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Tales of Fantasy:
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Tales of Fantasy
by
Edward Page Mitchell
This e-book edition: Project Gutenberg Australia, 2023
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Page Mitchell.
EDWARD PAGE MITCHELL (1852-1927), who worked as
an editor and story writer for the New York daily The
Sun, is recognized as a major figure in the early development
of the science fiction genre.
His works include stories about a time machine ("The Clock that Went Backward," 1881) and an invisible man ("The
Crystal Man," 1881), both of which pre-date H.G. Wells' novels
on these subjects (1895 and 1897).
Other works include stories about faster-than-light travel
("The Tachypomp," 1874), a cyborg ("The Ablest Man in the World,"
1879), teleportation ("The Man without a Body", 1877), and
mind-transfer ("Exchanging Their Souls," 1877).
Besides works of science fiction, Mitchell wrote stories in the fantasy and horror genres. RGL offers special compilations of tales in all three categories.
—Roy Glashan, 22 January 2023
TABLE OF CONTENTS
●1. The Inside of the Earth
●2. An Uncommon Sort of Spectre
●3. The Cave of the Splurgles
●4. The Devil's Funeral
●5. The Wonderful Corot
●6. The Terrible Voyage of the Toad
●7. The Pain Epicures
●8. A Day Among the Liars
●9. Our War with Monaco
1. — THE INSIDE OF THE EARTH
Published in the New York Sun, 27 February 1876
A BIG HOLE THROUGH THE PLANET FROM POLE TO POLE
How Claltus Treats The Theory Of The Open Polar Sea—What
He Says About The Gulf Stream—life Of A Brooklyn Discoverer
HE was an elderly man with a beard of grizzled
gray unkempt hair, light eyes that shot quick, furtive glances,
pale lips that trembled often with weak, uneasy smiles, and hands
that restlessly rubbed each other, or else groped unconsciously
for some missing tool. His clothes were coarse and in rags, and
as he sat on a low upturned box, close before a half-warm stove,
he shivered sometimes when a fierce gust of freezing wind rattled
the patched and dingy windows. Behind him was a carpenter's
bench, with a rack of neatly kept woodworking tools above it; a
lathe and a small stock of very handsomely finished library
stepladders. A great pile of black walnut chips and lathe dust
lay on the floor, and the air was full of the clean, fresh smell
of the wood. The room in which he sat was a garret, at the top of
two eroded flights of steep and rickety stairs, in a building
within three blocks of the southernmost extremity of that
Lilliputian railway on which Saratoga trunks, fitted up as horse
cars, are run from Fulton ferry to Hamilton ferry.
"Don't mention my name at all, sir," said he to the Sun
reporter, who perched upon an unsteady box before him, "nor don't
give them the exact place, please, for there are lots about who
know me, and who'd be bothering me, and maybe laughing at me.
Call me John Claltus. That's the name I was known by down in
Charleston and all down South, and it did very well while I was
working there, so you can put it in that."
"But why, having a grand scientific idea, and being the
originator of novel and bold theories, do you shrink so modestly
from public recognition and admiration?"
"I don't want any glory. I've thought out what I have because
I felt I had a mission to do it, and maybe mightn't be let live
if I didn't; but I'm done now. I can't last much longer. I'm old
and poor, and I don't care to have folks bothering me and maybe
laughing at me; and you see my brother, my cousins, and sometimes
some sailor friends come to see me, and I'd rather you'd let it
go as Claltus, sir."
"And as Claltus it shall go. But about your discovery. Was it
not Symmes's theory of a hole through the globe that first gave
you the idea?"
REMARKABLE VISIONS
"OH, not at all! I was shown it all in a vision years before I
ever heard of him. It was more than thirty-eight years ago. I was
only a twelve-year-old boy. I was greatly afraid when I saw it;
it was so terrible to me. I really think, from what I saw, that
the earth was all in a sort of mist or fog once. I felt that I
must go to sea and try to find out what I could about it as a
poor man; so as a sailor I went for years, always thinking about
it and inquiring when I could of them that might have had a
chance to know something. About two years ago I went South and
tried to establish myself there, and then I saw the vision again,
not so terrible as before, and I could understand it better. It
came to me like a globe, about two feet through, and a hole
through it one third of its diameter in bigness. I told it to
people there and they said I was crazy. I told it to two men I
was working for—brothers they were and Frenchmen. I built
an extension table and raised the roof of their house for them,
and they said, 'How can it be that you do our work so well and
yet are not in your right mind?' So I quit saying anything about
it. This is a model of like what I saw in the vision."
The model of the vision as produced is a ball of black walnut
wood, four and a half inches in diameter, traversed by a round
aperture whose diameter seemed to be about one third the diameter
of the ball or globe. Around the exterior, lines have been traced
by a lathe tool, the spaces between them representing ten degrees
each. A chalk mark on one side represents New York. This ball is
mounted between the points of an inverted U of strong wire, so
based upon a little board as to admit of being tipped to change
the angle at which the ball is poised. The points of the wire are
fastened near the edges of the ends of the hole at opposite sides
of the little globe, so as to admit of its turning, and thus
alternately raising and depressing, with reference to the false
poles, the ends of the hole. As the thing stood on a little
stand, where he placed it very carefully, the sunlight poured
through the hole, and as he turned it the area covered in the
interior of the ball by the sun's direct rays was gradually
narrowed, shortened, and finally so diminished as to extend
inward only a very little way; then, as he continued turning it,
the patch of light once more widened and lengthened until the sun
again shone all the way through.
THE LESSON OF THE MODEL
" ," said he, "that represents a day and a night for the
people in the inside of the earth. I'm perfectly satisfied in my
own mind that the turn is made on about ten degrees, and about
ten degrees from the outside rim of it; them that goes there
would get to the flat part on the inside. When they get to the
ninetieth degree that's the pole they've always been trying to
make. They'll be turning into the inside. Eighty degrees is the
furthest they've ever got yet, at least that's the furthest for
anyone that has come back to tell about it. Perry's Point is the
furthest land northward on this continent that has ever been
reached, and Spitsbergen is about as far on the other side. The
furtherst they have gone south is Victoria Island, opposite Cape
Horn, maybe a thousand miles away from the Cape, and that's only
about eighty degrees. I've got a bit of stone here that came from
Victoria Island that a sailor man gave me, thinkin', maybe, I
might find out something about it from somebody that knew."
The discoverer arose and walked slowly to the further end of
his garret, where he took from a shelf a little piece of stone,
about three inches in length, two in width, and three quarters in
thickness, soft as rotten stone almost, light brown and looking
like a bit of petrified wood.
"I don't know what it is. There isn't much curious about it.
I've seen bits of stone from the Central Park that looked much
like it, but not just the same. I tried to make a whetstone of
it, but it was too soft; it wouldn't take any polish."
"In your long sea service did you ever get far enough toward
the poles to find anything corroborative of your theories?"
"Not myself, though I've noticed things that confirmed me.
Now, there's the Gulf Stream, for instance. They say there's a
current from the Gulf of Mexico that goes across to Europe; but
I've seen enough myself, in the Indian Ocean, that I've crossed
many a time and often, and round to Cape Horn, that I'm convinced
it's the polar stream and the action of the sun on the narrow
part of the rim there causes it. I studied it in the Gulf of
Mexico. They thought the pressure of them big rivers flowing into
the gulf made it. Now if that was so it would make a great
pressure where it rushes through the narrow place between Florida
and the West Indies that would set the stream going away to the
other side of the ocean, but I couldn't see any such pressure
greater there than anywhere else. Them rivers has no more effect
there than a bucket of water poured into the bay down beyond.
It's the great heat of the sun at the narrow rim melting the ice,
and the current pouring out of that hole, that makes what they
call the Gulf Stream in the part of it they've observed."
WHAT A SAILOR SAID HE SAW
"HAVE you ever met any sailors who knew anything more about it
than you did yourself?"
"Yes," the discoverer answered quickly, ceasing to bore bits
from the soft stone with his thick thumbnail and looking up with
an eager smile,﹃I met a sailor man in Charleston—Tola or
Toland his name was—and he said he had been far enough to
see a great, bright arch that rose out of the water like, and I
said, 'That's my arch; that's the rim of the hole to the inside
of the earth.' He was there in Charleston waiting for a ship, and
I was making patterns. We used to meet every night to talk about
the thing, for he was a knowledgeable man, and took an interest
in it, the same as I did. He saw that arch every night for two
weeks while the privateer he was on was in them waters, and all
that was with him saw it, but they couldn't make it out. Then
they got frightened of it, beating about in strange waters, and
at last they got back to parts of the ocean they knew, and so
came away as fast as they could. Well,﹄sighing as he spoke,
"sailors sometimes make a heap of brag about what they've seen
and possibly there's nothing in it, but there may be. I know it's
there all the same, for I've seen it in the vision and it stands
to reason. I asked him if he could see anything in the daytime,
and he said no—nothing, only clouds and mists about him.
And that stands to reason, for in the night, you see, the
reflected light would shine up the arch and show it, but in
daytime it would be so high and so far off that it could not be
seen. I had some hopes that he might have got the color of land,
but he didn't."
"What do you suppose is the character of the country in
there?"
"Oh! I don't know, but it's likely there are mountains and
rivers in there. I think it's most likely they have most water in
there, but maybe a good deal of land, too; and maybe gold and
various kinds of things that's scarce on the outside."
"And people, too?"
"I shouldn't wonder at all if there was people there, driven
in there by the storms, and that couldn't find their way out
again."
"And how do you suppose they support life?"
"Why shouldn't they the same as people on the outside? Haven't
they got air and light and heat and the change of seasons, and
water and soil, the same as there is outside? It's a big place in
there. The open polar circle, I calculate, is in circumference
about the diameter of the earth, and that would give one third of
the earth open inside. They get light and heat from the sun, and
maybe a good deal of reflected light and heat all the way through
from the south end of the hole. That's where it all goes in
at."
THE MEN WHO LIVE INSIDE
"AND what sort of folks do you suppose are in there?"
"Ah! I don't know. There may be Irishmen there, and there may
be Dutch there, and there may be Malays there, and other kinds of
people, and there may be Danes there, too—they were good
smart sailor people, too, in their time, always beating about the
waters and they might have got drifted in there and couldn't get
out."
"How do you mean 'couldn't get out'?"
"Couldn't find their way. There's no charts of them waters,
and maybe the needle won't work the same there, and the place is
so big they may go on sailing there and never going straight or
finding their way back. Maybe they've been wrecked, and had no
means of coming away. Sure there must be mighty storms in there.
Great storms come out of that hole in the south. 'Great storms
come out of the South,' the Scriptures say. You'll find that in
the Book of Job, that and lots more about the earth. He talks
about it as if he knew all about it. He knew all about that hole
in the inside of the earth, and as he wasn't with the Creator
when He made it, he must have seen it to know so much about it as
he shows he did.
"And yet—" he murmured in a lower voice, meditatively
digging off little bits from a piece of chalk with his
fingernails, and touching up the spot representing New York on
the wooden ball—"you'll find a good many things in the
Scriptures if you search them, about the interior of the
earth."
"Have you ever tried to enlist government or private
enterprise to prosecute an investigation of the correctness of
your theories?"
"No. What could I do? I was always only a poor, hard-working,
ignorant man, but I seen it in a vision and I felt it my duty to
study on it and make it known. But I think if a good steamship
was laid on her course proper from New York, set in the way I
know she would have to be, and provided for rightly, in about ten
weeks she would get there and into the inside of the earth. Her
wheels would never stop until she got there, for there's more
than human thought about it. It's Cod's will it should be known,
and her machinist couldn't stop her wheels if she was going the
right way for it. But she would have to be provided with a good
shower bath to keep her wet all the time, for on the rim there,
on the narrow part, it will be five times as hot as at the
equator. If they get up an expedition to go there, it will have
to be well armed, too. If they find them Irish and Danes in
there, there will be fighting, for they are hostile people. Yes,
and them Malays, too. They know how to navigate ships, too, and
they're warlike chaps and they'll give them some trouble. Yes,
the expedition will have to be well armed."
OF LIGHT
"DO the inhabitants of the hole see the moon and the stars?"
"Partly, I conceive. They get the good of the moon about nine
days in the month, and can see such parts of the heavens as are
visible out of the ends of the hole. That's all; but it would
never be real night there, for even when the sun would be off on
one side its light would be reflected from the walls of the other
side. You see the earth is moving about the sun all the time. Not
that I think it goes round in the form them astronomers say it
does. I think it goes round on the high and low orbit, that is,
one side of the circle is raised in coming down from the
sun—and always at the same distance from the sun. Any globe
working about the sun must have the same force and the same
balance all the time to keep face. The theory of the astronomers
is that it goes out many millions of miles at certain times of
the year and comes back. Now, there would be no order or
regularity about that. It isn't reason. It would make a regular
hurly-burly of everything if the earth was allowed to run around
in that wild way. And there's another thing that goes to show the
world is hollow inside. A solid globe you can't make roll of
itself in the sunlight but a hollow one will. You go to work and
make a globe of fine silk and fill it with gas, or make it of
cork and hollow, and put it into a glass jar in the sun, and pump
the air out, and raise it up to a certain temperature—about
180 degrees or maybe 200, I think—and it'll roll in the
sun, but a solid one won't do it. So it stands to reason the
earth is hollow, so it will roll in the sun. I've tried that
experiment in my shop during the war. I made it up nice, but I
haven't got it now, for my shop was robbed three years ago, and I
lost that and a lot more things, and all my tools. The model I
had for the Patent Office was carried away, too."
"But let us get back to our hole. Beyond what the sailor told
you, you have nothing more than theory?"
"Not altogether. There are signs of life from further to the
south than anybody has ever gone yet that we know of. I read in a
paper last August that an English captain went far enough south
to get into warm water; and there he picked up a log drifting
from still further south, with nails in it and marks of an ax on
it, and that log he brought back with him to England, and it's
there now. Anyway, I read that in the paper—but," speaking
in a tone of regretful sadness, "these newspapers start so many
curious things and ideas that you can't always be certain about
what they say. But other sailor men than that captain have found
the water growing warmer, and had reason to know of open seas at
the poles. Besides, there's another thing that goes to show that
there's life inside the earth, and that is the great bones and
tusks of animals, so big that no animals on the earth now can
carry them or have such things, that they find away up in
Siberia. Them came from the inside of the earth, I've no doubt,
drifted out in the ice that was parted there when the sun cracked
the floes and set them drifting out in a polar current."
SURELY HOLLOW
"YOU are, of course, aware that many people have a theory that
the interior of the earth is in a state of fusion, and others
that there are vast internal seas, whose waves act upon chemical
substances in the earth, and produce spontaneous combustion and
earthquakes and volcanoes?"
"Yes, and what's to hinder. The crust of the earth, between
the hole inside and the outside surface, is nearly three thousand
miles thick, and surely in all that there's a heap of room for
many strange things. But as sure as you live and I live the earth
is hollow inside, and there's a great country there where people
can live, and where I've no doubt they do live, and someday it
will all be found out about it."
2. — AN UNCOMMON SORT OF SPECTRE
Published in the New York Sun, 30 March 1879
I
THE ancient castle of Weinstein, on the upper Rhine, was, as
everybody knows, inhabited in the autumn of 1352 by the powerful
Baron Kalbsbraten, better known in those parts as Old Twenty
Flasks, a sobriquet derived from his reputed daily capacity for
the product of the vineyard. The baron had many other admirable
qualities. He was a genial, whole-souled, public-spirited
gentleman, and robbed, murdered, burned, pillaged, and drove up
the steep sides of the Weinstein his neighbors' cattle, wives,
and sisters, with a hearty bonhomie that won for him the
unaffected esteem of his contemporaries.
One evening the good baron sat alone in the great hall of
Weinstein, in a particularly happy mood. He had dined well, as
was his habit, and twenty empty bottles stood before him in a row
upon the table, like a train of delightful memories of the recent
past. But the baron had another reason to be satisfied with
himself and with the world. The consciousness that he had that
day become a parent lit up his countenance with a tender glow
that mere wine cannot impart.
"What ho! Without! Hi! Seneschal!" he presently shouted, in a
tone that made the twenty empty bottles ring as if they were
musical glasses, while a score of suits of his ancestors' armor
hanging around the walls gave out in accompaniment a deep
metallic bass. The seneschal was speedily at his side.
"Seneschal," said Old Twenty Flasks, "you gave me to
understand that the baroness was doing finely?"
"I am told," replied the seneschal, "that her ladyship is
doing as well as could be expected."
The baron mused in silence for a moment, absently regarding
the empty bottles. "You also gave me to understand," he
continued, "that there were—"
"Four," said the seneschal, gravely. "I am credibly informed
that there are four, all boys."
"That," exclaimed the baron, with a glow of honest pride,
bringing a brawny fist down upon the table—"That, in these
days, when the abominable doctrines of Malthus are gaining ground
among the upper classes, is what I call
creditable—creditable, by Saint Christopher. If I do say
it!" His eyes rested again upon the empty bottles.﹃I think,
Seneschal,﹄he added, after a brief pause, "that under the
circumstances we may venture—"
"Nothing could be more eminently proper," rejoined the
seneschal. "I will fetch another flask forthwith, and of the
best. What says Your Excellency to the vintage of 1304, the year
of the comet?"
"But," hesitated the baron, toying with his mustache, "I
understood you to say that there were four of 'em—four
boys?"
"True, my lord," replied the seneschal, snatching the idea
with the readiness of a well-trained domestic. "I will fetch four
more flasks."
As the excellent retainer deposited four fresh bottles upon
the table within the radius of the baron's reach, he casually
remarked, "A pious old man, a traveler, is in the castle yard, my
lord, seeking shelter and a supper. He comes from beyond the
Alps, and fares toward Cologne."
"I presume," said the baron, with an air of indifference,
"that he has been duly searched for plunder."
"He passed this morning," replied the retainer, "through the
domain of your well-born cousin, Count Conrad of Schwinkenfels.
Your lordship will readily understand that he has nothing now
save a few beggarly Swiss coins of copper."
"My worthy cousin Conrad!" exclaimed the baron,
affectionately. "It is the one great misfortune of my life that I
live to the leeward of Schwinkenfels. But you relieved the pious
man of his copper?"
"My lord," said the seneschal, with an apologetic smile, "it
was not worth the taking."
"Now by my soul," roared the baron, "you exasperate me! Coin,
and not worth the taking! Perhaps not for its intrinsic value,
but you should have cleaned him out as a matter of principle, you
fool!"
The seneschal hung his head and muttered an explanation. At
the same time he opened the twenty-first bottle.
"Never," continued the baron, less violently but still
severely, "if you value my esteem and your own paltry skin,
suffer yourself to be swerved a hair's breadth from principle by
the apparent insignificance of the loot. A conscientious
attention to details is one of the fundamental elements of a
prosperous career—in fact, it underlies all political
economy."
The withdrawal of the cork from the twenty-second bottle
emphasized this statement.
"However," the baron went on, somewhat mollified, "this is not
a day on which I can consistently make a fuss over a trifle.
Four, and all boys! This is a glorious day for Weinstein. Open
the two remaining flasks, Seneschal, and show the pious stranger
in. I fain would amuse myself with him."
II
VIEWED through the baron's twenty-odd bottles, the stranger
appeared to be an aged man—eighty years, if a day. He wore
a shabby gray cloak and carried a palmer's staff, and seemed an
innocuous old fellow, cast in too commonplace a mold to furnish
even a few minutes' diversion. The baron regretted sending for
him, but being a person of unfailing politeness, when not upon
the rampage, he bade his guest be seated and filled him a beaker
of the comet wine.
After an obeisance, profound yet not servile, the pilgrim took
the glass and critically tasted the wine. He held the beaker up
athwart the light with trembling hand, and then tasted again. The
trial seemed to afford him great satisfaction, and he stroked his
long white beard.
"Perhaps you are a connoisseur. It pleases your palate, eh?"
said the baron, winking at the full-length portrait of one of his
ancestors.
"Proper well," replied the pilgrim, "though it is a trifle
syrupy from too long keeping. By the bouquet and the tint, I
should pronounce it of the vintage of 1304, grown on the steep
slope south southeast of the castle, in the fork of the two
pathways that lead to under the hill. The sun's rays reflected
from the turret give a peculiar excellence to the growth of that
particular spot. But your rascally varlets have shelved the
bottle on the wrong side of the cellar. It should have been put
on the dry side, near where your doughty grandsire Sigismund von
Weinstein, the Hairy Handed, walled up his third wife in
preparation for a fourth."
The baron regarded his guest with a look of amazement.﹃Upon
my life!﹄said he, "but you appear to be familiar with the ins
and outs of this establishment."
"If I do," rejoined the stranger, composedly sipping his wine,
"'tis no more than natural, for I lived more than sixty years
under this roof and know its every leak. I happen to be a Von
Weinstein myself."
The baron crossed himself and pulled his chair a little
further away from the bottles and the stranger.
"Oh no," said the pilgrim, laughing; "quiet your fears. I am
aware that every well-regulated castle has an ancestral ghost,
but my flesh and blood are honest. I was lord of Weinstein till I
went, twelve years ago, to study metaphysics in the Arabic
schools, and the cursed scriveners wrote me out of the estate.
Why, I know this hall from infancy! Yonder is the fireplace at
which I used to warm my baby toes. There is the identical suit of
armor into which I crawled when a boy of six and hid till my
sainted mother—heaven rest her!—nigh died of
fright. It seems but yesterday. There on the wall hangs the sharp
two-handed sword of our ancestor, Franz, the One-Eared, with
which I cut off the mustaches of my tipsy sire as he sat muddled
over his twentieth bottle. There is the very casque—but
perhaps these reminiscences weary you. You must pardon the
garrulity of an old man who has come to revisit the home of his
childhood and prime."
The baron pressed his hand to his forehead.﹃I have lived in
this castle myself for half a century,﹄said he, "and am
tolerably familiar with the history of my immediate progenitors.
But I can't say that I ever had the pleasure of your
acquaintance. However, permit me to fill your glass."
"It is good wine," said the pilgrim, holding out his glass.
"Except, perhaps, the vintage of 1392, when the
grapes—"
The baron stared at his guest. "The grapes of 1392," said he
dryly, "lack forty years of ripening. You are aged, my friend,
and your mind wanders."
"Excuse me, worthy host," calmly replied the pilgrim. "The
vintage of 1392 has been forty years cellared. You have no memory
for dates."
"What call you this year?" demanded the baron.
"By the almanacs, and the stars, and precedent, and common
consent, it is the year of grace 1433."
"By my soul and hope of salvation," ejaculated the baron, "it
is the year of grace 1352."
"There is evidently a misunderstanding somewhere," remarked
the venerable stranger. "I was born here in the year 1352, the
year the Turks invaded Europe."
"No Turk has invaded Europe, thanks be to heaven," replied Old
Twenty Flasks, recovering his self-control. "You are either a
magician or an imposter. In either case I shall order you drawn
and quartered as soon as we have finished this bottle. Pray
proceed with your very interesting reminiscences, and do not
spare the wine."
"I never practice magic," quietly replied the pilgrim, "and as
to being an imposter, scan well my face. Don't you recognize the
family nose, thick, short, and generously colored? How about the
three lateral and two diagonal wrinkles on my brow? I see them
there on yours. Are not my chaps Weinstein chaps? Look closely. I
court investigation."
"You do look damnably like us," the baron admitted.
"I was the youngest," the stranger went on, "of quadruplets.
My three brothers were puny, sickly things, and did not long
survive their birth. As a child I was the idol of my poor father,
who had some traits worthy of respectful mention, guzzling old
toper and unconscionable thief though he was."
The baron winced.
"They used to call him Old Twenty Flasks. It is my candid
opinion, based on memory, that Old Forty Flasks would have been
nearer the truth."
"It's a lie!" shouted the baron, "I rarely exceeded twenty
bottles."
"And as for his standing in the community," the pilgrim went
on, without taking heed of the interruption, "it must be
confessed that nothing could be worse. He was the terror of
honest folk for miles around. Property rights were extremely
insecure in this neighborhood, for the rapacity of my lamented
parent knew no bounds. Yet nobody dared to complain aloud, for
lives were not much safer than sheep or ducats. How the people
hated his shadow, and roundly cursed him behind his back! I
remember well that, when I was about fourteen—it must have
been in '66, the year the Grand Turk occupied Adrianople—
tall Hugo, the miller, called me up to him, and said: 'Boy, thou
has a right pretty nose.' 'It is a pretty nose, Hugo,' said I,
straightening up. 'Is it on firm and strong?' asked Hugo, with a
sneer. 'Firm enough, and strong enough, I dare say,' I answered;
'but why ask such a fool's question?' 'Well, well, boy,' said
Hugo, turning away, gook sharp with thine eyes after thy nose
when thy father is unoccupied, for he has just that conscience to
steal the nose off his son's face in lack of better
plunder.'"
"By St. Christopher!" roared the baron, "tall Hugo, the
miller, shall pay for this. I always suspected him. By St.
Christopher's burden, I'll break every bone in his villainous
body."
"'Twould be an ignoble vengeance," replied the pilgrim,
quietly, "for tall Hugo has been in his grave these sixty
years."
"True," said the baron, putting both hands to his head, and
gazing at his guest with a look of utter helplessness. "I forget
that it is now next century—that is to say, if you be not a
spectre."
"You will excuse me, my respected parent," returned the
pilgrim, "if I subject your hypothesis to the test of logic, for
it touches me upon a very tender spot, impugning, as it does, my
physical verity and my status as an actual individualized ego.
Now, what is our relative position? You acknowledge the date of
my birth to have been the year of grace 1352. That is a matter in
which your memory is not likely to be at fault. On the other
hand, with a strange inconsistency, you maintain, in the face of
almanacs, chronologies, and the march of events, that it is still
the year of grace 1352. Were you one of the seven sleepers, your
hallucination [to use no harsher term] might be pardoned, but you
are neither a sleeper nor a saint. Now, every one of the eighty
years that are packed away in the carpet bag of my experience
protests against your extraordinary error. It is I who have a
prima facie right to question your physical existence, not
you mine. Did you ever hear of a ghost, spectre, wraith,
apparition, eidolon, or spook coming out of the future to haunt,
annoy, or frighten individuals of an earlier generation?"
The baron was obliged to admit that he never had.
"But you have heard of instances where apparitions, ghosts,
spooks, call them what you will, have invaded the present from
out the limbo of the past?"
The baron crossed himself a second time and peered anxiously
into the dark corners of the apartment.﹃If you are a genuine Von
Weinstein,﹄he whispered, "you already know that this castle is
overrun with spectres of that sort. It is difficult to move about
after nightfall without tumbling over half a dozen of them."
"Then," said the placid logician, "you surrender your case.
You commit what, my revered preceptor in dialectics, the learned
Arabian Ben Dusty, used to style syllogistic suicide. For you
allow that, while ghosts out of the future are unheard of, ghosts
from the past are not infrequently encountered. Now I submit to
you as a man, this proposition: That it is infinitely more
probable that you are a ghost than that I am one!"
The baron turned very red. "Is this filial," he demanded, "to
deny the flesh and blood of your own father?"
"Is it paternal," retorted the pilgrim, not losing his
composure, "to insinuate the unrealness of the son of your own
begetting?"
"By all the saints!" growled the baron, growing still redder,
"this question shall be settled, and speedily. Halloo, there,
Seneschal!" He called again and again, but in vain.
"Spare your lungs," calmly suggested the pilgrim. "The
best-trained domestic in the world will not stir from beneath the
sod for all your shouting."
Twenty Flasks sank back helplessly in his chair. He tried to
speak, but his tongue and throat repudiated their functions. They
only gurgled.
"That is right," said his guest, approvingly. "Conduct
yourself as befits a venerable and respectable ghost from the
last century. A well-behaved apparition neither blusters nor is
violent. You can well afford to be peaceable in your deportment
now; you were turbulent enough before your death."
"My death?" gasped the baron.
"Excuse me," apologized the pilgrim, "for referring to that
unpleasant event."
"My death!" stammered the baron, his hair standing on end. "I
should like to hear the particulars."
"I was hardly more than fifteen at the time," said the pilgrim
musingly; "but I shall never forget the most trifling
circumstances of the great popular arising that put an end to my
worthy sire's career. Exasperated beyond endurance by your
outrageous crimes, the people for miles around at last rose in a
body, and, led by my old friend tall Hugo, the miller, flocked to
Schwinkenfels and appealed to your cousin, Count Conrad, for
protection against yourself, their natural protector. Von
Schwinkenfels heard their complaints with great gravity. He
replied that he had long watched your abominable actions with
distress and consternation; that he had frequently remonstrated
with you, but in vain; that he regarded you as the scourge of the
neighborhood; that your castle was full of blood-stained treasure
and shamefully acquired booty; and that he now regarded it as the
personal duty of himself, the conservator of lawful order and
good morals, to march against Weinstein and exterminate you for
the common good."
"The hypocritical pirate!" exclaimed Twenty Flasks.
"Which he proceeded to do," continued the pilgrim, "supported
not only by his retainers but by your own. I must say that you
made a sturdy defense. Had not your rascally seneschal sold you
out to Schwinkenfels and let down the drawbridge one evening when
you were as usual fuddling your brains with your twenty bottles,
perhaps Conrad never would have gained an entrance, and my young
eyes would have been spared the horrid task of watching the body
of my venerated parent dangling at the end of a rope from the
topmost turret of the northwest tower."
The baron buried his face in his hands and began to cry like a
baby. "They hanged me, did they?" he faltered.
"I am afraid no other construction can be put on it," said the
pilgrim. "It was the inevitable termination of such a career as
yours had been. They hanged you, they strangled you, they choked
you to death with a rope; and the unanimous verdict of the
community was Justifiable Homicide. You weep! Behold, Father, I
also weep for the shame of the house of Von Weinstein! Come to my
arms."
Father and son clasped each other in a long, affectionate
embrace and mingled their tears over the disgrace of Weinstein.
When the baron recovered from his emotion he found himself alone
with his conscience and twenty-four empty bottles. The pilgrim
had disappeared.
III
MEANWHILE, in the apartments consecrated to the offices of
maternity, all had been confusion, turmoil, and distress. In four
huge armchairs sat four experienced matrons, each holding in her
lap a pillow of swan's-down. On each pillow had reposed an
infinitesimal fraction of humanity, recently added to the sum
total of Von Weinstein. One experienced matron had dozed over her
charge; when she awoke the pillow in her lap was unoccupied. An
immediate census taken by the alarmed attendants disclosed the
startling fact that, although there were still four armchairs,
and four sage women, and four pillows of swan's-down, there were
but three infants. The seneschal, as an expert in mathematics and
accounts, was hastily summoned from below. His reckoning merely
confirmed the appalling suspicion. One of the quadruplets was
gone.
Prompt measures were taken in this fearful emergency. The
corners of the rooms were ransacked in vain. Piles of
bed-clothing and baskets of linen were searched through and
through. The hunt extended to other parts of the castle. The
seneschal even sent out trusted and discreet retainers on
horseback to scour the surrounding country. They returned with
downcast countenances; no trace of the lost Von Weinstein had
been found.
During one terrible hour the wails of the three neglected
infants mingled with the screams of the hysterical mother, to
whom the attention of the four sage women was exclusively
directed. At the end of the hour her ladyship had sufficiently
recovered to implore her attendants to make a last, though
hopeless count. On three pillows lay three babies howling lustily
in unison. On the fourth pillow reposed a fourth infant, with a
mysterious smile upon his face, but cheeks that bore traces of
recent tears.
3. — THE CAVE OF THE SPLURGLES
Published in the New York Sun, 29 June 1877
ONE October afternoon, as I was scrambling through the woods
on my way to the best of the trout brooks that abound in the
neighborhood of Canaan, Vermont, I nearly broke my left leg in a
deep hole in the ground.
The first thought was for my rod, which had become involved in
certain complications with the underbrush; the second was for my
left leg, which, fortunately, had sustained no serious damage;
and the third for the pitfall into which I had stumbled. The hole
was directly under the branches of a big red oak that grew on the
slope of a hill, or ledge, of metamorphic limestone. Juniper
bushes and brambles almost hid the orifice. Pulling these aside,
I got on all fours and peered down into the black hole, for what
purpose I do not know. My left leg was no longer there, and I
certainly had no interest in the inhabitants of the burrow,
whatever they might be—undoubtedly either snakes,
woodchucks, or skunks, with the weight of probability in favor of
the last-mentioned species. So I did not crawl in to explore the
cavity, although by a tight squeeze I could have done so, but
pursued my way across Rodney Prince's pasture to Rodney Prince's
brook, and brought home at sundown a string which weighed so many
pounds that, out of consideration for Rodney Prince's feelings, I
shall say nothing about it. The hospitable Granger had assured me
with friendly earnestness the evening before that there had never
been any trout in his brook, that the boys had long since fished
them out, and that if there were anything there now they were
miserable little finger-long specimens, unworthy of the attention
of a city man with a fifteen-dollar rod and a book full of
flies.
After supper I joined as usual the small circle of choice
spirits who gather every evening in the back part of Deacon
Plympton's grocery to smoke their pipes and to profit by the
oracular wisdom of the proprietor of the store. In a humble
attempt to contribute to the conversational interest of the
occasion, I casually remarked that I had stepped into a deep hole
that afternoon while going a fishing. I was flattered to find
that my insignificant adventure was treated with respect by the
company, and that even the taciturn deacon, from his seat on the
pork barrel, condescended to lend an attentive ear.
"Sho!" said he. "In Rodney's palter?"
"Yes."
"Under red oak?"
"Yes."
"Humph!" he grunted, blowing out a cloud of smoke, "narrer
escape."
"Why?" I asked, resolved to be no less laconic than he.
"Skunks?"
"No—Splurgles!"
And Andrew Hinckley, from a barrel of the deacon's
highest-priced flour, whispered "Splurgles." And his brother
John, from a box of washing soap, echoed the mysterious word. And
Squire Trull on the platform scales, and old Orrison Ripley on a
barrel of the sweetened bar, which the honest deacon sold as
powdered sugar at a shilling the pound, took up the refrain, and
solemnly remarked in concert, "Yes, the Splurgles!"
I knew that to ask a question would be to put myself at a
disadvantage with these worthy citizens, so I merely said,﹃Ah,
Splurgles,﹄and nodded my head, as if to escape the Splurgles
were a matter of common experience with me.
"It's providence," said Squire Trull, after a few moments'
silence, "that they didn't pull ye in."
"Ain't ben no closer shave sence Fuller stumbled in when he
was drunk and had the boot thawed clean off his fut. Has there,
Deacon?"
The deacon, thus appealed to, descended from the pork barrel,
walked to the other end of the store, returned with a sulphur
match in his hand, re-lit his pipe, and gravely shook his
head.
From the rambling conversation which ensued and lasted till
the nine o'clock bell inspired the deacon to take in his
designatory hams and put up shutters, I gathered the following
facts and allegations:
For many years, indeed ever since the infancy of the venerable
Orrison Ripley, the people of Canaan had regarded the hole in the
side of the hill under the red oak tree with superstitious awe.
There were few who would venture near the spot in broad daylight;
none after dark. The popular opinion of the hole seemed to be
well grounded. Sounds as of demoniac laughter were frequently
heard issuing from the cavern—indescribable sounds,
guttural and gurgling. As far as I could learn, this circumstance
was the only explanation of the etymology of the name Splurgles,
applied by tradition and usage to the inhabitants of the cave.
These supernatural beings were believed to be malevolent, not
only from the peculiar harshness of their laughter, which had
been heard by many at different times during the last half
century, but also on the testimony of a few who claimed to have
seen diabolical heads protruding from the hole as if demons had
come up from below to get a breath of fresh air. Moreover, there
was the horrible fate of Jeremiah Stackpole, a reckless,
atheistical young man, who, on the twenty-first of October 1858,
had boasted of his intention to gather acorns under the red oak
by the bill, and whose hat, discovered afterward beside the hole,
was the only trace of him that could ever be found. There was
also the experience of Jack Fuller, the brother of the town
clerk. Fuller, in a maudlin condition, had wandered into Rodney
Prince's pasture about four years ago, and had come home
perfectly sobered and minus one boot. He declared that while
rambling about in search of boxberry plums, he had stumbled into
the Splurgle hole. His leg had been grasped from below by fiery
hands—fingers that burned his foot through leather and
woolen—and it was only by an almost superhuman effort on
his part that he escaped being pulled bodily into the hole.
Fortunately, being afflicted with corns, he wore very loose
boots, and to this circumstance he owed his deliverance from the
awful grip of the Splurgles. Fuller solemnly affirmed that long
after he had pulled out his stocking foot and fled to a place of
safety, he felt the burning reminder of the red-hot fingers and
thumb that had clasped his instep.
The laconic deacon's summing up of the various stories about
the Splurgle hole with which I had been regaled, was concise,
comprehensive, and startling. "It's the back door of hell," he
said.
"Fuller," said I the next day to the hero of the
demon-snatched boot, "how much rum would it take to work up your
courage to the point of visiting the Splurgle hole with me this
afternoon?"
"Nigh onto a quart, I guess," replied Fuller, after an
inspection of my features had satisfied him that I was not
quizzing. "Best to be on the safe side and call it a full quart.
I calculate I should have to be pooty drunk."
"Will you go with me first," I then inquired, "and take the
quart of rum afterward, and a five-dollar bill into the
bargain?"
Fuller balanced the risk against the gain. You could almost
watch through his skin the temptation wrestling with the fear.
Rum conquered, as it will. At three o'clock, Mr. Fuller, carrying
a rope, a dark lantern, and a perfectly sober head, accompanied
me across Rodney Prince's pasture to the red oak on the side of
the hill.
A close examination of the hole convinced me that it was not
the burrow of any animal, Exploring it with a long stick, I found
that beyond the dirt lining, near the orifice, its walls were of
solid rock. It was, in fact, a tunnel into the ledge—a
natural tunnel, old as the hills of Vermont, and therefore,
dating back to the Lower Silurian period. Beyond the mouth of the
tunnel, where the debris and soil from the surface had partially
choked it up, the passage was as large as a Croton main. For
about ten feet the shaft trended downward at an angle of sixty or
seventy degrees. Thence its course, as far as I could determine
with my pole, was nearly horizontal, and directly toward the
heart of the hill.
I stepped down and shouted into the mouth of the cave. There
came back the confused and rambling echoes of my voice and then,
when they had ceased, I distinctly heard a low, strange laugh,
intelligent, yet not human, close to my ear and yet of another
and unknown world.
Fuller heard it too. He turned pale and ran a rod or two away.
I called to him sharply, and he came back trembling.
"That laugh we heard," said I, "is half in the peculiar echoes
of the hole and half in our imaginations. I am going to crawl
in."
By Fuller's earnest advice, I decided to enter the cave
backward, so that, in an emergency, I might scramble out with the
more expedition. I lit the dark lantern and tied one end of our
rope under my arms. The other end I gave to Fuller.﹃If I call
out,﹄I said,﹃pull with all your might, and if necessary take a
double turn around the oak.﹄Then I backed slowly and cautiously
down into the cave of the Splurgles.
Before my head and shoulders had left the daylight I felt both
ankles grasped from below with a powerful grip, and knew that I
was being drawn with superhuman strength down into the bowels of
the hill. I shouted to Fuller in desperation, but my cry was
almost drowned by a ringing peal of terrible, triumphant
laughter. I saw my companion jump toward the trunk of a big tree.
He did his best to save me, but his foot caught in the juniper
bushes, and he fell to the ground, the rope slipping from his
fear-benumbed fingers. My own fingers caught in vain at the loose
dirt at the mouth of the hole. The power that dragged me downward
was irresistible. My eyes met his, and his were full of horror.
"Cod help you!" he cried, as the darkness closed around me.
As I was pulled down and down with constantly increasing
speed, I lost my terror in the strange exhilaration of the
motion. I fancied that I was a flying express train tearing
through the night. I knew not, cared not whither. There I was, a
light boat towed in the hissing wake of a swift steamer. The roar
of the water took the rhythm of the singing, rushing sensation
that precedes a swoon, and consciousness left me.
The first of my senses to return, after an indefinite lapse of
time, was that of taste. The taste was that of incomparably good
brandy.
"He is reviving. You need attend no longer," said a voice,
harsh, yet not unkind.
I opened my eyes and looked around me. I lay in a small
apartment upon a comfortable couch. On every side heavy curtains
limited the field of vision. The one striking peculiarity of the
place is difficult to describe, for it involves a quality which
has no exact equivalent in any of the languages which men speak.
Every object was self-luminous, radiating light, so to speak,
instead of reflecting it. The crimson drapery shone with a
crimson glow, and yet it was opaque—not even translucent. A
couch was apparently wrought in copper, and yet the copper glowed
as if copper were a source of light. The tall person who stood
over me, looking down into my face with friendly and
compassionate regard, was also self-luminous. His features
radiated light; even his boots, which bore an immaculate polish,
shone with an indescribable sort of radiant blackness. I believed
that I could have read a newspaper by the light of his boots
alone.
The effect of this singular phenomenon was so grotesque that I
was impolite enough to laugh aloud.
"Pardon me," I said, "but you look so deucedly like a Chinese
lantern that I can't help it."
"I see nothing to excite mirth," he gravely replied. "Do you
refer to my luster?"
His sublime unconsciousness set me off again. Afterward, when
I had become accustomed to the phenomenon of universally diffused
light, each luminous color seemed perfectly natural, and I saw no
more reason for mirth than he did.
"My friend," I remarked, to turn the conversation, seeing that
he was a little piqued, "that was admirable brandy you were kind
enough to give me just now. Perhaps you have no objection to
telling me where I am."
"I can assure you that you are among those who are well
disposed toward you, notwithstanding your sinful follies and
weaknesses. We shall try to make you cease to regret the
frivolous world which you have left forever."
"You are altogether too hospitable," I said. "I shall get back
to Canaan as soon as possible."
"You will never get back to Canaan. The road by which you came
is traveled in one direction only."
"And you intend to keep me here in this infernal cave?"
"For your own good."
"It strikes me," I rejoined, with some heat, "that you are too
much interested in my moral welfare."
It must have been for full a week—although I had no
means of measuring time, my watch obstinately refusing to
go—that I was kept a close prisoner inside the luminous
curtains. At regular intervals my jack-o'-lantern guardian
visited me, bringing food which shone as if it were
phosphorescent, but which, nevertheless, I ate with infinite
relish, finding it very good. He seemed disinclined to converse,
but always kind and courteous, and invariably greeted and left me
with a calm, superior smile that came to be at last in the
highest degree exasperating.
"Look here," I said one day, finally losing all patience, "you
know very well that I don't lack the disposition to strangle you
and kick my way out of this place back to honest daylight. Still,
I am weak and human enough to say that you will oblige me
exceedingly by stating who you are, why you always smile on me in
that superior manner, and what you propose to do with me. Who the
devil are you, anyway?"
"All that you will speedily learn," he replied with unlimited
politeness, "for I am directed to conduct you at once to my
lord."
"The lord of the Splurgles?"
"Splurgles, if you choose. I believe that that is the name
given us in the wretched world which you are fortunate enough to
have escaped. Accompany me, if you please, to the audience
chamber of my lord."
The lord of the Splurgles was a personage of severe gravity of
countenance. Like my guardian and the counselors and courtiers
(with one exception) who surrounded him in the comfortably
appointed apartment, he was self-luminous. The exception was an
individual who seemed to be present in a menial capacity. This
person, apparently a human being like myself, had done his best
to remedy his natural deficiency in this respect. He had rubbed
his face, his hands, and his habiliments with phosphorus, and
shone artificially with a poor imitation of the genuine
illuminating principle of the Splurgle world. That this imitation
was in his case the sincerest form of flattery was evident from
his actions and looks. His bearing toward the Splurgles was
subservient in the extreme. He ran at their beck and call,
rejoiced under their approving notice, and seemed to swell with
conscious importance whenever the lord of these strange beings
deigned to give him a patronizing word or look.
"Worm of the earth!" said the principal Splurgle. "Are you
disposed to embrace a great opportunity?"
"I am disposed," I replied, "to crawl back to my groveling
life at the first chance."
"Poor fool," said the lord Splurgle, without the least sign of
impatience.
"Thank you," I replied, with a bow that was intended to be
ironical, "and what shall I call your lordship?"
"Oh, I am Ahriman," he returned, "the great Ahriman, the
powerful devil Ahriman. Mortals tremble at the thought of me, and
my name they dare not speak. I ruled over a vast empire of Devs
and Archdevs in my time, and wrought a great deal of mischief in
Persia and thereabouts. I am a tremendous fiend, I assure you. I
inspire much terror."
"Pardon me, Uncle Ahriman," I remarked, "but are you sure you
are quite as terrible as you used to be?"
An expression of mortified vanity stole over his countenance.
"Perhaps," he answered, hesitating a little, "perhaps I am a
little out of practice. Years and circumstances have limited my
field of action. But I am still very terrible. Beelzebub, am I
not very terrible?"
"My lord Ahriman," said a familiar voice behind me,﹃you are
inexpressibly terrible.﹄I looked around and saw that this
opinion proceeded from my old acquaintance and custodian.
"You hear Beelzebub," continued Ahriman; "he says that I am
inexpressibly terrible. You may believe Beelzebub, he is one of
the most truthful and conscientious devils in our community. He
takes rather a low view of human nature, but in matters like this
his opinion is as good as anybody's. Yes, I'm undeniably awful.
Isn't that so, Stackpole?"
The fellow whom I had previously noted as a mortal like
myself, and a base truckler withal to the ways and whims of the
Splurgles, stepped forward from the throng, raised his eyes from
the ground until they met those of Ahriman, and forthwith began
to shake and shiver as if stricken speechless with terror. I
believed at the time that the rascal simulated it all. I even
thought he gave me a sly wink as he retired when he had got
through trembling.
"You see," said Ahriman, turning proudly to me, "what a marked
effect my presence has on our worthy friend Jeremiah Stackpole,
though he has been accustomed to the sight of me for nearly
twenty years."
This mortal, then, was the atheistical young man of Canaan, of
whose mysterious disappearance in 1858 I had been informed in
Deacon Plympton's grocery. I afterward learned that the manner of
his introduction to the cave of the Splurgles was identical with
my own. Unlike me, he had speedily become reconciled to the
situation. The society of the retired devils in the bowels of the
earth exactly suited his tastes. Assured of a comfortable
subsistence as long as he lived, he made no attempt to escape
from the cave and found it to his interest to earn the good will
of his captors by toadying to their harmless vanity.
"Now, mortal," resumed Ahriman with a lofty air,﹃you may
think it strange that evil spirits, so powerful and terrible as
we are, should contemplate any other disposition of your
worthless body and totally depraved nature than to wipe you out
of existence altogether. To tell the truth, however, we find it
convenient to have a mortal or two on hand to do the hard work of
the community—to assist in the development of the immense
natural resources of the cave. Not that we are lazy,﹄he added,
"but in our honorable retirement we are perhaps less active and
energetic than we used to be. It is for this reason that you are
offered the opportunity to enjoy the remarkable advantages of
perpetual companionship with beings so great as we are. Dear,
dear," continued this awe-inspiring demon, fanning himself with a
barbed tail, which I had not previously noticed, "it is rather
warm! Moloch, take this mortal away. I find it very fatiguing to
talk so much."
I confess that I felt a trifle uneasy at the mention of a name
which had been awful to the ears of men for centuries. There was
something ghoulish in the idea of being turned over to the cruel
and bloodthirsty Moloch, at whose red altars thousands of human
lives had been sacrificed. The appearance of my new custodian,
however, was reassuring. Moloch came up with a friendly smile,
patted me on the head, and offered to show me over the cave. He
was a fat demon, good-natured, and apparently lazy, with a
grotesque face and a merry twinkle in his eyes. I liked Moloch
from the first.
"I'll tell you a good one," he whispered in my ear. "What were
the silliest nations that ever lived on the face of the earth?
Ha, ha! It's a good one, I assure you."
"I give it up," I said.
"Why," he said, beginning to shake like a jellyfish with
suppressed mirth,﹃the silliest nations were the Ass-yrians and
the Ninny-vites and the Babble-onians. D'ye see?﹄And Moloch went
off into a convulsion of merriment.
I laughed heartily, and he seemed to be much gratified at my
appreciation of his humor.﹃I'll tell you a better one than
that,﹄he said confidentially, "as soon as I think of the answer.
I've quite forgotten how the answer comes in. It's something
about a frisky rogue and a risky frog—no, I'm not certain
that's just it. But it's one of the best jokes you've ever heard
when it's put properly."
"Those devils over there," said Moloch, as we walked out of
the audience chamber into a field, under the overhanging roof of
the cave, where sundry rather innocuous-looking demons were
hoeing corn,﹃are the asuras and goblin pretas and
terrible rakshashas of the Hindoos. They used to range the
earth with bloody tongues and ogre teeth and cannibal appetites.
Now they are strictly graminivorous devils. Oh, I tell you there
has been a vast improvement in our race since we retired from
active business. You might call it the march of civilization,﹄he
added, with violent symptoms of inward laughter.
We came upon a gigantic demon sitting unsteadily on a rock,
his huge right fist clasping a wicker flask. "It's Typhon,"
whispered Moloch, "the Set of the ancient Egyptians. Set used to
breathe smoke and pelt his enemies with red-hot boulders. He
frightened all the gods once, if you remember, and drove them out
of the country. He won't hurt you. He's very peaceable now, even
when he's fuddled. Set has a great gullet for liquor and he is
the worse for it now, as you observe. Set has declined, you see,"
added Moloch chuckling, "Set, sat, sot."
"You are a mad wag, Moloch," said I.
"It's only my joking way," he replied. "I do enjoy a good
joke. Sometimes they get me up by the Canaan outlet and set me
laughing to scare the countrymen outside. Do you notice my
peculiarly merry eyes?"
In the course of my walk with Moloch through the Splurgle
community I came to understand how harmless and even simpleminded
these ancient bugaboos really were. If they were ever malevolent,
they had discarded their malevolence when superstition discarded
them. Like decayed gentlemen in other branches of industry, some
of them retained a certain pride in their whilom fiendishness,
but the shadow was ludicrously unlike the substance. One by one,
as the friendly Moloch told me with many brilliant jeux
d'esprit, which I regret that I am unable to remember, the
devils of antiquity, superseded in dogma and creed by newer and
more fashionable devils, had withdrawn from the face of the earth
and gone into retirement in this cavern under the roots of the
three-pronged mountain. Here the played-out fiends of forty
centuries had gradually rusted into the condition in which I
found them when dragged by the heels into their community.
"Ahriman has kept his head better than the rest of us,"
explained my guide, the cheerful Moloch, "and therefore he bosses
us, but privately, between you and me, I don't believe he is more
formidable or devilish than any man of the lot."
I saw and talked with Baal. He seemed a little weak in his
head, and was employed in the kitchen of the establishment,
dealing out rations of phosphorescent soup.﹃Your soup shines
today,﹄I remarked, for the want of anything better to say.
"Yes, it shines, it shines," replied the superannuated fiend,
apparently struck with the force of my remark. Then he paused, as
if unable to grasp the immensity of the idea, and put his ladle
hand to his forehead, spilling a stream of soup down over his
clothes. "It shines, it shines," he repeated, not noticing his
mishap,﹃and there's something in my head that buzzes and
buzzes.﹄Then he went on ladling out soup and muttering to
himself the feeble analogy, "It shines, it shines; it buzzes, it
buzzes."
"Some of us are farther gone than Baal is," said Moloch.
"There is a houseful of 'em in the institution over there poor
devils who sit and moon and hardly know enough to eat and drink.
You ought to see Abaddon. He's a sad sight. So far gone that he
can't appreciate a good conundrum."
Afterward I had the honor of an introduction to Lilith, the
mistress of Adam, and by him the mother of a pernicious brood of
devils. She was a sweet-tempered, grandmotherly old lady, and,
when I saw her, was knitting a pair of warm woolen socks for
Belial, a shiftless ne'er-do-well sort of fiend. I saw Asmodeus;
he was reading, with evident enjoyment, Timothy Titcomb's Letters
to Young Men. I met Leviathan, Nergal, and Belphegor; they would
have cowed and trembled had I said a harsh word. I talked with
Rimnon, Dagon, Kohai, Behemoth, and Antichrist; they were as
staid and respectable as the honest citizens who met nightly in
Deacon Plympton's grocery.
During a residence of several weeks with the Splurgles, I was
somewhat mortified to find that their moral standards put to
shame the common practices of mankind. Harmless fellows, vain of
their reputation for diabolical malignity, their private lives
were above reproach. They neither lied nor stole. They held every
trust to be sacred. Of their hospitality, I bear willing
testimony. The only form of vice which I discovered among them
was drunkenness, and that was confined to Typhon and one or two
others. Yet, while I credit them with virtues unfortunately rare
on earth, candor compels me to add that the Splurgles were rather
tedious companions, and I was glad when, having learned the
secret of the outlet through the good nature of my friend Moloch,
I stood once more under the red oak in Rodney Prince's
pasture.
Black and dead as every color looked after the self-luminous
hues of the Splurgle cave, the contrast was not so great as that
which oppressed me when I began to associate again with mankind.
The venality of trade, the petty malice of society, the
degradation of humanity, assumed a new and repulsive aspect. I
shared the pity of Beelzebub for mortal imperfection.
4. — THE DEVIL'S FUNERAL
Published in the New York Sun, 15 March 1879
I FELT myself lifted up from my bed by hands invisible and
swiftly borne down the ever-narrowing avenue of Time. Each moment
I passed a century and encountered new empires, new peoples,
strange ideas, and unknown faiths. So at last I found myself at
the end of the avenue, at the end of Time, under a blood-red sky
more awful than the deepest black.
Men and women hurried to and fro, their pale faces reflecting
the accursed complexion of the heavens. A desolate silence rested
upon all things. Then I heard afar a low wail, indescribably
grievous, swelling and falling again and blending with the notes
of the storm that began to rage. The wailing was answered by a
groan, and the groaning grew into thunder. The people wrung their
hands and tore their hair, and a voice, piercing and persistent,
shrieked above the turmoil,﹃Our lord and master, the Devil, is
no more! Our lord and master is no more!﹄Then I, too, joined the
mourners who bewailed the Devil's death.
An old man came to me and took me by the hand.﹃You also loved
and served him?﹄he asked. I made no reply, for I knew not
wherefore I lamented. He gazed steadfastly into my eyes.﹃There
are no sorrows,﹄he said, meaningly, "that are beyond
utterance."
"Not, then, like your sorrow," I retorted, "for your eyes are
dry, and there is no grief behind their pupils."
He placed his finger on my lips and whispered, "Wait!"
The old man led the way to a vast and lofty hall, filled to
the farthest corner with a weeping crowd. The multitude was,
indeed, a mighty one, for all the people of every age of the
world who had worshiped and served the Devil were assembled there
to do for him the last offices for the dead. I saw there men of
my own day and recognized others of earlier ages, whose faces and
fame had been brought down to me by art and by history; and I saw
many others who belonged to the later centuries through which I
had passed in my night progress down the avenue of Time. But as I
was about to inquire concerning these, the old man checked me.
"Hush," he said, "and listen." And the multitude cried with one
voice, "Hark and hear the report of the autopsy!"
From another apartment there came forth surgeons and
physicians and philosophers and learned faculties of all times
charged to examine the Devil's body and to discover, if they
could, the mystery of his existence. "For," the people had said,
"if these men of science can tell us wherein the Devil was the
Devil, if they can separate from his mortal parts the immortal
principle which distinguished him from ourselves, we may still
worship that immortal principle to our own continued profit and
to the unending glory of our late lord and master."
With grave looks upon their countenances, and with reluctant
steps, three delegates advanced from among the other sages. The
old man beside me raised his hand to command perfect silence.
Every sound of woe was at the instant suppressed. I saw that one
was Galen, Paracelsus another, and Corneilus Agrippa the
third.
"Ye who have faithfully served the master," said Agrippa in a
loud voice, "must listen in vain for the secret which our
scalpels have disclosed. We have lain bare both the heart and the
soul of him who lies yonder. His heart was like our own hearts,
fitly formed to throb with hot passions, to shrink with hatred,
and to swell with rage. But the mystery of his soul would blast
the lips that uttered it."
The old man hurriedly drew me a little way apart, out of the
throng. The multitude began to surge and sway with furious wrath.
It sought to seize and rend to pieces the learned and venerable
men who had dissected the Devil, yet refused to publish the
mystery of his existence.﹃What rubbish is this you tell us, you
charlatan hackers and hewers of corpses?﹄exclaimed one.﹃You
have discovered no mystery; you lie to our faces.﹄"Put them to
death!" screamed others. "They wish to hoard the secret for their
own advantage. We shall presently have a triumvirate of quacks
setting themselves up above us, in place of him whom we have
worshiped for the dignity of his teachings, the ingenuity of his
intellect, the exalted character of his morality. To death with
these upstart philosophers who would usurp the Devil's soul."
"We have sought only the Truth," replied the men of science,
soberly,﹃but we cannot give you the Truth as we found it. Our
functions go not further.﹄And thereupon they withdrew.
"Let us see for ourselves," shouted the foremost in the angry
crowd. So they made their way into the inner apartment where the
Devil's body lay in state. Thousands pressed after them and
struggled in vain to enter the presence of death that they, too,
might discover the true essential quality of the departed. Those
who gained entrance reverently but eagerly approached the massive
bier of solid gold, studded with glistening stones, and
resplendent with the mingled lustre of the emerald, the
chrysolite, and jasper. Dazzled, they shrank back with wild faces
and bewildered looks. Not a man among them dared stretch forth
his hand to tear away the bandages and coverings with which the
surgeons had veiled their work.
Then the old man who with me had silently witnessed the
tumultuous scene drew himself up to a grand height and said
aloud: "Worshipers of the Devil, whose majesty even in death
holds you subject! It is well that you have not seized the
mystery before the time. A variety of signs combine to inspire me
with hope that that which has sealed the lips of the men of
science may yet be revealed through faith. Let us forthwith pay
the last sad tribute to our departed lord. Let us make to his
memory a sacrifice worthy of our devotion. My art can kindle a
fire which consumes weighty ingots of gold as readily as it burns
tinsel paper, and which leaves behind no ashes and no regrets.
Let every man bring hither all the gold, whether in coin, or in
plate, or in trinkets, that he has earned in serving the Devil,
and every woman the gold that she has earned, and cast it into
the consuming fire. Then will the funeral pyre be worthy of him
whom we mourn."
"Well said, old man!" cried the Devil worshipers. "Thus we
will prove that our worship has not been base. Build you the pyre
while we go to fetch our gold."
My eyes were fixed upon the face of my companion, but I could
not read the thoughts that occupied his brain. When I turned
again the vast hall was empty of all save him and me.
Slowly and laboriously we built the funeral pile in the centre
of the apartment. We built it of the costly woods that were at
hand, already sprinkled by devout mourners with the choicest
spices. We built the pile broad and high, and draped it with
gorgeous stuffs. The old man smiled as he prepared the magic fire
that was to consume the gold which the Devil worshipers had gone
to fetch. Within the pyre he left an ample space for their
sacrifice.
Together we brought forth the Devil's body and placed it
carefully in position at the top of the pile. Thunders rolled in
the lofty space above our heads, and the whole building shook so
terribly that I expected it to fall, crushing us between roof and
pavement. Crash came after crash of thunder, nearer and nearer to
the pyre. Lightnings played close around us—around the old
man, the Devil's corpse, and me. Still we waited for the
multitude, but the multitude returned not.
"Behold the obsequies!" said the old man at last, thrusting
his lighted torch into the midst of the pile. "You and I are the
only mourners, and we have not a single ounce of gold to offer.
Go you now forth and bid all the Devil worshipers to the reading
of the last will and testament. They will come."
I hastened forth to obey the old man's command, and speedily
the funeral hall was thronged again. This time the Devil
worshipers brought their gold, and every man sought to make
excuse for his tardiness at the pyre. The air was thick with
explanations. "I tarried only," said one,﹃to be sure that I had
gathered all—all to the very last piece of gold in my
possession fetched,﹄said another,﹃the laborious accumulations
of fifty years, but I cheerfully sacrifice it all to the memory
of our dear lord.﹄A third said, "See, I bring all of mine, even
to the wedding ring of my dead wife."
There was a contention among the Devil worshipers to be first
to cast treasure into the fire. The charmed flames caught up the
gold, and streamed high above the corpse, casting upon every
eager face in the vast room a fierce yellow glare. Still the fire
was fed by hands innumerable, and still the old man stood beside
the pyre, smiling strangely.
The Devil worshipers now cried out with hoarse voices: "The
will! The will! Let us hear the last testament of our dead
lord!"
The old man opened a roll of asbestos paper and began to read
aloud, while the hubbub of the great throng died away into
silence and the angry roar of the consuming flames subsided into
a dull murmur. What the old man read was this:
"To my well-beloved subjects, the whole world, my faithful
worshipers and loyal servitors, greeting, and the Devil's only
blessing, a perpetual curse!
"For as much as I am conscious of the approach of the Change
that hunts every active existence, yet being of sound mind and
firm purpose, I do declare this to be my last will, pleasure, and
command as to the disposal of my kingdom and effects.
"To the wise I bequeath folly, and to the fools, pain. To the
rich I leave the wretchedness of the earth, and to the poor the
anguish of the unattainable; to the just, ingratitude, and to the
unjust, remorse; and to the theologians I bequeath the ashes of
my bones.
"I decree that the place called hell be closed forever.
"I decree that the torments, in fee simple, be divided among
all my faithful subjects, according to their merit, that the
pleasure and the treasure shall also be divided equitably among
my subjects.'"
Thereupon the Devil worshipers shrieked with one accord:
"There is no God but the Lord Devil, and he is dead! Now let us
enter into our inheritance."
But the old man replied, "Ye wretched! The Devil is dead, and
with the Devil died the world. The world is dead."
Then they stood aghast, looking at the pyre. All at once the
gold-laden flames leaped into a blazing column to the roof and
expired. And forth from the red embers of the Devil's heart there
crept a small snake, hissing hideously. The old man clutched at
the snake to crush it, but it slipped through his hands and made
its way into the midst of the crowd. Judas Iscariot caught
up the snake and placed it in his bosom. And when he did so, the
earth beneath us began to quiver as if in the convulsion of
death. The lofty pillars of the funeral chamber reeled like
giants seized with dizziness. The Devil worshipers fell flat upon
their faces; the old man and I stood alone. Crash followed quick
on crash on every side of us, but it was not this time the
concussions of thunder. It was the hopeless sound of the tumbling
of man's structures and fabrics and the echo from the other
worlds of this world's crack of doom. Then the stars began to
fall, and the fainter lights of heaven came down upon us like a
driving sleet of frozen fire. And children died of terror, and
mothers clasped their dead babes to their own cold breasts and
hurried this way and that for shelter that was never found. Light
became black, fire lost its heat in the utter disorganization of
Nature, and a whelming flood of chaos surged from the womb of the
universe and swallowed up the Devil worshipers and their dead
world.
Then I said to the old man as we stood in the void, "Now there
is surely no evil and no good; no world and no God."
But he smiled and shook his head, and left me to wander back
unguided through the centuries. Yet as he disappeared I saw that
high over the ruins of the world a rainbow of infinite brightness
stretched its arch.
5. — THE WONDERFUL COROT
Published in the New York Sun, 04 December 1881
I
ON the twentieth of May, 1881 (said John Nicholas, in the
smoking room of the Gallia), I spent the day and part of the
night at the house of my good friend Scott Jordan, President of
the Bloomsburgh and Lycoming Railroad. Jordan has a place in one
of the charming suburban neighborhoods a few miles out of
Philadelphia. His character deserves a word.
He is an intensely superstitious, intensely practical
man—a type of a class much more numerous than people will
readily believe. Half a dozen railroads, conceived, built,
equipped, and run to the profit of their legitimate owners, bear
witness to his honesty and sound business sense. If further
evidence of his worldly judgment is wanted, it may be found in a
safe full of marketable securities. In his power of managing men
and handling complicated enterprises, Scott Jordan comes nearer
to my idea of Thomas Brassey than does any other
capitalist-contractor I know. His name on a Board of Direction is
a guarantee of conservative, prudent, yet never timid management.
I wish he would undertake the comptrollership of my modest
finances, to the last dollar I possess. He is a companionable old
gentleman, and likes to be considered as a man of taste. He is in
the full sense a man of the world while concerned with the
affairs of this world, yet he spends nearly half his life in
another—a strange world where banjos play and bells ring
without human hands, where ghostly arms are stretched forth from
behind the curtains of the unknown, and dim forms belonging to
every age of history meet face to face.
Jordan's house is the happy hunting ground of all the
professional charlatans in the spirit-raising line. They fasten
to him like leeches—the rappers, the test mediums, the
healing mediums, the physical-manifestation people and the rope
tiers, the clairvoyants, the controlled of every sort, male and
female, young and old, prosperous and shabby.
Jordan has told me that these gentry cost him twelve or
fifteen thousand dollars a year. When they come to his door he
welcomes them as aids in his tireless investigation of truth.
They live like princes in his establishment; every morning brings
its honorarium for the performance of the night before. Jordan
royally entertains his Egyptians and Greeks until he detects them
in some piece of imposture cruder than usual. Then he talks to
them like a grieved parent, ships them off with a free pass over
one of his railroads, and is all ready to go through the same
process with the next corner.
You will understand now, gentlemen, that I had looked forward
with considerable interest to my visit to Jordan's house.
Although the family was entertaining several professionals, I
found that I was the only social guest. I make this distinction,
but Jordan never does. You can hardly help liking the old fellow
the better for the magnificent old-school courtesy with which he
treats the seediest humbug of the lot.
"It is they who condescend," he is accustomed to say, somewhat
pompously, "when they honor me with their company; for do they
not bring with them the kings and great poets and artists and the
wisest and best of every century?"
And if Jordan's testimony is accorded the same weight in this
matter as it would have in any railroad suit in any court in
Pennsylvania, the wisest and best of every century, from Socrates
down to George Washington, have, in fact, visited his private
cabinet.
At the dinner table I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. John
Roberts and his brother William, the celebrated cabinet mediums;
fellows with villainous faces. I was also presented in due form
to Mr. Helder, a gentleman of consumptive appearance, who is said
to possess remarkable developing powers; a fat lady whose name I
have forgotten, but who practices medicine under inspiration of
the eminent Dr. Rush; Mrs. Blackwell, the materializing medium,
and her daughter, introduced as Mrs. Work, a young lady with
black eyes, said to be a flower and modeling medium of rare
promise. At no time did I see any Mr. Work.
I thought the flower and modeling medium looked at me with not
unkind eyes during dinner. The behavior of the other
professionals indicated suspicious reserve. They furtively
watched me, as if trying to guess the depth of my penetration. I
contrived to drop a few remarks that seemed to encourage them.
Jordan was jovial, and wholly unconscious of all this byplay.
In my friend's library after dinner, there was the usual
jugglery, with the gas turned halfway down. A small extension
room, separated by a portiere from the library, served as a
cabinet. William Roberts suffered me to tie him with a
clothesline. He produced some of the commoner manifestations, and
then declared that the conditions were unfavorable. At Jordan's
urgent request, Mrs. Blackwell went into the cabinet. Hands and
vague white faces were shown between the curtains. The lights
were turned still lower. Mrs. Work touched the piano, singing in
a very musical voice, "Scots wha hae" and﹃Coming through the
Rye.﹄The persistent repetition of these airs finally elicited a
full-length figure in a cloud of white, and the apparition was
pronounced to be Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary withdrew and
reappeared several times. At last, as if gaining courage, she
ventured forth from the cabinet, advanced a yard or more into the
room, and curtsied. Jordan called my attention in a whisper to
the supernal beauty of her face and apparel. In a reverent voice
he inquired if she would permit a stranger to approach. A slight
inclination of Mary's head granted the boon. I stood face to face
with the Queen; she allowed my hand to rest lightly for a second
upon one of the folds of mull that draped her form. Her face was
so near mine that even in the dim light I could see her eyes
shining through the eye-holes of her absurd papier-maché
mask.
The impulse to seize Mary and expose the ridiculous imposture
was almost irresistible. I must have raised my hands
unconsciously, for the Queen took fright and disappeared behind
the portiere. Mrs. Work hastily left the piano and turned up the
gas. In the glance that she gave me I read a piteous appeal.
Jordan's face was beaming with satisfaction. "So beautiful,"
he murmured, "and so gracious!"
"Yes, beautiful," I repeated, still looking at the flower and
modeling medium; "beautiful and uncommonly gracious!"
"Thanks!" she whispered. "You are generous."
Half ashamed of myself as the voluntary accomplice of vulgar
tricksters, I listened with growing impatience to Jordan's
ecstatic account of other materializations not less marvelous and
convincing than this of Mary, Queen of Scots. The mediums had
returned to the ordinary occupations of evening leisure. The
younger Roberts and Mr. Helder were playing backgammon,
conversing at the same time in low voices. The fat representative
of Dr. Rush was asleep in her chair. Mrs. Work was crocheting.
Her mother was sipping brandy and water—a necessary
restorative, Jordan was careful to tell me, after the draft made
upon her vital forces by the recent materialization of Mary. The
situation would have been thoroughly commonplace had it not been
for occasional rattling detonations, or successions of sharp
raps, apparently in the ceiling, in the partition walls, all over
the furniture, and underneath the floor.
"They are playful tonight," said Roberts, looking up from his
backgammon board.
"Yes," said Mrs. Work's mother, as she stirred her brandy and
water. "They are very fond of Mr. Jordan. They hover around him
always. Sometimes, when my inner vision is clearer, I see the air
full of their beautiful forms, following him wherever he goes.
They love and reward him for his great interest in them and
us."
"Mr. Jordan," said I, "do you never find yourself imposed
on?"
"Oh, often," he replied. "Frequently by wicked spirits;
frequently by fraudulent mediums."
"There are frauds in every profession, you know," said Mrs.
Blackwell.
"There would be no paste diamonds," suggested Helder, "if
there were no real diamonds."
"And your repeated discoveries of imposture," I persisted,
"have not shaken your faith?"
"Why should they?" replied the railroad president "Nine
hundred and ninety-nine experiments with negative results prove
nothing; but the one-thousandth case, if established, proves
everything. Demonstrated once, the possibility of communication
with disembodied spirits is demonstrated forever."
A fusillade of raps in every part of the room greeted this
proposition.
"I grant that," said I. "Prove one instance of the
interference of spirits in the affairs of men and you have
established the whole case."
"But you believe," he rejoined, with a smile, "that the
thousandth and absolutely authentic instance will never be
proved; and meanwhile you reserve the right to explain away all
such things as you have seen tonight by the hypothesis of
jugglery."
"I'm sure the gentleman doesn't think that," insinuated Mrs.
Blackwell, who had now finished her brandy and water.
"Nevertheless," continued Jordan, "the one-thousandth instance
may happen, may happen at any time, and may happen to you. Come
and see my pictures."
I tried to keep a grave face while my host did the honors of a
score or more of Raphaels, Titans, Correggios, Guidos, and what
not, all painted in his own house by mediums under inspiration.
Jordan's old masters make a collection probably unlike any other
on earth. When he demanded what I thought of the internal
evidence of their authenticity, I was able to reply with perfect
truthfulness that nobody could mistake them.
From this amazing trash I turned with feelings of relief to a
landscape hanging in the hallway. "I moved it out here," said
Jordan, "to make room for that superb Carracci, 'Daniel in the
Lion's Den'—the large canvas you particularly admired."
I looked at the old gentleman to see if he was in earnest.
Then I looked again at the glorious landscape.
Here was no painted fiction, but truth itself: A clump of
rounded willows, seen by early morning light and seen again in
the perfectly calm water of the canal or sluggish stream which
they overhung; a skiff, resting partly on the water and partly on
the wet grass of the nearer bank; beyond, an indistinct distance
and the outline of a château tower with the conical Burgundian
peak; a marvelous humid atmosphere of blue and mist, a soft light
enveloping everything and caressing everything. No painted
fiction, I say, but a window through which anyone having eyes
might survey nature in her eternal truth.
I said: "That comes nearer to the supernatural than anything I
have ever seen. It is worth all your old masters together."
"You like it?" said he. "It is well enough, I suppose, though
of a school for which I have no particular fancy. It was painted
here about a year ago by a spirit who did not choose to identify
himself."
"Nonsense," said I, for this passed all endurance, "Corot has
been dead six years."
Jordan led the way back into the library. "Mrs. Work," said
he, "do you remember the circumstances under which the large
landscape in the hall—the hazy green one—was
painted?"
"Certainly," replied the young lady, looking up from her
needles; "I recollect very well. It was painted through me."
In claiming the authorship of this wonderful work of genius,
she used the matter-of-fact tone in which she would have
acknowledged a stork and sunflower in crewel, or a sleeping pussy
cat in Berlin wools.
"And you are an artist yourself—that is to say, when not
in the trance state?"
"Oh, yes," she replied, returning my gaze with unflinching
eyes; and thereupon she produced from one of Mr. Jordan's
portfolios a preposterous bunch of lilacs in water color.
Meanwhile, Jordan had been rummaging in his desk. He now brought
forth an account book. "Here we have it," he said,﹃all set down
in black and white.﹄In the middle of a page of similar memoranda
I read this item:
1880, May 13—Pd. M. A. Work for painting done under
control; large view (trees, stream, boat, etc.)...$25.00
"All I can say, madam," I exclaimed, turning to Mrs. Work, "is
that Knoedler or Avery would have been most happy to pay you ten
thousand dollars for that Corot, for Corot it is, and a
masterpiece at that."
"Good night," said Jordan, a little later, when I rose to
retire.﹃After what you have already experienced I need hardly
warn you not to be disturbed by any noises you may hear in your
bedroom.﹄A hailstorm of raps punctuated his sentence.﹃They
hover, hover around,﹄Mrs. Blackwell was saying, as I left the
library; "but in this house it is as guardian—"
I went to bed thoroughly bewildered. Was there, after all,
behind this wretched jack-in-the-box jugglery something
incomprehensible, unexplainable, unspeakable—something
which the jugglers themselves understood no better than their
dupes? When I thought of Mary, Queen of Scots, ogling me through
her pasteboard mask, and of Jordan's rhapsody over her unearthly
beauty, the problem seemed too ignoble to engage an intelligent
man's attention for a single minute; but there was the Corot. The
whole machinery of raps, hands, ropes, apparitions, guitars,
Raphaels, Correggios, and Carraccis was almost childish in its
simplicity; but there again was the Corot. Every train of logical
thought, every analytical process led me back to the marvelous
Corot.
One of three things must be true: The picture was a
commonplace daub, like the old masters, and I was laboring under
a strange delusion or hallucination in regard to its merits. Or,
Mrs. Work and her accomplices had procured a Corot unknown to
connoisseurs and had sold it for one five-hundredth part of its
market value, to bolster up a petty deception. Or, the landscape
was a marvel and the manner of its production a miracle. The
first supposition was the most plausible, yet I was not disposed
to accept it at the expense of my self-possession and judgment;
no doubt daylight would confirm my estimate of the picture. The
second supposition involved a degree of folly—disinterested
and expensive folly—on the part of these precious mediums
that did not tally with my observations of their character. To
accept the third supposition was, of course, to accept the theory
of the spiritualists. Thus reasoning I fell asleep, and was
awakened, about half-past two o'clock, by a muffled hammering
directly beneath my bed.
Now, gentlemen, what followed passed very rapidly, but every
incident is distinct in my memory, and I ask you to reserve
judgment until you have heard me through.
The noise came from the room under mine. As nearly as I could
judge, this was the library. Notwithstanding Jordan's advice, I
determined to see what was the matter. I jumped into my trousers
and cautiously proceeded toward the stairway. At the head of the
stairs a door opened as I passed and a hand was laid upon my
shoulder.
"Don't go down!" was eagerly whispered into my ear. "Don't go
down! Return to your chamber!"
A white figure stood before me. It was the flower and modeling
medium in her nightdress, her black hair all loose.
"Why should I not go down?" I demanded. "Are you afraid that I
shall embarrass the spirits in their carpenter work?"
She spoke hurriedly and with evident excitement: "You believe
it all a fraud, but it isn't. There's fraud enough, Lord knows,
for mediums must live; but, then, there are things—once in
a while, not often—that stun us."
"Tell me the truth about the Corot."
"As truly as I stand here, it was produced in the way we
said—on my easel, with my brush held in my hand, yet not by
me. I can tell you no more, for I know no more." The noise of
pounding downstairs increased.
"And if I go down, shall I encounter one of the mysteries that
you speak of!"
"No, but you will run into great danger. It is for your own
sake I ask you not to go." By this time I was in the lower
hall.
Downstairs I discovered the Roberts brothers holding a seance
at Jordan's plate closet, while the developing medium, Mr.
Helder, with a dark lantern in his hand, was developing the
combination lock of Jordan's safe.
In my brief and not victorious struggle with the three rascals
I must have received some hurt upon the head. My eyes were half
blinded with blood. With a vague idea of shouting for help at the
foot of the stairs, I staggered back into the lower hall, closely
pushed by two of the mediums. I heard one of them whisper,﹃Hit
hard! It's got to be done,﹄and saw a heavy iron bar raised and
aimed at my head.
At this moment I stood directly in front of the Corot. Even in
the imperfect light, that wonderful glimpse of nature opened
beside me like a window in the wall. In another instant the
crowbar would have buried itself in my skull. Then there reached
my ears a cry from the head of the stairs, where I had left the
flower medium standing, "Jump! Jump into the picture! For God's
sake, jump!"
Resting one hand upon the frame, as upon a window sill, I
launched myself against the canvas. The weapon descended, but I
was already beyond its range. I fell, fell, fell, as if falling
through infinite space, yet partially borne up by invisible
hands. Then I found myself upon the wet grass of the canal bank.
I jumped into the skiff and hurriedly poled it across the stream;
and then, having reached the other bank, I fainted dead away
under the willows.
When I came to my senses I was lying in snowy linen in the
Hôtel Dieu at Dijon, with a good sister to take care of me. Here
is a translation of the entry in the hospital books:
1881, May 21—Received from Monsieur the Mayor of
Flavigny an Unknown, found early this morning, unconscious, and
only partially clad, on the bank of the canal of Burgundy, near
the limits of the arrondissement. Injuries—Severe
scalp wound and slight fracture of the right parietal bone.
Property—One pair of trousers, one nightshirt, pair
slippers. Means of identification—None.
Gentlemen, that is the end of my statement of facts. I am now
on my way back to America. I shall establish the interference of
spirits in human affairs by affording conclusive evidence that a
wonderful picture was painted by a dead artist; that this picture
was used by the spirits in my behalf as a way of escape out of
mortal danger, and that, by the most extraordinary instance of
levitation on record, I was borne bodily more than three thousand
miles in a few seconds.
Do not laugh just yet. To the scientific world and to all
fair-minded investigators of the truth of spiritualism, I shall
soon offer in the way of evidence:
1. The register of the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia for
May 19, 1881. I stopped there on my way to visit Jordan. My name
will be found under that date.
2. The testimony of Mr. Jordan and his family that I was with
them at Bryn Mawr on May 20, 1881, up to eleven o'clock at
night.
3. The duly attested record of my admission to the hospital at
Dijon, France, on May 21, 1881.
4. The wonderful picture now in the possession of Jordan.
II
Dear Sir:
In reply to your note of inquiry, I beg leave to say
that our common friend, Mr. John Nicholas, has been under my care
for more than a year, with the exception of two months spent in
the Côte d'Or in charge of another medical attendant.
The facts in his unfortunate case are accurately set forth (up
to a certain point) in his own narrative, as outlined by you. Mr.
Nicholas' recollection is not trustworthy in regard to events
happening after he had suffered a severe blow on the head in his
encounter with thieves.
As to the value of his estimate of the merits of the picture
upon which his delusion is founded, I cannot speak. I have never
seen it. It may be well to say, however, that prior to his
departure for France, Mr. Nicholas was in the habit of
attributing the picture to an American artist, some years ago
deceased. As he used to tell the story, it was not to Burgundy
but to Wissahickon Valley that he was transported by
levitation.
I also beg leave to say that this mania does not affect his
sanity in all other respects; nor do I see reason to despair of
his entire recovery.
Yours respectfully,
Horace F. Daniels, M.D.
6. — THE TERRIBLE VOYAGE OF THE TOAD
Published in the New York Sun, 20 November 1878
IT was not owing to any lack of enterprise or courage that
Captain Peter Crum of Mackerel Cove, Maine, did not visit the
Paris Exposition in his own sloop yacht, the Toad. Nor was
the failure of his famous expedition due to any demerit in the
craft which he commanded. Ever since Captain Crum sailed his
sloop by dead reckoning to Boston, in spite of unpropitious
weather, including a heavy sou'east blow off Cape Elizabeth, and
returned in safety with a cargo of Medford rum to discomfit the
critics who had predicted certain disaster, there had been no
question as to the seagoing qualities of the Toad. It is
generally conceded at Mackerel Cove that Captain Peter Crum would
have reached Paris in triumph but for the malignant hostility of
a power justly abhorred and dreaded by all serious-minded
men.
"Oh, the Toad sails, she does!" Captain Crum carelessly
remarked to his neighbor, Deacon Silsbee, in the deacon's store
one day early in June.
"The Toad does sail," allowed the deacon.
The captain gazed significantly at the deacon, whose face put
on a receptive expression, as if to say the court awaits further
communications.
"An of you kin diskiver any rashn'l reason," continued Captain
Crum, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, "why she
shouldn't carry you and me and Andrew Jackson's son Tobias to the
big show over yonder, it's more'n Deacon."
The deacon bore the reputation of being, when sober, the
subtlest logician, both in theological and secular matters, on
that section of the coast. He sympathized heartily in the
captain's project, but felt it due to himself to proceed
deliberately, analytically, and cautiously.
"Hum!" said he, wagging his head; "the Toad's a
toler'b'l old boat."
"She is," assented the captain. "Old an' thurowly
seasoned."
"Without intendin' to disperidge," continued the deacon, "her
bottom's more putty 'n timber."
"Putty or no putty," rejoined the owner of the Toad,
"she sails afore the wind like a thing of life and minds her
helium like a lady."
"It's a long tack to Paris," suggested the deacon, shifting
his ground, "and them that go down upon the sea in ships [so to
speak of the Toad] take their lives in the palms of their
hands."
"Deacon!" said the captain, solemnly; "you ain't actin' up fer
to deny an overrulin' Providence, or the efficacy of prayer?
Won't you be along?"
"True," said the deacon, mollified by the compliment to his
powers of intercession. "The godly man feareth neither the
hurricane's fury nor the leviathan's rage. Are you certain you
kin lay the course?"
"Unless the geographies lie like Anemias," continued the
captain, growing more earnest as the details of the adventurous
scheme presented themselves to his mind, "it's as plain a course
to Havy-de-Grass as it is to Bangor. You take a short hitch round
Cape Sable and then you're practically thar. Who says the
Toad won't sail? Gimme a sou'east or sou'west wind, Andrew
Jackson's old compass out of the schooner Parida P., a good stock
of pervisions, two or three of them twenty-gallon kags of rum,
and the benefit of your petitions mornin' and evenin', and I'll
allow I'll lay the Toad 'longside the city landin' in
Paris in sixty days, spite of blows or Beelzebub!"
The captain brought his fist down upon the cover of Deacon
Silsbee's pork barrel with a vigor that denoted fixed
determination. Several neighbors who had dropped into the store
while he was speaking and had gathered around him, attracted by
the energy of his utterances, applauded the daring vow.﹃In
spite,﹄he repeated, "of blows or Beelzebub!"
"Cap'n! Cap'n!" said the deacon, coming round from behind his
counter and holding up both hands in protest, "say nothing thet's
rash. While I hold that prayerful navigators, sailing so
seaworthy and serious a craft as the Toad, hey little or
nothin' to fear from Satan's wiles, I hold it likewise that a
willful and froward sperrit of defiance at sech a moment is
onnecessary and foolish. And I would also remark that if it's a
question in your mind between two and three of them kags of rum
for so long a v'yage, it's a dooty and a vartue to be on the safe
side, Cap'n Crum!"
It is as well authenticated a fact as any in the history of
Mackerel Cove that on the morning of Monday, June 17, 1878, the
sloop Toad, of 8,825-10,000 registered tonnage, Crum
master, cleared for Havre with a cargo consisting of Deacon
Silsbee, Andrew Jackson's son Tobias, and nearly eighty gallons
of Medford rum. Deacon Silsbee and Tobias Jackson are advisedly
classed with the cargo rather than with the working crew of the
vessel. In order to be on hand for an early departure they had
thought it prudent to embark the night before. In accordance with
a suggestion of the deacon's, namely, that any surplus of rum
left over from the outward voyage could be profitably disposed of
in Paris for such articles of merchandise as the natives might
have to offer in exchange, the captain had added a fourth keg to
the stock already on board. When the captain took command of the
craft in the morning, he found his younger passenger curled up in
the cuddy, utterly insensible to the momentous character of the
occasion. By comparison with Tobias Jackson, Deacon Silsbee was
very sober, but judged by any other standard he was very drunk.
The deacon sat on the heel of the bowsprit, his chin resting
heavily on both hands, singing in a dismal voice hymn after hymn
of various meters, but to one unvarying tune. An invitation from
the captain to lend a hand at the jib halyard met with no
response. The deacon did not stir, but sat with his bleary eyes
glued on the rum kegs in the standing room aft and began,﹃The
voice of free grace cries escape to the mountain!﹄in a louder
and more melancholy intonation than before.
The entire population of the cove had come down to the shore
to witness the departure of the Toad. Many were the
weather prophecies and the arguments of dissuasion shouted at the
bold skipper. Even those of his neighbors who had been
friendliest to the undertaking urged him to postpone his start
until a more favorable day. They pointed to the long fog bank
that lined the horizon to the seaward and had already shut in
Damiscove Island and was hurrying toward Bald Head light and the
main shore.﹃I calkilate to hey considerable fog more or less
till I fetch beyond the Banks,﹄returned the captain, cheerfully.
"Guess I mought as well overhaul thet air compass of Andrew
Jackson now ez later on."
Under these discouraging circumstances, with prophecies of
evil sounding behind him and a thick fog dead ahead, with one of
his companions helplessly drunk below deck and the other
uncomfortably noisy above, Captain Peter Crum began his memorable
voyage. Standing erect at the stern sheets, he poured out for
himself a brimming tumblerful of rum as a sort of first line of
fortifications against the fog. Then, alone and unaided, he ran
up his mainsail and his jib and resumed his position at the helm.
He had sworn in the presence of all Mackerel Cove to sail the
Toad across the Atlantic in spite of Beelzebub. He would
do it or perish in the attempt, along with Deacon Silsbee and
Andrew Jackson's son Tobias. Captain Crum drank another
tumblerful of rum. The mainsail fluttered in the first flurry of
the fog breeze. Waving a graceful adieu to the assembled
multitude on shore, and throwing an affectionate kiss to his
weeping wife, who already considered herself in effect his widow,
and whom he could readily distinguish in the distance by her
pocket handkerchief, he grasped the tiller and brought the
Toad round into the wind. The sails filled and the gallant
though rather aged craft bounded off toward the open sea, while
loud above the splash of the waves and the shouts of the crowd on
shore rang out the deep voice of Deacon Silsbee, as he sang at
the top of his lungs:
"My willing soul wo-o-od shtay
In slusha framer zish;
An' sit an sing her shell away
To efferlash [hic] blish."
The first news of the Toad's progress was brought to
Mackerel Cove twenty-eight hours after her departure, by the crew
of a Halifax lumberman which put in on account of the fog. The
lumberman reported it very thick outside—thicker than
anything he remembered at that time of year. He had narrowly
escaped running on to the Clamshell, a well-known rock in the
shelter of Pumpkin Island, twenty miles out. As he sheered off he
had perceived a small sloop, apparently fast hung on the ledge.
To his hailing there had come the answer, in a voice as thick, if
not thicker than the fog and much more unsteady, that the
stranded sloop was the Toad of Mackerel Cove, bound for
the Paris Exposition with a cargo of rum. The captain of the
Toad confidently expected to get off at the next flood
tide. Offers of assistance were received by the Toad's
crew with derisive howls, and with some insulting reference to
Beelzebub, which the lumberman could not distinctly
understand.
"As I had no call to stand thar and be sarsed," concluded the
lumberman's captain, "I put round agin and left the critter on
the Clamshell. It's my private opinion that all hands on board
had been splicin' the main brace a good many times too
often."
For the next three weeks the anxious population of Mackerel
Cove heard nothing further of the fortunes of their adventurous
townsmen. The fog clung to the coast relentlessly for all that
time. At last a northwest wind drove it off the shore, and on the
second clear day the little steamer Moonbeam, engaged in the
porgy fishery, came up to the cove with a small sloop in tow and
three dejected, exhausted, and thoroughly disgusted navigators on
board. This sloop was the Toad.
The master of the porgy boat reported that he had found the
Toad aground on the Clamshell. At first he had seen no
signs of life on board, but upon running as near to the rock as
the draft of his steamer would allow, he discovered three human
beings lying unconscious in the cuddy, together with several
empty kegs that still smelled strong of rum. He took off the men,
and by attaching a rope to the sloop, succeeded in dragging her
into deep water. The rescued sailors partially recovered their
senses under the influence of hot coffee, dry clothing, and kind
treatment, but they still appeared to be in a state of
semi-stupefaction, and the story they told was so deliriously
incoherent that he could make neither head nor tail of it.
Of course, the first inference drawn by the people of the
Mackerel Cove was that the Toad, seen aground on the
Clamshell June 19 by the Halifax lumberman, and found aground on
the same ledge July 11 by the porgy steamer, had remained aground
uninterruptedly between those two dates, the crew, meanwhile,
consuming the four kegs of rum. This theory implied so inglorious
a termination to an adventure begun with so much bravado that for
several weeks Captain Crum, Deacon Silsbee, and Tobias Jackson
were subject to a great deal of ridicule on the part of their
neighbors and friends, and even the Toad itself became an
object of derision in the cove.
The returned voyagers bore all this with extraordinary
meekness for a while. At last, however, they began to hint that
the reproach was unmerited: that there was a marvelous and
mysterious history behind their apparent failure; and that if the
whole truth were known, they would figure for all time as the
heroes of one of the most protracted and terrific encounters with
diabolical agencies in this or any other age.
Little by little the story came out: partly in conversations
at Deacon Silsbee's store, partly in Tobias Jackson's
communications to boon companions in convivial hours, and partly
in allusions made by the deacon himself in prayer and exhortation
in the vestry of the Baptist meetinghouse. When the whole story
became known, it was so consistent and conclusive that it carried
conviction at the first recital.
The hostility of a malign power had confronted the voyagers at
the outset and driven them upon the Clamshell, in spite of
Captain Crum's positive knowledge that he was at least seventeen
miles to the southward of that rock at the moment when the
Toad struck it. Once aground and waiting for the tide to
flow, it became necessary, as a precaution against the chilling
fog, to use a good deal of the rum medicinally. The voyagers did
not remember being hailed by any Halifax lumberman. They did
remember, however, that a huge black craft sailing without sails
in the very teeth of the wind, yet not propelled by steam, and
manned by no earthly crew, loomed up in the fog close to the
Clamshell. There came to the rail of this apparitional vessel a
monster with a head four times as big as a rum keg, and eyes that
shone like coals of green fire, who demanded, in a supernally
awful voice, who it was that proposed to cross the sea in spite
of Beelzebub. Upon their shouting back defiance and the deacon's
repeating a text from Job, the phantom (for phantom they believed
it to be) vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
That, however, was only an unimportant episode, and one that
had almost escaped their memories in the press of later and more
terrible experiences. It was Tobias Jackson, who, when they found
that the Toad did not float at flood tide, suggested that
the only way to get off was to lighten the cargo. They,
therefore, went to work industriously on the contents of one of
the rum kegs, and by nightfall, to their unspeakable
satisfaction, felt the Toad rising and falling beneath
them with the motion of the water. Captain Crum then laid a
course for Havre, as straight as he could, allowing always for
the hitch round Cape Sable.
From the moment when the Toad got fairly afloat the
voyage was like a continuous succession of nightmares. After they
had cleared the fog the atmosphere became hot and heavy and
mysteriously oppressive to the lungs, though the sun was shining
brightly and there was, to all appearances, a fine fresh breeze.
Sometimes even at noonday the heavens would suddenly turn as dark
as pitch while strange phosphorescent lights played around the
mast of the Toad and the bungholes of the rum kegs. The
air seemed to be charged with electricity. One day the compass
acted as if possessed with the Devil. As an aid to navigation it
was very much worse than useless. The needle swung round and
round without any obvious cause, with a rapidity which no one
could contemplate without becoming dizzy and bewildered. Captain
Crum at last wedged the needle so that it could not move in the
box. But as soon as the compass stood still the Toad
itself began to spin round so viciously that they hastened to
release the needle.
On the fourth or fifth day out the wind freshened, and the
sloop went bounding over the billows. The deacon and Tobias
Jackson were seriously affected by the motion, and retired to the
cuddy. Even the captain himself, an old sailor who had weathered
many storms, was obliged to succumb to the nausea; but though
deadly sick, he held his post at the helm, and kept the bowsprit
pointed straight for Havre. The breeze increased to a gale, the
waves seemed animated with a merciless desire to overwhelm and
swallow up the frail Toad, appalling thunders filled the
sky, lightnings darted from every square inch of the heavens, and
the sloop labored fearfully. In this emergency it became
necessary, as a matter of self-preservation, to lighten the cargo
still further. The captain, after some trouble, succeeded in
arousing his sick and discouraged companions, and all hands went
to work on the second keg with an energy born of desperation.
Thus the Toad outrode the storm.
According to the best recollection of the sorely tried
navigators, who about this time lost all reckoning of days and
hours and began to measure events by another chronology, it was
either in the last quarter of the second keg or the first quarter
of the third keg that the sea suddenly became populous with
reptiles of vast dimensions and manifestly hostile disposition.
Captain Crum, Deacon Silsbee, and Tobias Jackson are agreed in
affirming most positively that it was neither whales nor
porpoises that they saw. The monsters which crowded the water
around the Toad, and fairly tumbled over each other in
their malignant eagerness to get at and annihilate that little
craft, were far larger than any whale, far livelier than any
porpoise. They were gigantic, antediluvian creatures of hideous
shape, with eyes that shone with malevolent purpose, and voices
that bellowed loud enough to strike you dumb with fear. They swam
round and round the Toad, glaring with hungry eyes upon
her unfortunate crew, and lashing the sea with their huge tails
until it was foam white as far as sight could reach. In the
largest of all these alarming monsters Deacon Silsbee was
confident that he identified the terrible beast with seven heads
and ten horns mentioned in Revelations.
"It is Beelzebub," whispered the deacon to the captain, as
soon as horror allowed him the use of his tongue. "It is the old
horned beast himself!"
As if to confirm the deacon's recognition, the air rang with a
diabolical laugh, and the principal beast reared its seven heads
high out of the water, and bore down directly upon the
Toad, while all the other beasts gave way.
"The critter come right on," said the deacon afterward in
describing the crisis, "and the cap'n and Tobias Jackson flopped
down among the kags, limp ez dead flounders. I knew the righteous
need not fear, so I stood firm and looked the sarpint squar in
the eyes. At this he begun to show symptoms of oneasiness. He
hitched an' backed an' sheered off a bit, glarin' at me ez fierce
ez ever. I felt encouraged, but bein' a little shaky in the legs,
reached down for the tin dipper and began fumblin' at the plug in
the bung of one of the kags. This giv him a minnit's advantage,
and he swum up close alongside; but I cotched his eye agin, and
he stopped short ez if shot. 'Beelzebub, begone!' sez I. 'You are
known, and you'd better begone!' 'Ho! Ho!' sez he, in an
aggravatin' tone, 'you're known likewise, Deacon Silsbee, an'
you'd better put round for Mackerel Cove, if you valley your
health. Crost the Atlantic in spite of me, ho! ho!' With that he
roars an onearthly roar, and I could feel Tobias Jackson, who was
lyin' agin my right leg, shake like a jellyfish."
"How about the cap'n?" asked one of the deacon's audience.
"The cap'n," continued the deacon, "had crawled into the
cuddy. It's no discredit to him ez a sailor or ez a man, for the
critter's roar was powerful skeerin'. But I, you see, bein'
varsed in Scripter and familiar with doctrine, knew the beast's
weak pints. 'Beelzebub!' sez I, looking him squar in the eye,
'you may roar and lash, but you can't intimidate me. Resist the
Devil and he will flee from you. You old serpent, you adversary,
you tormenter, you prince of unholiness, begone! Now git!'"
"And did he git?" inquired one of the deacon's neighbors.
"Not at wunst," said the deacon. "The old liar is dreadf'l
sub-tile. He swam off a few hundred rods in a hesitatin'
uncertain fashion and then turned round agin. 'Look here, Deacon
Silsbee,' sez he in an insinuatin' voice, 'I come in a friendly,
neighborly sperrit, and it's onnecessary fer you to speak so
ha'sh. Ez long ez you're bound to crost, and won't be balked of
it, I mought ez well give ye a lift an' save ye a sight of
trouble. Jest turn your eyes the t'other way a jiffy till I git
alongside the Toad. Then take a double hitch with your tow
line round one of my horns and I'll snake ye over to the French
coast in less than it takes a cable dispatch to crost. That's
solid!' 'It's solid,' replied I, waxin' very wrothy, 'that I know
you and your lyin' ways. The Toad wants none of your
unholy towin', Beelzebub. Now git!'
"That time," added the deacon, "he did git. He and all of his
ten thousand lesser devils sot up a howl of baffled rage so loud
that I thought it would shake the sun out of the sky down on to
our heads, and then of a suddin they all dove under. The sea was
smooth, the weather fair, with a good, fav'able sou'wester, and
the Toad seemed to be bowlin' along to the Exposishun. We
were so delighted at havin' escaped Satan's wiles that we forgot
the commercial featur of the enterprise, and went straight
through the third kag, plumb into the fourth."
Captain Crum's version of this encounter with the demon
monster in mid-ocean agreed substantially with the deacon's,
except in one unimportant particular. According to the captain's
recollection, it was Deacon Silsbee who sought shelter in the
cuddy when Beelzebub began to roar, and he, the captain, who
repulsed the arch enemy by the firmness of his demeanor. On being
questioned as to the relative accuracy of those two versions,
Tobias Jackson privately confessed that the memory of both the
captain and the deacon was at fault, and that it was he, Tobias,
that had saved the Toad. The diabolical fish had swum up
to the sloop and seized hold of the gunwale with its huge,
talon-like fins, the captain and the deacon had taken refuge
below deck, and the destruction of all on board seemed imminent,
when Tobias, who alone preserved his presence of mind, grasped a
belaying pin that happened to be within reach and beat Beelzebub
so lustily about the head and claws that he was glad to
relinquish his infernal clutch. This trifling discrepancy in the
narratives of the three navigators need not distract attention
from the main facts, namely, that Beelzebub did appear, was
boldly met, and was put to flight.
As to the remainder of the voyage, there was no disagreement.
The navigators again found that they were no match for Beelzebub,
who, though defeated in the face to face encounter, was a wily
and persevering foe and possessed a great advantage by reason of
his unfair and unscrupulous employment of supernatural agencies.
If Captain Crum attempted to take an observation of the sun to
determine the latitude and longitude of the Toad, the sun
would not stand still, but at Satan's instigation bobbed and
wobbled around the heavens in a manner that made nautical
reckoning an impossibility. Nor did the stars at night afford any
better data for calculation. They danced about through each
other's constellations with utter recklessness of consequences,
and all three of the Toad's crew testify that four moons
often appeared simultaneously, and the dipper frequently rose in
the west and set in the southeast. At times the wind would blow
from all points of the compass and the Toad would remain
stationary for hours, buffeted by conflicting breezes.
Notwithstanding these impediments to a prosperous passage,
Captain Crum believes that he finally would have made the coast
of France had not Beelzebub resorted to an unexpected and
insuperable trick. It was a foul blow to navigation—a blow
beneath the belt.
For day after day the Toad, to all appearances, had
been making good progress and the Toad's crew were well
along in the last half of the fourth and last keg. The wind blew
steadily abaft, the jib and mainsail drew finely, the water
rippled about the bows, and the captain had begun to look sharp
ahead for signs of land. By his rough reckoning the Toad
ought to have been in west longitude 5° 40', somewhere off
Ushant. At length land appeared—a faint blue line of
land—but, to their complete bewilderment, it was neither
ahead nor on either beam. It was directly behind the Toad,
and although by the wind, by the compass, by the swash of waves,
and by every other indication known to navigators they were
sailing directly away from it, its outlines every moment became
more distinct. Captain Crum caught up an empty rum keg (they were
all empty now) and threw it overboard. The keg rapidly passed by
the Toad from stern to stem, disappeared for a second
under the bowsprit, and was soon lost in the horizon to the
eastward.
The three bold sailors looked at each other with despairing
eyes. By this infallible test they knew that the Toad was
sailing, and had for days been sailing, directly backward, in the
teeth of the wind and in the face of all natural laws. It was no
use contending against an enemy who had such diabolical resources
at his command. Discouraged and sick at heart, they sank down
under the weight of their terrible disappointment and knew
nothing more until they found themselves on board the porgy
steamer Moonbeam, steaming up Mackerel Cove. Of the Toad's
second grounding upon the Clamshel! they knew nothing. It was a
singular coincidence, but what event could surprise them now?
Such was the story told of the Toad's voyage to France
by the courageous navigators who had fought hard against
unearthly odds. The inhabitants of Mackerel Cove, after hearing
it attentively, weighing it judicially, and cross-examining
closely, are unanimously agreed on three points:
1. That the voyage, although unsuccessful, is highly
creditable to the Toad, to the Toad's crew, and, by
reflex glory, to Mackerel Cove.
2. That Beelzebub, when actuated by motives of spite, is a
hard fellow to beat; yet—
3. That if the rum had held out long enough, the three
navigators would finally have got across and viewed the splendors
of the Exhibition in spite of him.
7. — THE PAIN EPICURES
Published in the New York Sun, 25 August 1878
I
NICHOLAS VANCE, a student in Harvard University, had the
misfortune to suffer almost incessantly with acute neuralgia
during the second term of his senior year. The malady not only
caused him great anguish of face, but it also deprived him of the
benefit of Professor Surdity's able lecture on speculative logic,
a study of which Vance was passionately fond.
If Vance had gone in the first place to a sensible physician,
as Miss Margaret Stull urged him to do, he would undoubtedly have
been advised that it was mental friction that had set his face on
fire. To extinguish the conflagration he would have been told to
abandon speculative logic for a time and go a fishing.
But although the young man loved Miss Margaret Stull, or at
least loved her as much as it is possible to love one who feels
no interest in hypotheses, he had little respect for her opinion
in a matter such as the neuralgia. Instead of consulting with a
duly qualified member of the faculty of medicine, he rushed
across the bridge one morning, in a paroxysm of pain, to seek
counsel of Tithami Concannon, the very worst person, under the
circumstances, to whom he possibly could have applied.
Tithami was himself a speculative logician. He lived up four
pairs of stairs, and his one window overlooked a dreary expanse
of back yards and clotheslines. By a subtle process of reasoning
he knew that the window commanded a superb view of the sunset,
granted only that the sun rose in the west and set in the east.
As Tithami was aware, moreover, that east and west are relative
terms, arbitrarily employed, and that inherently and absolutely
there is no more reason why the sun should travel from east to
west than from west to east, he derived a great deal of enjoyment
from the sunsets he did notice. Such are the resources of
speculative logic.
Tithami owed his education to his name. Thomas Concannon, who
thirty years ago taught the Harvard freshmen how to pronounce the
digamma, died a month before Tithami was born. Poor little Mrs.
Concannon, sincerely desiring to compliment the memory of her
deceased husband, named the infant after a Greek verb which the
tutor had held in especial esteem, and of whose capabilities she
had often heard him speak with enthusiasm. Her family tried in
vain to persuade the simple-minded mother to give up the idea, or
at least to compromise on Timothy, approximate in form to the
heathen verb, but thoroughly respectable in its associations. She
would not yield—not one final iota—and Tithami the
baby was baptized. This queer christening proved both the making
and the marring of the child. A rich, eccentric great uncle,
mightily tickled by the unconscious humor of the appellation,
offered to give young Tithami the best schooling that money could
buy, and he kept his word, all the way from a kindergarten to
Heidelberg. At the latter institution Tithami learned so much
logic from the renowned Speisecartius, and went so deep into
metaphysics with the profound Zundholzer, that he thoroughly
unfitted himself for all practical work in life. He came home and
speedily argued his benevolent uncle to death, but not before the
old gentleman had stricken the logician from his will and
diverted his entire property to the endowment of an asylum for
deaf mutes.
"My dear Nicholas," said Tithami, when Vance had sung all
twelve books of his epic of pain, "you are the luckiest
individual in the city of Boston. I congratulate you from the
bottom of my heart. Take your hand away from your cheek and sit
down in that easy chair and rejoice."
"Thank you," groaned Vance, who knew the chair. "I prefer to
stand up."
"Well," said Tithami cheerfully, "stand up if it pleases you,
so long as you stand still. The floor creaks and my landlady, who
is absurdly fussy over a trifle of rent, has a way of rushing in
when the slightest noise reminds her of the fact of my existence.
You've read how, in the Alps, a breeze sometimes brings down an
avalanche?"
"Hang your landlady!" shouted Nicholas. "I came to you as a
friend, for sympathy, not to be jeered at."
"If you must walk up and down like a maniac, Nicholas,"
continued Tithami, "pardon me for suggesting that you keep off
that third plank from the fireplace. It's particularly loose. I
repeat, Nicholas, that you are a lucky dog. I would give my
dinners for a week for such a neuralgia."
"Can you do anything for me or not?" demanded Nicholas,
fiercely. "I don't like to exercise intimidation, but, by
Jupiter, if you don't stop chaffing, I'll raise a yell that will
start the avalanche."
A perceptible tremor passed over Tithami's frame. It was
evident that the threat was not ineffectual. He arose hastily and
assured himself that the door was securely bolted. Then he
returned to Vance and addressed him with considerable
impressiveness of manner.
"Nicholas," said he, "I was perfectly serious when I
congratulated you upon your neuralgia. You, like myself, are a
speculative logician. Although not in an entirely candid and
reasonable frame of mind just now, you will not, I am sure,
refuse a syllogism. Let me ask you two plain Socratic questions
and present one syllogism, and then I'll give you something that
will subdue your pain—under protest, mind you, for I shall
feel that I am wronging you, Nicholas."
"Confound your sense of justice!" exclaimed Nicholas. "I
accept the proposition."
"Well, answer me this. Do you like a hot Indian curry?"
"Nothing better," said Nicholas.
"But suppose someone had offered you a curry when you were
fifteen years younger—during the bread and milk era of
your gastronomic evolution. Would you have partaken of it with
signal pleasure?"
"No," said Vance. "I should have as soon thought of sucking
the red-hot end of a poker."
"Good. Now we will proceed to our syllogism. Here it is.
Sensations that are primarily disagreeable may become more or
less agreeable by a proper education of the senses. Physical pain
is primarily disagreeable. Therefore, even physical pain, by
judicious cultivation, may be made a source of exquisite
pleasure."
"That doesn't help my neuralgia," said Nicholas. "What does it
all mean, anyway?"
"I never heard you speak unkindly of a syllogism before," said
Tithami, sorrowfully. Then he took a small jar from a closet in
the corner and shook out of it a little pile of fine white
powder, of which he gave Nicholas as much as would cover an
old-fashioned copper cent. This he did with evident
reluctance.
"Come here tonight," he added, "at half past nine, and I will
try to show you what it all means, my young friend."
II
THE apprehension of a new and profoundly significant truth is
a slow process. As Nicholas walked home over the bridge he
pondered the syllogism which Tithami had advanced. When he
reached the front gate of the house where Miss Margaret Stull
lived, and saw that young lady in her flower garden watering
polyanthuses, it occurred to him for the first time that he had
forgotten his neuralgia.
He sat down on the doorstep and lighted a cigar. The kind
inquiries and gentle solicitude of his sweetheart made him rather
ashamed of himself. It was not dignified that a young philosopher
with a heroic malady should be sitting among polyanthuses,
forgetful of his misery, and actually experiencing that dull glow
of bodily self-satisfaction which a well-fed Newfoundland dog may
be supposed to enjoy when he lies in the sunshine. Nicholas felt
it his duty to subject the facts of the case to logical
analysis.
The first result obtained was the remarkable fact that the
pain was still present in all its intensity.
Upon closely examining his sensations, Vance could discover no
change in either the frequency or the acuteness of the nervous
pangs. At tolerably regular periods the stream of fire ran
throbbing through his face and temples. In the intervals of
recurrence there was the same dull aching which had made life
intolerable for days before. Nicholas, therefore, felt safe in
the induction that the powder administered by Tithami had not
cured the pain.
The astonishing thing was that ever since he had taken the
powder the pain had been a matter of indifference. Nicholas was
compelled to admit, as a candid logician, that he would not raise
a finger to rid himself of the neuralgia now. So strange was the
transformation wrought in his sensatory system that he even felt
a sort of satisfaction in the throbbing and the aching, and would
have been sorry, rather than glad, to have them cease. Indeed,
the more he thought about it the nearer he approached to the
conclusion that neuralgia, under the existing conditions, was a
luxury and something to be cherished.
When this idea was communicated to Miss Margaret Stull, she at
once became alarmed for his sanity, and ran to fetch her aunt
Penelope. That respectable and experienced maiden heard the
proposition stated without showing surprise or other emotion. Her
comment was comprised in a single word.
"Morphia," said Miss Penelope.
"Call it lotus or ambrosia," exclaimed Nicholas, "call it
morphia, or what you will. If there is a potency in the blessed
drug that can transform agony into joy, torment into delight,
make the forenoon's paroxysms of torture the pulsations of
ecstasy in the afternoon, why may it not be, as Tithami said,
that—but I'll go to Boston and ask him this very hour."
Nicholas paused, for both Miss Penelope and Margaret were
regarding him with amazement. Margaret looked bewildered, but on
her aunt's face there was a very peculiar expression, which he
afterward recalled most vividly.
"Mr. Vance," said Miss Penelope calmly, "the morphia is acting
on your head. Suppose you lie down on the sofa in the back
parlor, where it's cool and quiet, until suppertime. After a good
cup of tea you'll be in better condition to go to Boston, and I
shall be very glad of your escort. I'm to spend the evening with
some friends at the West End."
III
AT twenty-five minutes past nine Vance climbed the stairs that
led to Tithami's abode. He found the speculative logician arrayed
in full evening dress and just drawing on a pair of tight boots.
This surprised Nicholas. He had never known his friend to be
guilty of that folly before.
"Neuralgia's not so bad a thing, eh, Nicholas?" said Tithami,
gaily. "Something like a hot curry when your taste's educated up
to it. Great pity, though, to blunt the edge of your enjoyment
with morphine. It's like sprinkling sawdust over a fine raw
oyster. However, we'll soon have you educated beyond such crude
practices. I want you to go out with me."
"But I'm not dressed," said Nicholas.
Tithami went to the looking glass and complacently surveyed
his own rather rusty attire. "That makes no difference," said he;
"it won't be noticed. Now, if you'll have the goodness to go
downstairs first. If the coast is clear, whistle 'Annie Laurie,'
and I'll come right along. But if you observe at the foot of the
stairs a she-dragon, a female Borgia, a gorgon, a raging
Tisiphone in a black bombazine dress, whistle the 'Dead March'
from Saul, and I'll climb down the gutter pipe and join you at
the corner."
The coast happened to be clear, and the notes of﹃Annie
Laurie﹄brought Tithami to the street door close upon Nicholas'
heels. He led Vance through street after street, and turned
corner after corner, discoursing the while upon light topics with
the rattling air of a man about town. Nicholas had never seen
Tithami display such animal spirits before. He seemed to have
shaken off the mustiness of scholastic logic, and walked and
talked like a nineteenth-century blade on his way to a congenial
debauch.
"You were saying this morning," said Nicholas—timidly
opening a subject on which he very much desired
instruction—"you were saying that physical pain, being only
a relative term, inasmuch as the same sensations in a modified
degree often yield us what we call physical pleasure, might be
cultivated so as to be a source of exquisite enjoyment. Now it
seems to me that this theory—"
"Oh, bother theory," said Tithami, smartly and apparently with
purpose rapping his knuckles against a lamp post they were just
then passing. "What's the use talking of theory when you'll
shortly see the idea in actual practice?"
"But please tell me what you mean," persisted Nicholas, "by
pain's being only relative."
"Why," said Tithami, "who can draw the line, for example, that
marks the boundary between the comfortable feeling you have after
a good dinner, and the uncomfortable feeling you have after
eating too much? In one case the sensation is translated by your
brain into pleasure. In the other, the same sensation, only a
trifle more pronounced, is called pain. Are you as blind as a
newborn rabbit that you can't see, after sitting so long under
Professor Surdity, that the distinction between pain and pleasure
is nothing but a fallacy of words? Didn't your morphine
experience today prove that? Throw away the morphine and educate
your intelligence up to the proper standard and you get the same
result."
Here Tithami, as if wearied of parleying, stopped short and
began to dance a vigorous jig upon the pavement.
"Why do you dance if your boots are tight?" Nicholas ventured
to inquire.
"Simply because they are tight, and my feet very tender,"
replied Tithami.
Nicholas walked on in silence. Tithami's conduct became more
and more astonishing every minute. But Nicholas' surprise
culminated when his friend halted in front of a brick mansion
which had once been aristocratic. Tithami ascended the steps and
rang the doorbell with the air of one who has reached his
destination. No wonder Nicholas was surprised. It was to that
same door that he had escorted Margaret's aunt Penelope, not half
an hour earlier that very evening.
IV
NICHOLAS had once attended a meeting of the First Radical Club
in a private house not far from the one which he now entered. The
scene in the parlor recalled the session of the Advanced
Thinkers. About a dozen men and women, more or less progressive
in appearance, were sitting in chairs or on sofas listening to a
paper read in a mumbling voice by a tall gentleman who stood in a
corner and held his manuscript close to his spectacles. The essay
did not seem to excite much enthusiasm. There were more empty
chairs than auditors.
When Nicholas and Tithami were ushered in, nearly all the
company arose and greeted the latter silently but with every
evidence of profound respect. Indeed, the salutations were almost
oriental in their obsequiousness.
"You are quite a rooster here, Tithami," whispered Vance,
irreverently.
"Hush!" Tithami whispered in return. "It was I who first
brought this idea from Heidelberg to Boston. It is simply their
gratitude for a great boon. But listen to the essay."
The speaker was just then saying: "Let it be postulated that
the principle which we hold is the true arcanum, the actual
earthly paradise, and let it be also postulated that we shall
progress from the material to the intellectual in the development
of this principle, and who can escape the conclusion from these
premises? As we advance in the self-discipline that already
enables us to derive the highest physical pleasure from
sensations that have been deemed a curse since Cain's first
colic, we shall find still loftier joys in the region of mental
pain. I firmly believe that the time is not distant when to the
initiated the death of a wife or husband will be a keener joy
than the first kiss at the altar, the bankruptcy of a fortune a
truer source of elation than the receipt of a legacy, the
disappointment of ambition more welcome than the fruition of
hope. This is but the logical—"
Nicholas could no longer contain himself. He knew the voice,
the style of reasoning, the spectacles. He had listened too often
and too intently to the lectures of Professor Surdity of Harvard
College to mistake him for another, or another for him. He
uttered a low whistle. Tithami checked him on the very edge of
another.
"Above all things," he whispered, "show no astonishment at
anything you may see or hear. And take special care to recognize
nobody you meet, even if it is your own grandmother. The
etiquette of the place requires that much of you."
Tithami now arose and beckoned Nicholas to follow him out of
the room. "This is slow," said he. "The professor is inclined to
be prosy. A few of the old fogies of our number like to sit and
listen to him. They are probably trying to carry his principle to
the extent of deriving excitement from a painful bore. We mustn't
waste time here. Let's go to the symposium."
A passageway, screened by heavy curtains, led to an extension
apartment that originally had been built for a painting gallery.
It had no windows. The skylight overhead had been removed and the
room was as completely sequestered as the inner chamber of one of
the pyramids of Gizeh. On a table in the middle of the apartment
a repast was laid. The table was surrounded by broad couches,
like the lecti of the Romans, on which several persons
were reclining. A few were eating, but the majority seemed
wrapped in the sufficiency of inactive bliss. In the corners of
the room Nicholas observed several bulky machines of wood. The
place seemed half banquet hall, half gymnasium.
As had been the case in the outer parlors, all the company
arose and saluted Tithami with marked deference. This was done
almost mechanically, and as if a matter of course. Of Nicholas'
presence the Pain Epicures apparently took no more notice than
the inmates of a Chinese opium den would have done. There was a
dreamy languor upon the company that made the locality seem not
unlike an opium den.
Tithami went directly to a sideboard and poured from a
decanter a brimming draft.
"It is aqua fortis," he explained, "diluted, of course,
but strong enough to take the skin from the lips, and set the
mouth and throat a-burning. You will try a glass? No? It would be
no stronger to your taste than raw brandy is to a child's. The
child grows up and learns to like brandy. You will grow to esteem
this tipple. Ah, Doctor! A glass with you. How are you enjoying
yourself nowadays?"
In the gentleman who approached at this moment, and whom
Tithami thus addressed, Nicholas recognized one of the most
eminent of Boston physicians, celebrated as a skillful
practitioner all through the eastern States. The doctor shook his
head at Tithami's polite question.
"Poorly, very poorly," he replied. "The moxa yields me no more
pleasure now than a mere cup blister or leeching. I'd give half
my income to be able to enjoy a simple neuralgia as I used
to."
Tithami gave Nicholas a significant look.
"And yet," continued the doctor, musingly, "the blind,
ignorant fools who employ me professionally insist on taking
chloroform for a trifling amputation. I suppose they won't have a
tooth drawn without anesthesia. What a pity that a luxury like
pain cannot be monopolized by those who can appreciate it!"
"With your resources and pathological knowledge," suggested
Tithami, "you ought to keep abreast of your pain progress and
avoid ennui."
"I try everything," rejoined the medical gentleman, with a
sigh. "Did it ever occur to you, Tithami," he continued, with
more animation, "that if one could find some stimulant that would
arouse the entire nervous system to acuter sensibility than any
agent now known, he might make himself conscious of the
circulation of the blood. How delightful it would be to actually
feel the hot tide rushing along the arteries, oozing through the
capillaries, coursing the veins, and surging into the aorta! Why,
it would lend a new piquancy to existence."
"He is one of the most advanced of us," said Tithami to
Nicholas after the doctor had passed on. "But he goes too fast. I
believe in moderation in pain, as in all other enjoyments. By
being temperate in my indulgences I keep the edge keen. By using
the moxa three or four times a day the doctor killed the goose
that laid the golden eggs. He's not enough of a philosopher to be
an epicure."
"Have all your friends here advanced as far as the doctor?"
asked Nicholas.
"Oh dear no! You understand that as one progresses the dose
must be increased. While a beginner may be contented with a
toothache, or may satiate himself by eating green watermelons for
the colic, like that young man yonder, or by sticking pins in the
calf of his leg, as those three gentlemen on the left-hand couch
are doing at this moment, there are others, of more cultivated
appetites, who must have the higher grades of pain. Yet it's the
same thing in all stages. Some are content to be rational in
their dissipations; others plunge into extremes. I have in mind a
banker, not present tonight, who became so infatuated with the
use of an old-fashioned thumbscrew which he picked up in some
curiosity shop, that he takes it in his pocket to the office and
uses it surreptitiously during business hours. I have no patience
with such a man. He must either degenerate into a secret
voluptuary or else set a bad example to his clerks."
"I should think so!" said Nicholas.
"Now here's a very different character," continued Tithami, as
a burly German approached. "He's satisfied with the simplest
pleasures. Good evening, mein Herr. You are all smiles
tonight."
"Ach Gott!" said the Teuton, "but I have one lovely
head woe. I have been—how say you it?—ge-butting
mein kopf unt de wall."
"And over there," Tithami went on, after congratulating the
German on his method, "is one of the rarest examples of besotted
folly that I could possibly show you. That man with his hand tied
up in a cloth and a serene smile on his face was ass enough one
day to cut off the tip of his little finger for the sake of the
temporary gratification he had from the smart. He is a lawyer in
good practice and ought to know better. Well, the wound healed,
and his enjoyment was over. So he cut off a fresh slice, a little
further down. Thus it went on, little by little, till now he has
nothing but the stumps of seven fingers and a thumb to show for
his sport. He's begun on the eighth finger already, and I'll
wager that he lays his next case before the jury with a solitary
thumb."
A strident creaking now attracted Nicholas' attention to one
of the wooden machines in the corner. Proceeding thither,
followed by Tithami, he beheld an extraordinary spectacle. The
machine rudely resembled an overshot water wheel. It was operated
by a crank at which a brawny African of decorous demeanor was
laboring. Upon the rim of the wheel, lashed hand and foot, was
stretched a fleshy citizen of middle age and highly respectable
appearance. He was in his shirt sleeves, and the perspiration
stood in great beads upon his brow, but his face bore an
expression of ineffable felicity. At every exertion of the darky
at the crank the strain upon the fat epicure's muscles and joints
increased. The tension seemed to be terrific, yet Nicholas heard
him whisper, in a voice almost inaudible, but ecstatic beyond
description, "Give her one more turn, George Washington, one
—more—little—yank—"
"I was just now speaking," said Tithami, "of the higher grades
of pain. Here you have an example. The fat gentleman is a
well-known capitalist and also a man of leisure, like myself. He
lives on Beacon Street. He is something of an enthusiast in the
pursuit of pain novelties. He bought that machine at Madrid and
presented it to the association. It is an undoubted original of
the instrument of torture known as the rack, and is said to have
been used by the Inquisition. At all events it is still in good
working order. With a capable man at the crank it affords an
amount of refined pleasure which I hope you will someday be able
to appreciate."
Nicholas shuddered and turned away from the rack. By this time
there were thirty-five or forty epicures in the room. The company
had been increased by the party from the parlors, Professor
Surdity's essay being at last concluded. There was more bustle
and activity among the epicures than earlier in the evening. The
intoxication of pain was working its effect and the revel was
growing reckless and noisy.
"Let us see what they are doing," said Nicholas.
"Make yourself perfectly at home," replied Tithami, politely.
"I told you your presence would not be noticed. Go wherever you
please, and if you feel like testing any of our appliances, don't
hesitate to do so. But if you'll kindly excuse me for a few
minutes, I think I'll take the next turn on the rack."
The revel went on with increasing zest. The hum of delirious
voices mingled with the creaking of two or three of the
instruments of torture. On one side Nicholas saw a sedate party
consisting of two philosophers and half a dozen theological
students. They were sitting on a bench cushioned with the sharp
points of tacks, and were discussing the immortality of the soul
in a most animated manner. Several epicures had taken a hint from
the German, and were butting their craniums against the wall. A
young man, evidently inexperienced in the luxuries of pain,
seemed to derive exquisite pleasure from the simplest form of
torture. He had inserted one finger in the joint of a lemon
squeezer, and was grimacing with callow delight as he pressed
together the handles of the utensil with his other hand. Two
doctors of divinity had stripped themselves to the waist, and
were obligingly flagellating each other in turn with willow
switches. It was creditable to their sense of equity that the
reciprocal service was performed with exact fairness, both in
regard to time and in regard to the energy with which the blows
were administered. Nicholas observed that, as a rule, the
intoxication of pain made men selfish. Wrapped in the felicity of
his own sensations, each epicure had little concern for the
enjoyment of those around him.
That, however, was not the case with a group of men and women
who had gathered at the remotest end of the apartment. There was
a buzz of conversation there, and a manifest display of interest,
as over some great novelty. The crowd was applauding the inventor
of a new appliance. Nicholas pushed his way into the group, and
then suddenly started back dumbfounded.
A woman of middle age sat on an ottoman, her foot in a basket
that was tightly covered over with cloth. A shoe and a stocking
lay on the floor. The woman's hair was disordered and her face
flushed with unhealthy excitement. With the abandon of a mad
bacchante, she began to sing a lively but incoherent song. Her
rather shrill voice floated into the uncertain quavers of
hysterical rapture. Nicholas turned to a bystander.﹃What has she
in the basket?﹄he demanded.
"Six nests of hornets," was the answer. "Isn't it beautiful?
It's the discovery of the age, and to think that a lady should be
the first!"
Nicholas was almost stupefied with horror and disgust. He knew
the basket, for he had brought it from Cambridge. He knew the
lady, for she was Margaret's aunt Penelope. Margaret's aunt the
central figure in such an orgy! He pushed his way to the front
and stood before the frantic woman. She looked up, and a cloudy
expression of dim remembrance and uncertain shame came over her
face. "Put on your shoe!" he sternly said. Mechanically she
obeyed. Nicholas kicked aside the basket, and there was a fierce
struggle among the epicures for the possession of the treasure.
The young man heeded not their rivalry. He took Miss Penelope by
the arm and led her out of the unholy place, out of the house.
The fresh night air brought her partially to her senses. She hung
her head and accompanied him in silence.
The last car for Cambridge was just starting from the square.
During the long ride not a word was said by Nicholas, and not a
word by his companion. At the door of the house the silence was
first broken. Nicholas looked up from the ground. The moon
lighted the window of the room where Margaret was innocently
sleeping.
"For Margaret's sake and for your own sake, Miss Penelope,"
said Nicholas, in a low but firm voice, "swear to me never to
visit that place again."
Miss Penelope's frame shook with agitation. She sobbed
violently. She looked first at Nicholas and then at Margaret's
window. At last she spoke.
"I swear it!" said Miss Penelope.
8. — A DAY AMONG THE LIARS
Published in the New York Sun, 23 August 1885
MY Dear Friend: You will no doubt be glad to hear about the
newly established infirmary at Lugville. I visited it a few days
ago in company with Mr. Merkle, a Boston lawyer, whom I happened
to meet upon the train. On the way down he gave me a most
interesting account of the endowment of this institution by the
late Lorin Jenks, to whose discriminating philanthropy the world
owes a charity that is not less novel in its conception than
noble and practical in its aim.
Mr. Lorin Jenks, as you know, was president of the Saco
Stocking and Sock Mills. He was a bachelor, and a very remarkable
man. He made a million dollars one day by observing women as they
purchased hose in a cheap store in Tremont Row. Mr. Jenks noticed
that females who hesitated a good while about paying fifty cents
a pair for plain white stockings eagerly paid seventy-five cents
for the same quality ornamented with red clocks at the ankles. It
cost twenty-two cents a pair to manufacture the stockings. The
red flosselle for the clocks cost a quarter of a cent.
"That observation," said Mr. Merkle, "was the foundation of
Jenks's great fortune. The Saco Mills immediately stopped making
plain hosiery. From that time forth Jenks manufactured nothing
but stockings with red clocks, which he retailed at sixty cents.
I am told that there is not a woman under sixty-five in
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, or Vermont who does not own
at least half a dozen pairs of poor Jenks's sixty-cent red
clockers."
"That fact," said I, "would interest Mr. Matthew Arnold. It
shows that sweetness and light—"
"Pardon me. It shows that Jenks was a practical man, as well
as a philosopher. Busy as he was during his life, he took great
interest in politics, like all sensible citizens. He was also a
metaphysician. He closely followed contemporary speculative
thought, inclining, until shortly before his death, to the
Hegelian school. Every midsummer, he left the stocking mill to
run itself and repaired joyfully to Concord to listen to the
lectures in the apple orchard. It is my private opinion that
Messrs. Plato, Kant & Co. bled him pretty heavily for the
privilege. But at Concord Jenks acquired new ideas as to his duty
to the race."
Mr. Merkle paused to hand his ticket to the conductor.
"During the last years of his life, inasmuch as he was known
to be eccentric, philanthropic, and without a family, Jenks was
much beset by people who sought to interest him in various
schemes for the amelioration of the human race. A week before he
died he sent for me.
"'Merkle,' says he, 'I want you to draw me a will so leathery
that no shark in Pemberton Square can bite it in two.'
"'Well,' says I, 'what is it now, Jenks?'
"'I wish,' says he, 'to devote my entire fortune to the
endowment of an institution, the idea of which occurred to me at
Concord.'
"'That's right,' said I, rather sharply. 'Put honest money
made in red clock hose into the Concord windmill—that's a
fine final act for a summer philosopher.'
"'Wait a minute,' said Jenks, and I fancied I saw a smile
around the corners of his mouth. 'It isn't the Concord school I
want to endow, although I don't deny there may be certain
expectations in and around the orchard. But why spend money in
teaching wisdom to the wise?' And then he proceeded to unfold his
noble plan for the foundation of an Infirmary for the
Mendacious."
The train was hauling up at the platform of the Lugville
station.
"A few days later," continued the lawyer, as we arose from our
seats, "this far-seeing and public-spirited citizen died. By the
terms of his will, the income of $1,500,000 in governments,
Massachusetts sixes, Boston and Albany stock, and sound first
mortgages on New England property is devoted to the infirmary,
under the direction of thirteen trustees. How the trust has been
administered, you will see for yourself in a few minutes."
We were met at the door of the infirmary by a pleasant-faced
gentleman who spoke with a slight German accent and introduced
himself as the assistant superintendent.
"Excuse me," said he, politely, "but which of you is the
patient?"
"Oh, neither," replied Merkle, with a laugh. "I am the counsel
for the Board, and this gentleman is merely a visitor who is
interested in the workings of the institution."
"Ah, I see," said the assistant superintendent. "Will you
kindly walk this way?"
We entered the office, and he handed me a book and a pen.
"Please inscribe your name," said he, "in the Visitors' Book." I
did so, and then turned to speak to Merkle, but the lawyer had
disappeared.
"Our system," said the assistant superintendent, "is very
simple. The theory of the institution is that the habit of
mendacity, which in many cases becomes chronic, is a moral
disease, like habitual inebriety, and that it can generally be
cured. We take the liar who voluntarily submits himself to our
treatment, and for six months we submit him to the forcing
process. That is, we encourage him in lying, surround him with
liars, his equals and superiors in skill, and cram him with
falsehood until he is fairly saturated. By this time the reaction
has set in, and the patient is usually starved for the truth. He
is prepared to welcome the second course of treatment. For the
next half year the opposite method is pursued. The satiated and
disgusted liar is surrounded by truthful attendants, encouraged
to peruse veracious literature, and by force of lectures,
example, and moral influence brought to understand how much more
creditable it is to say the thing which is than the thing which
is not. Then we send him back into the world; and I must say that
cases of relapse are infrequent."
"Do you find no incurables?" I asked.
"Yes," said the assistant superintendent, "once in a while.
But an incurable liar is better off here in the infirmary than
outside, and it is better for the outside community to have him
here."
Somebody came in, bringing a new patient. After sending for
the superintendent, the assistant invited me to follow him.﹃I
will show you how our patients live, and how they amuse
themselves,﹄he said. "We will go first, if you please, through
the left wing, where the saturating process may be observed."
He led the way across a hall into a large room, comfortably
furnished, and occupied by two dozen or more gentlemen, some
reading, some writing, while others sat or stood in groups
engaged in animated talk. Indeed, had it not been for the iron
bars at the windows, I might have fancied myself in the lounging
room of a respectable club. My guide stopped to speak to an
inmate who was listlessly turning the leaves of a well-thumbed
copy of Baron Münchausen, and left me standing near enough to one
of the groups to overhear parts of the conversation.
"My rod creaked and bent double," a stout, red-faced gentleman
was saying, "and the birch spun like a teetotum [top]. I tell you
if Pierre Chaveau hadn't had the presence of mind to grip the
most convenient part of my trousers with the boat hook, I should
have been dragged into the lake in two seconds or less. Well,
sir, we fought sixty-nine minutes by actual time taking, and when
I had him in, and had got him back to the hotel, he tipped the
scale, the speckled beauty did, at thirty-seven pounds and
eleven-sixteenths, whether you believe it or not."
"Nonsense," said a quiet little gentleman who sat opposite.
"That is impossible."
The first speaker looked flattered at this and colored with
pleasure. "Nevertheless," he retorted, "it's a fact, on my honor
as a sportsman. Why do you say it's impossible?"
"Because," said the other, calmly, "it is an ascertained
scientific fact, as every true fisherman in this room knows
perfectly well, that there are no trout in Mooselemagunticook
weighing under half a hundred."
"Certainly not," put in a third speaker. "The bottom of the
lake is a sieve—a sort of schistose sieve
formation—and all the fish smaller than the fifty-pounders
fall through."
"Why doesn't the water drop through, too?" asked the stout
patient, in a triumphant tone.
"It used to," replied the quiet gentleman gravely, "until the
Maine legislature passed an act preventing it."
My guide rejoined me and we went on across the room.﹃These
sportsman liars,﹄he said, "are among the mildest and most easily
cured cases that come here. We send them away in from six to nine
weeks' time with the habit broken up and pledged not to fish or
hunt any more. The man who lies about the fish he has caught, or
about the intelligence of his red setter dog is often in all
other respects a trustworthy citizen. Yet such cases form nearly
forty per cent of all our patients."
"What are the most obstinate cases?"
"Undoubtedly those which you will see in the Travelers' and
Politicians' wards of the infirmary. The more benign cases, such
as the fishermen liars, the society liars, the lady-killer or
bonnes fortunes liars, the Rocky Mountain and frontier
liars [excepting Texas cases], the railroad prospectus liars, the
psychical research liars, and the miscellaneous liars of various
classes, we permit during the first stage of treatment to mingle
freely with each other. The effect is good. But we keep the
Travelers and the Politicians strictly isolated."
He was about to conduct me out of the room by a door opposite
that through which we had entered when a detached phrase uttered
by a pompous gentleman arrested my attention.
"Scipio Africanus once remarked to me—"
"There couldn't be a better example," said my guide, as we
passed out of the room, "of what we call the forcing system in
the treatment of mendacity. That patient came to us voluntarily
about two months ago. The form of his disease is a common one.
Perfectly truthful in all other respects, he cannot resist the
temptation to claim personal acquaintance and even intimacy with
distinguished individuals. His friends laughed at him so much for
this weakness that when he heard of the establishment of the
infirmary he came here like a sensible man, and put himself under
our care. He is doing splendidly. When he found that his
reminiscences of Beaconsfield and Bismarck and Victor Hugo
created no sensation here, but were, on the contrary, at once
matched and capped by still more remarkable experiences narrated
by other inmates, he was at first a little staggered. But the
habit is so strong, and the peculiar vanity that craves
admiration on this score is so exacting, that he began to extend
his acquaintance, gradually and cautiously, back into the past.
Soon we had him giving reminiscences of Talleyrand, of Thomas
Jefferson, and of Lord Cornwallis. Observe the psychologic effect
of our system. The ordinary checks on the performances of such a
liar being removed, and, no doubt, suspicion, nor even wonder
being expressed at any of his anecdotes, he has gone back through
Voltaire and William the Silent to Charlemagne, and so on. There
happens to be in the institution another patient with precisely
the same trouble. They are, therefore, in active competition, and
each serves to force the other back more rapidly. Not long ago I
heard our friend in here describing one of Heliogabalus'
banquets, which he had attended as an honored guest. Why, I was
there, too!' cried the other liar. 'It was the night they gave us
the boar's head stuffed with goose giblets and that delicious dry
Opimian muscadine.'"
"Well," I asked, "and what is your prognosis in this
case?"
"Just now the two personal reminiscence liars are driving each
other back through ancient history at the rate of about three
centuries a week. The flood isn't likely to stop them. Before
long they will be matching reminiscences of the antediluvian
patriarchs, and then they'll bring up square on Adam. They can't
go any further than Adam. By that time they will be ready for the
truth-cure process; and after a few weeks spent in an atmosphere
of strict veracity in the other wing of the infirmary, they'll go
out into the world again perfectly cured, and much more useful
citizens than before they came to us."
We went upstairs and saw the scrupulously neat bedrooms which
the patients occupy; through the separate wards where the
isolated classes are treated; across to the right wing of the
building and into a lecture room where the convalescent liars
were gathered to hear a most interesting dissertation on﹃The
Inexpediency of Falsehood from the Legal Point of View.﹄I was
not surprised to recognize in the lecturer my railroad
acquaintance, the Boston lawyer, Merkle.
On our way back to the reception room, or office, we met a
pleasant-looking gentleman about forty years old.﹃He is a
well-known society man,﹄the assistant superintendent whispered
as the inmate approached, "and he was formerly the most politely
insincere person in America. Nobody could tell when he was
uttering the truth, or, indeed, whether he ever did utter the
truth. His habit became so exaggerated that his relatives induced
him to come to Lugville for treatment. I am glad to have you see
him, for he is a good example of a radical cure. We shall be
ready to discharge him by the first of next week."
The cured liar was about to pass us, but the assistant
superintendent stopped him. "Mr. Van Ransevoort," he said, "let
me make you acquainted with this gentleman, who has been
inspecting our system."
"I am glad to meet you, Mr. Van Ransevoort," I said.
He raised his hat and made me an unexceptionable bow. "And I,"
he replied, with a smile of charming courtesy, "am neither glad
nor sorry to meet you, sir. I simply don't care a damn."
The somewhat startling candor of his words was so much at
variance with the perfect politeness of his manner that I was
taken aback. I stammered something about not desiring to intrude.
But as he still stood there as if expecting the conversation to
be continued, I added, "I suppose you are looking forward to your
release next week?"
"Yes, sir," he replied, "I shall be rather glad to get out
again, but my wife will be sorry."
I looked at the assistant superintendent. He returned a glance
full of professional pride.
"Well, good-by, Mr. Van Ransevoort," I said. "Perhaps I shall
have the pleasure of meeting you again."
"I hope not, sir; it's rather a bore," said he, shaking my
hand most cordially, and giving the assistant superintendent a
friendly nod as he passed on.
I could fill many more pages than I have time to write with
descriptions of what I saw in the infirmary. Intelligence and
thoroughness were apparent in all of the arrangements. I
encountered and conversed with liars of more variation and degree
of mendacity than you would believe had distinct existence. The
majority of the cases were commonplace enough. Liars of real
genius seem to be as rare inside the establishment as they are
outside. I became convinced from my observations during the
profitable afternoon which I spent at Lugville that chronic
mendacity is a disease, as the assistant superintendent said, and
that it is amenable, in a great number of cases, to proper
treatment. On the importance of the experiment that is being
carried on at Lugville with so much energy and apparent success,
it is not necessary to dilate.
I sincerely hope that you will not misconstrue my motives in
laying the matter before you; and I cannot too strongly urge you
to go down to Lugville yourself at the earliest opportunity. You
ought to see with your own eyes how admirably Lorin Jenks's
bequest is administered, and what a prospect of reform and
regeneration the infirmary's system holds out to unfortunates.
The regular visitors' day is Wednesday. No doubt they would admit
you at any time.
9. — OUR WAR WITH MONACO
Published in the New York Sun, 07 March 1880
I
WHEN I last visited Monaco I found that enlightened community
in a state of exasperation against everything that is American. I
even detected covert hostility in the manner of M. Berg of the
Beau Rivage Hotel, who had formerly received me with so much
politeness. After breakfast, during which meal the waiter glared
at me with undisguised hatred, I went to pay my respects to our
diplomatic representative, an acquaintance of old in Ohio. The
consul's face was haggard, as if from protracted anxiety. He was
putting the final touches to an elaborate toilet.
"What is the trouble, Green?" I demanded.
The consul sighed repeatedly while he was framing his reply.
The excellent fellow had a habit of adorning his ordinary
conversation with the phraseology of an official dispatch. This
process required more or less time, but the effect was
impressive.
"I must inform you," he said, "that the relations between the
United States and the Independent Principality of Monaco, cordial
as they have been in the past, are approaching a crisis full of
peril. Recent events justify the apprehensions which I have from
time to time expressed in my communications to the Department of
State at Washington. It would be folly to conceal the fact that
the present attitude of the court of Prince Charles III is
anything but friendly to our own government; or that the
situation is one which calls for the utmost watchfulness and the
most delicate diplomacy. I have the honor to add that I shall be
both prudent and firm."
"Yes," said I; "but what is the row about?"
"The complication," he replied, emphasizing that word, "arises
partly from the dark intrigues of the crafty statesmen who
surround the prince, and partly from the behavior of Americans
here and at Nice, particularly Titus."
"And who the deuce is Titus?"
"George Washington Titus," he replied, with a look full of
gloom, "is a man whose existence and acts embitter my official
career; yet I am constantly yielding to the remarkable influence
which he exerts over me, as over most people with whom he comes
in contact. George Washington Titus is a perpetual source of
danger to the peace that has been maintained so long between the
United States and Monaco; yet when he is with me I cannot help
being carried away by the reckless enthusiasm of his nature. To
employ a colloquialism, he has kept me in hot water ever since he
arrived. Pardon me; but, privately and personally and apart from
my official capacity, I sometimes say to myself, 'Confound George
Washington Titus!'"
"Now," I remarked, "I am just as wise as I was before."
"The story is a long one, and, as in every affair of
international moment, the details are many and complicated. I am
about to have an interview with the hereditary prince, and shall
officially request an explanation of certain things. Come with me
to the palace. I will give you the facts as we walk."
It is only a step from the American consulate to the palace,
and the consul's narrative advanced slowly, owing to the dignity
of its periods. For convenience, I had better join what he told
me on this occasion with what I afterward learned respecting the
difficulty.
Since 1869, when Prince Charles III abolished taxation, the
revenue of the government of Monaco has been derived exclusively
from the gaming tables at the casino. The prince's subjects,
nearly six thousand souls, have been prosperous and happy, having
no taxes to pay and plenty of travelers to fleece. The income
from the casino has been large enough to meet all administrative
expenses, to support the court in a style befitting the
importance of the oldest reigning family in Europe—for
Prince Charles traces his line of descent directly back to the
Grimaldi of the tenth century—and to leave a handsome
annual surplus, part of which has been wisely devoted to a system
of internal improvements.
In pursuit of this policy, it had been determined about a year
before to blast out the large rock at the mouth of the cove
behind the palace. The prince's Navy, which consists of a steam
launch of about twelve tons burden, armed with a swivel gun, is
accustomed to ride at anchor in this cove when not actively
engaged. The rock seriously impeded the free ingress and egress
of the Navy. The contract for the work of removal was awarded by
Roasio, Minister of Marine, to Titus, an American engineer.
Up to the time of Titus' arrival in Monaco, the Americans had
been popular with the subjects of the prince. They were liberal
in expending money, rarely disputed reckoning at the hotels,
cafes, and shops, and contributed largely to the revenue of the
casino. The official pathway of my friend, the consul, had lain
over rose beds. Titus himself won much applause at first. He was
a tall, good-looking Baltimorean, who had been major of Engineers
in the Union Army. A genial and sometimes roistering companion of
men, gallant in his bearing toward the ladies of the court,
skillful in his attack on the obnoxious rock, he had enjoyed for
a time a pronounced success in Monaco. The people watched with
pride the operations of his divers, the work of his steam dredge,
the arrival and unloading of the square tin cans of dynamite
which came consigned to him from Marseilles. He was in a measure
identified with the mysterious forces of nature, and therefore a
little feared; but it was generally conceded that he deserved
well of the inhabitants.
Soon, however, he was unfortunate enough to incur the
displeasure of several very influential personages; and although
he himself cared not a copper for the frown of any dignitary on
the peninsula, the consul, who felt more or less responsible for
him, thenceforth trod on thorns. Titus' decline in prestige was
due to several causes.
One night, being in his cups, he had knocked down M. De
Mussly, the generalissimo of the Army, who had ventured to
remonstrate with him for practicing the war whoop of the American
Indian in the public square in front of the palace. On receiving
a challenge the next morning from the outraged warrior, Titus had
laughed, and offered to swim with De Mussly due south across the
Mediterranean until one or the other should be drowned. The
affair was brought to the attention of the Tribunal Supérieur by
M. Goybet, Advocate-General, but Consul Green succeeded in having
the charge suppressed.
Then followed another misadventure, far worse than the De
Mussly incident. At a grand ball at the casino, Titus
deliberately excused himself from dancing a fifth polka with the
Princess Florestine, sister of the reigning prince. This august
lady is a widow, who, in spite of her fifty years and two hundred
pounds, has managed to preserve the impulses and tastes of maiden
youth. If rumor was to be credited, she was not unkindly disposed
toward the good-looking American engineer. When Titus was asked
by a friend why he chose to fly in the face of Providence, he
replied, "I had already danced four times with the princess. The
old lady ought to remember that people go to balls for pleasure."
This remark, of course, came to the ears of the princess, and
thereafter she devoted every energy to the accomplishment of
Titus' ruin.
The unlucky American next provoked the hostility of the
all-powerful authorities at the casino, by introducing the game
of poker as a rival, in private society, to the public
attractions of roulette and rouge et noir. The new heresy spread
like wildfire. In Monaco and in Nice people lost money to each
other, instead of to the bank, as formerly. Receipts at the
casino fell off more than one half. In vain the Administration
procured a deliverance from the ecclesiastical authorities,
declaring the game immoral. People still played poker. Worse than
all, Titus and his disciples turned the terrible new engine
against the subjects of the prince, and won their money. This was
a startling innovation, and it awakened deep resentment. It was
said that no less a personage than Monsignor Theuret, the Grand
Almoner, having won thirteen thousand francs at roulette on a
succession of three seventeens, lost the entire amount the next
night at poker to Titus, and as much more besides; and that he
was obliged to give his note for a large sum to the American.
This was a specimen case.
As the prosperity of the people of Monaco rested wholly upon
the prosperity of the casino, popular indignation rose high
against the Americans, especially Titus. The poker question found
a place in politics. Titus' enemies were unceasing in their
efforts to undermine him at the court and neglected no means to
inflame the prejudices of the populace.
II
SUCH, then, was the situation when I accompanied Consul Green
to the palace.
At the threshold of the mansion inhabited by the descendants
of the Grimaldi, we encountered a gorgeous usher wearing a heavy
gold chain upon the breast of his crimson velvet robe. He led the
way across an inner court and up a flight of marble steps, at the
top of which he surrendered us, with a magnificent bow, to the
keeping of M. Ponsard, Commandant of the Palace. Ponsard, in his
turn, conducted us along a corridor and through a series of
stately apartments to the office of the First Chamberlain, who
after some delay ushered us into the presence of the Grand
Almoner of the prince's Household. This eminent individual was
seated at a desk writing. He greeted Green ceremoniously. He was
aware that Monsieur the American Minister had audience that
morning of the hereditary prince; but His Serene Highness was
just now reviewing the Army in the piazza before the palace. His
Serene Highness would soon return. If Monsieur the Minister and
his friend would like to witness the pageant, there was an
admirable view of the piazza from the balcony of the Salon des
Muses, the third apartment to the left. The chamberlain would
show the way.
"A polite old gentleman," I remarked, as we followed the
chamberlain to the Salon des Muses.
"That extraordinary man," whispered Green, with a touch of awe
in his voice, "is Monsignor Theuret, one of the most astute
statesmen in Europe. His influence at court is practically
boundless. He combines ecclesiastical with secular functions,
being apostolic administrator and bishop of Hermopolis, and at
the same time Grand Almoner of the household and superintendent
of the third Salle of the casino. Being one of the chief leaders
of the anti-Titus party, he both hates and fears me; yet did you
observe how well he dissembled?"
"It strikes me," said I, "that this doubling up of offices is
rather droll."
"It is necessary," returned Green, with perfect gravity, "in
Monaco, where the total population is not large. The First
Chamberlain, ahead of us here, as well as the Commandant of the
Palace, and the usher with the gold chain act at night as
croupiers at the casino. Chevalier Voliver, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, leads the casino orchestra. He is an excellent musician
and rather friendly to our interests, inasmuch as I have on
several occasions rendered him trifling services of a pecuniary
nature. But I must admit that, in statecraft, the Chevalier is
weak and irresolute. He is hardly more than the tool and creature
of Monsignor Theuret, whose ambition is as limitless as his
ability is diabolical."
The First Chamberlain left us on the balcony. Thence we
commanded a view, not only of the piazza below, but of nearly the
entire principality. One could have fired a pistol ball into the
Mediterranean, either to the west or to the south, and to the
north the French frontier was within long rifle range. The palace
itself shut off the eastward view, but Green informed me that the
sea boundary on that side, with the cove where the Navy rode at
anchor, was scarcely a stone's throw away. Opposite us were the
grounds of the casino, the long stuccoed façade, the round
concert kiosque, the theater, the restaurants, and the shops of
the bazaar. Above this seductive establishment floated a captive
balloon, in which visitors might ascend to the length of the rope
for twenty francs the trip.
From the balloon overhead I turned my attention to the
spectacle in the open piazza in front of the palace. Sidewalks,
steps, doorways, and windows were thronged with loyal subjects of
Charles III. Directly beneath us, on a fine black stallion, sat
the hereditary prince, motionless as a statue. The Army of
Monaco, commanded by the intrepid De Mussly, marched and
counter-marched before him, exhibiting its proficiency in all the
evolutions known to modern military science. In their smart red
uniforms and white cockades, the thirty-two carabineers, who
constitute the effective force under De Mussly, presented a truly
formidable appearance, wheeling to and fro. The generalissimo had
drilled them to march with that peculiarly vicious fling of the
legs which is taught in Prussian tactics; and when they came
kicking across the square in fours, wheeled suddenly into a
sixteen-front line, halted before the hereditary prince, and
grounded arms with a simultaneous clang of thirty-two carbine
butts against the pavement, bravo after bravo arose from the
delighted spectators, while a smile of proud gratification rested
for an instant upon His Serene Highness's countenance.
Just then I observed the eccentric actions of an individual
halfway across the square, who seemed to be trying to attract our
notice. He whistled through his knuckles, waved both arms in the
air, and then, apparently dissatisfied with the result of these
demonstrations, snatched a gun from the nearest soldier and
raised his own silk hat on the muzzle high above the heads of the
crowd. Having restored the gun to the astonished warrior, he
expressed his low opinion of the Army, for our benefit, by means
of a derisive pantomime, and began to elbow his way through the
ranks toward us.
"It is Titus," groaned Green. "He is continually compromising
me in some such way."
The consul endeavored in vain to discountenance our fellow
citizen below, by staring fixedly in another direction. Titus was
not to be snubbed. He shouted, "Hi! Green," and, "Oh! Green,"
until he obtained the full attention of my embarrassed
companion.
"Be sure to be at home by two o'clock, Green," roared Titus.
"I have important news." Thereupon he gleefully flourished before
our faces what looked like an official document and hurried
away.
When the First Chamberlain came to summon Green to his
interview with the hereditary prince, I returned to the consulate
to await him. He rejoined me at a little before two o'clock.
"Well, what luck?" I inquired.
"The outlook is gloomy," he replied, nervously. "The interview
was most unsatisfactory. In order to commit the government of
Monaco to some definite form of complaint, I requested His
Highness to say candidly in what the American people had offended
him. The prince regarded me steadily with his dark, piercing
eyes, and at last replied, 'Pouf! You Americans talk loudly at
our tables d'hôte, bully our croupiers, browbeat our
gendarmes before our very face, and make yourself generally
obnoxious.' I perceived, of course, the disingenuousness of this
answer, but managed to control my indignation. His Highness next
asked me a good many questions about the financial and material
resources of the United States Government, the efficiency of its
military and naval forces, its debt, annual revenue, and so on. I
need not say that my answers to all these questions were guarded
and discreet. I then pressed the prince to tell me if there was
any truth in the report that a personage high in the court had a
pecuniary interest in fomenting trouble between the United States
and Monaco. I thought the prince winced a little at this home
thrust; but he replied in the negative, referring to the story as
an 'idle bruit.' The interview then ended; but as I came away I
observed on the face of the crafty Monsignor Theuret an
expression which I could not fathom. It seemed very like mirth,
untimely as—"
Here the consul was interrupted by the precipitate entrance of
Titus, followed by three or four other Americans.
"Hallo, Green!" said this brusque individual. "Are you in the
dumps? I'll enliven you presently."
There was something in his tone, careless as it was, that
fairly startled Green out of his official dignity.
"Merciful heavens!" exclaimed the consul; "what has happened
now?"
Titus winked at the rest of the company. He took a pipe from
his pocket and reached for the tobacco box on the table,
upsetting, as he did so, the contents of the consul's inkstand
over a pile of official papers. This accident did not discompose
him in the least. He coolly filled his pipe and occupied himself
for some minutes in emitting large rings of smoke, one after
another, and then shooting little rings through the series.
"We are all of the Yankee persuasion, I suppose," he said at
last, casting a glance of inquiry at me. I nodded in reply. Then
Titus produced the document which we had seen him waving in the
piazza.
"Here's a lark," said he. "I took this down from the bulletin
board in front of Papa Voliver's Foreign Office this forenoon.
Lord forgive the theft! I did it for my country's sake."
Then he proceeded to read, rapidly translating the French into
English. We listened, dumbfounded. Great beads of perspiration
stood upon Green's forehead. He clutched mechanically at the
papers on the table and inked the ends of his fingers.
The document was an edict, signed by Charles III himself,
countersigned by the Chevalier Voliver, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, and sealed with the great seal of the principality.
Stripped of verbiage, the edict decreed:
First, that it should be unlawful for any subject of the
prince, or any foreigner sojourning within the boundaries of the
principality, to engage in the American game called poker, said
game being dangerous to the public morals and subversive of
existing institutions.
Secondly, that all obligations contracted by subjects of the
prince to subjects of the American President, through the game
called poker, or otherwise, be thereby repudiated.
Thirdly, that thenceforth no American subject be permitted to
enter the Principality of Monaco, for business or for pleasure;
that American subjects then in Monaco be allowed twenty-four
hours from the promulgation of this edict, within which time they
must leave the principality, under penalty of imprisonment at the
discretion of the Tribunal Supérieur and confiscation of their
effects.
All eyes were turned upon Green. It was some time before the
consul recovered the faculty of speech.﹃But this is
unprecedented!﹄he exclaimed.﹃It is not only outrageous in a
general way, but it is specifically discourteous to me,
personally and officially. I am the diplomatic representative of
the United States, duly accredited to this court. Here is an
important paper, seriously affecting the relations between the
two governments, which, instead of being conveyed to me in the
proper manner, has been tacked on a bulletin board, like a
miserable writ of attachment. Furthermore,﹄he added, as the
enormity of the outrage grew upon him, "I have not only been
ignored, insulted, but I have been trifled with. This edict must
have been posted before my interview with the hereditary prince.
It is infamous!"
"Well, fellow citizens," said Titus, with a light laugh, "what
are we going to do about it?"
"There is only one thing to do," replied Green. "Dispatch a
full and carefully worded statement of the affair to the
Department of State at Washington, in order that Congress may
take appropriate action."
Titus sent forth a roar of laughter along with a cloud of
smoke. "And meanwhile?" he demanded. "I am inclined to think that
in the present condition of our glorious Navy it will be about
two years and six months before we can expect to have a fleet of
iron-dads here."
"I suppose we must leave Monaco," said the consul, sadly. "We
are at the mercy of an absolute and remorseless power."
"Leave?" thundered Titus.
"Let us have your ideas, Mr. Titus," said I.
"Well," said Titus. "I propose to try my hand at a state
paper. I've undertaken tougher jobs in my day. Get a sheet of
clean foolscap, Green, and a good, sharp pen. Now write down what
I say."
He then dictated the following manifesto:
ToCharles Honore, Prince of Monaco:
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a
mighty nation to avenge an injury sustained by her in the persons
of some of her most valued citizens, the visitation of her wrath
upon the offender is apt to be sharp, sudden, and
overwhelming.
Unless your edict of this date be revoked before nine o'clock
tomorrow, and due apology made for the same, we, the United
States of America, do hereby declare war against the Principality
of Monaco on land, sea, underground, and in the skies; and God
have mercy upon your soul!
(Signed)
George Washington Titus, Commander in Chief
John J. Green, Minister Plenipotentiary.
"There! Green," said Titus, complacently, "now tell your man
Giovanni to go and tack this little composition upon the bulletin
board of the Foreign Office, and leave the rest to me."
"But this is very irregular," protested the consul. "The power
to declare war is vested by the Constitution in Congress. We
can't declare war. Besides, there are always certain formalities
to be observed."
"Damn your formalities!" rejoined Titus. "In times of great
national emergency like the present there is a higher law than
the Constitution. In such a crisis men of action must come to the
front. You can come in with your protocols and preliminary
drafts, and all that solemn rot, when we get to the negotiations
for peace. I'm commander in chief just now. You and these other
gentlemen must go around among the Americans here and tell 'em
not to be alarmed, but to act precisely as if nothing had
happened. That's General Order number one. Hold on a minute,
though. Is there anybody who understands the army signals?"
I respectfully informed the commander in chief that I was
familiar with the code.
"Good!" said he. "You've got grit. I like the build of your
chin. Stay here with me. I constitute you chief of staff."
"Now," he continued, after the others had departed, "take four
of the consul's red silk handkerchiefs and make some little
signal flags. I have another important letter to write."
The composition of this missive seemed to give him
considerable trouble, for I had finished the flags long before he
stopped writing. Finally he tossed me a sheet of note paper.﹃I
hate infernally to do this,﹄he said, giving his mustache a tug,
"but, hang it all, everything is fair in love and war."
The letter bore no address or signature:
Madame: I have read your eyes, and my heart is full of
joy. I have also read the black looks on the faces of your
jealous and powerful relatives. If I have seemed cold and
indifferent, it is because I cared for your peace of
mind—not because I feared for myself, believe me,
Madame.
And now the cruel edict has gone forth. Exile from Monaco is
nothing, for the world is wide. Exile from you is death; for my
poor life is in your adorable smile.
If you are as bold as you are beautiful; if wide difference of
rank weighs less in the balance than an absorbing passion; if you
can dare everything for the sake of one who has suffered and been
silent, be at the pump behind the equestrian statue of your noble
ancestor, Vincenzio Grimaldi, one hour before sunrise tomorrow
morning, and be alone.
"It's a confounded shame," remarked Titus, half to me, half to
himself, "to bring her out into the damp early air at her age;
but it can't be helped."
The consul's valet now returned. He had nailed the document
upon the bulletin board, as Excellency had commanded, and there
was already an immense crowd collected around it.
"Buono!" cried Titus.﹃Now, Giovanni, I have another
commission for you. You are discreet.﹄He gave him the letter and
whispered a few words of direction. The intelligent fellow
nodded.
"And, by the way, Giovanni, you are on pretty good terms with
the Army?"
"Yes, Excellency."
"How much will it cost to get the Army drunk tonight?"
"Very drunk, Excellency?"
"That is what I mean."
Giovanni made a rapid calculation with the aid of his fingers.
"About sixty francs, I think, Excellency," he replied, with a
broad grin. Titus handed him five napoleons.
An hour later I walked with the commander in chief along the
western rampart—the fashionable afternoon promenade in
Monaco. Few Americans were to be seen, but on every hand there
was evidence of an unusually excited state of popular feeling. We
encountered scowls and audibly whispered insults at every step;
but my companion walked on unconcerned, with his long, swinging
gait.﹃The Council of State is in session. There will be hot work
tomorrow,﹄I overheard one subject of the prince remarking to
another. A rattle of drums, and De Mussly marched briskly past
us, at the head of a detachment of four carabineers. Ladies waved
their handkerchiefs at the military.﹃The generalissimo is
posting his sentinels,﹄said Titus.﹃Luckily there are two cafes
in Monaco to one soldier.﹄Some of the shopkeepers were putting
up their shutters, early in the day as it was. Suddenly Titus
modified his pace, and his countenance assumed a singularly
pensive expression. Three ladies were approaching us. I had only
time to see that one of these, walking slightly in advance of the
others, was a very stout person of middle age, ostentatiously
dressed and heavily rouged. As she passed us Titus took off his
hat and made a profound and rather melancholy bow. The fat lady
bent her eyes to the ground. I thought I detected traces of a
blush on those parts of her face which were not factitiously
red.
"It's all right," Titus whispered in my ear. "The battle's
ours."
III
AT half past five o'clock on the morning of the momentous day,
a strange thing happened near the casino. The captive balloon,
set free from the moorings that tied it to the earth at night,
began to rise slowly and majestically through the mists of the
early twilight. With a plunge or two to the right and left, and a
flutter as if of astonishment at being disturbed at such an
unwonted hour, the vast spheroid settled its course straight
toward the zenith, as rapidly as the paying out of the rope
permitted. A single individual operated the brake of the cylinder
from which the rope unwound. That individual was myself. The car
of the balloon carried two passengers. One was Titus; the other,
a woman muffled in many wraps and closely veiled.
"Carissima!" Titus had whispered to his trembling companion as
he helped her into the basket.﹃It is our only chance of flight.
We should certainly be arrested at the frontier if we attempted
to escape by land.﹄A gentle gurgle of tenderness and
helplessness was the only response.
I watched the vaguely outlined bulk as it ascended to the
length of the rope. The light breeze from the west carried the
balloon directly over the palace, where it rested motionless at a
height of five or six hundred feet.
When I left the casino grounds I stepped over the prostrate
form of a sentinel, snoring lustily upon the pavement. The
streets were deserted, but I passed one cafe which had been open
all night. Glancing through the doorway, I saw a dozen of De
Mussly's red-uniformed veterans in various stages of
intoxication. Those who were still sober enough to sing were
shouting a war song, the refrain of which menaced my native land
with unutterable doom. Giovanni's five napoleons had done their
work.
Three hours later I finished a comfortable breakfast at my
hotel and sallied forth to find the consul. The situation had
changed. The city was wide awake now, and indescribable confusion
prevailed. The entire population surged through the streets
leading to the palace and the casino. Business was everywhere
suspended. A few carabineers were seen here and there, seedy in
the face and shaky in the legs. The generalissimo was making
desperate efforts to collect his demoralized army. On the balcony
in front of the palace, whence we had witnessed the brilliant
review of the Army on the day before, stood the prince and
several members of his family, surrounded by Ministers of State.
Among the latter I recognized the sinister visage of Monsignor
Theuret. The piazza and the adjoining streets were thronged with
people. All eyes were turned upward to the balloon, which still
floated over the palace, the only tranquil object in the
tumultuous scene.
As soon as Titus had shown his face to the crowd below, there
had been a rush to the windlass with the intention of winding in
the rope and recapturing the balloon. But Titus, leaning over the
side of the basket, had brandished a long bowie knife in a way
that left no doubt of his purpose to cut the balloon free if any
attempt should be made to haul it down. He was thus far master of
the situation. The enemy remained inactive, undecided what course
to pursue; the dignitaries upon the balcony were earnestly
engaged in conference.
In the piazza, just under the balcony, I espied the consul in
the center of a little knot of Americans. With some difficulty I
elbowed my way to the spot.
A murmur from the crowd drew my attention to the balloon.
Titus was making certain motions with two small red flags. I
produced two similar flags from beneath my waistcoat.
Communication was thus established between the two divisions of
the United States Army. The Duomo clock struck nine.
"Ask if the edict is revoked," signaled Titus.
I translated the message to the consul, who put the question
to the balcony in a loud voice and in the most approved terms of
diplomacy.
Monsignor Theuret, speaking for the government of Monaco,
replied with a sneer:﹃The edict is not revoked. Its provisions
relating to the arrest of Americans found within our territories
will be carried into effect in precisely one hour.﹄This answer
was conveyed to Titus.
"Declare Monaco in a state of siege!" was his prompt
rejoinder.
The cool audacity of this announcement produced a visible
effect upon the populace. What mysterious power had this man in
the sky, who talked with little flags and calmly defied a prince
with an Army and Navy? What was coming next?
Theuret retained his presence of mind. "Let the rope be cut,"
he shouted. "Then the wind will blow this impudent American
scoundrel over into Italy. We shall be well rid of him at the
price of a balloon."
Again there was a rush toward the rope and a hundred knives
were ready to do the work. But Theuret, who had been steadily
gazing upward, was seen to turn as pale as death and to grasp at
the balustrade for support.
"Basta! Basta!" he cried. "Cut not that rope, if you value
your lives! The princess is in the balloon!"
Sure enough, the round, red face of the princess was visible
over the wickerwork of the car. A howl of astonishment and dismay
went up from the crowd. The little knot of Americans answered the
howl with a cheer.
"Titus has won the game!" said the consul.
But the agitation of Monsignor Theuret was even greater than
circumstances appeared to warrant. The sight of the princess in
the car seemed to drive him to madness. He tore his hair, shook
both fists at the balloon, and shrieked as if he expected Madame
to hear. "Ah, Florestine, faithless! I suspected as much. Monster
of perfidy! Cuor' mio! Wretched, wretched woman!"
"I suspected as much, also," said the consul, in an undertone.
"We diplomats have eyes everywhere. Look at Theuret! What a
scandal!"
The prince was regarding Theuret's manifestations of jealous
frenzy with searching eyes. Then he summoned De Mussly and gave
him a command, inaudible to those below. Two soldiers removed
Monsignor Theuret from the balcony. "The bishop is arrested!"
cried the crowd, all agape at the unexpected incident.
"Now, monsieur," said the prince, addressing Consul Green,
"what are your demands? It seems that in some inexplicable way
you have succeeded in kidnaping our sister. What ransom do you
require of us?"
After some signaling, Green reported the ultimatum which Titus
propounded: The revocation of the edict, the restoration of
American citizens to an equality with the subjects of the most
privileged nation, the re-establishment of the game of poker, the
prince's own guarantee for the payment of all debts due to
American citizens, and an indemnity of ten thousand francs for
the expenses and anxieties of the war.
There was a long consultation upon the balcony. At last the
prince was seen to shake his head, as if in reply to arguments
intended to dissuade him from some settled plan of action. The
Chevalier Voliver stepped forward from the group and said, "His
Serene and Most Christian Highness has wavered between the
natural affection which he entertains for his sister, Madame the
Princess, and his duty toward his subjects. The struggle is now
at an end. Bitterly as he regrets one result of his decision, he
feels that he must place the interests of the people of Monaco
above family ties. He sacrifices Her Highness to duty. The edict
will go into effect at ten o'clock. He commands that the rope be
cut, and the balloon set adrift."
"That is the diplomatic way of saying that he is rather glad
to get rid of the foolish and troublesome old lady," I remarked
to Green after I had reported the speech to Titus.
But the consul and the rest of the Americans had fallen from
hope into dejection. They felt that the commander in chief had
played his last card and lost.
Not so Titus. His flags were plied vigorously for a brief
space of time, and then, reaching his arm at full length from the
network of ropes around the car, he held forth a large tin
canister that glittered in the sunlight.
The effect of this simple act was marvelous. It paralyzed the
arms of those who were about to cut the rope. It carried
consternation to the group upon the balcony. It created a panic
in the crowd, which scattered in every direction. A cry of horror
went up from a thousand throats. In all the noise and confusion
only one word was distinguishable:
"Dynamite!"
The people of Monaco had learned, from Titus' own teaching,
how terribly potent, even in small quantities, was this agent of
destruction. Now they felt that an unknown quantity of the awful,
mysterious thing was suspended, so to say, by a single hair, over
their heads and homes. The prince himself blanched at the
possibilities of the next moment.
"He says," I yelled at the top of my voice, "that if his
conditions are not accepted in three minutes by his watch, and
without further parley, he will drop the can and blow your
principality into smithereens."
In two minutes peace was re-established.
IV
THE war was over. Secured by the most explicit guarantees from
the government of Charles III, the victorious commander allowed
himself to be pulled down from the skies. Still holding the
dreaded fin can in one hand, with the other he gallantly assisted
his lady captive from the car of the balloon, and led her to the
balcony of the palace.
"Serene Highness," he said, as he respectfully consigned the
Princess Florestine to the care of her august brother, "I regret
that the necessities of war compelled me to make a prisoner of
Madame the Princess, who was abroad early this morning on a
mission of charity."
The prince bowed in silence. The princess's eyes were fixed
upon the floor.
"And, Serene Highness," continued Titus, "I implore you to
believe that I would not risk the precious life of so exalted a
lady by putting her in proximity with a dangerously large amount
of dynamite."
So saying, he tossed the can over the balustrade. It fell upon
the pavement with an empty rattle.
THE END
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