The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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Title: Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: August 19, 2006 [EBook #3184]
Last Updated: February 24, 2018
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONZO FITZ AND OTHER STORIES ***
Produced by David Widger
ALONZO FITZ
AND OTHER STORIES
by Mark Twain
CONTENTS
THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH
ETHELTON
ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING
ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE
PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH
THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN
THE CANVASSER'S TALE
AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER
PARIS NOTES
LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY
SPEECH ON THE BABIES
SPEECH ON THE WEATHER
CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE
ROGERS
THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON
It was well along in the forenoon of a bitter winter's day. The town of
Eastport, in the state of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that was
newly fallen. The customary bustle in the streets was wanting. One could
look long distances down them and see nothing but a dead-white emptiness,
with silence to match. Of course I do not mean that you could see the
silence—no, you could only hear it. The sidewalks were merely long,
deep ditches, with steep snow walls on either side. Here and there you
might hear the faint, far scrape of a wooden shovel, and if you were quick
enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figure stooping and
disappearing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next moment with
a motion which you would know meant the heaving out of a shovelful of
snow. But you needed to be quick, for that black figure would not linger,
but would soon drop that shovel and scud for the house, thrashing itself
with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was too venomously cold for
snow-shovelers or anybody else to stay out long.
Presently the sky darkened; then the wind rose and began to blow in
fitful, vigorous gusts, which sent clouds of powdery snow aloft, and
straight ahead, and everywhere. Under the impulse of one of these gusts,
great white drifts banked themselves like graves across the streets; a
moment later another gust shifted them around the other way, driving a
fine spray of snow from their sharp crests, as the gale drives the spume
flakes from wave-crests at sea; a third gust swept that place as clean as
your hand, if it saw fit. This was fooling, this was play; but each and
all of the gusts dumped some snow into the sidewalk ditches, for that was
business.
Alonzo Fitz Clarence was sitting in his snug and elegant little parlor, in
a lovely blue silk dressing-gown, with cuffs and facings of crimson satin,
elaborately quilted. The remains of his breakfast were before him, and the
dainty and costly little table service added a harmonious charm to the
grace, beauty, and richness of the fixed appointments of the room. A
cheery fire was blazing on the hearth.
A furious gust of wind shook the windows, and a great wave of snow washed
against them with a drenching sound, so to speak. The handsome young
bachelor murmured:
“That means, no going out to-day. Well, I am content. But what to do for
company? Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but these, like
the poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this, one needs a new
interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of captivity. That was
very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything. One doesn't want the edge
of captivity sharpened up, you know, but just the reverse.”
He glanced at his pretty French mantel-clock.
“That clock's wrong again. That clock hardly ever knows what time it is;
and when it does know, it lies about it—which amounts to the same
thing. Alfred!”
There was no answer.
“Alfred!... Good servant, but as uncertain as the clock.”
Alonzo touched an electric bell button in the wall. He waited a moment,
then touched it again; waited a few moments more, and said:
“Battery out of order, no doubt. But now that I have started, I will find
out what time it is.” He stepped to a speaking-tube in the wall, blew its
whistle, and called, “Mother!” and repeated it twice.
“Well, that's no use. Mother's battery is out of order, too. Can't raise
anybody down-stairs—that is plain.”
He sat down at a rosewood desk, leaned his chin on the left-hand edge of
it and spoke, as if to the floor: “Aunt Susan!”
A low, pleasant voice answered, “Is that you, Alonzo?'
“Yes. I'm too lazy and comfortable to go downstairs; I am in extremity,
and I can't seem to scare up any help.”
“Dear me, what is the matter?”
“Matter enough, I can tell you!”
“Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear! What is it?”
“I want to know what time it is.”
“You abominable boy, what a turn you did give me! Is that all?”
“All—on my honor. Calm yourself. Tell me the time, and receive my
blessing.”
“Just five minutes after nine. No charge—keep your blessing.”
“Thanks. It wouldn't have impoverished me, aunty, nor so enriched you that
you could live without other means.”
He got up, murmuring, “Just five minutes after nine,” and faced his clock.
“Ah,” said he, “you are doing better than usual. You are only thirty-four
minutes wrong. Let me see... let me see.... Thirty-three and twenty-one
are fifty-four; four times fifty-four are two hundred and thirty-six. One
off, leaves two hundred and thirty-five. That's right.”
He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-five
minutes to one, and said, “Now see if you can't keep right for a while—else
I'll raffle you!”
He sat down at the desk again, and said, “Aunt Susan!”
“Yes, dear.”
“Had breakfast?”
“Yes, indeed, an hour ago.”
“Busy?”
“No—except sewing. Why?”
“Got any company?”
“No, but I expect some at half past nine.”
“I wish I did. I'm lonesome. I want to talk to somebody.”
“Very well, talk to me.”
“But this is very private.”
“Don't be afraid—talk right along, there's nobody here but me.”
“I hardly know whether to venture or not, but—”
“But what? Oh, don't stop there! You know you can trust me, Alonzo—you
know, you can.”
“I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious. It affects me deeply—me,
and all the family—-even the whole community.”
“Oh, Alonzo, tell me! I will never breathe a word of it. What is it?”
“Aunt, if I might dare—”
“Oh, please go on! I love you, and feel for you. Tell me all. Confide in
me. What is it?”
“The weather!”
“Plague take the weather! I don't see how you can have the heart to serve
me so, Lon.”
“There, there, aunty dear, I'm sorry; I am, on my honor. I won't do it
again. Do you forgive me?”
“Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know I oughtn't to. You
will fool me again as soon as I have forgotten this time.”
“No, I won't, honor bright. But such weather, oh, such weather! You've got
to keep your spirits up artificially. It is snowy, and blowy, and gusty,
and bitter cold! How is the weather with you?”
“Warm and rainy and melancholy. The mourners go about the streets with
their umbrellas running streams from the end of every whalebone. There's
an elevated double pavement of umbrellas, stretching down the sides of the
streets as far as I can see. I've got a fire for cheerfulness, and the
windows open to keep cool. But it is vain, it is useless: nothing comes in
but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mocking odors from
the flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice in their lawless
profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunt their gaudy
splendors in his face while his soul is clothed in sackcloth and ashes and
his heart breaketh.”
Alonzo opened his lips to say, “You ought to print that, and get it
framed,” but checked himself, for he heard his aunt speaking to some one
else. He went and stood at the window and looked out upon the wintry
prospect. The storm was driving the snow before it more furiously than
ever; window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, with bowed
head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quaking body
against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girl was
plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from the blast,
and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over her head.
Alonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, “Better the slop, and the sultry
rain, and even the insolent flowers, than this!”
He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped in a listening
attitude. The faint, sweet notes of a familiar song caught his ear. He
remained there, with his head unconsciously bent forward, drinking in the
melody, stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing. There was a
blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo it seemed an added
charm instead of a defect. This blemish consisted of a marked flatting of
the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes of the refrain or
chorus of the piece. When the music ended, Alonzo drew a deep breath, and
said, “Ah, I never have heard 'In the Sweet By-and-by' sung like that
before!”
He stepped quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and said in a guarded,
confidential voice, “Aunty, who is this divine singer?”
“She is the company I was expecting. Stays with me a month or two. I will
introduce you. Miss—”
“For goodness' sake, wait a moment, Aunt Susan! You never stop to think
what you are about!”
He flew to his bedchamber, and returned in a moment perceptibly changed in
his outward appearance, and remarking, snappishly:
“Hang it, she would have introduced me to this angel in that sky-blue
dressing-gown with red-hot lapels! Women never think, when they get
a-going.”
He hastened and stood by the desk, and said eagerly, “Now, Aunty, I am
ready,” and fell to smiling and bowing with all the persuasiveness and
elegance that were in him.
“Very well. Miss Rosannah Ethelton, let me introduce to you my favorite
nephew, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence. There! You are both good people, and I
like you; so I am going to trust you together while I attend to a few
household affairs. Sit down, Rosannah; sit down, Alonzo. Good-by; I
sha'n't be gone long.”
Alonzo had been bowing and smiling all the while, and motioning imaginary
young ladies to sit down in imaginary chairs, but now he took a seat
himself, mentally saying, “Oh, this is luck! Let the winds blow now, and
the snow drive, and the heavens frown! Little I care!”
While these young people chat themselves into an acquaintanceship, let us
take the liberty of inspecting the sweeter and fairer of the two. She sat
alone, at her graceful ease, in a richly furnished apartment which was
manifestly the private parlor of a refined and sensible lady, if signs and
symbols may go for anything. For instance, by a low, comfortable chair
stood a dainty, top-heavy workstand, whose summit was a fancifully
embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored crewels, and other strings
and odds and ends protruding from under the gaping lid and hanging down in
negligent profusion. On the floor lay bright shreds of Turkey red,
Prussian blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spool or two, a pair
of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs. On a luxurious
sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goods wrought in black and
gold threads interwebbed with other threads not so pronounced in color,
lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon whose surface a rich
bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deft cultivation of the
crochet-needle. The household cat was asleep on this work of art. In a
bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished picture on it, and a palette
and brushes on a chair beside it. There were books everywhere: Robertson's
Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne, Rab and His Friends,
cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books—and books about all kinds of
odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There was a piano, with a
deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There was a great plenty of
pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantelpiece, and around
generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and quaint and
pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly devilish
china. The bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with foreign and
domestic flowers and flowering shrubs.
But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within or
without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features, of
Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is receiving
a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor of the garden;
great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an expression
made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness of a fawn; a
beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a lithe and rounded
figure, whose every attitude and movement was instinct with native grace.
Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that can
come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was of a
simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blue
flounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-roses chenille;
overdress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins;
corn-colored polonaise, en panier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttons and
silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff velvet lashings; basque
of lavender reps, picked out with valenciennes; low neck, short sleeves;
maroon velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; inside handkerchief
of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffron tint; coral
bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure of forget-me-nots and
lilies-of-the-valley massed around a noble calla.
This was all; yet even in this subdued attire she was divinely beautiful.
Then what must she have been when adorned for the festival or the ball?
All this time she had been busily chatting with Alonzo, unconscious of our
inspection. The minutes still sped, and still she talked. But by and by
she happened to look up, and saw the clock. A crimson blush sent its rich
flood through her cheeks, and she exclaimed:
“There, good-by, Mr. Fitz Clarence; I must go now!”
She sprang from her chair with such haste that she hardly heard the young
man's answering good-by. She stood radiant, graceful, beautiful, and
gazed, wondering, upon the accusing clock. Presently her pouting lips
parted, and she said:
“Five minutes after eleven! Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twenty
minutes! Oh, dear, what will he think of me!”
At the self-same moment Alonzo was staring at his clock. And presently he
said:
“Twenty-five minutes to three! Nearly two hours, and I didn't believe it
was two minutes! Is it possible that this clock is humbugging again? Miss
Ethelton! Just one moment, please. Are you there yet?”
“Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away.”
“Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?”
The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, “It's right down cruel of him
to ask me!” and then spoke up and answered with admirably counterfeited
unconcern, “Five minutes after eleven.”
“Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?”
“I'm sorry.”
No reply.
“Miss Ethelton!”
“Well?”
“You—you're there yet, ain't you?”
“Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?”
“Well, I—well, nothing in particular. It's very lonesome here. It's
asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by
and by—that is, if it will not trouble you too much?”
“I don't know but I'll think about it. I'll try.”
“Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton!... Ah, me, she's gone, and here are the black
clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again! But she said
good-by. She didn't say good morning, she said good-by! ... The clock was
right, after all. What a lightning-winged two hours it was!”
He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a
sigh and said:
“How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my
heart's in San Francisco!”
About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of her
bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas that
washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, “How different he is
from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic talent
of mimicry!”
II
Four weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gay
luncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with some
capital imitations of the voices and gestures of certain popular actors
and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees. He was elegantly
upholstered, and was a handsome fellow, barring a trifling cast in his
eye. He seemed very jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eye on the door
with an expectant and uneasy watchfulness. By and by a nobby lackey
appeared, and delivered a message to the mistress, who nodded her head
understandingly. That seemed to settle the thing for Mr. Burley; his
vivacity decreased little by little, and a dejected look began to creep
into one of his eyes and a sinister one into the other.
The rest of the company departed in due time, leaving him with the
mistress, to whom he said:
“There is no longer any question about it. She avoids me. She continually
excuses herself. If I could see her, if I could speak to her only a moment—but
this suspense—”
“Perhaps her seeming avoidance is mere accident, Mr. Burley. Go to the
small drawing-room up-stairs and amuse yourself a moment. I will despatch
a household order that is on my mind, and then I will go to her room.
Without doubt she will be persuaded to see you.”
Mr. Burley went up-stairs, intending to go to the small drawing-room, but
as he was passing “Aunt Susan's” private parlor, the door of which stood
slightly ajar, he heard a joyous laugh which he recognized; so without
knock or announcement he stepped confidently in. But before he could make
his presence known he heard words that harrowed up his soul and chilled
his young blood, he heard a voice say:
“Darling, it has come!”
Then he heard Rosannah Ethelton, whose back was toward him, say:
“So has yours, dearest!”
He saw her bowed form bend lower; he heard her kiss something—not
merely once, but again and again! His soul raged within him. The
heartbreaking conversation went on:
“Rosannah, I knew you must be beautiful, but this is dazzling, this is
blinding, this is intoxicating!”
“Alonzo, it is such happiness to hear you say it. I know it is not true,
but I am so grateful to have you think it is, nevertheless! I knew you
must have a noble face, but the grace and majesty of the reality beggar
the poor creation of my fancy.”
Burley heard that rattling shower of kisses again.
“Thank you, my Rosannah! The photograph flatters me, but you must not
allow yourself to think of that. Sweetheart?”
“Yes, Alonzo.”
“I am so happy, Rosannah.”
“Oh, Alonzo, none that have gone before me knew what love was, none that
come after me will ever know what happiness is. I float in a gorgeous
cloud land, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ecstasy!”
“Oh, my Rosannah!—for you are mine, are you not?”
“Wholly, oh, wholly yours, Alonzo, now and forever! All the day long, and
all through my nightly dreams, one song sings itself, and its sweet burden
is, 'Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, state of
Maine!'”
“Curse him, I've got his address, anyway!” roared Burley, inwardly, and
rushed from the place.
Just behind the unconscious Alonzo stood his mother, a picture of
astonishment. She was so muffled from head to heel in furs that nothing of
herself was visible but her eyes and nose. She was a good allegory of
winter, for she was powdered all over with snow.
Behind the unconscious Rosannah stood “Aunt Susan,” another picture of
astonishment. She was a good allegory of summer, for she was lightly clad,
and was vigorously cooling the perspiration on her face with a fan.
Both of these women had tears of joy in their eyes.
“Soho!” exclaimed Mrs. Fitz Clarence, “this explains why nobody has been
able to drag you out of your room for six weeks, Alonzo!”
“So ho!” exclaimed Aunt Susan, “this explains why you have been a hermit
for the past six weeks, Rosannah!”
The young couple were on their feet in an instant, abashed, and standing
like detected dealers in stolen goods awaiting judge Lynch's doom.
“Bless you, my son! I am happy in your happiness. Come to your mother's
arms, Alonzo!”
“Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew's sake! Come to my arms!”
Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of rejoicing on Telegraph
Hill and in Eastport Square.
Servants were called by the elders, in both places. Unto one was given the
order, “Pile this fire high, with hickory wood, and bring me a
roasting-hot lemonade.”
Unto the other was given the order, “Put out this fire, and bring me two
palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water.”
Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talk the
sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans.
Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the mansion on Telegraph
Hill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody. He hissed through
his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in melodrama,
“Him shall she never wed! I have sworn it! Ere great Nature shall have
doffed her winter's ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring, she shall
be mine!”
III
Two weeks later. Every few hours, during same three or four days, a very
prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had
visited Alonzo. According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave, of
Cincinnati. He said he had retired from the ministry on account of his
health. If he had said on account of ill-health, he would probably have
erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build. He was the inventor
of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his bread by selling
the privilege of using it. “At present,” he continued, “a man may go and
tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert from one state
to another, and he can attach his private telephone and steal a hearing of
that music as it passes along. My invention will stop all that.”
“Well,” answered Alonzo, “if the owner of the music could not miss what
was stolen, why should he care?”
“He shouldn't care,” said the Reverend.
“Well?” said Alonzo, inquiringly.
“Suppose,” replied the Reverend, “suppose that, instead of music that was
passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was loving
endearments of the most private and sacred nature?”
Alonzo shuddered from head to heel. “Sir, it is a priceless invention,”
said he; “I must have it at any cost.”
But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most
unaccountably. The impatient Alonzo could hardly wait. The thought of
Rosannah's sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief was
galling to him. The Reverend came frequently and lamented the delay, and
told of measures he had taken to hurry things up. This was some little
comfort to Alonzo.
One forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and knocked at Alonzo's
door. There was no response. He entered, glanced eagerly around, closed
the door softly, then ran to the telephone. The exquisitely soft and
remote strains of the “Sweet By-and-by” came floating through the
instrument. The singer was flatting, as usual, the five notes that follow
the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted her with this
word, in a voice which was an exact imitation of Alonzo's, with just the
faintest flavor of impatience added:
“Sweetheart?”
“Yes, Alonzo?”
“Please don't sing that any more this week—try something modern.”
The agile step that goes with a happy heart was heard on the stairs, and
the Reverend, smiling diabolically, sought sudden refuge behind the heavy
folds of the velvet window-curtains. Alonzo entered and flew to the
telephone. Said he:
“Rosannah, dear, shall we sing something together?”
“Something modern?” asked she, with sarcastic bitterness.
“Yes, if you prefer.”
“Sing it yourself, if you like!”
This snappishness amazed and wounded the young man. He said:
“Rosannah, that was not like you.”
“I suppose it becomes me as much as your very polite speech became you,
Mr. Fitz Clarence.”
“Mister Fitz Clarence! Rosannah, there was nothing impolite about my
speech.”
“Oh, indeed! Of course, then, I misunderstood you, and I most humbly beg
your pardon, ha-ha-ha! No doubt you said, 'Don't sing it any more
to-day.'”
“Sing what any more to-day?”
“The song you mentioned, of course, How very obtuse we are, all of a
sudden!”
“I never mentioned any song.”
“Oh, you didn't?”
“No, I didn't!”
“I am compelled to remark that you did.”
“And I am obliged to reiterate that I didn't.”
“A second rudeness! That is sufficient, sir. I will never forgive you. All
is over between us.”
Then came a muffled sound of crying. Alonzo hastened to say:
“Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words! There is some dreadful mystery here,
some hideous mistake. I am utterly earnest and sincere when I say I never
said anything about any song. I would not hurt you for the whole world....
Rosannah, dear speak to me, won't you?”
There was a pause; then Alonzo heard the girl's sobbings retreating, and
knew she had gone from the telephone. He rose with a heavy sigh, and
hastened from the room, saying to himself, “I will ransack the charity
missions and the haunts of the poor for my mother. She will persuade her
that I never meant to wound her.”
A minute later the Reverend was crouching over the telephone like a cat
that knoweth the ways of the prey. He had not very many minutes to wait. A
soft, repentant voice, tremulous with tears, said:
“Alonzo, dear, I have been wrong. You could not have said so cruel a
thing. It must have been some one who imitated your voice in malice or in
jest.”
The Reverend coldly answered, in Alonzo's tones:
“You have said all was over between us. So let it be. I spurn your
proffered repentance, and despise it!”
Then he departed, radiant with fiendish triumph, to return no more with
his imaginary telephonic invention forever.
Four hours afterward Alonzo arrived with his mother from her favorite
haunts of poverty and vice. They summoned the San Francisco household; but
there was no reply. They waited, and continued to wait, upon the voiceless
telephone.
At length, when it was sunset in San Francisco, and three hours and a half
after dark in Eastport, an answer to the oft-repeated cry of “Rosannah!”
But, alas, it was Aunt Susan's voice that spake. She said:
“I have been out all day; just got in. I will go and find her.”
The watchers waited two minutes—five minutes—ten minutes. Then
came these fatal words, in a frightened tone:
“She is gone, and her baggage with her. To visit another friend, she told
the servants. But I found this note on the table in her room. Listen: 'I
am gone; seek not to trace me out; my heart is broken; you will never see
me more. Tell him I shall always think of him when I sing my poor “Sweet
By-and-by,” but never of the unkind words he said about it.' That is her
note. Alonzo, Alonzo, what does it mean? What has happened?”
But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead. His mother threw back the
velvet curtains and opened a window. The cold air refreshed the sufferer,
and he told his aunt his dismal story. Meantime his mother was inspecting
a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor when she cast the
curtains back. It read, “Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, San Francisco.”
“The miscreant!” shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the false
Reverend and destroy him; for the card explained everything, since in the
course of the lovers' mutual confessions they had told each other all
about all the sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end of mud at
their failings and foibles for lovers always do that. It has a fascination
that ranks next after billing and cooing.
IV
During the next two months many things happened. It had early transpired
that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her
grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a duplicate
of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph Hill.
Whosoever was sheltering her—if she was still alive—had been
persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts to
find trace of her had failed.
Did Alonzo give her up? Not he. He said to himself, “She will sing that
sweet song when she is sad; I shall find her.” So he took his carpet-sack
and a portable telephone, and shook the snow of his native city from his
arctics, and went forth into the world. He wandered far and wide and in
many states. Time and again, strangers were astounded to see a wasted,
pale, and woe-worn man laboriously climb a telegraph-pole in wintry and
lonely places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear at a little box,
then come sighing down, and wander wearily away. Sometimes they shot at
him, as peasants do at aeronauts, thinking him mad and dangerous. Thus his
clothes were much shredded by bullets and his person grievously lacerated.
But he bore it all patiently.
In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say, “Ah, if I could
but hear the 'Sweet By-and-by'!” But toward the end of it he used to shed
tears of anguish and say, “Ah, if I could but hear something else!”
Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last some humane people
seized him and confined him in a private mad-house in New York. He made no
moan, for his strength was all gone, and with it all heart and all hope.
The superintendent, in pity, gave up his own comfortable parlor and
bedchamber to him and nursed him with affectionate devotion.
At the end of a week the patient was able to leave his bed for the first
time. He was lying, comfortably pillowed, on a sofa, listening to the
plaintive Miserere of the bleak March winds and the muffled sound of
tramping feet in the street below for it was about six in the evening, and
New York was going home from work. He had a bright fire and the added
cheer of a couple of student-lamps. So it was warm and snug within, though
bleak and raw without; it was light and bright within, though outside it
was as dark and dreary as if the world had been lit with Hartford gas.
Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his loving vagaries had made him a
maniac in the eyes of the world, and was proceeding to pursue his line of
thought further, when a faint, sweet strain, the very ghost of sound, so
remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon his ear. His pulses stood
still; he listened with parted lips and bated breath. The song flowed on—he
waiting, listening, rising slowly and unconsciously from his recumbent
position. At last he exclaimed:
“It is! it is she! Oh, the divine hated notes!”
He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the sounds proceeded, tore
aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone. He bent over, and as the last
note died away he burst forthwith the exclamation:
“Oh, thank Heaven, found at last! Speak to me, Rosannah, dearest! The
cruel mystery has been unraveled; it was the villain Burley who mimicked
my voice and wounded you with insolent speech!”
There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo; then a faint sound
came, framing itself into language:
“Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo!”
“They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah, and you shall have
the proof, ample and abundant proof!”
“Oh; Alonzo, stay by me! Leave me not for a moment! Let me feel that you
are near me! Tell me we shall never be parted more! Oh, this happy hour,
this blessed hour, this memorable hour!”
“We will make record of it, my Rosannah; every year, as this dear hour
chimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, all the
years of our life.”
“We will, we will, Alonzo!”
“Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah, shall henceforth—”
“Twenty-three minutes after twelve, afternoon shall—”
“Why; Rosannah, darling, where are you?”
“In Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. And where are you? Stay by me; do not
leave me for a moment. I cannot bear it. Are you at home?”
“No, dear, I am in New York—a patient in the doctor's hands.”
An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like the sharp buzzing
of a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles. Alonzo
hastened to say:
“Calm yourself, my child. It is nothing. Already I am getting well under
the sweet healing of your presence. Rosannah?”
“Yes, Alonzo? Oh, how you terrified me! Say on.”
“Name the happy day, Rosannah!”
There was a little pause. Then a diffident small voice replied, “I blush—but
it is with pleasure, it is with happiness. Would—would you like to
have it soon?”
“This very night, Rosannah! Oh, let us risk no more delays. Let it be now!—this
very night, this very moment!”
“Oh, you impatient creature! I have nobody here but my good old uncle, a
missionary for a generation, and now retired from service—nobody but
him and his wife. I would so dearly like it if your mother and your Aunt
Susan—”
“Our mother and our Aunt Susan, my Rosannah.”
“Yes, our mother and our Aunt Susan—I am content to word it so if it
pleases you; I would so like to have them present.”
“So would I. Suppose you telegraph Aunt Susan. How long would it take her
to come?”
“The steamer leaves San Francisco day after tomorrow. The passage is eight
days. She would be here the 31st of March.”
“Then name the 1st of April; do, Rosannah, dear.”
“Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo!”
“So we be the happiest ones that that day's suit looks down upon in the
whole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care? Call it the 1st of
April, dear.”
“Then the 1st of April at shall be, with all my heart!”
“Oh, happiness! Name the hour, too, Rosannah.”
“I like the morning, it is so blithe. Will eight in the morning do,
Alonzo?”
“The loveliest hour in the day—since it will make you mine.”
There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if
wool-lipped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannah
said, “Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and am called
to meet it.”
The young girl sought a large parlor and took her place at a window which
looked out upon a beautiful scene. To the left one could view the charming
Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers and its
plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills clothed in the
shining green of lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storied precipice
beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foes over to their
destruction, a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no doubt, for now
it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under the glowing arches of a
succession of rainbows. In front of the window one could see the quaint
town, and here and there a picturesque group of dusky natives, enjoying
the blistering weather; and far to the right lay the restless ocean,
tossing its white mane in the sunshine.
Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushed and
heated face, waiting. A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged blue necktie and
part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced,
“'Frisco haole!”
“Show him in,” said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming a
meaning dignity. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head to
heel in dazzling snow—that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of
Irish linen. He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture and
gave him a look which checked him suddenly. She said, coldly, “I am here,
as I promised. I believed your assertions, I yielded to your importune
lies, and said I would name the day. I name the 1st of April—eight
in the morning. NOW GO!”
“Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a lifetime—”
“Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all communication with you, until
that hour. No—no supplications; I will have it so.”
When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege of
troubles she had undergone had wasted her strength. Presently she said,
“What a narrow escape! If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier—Oh,
horror, what an escape I have made! And to think I had come to imagine I
was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherous monster! Oh,
he shall repent his villainy!”
Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more needs to be told.
On the 2d of the ensuing April, the Honolulu Advertiser contained this
notice:
MARRIED.—In this city, by telephone, yesterday morning,—at eight
o'clock, by Rev. Nathan Hays, assisted by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, of
New York, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U. S., and
Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U. S. Mrs. Susan
Howland, of San Francisco, a friend of the bride, was present, she
being the guest of the Rev. Mr. Hays and wife, uncle and aunt of the
bride. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, of San Francisco, was also
present but did not remain till the conclusion of the marriage
service. Captain Hawthorne's beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated,
was in waiting, and the happy bride and her friends immediately
departed on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala.
The New York papers of the same date contained this notice:
MARRIED.—In this city, yesterday, by telephone, at half-past two in
the morning, by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, assisted by Rev. Nathan Hays,
of Honolulu, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss
Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon. The parents and several
friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a sumptuous
breakfast and much festivity until nearly sunrise, and then departed
on a bridal trip to the Aquarium, the bridegroom's state of health
not admitting of a more extended journey.
Toward the close of that memorable day Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo Fitz Clarence
were buried in sweet converse concerning the pleasures of their several
bridal tours, when suddenly the young wife exclaimed: “Oh, Lonny, I
forgot! I did what I said I would.”
“Did you, dear?”
“Indeed, I did. I made him the April fool! And I told him so, too! Ah, it
was a charming surprise! There he stood, sweltering in a black dress-suit,
with the mercury leaking out of the top of the thermometer, waiting to be
married. You should have seen the look he gave when I whispered it in his
ear. Ah, his wickedness cost me many a heartache and many a tear, but the
score was all squared up, then. So the vengeful feeling went right out of
my heart, and I begged him to stay, and said I forgave him everything. But
he wouldn't. He said he would live to be avenged; said he would make our
lives a curse to us. But he can't, can he, dear?”
“Never in this world, my Rosannah!”
Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and their
Eastport parents, are all happy at this writing, and likely to remain so.
Aunt Susan brought the bride from the islands, accompanied her across our
continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rapturous meeting
between an adoring husband and wife who had never seen each other until
that moment.
A word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came so near
wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will be
sufficient. In a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless
artisan who he fancied had done him some small offense, he fell into a
caldron of boiling oil and expired before he could be extinguished.
ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING
ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE HISTORICAL AND ANTIQUARIAN
CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OFFERED FOR THE THIRTY-DOLLAR PRIZE. NOW FIRST
PUBLISHED.—[Did not take the prize]
Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered
any decay or interruption—no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle,
is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need,
the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is
immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains. My
complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded
man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly
lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so
prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this scheme
with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters to
the mothers in Israel. It would not become me to criticize you, gentlemen,
who are nearly all my elders—and my superiors, in this thing—and
so, if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in most
cases be more in a spirit of admiration than of fault-finding; indeed, if
this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the attention,
encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this Club
has devoted to it I should not need to utter this lament or shed a single
tear. I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a spirit of just and
appreciative recognition.
[It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and give
illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me
to beware of particulars and confine myself to generalities.]
No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our
circumstances—the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without
saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and
diligent cultivation—therefore, it goes without saying that this one
ought to be taught in the public schools—at the fireside—even
in the newspapers. What chance has the ignorant, uncultivated liar against
the educated expert? What chance have I against Mr. Per— against a
lawyer? Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were
even better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An
awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.
Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb:
Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain—adults
and wise persons never speak it. Parkman, the historian, says, “The
principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity.” In another
place in the same chapter he says, “The saying is old that truth should
not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience worries into
habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and nuisances.” It is strong
language, but true. None of us could live with an habitual truth-teller;
but, thank goodness, none of us has to. An habitual truth-teller is simply
an impossible creature; he does not exist; he never has existed. Of course
there are people who think they never lie, but it is not so—and this
ignorance is one of the very things that shame our so-called civilization.
Everybody lies—every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams;
in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his
feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deception—and purposely.
Even in sermons—but that is a platitude.
In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying
calls, under the humane and kindly pretense of wanting to see each other;
and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice, saying,
“We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out”—not meaning
that they found out anything against the fourteen—no, that was only
a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home—and their
manner of saying it—expressed their lively satisfaction in that
fact. Now, their pretense of wanting to see the fourteen—and the
other two whom they had been less lucky with—was that commonest and
mildest form of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflection from
the truth. Is it justifiable? Most certainly. It is beautiful, it is
noble; for its object is, not to reap profit, but to convey a pleasure to
the sixteen. The iron-souled truth-monger would plainly manifest, or even
utter the fact, that he didn't want to see those people—and he would
be an ass, and inflict a totally unnecessary pain. And next, those ladies
in that far country—but never mind, they had a thousand pleasant
ways of lying, that grew out of gentle impulses, and were a credit to
their intelligence and an honor to their hearts. Let the particulars go.
The men in that far country were liars; every one. Their mere howdy-do was
a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were undertakers.
To the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made no conscientious
diagnosis of your case, but answered at random, and usually missed it
considerably. You lied to the undertaker, and said your health was failing—a
wholly commendable lie, since it cost you nothing and pleased the other
man. If a stranger called and interrupted you, you said with your hearty
tongue, “I'm glad to see you,” and said with your heartier soul, “I wish
you were with the cannibals and it was dinner-time.” When he went, you
said regretfully, “Must you go?” and followed it with a “Call again”; but
you did no harm, for you did not deceive anybody nor inflict any hurt,
whereas the truth would have made you both unhappy.
I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and
should be cultivated. The highest perfection of politeness is only a
beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and
gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth. Let us do
what we can to eradicate it. An injurious truth has no merit over an
injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an
injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should
reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving. The man who
tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble is one of whom the angels
doubtless say, “Lo, here is an heroic soul who casts his own welfare into
jeopardy to succor his neighbor's; let us exalt this magnanimous liar.”
An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same
degree, is an injurious truth—a fact which is recognized by the law
of libel.
Among other common lies, we have the silent lie—the deception which
one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many
obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if
they speak no lie, they lie not at all. In that far country where I once
lived, there was a lovely spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high
and pure, and whose character answered to them. One day I was there at
dinner, and remarked, in a general way, that we are all liars. She was
amazed, and said, “Not all!” It was before “Pinafore's” time so I did not
make the response which would naturally follow in our day, but frankly
said, “Yes, all—we are all liars; there are no exceptions.” She
looked almost offended, and said, “Why, do you include me?” “Certainly,” I
said, “I think you even rank as an expert.” She said, “'Sh!—'sh! the
children!”
So the subject was changed in deference to the children's presence, and we
went on talking about other things. But as soon as the young people were
out of the way, the lady came warmly back to the matter and said, “I have
made it the rule of my life to never tell a lie; and I have never departed
from it in a single instance.” I said, “I don't mean the least harm or
disrespect, but really you have been lying like smoke ever since I've been
sitting here. It has caused me a good deal of pain, because I am not used
to it.” She required of me an instance—just a single instance. So I
said:—
“Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank which the Oakland
hospital people sent to you by the hand of the sick-nurse when she came
here to nurse your little nephew through his dangerous illness. This blank
asks all manner of questions as to the conduct of that sick-nurse: 'Did
she ever sleep on her watch? Did she ever forget to give the medicine?'
and so forth and so on. You are warned to be very careful and explicit in
your answers, for the welfare of the service requires that the nurses be
promptly fined or otherwise punished for derelictions. You told me you
were perfectly delighted with that nurse—that she had a thousand
perfections and only one fault: you found you never could depend on her
wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently while he waited in a chilly chair for
her to rearrange the warm bed. You filled up the duplicate of this paper,
and sent it back to the hospital by the hand of the nurse. How did you
answer this question—'Was the nurse at any time guilty of a
negligence which was likely to result in the patient's taking cold?' Come—everything
is decided by a bet here in California: ten dollars to ten cents you lied
when you answered that question.” She said, “I didn't; I left it blank!”
“Just so—you have told a silent lie; you have left it to be inferred
that you had no fault to find in that matter.” She said, “Oh, was that a
lie? And how could I mention her one single fault, and she so good?—it
would have been cruel.” I said, “One ought always to lie when one can do
good by it; your impulse was right, but, your judgment was crude; this
comes of unintelligent practice. Now observe the result of this inexpert
deflection of yours. You know Mr. Jones's Willie is lying very low with
scarlet fever; well, your recommendation was so enthusiastic that that
girl is there nursing him, and the worn-out family have all been
trustingly sound asleep for the last fourteen hours, leaving their darling
with full confidence in those fatal hands, because you, like young George
Washington, have a reputa—However, if you are not going to have
anything to do, I will come around to-morrow and we'll attend the funeral
together, for, of course, you'll naturally feel a peculiar interest in
Willie's case—as personal a one, in fact, as the undertaker.”
But that was all lost. Before I was half-way through she was in a carriage
and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion to save what was
left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly nurse. All of which
was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had been lying myself. But that
same day, all the same, she sent a line to the hospital which filled up
the neglected blank, and stated the facts, too, in the squarest possible
manner.
Now, you see, this lady's fault was not in lying, but only in lying
injudiciously. She should have told the truth there, and made it up to the
nurse with a fraudulent compliment further along in the paper. She could
have said, “In one respect the sick-nurse is perfection—when she is
on watch, she never snores.” Almost any little pleasant lie would have
taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary expression of the
truth.
Lying is universal—we all do it; we all must do it. Therefore, the
wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully,
judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for
others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably,
humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and
graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely,
with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as
being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and
pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good
and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature
habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather. Then—but
I am but a new and feeble student in this gracious art; I can not instruct
this Club.
Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise examination into what
sorts of lies are best and wholesomest to be indulged, seeing we must all
lie and do all lie, and what sorts it may be best to avoid—and this
is a thing which I feel I can confidently put into the hands of this
experienced Club—a ripe body, who may be termed, in this regard, and
without undue flattery, Old Masters.
ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE
All my life, from boyhood up, I have had the habit of reading a certain
set of anecdotes, written in the quaint vein of The World's ingenious
Fabulist, for the lesson they taught me and the pleasure they gave me.
They lay always convenient to my hand, and whenever I thought meanly of my
kind I turned to them, and they banished that sentiment; whenever I felt
myself to be selfish, sordid, and ignoble I turned to them, and they told
me what to do to win back my self-respect. Many times I wished that the
charming anecdotes had not stopped with their happy climaxes, but had
continued the pleasing history of the several benefactors and
beneficiaries. This wish rose in my breast so persistently that at last I
determined to satisfy it by seeking out the sequels of those anecdotes
myself. So I set about it, and after great labor and tedious research
accomplished my task. I will lay the result before you, giving you each
anecdote in its turn, and following it with its sequel as I gathered it
through my investigations.
THE GRATEFUL POODLE
One day a benevolent physician (who had read the books) having found a
stray poodle suffering from a broken leg, conveyed the poor creature to
his home, and after setting and bandaging the injured limb gave the little
outcast its liberty again, and thought no more about the matter. But how
great was his surprise, upon opening his door one morning, some days
later, to find the grateful poodle patiently waiting there, and in its
company another stray dog, one of whose legs, by some accident, had been
broken. The kind physician at once relieved the distressed animal, nor did
he forget to admire the inscrutable goodness and mercy of God, who had
been willing to use so humble an instrument as the poor outcast poodle for
the inculcating of, etc., etc., etc.
SEQUEL
The next morning the benevolent physician found the two dogs, beaming with
gratitude, waiting at his door, and with them two other dogs-cripples. The
cripples were speedily healed, and the four went their way, leaving the
benevolent physician more overcome by pious wonder than ever. The day
passed, the morning came. There at the door sat now the four reconstructed
dogs, and with them four others requiring reconstruction. This day also
passed, and another morning came; and now sixteen dogs, eight of them
newly crippled, occupied the sidewalk, and the people were going around.
By noon the broken legs were all set, but the pious wonder in the good
physician's breast was beginning to get mixed with involuntary profanity.
The sun rose once more, and exhibited thirty-two dogs, sixteen of them
with broken legs, occupying the sidewalk and half of the street; the human
spectators took up the rest of the room. The cries of the wounded, the
songs of the healed brutes, and the comments of the onlooking citizens
made great and inspiring cheer, but traffic was interrupted in that
street. The good physician hired a couple of assistant surgeons and got
through his benevolent work before dark, first taking the precaution to
cancel his church membership, so that he might express himself with the
latitude which the case required.
But some things have their limits. When once more the morning dawned, and
the good physician looked out upon a massed and far-reaching multitude of
clamorous and beseeching dogs, he said, “I might as well acknowledge it, I
have been fooled by the books; they only tell the pretty part of the
story, and then stop. Fetch me the shotgun; this thing has gone along far
enough.”
He issued forth with his weapon, and chanced to step upon the tail of the
original poodle, who promptly bit him in the leg. Now the great and good
work which this poodle had been engaged in had engendered in him such a
mighty and augmenting enthusiasm as to turn his weak head at last and
drive him mad. A month later, when the benevolent physician lay in the
death-throes of hydrophobia, he called his weeping friends about him, and
said:—
“Beware of the books. They tell but half of the story. Whenever a poor
wretch asks you for help, and you feel a doubt as to what result may flow
from your benevolence, give yourself the benefit of the doubt and kill the
applicant.”
And so saying he turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost.
THE BENEVOLENT AUTHOR
A poor and young literary beginner had tried in vain to get his
manuscripts accepted. At last, when the horrors of starvation were staring
him in the face, he laid his sad case before a celebrated author,
beseeching his counsel and assistance. This generous man immediately put
aside his own matters and proceeded to peruse one of the despised
manuscripts. Having completed his kindly task, he shook the poor young man
cordially by the hand, saying, “I perceive merit in this; come again to me
on Monday.” At the time specified, the celebrated author, with a sweet
smile, but saying nothing, spread open a magazine which was damp from the
press. What was the poor young man's astonishment to discover upon the
printed page his own article. “How can I ever,” said he, falling upon his
knees and bursting into tears, “testify my gratitude for this noble
conduct!”
The celebrated author was the renowned Snodgrass; the poor young beginner
thus rescued from obscurity and starvation was the afterward equally
renowned Snagsby. Let this pleasing incident admonish us to turn a
charitable ear to all beginners that need help.
SEQUEL
The next week Snagsby was back with five rejected manuscripts. The
celebrated author was a little surprised, because in the books the young
struggler had needed but one lift, apparently. However, he plowed through
these papers, removing unnecessary flowers and digging up some acres of
adjective-stumps, and then succeeded in getting two of the articles
accepted.
A week or so drifted by, and the grateful Snagsby arrived with another
cargo. The celebrated author had felt a mighty glow of satisfaction within
himself the first time he had successfully befriended the poor young
struggler, and had compared himself with the generous people in the books
with high gratification; but he was beginning to suspect now that he had
struck upon something fresh in the noble-episode line. His enthusiasm took
a chill. Still, he could not bear to repulse this struggling young author,
who clung to him with such pretty simplicity and trustfulness.
Well, the upshot of it all was that the celebrated author presently found
himself permanently freighted with the poor young beginner. All his mild
efforts to unload this cargo went for nothing. He had to give daily
counsel, daily encouragement; he had to keep on procuring magazine
acceptances, and then revamping the manuscripts to make them presentable.
When the young aspirant got a start at last, he rode into sudden fame by
describing the celebrated author's private life with such a caustic humor
and such minuteness of blistering detail that the book sold a prodigious
edition, and broke the celebrated author's heart with mortification. With
his latest gasp he said, “Alas, the books deceived me; they do not tell
the whole story. Beware of the struggling young author, my friends. Whom
God sees fit to starve, let not man presumptuously rescue to his own
undoing.”
THE GRATEFUL HUSBAND
One day a lady was driving through the principal street of a great city
with her little boy, when the horses took fright and dashed madly away,
hurling the coachman from his box and leaving the occupants of the carnage
paralyzed with terror. But a brave youth who was driving a grocery-wagon
threw himself before the plunging animals, and succeeded in arresting
their flight at the peril of his own.—[This is probably a misprint.—M.
T.]—The grateful lady took his number, and upon arriving at her home
she related the heroic act to her husband (who had read the books), who
listened with streaming eyes to the moving recital, and who, after
returning thanks, in conjunction with his restored loved ones, to Him who
suffereth not even a sparrow to fall to the ground unnoticed, sent for the
brave young person, and, placing a check for five hundred dollars in his
hand, said, “Take this as a reward for your noble act, William Ferguson,
and if ever you shall need a friend, remember that Thompson McSpadden has
a grateful heart.” Let us learn from this that a good deed cannot fail to
benefit the doer, however humble he may be.
SEQUEL
William Ferguson called the next week and asked Mr. McSpadden to use his
influence to get him a higher employment, he feeling capable of better
things than driving a grocer's wagon. Mr. McSpadden got him an
under-clerkship at a good salary.
Presently William Ferguson's mother fell sick, and William—Well, to
cut the story short, Mr. McSpadden consented to take her into his house.
Before long she yearned for the society of her younger children; so Mary
and Julia were admitted also, and little Jimmy, their brother. Jimmy had a
pocket knife, and he wandered into the drawing-room with it one day,
alone, and reduced ten thousand dollars' worth of furniture to an
indeterminable value in rather less than three-quarters of an hour. A day
or two later he fell down-stairs and broke his neck, and seventeen of his
family's relatives came to the house to attend the funeral. This made them
acquainted, and they kept the kitchen occupied after that, and likewise
kept the McSpaddens busy hunting up situations of various sorts for them,
and hunting up more when they wore these out. The old woman drank a good
deal and swore a good deal; but the grateful McSpaddens knew it was their
duty to reform her, considering what her son had done for them, so they
clave nobly to their generous task. William came often and got decreasing
sums of money, and asked for higher and more lucrative employments—which
the grateful McSpadden more or less promptly procured for him. McSpadden
consented also, after some demur, to fit William for college; but when the
first vacation came and the hero requested to be sent to Europe for his
health, the persecuted McSpadden rose against the tyrant and revolted. He
plainly and squarely refused. William Ferguson's mother was so astounded
that she let her gin-bottle drop, and her profane lips refused to do their
office. When she recovered she said in a half-gasp, “Is this your
gratitude? Where would your wife and boy be now, but for my son?”
William said, “Is this your gratitude? Did I save your wife's life or not?
Tell me that!”
Seven relations swarmed in from the kitchen and each said, “And this is
his gratitude!”
William's sisters stared, bewildered, and said, “And this is his grat—”
but were interrupted by their mother, who burst into tears and exclaimed,
“To think that my sainted little Jimmy threw away his life in the service
of such a reptile!”
Then the pluck of the revolutionary McSpadden rose to the occasion, and he
replied with fervor, “Out of my house, the whole beggarly tribe of you! I
was beguiled by the books, but shall never be beguiled again—once is
sufficient for me.” And turning to William he shouted, “Yes, you did save
my wife's life, and the next man that does it shall die in his tracks!”
Not being a clergyman, I place my text at the end of my sermon instead of
at the beginning. Here it is, from Mr. Noah Brooks's Recollections of
President Lincoln in “Scribners Monthly”:
J. H. Hackett, in his part of Falstaff, was an actor who gave Mr.
Lincoln great delight. With his usual desire to signify to others
his sense of obligation, Mr. Lincoln wrote a genial little note to
the actor expressing his pleasure at witnessing his performance.
Mr. Hackett, in reply, sent a book of some sort; perhaps it was one
of his own authorship. He also wrote several notes to the
President. One night, quite late, when the episode had passed out
of my mind, I went to the White House in answer to a message.
Passing into the President's office, I noticed, to my surprise,
Hackett sitting in the anteroom as if waiting for an audience. The
President asked me if any one was outside. On being told, he said,
half sadly, “Oh, I can't see him, I can't see him; I was in hopes he
had gone away.” Then he added, “Now this just illustrates the
difficulty of having pleasant friends and acquaintances in this
place. You know how I liked Hackett as an actor, and how I wrote to
tell him so. He sent me that book, and there I thought the matter
would end. He is a master of his place in the profession, I
suppose, and well fixed in it; but just because we had a little
friendly correspondence, such as any two men might have, he wants
something. What do you suppose he wants?” I could not guess, and
Mr. Lincoln added, “well, he wants to be consul to London. Oh,
dear!”
I will observe, in conclusion, that the William Ferguson incident
occurred, and within my personal knowledge—though I have changed the
nature of the details, to keep William from recognizing himself in it.
All the readers of this article have in some sweet and gushing hour of
their lives played the role of Magnanimous-Incident hero. I wish I knew
how many there are among them who are willing to talk about that episode
and like to be reminded of the consequences that flowed from it.
PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH
Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following lines, and see
if he can discover anything harmful in them?
Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
CHORUS
Punch, brothers! punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
I came across these jingling rhymes in a newspaper, a little while ago,
and read them a couple of times. They took instant and entire possession
of me. All through breakfast they went waltzing through my brain; and
when, at last, I rolled up my napkin, I could not tell whether I had eaten
anything or not. I had carefully laid out my day's work the day before—thrilling
tragedy in the novel which I am writing. I went to my den to begin my deed
of blood. I took up my pen, but all I could get it to say was, “Punch in
the presence of the passenjare.” I fought hard for an hour, but it was
useless. My head kept humming, “A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a
buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,” and so on and so on, without peace or
respite. The day's work was ruined—I could see that plainly enough.
I gave up and drifted down-town, and presently discovered that my feet
were keeping time to that relentless jingle. When I could stand it no
longer I altered my step. But it did no good; those rhymes accommodated
themselves to the new step and went on harassing me just as before. I
returned home, and suffered all the afternoon; suffered all through an
unconscious and unrefreshing dinner; suffered, and cried, and jingled all
through the evening; went to bed and rolled, tossed, and jingled right
along, the same as ever; got up at midnight frantic, and tried to read;
but there was nothing visible upon the whirling page except “Punch! punch
in the presence of the passenjare.” By sunrise I was out of my mind, and
everybody marveled and was distressed at the idiotic burden of my ravings—“Punch!
oh, punch! punch in the presence of the passenjare!”
Two days later, on Saturday morning, I arose, a tottering wreck, and went
forth to fulfil an engagement with a valued friend, the Rev. Mr.———,
to walk to the Talcott Tower, ten miles distant. He stared at me, but
asked no questions. We started. Mr.——— talked, talked,
talked as is his wont. I said nothing; I heard nothing. At the end of a
mile, Mr.——— said “Mark, are you sick? I never saw a man
look so haggard and worn and absent-minded. Say something, do!”
Drearily, without enthusiasm, I said: “Punch brothers, punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!”
My friend eyed me blankly, looked perplexed, then said:
“I do not think I get your drift, Mark. There does not seem to be any
relevancy in what you have said, certainly nothing sad; and yet—maybe
it was the way you said the words—I never heard anything that
sounded so pathetic. What is—”
But I heard no more. I was already far away with my pitiless,
heartbreaking “blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, buff trip slip for a
six-cent fare, pink trip slip for a three-cent fare; punch in the presence
of the passenjare.” I do not know what occurred during the other nine
miles. However, all of a sudden Mr.——— laid his hand on
my shoulder and shouted:—
“Oh, wake up! wake up! wake up! Don't sleep all day! Here we are at the
Tower, man! I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind, and never got a
response. Just look at this magnificent autumn landscape! Look at it! look
at it! Feast your eye on it! You have traveled; you have seen boasted
landscapes elsewhere. Come, now, deliver an honest opinion. What do you
say to this?”
I sighed wearily; and murmured:—
“A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent
fare, punch in the presence of the passenjare.”
Rev. Mr. ——— stood there, very grave, full of concern,
apparently, and looked long at me; then he said:—
“Mark, there is something about this that I cannot understand. Those are
about the same words you said before; there does not seem to be anything
in them, and yet they nearly break my heart when you say them. Punch in
the—how is it they go?”
I began at the beginning and repeated all the lines.
My friend's face lighted with interest. He said:—
“Why, what a captivating jingle it is! It is almost music. It flows along
so nicely. I have nearly caught the rhymes myself. Say them over just once
more, and then I'll have them, sure.”
I said them over. Then Mr. ——— said them. He made one
little mistake, which I corrected. The next time and the next he got them
right. Now a great burden seemed to tumble from my shoulders. That
torturing jingle departed out of my brain, and a grateful sense of rest
and peace descended upon me. I was light-hearted enough to sing; and I did
sing for half an hour, straight along, as we went jogging homeward. Then
my freed tongue found blessed speech again, and the pent talk of many a
weary hour began to gush and flow. It flowed on and on, joyously,
jubilantly, until the fountain was empty and dry. As I wrung my friend's
hand at parting, I said:—
“Haven't we had a royal good time! But now I remember, you haven't said a
word for two hours. Come, come, out with something!”
The Rev. Mr.——— turned a lack-lustre eye upon me, drew a
deep sigh, and said, without animation, without apparent consciousness:
“Punch, brothers, punch with care! Punch in the presence of the
passenjare!”
A pang shot through me as I said to myself, “Poor fellow, poor fellow! he
has got it, now.”
I did not see Mr.——— for two or three days after that.
Then, on Tuesday evening, he staggered into my presence and sank
dejectedly into a seat. He was pale, worn; he was a wreck. He lifted his
faded eyes to my face and said:—
“Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartless
rhymes. They have ridden me like a nightmare, day and night, hour after
hour, to this very moment. Since I saw you I have suffered the torments of
the lost. Saturday evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, and took the
night train for Boston. The occasion was the death of a valued old friend
who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon. I took my seat
in the cars and set myself to framing the discourse. But I never got
beyond the opening paragraph; for then the train started and the
car-wheels began their 'clack, clack-clack-clack-clack! clack-clack!—clack-clack-clack!'
and right away those odious rhymes fitted themselves to that
accompaniment. For an hour I sat there and set a syllable of those rhymes
to every separate and distinct clack the car-wheels made. Why, I was as
fagged out, then, as if I had been chopping wood all day. My skull was
splitting with headache. It seemed to me that I must go mad if I sat there
any longer; so I undressed and went to bed. I stretched myself out in my
berth, and—well, you know what the result was. The thing went right
along, just the same. 'Clack-clack clack, a blue trip slip,
clack-clack-clack, for an eight-cent fare; clack-clack-clack, a buff trip
slip, clack clack-clack, for a six-cent fare, and so on, and so on, and so
on punch in the presence of the passenjare!' Sleep? Not a single wink! I
was almost a lunatic when I got to Boston. Don't ask me about the funeral.
I did the best I could, but every solemn individual sentence was meshed
and tangled and woven in and out with 'Punch, brothers, punch with care,
punch in the presence of the passenjare.' And the most distressing thing
was that my delivery dropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing
rhymes, and I could actually catch absent-minded people nodding time to
the swing of it with their stupid heads. And, Mark, you may believe it or
not, but before I got through the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing
their heads in solemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all. The moment I
had finished, I fled to the anteroom in a state bordering on frenzy. Of
course it would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of the
deceased there, who had arrived from Springfield too late to get into the
church. She began to sob, and said:—
“'Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone, and I didn't see him before he died!'
“'Yes!' I said, 'he is gone, he is gone, he is gone—oh, will this
suffering never cease!'
“'You loved him, then! Oh, you too loved him!'
“'Loved him! Loved who?'
“'Why, my poor George! my poor nephew!'
“'Oh—him! Yes—oh, yes, yes. Certainly—certainly. Punch—punch—oh,
this misery will kill me!'
“'Bless you! bless you, sir, for these sweet words! I, too, suffer in this
dear loss. Were you present during his last moments?'
“'Yes. I—whose last moments?'
“'His. The dear departed's.'
“'Yes! Oh, yes—yes—yes! I suppose so, I think so, I don't
know! Oh, certainly—I was there—I was there!'
“'Oh, what a privilege! what a precious privilege! And his last words—oh,
tell me, tell me his last words! What did he say?'
“'He said—he said—oh, my head, my head, my head! He said—he
said—he never said anything but Punch, punch, punch in the presence
of the passenjare! Oh, leave me, madam! In the name of all that is
generous, leave me to my madness, my misery, my despair!—a buff trip
slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare—endu—rance
can no fur—ther go!—PUNCH in the presence of the passenjare!”
My friend's hopeless eyes rested upon mine a pregnant minute, and then he
said impressively:—
“Mark, you do not say anything. You do not offer me any hope. But, ah me,
it is just as well—it is just as well. You could not do me any good.
The time has long gone by when words could comfort me. Something tells me
that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that remorseless
jingle. There—there it is coming on me again: a blue trip slip for
an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a—”
Thus murmuring faint and fainter, my friend sank into a peaceful trance
and forgot his sufferings in a blessed respite.
How did I finally save him from an asylum? I took him to a neighboring
university and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymes
into the eager ears of the poor, unthinking students. How is it with them,
now? The result is too sad to tell. Why did I write this article? It was
for a worthy, even a noble, purpose. It was to warn you, reader, if you
should came across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them—avoid them
as you would a pestilence!
THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN
Let me refresh the reader's memory a little. Nearly a hundred years ago
the crew of the British ship Bounty mutinied, set the captain and his
officers adrift upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and sailed
southward. They procured wives for themselves among the natives of Tahiti,
then proceeded to a lonely little rock in mid-Pacific, called Pitcairn's
Island, wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that might be
useful to a new colony, and established themselves on shore. Pitcairn's is
so far removed from the track of commerce that it was many years before
another vessel touched there. It had always been considered an uninhabited
island; so when a ship did at last drop its anchor there, in 1808, the
captain was greatly surprised to find the place peopled. Although the
mutineers had fought among themselves, and gradually killed each other off
until only two or three of the original stock remained, these tragedies
had not occurred before a number of children had been born; so in 1808 the
island had a population of twenty-seven persons. John Adams, the chief
mutineer, still survived, and was to live many years yet, as governor and
patriarch of the flock. From being mutineer and homicide, he had turned
Christian and teacher, and his nation of twenty-seven persons was now the
purest and devoutest in Christendom. Adams had long ago hoisted the
British flag and constituted his island an appanage of the British crown.
To-day the population numbers ninety persons—sixteen men, nineteen
women, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls—all descendants of the
mutineers, all bearing the family names of those mutineers, and all
speaking English, and English only. The island stands high up out of the
sea, and has precipitous walls. It is about three-quarters of a mile long,
and in places is as much as half a mile wide. Such arable land as it
affords is held by the several families, according to a division made many
years ago. There is some live stock—goats, pigs, chickens, and cats;
but no dogs, and no large animals. There is one church building used also
as a capitol, a schoolhouse, and a public library. The title of the
governor has been, for a generation or two, “Magistrate and Chief Ruler,
in subordination to her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain.” It was his
province to make the laws, as well as execute them. His office was
elective; everybody over seventeen years old had a vote—no matter
about the sex.
The sole occupations of the people were farming and fishing; their sole
recreation, religious services. There has never been a shop in the island,
nor any money. The habits and dress of the people have always been
primitive, and their laws simple to puerility. They have lived in a deep
Sabbath tranquillity, far from the world and its ambitions and vexations,
and neither knowing nor caring what was going on in the mighty empires
that lie beyond their limitless ocean solitudes. Once in three or four
years a ship touched there, moved them with aged news of bloody battles,
devastating epidemics, fallen thrones, and ruined dynasties, then traded
them some soap and flannel for some yams and breadfruit, and sailed away,
leaving them to retire into their peaceful dreams and pious dissipations
once more.
On the 8th of last September, Admiral de Horsey, commander-in-chief of the
British fleet in the Pacific, visited Pitcairn's Island, and speaks as
follows in his official report to the admiralty:—
They have beans, carrots, turnips, cabbages, and a little maize;
pineapples, fig-trees, custard-apples, and oranges; lemons, and
cocoa-nuts. Clothing is obtained alone from passing ships, in barter
for refreshments. There are no springs on the island, but as it
rains generally once a month they have plenty of water, although at
times in former years they have suffered from drought. No alcoholic
liquors, except for medicinal purposes, are used, and a drunkard is
unknown....
The necessary articles required by the islanders are best shown by
those we furnished in barter for refreshments: namely, flannel,
serge, drill, half-boots, combs, tobacco, and soap. They also stand
much in need of maps and slates for their school, and tools of any
kind are most acceptable. I caused them to be supplied from the
public stores with a Union jack for display on the arrival of
ships, and a pit-saw, of which they were greatly in need. This, I
trust, will meet the approval of their lordships. If the munificent
people of England were only aware of the wants of this most
deserving little colony, they would not long go unsupplied....
Divine service is held every Sunday at 10.30 A.M. and at 3 P.M.,
in the house built and used by John Adams for that purpose until he
died in 1829. It is conducted strictly in accordance with the
liturgy of the Church of England, by Mr. Simon Young, their selected
pastor, who is much respected. A Bible class is held every
Wednesday, when all who conveniently can, attend. There is also a
general meeting for prayer on the first Friday in every month.
Family prayers are said in every house the first thing in the
morning and the last thing in the evening, and no food is partaken
of without asking God's blessing before and afterward. Of these
islanders' religious attributes no one can speak without deep
respect. A people whose greatest pleasure and privilege is to
commune in prayer with their God, and to join in hymns of praise,
and who are, moreover, cheerful, diligent, and probably freer from
vice than any other community, need no priest among them.
Now I come to a sentence in the admiral's report which he dropped
carelessly from his pen, no doubt, and never gave the matter a second
thought. He little imagined what a freight of tragic prophecy it bore!
This is the sentence:—
One stranger, an American, has settled on the island—a doubtful
acquisition.
A doubtful acquisition, indeed! Captain Ormsby, in the American ship
Hornet, touched at Pitcairn's nearly four months after the admiral's
visit, and from the facts which he gathered there we now know all about
that American. Let us put these facts together in historical form. The
American's name was Butterworth Stavely. As soon as he had become well
acquainted with all the people—and this took but a few days, of
course—he began to ingratiate himself with them by all the arts he
could command. He became exceedingly popular, and much looked up to; for
one of the first things he did was to forsake his worldly way of life, and
throw all his energies into religion. He was always reading his Bible, or
praying, or singing hymns, or asking blessings. In prayer, no one had such
“liberty” as he, no one could pray so long or so well.
At last, when he considered the time to be ripe, he began secretly to sow
the seeds of discontent among the people. It was his deliberate purpose,
from the beginning, to subvert the government, but of course he kept that
to himself for a time. He used different arts with different individuals.
He awakened dissatisfaction in one quarter by calling attention to the
shortness of the Sunday services; he argued that there should be three
three-hour services on Sunday instead of only two. Many had secretly held
this opinion before; they now privately banded themselves into a party to
work for it. He showed certain of the women that they were not allowed
sufficient voice in the prayer-meetings; thus another party was formed. No
weapon was beneath his notice; he even descended to the children, and
awoke discontent in their breasts because—as he discovered for them—they
had not enough Sunday-school. This created a third party.
Now, as the chief of these parties, he found himself the strongest power
in the community. So he proceeded to his next move—a no less
important one than the impeachment of the chief magistrate, James Russell
Nickoy; a man of character and ability, and possessed of great wealth, he
being the owner of a house with a parlor to it, three acres and a half of
yam land, and the only boat in Pitcairn's, a whaleboat; and, most
unfortunately, a pretext for this impeachment offered itself at just the
right time.
One of the earliest and most precious laws of the island was the law
against trespass. It was held in great reverence, and was regarded as the
palladium of the people's liberties. About thirty years ago an important
case came before the courts under this law, in this wise: a chicken
belonging to Elizabeth Young (aged, at that time, fifty-eight, a daughter
of John Mills, one of the mutineers of the Bounty) trespassed upon the
grounds of Thursday October Christian (aged twenty-nine, a grandson of
Fletcher Christian, one of the mutineers). Christian killed the chicken.
According to the law, Christian could keep the chicken; or, if he
preferred, he could restore its remains to the owner and receive damages
in “produce” to an amount equivalent to the waste and injury wrought by
the trespasser. The court records set forth that “the said Christian
aforesaid did deliver the aforesaid remains to the said Elizabeth Young,
and did demand one bushel of yams in satisfaction of the damage done.” But
Elizabeth Young considered the demand exorbitant; the parties could not
agree; therefore Christian brought suit in the courts. He lost his case in
the justice's court; at least, he was awarded only a half-peck of yams,
which he considered insufficient, and in the nature of a defeat. He
appealed. The case lingered several years in an ascending grade of courts,
and always resulted in decrees sustaining the original verdict; and
finally the thing got into the supreme court, and there it stuck for
twenty years. But last summer, even the supreme court managed to arrive at
a decision at last. Once more the original verdict was sustained.
Christian then said he was satisfied; but Stavely was present, and
whispered to him and to his lawyer, suggesting, “as a mere form,” that the
original law be exhibited, in order to make sure that it still existed. It
seemed an odd idea, but an ingenious one. So the demand was made. A
messenger was sent to the magistrate's house; he presently returned with
the tidings that it had disappeared from among the state archives.
The court now pronounced its late decision void, since it had been made
under a law which had no actual existence.
Great excitement ensued immediately. The news swept abroad over the whole
island that the palladium of the public liberties was lost—maybe
treasonably destroyed. Within thirty minutes almost the entire nation were
in the court-room—that is to say, the church. The impeachment of the
chief magistrate followed, upon Stavely's motion. The accused met his
misfortune with the dignity which became his great office. He did not
plead, or even argue; he offered the simple defense that he had not
meddled with the missing law; that he had kept the state archives in the
same candle-box that had been used as their depository from the beginning;
and that he was innocent of the removal or destruction of the lost
document.
But nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision of treason,
and degraded from his office, and all his property was confiscated.
The lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggested by
his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit: that he did it to
favor Christian, because Christian was his cousin! Whereas Stavely was the
only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin. The reader
must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a dozen
men; that the first children intermarried together and bore grandchildren
to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried; after them, great
and great-great-grandchildren intermarried; so that to-day everybody is
blood kin to everybody. Moreover, the relationships are wonderfully, even
astoundingly, mixed up and complicated. A stranger, for instance, says to
an islander:—
“You speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her
your aunt.”
“Well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too. And also my stepsister, my
niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin,
my great-aunt, my grandmother, my widowed sister-in-law—and next
week she will be my wife.”
So the charge of nepotism against the chief magistrate was weak. But no
matter; weak or strong, it suited Stavely. Stavely was immediately elected
to the vacant magistracy, and, oozing reform from every pore, he went
vigorously to work. In no long time religious services raged everywhere
and unceasingly. By command, the second prayer of the Sunday morning
service, which had customarily endured some thirty-five or forty minutes,
and had pleaded for the world, first by continent and then by national and
tribal detail, was extended to an hour and a half, and made to include
supplications in behalf of the possible peoples in the several planets.
Everybody was pleased with this; everybody said, “Now this is something
like.” By command, the usual three-hour sermons were doubled in length.
The nation came in a body to testify their gratitude to the new
magistrate. The old law forbidding cooking on the Sabbath was extended to
the prohibition of eating, also. By command, Sunday-school was privileged
to spread over into the week. The joy of all classes was complete. In one
short month the new magistrate had become the people's idol!
The time was ripe for this man's next move. He began, cautiously at first,
to poison the public mind against England. He took the chief citizens
aside, one by one, and conversed with them on this topic. Presently he
grew bolder, and spoke out. He said the nation owed it to itself, to its
honor, to its great traditions, to rise in its might and throw off “this
galling English yoke.”
But the simple islanders answered:
“We had not noticed that it galled. How does it gall? England sends a ship
once in three or four years to give us soap and clothing, and things which
we sorely need and gratefully receive; but she never troubles us; she lets
us go our own way.”
“She lets you go your own way! So slaves have felt and spoken in all the
ages! This speech shows how fallen you are, how base, how brutalized you
have become, under this grinding tyranny! What! has all manly pride
forsaken you? Is liberty nothing? Are you content to be a mere appendage
to a foreign and hateful sovereignty, when you might rise up and take your
rightful place in the august family of nations, great, free, enlightened,
independent, the minion of no sceptered master, but the arbiter of your
own destiny, and a voice and a power in decreeing the destinies of your
sister-sovereignties of the world?”
Speeches like this produced an effect by-and-by. Citizens began to feel
the English yoke; they did not know exactly how or whereabouts they felt
it, but they were perfectly certain they did feel it. They got to
grumbling a good deal, and chafing under their chains, and longing for
relief and release. They presently fell to hating the English flag, that
sign and symbol of their nation's degradation; they ceased to glance up at
it as they passed the capitol, but averted their eyes and grated their
teeth; and one morning, when it was found trampled into the mud at the
foot of the staff, they left it there, and no man put his hand to it to
hoist it again. A certain thing which was sure to happen sooner or later
happened now. Some of the chief citizens went to the magistrate by night,
and said:—
“We can endure this hated tyranny no longer. How can we cast it off?”
“By a coup d'etat.”
“How?”
“A coup d'etat. It is like this: everything is got ready, and at the
appointed moment I, as the official head of the nation, publicly and
solemnly proclaim its independence, and absolve it from allegiance to any
and all other powers whatsoever.”
“That sounds simple and easy. We can do that right away. Then what will be
the next thing to do?”
“Seize all the defenses and public properties of all kinds, establish
martial law, put the army and navy on a war footing, and proclaim the
empire!”
This fine program dazzled these innocents. They said:—
“This is grand—this is splendid; but will not England resist?”
“Let her. This rock is a Gibraltar.”
“True. But about the empire? Do we need an empire and an emperor?”
“What you need, my friends, is unification. Look at Germany; look at
Italy. They are unified. Unification is the thing. It makes living dear.
That constitutes progress. We must have a standing army and a navy. Taxes
follow, as a matter of course. All these things summed up make grandeur.
With unification and grandeur, what more can you want? Very well—only
the empire can confer these boons.”
So on the 8th day of December Pitcairn's Island was proclaimed a free and
independent nation; and on the same day the solemn coronation of
Butterworth I, Emperor of Pitcairn's Island, took place, amid great
rejoicings and festivities. The entire nation, with the exception of
fourteen persons, mainly little children, marched past the throne in
single file, with banners and music, the procession being upward of ninety
feet long; and some said it was as much as three-quarters of a minute
passing a given point. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the history
of the island before. Public enthusiasm was measureless.
Now straightway imperial reforms began. Orders of nobility were
instituted. A minister of the navy was appointed, and the whale-boat put
in commission. A minister of war was created, and ordered to proceed at
once with the formation of a standing army. A first lord of the treasury
was named, and commanded to get up a taxation scheme, and also open
negotiations for treaties, offensive, defensive, and commercial, with
foreign powers. Some generals and admirals were appointed; also some
chamberlains, some equerries in waiting, and some lords of the bedchamber.
At this point all the material was used up. The Grand Duke of Galilee,
minister of war, complained that all the sixteen grown men in the empire
had been given great offices, and consequently would not consent to serve
in the ranks; wherefore his standing army was at a stand-still. The
Marquis of Ararat, minister of the navy, made a similar complaint. He said
he was willing to steer the whale-boat himself, but he must have somebody
to man her.
The emperor did the best he could in the circumstances: he took all the
boys above the age of ten years away from their mothers, and pressed them
into the army, thus constructing a corps of seventeen privates, officered
by one lieutenant-general and two major-generals. This pleased the
minister of war, but procured the enmity of all the mothers in the land;
for they said their precious ones must now find bloody graves in the
fields of war, and he would be answerable for it. Some of the more
heartbroken and unappeasable among them lay constantly wait for the
emperor and threw yams at him, unmindful of the body-guard.
On account of the extreme scarcity of material, it was found necessary to
require the Duke of Bethany postmaster-general, to pull stroke-oar in the
navy and thus sit in the rear of a noble of lower degree namely, Viscount
Canaan, lord-justice of the common pleas. This turned the Duke of Bethany
into tolerably open malcontent and a secret conspirator—a thing
which the emperor foresaw, but could not help.
Things went from bad to worse. The emperor raised Nancy Peters to the
peerage on one day, and married her the next, notwithstanding, for reasons
of state, the cabinet had strenuously advised him to marry Emmeline,
eldest daughter of the Archbishop of Bethlehem. This caused trouble in a
powerful quarter—the church. The new empress secured the support and
friendship of two-thirds of the thirty-six grown women in the nation by
absorbing them into her court as maids of honor; but this made deadly
enemies of the remaining twelve. The families of the maids of honor soon
began to rebel, because there was nobody at home to keep house. The twelve
snubbed women refused to enter the imperial kitchen as servants; so the
empress had to require the Countess of Jericho and other great court dames
to fetch water, sweep the palace, and perform other menial and equally
distasteful services. This made bad blood in that department.
Everybody fell to complaining that the taxes levied for the support of the
army, the navy, and the rest of the imperial establishment were
intolerably burdensome, and were reducing the nation to beggary. The
emperor's reply—“Look—Look at Germany; look at Italy. Are you
better than they? and haven't you unification?”—-did not satisfy
them. They said, “People can't eat unification, and we are starving.
Agriculture has ceased. Everybody is in the army, everybody is in the
navy, everybody is in the public service, standing around in a uniform,
with nothing whatever to do, nothing to eat, and nobody to till the fields—”
“Look at Germany; look at Italy. It is the same there. Such is
unification, and there's no other way to get it—no other way to keep
it after you've got it,” said the poor emperor always.
But the grumblers only replied, “We can't stand the taxes—we can't
stand them.”
Now right on top of this the cabinet reported a national debt amounting to
upward of forty-five dollars—half a dollar to every individual in
the nation. And they proposed to fund something. They had heard that this
was always done in such emergencies. They proposed duties on exports; also
on imports. And they wanted to issue bonds; also paper money, redeemable
in yams and cabbages in fifty years. They said the pay of the army and of
the navy and of the whole governmental machine was far in arrears, and
unless something was done, and done immediately, national bankruptcy must
ensue, and possibly insurrection and revolution. The emperor at once
resolved upon a high-handed measure, and one of a nature never before
heard of in Pitcairn's Island. He went in state to the church on Sunday
morning, with the army at his back, and commanded the minister of the
treasury to take up a collection.
That was the feather that broke the camel's back. First one citizen, and
then another, rose and refused to submit to this unheard-of outrage—and
each refusal was followed by the immediate confiscation of the
malcontent's property. This vigor soon stopped the refusals, and the
collection proceeded amid a sullen and ominous silence. As the emperor
withdrew with the troops, he said, “I will teach you who is master here.”
Several persons shouted, “Down with unification!” They were at once
arrested and torn from the arms of their weeping friends by the soldiery.
But in the mean time, as any prophet might have foreseen, a Social
Democrat had been developed. As the emperor stepped into the gilded
imperial wheelbarrow at the church door, the social democrat stabbed at
him fifteen or sixteen times with a harpoon, but fortunately with such a
peculiarly social democratic unprecision of aim as to do no damage.
That very night the convulsion came. The nation rose as one man—though
forty-nine of the revolutionists were of the other sex. The infantry threw
down their pitchforks; the artillery cast aside their cocoa-nuts; the navy
revolted; the emperor was seized, and bound hand and foot in his palace.
He was very much depressed. He said:—
“I freed you from a grinding tyranny; I lifted you up out of your
degradation, and made you a nation among nations; I gave you a strong,
compact, centralized government; and, more than all, I gave you the
blessing of blessings—unification. I have done all this, and my
reward is hatred, insult, and these bonds. Take me; do with me as you
will. I here resign my crown and all my dignities, and gladly do I release
myself from their too heavy burden. For your sake I took them up; for your
sake I lay them down. The imperial jewel is no more; now bruise and defile
as ye will the useless setting.”
By a unanimous voice the people condemned the ex-emperor and the social
democrat to perpetual banishment from church services, or to perpetual
labor as galley-slaves in the whale-boat—whichever they might
prefer. The next day the nation assembled again, and rehoisted the British
flag, reinstated the British tyranny, reduced the nobility to the
condition of commoners again, and then straightway turned their diligent
attention to the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches, and the
rehabilitation of the old useful industries and the old healing and
solacing pieties. The ex-emperor restored the lost trespass law, and
explained that he had stolen it—not to injure any one, but to
further his political projects. Therefore the nation gave the late chief
magistrate his office again, and also his alienated Property.
Upon reflection, the ex-emperor and the social democrat chose perpetual
banishment from religious services in preference to perpetual labor as
galley-slaves “with perpetual religious services,” as they phrased it;
wherefore the people believed that the poor fellows' troubles had unseated
their reason, and so they judged it best to confine them for the present.
Which they did.
Such is the history of Pitcairn's “doubtful acquisition.”
THE CANVASSER'S TALE
Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tired
look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard-seed
of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the empty vastness
of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under his arm, and
said to myself, Behold, Providence hath delivered his servant into the
hands of another canvasser.
Well, these people always get one interested. Before I well knew how it
came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention
and sympathy. He told it something like this:—
My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child. My uncle
Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own. He was my only
relative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous. He
reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy.
In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my servants—my
chamberlain and my valet—to travel in foreign countries. During four
years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens of the
distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one whose tongue
was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with confidence, as one
unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you too, sir, are gifted
with the divine inflation. In those far lands I reveled in the ambrosial
food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the heart. But of all things,
that which most appealed to my inborn esthetic taste was the prevailing
custom there, among the rich, of making collections of elegant and costly
rarities, dainty objets de vertu, and in an evil hour I tried to uplift my
uncle Ithuriel to a plane of sympathy with this exquisite employment.
I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells;
another's noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another's elevating and
refining collection of undecipherable autographs; another's priceless
collection of old china; another's enchanting collection of postage-stamps—and
so forth and so on. Soon my letters yielded fruit. My uncle began to look
about for something to make a collection of. You may know, perhaps, how
fleetly a taste like this dilates. His soon became a raging fever, though
I knew it not. He began to neglect his great pork business; presently he
wholly retired and turned an elegant leisure into a rabid search for
curious things. His wealth was vast, and he spared it not. First he tried
cow-bells. He made a collection which filled five large salons, and
comprehended all the different sorts of cow-bells that ever had been
contrived, save one. That one—an antique, and the only specimen
extant—was possessed by another collector. My uncle offered enormous
sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell. Doubtless you know what
necessarily resulted. A true collector attaches no value to a collection
that is not complete. His great heart breaks, he sells his hoard, he turns
his mind to some field that seems unoccupied.
Thus did my uncle. He next tried brickbats. After piling up a vast and
intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened; his
great heart broke again; he sold out his soul's idol to the retired brewer
who possessed the missing brick. Then he tried flint hatchets and other
implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the factory
where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as himself. He
tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales—another failure, after
incredible labor and expense. When his collection seemed at last perfect,
a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztec inscription from the
Cundurango regions of Central America that made all former specimens
insignificant. My uncle hastened to secure these noble gems. He got the
stuffed whale, but another collector got the inscription. A real
Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of such supreme value
that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather part with his family
than with it. So my uncle sold out, and saw his darlings go forth, never
more to return; and his coal-black hair turned white as snow in a single
night.
Now he waited, and thought. He knew another disappointment might kill him.
He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other man
was collecting. He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered the
field-this time to make a collection of echoes.
“Of what?” said I.
Echoes, sir. His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated four
times; his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was a
thirteen-repeater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas; his
next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak,
because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it
having tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few
thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble
the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertook the job had never
built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one. Before he
meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but now it was
only fit for the deaf-and-dumb asylum. Well, next he bought a lot of cheap
little double-barreled echoes, scattered around over various states and
territories; he got them at twenty per cent. off by taking the lot. Next
he bought a perfect Gatling-gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a
fortune, I can tell you. You may know, sir, that in the echo market the
scale of prices is cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds; in fact,
the same phraseology is used. A single-carat echo is worth but ten dollars
over and above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or
double-barreled echo is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine
hundred and fifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle's
Oregon-echo, which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat
gem, and cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars—they threw
the land in, for it was four hundred miles from a settlement.
Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses. I was the accepted
suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was beloved
to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss. The family
were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an uncle held to be
worth five millions of dollars. However, none of us knew that my uncle had
become a collector, at least in anything more than a small way, for
esthetic amusement.
Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo, since
known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of
Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five carat gem. You could
utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the
day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the
same time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to make
the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of small hills
with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements of New
York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and neither
knew the other was there. The echo was not all owned by one man; a person
by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the east hill, and a person
by the name of Harbison J. Bledso owned the west hill; the swale between
was the dividing-line. So while my uncle was buying Jarvis's hill for
three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars, the other
party was buying Bledso's hill for a shade over three million.
Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of
echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but
the one-half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content
with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other. There
were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last that other
collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward a
man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill!
You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that
nobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would be
nothing to reflect my uncle's echo. My uncle remonstrated with him, but
the man said, “I own one end of this echo; I choose to kill my end; you
must take care of your own end yourself.”
Well, my uncle got an injunction put on him. The other man appealed and
fought it in a higher court. They carried it on up, clear to the Supreme
Court of the United States. It made no end of trouble there. Two of the
judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it was
impalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, salable, and
consequently taxable; two others believed that an echo was real estate,
because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not removable from
place to place; other of the judges contended that an echo was not
property at all.
It was finally decided that the echo was property; that the hills were
property; that the two men were separate and independent owners of the two
hills, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was at full
liberty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, but must
give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which might
result to my uncle's half of the echo. This decision also debarred my
uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo, without
defendant's consent; he must use only his own hill; if his part of the
echo would not go, under these circumstances, it was sad, of course, but
the court could find no remedy. The court also debarred defendant from
using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo, without consent. You
see the grand result! Neither man would give consent, and so that
astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from its great powers; and
since that day that magnificent property is tied up and unsalable.
A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss and the
nobility were gathering from far and near to honor our espousals, came
news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making me his sole
heir. He was gone; alas, my dear benefactor was no more. The thought
surcharges my heart even at this remote day. I handed the will to the
earl; I could not read it for the blinding tears. The earl read it; then
he sternly said, “Sir, do you call this wealth?—but doubtless you do
in your inflated country. Sir, you are left sole heir to a vast collection
of echoes—if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered
far and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent;
sir, this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; there is not an echo
in the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard man, but I must
look to my child's interest; if you had but one echo which you could
honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which was free from
incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble,
painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus wrest from it a
maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry my child to a
beggar. Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your mortgage-ridden
echoes and quit my sight forever.”
My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she
would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the
world. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die
within the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone,
praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together again
in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are
at rest. Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these maps and
plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for less money
than any man in the trade. Now this one, which cost my uncle ten dollars,
thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in Texas, I will let
you have for—
“Let me interrupt you,” I said. “My friend, I have not had a moment's
respite from canvassers this day. I have bought a sewing-machine which I
did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details; I
have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison which
the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of useless
inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. I would not
have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me. I would not let
it stay on the place. I always hate a man that tries to sell me echoes.
You see this gun? Now take your collection and move on; let us not have
bloodshed.”
But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams. You
know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have once
opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have got to
suffer defeat.
I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour. I bought
two double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another,
which he said was not salable because it only spoke German. He said, “She
was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down.”
AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER
The nervous, dapper, “peart” young man took the chair I offered him, and
said he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added:
“Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you.”
“Come to what?”
“Interview you.”
“Ah! I see. Yes—yes. Um! Yes—yes.”
I was not feeling bright that morning. Indeed, my powers seemed a bit
under a cloud. However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been
looking six or seven minutes I found I was obliged to refer to the young
man. I said:—
“How do you spell it?”
“Spell what?”
“Interview.”
“Oh, my goodness! what do you want to spell it for?”
“I don't want to spell it; I want to see what it means.”
“Well, this is astonishing, I must say. I can tell you what it means, if
you—if you—”
“Oh, all right! That will answer, and much obliged to you, too.”
“In, in, ter, ter, inter—”
“Then you spell it with an I?”
“Why certainly!”
“Oh, that is what took me so long.”
“Why, my dear sir, what did you propose to spell it with?”
“Well, I—I—hardly know. I had the Unabridged, and I was
ciphering around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the
pictures. But it's a very old edition.”
“Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a picture of it in even the latest e——
My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, but you do
not look as—as—intelligent as I had expected you would. No
harm—I mean no harm at all.”
“Oh, don't mention it! It has often been said, and by people who would not
flatter and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quite
remarkable in that way. Yes—yes; they always speak of it with
rapture.”
“I can easily imagine it. But about this interview. You know it is the
custom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious.”
“Indeed, I had not heard of it before. It must be very interesting. What
do you do it with?”
“Ah, well—well—well—this is disheartening. It ought to
be done with a club in some cases; but customarily it consists in the
interviewer asking questions and the interviewed answering them. It is all
the rage now. Will you let me ask you certain questions calculated to
bring out the salient points of your public and private history?”
“Oh, with pleasure—with pleasure. I have a very bad memory, but I
hope you will not mind that. That is to say, it is an irregular memory—singularly
irregular. Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it will be as
much as a fortnight passing a given point. This is a great grief to me.”
“Oh, it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can.”
“I will. I will put my whole mind on it.”
“Thanks. Are you ready to begin?”
“Ready.”
Q. How old are you?
A. Nineteen, in June.
Q. Indeed. I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six. Where were you
born?
A. In Missouri.
Q. When did you begin to write?
A. In 1836.
Q. Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now?
A. I don't know. It does seem curious, somehow.
Q. It does, indeed. Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you ever
met?
A. Aaron Burr.
Q. But you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you are only nineteen
years!—
A. Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for?
Q. Well, it was only a suggestion; nothing more. How did you happen to
meet Burr?
A. Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day, and he asked me to make
less noise, and—
Q. But, good heavens! if you were at his funeral, he must have been dead,
and if he was dead how could he care whether you made a noise or not?
A. I don't know. He was always a particular kind of a man that way.
Q. Still, I don't understand it at all. You say he spoke to you, and that
he was dead.
A. I didn't say he was dead.
Q. But wasn't he dead?
A. Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't.
Q. What did you think?
A. Oh, it was none of my business! It wasn't any of my funeral.
Q. Did you—However, we can never get this matter straight. Let me
ask about something else. What was the date of your birth?
A. Monday, October 31, 1693.
Q. What! Impossible! That would make you a hundred and eighty years old.
How do you account for that?
A. I don't account for it at all.
Q. But you said at first you were only nineteen, and now you make yourself
out to be one hundred and eighty. It is an awful discrepancy.
A. Why, have you noticed that? (Shaking hands.) Many a time it has seemed
to me like a discrepancy, but somehow I couldn't make up my mind. How
quick you notice a thing!
Q. Thank you for the compliment, as far as it goes. Had you, or have you,
any brothers or sisters?
A. Eh! I—I—I think so—yes—but I don't remember.
Q. Well, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard!
A. Why, what makes you think that?
Q. How could I think otherwise? Why, look here! Who is this a picture of
on the wall? Isn't that a brother of yours?
A. Oh, yes, yes, yes! Now you remind me of it; that was a brother of mine.
That's William—Bill we called him. Poor old Bill!
Q. Why? Is he dead, then?
A. Ah! well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a great mystery
about it.
Q. That is sad, very sad. He disappeared, then?
A. Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him—
Q. Buried him! Buried him, without knowing whether he was dead or not?
A. Oh, no! Not that. He was dead enough.
Q. Well, I confess that I can't understand this. If you buried him, and
you knew he was dead.
A. No! no! We only thought he was.
Q. Oh, I see! He came to life again?
A. I bet he didn't.
Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. Somebody was dead. Somebody was
buried. Now, where was the mystery?
A. Ah! that's just it! That's it exactly. You see, we were twins—defunct
and I—and we got mixed in the bathtub when we were only two weeks
old, and one of us was drowned. But we didn't know which. Some think it
was Bill. Some think it was me.
Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do you think?
A. Goodness knows! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, this
awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell you a
secret now, which I never have revealed to any creature before. One of us
had a peculiar mark—a large mole on the back of his left hand; that
was me. That child was the one that was drowned!
Q. Very well, then, I don't see that there is any mystery about it, after
all.
A. You don't? Well, I do. Anyway, I don't see how they could ever have
been such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child. But, 'sh!—don't
mention it where the family can hear of it. Heaven knows they have
heartbreaking troubles enough without adding this.
Q. Well, I believe I have got material enough for the present, and I am
very much obliged to you for the pains you have taken. But I was a good
deal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral. Would you mind
telling me what particular circumstance it was that made you think Burr
was such a remarkable man?
A. Oh! it was a mere trifle! Not one man in fifty would have noticed it at
all. When the sermon was over, and the procession all ready to start for
the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he said he
wanted to take a last look at the scenery, and so he got up and rode with
the driver.
Then the young man reverently withdrew. He was very pleasant company, and
I was sorry to see him go.
PARIS NOTES
[Crowded out of “A Tramp Abroad” to make room for more
vital statistics.—M. T.]
The Parisian travels but little, he knows no language but his own, reads
no literature but his own, and consequently he is pretty narrow and pretty
self-sufficient. However, let us not be too sweeping; there are Frenchmen
who know languages not their own: these are the waiters. Among the rest,
they know English; that is, they know it on the European plan—which
is to say, they can speak it, but can't understand it. They easily make
themselves understood, but it is next to impossible to word an English
sentence in such a way as to enable them to comprehend it. They think they
comprehend it; they pretend they do; but they don't. Here is a
conversation which I had with one of these beings; I wrote it down at the
time, in order to have it exactly correct.
I. These are fine oranges. Where are they grown?
He. More? Yes, I will bring them.
I. No, do not bring any more; I only want to know where they are from—where
they are raised.
He. Yes? (with imperturbable mien and rising inflection.)
I. Yes. Can you tell me what country they are from?
He. Yes? (blandly, with rising inflection.)
I. (disheartened). They are very nice.
He. Good night. (Bows, and retires, quite satisfied with himself.)
That young man could have become a good English scholar by taking the
right sort of pains, but he was French, and wouldn't do that. How
different is the case with our people; they utilize every means that
offers. There are some alleged French Protestants in Paris, and they built
a nice little church on one of the great avenues that lead away from the
Arch of Triumph, and proposed to listen to the correct thing, preached in
the correct way, there, in their precious French tongue, and be happy. But
their little game does not succeed. Our people are always there ahead of
them Sundays, and take up all the room. When the minister gets up to
preach, he finds his house full of devout foreigners, each ready and
waiting, with his little book in his hand—a morocco-bound Testament,
apparently. But only apparently; it is Mr. Bellows's admirable and
exhaustive little French-English dictionary, which in look and binding and
size is just like a Testament and those people are there to study French.
The building has been nicknamed “The Church of the Gratis French Lesson.”
These students probably acquire more language than general information,
for I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech—it never
names a historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in
dates, you get left. A French speech is something like this:
Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and
perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our
chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of
foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification
before heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the
seeds of its own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice
of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting
the oppressed peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of
France and live; and let us here record our everlasting curse
against the man of the 2d December, and declare in thunder tones,
the native tones of France, that but for him there had been no 17th
March in history, no 12th October, no 19th January, no 22d April,
no 16th November, no 30th September, no 2d July, no 14th February,
no 29th June, no 15th August, no 31st May—that but for him, France
the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant
almanac to-day!
I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent
way:
My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th
January. The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have
been in just proportion to the magnitude of the set itself. But for
it there had been no 30 November—sorrowful spectacle! The grisly
deed of the 16th June had not been done but for it, nor had the man
of the 16th June known existence; to it alone the 3d September was
due, also the fatal 12th October. Shall we, then, be grateful for
the 13th January, with its freight of death for you and me and all
that breathe? Yes, my friends, for it gave us also that which had
never come but for it, and it alone—the blessed 25th December.
It may be well enough to explain, though in the case of many of my readers
this will hardly be necessary. The man of the 13th January is Adam; the
crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful spectacle of
the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; the grisly deed of the 16th
June was the murder of Abel; the act of the 3d September was the beginning
of the journey to the land of Nod; the 12th day of October, the last
mountain-tops disappeared under the flood. When you go to church in
France, you want to take your almanac with you—annotated.
LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY
[Left out of “A Tramp Abroad” because its authenticity seemed
doubtful, and could not at that time be proved.—M. T.]
More than a thousand years ago this small district was a kingdom—a
little bit of a kingdom, a sort of dainty little toy kingdom, as one might
say. It was far removed from the jealousies, strifes, and turmoils of that
old warlike day, and so its life was a simple life, its people a gentle
and guileless race; it lay always in a deep dream of peace, a soft Sabbath
tranquillity; there was no malice, there was no envy, there was no
ambition, consequently there were no heart-burnings, there was no
unhappiness in the land.
In the course of time the old king died and his little son Hubert came to
the throne. The people's love for him grew daily; he was so good and so
pure and so noble, that by and by his love became a passion, almost a
worship. Now at his birth the soothsayers had diligently studied the stars
and found something written in that shining book to this effect:
In Hubert's fourteenth year a pregnant event will happen; the animal
whose singing shall sound sweetest in Hubert's ear shall save
Hubert's life. So long as the king and the nation shall honor this
animal's race for this good deed, the ancient dynasty shall not fail
of an heir, nor the nation know war or pestilence or poverty. But
beware an erring choice!
All through the king's thirteenth year but one thing was talked of by the
soothsayers, the statesmen, the little parliament, and the general people.
That one thing was this: How is the last sentence of the prophecy to be
understood? What goes before seems to mean that the saving animal will
choose itself at the proper time; but the closing sentence seems to mean
that the king must choose beforehand, and say what singer among the
animals pleases him best, and that if he choose wisely the chosen animal
will save his life, his dynasty, his people, but that if he should make
“an erring choice”—beware!
By the end of the year there were as many opinions about this matter as
there had been in the beginning; but a majority of the wise and the simple
were agreed that the safest plan would be for the little king to make
choice beforehand, and the earlier the better. So an edict was sent forth
commanding all persons who owned singing creatures to bring them to the
great hall of the palace in the morning of the first day of the new year.
This command was obeyed. When everything was in readiness for the trial,
the king made his solemn entry with the great officers of the crown, all
clothed in their robes of state. The king mounted his golden throne and
prepared to give judgment. But he presently said:—
“These creatures all sing at once; the noise is unendurable; no one can
choose in such a turmoil. Take them all away, and bring back one at a
time.”
This was done. One sweet warbler after another charmed the young king's
ear and was removed to make way for another candidate. The precious
minutes slipped by; among so many bewitching songsters he found it hard to
choose, and all the harder because the promised penalty for an error was
so terrible that it unsettled his judgment and made him afraid to trust
his own ears. He grew nervous and his face showed distress. His ministers
saw this, for they never took their eyes from him a moment. Now they began
to say in their hearts:
“He has lost courage—the cool head is gone—he will err—he
and his dynasty and his people are doomed!”
At the end of an hour the king sat silent awhile, and then said:—
“Bring back the linnet.”
The linnet trilled forth her jubilant music. In the midst of it the king
was about to uplift his scepter in sign of choice, but checked himself and
said:—
“But let us be sure. Bring back the thrush; let them sing together.”
The thrush was brought, and the two birds poured out their marvels of song
together. The king wavered, then his inclination began to settle and
strengthen—one could see it in his countenance. Hope budded in the
hearts of the old ministers, their pulses began to beat quicker, the
scepter began to rise slowly, when: There was a hideous interruption! It
was a sound like this—just at the door:
“Waw... he! waw... he! waw-he!-waw he!-waw-he!”
Everybody was sorely startled—and enraged at himself for showing it.
The next instant the dearest, sweetest, prettiest little peasant-maid of
nine years came tripping in, her brown eyes glowing with childish
eagerness; but when she saw that august company and those angry faces she
stopped and hung her head and put her poor coarse apron to her eyes.
Nobody gave her welcome, none pitied her. Presently she looked up timidly
through her tears, and said:—
“My lord the king, I pray you pardon me, for I meant no wrong. I have no
father and no mother, but I have a goat and a donkey, and they are all in
all to me. My goat gives me the sweetest milk, and when my dear good
donkey brays it seems to me there is no music like to it. So when my lord
the king's jester said the sweetest singer among all the animals should
save the crown and nation, and moved me to bring him here—”
All the court burst into a rude laugh, and the child fled away crying,
without trying to finish her speech. The chief minister gave a private
order that she and her disastrous donkey be flogged beyond the precincts
of the palace and commanded to come within them no more.
Then the trial of the birds was resumed. The two birds sang their best,
but the scepter lay motionless in the king's hand. Hope died slowly out in
the breasts of all. An hour went by; two hours, still no decision. The day
waned to its close, and the waiting multitudes outside the palace grew
crazed with anxiety and apprehension. The twilight came on, the shadows
fell deeper and deeper. The king and his court could no longer see each
other's faces. No one spoke—none called for lights. The great trial
had been made; it had failed; each and all wished to hide their faces from
the light and cover up their deep trouble in their own hearts.
Finally-hark! A rich, full strain of the divinest melody streamed forth
from a remote part of the hall—the nightingale's voice!
“Up!” shouted the king, “let all the bells make proclamation to the
people, for the choice is made and we have not erred. King, dynasty, and
nation are saved. From henceforth let the nightingale be honored
throughout the land forever. And publish it among all the people that
whosoever shall insult a nightingale, or injure it, shall suffer death.
The king hath spoken.”
All that little world was drunk with joy. The castle and the city blazed
with bonfires all night long, the people danced and drank and sang; and
the triumphant clamor of the bells never ceased.
From that day the nightingale was a sacred bird. Its song was heard in
every house; the poets wrote its praises; the painters painted it; its
sculptured image adorned every arch and turret and fountain and public
building. It was even taken into the king's councils; and no grave matter
of state was decided until the soothsayers had laid the thing before the
state nightingale and translated to the ministry what it was that the bird
had sung about it.
II
The young king was very fond of the chase. When the summer was come he
rode forth with hawk and hound, one day, in a brilliant company of his
nobles. He got separated from them by and by, in a great forest, and took
what he imagined a near cut, to find them again; but it was a mistake. He
rode on and on, hopefully at first, but with sinking courage finally.
Twilight came on, and still he was plunging through a lonely and unknown
land. Then came a catastrophe. In the dim light he forced his horse
through a tangled thicket overhanging a steep and rocky declivity. When
horse and rider reached the bottom, the former had a broken neck and the
latter a broken leg. The poor little king lay there suffering agonies of
pain, and each hour seemed a long month to him. He kept his ear strained
to hear any sound that might promise hope of rescue; but he heard no
voice, no sound of horn or bay of hound. So at last he gave up all hope,
and said, “Let death come, for come it must.”
Just then the deep, sweet song of a nightingale swept across the still
wastes of the night.
“Saved!” the king said. “Saved! It is the sacred bird, and the prophecy is
come true. The gods themselves protected me from error in the choice.”
He could hardly contain his joy; he could not word his gratitude. Every
few moments now he thought he caught the sound of approaching succor. But
each time it was a disappointment; no succor came. The dull hours drifted
on. Still no help came—but still the sacred bird sang on. He began
to have misgivings about his choice, but he stifled them. Toward dawn the
bird ceased. The morning came, and with it thirst and hunger; but no
succor. The day waxed and waned. At last the king cursed the nightingale.
Immediately the song of the thrush came from out the wood. The king said
in his heart, “This was the true-bird—my choice was false—succor
will come now.”
But it did not come. Then he lay many hours insensible. When he came to
himself, a linnet was singing. He listened with apathy. His faith was
gone. “These birds,” he said, “can bring no help; I and my house and my
people are doomed.” He turned him about to die; for he was grown very
feeble from hunger and thirst and suffering, and felt that his end was
near. In truth, he wanted to die, and be released from pain. For long
hours he lay without thought or feeling or motion. Then his senses
returned. The dawn of the third morning was breaking. Ah, the world seemed
very beautiful to those worn eyes. Suddenly a great longing to live rose
up in the lad's heart, and from his soul welled a deep and fervent prayer
that Heaven would have mercy upon him and let him see his home and his
friends once more. In that instant a soft, a faint, a far-off sound, but
oh, how inexpressibly sweet to his waiting ear, came floating out of the
distance:
“Waw... he! waw... he! Waw-he!—waw-he!—waw-he!”
“That, oh, that song is sweeter, a thousand times sweeter than the voice
of the nightingale, thrush, or linnet, for it brings not mere hope, but
certainty of succor; and now, indeed, am I saved! The sacred singer has
chosen itself, as the oracle intended; the prophecy is fulfilled, and my
life, my house, and my people are redeemed. The ass shall be sacred from
this day!”
The divine music grew nearer and nearer, stronger—and stronger and
ever sweeter and sweeter to the perishing sufferer's ear. Down the
declivity the docile little donkey wandered, cropping herbage and singing
as he went; and when at last he saw the dead horse and the wounded king,
he came and snuffed at them with simple and marveling curiosity. The king
petted him, and he knelt down as had been his wont when his little
mistress desired to mount. With great labor and pain the lad drew himself
upon the creature's back, and held himself there by aid of the generous
ears. The ass went singing forth from the place and carried the king to
the little peasant-maid's hut. She gave him her pallet for a bed,
refreshed him with goat's milk, and then flew to tell the great news to
the first scouting-party of searchers she might meet.
The king got well. His first act was to proclaim the sacredness and
inviolability of the ass; his second was to add this particular ass to his
cabinet and make him chief minister of the crown; his third was to have
all the statues and effigies of nightingales throughout his kingdom
destroyed, and replaced by statues and effigies of the sacred donkey; and,
his fourth was to announce that when the little peasant maid should reach
her fifteenth year he would make her his queen and he kept his word.
Such is the legend. This explains why the moldering image of the ass
adorns all these old crumbling walls and arches; and it explains why,
during many centuries, an ass was always the chief minister in that royal
cabinet, just as is still the case in most cabinets to this day; and it
also explains why, in that little kingdom, during many centuries, all
great poems, all great speeches, all great books, all public solemnities,
and all royal proclamations, always began with these stirring words:
“Waw... he! waw... he!—waw he! Waw-he!”
SPEECH ON THE BABIES
AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR
FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879
The fifteenth regular toast was “The Babies—as they comfort us in
our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities.”
I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have
not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works
down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for a
thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if
he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute—if
you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and
recontemplate your first baby—you will remember that he amounted to
a great deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when the
little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your
resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his mere
body-servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a commander who
made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. You had to
execute his order whether it was possible or not. And there was only one
form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick.
He treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the
bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. You could face the death-storm
at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed
your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to
take it. When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set your
faces toward the batteries, and advanced with steady tread; but when he
turned on the terrors of his war-whoop you advanced in the other
direction, and mighty glad of the chance, too. When he called for
soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any side remarks about
certain services being unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? No. You got
up and got it. When he ordered his pap-bottle and it was not warm, did you
talk back? Not you. You went to work and warmed it. You even descended so
far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff
yourself, to see if it was right—three parts water to one of milk, a
touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those
hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as
you went along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful
old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the
angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin—simply wind
on the stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his
usual hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and
remark, with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school
book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose
yourself? Oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering
up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled
undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to
sing!—“Rock-a-by baby in the treetop,” for instance. What a
spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the
neighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes
military music at three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this
sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated
that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? [“Go
on!”] You simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea
that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and
a front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you
and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising,
irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you
can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one
baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins.
Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain't any real difference
between triplets and an insurrection.
Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of
the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years from
now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still survive
(and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic numbering
200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our increase. Our
present schooner of State will have grown into a political leviathan—a
Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day will be on deck. Let them be
well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract on their hands.
Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some
which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could
know which ones they are. In one of those cradles the unconscious Farragut
of the future is at this moment teething—think of it!—and
putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly
justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the future renowned
astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but a languid
interest—poor little chap!—and wondering what has become of
that other one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future great
historian is lying—and doubtless will continue to lie until his
earthly mission is ended. In another the future President is busying
himself with no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has
become of his hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there
are now some 60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him
occasion to grapple with that same old problem a second time. And in still
one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious
commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his
approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole
strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his
big toe into his mouth—an achievement which, meaning no disrespect,
the illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some
fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there
are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.
SPEECH ON THE WEATHER
AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY
The next toast was: “The Oldest Inhabitant—The Weather of New
England.”
Who can lose it and forget it?
Who can have it and regret it?
Be interposer 'twixt us Twain.
Merchant of Venice.
To this Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) replied as follows:—
I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in
New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it
must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and
learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to
make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take
their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is a sumptuous variety
about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration—and
regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending
strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the
people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in
spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred
and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours.
It was I that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that
marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial, that so
astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and
get specimens from all the climes. I said, “Don't you do it; you come to
New England on a favorable spring day.” I told him what we could do in the
way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came and he made his
collection in four days. As to variety, why, he confessed that he got
hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to
quantity—well, after he had picked out and discarded all that was
blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to
spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to
invest; weather to give to the poor. The people of New England are by
nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will
not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about
“Beautiful Spring.” These are generally casual visitors, who bring their
notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the
natives feel about spring. And so the first thing they know the
opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by. Old
Probabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and
thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the paper and observe how crisply
and confidently he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on the
Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region. See
him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New
England, and then see his tail drop. He doesn't know what the weather is
going to be in New England. Well, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets
out something about like this: Probable northeast to southwest winds,
varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and points between,
high and low barometer swapping around from place to place; probable areas
of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes,
with thunder and lightning. Then he jots down this postscript from his
wandering mind, to cover accidents: “But it is possible that the program
may be wholly changed in the mean time.” Yes, one of the brightest gems in
the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only
one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of
it—a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the
procession is going to move first. You fix up for the drought; you leave
your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned.
You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under,
and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you
know you get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments; but
they can't be helped. The lightning there is peculiar; it is so
convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that
thing behind for you to tell whether—Well, you'd think it was
something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. And the thunder.
When the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and key up
the instruments for the performance, strangers say, “Why, what awful
thunder you have here!” But when the baton is raised and the real concert
begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with his head in the
ash-barrel. Now as to the size of the weather in New England lengthways, I
mean. It is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little country.
Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see
that New England weather sticking out beyond the edges and projecting
around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring states. She
can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks all about where
she has strained herself trying to do it. I could speak volumes about the
inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but a
single specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof. So I covered part of
my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it
ever rains on that tin? No, sir; skips it every time. Mind, in this speech
I have been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather—no
language could do it justice. But, after all, there is at least one or two
things about that weather (or, if you please, effects produced, by it)
which we residents would not like to part with. If we hadn't our
bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with
one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries—the
ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the
top—ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and
twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree
sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the
wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads
of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner
of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable
rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold—the
tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and
it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or
nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot
make the words too strong.
CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE —
[Being part of a chapter which was
crowded out of “A Tramp Abroad.”—M.T.]
There was as Englishman in our compartment, and he complimented me on—on
what? But you would never guess. He complimented me on my English. He said
Americans in general did not speak the English language as correctly as I
did. I said I was obliged to him for his compliment, since I knew he meant
it for one, but that I was not fairly entitled to it, for I did not speak
English at all—I only spoke American.
He laughed, and said it was a distinction without a difference. I said no,
the difference was not prodigious, but still it was considerable. We fell
into a friendly dispute over the matter. I put my case as well as I could,
and said:—
“The languages were identical several generations ago, but our changed
conditions and the spread of our people far to the south and far to the
west have made many alterations in our pronunciation, and have introduced
new words among us and changed the meanings of many old ones. English
people talk through their noses; we do not. We say know, English people
say nao; we say cow, the Briton says kaow; we—”
“Oh, come! that is pure Yankee; everybody knows that.”
“Yes, it is pure Yankee; that is true. One cannot hear it in America
outside of the little corner called New England, which is Yankee land. The
English themselves planted it there, two hundred and fifty years ago, and
there it remains; it has never spread. But England talks through her nose
yet; the Londoner and the backwoods New-Englander pronounce 'know' and
'cow' alike, and then the Briton unconsciously satirizes himself by making
fun of the Yankee's pronunciation.”
We argued this point at some length; nobody won; but no matter, the fact
remains Englishmen say nao and kaow for “know” and “cow,” and that is what
the rustic inhabitant of a very small section of America does.
“You conferred your 'a' upon New England, too, and there it remains; it
has not traveled out of the narrow limits of those six little states in
all these two hundred and fifty years. All England uses it, New England's
small population—say four millions—use it, but we have
forty-five millions who do not use it. You say 'glahs of wawtah,' so does
New England; at least, New England says 'glahs.' America at large flattens
the 'a', and says 'glass of water.' These sounds are pleasanter than
yours; you may think they are not right—well, in English they are
not right, but in 'American' they are. You say 'flahsk' and 'bahsket,' and
'jackahss'; we say 'flask,' 'basket,' 'jackass'—sounding the 'a' as
it is in 'tallow,' 'fallow,' and so on. Up to as late as 1847 Mr.
Webster's Dictionary had the impudence to still pronounce 'basket'
bahsket, when he knew that outside of his little New England all America
shortened the 'a' and paid no attention to his English broadening of it.
However, it called itself an English Dictionary, so it was proper enough
that it should stick to English forms, perhaps. It still calls itself an
English Dictionary today, but it has quietly ceased to pronounce 'basket'
as if it were spelt 'bahsket.' In the American language the 'h' is
respected; the 'h' is not dropped or added improperly.”
“The same is the case in England—I mean among the educated classes,
of course.”
“Yes, that is true; but a nation's language is a very large matter. It is
not simply a manner of speech obtaining among the educated handful; the
manner obtaining among the vast uneducated multitude must be considered
also. Your uneducated masses speak English, you will not deny that; our
uneducated masses speak American it won't be fair for you to deny that,
for you can see, yourself, that when your stable-boy says, 'It isn't the
'unting that 'urts the 'orse, but the 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer on the 'ard
'ighway,' and our stable-boy makes the same remark without suffocating a
single h, these two people are manifestly talking two different languages.
But if the signs are to be trusted, even your educated classes used to
drop the 'h.' They say humble, now, and heroic, and historic etc., but I
judge that they used to drop those h's because your writers still keep up
the fashion of putting an AN before those words instead of A. This is what
Mr. Darwin might call a 'rudimentary' sign that as an was justifiable
once, and useful when your educated classes used to say 'umble, and
'eroic, and 'istorical. Correct writers of the American language do not
put an before those words.”
The English gentleman had something to say upon this matter, but never
mind what he said—I'm not arguing his case. I have him at a
disadvantage, now. I proceeded:
“In England you encourage an orator by exclaiming, 'H'yaah! h'yaah!' We
pronounce it heer in some sections, 'h'yer' in others, and so on; but our
whites do not say 'h'yaah,' pronouncing the a's like the a in ah. I have
heard English ladies say 'don't you'—making two separate and
distinct words of it; your Mr. Burnand has satirized it. But we always say
'dontchu.' This is much better. Your ladies say, 'Oh, it's oful nice!'
Ours say, 'Oh, it's awful nice!' We say, 'Four hundred,' you say 'For'—as
in the word or. Your clergymen speak of 'the Lawd,' ours of 'the Lord';
yours speak of 'the gawds of the heathen,' ours of 'the gods of the
heathen.' When you are exhausted, you say you are 'knocked up.' We don't.
When you say you will do a thing 'directly,' you mean 'immediately'; in
the American language—generally speaking—the word signifies
'after a little.' When you say 'clever,' you mean 'capable'; with us the
word used to mean 'accommodating,' but I don't know what it means now.
Your word 'stout' means 'fleshy'; our word 'stout' usually means 'strong.'
Your words 'gentleman' and 'lady' have a very restricted meaning; with us
they include the barmaid, butcher, burglar, harlot, and horse-thief. You
say, 'I haven't got any stockings on,' 'I haven't got any memory,' 'I
haven't got any money in my purse; we usually say, 'I haven't any
stockings on,' 'I haven't any memory!' 'I haven't any money in my purse.'
You say 'out of window'; we always put in a the. If one asks 'How old is
that man?' the Briton answers, 'He will be about forty'; in the American
language we should say, 'He is about forty.' However, I won't tire you,
sir; but if I wanted to, I could pile up differences here until I not only
convinced you that English and American are separate languages, but that
when I speak my native tongue in its utmost purity an Englishman can't
understand me at all.”
“I don't wish to flatter you, but it is about all I can do to understand
you now.”
That was a very pretty compliment, and it put us on the pleasantest terms
directly—I use the word in the English sense.
[Later—1882. Esthetes in many of our schools are now beginning to
teach the pupils to broaden the 'a,' and to say “don't you,” in the
elegant foreign way.]
ROGERS
This Man Rogers happened upon me and introduced himself at the town of
——-, in the South of England, where I stayed awhile. His
stepfather had married a distant relative of mine who was afterward
hanged; and so he seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us.
He came in every day and sat down and talked. Of all the bland, serene
human curiosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest. He desired to
look at my new chimney-pot hat. I was very willing, for I thought he would
notice the name of the great Oxford Street hatter in it, and respect me
accordingly. But he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion,
pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recently
arrived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself. Said he
would send me the address of his hatter. Then he said, “Pardon me,” and
proceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper; daintily notched the
edges of it; took the mucilage and pasted it in my hat so as to cover the
manufacturer's name. He said, “No one will know now where you got it. I
will send you a hat-tip of my hatter, and you can paste it over this
tissue circle.” It was the calmest, coolest thing—I never admired a
man so much in my life. Mind, he did this while his own hat sat
offensively near our noses, on the table—an ancient extinguisher of
the “slouch” pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discolored by
vicissitudes of the weather, and banded by an equator of bear's grease
that had stewed through.
Another time he examined my coat. I had no terrors, for over my tailor's
door was the legend, “By Special Appointment Tailor to H. R. H. the Prince
of Wales,” etc. I did not know at the time that the most of the tailor
shops had the same sign out, and that whereas it takes nine tailors to
make an ordinary man, it takes a hundred and fifty to make a prince. He
was full of compassion for my coat. Wrote down the address of his tailor
for me. Did not tell me to mention my nom de plume and the tailor would
put his best work on my garment, as complimentary people sometimes do, but
said his tailor would hardly trouble himself for an unknown person
(unknown person, when I thought I was so celebrated in England!—that
was the cruelest cut), but cautioned me to mention his name, and it would
be all right. Thinking to be facetious, I said:—
“But he might sit up all night and injure his health.”
“Well, let him,” said Rogers; “I've done enough for him, for him to show
some appreciation of it.”
I might as well have tried to disconcert a mummy with my facetiousness.
Said Rogers: “I get all my coats there—they're the only coats fit to
be seen in.”
I made one more attempt. I said, “I wish you had brought one with you—I
would like to look at it.”
“Bless your heart, haven't I got one on?—this article is Morgan's
make.”
I examined it. The coat had been bought ready-made, of a Chatham Street
Jew, without any question—about 1848. It probably cost four dollars
when it was new. It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless and greasy.
I could not resist showing him where it was ripped. It so affected him
that I was almost sorry I had done it. First he seemed plunged into a
bottomless abyss of grief. Then he roused himself, made a feint with his
hands as if waving off the pity of a nation, and said—with what
seemed to me a manufactured emotion—“No matter; no matter; don't
mind me; do not bother about it. I can get another.”
When he was thoroughly restored, so that he could examine the rip and
command his feelings, he said, ah, now he understood it—his servant
must have done it while dressing him that morning.
His servant! There was something awe-inspiring in effrontery like this.
Nearly every day he interested himself in some article of my clothing. One
would hardly have expected this sort of infatuation in a man who always
wore the same suit, and it a suit that seemed coeval with the Conquest.
It was an unworthy ambition, perhaps, but I did wish I could make this man
admire something about me or something I did—you would have felt the
same way. I saw my opportunity: I was about to return to London, and had
“listed” my soiled linen for the wash. It made quite an imposing mountain
in the corner of the room—fifty-four pieces. I hoped he would fancy
it was the accumulation of a single week. I took up the wash-list, as if
to see that it was all right, and then tossed it on the table, with
pretended forgetfulness. Sure enough, he took it up and ran his eye along
down to the grand total. Then he said, “You get off easy,” and laid it
down again.
His gloves were the saddest ruin, but he told me where I could get some
like them. His shoes would hardly hold walnuts without leaking, but he
liked to put his feet up on the mantelpiece and contemplate them. He wore
a dim glass breastpin, which he called a “morphylitic diamond”—whatever
that may mean—and said only two of them had ever been found—the
Emperor of China had the other one.
Afterward, in London, it was a pleasure to me to see this fantastic
vagabond come marching into the lobby of the hotel in his grand-ducal way,
for he always had some new imaginary grandeur to develop—there was
nothing stale about him but his clothes. If he addressed me when strangers
were about, he always raised his voice a little and called me “Sir
Richard,” or “General,” or “Your Lordship”—and when people began to
stare and look deferential, he would fall to inquiring in a casual way why
I disappointed the Duke of Argyll the night before; and then remind me of
our engagement at the Duke of Westminster's for the following day. I think
that for the time being these things were realities to him. He once came
and invited me to go with him and spend the evening with the Earl of
Warwick at his town house. I said I had received no formal invitation. He
said that that was of no consequence, the Earl had no formalities for him
or his friends. I asked if I could go just as I was. He said no, that
would hardly do; evening dress was requisite at night in any gentleman's
house. He said he would wait while I dressed, and then we would go to his
apartments and I could take a bottle of champagne and a cigar while he
dressed. I was very willing to see how this enterprise would turn out, so
I dressed, and we started to his lodgings. He said if I didn't mind we
would walk. So we tramped some four miles through the mud and fog, and
finally found his “apartments”; they consisted of a single room over a
barber's shop in a back street. Two chairs, a small table, an ancient
valise, a wash-basin and pitcher (both on the floor in a corner), an
unmade bed, a fragment of a looking-glass, and a flower-pot, with a
perishing little rose geranium in it, which he called a century plant, and
said it had not bloomed now for upward of two centuries—given to him
by the late Lord Palmerston—(been offered a prodigious sum for it)—these
were the contents of the room. Also a brass candlestick and a part of a
candle. Rogers lit the candle, and told me to sit down and make myself at
home. He said he hoped I was thirsty, because he would surprise my palate
with an article of champagne that seldom got into a commoner's system; or
would I prefer sherry, or port? Said he had port in bottles that were
swathed in stratified cobwebs, every stratum representing a generation.
And as for his cigars—well, I should judge of them myself. Then he
put his head out at the door and called:
“Sackville!” No answer.
“Hi-Sackville!” No answer.
“Now what the devil can have become of that butler? I never allow a
servant to—Oh, confound that idiot, he's got the keys. Can't get
into the other rooms without the keys.”
(I was just wondering at his intrepidity in still keeping up the delusion
of the champagne, and trying to imagine how he was going to get out of the
difficulty.)
Now he stopped calling Sackville and began to call “Anglesy.” But Anglesy
didn't come. He said, “This is the second time that that equerry has been
absent without leave. To-morrow I'll discharge him.” Now he began to whoop
for “Thomas,” but Thomas didn't answer. Then for “Theodore,” but no
Theodore replied.
“Well, I give it up,” said Rogers. “The servants never expect me at this
hour, and so they're all off on a lark. Might get along without the
equerry and the page, but can't have any wine or cigars without the
butler, and can't dress without my valet.”
I offered to help him dress, but he would not hear of it; and besides, he
said he would not feel comfortable unless dressed by a practised hand.
However, he finally concluded that he was such old friends with the Earl
that it would not make any difference how he was dressed. So we took a
cab, he gave the driver some directions, and we started. By and by we
stopped before a large house and got out. I never had seen this man with a
collar on. He now stepped under a lamp and got a venerable paper collar
out of his coat pocket, along with a hoary cravat, and put them on. He
ascended the stoop, and entered. Presently he reappeared, descended
rapidly, and said:
“Come—quick!”
We hurried away, and turned the corner.
“Now we're safe,” he said, and took off his collar and cravat and returned
them to his pocket.
“Made a mighty narrow escape,” said he.
“How?” said I.
“B' George, the Countess was there!”
“Well, what of that?—don't she know you?”
“Know me? Absolutely worships me. I just did happen to catch a glimpse of
her before she saw me—and out I shot. Haven't seen her for two
months—to rush in on her without any warning might have been fatal.
She could not have stood it. I didn't know she was in town—thought
she was at the castle. Let me lean on you—just a moment—there;
now I am better—thank you; thank you ever so much. Lord bless me,
what an escape!”
So I never got to call on the Earl, after all. But I marked the house for
future reference. It proved to be an ordinary family hotel, with about a
thousand plebeians roosting in it.
In most things Rogers was by no means a fool. In some things it was plain
enough that he was a fool, but he certainly did not know it. He was in the
“deadest” earnest in these matters. He died at sea, last summer, as the
“Earl of Ramsgate.”
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