same hall for their meetings.  Both
parties don't use it at the same time, do they?"

"You bet they don't!" said both old ladies in a breath.

"And, moreover," said Aunt Betsy, "the Freethinkers and the Baptist Bible
class use the same room over the Market house, but you can take my word
for it they don't mush up together and use it at the same time.'

"Very well," said Angelo, "you understand it now.  And it stands to
reason that the arrangement couldn't be improved.  I'll prove it to you.
If our legs tried to obey two wills, how could we ever get anywhere?
I would start one way, Luigi would start another, at the same moment
--the result would be a standstill, wouldn't it?"

"As sure as you are born!  Now ain't that wonderful!  A body would never
have thought of it."

"We should always be arguing and fussing and disputing over the merest
trifles.  We should lose worlds of time, for we couldn't go down-stairs
or up, couldn't go to bed, couldn't rise, couldn't wash, couldn't dress,
couldn't stand up, couldn't sit down, couldn't even cross our legs,
without calling a meeting first and explaining the case and passing
resolutions, and getting consent.  It wouldn't ever do--now would it?"

"Do?  Why, it would wear a person out in a week!  Did you ever hear
anything like it, Patsy Cooper?"

"Oh, you'll find there's more than one thing about them that ain't
commonplace," said the widow, with the complacent air of a person with a
property right in a novelty that is under admiring scrutiny.

"Well, now, how ever do you manage it?  I don't mind saying I'm suffering
to know."

"He who made us," said Angelo reverently, "and with us this difficulty,
also provided a way out of it.  By a mysterious law of our being, each of
us has utter and indisputable command of our body a week at a time, turn
and turn about."

"Well, I never!  Now ain't that beautiful!"

"Yes, it is beautiful and infinitely wise and just.  The week ends every
Saturday at midnight to the minute, to the second, to the last shade of
a fraction of a second, infallibly, unerringly, and in that instant the
one brother's power over the body vanishes and the other brother takes
possession, asleep or awake."

"How marvelous are His ways, and past finding out!"

Luigi said: "So exactly to the instant does the change come, that during
our stay in many of the great cities of the world, the public clocks were
regulated by it; and as hundreds of thousands of private clocks and
watches were set and corrected in accordance with the public clocks, we
really furnished the standard time for the entire city."

"Don't tell me that He don't do miracles any more!  Blowing down the
walls of Jericho with rams' horns wa'n't as difficult, in my opinion."

"And that is not all," said Angelo.  "A thing that is even more
marvelous, perhaps, is the fact that the change takes note of longitude
and fits itself to the meridian we are on.  Luigi is in command this
week.  Now, if on Saturday night at a moment before midnight we could fly
in an instant to a point fifteen degrees west of here, he would hold
possession of the power another hour, for the change observes local time
and no other."

Betsy Hale was deeply impressed, and said with solemnity:

"Patsy Cooper, for detail it lays over the Passage of the Red Sea."

"Now, I shouldn't go as far as that," said Aunt Patsy, "but if you've a
mind to say Sodom and Gomorrah, I am with you, Betsy Hale."

"I am agreeable, then, though I do think I was right, and I believe
Parson Maltby would say the same.  Well, now, there's another thing.
Suppose one of you wants to borrow the legs a minute from the one that's
got them, could he let him?"

"Yes, but we hardly ever do that.  There were disagreeable results,
several times, and so we very seldom ask or grant the privilege,
nowadays, and we never even think of such a thing unless the case is
extremely urgent.  Besides, a week's possession at a time seems so little
that we can't bear to spare a minute of it.  People who have the use of
their legs all the time never think of what a blessing it is, of course.
It never occurs to them; it's just their natural ordinary condition,
and so it does not excite them at all.  But when I wake up, on Sunday
morning, and it's my week and I feel the power all through me, oh, such a
wave of exultation and thanksgiving goes surging over me, and I want to
shout 'I can walk!  I can walk!'  Madam, do you ever, at your uprising,
want to shout 'I can walk!  I can walk!'?"

"No, you poor unfortunate cretur', but I'll never get out of my bed again
without doing it!  Laws, to think I've had this unspeakable blessing all
my long life and never had the grace to thank the good Lord that gave it
to me!"

Tears stood in the eyes of both the old ladies and the widow said,
softly:

"Betsy Hale, we have learned something, you and me."

The conversation now drifted wide, but by and by floated back once more
to that admired detail, the rigid and beautiful impartiality with which
the possession of power had been distributed, between the twins.  Aunt
Betsy saw in it a far finer justice than human law exhibits in related
cases.  She said:

"In my opinion it ain't right no, and never has been right, the way a
twin born a quarter of a minute sooner than the other one gets all the
land and grandeurs and nobilities in the old countries and his brother
has to go bare and be a nobody.  Which of you was born first?"

Angelo's head was resting against Luigi's; weariness had overcome him,
and for the past five minutes he had been peacefully sleeping.  The old
ladies had dropped their voices to a lulling drone, to help him to steal
the rest his brother wouldn't take him up-stairs to get.  Luigi listened
a moment to Angelo's regular breathing, then said in a voice barely
audible:

"We were both born at the same time, but I am six months older than he
is."

"For the land's sake!"

"'Sh! on't wake him up; he wouldn't like my telling this.  It has
always been kept secret till now."

"But how in the world can it be?  If you were both born at the same time,
how can one of you be older than the other?"

"It is very simple, and I assure you it is true.  I was born with a full
crop of hair, he was as bald as an egg for six months.  I could walk six
months before he could make a step.  I finished teething six months ahead
of him.  I began to take solids six months before he left the breast.
I began to talk six months before he could say a word.  Last, and
absolutely unassailable proof, the sutures in my skull closed six months
ahead of his.  Always just that six months' difference to a day.  Was
that accident?  Nobody is going to claim that, I'm sure.  It was ordained
it was law it had its meaning, and we know what that meaning was.  Now
what does this overwhelming body of evidence establish?  It establishes
just one thing, and that thing it establishes beyond any peradventure
whatever.  Friends, we would not have it known for the world, and I must
beg you to keep it strictly to yourselves, but the truth is, we are no
more twins than you are."

The two old ladies were stunned, paralyzed-petrified, one may almost say
--and could only sit and gaze vacantly at each other for some moments;
then Aunt Betsy Hale said impressively:

"There's no getting around proof like that.  I do believe it's the most
amazing thing I ever heard of."  She sat silent a moment or two and
breathing hard with excitement, then she looked up and surveyed the
strangers steadfastly a little while, and added: "Well, it does beat me,
but I would have took you for twins anywhere."

"So would I, so would I," said Aunt Patsy with the emphasis of a
certainty that is not impaired by any shade of doubt.

"Anybody would-anybody in the world, I don't care who he is," said Aunt
Betsy with decision.

"You won't tell," said Luigi, appealingly.

"Oh, dear, no!" answered both ladies promptly, "you can trust us, don't
you be afraid."

"That is good of you, and kind.  Never let on; treat us always as if we
were twins."

"You can depend on us," said Aunt Betsy, "but it won't be easy, because
now that I know you ain't you don't seem so."

Luigi muttered to himself with satisfaction: "That swindle has gone
through without change of cars."

It was not very kind of him to load the poor things up with a secret like
that, which would be always flying to their tongues' ends every time they
heard any one speak of the strangers as twins, and would become harder
and harder to hang on to with every recurrence of the temptation to tell
it, while the torture of retaining it would increase with every new
strain that was applied; but he never thought of that, and probably would
not have worried much about it if he had.

A visitor was announced--some one to see the twins.  They withdrew to the
parlor, and the two old ladies began to discuss with interest the strange
things which they had been listening to.  When they had finished the
matter to their satisfaction, and Aunt Betsy rose to go, she stopped to
ask a question:

"How does things come on between Roweny and Tom Driscoll?"

"Well, about the same.  He writes tolerable often, and she answers
tolerable seldom."

"Where is he?"

"In St. Louis, I believe, though he's such a gadabout that a body can't
be very certain of him, I reckon."

"Don't Roweny know?"

"Oh, yes, like enough.  I haven't asked her lately."

"Do you know how him and the judge are getting along now?"

"First rate, I believe.  Mrs. Pratt says so; and being right in the
house, and sister to the one and aunt to t'other, of course she ought to
know.  She says the judge is real fond of him when he's away; but frets
when he's around and is vexed with his ways, and not sorry to have him go
again.  He has been gone three weeks this time--a pleasant thing for both
of them, I reckon."

"Tom's rather harum-scarum, but there ain't anything bad in him, I
guess."

"Oh, no, he's just young, that's all.  Still, twenty-three is old, in one
way.  A young man ought to be earning his living by that time.  If Tom
were doing that, or was even trying to do it, the judge would be a heap
better satisfied with him.  Tom's always going to begin, but somehow he
can't seem to find just the opening he likes."

"Well, now, it's partly the judge's own fault.  Promising the boy his
property wasn't the way to set him to earning a fortune of his own.  But
what do you think is Roweny beginning to lean any toward him, or ain't
she?"

Aunt Patsy had a secret in her bosom; she wanted to keep it there, but
nature was too strong for her.  She drew Aunt Betsy aside, and said in
her most confidential and mysterious manner:

"Don't you breathe a syllable to a soul--I'm going to tell you something.
In my opinion Tom Driscoll's chances were considerable better yesterday
than they are to-day."

"Patsy Cooper, what do you mean?"

"It's so, as sure as you're born.  I wish you could 'a' been at breakfast
and seen for yourself."

"You don't mean it!"

"Well, if I'm any judge, there's a leaning--there's a leaning, sure."

"My land!  Which one of 'em is it?"

"I can't say for certain, but I think it's the youngest one--Anjy."

Then there were hand-shakings, and congratulations, and hopes, and so on,
and the old ladies parted, perfectly happy--the one in knowing something
which the rest of the town didn't, and the other in having been the sole
person able to furnish that knowledge.

The visitor who had called to see the twins was the Rev. Mr. Hotchkiss,
pastor of the Baptist church.  At the reception Angelo had told him he
had lately experienced a change in his religious views, and was now
desirous of becoming a Baptist, and would immediately join Mr.
Hotchkiss's church.  There was no time to say more, and the brief talk
ended at that point.  The minister was much gratified, and had dropped in
for a moment now, to invite the twins to attend his Bible class at eight
that evening.  Angelo accepted, and was expecting Luigi to decline, but
he did not, because he knew that the Bible class and the Freethinkers met
in the same room, and he wanted to treat his brother to the embarrassment
of being caught in free-thinking company.




CHAPTER V

GUILT AND INNOCENCE FINELY BLENT

[A long and vigorous quarrel follows, between the twins.  And there is
plenty to quarrel about, for Angelo was always seeking truth, and this
obliged him to change and improve his religion with frequency, which
wearied Luigi, and annoyed him too; for he had to be present at each new
enlistment--which placed him in the false position of seeming to indorse
and approve his brother's fickleness; moreover, he had to go to Angelo's
prohibition meetings, and he hated them.  On the other hand, when it was
his week to command the legs he gave Angelo just cause of complaint, for
he took him to circuses and horse-races and fandangoes, exposing him to
all sorts of censure and criticism; and he drank, too; and whatever he
drank went to Angelo's head instead of his own and made him act
disgracefully.  When the evening was come, the two attended the
Free-thinkers' meeting, where Angelo was sad and silent; then came the
Bible class and looked upon him coldly, finding him in such company.
Then they went to Wilson's house and Chapter XI of Pudd'nhead Wilson
follows, which tells of the girl seen in Tom Driscoll's room; and closes
with the kicking of Tom by Luigi at the anti-temperance mass-meeting of
the Sons of Liberty; with the addition of some account of Roxy's
adventures as a chamber-maid on a Mississippi boat.  Her exchange of the
children had been flippantly and farcically described in an earlier
chapter.]

Next morning all the town was a-buzz with great news; Pudd'nhead Wilson
had a law case!  The, public astonishment was so great and the public
curiosity so intense, that when the justice of the peace opened his
court, the place was packed with people and even the windows were full.
Everybody was, flushed and perspiring; the summer heat was almost
unendurable.

Tom Driscoll had brought a charge of assault and battery against the
twins.  Robert Allen was retained by Driscoll, David Wilson by the
defense.  Tom, his native cheerfulness unannihilated by his back-breaking
and bone-bruising passage across the massed heads of the Sons of Liberty
the previous night, laughed his little customary laugh, and said to
Wilson:

"I've kept my promise, you see; I'm throwing my business your way.
Sooner than I was expecting, too."

"It's very good of you--particularly if you mean to keep it up."

"Well, I can't tell about that yet.  But we'll see.  If I find you
deserve it I'll take you under my protection and make your fame and
fortune for you."

"I'll try to deserve it, Tom."

A jury was sworn in; then Mr.  Allen said:

"We will detain your honor but a moment with this case.  It is not one
where any doubt of the fact of the assault can enter in.  These
gentlemen--the accused--kicked my client at the Market Hall last night;
they kicked him with violence; with extraordinary violence; with even
unprecedented violence, I may say; insomuch that he was lifted entirely
off his feet and discharged into the midst of the audience.  We can prove
this by four hundred witnesses--we shall call but three.  Mr. Harkness
will take the stand."

Mr. Harkness, being sworn, testified that he was chairman upon the
occasion mentioned; that he was close at hand and saw the defendants in
this action kick the plaintiff into the air and saw him descend among the
audience.

"Take the witness," said Allen.

"Mr. Harkness," said Wilson, "you say you saw these gentlemen, my
clients, kick the plaintiff.  Are you sure--and please remember that you
are on oath--are you perfectly sure that you saw both of them kick him,
or only one?  Now be careful."

A bewildered look began to spread itself over the witness's face.  He
hesitated, stammered, but got out nothing.  His eyes wandered to the
twins and fixed themselves there with a vacant gaze.

"Please answer, Mr.  Harkness, you are keeping the court waiting.  It is
a very simple question."

Counsel for the prosecution broke in with impatience:

"Your honor, the question is an irrelevant triviality.  Necessarily, they
both kicked him, for they have but the one pair of legs, and both are
responsible for them."

Wilson said, sarcastically:

"Will your honor permit this new witness to be sworn?  He seems to
possess knowledge which can be of the utmost value just at this moment
--knowledge which would at once dispose of what every one must see is a
very difficult question in this case.  Brother Allen, will you take the
stand?"

"Go on with your case!" said Allen, petulantly.  The audience laughed,
and got a warning from the court.

"Now, Mr. Harkness," said Wilson, insinuatingly, "we shall have to insist
upon an answer to that question."

"I--er--well, of course, I do not absolutely know, but in my opinion--"

"Never mind your opinion, sir--answer the question."

"I--why, I can't answer it."

"That will do, Mr.  Harkness.  Stand down."

The audience tittered, and the discomfited witness retired in a state of
great embarrassment.

Mr. Wakeman took the stand and swore that he saw the twins kick the
plaintiff off the platform.

The defense took the witness.

"Mr. Wakeman, you have sworn that you saw these gentlemen kick the
plaintiff.  Do I understand you to swear that you saw them both do it?"

"Yes, sir,"--with derision.

"How do you know that both did it?"

"Because I saw them do it."

The audience laughed, and got another warning from the court.

"But by what means do you know that both, and not one, did it?"

"Well, in the first place, the insult was given to both of them equally,
for they were called a pair of scissors.  Of course they would both want
to resent it, and so--"

"Wait!  You are theorizing now.  Stick to facts--counsel will attend to
the arguments.  Go on."

"Well, they both went over there--that I saw."

"Very good.  Go on."

"And they both kicked him--I swear to it."

"Mr. Wakeman, was Count Luigi, here, willing to join the Sons of Liberty
last night?"

"Yes, sir, he was.  He did join, too, and drank a glass or two of whisky,
like a man."

"Was his brother willing to join?"

"No, sir, he wasn't.  He is a teetotaler, and was elected through a
mistake."

"Was he given a glass of whisky?"

"Yes, sir, but of course that was another mistake, and not intentional.
He wouldn't drink it.  He set it down."  A slight pause, then he added,
casually and quite simply: "The plaintiff reached for it and hogged it."

There was a fine outburst of laughter, but as the justice was caught out
himself, his reprimand was not very vigorous.

Mr. Allen jumped up and exclaimed: "I protest against these foolish
irrelevancies.  What have they to do with the case?"

Wilson said: "Calm yourself, brother, it was only an experiment.  Now,
Mr. Wakeman, if one of these gentlemen chooses to join an association and
the other doesn't; and if one of them enjoys whisky and the other
doesn't, but sets it aside and leaves it unprotected" (titter from the
audience), "it seems to show that they have independent minds, and
tastes, and preferences, and that one of them is able to approve of a
thing at the very moment that the other is heartily disapproving of it.
Doesn't it seem so to you?"

"Certainly it does.  It's perfectly plain."

"Now, then, it might be--I only say it might be--that one of these
brothers wanted to kick the plaintiff last night, and that the other
didn't want that humiliating punishment inflicted upon him in that public
way and before all those people.  Isn't that possible?"

"Of course it is.  It's more than possible.  I don't believe the blond
one would kick anybody.  It was the other one that--"

"Silence!" shouted the plaintiff's counsel, and went on with an angry
sentence which was lost in the wave of laughter that swept the house.

"That will do, Mr.  Wakeman," said Wilson, "you may stand down."

The third witness was called.  He had seen the twins kick the plaintiff.
Mr. Wilson took the witness.

"Mr. Rogers, you say you saw these accused gentlemen kick the plaintiff?"

"Yes, sir."

"Both of them?"

"Yes, sir."

"Which of them kicked him first?"

"Why--they--they both kicked him at the same time.

"Are you perfectly sure of that?"

"Yes, sir."

"What makes you sure of it?"

"Why, I stood right behind them, and saw them do it."

"How many kicks were delivered?"

"Only one."

"If two men kick, the result should be two kicks, shouldn't it?"

"Why--why yes, as a rule."

"Then what do you think went with the other kick?"

"I--well--the fact is, I wasn't thinking of two being necessary, this
time."

"What do you think now?"

"Well, I--I'm sure I don't quite know what to think, but I reckon that
one of them did half of the kick and the other one did the other half."

Somebody in the crowd sung out: "It's the first sane thing that any of
them has said."

The audience applauded.  The judge said: "Silence! or I will clear the
court."

Mr. Allen looked pleased, but Wilson did not seem disturbed.  He said:

"Mr. Rogers, you have favored us with what you think and what you reckon,
but as thinking and reckoning are not evidence, I will now give you a
chance to come out with something positive, one way or the other, and
shall require you to produce it.  I will ask the accused to stand up and
repeat the phenomenal kick of last night."  The twins stood up.  "Now,
Mr. Rogers, please stand behind them."

A Voice: "No, stand in front!" (Laughter.  Silenced by the court.)
Another Voice:  "No, give Tommy another highst!"  (Laughter.  Sharply
rebuked by the court.)

"Now, then, Mr. Rogers, two kicks shall be delivered, one after the
other, and I give you my word that at least one of the two shall be
delivered by one of the twins alone, without the slightest assistance
from his brother.  Watch sharply, for you have of to render a decision
without any if's and ands it."  Rogers bent himself behind the twins with
palms just above his knees, in the modern attitude of the catcher at a
baseball match, and riveted eyes on the pair of legs in front of him.

"Are you ready, Mr.  Rogers?"

"Ready sir."

The kick, launched.

"Have you got that one classified, Mr.  Rogers?"

"Let me study a minute, sir."

"Take as much time as you please.  Let me know when you are ready."

For as much as a minute Rogers pondered, with all eyes and a breathless
interest fastened upon him.  Then he gave the word: "Ready, sir."

"Kick!"

The kick that followed was an exact duplicate of the first one.

"Now, then, Mr.  Rogers, one of those kicks was an individual kick, not a
mutual one.  You will now state positively which was the mutual one."

The witness said, with a crestfallen look:

"I've got to give it up.  There ain't any man in the world that could
tell t'other from which, sir."

"Do you still assert that last night's kick was a mutual kick?"

"Indeed, I don't, sir."

"That will do, Mr.  Rogers.  If my brother Allen desires to address the
court, your honor, very well; but as far as I am concerned I am ready to
let the case be at once delivered into the hands of this intelligent jury
without comment."

Mr.  Justice Robinson had been in office only two months, and in that
short time had not had many cases to try, of course.  He had no knowledge
of laws and courts except what he had picked up since he came into
office.  He was a sore trouble to the lawyers, for his rulings were
pretty eccentric sometimes, and he stood by them with Roman simplicity
and fortitude; but the people were well satisfied with him, for they saw
that his intentions were always right, that he was entirely impartial,
and that he usually made up in good sense what he lacked in technique,
so to speak.  He now perceived that there was likely to be a miscarriage
of justice here, and he rose to the occasion.

"Wait a moment, gentlemen," he said, "it is plain that an assault has
been committed it is plain to anybody; but the way things are going, the
guilty will certainly escape conviction.  I can not allow this.  Now---"

"But, your honor!" said Wilson, interrupting him, earnestly but
respectfully, "you are deciding the case yourself, whereas the jury--"

"Never mind the jury, Mr. Wilson; the jury will have a chance when there
is a reasonable doubt for them to take hold of--which there isn't,
so far.  There is no doubt whatever that an assault has been committed.
The attempt to show that both of the accused committed it has failed.
Are they both to escape justice on that account?  Not in this court,
if I can prevent it.  It appears to have been a mistake to bring the
charge against them as a corporation; each should have been charged in
his capacity as an individual, and--"

"But, your honor!" said Wilson, "in fairness to my clients I must insist
that inasmuch as the prosecution 'd not separate the--"

"No wrong will be done your clients, sir--they will be protected;
also the public and the offended laws.  Mr. Allen, you will amend your
pleadings, and put one of the accused on trial at a time."

Wilson broke in: "But, your honor! this is wholly unprecedented!
To imperil an accused person by arbitrarily altering and widening the
charge against him in order to compass his conviction when the charge as
originally brought promises to fail to convict, is a thing unheard of
before."

"Unheard of where?"

"In the courts of this or any other state."

The judge said with dignity: "I am not acquainted with the customs of
other courts, and am not concerned to know what they are.  I am
responsible for this court, and I cannot conscientiously allow my
judgment to be warped and my judicial liberty hampered by trying to
conform to the caprices of other courts, be they--"

"But, your honor, the oldest and highest courts in Europe--"

"This court is not run on the European plan, Mr. Wilson; it is not run on
any plan but its own.  It has a plan of its own; and that plan is,
to find justice for both State and accused, no matter what happens to be
practice and custom in Europe or anywhere else."  (Great applause.)
"Silence!  It has not been the custom of this court to imitate other
courts; it has not been the custom of this court to take shelter behind
the decisions of other courts, and we will not begin now.  We will do the
best we can by the light that God has given us, and while this 'court
continues to have His approval, it will remain indifferent to what other
organizations may think of it."  (Applause.) "Gentlemen, I must have
order!--quiet yourselves!  Mr. Allen, you will now proceed against the
prisoners one at a time.  Go on with the case."

Allen was not at his ease.  However, after whispering a moment with his
client and with one or two other people, he rose and said:

"Your honor, I find it to be reported and believed that the accused are
able to act independently in many ways, but that this independence does
not extend to their legs, authority over their legs being vested
exclusively in the one brother during a specific term of days, and then
passing to the other brother for a like term, and so on, by regular
alternation.  I could call witnesses who would prove that the accused had
revealed to them the existence of this extraordinary fact, and had also
made known which of them was in possession of the legs yesterday--and
this would, of course, indicate where the guilt of the assault belongs
--but as this would be mere hearsay evidence, these revelations not
having been made under oath"

"Never mind about that, Mr. Allen.  It may not all be hearsay.  We shall
see.  It may at least help to put us on the right track.  Call the
witnesses."

"Then I will call Mr. John Buckstone, who is now present, and I beg that
Mrs. Patsy Cooper may be sent for.  Take the stand, Mr. Buckstone."

Buckstone took the oath, and then testified that on the previous evening
the Count Angelo Capello had protested against going to the hall, and had
called all present to witness that he was going by compulsion and would
not go if he could help himself.  Also, that the Count Luigi had replied
sharply that he would go, just the same, and that he, Count Luigi, would
see to that himself.  Also, that upon Count Angelo's complaining about
being kept on his legs so long, Count Luigi retorted with apparent
surprise, "Your legs!--I like your impudence!"

"Now we are getting at the kernel of the thing," observed the judge, with
grave and earnest satisfaction.  "It looks as if the Count Luigi was in
possession of the battery at the time of the assault."

Nothing further was elicited from Mr. Buckstone on direct examination.
Mr. Wilson took the witness.

"Mr. Buckstone, about what time was it that that conversation took
place?"

"Toward nine yesterday evening, sir."

"Did you then proceed directly to the hall?"

"Yes, sir."

"How long did it take you to go there?"

"Well, we walked; and as it was from the extreme edge of the town, and
there was no hurry, I judge it took us about twenty minutes, maybe a
trifle more."

"About what hour was the kick delivered?"

"About thirteen minutes and a half to ten."

"Admirable!  You are a pattern witness, Mr. Buckstone.  How did you
happen to look at your watch at that particular moment?"

"I always do it when I see an assault.  It's likely I shall be called as
a witness, and it's a good point to have."

"It would be well if others were as thoughtful.  Was anything said,
between the conversation at my house and the assault, upon the detail
which we are now examining into?"

"No, sir."

"If power over the mutual legs was in the possession of one brother at
nine, and passed into the possession of the other one during the next
thirty or forty minutes, do you think you could have detected the
change?"

"By no means!"

"That is all, Mr.  Buckstone."

Mrs. Patsy Cooper was called.  The crowd made way for her, and she came
smiling and bowing through the narrow human lane, with Betsy Hale, as
escort and support, smiling and bowing in her wake, the audience breaking
into welcoming cheers as the old favorites filed along.  The judge did
not check this kindly demonstration of homage and affection, but let it
run its course unrebuked.

The old ladies stopped and shook hands with the twins with effusion, then
gave the judge a friendly nod, and bustled into the seats provided for
them.  They immediately began to deliver a volley of eager questions at
the friends around them: "What is this thing for?"  "What is that thing
for?"  "Who is that young man that's writing at the desk?  Why, I
declare, it's Jack Bunce!  I thought he was sick."  "Which is the jury?
Why, is that the jury?  Billy Price and Job Turner, and Jack Lounsbury,
and--well, I never!"  "Now who would ever 'a' thought--"

But they were gently called to order at this point, and asked not to talk
in court.  Their tongues fell silent, but the radiant interest in their
faces remained, and their gratitude for the blessing of a new sensation
and a novel experience still beamed undimmed from their eyes.  Aunt Patsy
stood up and took the oath, and Mr. Allen explained the point in issue,
and asked her to go on now, in her own way, and throw as much light upon
it as she could.  She toyed with her reticule a moment or two, as if
considering where to begin, then she said:

"Well, the way of it is this.  They are Luigi's legs a week at a time,
and then they are Angelo's, and he can do whatever he wants to with
them."

"You are making a mistake, Aunt Patsy Cooper," said the judge.  "You
shouldn't state that as a fact, because you don't know it to be a fact."

"What's the reason I don't?" said Aunt Patsy, bridling a little.

"What is the reason that you do know it?"

"The best in the world because they told me."

"That isn't a reason."

"Well, for the land's sake!  Betsy Hale, do you hear that?"

"Hear it?  I should think so," said Aunt Betsy, rising and facing the
court.  "Why, Judge, I was there and heard it myself.  Luigi says to
Angelo--no, it was Angelo said it to--"

"Come, come, Mrs.  Hale, pray sit down, and--"

"Certainly, it's all right, I'm going to sit down presently, but not
until I've--"

"But you must sit down!"

"Must!  Well, upon my word if things ain't getting to a pretty pass
when--"

The house broke into laughter, but was promptly brought to order, and
meantime Mr. Allen persuaded the old lady to take her seat.  Aunt Patsy
continued:

"Yes, they told me that, and I know it's true.  They're Luigi's legs this
week, but--"

"Ah, they told you that, did they?" said the Justice, with interest.

"Well, no, I don't know that they told me, but that's neither here nor
there.  I know, without that, that at dinner yesterday, Angelo was as
tired as a dog, and yet Luigi wouldn't lend him the legs to go up-stairs
and take a nap with."

"Did he ask for them?"

"Let me see--it seems to me, somehow, that--that--Aunt Betsy, do you
remember whether he--"

"Never mind about what Aunt Betsy remembers--she is not a witness; we
only want to know what you remember yourself," said the judge.

"Well, it does seem to, me that you are most cantankerously particular
about a little thing, Sim Robinson.  Why, when I can't remember a thing
myself, I always--"


"Ah, please go on!"

"Now how can she when you keep fussing at her all the time?" said Aunt
Betsy.  "Why, with a person pecking at me that way, I should get that
fuzzled and fuddled that--"

She was on her feet again, but Allen coaxed her into her seat once more,
while the court squelched the mirth of the house.  Then the judge said:

"Madam, do you know--do you absolutely know, independently of anything
these gentlemen have told you--that the power over their legs passes from
the one to the other regularly every week?"

"Regularly?  Bless your heart, regularly ain't any name for the exactness
of it!  All the big cities in Europe used to set the clocks by it."
(Laughter, suppressed by the court.)

"How do you know?  That is the question.  Please answer it plainly and
squarely."

"Don't you talk to me like that, Sim Robinson--I won't have it.  How do
I know, indeed!  How do you know what you know?  Because somebody told
you.  You didn't invent it out of your own head, did you?  Why, these
twins are the truthfulest people in the world; and I don't think it
becomes you to sit up there and throw slurs at them when they haven't
been doing anything to you.  And they are orphans besides--both of them.
All--"

But Aunt Betsy was up again now, and both old ladies were talking at once
and with all their might; but as the house was weltering in a storm of
laughter, and the judge was hammering his desk with an iron paper-weight,
one could only see them talk, not hear them.  At last, when quiet was
restored, the court said:

"Let the ladies retire."

"But, your honor, I have the right, in the interest of my clients,--to
cross-exam--"

"You'll not need to exercise it, Mr. Wilson--the evidence is thrown out."

"Thrown out!" said Aunt Patsy, ruffled; "and what's it thrown out for,
I'd like to know."

"And so would I, Patsy Cooper.  It seems to me that if we can save these
poor persecuted strangers, it is our bounden duty to stand up here and
talk for them till--"

"There, there, there, do sit down!"

It cost some trouble and a good deal of coaxing, but they were got into
their seats at last.  The trial was soon ended now.  The twins themselves
became witnesses in their own defense.  They established the fact, upon
oath, that the leg-power passed from one to the other every Saturday
night at twelve o'clock sharp.  But or cross-examination their counsel
would not allow them to tell whose week of power the current week was.
The judge insisted upon their answering, and proposed to compel them, but
even the prosecution took fright and came to the rescue then, and helped
stay the sturdy jurist's revolutionary hand.  So the case had to go to
the jury with that important point hanging in the air.  They were out an
hour and brought in this verdict:

"We the jury do find:  1, that an assault was committed, as charged;
2, that it was committed by one of the persons accused, he having been
seen to do it by several credible witnesses; 3, but that his identity is
so merged in his brother's that we have not been able to tell which was
him.  We cannot convict both, for only one is guilty.  We cannot acquit
both, for only one is innocent.  Our verdict is that justice has been
defeated by the dispensation of God, and ask to be discharged from
further duty."

This was read aloud in court and brought out a burst of hearty applause.
The old ladies made a spring at the twins, to shake and congratulate, but
were gently disengaged by Mr. Wilson and softly crowded back into their
places.

The judge rose in his little tribune, laid aside his silver-bowed
spectacles, roached his gray hair up with his fingers, and said, with
dignity and solemnity, and even with a certain pathos:

"In all my experience on the bench, I have not seen justice bow her
head in shame in this court until this day.  You little realize what
far-reaching harm has just been wrought here under the fickle forms of law.
Imitation is the bane of courts--I thank God that this one is free from
the contamination of that vice--and in no long time you will see the
fatal work of this hour seized upon by profligate so-called guardians of
justice in all the wide circumstance of this planet and perpetuated in
their pernicious decisions.  I wash my hands of this iniquity.  I would
have compelled these culprits to expose their guilt, but support failed
me where I had most right to expect aid and encouragement.  And I was
confronted by a law made in the interest of crime, which protects the
criminal from testifying against himself.  Yet I had precedents of my own
whereby I had set aside that law on two different occasions and thus
succeeded in convicting criminals to whose crimes there were no witnesses
but themselves.  What have you accomplished this day?  Do you realize it?
You have set adrift, unadmonished, in this community, two men endowed
with an awful and mysterious gift, a hidden and grisly power for evil
--a power by which each in his turn may commit crime after crime of the
most heinous character, and no man be able to tell which is the guilty or
which the innocent party in any case of them all.  Look to your homes
look to your property look to your lives for you have need!

"Prisoners at the bar, stand up.  Through suppression of evidence, a jury
of your--our--countrymen have been obliged to deliver a verdict
concerning your case which stinks to heaven with the rankness of its
injustice.  By its terms you, the guilty one, go free with the innocent.
Depart in peace, and come no more!  The costs devolve upon the outraged
plaintiff--another iniquity.  The court stands dissolved."

Almost everybody crowded forward to overwhelm the twins and their counsel
with congratulations; but presently the two old aunties dug the
duplicates out and bore them away in triumph through the hurrahing crowd,
while lots of new friends carried Pudd'nhead Wilson off tavernward to
feast him and "wet down" his great and victorious entry into the legal
arena.  To Wilson, so long familiar with neglect and depreciation, this
strange new incense of popularity and admiration was as a fragrance blown
from the fields of paradise.  A happy man was Wilson.




CHAPTER VI

THE AMAZING DUEL

     A deputation came in the evening and conferred upon Wilson the
     welcome honor of a nomination for mayor; for the village has just
     been converted into a city by charter.  Tom skulks out of
     challenging the twins.  Judge Driscoll thereupon challenges Angelo
     (accused by Tom of doing the kicking); he declines, but Luigi
     accepts in his place against Angelo's timid protest.

It was late Saturday night nearing eleven.

The judge and his second found the rest of the war party at the further
end of the vacant ground, near the haunted house.  Pudd'nhead Wilson
advanced to meet them, and said anxiously:

"I must say a word in behalf of my principal's proxy, Count Luigi, to
whom you have kindly granted the privilege of fighting my principal's
battle for him.  It is growing late, and Count Luigi is in great trouble
lest midnight shall strike before the finish."

"It is another testimony," said Howard, approvingly.  "That young man is
fine all through.  He wishes to save his brother the sorrow of fighting
on the Sabbath, and he is right; it is the right and manly feeling and
does him credit.  We will make all possible haste."

Wilson said: "There is also another reason--a consideration, in fact,
which deeply concerns Count Luigi himself.  These twins have command of
their mutual legs turn about.  Count Luigi is in command now; but at
midnight, possession will pass to my principal, Count Angelo, and--well,
you can foresee what will happen.  He will march straight off the field,
and carry Luigi with him."

"Why! sure enough!" cried the judge, "we have heard something about that
extraordinary law of their being, already--nothing very definite, it is
true, as regards dates and durations of power, but I see it is definite
enough as regards to-night.  Of course we must give Luigi every chance.
Omit all the ceremonial possible, gentlemen, and place us in position."

The seconds at once tossed up a coin; Howard won the choice.  He placed
the judge sixty feet from the haunted house and facing it; Wilson placed
the twins within fifteen feet of the house and facing the judge
--necessarily.  The pistol-case was opened and the long slim tubes taken
out; when the moonlight glinted from them a shiver went through Angelo.
The doctor was a fool, but a thoroughly well-meaning one, with a kind
heart and a sincere disposition to oblige, but along with it an absence
of tact which often hurt its effectiveness.  He brought his box of lint
and bandages, and asked Angelo to feel and see how soft and comfortable
they were.  Angelo's head fell over against Luigi's in a faint, and
precious time was lost in bringing him to; which provoked Luigi into
expressing his mind to the doctor with a good deal of vigor and
frankness.  After Angelo came to he was still so weak that Luigi was
obliged to drink a stiff horn of brandy to brace him up.

The seconds now stepped at once to their posts, halfway between the
combatants, one of them on each side of the line of fire.  Wilson was to
count, very deliberately, "One-two-three-fire!--stop!" and the duelists
could bang away at any time they chose during that recitation, but not
after the last word.  Angelo grew very nervous when he saw Wilson's hand
rising slowly into the air as a sign to make ready, and he leaned his
head against Luigi's and said:

"Oh, please take me away from here, I can't stay, I know I can't!"

"What in the world are you doing?  Straighten up!  What's the matter with
you?--you're in no danger--nobody's going to shoot at you.  Straighten
up, I tell you!"

Angelo obeyed, just in time to hear:

"One--!"

"Bang!"  Just one report, and a little tuft of white hair floated slowly
to the judge's feet in the moonlight.  The judge did not swerve; he still
stood erect and motionless, like a statue, with his pistol-arm hanging
straight down at his side.  He was reserving his fire.

"Two--!"

"Three--"!

"Fire--!"

Up came the pistol-arm instantly-Angelo dodged with the report.  He said
"Ouch!" and fainted again.

The doctor examined and bandaged the wound.

It was of no consequence, he said--bullet through fleshy part of arm--no
bones broken the gentleman was still able to fight let the duel proceed.

Next time Angelo jumped just as Luigi fired, which disordered his aim and
caused him to cut a chip off of Howard's ear.  The judge took his time
again, and when he fired Angelo jumped and got a knuckle skinned.  The
doctor inspected and dressed the wounds.  Angelo now spoke out and said
he was content with the satisfaction he had got, and if the judge--but
Luigi shut him roughly up, and asked him not to make an ass of himself;
adding:

"And I want you to stop dodging.  You take a great deal too prominent a
part in this thing for a person who has got nothing to do with it.  You
should remember that you are here only by courtesy, and are without
official recognition; officially you are not here at all; officially you
do not even exist.  To all intents and purposes you are absent from this
place, and you ought for your own modesty's sake to reflect that it
cannot become a person who is not present here to be taking this sort of
public and indecent prominence in a matter in which he is not in the
slightest degree concerned.  Now, don't dodge again; the bullets are not
for you, they are for me; if I want them dodged I will attend to it
myself.  I never saw a person act so."

Angelo saw the reasonableness of what his brother had said, and he did
try to reform, but it was of no use; both pistols went off at the same
instant, and he jumped once more; he got a sharp scrape along his cheek
from the judge's bullet, and so deflected Luigi's aim that his ball went
wide and chipped flake of skin from Pudd'nhead Wilson's chin.  The doctor
attended to the wounded.

By the terms, the duel was over.  But Luigi was entirely out of patience,
and begged for one exchange of shots, insisting that he had had no fair
chance, on account of his brother's indelicate behavior.  Howard was
opposed to granting so unusual a privilege, but the judge took Luigi's
part, and added that indeed he himself might fairly be considered
entitled to another trial, because although the proxy on the other side
was in no way to blame for his (the judge's) humiliatingly resultless
work, the gentleman with whom he was fighting this duel was to blame for
it, since if he had played no advantages and had held his head still, his
proxy would have been disposed of early.  He added:

"Count Luigi's request for another exchange is another proof that he is a
brave and chivalrous gentleman, and I beg that the courtesy he asks may
be accorded him."

"I thank you most sincerely for this generosity, Judge Driscoll," said
Luigi, with a polite bow, and moving to his place.  Then he added to
Angelo, "Now hold your grip, hold your grip, I tell you, and I'll land
him sure!"

The men stood erect, their pistol-arms at their sides, the two seconds
stood at their official posts, the doctor stood five paces in Wilson's
rear with his instruments and bandages in his hands.  The deep stillness,
the peaceful moonlight, the motionless figures, made an impressive
picture and the impending fatal possibilities augmented this
impressiveness solemnity.  Wilson's hand began to rise--slowly--still
higher--still higher--in another moment:

"Boom!" the first stroke of midnight swung up  out of the distance;
Angelo was off like a deer!

"Oh, you unspeakable traitor!" wailed his brother, as they went soaring
over the fence.

The others stood astonished and gazing; and so stood, watching that
strange spectacle until distance dissolved it and swept it from their
view.  Then they rubbed their eyes like people waking out of a dream,

"Well, I've never seen anything like that before!" said the judge.
"Wilson, I am going to confess now, that I wasn't quite able to believe
in that leg business, and had a suspicion that it was a put-up
convenience between those twins; and when Count Angelo fainted I thought
I saw the whole scheme--thought it was pretext No. 2, and would be
followed by others till twelve o'clock should arrive, and Luigi would get
off with all the credit of seeming to want to fight and yet not have to
fight, after all.  But I was mistaken.  His pluck proved it.  He's a
brave fellow and did want to fight."

"There isn't any doubt about that," said Howard, and added, in a grieved
tone, "but what an unworthy sort of Christian that Angelo is--I hope and
believe there are not many like him.  It is not right to engage in a duel
on the Sabbath--I could not approve of that myself; but to finish one
that has been begun--that is a duty, let the day be what it may."

They strolled along, still wondering, still talking.

"It is a curious circumstance," remarked the surgeon, halting Wilson a
moment to paste so more court-plaster on his chin, which had gone to
leaking blood again, "that in this duel neither of the parties who
handled the pistols lost blood while nearly all the persons present in
the mere capacity of guests got hit.  I have not heard of such a thing
before.  Don't you think it unusual?"

"Yes," said the Judge, "it has struck me as peculiar.  Peculiar and
unfortunate.  I was annoyed at it, all the time.  In the case of Angelo
it made no great difference, because he was in a measure concerned,
though not officially; but it troubled me to see the seconds compromised,
and yet I knew no way to mend the matter.

"There was no way to mend it," said Howard, whose ear was being
readjusted now by the doctor; "the code fixes our place, and it would not
have been lawful to change it.  If we could have stood at your side, or
behind you, or in front of you, it--but it would not have been legitimate
and the other parties would have had a just right to complain of our
trying to protect ourselves from danger; infractions of the code are
certainly not permissible in any case whatever."

Wilson offered no remarks.  It seemed to him that there was very little
place here for so much solemnity, but he judged that if a duel where
nobody was in danger or got crippled but the seconds and the outsiders
had nothing ridiculous about it for these gentlemen, his pointing out
that feature would probably not help them to see it.

He invited them in to take a nightcap, and Howard and the judge accepted,
but the doctor said he would have to go and see how Angelo's principal
wound was getting on.

     [It was now Sunday, and in the afternoon Angelo was to be received
     into the Baptist communion by immersion--a doubtful prospect, the
     doctor feared.]




CHAPTER VII

LUIGI DEFIES GALEN

When the doctor arrived at Aunt Patsy Cooper's house, he found the lights
going and everybody up and dressed and in a great state of solicitude and
excitement.  The twins were stretched on a sofa in the sitting-room, Aunt
Patsy was fussing at Angelo's arm, Nancy was flying around under her
commands, the two young boys were trying to keep out of the way and
always getting in it, in order to see and wonder, Rowena stood apart,
helpless with apprehension and emotion, and Luigi was growling in
unappeasable fury over Angelo's shameful flight.

As has been reported before, the doctor was a fool--a kind-hearted and
well-meaning one, but with no tact; and as he was by long odds the most
learned physician in the town, and was quite well aware of it, and could
talk his learning with ease and precision, and liked to show off when he
had an audience, he was sometimes tempted into revealing more of a case
than was good for the patient.

He examined Angelo's wound, and was really minded to say nothing for
once; but Aunt Patsy was so anxious and so pressing that he allowed his
caution to be overcome, and proceeded to empty himself as follows, with
scientific relish:

"Without going too much into detail, madam--for you would probably not
understand it, anyway--I concede that great care is going to be necessary
here; otherwise exudation of the esophagus is nearly sure to ensue, and
this will be followed by ossification and extradition of the maxillaris
superioris, which must decompose the granular surfaces of the great
infusorial ganglionic system, thus obstructing the action of the
posterior varioloid arteries, and precipitating compound strangulated
sorosis of the valvular tissues, and ending unavoidably in the dispersion
and combustion of the marsupial fluxes and the consequent embrocation of
the bicuspid populo redax referendum rotulorum."

A miserable silence followed.  Aunt Patsy's heart sank, the pallor of
despair invaded her face, she was not able to speak; poor Rowena wrung
her hands in privacy and silence, and said to herself in the bitterness
of her young grief, "There is no hope--it is plain there is no hope"; the
good-hearted negro wench, Nancy, paled to chocolate, then to orange, then
to amber, and thought to herself with yearning sympathy and sorrow, "Po'
thing, he ain' gwyne to las' throo de half o' dat"; small Henry choked
up, and turned his head away to hide his rising tears, and his brother
Joe said to himself, with a sense of loss, "The baptizing's busted,
that's sure."  Luigi was the only person who had any heart to speak.  He
said, a little bit sharply, to the doctor:

"Well, well, there's nothing to be gained by wasting precious time; give
him a barrel of pills--I'll take them for him."

"You?" asked the doctor.

"Yes.  Did you suppose he was going to take them himself?"

"Why, of course."

"Well, it's a mistake.  He never took a dose of medicine in his life.  He
can't."

"Well, upon my word, it's the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of!"

"Oh," said Aunt Patsy, as pleased as a mother whose child is being
admired and wondered at; "you'll find that there's more about them that's
wonderful than their just being made in the image of God like the rest of
His creatures, now you can depend on that, I tell you," and she wagged
her complacent head like one who could reveal marvelous things if she
chose.

The boy Joe began:

"Why, ma, they ain't made in the im--"

"You shut up, and wait till you're asked, Joe.  I'll let you know when I
want help.  Are you looking for something, doctor?"

The doctor asked for a few sheets of paper and a pen, and said he would
write a prescription; which he did.  It was one of Galen's; in fact, it
was Galen's favorite, and had been slaying people for sixteen thousand
years.  Galen used it for everything, applied it to everything, said it
would remove everything, from warts all the way through to lungs and it
generally did.  Galen was still the only medical authority recognized in
Missouri; his practice was the only practice known to the Missouri
doctors, and his prescriptions were the only ammunition they carried when
they went out for game.

By and by Dr. Claypool laid down his pen and read the result of his
labors aloud, carefully and deliberately, for this battery must be
constructed on the premises by the family, and mistakes could occur;
for he wrote a doctor's hand the hand which from the beginning of time
has been so disastrous to the apothecary and so profitable to the
undertaker:

"Take of afarabocca, henbane, corpobalsamum, each two drams and a half:
of cloves, opium, myrrh, cyperus, each two drams; of opobalsamum, Indian
leaf, cinnamon, zedoary, ginger, coftus, coral, cassia, euphorbium, gum
tragacanth, frankincense, styrax calamita, Celtic, nard, spignel,
hartwort, mustard, saxifrage, dill, anise, each one dram; of xylaloes,
rheum ponticum, alipta, moschata, castor, spikenard, galangals, opoponax,
anacardium, mastich, brimstone, peony, eringo, pulp of dates, red and
white hermodactyls, roses, thyme, acorns, pennyroyal, gentian, the bark
of the root of mandrake, germander, valerian, bishop's-weed, bayberries,
long and white pepper, xylobalsamum, carnabadium, macedonian, parsley
seeds, lovage, the seeds of rue, and sinon, of each a dram and a half; of
pure gold, pure silver, pearls not perforated, the blatta byzantina, the
bone of the stag's heart, of each the quantity of fourteen grains of
wheat; of sapphire, emerald and jasper stones, each one dram; of
hazel-nuts, two drams; of pellitory of Spain, shavings of ivory, calamus
odoratus, each the quantity of twenty-nine grains of wheat; of honey or
sugar a sufficient quantity.  Boil down and skim off."

"There," he said, "that will fix the patient; give his brother a
dipperful every three-quarters of an hour--"

"--while he survives," muttered Luigi--

"--and see that the room is kept wholesomely hot, and the doors and
windows closed tight.  Keep Count Angelo nicely covered up with six or
seven blankets, and when he is thirsty--which will be frequently--moisten
a 'rag in the vapor of the tea kettle and let his brother suck it.  When
he is hungry--which will also be frequently he must not be humored
oftener than every seven or eight hours; then toast part of a cracker
until it begins to brown, and give it to his brother."

"That is all very well, as far as Angelo is concerned," said Luigi, "but
what am I to eat?"

"I do not see that there is anything the matter with you," the doctor
answered, "you may, of course, eat what you please."

"And also drink what I please, I suppose?"

"Oh, certainly--at present.  When the violent and continuous perspiring
has reduced your strength, I shall have to reduce your diet, of course,
and also bleed you, but there is no occasion for that yet awhile."  He
turned to Aunt Patsy and said: "He must be put to bed, and sat up with,
and tended with the greatest care, and not allowed to stir for several
days and nights."

"For one, I'm sacredly thankful for that," said Luigi, "it postpones the
funeral--I'm not to be drowned to-day, anyhow."

Angelo said quietly to the doctor:

"I will cheerfully submit to all your requirements, sir, up to two
o'clock this afternoon, and will resume them after three, but cannot be
confined to the house during that intermediate hour."

"Why, may I ask?"

"Because I have entered the Baptist communion, and by appointment am to
be baptised in the river at that hour."

"Oh, insanity!--it cannot be allowed!"

Angelo answered with placid firmness:

"Nothing shall prevent it, if I am alive."

"Why, consider, my dear sir, in your condition it might prove fatal."

A tender and ecstatic smile beamed from Angelo's eyes, and he broke forth
in a tone of joyous fervency:

"Ah, how blessed it would be to die for such a cause--it would be
martyrdom!"

"But your brother--consider your brother; you would be risking his life,
too."

"He risked mine an hour ago," responded Angelo, gloomily; "did he
consider me?"  A thought swept through his mind that made him shudder.
"If I had not run, I might have been killed in a duel on the Sabbath day,
and my soul would have been lost--lost."

"Oh, don't fret, it wasn't in any danger," said Luigi, irritably; "they
wouldn't waste it for a little thing like that; there's a glass case all
ready for it in the heavenly museum, and a pin to stick it up with."

Aunt Patsy was shocked, and said:

"Looy, Looy!--don't talk so, dear!"

Rowena's soft heart was pierced by Luigi's unfeeling words, and she
murmured to herself, "Oh, if I but had the dear privilege of protecting
and defending him with my weak voice!--but alas! this sweet boon is
denied me by the cruel conventions of social intercourse."

"Get their bed ready," said Aunt Patsy to Nancy, "and shut up the windows
and doors, and light their candles, and see that you drive all the
mosquitoes out of their bar, and make up a good fire in their stove, and
carry up some bags of hot ashes to lay to his feet--"

"--and a shovel of fire for his head, and a mustard plaster for his neck,
and some gum shoes for his ears," Luigi interrupted, with temper; and
added, to himself, "Damnation, I'm going to be roasted alive, I just know
it!"

"Why, Looy!  Do be quiet; I never saw such a fractious thing.  A body
would think you didn't care for your brother."

"I don't--to that extent, Aunt Patsy.  I was glad the drowning was
postponed a minute ago, but I'm not now.  No, that is all gone by; I want
to be drowned."

"You'll bring a judgment on yourself just as sure as you live, if you go
on like that.  Why, I never heard the beat of it.  Now, there--there!
you've said enough.  Not another word out of you--I won't have it!"

"But, Aunt Patsy--"

"Luigi!  Didn't you hear what I told you?"

"But, Aunt Patsy, I--why, I'm not going to set my heart and lungs afloat
in that pail of sewage which this criminal here has been prescri--"

"Yes, you are, too.  You are going to be good, and do everything I tell
you, like a dear," and she tapped his cheek affectionately with her
finger.  "Rowena, take the prescription and go in the kitchen and hunt up
the things and lay them out for me.  I'll sit up with my patient the rest
of the night, doctor; I can't trust Nancy, she couldn't make Luigi take
the medicine.  Of course, you'll drop in again during the day.  Have you
got any more directions?"

"No, I believe not, Aunt Patsy.  If I don't get in earlier, I'll be along
by early candle-light, anyway.  Meantime, don't allow him to get out of
his bed."

Angelo said, with calm determination:

"I shall be baptized at two o'clock.  Nothing but death shall prevent
me."

The doctor said nothing aloud, but to himself he said:

"Why, this chap's got a manly side, after all!  Physically he's a coward,
but morally he's a lion.  I'll go and tell the others about this; it will
raise him a good deal in their estimation--and the public will follow
their lead, of course."

Privately, Aunt Patsy applauded too, and was proud of Angelo's courage in
the moral field as she was of Luigi's in the field of honor.

The boy Henry was troubled, but the boy Joe said, inaudibly, and
gratefully, "We're all honky, after all; and no postponement on account
of the weather."




CHAPTER VIII

BAPTISM OF THE BETTER HALF

By nine o'clock the town was humming with the news of the midnight duel,
and there were but two opinions about it: one, that Luigi's pluck in the
field was most praiseworthy and Angela's flight most scandalous; the
other, that Angelo's courage in flying the field for conscience' sake was
as fine and creditable as was Luigi's in holding the field in the face of
the bullets.  The one opinion was held by half of the town, the other one
was maintained by the other half.  The division was clean and exact, and
it made two parties, an Angela party and a Luigi party.  The twins had
suddenly become popular idols along with Pudd'nhead Wilson, and haloed
with a glory as intense as his.  The children talked the duel all the way
to Sunday-school, their elders talked it all the way to church, the choir
discussed it behind their red curtain, it usurped the place of pious
thought in the "nigger gallery."

By noon the doctor had added the news, and spread it, that Count Angelo,
in spite of his wound and all warnings and supplications, was resolute in
his determination to be baptized at the hour appointed.  This swept the
town like wildfire, and mightily reinforced the enthusiasm of the Angelo
faction, who said, "If any doubted that it was moral courage that took
him from the field, what have they to say now!"

Still the excitement grew.  All the morning it was traveling countryward,
toward all points of the compass; so, whereas before only the farmers and
their wives were intending to come and witness the remarkable baptism,
a general holiday was now proclaimed and the children and negroes
admitted to the privileges of the occasion.  All the farms for ten miles
around were vacated, all the converging roads emptied long processions of
wagons, horses, and yeomanry into the town.  The pack and cram of people
vastly exceeded any that had ever been seen in that sleepy region before.
The only thing that had ever even approached it, was the time long gone
by, but never forgotten, nor even referred to without wonder and pride,
when two circuses and a Fourth of July fell together.  But the glory of
that occasion was extinguished now for good.  It was but a freshet to
this deluge.

The great invasion massed itself on the river-bank and waited hungrily
for the immense event.  Waited, and wondered if it would really happen,
or if the twin who was not a "professor" would stand out and prevent it.

But they were not to be disappointed.  Angela was as good as his word.
He came attended by an escort of honor composed of several hundred of the
best citizens, all of the Angelo party; and when the immersion was
finished they escorted him back home and would even have carried him on
their shoulders, but that people might think they were carrying Luigi.

Far into the night the citizens continued to discuss and wonder over the
strangely mated pair of incidents that had distinguished and exalted the
past twenty-four hours above any other twenty-four in the history of
their town for picturesqueness and splendid interest; and long before the
lights were out and burghers asleep it had been decided on all hands that
in capturing these twins Dawson's Landing had drawn a prize in the great
lottery of municipal fortune.

At midnight Angelo was sleeping peacefully.  His immersion had not harmed
him, it had merely made him wholesomely drowsy, and he had been dead
asleep many hours now.  It had made Luigi drowsy, too, but he had got
only brief naps, on account of his having to take the medicine every
three-quarters of an hour-and Aunt Betsy Hale was there to see that he
did it.  When he complained and resisted, she was quietly firm with him,
and said in a low voice:

"No-no, that won't do; you mustn't talk, and you mustn't retch and gag
that way, either--you'll wake up your poor brother."

"Well, what of it, Aunt Betsy, he--"

"'Sh-h!  Don't make a noise, dear.  You mustn't: forget that your poor
brother is sick and--"

"Sick, is he?  Well, I wish I--"

"'Sh-h-h!  Will you be quiet, Luigi!  Here, now, take the rest of it
--don't keep me holding the dipper all night.  I declare if you haven't
left a good fourth of it in the bottom!  Come-that's a good--

"Aunt Betsy, don't make me!  I feel like I've swallowed a cemetery; I do,
indeed.  Do let me rest a little--just a little; I can't take any more of
the devilish stuff now."

"Luigi!  Using such language here, and him just baptized!  Do you want
the roof to fall on you?"

"I wish to goodness it would!"

"Why, you dreadful thing!  I've a good notion to--let that blanket alone;
do you want your, brother to catch his death?"

"Aunt Betsy, I've got to have it off, I'm being roasted alive; nobody
could stand it--you couldn't yourself."

"Now, then, you're sneezing again--I just expected it."

"Because I've caught a cold in my head.  I always do, when I go in the
water with my clothes on.  And it takes me weeks to get over it, too.
I think it was a shame to serve me so."

"Luigi, you are unreasonable; you know very well they couldn't baptize
him dry.  I should think you would be willing to undergo a little
inconvenience for your brother's sake."

"Inconvenience!  Now how you talk, Aunt Betsy.  I came as near as
anything to getting drowned you saw that yourself; and do you call this
inconvenience?--the room shut up as tight as a drum, and so hot the
mosquitoes are trying to get out; and a cold in the head, and dying for
sleep and no chance to get any--on account of this infamous medicine that
that assassin prescri--"

"There, you're sneezing again.  I'm going down and mix some more of this
truck for you, dear."




CHAPTER IX

THE DRINKLESS DRUNK

During Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the twins grew steadily worse; but
then the doctor was summoned South to attend his mother's funeral, and
they got well in forty-eight hours.  They appeared on the street on
Friday, and were welcomed with enthusiasm by the new-born parties, the
Luigi and Angelo factions.  The Luigi faction carried its strength into
the Democratic party, the Angelo faction entered into a combination with
the Whigs.  The Democrats nominated Luigi for alderman under the new city
government, and the Whigs put up Angelo against him.  The Democrats
nominated Pudd'nhead Wilson for mayor, and he was left alone in this
glory, for the Whigs had no man who was willing to enter the lists
against such a formidable opponent.  No politician had scored such a
compliment as this before in the history of the Mississippi Valley.

The political campaign in Dawson's Landing opened in a pretty warm
fashion, and waned hotter every week.  Luigi's whole heart was in it,
and even Angelo developed a surprising amount of interest-which was
natural, because he was not merely representing Whigism, a matter of no
consequence to him; but he was representing something immensely finer and
greater--to wit, Reform.  In him was centered the hopes of the whole
reform element of the town; he was the chosen and admired champion of
every clique that had a pet reform of any sort or kind at heart.  He was
president of the great Teetotalers' Union, its chiefest prophet and
mouthpiece.

But as the canvass went on, troubles began to spring up all around
--troubles for the twins, and through them for all the parties and
segments and factions of parties.  Whenever Luigi had possession of the
legs, he carried Angelo to balls, rum shops, Sons of Liberty parades,
horse-races, campaign riots, and everywhere else that could damage him
with his party and the church; and when it was Angelo's week he carried
Luigi diligently to all manner of moral and religious gatherings, doing
his best to regain the ground he had lost before.  As a result of these
double performances, there was a storm blowing all the time, an
ever-rising storm, too--a storm of frantic criticism of the twins,
and rage over their extravagant, incomprehensible conduct.

Luigi had the final chance.  The legs were his for the closing week of
the canvass.  He led his brother a fearful dance.

But he saved his best card for the very eve of the election.  There was
to be a grand turnout of the Teetotalers' Union that day, and Angelo was
to march at the head of the procession and deliver a great oration
afterward.  Luigi drank a couple of glasses of whisky--which steadied his
nerves and clarified his mind, but made Angelo drunk.  Everybody who saw
the march, saw that the Champion of the Teetotalers was half seas over,
and noted also that his brother, who made no hypocritical pretensions to
extra temperance virtues, was dignified and sober.  This eloquent fact
could not be unfruitful at the end of a hot political canvass.  At the
mass-meeting Angelo tried to make his great temperance oration, but was
so discommoded--by hiccoughs and thickness of tongue that he had to give
it up; then drowsiness overtook him and his head drooped against Luigi's
and he went to sleep.  Luigi apologized for him, and was going on to
improve his opportunity with an appeal for a moderation of what he called
"the prevailing teetotal madness," but persons in the audience began to
howl and throw things at him, and then the meeting rose in wrath and
chased him home.

This episode was a crusher for Angelo in another way.  It destroyed his
chances with Rowena.  Those chances had been growing, right along, for
two months.  Rowena had partly confessed that she loved him, but wanted
time to consider.  Now the tender dream was ended, and she told him so
the moment he was sober enough to understand.  She said she would never
marry a man who drank.

"But I don't drink," he pleaded.
The Complete Works of Mark Twain - Part 9
