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<div class='tnotes covernote'>
<p class='c000'><b>Transcriber’s Note:</b></p>
<p class='c000'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
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<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>MOMENTS WITH</span></div>
<div class='line'><span class='xxlarge'>MARK TWAIN</span></div>
<div class='line in4'><span class='xxlarge'>❖</span></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='figcenter id001'>
<ANTIMG src='images/i_frontispiece.jpg' alt='Mark Twain' class='ig001' />
<div class='ic001'>
<p>Copyright, 1907, by Underwood & Underwood</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class='titlepage'>
<div>
<h1 class='c002'>Moments With<br/> MARK TWAIN</h1></div>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c003'>
<div><span class='xlarge'><em>Selected by</em> ❦ ❦ ❦</span></div>
<div><span class='xlarge'>ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE</span></div>
</div></div>
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<div><span class='large'>Harper & Brothers Publishers</span></div>
<div>New York and London</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div><span class='sc'>Moments With Mark Twain</span></div>
<div class='c004'>Copyright, 1920, by The Mark Twain Company</div>
<div>Printed in the United States of America</div>
<div>Published March, 1920</div>
</div></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c004' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c005'>CONTENTS</h2></div>
<table class='table0' summary='CONTENTS'>
<tr>
<th class='c006'><span class='small'>CHAP.</span></th>
<th class='c007'> </th>
<th class='c008'><span class='small'>PAGE</span></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>I.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Sketches New and Old</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_1'>1</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>II.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>The Innocents Abroad</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_7'>7</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>III.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Roughing It</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_58'>58</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>IV.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>The Gilded Age</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_101'>101</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>V.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Adventures of Tom Sawyer</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_113'>113</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>VI.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>The Stolen White Elephant</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_129'>129</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>VII.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>A Tramp Abroad</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_131'>131</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>VIII.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Life on the Mississippi</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_155'>155</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>IX.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>The Prince and the Pauper</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_182'>182</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>X.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_199'>199</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XI.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_223'>223</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XII.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_244'>244</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XIII.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_247'>247</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XIV.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>The Private History of a Campaign that Failed</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_254'>254</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XV.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_261'>261</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XVI.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Saint Joan of Arc</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_272'>272</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XVII.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Following the Equator</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_273'>273</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XVIII.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Concerning the Jews</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_283'>283</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XIX.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Christian Science</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_285'>285</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XX.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Italian Without a Master</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_288'>288</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XXI.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>Eve’s Diary</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_290'>290</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XXII.</td>
<td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Miscellaneous</span></td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_291'>291</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XXIII.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> “<span class='sc'>The Death of Jean</span>”</td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_298'>298</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c006'>XXIV.</td>
<td class='c007'><em>From</em> <span class='sc'>One of His Latest Memoranda</span></td>
<td class='c008'><SPAN href='#Page_299'>299</SPAN></td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c005'>FOREWORD</h2></div>
<p class='c009'>Beginning his preface to the “Uniform Edition”
of his works, Mark Twain wrote:</p>
<p class='c010'>“So far as I remember, I have never seen an
Author’s Preface which had any purpose but
one—to furnish reasons for the publication of
the book. Prefaces wear many disguises, call
themselves by various names, and pretend to
come on various businesses, but I think that upon
examination we are quite sure to find that their
errand is always the same: they are there to
apologize for the book; in other words, furnish
reasons for its publication. This often insures
brevity.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Accepting the above as gospel (as necessarily
we must, in this book,) one is only required here
to furnish a few more or less plausible excuses
for its existence. Very well, then, we can think
of two:</p>
<p class='c010'>First: To prove to those who have read Mark
Twain sparingly, or know him mainly from
hearsay, that he was something more than a
mere fun-maker.</p>
<p class='c010'>Second: To provide for those who have read
largely of his work something of its essence, as
it were—put up in a form which may be found
convenient when one has not time, or inclination,
to search the volumes.</p>
<p class='c010'>These are the excuses—now, an added word
as to method: The examples have been arranged
chronologically, so that the reader, following
them in order, may note the author’s
evolution—the development of his humor, his
observation, his philosophy and his literary style.
They have been selected with some care, in the
hope that those who know the author best may
consider him fairly represented.</p>
<p class='c010'>Feeling now that this little volume is sufficiently
explained, the compiler begs to offer it,
without further extenuation, to all who do honor
to the memory of our foremost laughing
philosopher.</p>
<div class='lg-container-r c001'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>MOMENTS WITH</span></div>
<div class='line'><span class='xxlarge'>MARK TWAIN</span></div>
<div class='line in4'><span class='xxlarge'>❖</span></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “SKETCHES NEW AND OLD” (1865–67)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Answers to Correspondents</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>“Moral Statistician.”—I don’t want any of
your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit
my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people.
You are always ciphering out how much a man’s
health is injured, and how much his intellect
is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and
cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’
indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and
in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee;
and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking
a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. And
you are always figuring out how many women
have been burned to death because of the dangerous
fashion of wearing expansive hoops, etc.,
etc., etc. You never see more than one side of
the question. You are blind to the fact that
most old men in America smoke, and drink
<span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>coffee, although, according to your theory, they
ought to have died young; and that hearty old
Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly
old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and
yet grow older and fatter all the time. And
you never try to find out how much solid comfort,
relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives
from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which
is worth ten times the money he would save by
letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate
of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of
people from <em>not</em> smoking. Of course you can
save money by denying yourself all those little
vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then
what can you do with it? What use can you
put it to? Money can’t save your infinitesimal
soul. All the use that money can be put to is
to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life;
therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and
enjoyment, where is the use of accumulating
cash? It won’t do for you to say that you can
use it to better purpose in furnishing a good
table, and in charities, and in supporting tract
societies, because you know yourself that you
people who have no petty vices are never known
to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves
so in the matter of food that you are
always feeble and hungry. And you never dare
<span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor
wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try
to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you
are always down on your knees, with your eyes
buried in the cushion, when the contribution
box comes around; and you never give the revenue
officers a full statement of your income.
Now you know all these things yourself, don’t
you? Very well, then, what is the use of your
stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and
withered old age? What is the use of your saving
money that is so utterly worthless to you?
In a word, why don’t you go off somewhere and
die, and not be always trying to seduce people
into becoming as “ornery” and unloveable as you
are yourselves, by your villainous “moral statistics”?
Now I don’t approve of dissipation, and
I don’t indulge in it, either; but I haven’t
a particle of confidence in a man who has no
redeeming petty vices, and so I don’t want to
hear from you any more. I think you are the
very same man who read me a long lecture last
week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars,
and then came back, in my absence, with your
reprehensible fireproof gloves on, and carried off
my beautiful parlor stove.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Young Author.”—Yes, Agassiz <em>does</em> recommend
authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus
<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>in it makes brain. So far you are correct.
But I cannot help you to a decision about the
amount you need to eat—at least, not with certainty.
If the specimen composition you send
is about your fair usual average, I should judge
that perhaps a couple of whales would be all
you would want for the present. Not the largest
kind, but simply good, middling-sized whales.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>How I Edited an Agricultural Paper</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>In about half an hour an old gentleman, with
a flowing beard and a fine but rather austere
face, entered, and sat down at my invitation.
He seemed to have something on his mind. He
took off his hat and set it on the floor, and got
out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of
our paper.</p>
<p class='c010'>He put the paper on his lap, and while he
polished his spectacles with his handkerchief, he
said, “Are you the new editor?”</p>
<p class='c010'>I said I was.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Have you ever edited an agricultural paper
before?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“No,” I said; “this is my first attempt.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Very likely. Have you had any experience
in agriculture, practically?”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>“No; I believe I have not.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Some instinct told me,” said the old gentleman,
putting on his spectacles and looking over
them at me with asperity, while he folded his
paper into a convenient shape. “I wish to read
you what must have made me have that instinct.
It was this editorial. Listen, and see if it was
you that wrote it:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Turnips should never be pulled, it injures
them. It is much better to send a boy up and
let him shake the tree.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Now, what do you think of that?—for I
really suppose you wrote it?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Think of it? Why, I think it is good. I
think it is sense. I have no doubt that every
year millions and millions of bushels of turnips
are spoiled in this township alone by being pulled
in a half-ripe condition, when, if they had sent
a boy up to shake the tree——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Shake your grandmother! Turnips don’t
grow on trees!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, they don’t don’t they? Well, who said
they did? The language was intended to be
figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that
knows anything will know that I meant that
the boy should shake the vine.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Then this old person got up and tore his
paper all into small shreds, and stamped on
<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>them, and broke several things with his cane,
and said I did not know as much as a cow; and
then went out and banged the door after him,
and, in short, acted in such a way that I fancied
he was displeased about something. But not
knowing what the trouble was, I could not be
any help to him.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “THE INNOCENTS ABROAD” (1867–68)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>On Keeping a Journal</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition
of a man to keep a faithful record of his
performances, in a book; and he dashes at his
work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him
the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest
pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But
if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find
out that only those rare natures that are made
up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for
duty’s sake, and invincible determination, may
hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise
as the keeping of a journal and not sustain
a shameful defeat.... If you wish to
inflict a heartless and malignant punishment
upon a young person, pledge him to keep a
journal a year.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The “Quaker City” in a Storm</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>And the last night of the seven was the
stormiest of all. There was no thunder, no
<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the
keen whistling of the gale through the cordage,
and the rush of the seething waters. But the
vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to
heaven—then paused an instant that seemed a
century, and plunged headlong down again, as
from a precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched
the decks like rain. The blackness of darkness
was everywhere. At long intervals a flash
of lightning clove it with a quivering line of
fire, that revealed a heaving world of water
where was nothing before, kindled the dusky
cordage to glittering silver, and lit up the faces
of the men with a ghastly lustre!</p>
<p class='c010'>Fear drove many on deck that were used
to avoiding the night winds and the spray.
Some thought the vessel could not live through
the night, and it seemed less dreadful to stand
out in the midst of the wild tempest and <em>see</em>
the peril that threatened than to be shut up in
the sepulchral cabins, under the dim lamps, and
imagine the horrors that were abroad on the
ocean. And once out—once where they could
see the ship struggling in the strong grasp of
the storm—once where they could hear the
shriek of the winds, and face the driving spray
and look out upon the majestic picture the lightnings
disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce
<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>fascination they could not resist, and so remained.
It was a wild night—and a very, very
long one.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Beautiful Stranger</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>While we stood admiring the cloud-capped
peaks and the lowlands robed in misty gloom,
a finer picture burst upon us and chained every
eye like a magnet—a stately ship, with canvas
piled on canvas till she was one towering mass
of bellying sail. She came speeding over the
sea like a great bird. Africa and Spain were
forgotten. All homage was for the beautiful
stranger. While everybody gazed, she swept
superbly by and flung the Stars and Stripes to
the breeze! Quicker than thought hats and
handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer
went up! She was beautiful before—she was
radiant now. Many a one on her decks knew
then for the first time how tame a sight his
country’s flag is at home compared with what
it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a
vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel
a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish
blood!</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Tangier</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>What a funny old town it is! It seems like
<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>profanation to laugh and jest and bandy the
frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics.
Only the stately phraseology and the measured
speech of the sons of the Prophet are suited to
a venerable antiquity like this. Here is a
crumbling wall that was old when Columbus
discovered America; was old when Peter the
Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle
Ages to arm for the first Crusade; was old when
Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered enchanted
castles and battled with giants and genii
in the fabled days of the olden time; was old
when Christ and his disciples walked the earth;
stood where it stands to-day when the lips of
Memnon were vocal, and men bought and sold
in the streets of ancient Thebes!</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>American Beauties</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>I will conclude this chapter with a remark
that I am sincerely proud to be able to make—and
glad, as well, that my comrades cordially
indorse it, to wit: by far the handsomest women
we have seen in France were born and reared
in America.</p>
<p class='c010'>I feel, now, like a man who has redeemed a
failing reputation and shed luster upon a dimmed
<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>escutcheon, by a single just deed done at the
eleventh hour.</p>
<p class='c010'>Let the curtain fall, to slow music.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>An Early Memory</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>It is hard to forget repulsive things. I remember
yet how I ran off from school once
when I was a boy, and then, pretty late at night,
concluded to climb into the window of my father’s
office and sleep on a lounge, because I had
a delicacy about going home and getting
thrashed. As I lay on the lounge and my eyes
grew accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I
could see a long, dusky, shapeless thing stretched
upon the floor. A cold shiver went through me.
I turned my face to the wall. That did not
answer. I was afraid that the thing would
creep over and seize me in the dark. I turned
back and stared at it for minutes and minutes—they
seemed hours. It appeared to me that the
lagging moonlight never, never would get to it.
I turned to the wall and counted twenty, to
pass the feverish time away. I looked—the pale
square was nearer. I turned again and counted
fifty—it was almost touching it. With desperate
will I turned again and counted one
hundred, and faced about, all in a tremble. A
<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>white human hand lay in the moonlight! Such
an awful sinking at the heart—such a sudden
gasp for breath. I felt—I cannot tell <em>what</em> I
felt. When I recovered strength enough, I faced
the wall again. But no boy could have remained
so, with that mysterious hand behind
him. I counted again, and looked—the most
of a naked arm was exposed. I put my hands
over my eyes and counted until I could stand
it no longer, and then—the pallid face of a
man was there, with the corners of the mouth
drawn down, and the eyes fixed and glassy in
death! I raised to a sitting posture and glowered
on the corpse till the light crept down the
bare breast,—line by line—inch by inch—past
the nipple,—and then it disclosed a ghastly stab!</p>
<p class='c010'>I went away from there. I do not say that
I went away in any sort of a hurry, but I simply
went——that is sufficient. I went out at the
window, and I carried the sash along with
me. I did not need the sash, but it was handier
to take it than it was to leave it, and so I took
it. I was not scared, but I was considerably
agitated.</p>
<p class='c010'>When I reached home, they whipped me, but
I enjoyed it. It seemed perfectly delightful.
That man had been stabbed near the office that
afternoon, and they carried him in there to doctor
<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>him, but he only lived an hour. I have
slept in the same room with him often, since
then—in my dreams.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>At the Ambrosian Library</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>We saw a manuscript of Virgil, with annotations
in the handwriting of Petrarch, the gentleman
who loved another man’s Laura, and
lavished upon her all through life a love which
was a clear waste of the raw material. It was
sound sentiment, but bad judgment. It brought
both parties fame, and created a fountain of
commiseration for them in sentimental breasts
that is running yet. But who says a word in
behalf of poor Mr. Laura? (I do not know his
other name.) Who glorifies him? Who bedews
him with tears? Who writes poetry about
him? Nobody. How do you suppose <em>he</em> liked
the state of things that has given the world so
much pleasure?... Let the world go on fretting
about Laura and Petrarch if it will; but
as for me, my tears and my lamentations shall
be lavished upon the unsung defendant.</p>
<p class='c010'>We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia
Borgia, a lady for whom I have always entertained
the highest respect, on account of her
rare histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid
<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>gold goblets made of gilded wood, her high distinction
as an operatic screamer, and the facility
with which she could order a sextuple funeral
and get the corpses ready for it. We saw one
single coarse yellow hair from Lucrezia’s head,
likewise. It awoke emotions, but we still live.
In this same library we saw some drawings by
Michael Angelo (these Italians call him Mickel
Angelo), and Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell
it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.) We
reserve our opinion of these sketches.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Our Need of Repose</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Just in this one matter lies the main charm
of life in Europe—comfort. In America, we
hurry—which is well; but when the day’s work
is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains,
we plan for the morrow, we even carry our
business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry
over them when we ought to be restoring our
racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn
up our energies with these excitements, and
either die early or drop into a lean and mean
old age at a time of life which they call a man’s
prime in Europe. When an acre of ground has
produced long and well, we let it lie fallow and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>rest for a season; we take no man clear across
the continent in the same coach he started in—the
coach is stabled somewhere on the plains
and its heated machinery allowed to cool for a
few days; when a razor has seen long service
and refuses to hold an edge, the barber lays it
away for a few weeks, and the edge comes back
of its own accord. We bestow thoughtful care
upon inanimate objects, but none upon ourselves.
What a robust people, what a nation of
thinkers we might be, if we would only lay
ourselves on the shelf occasionally, and renew
our edges!</p>
<p class='c010'>I do envy these Europeans the comfort they
take. When the work of the day is done, they
forget it.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Venice</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>It was a long, long ride. But toward evening,
as we sat silent and hardly conscious of
where we were—subdued into that meditative
calm that comes so surely after a conversational
storm—some one shouted:</p>
<p class='c010'>“VENICE!”</p>
<p class='c010'>And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a
league away, lay a great city with its towers and
domes and steeples drowsing in a golden midst
of sunset.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>The venerable Mother of the Republics is
scarce a fit subject for flippant speech or the idle
gossiping of tourists. It seems a sort of sacrilege
to disturb the glamour of old romance that pictures
her to us softly from afar off as through
a tinted mist, and curtains her ruin and her
desolation from our view. One ought, indeed,
to turn away from her rags, her poverty, and
her humiliation, and think of her only as she
was when she sunk the fleets of Charlemagne;
when she humbled Frederick Barbarossa or
waved her victorious banners above the battlements
of Constantinople.</p>
<p class='c010'>There was music everywhere—choruses, string
bands, brass bands, flutes, everything. I was so
surrounded, walled in with music, magnificence,
and loveliness, that I became inspired with the
spirit of the scene, and sang one tune myself.
However, when I observed that the other gondolas
had sailed away, and my gondolier was
preparing to go overboard, I stopped.</p>
<p class='c010'>In the glare of the day, there is little poetry
about Venice, but under the charitable moon her
stained palaces are white again, their battered
sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old
city seems crowned once more with the grandeur
that was hers five hundred years ago. It is
easy, then, in fancy, to people these silent canals
<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>with plumed gallants and fair ladies—with Shylocks
in gaberdine and sandals, venturing loans
upon the rich argosies of Venetian commerce—with
Othellos and Desdemonas, with Iagos
and Roderigos—with noble fleets and victorious
legions returning from the wars. In the treacherous
sunlight we see Venice decayed, forlorn,
poverty-stricken, and commerceless—forgotten
and utterly insignificant. But in the moonlight,
her fourteen centuries of greatness fling their
glories about her, and once more is she the
princeliest among the nations of the earth.</p>
<p class='c010'>Yes, I think we have seen all Venice. We
have seen in these old churches a profusion
of costly and elaborate sepulchre ornamentation
such as we never dreamt of before. We have
stood in the dim religious light of these hoary
sanctuaries, in the midst of long ranks of dusty
monuments and effigies of the great dead of
Venice, until we seemed drifting back, back,
back, into the solemn past, and looking upon
the scenes and mingling with the people of a
remote antiquity. We have been in a half-waking
sort of a dream all the time. I do not
know how else to describe the feeling. A
part of our being has remained still in the
nineteenth century, while another part of it
<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>has seemed in some unaccountable way walking
among the phantoms of the tenth.</p>
<p class='c010'>We have seen famous pictures until our eyes
are weary with looking at them and refuse to
find interest in them any longer.... We
have striven hard to learn. We have had some
success. We have mastered some things, possibly
of trifling import in the eyes of the learned,
but to us they give pleasure, and we take as
much pride in our little acquirements as do
others who have learned far more, and we love
to display them full as well. When we see
a monk going about with a lion and looking
tranquilly up to heaven, we know that that is
St. Mark. When we see a monk with a book
and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying
to think of a word, we know that that is
St. Matthew. When we see a monk sitting on
a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with
a human skull beside him, and without other
baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome. Because
we know that he always went flying light
in the matter of baggage. When we see a
party looking tranquilly up to heaven, unconscious
that his body is shot through and through
with arrows, we know that that is St. Sebastian.
When we see other monks looking tranquilly
up to heaven, but having no trademark,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>we always ask who those parties are. We do
this because we humbly wish to learn....</p>
<p class='c010'>And so, having satisfied ourselves, we depart
to-morrow, and leave the venerable Queen of
the Republics to summon her vanished ships,
and marshal her shadowy armies, and know
again in dreams the pride of her old renown.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>At Pisa</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The Baptistery, which is a few years older
than the Leaning Tower, is a stately rotunda
of huge dimensions, and was a costly structure.
In it hangs the lamp whose measured swing
suggested to Galileo the pendulum. It looked
an insignificant thing to have conferred upon
the world of science and mechanics such a
mighty extension of their dominions as it has.
Pondering, in its suggestive presence, I seemed
to see a crazy universe of swinging disks, the
toiling children of this sedate parent. He appeared
to have an intelligent expression about
him of knowing that he was not a lamp at all;
that he was a Pendulum; a pendulum disguised,
for prodigious and inscrutable purposes of his
own deep devising, and not a common pendulum
either, but the old original patriarchal
<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>Pendulum—the Abraham Pendulum of the
world.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Christian Persuasion</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>How times have changed, between the older
ages and the new! Some seventeen or eighteen
centuries ago, the ignorant men of Rome were
wont to put Christians in the arena of the
Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild beasts in
upon them, for show. It was for a lesson as
well. It was to teach the people to abhor
and fear the new doctrine the followers of
Christ were teaching. The beasts tore the victims
limb from limb and made poor mangled
corpses of them in the twinkling of an eye.
But when the Christians came into power,
when the holy Mother Church became mistress
of the barbarians, she taught them the
error of their ways by no such means. No,
she put them in this pleasant Inquisition and
pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, who was so
gentle and so merciful toward all men, and they
urged the barbarians to love him; and they did
all they could to persuade them to love and
honor him—first by twisting their thumbs out
of joint with a screw; then by nipping their
flesh with pincers—red-hot ones, because they
are the most comfortable in cold weather; then
<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>by skinning them alive a little, and finally by
roasting them in public. They always convinced
those barbarians. The true religion,
properly administered, as the good Mother
Church used to administer it, is very, very
soothing. It is wonderfully persuasive also.
There is a great difference between feeding
parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer
feelings in an Inquisition. One is the system
of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened
civilized people. It is a great pity the
playful Inquisition is no more.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Taking It Out of the Guides</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed,
so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace, as I
did yesterday when I learned that Michael
Angelo was dead.</p>
<p class='c010'>But we have taken it out of this guide. He
has marched us through miles of pictures and
sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican;
and through miles of pictures and sculpture in
twenty other palaces; he has shown us the great
picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes
enough to fresco the heavens—pretty much all
done by Michael Angelo. So with him we
have played that game which has vanquished so
<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>many guides for us—imbecility and idiotic questions.
These creatures never suspect—they have
no idea of a sarcasm.</p>
<p class='c010'>He shows us a figure and says: “Statoo
brunzo.” (Bronze statue).</p>
<p class='c010'>We look at it indifferently and the doctor
asks: “By Michael Angelo?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“No—not know who.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Then he shows us the ancient Roman Forum.
The doctor asks: “Michael Angelo?”</p>
<p class='c010'>A stare from the guide. “No—a thousan’
year before he is born.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Then an Egyptian obelisk. Again: “Michael
Angelo?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, <span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mon dieu</span>, genteelman! Zis is TWO
thousan’ year before he is born.”</p>
<p class='c010'>He grows so tired of that unceasing question
sometimes, that he dreads to show us anything
at all. The wretch has tried all the ways he
can think of to make us comprehend that Michael
Angelo is only responsible for the creation of a
<em>part</em> of the world, but somehow he has not succeeded
yet. Relief for overtasked eyes and brain
from study and sightseeing is necessary, or we
shall become idiotic, sure enough. Therefore
this guide must continue to suffer. If he does
not enjoy it, so much the worse for him. We do.</p>
<p class='c010'>In this place I might as well jot down a
<span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>chapter concerning those necessary nuisances,
European guides. Many a man has wished in
his heart he could do without his guide; but
knowing he could not, has wished he could get
some amusement out of him as a remuneration
for the affliction of his society. We accomplished
this latter matter, and if our experience can be
made useful to others they are welcome to it.</p>
<p class='c010'>Guides know about enough English to tangle
everything up so that a man can make neither
head nor tail of it. They know their story by
heart—the history of every statue, painting, cathedral,
or other wonder they show you. They
know it and tell it as a parrot would—and if
you interrupt, and throw them off the track,
they have to go back and begin over again. All
their lives long, they are employed in showing
strange things to foreigners and listening to their
bursts of admiration. It is human nature to
take delight in exciting admiration. It is what
prompts children to say “smart” things, and to
do absurd ones, and in other ways “show off”
when company is present. It is what makes
gossips turn out in rain and storm to go and be
the first to tell a startling bit of news. Think,
then, what a passion it becomes with a guide,
whose privilege it is, every day, to show to
strangers wonders that throw them into perfect
<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>ecstasies of admiration! He gets so that he
could not by any possibility live in a soberer
atmosphere. After we discovered this, we <em>never</em>
went into ecstasies any more—we never admired
anything—we never showed any but impassible
faces and stupid indifference in the presence of
the sublimest wonders a guide had to display.
We had found their weak point. We have
made good use of it ever since. We have made
some of those people savage, at times, but we
have never lost our own serenity.</p>
<p class='c010'>The doctor asks the questions, generally, because
he can keep his countenance, and look more
like an inspired idiot, and throw more imbecility
into the tone of his voice than any man that
lives. It comes natural to him.</p>
<p class='c010'>The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure
an American party, because Americans have so
much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment
and emotion before any relic of Columbus. Our
guide there fidgeted about as if he had swallowed
a spring mattress. He was full of animation—full
of impatience. He said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Come wis me, genteelmen!—come! I show
you ze letter writing by Christopher Colombo!
write it himself!—write it wis his own hand!—come!”</p>
<p class='c010'>He took us to the municipal palace. After
<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>much impressive fumbling of keys and opening
of locks, the stained and aged document was
spread before us. The guide’s eyes sparkled.
He danced about us and tapped the parchment
with his finger:</p>
<p class='c010'>“What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so?
See! handwriting Christopher Colombo!—write
it himself!”</p>
<p class='c010'>We looked indifferent—unconcerned. The
doctor examined the document very deliberately,
during a painful pause. Then he said, without
any show of interest:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah—Ferguson—what—what did you say
was the name of the party who wrote this?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher
Colombo.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Another deliberate examination.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah—did he write it himself, or—or how?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“He write it himself!—Christopher Colombo!
he’s own handwriting, write by himself!”</p>
<p class='c010'>Then the doctor laid the document down and
said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen
years old that could write better than that.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“But zis is ze great Christo——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I don’t care who it is! It’s the worst writing
I ever saw. Now you mustn’t think you
can impose on us because we are strangers. We
<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>are not fools, by a good deal. If you have got
any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot
them out!—and if you haven’t, drive on!”</p>
<p class='c010'>We drove on. The guide was considerably
shaken up, but he made one more venture. He
had something which he thought would overcome
us. He said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me! I show
you beautiful, oh, magnificent bust Christopher
Colombo!—splendid, grand, magnificent!”</p>
<p class='c010'>He brought us before the beautiful bust—for
it <em>was</em> beautiful—and sprang back and
struck an attitude:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah, look, genteelmen!—beautiful, grand,—bust
Christopher Colombo!—Beautiful bust,
beautiful pedestal!”</p>
<p class='c010'>The doctor put up his eyeglass—procured for
such occasions:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah—what did you say this gentleman’s name
was?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher
Colombo!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Christopher Colombo—the great Christopher
Colombo. Well what did <em>he</em> do?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Discover America!—discover America, oh,
ze devil!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Discover America. No—that statement will
hardly wash. We are just from America ourselves.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>We heard nothing about it. Christopher
Colombo—pleasant name—is—is he dead?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, <span lang="it" xml:lang="it">corpo di Baccho</span>!—three hundred year!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“What did he die of?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I do not know!—I cannot tell.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Smallpox, think?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I do not know, genteelmen!—I do not know
<em>what</em> he die of!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Measles, likely?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Maybe—maybe—I do not know—I think
he die of somethings.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Parents living?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Im-posseeble!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah—which is the bust and which is the
pedestal?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Santa Maria!—<em>zis</em> ze bust!—<em>zis</em> ze pedestal!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah, I see, I see—happy combination—very
happy combination, indeed. Is—is this the first
time this gentleman was ever on a bust?”</p>
<p class='c010'>That joke was lost on the foreigner—guides
cannot master subtleties of the American joke.</p>
<p class='c010'>We have made it interesting for this Roman
guide. Yesterday we spent three or four hours
in the Vatican again, that wonderful world of
curiosities. We came very near expressing interest,
sometimes—even admiration—it was very
hard to keep from it. We succeeded though.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>Nobody else ever did, in the Vatican museums.
The guide was bewildered—nonplussed. He
walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up extraordinary
things, and exhausted all his ingenuity
on us, but it was a failure; we never showed
any interest in anything. He had reserved what
he considered to be his greatest wonder till the
last—a royal Egyptian mummy; the best-preserved
in the world, perhaps. He took us there.
He felt so sure, this time, that some of his old
enthusiasm came back to him:</p>
<p class='c010'>“See, genteelmen!—Mummy! Mummy!”</p>
<p class='c010'>The eyeglass came up as calmly, as deliberately
as ever.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah,—Ferguson—what did I understand you
to say the gentleman’s name was?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Name?—he got no name! Mummy!—’Gyptian
mummy!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes, yes. Born here?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“No! <em>’Gyptian</em> mummy!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“No!—<em>Not</em> Frenchman, not Roman!—born
in Egypta!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before.
Foreign locality, likely. Mummy—mummy.
How calm he is—how self-possessed.
Is, ah—is he dead?”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>“Oh, <span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">SACRE BLEU</span>, been dead three thousan’
year!”</p>
<p class='c010'>The doctor turned on him savagely:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct
as this! Playing us for Chinamen because
we are strangers and trying to learn. Trying
to impose your vile second-hand carcasses on
<em>us</em>!—thunder and lightning, I’ve a notion to—to—if
you’ve got a nice <em>fresh</em> corpse, fetch him
out!—or, by George, we’ll brain you!”</p>
<p class='c010'>We make it exceedingly interesting for this
Frenchman. However, he has paid us back,
partly, without knowing it. He came to the
hotel this morning to ask if we were up, and he
endeavored as well as he could to describe us,
so that the landlord would know which persons
he meant. He finished with the casual remark
that we were lunatics. The observation was so
innocent and so honest that it amounted to a
very good thing for a guide to say.</p>
<p class='c010'>There is one remark (already mentioned)
which never yet has failed to disgust these
guides. We use it always, when we can think of
nothing else to say. After they have exhausted
their enthusiasm pointing out to us and praising
the beauties of some ancient bronze image
or broken-legged statue, we look at it stupidly
and in silence for five, ten, fifteen minutes—as
<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>long as we can hold out, in fact—and then
ask:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Is—is he dead?”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Surfeit of Art</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>When I was a schoolboy and was to have a
new knife, I could not make up my mind as to
which was the prettiest in the showcase, and I
did not think any of them were particularly
pretty; and so I chose with a heavy heart. But
when I looked at my purchase, at home, where
no glittering blades came into composition with
it, I was astonished to see how handsome it was.
To this day my new hats look better out of
the shop than they did in it, with other new
hats. It begins to dawn upon me now, that
possibly, what I have been taking for uniform
ugliness in the galleries may be uniform beauty,
after all. I honestly hope it is, to others, but
certainly it is not to me. Perhaps the reason
I used to enjoy going to the Academy of Fine
Arts in New York was because there were but
a few hundred paintings in it, and it did not
surfeit me to go through the list. I suppose
the Academy was bacon and beans in the Forty-Mile
Desert, and a European gallery is a state
dinner of thirteen courses. One leaves no sign
<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>after him of the one dish, but the thirteen
frighten away his appetite and give him no satisfaction.</p>
<p class='c010'>There is one thing I am certain of, though.
With all the Michael Angelos, the Raphaels, the
Guidos, and the other old masters, the sublime
history of Rome remains unpainted! They
painted Virgins enough, and Popes enough, and
saintly scarecrows enough, to people Paradise,
almost, and these things are all they did paint.
“Nero fiddling o’er burning Rome,” the assassination
of Caesar, the stirring spectacle of a hundred
thousand people bending forward with rapt interest,
in the coliseum, to see two skilful gladiators
hacking away each other’s lives, a tiger springing
upon a kneeling martyr—these and a thousand
other matters which we read of with a
living interest, must be sought for only in books—not
among the rubbish left by the old masters—who
are no more, I have the satisfaction of
informing the public.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>At Pompeii</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Everywhere, you see things that make you
wonder how old these old houses were before
the night of destruction came—things, too, which
bring back those long-dead inhabitants and place
<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>them living before your eyes. For instance:
The steps (two feet thick—lava blocks) that
lead up out of the school, and the same kind
of steps that lead up into the dress circle of the
principal theater, are almost worn through!
For ages the boys hurried out of that school, and
for ages their parents hurried into that theater,
and the nervous feet that have been dust and
ashes for eighteen centuries have left their record
for us to read to-day. I imagined I could
see crowds of gentlemen and ladies thronging
into the theater, with tickets for secured seats
in their hands, and on the wall I read the
imaginary placard, in infamous grammar,
“POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST, EXCEPT
MEMBERS OF THE PRESS!” Hanging
about the doorway (I fancied) were slouchy
Pompeiian street boys uttering slang and profanity,
and keeping a wary eye out for checks.
I entered the theater, and sat down in one of
the long rows of stone benches in the dress circle,
and looked at the place for the orchestra, and
the ruined stage, and around at the wide sweep
of empty boxes, and thought to myself, “This
house won’t pay.” I tried to imagine the music
in full blast, the leader of the orchestra beating
time, and the “versatile” So-and-So (who had
“just returned from a most successful tour in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>the provinces to play his last and farewell engagement
of positively six nights only, in Pompeii,
previous to his departure for Herculaneum”)
charging around the stage and piling the
agony mountains high—but I could not do it
with such a “house” as that; those empty benches
tied my fancy down to dull reality. I said,
these people that ought to be here have been
dead, and still, and moldering to dust for ages
and ages, and will never care for the trifles and
follies of life any more forever—“Owing to circumstances,
etc., etc., there will not be any performance
to-night.” Close down the curtains.
Put out the lights.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Fame</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>After browsing among the stately ruins of
Rome, of Baiae, of Pompeii, and after glancing
down the long marble ranks of battered and
nameless imperial heads that stretch down the
corridors of the Vatican, one thing strikes me
with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial,
unlasting character of fame. Men
lived long lives, in the olden time, and struggled
feverishly through them, toiling like slaves,
in oratory, in generalship, or in literature, and
then laid them down and died, happy in the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>possession of an enduring history and a deathless
name. Well, twenty little centuries flutter away,
and what is left of these things? A crazy inscription
on a block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries
bother over and tangle up and make
nothing out of but a bare name (which they
spell wrong)—no history, no tradition, no poetry—nothing
that can give it even a passing interest.
What may be left of General Grant’s great name
forty centuries hence? This—in the Encyclopedia
for A.D. 5868, possibly.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Uriah S. (or Z.) Grant—popular poet of
ancient times in the Aztec provinces of the United
States of British America. Some authors say
flourished about A.D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah
Foo-foo states that he was a contemporary of
Scharkspyre, the English poet, and flourished
about A.D. 1328, some three centuries <em>after</em> the
Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote
‘Rock me to Sleep, Mother,’”</p>
<p class='c010'>These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Athens from the Acropolis</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The full moon was riding high in the cloudless
heavens now. We sauntered carelessly and
unthinkingly to the edge of the lofty battlements
of the citadel, and looked down—a vision! And
<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>such a vision! Athens by moonlight! The
prophet that thought the splendors of the New
Jerusalem were revealed to him, surely saw this
instead! It lay in the level plain right under our
feet—all spread abroad like a picture—and we
looked down upon it as we might have looked
from a balloon. We saw no semblance of a
street, but every house, every window, every
clinging vine, every projection, was as distinct
and sharply marked as if the time were noonday;
and yet there was no glare, no glitter, nothing
harsh or repulsive—the noiseless city was
flooded with the mellowest light that ever
streamed from the moon, and seemed like some
living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber. On
its further side was a little temple, whose delicate
pillars and ornate front glowed with a rich
luster that chained the eye like the spell; and
nearer by, the palace of the king reared its creamy
walls out of the midst of a great garden of
shrubbery that was flecked all over with a random
shower of amber lights—a spray of golden
sparks that lost their brightness in the glory of
the moon, and glinted softly upon the sea of
dark foliage like the pallid stars of the milky
way. Overhead the stately columns, majestic
still in their ruin—under foot the dreaming city—in
the distance the silver sea—not on the broad
<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>earth is there another picture half so beautiful!</p>
<p class='c010'>As we turned and moved again through the
temple, I wished that the illustrious men who
had sat in it in the remote ages could visit it
again and reveal themselves to our curious eyes—Plato,
Aristotle, Demosthenes, Socrates, Phocion,
Pythagoras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon, Herodotus,
Praxiteles and Phidias, Zeuxis the painter.
What a constellation of celebrated names! But
more than all, I wished that old Diogenes, groping
so patiently with his lantern, searching so
zealously for one solitary honest man in all the
world, might meander along and stumble on our
party. I ought not to say it, maybe, but still
I suppose he would have put out his light.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Constantinople</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Commercial morals, especially, are bad. There
is no gainsaying that. Greek, Turkish, and Armenian
morals consist only in attending church
regularly on the appointed Sabbaths, and in
breaking the ten commandments all the balance
of the week. It comes natural to them to lie
and cheat in the first place, and then they go
on and improve on nature until they arrive at
perfection. In recommending his son to a merchant
as a valuable salesman, a father does not
<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>say he is a nice, moral, upright boy, and goes to
Sunday-school and is honest, but he says, “This
boy is worth his weight in broad pieces of a hundred—for
behold, he will cheat whomsoever hath
dealings with him, and from the Euxine to the
waters of Marmora there abideth not so gifted
a liar!” How is that for a recommendation?
The missionaries tell me that they hear encomiums
like that passed upon people every day.
They say of a person they admire, “Ah, he is a
charming swindler, and a most exquisite liar!”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Turkish Journalism</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The newspaper business has its inconveniences
in Constantinople. Two Greek papers and one
French one were suppressed here within a few
days of each other. No victories of the Cretans
are allowed to be printed. From time to time
the Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various
editors that the Cretan insurrection is entirely
suppressed, and although that editor knows better,
he still has to print the notice. The Levant
Herald is too fond of speaking praisefully of
Americans to be popular with the Sultan, who
does not relish our sympathy with the Cretans,
and therefore that paper has to be particularly
circumspect in order to keep out of trouble. Once
<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>the editor, forgetting the official notice in his
paper that the Cretans were crushed out, printed
a letter of a very different tenor, from the American
Consul in Crete, and was fined two hundred
and fifty dollars for it. Shortly he printed another
from the same source and was imprisoned
three months for his pains. I think I could get
the assistant editorship of the Levant Herald,
but I am going to try to worry along without it.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Camel</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>By half-past six we were under way, and all
the Syrian world seemed to be under way also.
The road was filled with mule trains and long
processions of camels. This reminds me that
we have been trying for some time to think what
a camel looks like, and now we have made it out.
When he is down on all his knees, flat on his
breast to receive his load, he looks something
like a goose, swimming; and when he is upright
he looks like an ostrich with an extra set of legs.
Camels are not beautiful, and their long under
lip gives them an exceedingly “gallus” expression.
They have immense flat, forked cushions of
feet, that make a track in the dust like a pie with
a slice cut out of it. They are not particular
about their diet. They would eat a tombstone
<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>if they could bite it. A thistle grows about here
which has needles on it that would pierce through
leather, I think; if one touches you, you can find
relief in nothing but profanity. The camels eat
these. They show by their actions that they
enjoy them. I suppose it would be a real treat
to a camel to have a keg of nails for supper.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>At Noah’s Tomb</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Noah’s tomb is built of stone, and is covered
with a long stone building. Bucksheesh let us in.
The building had to be long, because the grave
of the honored old navigator is two hundred and
ten feet long itself! It is only about four feet
high, though. He must have cast a shadow like
a lightning-rod. The proof that this is the genuine
spot where Noah was buried can only be
doubted by uncommonly incredulous people. The
evidence is pretty straight. Shem, the son of
Noah, was present at the burial, and showed the
place to his descendants, who transmitted the
knowledge to their descendants, and the lineal
descendants of these introduced themselves to us
to-day. It was pleasant to make the acquaintance
of members of so respectable a family. It was
<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>a thing to be proud of. It was the next thing
to being acquainted with Noah himself.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Damascus</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Damascus dates back anterior to the days of
Abraham, and is the oldest city in the world.
It was founded by Uz, the grandson of Noah.
“The early history of Damascus is shrouded in
the mists of a hoary antiquity.” Leave the matters
written of in the first eleven chapters of the
Old Testament out, and no recorded event has
occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence
to receive the news of it. Go back as far
as you will into the vague past, there was always
a Damascus. In the writings of every century
for more than four thousand years, its name has
been mentioned, and its praises sung. To Damascus,
years are only moments, decades are only
flitting trifles of time. She measures time, not
by days and months and years, but by the empires
she has seen rise and prosper and crumble
to ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw
the foundations of Baalbec, and Thebes, and
Ephesus laid; she saw these villages grow into
mighty cities, and amaze the world with their
grandeur—and she has lived to see them desolate,
deserted, and given over to the owls and the bats.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>She saw the Israelitish empire exalted, and she
saw it annihilated. She saw Greece rise, and
flourish two thousand years, and die. In her
old age she saw Rome built; she saw it overshadow
the world with its power; she saw it
perish. The few hundreds of years of Genoese
and Venetian might and splendor were, to grave
old Damascus, only a trifling scintillation hardly
worth remembering. Damascus has seen all that
has ever occurred on earth, and still she lives.
She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand
empires and will see the tombs of a thousand
more before she dies. Though another
claims the name, old Damascus is by right the
Eternal City.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>At Banias</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>It seems curious enough to us to be standing
on ground that was once actually pressed by the
feet of the Saviour. The situation is suggestive
of a reality and a tangibility that seem at variance
with the vagueness and mystery and ghostliness
that one naturally attaches to the character
of a god. I cannot comprehend yet that I am sitting
where a god has stood, and looking upon
the brook and the mountains which that god
looked upon, and am surrounded by dusky men
and women whose ancestors saw him, and even
<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>talked with him, face to face, and carelessly, just
as they would have done with any other stranger.
I cannot comprehend this; the gods of my understanding
have been always hidden in clouds,
and very far away.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Healer in Palestine</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>As soon as the tribe found out that we had a
doctor in our party, they began to flock in from
all quarters. Dr. B., in the charity of his nature,
had taken a child from a wagon who sat
near by, and put some sort of a wash upon its
diseased eyes. That woman went off and started
the whole nation, and it was a sight to see them
swarm! The lame, the halt, the blind, the leprous—all
the distempers that are bred of indolence,
dirt, and iniquity—were represented in the
congress in ten minutes, and still they came!
Every woman that had a sick baby brought it
along, and every woman that hadn’t, borrowed
one. What reverent and what worshiping looks
they bent upon that dread, mysterious power,
the Doctor! They watched him take his phials
out; they watched him measure the particles of
white powder; they watched him add drops of
one precious liquid, and drops of another; they
lost not the slightest movement; their eyes were
<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>riveted upon him with a fascination that nothing
could distract. I believe they thought he was
gifted like a god. When each individual got his
portion of medicine, his eyes were radiant with
joy—notwithstanding by nature they are a thankless
and impassive race—and upon his face was
written the unquestioning faith that nothing on
earth could prevent the patient from getting well,
now.</p>
<p class='c010'>Christ knew how to preach to these simple, superstitious,
disease-tortured creatures: He healed
the sick. They flocked to our poor human doctor
this morning when the fame of what he had
done to the sick child went abroad in the land,
and they worshiped him with their eyes while
they did not know as yet whether there was virtue
in his simples or not. The ancestors of these—people
precisely like them in color, dress, manners,
costumes, simplicity—flocked in vast multitudes
after Christ, and when they saw Him make
the afflicted whole with a word, it is no wonder
they worshiped Him. No wonder His deeds were
the talk of the nation. No wonder the multitude
that followed Him was so great that at one time—thirty
miles from here—they had to let a sick
man down through the roof because no approach
could be made to the door; no wonder His
audiences were so great at Galilee that He had
<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>to preach from a ship removed a little distance
from the shore; no wonder that even in<SPAN name='t44'></SPAN> the desert
places about Bethsaida, five thousand invaded
His solitude, and He had to feed them by a
miracle or else see them suffer for their confiding
faith and devotion; no wonder when there was
a great commotion in a city in those days, one
neighbor explained it to another in words to this
effect: “They say that Jesus of Nazareth is
come!”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Bible</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful
passage in a book which is so gemmed with
beautiful passages, as the Bible; but it is certain
that not many things within its lids may take
rank above the exquisite story of Joseph. Who
taught those ancient writers their simplicity of
language, their felicity of expression, their pathos,
and, above all, their faculty of sinking themselves
entirely out of sight of the reader and making
the narrative stand out alone and seem to
tell itself? Shakespeare is always present when
one reads his book; Macaulay is present when
we follow the march of his stately sentences; but
the Old Testament writers are hidden from view.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Galilee at Night</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but
<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>the broad compass of the heavens, and is a theater
meet for great events; meet for the birth of
a religion able to save a world; and meet for
the stately figure appointed to stand upon its
stage and proclaim its high decrees. But in the
sunlight, one says: Is it for the deeds which
were done and the words which were spoken in
this little acre of rocks and sand eighteen centuries
gone, that the bells are ringing to-day in
the remote islands of the sea and far and wide
over continents that clasp the circumference of
the huge globe?</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Distance in the East</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>In Constantinople you ask, “How far is it to
the Consulate?” and they answer, “About ten
minutes.” “How far is it to the Lloyds’
Agency?” “Quarter of an hour.” “How far is
it to the lower bridge?” “Four minutes.” I
cannot be positive about it, but I think that there,
when a man orders a pair of pantaloons, he says
he wants them a quarter of a minute in the legs
and nine seconds around the waist.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Pleasant Incident</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>I cannot think of anything now more certain
to make one shudder, than to have a soft-footed
<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>camel sneak up behind him and touch him on
the ear with its cold, flabby under lip. A camel
did this for one of the boys, who was drooping
over his saddle in a brown study. He glanced up
and saw the majestic apparition hovering above
him, and made frantic efforts to get out of the
way, but the camel reached out and bit him on
the shoulder before he accomplished it. This was
the only pleasant incident of the journey.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Sacred Marvels</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Imagination labors best in distant fields. I
doubt if any man can stand in the Grotto of
the Annunciation and people with the phantom
images of his mind its too tangible walls of stone.</p>
<p class='c010'>They showed us a broken granite pillar, depending
from the roof, which they said was
hacked in two by the Moslem conquerors of
Nazareth, in the vain hope of pulling down the
sanctuary. But the pillar remained miraculously
suspended in the air, and, unsupported itself, supported
then and still supports the roof. By
dividing this statement up among eight, it was
found not difficult to believe it.</p>
<p class='c010'>These gifted Latin monks never do anything
by halves. If they were to show you the Brazen
Serpent that was elevated in the wilderness, you
<span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>could depend upon it that they had on hand the
pole it was elevated on also, and even the hole
it stood in. They have got the “Grotto” of the
Annunciation here; and just as convenient to
it as one’s throat is to his mouth, they have also
the Virgin’s Kitchen, and even her sitting-room,
where she and Joseph watched the infant Saviour
play with Hebrew toys, eighteen hundred years
ago. All under one roof, and all clean, spacious,
comfortable “grottoes.” It seems curious that
personages intimately connected with the Holy
Family always lived in grottoes—in Nazareth,
in Bethlehem, in imperial Ephesus—and yet nobody
else in their day and generation thought
of doing anything of the kind. If they ever
did, their grottoes are all gone, and I suppose we
ought to wonder at the peculiar marvel of the
preservation of these I speak of. When the Virgin
fled from Herod’s wrath, she hid in a
grotto in Bethlehem, and the same is there to
this day. The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem
was done in a grotto; the Saviour was
born in a grotto—both are shown to pilgrims yet.
It is exceedingly strange that these tremendous
events all happened in grottoes—and exceedingly
fortunate, likewise, because the strongest houses
<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>must crumble to ruin in time, but a grotto in the
living rock will last forever.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>At Adam’s Grave</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The tomb of Adam! How touching it was,
here in a land of strangers, far away from home,
and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to
discover the grave of a blood relation. True, a
distant one, but still a relation. The unerring
instinct of nature thrilled its recognition. The
fountain of my filial affection was stirred to its
profoundest depths, and I gave way to tumultuous
emotion. I leaned upon a pillar and burst
into tears. I deem it no shame to have wept over
the grave of my poor dead relative. Let him who
would sneer at my emotion close this volume here,
for he will find little to his taste in my journeyings
through the Holy Land. Noble old man—he
did not live to see me—he did not live to see
his child. And I—I—alas, I did not live to see
<em>him</em>. Weighed down by sorrow and disappointment,
he died before I was born—six thousand
brief summers before I was born. But let us
try to bear it with fortitude. Let us trust that
he is better off where he is. Let us take comfort
in the thought that his loss is our eternal
gain.</p>
<div>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Wandering Jew</span></h3></div>
<p class='c012'>And so we came at last to another wonder, of
deep and abiding interest—the veritable house
where the unhappy wretch once lived who has
been celebrated in song and story for more than
eighteen hundred years as the Wandering Jew.
On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he
stood in this old doorway with his arms akimbo,
looking out upon the struggling mob that was approaching,
and when the weary Saviour would
have sat down and rested him a moment, pushed
him rudely away and said, “Move on!” The
Lord said, “Move on, thou, likewise,” and the
command has never been<SPAN name='t49'></SPAN> revoked from that day to
this. All men know now that the miscreant upon
whose head that just curse fell has roamed up
and down the wide world, for ages and ages,
seeking rest and never finding it—courting death
but always in vain—longing to stop, in city, in
wilderness, in desert solitudes, yet hearing always
that relentless warning to march—march
on! They say—do these hoary traditions—that
when Titus sacked Jerusalem and slaughtered
eleven hundred thousand Jews in her streets and
byways, the Wandering Jew was seen always in
the thickest of the fight, and that when battle-axes
gleamed in the air, he bowed his head beneath
<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>them; when swords flashed their deadly
lightnings, he sprang in their way; he bared his
breast to whizzing javelins, to hissing arrows, to
any and to every weapon that promised death
and forgetfulness, and rest. But it was useless—he
walked forth out of the carnage without a
wound. And it is said that five hundred years
afterwards he followed Mahomet when he carried
destruction to the cities of Arabia, and then
turned against him, hoping in this way to win the
death of a traitor. His calculations were wrong
again. No quarter was given to any living creature
but one, and that was the only one of all
the host that did not want it. He sought death
five hundred years later, in the wars of the Crusades,
and offered himself to famine and pestilence
at Ascalon. He escaped again—he could
not die. These repeated annoyances could have
at last but one effect—they shook his confidence.
Since then the Wandering Jew has carried on a
kind of desultory toying with the most promising
of the aids and implements of destruction, but
with small hope, as a general thing. He has
speculated some in cholera and railroads and has
taken almost a lively interest in infernal machines
and patent medicines. He is old, now,
and grave, as becomes an age like his; he indulges
<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>in no light amusements save that he goes
sometimes to executions, and is fond of funerals.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Bedouins</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>We had had a glimpse, from a mountain top,
of the Dead Sea, lying like a blue shield in the
plain of the Jordan, and now we were marching
down a close, flaming, rugged, desolate defile,
where no living creature could enjoy life, except,
perhaps, a salamander. It was such a
dreary, repulsive, horrible solitude! It was the
“wilderness” where John preached, with camel’s
hair about his loins—raiment enough—but he
never could have got his locusts and wild honey
here. We were moping along down through
this dreadful place, every man in the rear. Our
guards—two gorgeous young Arab sheiks, with
cargoes of swords, guns, pistols, and daggers on
board—were loafing ahead.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Bedouins!”</p>
<p class='c010'>Every man shrunk up and disappeared in his
clothes like a mud-turtle. My first impulse was
to dash forward and destroy the Bedouins. My
second was to dash to the rear to see if there were
any coming in that direction. I acted on the
latter impulse. So did all the others. If any
Bedouins had approached us, then, from that point
<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>of compass, they would have paid dearly for
their rashness. We all remarked that, afterwards.
There would have been scenes of riot
and bloodshed there that no pen could describe.
I know that, because each man told what he
would have done, individually; and such a medley
of strange and unheard-of inventions of
cruelty you could not conceive of. One man said
he had calmly made up his mind to perish where
he stood, if need be, but never yield an inch;
he was going to wait, with deadly patience, till
he could count the stripes on the first Bedouin’s
jacket, and then count them and let him have it.
Another was going to sit still till the first lance
reached within an inch of his breast, and then
dodge it and seize it. I forbear to tell what he
was going to do to that Bedouin that owned it.
It makes my blood run cold to think of it.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Smitten Land</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it
broods the spell of a curse that has withered its
fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom
and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers,
that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose
bitter waters no living thing exists—over whose
waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless
<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>and dead—about whose borders nothing
grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane,
and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment
to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the
touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of
Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the
Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds
only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the
desert; Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin
to-day, even as Joshua’s miracle left it more than
three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany,
in their poverty and their humiliation, have
nothing about them now to remind one that they
once knew the high honor of the Saviour’s presence;
the hallowed spot where the shepherds
watched their flocks by night, and where the
angels sang “Peace on earth, good will to men,”
is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed
by any feature that is pleasant to the eye.
Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in
history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is
become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon
are no longer there to compel the admiration of
visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple,
which was the pride and glory of Israel, is
gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above
the spot where, on that most memorable day in
the annals of the world, they reared the Holy
<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman
fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of
the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago
deserted by the devotees of war and commerce,
and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum
is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home
of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have
vanished from the earth, and the “desert places”
round about them, where thousands of men once
listened to the Saviour’s voice and ate the
miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude
that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking
foxes.</p>
<p class='c010'>Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why
should it be otherwise? Can the <em>curse</em> of the
Deity beautify a land?</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Sphinx</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>After years of waiting, it was before me at
last. The great face was so sad, so earnest, so
longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of
earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity
such as never anything human wore. It
was stone, but seemed sentient. If ever image
of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking
toward the verge of the landscape, yet looking
<em>at</em> nothing—nothing but distance and vacancy.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>It was looking over and beyond everything
of the present, and far into the past. It
was gazing out over the ocean of Time—over
lines of century-waves which, further and further
receding, closed nearer and nearer together, and
blended at last into one unbroken tide, away
toward the horizon of remote antiquity. It was
thinking of the wars of departed ages; of the
empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the
nations whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress
it had watched, whose annihilation it had
noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death,
the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow
revolving years. It was the type of an attribute
of man—of a faculty of his heart and brain.
It was MEMORY—RETROSPECTION—wrought
into visible, tangible form. All who
know what pathos there is in memories of days
that are accomplished and faces that have vanished—albeit
only a trifling score of years gone
by—will have some appreciation of the pathos
that dwells in these grave eyes that look so
steadfastly back upon the things they knew before
History was born—before tradition had being—things
that were, and forms that moved, in
a vague era which even Poetry and Romance
scarce know of—and passed one by one away and
left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of
<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>a strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes.</p>
<p class='c010'>The Sphinx is grand in its loneliness; it is
imposing in its magnitude; it is impressive in
the mystery that hangs over its story. And there
is that in the overshadowing majesty of this
eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory
of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one
something of what he shall feel when he shall
stand at last in the awful presence of God.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Memories of the Pilgrimage</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>We shall remember something of pleasant
France; and something also of Paris, though it
flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone
again, we hardly knew how or where. We shall
remember, always, how we saw majestic Gibraltar
glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish
sunset and swimming in a sea of rainbows. In
fancy we shall see Milan again, and her stately
cathedral with its marble wilderness of graceful
spires. And Padua—Verona—Como, jeweled
with stars; and patrician Venice, afloat on her
stagnant flood—silent, desolate, haughty—scornful
of her humbled state—wrapping herself in
memories of her lost fleets, of battle and triumph,
and all the pageantry of a glory that is departed.</p>
<p class='c010'>We cannot forget Florence—Naples—nor the
foretaste of heaven that is in the delicious atmosphere
<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>of Greece—and surely not Athens and the
broken temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable
Rome—nor the green plain that compasses
her round about, contrasting its brightness with
her gray decay—nor the ruined arches that stand
apart in the plain and clothe their looped and
windowed raggedness with vines. We shall remember
St. Peter’s; not as one sees it when he
walks the streets of Rome and fancies all her
domes are just alike, but as he sees it leagues
away, when every meaner edifice has faded out
of sight and that one dome looms superbly up
in the flush of sunset, full of dignity and grace,
strongly outlined as a mountain.</p>
<p class='c010'>We shall remember Constantinople and the
Bosporus—the colossal magnificence of Baalbec—the
Pyramids of Egypt—the prodigious form, the
benignant countenance of the Sphinx—Oriental
Smyrna—sacred Jerusalem—Damascus, the
“Pearl of the East,” the pride of Syria, the fabled
Garden of Eden, the home of princes and
genii of the Arabian Nights, the oldest metropolis
on the earth, the one city in all the world that
has kept its name and held its place and looked
serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires of
four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed
their little season of pride and pomp and then
vanished and been forgotten!</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “ROUGHING IT”</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Starting West</span><br/> (1870–71)</h3>
<p class='c012'>We were six days going from St. Louis to
“St. Joe”—a trip that was so dull, and sleepy,
and eventless that it has left no more impression
on my memory than if its duration had been six
minutes instead of that many days. No record
is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a
confused jumble of savage looking snags, which
we deliberately walked over with one wheel or
the other; and of reefs which we butted and
butted, and then retired from and climbed over
in some softer place; and of sand-bars which
we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then
got out our crutches and sparred over. In fact,
the boat might almost as well have gone to St.
Joe by land, for she was walking most of the
time, anyhow—climbing over reefs and clambering
over snags patiently and laboriously all day
long. The captain said she was a “bully” boat,
and all she wanted was more “shear” and a bigger
<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of stilts,
but I had the deep sagacity not to say so.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>George Bemis and “The Allen”</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Mr. George Bemis was dismally formidable.
George Bemis was our fellow traveler. We had
never seen him before. He wore in his belt an
old original “Allen” revolver, such as irreverent
people called a “pepper-box.” Simply drawing
the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As
the trigger came back, the hammer would begin
to rise and the barrel to turn over, and presently
down would drop the hammer, and away would
speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel
and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which
was probably never done with an “Allen” in the
world. But George’s was a reliable weapon,
nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers
afterwards said, “If she didn’t get what she went
after, she would fetch something else.”</p>
<p class='c009'>And so she did. She went after a deuce of
spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched
a mule standing about thirty yards to the left
of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>owner came out with a double-barreled shot-gun
and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Overland Stage</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Our coach was a great swinging and swaying
stage, of the most sumptuous description—an imposing
cradle on wheels. It was drawn by six
handsome horses, and by the side of the driver sat
the “conductor,” the legitimate captain of the
craft; for it was his business to take charge and
care of the mails, baggage, express matter, and
passengers. We three were the only passengers,
this trip. We sat on the back seat, inside. About
all the rest of the coach was full of mail bags—for
we had three days’ delayed mails with us.
Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular wall
of mail matter rose up to the roof. There was
a great pile of it strapped on top of the stage,
and both the fore and hind boots were full.
We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it
aboard, the driver said—“a little for Brigham,
and Carson, and ’Frisco, but the heft of it for
the Injuns, which is powerful troublesome ’thout
they get plenty of truck to read.” But as he
just then got up a fearful convulsion of his countenance
which was suggestive of a wink being
swallowed by an earthquake, we guessed that
<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>his remark was intended to be facetious, and to
mean that we would unload the most of our mail
matter somewhere on the plains and leave it to
the Indians, or whosoever wanted it.</p>
<p class='c010'>We changed horses every ten miles, all day
long, and fairly flew over the hard level road.
We jumped out and stretched our legs every time
the coach stopped, and so the night found us
still vivacious and unfatigued.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Morning on the Plains</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil.
But morning came, by and by. It was
another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast
expanses of level greensward, bright sunlight,
an impressive solitude, utterly without visible
human beings or human habitations, and an atmosphere
of such amazing magnifying properties
that trees that seemed close at hand were more
than three miles away. We resumed undress
uniform, climbed a-top of the flying coach, dangled
our legs over the side, shouted occasionally
at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their
ears back and scamper faster, tied our hats on
to keep our hair from blowing away, and leveled
an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us
for things new and strange to gaze at. Even at
<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>this day it thrills me through and through to
think of the life, the gladness and the wild sense
of freedom that used to make the blood dance in
my veins on those fine overland mornings.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Cayote</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking
skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched
over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags
down with a despairing expression of forsakenness
and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long,
sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed
teeth. He has a general slinking expression all
over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory
of Want. He is <em>always</em> hungry. He is always
poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest
creatures despise him, and even the fleas would
desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless
and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth
are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is
apologizing for it. And he is <em>so</em> homely!—so
scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful.
When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets
a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little
out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his
head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot
through the sagebrush, glancing over his shoulder
<span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>at you, from time to time, till he is about
out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and
takes a deliberate survey of you; he will trot
fifty yards and stop again—another fifty and
stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding
body blends with the gray of the sagebrush,
and he disappears. All this is when you make
no demonstration against him; but if you do, he
develops a livelier interest in his journey, and
instantly electrifies his heels and puts such a deal
of real estate between himself and your weapon,
that by the time you have raised the hammer
you see that you need a minie rifle, and
by the time you have got him in line you
need a rifled cannon, and by the time you have
“drawn a bead” on him you see well enough
that nothing but an unusually long-winded
streak of lightning could reach him where he is
now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after
him, you will enjoy it ever so much—especially
if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself,
and has been brought up to think he knows
something about speed. The cayote will go
swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his,
and every little while he will smile a fraudful
smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog
entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition,
and make him lay his head still lower to the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>ground, and stretch his neck further to the front,
and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out
straighter behind, and move his furious legs with
a yet wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and
broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert
sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake
across the level plain! And all this time the
dog is only a short twenty feet behind the cayote,
and to save the soul of him he cannot understand
why it is that he cannot get perceptibly
closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it
makes him madder and madder to see how gently
the cayote glides along and never pants or sweats
or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and
more incensed to see how shamefully he has been
taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble
swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot
is; and next he notices that he is getting fagged,
and that the cayote actually has to slacken speed
a little to keep from running away from him—and
<em>then</em> that town-dog is mad in earnest, and
he begins to strain and weep and swear, and
paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for
the cayote with concentrated and desperate energy.
This “spurt” finds him six feet behind
the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends.
And then, in the instant that a wild new hope
is lighting up his face, the cayote turns and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a
something about it which seems to say, “Well, I
shall have to tear myself away from you, bud—business
is business, and it will not do for me to
be fooling along this way all day”—and forthwith
there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting
of a long crack through the atmosphere,
and behold that dog is solitary and alone in the
midst of a vast solitude!</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Pony Rider</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>In a little while all interest was taken up in
stretching our necks and watching for the “pony-rider”—the
fleet messenger who sped across the
continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying
letters nineteen hundred miles in eight days!
Think of that for perishable horse and human
flesh and blood to do! The pony-rider was
usually a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit
and endurance. No matter what time of the
day or night his watch came on, and no matter
whether it was winter or summer, raining, snowing,
hailing, or sleeting, or whether his “beat”
was a level straight road or a crazy trail over
mountain crags and precipices, or whether it
led through peaceful regions that swarmed with
hostile Indians, he must be always ready to leap
<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>into the saddle and be off like the wind! There
was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty.
He rode fifty miles without stopping by daylight,
moonlight, starlight, or through the blackness of darkness—just as it happened. He rode
a splendid horse that was born for a racer and
fed and lodged like a gentleman; kept him at
his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he
came crashing up to the station where stood two
men holding fast a fresh, impatient steed, the
transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in the
twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager
pair and were out of sight before the spectator
could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both rider
and horse went “flying light.” The rider’s dress
was thin, and fitted close; he wore a “roundabout,”
and a skull-cap, and tucked his pantaloons
into his boot tops like a race-rider. He carried
no arms—he carried nothing that was not
absolutely necessary, for even the postage on his
literary freight was worth <em>five dollars a letter</em>.
He got but little frivolous correspondence to
carry—his bag had business letters in it, mostly.
His horse was stripped of all unnecessary weight,
too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle,
and no visible blanket. He wore light shoes,
or none at all. The little flat mail-pockets
strapped under the rider’s thighs would each
<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>hold about the bulk of a child’s primer. They
held many and many an important business
chapter and newspaper letter, but these were
written on paper as airy and thin as gold-leaf,
nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized.
The stage-coach traveled about a hundred
to a hundred and twenty-five miles a day
(twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two
hundred and fifty. There were about eighty
pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night and
day, stretching in a long, scattering procession
from Missouri to California, forty flying eastward,
and forty toward the west, and among
them making four hundred gallant horses earn
a stirring livelihood and see a deal of scenery
every single day in the year.</p>
<p class='c010'>We had had a consuming desire, from the
beginning, to see a pony-rider, but somehow or
other all that passed us and all that met us managed
to streak by in the night, and so we heard
only a whiz and a hail, and the swift phantom
of the desert was gone before we could get our
heads out of the windows. But now we were
expecting one along every moment, and would
see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver
exclaims:</p>
<p class='c010'>“HERE HE COMES.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Every neck is stretched further, and every eye
<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>strained wider. Away across the endless dead
level of the prairie a black speck appears against
the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well,
I should think so! In a second or two it becomes
a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising
and falling,—sweeping toward us nearer and
nearer—growing more and more distinct, more
and more sharply defined—nearer and still
nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly
to the ear—another instant a whoop and a hurrah
from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s
hand, but no reply, and a man and horse burst
past our excited faces, and go winging away like
a belated fragment of a storm!</p>
<p class='c010'>So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal
fancy, that but for the flake of white foam left
quivering and perishing on a mail-sack after the
vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might
have doubted whether we had seen any actual
horse and man at all, maybe.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Indian Country</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>We had now reached a hostile Indian country,
and during the afternoon we passed Laparelle
Station, and enjoyed great discomfort all the
time we were in the neighborhood, being aware
that many of the trees we dashed by at arm’s
<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>length concealed a lurking Indian or two. During
the preceding night an ambushed savage had
sent a bullet through the pony-rider’s jacket, but
he had ridden on, just the same, because pony-riders
were not allowed to stop and inquire into
such things except when killed. As long as
they had life enough in them they had to stick
to the horse and ride, even if the Indians had
been waiting for them a week, and were entirely
out of patience. About two hours and a
half before we arrived at Laparelle Station,
the keeper in charge of it had fired four times
at an Indian, but he said with an injured air
that the Indian had “skipped around so’s to spile
everything—and ammunition’s blamed skurse,
too.” The most natural inference conveyed by
his manner of speaking was, that in “skipping
around,” the Indian had taken an unfair advantage....
We shut the blinds down very tightly
that first night in the hostile Indian country,
and lay on our arms. We slept on them some,
but most of the time we only lay on them. We
did not talk much, but kept quiet and listened.
It was an inky-black night, and occasionally
rainy. We were among woods and rocks, hills
and gorges—so shut in, in fact, that when we
peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could
discern nothing. The driver and conductor on
<span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals,
in low tones, as is the way of men in the
midst of invisible dangers. We listened to raindrops
pattering on the roof; and the grinding
of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the
low wailing of the wind; and all the time we had
that absurd sense upon us, inseparable from
travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the
sense of remaining perfectly still in one place,
notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of the
vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the
grinding of the wheels. We listened a long
time, with intent faculties and bated breath;
every time one of us would relax, and draw a
long sigh of relief and start to say something, a
comrade would be sure to utter a sudden
“Hark!” and instantly the experimenter was
rigid and listening again.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>At the Summit of the Rockies</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>And now, at last, we were fairly in the renowned
SOUTH PASS, and whirling gaily
along, high above the common world. We
were perched upon the extreme summit of the
great range of the Rocky Mountains, toward
which we had been climbing, patiently climbing,
ceaselessly climbing, for days and nights together—and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>about us was gathered a convention
of Nature’s kings that stood ten, twelve, and even
thirteen thousand feet high—grand old fellows
who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington,
in the twilight. We were in such an
airy elevation above the creeping populations of
the earth, that now and then when the obstructing
crags stood out of the way it seemed that we
could look around and abroad and contemplate
the whole great globe, with its dissolving views
of mountains, seas, and continents stretching
away through the mystery of the summer haze.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Incidents by the Way</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>At the Green River station we had breakfast—hot
biscuits, fresh antelope steaks, and coffee—the
only decent meal we tasted between the
United States and Great Salt Lake City and
the only one we were ever really thankful
for. Think of the monotonous execrableness
of the thirty that went before it, to leave
this one simple breakfast looming up in my
memory like a shot-tower after all these years
have gone by!</p>
<p class='c010'>At five p. m. we reached Fort Bridger, one
hundred and seventeen miles from the South
Pass, and one thousand and twenty-five miles
<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>from St. Joseph. Fifty-two miles further on,
near the head of Echo Canyon, we met sixty
United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The
day before, they had fired upon three hundred
or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed
gathered together for no good purpose. In the
fight that had ensued, four Indians were captured,
and the main body chased four miles, but nobody
killed. This looked like business. We
had a notion to get out and join the sixty soldiers,
but upon reflecting that there were four
hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on
and join the Indians.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Mormon Beauties</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only
two days, and therefore we had no time to make
the customary inquisition into the workings of
polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions
preparatory to calling the attention of
the nation at large once more to the matter. I
had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency
of youth I was feverish to plunge in
headlong and achieve a great reform here—until
I saw the Mormon women. Then I was
touched. My heart was wiser than my head.
It warmed toward these poor, ungainly, and pathetically
<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>“homely” creatures, and as I turned
to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said,
“No—the man that marries one of them has
done an act of Christian charity which entitles
him to the kindly applause of mankind, not
harsh censure—and the man that marries sixty of
them has done a deed of open-handed generosity
so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered
in his presence and worship in silence.”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Alkali Desert</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The poetry was all in the anticipation—there
is none in the reality. Imagine a vast, waveless
ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes;
imagine this solemn waste tufted with ash-dusted
sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless silence
and solitude that belong to such a place; imagine
a coach, creeping like a bug through the midst
of this shoreless level, and sending up tumbled
volumes of dust as if it were a bug that went
by steam; imagine this aching monotony of toiling
and plowing kept up hour after hour, and
the shore still as far away as ever, apparently;
imagine team, driver, coach and passengers so
deeply coated with ashes that they are all one
colorless color; imagine ash-drifts roosting above
mustaches and eyebrows like snow accumulations
<span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>on boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it.</p>
<p class='c010'>The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless
malignity; the perspiration is welling
from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely
a sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed
before it gets there; there is not the faintest
breath of air stirring; there is not a merciful
shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament;
there is not a living creature visible in any direction
whither one searches the blank level that
stretches its monotonous miles on every hand;
there is not a sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not
a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant
pipe of bird—not even a sob from the lost souls
that doubtless people that dead air.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Arrival in Carson City</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>By and by Carson City was pointed out to
us. It nestled in the edge of a great plain and
was a sufficient number of miles away to look
like an assemblage of mere white spots in the
shadow of a grim range of mountains overlooking
it, whose summits seemed lifted clear out
of companionship and consciousness of earthly
things.</p>
<p class='c010'>We arrived, disembarked, and the stage went
on. It was a “wooden” town; its population
<span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>two thousand souls. The main street consisted
of four or five blocks of little frame stores which
were too high to sit down on, but not too high
for various other purposes; in fact hardly high
enough. They were packed close together, side
by side, as if room were scarce in that mighty
plain. The sidewalk was of boards that were
more or less loose and inclined to rattle when
walked upon. In the middle of the town, opposite
the stores, was the “plaza,” which is native
to all towns beyond the Rocky Mountains—a
large, unfenced, level vacancy, with a liberty
pole in it, and very useful as a place for
public auctions, horse trades, and mass meetings,
and likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two
other sides of the plaza were faced by stores,
offices and stables. The rest of Carson City
was pretty scattering.</p>
<p class='c010'>We were introduced to several citizens, at the
stage-office and on the way up to the Governor’s
from the hotel—among others, to a Mr. Harris,
who was on horseback; he began to say something,
but interrupted himself with the remark:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I’ll have to get you to excuse me a minute;
yonder is the witness that swore I helped to rob
the California coach—a piece of impertinent
intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted
with the man.”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>Then he rode over and began to rebuke the
stranger with a six-shooter, and the stranger began
to explain with another. When the pistols
were emptied, the stranger resumed his work
(mending a whip-lash), and Mr. Harris rode by
with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a
bullet through one of his lungs, and several
through his hips; and from them issued little
rivulets of blood that coursed down the horse’s
sides and made the animal look quite picturesque.
I never saw Harris shoot a man after that but
it recalled to mind that first day in Carson.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Lake Tahoe</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe
would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine
vigor, and give him an appetite like an
alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest
mummies, of course, but the fresher ones. The
air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine,
bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it
be?—it is the same the angels breathe. I think
that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered
together that a man cannot sleep off in one
night on the sand by its side. Not under a
roof, but under the sky; it seldom or never rains
there in the summer time. I know a man who
<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>went there to die. But he made a failure of it.
He was a skeleton when he came, and could
barely stand. He had no appetite, and did nothing
but read tracts and reflect on the future.
Three months later he was sleeping out-of-doors
regularly, eating all he could hold, three times
a day, and chasing game over mountains three
thousand feet high for recreation. And he was
a skeleton no longer, but weighed part of a
ton. This is no fancy sketch, but the truth.
His disease was consumption. I confidently
commend his experience to other skeletons.</p>
<p class='c010'>... As soon as we had eaten breakfast we
got in the boat and skirted along the lake shore
about three miles and disembarked. We liked
the appearance of the place, and so we claimed
some three hundred acres of it and stuck our
“notice” on a tree. It was yellow pine timber
land—a dense forest of trees a hundred feet
high and from one to five feet through at the
butt. It was necessary to fence our property
or we could not hold it. That is to say, it was
necessary to cut down trees here and there and
make them fall in such a way as to form a sort
of enclosure (with pretty wide gaps in it). We
cut down three trees apiece, and found it such
heart-breaking work that we decided to “rest
our case” on those; if they held the property,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>well and good; if they didn’t, let the property
spill out through the gaps and go; it was no
use to work ourselves to death merely to save
a few acres of land. Next day we came back
to build a house—for a house was also necessary,
in order to hold the property. We decided to
build a substantial log-house and excite the envy
of the Brigade boys; but by the time we had cut
and trimmed the first log it seemed unnecessary
to be so elaborate, and so we concluded to build
it of saplings. However, two saplings duly cut
and trimmed, compelled recognition of the fact
that a still modester architecture would satisfy
the law, and so we concluded to build a “brush”
house. We devoted the next day to this work,
but we did so much “sitting around” and discussing
that by the middle of the afternoon we
had achieved only a half way sort of affair which
one of us had to watch while the other cut brush,
lest if both turned our backs we might not be
able to find it again, it had such a strong family
resemblance to the surrounding vegetation.
But we were satisfied with it.... We slept in
the sand close to the water’s edge, between two
protecting boulders, which took care of the
stormy night winds for us. We never took any
paregoric to make us sleep. At the first break
of dawn we were always up and running footraces
<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>to tone down excess of physical vigor and
exuberance of spirits. That is, Johnny was—but
I held his hat. While smoking the pipe of
peace after breakfast we watched the sentinel
peaks put on the glory of the sun, and followed
the conquering light as it swept among the
shadows, and set the captive crags and forests
free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and
brighten upon the water till every little detail of
forest, precipice, and pinnacle was wrought in
and finished, and the miracle of the enchanter
complete. Then to “business.”</p>
<p class='c010'>That is, drifting around in the boat. We
were on the north shore. There, the rocks on
the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white.
This gives the marvelous transparency of the
water a fuller advantage than it has elsewhere
on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred
yards or so from the shore and then lay down
on the thwarts in the sun, and let the boat drift
by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked.
It interrupted the Sabbath stillness, and marred
the dreams, the luxurious rest and indolence
brought.... So singularly clear was the water,
that where it was only twenty or thirty feet
deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that
the boat seemed floating in air! Yes, where it
was even <em>eighty</em> feet deep. Every little pebble
<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>was distinct, every speckled trout, every hand’s-breadth
of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces,
a granite boulder, as large as a village church,
would start out of the bottom apparently, and
seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till
presently it threatened to touch our faces, and
we could not resist the impulse to seize the oar
and avert the danger. But the boat would float
on, and the boulder descend again, and then we
could see that when we had been exactly above
it, it must still have been twenty or thirty feet
below the surface. Down through the transparency
of these great depths, the water was not
<em>merely</em> transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly
so. All objects seen through it had a bright,
strong vividness, not only of outline, but of every
minute detail, which they would not have had
when seen simply through the same depth of
atmosphere. So empty and airy did all spaces
seem below us, and so strong was the sense of
floating high aloft in mid-nothingness, that we
called these boat-excursions “balloon-voyages.” ...
Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, we lolled
on the sand in camp, and smoked pipes and read
some old well-worn novels. At night, by the
camp-fire, we played euchre and seven-up to
strengthen the mind—and played them with
cards so greasy and defaced that only a whole
<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>summer’s acquaintance with them could enable
the student to tell the ace of clubs from the
jack of diamonds.</p>
<p class='c010'>We never slept in our “house.” It never
occurred to us, for one thing; and besides, it was
built to hold the ground, and that was enough.
We did not wish to strain it.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Selling Out a Mine</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The Gould & Curry claim comprised twelve
hundred feet, and it all belonged originally to
the two men whose name it bears. Mr. Curry
owned two-thirds of it—and he said that he
sold it out for twenty-five hundred dollars in
cash, and an old plug horse that ate up his market
value in hay and barley in seventeen days by
the watch. And he said that Gould sold out
for a pair of second-hand government blankets
and a bottle of whisky that killed nine men in
three hours, and that an unoffending stranger
that smelt the cork was disabled for life. Four
years afterward the mine thus disposed of was
worth in the San Francisco market seven million
six hundred thousand dollars in gold coin.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw
when he died. He was a representative citizen.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>He had “killed his man”—not in his own
quarrel, it is true, but in defence of a stranger
unfairly beset by numbers. He had kept a
sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor
of a dashing helpmeet whom he could have discarded
without the formality of a divorce. He
had a high position in the fire department and
had been a very Warwick in politics. When he
died there was great lamentation throughout the
town, but especially in the vast bottom stratum
of society.</p>
<p class='c010'>On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw,
in the delirium of a wasting typhoid fever,
had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body,
cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story
window and broken his neck—and after due deliberation,
the jury, sad and tearful, but with
intelligence unblinded by its sorrow, brought in
a verdict of death “by the visitation of God.”
What could the world do without juries?</p>
<p class='c010'>Prodigious preparations were made for the funeral.
All the vehicles in town were hired, all
the saloons put in mourning, all the municipal
and fire-company flags hung at half-mast, and all
the firemen ordered to muster in uniform and
bring their machines duly draped in black. Now—let
it be remarked in parenthesis—as all the
people of the earth had representative adventures
<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>in the Silverland, and as each adventurer had
brought the slang of his nation or of his locality
with him, the combination made the slang of
Nevada the richest and the most infinitely varied
and copious that had ever existed anywhere in
the world, perhaps, except in the mines of California
in the “early days.” Slang was the
language of Nevada. It was hard to preach a
sermon without it, and be understood. Such
phrases as “You bet!” “Oh, no, I reckon not.”
“No Irish need apply,” and a hundred others,
became so common as to fall from the lips of a
speaker unconsciously—and very often when
they did not touch the subject under discussion
and consequently failed to mean anything.</p>
<p class='c010'>After Buck Fanshaw’s inquest, a meeting of
the short-haired brotherhood was held, for nothing
could be done on the Pacific coast without a
public meeting and an expression of sentiment.
Regretful resolutions were passed and various
committees appointed; among others, a committee
of one was deputed to call on the minister, a
fragile, gentle, spiritual new fledgling from an
Eastern theological seminary, and as yet unacquainted
with the ways of the mines. The committeeman,
“Scotty” Briggs, made his visit; and
in after days it was worth something to hear
the minister tell about it. Scotty was a stalwart
<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>rough, whose customary suit, when on
weighty official business, like committee work,
was a fire helmet, flaming red flannel shirt, patent
leather belt with spanner and revolver attached,
coat hung over arm, and pants stuffed
into boot tops. He formed something of
a contrast to the pale theological student. It is
fair to say of Scotty, however, in passing, that
he had a warm heart, and a strong love for his
friends, and never entered into a quarrel when
he could reasonably keep out of it. Indeed,
it was commonly said that when ever one of
Scotty’s fights was investigated, it always turned
out that it had originally been no affair of his,
but out of native good-heartedness he had dropped
in of his own accord to help the man who was
getting the worst of it. He and Buck Fanshaw
were bosom friends, for years, and had often
taken adventurous “potluck” together. On one
occasion, they had thrown off their coats and
taken the weaker side in a fight among strangers,
and after gaining a hard earned victory,
turned and found that the men they were helping
had deserted early and not only that, but
had stolen their coats and made off with them!
But to return to Scotty’s visit to the minister.
He was on a sorrowful mission, now, and his
face was the picture of woe. Being admitted to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>the presence he sat down before the clergyman,
placed his fire hat on an unfinished manuscript
sermon under the minister’s nose, took from it a
red silk handkerchief, wiped his brow and heaved
a sigh of dismal impressiveness, explanatory of
his business. He choked, and even shed tears;
but with an effort he mastered his voice and said
in lugubrious tones:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill
next door?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Am I the—pardon me, I believe I do not understand?”</p>
<p class='c010'>With another sigh and a half-sob, Scotty rejoined:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, you see, we are in a bit of trouble, and
the boys thought maybe you would give us a
lift, if we’d tackle you—that is, if I’ve got the
rights of it and you are the head clerk of the
doxology-works next door.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I am the shepherd in charge of the flock
whose fold is next door.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“The which?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“The spiritual adviser of the little company
of believers whose sanctuary adjoins these
premises.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment,
and then said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“You rather hold over me, pard. I reckon I
<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>can’t call that hand. Ante and pass the buck.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“How? I beg pardon. What did I understand
you to say?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, you’ve ruther got the bulge on me.
Or may’be we’ve both got the bulge, somehow.
You don’t smoke me and I don’t smoke you.
You see, one of the boys has passed in his
checks, and we want to give him a good send-off,
and so the thing I’m on now is to roust out
somebody to jerk a little chin-music for us and
waltz him through handsome.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“My friend, I seem to grow more and more
bewildered. Your observations are wholly incomprehensible
to me. Cannot you simplify
them in some way? At first I thought perhaps
I understood you, but I grope now. Would it
not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to
categorical statements of facts, unencumbered
with obstructive accumulations of metaphor and
allegory?”</p>
<p class='c010'>Another pause, and more reflection. Then,
said Scotty:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I’ll have to pass, I judge.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“How?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“You’ve raised me out, pard.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I still fail to catch your meaning.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for
<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>me—that’s the idea. I can’t neither trump nor
follow suit.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed.
Scotty leaned his head on his hand and
gave himself up to thought. Presently his face
came up, sorrowful, but confident.</p>
<p class='c010'>“I’ve got it now, so’s you can savvy,” he said.
“What we want is a gospel-sharp. See?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“A what?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Gospel-sharp. Parson.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh! Why did you not say so before? I am
a clergyman—a parson.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Now you talk! You see my blind and straddle
it like a man. Put it there!”—extending a
brawny paw, which closed over the minister’s
small hand and gave it a shake indicative of
fraternal sympathy and fervent gratification.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Now we’re all right, pard. Let’s start fresh.
Don’t you mind my shuffling a little—becuz we’re
in a power of trouble. You see, one of the boys
has gone up the flume——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Gone where?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Up the flume—throwed up the sponge, you
understand.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Thrown up the sponge?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes—kicked the bucket——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ah—has departed to that mysterious country
from whose bourne no traveler returns.”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>“Return! I reckon not. Why, pard, he’s
<em>dead!</em>”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes, I understand.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, you do? Well I thought maybe you
might be getting tangled some more. Yes, you
see he’s dead again——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“<em>Again!</em> Why, has he ever been dead before?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Dead before? No! Do you reckon a man
has got as many lives as a cat? But you bet you,
he’s awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish
I’d never seen this day. I don’t want no better
friend than Buck Fanshaw. I knowed him by
the back; and when I know a man and like
him, I freeze to him—you hear <em>me</em>. Take him
all round, pard, there never was a bullier man
in the mines. No man ever knowed Buck Fanshaw
to go back on a friend. But it’s all up,
you know, it’s all up. It <em>ain’t</em> no use. They’ve
scooped him.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Scooped him?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes—death has. Well, well, well, we’ve got
to give him up. Yes, indeed. It’s a kind of a
hard world, after all, <em>ain’t</em> it? But pard, he
was a rustler! You ought to see him get started
once. He was a bully boy with a glass eye!
Just spit in his face and give him room according
<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>to his strength, and it was just beautiful to
see him peel and go in. He was the worst
son of a thief that ever drawed breath. Pard,
he was <em>on</em> it! He was on it bigger than an
Injun!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“On it? On what?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“On the shoot. On the shoulder. On the
fight, you understand. <em>He</em> didn’t give a continental
for <em>any</em> body. <em>Beg</em> your pardon, friend,
for coming so near saying a cuss-word—but you
see I’m on an awful strain, in this palaver, on
account of having to cramp down and draw
everything so mild. But we’ve got to give him
up. There ain’t any getting around that, I
don’t reckon. Now if we can get you to help
plant him——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Preach the funeral discourse? Assist at the
obsequies?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Obs’quies is good. Yes. That’s it—that’s
our little game. We are going to get the thing
up regardless, you know. He was always nifty
himself, and so you bet you his funeral ain’t
going to be no slouch—solid silver door-plate
on his coffin, six plumes on the hearse, and one
nigger on the box in a biled shirt and a plug
hat—how’s that for high? And we’ll take care
of <em>you</em> pard. We’ll fix you all right. There’ll
be a kerridge for you; and whatever you want,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>you just ’scape out and we’ll ’tend to it. We’ve
got a shebang fixed up for you to stand behind,
in No. 1’s house, and don’t you be afraid. Just
go in and toot your horn, if you don’t sell a clam.
Put Buck through as bully as you can, pard, for
anybody that knowed him will tell you that he
was one of the whitest men that was ever in the
mines. You can’t draw it too strong. He
never could stand it to see things going wrong.
He’s done more to make this town quiet and
peaceable than any man in it. I’ve seen him
lick four Greasers in eleven minutes, myself. If
a thing wanted regulating, <em>he</em> warn’t a man to
go browsing around for somebody to do it, but
he would prance in and regulate it himself. He
warn’t a Catholic. Scasely. He was down on
’em. His word was ‘No Irish need apply!’
But it didn’t make no difference about that
when it came down to what a man’s rights was—and
so, when some roughs jumped the
Catholic boneyard and started in to stake out
town lots in it he <em>went</em> for ’em! And he <em>cleaned</em>
’em, too! I was there, pard, and I seen it myself.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“That was very well, indeed—at least the impulse
was—whether the act was strictly defensible
or not. Had deceased any religious convictions?
That is to say, did he feel a dependence
<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>upon, or acknowledge allegiance to a higher
power?”</p>
<p class='c010'>More reflection.</p>
<p class='c010'>“I reckon you’ve stumped me again, pard.
Could you say it over once more, and say it
slow?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, to simplify it somewhat, was he, or
rather had he ever been connected with any organization
sequestered for secular concerns and
devoted to self-sacrifice in the interests of morality?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“All down but nine—set ’em up on the other
alley, pard.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“What did I understand you to say?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, you’re most too many for me, you
know. When you get in with your left I hunt
grass every time. Every time you draw, you
fill; but I don’t seem to have any luck. Let’s
have a new deal.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“How? Begin again?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“That’s it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Very well. Was he a good man, and——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“There—I see that; don’t put up another chip
till I look at my hand. A good man, says you?
Pard, it ain’t no name for it. He was the best
man that ever—pard, you would have doted on
that man. He could lam any galoot of his
inches in America. It was him that put down
<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>the riot last election before it got a start; and
everybody said he was the only man that could
have done it. He waltzed in with a spanner in
one hand and a trumpet in the other, and sent
fourteen men home on a shutter in less than
three minutes. He had that riot all broke up
and prevented nice before anybody ever got a
chance to strike a blow. He was always for
peace, and he would <em>have</em> peace—he could not
stand disturbances. Pard, he was a great loss
to this town. It would please the boys if you
would chip in something like that and do him
justice. Here once when the Micks got to
throwing stones through the Methodis’ Sunday-school
windows, Buck Fanshaw, all of his own
notion, shut up his saloon and took a couple of
six-shooters and mounted guard over the Sunday-school.
Says he, ‘No Irish need Apply!’ And
they didn’t. He was the bulliest man in the
mountains, pard! He could run faster, jump
higher, hit harder, and hold more tanglefoot
whisky without spilling than any man in seventeen
counties. Put that in, pard—it’ll please the
boys more than anything you could say. And
you can say, pard, that he never shook his
mother.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Never shook his mother?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“That’s it—any of the boys will tell you so.”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>“Well, but why <em>should</em> he shake her?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“That’s what <em>I</em> say—but some people does.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Not people of any repute.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, some that averages pretty so-so.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“In my opinion the man that would offer personal
violence to his own mother ought to——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Cheese it, pard; you’ve banked your ball
clean outside the string. What I was drivin’
at, was, that he never <em>throwed</em> off on his mother—don’t
you see? No indeedy. He give her a
house to live in, and town lots, and plenty of
money; and he looked after her and took care
of her all the time; and when she was down
with the smallpox I’m d—d if he didn’t set
up nights and nuss her himself! <em>Beg</em> your pardon
for saying it, but it hopped out too quick
for yours truly. You’ve treated me like a gentleman,
pard, and I ain’t the man to hurt your
feelings intentional. I think you’re white. I
think you’re a square man, pard. I like you,
and I’ll lick any man that don’t. I’ll lick him
till he can’t tell himself from a last year’s corpse!
Put it <em>there</em>!” (Another fraternal hand-shake—and
exit).</p>
<p class='c010'>The obsequies were all that “the boys” could
desire. Such a marvel of funeral pomp had
never been seen in Virginia. The plumed
hearse, the dirge-breathing brass bands, the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>closed marts of business, the flags drooping at
half-mast, the long, plodding procession of uniformed
secret societies, military battalions and
fire companies, draped engines, carriages of
officials, and citizens in vehicles and on foot, attracted
multitudes of spectators to the sidewalks,
roofs, and windows; and for years afterward,
the degree of grandeur attained by any
civic display in Virginia was determined by
comparison with Buck Fanshaw’s funeral.</p>
<p class='c010'>Scotty Briggs, as a pall-bearer and a mourner,
occupied a prominent place at the funeral,
and when the sermon was finished and the last
sentence of the prayer for the dead man’s soul
ascended, he responded in a low voice, but with
feeling:</p>
<p class='c010'>“AMEN. No Irish need apply.”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>An Abandoned Town</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>We lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside,
and there were not five other cabins in
view over the wide expanse of hill and forest.
Yet a flourishing city of two or three thousand
population had occupied this grassy dead solitude
during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years
before, and where our cabin stood had once been
the heart of the teaming hive, the center of the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>city. When the mines gave out the town fell
into decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared—streets,
dwellings, shops, everything—and
left no sign. The grassy slopes were as
green and smooth and desolate of life as if they
had never been disturbed. The mere handful
of miners still remaining had seen the town
spring up, spread, grow, and flourish in its pride;
and they had seen it sicken and die, and pass
away like a dream. With it their hopes had died,
and their zest of life. They had long ago resigned
themselves to their exile, and ceased to
correspond with their distant friends or turn
longing eyes toward their distant homes. They
had accepted banishment, forgotten the world
and been forgotten of the world. They were far
from telegraphs and railroads, and they stood,
as it were, in a living grave, dead to the events
that stirred the globe’s great populations, dead
to the common interests of men, isolated and
outcast from brotherhood with their kind. It
was the most singular, and almost the most
touching and melancholy exile that fancy can
imagine.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Hawaiian Temple</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Near by is an interesting ruin—the meager remains
of an ancient temple—a place where human
<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>sacrifices were offered up in those old by-gone
days when the simple child of nature,
yielding momentarily to sin when sorely
tempted, acknowledged his error when calm reflection
had shown it to him, and came forward
with noble frankness and offered up his grandmother
as an atoning sacrifice—in those old days
when the luckless sinner could keep on cleansing
his conscience and achieving periodical happiness
as long as his relations held out; long, long before
the missionaries braved a thousand privations
to come and make them permanently miserable
by telling them how beautiful and how
blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible
it is to get there; and showed the poor
native how dreary a place perdition is and what
unnecessarily liberal facilities there are for going
to it; showed him how, in his ignorance, he
had gone and fooled away all his kinsfolk to
no purpose; showed him what rapture it is to
work all day long for fifty cents to buy food for
next day with, as compared with fishing for a
pastime and lolling in the shade through eternal
summer, and eating of the bounty that nobody
labored to provide but Nature. How
sad it is to think of the multitudes who have
<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>gone to their graves in this beautiful island and
never knew there was a hell.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Hawaiian Statesman</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The President is the King’s father. He is an
erect, strongly built, massive-featured, white-haired,
tawny old gentleman of eighty years of
age, or thereabouts. He was simply but well
dressed, in a blue cloth coat and white vest, and
white pantaloons, without spot, dust, or blemish
upon them. He bears himself with a calm,
stately dignity, and is a man of noble presence.
He was a young man and a distinguished warrior
under that terrific fighter, Kamehameha I.,
more than half a century ago. A knowledge of
his career suggested some such thought as this:
“This man, naked as the day he was born, and
war-club and spear in hand, has charged at the
head of a horde of savages against other hordes
of savages more than a generation and a half
ago, and reveled in slaughter and carnage; has
worshiped wooden images on his devout knees;
has seen hundreds of his race offered up in
heathen temples as sacrifices to wooden idols, at a
time when no missionary’s foot had ever pressed
this soil, and he had never heard of the white
man’s God; has believed his enemy could
<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>secretly pray him to death; has seen the day, in
his childhood, when it was a crime punishable
by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for
a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the king—and
now look at him an educated Christian;
neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-minded,
elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree,
and one who has been the honored guest of
royalty in Europe; a man practiced in holding
the reins of an enlightened government, and well
versed in the politics of his country and in general,
practical information. Look at him, sitting
there presiding over the deliberations of a legislative
body, among whom are white men—a
grave, dignified, statesmanlike personage, and as
seemingly natural and fitted to the place as if he
had been born in it and had never been out of
it in his lifetime. How the experiences of this
old man’s eventful life shame the cheap inventions
of romance!”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Hawaiian Religion</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Quite a broad tract of land near the temple,
extending from the sea to the mountain, was
sacred to the god Lono in olden times—so sacred
that if a common native set his sacrilegious foot
upon it, it was judicious for him to make his
<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>will, because his time had come. He might go
around it by water, but he could not cross it.
It was well sprinkled with pagan temples and
stocked with awkward, homely idols carved out
of logs of wood. There was a temple devoted
to prayers for rain—and with fine sagacity it
was placed at a point so well up on the mountain
side that if you prayed there twenty-four
times a day for rain you would be likely to get
it every time. You would seldom get to your
Amen before you would have to hoist your
umbrella.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Crater of Haleakala</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Presently, vagrant white clouds came drifting
along, high over the sea and the valley; then
they came in couples and groups; then in imposing
squadrons; gradually joining their forces,
they banked themselves solidly together, a thousand
feet under us, and <em>totally shut out land and
ocean</em>—not a vestige of <em>anything</em> was left in
view, but just a little of the rim of the crater,
circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat
(for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the
filmy hosts without had drifted through a chasm
in the crater wall and filed round and round,
and gathered and sunk and blended together till
<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>the abyss was stored to the brim with a fleecy
fog). Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence
reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league,
the snowy floor stretched without a break—not
level, but in rounded folds, with shallow creases
between, and here and there stately piles of
vapory architecture lifting themselves aloft out
of the common plain—some near at hand, some
in the middle distances, and others relieving the
monotony of the remote solitudes. There was
little conversation, for the impressive scene overawed
speech. I felt like the Last Man, neglected
of the judgment, and left pinnacled in
mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished
world.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “THE GILDED AGE” (1873)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Colonel Seller’s Great Idea</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Washington was not able to ignore the cold
entirely. He was nearly as close to the stove
as he could get, and yet he could not persuade
himself that he felt the slightest heat, notwithstanding
the isinglass door was still gently and
serenely glowing. He tried to get a trifle closer
to the stove, and the consequence was he tripped
the supporting poker and the stove-door tumbled
to the floor. And then there was a revelation—there
was nothing in the stove but a lighted tallow
candle!</p>
<p class='c010'>The poor youth blushed and felt as if he
must die with shame. But the Colonel was only
disconcerted for a moment—he straightaway
found his voice again:</p>
<p class='c010'>“A little idea of my own, Washington—one
of the greatest things in the world! You must
write and tell your father about it—don’t forget
that, now. I have been reading up some
<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>European scientific reports—friend of mine,
Count Fugier sent them to me—sends me all
sorts of things from Paris—he thinks the world
of me, Fugier does. Well, I saw that the
Academy of France had been testing the properties
of heat, and they came to the conclusion
that it was a non-conductor or something like
that, and of course its influence must necessarily
be deadly in nervous organizations with excitable
temperaments, especially where there is any
tendency toward rheumatic affections. Bless
you, I saw in a moment what was the matter
with us, and says I, out goes your fires!—no
more slow torture and certain death for me, sir.
What you want is the <em>appearance</em> of heat, not
the heat itself—that’s the idea. Well, how to do
it was the next thing. I just put my head to
work, pegged away a couple of days, and here
you are! Rheumatism? Why a man can’t any
more start a case of rheumatism in this house
than he can shake an opinion out of a mummy!
Stove with a candle in it and transparent door—that’s
it—it has been the salvation of this
family. Don’t you fail to write your father about
it, Washington. And tell him the idea is mine—I’m
no more conceited than most people, I reckon,
but you know it is human nature for a man to
want credit for a thing like that.”</p>
<div>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Colonel Sellers Lets Himself Out</span></h3></div>
<p class='c012'>The supper at Colonel Sellers’s was not sumptuous,
in the beginning, but it improved on acquaintance.
That is to say, that what Washington
regarded at first sight as mere lowly potatoes,
presently became awe-inspiring agricultural
productions that had been reared in some ducal
garden beyond the sea, under the sacred eye of
the duke himself, who had sent them to Sellers;
the bread was from corn which could be grown
in only one favored locality in the earth and
only a favored few could get it; the Rio coffee,
which at first seemed execrable to the taste, took
to itself an improved flavor when Washington
was told to drink it slowly and not hurry what
should be a lingering luxury in order to be fully
appreciated—it was from the private stores of
a Brazilian nobleman with an unrememberable
name. The Colonel’s tongue was a magician’s
wand that turned dried apples into figs and
water into wine as easily as it could change a
hovel into a palace and present poverty into imminent
future riches.</p>
<p class='c010'>Washington slept in a cold bed in a carpetless
room and woke up in a palace in the morning;
at least the palace lingered during the moment
that he was rubbing his eyes and getting his
<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>bearings—and then it disappeared and he recognized
that the Colonel’s inspiring talk had been
influencing his dreams. Fatigue had made him
sleep late; when he entered the sitting-room he
noticed that the old haircloth sofa was absent;
when he sat down to breakfast the Colonel tossed
six or seven dollars in bills on the table, counted
them over, said he was a little short and must
call upon his banker; then returned the bills to
his wallet with the indifferent air of a man who is
used to money. The breakfast was not an improvement
upon the supper, but the Colonel
talked it up and transformed it into an oriental
feast. By and by, he said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I intend to look out for you, Washington, my
boy. I hunted up a place for you yesterday, but
I am not referring to that, now—that is a mere
livelihood—mere bread and butter; but when I
say I mean to look out for you I mean something
very different. I mean to put things in your
way that will make a mere livelihood a
trifling thing. I’ll put you in a way to make
more money than you’ll ever know what
to do with. You’ll be right here where I can
put my hand on you when anything turns up.
I’ve got some prodigious operations on foot; but
I’m keeping quiet; mum’s the word; your old
hand don’t go around pow-wowing and letting
<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>everybody see his k’yards and find out his little
game. But all in good time, Washington, all in
good time. You’ll see. Now, there’s an operation
in corn that looks well. Some New York
men are trying to get me to go into it—buy up
all the growing crops and just boss the market
when they mature—ah, I tell you, it’s a great
thing. And it only costs a trifle; two millions
or two and a half will do it. I haven’t exactly
promised yet—there’s no hurry—the more indifferent
I seem, you know, the more anxious those
fellows will get. And then there is the hog
speculation—that’s bigger still. We’ve got quiet
men at work” (he was very impressive here),
“mousing around, to get propositions out of all
the farmers in the whole West and Northwest
for the hog crop, and other agents quietly getting
propositions and terms out of all the manufactories—and
don’t you see, if we can get
all the hogs and all the slaughter-houses into our
hands on the dead quiet—whew! it would take
three ships to carry the money. I’ve looked into
the thing—calculated all the chances for and all
the chances against, and though I shake my head
and hesitate and keep on thinking, apparently,
I’ve got my mind made up that if the thing
can be done on a capital of six millions, that’s
the horse to put up money on! Why, Washington—but
<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>what’s the use of talking about it—any
man can see that there’s whole Atlantic oceans
of cash in it, gulfs and bays thrown in. But
there’s a bigger thing than that, yet—a bigger——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, Colonel, you can’t want anything bigger!”
said Washington, his eyes blazing. “Oh,
I wish I could go into either of those speculations—I
only wish I had money—I wish I wasn’t
cramped and kept down and fettered with poverty,
and such prodigious chances lying right here
in sight! Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor.
But don’t throw away those things—they are so
splendid that I can see how sure they are. Don’t
throw them away for something still better and
maybe fail in it! I wouldn’t, Colonel. I would
stick to these. I wish father were here and
were his old self again. Oh, he never in his
life had such chances as these are. Colonel, you
<em>can’t</em> improve on these—no man can improve on
them!”</p>
<p class='c010'>A sweet, compassionate smile played about the
Colonel’s features, and he leaned over the table
with the air of a man who is “going to show
you” and do it without the least trouble:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why Washington, my boy, these things are
nothing. They <em>look</em> large—of course they look
large to a novice—but to a man who has been all
<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>his life accustomed to large operations—pshaw!
They’re well enough to while away an idle hour
with, or furnish a bit of employment that will
give a trifle of idle capital a chance to earn its
bread while it is waiting for something to <em>do</em>,
but—now just listen a moment—just let me give
you an idea of what we old veterans of commerce
call ‘business.’ Here’s the Rothschilds’ proposition—this
is between you and me, you understand——”</p>
<p class='c010'>Washington nodded three or four times impatiently,
and his glowing eyes said, “Yes, yes—hurry—I
understand——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“——for I wouldn’t have it get out for a fortune.
They want me to go in with them on the
sly—agent was here two weeks ago about it—go
in on the sly” (voice down to an impressive
whisper, now) “and buy up a hundred and thirteen
wildcat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky,
Illinois, and Missouri—notes of these banks are
at all sorts of discount now—average discount of
the hundred and thirteen is forty-four per cent.—buy
them all up, you see, and then all of a sudden
let the cat out of the bag! Whiz! the stock of
every one of those wildcats would spin up to a
tremendous premium before you could turn a
handspring—profit on the speculation not a dollar
less than forty millions!” (An eloquent pause
<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>while the marvelous vision settled into W.’s
focus.) “Where’s your hogs now! Why, my
dear innocent boy, we would just sit down on
the front doorsteps and peddle banks like lucifer
matches!”</p>
<p class='c010'>Washington finally got his breath and said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, it is perfectly wonderful! Why couldn’t
these things have happened in father’s day. And
I—it’s of no use—they simply lie before my face
and mock me. There is nothing for me to do
but to stand helpless and see other people reap
the astonishing harvest.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Never mind, Washington, don’t you worry.
I’ll fix you. There’s plenty of chances. How
much money have you got?”</p>
<p class='c010'>In the presence of so many millions, Washington
could not keep from blushing when he had
to confess that he had but eighteen dollars in
the world.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, all right—don’t despair. Other people
had been obliged to begin with less. I have
a small idea that may develop into something for
us both, all in good time. Keep your money
close and add to it. I’ll make it breed. I’ve
been experimenting (to pass away the time) on
a little preparation for curing sore eyes—a kind
of decoction nine-tenths water and the other
tenth drugs that don’t cost more than a dollar
<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>a barrel; I’m still experimenting; there’s one ingredient
wanted yet to perfect the thing, and
somehow I can’t just manage to hit upon the thing
that’s necessary, and I don’t dare talk with a
chemist, of course. But I’m progressing, and
before many weeks I wager the country will ring
with the fame of Beriah Sellers’ Infallible Imperial
Oriental Optic Liniment and Salvation for
Sore Eyes—the Medical Wonder of the Age!
Small bottles fifty cents, large ones a dollar. Average
cost, five and seven cents for the two sizes.
The first year sell, say, ten thousand bottles in
Missouri, seven thousand in Iowa, three thousand
in Arkansas, four thousand in Kentucky, six
thousand in Illinois, and say twenty-five thousand
in the rest of the country. Total, fifty-five thousand
bottles; profit clear of all expenses, twenty
thousand dollars at the very lowest calculation.
All the capital needed is to manufacture the first
two thousand bottles—say a hundred and fifty
dollars—then the money would begin to flow in.
The second year, sales would reach 200,000 bottles—clear
profit, say, $75,000—and in the meantime
the great factory would be building in St.
Louis, to cost, say, $100,000. The third year
we could easily sell 1,000,000 bottles in the
United States and——”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>“Oh, splendid!” said Washington. “Let’s commence
right away—let’s——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“——1,000,000 bottles in the United States—profit
at least $350,000—and <em>then</em> it would begin
to be time to turn our attention toward the <em>real</em>
idea of the business.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“The <em>real</em> idea of it! Ain’t $350,000 a year
pretty real——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Stuff! Why, what an infant you are, Washington—what
a guileless, shortsighted, easily-contented
innocent you are, my poor little country-bred
know-nothing! Would I go to all that
trouble and bother for the poor crumbs a body
might pick up in <em>this</em> country? Now do I look like
a man who—does my history suggest that I am
a man who deals in trifles, contents himself with
the narrow horizon that hems in the common
herd, sees no further than the end of his nose?
Now, <em>you</em> know that that is not me. Couldn’t
be me. <em>You</em> ought to know that if I throw my
time and abilities into a patent medicine, it’s a
patent medicine whose field of operations is the
solid earth! its clients the swarming nations that
inhabit it! Why what is the republic of America
for an eye-water country? Lord bless you,
it is nothing but a barren highway that you’ve
got to cross to get <em>to</em> the true eye-water market!
Why, Washington, in the Oriental countries people
<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>swarm like the sands of the desert; every
square mile of land upholds its thousands upon
thousands of struggling human creatures—and
every separate and individual devil of them’s got
the ophthalmia! It’s as natural to them as noses
are, and sin. It’s born with them, it stays with
them, that’s all that some of them have left when
they die. Three years of introductory trade in
the Orient and what will be the result? Why,
our headquarters would be in Constantinople and
our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and
warehouses in Cairo, Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus,
Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi,
Bombay, and Calcutta! Annual income—well,
God only knows how many millions and millions
apiece!”</p>
<p class='c010'>Washington was so dazed, so bewildered—his
heart and his eyes had wandered so far away
among the strange lands beyond the seas, and
such avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered
and jingled confusedly down before him,
that he was now as one who had been whirling
round and round for a time, and stopping all at
once, finds his surroundings still whirling and
all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by
little the Sellers family cooled down and crystallized
into shape, and the poor room lost its
glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth
<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>found his voice and begged Sellers to drop everything
and hurry up the eye-water; and he got
out his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon
the Colonel—pleaded with him to take it—implored
him to do it. But the Colonel would not;
said he would not need the capital (in his native
magnificent way he called that eighteen dollars
capital) till the eye-water was an accomplished
fact. He made Washington easy in his mind,
though, by promising that he would call for it
just as soon as the invention was finished, and
he added the glad tidings that nobody but just
they two should be admitted to a share in the
speculation.</p>
<p class='c010'>When Washington left the breakfast table he
worshiped that man.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER” (1874–5)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Speculation in Whitewash</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Saturday morning was come, and all the summer
world was bright and fresh, and brimming
with life. There was a song in every heart;
and if the heart was young the music issued at
the lips. There was cheer in every face and a
spring in every step. The locust trees were in
bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled
the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and
above it, was green with vegetation, and it lay
just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land,
dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket
of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed
the fence, and all gladness left him and a
deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit.
Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life
to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.
Sighing he dipped his brush and passed it along
the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it
<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>again; compared the insignificant whitewashed
streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed
fence, and sat down on a tree box
discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate
with a tin pail, and singing “Buffalo Gals.”
Bringing water from the town pump had always
been hateful work in Tom’s eyes, before, but
now it did not strike him so. He remembered
that there was company at the pump. White,
mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always
there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings,
quarreling, fighting, skylarking. And
he remembered that although the pump was only
a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got
back with a bucket of water under an hour—and
even then somebody generally had to go
after him. Tom said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Say, Jim, I’ll fetch the water if you’ll whitewash
some.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Jim shook his head and said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Can’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me
I got to go an’ git dis water an’ not stop foolin’
’roun’ wid anybody. She say she spec Mars
Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an’ so she tole
me go ’long an’ ’tend to my own business—she
’lowed <em>she’d</em> ’tend to de whitewashin’.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim.
That’s the way she always talks. Gimme the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>bucket—I won’t be gone only a minute. <em>She</em>
won’t ever know.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, I dasn’t Mars Tom. Ole missis she’d
take an’ tar de head off’n me. ’Deed she would.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“<em>She!</em> She never licks anybody—whacks ’em
over the head with her thimble—and who cares
for that, I’d like to know. She talks awful,
but talk don’t hurt—anyway it don’t if she don’t
cry. Jim, I’ll give you a marvel. I’ll give you a
white alley!”</p>
<p class='c010'>Jim began to waver.</p>
<p class='c010'>“White alley, Jim! And it’s a bully taw.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“My! Dat’s a mighty gay marvel, <em>I</em> tell you!
But Mars Tom I’s powerful afraid ole missis——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“And besides, if you will I’ll show you my
sore toe.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Jim was only human—this attraction was too
much for him. He put down his pail, took the
white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing
interest while the bandage was being unwound.
In another moment he was flying down
the street with his pail and a tingling rear,
Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt
Polly was retiring from the field with a slipper
in her hand and triumph in her eye.</p>
<p class='c010'>But Tom’s energy did not last. He began to
think of the fun he had planned for this day,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys
would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious
expeditions, and they would make a world
of fun of him for having to work—the very
thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out
his worldly wealth and examined it—bits of toys,
marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange
of <em>work</em>, maybe, but not half enough to buy so
much as half an hour of pure freedom. So he
returned his straitened means to his pocket, and
gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At
this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration
burst upon him! Nothing less than a great,
magnificent inspiration.</p>
<p class='c010'>He took up his brush and went tranquilly to
work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently—the
very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been
dreading. Ben’s gait was the hop-skip-and-jump—proof
enough that his heart was light and his
anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and
giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed
by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong,
for he was personating a steamboat. As he
drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of
the street, leaned far over to starboard and
rounded to, ponderously and with laborious pomp
and circumstance—for he was personating the
“Big Missouri,” and considered himself to be
<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>drawing nine feet of water. He was the boat and
captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to
imagine himself standing on his own hurricane deck;
giving the orders and executing them:
“Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!” The headway
ran almost out and he drew up slowly toward
the sidewalk.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!” His
arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Set her back on the starboard! Ting-a-ling-ling!
Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!” His
right hand, meantime, describing stately circles—for
it was representing a forty-foot wheel.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling!
Chow-ch-chow chow!” The left hand
began to describe circles.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop
the labboard! Come ahead on the stabboard!
Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow!
Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that
head-line! <em>Lively</em> now! Come—out with your
spring-line—what’re you about there! Take a
turn round that stump with the bight of it!
Stand by that stage, now—let her go! Done
with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! <em>Sh’t!
sh’t! sh’t!”</em> (trying the gauge-cocks).</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom went on whitewashing—paid no attention
<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment
and then said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Hi-<em>yi. You’re</em> up a stump, ain’t you!”</p>
<p class='c010'>No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch
with the eye of an artist, then he gave his brush
another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as
before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom’s
mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his
work. Ben said—</p>
<p class='c010'>“Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom wheeled suddenly and said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, it’s you Ben! I warn’t noticing.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Say—<em>I’m</em> going in a swimming, <em>I</em> am. Don’t
you wish you could? But of course you’d
ruther <em>work</em>—wouldn’t you? Course you
would!”</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“What do you call work?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, ain’t <em>that</em> work?”</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered
carelessly:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All
I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, come, now, you don’t mean to let on
that you <em>like</em> it?”</p>
<p class='c010'>The brush continued to move.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t
<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash
a fence every day?”</p>
<p class='c010'>That put the thing in a new light. Ben
stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush
daintily—added a touch here and there—criticised
the effect again—Ben watching every move
and getting more and more interested, more and
more absorbed. Presently he said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Say, Tom, let <em>me</em> whitewash a little.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom considered, was about to consent; but
he altered his mind:</p>
<p class='c010'>“No—no—I reckon it wouldn’t hardly do,
Ben. You see, Aunt Polly’s awful particular
about this fence—right here on the street, you
know—but if it was the back fence I wouldn’t
mind and <em>she</em> wouldn’t. Yes, she’s awful particular
about this fence; it’s got to be done very
careful; I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand,
maybe two thousand, that can do the way
it’s got to be done.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“No—is that so? Oh come, now—lemme just
try. Only just a little—I’d let <em>you</em>, if you was
me, Tom.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ben, I’d like to, honest injun; but Aunt
Polly—well, Jim wanted to do it, but she
wouldn’t let him. Sid wanted to do it, and she
wouldn’t let Sid. Now don’t you see how I’m
<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything
was to happen to it——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, shucks, I’ll be just as careful. Now
lemme try. Say—I’ll give you the core of my
apple.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, here—— No, Ben, now don’t. I’m
afeard——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I’ll give you <em>all</em> of it!”</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his
face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the
late steamer “Big Missouri” worked and sweated
in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in
the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched
his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents.
There was no lack of material; boys
happened along every little while; they came to
jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time
Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next
chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair;
and when <em>he</em> played out, Johnny Miller bought
in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with—and
so on, and so on, hour after hour. And
when the middle of the afternoon came, from
being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning,
Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He
had beside the things before mentioned, twelve
marbles, part of a jew’s-harp, a piece of blue
bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a
<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment
of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin
soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a
kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a
dog-collar—but no dog—the handle of a knife,
four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old
window-sash.</p>
<p class='c010'>He had had a nice, good, idle time all the
while—plenty of company—and the fence had
three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run
out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted
every boy in the village.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Tom Falls in Love</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>As he was passing by the house where Jeff
Thatcher lived, he saw a new girl in the
garden—a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow
hair plaited into two long tails, white summer
frock and embroidered pantalettes. The
fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A
certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart
and left not even a memory of herself behind.
He had thought he loved her to distraction; he
had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold
it was only a poor little evanescent partiality.
He had been months winning her; she had
confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>happiest and the proudest boy in the world only
seven short days, and here in one instant of time
she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger
whose visit is done.</p>
<p class='c010'>He worshiped this new angel with furtive eye,
till he saw that she had discovered him; then
he pretended he did not know she was present,
and began to “show off” in all sorts of absurd
boyish ways, in order to win her admiration. He
kept up this grotesque foolishness for some time;
but by and by, while he was in the midst of
some dangerous gymnastic performances, he
glanced aside and saw that the little girl was
wending her way toward the house. Tom came
up to the fence and leaned on it, grieving, and
hoping she would tarry yet a while longer. She
halted a moment on the steps and then moved
toward the door. Tom heaved a great sigh as
she put her foot on the threshold. But his face
lit up, right away, for she tossed a pansy over
the fence a moment before she disappeared.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Huck</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Huckleberry came and went, at his own free
will. He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and
in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to
go to school or to church, or call any being master
<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming
when and where he chose, and stay as long
as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight;
he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was
always the first that went barefoot in the spring
and the last to resume leather in the fall; he
never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he
could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything
that goes to make life precious, that boy had.
So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable
boy in St. Petersburg.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Pirates’ Island</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>They built a fire against the side of a great
log, twenty or thirty steps within the somber
depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon
in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half
of the corn “pone” stock they had brought. It
seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild
free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored
and uninhabited island, far from the haunts of
men, and they said they never would return to
civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces
and threw its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks
of their forest temple, and upon the varnished
foliage and festooning vines.</p>
<p class='c010'>Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness
<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>began to steal upon the eyelids of the little waifs.
The pipe dropped from the fingers of the Red-Handed,
and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free
and the weary. The Terror of the Seas and
the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main had
more difficulty in getting to sleep. They said
their prayers inwardly, and lying down, since
there was nobody there with authority to make
them kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they had
a mind not to say them at all, but they were
afraid to proceed to such lengths as that, lest
they might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt
from Heaven....</p>
<p class='c010'>When Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered
where he was. He sat up and rubbed his
eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended.
It was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious
sense of repose and peace in the deep
pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not
a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great
Nature’s meditation. Beaded dewdrops stood
upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of
ashes covered the fire, and a thin blue breath of
smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck
still slept.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Tom Learns to Smoke</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>After a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said
<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>he wanted to learn to smoke, now. Joe caught
at the idea and said he would like to try, too.
So Huck made pipes and filled them. These
novices had never smoked anything before but
cigars made of grapevine, and they “bit” the
tongue, and were not considered manly anyway.</p>
<p class='c010'>Now they stretched themselves out on their
elbows and began to puff, charily, and with slender
confidence. The smoke had an unpleasant
taste, and they gagged a little, but Tom said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, it’s just as easy! If I’d a knowed <em>this</em>
was all, I’d a learnt long ago.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“So would I,” said Joe. “It’s just nothing.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, many a time I’ve looked at people
smoking, and thought ‘well, I wish I could do
that’; but I never thought I could,” said Tom.</p>
<p class='c010'>“That’s just the way with me, hain’t it, Huck?
You’ve heard me talk just that way—haven’t you
Huck? I’ll leave it to Huck if I haven’t.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes—heaps of times,” said Huck.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, I have too,” said Tom; “oh, hundreds
of times. Once down by the slaughter-house.
Don’t you remember, Huck? Bob Tanner was
there, and Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher,
when I said it. Don’t you remember, Huck,
’bout me saying that?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes, that’s so,” said Huck. “That was the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>day after I lost a white alley. No, ’twas the day
before.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“There—I told you so,” said Tom. “Huck
recollects it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I bleeve I could smoke this pipe all day,”
said Joe. “<em>I</em> don’t feel sick.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Neither do I,” said Tom. “<em>I</em> could smoke
it all day. But I bet you Jeff Thatcher
couldn’t.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Jeff Thatcher! Why, he’d keel over just
with two draws. Just let him try it once.
<em>He’d</em> see!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I bet he would. And Johnny Miller—I wish
I could see Johnny Miller tackle it once.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, don’t <em>I</em>!” said Joe,<SPAN name='t126'></SPAN> “Why, I bet you Johnny Miller
couldn’t any more do this than nothing. Just
one little snifter would fetch <em>him</em>.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“’Deed it would, Joe. Say—I wish the boys
could see us now.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“So do I.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Say—boys, don’t say anything about it, and
sometime when they’re around, I’ll come up to
you and say ‘Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.’
And you’ll say, kind of careless like, as if it
warn’t anything, you’ll say, ‘Yes, I got my <em>old</em>
pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain’t
very good.’ And I’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s all right, if
it’s <em>strong</em> enough.’ And then you’ll out with
<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>the pipes, and we’ll light up just as ca’m, and
then just see ’em look!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“By jings, that’ll be gay, Tom! I wish it was
<em>now</em>!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“So do I! And when we tell ’em we learned
when we was off pirating, won’t they wish they’d
been along?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, I reckon not! I’ll just <em>bet</em> they will!”</p>
<p class='c010'>So the talk ran on. But presently it began to
flag a trifle, and grow disjointed. The silences
widened; the expectoration marvelously increased.
Every pore inside the boys’ cheeks became
a spouting fountain; they could scarcely
bail out the cellars under their tongues fast
enough to prevent an inundation; little overflowings
down their throats occurred in spite of
all they could do, and sudden retchings followed
every time. Both boys were looking very pale
and miserable, now. Joe’s pipe dropped from
his nerveless fingers. Tom’s followed. Both
fountains were going furiously and both pumps
bailing with might and main. Joe said feebly:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I’ve lost my knife. I reckon I better go and
find it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom said, with quivering lips and halting utterance:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I’ll help you. You go over that way and I’ll
<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>hunt around by the spring. No, you needn’t
come, Huck—we can find it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>So Huck sat down again, and waited an hour.
Then he found it lonesome, and went to find his
comrades. They were wide apart in the woods,
both very pale, both fast asleep. But something
informed him that if they had had any trouble
they had got rid of it.</p>
<p class='c010'>They were not talkative at supper that night.
They had a humble look, and when Huck prepared
his pipe after the meal and was going to
prepare theirs, they said no, they were not feeling
very well—something they ate at dinner had
disagreed with them.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT” (1878)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Describing an Elephant</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>“There are cases in detective history to show
that criminals have been detected through peculiarities
in their appetites. Now, what does this
elephant eat? and how much?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, as to <em>what</em> he eats—he will eat <em>anything</em>.
He will eat a man, he will eat a Bible—he
will eat anything <em>between</em> a man and a
Bible.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Good—very good, indeed, but too general.
Details are necessary—details are the only valuable
thing in our trade. Very well—as to men:
At one meal—or, if you prefer, during one
day—how many men will he eat, if fresh?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“He would not care whether they were fresh
or not; at a single meal he would eat five ordinary
men.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Very good; five men; we will put that down.
What nationalities would he prefer?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“He is indifferent about nationalities. He
prefers acquaintances, but is not prejudiced
against strangers.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Very good. Now, as to Bibles. How many
Bibles would he eat at a meal?”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>“He would eat an entire edition.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Now that is more exact. I will put that
down. Very well; he likes men and Bibles; so
far, so good. What else will he eat? I want
particulars.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“He will leave Bibles to eat bricks, he will
leave bricks to eat bottles, he will leave bottles
to eat clothing, he will leave clothing to eat cats,
he will leave cats to eat oysters, he will leave
oysters to eat ham, he will leave ham to eat
sugar, he will leave sugar to eat pie, he will
leave pie to eat potatoes, he will leave potatoes
to eat bran, he will leave bran to eat hay, he
will leave hay to eat oats, he will leave oats
to eat rice, for he was mainly raised on it. There
is nothing whatever that he will not eat but
European butter, and he would eat that if he
could taste it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Very good. General quantity at a meal—say
about——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, anywhere from a quarter to a half
a ton.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“And he drinks——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Everything that is fluid. Milk, water,
whisky, molasses, castor oil, camphene, carbolic
acid—it is no use to go into particulars; whatever
fluid occurs to you set it down. He will drink
anything that is fluid, except European coffee.”</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “A TRAMP ABROAD” (1878–9)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Wagner</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>One day we took the train and went down to
Mannheim to see King Lear played in German.
It was a mistake. We sat in our seats three
whole hours and never understood anything but
the thunder and lightning; and even that was
reversed to suit German ideas, for the thunder
came first and the lightning followed after....
Another time we went to Mannheim and attended
a shivaree—otherwise an opera—the one
called Lohengrin. The banging and slamming
and booming and crashing were something beyond
belief. The racking and pitiless pain of it remains
stored up in my memory alongside the
memory of the time that I had my teeth fixed.
There were circumstances which made it necessary
for me to stay through the four hours to
the end, and I stayed; but the recollection of that
<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>long, dragging, relentless season of suffering is
indestructible. To have to endure it in silence,
and sitting still, made it all the harder. I was
in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers,
of the two sexes, and this compelled repression;
yet at times the pain was so exquisite
that I could hardly keep the tears back. At
those times, as the howlings and wailings and
shriekings of the singers, and the ragings and
roarings and explosions of the vast orchestra
rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder,
and fiercer and fiercer, I could have cried if I
had been alone. Those strangers would not have
been surprised to see a man do such things who
was being gradually skinned, but they would have
marveled at it here, and made remarks about it,
no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the
present case which was an advantage over being
skinned. There was a wait of half an hour at
the end of the first act, and I could have gone
out and rested during that time, but I could
not trust myself to do it, for I felt that I should
desert and stay out. There was another wait
of half an hour toward nine o’clock, but I had
gone through so much by that time that I had
no spirit left, and so had no desire but to be
let alone.</p>
<p class='c010'>I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>people there were like me, for, indeed, they were
not. Whether it was that they naturally liked
that noise, or whether it was that they had
learned to like it by getting used to it, I did not
at that time know; but they did like it—this was
plain enough. While it was going on they sat
and looked rapt and grateful as cats do when
one strokes their backs; and whenever the curtain
fell they rose to their feet, in one solid
mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick
with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of
applause swept the place. This was not comprehensible
to me. Of course, there were many
people there who were not under compulsion
to stay; yet the tiers were as full at the close
as they had been at the beginning. This showed
that the people liked it....</p>
<p class='c010'>I suppose there are two kinds of music—one
kind which one feels, just as an oyster might,
and another sort which requires a higher faculty,
a faculty which must be assisted and developed
by teaching. Yet if base music gives certain
of us wings, why should we want any other?
But we do. We want it because the higher and
better like it. But we want it without giving
it the necessary time and trouble; so we climb
into that upper tier, that dress circle, by a lie;
we <em>pretend</em> we like it. I know several of that
<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>sort of people—and I propose to be one of them
myself when I get home with my fine European
education.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Midnight Entertainment</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>At last all sleepiness forsook me. I recognized
the fact that I was hopelessly and permanently
wide-awake. Wide-awake, and feverish
and thirsty. When I had lain tossing there
as long as I could endure it, it occurred to me
that it would be a good idea to dress and go
out in the great square and take a refreshing
wash in the fountain, and smoke and reflect
there until the remnant of the night was gone.</p>
<p class='c010'>I believed I could dress in the dark without
waking Harris. I had banished my shoes after
the mouse, but my slippers would do for a
summer night. So I rose softly, and gradually
got on everything—down to one sock. I couldn’t
seem to get on the track of that sock, any way
I could fix it. But I had to have it; so I went
down on my hands and knees, with one slipper
on and the other in my hand, and began to paw
gently around and rake the floor, but with no
success. I enlarged my circle, and went on pawing
and raking. With every pressure of my
knee, how the floor creaked! and every time I
<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>chanced to rake against any article, it seemed to
give out thirty-five or thirty-six times more noise
than it would have in the daytime. In those
cases I always stopped and held my breath till
I was sure Harris had not awakened—then I
crept along again. I moved on and on, but I
could not find the sock; I could not seem to
find anything but furniture. I could not remember
that there was much furniture in the room
when I went to bed, but the place was alive
with it now—especially chairs—chairs everywhere—had
a couple of families moved in, in the
meantime? And I never could seem to glance
on one of those chairs, but always struck it
full and square with my head. My temper rose,
by steady and sure degrees, and as I pawed on
and on, I fell to making vicious comments under
my breath.</p>
<p class='c010'>Finally, with a venomous access of irritation,
I said I would leave without the sock; so I rose
up and made straight for the door—as I supposed—and
suddenly confronted my dim spectral
image in the mirror. It startled the breath
out of me, for an instant; it was also showed
me that I was lost, and had no sort of idea
where I was. When I realized this, I was so
angry that I had to sit down on the floor and
take hold of something to keep from lifting the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>roof off with an explosion of opinion. If there
had been only one mirror, it might possibly have
helped to locate me; but there were two, and
two were as bad as a thousand; besides, these
were on opposite sides of the room. I could see
the dim blur of the windows, but in my turned-around
condition they were exactly where they
ought not to be, and so they only confused me instead
of helping me.</p>
<p class='c010'>I started to get up, and knocked down an
umbrella; it made a noise like a pistol-shot when
it struck that hard, slick, carpetless floor; I
grated my teeth and held my breath—Harris
did not stir. I set the umbrella slowly and carefully
against the wall, but as soon as I took my
hand away, its heel slipped from under it and
down it came again with another bang. I shrunk
together and listened a moment in silent fury—no
harm done, everything quiet. With the most
painstaking care and nicety I stood the umbrella
up once more, took my hand away, and down
it came again.</p>
<p class='c010'>I have been strictly reared, but if it had not
been so dark and solemn and awful there in that
lonely, vast room, I do believe I should have
said something then which could not have been
put in a Sunday-school book without injuring the
sale of it. If my reasoning powers had not been
<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>already sapped dry by my harassments, I would
have known better than to try to set an umbrella
on end on one of those glassy German
floors in the dark; it can’t be done in the daytime
without four failures to one success. I had
one comfort, though—Harris was yet still and
silent—he had not stirred.</p>
<p class='c010'>The umbrella could not locate me—there were
four standing around the room, and all alike.
I thought I would feel along the wall and find
the door in that way. I rose up and began this
operation, but raked down a picture. It was not
a large one, but it made noise enough for a
panorama. Harris gave out no sound, but I
felt that if I experimented any further with the
pictures I should be sure to wake him. Better
give up trying to get out. Yes, I would find
King Arthur’s Round Table once more—I had
already found it several times—and used it for
a base of departure on an exploring tour for
my bed; if I could find my bed I could find my
water-pitcher. I would quench my raging thirst
and turn in. So I started on my hands and
knees, because I could go faster that way, and
with more confidence, too, and not knock things
down. By and by I found the table—with my
head—rubbed the bruise a little, then rose up
and started, with hands abroad and fingers
<span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>spread, to balance myself. I found a chair; then
the wall; then another chair; then a sofa; then
an alpenstock, then another sofa; this confounded
me, for I had thought there was only one sofa.
I hunted up the table again and took a fresh
start; found some more chairs.</p>
<p class='c010'>It occurred to me, now, as it ought to have
done before, that as the table was round, it was
therefore no value as a place to aim from; so I
moved off once more and at random among the
wilderness of chairs and sofas—wandered off
into unfamiliar regions, and presently knocked
a candlestick off a mantelpiece and knocked off
a lamp, grabbed at the lamp and knocked off a
water-pitcher with a rattling crash, and thought
to myself, “I’ve found you at last—I judged I
was close upon you.” Harris shouted “murder,”
and “thieves,” and finished with “I’m absolutely
drowned.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The crash had roused the house. Mr. X.
pranced in, in his long night-garment, with a
candle, young Z. after him with another candle;
a procession swept in at another door, with candles
and lanterns—landlord and two German
guests in their nightgowns, and a chambermaid
in hers.</p>
<p class='c010'>I looked around; I was at Harris’s bed, a
sabbath day’s journey from my own. There was
<span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>only one sofa; it was against the wall; there was
only one chair where a body could get at it—I
had been revolving around it like a planet,
and colliding with it like a comet half the night.</p>
<p class='c010'>I explained how I had been employing myself,
and why. Then the landlord’s party left, and
the rest of us set about our preparations for
breakfast, for the dawn was ready to break. I
glanced furtively at my pedometer, and found
I had made 47 miles. But I did not care, for I
had come out for a pedestrian tour anyway.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Foreign Quotations</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>I have a prejudice against people who print
things in a foreign language and add no translation.
When I am the reader, and the author
considers me able to do the translating myself,
he pays me quite a nice compliment—but if he
would do the translating for me I would try to
get along without the compliment.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Reflections on the Ant</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Now and then, while we rested, we watched
the laborious ant at his work. I found nothing
new in him—certainly nothing to change my
opinion of him. It seems to me that in the matter
<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>of intellect the ant must be a strangely overrated
bird. During many summers, now, I have
watched him, when I ought to have been in better
business, and I have not yet come across a
living ant that seemed to have any more sense
than a dead one. I refer to the ordinary ant,
of course; I have had no experience of those
wonderful Swiss and African ones which vote,
keep drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute
about religion. Those particular ants may be all
that the naturalist paints them, but I am persuaded
that the average ant is a sham. I admit
his industry, of course; he is the hardest working
creature in the world—when anybody is looking—but
his leather-headedness is the point I make
against him. He goes out foraging, he makes a
capture, and then what does he do? Go home?
No—he goes anywhere but home. He doesn’t
know where home is. His home may be only
three feet away,—no matter, he can’t find
it. He makes his capture, as I have said; it is
generally something which can be of no sort of
use to himself or anybody else; it is usually
seven times bigger than it ought to be; he lifts
it bodily up in the air by main force and starts;
not toward home, but in the opposite direction;
not calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste
which is wasteful of his strength; he fetches up
<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>against a pebble, and instead of going around it,
he climbs over it backwards dragging his booty
after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps
up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes,
moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously,
yanks it this way, then that, shoves it ahead of
him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him
another moment, gets madder and madder, then
presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing
away in an entirely new direction; comes to a
weed; it never occurs to him to go around it;
no, he must climb it; and he does climb it, dragging
his worthless property to the top—which is
as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to
carry a sack of flour from Heidelberg to Paris
by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up
there he finds that that is not the place; takes
a cursory glance at the scenery and either climbs
down again or tumbles down, and starts off once
more—as usual in a new direction. At the end
of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches
of the place he started from and lays his burden
down; meantime he has been over all the ground
for two yards around, and climbed all the weeds
and pebbles he came across. Now he wipes the
sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, and then
marches aimlessly off, in as violent a hurry as
ever. He traverses a good deal of zig-zag country,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>and by and by stumbles on his same booty
again. He does not remember ever having seen
it before; he looks around to see which is not the
way home, grabs his bundle and starts; he goes
through the same adventures he had before; finally
stops to rest, and a friend comes along.
Evidently the friend remarks that a last year’s
grasshopper leg is a very noble acquisition, and
inquires where he got it. Evidently the proprietor
does not remember exactly where he did
get it, but thinks he got it “around here somewhere.”
Evidently the friend contracts to help
him freight it home. Then, with a judgment
peculiarly antic (pun not intentional), they take
hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg
and begin to tug with all their might in opposite
directions. Presently they take a rest and confer
together. They decide that something is wrong,
they can’t make out what. Then they go at it
again, just as before. Same result. Mutual
recriminations follow. Evidently each accuses
the other of being an obstructionist. They warm
up, and the dispute ends in a fight. They lock
themselves together and chew each other’s jaws
for a while; then they roll and tumble on the
ground till one loses a horn or a leg and has to
haul off for repairs. They make up and go to
work again in the same old insane way, but the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he may,
the other one drags off the booty and him at the
end of it. Instead of giving up, he hangs on,
and gets his shins bruised against every obstruction
that comes in the way. By and by, when
that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over
the same old ground once more, it is finally
dumped at about the spot where it originally
lay, the two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully
and decide that dried grasshopper legs are
a poor sort of property after all, and then each
starts off in a different direction to see if he
can’t find an old nail or something else that is
heavy enough to afford entertainment and at
the same time valueless enough to make an ant
want to own it.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Foreign Quotations Again</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>When really learned men write books for other
learned men to read, they are justified in using
as many learned words as they please—their
audience will understand them; but a man that
writes a book for the general public to read is
not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated
foreign expressions. It is an insolence
toward the majority of the purchasers, for it is
a very frank and impudent way of saying, “Get
<span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>the translations made yourself, if you want them;
this book is not written for the ignorant classes.”
There are men who know a foreign language so
well and have used it so long in their daily life
that they seem to discharge whole volleys of it
into their English writings unconsciously, and
so they omit to translate, as much as half the
time. That is a great cruelty to nine out of
ten of the man’s readers. What is the excuse
for this? The writer would say he only uses the
foreign language where the delicacy of his point
cannot be conveyed in English. Very well, then
he writes his best things for the tenth man, and
he ought to warn the other nine not to buy his
book. However, the excuse he offers is at least
an excuse; but there is another set of men who ... know a <em>word</em> here and there, of a foreign
language, or a few beggarly little three-word
phrases, filched from the back of the dictionary,
and these they are continually peppering into
their literature, with a pretense of knowing that
language—what excuse can they offer? The foreign
words and phrases which they use have their
exact equivalents in a nobler language—English;
yet they think they “adorn their page” when they
say <i><span lang="de" xml:lang="de">Strasse</span></i> for street, and <i><span lang="de" xml:lang="de">Bahnhof</span></i> for railway
station, and so on—flaunting these fluttering rags
of poverty in the reader’s face, and imagining he
<span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>will be ass enough to take them for the sign of
untold riches held in reserve.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Jungfrau</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>There was something subduing in the influence
of that silent and solemn and awful presence;
one seemed to meet the immutable, the indestructible,
the eternal, face to face, and to feel the
trivial and fleeting nature of his own existence the
more sharply by the contrast. One had the sense
of being under the brooding contemplation of a
spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice—a spirit
which had looked down, through the slow drift
of the ages, upon a million vanished races of men,
and judged them; and would judge a million
more—and still be there, watching, unchanged
and unchangeable, after all life should be gone
and the earth have become a vacant desolation.</p>
<p class='c010'>While I was feeling these things, I was groping,
without knowing it, toward an understanding
of what the spell is which people find in the
Alps, and in no other mountains—that strange,
deep, nameless influence, which once felt, cannot
be forgotten—once felt, leaves always behind
it a restless longing to feel it again—a
longing which is like homesickness; a grieving,
haunting yearning, which will plead, implore,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>and persecute till it has its will. I met dozens
of people, imaginative and unimaginative, cultivated
and uncultivated, who had come from far
countries and roamed through the Swiss Alps
year after year—they could not explain why.
They had come first, they said, out of idle curiosity,
because everybody talked about it; they
had come since because they could not help it,
and they should keep on coming, while they
lived, for the same reason; they had tried to
break their chains and stay away, but it was
futile; now, they had no desire to break them.
Others came nearer formulating what they felt:
they said they could find perfect rest and peace
nowhere else when they were troubled; all frets
and worries and chafings sank to sleep in the
presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps:
the Great Spirit of the Mountain breathed his
own peace upon their hurt minds and sore hearts,
and healed them; they could not think base
thoughts or do mean and sordid things here,
before the visible throne of God.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Climbing the Gemmi Pass</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>When we began that ascent, we could see a
microscopic chalet perched away up against
heaven on what seemed to be the highest mountain
<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>near us. It was on our right, across the
narrow head of the valley. But when we got
up abreast it on its own level, mountains were
towering high above on every hand, and we saw
that its altitude was just about that of the little
Gasternthal which we had visited the evening
before. Still it seemed a long way up in the
air, in that waste and lonely wilderness of rocks.
It had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it
which seemed about as big as a billiard table,
and this grass plot slanted so sharply downwards,
and was so brief, and ended so exceedingly
soon at the verge of the absolute precipice,
that it was a shuddery thing to think of a person’s
venturing to trust his foot on an incline
so situated at all. Suppose a man stepped on
an orange peel in that yard; there would be
nothing for him to seize; nothing could keep
him from rolling; five revolutions would bring
him to the edge, and over he would go. What
a frightful distance he would fall!—for there are
very few birds that fly as high as his starting-point.
He would strike and bounce, two or
three times, on his way down, but this would be
no advantage to him. I would as soon take an
airing on the slant of a rainbow as in such a
front yard. I would rather, in fact, for the distance
<span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>down would be about the same, and it is
pleasanter to slide than to bounce.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Descent of Gemmi Pass</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable
road I have ever seen. It wound in
corkscrew curves down the face of the colossal
precipice—a narrow way, with always the solid
rock wall at one elbow, and perpendicular nothingness
at the other. We met an everlasting procession
of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists
climbing up this steep and muddy path, and
there was no room to spare when you had to
pass a tolerably fat mule. I always took the inside,
when I heard or saw the mule coming, and
flattened myself against the wall. I preferred
the inside, of course, but I should have had to
take it anyhow, because the mule prefers the
outside. A mule’s preference—on a precipice—is
a thing to be respected. Well, his choice is
always the outside. His life is mostly devoted
to carrying bulky panniers and packages which
rest against his body—therefore he is habituated
to taking the outside edge of mountain paths, to
keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or
banks on the other. When he goes into the
passenger business he absurdly clings to his old
<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger always
dangling over the great deeps of the lower world
while that passenger’s heart is in the highlands,
so to speak. More than once I saw a mule’s
hind foot cave out over the outer edge and send
earth and rubbish into the bottomless abyss; and
I noticed that upon these occasions the rider,
whether male or female, looked tolerably unwell.</p>
<p class='c010'>There was one place where an 18–inch breadth
of light masonry had been added to the verge
of the path, and as there was a very sharp turn,
here, a panel of fencing had been set up there
at some ancient time, as a protection. This panel
was old and gray and feeble, and the light masonry
had been loosened by recent rains. A
young American girl came along on a mule, and
in making the turn the mule’s hind foot caved
all the loose masonry and one of the fence posts
overboard; the mule gave a violent lurch inboard
to save himself, and succeeded in the effort,
but the girl turned as white as the snow of Mont
Blanc for a moment.</p>
<p class='c010'>The path here was simply a groove cut in the
face of the precipice; there was a four-foot
breadth of solid rock under the traveler, and
a four-foot breadth of solid rock just above his
head, like the roof of a narrow porch; he could
look out from this gallery and see a sheer summitless
<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>and bottomless wall of rock before him,
across a gorge or crack a biscuit’s toss in width—but
he could not see the bottom of his own
precipice unless he lay down and projected his
nose over the edge. I did not do this, because
I did not wish to soil my clothes.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Alp Climbing</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>There is probably no pleasure equal to the
pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is
a pleasure which is confined strictly to people
who can find pleasure in it. I have not jumped
to this conclusion; I have traveled to it per
gravel train, so to speak. I have thought the
whole thing out, and am quite sure I am right.
A born climber’s appetite for climbing is hard to
satisfy; when it comes upon him he is like a
starving man with a feast before him; he may
have other business on hand, but it must wait.
Mr. Girdlestone had had his usual summer holiday
in the Alps, and had spent it in the usual
way, hunting for unique chances to break his
neck; his vacation was over, and his luggage
packed for England, but all of a sudden a hunger
had come upon him to climb the tremendous
Weisshorn once more, for he had heard of a new
and utterly impossible route up it. His baggage
<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend,
laden with knapsacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and
canteens of milk, were just setting out. They
would spend the night high up among the snows,
somewhere, and get up at two in the morning
and finish the enterprise. I had a strong desire
to go with them, but forced it down—a feat
which Mr. Girdlestone, with all his fortitude,
could not do.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Old Masters</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>We visited the picture galleries and the other
regulation “sights” of Milan—not because I
wanted to write about them again, but to see
if I had learned anything in twelve years. I
afterwards visited the great galleries of Rome
and Florence for the same purpose. I found I
had learned one thing. When I wrote about the
Old Masters before, I said the copies were better
than the originals. That was a mistake of
large dimensions. The Old Masters were still
unpleasing to me, but they were truly divine contrasted
with the copies. The copy is to the original
as the pallid, smart, inane new waxwork group is
to the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living
men and women whom it professes to duplicate.
There is a mellow richness, a subdued color, in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>the old pictures, which is to the eye what muffled
and mellowed sound is to the ear. That is
the merit which is most loudly praised in the
old picture, and is the one which the copy most
conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must
not hope to compass. It was generally conceded
by the artists with whom I talked, that that subdued
splendor, that mellow richness, is imparted
to the picture by <em>age</em>. Then why should we
worship the Old Master for it, who didn’t impart
it, instead of worshiping Old Time, who
did? Perhaps the picture was a clanging bell,
until time muffled it and sweetened it.</p>
<p class='c010'>In conversation with an artist in Venice, I
asked,</p>
<p class='c010'>“What is it that people see in Old Masters?
I have been in the Doge’s palace and I saw several
acres of very bad drawing, very bad perspective,
and very incorrect proportions. Paul
Veronese’s dogs do not resemble dogs; all the
horses look like bladders on legs; one man had
a <em>right</em> leg on the left side of his body; in the
large picture where the Emperor (Barbarossa?)
is prostrate before the Pope, there are three men
in the foreground who are over thirty feet high,
if one may judge by the size of a kneeling little
boy in the center of the foreground; and according
to the same scale, the Pope is 7 feet high
<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>and the Doge is a shriveled dwarf of 4 feet.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The artist said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes, the Old Masters often drew badly;
they did not care much for truth and exactness
in minor details; but after all, in spite of bad
drawing, bad perspective, bad proportions, and
a choice of subjects which no longer appeal to
people as strongly as they did three hundred
years ago, there is a <em>something</em> about their pictures
which is divine—a something which is
above and beyond the art of any epoch since—a
something which would be the despair of artists
but that they never hope or expect to attain
it, and therefore do not worry about it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>That is what he said—and he said what he
believed; and not only believed, but felt.</p>
<p class='c010'>Reasoning—especially reasoning without technical
knowledge—must be put aside, in cases of
this kind. It cannot assist the inquirer. It will
lead him, in the most logical progression, to what,
in the eyes of the artists, would be a most illogical
conclusion. Thus: bad drawing, bad
proportions, bad perspective, indifference to truthful
detail, color which gets its merit from time,
and not from the artist—these things constitute
the Old Master; conclusion, the Old Master was
a bad painter, the Old Master was not an Old
Master at all, but an Old Apprentice. Your
<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>friend the artist will grant your premises, but
deny your conclusion; he will maintain that notwithstanding
this formidable list of confessed defects,
there is still a something that is divine and
unapproachable about the Old Master, and that
there is no arguing the fact away by any system
of reasoning whatever.</p>
<p class='c010'>I can believe that. There are women who
have an indefinable charm in their faces which
makes them beautiful to their intimates; but a
cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out
and find this beauty would fail. He would
say of one of these women: This chin is too
short, this nose is too long, this forehead is
too high, this hair is too red, this complexion
is too pallid, the perspective of the entire
composition is incorrect; conclusion, the woman
is not beautiful. But her nearest friend might
say, and say truly, “Your premises are right,
your logic is faultless, but your conclusion is
wrong, nevertheless; she is an Old Master—she
is beautiful, but only to such as know her; it is
a beauty which cannot be formulated, but it is
there just the same.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I found more pleasure in contemplating the
Old Masters this time than I did when I was
in Europe in former years, but still it was a
calm pleasure; there was nothing overheated
about it.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI” (1874–5)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Permanent Ambition</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>When I was a boy, there was but one permanent
ambition among my comrades in our village
on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That
was to be a steamboatman. We had transient
ambitions of other sorts, but they were only
transient. When a circus came and went, it left
us all burning to become clowns; the first negro
minstrel show that ever came to our section left
us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and
then we had a hope that, if we lived and were
good, God would permit us to be pirates. These
ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the
ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.</p>
<p class='c010'>My father was a justice of the peace, and I
supposed he possessed the power of life and death
over all men, and could hang anybody that offended
him. This was distinction enough for me
as a general thing; but the desire to be a steamboatman
<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>kept intruding, nevertheless. I first
wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out
with a white apron on and shake a tablecloth over
the side, where all my old comrades could see
me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand
who stood on the end of the stage-plank
with the coil of rope in his hand, because he
was particularly conspicuous. But these were
only day-dreams—they were too heavenly to be
contemplated as real possibilities. By and by
one of our boys went away. He was not heard
of for a long time. At last he turned up as
apprentice engineer or “striker” on a steamboat.
This thing shook the bottom out of all my Sunday-school
teachings. That boy had been notoriously
worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he
was exalted to this eminence, and I left in obscurity
and misery.</p>
<p class='c010'>This creature’s career could produce but one
result, and it speedily followed. Boy after boy
managed to get on the river. The minister’s
son became an engineer. The doctor’s and the
postmaster’s sons became “mud clerks”; the
wholesale liquor dealer’s son became a barkeeper
on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and
two sons of the county judge, became pilots.
Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot,
even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely
<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>salary—from a hundred and fifty to two hundred
and fifty dollars a month, and no board to
pay. Two months of his wages would pay a
preacher’s salary for a year. Now some of us
were left disconsolate. We could not get on the
river—at least our parents would not let us.</p>
<p class='c010'>So, by and by, I ran away. I said I would
never come home again till I was a pilot and
could come in glory.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>First Lessons in Piloting</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The boat backed out from New Orleans at
four in the afternoon, and it was “our watch”
until eight. Mr. Bixby, my chief, “straightened
her up,” ploughed her along past the sterns
of the other boats that lay at the Levee, and then
said, “Here, take her; shave those steamships
as close as you’d peel an apple.” I took the
wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered up into the
hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were
about to scrape the side of every ship in the line,
we were so close. I held my breath and began
to claw the boat away from the danger; and I
had my own opinion of the pilot who had known
no better than to get us into such peril, but I
was too wise to express it. In half a minute
I had a wide margin of safety intervening between
<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>the <em>Paul Jones</em> and the ships; and within
ten seconds more I was set aside in disgrace, and
Mr. Bixby was going into danger again and flaying
me alive with abuse of my cowardice. I
was stung, but I was obliged to admire the easy
confidence with which my chief loafed from side
to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so
closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent.
When he had cooled a little he told me that the
easy water was close ashore and the current outside,
and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream,
to get the benefit of the former, and stay
well out, down-stream, to take advantage of the
latter. In my own mind I resolved to be a
down-stream pilot and leave the up-streaming to
people dead to prudence.</p>
<p class='c010'>Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention
to certain things. Said he, “This is Six-Mile
Point.” I assented. It was pleasant enough
information, but I could not see the bearing of
it. I was not conscious that it was a matter
of any interest to me. Another time he said,
“This is Nine-Mile Point.” Later he said,
“This is Twelve-Mile Point.” They were all
about level with the water’s edge; they all looked
about alike to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque.
I hoped Mr. Bixby would change
the subject. But no; he would crowd up
<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>around a point, hugging the shore with affection,
and then say: “The slack water ends here,
abreast this bunch of China-trees; now we cross
over.” So he crossed over. He gave me the
wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either
came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation,
or I yawed too far from shore, and so
dropped back into disgrace again and got abused.</p>
<p class='c010'>The watch was ended at last, and we took
supper and went to bed. At midnight the glare
of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night
watchman said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Come, turn out!”</p>
<p class='c010'>And then he left. I could not understand
this extraordinary procedure; so I presently gave
up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty
soon the watchman was back again, and this
time he was gruff. I was annoyed. I said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“What do you want to come bothering
around here in the middle of the night for?
Now, as like as not, I’ll not get to sleep again
to-night.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The watchman said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, if this ain’t good, I’m blessed.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The “off-watch” was just turning in, and I
heard some brutal laughter from them, and such
remarks as, “Hello, watchman! ain’t the new
cub turned out yet? He’s delicate likely. Give
<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>him some sugar in a rag, and send for the
chambermaid to sing ‘Rock-a-bye Baby,’ to him.”</p>
<p class='c010'>About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the
scene. Something like a minute later I was
climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my
clothes on and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby
was close behind, commenting. Here was something
fresh—this thing of getting up in the middle
of the night to go to work. It was a detail
in piloting that had never occurred to me at
all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow
I had never happened to reflect that somebody
had to get up out of a warm bed to run
them. I began to fear that piloting was not
quite so romantic as I had imagined it was;
there was something very real and worklike
about this new phase of it.</p>
<p class='c010'>It was rather a dingy night, although a fair
number of stars were out. The big mate was
at the wheel, and he had the old tub pointed at
a star and was holding her straight up the middle
of the river. The shores on either hand were
not much more than half a mile apart, but they
seemed wonderfully far away and ever so vague
and indistinct. The mate said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“We’ve got to land at Jones’s plantation, sir.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to
myself, “I wish you joy of your job, Mr. Bixby;
<span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>you’ll have a good time finding Mr. Jones’s
plantation such a night as this; and I hope you
never <em>will</em> find it as long as you live.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Mr. Bixby said to the mate:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Upper.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I can’t do it. The stumps there are out of
the water at this stage. It’s no great distance
to the lower, and you’ll have to get along with
that.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“All right, sir. If Jones don’t like it, he’ll
have to lump it, I reckon.”</p>
<p class='c010'>And then the mate left. My exultation began
to cool and my wonder to come up. Here
was a man who not only proposed to find this
plantation on such a night, but to find either
end of it you preferred. I dreadfully wanted
to ask a question, but I was carrying about as
many short answers as my cargo-room would
admit of, so I held my peace. All I desired to
ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether
he was ass enough to really imagine he was going
to find that plantation on a night when all plantations
were exactly alike, and all the same
color. But I held in. I used to have fine inspirations
of prudence in those days.</p>
<p class='c010'>Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was
<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>scraping it, just the same as if it had been daylight.
And not only that but singing:</p>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div>“Father in heaven, the day is declining,” etc.</div>
</div></div>
<p class='c013'>It seemed to me that I had put my life into
the keeping of a peculiarly reckless outcast.
Presently he turned on me and said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“What’s the name of the first point above New
Orleans?”</p>
<p class='c010'>I was gratified to be able to answer promptly,
and I did. I said I didn’t know.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Don’t <em>know</em>?”</p>
<p class='c010'>This manner jolted me. I was down at the
foot again, in a moment. But I had to say just
what I had said before.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, you’re a smart one!” said Mr. Bixby.
“What’s the name of the <em>next</em> point?”</p>
<p class='c010'>Once more I didn’t know.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name
of any point or place I told you.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I studied a while and decided that I couldn’t.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Look here! What do you start out from,
above Twelve-Mile Point, to cross over?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I—I—don’t know.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“You—you—don’t know?” mimicking my
drawling manner of speech. “What <em>do</em> you
know?”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>“I—I—nothing, for certain.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“By the great Cæsar’s ghost, I believe you!
You’re the stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or
ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of
<em>you</em> being a pilot—<em>you</em>! Why you don’t know
enough to pilot a cow down a lane.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous
man, and he shuffled from one side of his
wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He
would boil a while to himself, and then overflow
and scald me again.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Look here! What do you suppose I told
you the names of those points for?”</p>
<p class='c010'>I tremblingly considered a moment, and the
devil of temptation provoked me to say:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well—to—to—be entertaining, I thought.”</p>
<p class='c010'>This was a red flag to the bull. He raged
and stormed so (he was crossing the river at the
time) that I judge it made him blind, because
he ran over the steering-gear of a trading-scow.
Of course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot
profanity. Never was a man so grateful as Mr.
Bixby was; because he was brimful, and here
were subjects who could <em>talk back</em>. He threw
open a window, thrust his head out and such
an eruption followed as I never had heard before.
The fainter and farther away the scowmen’s
curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted
<span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew.
When he closed the window he was empty.
You could have drawn a seine through his system
and not caught curses enough to disturb
your mother with. Presently he said to me in
the gentlest way:</p>
<p class='c010'>“My boy, you must get a little memorandum
book; and every time I tell you a thing, put it
down right away. There’s only one way to be
a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by
heart. You have to know it just like A B C.”</p>
<p class='c010'>That was a dismal revelation to me; for my
memory was never loaded with anything but
blank cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged
long. I judged that it was best to
make allowances, for doubtless Mr. Bixby was
“stretching.” Presently he pulled a rope and
struck a few strokes on the big bell. The stars
were all gone now, and the night was as black
as ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the
bank, but I was not entirely certain that I could
see the shore. The voice of the invisible watchman
called up from the hurricane deck:</p>
<p class='c010'>“What’s this, sir?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Jones’s plantation.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I said to myself, “I wish that I might venture
to offer a small bet that it isn’t,” But I did not
chirp. I only waited to see. Mr. Bixby
<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>handled the engine bells, and in due time the
boat’s nose came to the land, a torch glowed from
the forecastle, a man skipped ashore, a darkey’s
voice on the bank said, “Gimme de k’yarpet bag,
Mass’ Jones,” and the next moment we were
standing up the river again, all serene. I reflected
deeply a while, and then said—but not
aloud—“Well, the finding of that plantation
was the luckiest accident that ever happened;
but it couldn’t happen again in a hundred years.”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Perplexing Lessons</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>At the end of what seemed a tedious while,
I had managed to pack my head full of islands,
towns, bars, “points,” and bends, and a curiously
inanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However,
inasmuch as I could shut my eyes and reel
off a good long string of these names without
leaving out more than ten miles of river in every
fifty, I began to feel that I could take a boat
down to New Orleans if I could make her skip
those little gaps. But of course my complacency
could hardly get start enough to lift my nose a
trifle into the air, before Mr. Bixby would think
of something to fetch it down again. One day
he turned on me suddenly with this settler:</p>
<p class='c010'>“What is the shape of Walnut Bend?”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>He might as well have asked me my grandmother’s
opinion of protoplasm. I reflected respectfully,
and then said I didn’t know it had
any particular shape. My gunpowdery chief
went off with a bang, of course, and then went
on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives.</p>
<p class='c010'>I had learned long ago that he only carried
just so many rounds of ammunition and was sure
to subside into a very placable and even remorseful
old smoothbore as soon as they were all gone.
That word “old” is merely affectionate; he was
not more than thirty-four. I waited. By and
by he said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“My boy, you’ve got to know the <em>shape</em> of the
river perfectly. It is all there is left to steer
by on a very dark night. Everything else is
blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn’t
the same shape in the night that it has in the
daytime.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“How on earth am I ever going to learn it
then?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“How do you follow a hall at home in the
dark? Because you know the shape of it. You
can’t see it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Do you mean to say that I’ve got to know all
the million trifling variations of shape in the
banks of this interminable river as well as I
<span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>know the shape of the front hall at home?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“On my honor, you’ve got to know them
<em>better</em> than any man ever did know the shapes
of the halls in his own house.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I wish I was dead!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Now, I don’t want to discourage you,
but——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, pile it on me; I might as well have
it now as another time.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“You see, this has got to be learned; there
isn’t any getting around it. A clear starlight night
throws such heavy shadows that, if you didn’t
know the shape of a shore perfectly, you would
claw away from every bunch of timber, because
you would take the black shadow of it for a
solid cape; and you see you would be getting
scared to death every fifteen minutes by the
watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all
the time when you ought to be within fifty feet
of it. You can’t see a snag in one of those
shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and
the shape of the river tells you when you are
coming to it. Then there’s your pitch-dark
night; the river is a very different shape on a
pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight
night. All shores seem to be straight lines, then,
and mighty dim ones, too; and you’d <em>run</em> them
for straight lines, only you know better. You
<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>boldly drive your boat right into what seems to
be a solid, straight wall (you knowing very well
that in reality there is a curve there), and that
wall falls back and makes way for you. Then
there’s your gray mist. You take a night when
there’s one of these grisly drizzly, gray mists,
and then there isn’t <em>any</em> particular shape to a
shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the
oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different
kinds of <em>moonlight</em> change the shape of the
river in different ways. You see——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, don’t say any more, please! Have I got
to learn the shape of the river according to all
these five hundred thousand different ways? If
I tried to carry all that cargo in my head it
would make me stoop-shouldered.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“<em>No!</em> you only learn the shape of <em>the</em> river;
and you learn it with such absolute certainty
that you can always steer by the shape that’s <em>in
your head</em>, and never the one that’s before your
eyes.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Very well, I’ll try it; but, after I have
learned it, can I depend on it? Will it keep the
same form and not go fooling around?”</p>
<p class='c010'>Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W. came
in to take the watch and he said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Bixby, you’ll have to look out for President’s
Island, and all that country clear away up above
<span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>the Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are
caving and the shape of the shore changing like
everything. Why you wouldn’t know the point
above 40. You can go up inside the old sycamore
snag, now.”</p>
<p class='c010'>So that question was answered. Here were
leagues of shore changing shape. My spirits
were down in the mud again. Two things
seemed pretty apparent to me. One was, that
in order to be a pilot a man has got to learn
more than any one man ought to be allowed to
know; and the other was, that he must learn
it all over again in a different way every twenty-four
hours.</p>
<p class='c010'>That night we had the watch until twelve.
Now it was an ancient river custom for the two
pilots to chat a bit when the watch changed.
While the relieving pilot put on his gloves and
lit his cigar, his partner, the retiring pilot, would
say something like this:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I judge the upper bar is making down a
little at Hale’s Point; had quarter twain with
the lower lead and mark twain with the other.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes, I thought it was making down a little,
last trip. Meet any boats?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Met one abreast the head of 21, but she
was away over hugging the bar, and I couldn’t
make her out entirely. I took her for the <em>Sunny
<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>South</em>—hadn’t any skylight forward of the
chimneys.”</p>
<p class='c010'>And so on. And as the relieving pilot took
the wheel his partner would mention that we
were in such-and-such a bend, and say we were
abreast of such a man’s woodyard or plantation.
This was courtesy; I supposed it was <em>necessity</em>.
But Mr. W. came on watch full twelve minutes
late on this particular night—a tremendous
breach of etiquette; in fact, it is the unpardonable
sin among pilots. So Mr. Bixby gave him
no greeting whatever, but simply surrendered the
wheel and marched out of the pilot-house without
a word. I was appalled; it was a villainous
night for blackness, we were in a particularly
wide and blind part of the river, where there
was no shape or substance to anything, and it
seemed incredible that Mr. Bixby should have
left that poor fellow to kill the boat trying to
find out where he was. But I resolved that I
would stand by him anyway. He should find
that he was not wholly friendless. So I stood
around, and waited to be asked where we were.
But Mr. W. plunged on serenely through the
solid firmament of black cats that stood for an
atmosphere and never opened his mouth. “He
is a proud devil!” thought I; “here is a limb of
Satan that would rather send us all to destruction
<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>than put himself under obligations to me,
because I am not yet one of the salt of the earth
and privileged to snub captains and lord it over
everything dead and alive in a steamboat.” I
presently climbed up on the bench; I did not
think it was safe to go to sleep while this lunatic
was on watch.</p>
<p class='c010'>However, I must have gone to sleep in the
course of time, because the next thing I was
aware of was the fact that day was breaking,
Mr. W. gone, and Mr. Bixby at the wheel again.
So it was four o’clock and all well—but me;
I felt like a skinful of dry bones, and all of
them trying to ache at once.</p>
<p class='c010'>Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up
there for. I confessed that it was to do Mr. W.
a benevolence—tell him where he was. It took
five minutes for the entire preposterousness of
the thing to filter into Mr. Bixby’s system, and
then I judged it filled him nearly up to the
chin; because he paid me a compliment—and
not much of a one either. He said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, taking you by and large, you seem to
be more different kinds of an ass than any creature
I ever saw before. What did you suppose
he wanted to know for?”</p>
<p class='c010'>I said I thought it might be a convenience to
him.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>“Convenience! D——nation! Didn’t I tell
you that a man’s got to know the river in the
night the same as he’d know his front hall?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, I can follow the front hall in the dark
if I know it <em>is</em> the front hall; but suppose you set
me down in the middle of it in the dark and did
not tell me which hall it is; how am I to know?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, you’ve <em>got</em> to, on the river!”</p>
<p class='c010'>“All right. Then I’m glad I never said anything
to Mr. W.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I should say so! Why, he’d have slammed
you through the window and utterly ruined a
hundred dollars’ worth of window-sash and
stuff.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I was glad this damage had been saved, for
it would have made me unpopular with the
owners. They always hated anybody who had
the name of being careless and injuring things.</p>
<p class='c010'>I went to work now to learn the shape of the
river; and of all the eluding and ungraspable
objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands
on, that was the chief. I would fasten my eyes
upon a sharp, wooded point that projected far
into the river some miles ahead of me, and go
laboriously photographing its shape into my
brain; and just as I was beginning to succeed
to my satisfaction, we would draw up toward
it and the exasperating thing would begin to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>melt away and fold back into the bank! If
there had been a conspicuous dead tree standing
up in the very point of the cape, I would find
that tree inconspicuously merged into the general
forest, and occupying the middle of a
straight shore, when I got abreast of it! No
prominent hill would stick to its shape long
enough for me to make up my mind what its
form really was, but it was as dissolving and
changeful as if it had been a mountain of butter
in the hottest corner of the tropics. Nothing
ever had the same shape when I was coming
down-stream that it had borne when I went
up. I mentioned these little difficulties to Mr.
Bixby. He said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“That’s the very main virtue of the thing. If
the shapes didn’t change every three seconds
they wouldn’t be of any use. Take this place
where we are now, for instance. As long as
that hill over yonder is only one hill, I can boom
right along the way I’m going; but the moment
it splits at the top and forms a V, I know I’ve
got to scratch to starboard in a hurry, or I’ll
bang this boat’s brains out against a rock; and
then the moment one of the prongs of the V
swings behind the other, I’ve got to waltz to
larboard again, or I’ll have a misunderstanding
with a snag that would snatch the keelson out
<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>of this steamboat as neatly as if it were a sliver
in your hand. If that hill didn’t change its
shape on bad nights there would be an awful
steamboat graveyard around here inside of a
year.”</p>
<p class='c010'>It was plain that I had got to learn the shape
of the river in all the different ways that could
be thought of,—upside down, wrong end first,
inside out, fore-and-aft, and “thortships,”—and
then know what to do on gray nights when it
hadn’t any shape at all. So I set about it. In
the course of time I began to get the best of
this knotty lesson, and my self-complacency
moved to the front once more. Mr. Bixby was
all fixed, and ready to start it to the rear again.
He opened on me in this fashion:</p>
<p class='c010'>“How much water did we have in the middle
crossing at Hole-in-the-Wall, trip before last?”</p>
<p class='c010'>I considered this an outrage. I said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are
singing through that tangled place for three-quarters
of an hour on a stretch. How do you
reckon I can remember such a mess as that?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“My boy, you’ve got to remember it. You’ve
got to remember the exact spot and the exact
marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest
water, in every one of the five hundred shoal
places between St. Louis and New Orleans; and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>you mustn’t get the shoal soundings and marks
of one trip mixed up with the shoal soundings
and marks of another, either, for they’re not
often twice alike. You must keep them separate.”</p>
<p class='c010'>When I came to myself again, I said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“When I get so that I can do that, I’ll be able
to raise the dead, and then I won’t have to pilot
a steamboat to make a living. I want to retire
from this business. I want a slush-bucket and
a brush; I’m only fit for a roustabout. I haven’t
got brains enough to be a pilot; and if I had
I wouldn’t have strength enough to carry them
around unless I went on crutches.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Now, drop that! When I say I’ll learn a
man the river, I mean it. And you can depend
on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Test of Courage</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The growth of courage in the pilot-house is
steady all the time, but it does not reach a high
and satisfactory condition until sometime after
the young pilot has been “standing his own
watch” alone and under the staggering weight
of all the responsibilities connected with the position.
When an apprentice has become pretty
thoroughly acquainted with the river, he goes
<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>clattering along so fearlessly with his steamboat,
night or day, that he presently begins to imagine
that it is <em>his</em> courage that animates him; but the
first time the pilot steps out and leaves him to
his own devices he finds out it was the other
man’s. He discovers that the article has been
left out of his own cargo altogether. The whole
river is bristling with exigencies in a moment;
he is not prepared for them; he does not know
how to meet them; all his knowledge forsakes
him; and within fifteen minutes he is as white
as a sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore,
pilots wisely train these cubs by various
strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little
more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play
a friendly swindle upon the candidate.</p>
<p class='c010'>Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once,
and for years afterward I used to blush, even
in my sleep, when I thought of it. I had become
a good steersman; so good, indeed, that I
had all the work to do on our watch, night and
day. Mr. Bixby seldom made a suggestion to
me; all he ever did was to take the wheel on
particularly bad nights or in particularly bad
crossings, land the boat when she needed to be
landed, play gentleman of leisure nine-tenths
of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower
river was about bank-full, and if anybody had
<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>questioned my ability to run any crossing between
Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction,
I should have felt irreparably hurt. The
idea of being afraid of any crossing in the lot,
in the <em>daytime</em>, was a thing too preposterous
for contemplation. Well, one matchless summer’s
day I was bowling down the bend above
Island 66, brim full of self-conceit and carrying
my nose as high as a giraffe’s, when Mr. Bixby
said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I am going below a while. I suppose you
know the next crossing?”</p>
<p class='c010'>This was almost an affront. It was about the
plainest and simplest crossing in the whole river.
One couldn’t come to any harm, whether he ran
it right or not; and as for depth, there never
had been any bottom there. I knew all this
perfectly well.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Know how to <em>run</em> it? Why, I can run it
with my eyes shut.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“How much water is there in it?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, that is an odd question. I couldn’t
get bottom there with a church steeple.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“You think so, do you?”</p>
<p class='c010'>The very tone of the question shook my confidence.
That was what Mr. Bixby was expecting.
He left, without saying anything more.
I began to imagine all sorts of things. Mr.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent somebody
down to the forecastle with some mysterious
instructions to the leadsmen, another messenger
was sent to whisper among the officers,
and then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a
smoke-stack where he could observe results.
Presently the captain stepped out on the hurricane
deck; next the chief mate appeared; then
a clerk. Every moment or two a straggler
was added to my audience; and before I got to
the head of the island I had fifteen or twenty
people assembled down there under my nose.
I began to wonder what the trouble was. As
I started across, the captain glanced aloft at me
and said, with a sham uneasiness in his voice:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Where is Mr. Bixby?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Gone below, sir.”</p>
<p class='c010'>But that did the business for me. My
imagination began to construct dangers out of
nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could
keep the run of them. All at once I imagined
I saw shoal water ahead! The wave of coward
agony that surged through me then came near
dislocating every joint in me. All my confidence
in that crossing vanished. I seized the bell-rope;
dropped it, ashamed; seized it again; dropped it
once more; clutched it tremblingly once again,
and pulled it so feebly that I could hardly hear
<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>the stroke myself. Captain and mate sang out
instantly, and both together:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Starboard lead there! and quick about it!”
This was another shock. I began to climb the
wheel like a squirrel; but I would hardly get
the boat started to port before I would see new
dangers on that side, and away I would spin
to the other; only to find perils accumulating
to starboard, and be crazy to get to port again.
Then came the leadsman’s sepulchral cry:</p>
<p class='c010'>“D-e-e-p four!”</p>
<p class='c010'>Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror
of it took my breath away.</p>
<p class='c010'>“M-a-r-k three! M-a-r-k three! Quarter-less-three!
Half twain!”</p>
<p class='c010'>This was frightful! I seized the bell-rope and
stopped the engines.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Quarter twain! Quarter twain! <em>Mark</em>
twain!”</p>
<p class='c010'>I was helpless. I did not know what in the
world to do. I was quaking from head to foot,
and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they
stuck out so far.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Quarter-<em>less</em>-twain! Nine-and-a-half!”</p>
<p class='c010'>We were <em>drawing</em> nine! My hands were in
a nerveless flutter. I could not ring a bell intelligibly
with them. I flew to the speaking-tube
and shouted to the engineer:</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>“Oh, Ben, if you love me, <em>back</em> her! Quick,
Ben! Oh, back the immortal <em>soul</em> out of her!”</p>
<p class='c010'>I heard the door close gently. I looked
around, and there stood Mr. Bixby, smiling, a
bland, sweet smile. Then the audience on the
hurricane deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating
laughter. I saw it all, now, and I felt
meaner than the meanest man in human history.
I laid in the lead, set the boat in her marks,
came ahead on the engines, and said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“It was a fine trick to play on an orphan,
<em>wasn’t</em> it? I suppose I’ll never hear the last
of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at
the head of 66.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, no, you won’t, maybe. In fact I hope
you won’t; for I want you to learn something
by that experience. Didn’t you know there was
no bottom in that crossing?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes, sir, I did.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Very well, then. You shouldn’t have allowed
me or anybody else to shake your confidence
in that knowledge. Try to remember
that. And another thing: when you get into a
dangerous place, don’t turn coward. That isn’t
going to help matters any.”</p>
<p class='c010'>It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly
learned. Yet about the hardest part of it was
<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>that for months I so often had to hear a phrase
which I had conceived a particular distaste for.
It was, “Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!”</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER” (1877–80)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Births of High and Low Degree</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>In the ancient city of London, on a certain
autumn day, in the second quarter of the sixteenth
century, a boy was born to a poor family
of the name of Canty, who did not want him.
On the same day another English child was born
to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did
want him. All England wanted him, too.
England had so longed for him, and hoped for
him, and prayed God for him, that, now that
he was really come, the people went nearly mad
for joy. Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed
each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday,
and high and low, rich and poor, feasted and
danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they
kept this up for days and nights together. By
day, London was a sight to see, with gay banners
waving from every balcony and housetop,
and splendid pageants marching along. By
night it was again a sight to see, with its great
<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>bonfires at every corner, and its troops of revelers
making merry around them. There was no talk
in all England but of the new baby, Edward
Tudor, Prince of Wales, who lay lapped in silks
and satins, unconscious of all this fuss, and not
knowing that great lords and ladies were tending
him and watching over him—and not caring,
either. But there was no talk about the other
baby, Tom Canty, lapped in his poor rags, except
among the family of paupers whom he had
just come to trouble with his presence.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Canty Home</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The house which Tom’s father lived in was
up a foul little pocket called Offal Court, out of
Pudding Lane. It was small, decayed, and
rickety, but it was packed full of wretchedly
poor families. Canty’s tribe occupied a room
on the third floor. The mother and father had
a sort of bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his
grandmother, and his two sisters, Bet and Nan,
were not restricted—they had all the floor to
themselves, and might sleep where they chose.
There were the remains of a blanket or two,
and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw,
but these could not rightly be called beds, for
they were not organized; they were kicked into
<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>a general pile mornings, and selections made
from the mass at night, for service.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>London Bridge</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>This structure, which had stood for six hundred
years, and had been a noisy and populous
thoroughfare all that time, was a curious affair,
for a closely packed rank of stores and shops,
with family quarters overhead, stretched along
both sides of it, from one bank of the river to
the other. The Bridge was a sort of a town to
itself; it had its inn, its beer houses, its bakeries,
its haberdasheries, its food markets, its manufacturing
industries and even its church. It
looked upon the two neighbors which it linked
together—London and Southwark—as being
well enough, as suburbs, but not otherwise particularly
important. It was a close corporation,
so to speak; it was a narrow town, of a
single street a fifth of a mile long, its population
was but a village population, and everybody
in it knew all his fellow townsmen intimately,
and had known their fathers and mothers
before them—and all their little family affairs
into the bargain. It had its aristocracy, of course—its
fine old families of butchers, and bakers,
and what-not, who had occupied the same old
<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>premises for five or six hundred years, and knew
the great history of the Bridge from beginning
to end, and all its strange legends; and who
always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy
thoughts, and lied in a long, level, direct, substantial
bridgy way.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Tom Canty, King</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>He opened his eyes—the richly clad First Lord
of the Bedchamber was kneeling by his couch.
The gladness of the lying dream faded away—the
poor boy recognized that he was still a captive
and a king. The room was filled with
courtiers clothed in purple mantles—the mourning
color<SPAN name='r1' /><SPAN href='#f1' class='c014'><sup>[1]</sup></SPAN>—and with noble servants of the
monarch. Tom sat up in bed and gazed out
from the heavy silken curtains upon this fine
company.</p>
<p class='c010'>The weighty business of dressing began, and
one courtier after another knelt and paid his
court and offered to the little king his condolences
upon his heavy loss, while the dressing
proceeded. In the beginning, a shirt was
taken up by the Chief Equerry in Waiting, who
passed it to the First Lord of the Buckhounds,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>who passed it to the Second Gentleman of the
Bedchamber, who passed it to the Head Ranger
of Windsor Forest, who passed it to the Third
Groom of the Stole, who passed it to the Chancellor
Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, who
passed it to the Master of the Wardrobe, who
passed it to Norroy King-at-Arms, who passed
it to the Constable of the Tower, who passed it
to the Chief Steward of the Household, who
passed it to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, who
passed it to the Lord High Admiral of England,
who passed it to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who passed it to the First Lord of
the Bedchamber, who took what was left of it
and put it on Tom. Poor little wondering
chap, it reminded him of passing buckets at a
fire....</p>
<p class='c010'>A secretary of state presented an order of the
Council appointing the morrow at eleven for
the reception of the foreign ambassadors, and
desired the king’s assent.</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom turned an inquiring look toward Hertford,
who whispered:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Your majesty will signify consent. They
come to testify their royal masters’ sense of the
heavy calamity which hath visited your grace
and the realm of England.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Tom did as he was bidden. Another secretary
<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>began to read a preamble concerning the
expenses of the late king’s household, which
had amounted to £28,000 during the preceding
six months—a sum so vast that it made Tom
Canty gasp; he gasped again when the fact
appeared that £20,000 of this money were still
owing and unpaid; and once more when it appeared
that the king’s coffers were about empty,
and his twelve hundred servants much embarrassed
for lack of the wages due them. Tom
spoke out, with lively apprehension.</p>
<p class='c010'>“We be going to the dogs, ’tis plain. ’Tis
meet and necessary that we take a smaller house
and set the servants at large, sith they be of
no value but to make delay, and trouble one
with offices that harass the spirit and shame the
soul, they misbecoming any but a doll, that hath
nor brains nor hands to help itself withal. I
remember me of a small house that standeth
over against the fish-market, by Billingsgate——”</p>
<p class='c010'>A sharp pressure upon Tom’s arm stopped
his foolish tongue and sent a blush to his face;
but no countenance there betrayed any sign that
this strange speech had been remarked or given
concern.</p>
<div>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Little King in Prison</span></h3></div>
<p class='c012'>Hendon’s<SPAN name='r2' /><SPAN href='#f2' class='c014'><sup>[2]</sup></SPAN> arts all failed with the king—he
could not be comforted, but a couple of women
who were chained near him, succeeded better.
Under their gentle ministrations he found peace
and learned a degree of patience. He was very
grateful, and came to love them dearly and
to delight in the sweet and soothing influence
of their presence. He asked them why they
were in prison, and when they said they were
Baptists, he smiled and inquired:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Is that a crime to be shut up for in a prison?
Now I grieve, for I shall lose ye—they will not
keep ye long for such a little thing.”</p>
<p class='c010'>They did not answer; and something in their
faces made him uneasy. He said, eagerly:</p>
<p class='c010'>“You do not speak—be good to me, and tell
me—there will be no other punishment? Prithee,
tell me there is no fear of that.”</p>
<p class='c010'>They tried to change the topic, but his fears
were aroused, and he pursued it:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Will they scourge thee? No, no, they would
not be so cruel! Say they would not. Come,
they <em>will</em> not, will they?”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>The women betrayed confusion and distress,
but there was no avoiding an answer, so one
of them said, in a voice choked with emotion:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, thou’lt break our hearts, thou gentle
spirit! God will help us to bear our——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“It is a confession!” the king broke in.
“Then they <em>will</em> scourge thee, the stony-hearted
wretches. But oh, thou must not weep, I cannot
bear it. Keep up thy courage—I shall come
to my own in time to save thee from this bitter
thing and I will do it!”</p>
<p class='c010'>When the king awoke in the morning, the
women were gone.</p>
<p class='c010'>“They are saved!” he said, joyfully; then
added, despondently, “but woe is me!—for they
were my comforters.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Each of them had left a shred of ribbon
pinned to his clothing, in token of remembrance.
He said he would keep these things always; and
that soon he would seek out these dear good
friends of his and take them under his protection.</p>
<p class='c010'>Just then the jailer came in with some
subordinates and commanded that the prisoners
be conducted to the jail-yard. The king was
overjoyed—it would be a blessed thing to see
the blue sky and breathe the fresh air once
more. He fretted and chafed at the slowness
<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>of the officers, but his turn came at last and he
was released from his staple and ordered to
follow the other prisoners, with Hendon.</p>
<p class='c010'>The court, or quadrangle, was stone-paved,
and open to the sky. The prisoners entered it
through a massive archway of masonry, and
were placed in file, standing, with their backs
against the wall. A rope was stretched in front
of them, and they were also guarded by their
officers. It was a chill and lowering morning,
and a light snow which had fallen during the
night whitened the great empty space and added
to the general dismalness of its aspect. Now
and then a wintry wind shivered through the
place and sent the snow eddying hither and
thither.</p>
<p class='c010'>In the center of the court stood two women,
chained to posts. A glance showed the king
that these were his good friends. He shuddered,
and said to himself, “Alack, they are not gone
free, as I had thought. To think that such
as these should know the lash!—in England!
Ay, there’s the shame of it—not in Heathenesse,
but Christian England! They will be scourged;
and I, whom they have comforted and kindly
entreated, must look on and see the great wrong
done; it is strange, so strange! that I, the very
source of power in this broad realm, am helpless
<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>to protect them. But let these miscreants
look well to themselves, for there is a day coming
when I will require of them a heavy reckoning
for this work. For every blow they strike
now they shall feel a hundred then.”</p>
<p class='c010'>A great gate swung open and a crowd of citizens
poured in. They flocked around the two
women, and hid them from the king’s view. A
clergyman entered and passed through the crowd,
and he also was hidden. The king now heard
talking, back and forth, as if questions were
being asked and answered, but he could not
make out what was said. Next there was a
deal of bustle and preparation, and much passing
and repassing of officials through that part of
the crowd that stood on the further side of the
women; and while this proceeded a deep hush
gradually fell upon the people.</p>
<p class='c010'>Now, by command, the masses parted and
fell aside, and the king saw a spectacle that froze
the marrow in his bones. Fagots had been piled
about the two women, and a kneeling man was
lighting them!</p>
<p class='c010'>The women bowed their heads, and covered
their faces with their hands; the yellow flames
began to climb upward among the snapping and
crackling fagots, and wreaths of blue smoke to
stream away on the wind; the clergyman lifted
<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>his hands and began a prayer—just then two
young girls came flying through the great gate,
uttering piercing screams, and threw themselves
upon the women at the stake. Instantly they
were torn away by the officers, and one of them
was kept in a tight grip, but the other broke
loose, saying she would die with her mother;
and before she could be stopped she had flung
her arms about her mother’s neck again. She
was torn away once more, and with her gown
on fire. Two or three men held her, and the
burning portion of her gown was snatched off
and thrown flaming aside, she struggling all
the while to free herself, and saying she would
be alone in the world now, and begging to
be allowed to die with her mother. Both the
girls screamed continually, and fought for freedom;
but suddenly this tumult was drowned
under a volley of heart-piercing shrieks of mortal
agony. The king glanced from the frantic girls
to the stake, then turned away and leaned his
ashen face against the wall, and looked no more.
He said, “That which I have seen, in that one
little moment, will never go out from my
memory, but will abide there; and I shall see it
all the days, and dream of it all the nights, till
I die. Would God I had been blind!”</p>
<p class='c010'>Hendon was watching the king. He said to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>himself, with satisfaction, “His disorder
mendeth; he hath changed, and groweth gentler.
If he had followed his wont, he would have
stormed at these varlets, and said he was king,
and commanded that the women be turned loose
unscathed. Soon his delusion will pass away
and be forgotten, and his poor mind will be
whole again. God speed the day!”</p>
<p class='c010'>That same day several prisoners were brought
in to remain over night, who were being conveyed,
under guard, to various places in the
kingdom, to undergo punishment for crimes committed.
The king conversed with these,—he
had made it a point, from the beginning, to instruct
himself for the kingly office by questioning
prisoners whenever the opportunity offered—and
the tale of their woes wrung his heart. One
of them was a poor half-witted woman who had
stolen a yard or two of cloth from a weaver—she
was to be hanged for it. Another was a
man who had been accused of stealing a horse;
he said the proof had failed, and he had
imagined that he was safe from the halter;
but no—he was hardly free before he was
arraigned for killing a deer in the king’s park;
this was proved against him, and now he
was on his way to the gallows. There was
a tradesman’s apprentice whose case particularly
<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>distressed the king; this youth said he found a
hawk one evening that had escaped from its
owner, and he took it home with him, imagining
himself entitled to it; but the court convicted him
of stealing it, and sentenced him to death.</p>
<p class='c010'>The king was furious over these inhumanities,
and wanted Hendon to break jail and fly
with him to Westminster, so that he could mount
his throne and hold out his scepter in mercy over
these unfortunate people and save their lives.
“Poor child,” sighed Hendon, “these woeful
tales have brought his malady upon him again—alack,
but for this evil hap, he would have
been well in a little time.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Among these prisoners was an old lawyer—a
man with a strong face and a dauntless mien.
Three years past, he had written a pamphlet
against the Lord Chancellor, accusing him of
injustice, and had been punished for it by the
loss of his ears in the pillory and degradation
from the bar, and in addition had been fined
£3,000 and sentenced to imprisonment for life.
Lately he had repeated his offense; and in consequence
was now under sentence to lose <em>what
remained of his ears</em>, pay a fine of £5,000, be
branded on both cheeks, and remain in prison
for life.</p>
<p class='c010'>“These be honorable scars,” he said, and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>turned back his gray hair and showed the mutilated
stubs of what had once been his ears.</p>
<p class='c010'>The king’s eyes burned with passion. He
said: “None believe in me—neither wilt thou.
But no matter—within the compass of a month
thou shalt be free; and more, the laws that have
dishonored thee, and shamed the English name,
shall be swept from the statute books. The
world is made wrong, kings should go to school
to their own laws at times, and so learn mercy.”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Tom Canty the First</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Whilst the true king wandered about the land,
poorly clad, poorly fed, cuffed and derided by
tramps one while, herding with thieves and murderers
in a jail another, and called idiot and
impostor by all impartially, the mock King Tom
Canty enjoyed a quite different experience.</p>
<p class='c010'>When we saw him last, royalty was just
beginning to have a bright side for him. This
bright side went on brightening more and more
every day; in a very little while it was become
almost all sunshine and delightfulness. He lost
his fears! his misgivings faded out and died; his
embarrassments departed, and gave place to an
easy and confident bearing.</p>
<p class='c010'>He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady
<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>Jane Gray into his presence when he wanted to
play or talk, and dismissed them when he was
done with them, with the air of one familiarly
accustomed to such performances. It no
longer confused him to have these lofty personages
kiss his hand at parting.</p>
<p class='c010'>He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in
state at night, and dressed with intricate and
solemn ceremony in the morning. It came to
be a proud pleasure to march to dinner attended
by a glittering procession of officers of state and
gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he
doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and
made them a hundred. He liked to hear the
bugles sounding down the long corridors, and
the distant voices responding, “Way for the
king!”</p>
<p class='c010'>He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned
state in council, and seeming to be something
more than the Lord Protector’s mouthpiece.
He liked to receive great ambassadors and their
gorgeous trains, and listen to the affectionate
messages they brought from illustrious monarchs
who called him “brother.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Oh, happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Tom Is Recognized</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The great pageant moved on, and still on,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>under one triumphal arch after another, and past
a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical
tableaux, each of which typified and exalted
some virtue, or talent, or merit, of the
little king’s. Throughout the whole of Cheapside,
from every penthouse and window, hung
banners and streamers; and the richest carpets,
stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streets,—specimens
of the great wealth of the stores
within; and the splendor of this throughfare
was equaled in the other streets, and in some
even surpassed.</p>
<p class='c010'>“And all these wonders and these marvels are
to welcome me—me!” murmured Tom Canty.</p>
<p class='c010'>The mock king’s cheeks were flushed with
excitement, his eyes were flashing, his senses
swam in a delirium of pleasure. At this point,
just as he was raising his hand to fling another
rich largess, he caught sight of a pale, astounded
face which was strained forward out of the second
rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted
upon him. A sickening consternation struck
through him; he recognized his mother! and up
flew his hand, palm outward, before his eyes,—that
old involuntary gesture, born of a forgotten
episode, and perpetuated by habit. In an
instant more she had torn her way out of the
press, and past the guards, and was at his side.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>She embraced his leg, she covered it with kisses,
she cried, “O, my child, my darling!” lifting
toward him a face that was transfigured with
joy and love. The same instant an officer of
the King’s Guard snatched her away with a
curse, and sent her reeling back whence she
came, with a vigorous impulse from his strong
arm. The words, “I do not know you, woman!”
were falling from Tom Canty’s lips when this
piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the
heart to see her treated so; and as she turned
for a last glimpse of him, whilst the crowd
was swallowing her from his sight, she seemed
so wounded, so broken-hearted, that a shame fell
upon him which consumed his pride to ashes, and
withered his stolen royalty. His grandeurs were
stricken valueless; they seemed to fall away from
him like rotten rags.</p>
<p class='c010'>The procession moved on, and still on, through
ever augmenting splendors and ever augmenting
tempests of welcome; but to Tom Canty they
were as if they had not been. He neither saw
nor heard. Royalty had lost its grace and sweetness;
its pomps were become a reproach. Remorse
was eating his heart out. He said,
“Would God I were free of my captivity!”</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN” (1876–83)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Huck and Nigger Jim<SPAN name='r3' /><SPAN href='#f3' class='c014'><sup>[3]</sup></SPAN> Start on their Long Drift</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>When it was beginning to come on dark we
poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket,
and looked up and down and across; nothing in
sight; so Jim took up some of the top planks
of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get
under in blazing weather and rainy, and to
keep the things dry. Jim made a floor for the
wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the
level of the raft, so now the blankets and all
the traps were out of reach of steamboat waves.
Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a
layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with
a frame around it for to hold it to its place;
this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or
chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being
seen. We made an extra steering-oar, too, because
<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>one of the others might get broke on a
snag or something. We fixed up a short forked
stick to hang the old lantern on, because we
must always light the lantern whenever we see
a steamboat coming down-stream, to keep from
getting run over; but we wouldn’t have to light
it for the up-stream boats unless we see we was
in what they call a “crossing”; for the river
was pretty high yet, very low banks being still
a little under water; so up-bound boats didn’t
always run the channel, but hunted easy water.</p>
<p class='c010'>This second night we run between seven
and eight hours, with a current that was making
over four mile an hour. We catched fish and
talked, and we took a swim now and then to
keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn,
drifting down the big, still river, laying on our
backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t
ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often
that we laughed—only a little kind of a low
chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a
general thing, and nothing ever happened to us
at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next.</p>
<p class='c010'>Every night we passed towns, some of them
away up on black hillsides, nothing but just
a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you
see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and
it was like the whole world lit up. In St.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>Petersburg they used to say there was twenty
or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, but I
never believed it till I see that wonderful spread
of lights at two o’clock that still night. There
warn’t a sound there; everybody was asleep.</p>
<p class='c010'>Every night now I used to slip ashore toward
ten o’clock at some little village, and buy ten
or fifteen cents’ worth of meal or bacon or other
stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken
that warn’t roosting comfortable, and took him
along. Pap always said, take a chicken when
you get a chance, because if you don’t want him
yourself you can easy find somebody that does,
and a good deed aint ever forgot. I never see
pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself,
but that is what he used to say, anyway.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Grangerford-Shepherdson Feud</span><SPAN name='r4' /><SPAN href='#f4' class='c014'><sup>[4]</sup></SPAN></h3>
<p class='c012'>Col. Grangerford was a gentleman, you see.
He was a gentleman all over; and so was his
family. He was well born, as the saying is, and
that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a
horse, so the Widow Douglas said, and nobody
<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy
in our town; and pap he always said it, too,
though he warn’t no more quality than a mudcat
himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall
and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion,
not a sign of red in it anywheres; he
was clean-shaved every morning all over his
thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips,
and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high
nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind
of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like
they was looking out of caverns at you, as you
may say. His forehead was high, and his hair
was gray and straight and hung to his shoulders.
His hands was long and thin, and every day of
his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit
from head to foot made out of linen so white
it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays
he wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on
it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver
head to it. There warn’t no frivolishness about
him, not a bit, and he warn’t ever loud. He
was as kind as he could be—you could feel
that, you know, and so you had confidence.
Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see;
but when he straightened himself up like a
liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker
out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>climb a tree first, and find out what the matter
was afterwards. He didn’t ever have to tell
anybody to mind their manners—everybody was
always good-mannered where he was. Everybody
loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine
most always—I mean he made it seem like
good weather. When he turned into a cloudbank
it was awful dark for half a minute, and
that was enough; there wouldn’t nothing go
wrong for a week.</p>
<p class='c010'>When him and the old lady came down in the
morning all the family got up out of their
chairs and give them good day, and didn’t set
down again till <em>they</em> had set down. Then
Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the
decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and
handed it to him, and he held it in his hand
and waited till Tom’s and Bob’s was mixed,
and then they bowed and said, “Our duty to
you, sir, and madam”; and <em>they</em> bowed the least
bit in the world and said thank you, and so
they drank, all three, and Bob and Tom poured
a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mite
of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their
tumblers, and give it to me and Buck,<SPAN name='r5' /><SPAN href='#f5' class='c014'><sup>[5]</sup></SPAN> and we
drank to the old people too.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>Bob was the oldest and Tom next—tall,
beautiful men with very broad shoulders and
brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes.
They dressed in white linen from head to foot,
like the old gentleman, and wore broad Panama
hats.</p>
<p class='c010'>Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was
twenty-five, and tall and proud and grand, but
as good as she could be when she warn’t stirred
up; but when she was she had a look that would
make you wilt in your tracks, like her father.
She was beautiful.</p>
<p class='c010'>So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a
different kind. She was gentle and sweet like
a dove, and she was only twenty.</p>
<p class='c010'>Each person had their own nigger to wait on
them—Buck too. My nigger had a monstrous
easy time, because I warn’t used to having anybody
do anything for me, but Buck’s was on
the jump most of the time.</p>
<p class='c010'>This was all there was of the family now,
but there used to be more—three sons; they
got killed; and Emmeline that died.</p>
<p class='c010'>The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and
over a hundred niggers. Sometimes a stack of
people would come there, horseback, from ten
or fifteen miles around, and stay five or six
days, and have such junketings round about and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods
daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These
people was mostly kinfolks of the family. The
men brought their guns with them. It was a
handsome lot of quality, I tell you.</p>
<p class='c010'>There was another clan of aristocracy around
there—five or six families—mostly of the name
of Shepherdson. They was as high-toned and
well born and rich and grand as the tribe of
Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons and Grangerfords
used the same steamboat-landing, which
was about two miles above our house; so sometimes
when I went up there with a lot of our
folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons
there on their fine horses.</p>
<p class='c010'>One day Buck and me was away out in the
woods hunting, and heard a horse coming. We
was crossing the road. Buck says:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Quick! Jump for the woods!”</p>
<p class='c010'>We done it, and then peeped down the woods
through the leaves. Pretty soon a splendid
young man came galloping down the road, setting
his horse easy and looking like a soldier. He
had his gun across his pommel. I had seen him
before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I
heard Buck’s gun go off at my ear, and Harney’s
hat tumbled off from his head. He
grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place
<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>where we was hid. But we didn’t wait. We
started through the woods on a run. The woods
warn’t thick, so I looked over my shoulder to
dodge the bullet, and twice I seen Harney cover
Buck with his gun; and then he rode away the
way he came—to get his hat, I reckon, but I
couldn’t see. We never stopped running till we
got home. The old gentleman’s eyes blazed a
minute—’twas pleasure, mainly, I judged—then
his face sort of smoothed down, and he says,
kind of gentle:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I don’t like that shooting from behind a
bush. Why didn’t you step into the road, my
boy?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“The Shepherdsons don’t, father. They always
take advantage.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a
queen while Buck was telling his tale, and her
nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two
young men looked dark, but never said nothing.
Miss Sophia she turned pale, but the color come
back when she found the man warn’t hurt.</p>
<p class='c010'>Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs
under the trees by ourselves, I says:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Did you want to kill him, Buck?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, I bet I did.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“What did he do to you?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Him? He never done nothing to me.”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>“Well, then, what did you want to kill him
for?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, nothing—only it’s on account of the
feud.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“What’s a feud?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, where was you raised? Don’t you
know what a feud is?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Never heard of it before—tell me about it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way: A
man has a quarrel with another man, and kills
him; then that other man’s brother kills <em>him</em>;
then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for
one another; then the <em>cousins</em> chip in—and by
and by everybody’s killed off, and there ain’t no
more feud. But it’s kind of slow, and takes a
long time.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Has this one been going on long, Buck?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, I should <em>reckon</em>! It started thirty
year ago, or som’ers along there. There was
trouble ’bout something, and then a lawsuit to
settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men,
and so he up and shot the man that won the
suit—which he would naturally do, of course.
Anybody would.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“What was the trouble about, Buck?—land?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I reckon maybe—I don’t know.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, who done the shooting? Was it a
Grangerford or a Shepherdson?”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>“Laws, how do <em>I</em> know? It was so long ago.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Don’t anybody know?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of
the other old people; but they don’t know now
what the row was about in the first place.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Has there been many killed, Buck?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes; right smart chance of funerals. But
they don’t always kill. Pa’s got a few buckshot
in him; but he don’t mind it ’cuz he don’t
weigh much, anyway. Bob’s been carved up
some with a bowie, and Tom’s been hurt once or
twice.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes, we got one and they got one. ’Bout
three months ago my cousin Bud, fourteen years
old, was riding through the woods on t’other
side of the river, and didn’t have no weapon
with him, which was blame’ foolishness, and
in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming
behind him, and sees old Baldy Shepherdson
a-linkin’ after him with his gun in his hand and
his white hair a-flying in the wind; and ’stead
of jumping off and taking to the brush, Bud
’lowed he could outrun him; so they had it,
nip and tuck, for five mile or more, the old
man a-gaining all the time; so at last Bud seen
it warn’t any use, so he stopped and faced
around so as to have the bullet-holes in front,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>you know, and the old man he rode up and shot
him down. But he didn’t get much chance to
enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks
laid <em>him</em> out.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I reckon that old man a coward, Buck.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I reckon he <em>warn’t</em> a coward. Not by a
blame’ sight. There ain’t a coward amongst
them Shepherdsons—not a one. And there ain’t
no cowards amongst the Grangerfords either.
Why, that old man kep’ up his end in a fight
one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords,
and come out winner. They was all a-horseback;
he lit off of his horse and got behind
a little woodpile, and kep’ his horse before
him to stop the bullets; but the Grangerfords
stayed on their horses and capered around the
old man, and peppered away at him, and he
peppered away at them. Him and his horse
both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but
the Grangerfords had to be <em>fetched</em> home—and
one of ’em was dead, and another died the next
day. No, sir; if a body’s out hunting for cowards
he don’t want to fool away any time
amongst them Shepherdsons becuz they don’t
breed any of that <em>kind</em>.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Next Sunday we all went to church, about
three mile, everybody a-horseback. The men
took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept
<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>them between their knees or stood them handy
against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the
same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about
brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but
everybody said it was a good sermon, and they
all talked it over going home, and had such a
powerful lot to say about faith and good works
and free grace and preforeordestination, and I
don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to
be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across
yet.</p>
<p class='c010'>About an hour after dinner everybody was
dozing around, some in their chairs and some in
their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. Buck
and a dog was stretched out on the grass in the
sun sound asleep. I went up to our room, and
judged I would take a nap myself. I found
that sweet Miss Sophia standing in her door,
which was next to ours, and she took me in
her room and shut the door very soft, and asked
me if I liked her, and I said I did; and she
asked me if I would do something for her and
not tell anybody, and I said I would. Then
she said she’d forgot her Testament, and left it
in the seat at church between two other books,
and would I slip out quiet and go there and
fetch it to her, and not say nothing to nobody.
I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off
<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>up the road, and there warn’t anybody at the
church, except maybe a hog or two, for there
warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a
puncheon floor in summertime because it’s cool.
If you notice, most folks don’t go to church
only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.</p>
<p class='c010'>Says I to myself, something’s up; it ain’t
natural for a girl to be in such a sweat about
a Testament. So I give it a shake, and out
drops a little piece of paper with “<em>Half-past
two</em>” wrote on it with a pencil. I ransacked
it, but couldn’t find anything else. I couldn’t
make anything out of that, so I put the paper
in the book again, and when I got home and
upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door
waiting for me. She pulled me in and shut the
door; then she looked in the Testament till she
found the paper, and as soon as she read it she
looked glad; and before a body could think she
grabbed me and gave me a squeeze, and said
I was the best boy in the world, and not to
tell anybody. She was mighty red in the face
for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it
made her powerful pretty. I was a good deal
astonished, but when I got my breath I asked
her what the paper was about, and she asked
me if I had read it, and I said no, and she
asked me if I could read writing, and I told
<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>her “no, only coarse-hand,” and then she said
the paper warn’t anything but a book-mark to
keep her place, and I might go and play now.</p>
<p class='c010'>I went off down to the river, studying over
this thing, and pretty soon I noticed that my
nigger was following along behind. When we
was out of sight of the house he looked back
and around a second, and then comes a-running
and says:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Mars Jawge,<SPAN name='r6' /><SPAN href='#f6' class='c014'><sup>[6]</sup></SPAN> if you’ll come down into de
swamp I’ll show you a whole stack o’ water-moccasins.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Thinks I, that’s mighty curious; he said that
yesterday. He oughter to know a body don’t
love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting
for them. What is he up to, anyway? So
I says:</p>
<p class='c010'>“All right; trot ahead.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I followed a half a mile; then he struck out
over the swamp, and waded ankle-deep as much
as another half-mile. We come to a little flat
piece of land which was dry and very thick
with trees and bushes and vines, and he says:</p>
<p class='c010'>“You shove right in dah jist a few steps, Mars
Jawge; Dah’s whah dey is. I’s seed ’m befo’;
I don’t k’yer to see ’em no mo’.”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>Then he slopped right along and went away,
and pretty soon the trees hid him. I poked into
the place a ways and come to a little open patch
as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines,
and found a man lying there asleep—and, by
jings, it was my old Jim!</p>
<p class='c010'>I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going
to be a grand surprise to him to see me again, but
it warn’t. He nearly cried he was so glad, but
he warn’t surprised. Said he swum along behind
me that night, and heard me yell every
time, but dasn’t answer, because he didn’t want
nobody to pick <em>him</em> up and take him into slavery
again. Says he:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I got hurt a little, en couldn’t swim fas’,
so I wuz a considerable ways behine you towards
de las’; when you landed I reck’ned I could ketch
up wid you on de lan’ ’dout havin’ to shout at
you, but when I see dat house I begin to go
slow. I ’uz off too far to hear what dey say to
you—I wuz ’fraid o’ de dogs; but when it ’uz
all quiet ag’in I knowed you’s in de house, so
I struck out for de woods to wait for day. Early
in de mawnin’ some er de niggers come along,
gwyne to de fields, en dey tuk me en showed
me dis place, whah de dogs can’t track me on
accounts o’ de water, end dey brings me truck
<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>to eat every night, en tells me how you’s a-gittin’
along.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why didn’t you tell my Jack to fetch me
here sooner, Jim?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, ’twarn’t no use to ’sturb you, Huck,
tell we could do sumfn—but we’s all right,
now. I ben a buyin’ pots en pans en vittles, as
I got a chanst, en a-patchin’ up de raf’, nights,
when——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“<em>What</em> raft, Jim?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Our ole raf’.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“You mean to say our old raft warn’t smashed
all to flinders?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“No, she warn’t. She was tore up a good
deal—one en’ of her was; but dey warn’t no
great harm done, on’y our traps was mos’ all
los’. Ef we hadn’ dive’ so deep en swum so
fur under water, en de night hadn’t ben so dark,
en we warn’t so sk’yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads,
as de sayin’ is, we’d a seed de raf’. But
it’s jis’ as well we didn’t, ’kase now she’s all
fixed up ag’in mos’ as good as new, en we’s
got a new lot o’ stuff, in the place o’ what ’uz
los’.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Why, how did you get hold of the raft
again, Jim—did you catch her?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“How I gwyne to ketch her en I out in de
woods? No; some er de niggers foun’ her
<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>ketched on a snag along heah in de ben’, en dey
hid her in a crick ’mongst de willows, en dey
wuz so much jawin’ ’bout which un ’um she
b’long to de mos’ dat I come to heah ’bout it
pooty soon, so I ups en settles de trouble by
tellin’ ’um she don’t b’long to none uv ’um,
but to you en me; en I ast ’m if dey gwyne to
grab a young white genlman’s propaty, en git
a hid’n for it? Den I gin ’m ten cents apiece,
en dey ’uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some
mo’ raf’s ’ud come along en make ’m rich ag’in.
Dey’s mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en
whatever I wants ’m to do fur me I doan’ have
to ast ’m twice, honey. Dat Jack’s a good
nigger, en pooty smart.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Yes, he is. He ain’t ever told me you was
here; told me to come, and he’d show me a lot
of water-moccasins. If anything happens <em>he</em>
ain’t mixed up in it. He can say he never seen
us together, and it’ll be the truth.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I don’t want to talk much about the next
day. I reckon I’ll cut it pretty short. I waked
up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over
and go to sleep again when I noticed how still
it was—didn’t seem to be anybody stirring.
That warn’t usual. Next I noticed that Buck
was up and gone. Well, I gets up, a-wondering,
and goes down-stairs—nobody around; everything
<span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>as still as a mouse. Just the same outside.
Thinks I, what does it mean? Down
by the woodpile I comes across my Jack and
says:</p>
<p class='c010'>“What’s it all about?”</p>
<p class='c010'>Says he:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Don’t you know, Mars Jawge?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“No,” says I, “I don’t.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, den, Miss Sophia’s run off! ’deed she
has. She run off in de night some time—nobody
don’t know jis when; run off to get married
to dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know—leastways,
so dey ’spec. De fambly foun’ it
out ’bout half an hour ago—maybe a little
mo’—en’ I <em>tell</em> you dey warn’t no time los’.
Sich another hurryin’ up guns en hosses <em>you</em>
never see! De women folks has gone for to
stir up de relations, en ole Mars Saul en de
boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river road
for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him
’fo’ he kin git acrost de river wid Miss Sophia.
I reck’n dey’s gwyne to be mighty rough
times.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Buck went off ’thout waking me up.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Well, I reck’n he <em>did</em>! Dey warn’t gwyne
to mix you up in it. Mars Buck loaded up
his gun en ’lowed he’s gwyne to fetch home a
Shepherdson or bust. Well, dey’ll be plenty
<span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>un ’m dah, I reck’n, en you bet you he’ll fetch
one ef he gits a chanst.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I took up the river road as hard as I could
put. By and by I begin to hear guns a good
ways off. When I came into sight of the log
store and the woodpile where the steamboats
lands I worked along under the trees and brush
till I got to a good place, and then I clumb
up into the forks of a cottonwood that was out
of reach, and watched. There was a wood-rank
four foot high a little ways in front of the tree,
and first I was going to hide behind that; but
maybe it was luckier I didn’t.</p>
<p class='c010'>There was four or five men cavorting around
on their horses in the open place before the log
store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at
a couple of young chaps that was behind the
wood-rank alongside of the steamboat-landing—but they couldn’t come it. Every time one of
them showed himself on the river side of the
woodpile he got shot at. The two boys was
squatting back to back behind the pile, so they
could watch both ways.</p>
<p class='c010'>By and by the men stopped cavorting around
and yelling. They started riding towards the
store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a
steady bead over the wood-rank, and drops one
of them out of his saddle. All the men jumped
<span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and
started to carry him to the store; and that
minute the two boys started on the run. They
got half-way to the tree I was in before the
men noticed. Then the men see them, and
jumped on their horses and took out after them.
They gained on the boys, but it didn’t do no
good, the boys had too good a start; they got to
the woodpile that was in front of my tree, and
slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge
on the men again. One of the boys was Buck,
and the other was a slim young chap about
nineteen years old.</p>
<p class='c010'>The men ripped around awhile, and then rode
away. As soon as they was out of sight I sung
out to Buck and told him. He didn’t know
what to make of my voice coming out of the
tree at first. He was awful surprised. He
told me to watch out sharp and let him know
when the men come in sight again; said they
was up to some devilment or other—wouldn’t be
gone long. I wished I was out of that tree, but
I dasn’t come down. Buck begun to cry and
rip, and ’lowed that him and his cousin Joe
(that was the other young chap) would make
up for this day yet. He said his father and his
two brothers was killed, and two or three of
the enemy. Said the Shepherdsons laid for them
<span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>in ambush. Buck said his father and brothers
ought to waited for their relations—the
Shepherdsons was too strong for them. I asked
him what was become of young Harney and
Miss Sophia. He said they’d got across the
river and was safe. I was glad of that; but the
way Buck did take on because he didn’t manage
to kill Harney that day he shot at him—I
hain’t never heard anything like it.</p>
<p class='c010'>All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three
or four guns—the men had slipped around
through the woods and come in from behind
without their horses! The boys jumped for the
river—both of them hurt—and as they swum
down the current the men run along the bank
shooting at them and singing out, “Kill them,
kill them!” It made me so sick I most fell
out of the tree. I ain’t a-going to tell <em>all</em> that
happened—it would make me sick again if I was
to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore
that night to see such things. I ain’t ever going
to get shut of them—lots of times I dream about
them.</p>
<p class='c010'>I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark,
afraid to come down. Sometimes I heard guns
away off in the woods; and twice I seen little
gangs of men gallop past the log store with
guns; so I reckoned the trouble was still a-going
<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>on. I was mighty downhearted; so I made up
my mind I wouldn’t ever go anear that house
again, because I reckoned I was to blame, somehow.
I judged that that piece of paper meant
that Miss Sophia was to meet Harney some-wheres
at half-past two, and run off; and I judged
I ought to told her father about that paper and
the curious way she acted, and then maybe he
would ’a’ locked her up, and this awful mess
wouldn’t ever happened.</p>
<p class='c010'>When I got down out of the tree I crept
along down the river bank a piece, and found
the two bodies laying in the edge of the water,
and tugged at them till I got them ashore; then
I covered up their faces, and got away as quick
as I could. I cried a little when I was covering
up Buck’s face, for he was mighty good to
me.</p>
<p class='c010'>It was just dark now. I never went near the
house, but struck through the woods and made
for the swamp. Jim warn’t on his island, so
I tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and
crowded through the willows, red-hot to jump
aboard and get out of that awful country. The
raft was gone! My souls, but I was scared! I
couldn’t get my breath for most a minute. Then
I raised a yell. A voice not twenty-five foot
from me, says:</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>“Good lan’! is dat you, honey? Doan’ make
no noise.”</p>
<p class='c010'>It was Jim’s voice—nothing ever sounded so
good before. I run along the bank a piece and
got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged
me, he was so glad to see me. He says:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Laws bless you, chile, I ’uz right down sho’
you’s dead ag’in. Jack’s been heah; he say he
reck’n you’s been shot, kase you didn’t come
home no mo’; so I’s jes’ dis minute a-startin’
er raf’ down towards de mouf er de crick, so’s
to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon
as Jack comes ag’in en tells me for certain you
<em>is</em> dead. Lawdy, I’s mighty glad to git you
back ag’in, honey.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I says:</p>
<p class='c010'>“All right—that’s mighty good; they won’t
find me, and they’ll think I’ve been killed, and
floated down the river—there’s something up
there that’ll help them think so—so don’t you
lose no time, Jim, but just shove off for the big
water as fast as ever you can.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I never felt easy till the raft was two mile
below there and out in the middle of the Mississippi.
Then we hung up our signal lantern, and
judged that we was free and safe once more.
I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday, so
<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk,
and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain’t
nothing in the world so good when it’s cooked
right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked
and had a good time. I was powerful glad to
get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to
get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t
no home like a raft, after all. Other places
do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a
raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and
comfortable on a raft.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT” (1886–7)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Meeting the Yankee</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>It was in Warwick Castle that I came across
the curious stranger whom I am going to talk
about. He attracted me by three things: his
candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity
with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his
company—for he did all the talking. We fell
together, as modest people will, in the tail of
the herd that was being shown through, and
he at once began to say things which interested
me. As he talked along, softly, pleasantly,
flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly
out of this world and time, and into some remote
era and old forgotten country; and so he gradually
wove such a spell about me that I seemed
to move among the specters and shadows and
dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding
speech with a relic of it! Exactly as I would
speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies,
or my most familiar neighbors, he spoke of Sir
<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>Bedivere, Sir Bors de Ganis, Sir Launcelot of
the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all the other great
names of the Table Round—and how old, old,
unspeakably old and faded and dry and musty
and ancient he came to look as he went on!
Presently he turned to me and said, just as one
might speak of the weather, or any other common
matter—</p>
<p class='c010'>“You know about transmigration of souls; do
you know about transposition of epochs—and
bodies?”</p>
<p class='c010'>I said I had not heard of it. He was so
little interested—just as when people speak of
the weather—that he did not notice whether I
made him any answer or not. There was half
a moment of silence, immediately interrupted
by the droning voice of the salaried cicerone:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century,
time of King Arthur and the Round Table;
said to have belonged to the knight Sir Sagramor
le Desirous; observe the round hole through
the chain-mail in the left breast; can’t be accounted
for; supposed to have been done with
a bullet since invention of firearms—perhaps
maliciously by Cromwell’s soldiers.”</p>
<p class='c010'>My acquaintance smiled—not a modern
smile, but one that must have gone out of general
<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>use many, many centuries ago—and muttered,
apparently to himself:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Wit ye well, <em>I saw it done</em>.” Then, after a
pause, added: “I did it myself.”</p>
<p class='c010'>By the time I had recovered from the electric
surprise of this remark, he was gone.</p>
<p class='c010'>All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick
Arms, steeped in a dream of the olden
time, while the rain beat upon the windows, and
the wind roared about the eaves and corners.
From time to time I dipped into old Sir Thomas
Malory’s enchanting book, and fed at its rich
feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed in the
fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed
again.</p>
<p class='c010'>As I laid the book down there was a knock
at the door, and my stranger came in. I gave
him a pipe and a chair, and made him welcome.
I also comforted him with a hot Scotch whisky;
gave him another one; then still another—hoping
always for his story. After a fourth persuader,
he drifted into it himself, in a quite simple and
natural way:</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Stranger’s History</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>I am an American. I was born and reared
in Hartford, in the State of Connecticut—anyway,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>just over the river, in the country. So I
am a Yankee of the Yankees—and practical,
yes, and nearly barren of sentiment, I suppose—or
poetry, in other words. My father was
a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and
I was both, along at first. Then I went over
to the great arms factory and learned my real
trade; learned all there was to it; learned to
make everything: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers,
engines, all sorts of labor-saving machinery.
Why, I could make anything a body wanted—anything
in the world, it didn’t make any difference
what; and if there wasn’t any quick
new-fangled way to make a thing, I could invent
one—and do it as easy as rolling off a
log. I became head superintendent; had a
couple of thousand men under me.</p>
<p class='c010'>Well, a man like that is a man that is full of
fight—that goes without saying. With a couple
of thousand men under one, one has plenty of
that sort of amusement. I had, anyway. At
last I met my match, and I got my dose. It
was during a misunderstanding conducted with
crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules.
He laid me out with a crusher alongside the
head that made everything crack, and seemed
to spring every joint in my skull and make it
overlap its neighbor. Then the world went out
<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>in darkness, and I didn’t feel anything more,
and didn’t know anything at all—at least for a
while.</p>
<p class='c010'>When I came to again, I was sitting under
an oak tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful
and broad country landscape all to myself—nearly.
Not entirely; for there was a fellow
on a horse, looking down at me—a fellow fresh
out of a picture-book. He was in old-time iron
armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his
head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it;
and he had a shield, and a sword, and a
prodigious spear; and his horse had armor on,
too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead,
and gorgeous red and green silk trappings
that hung down all around him like a bedquilt,
nearly to the ground.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Fair sir, will ye just?” said this fellow.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Will I which?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Will ye try a passage of arms for land or
lady or for——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“What are you giving me?” I said. “Get
along back to your circus, or I’ll report you.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Now what does this man do but fall back
a couple of hundred yards and then come rushing
at me as hard as he could tear, with his
nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse’s neck
and his long spear pointed straight ahead. I
<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>saw he meant business, so I was up the tree when
he arrived.</p>
<p class='c010'>He allowed that I was his property, the captive
of his spear. There was argument on his
side—and the bulk of the advantage—so I
judged it best to humor him. We fixed up an
agreement whereby I was to go with him and
he was not to hurt me. I came down, and we
started away, I walking by the side of his horse.
We marched comfortably along, through glades
and over brooks which I could not remember to
have seen before—which puzzled me and made
me wonder—and yet we did not come to any
circus or sign of a circus. So I gave up the
idea of a circus, and concluded he was from an
asylum. But we never came to an asylum—so
I was up a stump, as you may say. I asked
him how far we were from Hartford. He said
he had never heard of the place; which I took to
be a lie, but allowed it to go at that. At the
end of an hour we saw a far-away town sleeping
in a valley by a winding river; and beyond
it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers
and turrets, the first I had ever seen out of
a picture.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Bridgeport,” said I, pointing.</p>
<p class='c010'>“Camelot,” said he.</p>
<p class='c010'>My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>He caught himself nodding, now, and
smiled one of those pathetic, obsolete smiles of
his, and said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“I find I can’t go on; but come with me,
I’ve got it all written out, and you can read it,
if you like.”</p>
<p class='c010'>In his chamber, he said: “First, I kept a
journal; then by and by, after years, I took
the journal and turned it into a book. How
long ago that was!”</p>
<p class='c010'>He handed me his manuscript, and pointed out
the place where I should begin:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Begin here—I’ve already told you what goes
before.” He was steeped in drowsiness by this
time. As I went out at his door I heard him
murmur sleepily: “Give you good den, fair sir.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure.
The first part of it—the great bulk of it—was
parchment, and yellow with age. I scanned
a leaf particularly and saw that it was a palimpsest.
Under the old dim writing of the Yankee
historian appeared traces of a penmanship which
was older and dimmer still—Latin words and
sentences: fragments from old monkish legends,
evidently. I turned to the place indicated by
my stranger and began to read.</p>
<div>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Round Table</span><SPAN name='r7' /><SPAN href='#f7' class='c014'><sup>[7]</sup></SPAN></h3></div>
<p class='c012'>In the middle of this groined and vaulted
public square was an oaken table which was
called the Table Round. It was as large as
a circus ring; and around it sat a great company
of men dressed in such various and splendid
colors that it hurt one’s eyes to look at them.
They wore their plumed hats, right along, except
that whenever one addressed himself directly
to the king, he lifted his hat a trifle just
as he was beginning his remark.</p>
<p class='c010'>Mainly they were drinking—from entire ox
horns; but a few were still munching bread or
gnawing beef bones. There was about an average
of two dogs to one man; and these sat in
expectant attitudes till a spent bone was flung
to them, and then they went for it by brigades
and divisions, with a rush, and there ensued a
fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous
chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing
tails, and the storm of howlings and barkings
deafened all speech for the time; but that was
no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger
interest anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe
it the better and bet on it, and the ladies
and the musicians stretched themselves out over
<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>their balusters with the same object; and all
broke into delighted ejaculation, from time to
time. In the end, the winning dog stretched
himself out comfortably with his bone between
his paws, and proceeded to growl over it, and
gnaw it, and grease the floor with it, just as
fifty others were already doing; and the rest
of the court resumed their previous industries
and entertainments.</p>
<p class='c010'>As a rule, the speech and behavior of these
people were gracious and courtly; and I noticed
that they were good and serious listeners when
anybody was telling anything—I mean in a dog-fightless
interval. And plainly, too, they were
a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of the
stateliest pattern with a most gentle and winning
naiveté, and ready and willing to listen
to anybody else’s lie, and believe it, too. It
was hard to associate them with anything cruel
or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood
and suffering with a guileless relish that made
me almost forget to shudder.</p>
<p class='c010'>Mainly the Round Table talk was monologues—narrative
accounts of the adventures in which
these prisoners were captured and their friends
and backers killed and stripped of their steeds
and armor. As a general thing—as far as I
could make out—these murderous adventures
<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>were not forays undertaken to avenge injuries,
nor to settle old disputes or sudden fallings out;
no, as a rule they were simple duels between
strangers—duels between people who had never
even been introduced to each other, and between
whom existed no cause of offense whatever.
Many a time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers,
meet by chance, and say simultaneously, “I
can lick you,” and go at it on the spot; but I
had always imagined until now that that sort
of thing belonged to children only, and was a
sign and mark of childhood; but here were these
big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it
clear up into full age, and beyond. Yet there
was something very engaging about these great
simple-hearted creatures, something attractive
and lovable. There did not seem to be brains
enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to
bait a fish-hook with; but you didn’t seem to
mind that; after a little, you soon saw that
brains were not needed in a society like that,
and indeed would have marred it, spoiled its
symmetry—perhaps rendered its existence impossible.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Yankee Reflects</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Why, dear me, <em>any</em> kind of royalty, howsoever
modified, <em>any</em> kind of aristocracy, howsoever
pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you
<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>are born and brought up under that sort of
arrangement you probably never find it out for
yourself, and don’t believe it when somebody
else tells you. It is enough to make a body
ashamed of his race to think of the sort of
froth that has always occupied its thrones without
shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate
people that have always figured as its aristocracies—a
company of monarchs and nobles who,
as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and
obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own
exertions.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Perfect Government</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely
perfect government. An earthly despotism
would be the absolutely perfect earthly government,
if the conditions were the same, namely,
the despot the perfectest individual of the human
race, and his lease of life perpetual. But as a
perishable perfect man must die, and leave his
despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor,
an earthly despotism is not merely a bad
form of government, it is the worst form that is
possible.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Maids in Distress</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>There never was such a country for wandering
liars; and they were of both sexes. Hardly
<span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>a month went by without one of these tramps
arriving; and generally loaded with a tale about
some princess or other wanting help to get her
out of some far-away castle where she was held
in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a
giant. Now you would think that the first
thing the king would do after listening to such
a novelette from an entire stranger, would be to
ask for credentials—yes, and a pointer or two as
to locality of castle, best route to it, and so on.
But nobody ever thought of so simple and common-sense
a thing as that. No, everybody
swallowed these people’s lies whole, and never
asked a question of any sort or about anything.
Well, one day when I was not around, one of
these people came along—it was a she one, this
time—and told a tale of the usual pattern. Her
mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy
castle, along with forty-four other young and
beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses;
they had been languishing in that cruel
captivity for twenty-six years; the masters of
the castle were three stupendous brothers, each
with four arms and one eye—the eye in the
center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit.
Sort of fruit not mentioned; their usual slovenliness
in statistics.</p>
<p class='c010'>Would you believe it? The king and the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>whole Round Table were in raptures over this
preposterous opportunity for adventure. Every
knight of the Table jumped for the chance, and
begged for it; but to their vexation and chagrin
the king conferred it upon me, who had not
asked for it at all.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Knight’s Average</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>If knights errant were to be believed, not all
castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in.
As a matter of fact, knights errant were <em>not</em>
persons to be believed—that is, measured by modern
standards of veracity; yet, measured by the
standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly,
you got the truth. It was very simple:
you discounted a statement ninety-seven per
cent.; the rest was fact.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Sixth Century Kingdoms</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>“Kings” and “Kingdoms” were as thick in
Britain as they had been in little Palestine in
Joshua’s time, when people had to sleep with
their knees pulled up because they couldn’t
stretch out without a passport.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Nature</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Training—training is everything; training is
all there is <em>to</em> a person. We speak of nature;
<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>what we call by that misleading name is
heredity and training. We have no thoughts
of our own, no opinions of our own; they are
transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is
original in us, and therefore fairly creditable
or discreditable to us, can be covered up and
hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the
rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited
from, a procession of ancestors that stretches
back a billion years to the Adam-clam or grasshopper
or monkey from whom our race has been
so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably
developed.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Conscience</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn’t
have any conscience. It is one of the most disagreeable
things connected with a person; and
although it certainly does a great deal of good,
it cannot be said to pay, in the long run; it
would be much better to have less good and
more comfort. Still, this is only my opinion, and
I am only one man; others, with less experience,
may think differently. They have a right to
their views. I only stand to this; I have noticed
my conscience for many years, and I know
it is more trouble and bother to me than anything
else I started with. I suppose that in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>the beginning I prized it, because we prize anything
that is ours; and yet how foolish it was
to think so. If we look at it in another way
we see how absurd it is: if I had an anvil in
me would I prize it? Of course not. And yet
when you come to think, there is no real difference
between a conscience and an anvil—I
mean for comfort. I have noticed it a thousand
times. And you could dissolve an anvil
with acids, when you couldn’t stand it any
longer; but there isn’t any way that you can
work off a conscience—at least, so it will stay
worked off; not that I know of, anyway.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The German Tongue</span><SPAN name='r8' /><SPAN href='#f8' class='c014'><sup>[8]</sup></SPAN></h3>
<p class='c012'>I was gradually coming to have a mysterious
and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays
whenever she pulled out from the station and
got her train fairly started on one of those
horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers,
it was borne in upon me that I was standing in
the awful presence of the Mother of the German
Language. I was so impressed with this,
that sometimes when she began to empty one of
these sentences on me I unconsciously took the
very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered;
<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>and if words had been water, I had been drowned,
sure. She had exactly the German way; whatever
was in her mind to be delivered, whether a
mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopædia, or
the history of a war, she would get it into a
single sentence or die. Whenever the literary
German dives into a sentence, that is the last you
are going to see of him till he emerges on the
other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his
mouth.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Government by the People</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>There is a phrase which has grown so common
in the world’s mouth that it has come to
seem to have sense and meaning—the sense and
meaning implied when it is used; that is the
phrase which refers to this or that or the other
nation as possibly being “capable of self-government”;
and the implied sense of it is, that there
has been a nation somewhere, some time or other
which <em>wasn’t</em> capable of it—wasn’t as able to
govern itself as some self-appointed specialists
were, or would be, to govern it. The master
minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in
affluent multitude from the mass of the nation,
and from the mass of the nation only—not from
its privileged classes; and so, no matter what
the nation’s intellectual grade was, whether high
<span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>or low, the bulk of its ability was in the long
ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it
never saw the day that it had not the material
in abundance whereby to govern itself. Which
is to assert an always self-proven fact; that
even the best governed and most free and most
enlightened monarchy is still behind the best
condition attainable by its people; and that the
same is true of kindred governments of lower
grades, all the way down to the lowest.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Prophecy</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>A prophet doesn’t have to have any brains.
They are good to have, of course, for the ordinary
exigencies of life, but they are of no use
in professional work. It is the restfullest vocation
there is. When the spirit of prophecy
comes upon you, you merely take your intellect
and lay it off in a cool place for a rest, and
unship your jaw and leave it alone; it will
work itself: the result is prophecy.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Hard Work</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you,
unless you have suffered in your own person the
thing which the words try to describe. There
<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and
complacently about “the working classes,” and
satisfy themselves that a day’s hard intellectual
work is very much harder than a day’s hard
manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much
bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you
know, because they know all about the one, but
haven’t tried the other. But I know all about
both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn’t
money enough in the universe to hire me to
swing a pick-axe thirty days, but I will do the
hardest kind of intellectual work for just as
near nothing as you can cipher it down—and
I will be satisfied, too.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Still Hope</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Yes, there is plenty good enough material for
a republic in the most degraded people that ever
existed—even the Russians; plenty of manhood in
them—even in the Germans—if one could but
force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy,
to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne
that ever was set up and any nobility that ever
supported it.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Human Race</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Toward the shaven monk who trudged along
with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing
<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply
reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with
the small farmer and the free mechanic he was
cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed
by with a countenance respectfully lowered, this
chap’s nose was in the air—he couldn’t even
see him. Well, there are times when one would
like to hang the whole human race and finish
the farce.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The King in Slavery</span><SPAN name='r9' /><SPAN href='#f9' class='c014'><sup>[9]</sup></SPAN></h3>
<p class='c012'>We had a rough time for a month, tramping
to and fro in the earth, and suffering. And
what Englishman was the most interested in the
slavery question by that time? His grace, the
king! Yes; from being the most indifferent, he
was become the most interested. He was become
the bitterest hater of the institution I had ever
heard talk....</p>
<p class='c010'>Now and then we had an adventure. One
night we were overtaken by a snow-storm while
still a mile from the village we were making for.
Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog,
the driving snow was so thick. You couldn’t
see a thing, and we were soon lost. The slave-driver
lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin
<span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>before him, but his lashings only made matters
worse, for they drove us further from the road
and from likelihood of succor. So we had to
stop at last and slump down in the snow where
we were. The storm continued until toward
midnight, then ceased. By this time two of our
feebler men and three of our women were dead,
and others past moving and threatened with
death. Our master was nearly beside himself.
He stirred up the living and made us stand,
jump, slap ourselves, to restore our circulation,
and he helped as well as he could with his
whip.</p>
<p class='c010'>Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks
and yells, and soon a woman came running and
crying; and seeing our group, she flung herself
into our midst and begged for protection.
A mob of people came tearing after her, some
with torches, and they said she was a witch who
had caused several cows to die by a strange disease,
and practiced her arts by help of a devil
in the form of a black cat. This poor woman
had been stoned until she hardly looked human,
she was so battered and bloody. The mob
wanted to burn her.</p>
<p class='c010'>Well, now, what do you suppose our master
did? When we closed around this poor creature
to shelter her, he saw his chance. He said,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>burn her here, or they shouldn’t have her at all.
Imagine that! They were willing. They fastened
her to a post; they brought wood and piled
it about her; they applied the torch, while she
shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young
daughters to her breast; and our brute, with a
heart solely for business, lashed us into position
about the stake and warmed us into life and
commercial value by the same fire which took
away the innocent life of that poor harmless
mother. That was the sort of master we had.
I took <em>his</em> number. That snow-storm cost him
nine of his flock; and he was more brutal to
us than ever, after that, for many days together,
he was so enraged over his loss.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION” (1877)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>What We Saw in Bermuda</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so
I was thinking of saying in print in a general
way, that there were none at all; but one night
after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into
my room carrying something, and asked, “Is this
your boot?” I said it was, and he said he had
met a spider going off with it. Next morning
he stated that just at dawn the same spider
raised his window and was coming in to get his
shirt, but saw him and fled.</p>
<p class='c010'>I inquired, “Did he get the shirt?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“No.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“How did you know it was a shirt he was
after?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I could see it in his eyes.”</p>
<p class='c010'>We inquired around, but could hear of no Bermudian
spider capable of doing these things.
Citizens said that their largest spiders could not
more than spread their legs over an ordinary
<span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>saucer, and that they had always been considered
honest. Here was testimony of a clergyman
against the testimony of mere worldlings—interested
ones, too. On the whole, I judged
it best to lock up my things.</p>
<p class='c010'>Here and there on the country roads we found
lemon, papaw, orange, lime, and fig-trees; also
several sorts of palms, among them the cocoa,
the date, and the palmetto. We saw some bamboos
forty feet high, with stems as thick as a
man’s arm. Jungles of the mangrove-tree stood
up out of swamps, propped on their interlacing
roots, as upon a tangle of stilts. In dryer places
the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud
of shade. Here and there the blossomy tamarisk
adorned the roadside. There was a curious
gnarled and twisted black tree, without a
single leaf on it. It might have passed itself
off for a dead apple tree but for the fact that
it had a star-like, red-hot flower sprinkled
sparsely over its person. It had the scattery red
glow that a constellation might have when
glimpsed through smoked glass....</p>
<p class='c010'>We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as
calmly and unostentatiously as a vine would do
it. We saw an india-rubber-tree, but out of season,
possibly, so there were no shoes on it, nor
suspenders, nor anything that a person would
<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>properly expect to find there. This gave it an
impressively fraudulent look. There was exactly
one mahogany tree on the island. I know
this to be reliable, because I saw a man who
said he had counted it many a time and could
not be mistaken. He was a man with a harelip
and a pure heart, and everybody said he was as
true as steel. Such men are all too few.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “PUDD’NHEAD WILSON’S CALENDAR” (1892–3)</h2></div>
<p class='c009'>Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick.</p>
<p class='c009'>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.</p>
<p class='c009'>Whosoever 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.</p>
<p class='c009'>Adam and Eve had many advantages, but
the principal one was, that they escaped teething.</p>
<p class='c009'>There is this trouble about special providences—namely,
there is so often a doubt as to which
<span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>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.</p>
<p class='c009'>Training is everything. The peach was once
a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage
with a college education.</p>
<p class='c009'>Remarks of Dr. Baldwin’s, concerning upstarts:
We don’t care to eat toadstools that
think they are truffles.</p>
<p class='c009'>Let us endeavor so to live that when we
come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.</p>
<p class='c009'>Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of
the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs
a step at a time.</p>
<p class='c009'>One of the most striking differences between
a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.</p>
<p class='c009'>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.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>Consider well the proportions of things. It
is better to be a young junebug than an old
bird of paradise.</p>
<p class='c009'>Why is it that we rejoice at birth and grieve
at a funeral? It is because we are not the
person involved.</p>
<p class='c009'>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.</p>
<p class='c009'>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.</p>
<p class='c009'>When angry, count four; when very angry,
swear.</p>
<p class='c009'>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.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike
it out.</p>
<p class='c009'>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 Putman 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.</p>
<p class='c009'>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.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>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.</p>
<p class='c009'>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.</p>
<p class='c009'>Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s
habits.</p>
<p class='c009'>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—<em>watch that basket</em>.”</p>
<p class='c009'>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.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>We know all about the habits of the ant,
we know all about the habits of the bee, but
we know nothing at all about the habits of the
oyster. It seems almost certain that we have
been choosing the wrong time for studying the
oyster.</p>
<p class='c009'>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.</p>
<p class='c009'><em>July 4.</em> Statistics show that we lose more fools
on this day than on 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.</p>
<p class='c009'>Thanksgiving Day. Let all give humble,
hearty, and sincere thanks, now, but the turkeys.
In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys;
they use plumbers. It does not become you and
me to sneer at Fiji.</p>
<p class='c009'>Few things are harder to put up with than
the annoyance of a good example.</p>
<p class='c009'>It were not best that we should all think
alike; it is difference of opinion that makes
horse races.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>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.</p>
<p class='c009'><em>April 1.</em> This the day upon which we are
reminded of what we are on the other three
hundred and sixty-four.</p>
<p class='c009'>It is often the case that the man who can’t
tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one.</p>
<p class='c009'>October 12, the <em>Discovery</em>. It was wonderful
to find America, but it would have been more
wonderful to miss it.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED” (1885)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Marion Rangers</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>You have heard from a great many people
who did something in the war; is it not fair and
right that you listen a little moment to one who
started out to do something in it, but didn’t?
Thousands entered the war, got just a taste of
it, and then stepped out again permanently....</p>
<p class='c010'>In that summer—of 1861—the first wash of
the wave of war broke upon the shores of Missouri.
Our state was invaded by the Union
forces. They took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson
Barracks, and some other points. The
Governor, Calib Jackson, issued his proclamation
calling out fifty thousand militia to repel
the invader.</p>
<p class='c010'>I was visiting in the small town where my
boyhood had been spent—Hannibal, Marion
County. Several of us got together in a secret
place by night and formed ourselves into a military
company. One Tom Lyman, a young fellow
<span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>of a good deal of spirit but of no military
experience, was made captain; I was made second
lieutenant. We had no first lieutenant; I
do not know why; it was long ago. There were
fifteen of us. By the advice of an innocent connected
with the organization we called ourselves
the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that
any one found fault with the name. I did not;
I thought it sounded quite well. The young
fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a
fair sample of the kind of stuff we were made
of. He was young, ignorant, good-natured,
well-meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given
to reading chivalric novels and singing forlorn
love ditties. He had some pathetic little nickel-plated
aristocratic instincts, and detested his
name, which was Dunlap; detested it partly because
it was nearly as common in that region
as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian
sound to his ear. So he tried to ennoble it by
writing it in this way: <em>d’Unlap</em>. That contented
his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, for
people gave the new name the same old pronunciation—emphasis
on the front end of it. He
then did the bravest thing that can be imagined—a
thing to make one shiver when one
remembers how the world is given to resenting
shams and affectations; he began to write his
<span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>name so: <em>d’Un Lap</em>. And he waited patiently
through the long storm of mud that was flung
at this work of art, and he had his reward at
last; for he lived to see that name accepted, and
the emphasis put where he wanted it by people
who had known him all his life, and to whom
the tribe of Dunlaps had been as familiar as
the rain and sunshine for forty years. So sure
of victory at last is the courage that can wait.
He said he had found, by consulting some
ancient French chronicles, that the name was
rightly and originally written d’Un Lap; and
said that if it were translated into English it
would mean Peterson: <em>Lap</em>, Latin or Greek, he
said, for stone or rock, same as the French
<em>pierre</em>, that is to say Peter; <em>d’</em> of or from; <em>un</em>,
a or one; hence, d’Un Lap, of or from a
stone or a Peter; that is to say, one who is the
son of a stone, the son of a Peter—Peterson.
Our militia company were not learned, and the
explanation confused them; so they called him
Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in
his way; he named our camps for us, and he
generally struck a name that was “no slouch,”
as the boys said.</p>
<p class='c010'>That is one sample of us. Another was Ed
Stevens, son of the town jeweler—trim built,
handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright, educated,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>but given over entirely to fun. There
was nothing serious in life to him. As far as
he was concerned, this military expedition of
ours was simply a holiday. I should say that
about half of us looked upon it in the same way;
not consciously perhaps, but unconsciously. We
did not think; we were not capable of it. As
for myself, I was full of unreasoning joy to be
done with turning out of bed at midnight and
four in the morning for a while; grateful to
have a change, new scenes, new occupations, a
new interest. In my thoughts that was as far
as I went; I did not go into the details; as a
rule, one doesn’t at twenty-four.</p>
<p class='c010'>Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith’s
apprentice. This vast donkey had some pluck,
of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart;
at one time he would knock a horse down for
some impropriety, and at another he would get
homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate
credit to his account which some of us
hadn’t; he stuck to the war, and was killed in
battle at last.</p>
<p class='c010'>Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured,
flax-headed lubber; lazy, sentimental,
full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature;
an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often
quite picturesque liar, and yet not a successful
<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>one, for he had had no intelligent training, but
was allowed to come up just anyway. This life
was serious enough to him, and seldom satisfactory.
But he was a good fellow, anyway, and
the boys all liked him. He was made orderly
sergeant; Stevens was made corporal.</p>
<p class='c010'>These samples will answer—and they are
quite fair ones. Well, this herd of cattle started
for the war. What could you expect of them?
They did as well as they knew how; but really
what was justly to be expected of them? Nothing,
I should say. That is what they did....</p>
<p class='c010'>For a time life was idly delicious, it was perfect;
there was nothing to mar it. Then came
some farmers with an alarm one day. They said
it was rumored that the enemy were advancing
in our direction from over Hyde’s Prairie. The
result was a sharp stir among us and general
consternation. It was a rude awakening from
our pleasant trance. The rumor was but a
rumor—nothing definite about it; so, in the confusion,
we did not know which way to retreat.
Lyman was for not retreating at all, in these
uncertain circumstances; but he found that if
he tried to maintain that attitude he would
fare badly, for the command were in no humor
to put up with insubordination. So he yielded
the point and called a council of war—to consist
<span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>of himself and the three other officers; but
the privates made such a fuss about being left
out that we had to allow them to remain, for they
were already present, and doing the most of the
talking, too. The question was, which way to
retreat; but all were so flurried that nobody
seemed to have even a guess to offer. Except
Lyman. He explained in a few calm words
that, inasmuch as the enemy was approaching
from over Hyde’s Prairie, our course was simple;
all we had to do was not to retreat <em>towards</em>
him; any other direction would answer our
needs perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment
how true this was, and how wise; so Lyman
got a great many compliments. It was now
decided that we should fall back on Mason’s
farm.</p>
<p class='c010'>It was after dark by this time, and as we
could not know how soon the enemy might arrive,
it did not seem best to try to take the
horses and things with us; so we only took the
guns and ammunition, and started at once.</p>
<p class='c010'>We heard a sound, and held our breath and
listened, and it seemed to be the enemy coming,
though it could have been a cow, for it had a
cough like a cow; but we did not wait, but
left a couple of guns behind and struck out for
Mason’s again, as briskly as we could scramble
<span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>along in the dark. But we got lost presently
among the rugged little ravines, and wasted a
deal of time finding the way again, so it was
after nine o’clock when we reached Mason’s
stile at last; and then before we could open
our mouths to give the countersign several dogs
came bounding over the fence, with great riot
and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the
slack of his trousers and began to back away
with him. We could not shoot the dogs without
endangering the persons they were attached
to; so we had to look on helplessly, at what was
perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of the Civil
War. There was light enough, and to spare,
for the Masons had now run out on the porch
with candles in their hands. The old man and
his son came and undid the dogs without difficulty,
all but Bowers’s; but they couldn’t undo
his dog, they didn’t know his combination; he
was of the bull kind, and seemed to be set with
a Yale time-lock; but they got him loose at last
with some scalding water, of which Bowers got
his share and returned thanks.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “THE PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC”</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Joan</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned
man’s character one must judge it by the standards
of his time, not ours. Judged by the
standards of one century, the noblest characters
of an earlier one lose much of their luster; judged
by the standards of to-day, there is probably
no illustrious man of four or five centuries ago
whose character could meet the test at all points.
But the character of Joan of Arc is unique.
It can be measured by the standards of all
times without misgiving or apprehension as to
the result. Judged by any of them, judged by
all of them, it is still flawless, it is still ideally
perfect; it still occupies the loftiest place possible
to human attainment, a loftier one than has
been reached by any other mere mortal.</p>
<p class='c010'>When we reflect that her century was the
brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history
since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder
<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>at the miracle of such a product from such a
soil. The contrast between her and her century
is the contrast between day and night.
She was truthful when lying was the common
speech of men; she was honest when honesty
was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of
promises when the keeping of a promise was expected
of no one; she gave her great mind to
great thoughts and great purposes when other
great minds wasted themselves upon pretty
fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest,
and fine, and delicate, when to be loud and
coarse might be said to be universal; she was
full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the
rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown,
and honorable in an age which had
forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of
convictions in a time when men believed in nothing
and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly
true in an age that was false to the core;
she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired
in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was
of a dauntless courage when hope and courage
had perished in the hearts of her nation; she
was spotlessly pure in mind and body when
society in the highest places was foul in both—she
was all these things in an age when crime
was the common business of lords and princes,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>and when the highest personages in Christendom
were able to astonish even that infamous
era and make it stand aghast at the spectacle
of their atrocious lives black with unimaginable
treacheries, butcheries, and bestialities.</p>
<p class='c010'>She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish
person whose name has a place in profane history.
No vestige or suggestion of self-seeking
can be found in any word or deed of hers.
When she had rescued her king from his vagabondage,
and set his crown upon his head she
was offered rewards and honors, but she refused
them all, and would take nothing. All she
would take for herself—if the king would grant
it—was leave to go back to her village home,
and tend her sheep again, and feel her mother’s
arms about her, and be her housemaid and
helper. The selfishness of this unspoiled general
of victorious army, companion of princes,
an idol of an applauding and grateful nation,
reached but that far and no farther.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Fairy Tree</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>In a noble open space carpeted with grass on
the high ground toward Vaucouleur stood a
most majestic beech tree with wide-reaching arms
and a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid
<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>spring of cold water; and on summer days the
children went there—oh, every summer for
more than five hundred years—went there and
sang and danced around the tree for hours together,
refreshing themselves at the spring from
time to time, and it was most lovely and enjoyable.
Also they made wreaths of flowers
and hung them upon the tree and about the
spring to please the fairies that lived there; for
they liked that, being idle innocent little creatures,
as all fairies are and fond of anything
delicate and pretty like wild flowers put together
in that way. And in return for this attention
the fairies did any friendly thing they could
for the children, such as keeping the spring
always full and clear and cold, and driving away
serpents and insects that sting; and so there
was never any unkindness between the fairies and
the children during more than five hundred
years—tradition said a thousand—but only the
warmest affection and the most perfect trust and
confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies
mourned just as that child’s playmates did, and
the sign of it was there to see; for before the
dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a
little immortelle over the place where the child
was used to sit under the tree. I know this to
be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And
<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>the reason it was known that the fairies did it
was this—that it was made all of black flowers
of a sort not known in France anywhere.</p>
<p class='c010'>Now from time immemorial all children reared
in Domremy were called the Children of the
Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried
with it a mystic privilege not granted to any
other of the children of this world. Which
was this: whenever one of these came to die,
then beyond the vague and formless images
drifting through his darkening mind rose soft
and rich and fair a vision of the tree—if all was
well with his soul. That was what some said.
Others said the vision came in two ways: once
as a warning, one or two years in advance of
death, when the soul was the captive of sin,
and then the tree appeared in its desolate winter
aspect—then that soul was smitten with an
awful fear. If repentance came, and purity of
life the vision came again, this time summer-clad
and beautiful; but if it were otherwise
with that soul the vision was withheld, and it
passed from life knowing its doom. Still others
said that the vision came but once and then only
to the sinless dying forlorn in distant lands and
pitifully longing for some last dear reminder of
their home. And what reminder of it could go
to their hearts like the picture of the tree that
<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>was the darling of their love and the comrade
of their joys and comforter of their small griefs
all through the divine days of their vanished
youth?</p>
<p class='c010'>Now the several traditions were as I have
said, some believing one and some another. One
of them I know to be the truth, and that was
the last one. I do not say anything against the
others; I think they were true, but I only <em>know</em>
that the last one was; and it is my thought that
if one keep to the things he knows, and not
trouble about the things which he cannot be
sure about, he will have the steadier mind for
it—and there is profit in that. I know that
when the children of the tree die in a far land,
then—if they be at peace with God—they turn
their longing eyes toward home, and there, far-shining,
as through a rift in a cloud that curtains
heaven, they see the soft picture of the fairy
tree, clothed in a dream of golden light; and
they see the blooming meads sloping away to
the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown
faint and sweet the fragrance of the flowers of
home. And then the vision fades and passes—but
<em>they</em> know, <em>they</em> know! and by their transfigured
faces you know also, you stand looking
on; yes, you know the message that has come,
and that it has come from heaven.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>Joan and I believed alike about this matter.
But Pierre Morel, and Jacques d’Arc and many
others believed that the vision appeared twice—to
a sinner. In fact, they and many others said
they <em>knew</em> it. Probably because their fathers
had known it and had told them; for one gets
most things at second hand in this world....</p>
<p class='c010'>Always, from the remotest times, when the
children joined hands and danced around the
fairy tree they sang the song which was the
tree’s song, the song of <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’Arbre Fée de Bourlemont</span></cite>.
They sang it to a quaint sweet air—a
solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring
through my dreaming spirit all my life when
I was weary and troubled, resting me and carrying
me through night and distance home again.
No stranger can know or feel what that song
has been through the drifting centuries to exiled
Children of the Tree, homeless and heavy of
heart in countries foreign to their speech and
ways. You will think it a simple thing, that
song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember
what it was to us, and what it brought
before our eyes when it floated through our
memories, then you will respect it. And you
will understand how the water wells up in our
eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices
break and we cannot sing the last lines:</p>
<div class='lg-container-b c004'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>“And when, in exile wand’ring, we</div>
<div class='line'>Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Oh, rise upon our sight!”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c013'>and you will remember that Joan of Arc sang
this song with us around the tree when she
was a little child, and always loved it. And
<em>that</em> hallows it, yes, you will grant that:</p>
<h3 class='c011'><cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’Arbre Fée de Bourlemont.</span></cite></h3>
<div class='lg-container-b c004'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in12'>Song of the children</div>
<div class='line'>Now what has kept your leaves so green,</div>
<div class='line in2'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Arbre Fée de Bourlemont</span>?</div>
<div class='line'>The children’s tears! they brought each grief,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And you did comfort them and cheer</div>
<div class='line in2'>Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear</div>
<div class='line'>That, healèd, rose, a leaf.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And what has built you up so strong,</div>
<div class='line in2'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Arbre Fée de Bourlemont</span>?</div>
<div class='line'>The children’s love! they’ve loved you long:</div>
<div class='line in2'>Ten hundred years, in sooth,</div>
<div class='line'>They’ve nourished you with praise and song,</div>
<div class='line'>And warmed your heart and kept it young—</div>
<div class='line in2'>A thousand years of youth!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Bide always green in our young hearts,</div>
<div class='line in2'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Arbre Fée de Bourlemont</span>!</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>And we shall always youthful be,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Not heeding Time his flight;</div>
<div class='line'>And when, in exile wand’ring, we</div>
<div class='line'>Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Oh, rise upon our sight!</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Joan Before Rheims</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>We marched, marched, kept on marching;
and at last, on the 16th of July, we came in
sight of our goal and saw the great cathedral
towers of Rheims rise out of the distance!
Huzza after huzza swept the army from van to
rear; and as for Joan of Arc, there where she
sat her horse, gazing, clothed all in white armor,
dreamy, beautiful, and in her face a deep, deep
joy, a joy not of earth, oh, she was not flesh,
she was a spirit! Her sublime mission was
closing—closing in flawless triumph. To-morrow
she could say, “It is finished—let me go
free.”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Joan’s Reward</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>The fantastic dream, the incredible dream,
the impossible dream of the peasant child stood
fulfilled; the English power was broken, the
heir of France was crowned.</p>
<p class='c010'>She was like one transfigured, so divine was
the joy that shone in her face as she sank to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>her knees at the king’s feet and looked up at
him through her tears. Her lips were quivering,
and her words came soft and low and
broken:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Now, O gentle king, is the pleasure of God
accomplished according to his command that you
should come to Rheims and receive the crown
that belongeth of right to you, and unto none
other. My work which was given me to do is
finished; give me your peace, and let me go
back to my mother, who is poor and old, and
has need of me.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The king raised her up, and there before
all that host he praised her great deeds in
most noble terms; and there he confirmed her
nobility and titles, making her the equal of a
count in rank, and also appointed a household
and officers for her according to her dignity;
and then he said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“You have saved the crown. Speak—require—demand;
and whatsoever grace you ask it
shall be granted, though it make the kingdom
poor to meet it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Now that was fine, that was loyal. Joan was
on her knees again straightway, and said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Then, O gentle king, if out of your compassion
you will speak the word, I pray you
give commandment that my village, poor and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>hard-pressed by reason of the war, may have
its taxes remitted.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“It is so commanded. Say on.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“That is all.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“All? Nothing but that?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“It is all. I have no other desire.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“But that is nothing—less than nothing. Ask—do
not be afraid.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Indeed, I cannot, gentle king. Do not
press me. I will not have aught else, but only
this alone.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The king seemed nonplussed, and stood still
a moment, as if trying to comprehend and
realize the full stature of this strange unselfishness.
Then he raised his head and said:</p>
<p class='c010'>“She has won a kingdom and crowned its
king; and all she asks and all she will take is
this poor grace—and even this is for others,
not for herself. And it is well; her act being
proportioned to the dignity of one who carries
in her head and heart riches which outvalue
any that any king could add, though he gave
his all. She shall have her way. Now, therefore,
it is decreed that from this day forth Domremy,
natal village of Joan of Arc, Deliverer of
France, called the Maid of Orleans, is freed
from all taxation <em>forever</em>.”</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “SAINT JOAN OF ARC” (1899)</h2></div>
<p class='c009'>There is no one to compare her with, none to
measure her by; for all others among the illustrious
<em>grew</em> towards their high place in an atmosphere
and surroundings which discovered
their gift to them and nourished it and promoted
it, intentionally or unconsciously. There have
been other young generals, but they were not
girls; young generals, but they have been
soldiers before they were generals: she <em>began</em>
as a general. She commanded the first army
she ever saw; she led it from victory to victory,
and never lost a battle with it; there have
been young commanders-in-chief, but none so
young as she: she is the only soldier in history
who has held the supreme command of a nation’s
armies at the age of seventeen.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR”<br/> <span class='sc'>Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar</span><br/> (1896–7)</h2></div>
<p class='c009'>A man may have no bad habits and have
worse.</p>
<p class='c009'>When in doubt, tell the truth.</p>
<p class='c009'>It is more trouble to make a maxim than it
is to do right.</p>
<p class='c009'>A dozen direct censures are easier to bear
than one morganatic compliment.</p>
<p class='c009'>Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has
merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid
an asteroid.</p>
<p class='c009'>He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring
to its own merits.</p>
<p class='c009'>Truth is the most valuable thing we have.
Let us economize it.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>It could probably be shown by facts and figures
that there is no distinctly native American
criminal class except Congress.</p>
<p class='c009'>It is your human environment that makes
climate.</p>
<p class='c009'>Everything human is pathetic. The secret
source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow.
There is no humor in heaven.</p>
<p class='c009'>We should be careful to get out of an experience
only the wisdom that is in it—and
stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits
down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit
down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is
well; but also she will never sit down on a
cold one any more.</p>
<p class='c009'>There are those who scoff at the schoolboy,
calling him frivolous and shallow. Yet it was
the schoolboy who said, “Faith is believing
what you know ain’t so.”</p>
<p class='c009'>We can secure other people’s approval, if we
do right and try hard; but our own is worth a
hundred of it, and no way has been found out
of securing that.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>Truth is stranger than fiction—to some people,
but I am measurably familiar with it. Truth
is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction
is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth
isn’t.</p>
<p class='c009'>There is a Moral Sense, and there is an
Immoral Sense. History shows us that the
Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and
how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense
enables us to perceive immorality and how to
enjoy it.</p>
<p class='c009'>The English are mentioned in the Bible:
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the
earth.</p>
<p class='c009'>It is easier to stay out than to get out.</p>
<p class='c009'>Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.</p>
<p class='c009'>It is by the goodness of God that in our country
we have those three unspeakably precious
things: Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,
and the prudence never to practice either
of them.</p>
<p class='c009'>Man will do many things to get himself loved,
he will do all things to get himself envied.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>Nothing is so ignorant as a man’s left hand,
except a lady’s watch.</p>
<p class='c009'>Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep
a tidy soul.</p>
<p class='c009'>There is no such thing as “the Queen’s English.”
The property has gone into the hands
of a joint stock company and we own the bulk
of the shares.</p>
<p class='c009'>“<em>Classic.</em>” A book which people praise and
don’t read.</p>
<p class='c009'>There are people who can do all fine and
heroic things but one: keep from telling their
happiness to the unhappy.</p>
<p class='c009'>Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or
needs to.</p>
<p class='c009'>The universal brotherhood of man is our most
precious possession, what there is of it.</p>
<p class='c009'>Let us be thankful for the fools. But for
them the rest of us could not succeed.</p>
<p class='c009'>When people do not respect us we are sharply
offended; yet deep down in his private heart
no man much respects himself.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>Nature makes the locust with an appetite for
crops: man would have made him with an appetite
for sand.</p>
<p class='c009'>The spirit of wrath—not the words—is the
sin; and the spirit of wrath is cursing. We
begin to swear before we can talk.</p>
<p class='c009'>The man with a new idea is a Crank till the
idea succeeds.</p>
<p class='c009'>Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He
cut us out of the “blessing” of idleness and won
for us the “curse” of labor.</p>
<p class='c009'>Let us not be too particular. It is better to
have old second-hand diamonds than none at
all.</p>
<p class='c009'>The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power
than any other man in the earth; but he cannot
stop a sneeze.</p>
<p class='c009'>There are several good protections against
temptations, but the surest is cowardice.</p>
<p class='c009'>Names are not always what they seem. The
common Welsh name Bzjxxllwcp is pronounced
Jackson.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>To succeed in the other trades, capacity must
be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.</p>
<p class='c009'>Prosperity is the best protector of principle.</p>
<p class='c009'>By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity.
Another man’s, I mean.</p>
<p class='c009'>Few of us can stand prosperity. Another
man’s, I mean.</p>
<p class='c009'>There is an old time toast which is golden
for its beauty. “When you ascend the hill of
prosperity may you not meet a friend.”</p>
<p class='c009'>Each person is born to one possession which
outvalues all his others—his last breath.</p>
<p class='c009'>Hunger is the handmaid of genius.</p>
<p class='c009'>The old saw says, “Let a sleeping dog lie.”
Right. Still, when there is much at stake it
is better to get a newspaper to do it.</p>
<p class='c009'>It takes your enemy and your friend, working
together, to hurt you to the heart; the one
to slander you and the other to get the news
to you.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>If the desire to kill and the opportunity to
kill came always together, who would escape
hanging?</p>
<p class='c009'>Simple rules for saving money: To save
half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to
contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty.
To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it
all, count sixty-five.</p>
<p class='c009'>Grief can take care of itself; but to get the
full value of a joy you must have somebody
to divide it with.</p>
<p class='c009'>He had had much experience of physicians, and
said “the only way to keep your health is to
eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t
like, and do what you’d druther not.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The man who is ostentatious of his modesty
is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.</p>
<p class='c009'>Let me make the superstitions of a nation
and I care not who makes its laws or its songs
either.</p>
<p class='c009'>Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles
have been.</p>
<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>Do not undervalue the headache. While it is
at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but
when relief begins the unexpired remainder is
worth $4.00 a minute.</p>
<p class='c009'>True irreverence is disrespect to another
man’s god.</p>
<p class='c009'>There are two times in a man’s life when
he should not speculate: when he can’t afford
it, and when he can.</p>
<p class='c009'>She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call
unrefined. She was the kind of person that
keeps a parrot.</p>
<p class='c009'>Make it a point to do something every day
that you don’t want to do. This is the golden
rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty
without pain.</p>
<p class='c009'>Don’t part with your illusions. When they
are gone you may still exist but you have ceased
to live.</p>
<p class='c009'>Often, the surest way to convey misinformation
is to tell the truth.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The
trouble with you Chicago people is, that you
think you are the best people down here; whereas
you are merely the most numerous.</p>
<p class='c009'>In the first place God made idiots. This was
for practice. Then He made School Boards.</p>
<p class='c009'>There are no people who are quite so vulgar
as the over-refined ones.</p>
<p class='c009'>In statesmanship get the formalities right,
never mind about the moralities.</p>
<p class='c009'>Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side
which he never shows to anybody.</p>
<p class='c009'>The very ink with which all history is written
is merely fluid prejudice.</p>
<p class='c009'>There isn’t a Parallel of Latitude but thinks
it would have been the Equator if it had had
its rights.</p>
<p class='c009'>I have traveled more than any one else, and
I have noticed that even the angels speak English
with an accent.</p>
<div>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Art</span></h3></div>
<p class='c012'>Whenever I enjoy anything in Art it means
that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge
of this fact has saved me from going to pieces
with enthusiasm in front of many and many a
chromo.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Italian Cigars</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>In Italy, as in France, the Government is the
only cigar-peddler. Italy has three or four domestic
brands: the Minghetti, the Trabuco, the
Virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification
of the Virginia. The Minghettis are
large and comely, and cost three dollars and
sixty cents a hundred; I can smoke a hundred in
seven days and enjoy every one of them. The
Trabucos suit me, too; I don’t remember the
price. But one has to learn to like the Virginia,
nobody is born friendly to it. It looks
like a rat-tail file, but smokes better, some think.
It has a straw through it; you pull this out,
and it leaves a flue, otherwise there would be
no draught, not even as much as there is to a
nail. Some prefer a nail at first.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “CONCERNING THE JEWS” (1898)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Human Being</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>I’m quite sure that (bar one) I have no race
prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices
nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices.
Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society.
All that I care to know is that a man is a
human being—that is enough for me; he can’t
be any worse.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Immortal Race</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>If the statistics are right the Jews constitute
but <em>one per cent.</em> of the human race. It suggests
a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the
blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew
ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of,
has always been heard of. He is as prominent
on the planet as any other people, and his commercial
importance is extravagantly out of proportion
to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions
<span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>to the world’s list of great names in
literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine,
and abstruse learning are always away out of
proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He
has made a marvelous fight in this world, in
all the ages; and has done it with his hands
tied behind him. He could be vain of himself,
and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the
Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the
planet with sound and splendor then faded to
dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and
the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and
were gone; other people have sprung up and
held their torch high for a time, but it burned
out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.
The Jew saw them all, beat them all,
and is now what he always was, exhibiting no
decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening
of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling
of his alert and aggressive mind. All
things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces
pass, but he remains. What is the secret of
his immortality?</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “CHRISTIAN SCIENCE” (1898)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The C. S. Healer</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>She was middle-aged, and large and bony,
and erect, and had an austere face and a resolute
jaw and a Roman beak and was a widow
in the third degree, and her name was Fuller.
I was eager to get to business and find relief,
but she was distressingly deliberate. She unpinned
and unhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries
one by one, abolished the wrinkles
with a flirt of her hand, and hung the articles
up; peeled off her gloves and disposed of them,
got a book out of her hand-bag, then drew a
chair to the bedside, descended into it without
hurry and I hung out my tongue. She said,
with pity but without passion:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Return it to its receptacle. We deal with
the mind only, not with its dumb servants.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I could not offer my pulse, because the connection
was broken; but she detected the apology
before I could word it, and indicated by a negative
tilt of her head that the pulse was another
<span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>dumb servant that she had no use for. Then
I thought I would tell her my symptoms and
how I felt, so that she would understand the
case; but that was another inconsequence, she
did not need to know those things; moreover,
my remark about how I felt was an abuse of
language, a misapplication of terms.</p>
<p class='c010'>“One does not <em>feel</em>” she explained; “there is
no such thing as feeling: therefore, to speak
of a non-existent thing as existent is a contradiction.
Matter has no existence; nothing exists
but mind; the mind cannot feel pain, it
can only imagine it.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“But if it hurts, just the same——”</p>
<p class='c010'>“It doesn’t. A thing which is unreal cannot
exercise the functions of reality. Pain is unreal;
hence, pain cannot hurt.”</p>
<p class='c010'>In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the
act of shooing the illusion of pain out of the
mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress,
said “Ouch!” and went tranquilly on with her
talk. “You should never allow yourself to
speak of how you feel, nor permit others to
ask you how you are feeling; you should never
concede that you are ill, nor permit others to
talk about disease or pain or death or similar
non-existences in your presence. Such talk only
<span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>encourages the mind to continue its empty
imaginings.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Just at that point the <em>Stubenmädchen</em> trod on
the cat’s tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of
cat profanity. I asked, with caution:</p>
<p class='c010'>“Is a cat’s opinion about pain valuable?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from
mind only; the lower animals being eternally
perishable, have not been granted mind; without
mind, opinion is impossible.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“She merely <em>imagined</em> she felt a pain—the
cat?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“She cannot imagine a pain, for imagining is
an effect of mind; without mind there is no
imagination. A cat has no imagination.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Then she had a <em>real</em> pain?”</p>
<p class='c010'>“I have already told you there is no such
<em>thing</em> as real pain.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“It is strange and interesting. I do wonder
what was the matter with the cat.”</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER” (1903)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Home Product</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals,
swindles, robberies, explosions, collisions,
and all such things, when we know the people,
and when they are neighbors and friends, but
when they are strangers we do not get any great
pleasure out of them, as a rule. Now the
trouble with an American paper is that it has
no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for
blood and garbage and the result is that you are
daily overfed and suffer a surfeit. By habit you
stow this muck every day, but you come by and
by to take no vital interest in it—indeed, you
almost get tired of it. As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths
of it concerns strangers only—people
away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand
miles, ten thousand miles from where you
are. Why, when you come to think of it, who
cares what becomes of those people? I would
not give the assassination of one personal friend
<span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>for a whole massacre of those others. And, to
my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in
a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom
and Gomorrah of outlanders gone rotten. Give
me the home product every time.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Charm of Uncertainty</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>There is a great, a peculiar charm about reading
news scraps in a language which you are
not acquainted with—the charm that always goes
with the mysterious and the uncertain. You can
never be absolutely sure of the meaning of anything
you read in such circumstances; you are
chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time,
and the baffling turns and dodges of the prey
make the life of the hunt. A dictionary would
soil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful
purport will cast a vale of dreamy and golden
uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and
practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting
and adorable mystery an incident which had
been vulgar and commonplace but for the benefaction.
Would you be wise to draw a dictionary
on that gracious word? Would you be
properly grateful?</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_290'>290</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “EVE’S DIARY” (1905)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Her Chief Desire</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may
pass from this life together—a longing which
shall never perish from the earth, but shall have
place in the heart of every wife that loves, until
the end of time; and it shall be called by my
name.</p>
<p class='c010'>But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer
that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak,
I am not so necessary to him as he is to me—life
without him would not be life; how could
I endure it? This prayer is also immortal, and
will not cease from being offered while my race
continues. I am the first wife; and in the last
wife I shall be repeated.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>At Eve’s Grave</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Adam: Wheresoever she was, <em>there</em> was Eden.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>William Dean Howells</span> (1905)</h3>
<p class='c012'>For forty years his English has been to me
a continual delight and astonishment. In the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>sustained exhibition of certain great qualities—clearness,
compression, verbal exactness, and enforced
and seemingly unconscious felicity of
phrasing—he is, in my belief, without his peer
in the English-writing world. <em>Sustained.</em> I intrench
myself behind that protecting word.
There are others who exhibit those great qualities
as greatly as he does, but only by intervaled
distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches
of veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas
Howell’s moon sails cloudless skies all night
and all the nights.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c005'>MISCELLANEOUS (1905–9)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Making the Oyster</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>You can’t make an oyster out of nothing, nor
you can’t do it in a day. You’ve got to start
with a vast variety of invertebrates, the belemnites,
trilobites, jubusites, amalekites, and that
sort of fry, and put them in to soak in a primary
sea and observe and wait what will happen.
Some of them will turn out a disappointment;
the belemnites and the amalekites and such will
be failures, and they will die out and become
extinct in the course of the nineteen million
years covered by the experiment; but all is not
lost, for the jubusites will develop gradually
<span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span>into encrinites and stalactites and blatherskites,
and one thing and another, as the mighty ages
creep on and the periods pile their lofty crags
in the primordial seas, and at last the first
grand stages in the preparation of the world for
man stands completed, the oyster is done. Now
an oyster has hardly any more reasoning power
than a man has, so it is probable that this one
jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen million
years was a preparation for <em>him</em>. That
would be just like an oyster, and, anyway, this
one could not know at that early date that he
was only an incident in the scheme, and that
there was some more to the scheme yet. (Mark
Twain—A Biography).</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Fatality of Sequence</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>When the first living atom found itself afloat
on the great Laurentian sea the first act of that
first atom led to the <em>second</em> act of that first atom,
and so on down through the succeeding ages of
all life, until, if the steps could be traced, it
would be shown that the first act of that first
atom has led inevitably to the act of my standing
in my dressing gown at this instant, talking
to you. (Mark Twain—A Biography).</p>
<div>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Life’s Turning Point</span></h3></div>
<p class='c012'>Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point
of my life (and of yours) was the Garden of
Eden. It was there that the first link was
forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to
the emptying of me into the literary guild.
Adam’s <em>temperament</em> was the first command the
Deity ever issued to a human being on this
planet. And it was the only command Adam
would <em>never</em> be able to disobey. It said, “Be
weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply
persuadable.” The later command, to let the
fruit alone was certain to be disobeyed. Not by
Adam himself, but by his <em>temperament</em>—which
he did not create and had no authority over.
For the <em>temperament</em> is the man; the thing
tricked out with clothes and named Man is
merely its shadow, nothing more. The law of
the tiger’s temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the
law of the sheep’s temperament is, Thou shalt
not kill. To issue later commands requiring the
tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring
the sheep to imbue its hands in the blood
of the lion is not worth while, for those commands
<em>can’t</em> be obeyed. They would invite to
violations of the law of <em>temperament</em>, which is
supreme, and takes precedence of all other authorities.
I cannot help feeling disappointed in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_294'>294</span>Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments.
Not in <em>them</em>, poor helpless young creatures—afflicted
with temperaments made out of butter;
which butter was commanded to get into
contact with fire and <em>be melted</em>. What I cannot
help wishing is, that Adam and Eve had
been postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan
of Arc put in their place. That splendid pair
equipped with temperaments not made of butter,
but of asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions
nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled
<em>them</em> to eat the apple.</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Close of Seventieth Birthday Speech</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Threescore years and ten!</p>
<p class='c010'>It is the scriptural statute of limitations. After
that you owe no active duties; for you the
strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired
man, to use Kipling’s military phrase; you have
served your term, well or less well, and you are
mustered out. You are become an honorary
member of the republic, you are emancipated,
compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle call
but “lights out.” You pay the time-worn duty
bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer—and
without prejudice—for they are not legally
collectible.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span>The previous-engagement plea, which in forty
years has cost you so many twinges, you can
lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you
will never need it again. If you shrink at
thought of night, and winter, and the late homecomings
from the banquet and the lights and
laughter through the deserted street—a desolation
which would not remind you now, as for
a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping
and you must creep in a-tiptoe and not
disturb them, but would only remind you that
you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them
more—if you shrink at the thought of these
things you need only reply, “Your invitation
honors me and pleases me because you still keep
me in your remembrance, but I am seventy;
seventy, and would nestle in the chimney corner
and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take
my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and
that when you in your turn shall arrive at Pier
70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with
a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward
the sinking sun with a contented heart.”</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Future Life</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>(Mark Twain often allowed his fancy to
play with the idea of the orthodox heaven, its
curiosities of architecture and its employments
<span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>of continuous prayer, psalm-singing, and harpistry).</p>
<p class='c010'>“What a childish notion it was,” he said, “and
how curious that only a little while ago human
beings were so willing to accept such fragile evidences
about a place of so much importance.
If we should find somewhere to-day an ancient
book containing an account of a beautiful and
blooming tropical paradise secreted in the center
of eternal icebergs—an account written by men
who did not even claim to have seen it themselves—no
geographical society on earth would
take any stock in that book, yet that account
would be quite as authentic as any we have of
heaven. If God has such a place prepared for
us, and really wanted us to know it, He could
have found some better way than a book, so
liable to alterations and misinterpretations. God
has had no trouble to prove to man the laws
of the constellations and the construction of the
world, and such things as that, none of which
agree with His so-called book. As to a hereafter,
we have not the slightest evidence that
there is any—<em>no</em> evidence that appeals to logic
and reason. I have never seen what to me
seemed an atom of proof that there is a future
life.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Then, after a long pause, he added:</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>“And yet—I am strongly inclined to expect
one.” (Mark Twain—A Biography).</p>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Religion</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>I would not interfere with any one’s religion,
either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am
not able to believe one’s religion can affect his
hereafter one way or the other, no matter what
that religion may be. But it may easily be a
great comfort to him in this life—hence it is a
valuable possession to him.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “THE DEATH OF JEAN”<br/> (1909)</h2></div>
<p class='c009'>It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun.
Four hundred miles away, but I can see
it all, just as if I were there. The scene is
the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean’s
coffin stands where her mother and I stood, forty
years ago, and were married; and where Susy’s
coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother’s
stood five years and a half ago; and where
mine will stand, after a little time.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span>
<h2 class='c005'><em>FROM</em> “ONE OF HIS LATEST MEMORANDA”<br/> (1909)</h2></div>
<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Impartial Friend</span></h3>
<p class='c012'>Death—the only immortal who treats us all
alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose
refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure—the
rich and the poor—the loved and the unloved.</p>
<hr class='c015' />
<div class='footnote' id='f1'>
<p class='c010'><SPAN href='#r1'>1</SPAN>. Through an exchange of clothing with the little prince
Tom Canty suddenly found himself royalty, and upon the
death of Henry VIII is now king.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f2'>
<p class='c010'><SPAN href='#r2'>2</SPAN>. Miles Hendon, who has taken the real prince—now a
wanderer—under his protection. In the course of their
adventures the two have landed in prison.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f3'>
<p class='c010'><SPAN href='#r3'>3</SPAN>. Nigger Jim is a runaway slave to whom Huck affords
protection.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f4'>
<p class='c010'><SPAN href='#r4'>4</SPAN>. Huck and Nigger Jim, drifting down the Mississippi
on their raft have been struck by a steamboat. Jim has
disappeared but Huck, making his way to shore, has been
taken in by Col. Grangerford, whose family is in bitter
feud with the Shepherdsons.</p>
<p class='c010'>Edmund Clarence Stedman declared this chapter of Huck
Finn’s adventures to be “as dramatic and powerful an
episode as I know in modern literature.”</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f5'>
<p class='c010'><SPAN href='#r5'>5</SPAN>. Buck Grangerford, a boy of about Huck’s age.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f6'>
<p class='c010'><SPAN href='#r6'>6</SPAN>. On his arrival at the Grangerford home Huck had given
his name as George Jackson.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f7'>
<p class='c010'><SPAN href='#r7'>7</SPAN>. The Yankee and his captor have arrived at Camelot and
are in King Arthur’s castle.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f8'>
<p class='c010'><SPAN href='#r8'>8</SPAN>. The Yankee with the maid, Alisande, a great talker,
is on the way to rescue the imprisoned princesses.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f9'>
<p class='c010'><SPAN href='#r9'>9</SPAN>. The King and the Yankee travelling in disguise have
fallen into the clutches of a slave-dealer.</p>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c003'>
<div>THE END</div>
</div></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c004' /></div>
<div class='tnotes'>
<div class='section ph2'>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<ol class='ol_1 c003'>
<li>P. <SPAN href='#t44'>44</SPAN>, changed "even the" to "even in the".
</li>
<li>P. <SPAN href='#t49'>49</SPAN>, changed "never revoked" to "never been revoked".
</li>
<li>P. <SPAN href='#t126'>126</SPAN>, changed "“Oh, don’t <em>I</em>!”" to "“Oh, don’t <em>I</em>!” said
Joe,".
</li>
<li>Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
</li>
<li>Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
</li>
<li>Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the
last chapter.
</li>
</ol></div>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />