"WE SWOOPED DOWN, NOW, ALL OF A SUDDEN" 
 
TOM SAWYER ABROAD 
 TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 BY MARK TWAIN 
 
 ) 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 KARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 1905 
 
Copyright, 1878, by SLOTE, WOODMAN & Co. 
 
 Copyright, 1882, by SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 
 
 Copyright, 1894, by SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 
 Copyright, 1896 and 1899, by HARPER & BROTHERS 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " WE SWOOPED DOWN, NOW, ALL OF A SUDDEN " Frontispiece 
 "WE CATCHED FISH" Facing p. 84 
 
 MAP OF TOM SAWYER S TRIP 134 
 
 "l RECKON I GOT TO BE EXCUSED* ... " 138 
 MAP OF PARIS Page 435 
 
 iii 
 
 M101115 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 . 1 / 
 
 TOM SAWYER ABROAD . I . \. ...... 7 
 
 TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE .. . ... .137 
 
 THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT . \ \ * ; . . . . 22Q 
 SOME RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION . . 254 
 
 THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT CARNIVAL OP 
 
 CRIME IN CONNECTICUT . \{/V(0 35 
 
 ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE , , .326 
 PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH .... .... 334 
 
 THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN 341 
 
 ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING . . . . .355 
 
 THE CANVASSER S TALE 3^3 
 
 AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER 371 
 
 PARIS NOTES . .... 377 
 
vi Contents 
 
 LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY 380 
 
 SPEECH ON THE BABIES 388 
 
 SPEECH ON THE WEATHEF 3s,2 
 
 CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE 396 
 
 ROGERS , .401 
 
 THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND 
 
 ROSANNAH ETHELTON 408 
 
 MAP OF P\RIS ....,... . . 433 
 
 LETTER READ AT A DINNER . , . a 437 
 
TOM SAWYER ABROAD 
 TOM SAWYER DETECTIVE 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER STORIES 
 
TOM SAWYER ABROAD 
 
 CHAPTER I. , , , . . 
 
 TOM SEEKS NEW ADVENTURES 
 
 DO you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all 
 them adventures? I mean the adventures we had 
 down the river, and the time we set the darky Jim free 
 and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn t. It only 
 just p isoned him for more. That was all the effect it 
 had. You*see, when we three came back up the river 
 in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and 
 the village received us with a torchlight procession and 
 speeches, and everybody hurrah d and shouted, it 
 made us heroes, and that was what Tom Sawyer had 
 always been hankering to be. 
 
 For a while he was satisfied. Everybody made 
 much of him, and he tilted up his nose and stepped 
 around the town as though he owned it. Some called 
 him Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and that just swelled 
 him up fit to bust. You see he laid over me and Jim 
 considerable, because we only went down the river on 
 a raft and came back by the steamboat, but Tom went 
 
 (7) 
 
8 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 by the steamboat both ways. The boys envied me and 
 Jim a good deal, but land ! they just knuckled to the 
 dirt before TOM. 
 
 Well, I don t know; maybe he might have been 
 satisfied if it hadn t been for old Nat Parsons, which 
 was postmaster, and powerful long and slim, and kind 
 o good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account 
 9f his. ag,e, and; about the talkiest old cretur I ever see. 
 OFor asVmiiU ri as thirty years he d been the only man in 
 rtheviliagje that had a reputation I mean a reputation 
 fof being 1 a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud 
 of it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that 
 thirty years he had told about that journey over a 
 million times and enjoyed it every time. And now 
 comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody 
 admiring and gawking over his travels, and it just give 
 the poor old man the high strikes.. It made him sick 
 to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say " My 
 land!" "Did you ever!" "My goodness sakes 
 alive!" and all such things ; but he couldn t pull away 
 from it, any more than a fly that s got its hind leg fast 
 in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a 
 rest, the poor old cretur would chip in on his same old 
 travels and work them for all they were worth ; but 
 they were pretty faded, and didn t go for much, and it 
 was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another 
 innings, and then the old man again and so on, and 
 so on, for an hour and more, each trying to beat out 
 the other. 
 
 You see, Parsons travels happened like this: When 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 9 
 
 he first got to be postmaster and was green in the busi 
 ness, there come a letter for somebody he didn t know, 
 and there wasn t any such person in the village. Well, 
 he didn t know what to do, nor how to act, and there 
 the letter stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till 
 the bare sight of it gave him a conniption. The postage 
 wasn t paid on it, and that was another thing to worry 
 about. There wasn t any way to collect that ten cents, 
 and he reckon d the gov ment would hold him respon 
 sible for it and maybe turn him out besides, when they 
 found he hadn t collected it. Well, at last he couldn t 
 stand it any longer. He couldn t sleep nights, he 
 couldn t eat, he was thinned down to a shadder, yet 
 he da sn t ask anybody s advice, for the very person 
 he asked for advice might go back on him and let the 
 gov ment know about the letter. He had the letter 
 buried under the floor, but that did no good ; if he 
 happened to see a person standing over the place it d 
 give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with 
 suspicions, and he would sit up that night till the town 
 was still and dark, and then he would sneak there and 
 get it out and bury it in another place. Of course, 
 people got to avoiding him and shaking their heads 
 and whispering, because, the way he was looking and 
 acting, they judged he had killed somebody or done 
 something terrible, they didn t know what, and if he 
 had been a stranger they would ve lynched him. 
 
 Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn t stand it 
 any longer; so he made up his mind to pull out for 
 Washington, and just go to the President of the United 
 
10 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 States and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not 
 keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and 
 lay it before the whole gov ment, and say, "Now, 
 there she is do with me what you re a mind to; 
 though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent man 
 and not deserving of the full penalties of the law and 
 leaving behind me a family that must starve and yet 
 hadn t had a thing to do with it, which is the whole 
 truth and I can swear to it." 
 
 So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboat- 
 ing, and some stage-coaching, but all the rest of the 
 way was horseback, and it took him three weeks to get 
 to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of vil 
 lages and four cities. He was gone most eight weeks, 
 and there never was such a proud man in the village as 
 he when he got back. His travels made him the greatest 
 man in all that region, and the most talked about; and 
 people come from as much as thirty miles back in the 
 country, and from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, 
 just to look at him and there they d stand and gawk, 
 and he d gabble. You never see anything like it. 
 
 Well, there wasn t any way now to settle which was 
 the greatest traveler ; some said it was Nat, some said 
 it was Tom. Everybody allowed that Nat had seen 
 the most longitude, but they had to give in that what 
 ever Tom was short in longitude he had made up in 
 latitude and climate. It was about a stand-off; so both 
 of them had to whoop up their dangerous adventures, 
 and try to get ahead that way. That bullet-wound in 
 Tom s leg was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 11 
 
 against, but he bucked the best he could; and at a 
 disadvantage, too, for Tom didn t set still as he d orter 
 done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered 
 around and worked his limp while Nat was painting up 
 the adventure that he had in Washington ; for Tom 
 never let go that limp when his leg got well, but prac 
 ticed it nights at home, and kept it good as new right 
 along. 
 
 Nat s adventure was like this; I don t know how 
 true it is ; maybe he got it out of a paper, or some 
 where, but I will say this for him, that he did know 
 how to tell it. He could make anybody s flesh crawl, 
 and he d turn pale and hold his breath when he told 
 it, and sometimes women and girls got so faint they 
 couldn t stick it out. Well, it was this way, as near as 
 I can remember : 
 
 He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his 
 horse and shoved out to the President s house with his 
 letter, and they told him the President was up to the 
 Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia not 
 a minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat most 
 dropped, it made him so sick. His horse was put up, 
 and he didn t know what to do. But just then along 
 comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he 
 see his chance. He rushes out and shouts: " A half a 
 dollar if you git me to the Capitol in half an hour, and 
 a quarter extra if you do it in twenty minutes!" 
 
 " Done !" says the darky. 
 
 Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away 
 they went a-ripping and a-tearing over the roughest 
 
12 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 road a body ever see, and the racket of it was some 
 thing awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops 
 and hung on for life and death, but pretty soon the 
 hack hit a rock and flew up in the air, and the bottom 
 fell out, and when it come down Nat s feet was on the 
 ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger 
 if he couldn t keep up with the hack. He was horrible 
 scared, but he laid into his work for all he was worth, 
 and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs 
 fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to 
 stop, and so did the crowds along the street, for they 
 could see his legs spinning along under the coach, and 
 his head and shoulders bobbing inside through the 
 windows, and he was in awful danger; but the more 
 they all shouted the more the nigger whooped and 
 yelled and lashed the horses and shouted, " Don t you 
 fret, I se gwine to git you dah in time, boss; I s gwine 
 to do it, sho !" for you see he thought they were all 
 hurrying him up, and, of course, he couldn t hear any 
 thing for the racket he was making. And so they went 
 ripping along, and everybody just petrified to see it; 
 and when they got to the Capitol at last it was the 
 quickest trip that ever was made, and everybody said 
 so. The horses laid down, and Nat dropped, all tuck 
 ered out, and he was all dust and rags and barefooted ; 
 but he was in time and just in time, and caught the 
 President and give him the letter, and everything was 
 all right, and the President give, him a free pardon on 
 the spot, and Nat give the nigger two extra quarters 
 instead of one, because he could see that if he hadn t 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 13 
 
 had the hack he wouldn t a got there in time, nor 
 anywhere near it. 
 
 It was a powerful good adventure, and Tom Sawyer 
 had to work his bullet-wound mighty lively to hold his 
 own against it. 
 
 Well, by and by Tom s glory got to paling down 
 gradu ly, on account of other things turning up for the 
 people to talk about first a horse-race, and on top of 
 that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and 
 on top of that the eclipse ; and that started a revival, 
 same as it always does, and by that time there wasn t 
 any more talk about Tom, so to speak, and you never 
 see a person so sick and disgusted. 
 
 Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right 
 along day in and day out, and when I asked him what 
 was he in such a state about, he said it most broke his 
 heart to think how time was slipping away, and him 
 getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and 
 no way of making a name for himself that he could 
 see. Now that is the way boys is always thinking, but 
 he was the first one I ever heard come out and say it. 
 
 So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him 
 celebrated ; and pretty soon he struck it, and offered to 
 take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer was always free and 
 generous that way. There s a-plenty of boys that s 
 mighty good and friendly when you ve got a good 
 thing, but when a good thing happens to come their 
 way they don t say a word to you, and try to hog it 
 all. That warn t ever Tom lawyer s way, I can say 
 that for him. There s plenty of boys that will come 
 
14 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 hankering and groveling around you when you ve got 
 an apple and beg the core off of you ; but when they ve 
 got one, and you beg for the core and remind them 
 how you give them a core one time, they say thank 
 you most to death, but there ain t a-going to be no 
 core. But I notice they always git come up with ; all 
 you got to do is to wait. 
 
 Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom 
 told us what it was. It was a crusade. 
 
 " What s a crusade?" I says. 
 
 He looked scornful, the way he s always done when 
 he was ashamed of a person, and says: 
 
 " Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don t 
 know what a crusade is?" 
 
 "No," says I, "I don t. And I don t care to, 
 nuther. I ve lived till now and done without it, and 
 had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me, I ll 
 know, and that s soon enough. I don t see any use in 
 finding out things and clogging up my head with them 
 when I mayn t ever have any occasion to use em. 
 There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk 
 Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. 
 Now, then, what s a crusade? But I can tell you one 
 thing before you begin; if it s a patent-right, there s 
 no money in it. Bill Thompson he " 
 
 "Patent-right!" says he. "I never see such an 
 idiot. Why, a crusade is a kind of war." 
 
 I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he 
 was in real earnest, and went right on, perfectly 
 ca m: 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 15 
 
 41 A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from 
 the paynim." 
 
 Which Holy Land?" 
 
 44 Why, the Holy Land there ain t but one." 
 
 " What do we want of it?" 
 
 41 Why, can t you understand? It s in the hands oi 
 the paynim, and it s our duty to take it away from 
 them." 
 
 4< How did we come to let them git hold of it?" 
 
 44 We didn t come to let them git hold of it. They 
 always had it." 
 
 " Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don t it?" 
 
 " Why of course it does. Who said it didn t?" 
 
 I studied over it, but couldn t seem to git at the 
 right of it, no way. I says : 
 
 44 It s too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a 
 farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, 
 would it be right for him to " 
 
 "Oh, shucks! you don t know enough to come in 
 when it rains, Huck Finn. It ain t a farm, it s entirely 
 different. You see, it s like this. They own the land, 
 just the mere land, and that s all they do own; but it 
 w r as our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it 
 holy, and so they haven t any business to be there 
 defiling it. It s a shame, and we ought not to stand it 
 a minute. We ought to march against them and take 
 it away from them." 
 
 4 Why, it does seem to me it s the most mixed-up 
 thing I ever see ! Now, if I had a farm and another 
 person " 
 
16 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 " Don t I tell you it hasn t got anything to do with 
 farming? Farming is business just common low-down 
 business: that s all it is, it s all you can say for it; but 
 this is higher, this is religious, and totally different." 
 
 "Religious to go and take the land away from 
 people that owns it?" 
 
 " Certainly; it s always been considered so." 
 
 Jim he shook his head, and says: 
 
 " Mars Tom, I reckon dey s a mistake about it 
 somers dey mos sholy is. I s religious myself, en 
 I knows plenty religious people, but I hain t run across 
 none dat acts like dat." 
 
 It made Tom hot, and he says : 
 
 "Well, it s enough to make a body sick, such 
 mullet-headed ignorance ! If either of you d read any 
 thing about history, you d know that Richard Cur de 
 Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lots 
 more of the most noble-hearted and pious people in 
 the world, hacked and hammered at the paynims for 
 more than two hundred years trying to take their land 
 away from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the 
 whole time and yet here s a couple of sap-headed 
 country yahoos out in the backwoods of Missouri set 
 ting themselves up to know more about the rights and 
 wrongs of it than they did ! Talk about cheek !" 
 
 Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, 
 and me and Jim felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and 
 wished we hadn t been quite so chipper. I couldn t 
 say nothing, and Jim he couldn t for a while; then he 
 says: 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 17 
 
 "Well, den, I reckon it s all right; beca se ef dey 
 didn t know, dey ain t no use for po ignorant folks 
 like us to be trying to know; en so, ef it s our duty, 
 we got to go en tackle it en do de bes we can. Same 
 time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as Mars Tom. 
 De hard part gwine to be to kill folks dat a body hain t 
 been quainted wid and dat hain t done him no harm. 
 Dat s it, you see. Ef we wuz to go mongst em, jist 
 we three, en say we s hungry, en ast em for a bite to 
 eat, why, maybe dey s jist like yuther people. Don t 
 you reckon dey is? Why, dey d give it, I know dey 
 would, en den " 
 
 4 Then what?" 
 
 * Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain t no 
 use, we can t kill dem po strangers dat ain t doin us 
 no harm, till we ve had practice I knows it perfectly 
 well, Mars Tom deed I knows it perfectly well. But 
 ef we takes a axe or two, jist you en me en Huck, en 
 slips acrost de river to-night arter de moon s gone 
 down, en kills dat sick fam ly dat s over on the Sny, 
 en burns dey house down, en " 
 
 "Oh, you make me tired!" says Tom. " I don t 
 want to argue any more with people like you and Huck 
 Finn, that s always wandering from the subject, and 
 ain t got any more sense than to try to reason out a 
 thing that s pure theology by the laws that protect real 
 estate ! 
 
 Now that s just where Tom Sawyer warn t fair. Jim 
 didn t mean no harm, and I didn t mean no harm. 
 We knowed well enough that he was right and we was 
 
18 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 wrong, and all we was after was to get at the how of 
 it, and that was all; and the only reason he couldn t 
 explain it so we could understand it was because we 
 was ignorant yes, and pretty dull, too, I ain t deny 
 ing that; but, land ! that ain t no crime, I should think. 
 
 But he wouldn t hear no more about it just said if 
 we had tackled the thing in the proper spirit, he would 
 a raised a couple of thousand knights and put them 
 in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a lieu 
 tenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself 
 and brushed the whole paynim outfit into the sea like 
 flies and come back across the world in a glory like 
 sunset. But he said we didn t know enough to take 
 the chance when we had it, and he wouldn t ever offer 
 it again. And he didn t. When he once got set, you 
 couldn t budge him. 
 
 But I didn t care much. I am peaceable, and don t 
 get up rows with people that ain t doing nothing to 
 me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I was, and 
 we would let it stand at that. 
 
 Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott s 
 book, which he was always reading. And it was a 
 wild notion, because in my opinion he never could ve 
 raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would ve 
 got licked. I took the book and read all about it, and 
 as near as I could make it out, most of the folks that 
 shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky 
 time of it. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BALLOON ASCENSION 
 
 WELL, Tom got up one thing after another, but 
 they all had tender spots about em somewheres, 
 and he had to shove em aside. So at last he was 
 about in despair. Then the St. Louis papers begun to 
 talk a good deal about the balloon that was going to 
 sail to Europe, and Tom sort of thought he wanted 
 to go down and see what it looked like, but couldn t 
 make up his mind. But the papers went on talking, 
 and so he allowed that maybe if he didn t go he 
 mightn t ever have another chance to see a balloon; 
 and next, he found out that Nat Parsons was going 
 down to see it, and that decided him, of course. He 
 wasn t going to have Nat Parsons coming back brag 
 ging about seeing the balloon, and him having to listen 
 to it and keep quiet. So he wanted me and Jim to go 
 too, and we went. 
 
 It was a noble big balloon, and had wings and fans 
 and all sorts of things, and wasn t like any balloon you 
 see in pictures. It was away out toward the edge of 
 town, in a vacant lot, corner of Twelfth street; and 
 there was a big crowd around it, making fun of it, and 
 B* (19) 
 
20 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 making fun of the man, a lean pale feller with that 
 soft kind of moonlight in his eyes, you know, and 
 they kept saying it wouldn t go. It made him hot to 
 hear them, and he would turn on them and shake his 
 fist and say they was animals and blind, but some day 
 they would find they had stood face to face with one 
 of the men that lifts up nations and makes civilizations, 
 and was too dull to know it; and right here on this 
 spot their own children and grandchildren would build 
 a monument to him that would outlast a thousand 
 years, but his name would outlast the monument. 
 And then the crowd would burst out in a laugh again, 
 and yell at him, and ask him what was his name before 
 he was married, and what he would take to not do it, 
 and what was his sister s cat s grandmother s name, 
 and all the things that a crowd says when they ve got 
 hold of a feller that they see they can plague. Well, 
 some things they said was funny, yes, and mighty 
 witty too, I ain t denying that, but all the same it 
 warn t fair nor brave, all them people pitching on one, 
 and they so glib and sharp, and him without any gift 
 of talk to answer back v/ith. But, good land ! what 
 did he want to sass back for? You see, it couldn t do 
 him no good, and it was just nuts for them. They 
 had him, you know. But that was his way. I reckon 
 he couldn t help it; he was made so, I judge. He 
 was a good enough sort of cretur, and hadn t no harm 
 in him, and was just a genius, as the papers said, which 
 wasn t his fault. We can t all be sound: we ve got to 
 be the way we re made. As near as I can make out, 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 21 
 
 geniuses think they know it all, and so they won t take 
 people s advice, but always go their own way, which 
 makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and 
 that is perfectly natural. If they was humbler, and 
 listened and tried to learn, it would be better for them. 
 
 The part the professor was in was like a boat, and 
 was big and roomy, and had water-tight lockers around 
 the inside to keep all sorts of things in, and a body 
 could sit on them, and make beds on them, too. We 
 went aboard, and there was twenty people there, snoop 
 ing around and examining, and old Nat Parsons was 
 there, too. The professor kept fussing around getting 
 ready, and the people went ashore, drifting out one at 
 a time, and old Nat he was the last. Of course it 
 wouldn t do to let him go out behind us. We mustn t 
 budge till he was gone, so we could be last ourselves. 
 
 But he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. 
 I heard a big shout, and turned around the city was 
 dropping from under us like a shot ! It made me sick 
 all through, I was so scared. Jim turned gray and 
 couldn t say a w r ord, and Tom didn t say nothing, but 
 looked excited. The city went on dropping down, 
 and down, and down; but we didn t seem to be doing 
 nothing but just hang in the air and stand still. The 
 houses got smaller and smaller, and the city pulled 
 itself together, closer and closer, and the men and 
 wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling 
 around, and the streets like threads and cracks; and 
 then it all kind of melted together, and there wasn t 
 any city any more : it was only a big scar on the earth, 
 
22 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 and it seemed to me a body could see up the river and 
 down the river about a thousand miles, though of 
 course it wasn t so much. By and by the earth was a 
 ball just a round ball, of a dull color, with shiny 
 stripes wriggling and winding around over it, which 
 was rivers. The Widder Douglas always told me the 
 earth was round like a ball, but I never took any stock 
 in a lot of them superstitions o hers, and of course I 
 paid no attention to that one, because I could see my 
 self that the world was the shape of a plate, and flat. 
 I used to go up on the hill, and take a look around 
 and prove it for myself, because I reckon the best way 
 to get a sure thing on a fact is to go and examine for 
 yourself, and not take anybody s say-so. But I had to 
 give in now that the widder was right. That is, she 
 was right as to the rest of the world, but she warn t 
 right about the part our village is in ; that part is the 
 shape of a plate, and flat, I take my oath ! 
 
 The professor had been quiet all this time, as if he 
 was asleep ; but he broke loose now, and he was mighty 
 bitter. He says something like this : 
 
 "Idiots! They said it wouldn t go; and they 
 wanted to examine it, and spy around and get the 
 secret of it out of me. But I beat them. Nobody 
 knows the secret but me. Nobody knows what makes 
 it move but me; and it s a new power a new power, 
 and a thousand times the strongest in the earth ! 
 Steam s foolishness to it! They said I couldn t go to 
 Europe. To Europe ! Why, there s power aboard to 
 last five years, and feed for three months. They are 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 23 
 
 fools! What do they know about it? Yes, and they 
 said my air-ship was flimsy. Why, she s good for 
 fifty years ! I can sail the skies all my life if I want 
 to, and steer where I please, though they laughed at 
 that, and said I couldn t. Couldn t steer ! Come 
 here, boy; we ll see. You press these buttons as I 
 tell you." 
 
 Ke made Tom steer the ship all about and every 
 which way, and learnt him the whole thing in nearly 
 no time; and Tom said it was perfectly easy. He 
 made him fetch the ship down most to the earth, and 
 had him spin her along so close to the Illinois prairies 
 that a body could talk to the farmers, and hear every 
 thing they said perfectly plain ; and he flung out 
 printed bills to them that told about the balloon, and 
 said it was going to Europe. Tom got so he could 
 steer straight for a tree till he got nearly to it, and then 
 dart up and skin right along over the top of it. Yes, 
 and he showed Tom how to land her ; and he done it 
 first-rate, too, and set her down in the prairies as soft 
 as wool. But the minute we started to skip out the 
 professor says, " No, you don t!" and shot her up in 
 the air again. It was awful. I begun to beg, and so 
 did Jim; but it only give his temper a rise, and he 
 begun to rage around and look wild out of his eyes, 
 and I was scared of him. 
 
 Well, then he got on to his troubles again, and 
 mourned and grumbled about the way he was treated, 
 and couldn t seem to git over it, and especially people s 
 saying his ship was flimsy. He scoffed at that, and at 
 
24 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 their saying she warn t simple and would be always 
 getting out of order. Get out of order ! That graveled 
 him; he said that she couldn t anymore get out of 
 order than the solar sister. 
 
 He got worse and worse, and I never see a person 
 take on so. It give me the cold shivers to see him, 
 and so it did Jim. By and by he got to yelling and 
 screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn t ever 
 have his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean. 
 He said he would sail his balloon around the globe just 
 to show what he could do, and then he would sink it in 
 the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. Well, it was 
 the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming 
 on ! 
 
 He give us something to eat, and made us go to the 
 other end of the boat, and he laid down on a locker, 
 where he could boss all the works, and put his old 
 pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if any 
 body come fooling around there trying to land her, he 
 would kill him. 
 
 We set scrunched up together, and thought consider 
 able, but didn t say much only just a word once in a 
 while when a. body had to say something or bust, we 
 was so scared and worried. The night dragged along 
 slow and lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the 
 moonshine made everything soft and pretty, and the 
 farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could 
 hear the farm sounds, and wished we could be down 
 there ; but, laws ! we just slipped along over them like 
 a ghost, and never left a track. 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 25 
 
 Away in the night, when all the sounds was late 
 sounds, and the air had a late feel, and a late smell, 
 too about a two-o clock feel, as near as I could make 
 out Tom said the professor was so quiet this time 
 he must be asleep, and we d better 
 
 " Better what?" I says in a whisper, and feeling sick 
 all over, because I knowed what he was thinking about. 
 
 "Better slip back there and tie him, and land the 
 ship," he says. 
 
 I says: * No, sir! Don t you budge, Tom Sawyer." 
 
 And Jim well, Jim was kind o gasping, he was so 
 scared. He says : 
 
 14 Oh, Mars Tom, don t! Ef you teches him, we s 
 gone we s gone sho ! I ain t gwine anear him, not 
 for nothin in dis worl . Mars Tom, he s plumb crazy. 
 
 Tom whispers and says: " That s why we ve got to 
 do something. If he wasn t crazy I wouldn t give 
 shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn t hire me 
 to get out now that I ve got used to this balloon and 
 over the scare of being cut loose from the solid ground 
 - if he was in his right mind. But it s no good politics, 
 sailing around like this with, a person that s out of his 
 head, and says he s going round the world and then 
 drown us all. We ve got to do something, I tell you, 
 and do it before he wakes up, too, or we mayn t ever 
 get another chance. Come !" 
 
 But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of 
 it, and we said we wouldn t budge. So Tom was for 
 slipping back there by himself to see if he couldn t get 
 at the steering-gear and land the ship. We begged and 
 
26 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 begged him not to, but it warn t no use; so he got 
 down on his hands and knees, and begun to crawl an 
 inch at a time, we a-holding our breath and watching. 
 After he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower 
 than ever, and it did seem like years to me. But at 
 last we see him get to the professor s head, and sort 
 of raise up soft and look a good spell in his face and 
 listen. Then we see him begin to inch along again 
 toward the professor s feet where the steering-buttons 
 was. Well, he got there all safe, and was reaching 
 slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked 
 down something that made a noise, and we see him 
 slump down flat an soft in the bottom, and lay still. 
 The professor stirred, and says, "What s that?" But 
 everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he begun to 
 mutter and mumble and nestle, like a person that s 
 going to wake up, and I thought I was going to die, I 
 was so worried and scared. 
 
 Then a cloud slid over the moon, and I most cried, 
 I was so glad. She buried herself deeper and deeper 
 into the cloud, and it got so dark we couldn t see Tom. 
 Then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear the 
 professor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing 
 the weather. We was afraid every minute he would 
 touch Tom, and then we would be goners, and no 
 help ; but Tom was already on his way back, and when 
 we felt his hands on our knees my breath stopped 
 sudden, and my heart fell down mongst my other works, 
 because I couldn t tell in the dark but it might be the 
 professor, which I thought it was. 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 27 
 
 Dear ! I was so glad to have him back that I was 
 just as near happy as a person could be that was up in 
 the air that way with a deranged man. You can t land 
 a balloon in the dark, and so I hoped it would keep on 
 raining, for I didn t want Tom to go meddling any 
 more and make us so awful uncomfortable. Well, I 
 got my wish. It drizzled and drizzled along the rest 
 of the night, which wasn t long, though it did seem so ; 
 and at daybreak it cleared, and the world looked 
 mighty soft and gray and pretty, and the forests and 
 fields so good to see again, and the horses and cattle 
 standing sober and thinking. Next, the sun come a- 
 blazing up gay and splendid, and then we began to feel 
 rusty and stretchy, and first we knowed we was all 
 asleep. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 TOM EXPLAINS 
 
 WE went to sleep about four o clock, and woke up 
 about eight. The professor was setting back 
 there at his end, looking glum. He pitched us some 
 breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship 
 compass. That was about the middle of the boat. 
 Well, when you are sharp-set, and you eat and satisfy 
 yourself, everything looks pretty different from what it 
 done before. It makes a body feel pretty near com 
 fortable, even when he is up in a balloon with a genius. 
 We got to talking together. 
 
 There was one thing that kept bothering me, and by 
 and by I says : 
 
 44 Tom, didn t we start east?" 
 
 44 Yes." 
 
 44 How fast have we been going?" 
 
 44 Well, you heard what the professor said when he 
 was raging round. Sometimes, he said, we was making 
 fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety, sometimes a 
 hundred ; said that with a gale to help he could make 
 three hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale, 
 and wanted it blowing the right direction, he only had 
 to go up higher or down lower to find it." 
 
 (28) 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 29 
 
 " Well, then, it s just as I reckoned. The professor 
 lied." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because if we was going so fast we ought to be 
 past Illinois, oughtn t we?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "Well, we ain t." 
 
 " What s the reason we ain t?" 
 
 * I know by the color. We re right over Illinois 
 yet. And you can see for yourself that Indiana ain t 
 in sight." 
 
 " I wonder what s the matter with you, Huck. You 
 know by the color ? 
 
 "Yes, of course I do." 
 
 " What s the color got to do with it?" 
 
 " It s got everything to do with it. Illinois is green, 
 Indiana is pink. You show me any pink down here, 
 if you can. No, sir; it s green." 
 
 Indiana pink f Why, what a lie ! " 
 
 14 It ain t no lie; I ve seen it on the map, and it s 
 pink." 
 
 You never see a person so aggravated and disgusted. 
 He says: 
 
 "Well, if I was such a numbskull as you, Huck 
 Finn, I would jump over. Seen it on the map ! Huck 
 Finn, did you reckon the States was the same color 
 out-of-doors as they are on the map?" 
 
 " Tom Sawyer, what s a map for? Ain t it to learn 
 you facts?" 
 
 "Of course. 
 
30 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 41 Well, then, how s it going to do that if it tells lies? 
 That s what I want to know." 
 
 11 Shucks, you muggins! It don t tell lies." 
 
 "It don t, don t it?" 
 
 "No, it don t." 
 
 "All right, then; if it don t, there ain t no two 
 States the same color. You git around that, if you 
 can, Tom Sawyer." 
 
 He see I had him, and Jim see it too; and I tell 
 you, I felt pretty good, for Tom Sawyer was always a 
 hard person to git ahead of. Jim slapped his leg and 
 says: 
 
 "I tell you ! dat s smart, dat s right down smart. 
 Ain t no use, Mars Tom; he got you dis time, sho !" 
 He slapped his leg again, and says, * My Ian , but it 
 was smart one !" 
 
 I never felt so good in my life; and yet / didn t 
 know I was saying anything much till it was out. I 
 was just mooning along, perfectly careless, and not 
 expecting anything was going to happen, and never 
 thinking of such a thing at all, when, all of a sudden, 
 out it came. Why, it was just as much a surprise to 
 me as it was to any of them. It was just the same way 
 it is when a person is munching along on a hunk of 
 corn-pone, and not thinking about anything, and all of 
 a sudden bites into a di mond. Now all that he knows 
 first off is that it s some kind of gravel he s bit into; 
 but he don t find out it s a di mond till he gits it out 
 and brushes off the sand and crumbs and one thing or 
 another, and has a look at it, and then he s surprised 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 31 
 
 and glad yes, and proud too; though when you 
 come to look the thing straight in the eye, he ain t 
 entitled to as much credit as he would a been if he d 
 been hunting di monds. You can see the difference 
 easy if you think it over. You see, an accident, that 
 way, ain t fairly as big a thing as a thing that s done 
 a-purpose. Anybody could find that di mond in that 
 corn-pone; but mind you, it s got to be somebody 
 that s got that kind of a corn-pone. That s where that 
 feller s credit comes in, you see; and that s where 
 mine comes in. I don t claim no great things I 
 don t reckon I could a* done it again but I done it 
 that time; that s all I claim. And I hadn t no more 
 idea I could do such a thing, and warn t any more 
 thinking about it or trying to, than you be this minute. 
 Why, I was just as ca m, a body couldn t be any 
 ca mer, and yet, all of a sudden, out it come. I ve 
 often thought of that time, and I can remember just 
 the way everything looked, same as if it was only last 
 week. I can see it all : beautiful rolling country with 
 woods and fields and lakes for hundreds and hundreds 
 of miles all around, and towns and villages scattered 
 everywheres under us, here and there and yonder; and 
 the professor mooning over a chart on his little table, 
 and Tom s cap flopping in the rigging where it was 
 hung up to dry. And one thing in particular was a 
 bird right alongside, not ten foot off, going our way 
 and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the time; 
 and a railroad train doing the same thing down there, 
 sliding among the trees and farms, and pouring out a 
 
32 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 long cloud of black smoke and now and then a little 
 puff of white ; and when the white was gone so long 
 you had almost forgot it, you would hear a little faint 
 toot, and that was the whistle. And we left the bird 
 and the train both behind, way behind, and done it 
 easy, too. 
 
 But Tom he was huffy, and said me and Jim was a 
 couple of ignorant blatherskites, and then he says: 
 
 " Suppose there s a brown calf and a big brown dog, 
 and an artist is making a picture of them. What is the 
 main thing that that artist has got to do? He has got 
 to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute 
 you look at them, hain t he? Of course. Well, then, 
 do you want him to go and paint both of them brown ? 
 Certainly you don t. He paints one of them blue, 
 and then you can t make no mistake. It s just the 
 same with the maps. That s why they make every 
 State a different color; it ain t to deceive you, it s to 
 keep you from deceiving yourself." 
 
 But I couldn t see no argument about that, and 
 neither could Jim. Jim shook his head, and says: 
 
 "Why, Mars Tom, if you knowed what chuckle- 
 heads dem painters is, you d wait a long time before 
 you d fetch one er dem in to back up a fac . I s 
 gwine to tell you, den you kin see for you self. I see 
 one of em a-paintin away, one day, down in ole 
 Hank Wilson s back lot, en I went down to see, en he 
 was paintin dat old brindle cow wid de near " horn 
 gone you knows de one I means. En I ast him 
 what he s paintin her for, en he say when he git her 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 33 
 
 painted, de picture s wuth a hundred dollars. Mars 
 Tom, he could a got de cow fer fifteen, en I tole him 
 so. Well, sah, if you ll b lieve me, he jes shuck his 
 head, dat painter did, en went on a-dobbin . Bless 
 you, Mars Tom, dey don t know nothinV 
 
 Tom lost his temper. I notice a person most always 
 does that s got laid out in an argument. He told us to 
 shut up, and maybe we d feel better. Then he see a 
 town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the 
 glass and looked at it, and then looked at his silver 
 turnip, and then at the clock, and then at the turnip 
 again, and says: 
 
 That s funny ! That clock s near about an hour 
 fast." 
 
 So he put up his turnip. Then he see another clock, 
 and took a look, and it was an hour fast too. That 
 puzzled him. 
 
 "That s a mighty curious thing," he says. "I 
 don t understand it." 
 
 Then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, 
 and sure enough it was an hour fast too. Then his 
 eyes began to spread and his breath to come out kinder 
 gaspy like, and he says: 
 
 41 Ger-reat Scott, it s the longitude /" 
 
 I says, considerably scared : 
 
 14 Well, what s been and gone and happened now?" 
 
 "Why, the thing that s happened is that this old 
 bladder has slid over Illinois and Indiana and Ohio like 
 nothing, and this is the east end of Pennsylvania or 
 New York, or somewheres around there." 
 3** 
 
34 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 "Tom Sawyer, you don t mean it!" 
 
 "Yes, I do, and it s dead sure. We ve covered 
 about fifteen degrees of longitude since we left St. 
 Louis yesterday afternoon, and them clocks are right. 
 We ve come close on to eight hundred miles. * 
 
 I didn t believe it, but it made the cold streaks 
 trickle down my back just the same. In my experi 
 ence I knowed it wouldn t take much short of two 
 weeks to do it down the Mississippi on a raft. 
 
 Jim was working his mind and studying. Pretty 
 soon he says : 
 
 1 Mars Tom, did you say dem clocks uz right?" 
 
 "Yes, they re right." 
 
 " Ain t yo watch right, too?" 
 
 " She s right for St. Louis, but she s an hour wrong 
 for here." 
 
 * Mars Tom, is you tryin to let on dat de time ain t 
 de same every wheres?" 
 
 " No, it ain t the same every wheres, by a long 
 shot." 
 
 Jim looked distressed, and says: 
 
 " It grieves me to hear you talk like dat, Mars Tom; 
 I s right down ashamed to hear you talk like dat, arter 
 de way you s been raised. Yassir, it d break yo Aunt 
 Polly s heart to hear you." 
 
 Tom was astonished. He looked Jim over wonder 
 ing, and didn t say nothing, and Jim went on: 
 
 " Mars Tom, who put de people out yonder in St. 
 Louis? De Lord done it. Who put de people here 
 whar we is? De Lord done it. Ain dey bofe his 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 35 
 
 children? Cose dey is. Well, den ! is he gwine to 
 s criminate twixt em?" 
 
 " Scriminate ! I never heard such ignorance. There 
 ain t no discriminating about it. When he makes you 
 and some more of his children black, and makes the 
 rest of us white, what do you call that?" 
 
 Jim see the p int. He was stuck. He couldn t 
 answer. Tom says : 
 
 " He does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; 
 but this case here ain t no discrimination of his, it s 
 man s. The Lord made the day, and he made the 
 night; but he didn t invent the hours, and he didn t 
 distribute them around. Man did that." 
 
 " Mars Tom, is dat so? Man done it?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "Who tole him he could?" 
 
 "Nobody. He never asked." 
 
 Jim studied a minute, and says: 
 
 "Well, dat do beat me. I wouldn t a* tuck no 
 sich resk. But some people ain t scared o nothin . 
 Dey bangs right ahead ; dey don t care what happens. 
 So den dey s allays an hour s diff unce every whah, 
 Mars Tom?" 
 
 "An hour? No! It s four minutes difference for 
 every degree of longitude, you know. Fifteen of em s 
 an hour, thirty of em s two hours, and so on. When 
 it s one clock Tuesday morning in England, it s eight 
 o clock the night before in New York." 
 
 Jim moved a little way along the locker, and you 
 
 could see he was insulted. He kept shaking his head 
 c** 
 
36 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 and muttering, and so I slid along to him and patted 
 him on the leg, and petted him up, and got him over 
 the worst of his feelings, and then he says: 
 
 44 Mars Tom talkin sich talk as dat ! Choosday in 
 one place en Monday in t other, bofe in the same day! 
 Huck, dis ain t no place to joke up here whah we is. 
 Two days in one day ! How you gwine to get two 
 days inter one day? Can t git two hours inter one 
 hour, kin you? Can t git two niggers inter one nigger 
 skin, kin you? Can t git two gallons of whisky inter a 
 one-gallon jug, kin you? No, sir, twould strain de 
 jug. Yes, en even den you couldn t, / don t believe. 
 Why, looky here, Huck, s posen de Choosday was 
 New Year s now den ! is you gwine to tell me it s 
 dis year in one place en las year in t other, bofe in de 
 identical same minute? It s de beatenest rubbage ! I 
 can t stan it I can t stan to hear tell bout it." 
 Then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and Tom 
 says: 
 
 44 Now what s the matter? What s the trouble?" 
 
 Jim could hardly speak, but he says : 
 
 " Mars Tom, you ain t jokin , en it s so ?" 
 
 44 No, I m not, and it is so." 
 
 Jim shivered again, and says: 
 
 4 Den dat Monday could be de las day, en dey 
 wouldn t be no las day in England, en de dead 
 wouldn t be called. We mustn t go over dah, Mars 
 Tom. Please git him to turn back; I wants to be 
 whah" 
 
 All of a sudden we see something, and all jumped 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 37 
 
 up, and forgot everything and begun to gaze. Tom 
 says: 
 
 "Ain t that the " He catched his breath, then 
 says: * It is, sure as you live ! It s the ocean !" 
 
 That made me and Jim catch our breath, too. Then 
 we all stood petrified but happy, for none of us had 
 ever seen an ocean, or ever expected to. Tom kept 
 muttering: 
 
 " Atlantic Ocean Atlantic. Land, don t it sound 
 great ! And that s it and we are looking at it we ! 
 Why, it s just too splendid to believe !" 
 
 Then we see a big bank of black smoke ; and when 
 we got nearer, it was a city and a monster she was, 
 too, with a thick fringe of ships around one edge; and 
 we wondered if it was New York, and begun to jaw 
 and dispute about it, and, first we knowed, it slid from 
 under us and went flying behind, and here we was, out 
 over the very ocean itself, and going like a cyclone. 
 Then we woke up, I tell you ! 
 
 We made a break aft and raised a wail, and begun to 
 beg the professor to turn back and land us, but 
 he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back, 
 and we went, but nobody will ever know how bad we 
 felt. 
 
 The land was gone, all but a little streak, like a 
 snake, away off on the edge of the water, and down 
 under us was just ocean, ocean, ocean millions of 
 miles of it, heaving and pitching and squirming, and 
 white sprays blowing from the wave-tops, and only a 
 few ships in sight, wallowing around and laying over, 
 
38 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 first on one side and then on t other, and sticking their 
 bows under and then their sterns; and before long 
 there warn t no ships at all, and we had the sky and 
 the whole ocean all to ourselves, and the roomiest place 
 I ever see and the lonesomest. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 STORM 
 
 AND it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was 
 the big sky up there, empty and awful deep ; and 
 the ocean down there without a thing on it but just the 
 waves. All around us was a ring, where the sky and 
 the water come together; yes, a monstrous big ring it 
 was, and we right in the dead center of it plumb in 
 the center. We was racing along like a prairie fire, but 
 it never made any difference, we couldn t seem to git 
 past that center no way. I couldn t see that we ever 
 gained an inch on that ring. It made a body feel 
 creepy, it was so curious and unaccountable. 
 
 Well, everything was so awful still that we got to 
 talking in a very low voice, and kept on getting creepier 
 and lonesomer and less and less talky, till at last the 
 talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there and 
 * thunk," as Jim calls it, and never said a word the 
 longest time. 
 
 The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead, 
 then he stood up and put a kind of triangle to his eye, 
 and Tom said it was a sextant and he was taking the 
 sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. Then he 
 ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he 
 
 (39) 
 
40 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 begun to carry on again. He said lots of wild things, 
 and, among others, he said he would keep up this 
 hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow after 
 noon, and then he d land in London. 
 
 We said we would be humbly thankful. 
 
 He was turning away, but he whirled around when 
 we said that, and give us a long look of his blackest 
 kind one of the maliciousest and suspiciousest looks 
 I ever see. Then he says: 
 
 1 You want to leave me. Don t try to deny it." 
 
 We didn t know what to say, so we held in and 
 didn t say nothing at all. 
 
 He went aft and set down, but he couldn t seem to 
 git that thing out of his mind. Every now and then he 
 would rip out something about it, and try to make us 
 answer him, but we dasn t. 
 
 It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it 
 did seem to me I couldn t stand it. It was still worse 
 when night begun to come on. By and by Tom 
 pinched me and whispers : 
 
 "Look!" 
 
 I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a 
 whet out of a bottle. I didn t like the looks of that. 
 By and by he took another drink, and pretty soon he 
 begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black 
 and stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder, 
 and the thunder begun to mutter, and the wind to 
 wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it 
 was awful. It got so black we couldn t see him any 
 more, and wished we couldn t hear him, but we could. 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 41 
 
 Then he got still; but he warn t still ten minutes till 
 we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his 
 noise again, so we could tell where he was. By and by 
 there was a flash of lightning, and we see him start to 
 get up, but he staggered and fell down. We heard 
 him scream out in the dark : 
 
 " They don t want to go to England. All right, I ll 
 change the course. They want to leave me. I know 
 they do. Well, they shall and now / 
 
 I most died when he said that. Then he was still 
 again still so long I couldn t bear it, and it did seem 
 to me the lightning wouldn t ever come again. But at 
 last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his 
 hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. 
 My, but his eyes was terrible ! He made a lunge for 
 Tom, and says, "Overboard you go!" but it was 
 already pitch-dark again, and I couldn t see whether 
 he got him or not, and Tom didn t make a sound. 
 
 There was another long, horrible wait; then there 
 was a flash, and I see Tom s head sink down outside 
 the boat and disappear. He was on the rope-ladder 
 that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The 
 professor let off a shout and jumped for him, and 
 straight off it was pitch-dark again, and Jim groaned 
 out, " Po Mars Tom, he s a goner!" and made a 
 jump for the professor, but the professor warn t there. 
 
 Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then 
 another not so loud, and then another that was way 
 below, and you could only just hear it; and I heard 
 Jim say, " Po Mars Tom!" 
 
42 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could 
 a* counted four thousand before the next flash come. 
 When it come I see Jim on his knees, with his arms 
 on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was 
 crying. Before I could look over the edge it was all 
 dark again, and I was glad, because I didn t want to 
 see. But when the next flash come, I was watching, 
 and down there I see somebody a-swinging in the wind 
 on the ladder, and it was Tom ! 
 
 "Come up!" I shouts; " come up, Tom !" 
 
 His voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, I 
 couldn t make out what he said, but I thought he asked 
 was the professor up there. I shouts: 
 
 " No, he s down in the ocean! Come up! Can 
 we help you?" 
 
 Of course, all this in the dark. 
 
 " Huck, who is you hollerin at?" 
 
 "rmhollerin at Tom." 
 
 " Oh, Huck, how kin you act so, when you know 
 po Mars Tom " Then he let off an awful scream, 
 and flung his head and his arms back and let off another 
 one, because there was a white glare just then, and he 
 had raised up his face just in time to see Tom s, as 
 white as snow, rise above the gunnel and look him right 
 in the eye. He thought it was Tom s ghost, you 
 see. 
 
 Tom clumb aboard, and when Jim found it was him, 
 and not his ghost, he hugged him, and called him all 
 sorts of loving names, and carried on like he was gone 
 crazy, he was so glad. Says I: 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 4) 
 
 "What did you wait for, Tom? Why didn t you 
 come up at first?" 
 
 "I dasn t, Huck. I knowed somebody plunged 
 down past me, but I didn t know who it was in the 
 dark. It could a been you, it could a been Jim." 
 
 That was the way with Tom Sawyer always sound. 
 He warn t coming up till he knowed where the pro 
 fessor was. 
 
 The storm let go about this time with all its might ; 
 and it was dreadful the way the thunder boomed and 
 tore, and the lightning glared out, and the wind sung 
 and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come down. 
 One second you couldn t see your hand before you, 
 and the next you could count the threads in your coat- 
 sleeve, and see a whole wide desert of waves pitching 
 and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. A storm 
 like that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain t at its 
 best when you are up in the sky and lost, and it s wet 
 and lonesome, and there s just been a death in the 
 family. 
 
 We set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low 
 about the poor professor; and everybody was sorry 
 for him, and sorry the world had made fun of him and 
 treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he 
 could, and hadn t a friend nor nobody to encourage 
 him and keep him from brooding his mind away and 
 going deranged. There was plenty of clothes and 
 blankets and everything at the other end, but we 
 thought we d ruther take the rain than go meddling 
 back there. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 LAND 
 
 WE tried to make some plans, but we couldn t come 
 to no agreement. Me and Jim was for turning 
 around and going back home, but Tom allowed that 
 by the time daylight come, so we could see our way, 
 we would be so far toward England that we might as 
 well go there, and come back in a ship, and have the 
 glory of saying we done it. 
 
 About midnight the storm quit and the moon come 
 out and lit up the ocean, and we begun to feel com- 
 tortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the 
 lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again 
 till sun-up. The sea was sparkling like di monds, and 
 it was nice weather, and pretty soon our things was all 
 dry again. 
 
 We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first 
 thing we noticed was that there was a dim light burning 
 in a compass back there under a hood. Then Tom was 
 disturbed. He says: 
 
 "You know what that means, easy enough. It 
 means that somebody has got to stay on watch and 
 steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she ll 
 
 (44) 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 45 
 
 wander around and go wherever the wind wants her 
 to." 
 
 "Well," I says, "what s she been doing since 
 er since we had the accident?" 
 
 " Wandering," he says, kinder troubled " wander 
 ing, without any doubt. She s in a wind now that s 
 blowing her south of east. We don t know how long 
 that s been going on, either." 
 
 So then he p inted her east, and said he would hold 
 her there till we rousted out the breakfast. The pro- 
 fessor had laid in everything a body could want; he 
 couldn t a been better fixed. There wasn t no milk 
 for the coffee, but there was water, and everything 
 else you could want, and a charcoal stove and the 
 fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and matches ; and 
 wine and liquor, which warn t in our line; and books, 
 and maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs, 
 and blankets, and no end of rubbish, like brass beads 
 and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure sign that 
 he had an idea of visiting among savages. There was 
 money, too. Yes, the professor was well enough fixed. 
 
 After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to 
 steer, and divided us all up into four-hour watches, 
 turn and turn about; and when his watch was out I 
 took his place, and he got out the professor s papers 
 and pens and wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, tell 
 ing her everything that had happened to us, and dated 
 it "7/2 the Welkin, approaching England," and folded 
 it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and 
 directed it, and wrote above the direction, in big 
 
46 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 writing," From Tom Sawyer, the Erronort" and said 
 it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when 
 it come along in the mail. I says: 
 
 " Tom Sawyer, this ain t no welkin; it s a balloon." 
 
 " Well, now, who said it was a welkin, smarty?" 
 
 " You ve wrote it on the letter, anyway." 
 
 "What of it? That don t mean that the balloon s 
 the welkin." 
 
 "Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a 
 welkin?" 
 
 I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and 
 scraped around in his mind, but he couldn t find noth 
 ing, so he had to say: 
 
 "/don t know, and nobody don t know. It s just 
 a word, and it s a mighty good word, too. There 
 ain t many that lays over it. I don t believe there s 
 any that does." 
 
 "Shucks!" I says. "But what does it mean? 
 that s the p int." 
 
 "/ don t know what it means, I tell you. It s a 
 word that people uses for for well, it s orna 
 mental. They don t put ruffles on a shirt to keep a 
 person warm, do they?" 
 
 " Course they don t." 
 
 " But they put them on, don t they?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and 
 the welkin s the ruffle on it." 
 
 I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did. 
 
 "Now, Mars Tom, it ain t no use to talk like dat; 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 47 
 
 en, moreover, it s sinful. You knows a letter ain t no 
 shirt, en dey ain t no ruffles on it, nuther. Dey ain t 
 no place to put em on; you can t put em on, and 
 dey wouldn t stay ef you did." 
 
 " Oh, do shut up, and wait till something s started 
 that you know something about." 
 
 "Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can t mean to say I 
 don t know about shirts, when, goodness knows, I s 
 toted home de washin ever sence " 
 
 " I tell you, this hasn t got anything to do with 
 shirts. I only " 
 
 " Why, Mars Tom, you said yo self dat a letter " 
 
 "Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I 
 only used it as a metaphor." 
 
 That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then 
 Jim says rather timid, because he see Tom was get 
 ting pretty tetchy : 
 
 " Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?" 
 
 "A metaphor s a well, it s a a- a metaphor s 
 an illustration." He see that didn t git home, so he 
 tried again. "When I say birds of a feather flocks 
 together, it s a metaphorical way of saying " 
 
 "But dey don t, Mars Tom. No, sir, deed dey 
 don t. Dey ain t no feathers dat s more alike den a 
 bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits till you catches 
 dem birds together, you ll " 
 
 "Oh, give us a rest! You can t get the simplest 
 little thing through your thick skull. Now don t bother 
 me any more." 
 
 Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased 
 
48 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 with himself for catching Tom out. The minute Tom 
 begun to talk about birds I judged he was a goner, 
 because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us 
 put together. You see, he had killed hundreds and 
 hundreds of them, and that s the way to find out 
 about birds. That s the way people does that writes 
 books about birds, and loves them so that they ll 
 go hungry and tired and take any amount of trouble to 
 find a new bird and kill it. Their name is ornitholo- 
 gers, and I could have been an ornithologer myself, 
 because I always loved birds and creatures; and I 
 started out to learn how to be one, and I see a bird 
 setting on a limb of a high tree, singing with its head 
 tilted back and its mouth open, and before I thought I 
 fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down 
 from the limb, all limp like a rag, and I run and picked 
 him up and he was dead, and his body was warm in my 
 hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like 
 his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin 
 over his eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side 
 of his head; and, laws! I couldn t see nothing more 
 for the tears; and I hain t never murdered no creature 
 since that warn t doing me no harm, and I ain t going 
 to. 
 
 But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted 
 to know. I got the subject up again, and then Tom 
 explained, the best he could. He said when a person 
 made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of 
 the people made the welkin ring. He said they always 
 said that, but none of them ever told what it was, so 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 49 
 
 he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. Well, 
 that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and 
 said so. That pleased Tom and put him in a good 
 humor again, and he says: 
 
 "Well, it s all right, then; and we ll let bygones 
 be bygones. I don t know for certain what a welkin 
 is, but when we land in London we ll make it ring, 
 anyway, and don t you forget it." 
 
 He said an erronort was a person who sailed around 
 in balloons ; and said it was a mighty sight finer to be 
 Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be Tom Sawyer the 
 Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the 
 world, if we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn t 
 give shucks to be a traveler now. 
 
 Toward the middle of the afternoon we got every 
 thing ready to land, and we felt pretty good, too, and 
 proud ; and we kept watching with the glasses, like 
 Columbus discovering America. But we couldn t see 
 nothing but ocean. The afternoon wasted out and the 
 sun shut down, a nd still there warn t no land any 
 wheres. We wondered what was the matter, but 
 reckoned it would come out all right, so we went on 
 steering east, but went up on a higher level so we 
 wouldn t hit any steeples or mountains in the dark. 
 
 It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim s; 
 but Tom stayed up, because he said ship captains done 
 that when they was making the land, and didn t stand 
 no regular watch. 
 
 Well, when daylight come, Jim give a shout, and we 
 jumped up and looked over, and there was the land 
 4** 
 
50 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 sure enough land all around, as far as you could see, 
 and perfectly level and yaller. We didn t know how 
 long we d been over it. There warn t no trees, nor 
 hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and Tom and Jim had took 
 it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a dead 
 ca m; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had 
 been the sea and rough, it would a looked smooth, all 
 the same, in the night, that way. 
 
 We was all in a powerful excitement now, and 
 grabbed the glasses and hunted everywheres for Lon 
 don, but couldn t find hair nor hide of it, nor any 
 other settlement nor any sign of a lake or a river, 
 either. Tom was clean beat. He said it warn t his 
 notion of England ; he thought England looked like 
 America, and always had that idea. So he said we 
 better have breakfast, and then drop down and inquire 
 the quickest way to London. We cut the breakfast 
 pretty short, we was so impatient. As we slanted 
 along down, the weather began to moderate, and 
 pretty soon we shed our furs. But it kept on moder 
 ating, and in a precious little while it was most too 
 moderate. We was close down now, and just blistering ! 
 
 We settled down to within thirty foot of the land 
 that is, it was land if sand is land ; for this wasn t any 
 thing but pure sand. Tom and me clumb down the 
 ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt 
 amazing good that is, the stretching did, but the 
 sand scorched our feet like hot embers. Next, we see 
 somebody coming, and started to meet him ; but we 
 heard Jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 51 
 
 dancing, and making signs, and yelling. We couldn t 
 make out what he said, but we was scared anyway, and 
 begun to heel it back to the balloon. When we got 
 close enough, we understood the words, and they 
 made me sick: 
 
 " Run! Run fo yo life! Hit s a lion; I kin see 
 him thoo de glass! Run, boys; do please heel it de 
 bes you kin. He s bu sted outen de menagerie, en 
 dey ain t nobody to stop him!" 
 
 It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of 
 my legs. I could only just gasp along the way you do 
 in a dream when there s a ghost gaining on you. 
 
 Tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and 
 waited for me ; and as soon as I got a foothold on it 
 he shouted to Jim to soar away. But Jim had clean 
 lost his head, and said he had forgot how. So Tom 
 shinned along up and told me to follow ; but the lion 
 was arriving, fetching a most ghastly roar with every 
 lope, and my legs shook so I dasn t try to take one of 
 them out of the rounds for fear the other one would 
 give way under me. 
 
 But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the 
 balloon up a little, and stopped it again as soon as the 
 end of the ladder was ten or twelve feet above ground. 
 And there was the lion, a-ripping around under me, 
 and roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder, 
 and only missing it about a quarter of an inch, it 
 seemed to me. It was delicious to be out of his reach, 
 perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and thank 
 ful all up one side ; but I was hanging there helpless 
 
 D* 
 
52 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 and couldn t climb, and that made me feel perfectly 
 wretched and miserable all down the other. It is most 
 seldom that a person feels so mixed like that ; and it is 
 not to be recommended, either. 
 
 Tom asked me what he d better do, but I didn t 
 know. He asked me if I could hold on whilst he sailed 
 away to a safe place and left the lion behind. I said I 
 could if he didn t go no higher than he was now; but 
 if he went higher I would lose my head and fall, sure. 
 So he said, " Take a good grip," and he started. 
 
 "Don t go so fast," I shouted. "It makes my 
 head swim." 
 
 He had started like a lightning express. He slowed 
 down, and we glided over the sand slower, but still in 
 a kind of sickening way ; for it is uncomfortable to see 
 things sliding and gliding under you like that, and not 
 a sound. 
 
 But pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the 
 lion was catching up. His noise fetched others. You 
 could see them coming on the lope from every direc 
 tion, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of 
 them under me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling 
 and snapping at each other ; and so we went skimming 
 along over the sand, and these fellers doing what they 
 could to help us to not forgit the occasion ; and then 
 some other beasts come, without an invite, and they 
 started a regular riot down there. 
 
 We see this plan was a mistake. We couldn t ever 
 git away from them at this gait, and I couldn t hold on 
 forever. So Tom took a think, and struck another 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 53 
 
 idea. That was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box 
 revolver, and then sail away while the others stopped 
 to fight over the carcass. So he stopped the balloon 
 still, and done it, and then we sailed off while the fuss 
 was going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off, 
 and they helped me aboard ; but by the time we was 
 out of reach again, that gang was on hand once more. 
 And when they see we was really gone and they 
 couldn t get us, they sat down on their hams and 
 looked up at us so kind of disappointed that it was as 
 much as a person could do not to see their side of the 
 matter. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IT S A CARAVAN 
 
 I WAS so weak that the only thing I wanted was a 
 chance to lay down, so I made straight for my 
 locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a 
 body couldn t get back his strength in no such oven as 
 that, so Tom give the command to soar, and Jim 
 started her aloft. 
 
 We had to go up a mile before we struck comfort 
 able weather where it was breezy and pleasant and just 
 right, and pretty soon I was all straight again. Tom 
 had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps 
 up and says: 
 
 41 1 bet you a thousand to one / know where we are. 
 We re in the Great Sahara, as sure as guns !" 
 
 He was so excited he couldn t hold still; but I 
 wasn t. I says : 
 
 "Well, then, where s the Great Sahara? In Eng 
 land or in Scotland?" 
 
 " Tain t in either; it s in Africa." 
 
 Jim s eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down 
 with no end of interest, because that was where his 
 originals come from; but I didn t more than half be- 
 
 (54) 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 55 
 
 lieve it. I couldn t, you know; it seemed too awful 
 far away for us to have traveled. 
 
 But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, 
 and said the lions and the sand meant the Great Desert, 
 sure. He said he could a found out, before we 
 sighted land, that we was crowding the land some- 
 wheres, if he had thought of one thing; and when we 
 asked him what, he said : 
 
 These clocks, They re chronometers. You al 
 ways read about them in sea voyages. One of them 
 is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping St. 
 Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it 
 was four in the afternoon by my watch and this clock, 
 and it was ten at night by this Grinnage clock. Well, 
 at this time of the year the sun sets at about seven 
 o clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening 
 when the sun went down, and it was half -past five 
 o clock by the Grinnage clock, and half past 1 1 A. M. 
 by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun 
 rose and set by my watch in St. Louis, and the Grin 
 nage clock was six hours fast; but we ve come so far 
 east that it comes within less than half an hour of set 
 ting by the Grinnage clock now, and I m away out 
 more than four hours and a half out. You see, that 
 meant that we was closing up on the longitude of 
 Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was 
 p inted right which we wasn t. No, sir, we ve been 
 a-wandering wandering way down south of east, and 
 it s my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this map. 
 You see how the shoulder of Africa sticks out to the 
 
56 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 west. Think how fast we ve traveled ; if we had gone 
 straight east we would be long past England by this 
 time. You watch for noon, all of you, and we ll stand 
 up, and when we can t cast a shadow we ll find that 
 this Grinnage clock is coming mighty close to marking 
 twelve. Yes, sir, /think we re in Africa; and it s just 
 bully." 
 
 Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his 
 head and says : 
 
 " Mars Tom, I reckon dey s a mistake som er s. I 
 hain t seen no niggers yit." 
 
 "That s nothing; they don t live in the desert. 
 What is that, way off yonder? Gimme a glass." 
 
 He took a long look, and said it was like a black 
 string stretched across the sand, but he couldn t guess 
 what it was. 
 
 "Well," I says, "I reckon maybe you ve got a 
 chance now to find out whereabouts this balloon is, 
 because as like as not that is one of these lines here, 
 that s on the map, that you call meridians of longi 
 tude, and we can drop down and look at its number, 
 and--" 
 
 " Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunk 
 head as you. Did you s pose there s meridians of 
 longitude on the earth ?" 
 
 "Tom Sawyer, they re set down on the map, and 
 you know it perfectly well, and here they are, and you 
 can see for yourself." 
 
 44 Of course they re on the map, but that s nothing; 
 there ain t any on the ground." 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 57 
 
 " Tom, do you know that to be so?" 
 
 "Certainly I do." 
 
 "Well, then, that map s a liar again. I never see 
 such a liar as that map." 
 
 He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and 
 Jim was warming his opinion, too, and next minute 
 we d a broke loose on another argument, if Tom 
 hadn t dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands 
 like a maniac and sing out : 
 
 "Camels! Camels!" 
 
 So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, 
 but I was disappointed, and says: 
 
 11 Camels your granny; they re spiders." 
 
 "Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking 
 in a procession? You don t ever reflect, Huck Finn, 
 and I reckon you really haven t got anything to 
 reflect with. Don t you know we re as much as a 
 mile up in the air, and that that string of crawlers is 
 two or three miles away? Spiders, good land ! Spiders 
 as big as a cow? Perhaps you d like to go down 
 and milk one of em. But they re camels, just the 
 same. It s a caravan, that s what it is, and it s a mile 
 long." 
 
 "Well, then, let s go down and look at it. I 
 don t believe in it, and ain t going to till I see it and 
 know it." 
 
 "All right," he says, and give the command: 
 " Lower away." 
 
 As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we 
 could see that it was camels, sure enough, plodding 
 
58 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 along, an everlasting string of them, with bales strapped 
 to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, 
 and a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and 
 hanging down with tassels and fringes ; and some of 
 the men had long guns and some hadn t, and some 
 was riding and some was walking. And the weather 
 well, it was just roasting. And how slow they did 
 creep along! We swooped down now, all of a 
 sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their 
 heads. 
 
 The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat 
 on their stomachs, some begun to fire their guns at us, 
 and the rest broke and scampered every which way, 
 and so did the camels. 
 
 We see that we was making trouble, so we went up 
 again about a mile, to the cool weather, and watched 
 them from there. It took them an hour to get together 
 and form the procession again ; then they started along, 
 but we could see by the glasses that they wasn t pay 
 ing much attention to anything but us. We poked 
 along, looking down at them with the glasses, and by 
 and by we see a big sand mound, and something like 
 people the other side of it, and there was something 
 like a man laying on top of the mound that raised his 
 head up every now and then, and seemed to be watch 
 ing the caravan or us, we didn t know which. As the 
 caravan got nearer, he sneaked down on the other side 
 and rushed to the other men and horses for that is 
 what they was and we see them mount in a hurry; 
 and next, here they come, like a house afire, some with 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 59 
 
 lances and some with long guns, and all of them yell 
 ing the best they could. 
 
 They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the 
 next minute both sides crashed together and was all 
 mixed up, and there was such another popping of guns 
 as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke 
 you could only catch glimpses of them struggling 
 together. There must a been six hundred men in 
 that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then they 
 broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and 
 nail, and scurrying and scampering around, and laying 
 into each other like everything; and whenever the 
 smoke cleared a little you could see dead and wounded 
 people and camels scattered far and wide and all about, 
 and camels racing off in every direction. 
 
 At last the robbers see they couldn t win, so their 
 chief sounded a signal, and all that was left of them 
 broke away and went scampering across the plain. 
 The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it 
 off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run 
 screaming and begging after him, and followed him 
 away off across the plain till she was separated a long 
 ways from her people; but it warn t no use, and she 
 had to give it up, and we see her sink down on the 
 sand and cover her face with her hands. Then Tom 
 took the helium, and started for that yahoo, and we 
 come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked 
 him out of the saddle, child and all; and he was jarred 
 considerable, but the child wasn t hurt, but laid there 
 working its hands and legs in the air like a tumble-bug 
 
60 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 that s on its back and can t turn over. The man went 
 staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn t know 
 what had hit him, for we was three or four hundred 
 yards up in the air by this time. 
 
 We judged the woman would go and get the child 
 now; but she didn t. We could see her, through the 
 glass, still setting there, with her head bowed down on 
 her knees; so of course she hadn t seen the perform 
 ance, and thought her child was clean gone with the 
 man. She was nearly a half a mile from her people, 
 so we thought we might go down to the child, which 
 was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake 
 it to her before the caravan people could git to us to 
 do us any harm ; and besides, we reckoned they had 
 enough business on their hands for one while, anyway, 
 with the wounded. We thought we d chance it, and 
 we did. We swooped down and stopped, and Jim 
 shinned down the ladder and fetched up the kid, which 
 was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor, 
 too, considering it was just out of a battle and been 
 tumbled off of a horse ; and then we started for the 
 mother, and stopped back of her and tolerable near 
 by, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when 
 he was close back of her the child goo-goo d, the way 
 a child does, and she heard it, and whirled and fetched 
 a shriek of joy, and made a jump for the kid and 
 snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged 
 Jim, and then snatched off a gold chain and hung it 
 around Jim s neck,- and hugged him again, and jerked 
 up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all the 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 61 
 
 time ; and Jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and 
 in a minute we was back up in the sky and the woman 
 was staring up, with the back of her head between her 
 shoulders and the child with its arms locked around 
 her neck. And there she stood, as long as we was in 
 sight a-sailing away in the skv. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA 
 
 \ |OON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder 
 1 ^" was just a blot around his feet. We looked, 
 and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the 
 difference didn t amount to nothing. So Tom said 
 London was right north of us or right south of us, one 
 or t other, and he reckoned by the weather and the 
 sand and the camels it was north ; and a good many 
 miles north, too ; as many as from New York to the 
 city of Mexico, he guessed. 
 
 Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the 
 fastest thing in the world, unless it might be some 
 kinds of birds a wild pigeon, maybe, or a railroad. 
 
 But Tom said he had read about railroads in England 
 going nearly a hundred miles an hour for a little ways, 
 and there never was a bird in the world that could do 
 that except one, and that was a flea. 
 
 "A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he 
 ain t a bird, strickly speakin " 
 
 " He ain t a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?" 
 " I don t rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he s 
 only jist a animal. No, I reckon dat won t do, nuther, 
 
 (62) 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 63 
 
 he ain t big enough for a animal. He mus be a bug. 
 Yassir, dat s what he is, he s a bug." 
 
 " I bet he ain t, but let it go. What s your second 
 place?" 
 
 " Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes 
 a long ways, but a flea don t." 
 
 " He don t, don t he? Come, now, what is a long 
 distance, if you know?" 
 
 * Why, it s miles, and lots of em anybody knows 
 dat." 
 
 11 Can t a man walk miles?" 
 
 "Yassir, he kin." 
 
 " As many as a railroad?" 
 
 * Yassir, if you give him time." 
 
 "Can t a flea?" 
 
 "Well I s pose so ef you gives him heaps of 
 time." 
 
 "Now you begin to see, don t you, that distance 
 ain t the thing to judge by, at all; it s the time it takes 
 to go the distance /;/ that counts, ain t it?" 
 
 "Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn t a 
 b lieved it, Mars Tom." 
 
 " It s a matter of proportion, that s what it is; and 
 when you come to gauge a thing s speed by its size, 
 where s your bird and your man and your railroad, 
 alongside of a flea? The fastest man can t run more 
 than about ten miles in an hour not much over ten 
 thousand times his own length. But all the books says 
 any common ordinary third-class flea can jump a hun 
 dred and fifty times his own length ; yes, and he can 
 
 5 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 make five jumps a second too seven hundred and 
 fifty times his own length, in one little second for he 
 don t fool away any time stopping and starting he 
 does them both at the same time; you ll see, if you 
 try to put your finger on him. Now that s a common, 
 ordinary, third-class flea s gait; but you take an Eye- 
 talian^r^/-class, that s been the pet of the nobility all 
 his life, and hasn t ever knowed what want or sickness 
 or exposure was, and he can jump more than three 
 hundred times his own length, and keep it up all clay, 
 five such jumps every second, which is fifteen hundred 
 times his own length. Well, suppose a man could go 
 fifteen hundred times his own length in a second say, 
 a mile and a half. It s ninety miles a minute; it s 
 considerable more than five thousand miles an hour. 
 Where s your man noiv ? yes, and your bird, and 
 your railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they don t 
 amount to shucks longside of a flea. A flea is just 
 a comet b iled down small." 
 
 Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim 
 said : 
 
 11 Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin en 
 no lies, Mars Tcm?" 
 
 "Yes, they are; they re perfectly true." 
 
 " Well, den, honey, a body s got to respec a flea. 
 I ain t had no respec for um befo , sca sely, but dey 
 ain t no gittin roun it, dey do deserve it, dat s 
 certain." 
 
 "Well, I bet they do. They ve got ever so much 
 more sense, and brains, and brightness, in proportion 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 65 
 
 to their size, than any other cretur in the world. A 
 person can learn them most anything; and they learn 
 it quicker than any other cretur, too. They ve been 
 learnt to haul little carriages in harness, and go this 
 way and that way and t other way according to their 
 orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing 
 it as exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. 
 They ve been learnt to do all sorts of hard and 
 troublesome things. S pose you could cultivate a flea 
 up to the size of a man, and keep his natural 
 smartness a-growing and a-growing right along up, 
 bigger and bigger, and keener and keener, in the same 
 proportion where d the human race be, do you 
 reckon? That flea would be President of the United 
 States, and you couldn t any more prevent it than you 
 can prevent lightning." 
 
 " My Ian , Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so 
 much to de beas . No, sir, I never had no idea of it, 
 and dat s de fac ." 
 
 " There s more to him, by a long sight, than there 
 is to any other cretur, man or beast, in proportion to 
 size. He s the interestingest of them all. People have 
 so much to say about an ant s strength, and an ele 
 phant s, and a locomotive s. Shucks, they don t begin 
 with a flea. He can lift two or three hundred times his 
 own weight. And none of them can come anywhere 
 near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his 
 own, and is very particular, and you can t fool him; 
 his instinct, or his judgment, or whatever it is, is per 
 fectly sound and clear, and don t ever make a mistake. 
 5** 
 
66 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain t 
 so. There s folks that he won t go near, hungry or 
 not hungry, and I m one of them. I ve never had one 
 of them on me in my life." 
 
 "Mars Tom!" 
 
 "It s so; I ain t joking." 
 
 44 Well, sah, I hain t ever heard de likes o datbefo ." 
 
 Jim couldn t believe it, and I couldn t; so we had to 
 drop down to the sand and git a supply and see. Tom 
 was right. They went for me and Jim by the thou 
 sand, but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn t 
 no explaining it, but there it was and there warn t no 
 getting around it. He said it had always been just so, 
 and he d just as soon be where there was a million of 
 them as not; they d never touch him nor bother 
 him. 
 
 We went up to the cold weather to freeze em out, 
 and stayed a little spell, and then come back to the 
 comfortable weather and went lazying along twenty or 
 twenty-five miles an hour, the way we d been doing for 
 the last few hours. The reason was, that the longer 
 we was in that solemn, peaceful desert, the more the 
 hurry and fuss got kind of soothed down in us, and 
 the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to 
 feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and 
 then loving it. So we had cramped the speed down, 
 as I was saying, and was having a most noble good 
 lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, 
 sometimes stretched out on the lockers reading, some 
 times taking a nap. 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 67 
 
 It didn t seem like we was the same lot that was in 
 such a state to find land and git ashore, but it was. 
 But we had got over that clean over it. We was 
 used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and 
 didn t want to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed 
 just like home; it most seemed as if I had been born 
 and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And 
 always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging 
 at me, and pestering of me, and scolding, and finding 
 fault, and fussing and bothering, and sticking to me, 
 and keeping after me, and making me do this, and 
 making me do that and t other, and always selecting 
 out the things I didn t want to do, and then giving me 
 Sam Hill because I shirked and done something else, 
 and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time ; 
 but up here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny and 
 lovely, and plenty to eat, and plenty of sleep, and 
 strange things to see, and no nagging and no pester 
 ing, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. 
 Land, I warn t in no hurry to git out and buck at 
 civilization again. Now, one of the worst things about 
 civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter with 
 trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes 
 you feel bad, and the newspapers fetches you the 
 troubles of everybody all over the world, and keeps 
 you downhearted and dismal most all the time, and 
 it s such a heavy load for a person. I hate them 
 newspapers ; and I hate letters ; and if I had my way 
 I wouldn t allow nobody to load his troubles on to 
 other folks he ain t acquainted with, on t other side of 
 
68 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 the world, that way. Well, up in a balloon there ain t 
 any of that, and it s the darlingest place there is. 
 
 We had supper, and that night was one of the 
 prettiest nights I ever see. The moon made it just 
 like daylight, only a heap softer ; and once we see a 
 lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the 
 earth, it seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand 
 by him like a puddle of ink. That s the kind of moon 
 light to have. 
 
 Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn t 
 want to go to sleep. Tom said we was right in the 
 midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said it was right 
 along here that one of the cutest things in that book 
 happened ; so we looked down and watched while he 
 told about it, because there ain t anything that is so 
 interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked 
 about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost 
 his camel, and he come along in the desert and met a 
 man, and says : 
 
 " Have you run across a stray camel to-day?" 
 
 And the man says : 
 
 " Was he blind in his left eye?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Had he lost an upper front tooth?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 4 Was his off hind leg lame?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and 
 honey on the other?" 
 
 "Yes, but you needn t go into no more details 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 69 
 
 that s the one, and I m in a hurry. Where did you 
 see him?" 
 
 " I hain t seen him at all," the man says. 
 
 " Hain t seen him at all? How can you describe 
 him so close, then?" 
 
 " Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, 
 everything has got a meaning to it; but most people s 
 eyes ain t any good to them. I knowed a camel had 
 been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he 
 was lame in his off hind leg because he had favored 
 that foot and trod light on it, and his track showed it. 
 I knowed he was blind on his left side because he only 
 nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I 
 knowed he had lost an upper front tooth because where 
 he bit into the sod his teeth-print showed it. The 
 millet-seed sifted out on one side the ants told me 
 that; the honey leaked out on the other the flies 
 told me that. I know all about your camel, but I 
 hain t seen him." 
 
 Jim says : 
 
 " Go on, Mars Tom, hit s a mighty good tale, and 
 powerful interestin ." 
 
 "That s all," Tom says. 
 
 "All?" says Jim, astonished. "What come o 
 de camel?" 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 " Mars Tom, don t de tale say?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Jim puzzled a minute, then he says: 
 
 " Well ! Ef dat ain t de beatenes tale ever / struck. 
 
70 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 Jist gits to de place whah de intrust is gittin red-hot, 
 en down she breaks. Why, Mars Tom, dey ain t no 
 sense in a tale dat acts like dat. Hain t you got no 
 idea whether de man got de camel back er not?" 
 
 "No, I haven t." 
 
 I see myself there warn t no sense in the tale, to 
 chop square off that way before it come to anything, 
 but I warn t going to say so, because I could see Tom 
 was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out 
 and the way Jim had popped on to the weak place in 
 it, and I don t think it s fair for everybody to pile on 
 to a feller when he s down. But Tom he whirls on 
 me and says: 
 
 " What foyou think of the tale?" 
 
 Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean 
 breast and say it did seem to me, too, same as it did 
 to Jim, that as long as the tale stopped square in the 
 middle and never got to no place, it really warn t 
 worth the trouble of telling. 
 
 Tom s chin dropped on his breast, and stead of 
 being mad, as I reckoned he d be, to hear me scoff at 
 his tale that way, he seemed to be only sad ; and he 
 says: 
 
 "Some people can see, and some can t just as 
 that man said. Let alone a camel, if a cyclone had 
 gone by, you duffers wouldn t a noticed the 
 track." 
 
 I don t know what he meant by that, and he didn t 
 say; it was just one of his irrulevances, I reckon he 
 was full of them, sometimes, when he was in a close 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 71 
 
 place and couldn t see no other way out but I didn t 
 mind. We d spotted the soft place in that tale sharp 
 enough, he couldn t git away from that little fact. It 
 graveled him like the nation, too, I reckon, much as 
 he tried not to let on. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DISAPPEARING LAKE 
 
 WE had an early breakfast in the morning, and set 
 looking down on the desert, and the weather 
 was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn t 
 high up. You have to come down lower and lower 
 after sundown in the desert, because it cools off so 
 fast; and so, by the time it is getting toward dawn, 
 you are skimming along only a little ways above the 
 sand. 
 
 We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide 
 along the ground, and now and then gazing off across 
 the desert to see if anything was stirring, and then 
 down on the shadder again, when all of a sudden 
 almost right under us we see a lot of men and camels 
 laying scattered about, perfectly quiet, like they was 
 asleep. 
 
 We shut off the power, and backed up and stood 
 over them, and then we see that they was all dead. It 
 give us the cold shivers. And it made us hush down, 
 too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. We 
 dropped down slow and stopped, and me and Tom 
 dumb down and went among them. There was men, 
 
 (72) 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 73 
 
 and women^ and children. They was dried by the sun 
 and dark and shriveled and leathery, like the pictures 
 of mummies you see in books. And yet they looked 
 just as human, you wouldn t a believed it; just like 
 they was asleep. 
 
 Some of the people and animals was partly covered 
 with sand, but most of them not, for the sand was 
 thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard. Most 
 of the clothes had rotted away ; and when you took 
 hold of a rag, it tore with a touch, like spider- 
 web. Tom reckoned they had been laying there for 
 years. 
 
 Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had 
 swords on and had shawl belts with long, silver- 
 mounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels had 
 their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted 
 and spilt the freight out on the ground. We didn t 
 reckon the swords was any good to the dead people 
 any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. 
 We took a small box, too, because it was so handsome 
 and inlaid so fine ; and then we wanted to bury the 
 people ; but there warn t no way to do it that we could 
 think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that 
 would blow away again, of course. 
 
 Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty 
 soon that black spot on the sand was out of sight, and 
 we wouldn t ever see them poor people again in this 
 world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to 
 guess how they come to be there, and how it all hap 
 pened to them, but we couldn t make it out. First we 
 
74 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around and 
 about till their food and water give out and they 
 starved to death ; but Tom said no wild animals nor 
 vultures hadn t meddled with them, and so that guess 
 wouldn t do. So at last we give it up, and judged we 
 wouldn t think about it no more, because it made us 
 low-spirited. 
 
 Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels 
 in it, quite a pile, and some little veils of the kind the 
 dead women had on, with fringes made out of curious 
 gold money that we warn t acquainted with. We 
 wondered if we better go and try to find them again 
 and give it back ; but Tom thought it over and said 
 no, it was a country that was full of robbers, and they 
 would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on 
 us for putting the temptation in their way. So we 
 went on; but I wished we had took all they had, so 
 there wouldn t a been no temptation at all left. 
 
 We had had two hours of that blazing weather down 
 there, and was dreadful thirsty when we got aboard 
 again. We went straight for the water, but it was 
 spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough 
 to scald your mouth. We couldn t drink it. It was 
 Mississippi river water, the best in the world, and we 
 stirred up the mud in it to see if that would help, but 
 no, the mud wasn t any better than the water. 
 
 Well, we hadn t been so very, very thirsty before, 
 while we was interested in the lost people, but we was 
 now, and as soon as we found we couldn t have a 
 drink, we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 75 
 
 we was a quarter of a minute before. Why, in a little 
 while we wanted to hold our mouths open and pant 
 like a dog. 
 
 Tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, every- 
 wheres, because we d got to find an oasis or there 
 warn t no telling what would happen. So we done it. 
 We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our 
 arms got so tired we couldn t hold them any more. 
 Two hours three hours just gazing and gazing, 
 and nothing but sand, sand, sand, and you could see 
 the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, 
 dear, a body don t know what real misery is till he is 
 thirsty all the way through and is certain he ain t ever 
 going to come to any water any more. At last I 
 couldn t stand it to look around on them baking plains; 
 I laid down on the locker, and give it up. 
 
 But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she 
 was ! A lake, wide and shiny, with pa m-trees leaning 
 over it asleep, and their shadders in the water just as 
 soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything 
 look so good. It was a long ways off, but that 
 warn t anything to us; we just slapped on a hundred- 
 mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven minutes ; 
 but she stayed the same old distance away, all the 
 time; we couldn t seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as 
 far, and shiny, and like a dream; but we couldn t get 
 no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she was gone! 
 
 Tom s eyes took a spread, and he says: 
 
 "Boys, it was a Bridge!" Said it like he was 
 glad. I didn t see nothing to be glad about. I says: 
 
76 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 11 Maybe. I don t care nothing about its name, the 
 thing I want to know is, what s become of it?" 
 
 Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn t 
 speak, but he wanted to ask that question himself if he 
 could a done it. Tom says: 
 
 "What s become of it? Why, you see yourself it s 
 gone." 
 
 " Yes, I know; but where s it gone to ? " 
 
 He looked me over and says : 
 
 "Well, now, Huck Finn, where would it go to! 
 Don t you know what a myridge is?" 
 
 "No, I don t. What is it?" 
 
 " It ain t anything but imagination. There ain t 
 anything to it." 
 
 It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, 
 and I says : 
 
 11 What s the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom 
 Sawyer? Didn t I see the lake?" 
 Yes you think you did." 
 
 " I don t think nothing about it, I did see it." 
 
 "I tell you you didri 7 see it either because it 
 warn t there to see." 
 
 It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke 
 in and says, kind of pleading and distressed : 
 
 " Mars Tom, please don t say sich things in sich an 
 awful time as dis. You ain t only reskin yo own 
 self, but you s reskin us same way like Anna Nias 
 en Siffira. De lake wuz dah I seen it jis as plain 
 as I sees you en Huck dis minute." 
 
 I says: 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 77 
 
 " Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one 
 that seen it first. Now, then !" 
 
 " Yes, Mars Tom, hit s so you can t deny it. We 
 all seen it, en dat prove it was dah." 
 
 " Proves it! How does it prove it?" 
 
 "Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, 
 Mars Tom. One pusson might be drunk, or dreamy 
 or suthin , en he could be mistaken; en two might, 
 maybe; but I tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, 
 drunk er sober, it s so. Dey ain t no gittin aroun 
 dat, en you knows it, Mars Tom." 
 
 " I don t know nothing of the kind. There used to 
 be forty thousand million people that seen the sun 
 move from one side of the sky to the other every day. 
 Did that prove that the sun done it?" 
 
 41 Course it did. En besides, dey warn t no casion 
 to prove it. A body at s got any sense ain t gwine to 
 doubt it. Dah she is now a sailin thoo de sky, 
 like she allays done." 
 
 Tom turned on me, then, and says: 
 
 " What &v you say is the sun standing still?" 
 Tom Sawyer, what s the use to ask such a jackass 
 question? Anybody that ain t blind can see it don t 
 stand still." 
 
 "Well," he says, "I m lost in the sky with no 
 company but a passel of low-down animals that don t 
 know no more than the head boss of a university did 
 three or four hundred years ago." 
 
 It warn t fair play, and I let him know it. I 
 says: 
 
78 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 11 Throwin mud ain t arguin , Tom Sawyer." 
 
 14 Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, 
 dah s de lake agi n!" yelled Jim, just then. "Now, 
 Mars Tom, what you gwine to say?" 
 
 Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder 
 across the desert, perfectly plain, trees and all, just 
 the same as it was before. I says: 
 
 44 1 reckon you re satisfied now, Tom Sawyer." 
 
 But he says, perfectly ca m: 
 
 44 Yes, satisfied there ain t no lake there." 
 
 Jim says: 
 
 "Don t talk so, Mars Tom it sk yers me to hear 
 you. It s so hot, en you s so thirsty, dat you ain t in 
 yo right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but don t she look 
 good! clah I doan know how I s gwine to wait tell 
 we gits dah, I s so thirsty." 
 
 14 Well., you ll have to wait; and it won t do you no 
 good, either, because there ain t no lake there, I tell 
 you." 
 
 I says : 
 
 44 Jim, don t you take your eye off of it, and I 
 won t, either." 
 
 44 Deed I won t; en bless you, honey, I couldn t ef 
 I wanted to." 
 
 We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles 
 behind us like nothing, but never gaining an inch on it 
 and all of a sudden it was gone again ! Jim stag 
 gered, and most fell down. When he got his breath 
 he says, gasping like a fish : 
 
 4 Mars Tom, hit s a ghos\ dat s what it is, en I 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 79 
 
 hopes to goodness we ain t gwine to see it no mo . 
 Dey s been a lake, en suthin s happened, en de lake s 
 dead, en we s seen its ghos ; we s seen it twiste, en 
 dat s proof. De desert s ha nted, it s ha nted, sho; 
 oh, Mars Tom, le s git outen it; I d ruther die den 
 have de night ketch us in it ag in en de ghos er dat 
 lake come a-mournin aroun us en we asleep en doan 
 know de danger we s in." 
 
 " Ghost, you gander! It ain t anything but air and 
 heat and thirstiness pasted together by a person s 
 imagination. If I gimme the glass !" 
 
 He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right. 
 
 "It s a flock of birds," he says. "It s getting 
 toward sundown, and they re making a bee-line across 
 our track for somewheres. They mean business 
 maybe they re going for food or water, or both. Let 
 her go to starboard ! Port your helium ! Hard down ! 
 There ease up steady, as you go." 
 
 We shut down some of the power, so as not to out- 
 speed them, and took out after them. We went skim 
 ming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and when 
 we had followed them an hour and a half and was get 
 ting pretty discouraged, and was thirsty clean to 
 unendurableness, Tom says: 
 
 1 Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, 
 away ahead of the birds." 
 
 Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the 
 locker sick. He was most crying, and says : 
 
 11 She s dah ag in, Mars Tom, she s dah ag in, en I 
 knows I s gwine to die, case when a body sees a ghos 
 
80 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 de third time, dat s what it means. I wisht I d never 
 come in dis balloon, dat I does." 
 
 He wouldn t look no more, and what he said made 
 me afraid, too, because I knowed it was true, for that 
 has always been the way with ghosts; so then I 
 wouldn t look any more, either. Both of us begged 
 Tom to turn off and go some other way, but he 
 wouldn t, and said we was ignorant superstitious 
 blatherskites. Yes, and he ll git come up with, one 
 of these days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that 
 way. They ll stand it for a while, maybe, but they 
 won t stand it always, for anybody that knows about 
 ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revenge 
 ful they are. 
 
 So we was all quiet and still, Jim and me being 
 scared, and Tom busy. By and by Tom fetched the 
 balloon to a standstill, and says: 
 
 " Now get up and look, you sapheads." 
 
 We done it, and there was the sure-enough water 
 right under us! clear, and blue, and cool, and deep, 
 and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest sight that ever 
 was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, 
 and shady groves of big trees, looped together with 
 vines, and all looking so peaceful and comfortable 
 enough to make a body cry, it was so beautiful. 
 
 Jim did cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was 
 so thankful and out of his mind for joy. It was my 
 watch, so I had to stay by the works, but Tom and 
 Jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and 
 fetched me up a lot, and I ve tasted a many a good 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 81 
 
 thing in my life, but nothing that ever begun with that 
 water. 
 
 Then we went down and had a swim, and then Tom 
 came up and spelled me, and me and Jim had a swim, 
 and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a 
 foot-race and a boxing-mill, and I don t reckon I ever 
 had such a good time in my life. It warn t so very 
 hot, because it was close on to evening, and we hadn t 
 any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in 
 school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain t 
 no sense in them when there ain t no civilization nor 
 other kinds of bothers and fussiness around. 
 
 "Lions a-comin ! lions! Quick, Mars Tom! 
 Jump for yo life, Huck!" 
 
 Oh, and didn t we ! We never stopped for clothes, 
 but waltzed up the ladder just so. Jim lost his head 
 straight off he always done it whenever he got ex 
 cited and scared; and so now, stead of just easing the 
 ladder up from the ground a little, so the animals 
 couldn t reach it, he turned on a raft of power, and we 
 went whizzing up and was dangling in the sky before 
 he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing 
 he was doing. Then he stopped her, but he had clean 
 forgot what to do next; so there we was, so high that 
 the lions looked like pups, and we was drifting off on 
 the wind. 
 
 But Tom he shinned up and went for the works and 
 begun to slant her down, and back toward the lake, 
 where the animals was gathering like a camp-meeting, 
 and I judged he had lost his head, too; for he knowed 
 
82 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 I was too scared to climb, and did he want to dump 
 me among the tigers and things? 
 
 But no, his head was level, he knowed what he was 
 about. He swooped down to within thirty or forty 
 feet of the lake, and stopped right over the center, and 
 sung out: 
 
 44 Leggo, and drop !" 
 
 I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to 
 go about a mile toward the bottom ; and when I come 
 up, he says: 
 
 44 Now lay on your back and float till you re rested 
 and got your pluck back, then I ll dip the ladder in 
 the water and you can climb aboard " 
 
 I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, be 
 cause if he had started off somewheres else to drop 
 down on the sand, the menagerie would a come 
 along, too, and might a kept us hunting a safe place 
 till I got tuckered out and fell. 
 
 And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out 
 the clothes, and trying to divide them up so there 
 would be some for all, but there was a misunderstand 
 ing about it somewheres, on account of some of them 
 trying to hog more than their share; so there was 
 another insurrection, and you never see anything like 
 it in the world. There must a j been fifty of them, all 
 mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping 
 and biting and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and 
 you couldn t tell which was which, and the sand and 
 fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was 
 dead, and some was limping off crippled, and the rest 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 83 
 
 was setting around on the battlefield, some of them 
 licking their sore places and the others looking up at 
 us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down 
 and have some fun, but which we didn t want any. 
 
 As for the clothes, they warn t any, any more. 
 Every last rag of them was inside of the animals ; and 
 not agreeing with them very well, I don t reckon, for 
 there was considerable many brass buttons on them, 
 and there was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking 
 tobacco, and nails and chalk and marbles and fish 
 hooks and things. But I wasn t caring. All that was 
 bothering me was, that all we had now was the pro 
 fessor s clothes, a big enough assortment, but not suit 
 able to go into company with, if we came across any, 
 because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the 
 coats and things according. Still, there was everything 
 a tailor needed, and Jim was a kind of jack-legged 
 tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or two 
 down for us that would answer. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT 
 
 STILL, we thought we would drop down there a 
 minute, but on another errand. Most of the pro 
 fessor s cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new 
 way that somebody had just invented ; the rest was 
 fresh. When you fetch Missouri beefsteak to the 
 Great Sahara, you want to be particular and stay up 
 in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would 
 drop down into the lion market and see how we could 
 make out there. 
 
 We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we 
 was just above the reach of the animals, then we let 
 down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled up a 
 dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub 
 tiger. We had to keep the congregation off with the 
 revolver, or they would a took a hand in the proceed 
 ings and helped. 
 
 We carved off a supply from both, and saved the 
 skins, and hove the rest overboard. Then we baited 
 some of the professor s hooks with the fresh meat and 
 went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a con 
 venient distance above the water, and catched a lot of 
 
 (84) 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 85 
 
 the nicest fish you ever see. It was a most amazing 
 good supper we had ; lion steak, tiger steak, fried fish, 
 and hot corn-pone. I don t want nothing better than 
 that. 
 
 We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out 
 of the top of a monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim 
 tree that hadn t a branch on it from the bottom plumb 
 to the top, and there it bursted out like a feather- 
 duster. It was a pa m-tree, of course; anybody knows 
 a pa m-tree the minute he see it, by the pictures. We 
 went for cocoanuts in this one, but there warn t none. 
 There was only big loose bunches of things like over 
 sized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because 
 he said they answered the description in the Arabian 
 Nights and the other books. Of course they mightn t 
 be, and they might be poison ; so we had to wait a 
 spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. They 
 done it; so we done it, too, and they was most amaz 
 ing good. 
 
 By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and 
 settle on the dead animals. They was plucky creturs ; 
 they would tackle one end of a lion that was being 
 gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion 
 drove the bird away, it didn t do no good; he was 
 back again the minute the lion was busy. 
 
 The big birds come out of every part of the sky 
 you could make them out with the glass while they was 
 still so far away you couldn t see them with your naked 
 eye. Tom said the birds didn t find out the meat was 
 there by the smell ; they had to find it out by seeing 
 
86 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 it. Oh, but ain t that an eye for you ! Tom said at 
 the distance of five mile a patch of dead lions couldn t 
 look any bigger than a person s finger-nail, and he 
 couldn t imagine how the birds could notice such a 
 little thing so far off. 
 
 It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, 
 and we thought maybe they warn t kin. But Jim said 
 that didn t make no difference. He said a hog was 
 fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he 
 reckoned maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled 
 though maybe not quite. He thought likely a lion 
 wouldn t eat his own father, if he knowed which was 
 him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if 
 he was uncommon hungry, and eat his mother-in-law 
 any time. But reckoning don t settle nothing. You 
 can reckon till the cows come home, but that don t 
 fetch you to no decision. So we give it up and let it 
 drop. 
 
 Generly it was very still in the Desert nights, but this 
 time there was music. A lot of other animals come to 
 dinner; sneaking yelpers that Tom allowed was jackals, 
 and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas ; and 
 all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the 
 time. They made a picture in the moonlight that was 
 more different than any picture I ever see. We had a 
 line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn t 
 stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but I was 
 up two or three times to look down at the animals and 
 hear the music. It was like having a front seat at a 
 menagerie for nothing, which I hadn t ever had before, 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 87 
 
 and so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the 
 most of it; I mightn t ever have such a chance 
 again. 
 
 We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then 
 lazied around all day in the deep shade on an island, 
 taking turn about to watch and see that none of the 
 animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts 
 for dinner. We was going to leave the next day, but 
 couldn t, it was too lovely. 
 
 The day after, when we rose up toward the sky and 
 sailed off eastward, we looked back and watched that 
 place till it warn t nothing but just a speck in the 
 Desert, and I tell you it was like saying good-bye to a 
 friend that you ain t ever going to see any more. 
 
 Jim was thinking to himself, and at last he says : 
 
 " Mars Tom, we s mos to de end er de Desert now, 
 I speck." 
 
 " Why?" 
 
 "Well, hit stan* to reason we is. You knows how 
 long we s been a-skimmin over it. Mus be mos out 
 o san . Hit s a wonder to me dat it s hilt out as long 
 as it has." 
 
 " Shucks, there s plenty sand, you needn t worry." 
 
 * Oh, I ain t a-worryin , Mars Tom, only wonderin , 
 dat s all. De Lord s got plenty san , I ain t doubtin 
 dat; but nemmine, He ain t gwyne to was e it jist on 
 dat account; en I allows dat dis Desert s plenty big 
 enough now, jist de way she is, en you can t spread 
 her out no mo dout was in san ." 
 
 " Oh, go long! we ain t much more than fairly 
 
88 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 started across this Desert yet. The United States is a 
 pretty big country, ain t it? Ain t it, Huck?" 
 
 1 Yes," I says, " there ain t no bigger one, I don t 
 reckon." 
 
 "Well," he says, " this Desert is about the shape 
 of the United States, and if you was to lay it down on 
 top of the United States, it would cover the land of 
 the free out of sight like a blanket. There d be a little 
 corner sticking out, up at Maine and away up north 
 west, and Florida sticking out like a turtle s tail, and 
 that s all. We ve took California away from the 
 Mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of the 
 Pacific coast is ours now, and if you laid the Great 
 Sahara down with her edge on the Pacific, she would 
 cover the United States and stick out past New York 
 six hundred miles into the Atlantic ocean." 
 
 I say: 
 
 " Good land ! have you got the documents for that, 
 Tom Sawyer?" 
 
 "Yes, and they re right here, and I ve been study 
 ing them. You can look for yourself. From New 
 York to the Pacific is 2,600 miles. From one end of 
 the Great Desert to the other is 3,200. The United 
 States contains 3,600,000 square miles, the Desert 
 contains 4,162,000. With the Desert s bulk you could 
 cover up every last inch of the United States, and in 
 under where the edges projected out, you could tuck 
 England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Denmark, and all 
 Germany. Yes, sir, you could hide the home of the 
 brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 89 
 
 the Great Sahara, and you would still have 2,000 
 square miles of sand left." 
 
 "Well," I says, "it clean beats me. Why, Tom, 
 it shows that the Lord took as much pains makin this 
 Desert as makin the United States and all them other 
 countries." 
 
 Jim says: " Huck, dat don stan to reason. I 
 reckon dis Desert wa n t made at all. Now you take 
 en look at it like dis you look at it, and see ef I s 
 right. What s a desert good for? Taint good for 
 nuthin . Dey ain t no way to make it pay. Hain t 
 dat so, Huck?" 
 
 "Yes, I reckon." 
 
 11 Hain t it so, Mars Tom?" 
 
 " I guess so. Go on." 
 
 " Ef a thing ain t no good, it s made in vain, ain t it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Now, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain? 
 You answer me dat." 
 
 "Well no, He don t." 
 
 " Den how come He make a desert?" 
 
 " Well, go on. How did He come to make it?" 
 
 " Mars Tom, / b lieve it uz jes like when you s buildin 
 a house; dey s allays a lot o truck en rubbish lef over. 
 What does you do wid it? Doan you take en k yart 
 it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot? Course. 
 Now, den, it s my opinion hit was jes like dat dat 
 de Great Sahara warn t made at all, she jes happen* ." 
 
 I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it 
 was the best one Jim ever made. Tom he said the same, 
 
90 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 but said the trouble about arguments is, they ain t 
 nothing but theories , after all, and theories don t prove 
 nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell, 
 when you are tuckered out butting around and around 
 trying to find out something there ain t no way to find 
 out. And he says: 
 
 "There s another trouble about theories: there s 
 always a hole in them somewheres, sure, if you look 
 close enough. It s just so with this one of Jim s. 
 Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How 
 does it come that there was just exactly enough star- 
 stuff, and none left over? How does it come there 
 ain t no sand-pile up there?" 
 
 But Jim was fixed for him and says : 
 
 "What s de Milky Way? dat s what 7 want to 
 know. What s de Milky Way? Answer me dat!" 
 
 In my opinion it was just a sockdologer. It s only 
 an opinion, it s only my opinion and others may think 
 different ; but I said it then and I stand to it now it 
 was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landed 
 Tom Sawyer. He couldn t say a word. He had that 
 stunned look of a person that s been shot in the back 
 with a kag of nails. All he said was, as for people 
 like me and Jim, he d just as soon have intellectual 
 intercourse with a catfish. But anybody can say that 
 and I notice they always do, when somebody has 
 fetched them a lifter. Tom Sawyer was tired of that 
 end of the subject. 
 
 So we got back to talking about the size of the 
 Desert again, and the more we compared it with this 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 91 
 
 and that and t other thing, the more nobier and bigger 
 and grander it got to look right along. And so, hunt 
 ing among the riggers, Tom found, by and by, that it 
 was just the same size as the Empire of China. Then 
 he showed us the spread the Empire of China made on 
 the map, and the room she took up in the world. 
 Well, it was wonderful to think of, and I says : 
 
 "Why, I ve heard talk about this Desert plenty of 
 times, but 7 never knowed before how important she 
 was." 
 
 Then Tom says : 
 
 "Important! Sahara important! That s just the 
 way with some people. If a thing s big, it s important. 
 That s all the sense they ve got. All they can see is 
 size. Why, look at England. It s the most important 
 country in the world ; and yet you could put it in 
 China s vest-pocket; and not only that, but you d 
 have the dickens s own time to find it again the next 
 time you wanted it. And look at Russia. It spreads 
 all around and everywhere, and yet ain t no more im 
 portant in this world than Rhode Island is, and hasn t 
 got half as much in it that s worth saving." 
 
 Away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just 
 on the edge of the world. Tom broke off his talk, and 
 reached for a glass very much excited, and took a look, 
 and says: 
 
 That s it it s the one I ve been looking for, 
 sure. If I m right, it s the one the dervish took the 
 man into and showed him all the treasures." 
 
 So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it 
 out of the Arabian Nights. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE TREASURE-HILL 
 
 TOM said it happened like this. 
 A dervish was stumping it along through the 
 Desert, on foot, one blazing hot day, and he had come 
 a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and hungry, 
 and ornery and tired, and along about where we are 
 now he run across a camel-driver with a hundred 
 camels, and asked him for some a ms. But the camel- 
 driver he asked to be excused. The dervish said: 
 
 " Don t you own these camels?" 
 
 " Yes, they re mine." 
 
 "Are you in debt?" 
 
 "Who me? No." 
 
 " Well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain t 
 in debt is rich and not only rich, but very rich. 
 Ain t it so?" 
 
 The camel-driver owned up that it was so. Then 
 the dervish says : 
 
 " God has made you rich, and He has made me 
 poor. He has His reasons, and they are wise, blessed 
 be His name. But He has willed that His rich shall 
 help His poor, and you have turned away from me, 
 
 (92) 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 93 
 
 your brother, in my need, and He will remember this, 
 and you will lose by it." 
 
 That made the camel-driver feel shaky, but all the 
 same he was born hoggish after money and didn t like 
 to let go a cent; so he begun to whine and explain, 
 and said times was hard, and although he had took a 
 full freight down to Balsora and got a fat rate for it, 
 he couldn t git no return freight, and so he warn t 
 making no great things out of his trip. So the dervish 
 starts along again, and says: 
 
 "All right, if you want to take the risk; but I 
 reckon you ve made a mistake this time, and missed a 
 chance." 
 
 Of course the camel-driver wanted to know what 
 kind of a chance he had missed, because maybe there 
 was money in it; so he run after the dervish, and 
 begged him so hard and earnest to take pity on him 
 that at last the dervish gave in, and says: 
 
 " Do you see that hill yonder? Well, in that hill is 
 all the treasures of the earth, and I was looking around 
 for a man with a particular good kind heart and a 
 noble, generous disposition, because if I could find just 
 that man, I ve got a kind of a salve I could put on 
 his eyes and he could see the treasures and get them 
 out." 
 
 So then the camel-driver was in a sweat; and he 
 cried, and begged, and took on, and went down on his 
 knees, and said he was just that kind of a man, and 
 said he could fetch a thousand people that would say 
 he wasn t ever described so exact before. 
 
94 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 "Well, then," says the dervish, " all right. If we 
 load the hundred camels, can I have half of them?" 
 
 The driver was so glad he couldn t hardly hold in, 
 and says : 
 
 " Now you re shouting." 
 
 So they shook hands on the bargain, and the dervish 
 got out his box and rubbed the salve on the driver s 
 right eye, and the hill opened and he went in, and 
 there, sure enough, was piles and piles of gold and 
 jewels sparkling like all the stars in heaven had fell down. 
 
 So him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded 
 every camel till he couldn t carry no more; then they 
 said good-bye, and each of them started off with his 
 fifty. But pretty soon the camel-driver come a-running 
 and overtook the dervish and says : 
 
 You ain t in society, you know, and you don t 
 really need all you ve got. Won t you be good, and 
 let me have ten of your camels?" 
 
 " Well," the dervish says, " I don t know but what 
 you say is reasonable enough." 
 
 So he done it, and they separated and the dervish 
 started off again with his forty. But pretty soon here 
 comes the camel-driver bawling after him again, and 
 whines and slobbers around and begs another ten off of 
 him, saying thirty camel loads of treasures was enough 
 to see a dervish through, because they live very simple, 
 you know, and don t keep house, but board around 
 and give their note. 
 
 But that warn t the end yet. That ornery hound 
 kept coming and coming till he had begged back all 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 95 
 
 the camels and had the whole hundred. Then he was 
 satisfied, and ever so grateful, and said he wouldn t 
 ever forgit the dervish as long as he lived, and nobody 
 hadn t been so good to him before, and liberal. So 
 they shook hands good-bye, and separated and started 
 off again. 
 
 But do you know, it warn t ten minutes till the 
 camel-driver was unsatisfied again he was the low- 
 downest reptyle in seven counties and he cornea- 
 running again. And this time the thing he wanted was 
 to get the dervish to rub some of the salve on his other 
 eye. 
 
 "Why?" said the dervish. 
 
 " Oh, you know," says the driver. 
 
 44 Know what?" 
 
 "Well, you can t fool me," says the driver. 
 "You re trying to keep back something from me, 
 you know it mighty well. You know, I reckon, that 
 if I had the salve on the other eye I could see a lot 
 more things that s valuable. Come please put it on." 
 
 The dervish says : 
 
 " I wasn t keeping anything back from you. I 
 don t mind telling you what would happen if I put it 
 on. You d never see again. You d be stone-blind the 
 rest of your days." 
 
 But do you know that beat wouldn t believe him. 
 No, he begged and begged, and whined and cried, till 
 at last the dervish opened his box and told him to put 
 it on, if he wanted to. So the man done it, and sure 
 enough he was as blind as a bat in a minute. 
 
 7 
 
96 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 Then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him 
 and made fun of him ; and says : 
 
 "Good-bye a man that s blind hain t got no use 
 for jewelry." 
 
 And he cleared out with the hundred camels, and 
 left that man to wander around poor and miserable and 
 friendless the rest of his days in the Desert. 
 
 Jim said he d bet it was a lesson to him. 
 Yes," Tom says, "and like a considerable many 
 lessons a body gets. They ain t no account, because 
 the thing don t ever happen the same way again and 
 can t. The time Hen Scovil fell down the chimbly 
 and crippled his back for life, everybody said it would 
 be a lesson to him. What kind of a lesson? How 
 was he going to use it? He couldn t climb chimblies 
 no more, and he hadn t no more backs to break." 
 
 "All de same, Mars Tom, dey is sich a thing as 
 learnin by expe ence. De Good Book say de burnt 
 chile shun de fire." 
 
 " Well, I ain t denying that a thing s a lesson if it s 
 a thing that can happen twice just the same way. 
 There s lots of such things, and they educate a person, 
 that s what Uncle Abner always said; but there s forty 
 million lots of the other kind the kind that don t 
 happen the same way twice and they ain t no real 
 use, they ain t no more instructive than the small-pox. 
 When you ve got it, it ain t no good to find out you 
 ought to been vaccinated, and it ain t no good to git 
 vaccinated afterward, because the small-pox don t 
 come but once. But, on the other hand, Uncle Abner 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 97 
 
 said that the person that had took a bull by the tail 
 once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a 
 person that hadn t, and said a person that started in to 
 carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that 
 was always going to be useful to him, and warn t ever 
 going to grow dim or doubtful. But I can tell you, 
 Jim, Uncle Abner was down on them people that s all 
 the time trying to dig a lesson out of everything that 
 happens, no matter whether " 
 
 But Jim was asleep. Tom looked kind of ashamed, 
 because you know a person always feels bad when he 
 is talking uncommon fine and thinks the other person 
 is admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that 
 way. Of course he oughtn t to go to sleep, because 
 it s shabby; but the finer a person talks the certainer 
 it is to make you sleep, and so when you come to look 
 at it it ain t nobody s fault in particular; both of 
 them s to blame. 
 
 Jim begun to snore soft and blubbery at first, 
 then a long rasp, then a stronger one, then a half a 
 dozen horrible ones like the last water sucking down 
 the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more 
 power to it, and some big coughs and snorts flung in, 
 the way a cow does that is choking to death ; and 
 when the person has got to that point he is at his level 
 best, and can wake up a man that is in the next block 
 with a dipperful of loddanum in him, but can t wake 
 himself up although all that awful noise of his n ain t 
 but three inches from his own ears. And that is the 
 curiosest thing in the world, seems to me. But you 
 
98 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 rake a match to light the candle, and that little bit of a 
 noise will fetch him. I wish I knowed what was the 
 reason of that, but there don t seem to be no way to 
 find out. Now there was Jim alarming the whole 
 Desert, and yanking the animals out, for miles and 
 miles around, to see what in the nation was going on 
 up there; there warn t nobody nor nothing that was as 
 close to the noise as he was, and yet he was the only 
 cretur that wasn t disturbed by it. We yelled at him 
 and whooped at him, it never done no good; but the 
 first time there come a little wee noise that wasn t of a 
 usual kind it woke him up. No, sir, I ve thought it 
 all over, and so has Tom, and there ain t no way to 
 find out why a snorer can t hear himself snore. 
 
 Jim said he hadn t been asleep; he just shut his eyes 
 so he could listen better. 
 
 Tom said nobody warn t accusing him. 
 
 That made him look like he wished he hadn t said 
 anything. And he wanted to git away from the sub 
 ject, I reckon, because he begun to abuse the camel- 
 driver, just the way a person does when he has got 
 catched in something and wants to take it out of some 
 body else. He let into the camel-driver the hardest he 
 knowed how, and I had to agree with him ; and he 
 praised up the dervish the highest he could, and I had 
 to agree with him there, too. But Tom says: 
 
 " I ain t so sure. You call that dervish so dreadful 
 liberal and good and unselfish, but I don t quite see it. 
 He didn t hunt up another poor dervish, did he? No, 
 he didn t. If he was so unselfish, why didn t he go in 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 99 
 
 there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go 
 along and be satisfied? No, sir, the person he was 
 hunting for was a man with a hundred camels. He 
 wanted to get away with all the treasure he could." 
 
 l< Why, Mars Tom, he was willin to divide, fair and 
 square; he only struck for fifty camels." 
 
 4 * Because he knowed how he was going to get all of 
 them by and by." 
 
 " Mars Tom, he tole de man de truck would make 
 him bline." 
 
 Yes, because he knowed the man s character. It 
 was just the kind of a man he was hunting for a 
 man that never believes in anybody s word or any 
 body s honorableness, because he ain t got none of his 
 own. I reckon there s lots of people like that dervish. 
 They swindle, right and left, but they always make the 
 other person seem to swindle himself. They keep inside 
 of the letter of the law all the time, and there ain t no 
 way to git hold of them. They don t put the salve on 
 oh, no, that would be sin; but they know how to 
 fool you into putting it on, then it s you that blinds 
 yourself. I reckon the dervish and the camel-driver 
 was just a pair a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and a 
 dull, coarse, ignorant one, but both of them rascals, 
 just the same." 
 
 " Mars Tom, does you reckon dey s any o dat kind 
 o salve in de worl now?" 
 
 1 Yes, Uncle Abner says there is. He says they ve 
 got it in New York, and they put it on country people s 
 eyes and show them all the railroads in the world, and 
 G* 
 
100 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 they go in and git them, and then when they rub the 
 salve on the other eye the other man bids them good 
 bye and goes off with their railroads. Here s the 
 treasure-hill now. Lower away!" 
 
 We landed, but it warn t as interesting as I thought 
 it was going to be, because we couldn t find the place 
 where they went in to git the treasure. Still, it was 
 plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere hill 
 itself where such a wonderful thing happened. Jim 
 said he wouldn t a missed it for three dollars, and I 
 felt the same way. 
 
 And to me and Jim, as wonderful a thing as any was 
 the way Tom could come into a strange big country 
 like this and go straight and find a little hump like that 
 and tell it in a minute from a million other humps that 
 was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but 
 only his own learning and his own natural smartness. 
 We talked and talked it over together, but couldn t 
 make out how he done it. He had the best head on 
 him I ever see ; and all he lacked was age, to make a 
 name for himself equal to Captain Kidd or George 
 Washington. I bet you it would a crowded either of 
 them to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it warn t 
 nothing to Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and 
 put his finger on it as easy as you could pick a nigger 
 out of a bunch of angels. 
 
 We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped 
 up a raft of salt around the edges, and loaded up the 
 lion s skin and the tiger s so as they would keep till Jim 
 could tan them. 
 
CHAPTER XL,/ j*,] 
 
 THE SAND-STORM . V T . : 
 
 WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then 
 just as the full moon was touching the ground 
 on the other side of the desert, we see a string of little 
 black figgers moving across its big silver face. You 
 could see them as plain as if they was painted on the 
 moon with ink. It was another caravan. We cooled 
 down our speed and tagged along after it, just to have 
 company, though it warn t going our way. It was a 
 rattler, that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at 
 next morning when the sun come a-streaming across 
 the desert and flung the long shadders of the camels 
 on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-long- 
 legses marching in procession. We never went very 
 near it, because we knowed better now than to act like 
 that and scare people s camels and break up their cara 
 vans. It was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich 
 clothes and nobby style. Some of the chiefs rode on 
 dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very tall, and 
 they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and 
 they rock the man that is on them pretty violent and 
 churn up his dinner considerable, I bet you, but they 
 
 (101) 
 
102 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 make noble good time, and a camel ain t nowheres with 
 them for speed. 
 
 The caravan camped, during the middle part of the 
 day, and then started again about the middle of the 
 afternoon. Before long the sun begun to look very 
 curious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to 
 copper, and after that it begun to look like a blood- 
 rod . p^Hi and the. air got hot and close, and pretty soon 
 all the sky in the west darkened up and looked thick 
 and foggy, but fiery and dreadful like it looks 
 through a piece of red glass, you know. We looked 
 down and see a big confusion going on in the caravan, 
 and a rushing every which way like they was scared; 
 and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and 
 laid there perfectly still. 
 
 Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up 
 like an amazing wide wall, and reached from the Desert 
 up into the sky and hid the sun, and it was coming 
 like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck 
 us, and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun 
 to sift against our faces and sting like fire, and Tom 
 sung out: 
 
 " It s a sand-storm turn your backs to it!" 
 
 We done it ; and in another minute it was blowing a 
 gale, and the sand beat against us by the shovelful, and 
 the air was so thick with it we couldn t see a thing. In 
 five minutes the boat was level full, and we was setting 
 on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only 
 our heads out and could hardly breathe. 
 
 Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 103 
 
 wall go a-sailing off across the desert, awful to look at, 
 I tell you. We dug ourselves out and looked down, 
 and where the caravan was before there wasn t any 
 thing but just the sand ocean now, and all still and 
 quiet. All them people and camels was smothered and 
 dead and buried buried under ten foot of sand, we 
 reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before 
 the wind uncovered them, and all that time their friends 
 wouldn t ever know what become of that caravan. 
 Tom said : 
 
 Now we know what it was that happened to the 
 people we got the swords and pistols from." 
 
 Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day 
 now. They got buried in a sand-storm, and the wild 
 animals couldn t get at them, and the wind never un 
 covered them again until they was dried to leather and 
 warn t fit to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry 
 for them poor people as a person could for anybody, 
 and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this last 
 caravan s death went harder with us, a good deal 
 harder. You see, the others was total strangers, and 
 we never got to feeling acquainted with them at all, 
 except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching 
 the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We 
 was huvvering around them a whole night and most a 
 whole day, and had got to feeling real friendly with 
 them, and acquainted. I have found out that there 
 ain t no surer way to find out whether you like people 
 or hate them than to travel with them. Just so with 
 these. We kind of liked them from the start, and 
 
104 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer 
 we traveled with them, and the more we got used to 
 their ways, the better and better we liked them, and 
 the gladder and gladder we was that we run across 
 them. We had come to know some of them so well 
 that we called them by name when we was talking 
 about them, and soon got so familiar and sociable that 
 we even dropped the Miss and Mister and just used 
 their plain names without any handle, and it did not 
 seem unpolite, but just the right thing. Of course, it 
 wasn t their own names, but names we give them. 
 There was Mr. Elexander Robinson and Miss Adaline 
 Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss 
 Harryet McDougal , and Judge Jeremiah Butler and 
 young Bushrod Butler, and these was big chiefs mostly 
 that wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and 
 dressed like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But 
 as soon as we come to know them good, and like them 
 very much, it warn t Mister, nor Judge, nor nothing, 
 any more, but only Elleck, and Addy, and Jake, and 
 Hattie, and Jerry, and Buck, and so on. 
 
 And you know the more you join in with people in 
 their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and 
 dearer they come to be to you. Now we warn t cold 
 and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right 
 down friendly and sociable, and took a chance in every 
 thing that was going, and the caravan could depend on 
 us to be on hand every time, it didn t make no differ 
 ence what it was. 
 
 When they camped, we camped right over them, ten 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 105 
 
 or twelve hundred feet up in the air. When they et a 
 meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so much home- 
 liker to have their company. When they had a wed 
 ding that night, and Buck and Addy got married, we 
 got ourselves up in the very starchiest of the professor s 
 duds for the blow-out, and when they danced we jined 
 in. and shook a foot up there. 
 
 But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the 
 nearest, and it was a funeral that done it with us. It 
 was next morning, just in the still dawn. We didn t 
 know the diseased, and he warn t in our set, but that 
 never made no difference; he belonged to the caravan, 
 and that was enough, and there warn t no more sincerer 
 tears shed over him than the ones we dripped on him 
 from up there eleven hundred foot on high. 
 
 Yes, parting with this caravan was much more 
 bitterer than it was to part with them others, which was 
 comparative strangers, and been dead so long, anyway. 
 We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of 
 them, too, and now to have death snatch them from 
 right before our faces while we was looking, and leave 
 us so lonesome and friendless in the middle of that big 
 desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we mightn t ever 
 make any more friends on that voyage if we was 
 going to lose them again like that. 
 
 We couldn t keep from talking about them, and 
 they was all the time coming up in our memory, and 
 looking just the way they looked when we was all alive 
 and happy together. We could see the line marching, 
 and the shiny spearheads a-winking in the sun; we 
 
106 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 could see the dromedaries lumbering along; we could 
 see the wedding and the funeral; and more oftener 
 than anything else we could see them praying, because 
 they don t allow nothing to prevent that; whenever 
 the call come, several times a day, they would stop 
 right there, and stand up and face to the east, and lift 
 back their heads, and spread out their arms and begin, 
 and four or five times they would go down on their 
 knees, and then fall forward and touch their forehead 
 to the ground. 
 
 Well, it warn t good to go on talking about them, 
 lovely as they was in their life, and dear to us in their 
 life and death both, because it didn t do no good, and 
 made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going 
 to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them 
 again in a better world; and Tom kept still and didn t 
 tell him they was only Mohammedans; it warn t no 
 use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad enough just 
 as it was. 
 
 When we woke up next morning we was feeling a 
 little cheerfuller, and had had a most powerful good 
 sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed there is, 
 and I don t see why people that can afford it don t 
 have it more. And it s terrible good ballast, too; I 
 never see the balloon so steady before. 
 
 Tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered 
 what we better do with it; it was good sand, and it 
 didn t seem, good sense to throw it away. Jim says: 
 
 " Mars Tom, can t we tote it back home en sell it? 
 How long ll it take?" 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 107 
 
 " Depends on the way we go." 
 
 " Well, sah, she s wuth a quarter of a dollar a load 
 at home, en I reckon we s got as much as twenty 
 loads, hain t we? How much would dat be?" 
 
 Five dollars," 
 
 " By jings, Mars Tom, le s shove for home right on 
 de spot! Hit s more n a dollar en a half apiece, hain t 
 it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, ef dat ain t makin money de easiest ever / 
 struck! She jes rained in never cos us a lick o 
 work. Le s mosey right along, Mars Tom." 
 
 But Tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy 
 and excited he never heard him. Pretty soon he says: 
 
 41 Five dollars sho ! Look here, this sand s worth 
 worth why, it s worth no end of money." 
 
 " How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!" 
 
 " Well, the minute people knows it s genuwyne sand 
 from the genuwyne Desert of Sahara, they ll just be in 
 a perfect state of mind to git hold of some of it to 
 keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a 
 curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and 
 float around all over the United States and peddle them 
 out at ten cents apiece. We ve got all of ten thousand 
 dollars worth of sand in this boat." 
 
 Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun 
 to shout whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says: 
 
 "And we can keep on coming back and fetching 
 sand, and coming back and fetching more sand, and 
 just keep it a-going till we ve carted this whole Desert 
 
108 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 -..!^ ^ 
 
 over there and sold it out; and there ain t ever going 
 to be any opposition, either, because we ll take out a 
 patent." 
 
 " My goodness," I says, 4< we ll be as rich as Creo 
 sote, won t we, Tom?" 
 
 " Yes Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was 
 hunting in that little hill for the treasures of the earth, 
 and didn t know he was walking over the real ones for 
 a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made the 
 driver." 
 
 " Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?" 
 
 " Well, I don t know yet. It s got to be ciphered, 
 and it ain t the easiest job to do, either, because it s 
 over four million square miles of sand at ten cents a 
 vial." 
 
 Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out consider 
 able, and he shook his head and says: 
 
 11 Mars Tom, we can t ford all dem vials a king 
 couldn t. We better not try to take de whole Desert, 
 Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho ." 
 
 Tom s excitement died out, too, now, and I reck 
 oned it was on account of the vials, but it wasn t. He 
 set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer, and at last 
 he says: 
 
 " Boys, it won t work; we got to give it up." 
 
 "Why, Tom?" 
 
 " On account of the duties." 
 
 I couldn t make nothing out of that, neither could 
 Jim. I says: 
 
 " What is our duty, Tom? Because if we can t git 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 109 
 
 around it, why can t we just do it? People often has 
 to." 
 
 But he says : 
 
 ** Oh, it ain t that kind of duty. The kind I mean 
 is a tax. Whenever you strike a frontier that s the 
 border of a country, you know you find a custom 
 house there, and the gov ment officers comes and rum 
 mages among your things and charges a big tax, which 
 they call a duty because it s their duty to bust you if 
 they can, and if you don t pay the duty they ll hog 
 your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don t 
 deceive nobody, it s just hogging, and that s all it is. 
 Now if we try to carry this sand home the way we re 
 pointed now, we got to climb fences till we git tired 
 just frontier after frontier Egypt, Arabia, Hindostan, 
 and so on, and they ll all whack on a duty, and so you 
 see, easy enough, we can t go that road." 
 
 * Why, Tom," I says, " we can sail right over their 
 old frontiers; how are they going to stop us?" 
 
 He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave : 
 
 " Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?" 
 
 I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said 
 nothing, and he went on : 
 
 ;< Well, we re shut off the other way, too. If we go 
 back the way we ve come, there s the New York 
 custom-house, and that is worse than all of them others 
 put together, on account of the kind of cargo we ve 
 got." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 41 Well, they can t raise Sahara sand in America, of 
 
110 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 course, and when they can t raise a thing there, the 
 duty is fourteen hundred thousand per cent, on it if 
 you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it." 
 
 ** There ain t no sense in that, Tom Sawyer." 
 
 "Who said there was? What do you talk to me 
 like that for, Huck Finn? You wait till I say a thing s 
 got sense in it before you go to accusing me of say 
 ing it." 
 
 " All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. 
 Go on." 
 
 Jim says: 
 
 " Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything 
 we can t raise in America, en don t make no stinction 
 twix anything?" 
 
 11 Yes, that s what they do." 
 
 " Mars lorn, ain t de blessin o de Lord de mos 
 valuable thing dey is?" 
 
 "Yes, it is." 
 
 " Don t de preacher stan up in de pulpit en call it 
 down on de people?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 11 Whah do it come from?" 
 
 11 From heaven." 
 
 " Yassir ! you s jes right, deed you is, honey it 
 come from heaven, en dat s a foreign country. Now, 
 den ! do dey put a tax on dat blessin ?" 
 
 "No, they don t." 
 
 "Course dey don t; en so it stan to reason dat 
 you s mistaken, Mars Tom. Dey wouldn t put de tax 
 on po truck like san , dat everybody ain t bleeged to 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 111 
 
 have, en leave it off n de bes thing dey is, which 
 nobody can t git along widout." 
 
 Tom Sawyer was stumped ; he see Jim had got him 
 where he couldn t budge. He tried to wiggle out by 
 saying they had forgot to put on that tax, but they d 
 be sure to remember about it, next session of Con 
 gress, and then they d put it on, but that was a poor 
 lame come-off, and he knowed it. He said there 
 warn t nothing foreign that warn t taxed but just that 
 one, and so they couldn t be consistent without taxing 
 it, and to be consistent was the first law of politics. 
 So he stuck to it that they d left it out unintentional 
 and would be certain to do their best to fix it before 
 they got caught and laughed at. 
 
 But I didn t feel no more interest in such things, as 
 long as we couldn t git our sand through, and it made 
 me low-spirited, and Jim the same, Tom he tried to 
 cheer us up by saying he would think up another 
 speculation for us that would be just as good as this 
 one and better, but it didn t do no good, we didn t 
 believe there was any as big as this. It was mighty 
 hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could 
 a bought a country and started a kingdom and been 
 celebrated and happy, and now we was so poor and 
 ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands. 
 The sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold 
 and di monds, and the feel of it was so soft and so 
 silky and nice, but now I couldn t bear the sight of it, 
 it made me sick to look at it, and I knowed I wouldn t 
 ever feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, and I 
 
112 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 didn t have it there no more to remind us of what we 
 had been and what we had got degraded down to. 
 The others was feeling the same way about it that I 
 was. I knowed it, because they cheered up so, the 
 minute I says le s throw this truck overboard. 
 
 Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty 
 solid work, too; so Tom he divided it up according to 
 fairness and strength. He said me and him would 
 clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three- 
 fifths. Jim he didn t quite like that arrangement. He 
 says: 
 
 J Course I s de stronges , en Fs willin to do a share 
 accordin , but by jings you s kinder pilin it onto ole 
 Jim, Mars Tom, hain t you?" 
 
 11 Well, I didn t think so, Jim, but you try your hand 
 at fixing it, and let s see." 
 
 So Jim reckoned it wouldn t be no more than fair if 
 me and Tom done a tenth apiece. Tom he turned his 
 back to git room and be private, and then he smole a 
 smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara 
 to the westward, back to the Atlantic edge of it where 
 we come from. Then he turned around again and 
 said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was 
 satisfied if Jim was. Jim said he was. 
 
 So then Tom measured off our two-tenths in the 
 bow and left the rest for Jim, and it surprised Jim a 
 good deal to see how much difference there was and 
 what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said 
 he was powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time 
 and got the first arrangement altered, for he said that 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 113 
 
 even the way it was now, there was more sand than 
 enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed. 
 
 Then we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and 
 tough ; so hot we had to move up into cooler weather 
 or we couldn t a stood it. Me and Tom took turn 
 about, and one worked while t other rested, but there 
 warn t nobody to spell poor old Jim, and he made all 
 that part of Africa damp, he sweated so. We couldn t 
 work good, we was so full of laugh, and Jim he kept 
 fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and 
 we had to keep making up things to account for it, and 
 they was pretty poor inventions, but they done well 
 enough, Jim didn t see through them. At last when 
 we got done we was most dead, but not with work 
 but with laughing. By and by Jim was most dead, 
 too, but it was with work; then we took turns and 
 spelled him, and he was as thankful as he could be, 
 and would set on the gunnel and swab the sweat, and 
 heave and pant, and say how good we was to a poor 
 old nigger, and he wouldn t ever forgit us. He was 
 always the gratefulest nigger I ever see, for any little 
 thing you done for him. He was only nigger outside; 
 inside he was as white as you be. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 JIM STANDING SIEGE 
 
 THE next few meals was pretty . sandy, but that 
 don t make no difference when you are hungry; 
 and when you ain t it ain t no satisfaction to eat, any 
 way, and so a little grit in the meat ain t no particular 
 drawback, as far as I can see. 
 
 Then we struck the east end of the Desert at last, 
 sailing on a northeast course. Away off on the edge 
 of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see three little 
 sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says: 
 
 "It s the pyramids of Egypt." 
 
 It made my heart fairly jump. You see, I had seen 
 a many and a many a picture of them, and heard tell 
 about them a hundred times, and yet to come on them 
 all of a sudden, that way, and find they was real, stead 
 of imaginations, most knocked the breath out of me 
 with surprise. It s a curious thing, that the more you 
 hear about a grand and big and bully thing or person, 
 the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and 
 gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moon 
 shine and nothing solid to it. It s just so with George 
 Washington, and the same with them pyramids. 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 115 
 
 And moreover, besides, the thing they always said 
 about them seemed to me to be stretchers. There was 
 a feller come to the Sunday-school once, and had a 
 picture of them, and made a speech, and said the big 
 gest pyramid covered thirteen acres, and was most five 
 hundred foot high, just a steep mountain, all built out 
 of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up 
 in perfectly regular layers, like stair-steps. Thirteen 
 acres, you see, for just one building; it s a farm. If 
 it hadn t been in Sunday-school, I would a judged it 
 was a lie ; and outside I was certain of it. And he 
 said there was a hole in the pyramid, and you could go 
 in there with candles, and go ever so far up a long 
 slanting tunnel, and come to a large room in the 
 stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would 
 find a big stone chest with a king in it, four thousand 
 years old. I said to myself, then, if that ain t a lie I 
 will eat that king if they will fetch him, for even 
 Methusalem warn t that old, and nobody claims it. 
 
 As we come a little nearer we see the yaller sand 
 come to an end in a long straight edge like a blanket, 
 and on to it was joined, edge to edge, a wide country 
 of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through 
 it, and Tom said it was the Nile. It made my heart 
 jump again, for the Nile was another thing that wasn t 
 real to me. Now I can tell you one thing which is 
 dead certain : if you will fool along over three thou 
 sand miles of yaller sand, all glimmering with heat so 
 that it makes your eyes water to look at it, and you ve 
 been a considerable part of a week doing it, the green 
 H* 
 
116 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 country will look so like home and heaven to you that 
 it will make your eyes water again. 
 
 It was just so with me, and the same with Jim. 
 
 And when Jim got so he could believe it was the 
 land of Egypt he was looking at, he wouldn t enter it 
 standing up, but got down on his knees and took off 
 his hat, because he said it wasn t fitten for a humble 
 poor nigger to come any other way where such men 
 had been as Moses and Joseph and Pharaoh and the 
 other prophets. He was a Presbyterian, and had a 
 most deep respect for Moses which was a Presbyterian, 
 too, he said. He was all stirred up, and says: 
 
 "Hit s de Ian of Egypt, de Ian* of Egypt, en I s 
 lowed to look at it wid my own eyes ! En dah s de 
 river dat was turn to blood, en I s looking at de very 
 same groun whah de plagues was, en de lice, en de 
 frogs, en de locus , en de hail, en whah dey marked 
 de door-pos , en de angel o de Lord come by in de 
 darkness o de night en slew de fust-born in all de Ian 
 o Egypt. Ole Jim ain t worthy to see dis day!" 
 
 And then he just broke down and cried, he was so 
 thankful. So between him and Tom there was talk 
 enough, Jim being excited because the land was so full 
 of history Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the 
 bulrushers, Jacob coming down into Egypt to buy 
 corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all them interesting 
 things; and Tom just as excited too, because the land 
 was so full of history that was in his line, about 
 Noureddin, and Bedreddin, and such like monstrous 
 giants, that made Jim s wool rise, and a raft of other 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 117 
 
 Arabian Nights folks, which the half of them never 
 done the things they let on they done, I don t believe. 
 
 Then we struck a disappointment, for one of them 
 early morning fogs started up, and it warn t no use to 
 sail over the top of it, because we would go by Egypt, 
 sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass 
 straight for the place where the pyramids was gitting 
 blurred and blotted out, and then drop low and skin 
 along pretty close to the ground and keep a sharp 
 lookout. Tom took the helium, I stood by to let go 
 the anchor, and Jim he straddled the bow to dig 
 through the fog with his eyes and watch out for danger 
 ahead. We went along a steady gait, but not very 
 fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that 
 Jim looked dim and ragged and smoky through it. It 
 was awful still, and we talked low and was anxious. 
 Now and then Jim would say : 
 
 " Highst her a p int, Mars Tom, highst her!" and 
 up she would skip, a foot or two, and we would slide 
 right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with people that 
 had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and 
 gap and stretch ; and once when a feller was clear up 
 on his hind legs so he could gap and stretch better, we 
 took him a blip in the back and knocked him off. By 
 and by, after about an hour, and everything dead still 
 and we a-straining our ears for sounds and holding our 
 breath, the fog thinned a little, very sudden, and Jim 
 sung out in an awful scare : 
 
 " Oh, for de lan s sake, set her back, Mars Tom, 
 here s de biggest giant outen de Rabian Nights a- 
 
118 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 comin for us!" and he went over backwards in the 
 boat. 
 
 Tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed 
 to a standstill a man s face as big as our house at home 
 looked in over the gunnel, same as a house looks out 
 of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must a* 
 been clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or 
 more; then I come to, and Tom had hitched a boat- 
 hook on to the lower lip of the giant and was holding 
 the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head 
 back and got a good long look up at that awful face. 
 
 Jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing 
 up at the thing in a begging way, and working his lips, 
 but not getting anything out. I took only just a 
 glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says: 
 
 " He ain t alive, you fools; it s the Sphinx!" 
 
 I never see Tom look so little and like a fly; 
 but that was because the giant s head was so big and 
 awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but not dreadful any 
 more, because you could see it was a noble face, 
 and kind of sad, and not thinking about you, but about 
 other things and larger. It was stone, reddish stone, 
 and its nose and ears battered, and that give it an 
 abused look, and you felt sorrier for it for that. 
 
 We stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over 
 it, and it was just grand. It was a man s head, or 
 maybe a woman s, on a tiger s body a hundred and. 
 twenty-five foot long, and there was a dear little temple 
 between its front paws. All but the head used to be 
 under the sand, for hundreds of years, maybe thou- 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 119 
 
 sands, but they had just lately dug the sand away and 
 found that little temple. It took a power of sand to 
 bury that cretur ; most as much as it would to bury a 
 steamboat, I reckon. 
 
 We landed Jim on top of the head, with an American 
 flag to protect him, it being a foreign land; then we 
 sailed off to this and that and t other distance, to git 
 what Tom called effects and perspectives and propor 
 tions, and Jim he done the best he could, striking all 
 the different kinds of attitudes and positions he could 
 study up, but standing on his head and working his 
 legs the way a frog does was the best. The further we 
 got away, the littler Jim got, and the grander the 
 Sphinx got, till at last it was only a clothespin on a 
 dome, as you might say. That s the way perspective 
 brings out the correct proportions, Tom said ; he said 
 Julus Cesar s niggers didn t know how big he was, 
 they was too close to him. 
 
 Then we sailed off further and further, till we 
 couldn t see Jim at all any more, and then that great 
 figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out over the Nile 
 Valley so still and solemn and lonesome, and all the 
 little shabby huts and things that was scattered about it 
 clean disappeared and gone, and nothing around it now 
 but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet, which was the 
 sand. 
 
 That was the right place to stop, and we done it. 
 We set there a-looking and a-thinking for a half an 
 hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made us feel 
 quiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been 
 
120 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 looking over that valley just that same way, and think 
 ing its awful thoughts all to itself for thousands of 
 years, and nobody can t find out what they are to this 
 day. 
 
 At last I took up the glass and see some little black 
 things a-capering around on that velvet carpet, and 
 some more a-climbing up the cretur s back, and then I 
 see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told 
 Tom to look. He done it, and says : 
 
 1 They re bugs. No hold on ; they why, I be 
 lieve they re men. Yes, it s men men and horses 
 both. They re hauling a long ladder up onto the 
 Sphinx s back now ain t that odd? And now they re 
 trying to lean it up a there s some more puffs of 
 smoke it s guns! Huck, they re after Jim." 
 
 We clapped on the power, and went for them a- 
 biling. We was there in no time, and come a-whizzing 
 down amongst them, and they broke and scattered every 
 which way, and some that was climbing the ladder after 
 Jim let go all holts and fell. We soared up and found 
 him laying on top of the head panting and most 
 tuckered out, partly from howling for help and partly 
 from scare. He had been standing a siege a long time 
 a week, he said, but it warn t so, it only just seemed 
 so to him because they was crowding him so. They 
 had shot at him, and rained the bullets all around him, 
 but he warn t hit, and when they found he wouldn t 
 stand up and the bullets couldn t git at him when he 
 was laying down, they went for the ladder, and then 
 he knowed it was all up with him if we didn t come 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 121 
 
 pretty quick. Tom was very indignant, and asked him 
 why he didn t show the flag and command them to git, 
 in the name of the United States. Jim said he done 
 it, but they never paid no attention. Tom said he 
 would have this thing looked into at Washington, and 
 says: 
 
 " You ll see that they ll have to apologize for insult 
 ing the flag, and pay an indemnity, too, on top of it, 
 even if they git off that easy." 
 
 Jim says : 
 
 " What s an indemnity, Mars Tom?" 
 
 "It s cash, that s what it is. 1 
 
 " Who gits it, Mars Tom?" 
 
 "Why, we do. 1 
 
 " En who gits de apology?" 
 
 "The United States. Or, we can take whichever 
 we please. We can take the apology, if we want to, 
 and let the gov ment take the money." 
 
 " How much money will it be, Mars Tom?" 
 
 "Well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will 
 be at least three dollars apiece, and I don t know but 
 more." 
 
 " Well, den, we ll take de money, Mars Tom, blame 
 de pology. Hain t dat yo notion, too? En hain t it 
 yourn, Huck?" 
 
 We talked it over a little and allowed that that was as 
 good a way as any, so we agreed to take the money. 
 It was a new business to me, and I asked Tom if 
 countries always apologized when they had done wrong, 
 and he says : 
 
122 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 "Yes; the little ones does." 
 
 We was sailing around examining the pyramids, you 
 know, and now we soared up and roosted on the flat top 
 of the biggest one, and found it was just like what the 
 man said in the Sunday-school. It was like four pairs 
 of stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up 
 and comes together in a point at the top, only these 
 stair-steps couldn t be clumb the way you climb other 
 stairs; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and 
 you have to be boosted up from behind. The two 
 other pyramids warn t far away, and the people moving 
 about on the sand between looked like bugs crawling, 
 we was so high above them. 
 
 Tom he couldn t hold himself he was so worked up 
 with gladness and astonishment to be in such a cele 
 brated place, and he just dripped history from every 
 pore, seemed to me. He said he couldn t scarcely 
 believe he was standing on the very identical spot the 
 prince flew from on the Bronze Horse. It was in the 
 Arabian Night times, he said. Somebody give the 
 prince a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and 
 he could git on him and fly through the air like a bird, 
 and go all over the world, and steer it by turning the 
 peg, and fly high or low and land wherever he wanted 
 to. 
 
 When he got done telling it there was one of them 
 uncomfortable silences that comes, you know, when a 
 person has been telling a whopper and you feel sorry 
 for him and wish you could think of some way to 
 change the subject and let him down easy, but git stuck 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 123 
 
 and don t see no way, and before you can pull your 
 mind together and do something, that silence has got in 
 and spread itself and done the business. I was embar 
 rassed, Jim he was embarrassed, and neither of us 
 couldn t say a word. Well, Tom he glowered at me a 
 minute, and says: 
 
 " Come, out with it. What do you think?" 
 
 I says : 
 
 "Tom Sawyer, you don t believe that, yourself," 
 
 "What s the reason I don t? What s to hendei 
 me?" 
 
 "There s one thing to hender you: it couldn t 
 happen, that s all." 
 
 " What s the reason it couldn t happen?" 
 
 " You tell me the reason it could happen." 
 
 "This balloon is a good enough reason it could 
 happen, I should reckon." 
 
 " JTOj/isit?" 
 
 " Why is it? I never saw such an idiot. Ain t this 
 balloon and the bronze horse the same thing under 
 different names?" 
 
 " No, they re not. One is a balloon and the other s 
 a horse. It s very different. Next you ll be saying a 
 house and a cow is the same thing." 
 
 " By Jackson, Huck s got him ag in ! Dey ain t no 
 wigglin outer dat!" 
 
 Shut your head, Jim ; you don t know what you re 
 talking about. And Huck don t. Look here, Huck, 
 I ll make it plain to you, so you can understand. You 
 see, it ain t the mere form that s got anything to do 
 
124 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 with their being similar or unsimilar, it s the princi 
 ple involved ; and the principle is the same in both. 
 Don t you see, now?" 
 
 I turned it over in my mind, and says: 
 
 "Tom, it ain t no use. Principles is all very well, 
 but they don t git around that one big fact, that the 
 thing that a balloon can do ain t no sort of proof of 
 what a horse can do." 
 
 II Shucks, Huck, you don t get the idea at all. Now 
 look here a minute it s perfectly plain. Don t we 
 fly through the air?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Very well. Don t we fly high or fly low, just as 
 we please?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Don t we steer whichever way we want to?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And don t we land when and where we please?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " How do we move the balloon and steer it?" 
 
 " By touching the buttons." 
 
 " Now I reckon the thing is clear to you at last. In 
 the other case the moving and steering was done by 
 turning a peg. We touch a button, the prince turned 
 a peg. There ain t an atom of difference, you see. I 
 knowed I could git it through your head if I stuck to it 
 long enough." 
 
 He felt so happy he begun to whistle. But me and 
 Jim was silent, so he broke off surprised, and says: 
 
 " Looky here, Huck Finn, don t you see it yet? 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 125 
 
 I says: 
 
 " Tom Sawyer, I want to ask you some questions." 
 
 "Go ahead," he says, and I see Jim chirk up to 
 listen. 
 
 44 As I understand it, the whole thing is in the buttons 
 and the peg the rest ain t of no consequence. A 
 button is one shape, a peg is another shape, but that 
 ain t any matter?" 
 
 44 No, that ain t any matter, as long as they ve both 
 got the same power." 
 
 "All right, then. What is the power that s in a 
 candle and in a match?" 
 
 4 It s the fire." 
 
 II It s the same in both, then?" 
 * Yes, just the same in both." 
 
 " All right. Suppose I set fire to a carpenter shop 
 with a match, what will happen to that carpenter 
 shop?" 
 
 44 She ll burn up." 
 
 4 4 And suppose I set fire to this pyramid with a 
 candle will she burn up?" 
 
 44 Of course she won t." 
 
 4 All right. Now the fire s the same, both times. 
 Why does the shop burn, and the pyramid don t?" 
 
 44 Because the pyramid can t burn." 
 
 44 Aha ! and a horse can t fly!" 
 
 44 My Ian , ef Huck ain t got him ag in ! Huck s 
 landed him high en dry dis time, / tell you ! Hit s 
 de smartes trap I ever see a body walk inter en 
 ef I " 
 
126 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 But Jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and 
 couldn t go on, and Tom was that mad to see how neat 
 I had floored him, and turned his own argument ag in 
 him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it, 
 that all he could manage to say was that whenever he 
 heard me and Jim try to argue it made him ashamed 
 of the human race. I never said nothing; I was feel 
 ing pretty well satisfied. When I have got the best of 
 a person that way, it ain t my way to go around crow 
 ing about it the way some people does, for I consider 
 that if I was in his place I wouldn t wish him to crow 
 over me. It s better to be generous, that s what I 
 think. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 GOING FOR TOM S PIPE 
 
 BY AND BY we left Jim to float around up there in 
 the neighborhood of the pyramids, and we dumb 
 down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and 
 went in with some Arabs and candles, and away in 
 there in the middle of the pyramid we found a room and 
 a big stone box in it where they used to keep that king, 
 just as the man in the Sunday-school said ; but he was 
 gone, now; somebody had got him. But I didn t take 
 no interest in the place, because there could be ghosts 
 there, of course; not fresh ones, but I don t like no 
 kind. 
 
 So then we come out and got some little donkeys and 
 rode a piece, and then went in a boat another piece, 
 and then more donkeys, and got to Cairo ; and all the way 
 the road was as smooth and beautiful a road as ever I 
 see, and had tall date-pa ms on both sides, and naked 
 children everywhere, and the men was as red as copper, 
 and fine and strong and handsome. And the city was 
 a curiosity. Such narrow streets why, they were 
 just lanes, and crowded with people with turbans, and 
 women with veils, and everybody rigged out in blazing 
 9 (127) 
 
128 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 bright clothes and all sorts of colors, and you wondered 
 how the camels and the people got by each other in 
 such narrow little cracks, but they done it a perfect 
 jam, you see, and everybody noisy. The stores warn t 
 big enough to turn around in, but you didn t have to 
 go in ; the storekeeper sat tailor fashion on his counter, 
 smoking his snaky long pipe, and had his things where 
 he could reach them to sell, and he was just as good as 
 in the street, for the camel-loads brushed him as they 
 went by. 
 
 Now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage 
 with fancy dressed men running and yelling in front of 
 it and whacking anybody with a long rod that didn t 
 get out of the way. And by and by along comes the 
 Sultan riding horseback at the head of a procession, 
 and fairly took your breath away his clothes was so 
 splendid ; and everybody fell flat and laid on his 
 stomach while he went by. I forgot, but a feller 
 helped me to remember. He was one that had a rod 
 and run in front. 
 
 There was churches, but they don t know enough to 
 keep Sunday; they keep Friday and break the Sab 
 bath. You have to take off your shoes when you go 
 in. There was crowds of men and boys in the church, 
 setting in groups on the stone floor and making no end 
 of noise getting their lessons by heart, Tom said, out 
 of the Koran, which they think is a Bible, and people 
 that knows better knows enough to not let on. I never 
 see such a big church in my life before, and most awful 
 high, it was ; it made you dizzy to look up ; our 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 129 
 
 village church at home ain t a circumstance to it; if 
 you was to put it in there, people would think it was a 
 drygoods box. 
 
 What I wanted to see was a dervish, because I was 
 interested in dervishes on accounts of the one that 
 played the trick on the camel-driver. So we found a 
 lot in a kind of a church, and they called themselves 
 Whirling Dervishes; and they did whirl, too. I never 
 see anything like it. They had tall sugar-loaf hats on, 
 and linen petticoats; and they spun and spun and 
 spun, round and round like tops, and the petticoats 
 stood out on a slant, and it was the prettiest thing I 
 ever see, and made me drunk to look at it. They was 
 all Moslems, Tom said, and when I asked him what a 
 Moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn t a 
 Presbyterian. So there is plenty of them in Missouri, 
 though I didn t know it before. 
 
 We didn t see half there was to see in Cairo, because 
 Tom was in such a sweat to hunt out places that was 
 celebrated in history. We had a most tiresome time to 
 find the granary where Joseph stored up the grain 
 before the famine, and when we found it it warn t 
 worth much to look at, being such an old tumble-down 
 wreck; but Tom was satisfied, and made more fuss over 
 it than I would make if I stuck a nail in my foot. 
 How he ever found that place was too many for me. 
 We passed as much as forty just like it before we come 
 to it, and any of them would a done for me, but none 
 but just the right one would suit him ; I never see any 
 body so particular as Tom Sawyer. The minute he 
 9* 
 
130 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 struck the right one he reconnized it as easy as I would 
 reconnize my other shirt if I had one, but how he done 
 it he couldn t any more tell than he could fly; he said 
 so himself. 
 
 Then we hunted a long time for the house where the 
 boy lived that learned the cadi how to try the case of 
 the old olwes and the new ones, and said it was out of 
 the Arabian Nights, and he would tell me and Jim 
 about it when he got time. Well, we hunted and 
 hunted till I was ready to drop, and I wanted Tom to 
 give it up and come next day and git somebody that 
 knowed the town and could talk Missourian and could 
 go straight to the place; but no, he wanted to find it 
 himself, and nothing else would answer. So on we 
 went. Then at last the remarkablest thing happened I 
 ever see. The house was gone gone hundreds of 
 years ago every last rag of it gone but just one mud 
 brick. Now a person wouldn t ever believe that a 
 backwoods Missouri boy that hadn t ever been in that 
 town before could go and hunt that place over and find 
 that brick, but Tom Sawyer done it. I know he done 
 it, because I see him do it. I was right by his very 
 side at the time, and see him see the brick and see him 
 reconnize it. Well, I says to myself, how does he do 
 it? Is it knowledge, or is it instink? 
 
 Now there s the facts, just as they happened : let 
 everybody explain it their own way. I ve ciphered 
 over it a good deal, and it s my opinion that some of it 
 is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. The 
 reason is this : Tom put the brick in his pocket to give 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 131 
 
 to a museum with his name on it and the facts when he 
 went home, and I slipped it out and put another brick 
 considerable like it in its place, and he didn t know the 
 difference but there was a difference, you see. I 
 think that settles it it s mostly instink, not knowledge. 
 Instink tells him where the exart place is for the brick to 
 be in, and so he reconnizes it by the place it s in, not 
 by the look of the brick. If it was knowledge, not 
 instink, he would know the brick again by the look of 
 it the next time he seen it which he didn t. So it 
 shows that for all the brag you hear about knowledge 
 being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of 
 it for real unerringness. Jim says the same. 
 
 When we got back Jim dropped down and took us 
 in, and there was a young man there with a red skull 
 cap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket and baggy 
 trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it 
 that could talk English and wanted to hire to us as 
 guide and take us to Mecca and Medina and Central 
 Africa and everywheres for a half a dollar a day and his 
 keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the 
 power, and by the time we was through dinner we was 
 over the place where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea 
 when Pharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught 
 by the waters. We stopped, then, and had a good 
 look at the place, and it done Jim good to see it. He 
 said he could see it all, now, just the way it happened ; 
 he could see the Israelites walking along between the 
 walls of water, and the Egyptians coming, from away 
 off yonder, hurrying all they could, and see them start 
 
132 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 in as the Israelites went out, and then when they was 
 all in, see the walls tumble together and drown the last 
 man of them. Then we piled on the power again and 
 rushed away and huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw 
 the place where Moses broke the tables of stone, and 
 where the children of Israel camped in the plain and 
 worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as 
 interesting as could be, and the guide knowed every 
 place as well as I knowed the village at home. 
 
 But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the 
 plans to a standstill. Tom s old ornery corn-cob pipe 
 had got so old and swelled and warped that she couldn t 
 hold together any longer, notwithstanding the strings 
 and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom 
 he didn t know what to do. The professor s pipe 
 wouldn t answer; it warn t anything but a mershum, 
 and a person that s got used to a cob pipe knows it 
 lays a long ways over all the other pipes in this world, 
 and you can t git him to smoke any other. He 
 wouldn t take mine, I couldn t persuade him. So 
 there he was. 
 
 He thought it over, and said we must scour around 
 and see if we could roust out one in Egypt or Arabia or 
 around in some of these countries, but the guide said no, 
 it warn t no use, they didn t have them. So Tom was 
 pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said 
 he d got the idea and knowed what to do. He says : 
 
 " I ve got another corn-cob pipe, and it s a prime 
 one, too, and nearly new. It s laying on the rafter 
 that s right over the kitchen stove at home in the 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 133 
 
 village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, 
 and me and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till 
 you come back." 
 
 "But, Mars Tom, we couldn t ever find de village. 
 I could find de pipe, case I knows de kitchen, but my 
 Ian , we can t ever find de village, nur Sent Louis, nur 
 none o dem places. We don t know de way, Mars 
 Tom." 
 
 That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. 
 Then he said : 
 
 11 Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I ll tell you 
 how. You set your compass and sail west as straight 
 as a dart, till you find the United States. It ain t any 
 trouble, because it s the first land you ll strike the other 
 side of the Atlantic. If it s daytime when you strike it, 
 bulge right on, straight west from the upper part of the 
 Florida coast, and in an hour and three quarters you ll 
 hit the mouth of the Mississippi at the speed that 
 I m going to send you. You ll be so high up in the 
 air that the earth will be curved considerable sorter 
 like a washbowl turned upside down and you ll see a 
 raft of rivers crawling around every which way, long 
 before you get there, and you can pick out the Miss 
 issippi without any trouble. Then you can follow the 
 river north nearly, an hour and three quarters, till you 
 see the Ohio come in; then you want to look sharp, 
 because you re getting near. Away up to your left 
 you ll see another thread coming in that s the 
 Missouri and is a little above St. Louis. You ll come 
 down low then, so as you can examine the villages as 
 
134 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 you spin along. You ll pass about twenty-five in the 
 next fifteen minutes, and you ll recognize ours when 
 you see it and if you don t, you can yell down and 
 ask." 
 
 " Ef it s dat easy, Mars Tom, I reckon we kin do 
 it yassir, I knows we kin." 
 
 The guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he 
 could learn to stand his watch in a little while. 
 
 "Jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an 
 hour," Tom said. " This balloon s as easy to manage 
 as a canoe." 
 
 Tom got out the chart and marked out the course 
 and measured it, and says : 
 
 "To go back west is the shortest way, you see. 
 It s only about seven thousand miles. If you went 
 east, and so on around, it s over twice as far." Then 
 he says to the guide, " I want you both to watch the 
 tell-tale all through the watches, and whenever it don t 
 mark three hundred miles an hour, you go higher or 
 drop lower till you find a storm-current that s going 
 your way. There s a hundred miles an hour in this 
 old thing without any wind to help. There s two- 
 hundred-mile gales to be found, any time you want to 
 hunt for them." 
 
 "We ll hunt for them, sir." 
 
 " See that you do. Sometimes you may have to 
 go up a couple of miles, and it ll be p ison cold, but 
 most of the time you ll find your storm a good deal 
 lower. If you can only strike a cyclone that s the 
 ticket for you! You ll see by the professor s books 
 
. fry v 8 ^ 
 
 Vt^r*^? 
 
 s& ffiu 
 
 2&~r 
 
 V 
 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 135 
 
 that they travel west in these latitudes ; and they travel 
 low, too." 
 
 Then he ciphered on the time, and says 
 
 "Seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an 
 hour you can make the trip in a day twenty-four 
 hours. This is Thursday; you ll be back here Sat 
 urday afternoon. Come, now, hustle out some blankets 
 and food and books and things for me and Huck, and 
 you can start right along. There ain t no occasion to 
 fool around I want a smoke, and the quicker you 
 fetch that pipe the better." 
 
 All hands jumped for the things, and in eight min 
 utes our things was out and the balloon was ready for 
 America. So we shook hands good-bye, and Tom 
 gave his last orders : 
 
 " It s 10 minutes to 2 P.M. now, Mount Sinai time. 
 In 24 hours you ll be home, and it 11 be 6 to-mor 
 row morning, village time. When you strike the 
 village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in the 
 woods, out of sight; then you rush down, Jim, and 
 shove these letters in the post-office, and if you see 
 anybody stirring, pull your slouch down over your face 
 so they won t know you. Then you go and slip in the 
 back way to the kitchen and git the pipe, and lay this 
 piece of paper on the kitchen table, and put something 
 on it to hold it, and then slide out and git away, and 
 don t let Aunt Polly catch a sight of you, nor nobody 
 else. Then you jump for the balloon and shove for 
 Mount Sinai three hundred miles an hour. You won t 
 have lost more than an hour. You ll start back at 7 or 
 
136 Tom Sawyer Abroad 
 
 8 A.M., village time, and be here in 24 hours, arriving 
 at 2 or 3 P.M., Mount Sinai time." 
 
 Tom he read the piece of paper to us. He had 
 wrote on it : 
 
 " 
 
 THURSDAY AFTERNOON. Tom Sawyer the Erro- 
 nort sends his love to Aunt Polly from Mount Sinai 
 where the Ark was, and so does Huck Finn, and she 
 will get it to-morrow morning half -past six* 
 
 " TOM SAWYER THE ERRONORT." 
 
 That ll make her eyes bulge out and the tears 
 come," he says. Then he says: 
 
 1 Stand by ! One two three away you go ! " 
 
 And away she did go ! Why, she seemed to whiz 
 out of sight in a second. 
 
 Then we found a most comfortable cave that looked 
 out over the whole big plain, and there we camped to 
 wait for the pipe. 
 
 The balloon come back all right, and brung the pipe ; 
 but Aunt Polly had catched Jim when he was getting 
 it, and anybody can guess what happened : she sent 
 for Tom. So Jim he says : 
 
 " Mars Tom, she s out on de porch wid her eye sot on 
 de sky a-layin for you, en she say she ain t gwyne to 
 budge from dah tell she gits hold of you. Dey s gwyne 
 to be trouble, Mars Tom, deed dey is." 
 
 So then we shoved for home, and not feeling very 
 gay, neither. 
 
 *This misplacing of the Ark is probably Huck s error, not Tom s. 
 M.T. 
 
O < rue s y\ C 
 
 . 
 
 vu-V 
 
 ^- <* - 
 
 TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE* 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK 
 
 WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom 
 Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free, the time he 
 was chained up for a runaway slave down there on 
 Tom s uncle Silas s farm in Arkansaw. The frost was 
 working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and 
 it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every 
 day; and next it would be marble time, and next 
 mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next 
 kites, and then right away it would be summer and go 
 ing in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to 
 look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. 
 Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, 
 and there s something the matter with him, he don t 
 know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and 
 
 * Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not inventions, but 
 facts even to the public confession of the accused. I take them from an 
 old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenes 
 to America. I have added some details, but only a couple of them are 
 important ones. M. T. 
 
 (137) 
 Pv*4 if " 
 
138 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 mopes and thinks ; and mostly he hunts for a lone 
 some place high up on the hill in the edge of the woods, 
 and sets there and looks away off on the big Mississippi 
 down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points 
 where the timber looks smoky and dim it s so far off and 
 still, and everything s so solemn it seems like everybody 
 you ve loved is dead and gone, and you most wish you 
 was dead and gone too, and done with it all. 
 
 Don t you know what that is? It s spring fever. 
 That is what the name of it is. And when you ve got 
 it, you want oh, you don t quite know what it is you 
 do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you 
 want it so ! It seems to you that mainly what you want 
 is to get away ; get away from the same old tedious 
 things you re so used to seeing and so tired of, and see 
 something new. That is the idea ; you want to go and 
 be a wanderer ; you want to go wandering far away to 
 strange countries where everything is mysterious and 
 wonderful and romantic. And if you can t, do that, 
 you ll put up with considerable less; you ll go any 
 where you can go, just so as to get away, and be thank 
 ful of the chance, too. 
 
 Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and 
 had it bad, too; but it warn t any use to think about 
 Tom trying to get away, because, as he said, his Aunt 
 Polly wouldn t let him quit school and go traipsing off 
 somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was 
 setting on the front steps one day about sundown talk 
 ing this way, when out comes his aunt Polly with a 
 letter in her hand and says : 
 
I RECKON I GOT TO BE EXCUSED" 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 139 
 
 " Tom, I reckon you ve got to pack up and go down 
 to Arkansaw your aunt Sally wants you." 
 
 I most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned 
 Tom would fly at his aunt and hug her head off; but if 
 you believe me he set there like a rock, and never said 
 a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so foolish, 
 with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, 
 we might lose it if he didn t speak up and show he was 
 thankful and grateful. But he set there and studied 
 and studied till I was that distressed I didn t know 
 what to do; then he says, very ca m, and I could a 
 shot him for it : 
 
 "Well," he says, "I m right down sorry, Aunt 
 Polly, but I reckon I got to be excused for the 
 present." 
 
 His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at 
 the cold impudence of it that she couldn t say a word 
 for as much as a half a minute, and this gave me a 
 chance to nudge Tom and whisper : 
 
 " Ain t you got any sense? Sp iling such a noble 
 chance as this and throwing it away?" 
 
 But he warn t disturbed. He mumbled back: 
 
 " Huck Finn, do you want me to let her see how bad 
 I want to go? Why, she d begin to doubt, right 
 away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and dangers and 
 objections, and first you know she d take it all back. 
 You lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her." 
 
 Now I never would a thought of that. But he was 
 right. Tom Sawyer was always right the levelest 
 head I ever see, and always at himself and ready for 
 
140 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 anything you might spring on him. By this time his 
 aunt Polly was all straight again, and she let fly. She 
 says: 
 
 "You ll be excused! You will! Well, I never 
 heard the like of it in all my days ! The idea of you 
 talking like that to me! Now take yourself off and 
 pack your traps ; and if I hear another word out of 
 you about what you ll be excused from and what you 
 won t, I lay / // excuse you with a hickory!" 
 
 She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we 
 dodged by, and he let on to be whimpering as we 
 struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged me, 
 he was so out of his head for gladness because he was 
 going traveling. And he says : 
 
 " Before we get away she ll wish she hadn t let me 
 go, but she won t know any way to get around it now. 
 After what she s said, her pride won t let her take it 
 back." 
 
 Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his 
 aunt and Mary would finish up for him ; then we waited 
 ten more for her to get cooled down and sweet and 
 gentle again ; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to 
 unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but 
 twenty when they was all up, and this was one of the 
 times when they was all up. Then we went down, 
 being in a sweat to know what the letter said. 
 
 She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying 
 in her lap. We set down, and she says : 
 
 "They re in considerable trouble down there, and 
 they think you and Huck 11 be a kind of diversion for 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 141 
 
 them comfort/ they say. Much of that they ll get 
 out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There s a neigh 
 bor named Brace Dunlap that s been wanting to marry 
 their Benny for three months, and at last they told him 
 pint blank and once for all, he couldn t ; so he has soured 
 on them, and they re worried about it. I reckon he s 
 somebody they think they better be on the good side 
 of, for they ve tried to please him by hiring his no- 
 account brother to help on the farm when they can t 
 hardly afford it, and don t want him around anyhow. 
 Who are the Dunlaps?" 
 
 "They live about a mile from Uncle Silas s place, 
 Aunt Polly all the farmers live about a mile apart 
 down there and Brace Dunlap is a long sight richer 
 than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of nig 
 gers. He s a widower, thirty-six years old, without 
 any children, and is proud of his money and overbear 
 ing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I judge he 
 thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the 
 asking, and it must have set him back a good deal when 
 he found he couldn t get Benny. Why, Benny s only 
 half as old as he is, and just as sweet and lovely as 
 well, you ve seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas why, 
 it s pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way so hard 
 pushed and poor, and yet hiring that useless Jubiter 
 Dunlap to please his ornery brother." 
 
 44 What a name Jubiter! Where d he get it?" 
 
 " It s only just a nickname. I reckon they ve forgot 
 his real name long before this. He s twenty-seven, 
 now, and has had it ever since the first time he ever 
 
142 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round 
 brown mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his 
 knee, and four little bits of moles around it, when he 
 was naked, and he said it minded him of Jubiter and 
 his moons ; and the children thought it was funny, and 
 so they got to calling him Jubiter, and he s Jubiter yet. 
 He s tall, and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and ruther 
 cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears 
 long brown hair and no beard, and hasn t got a cent, 
 and Brace boards him for nothing, and gives him his old 
 clothes to wear, and despises him. Jubiter is a twin." 
 
 14 What s t other twin like?" 
 
 "Just exactly like Jubiter so they say; used to 
 was, anyway, but he hain t been seen for seven years. 
 He got to robbing when he was nineteen or twenty, 
 and they jailed him ; but he broke jail and got away 
 up North here, somers. They used to hear about him 
 robbing and burglaring now and then, but that was 
 years ago. He s dead, now. At least that s what 
 they say. They don t hear about him any more." 
 
 " What was his name?" 
 
 "Jake." 
 
 There wasn t anything more said for a considerable 
 while ; the old lady was thinking. At last she says : 
 
 " The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally 
 is the tempers that that man Jubiter gets your uncle 
 into." 
 
 Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says: 
 
 "Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be jok 
 ing! I didn t know he had any temper." 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 143 
 
 "Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally 
 says; says he acts as if he would really hit the man, 
 sometimes." 
 
 "Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. 
 Why, he s just as gentle as mush." 
 
 "Well, she s worried, anyway. Says your uncle 
 Silas is like a changed man, on account of all this 
 quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it, and lay 
 all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he s a 
 preacher and hain t got any business to quarrel. Your 
 aunt Sally says he hates to go into the pulpit he s so 
 ashamed ; and the people have begun to cool toward 
 him, and he ain t as popular now as he used to was." 
 
 " Well, ain t it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was 
 always so good and kind and moony and absent-minded 
 and chuckle-headed and lovable why, he was just an 
 angel ! What can be the matter of him, do you 
 reckon?" 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 JAKE DUNLAP 
 
 WE had powerful good luck; because we got a 
 chance in a stern-wheeler from away North which 
 was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers 
 away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the 
 way down the Upper Mississippi and all the way down 
 the Lower Mississippi to that farm in Arkansaw with 
 out having to change steamboats at St. Louis ; not so 
 very much short of a thousand miles at one pull. 
 
 A pretty lonesome boat; there warn t but few 
 passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide 
 apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was four days 
 getting out of the " upper river," because we got 
 aground so much. But it warn t dull couldn t be 
 for boys that was traveling, of course. 
 
 From the very start me and Tom allowed that there 
 was somebody sick in the stateroom next to ourn, be 
 cause the meals was always toted in there by the wait 
 ers. By and by we asked about it Tom did and 
 the waiter said it was a man, but he didn t look sick. 
 
 "Well, buttfzV/he sick?" 
 
 " I don t know; maybe he is, but pears to me he s 
 just letting on." 
 
 (144) 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 145 
 
 " What makes you think that?" 
 
 " Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off 
 some time or other don t you reckon he would? 
 Well, this one don t. At least he don t ever pull off 
 his boots, anyway." 
 
 "The mischief he don t! Not even when he goes 
 to bed?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer a mystery was. 
 If you d lay out a mystery and a pie before me and 
 him, you wouldn t have to say take your choice; it 
 was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my 
 nature I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he 
 has always run to mystery. People are made different. 
 And it is the best way. Tom says to the waiter : 
 
 " What s the man s name?" 
 
 "Phillips." 
 
 II Where d he come aboard ?" 
 
 "I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the 
 Iowa line." 
 
 " What do you reckon he s a-playing?" 
 
 II 1 hain t any notion I never thought of it." 
 
 I says to myself, here s another one that runs to pie. 
 
 "Anything peculiar about him? the way he acts or 
 talks?" 
 
 "No nothing, except he seems so scary, and 
 keeps his doors locked night and day both, and when 
 you knock he won t let you in till he opens the door a 
 crack and sees who it is." 
 
 " By jimminy, it s hit resting ! I d like to get a 
 10** 
 
146 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 look at him. Say the next time you re going in 
 there, don t you reckon you could spread the door 
 and" 
 
 " No, indeedy ! He s always behind it. He would 
 block that game." 
 
 Tom studied over it, and then he says : 
 
 " Looky here. You lend me your apern and let me 
 take him his breakfast in the morning. I ll give you a 
 quarter." 
 
 The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head 
 steward wouldn t mind. Tom says that s all right, he 
 reckoned he could fix it with the head steward ; and he 
 done it. He fixed it so as we could both go in with 
 aperns on and toting vittles. 
 
 He didn t sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get 
 in there and find out the mystery about Phillips ; and 
 moreover he done a lot of guessing about it all night, 
 which warn t no use, for if you are going to find out 
 the facts of a thing, what s the sense in guessing out 
 what ain t the facts and wasting ammunition? I 
 didn t lose no sleep. I wouldn t give a dern to know 
 what s the matter of Phillips, I says to myself. 
 
 Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a 
 couple of trays of truck, and Tom he knocked on the 
 door. The man opened it a crack, and then he let us in 
 and shut it quick. By Jackson, when we got a sight of 
 him, we most dropped the trays ! and Tom says: 
 
 "Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where d you come from?" 
 
 Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first 
 off he looked like he didn t know whether to be scared, 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 147 
 
 or glad, or both, or which, but finally he settled down 
 to being glad ; and then his color come back, though at 
 first his face had turned pretty white. So we got to 
 talking together while he et his breakfast. And he 
 says: 
 
 "But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I d just as soon tell 
 you who I am, though, if you ll swear to keep mum, 
 for I ain t no Phillips, either." 
 
 Tom says : 
 
 "We ll keep mum, but there ain t any need to tell 
 who you are if you ain t Jubiter Dunlap." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because if you ain t him you re t other twin, Jake. 
 You re the spit n image of Jubiter." 
 
 "Well, I am Jake. But looky here, how do you 
 come to know us Dunlaps?" 
 
 Tom told about the adventures we d had down there 
 at his uncle Silas s last summer, and when he see that 
 there warn t anything about his folks or him either, 
 for that matter that we didn t know, he opened out 
 and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made 
 any bones about his own case; said he d been a hard 
 lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned he d be a hard lot 
 plumb to the end. He said of course it was a danger 
 ous life, and 
 
 He give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a person 
 that s listening. We didn t say anything, and so it 
 was very still for a second or so, and there warn t no 
 sounds but the screaking of the woodwork and the chug- 
 chugging of the machinery down below 
 
148 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about 
 his people, and how Brace s wife had been dead three 
 years, and Brace wanted to marry Benny and she shook 
 him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him 
 and Uncle Silas quarreling all the time and then he 
 let go and laughed. 
 
 "Land!" he says, "it s like old times to hear all 
 this tittle-tattle, and does me good. It s been seven 
 years and more since I heard any. How do they talk 
 about me these days?" 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " The farmers and the family." 
 
 "Why, they don t talk about you at all at least 
 only just a mention, once in a long time." 
 
 " The nation !" he says, surprised ; " why is that?" 
 
 " Because they think you are dead long ago." 
 
 "No! Are you speaking true? honor bright, 
 now." He jumped up, excited. 
 
 " Honor bright. There ain t anybody thinks you are 
 alive." 
 
 "Then I m saved, I m saved, sure! I ll go home. 
 They ll hide me and save my life. You keep mum. 
 Swear you ll keep mum swear you ll never, never tell 
 on me. Oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that s being 
 hunted day and night, and dasn t show his face ! I ve 
 never done you any harm ; I ll never do you any, as 
 God is in the heavens; swear you ll be good to me 
 and help me save my life." 
 
 We d a swore it if he d been a dog; and so we done 
 it. Well, he couldn t love us enough for it or be grate- 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 149 
 
 ful enough, poor cuss; it was all he could do to keep 
 from hugging us. 
 
 We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag 
 and begun to open it, and told us to turn our backs. 
 We done it, and when he told us to turn again he was 
 perfectly different to what he was before. He had on 
 blue goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown 
 whiskers and mustashes you ever see. His own 
 mother wouldn t a knowed him. He asked us if he 
 looked like his brother Jubiter, now. 
 
 " No," Tom said; " there ain t anything left that s 
 like him except the long hair." 
 
 "All right, I ll get that cropped close to my head be 
 fore I get there; then him and Brace will keep my 
 secret, and I ll live with them as being a stranger, and 
 the neighbors won t ever guess me out. What do you 
 think?" 
 
 Tom he studied awhile, then he says : 
 
 " Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep 
 mum there, but if you don t keep mum yourself there s 
 going to be a little bit of a risk it ain t much, maybe, 
 but it s a little. I mean, if you talk, won t people 
 notice that your voice is just like Jubiter s; and 
 mightn t it make them think of the twin they reckoned 
 was dead, but maybe after all was hid all this time 
 under another name?" 
 
 "By George," he says, "you re a sharp one! 
 You re perfectly right. I ve got to play deef and 
 dumb when there s a neighbor around. If I d a struck 
 for home and forgot that little detail However, I 
 
150 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 wasn t striking for home. I was breaking for any 
 place where I could get away from these fellows that 
 are after me ; then I was going to put on this disguise 
 and get some different clothes, and " 
 
 He jumped for the outside door and laid his ear 
 against it and listened, pale and kind of panting. 
 Presently he whispers : 
 
 " Sounded like cocking a gun ! Lord, what a life to 
 lead!" 
 
 Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, 
 and wiped the sweat off of his face. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 A DIAMOND ROBBERY 
 
 rROM that time out, we was with him most all the 
 time, and one or t other of us slept in his upper 
 berth. He said he had been so lonesome, and it was 
 such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody 
 to talk to in his troubles. We was in a sweat to find 
 out what his secret was, but Tom said the best way was 
 not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop into it 
 himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking 
 questions he would get suspicious and shet up his shell. 
 It turned out just so. It warn t no trouble to see that 
 he wanted to talk about it, but always along at first he 
 would scare away from it when he got on the very edge 
 of it, and go to talking about something else. The 
 way it come about was this: He got to asking us, 
 kind of indifferent like, about the passengers down on 
 deck. We told him about them. But he warn t satis 
 fied ; we warn t particular enough. He told us to de 
 scribe them better. Tom done it. At last, when Tom 
 was describing one of the roughest and raggedest ones, 
 he gave a shiver and a gasp and says : 
 
 "Oh, lordy, that s one of them! They re aboard 
 
 (151) 
 
152 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 sure I just knowed it. I sort of hoped I had got 
 away, but I never believed it. Go on." 
 
 Presently when Tom was describing another mangy, 
 rough deck passenger, he give that shiver again and 
 says: 
 
 "That s him! that s the other one. If it would 
 only come a good black stormy night and I could get 
 ashore. You see, they ve got spies on me. They ve 
 got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar 
 yonder forrard, and they take that chance to bribe 
 somebody to keep watch on me porter or boots or 
 somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody 
 seeing me, they would know it inside of an hour." 
 
 So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, 
 sure enough, he was telling! He was poking along 
 through his ups and downs, and when he come to that 
 place he went right along. He says : 
 
 It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery- 
 shop in St. Louis. What we was after was a couple of 
 noble big di monds as big as hazel-nuts, which every 
 body was running to see. We was dressed up fine, and 
 we played it on them in broad daylight. We ordered 
 the di monds sent to the hotel for us to see if we 
 wanted to buy, and when we was examining them we 
 had paste counterfeits all ready, and them was the things 
 that went back to the shop when we said the water 
 wasn t quite fine enough for twelve thousand dollars." 
 
 1 Twelve thousand dollars ! Tom says. Was 
 they really worth all that money, do you reckon?" 
 
 11 Every cent of it." 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 153 
 
 "And you fellows got away with them?" 
 
 "As easy as nothing. I don t reckon the julery 
 people know they ve been robbed yet. But it wouldn t 
 be good sense to stay around St. Louis, of course, so 
 we considered where we d go. One was for going one 
 way, one another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, 
 and the Upper Mississippi won. We done up the 
 di monds in a paper and put our names on it and put 
 it in the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to 
 ever let either of us have it again without the others was 
 on hand to see it done; then we went down town, each 
 by his own self because I reckon maybe we all had 
 the same notion. I don t know for certain, but I 
 reckon maybe we had." 
 
 " What notion?" Tom says. 
 
 "To rob the others." 
 
 * What one take everything, after all of you had 
 helped to get it?" 
 
 "Cert nly." 
 
 It disgusted Tom Sawyer, and he said it was the 
 orneriest, low-downest thing he ever heard of. But 
 Jake Dunlap said it warn t unusual in the profession. 
 Said when a person was in that line of business he d 
 got to look out for his own intrust, there warn t no 
 body else going to do it for him. And then he went 
 on. He says: 
 
 "You see, the trouble was, you couldn t divide up 
 two di monds amongst three. If there d been three 
 But never mind about that, there warn t three. I 
 loafed along the back streets studying and studying. 
 
154 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 And I says to myself, I ll hog them di monds the first 
 chance I get, and I ll have a disguise all ready, and I ll 
 give the boys the slip, and when I m safe away I ll put 
 it on, and then let them find me if they can. So I got 
 the false whiskers and the goggles and this countrified 
 suit of clothes, and fetched them along back in a hand 
 bag; and when I was passing a shop where they sell all 
 sorts of things, I got a glimpse of one of my pals 
 through the window. It was Bud Dixon. I was glad, 
 you bet. I says to myself, I ll see what he buys. So 
 I kept shady, and watched. Now what do you reckon 
 it was he bought?" 
 
 "Whiskers?" said I. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Goggles?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Oh, keep still, Huck Finn, can t you, you re only 
 just hendering all you can. What was it he bought, 
 Jake?" 
 
 1 You d never guess in the world. It was only just 
 a screwdriver just a wee little bit of a screwdriver." 
 
 " Well, I declare ! What did he want with that?" 
 
 " That s what 7 thought. It was curious. It clean 
 stumped me. I says to myself, what can he want with 
 that thing? Well, when he come out I stood back out 
 of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand slop 
 shop and see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old 
 ragged clothes just the ones he s got on now, as 
 you ve described. Then I went down to the wharf and 
 hid my things aboard the up-river boat that we had 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 155 
 
 picked out, and then started back and had another 
 streak of luck. I seen our other pal lay in his stock 
 of old rusty second-handers. We got the di monds 
 and went aboard the boat. 
 
 " But now we was up a stump, for we couldn t go 
 to bed. We had to set up and watch one another. 
 Pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a strain on us, 
 because there was bad blood between us from a 
 couple of weeks back, and we was only friends in the 
 way of business. Bad anyway, seeing there was only 
 two di monds betwixt three men. First we had supper, 
 and then tramped up and down the deck together 
 smoking till most midnight; then we went and set 
 down in my stateroom and locked the doors and looked 
 in the piece of paper to see if the di monds was all 
 right, then laid it on the lower berth right in full sight ; 
 and there we set, and set, and by-and-by it got to be 
 dreadful hard to keep awake. At last Bud Dixon he 
 dropped off. As soon as he was snoring a good regular 
 gait that was likely to last, and had his chin on his 
 breast and looked permanent, Hal Clayton nodded 
 towards the di monds and then towards the outside 
 door, and I understood. I reached and got the paper, 
 and then we stood up and waited perfectly still ; Bud 
 never stirred; I turned the key of the outside door 
 very soft and slow, then turned the knob the same 
 way, and we went tiptoeing out onto the guard, and 
 shut the door very soft and gentle. 
 
 "There warn t nobody stirring anywhere, and the 
 boat was slipping along, swift and steady, through the 
 
156 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 big water in the smoky moonlight. We never said a 
 word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and 
 plumb back aft, and set down on the end of the sky 
 light. Both of us knowed what that meant, without 
 having to explain to one another. Bud Dixon would 
 wake up and miss the swag, and would come straight 
 for us, for he ain t afeard of anything or anybody, that 
 man ain t. He would come, and we would heave him 
 overboard, or get killed trying. It made me shiver, 
 because I ain t as brave as some people, but if I 
 showed the white feather well, I knowed better than 
 do that. I kind of hoped the boat would land somers, 
 and we could skip ashore and not have to run the risk 
 of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she 
 was an upper-river tub and there warn t no real chance 
 of that. 
 
 "Well, the time strung along and along, and that 
 fellow never come ! Why, it strung along till dawn 
 begun to break, and still he never come. Thunder/ I 
 says, what do you make out of this? ain t it sus 
 picious? Land! Hal says, do you reckon he s 
 playing us? open the paper! I done it, and by 
 gracious there warn t anything in it but a couple of 
 little pieces of loaf-sugar ! That s the reason he could 
 set there and snooze all night so comfortable. Smart? 
 Well, I reckon ! He had had them two papers all fixed 
 and ready, and he had put one of them in place of 
 t other right under our noses. 
 
 11 We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight 
 off, was to make a plan ; and we done it. We would 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 157 
 
 do up the paper again, just as it was, and slip in, very 
 elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and 
 let on we didn t know about any trick, and hadn t any 
 idea he was a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores 
 of his n; and we would stick by him, and the first 
 night we was ashore we would get him drunk and 
 search him, and get the di monds; and do for him, 
 too, if it warn t too risky. If we got the swag, we d 
 got to do for him, or he would hunt us down and do for 
 us, sure. But I didn t have no real hope. I knowed 
 we could get him drunk he was always ready for 
 that but what s the good of it? You might search 
 him a year and never find 
 
 "Well, right there I catched my breath and broke 
 off my thought ! For an idea went ripping through my 
 head that tore my brains to rags and land, but I felt 
 gay and good ! You see, I had had my boots off, to 
 unswell my feet, and just then I took up one of them 
 to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the heel- 
 bottom, and it just took my breath away. You re 
 member about that puzzlesome little screwdriver? * 
 
 You bet I do," says Tom, all excited. 
 
 "Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot 
 heel, the idea that went smashing through my head 
 was, /know where he s hid the di monds! You look 
 at this boot heel, now. See, it s bottomed with a steel 
 plate, and the plate is fastened on with little screws. 
 Now there wasn t a screw about that feller anywhere 
 but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a screwdriver, 
 I reckoned I knowed why." 
 
158 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 11 Huck, ain t it bully!" says Tom. 
 
 "Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and 
 slipped in and laid the paper of sugar on the berth, 
 and sat down soft and sheepish and went to listening to 
 Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty 
 soon, but I didn t; I wasn t ever so wide awake in my 
 life. I was spying out from under the shade of my 
 hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took me a 
 long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was 
 wrong, but at last I struck it. It laid over by the 
 bulkhead, and was nearly the color of the carpet. It 
 was a little round plug about as thick as the end of your 
 little finger, and I says to myself there s a di mond in 
 the nest you ve come from. Before long I spied out 
 the plug s mate. 
 
 "Think of the smartness and coolness of that 
 blatherskite ! He put up that scheme on us and 
 reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead 
 and done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd n- 
 heads. He set there and took his own time to un 
 screw his heelplates and cut out his plugs and stick in 
 the di monds and screw on his plates again. He 
 allowed we would steal the bogus swag and wait all 
 night for him to come up and get drownded, and by 
 George it s just what we done! /think it was power 
 ful smart." 
 
 " You bet your life it was !" says Tom, just full of 
 admiration. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE THREE SLEEPERS 
 
 f{\V/ELL, all day we went through the humbug of 
 VV watching one another, and it was pretty sickly 
 business for two of us and hard to act out, I can tell 
 you. About night we landed at one of them little 
 Missouri towns high up toward Iowa, and had supper 
 at the tavern, and got a room upstairs with a cot and a 
 double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a deal 
 table in the dark hall while we was moving along it to 
 bed, single file, me last, and the landlord in the lead 
 with a tallow candle. We had up a lot of whisky, and 
 went to playing high-low-jack for dimes, and as soon 
 as the whisky begun to take hold of Bud we stopped 
 drinking, but we didn t let him stop. We loaded him 
 till he fell out of his chair and laid there snoring. 
 
 " We was ready for business now. I said we better 
 pull our boots off, and his n too, and not make any 
 noise, then we could pull him and haul him around and 
 ransack him without any trouble. So we done it. I 
 set my boots and Bud s side by side, where they d be 
 handy. Then we stripped him and searched his seams 
 and his pockets and his socks and the inside of his 
 boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. Never 
 " (159) 
 
160 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 found any di monds. We found the screwdriver, and 
 Hal says, What do you reckon he wanted with that? 
 I said I didn t know; but when he wasn t looking I 
 hooked it. At last Hal he looked beat and discour 
 aged, and said we d got to give it up. That was what 
 I was waiting for. I says : 
 
 14 There s one place we hain t searched. 
 
 11 What place is that? he says. 
 
 " His stomach. 
 
 By gracious, I never thought of that ! Now we re 
 on the homestretch, to a dead moral certainty. How 11 
 we manage? 
 
 Well, I says, just stay by him till I turn out and 
 hunt up a drug store, and I reckon I ll fetch something 
 that ll make them di monds tired of the company 
 they re keeping/ 
 
 "He said that s the ticket, and with him looking 
 straight at me I slid myself into Bud s boots instead of 
 my own, and he never noticed. They was just a shade 
 large for me, but that was considerable better than be 
 ing too small. I got my bag as I went a-groping 
 through the hall, and in about a minute I was out the 
 back way and stretching up the river road at a five-mile 
 gait. 
 
 "And not feeling so very bad, neither walking on 
 di monds don t have no such effect. When I had gone 
 fifteen minutes I says to myself, there s more n a mile 
 behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes 
 and I says there s considerable more land behind me 
 now, and there s a man back there that s begun to 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 161 
 
 wonder what s the trouble. Another five and I says to 
 myself he s getting real uneasy he s walking the floor 
 now. Another five, and I says to myself, there s two 
 mile and a half behind me, and he s awful uneasy be 
 ginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I says to my 
 self , forty minutes gone he knows there s something 
 up! Fifty minutes the truth s a-busting on him 
 now! he is reckoning I found the di monds whilst we 
 was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never 
 let on yes, and he s starting out to hunt for me. 
 He ll hunt for new tracks in the dust, and they ll as 
 likely send him down the river as up. 
 
 " Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and 
 before I thought I jumped into the bush. It was 
 stupid ! When he got abreast he stopped and waited 
 a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. 
 But I didn t feel gay any more. I says to myself I ve 
 botched my chances by that; I surely have, if he meets 
 up with Hal Clayton, 
 
 "Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elex- 
 andria and see this stern- wheeler laying there, and was 
 very glad, because I felt perfectly safe, now, you know. 
 It was just daybreak. I went aboard and got this state 
 room and put on these clothes and went up in the pilot 
 house to watch, though I didn t reckon there was 
 any need of it. I set there and played with my 
 di monds and waited and waited for the boat to start, 
 but she didn t. You see, they was mending her 
 machinery, but I didn t know anything about it, not 
 being very much used to steamboats. 
 
162 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 " Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till 
 plumb noon; and long before that I was hid in this 
 stateroom ; for before breakfast I see a man coming, 
 away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton s, and it 
 made me just sick. I says to myself, if he finds out 
 I m aboard this boat, he s got me like a rat in a trap. 
 All he s got to do is to have me watched, and wait 
 wait till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand miles 
 away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place 
 and make me give up the di monds, and then he ll 
 oh, / know what he ll do! Ain t it awful awful! 
 And now to think the other one s aboard, too! Oh, 
 ain t it hard luck, boys ain t it hard ! But you ll help 
 save me, won t you? oh, boys, be good to a poor 
 devil that s being hunted to death, and save me I ll 
 worship the very ground you walk on ! " 
 
 We turned in and soothed him down and told him 
 we would plan for him and help him, and he needn t 
 be so afeard ; and so by and by he got to feeling kind 
 of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and 
 held up his di monds this way and that, admiring them 
 and loving them ; and when the light struck into them 
 they was beautiful, sure ; why, they seemed to kind of 
 bust, and snap fire out all around. But all the same I 
 judged he was a fool. If I had been him I would a 
 handed the di monds to them pals and got them to go 
 ashore and leave me alone. But he was made differ 
 ent. He said it was a whole fortune and he couldn t 
 bear the idea. 
 
 Twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 163 
 
 good while, once in the night; but it wasn t dark 
 enough, and he was afeard to skip. But the third 
 time we had to fix it there was a better chance. We 
 laid up at a country woodyard about forty mile above 
 Uncle Silas s place a little after one at night, and it was 
 thickening up and going to storm. So Jake he laid for 
 a chance to slide. We begun to take in wood. Pretty 
 soon the rain come a-drenching down, and the wind 
 blowed hard. Of course every boat-hand fixed a 
 gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet, the way they 
 do when they are toting wood, and we got one for 
 Jake, and he slipped down aft with his hand-bag and 
 come tramping forrard just like the rest, and walked 
 ashore with them, and when we see him pass out of the 
 light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the 
 dark, we got our breath again and just felt grateful and 
 splendid. But it wasn t for long. Somebody told, I 
 reckon; for in about eight or ten minutes them two 
 pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump 
 and darted ashore and was gone. We waited plumb 
 till dawn for them to come back, and kept hoping they 
 would, but they never did. We was awful sorry and 
 low-spirited. All the hope we had was that Jake had 
 got such a start that they couldn t get on his track, and 
 he would get to his brother s and hide there and be 
 safe. 
 
 He was going to take the river road, and told us to 
 find out if Brace and Jubiter was to home and no 
 strangers there, and then slip out about sundown and 
 tell him. Said he would wait for us in a little bunch of 
 
164 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 sycamores right back of Tom s uncle Silas s tobacker 
 field on the river road, a lonesome place. 
 
 We set and talked a long time about his chances, and 
 Tom said he was all right if the pals struck up the 
 river instead of down, but it wasn t likely, because 
 maybe they knowed where he was from ; more likely 
 they would go right, and dog him all day, him not 
 suspecting, and kill him when it come dark, and take 
 the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS 
 
 WE didn t get done tinkering the machinery till away 
 late in the afternoon, and so it was so close to 
 sundown when we got home that we never stopped on 
 our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight 
 as we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and 
 have him wait till we could go to Brace s and find out 
 how things was there. It was getting pretty dim by the 
 time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and 
 panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty 
 yards ahead of us ; and just then we see a couple of 
 men run into the bunch and heard two or three terrible 
 screams for help. Poor Jake is killed, sure," we 
 says. We was scared through and through, and broke 
 for the tobacker field and hid there, trembling so our 
 clothes would hardly stay on ; and just as we skipped 
 in there, a couple of men went tearing by, and into the 
 bunch they went, and in a second out jumps four men 
 and took out up the road as tight as they could go, 
 two chasing two. 
 
 We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened 
 for more sounds, but didn t hear none for a good while 
 
 (165) 
 
166 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 but just our hearts. We was thinking of that awful 
 thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed 
 like being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold 
 shudders. The moon come a-swelling up out of the 
 ground, now, powerful big and round and bright, be 
 hind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison 
 bars, and the black shadders and white places begun to 
 creep around, and it was miserable quiet and still and 
 night-breezy and graveyardy and scary. All of a sud 
 den Tom whispers : 
 
 -Look! what s that?" 
 
 "Don t!" I says. " Don t take a person by sur 
 prise that way. I m most ready to die, anyway, with 
 out you doing that." 
 
 "Look, I tell you. It s something coming out of 
 the sycamores." 
 
 "Don t, Tom!" 
 
 "It s terrible tall!" 
 
 "Oh, lordy-lordy! let s" 
 
 " Keep still it s a-coming this way." 
 
 He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough 
 to whisper. I had to look. I couldn t help it. So 
 now we was both on our knees with our chins on a 
 fence rail and gazing yes, and gasping, too. It was 
 coming down the road coming in the shadder of the 
 trees, and you couldn t see it good; not till it was 
 pretty close to us ; then it stepped into a bright splotch 
 of moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracks 
 it was Jake Dunlap s ghost! That was what we said 
 to ourselves. 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 167 
 
 We couldn t stir for a minute or two; then it was 
 gone. We talked about it in low voices. Tom 
 says: 
 
 "They re mostly dim and smoky, or like they re 
 made out of fog, but this one wasn t." 
 
 "No," I says ; "I seen the goggles and the whiskers 
 perfectly plain." 
 
 " Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified 
 Sunday clothes plaid breeches, green and black " 
 
 "Cotton-velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares " 
 
 " Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs 
 and one of them hanging unbuttoned " 
 
 "Yes, and that hat " 
 
 "What a hat for a ghost to wear !" 
 
 You see it was the first season anybody wore that 
 kind a black stiff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and 
 not smooth, with a round top just like a sugar-loaf. 
 
 " Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?" 
 
 " No seems to me I did, then again it seems to me 
 I didn t." 
 
 " I didn t either; but it had its bag along, I noticed 
 that." 
 
 " So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?" 
 
 " Sho ! I wouldn t be as ignorant as that if I was 
 you, Huck Finn. Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost- 
 stuff. They ve got to have their things, like anybody 
 else. You see, yourself, that its clothes was turned to 
 ghost-stuff. Well, then, what s to hender its bag from 
 turning, too? Of course it done it." 
 
 That was reasonable. I couldn t find no fault with 
 
168 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 it. Bill Withers and his brother Jack come along by, 
 talking, and Jack says : 
 
 " What do you reckon he was toting?" 
 
 " I dunno ; but it was pretty heavy." 
 
 " Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from 
 old Parson Silas, I judged." 
 
 " So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn t let on to 
 see him." 
 
 "That s me, too." 
 
 Then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. 
 It showed how unpopular old Uncle Silas had got to be 
 now. They wouldn t a let a nigger steal anybody 
 else s corn and never done anything to him. 
 
 We heard some more voices mumbling along towards 
 us and getting louder, and sometimes a cackle of a 
 laugh. It was Lem Beebe and Jim Lane. Jim Lane 
 says: 
 
 Who? Jubiter Dunlap?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Oh, I don t know. I reckon so. I seen him spad 
 ing up some ground along about an hour ago, just be 
 fore sundown him and the parson. Said he guessed 
 he wouldn t go to-night, but we could have his dog if 
 we wanted him." 
 
 "Too tired, I reckon." 
 
 Yes works so hard ! 
 
 "Oh, you bet!" 
 
 They cackled at that, and went on by. Tom said we 
 better jump out and tag along after them, because they 
 was going our way and it wouldn t be comfortable to 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 169 
 
 run across the ghost all by ourselves. So we done it, 
 and got home all right. 
 
 That night was the second of September a Satur 
 day. I sha n t ever forget it. You ll see why, pretty 
 soon. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS 
 
 WE tramped along behind Jim and Lem till we come 
 to the back stile where old Jim s cabin was that 
 he was captivated in, the time we set him free, and here 
 come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and 
 there was the lights of the house, too ; so we warn t 
 afeard any more, and was going to climb over, but 
 Tom says : 
 
 " Hold on; set down here a minute. By George !" 
 
 " What s the matter?" says I. 
 
 " Matter enough !" he says. " Wasn t you expect 
 ing we would be the first to tell the family who it is 
 that s been killed yonder in the sycamores, and all 
 about them rapscallions that done it, and about the 
 di monds they ve smouched off of the corpse, and paint 
 it up fine, and have the glory of being the ones that 
 knows a lot more about it than anybody else?" 
 
 "Why, of course. It wouldn t be you, Tom Sawyer, 
 if you was to let such a chance go by. I reckon it 
 ain t going to suffer none for lack of paint," I says, 
 " when you start in to scollop the facts/ 
 
 11 Well, now," he says, perfectly ca m, " what would 
 
 (170) 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 171 
 
 you say if I was to tell you I ain t going to start in % at 
 all?" 
 
 I was astonished to hear him talk so. I says: 
 
 "I d say it s a lie. You ain t in earnest, Tom 
 Sawyer?" 
 
 "You ll soon see. Was the ghost barefooted?" 
 
 " No, it wasn t. What of it?" 
 
 "You wait I ll show you what. Did it have its 
 boots on?" 
 
 " Yes. I seen them plain." 
 
 "Swear it?" 
 
 "Yes, I swear it." 
 
 " So do I. Now do you know what that means?" 
 
 " No. What does it mean?" 
 
 " Means that them thieves didn t get the diamonds ." 
 
 " Jimminy ! What makes you think that?" 
 
 "I don t only think it, I know it. Didn t the 
 breeches and goggles and whiskers and hand-bag and 
 every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff? Everything it 
 had on turned, didn t it? It shows that the reason its 
 boots turned too was because it still had them on after 
 it started to go ha nting around, and if that ain t proof 
 that them blatherskites didn t get the boots, I d like to 
 know what you d call proof." 
 
 Think of that now. I never see such a head as that 
 boy had. Why, / had eyes and I could see things, but 
 they never meant nothing to me. But Tom Sawyer 
 was different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just 
 got up on its hind legs and talked to him told him 
 everything it knowed. 7 never see such a head. 
 
172 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 "Tom Sawyer," I says, "I ll say it again as I ve 
 said it a many a time before: I ain t fitten to black 
 your boots. But that s all right that s neither here 
 nor there. God Almighty made us all, and some He 
 gives eyes that s blind, and some He gives eyes that 
 can see, and I reckon it ain t none of our lookout what 
 He done it for; it s all right, or He d a fixed it some 
 other way. Go on I see plenty plain enough, now, 
 that them thieves didn t get way with the di monds. 
 Why didn t they, do you reckon?" 
 
 " Because they got chased away by them other two 
 men before they could pull the boots off of the corpse." 
 
 "That s so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, 
 why ain t we to go and tell about it?" 
 
 " Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can t you see? Look at 
 it. What s a-going to happen? There s going to be 
 an inquest in the morning. Them two men will tell 
 how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time 
 to not save the stranger. Then the jury 11 twaddle 
 and twaddle and twaddle, and finally they ll fetch in a 
 verdict that he got shot or stuck or busted over the 
 head with something, and come to his death by the in 
 spiration of God. And after they ve buried him they ll 
 auction off his things for to pay the expenses, and 
 then s our chance." 
 
 "How, Tom?" 
 
 " Buy the boots for two dollars !" 
 
 Well, it most took my breath. 
 
 " My land ! Why, Tom, we ll get the di monds !" 
 
 "You bet. Some day there ll be a big reward 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 173 
 
 offered for them a thousand dollars, sure. That s 
 our money! Now we ll trot in and see the folks. 
 And mind you we don t know anything about any 
 murder, or any di monds, or any thieves don t you 
 forget that." 
 
 I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed, 
 / d a sold them di monds yes, sir for twelve 
 thousand dollars; but I didn t say anything. It 
 wouldn t done any good. I says: 
 
 1 But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has 
 made us so long getting down here from the village, 
 Tom?" 
 
 "Oh, I ll leave that to you," he says. " I reckon 
 you can explain it somehow." 
 
 He was always just that strict and delicate. He 
 never would tell a lie himself. 
 
 We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, 
 and t other thing that was so familiar, and we so glad 
 to see it again, and when we got to the roofed big 
 passageway betwixt the double log house and the 
 kitchen part, there was everything hanging on the wall 
 just as it used to was, even to Uncle Silas s old faded 
 green baize working-gown with the hood to it, and rag 
 gedy white patch between the shoulders that always 
 looked like somebody had hit him with a snowball ; and 
 then we lifted the latch and walked in. Aunt Sally she 
 was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and the 
 children was huddled in one corner, and the old man 
 he was huddled in the other and praying for help in 
 time of need. She jumped for us with joy and tears 
 
174 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 running down her face and give us a whacking box on 
 the ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed 
 us again, and just couldn t seem to get enough of it, 
 she was so glad to see us ; and she says : 
 
 "Where have you been a-loafmg to, you good-for- 
 nothing trash! I ve been that worried about you I 
 didn t know what to do. Your traps has been here 
 ever so long, and I ve had supper cooked fresh about 
 four times so as to have it hot and good when you 
 come, till at last my patience is just plumb wore out, 
 and I declare I I why I could skin you alive ! You 
 must be starving, poor things! set down, set down, 
 everybody; don t lose no more time." 
 
 It was good to be there again behind all that noble 
 corn-pone and spareribs, and everything that you could 
 ever want in this world. Old Uncle Silas he peeled off 
 one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as many 
 layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was haul 
 ing in the slack of it I was trying to study up what to 
 say about what kept us so long. When our plates was 
 all leadened and we d got a-going, she asked me, and 
 I says: 
 
 "Well, you see, er Mizzes " 
 
 11 Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? 
 Have I ever been stingy of cuffs or kisses for you since 
 the day you stood in this room and I took you for Tom 
 Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though 
 you told me four thousand lies and I believed every 
 one of them like a simpleton? Call me Aunt Saliy 
 like you always done." 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 175 
 
 So I done it. And I says : 
 
 " Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along 
 afoot and take a smell of the woods, and we run across 
 Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to go with 
 them blackberrying to-night, and said they could bor 
 row Jubiter Dunlap s dog, because he had told them 
 just that minute " 
 
 "Where did they see him?" says the old man; and 
 when I looked up to see how he come to take an intrust 
 in a little thing like that, his eyes was just burning into 
 me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind of 
 throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and 
 says : 
 
 " It was when he was spading up some ground along 
 with you, towards sundown or along there." 
 
 He only said, "Um," in a kind of a disappointed 
 way, and didn t take no more intrust. So I went on. 
 I says : 
 
 "Well, then, as I was a-saying " 
 That ll do, you needn t go no furder." It was 
 Aunt Sally. She was boring right into me with her 
 eyes, and very indignant. " Huck Finn," she says, 
 " how d them men come to talk about going a-black- 
 berrying in September in this region?" 
 
 I see I had slipped up, and I couldn t say a word. 
 She waited, still a-gazing at me, then she says : 
 
 "And how d they come to strike that idiot idea of 
 going a-blackberrying in the night?" 
 
 "Well, m m, they er they told us they had a 
 lantern, and " 
 
176 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 "Oh, shet up do! Looky here; what was they 
 going to do with a dog? hunt blackberries with it?" 
 
 "I think, m m, they" 
 
 11 Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fix 
 ing your mouth to contribit to this mess of rubbage? 
 Speak out and I warn you before you begin, that 
 I don t believe a word of it. You and Huck s been up 
 to something you no business to /know it perfectly 
 well; / know you, both of you. Now you explain that 
 dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern, and the 
 rest of that rot and mind you talk as straight as a 
 string do you hear?" 
 
 Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very 
 dignified : 
 
 " It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just 
 for making a little bit of a mistake that anybody could 
 make." 
 
 " What mistake has he made?" 
 
 " Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when 
 of course he meant strawberries." 
 
 "Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little 
 more, I ll" 
 
 "Aunt Sally, without knowing it and of course 
 without intending it you are in the wrong. If you d 
 a studied natural history the way you ought, you 
 would know that all over the world except just here in 
 Arkansaw they always hunt strawberries with a dog 
 and a lantern " 
 
 But she busted in on him there and just piled into 
 him and snowed him under. She was so mad she 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 177 
 
 couldn t get the words out fast enough, and she gushed 
 them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what 
 Tom Sawyer was after. He allowed to work her up 
 and get her started and then leave her alone and let her 
 burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated 
 with that subject that she wouldn t say another word 
 about it, nor let anybody else. Well, it happened just 
 so. When she was tuckered out and had to hold up, 
 he says, quite ca m: 
 
 "And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally " 
 " Shet up!" she says, "I don t want to hear 
 another word out of you." 
 
 So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn t have no 
 more trouble about that delay. Tom done it elegant. 
 
 12 < 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A NIGHT S VIGIL 
 
 BENNY she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed 
 some, now and then ; but pretty soon she got to 
 asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom s aunt Polly, 
 and then Aunt Sally s clouds cleared off and she got in 
 a good humor and joined in on the questions and was 
 her lovingest best self, and so the rest of the supper 
 went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he 
 didn t take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded 
 and restless, and done a considerable amount of sigh 
 ing ; and it was kind of heart-breaking to see him so 
 sad and troubled and worried. 
 
 By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and 
 knocked on the door and put his head in with his old 
 straw hat in his hand bowing and scraping, and said his 
 Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his 
 brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, 
 and would Marse Silas please tell him where he was? 
 I never see Uncle Silas speak up so sharp and fractious 
 before. He says : 
 
 "Am / his brother s keeper?" And then he kind 
 of wilted together, and looked like he wished he hadn t 
 spoken so, and then he says, very gentle: " But you 
 
 (178) 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 179 
 
 needn t say that, Billy; I was took sudden and irritable, 
 and I ain t very well these days, and not hardly respon 
 sible. Tell him he ain t here." 
 
 And when the nigger was gone he got up and 
 walked the floor, backwards and forwards, mumbling 
 and muttering to himself and plowing his hands through 
 his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she 
 whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, 
 it embarrassed him. She said he was always thinking 
 and thinking, since these troubles come on, and she 
 allowed he didn t more n about half know what he was 
 about when the thinking spells was on him ; and she 
 said he walked in his sleep considerable more now than 
 he used to, and sometimes wandered around over the 
 house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched 
 him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. 
 She said she reckoned it didn t do him no harm, and 
 may be it done him good. She said Benny was the 
 only one that was much help to him these days. Said 
 Benny appeared to know just when to try to soothe 
 him and when to leave him alone. 
 
 So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and 
 muttering, till by and by he begun to look pretty tired ; 
 then Benny she went and snuggled up to his side and 
 put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and 
 walked with him; and he smiled down on her, and 
 reached down and kissed her; and so, little by little 
 the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded him 
 off to his room. They had very petting ways together, 
 and it was uncommon pretty to see. 
 L** 
 
180 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready 
 for bed ; so by and by it got dull and tedious, and me 
 and Tom took a turn in the moonlight, and fetched up 
 in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good 
 deal of talk. And Tom said he d bet the quarreling 
 was all Jubiter s fault, and he was going to be on hand 
 the first time he got a chance, and see; and if it was 
 so, he was going to do his level best to get Uncle Silas 
 to turn him off. 
 
 And so we talked and smoked and stuffed water 
 melons much as two hours, and then it was pretty late, 
 and when we got back the house was quiet and dark, 
 and everybody gone to bed. 
 
 Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that 
 the old green baize work-gown was gone, and said it 
 wasn t gone when he went out; so he allowed it was 
 curious, and then we went up to bed. 
 
 We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, 
 which was next to ourn, and judged she was worried a 
 good deal about her father and couldn t sleep. We 
 found we couldn t, neither. So we set up a long time, 
 and smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty 
 dull and down-hearted. We talked the murder and the 
 ghost over and over again, and got so creepy and 
 crawly we couldn t get sleepy nohow and noway. 
 
 By and by, when it was away late in the night and all 
 the sounds was late sounds and solemn, Tom nudged 
 me and whispers to me to look, and I done it, and there 
 we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn t 
 know just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 181 
 
 and we couldn t see him good. Then he started for 
 the stile, and as he went over it the moon came out 
 strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over his 
 shoulder, and we see the white patch on the old work- 
 gown. So Tom says: 
 
 " He s a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was 
 allowed to follow him and see where he s going to. 
 There, he s turned down by the tobacker-field. Out 
 of sight now. It s a dreadful pity he can t rest no 
 better." 
 
 We waited a long time, but he didn t come back any 
 more, or if he did he come around the other way; so 
 at last we was tuckered out and went to sleep and had 
 nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we 
 was awake again, because meantime a storm had come 
 up and been raging, and the thunder and lightning 
 was awful, and the wind was a- thrashing the trees 
 around, and the rain was driving down in slanting 
 sheets, and the gullies was running rivers. Tom says : 
 
 " Looky here, Huck, I ll tell you one thing that s 
 mighty curious. Up to the time we went out last night 
 the family hadn t heard about Jake Dunlap being mur 
 dered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and 
 Bud Dixon away would spread the thing around in a 
 half an hour, and every neighbor that heard it would 
 shin out and fly around from one farm to t other and 
 try to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don t 
 have such a big thing as that to tell twice in thirty year ! 
 Huck, it s mighty strange; I don t understand it." 
 
 So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so 
 
182 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 we could turn out and run across some of the people 
 and see if they would say anything about it to us. 
 And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised 
 and shocked. 
 
 We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. 
 It was just broad day then. We loafed along up the 
 road, and now and then met a person and stopped and 
 said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we 
 left the folks at home, and how long we was going to 
 stay, and all that, but none of them said a word about 
 that thing; which was just astonishing, and no mistake. 
 Tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we 
 would find that body laying there solitary and alone, 
 and not a soul around. Said he believed the men 
 chased the thieves so far into the woods that the thieves 
 prob ly seen a good chance and turned on them at last, 
 and maybe they all killed each other, and so there 
 wasn t anybody left to tell. 
 
 First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was 
 right at the sycamores. The cold chills trickled down 
 my back and I wouldn t budge another step, for all 
 Tom s persuading. But he couldn t hold in; he d got 
 to see if the boots was safe on that body yet. So he 
 crope in and the next minute out he come again with 
 his eyes bulging he was so excited, and says: 
 
 <4 Huck, it s gone!" 
 
 I was astonished ! I says : 
 
 II Tom, you don t mean it." 
 
 "It s gone, sure. There ain t a sign of it. The 
 ground is trampled some, but if there was any blood 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 183 
 
 it s all washed away by the storm, for it s all puddles 
 and slush in there." 
 
 At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; 
 and it was just as Tom said there wasn t a sign of a 
 corpse. 
 
 "Bern it," I says, "the di monds is gone. Don t 
 you reckon the thieves slunk back and lugged him off, 
 Tom?" 
 
 "Looks like it. It just does. Now where d they 
 hide him, do you reckon?" 
 
 "I don t know," I says, disgusted, "and what s 
 more I don t care. They ve got the boots, and that s 
 all / cared about. He ll lay around these woods a 
 long time before /hunt him up." 
 
 Tom didn t feel no more intrust in him neither, only 
 curiosity to know what come of him ; but he said we d 
 lay low and keep dark and it wouldn t be long till the 
 dogs or somebody rousted him out. 
 
 We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered 
 and put out and disappointed and swindled. I warn t 
 ever so down on a corpse before. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 TALKING WITH THE GHOST 
 
 IT warn t very cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she 
 looked old and tired and let the children snarl and 
 fuss at one another and didn t seem to notice it was 
 going on, which wasn t her usual style; me and Tom 
 had a plenty to think about without talking ; Benny she 
 looked like she hadn t had much sleep, and whenever 
 she d lift her head a little and steal a look towards her 
 father you could see there was tears in her eyes ; and 
 as for the old man, his things stayed on his plate and 
 got cold without him knowing they was there, I reckon, 
 for he was thinking and thinking all the time, and never 
 said a word and never et a bite. 
 
 By and by when it was stillest, that nigger s head 
 was poked in at the door again, and he said his Marse 
 Brace was getting powerful uneasy about Marse Jubiter, 
 which hadn t come home yet, and would Marse Silas 
 please 
 
 He was looking at Uncle Silas, and he stopped there, 
 like the rest of his words was froze ; for Uncle Silas he 
 rose up shaky and steadied himself leaning his fingers 
 on the table, and he was panting, and his eyes was set 
 on the nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his 
 
 (184) 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 185 
 
 other hand up to his throat a couple of times, and at 
 last he got his words started, and says: 
 
 1 Does he does he think what does he think ! 
 Tell him tell him " Then he sunk down in his 
 chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could hardly 
 hear him : Go away go away ! 
 
 The nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we 
 all felt well, I don t know how we felt, but it was 
 awful, with the old man panting there, and his eyes set 
 and looking like a person that was dying. None of us 
 could budge ; but Benny she slid around soft, with her 
 tears running down, and stood by his side, and nestled 
 his old gray head up against her and begun to stroke it 
 and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go 
 away, and we done it, going out very quiet, like the 
 dead was there. 
 
 Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty 
 solemn, and saying how different it was now to what it 
 was last summer when we was here and everything was 
 so peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much 
 of Uncle Silas, and he was so cheerful and simple- 
 hearted and pudd n-headed and good and now look 
 at him. If he hadn t lost his mind he wasn t much 
 short of it. That was what we allowed. 
 
 It was a most lovely day now, and bright and sun 
 shiny ; and the further and further we went over the 
 hills towards the prairie the lovelier and lovelier the 
 trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed 
 strange and somehow wrong that there had to be 
 trouble in such a world as this. And then all of a 
 
186 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 sudden I catched my breath and grabbed Tom s arm, and 
 all my livers and lungs and things fell down into my legs. 
 
 4 * There it is!" I says. We jumped back behind a 
 bush shivering, and Tom says : 
 
 " Sh! don t make a noise." 
 
 It was setting on a log right in the edge of a little 
 prairie, thinking. I tried to get Tom to come away, 
 but he wouldn t, and I dasn t budge by myself. He 
 said we mightn t ever get another chance to see one, 
 and he was going to look his fill at this one if he died 
 for it. So I looked too, though it give me the fan- 
 tods to do it. Tom he had to talk, but he talked low. 
 He says: 
 
 "Poor Jakey, it s got all its things on, just as he 
 said he would. Now you see what we wasn t certain 
 about its hair. It s not long now the way it was: 
 it s got it cropped close to its head, the way he said he 
 would. Huck, I never see anything look any more 
 naturaler than what It does." 
 
 "Nor I neither," I says; "I d recognize it any 
 wheres." 
 
 "So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genu- 
 wyne, just the way it done before it died." 
 
 So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says : 
 
 " Huck, there s something mighty curious about this 
 one, don t you know? It oughtn t to be going around 
 in the daytime." 
 
 "That s so, Tom I never heard the like of it 
 before." 
 
 " No, sir, they don t ever come out only at night 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 187 
 
 and then not till after twelve. There s something 
 wrong about this one, now you mark my words. I 
 don t believe it s got any right to be around in the 
 daytime. But don t it look natural! Jake was going 
 to play deef and dumb here, so the neighbors wouldn t 
 know his voice. Do you reckon it would do that if we 
 was to holler at it?" 
 
 44 Lordy, Tom, don t talk so ! If you was to holler 
 at it I d die in my tracks." 
 
 44 Don t you worry, I ain t going to holler at it. 
 Look, Huck, it s a-scratching its head don t you see?" 
 
 "Well, what of it?" 
 
 44 Why, this. What s the sense of it scratching its 
 head? There ain t anything there to itch; its head is 
 made out of fog or something like that, and can t itch. 
 A fog can t itch; any fool knows that." 
 
 44 Well, then, if it don t itch and can t itch, what in 
 the nation is it scratching it for? Ain t it just habit, 
 don t you reckon?" 
 
 44 No, sir, I don t. I ain t a bit satisfied about the 
 way this one acts. I ve a blame good notion it s a 
 bogus one I have, as sure as I m a-sitting here. 
 Because, if it Huck!" 
 
 44 Well, what s the matter now?" 
 4 You can t see the bushes through it /" 
 
 44 Why, Tom, it s so, sure! It s as solid as a cow. 
 I sort of begin to think " 
 
 44 Huck, it s biting off a chaw of tobacker ! By 
 George, they don t chaw they hain t got anything to 
 chaw with. Huck ! 
 
188 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 11 I m a-listening." 
 
 " It ain t a ghost at all. It s Jake Dunlap his own 
 self!" 
 
 " Oh your granny!" I says. 
 
 " Huck Finn, did we find any corpse in the syca 
 mores?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 11 Or any sign of one?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 11 Mighty good reason. Hadn t ever been any corpse 
 there." 
 
 " Why, Tom, you know we heard " 
 
 "Yes, we did heard a howl or two. Does that 
 prove anybody was killed? Course it don t. And we 
 seen four men run, then this one come walking out and 
 we took it for a ghost. No more ghost than you are. 
 It was Jake Dunlap his own self, and it s Jake Dunlap 
 now. He s been and got his hair cropped, the way he 
 said he would, and he s playing himself for a stranger, 
 just the same as he said he would. Ghost? Hum! 
 he s as sound as a nut." 
 
 Then I see it all, and how we had took too much for 
 granted. I was powerful glad he didn t get killed, and 
 so was Tom, and we wondered which he would like the 
 best for us to never let on to know him, or how? 
 Tom reckoned the best way would be to go and ask 
 him. So he started; but I kept a little behind, because 
 I didn t know but it might be a ghost, after all. When 
 Tom got to where he was, he says: 
 
 " Me and Huck s mighty glad to see you again, 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 189 
 
 and you needn t be afeared we ll tell. And if you 
 think it ll be safer for you if we don t let on to know 
 you when we run across you, say the word and you ll 
 see you can depend on us, and would ruther cut our 
 hands off than get you into the least little bit of 
 danger." 
 
 First off he looked surprised to see us, and not very 
 glad, either; but as Tom went on he looked pleasanter, 
 and when he was done he smiled, and nodded his head 
 several times, and made signs with his hands, and says : 
 
 " Goo-goo goo-goo," the way deef and dummies 
 does. 
 
 Just then we see some of Steve Nickerson s people 
 coming that lived t other side of the prairie, so Tom 
 says: 
 
 * You do it elegant ; I never see anybody do it 
 better. You re right; play it on us, too; play it on 
 us same as the others; it ll keep you in practice and 
 prevent you making blunders. We ll keep away from 
 you and let on we don t know you, but any time we 
 can be any help, you just let us know." 
 
 Then we loafed along past the Nickersons, and of 
 course they asked if that was the new stranger yonder, 
 and where d he come from, and what was his name, 
 and which communion was he, Babtis or Methodis , 
 and which politics, Whig or Democrat, and how long 
 is he staying, and all them other questions that humans 
 always asks when a stranger comes, and animals does, 
 too. But Tom said he warn t able to make anything 
 out of deef and dumb signs, and the same with goo- 
 
190 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 gooing. Then we watched them go and bullyrag Jake ; 
 because we was pretty uneasy for him. Tom said it 
 would take him days to get so he wouldn t forget he 
 was a deef and dummy sometimes, and speak out be 
 fore he thought. When we had watched long enough 
 to see that Jake was getting along all right and working 
 his signs very good, we loafed along again, allowing to 
 strike the schoolhouse about recess time, which was a 
 three-mile tramp. 
 
 I was so disappointed not to hear Jake tell about the 
 row in the sycamores, and how near he come to get 
 ting killed, that I couldn t seem to get over it, and 
 Tom he felt the same, but said if we was in Jake s fix 
 we would want to go careful and keep still and not take 
 any chances. 
 
 The boys and girls was all glad to see us again, and 
 we had a real good time all through recess. Coming 
 to school the Henderson boys had come across the new 
 deef and dummy and told the rest ; so all the scholars 
 was chuck full of him and couldn t talk about anything 
 else, and was in a sweat to get a sight of him because 
 they hadn t ever seen a deef and dummy in their lives, 
 and it made a powerful excitement. 
 
 Tom said it was tough to have to keep mum now ; 
 said we would be heroes if we could come out and tell 
 all we knowed ; but after all, it was still more heroic to 
 keep mum, there warn t two boys in a million could do 
 it. That was Tom Sawyer s idea about it, and I 
 reckoned there warn t anybody could better it. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FINDING OF JUBITER DUNLAP 
 
 IN the next two or three days Dummy he got to be 
 powerful popular. He went associating around with 
 the neighbors, and they made much of him, and was 
 proud to have such a rattling curiosity among them. 
 They had him to breakfast, they had him to dinner, 
 they had him to supper; they kept him loaded up 
 with hog and hominy, and warn t ever tired staring at 
 him and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed 
 more about him, he was so uncommon and romantic. 
 His signs warn t no good; people couldn t under 
 stand them and he prob ly couldn t himself, but he 
 done a sight of goo-gooing, and so everybody was sat 
 isfied, and admired to hear him go it. He toted a 
 piece of slate around, and a pencil; and people wrote 
 questions on it and he wrote answers ; but there warn t 
 anybody could read his writing but Brace Dunlap. 
 Brace said he couldn t read it very good, but he could 
 manage to dig out the meaning most of the time. He 
 said Dummy said he belonged away off somers and 
 used to be well off, but got busted by swindlers which 
 he had trusted, and was poor now, and hadn t any way 
 to make a living. 
 
 13 (191) 
 
192 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 Everybody praised Brace Dunlap for being so good 
 to that stranger. He let him have a little log-cabin all 
 to himself, and had his niggers take care of it, and fetch 
 him all the vittles he wanted. 
 
 Dummy was at our house some, because old Uncle 
 Silas was so afflicted himself, these days, that anybody 
 else that was afflicted was a comfort to him. Me and 
 Tom didn t let on that we had knowed him before, and 
 he didn t let on that he had knowed us before. The 
 family talked their troubles out before him the same as 
 if he wasn t there, but we reckoned it wasn t any harm 
 for him to hear what they said. Generly he didn t 
 seem to notice, but sometimes he did. 
 
 Well, two or three days went along, and everybody 
 got to getting uneasy about Jubiter Dunlap. Every 
 body was asking everybody if they had any idea what 
 had become of him. No, they hadn t, they said: and 
 they shook their heads and said there was something 
 powerful strange about it. Another and another day 
 went by; then there was a report got around that praps 
 he was murdered. You bet it made a big stir ! Every 
 body s tongue was clacking away after that. Saturday 
 two or three gangs turned out and hunted the woods to 
 see if they could run across his remainders. Me and 
 Tom helped, and it was noble good times and exciting. 
 Tom he was so brimful of it he couldn t eat nor rest. 
 He said if we could find that corpse we would be 
 celebrated, and more talked about than if we got 
 drownded. 
 
 The others got tired and give it up ; but not Tom 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 193 
 
 Sawyer that warn t his style. Saturday night he 
 didn t sleep any, hardly, trying to think up a plan; 
 and towards daylight in the morning he struck it. He 
 snaked me out of bed and was all excited, and says: 
 
 "Quick, Huck, snatch on your clothes I ve got 
 it! Bloodhound!" 
 
 In two minutes we was tearing up the river road in 
 the dark towards the village. Old Jeff Hooker had a 
 bloodhound, and Tom was going to borrow him. I 
 says: 
 
 The trail s too old, Tom and besides, it s rained, 
 you know." 
 
 " It don t make any difference, Huck. If the body s 
 hid in the woods anywhere around the hound will find 
 it. If he s been murdered and buried, they wouldn t 
 bury him deep, it ain t likely, and if the dog goes over 
 the spot he ll scent him, sure. Huck, we re going to 
 be celebrated, sure as you re born !" 
 
 He was just a-blazing; and whenever he got afire he 
 was most likely to get afire all over. That was the way 
 this time. In two minutes he had got it all ciphered 
 out, and wasn t only just going to find the corpse 
 no, he was going to get on the track of that murderer 
 and hunt him down, too ; and not only that, but he 
 was going to stick to him till 
 
 " Well," I says, " you better find the corpse first; I 
 reckon that s a-plenty for to-day. For all we know, 
 there ain t any corpse and nobody hain t been mur 
 dered. That cuss could a gone off somers and not 
 been killed at all." 
 
194 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 That graveled him, and he says: 
 
 " Huck Finn, I never see such a person as you to 
 want to spoil everything. As long as you can t see 
 anything hopeful in a thing, you won t let anybody 
 else. What good can it do you to throw cold water on 
 that corpse and get up that selfish theory that there 
 ain t been any murder? None in the world. I don t 
 see how you can act so. I wouldn t treat you like 
 that, and you know it. Here we ve got a noble good 
 opportunity to make a ruputation, and " 
 
 " Oh, go ahead," I says. " I m sorry, and I take it 
 all back. I didn t mean nothing. Fix it any way 
 you want it. He ain t any consequence to me. If 
 he s killed, I m as glad of it as you are; and if he " 
 
 " I never said anything about being glad ; I only " 
 
 "Well, then, I m as sorry as you are. Any way 
 you druther have it, that is the way / druther have it. 
 He" 
 
 " There ain t any druthers about it, Huck Finn; no 
 body said anything about druthers. And as for" 
 
 He forgot he was talking, and went tramping along, 
 studying. He begun to get excited again, and pretty 
 soon he says : 
 
 *"? V 
 
 " Huck, it 11 be the bulliest" thing that ever happened 
 if we find the body after everybody else has quit look 
 ing, and then go ahead and hunt up the murderer. It 
 won t only be an honor to us, but it 11 be an honor to 
 Uncle Silas because it was us that done it. It 11 set 
 him up again, you see if it don t." 
 
 But Old Jeff Hooker he throwed cold water on the 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 195 
 
 whole business when we got to his blacksmith shop and 
 told him what we come for. 
 
 "You can take the dog," he says, "but you ain t 
 a-going to find any corpse, because there ain t any 
 corpse to find. Everybody s quit looking, and they re 
 right. Soon as they come to think, they knowed there 
 warn t no corpse. And I ll tell you for why. What 
 does a person kill another person for, Tom Sawyer? 
 answer me that." 
 
 "Why, he er " 
 
 "Answer up ! You ain t no fool. What does he kill 
 him for? " 
 
 "Well, sometimes it s for revenge, and " 
 4 Wait. One thing at a time. Revenge, says you; 
 and right you are. Now who ever had anything agin 
 that poor trifling no-account? Who do you reckon 
 would want to kill him ? that rabbit ! 
 
 Tom was stuck. I reckon he hadn t thought of a 
 person having to have a reason for killing a person be 
 fore, and now he sees it warn t likely anybody would 
 have that much of a grudge against a lamb like Jubiter 
 Dunlap. The blacksmith says, by and by: 
 
 The revenge idea won t work, you see. Well, 
 then, what s next? Robbery? B gosh, that must a* 
 been it, Tom ! Yes, sirree, I reckon we ve struck it 
 this time. Some feller wanted his gallus-buckles, and 
 so he" 
 
 But it was so funny he busted out laughing, and just 
 went on laughing and laughing and laughing till he was 
 most dead, and Tom looked so put out and cheap that 
 
196 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 I knowed he was ashamed he had come, and he wished 
 he hadn t. But old Hooker never let up on him. He 
 raked up everything a person ever could want to kill 
 another person about, and any fool could see they 
 didn t any of them fit this case, and he just made no 
 end of fun of the whole business and of the people 
 that had been hunting the body ; and he said : 
 
 " If they d had any sense they d a knowed the lazy 
 cuss slid out because he wanted a loafing spell after all 
 this work. He ll come pottering back in a couple of 
 weeks, and then how 11 you fellers feel? But, laws 
 bless you, take the dog, and go and hunt his re 
 mainders. Do, Tom." 
 
 Then he busted out, and had another of them forty- 
 rod laughs of hisn. Tom couldn t back down after all 
 this, so he said, "All right, unchain him;" and the 
 blacksmith done it, and we started home and left that 
 old man laughing yet. 
 
 It was a lovely dog. There ain t any dog that s got 
 a lovelier disposition than a bloodhound, and this one 
 knowed us and liked us. He capered and raced 
 around ever so friendly, and powerful glad to be free 
 and have a holiday; but Tom was so cut up he couldn t 
 take any intrust iahim, and said he wished he d stopped 
 and thought a minute before he ever started on such a 
 fool errand. He said old Jeff Hooker would tell every 
 body, and we d never hear the last of it. 
 
 So we loafed along home down the back lanes, feel 
 ing pretty glum and not talking. When w r e was pass 
 ing the far corner of our tobacker field we heard the 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 197 
 
 dog set up a long howl in there, and we went to the 
 place and he was scratching the ground with all his 
 might, and every now and then canting up his head 
 sideways and fetching another howl. 
 
 It was a long square, the shape of a grave ; the rain 
 had made it sink down and show the shape. The 
 minute we come and stood there we looked at one 
 another and never said a word. When the dog had 
 dug down only a few inches he grabbed something and 
 pulled it up, and it was an arm and a sleeve. Tom 
 kind of gasped out, and says : 
 
 " Come away, Huck it s found." 
 
 I just felt awful. We struck for the road and 
 fetched the first men that come along. They got a 
 spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you never 
 see such an excitement. You couldn t make anything 
 out of the face, but you didn t need to. Everybody 
 said: 
 
 " Poor Jubiter; it s his clothes, to the last rag!" 
 
 Some rushed off to spread the news and tell the 
 justice of the peace and have an inquest, and me and 
 Tom lit out for the house. Tom was all afire and most 
 out of breath when we come tearing in where Uncle 
 Silas and Aunt Sally and Benny was. Tom sung 
 out: 
 
 " Me and Huck s found Jubiter Dunlap s corpse all 
 by ourselves with a bloodhound, after everybody else 
 had quit hunting and given it up; and if it hadn t a 
 been for us it never would a been found; and he was 
 murdered too they done it with a club or something 
 
198 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 like that; and I m going to start in and find the mur 
 derer, next, and I bet I ll do it!" 
 
 Aunt Sally and Benny sprung up pale and astonished, 
 but Uncle Silas fell right forward out of his chair on to 
 the floor and groans out: 
 
 " Oh, my God, you ve found him now!" 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE ARREST OF UNCLE SILAS 
 
 THEM awful words froze us solid. We couldn t 
 move hand or foot for as much as half a minute. 
 Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man up 
 and got him into his chair, and Benny petted him and 
 kissed him and tried to comfort him, and poor old 
 Aunt Sally she done the same; but, poor things, they 
 was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their 
 right minds that they didn t hardly know what they was 
 about. With Tom it was awful; it most petrified him 
 to think maybe he had got his uncle into a thousand 
 times more trouble than ever, and maybe it wouldn t 
 ever happened if he hadn t been so ambitious to get 
 celebrated, and let the corpse alone the way the others 
 done. But pretty soon he sort of come to himself 
 again and says : 
 
 11 Uncle Silas, don t you say another word like that. 
 It s dangerous, and there ain t a shadder of truth in it." 
 
 Aunt Sally and Benny was thankful to hear him say 
 that, and they said the same; but the old man he 
 wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless, and the tears 
 run down his face, and he says: 
 
 (i99) 
 
200 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 "No I done it ; poor Jubiter, I done it ! " 
 
 It was dreadful to hear him say it. Then he went 
 on and told about it, and said it happened the day 
 me and Tom come along about sundown. He said 
 Jubiter pestered him and aggravated him till he was so 
 mad he just sort of lost his mind and grabbed up a stick 
 and hit him over the head with all his might, and 
 Jubiter dropped in his tracks. Then he was scared and 
 sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted his head 
 up, and begged him to speak and say he wasn t dead; 
 and before long he come to, and when he see who it 
 was holding his head, he jumped like he was most 
 scared to death, and cleared the fence and tore into the 
 woods, and was gone. So he hoped he wasn t hurt 
 bad. 
 
 "But laws," he says, "it was only just fear that 
 gave him that last little spurt of strength, and of course 
 it soon played out and he laid down in the bush, and 
 there wasn t anybody to help him, and he died." 
 
 Then the old man cried and grieved, and said he was 
 a murderer and the mark of Cain was on him, and he 
 had disgraced his family and was going to be found 
 out and hung. But Tom said : 
 
 " No, you ain t going to be found out. You didn t 
 kill him. One lick wouldn t kill him. Somebody else 
 done it." 
 
 "Oh, yes," he says, "I done it nobody else. 
 Who else had anything against him? Who else could 
 have anything against him?" 
 
 He looked up kind of like he hoped some of us could 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 201 
 
 mention somebody that could have a grudge against 
 that harmless no-account, but of course it warn t no 
 use he had us; we couldn t say a word. He 
 noticed that, and he saddened down again, and I never 
 see a face so miserable and so pitiful to see. Tom 
 had a sudden idea, and says : 
 
 "But hold on! somebody buried him. Now 
 who" 
 
 He shut off sudden. I knowed the reason. It give 
 me the cold shudders when he said them words, because 
 right away I remembered about us seeing Uncle Silas 
 prowling around with a long-handled shovel away in 
 the night that night. And I knowed Benny seen him, 
 too, because she was talking about it one day. The 
 minute Tom shut off he changed the subject and went 
 to begging Uncle Silas to keep mum, and the rest of us 
 done the same, and said he must, and said it wasn t his 
 business to tell on himself, and if he kept mum nobody 
 would ever know; but if it was found out and any 
 harm come to him it would break the family s hearts 
 and kill them, and yet never do anybody any good. 
 So at last he promised. We was all of us more com 
 fortable, then, and went to work to cheer up the old 
 man. We told him all he d got to do was to keep still, 
 and it wouldn t be long till the whole thing would blow 
 over and be forgot. We all said there wouldn t any 
 body ever suspect Uncle Silas, nor ever dream of such 
 a thing, he being so good and kind, and having such a 
 good character ; and Tom says, cordial and hearty, he 
 says : 
 
202 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 "Why, just look at it a minute; just consider. 
 Here is Uncle Silas, all these years a preacher at his 
 own expense ; all these years doing good with all his 
 might and every way he can think of at his own ex 
 pense, all the time ; always been loved by everybody, 
 and respected ; always been peaceable and minding his 
 own business, the very last man in this whole deestrict 
 to touch a person, and everybody knows it. Suspect 
 him ? Why, it ain t any more possible than " 
 
 * By authority of the State of Arkansaw, I arrest 
 you for the murder of Jubiter Dunlap!" shouts the 
 sheriff at the door. 
 
 It was awful. Aunt Sally and Benny flung themselves 
 at Uncle Silas, screaming and crying, and hugged him 
 and hung to him, and Aunt Sally said go away, she 
 wouldn t ever give him up, they shouldn t have him, 
 and the niggers they come crowding and crying to the 
 door and- well, I couldn t stand it; it was enough to 
 break a person s heart; so I got out. 
 
 They took him up to the little one-horse jail in the 
 village, and we all went along to tell him good-bye; 
 and Tom was feeling elegant, and says to me, " We ll 
 have a most noble good time and heaps of danger some 
 dark night getting him out of there, Huck, and it 11 be 
 talked about everywheres and we will be celebrated;" 
 but the old man busted that scheme up the minute he 
 whispered to him about it. He said no, it was his duty 
 to stand whatever the law done to him, and he would 
 stick to the jail plumb through to the end, even if 
 there warn t no door to it. It disappointed Tom 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 203 
 
 and graveled him a good deal, but he had to put up 
 with it. 
 
 But he felt responsible and bound to get his uncle 
 Silas free ; and he told Aunt Sally, the last thing, not 
 to worry, because he was going to turn in and work 
 night and day and beat this game and fetch Uncle Silas 
 out innocent; and she was very loving to him and 
 thanked him and said she knowed he would do his very 
 best. And she told us to help Benny take care of the 
 house and the children, and then we had a good-bye 
 cry all around and went back to the farm, and left her 
 there to live with the jailer s wife a month till the trial 
 in October. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 TOM SAWYER DISCOVERS THE MURDERERS 
 
 WELL, that was a hard month on us all. Poor 
 Benny, she kept up the best she could, and me 
 and Tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the 
 house, but it kind of went for nothing, as you may say. 
 It was the same up at the jail. We went up every day 
 to see the old people, but it was awful dreary, because 
 the old man warn t sleeping much, and was walking in 
 his sleep considerable; and so he got to looking fagged 
 and miserable, and his mind got shaky, and we all got 
 afraid his troubles would break him down and kill him. 
 And whenever we tried to persuade him to feel cheer- 
 fuler, he only shook his head and said if we only 
 knowed what it was to carry around a murderer s load 
 on your heart we wouldn t talk that way. Tom and all 
 of us kept telling him it wasn t murder, but just acci 
 dental killing, but it never made any difference it was 
 murder, and he wouldn t have it any other way. He 
 actu ly begun to come out plain and square towards 
 trial time and acknowledge that he tried to kill the man. 
 Why, that was awful, you know. It made things seem 
 fifty times as dreadful, and there warn t no more com- 
 
 (204) 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 205 
 
 fort for Aunt Sally and Benny. But he promised he 
 wouldn t say a word about his murder when others 
 was around, and v/e was glad of that. 
 
 Tom Sawyer racked the head off of himself all that 
 month trying to plan some way out for Uncle Silas, and 
 many s the night he kept me up most all night with 
 this kind of tiresome work, but he couldn t seem to get 
 on the right track no way. As for me, I reckoned a 
 body might as well give it up, it all looked so blue and 
 I was so downhearted; but he wouldn t. He stuck to 
 the business right along, and went on planning and 
 thinking and ransacking his head. 
 
 So at last the trial come on, towards the middle of 
 October, and we was all in the court. The place was 
 jammed, of course. Poor old Uncle Silas, he looked 
 more like a dead person than a live one, his eyes was so 
 hollow and he looked so thin and so mournful. Benny 
 she set on one side of him and Aunt Sally on the other, 
 and they had veils on, and was full of trouble. But 
 Tom he set by our lawyer, and had his finger in every- 
 wheres, of course. The lawyer let him, and the judge 
 let him. He most took the business out of the law 
 yer s hands sometimes; which was well enough, be 
 cause that was only a mud-turtle of a back-settlement 
 lawyer and didn t know enough to come in when it 
 rains, as the saying is. 
 
 They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the 
 jDIosJtitutjon got up and begun. He made a terrible 
 speech against the old man, that made him moan and 
 groan, and made Benny and Aunt Sally cry. The way 
 
206 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 he told about the murder kind of knocked us all stupid 
 it was so different from the old man s tale. He said 
 he was going to prove that Uncle Silas was seen to 
 kill Jubiter Dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it 
 deliberate, and said he was going to kill him the very 
 minute he hit him with the club ; and they seen him hide 
 Jubiter in the bushes, and they seen that Jubiter was 
 stone-dead. And said Uncle Silas come later and 
 lugged Jubiter down into the tobacker field, and two 
 men seen him do it. And said Uncle Silas turned out, 
 away in the night, and buried Jubiter, and a man seen 
 him at it. 
 
 I says to myself, poor old Uncle Silas has been lying 
 about it because he reckoned nobody seen him and he 
 couldn t bear to break Aunt Sally s heart and Benny s; 
 and right he was: as for me, I would a lied the 
 same way, and so would anybody that had any feeling, 
 to save them such misery and sorrow which tliey warn t 
 no ways responsible for. Well, it made our lawyer 
 look pretty sick; and it knocked Tom silly, too, for a 
 little spell, but then he braced up and let on that he 
 warn t worried but I knowed he was, all the same. 
 And the people my, but it made a stir amongst 
 them! 
 
 And when that lawyer was done telling the jury what 
 he was going to prove, he set down and begun to work 
 his witnesses. 
 
 First, he called a lot of them to show that there was 
 bad blood betwixt Uncle Silas and the diseased ; and 
 they told how they had heard Uncle Silas threaten the 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 207 
 
 diseased, at one time and another, and how it got 
 worse and worse and everybody was talking about it, 
 and how diseased got afraid of his life, and told two or 
 three of them he was certain Uncle Silas would up and 
 kill him some time or another. 
 
 Tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; 
 but it warn t no use, they stuck to what they said. 
 
 Next, they called up Lem Beebe, and he took the 
 stand. It come into my mind, then, how Lem and Jim 
 Lane had come along talking, that time, about borrow 
 ing a dog or something from Jubiter Dunlap ; and that 
 brought up the blackberries and the lantern ; and that 
 brought up Bill and Jack Withers, and how they passed 
 by, talking about a nigger stealing Uncle Silas s corn; 
 and that fetched up our old ghost that come along 
 about the same time and scared us so and here he 
 was too, and a privileged character, on accounts of his 
 being deef and dumb and a stranger, and they had fixed 
 him a chair inside the railing, where he could cross his 
 legs and be comfortable, whilst the other people was all 
 in a jam so they couldn t hardly breathe. So it all 
 come back to me just the way it was that day; and it 
 made me mournful to think how pleasant it was up to 
 then, and how miserable ever since. 
 
 Lem Beebe > sworn, said: " I was a-coming along, that day, second of 
 September, and Jim Lane was with me, and it was towards sundown, and 
 we heard loud talk, like quarrelling, and we was very close, only the hazel 
 bushes between (that s along the fence); and we heard a voice say, * I ve 
 told you more n once I d kill you, and knowed it was this prisoner s voice; 
 and then we see a club come up above the bushes and down out of sight 
 again, and heard a smashing thump and then a groan or two; and then we 
 
 14 
 
208 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 crope soft to where we could see, and there laid Jupiter Dunlap dead, and 
 this prisoner standing over him with the club; and the next he hauled the 
 dead man into a clump of bushes and hid him, and then we stooped low, 
 to be out of sight, and got away." 
 
 Well, it was awful. It kind of froze everybody s 
 blood to hear it, and the house was most as still whilst 
 he was telling it as if there warn t nobody in it. And 
 when he was done, you could hear them gasp and sigh, 
 all over the house, and look at one another the same 
 as to say, " Ain t it perfectly terrible ain t it awful !" 
 
 Now happened a thing that astonished me. All the 
 time the first witnesses was proving the bad blood and 
 the threats and all that, Tom Sawyer was alive and lay 
 ing for them; and the minute they was through, he 
 went for them, and done his level best to catch them in 
 lies and spile their testimony. But now, how different. 
 When Lem first begun to talk, and never said anything 
 about speaking to Jubiter or trying to borrow a dog 
 off of him, he was all alive and laying for Lem, and you 
 could see he was getting ready to cross-question him to 
 death pretty soon, and then I judged him and me would 
 go on the stand by and by and tell what we heard him 
 and Jim Lane say. But the next time I looked at Tom 
 I got the cold shivers. Why, he was in the brownest 
 study you ever see miles and miles away. He warn t 
 hearing a word Lem Beebe was saying; and when he 
 got through he was still in that brown-study, just the 
 same. Our lawyer joggled him, and then he looked up 
 startled, and says, " Take the witness if you want him. 
 Lemme alone I want to think." 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 209 
 
 Well, that beat me. I couldn t understand it. And 
 Benny and her mother oh, they looked sick, they 
 was so troubled. They shoved their veils to one side 
 and tried to get his eye, but it warn t any use, and I 
 couldn t get his eye either. So the mud-turtle he 
 tackled the witness, but it didn t amount to nothing; 
 and he made a mess of it. 
 
 Then they called up Jim Lane, and he told the very 
 same story over again, exact. Tom never listened to 
 this one at all, but set there thinking and thinking, miles 
 and miles away. So the mud-turtle went in alone 
 again and come out just as flat as he done before. The 
 lawyer for the prostitution looked very comfortable, 
 but the judge looked disgusted. You see, Tom was 
 just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it 
 was Arkansaw law for a prisoner to choose anybody he 
 wanted to help his lawyer, and Tom had had Uncle 
 Silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching 
 it and you could see the judge didn t like it much. 
 
 All that the mud-turtle got out of Lem and Jim was 
 this : he asked them : 
 
 " Why didn t you go and tell what you saw?" 
 
 * We was afraid we would get mixed up in it our 
 selves. And we was just starting down the river 
 a-hunting for all the week besides ; but as soon as we 
 come back we found out they d been searching for the 
 body, so then we went and told Brace Dunlap all 
 about it." 
 
 "When was that?" 
 
 " Saturday night, September 9th, M 
 14** 
 
210 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 The judge he spoke up and says : 
 
 " Mr. Sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions 
 of being accessionary after the fact to the murder." 
 
 The lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, 
 and says: 
 
 "Your honor! I protest against this extraordi " 
 
 " Set down !" says the judge, pulling his bowie and 
 laying it on his pulpit. "I beg you to respect the 
 Court." 
 
 So he done it. Then he called Bill Withers. 
 
 Bill Wither s> sworn, said: "I was coming along about sundown, 
 Saturday, September 2d, by the prisoner s field, and my brother Jack was 
 with me, and we seen a man toting off something heavy on his back and 
 allowed it was a nigger stealing corn; we couldn t see distinct; next we 
 made out that it was one man carrying another: and the way it hung, so 
 kind of limp, we judged it was somebody that was drunk; and by the 
 man s walk we said it was Parson Silas, and we judged he had found Sam 
 Cooper drunk in the road, which he was always trying to reform him, and 
 was toting him out of danger. 5 
 
 It made the people shiver to think of poor old Uncle 
 Silas toting off the diseased down to the place in his 
 tobacker field where the dog dug up the body, but 
 there warn t much sympathy around amongst the faces, 
 and I heard one cuss say, " Tis the coldest blooded 
 work I ever struck, lugging a murdered man around 
 like that, and going to bury him like a animal, and him 
 a preacher at that. 
 
 Tom he went on thinking, and never took no notice ; 
 so our lawyer took the witness and done the best he 
 could, and it was plenty poor enough. 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 211 
 
 Then Jack Withers he come on the stand and told the 
 same tale, just like Bill done. 
 
 And after him comes Brace Dunlap, and he was look 
 ing very mournful, and most crying; and there was a 
 rustle and a stir all around, and everybody got ready to 
 listen, and lots of the women folks said, " Poor cretur, 
 poor cretur," and you could see a many of them wip 
 ing their eyes. 
 
 Brace Dunlap, sworn, said: "I was in considerable trouble a long 
 time about my poor brother, but I reckoned things warn t near so bad as 
 he made out, and I couldn t make myself believe anybody would have the 
 heart to hurt a poor harmless cretur like that " [by jings, I was sure I seen 
 Tom give a kind of a faint little start, and then look disappointed again] 
 "and you know I couldn t think a preacher would hurt him it warn t 
 natural to think such an onlikely thing so I never paid much attention, 
 and now I sha n t ever, ever forgive myself; for if I had a done different, 
 my poor brother would be with me this day, and not laying yonder mur 
 dered, and him so harmless." He kind of broke down there and choked 
 up, and waited to get his voice; and people all around said the most pitiful 
 things, and women cried; and it was very still in there, and solemn, and 
 old Uncle Silas, poor thing, he give a groan right out so everybody heard 
 him. Then Brace he went on, " Saturday, September 2d, he didn t come 
 home to supper. By-and-by I got a little uneasy, and one of my niggers 
 went over to this prisoner s place, but come back and said he warn t there. 
 So I got uneasier and uneasier, and couldn t rest. I went to bed, but I 
 couldn t sleep; and turned out, away late in the night, and went wander 
 ing over to this prisoner s place and all around about there a good while, 
 hoping I would run across my poor brother, and never knowing he was out 
 of his troubles and gone to a better shore " So he broke down and 
 choked up again, and most all the women was crying now. Pretty soon he 
 got another start and says: " But it warn t no use; so at last I went home 
 and tried to get some sleep, but couldn t. Well, in a day or two everybody 
 was uneasy, and they got to talking about this prisoner s threats, and took 
 to the idea, which I didn t take no stock in, that my brother was murdered; 
 so they hunted around and tried to find his body, but couldn t and give it 
 
212 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 up. And so I reckoned he was gone off somers to have a little peace, and 
 would come back to us when his troubles was kind of healed. But late 
 Saturday night, the 9th, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane come to my house and 
 told me all told me the whole awful sassination, and my heart was 
 broke. And then I remembered something that hadn t took no hold of me 
 at the time, because reports said this prisoner had took to walking in his 
 sleep and doing all kind of things of no consequence, not knowing what he 
 was about. I will tell you what that thing was that come back into my 
 memory. Away late that awful Saturday night when I was wandering 
 around about this prisoner s place, grieving and troubled, I was down by 
 the corner of the tobacker-field and I heard a sound like digging in a gritty 
 soil; and I crope nearer and peeped through the vines that hung on the 
 rail fence and seen this prisoner shoveling shoveling with a long-handled 
 shovel heaving earth into a big hole that was most filled up; his back 
 was to me, but it was bright moonlight and I knowed him by his old green 
 baize work-gown with a splattery white patch in the middle of the back 
 like somebody had hit him with a snowball. He was burying the man he^d 
 murdered! " 
 
 And he slumped down in his chair crying and sob 
 bing, and most everybody in the house busted out 
 wailing, and crying, and saying, "Oh, it s awful 
 awful horrible ! and there was a most tremendous ex 
 citement, and you couldn t hear yourself think; and 
 right in the midst of it up jumps old Uncle Silas, white 
 as a sheet, and sings out : 
 
 "I?s true , every word / murdered him in cold 
 blood!" 
 
 By Jackson, it petrified them ! People rose up wild 
 all over the house, straining and staring for a better look 
 at him, and the judge was hammering with his mallet 
 and the sheriff yelling " Order order in the court 
 order!" 
 
 And all the while the old man stood there a-quaking 
 and his eyes a-burning, and not looking at his wife and 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 213 
 
 daughter, which was clinging to him and begging him 
 to keep still, but pawing them off with his hands and 
 saying he would clear his black soul from crime, he 
 would heave off this load that was more than he could 
 bear, and he wouldn t bear it another hour! And 
 then he raged right along with his awful tale, every 
 body a-staring and gasping, judge, jury, lawyers, and 
 everybody, and Benny and Aunt Sally crying their 
 hearts out. And by George, Tom Sawyer never 
 looked at him once! Never once just set there 
 gazing with all his eyes at something else, I couldn t 
 tell what. And so the old man raged right along, 
 pouring his words out like a stream of fire : 
 
 * I killed him ! I am guilty ! But I never had the 
 notion in my life to hurt him or harm him, spite of all 
 them lies about my threatening him, till the very 
 minute I raised the club then my heart went cold ! 
 then the pity all went out of it, and I struck to kill ! In 
 that one moment all my wrongs come into my mind ; 
 all the insults that that man and the scoundrel his 
 brother, there, had put upon me, and how they laid in 
 together to ruin me with the people, and take away 
 my good name, and drive me to some deed that would 
 destroy me and my family that hadn t ever done tliem 
 no harm, so help me God ! And they done it in a mean 
 revenge for why? Because my innocent pure girl 
 here at my side wouldn t marry that rich, insolent, 
 ignorant coward, Brace Dunlap, who s been sniveling 
 here over a brother he never cared a brass farthing 
 for " [I see Tom give a jump and look glad this time, 
 
214 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 to a dead certainty] "and in that moment I ve told 
 you about, I forgot my God and remembered only my 
 heart s bitterness, God forgive me, and I struck to kill. 
 In one second I was miserably sorry oh, filled with 
 remorse ; but I thought of my poor family, and I must 
 hide what I d done for their sakes; and I did hide that 
 corpse in the bushes ; and presently I carried it to the 
 tobacker field ; and in the deep night I went with my 
 shovel and buried it where " 
 
 Up jumps Tom and shouts: 
 
 " Now, I ve got it!" and waves his hand, oh, ever 
 so fine and starchy, towards the old man, and says : 
 
 " Set down! A murder was done, but you never 
 had no hand in it!" 
 
 Well, sir, you could a heard a pin drop. And the 
 old man he sunk down kind of bewildered in his seat 
 and Aunt Sally and Benny didn t know it, because they 
 was so astonished and staring at Tom with their 
 mouths open and not knowing what they was about. 
 And the whole house the same. / never seen people 
 look so helpless and tangled up, and I hain t ever seen 
 eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn 
 did. Tom says, perfectly ca m: 
 Your honor, may I speak?" 
 
 " For God s sake, yes go on!" says the judge, so 
 astonished and mixed up he didn t know what he was 
 about hardly. 
 
 Then Tom he stood there and waited a second or two 
 
 that was for to work up an " effect," as he calls it 
 
 then he started in just as ca m as ever, and says: 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 215 
 
 4< For about two weeks now there s been a little bill 
 sticking on the front of this courthouse offering two 
 thousand dollars reward for a couple of big di monds 
 stole at St. Louis. Them di monds is worth twelve 
 thousand dollars. But never mind about that till I get 
 to it. Now about this murder. I will tell you all 
 about it how it happened who done it every 
 afctail." 
 
 You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to 
 listen for all they was worth. 
 
 This man here, Brace Dunlap, that s been sniveling 
 so about his dead brother that you know he never 
 cared a straw for, wanted to marry that young girl 
 there, and she wouldn t have him. So he told Uncle 
 Silas he would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed 
 how powerful he was, and how little chance he had 
 against such a man, and he was scared and worried, and 
 done everything he could think of to smooth him over 
 arid get him to be good to him : he even took his no- 
 account brother Jubiter on the farm and give him wages 
 and stinted his own family to pay them ; and Jubiter 
 done everything his brother could contrive to insult 
 Uncle Silas, and fret and worry him, and try to drive 
 Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt, so as to injure Uncle 
 Silas with the people. And it done it. Everybody 
 turned against him and said the meanest kind of things 
 about him, and it graduly broke his heart yes, and 
 he was so worried and distressed that often he warn t 
 hardly in his right mind. 
 
 "Well, on that Saturday that we ve had so much 
 
216 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 trouble about, two of these witnesses here, Lem Beebe 
 and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle Silas and 
 Jubiter Dunlap was at work and that much of what 
 they ve said is true, the rest is lies. They didn t hear 
 Uncle Silas say he would kill Jubiter; they didn t hear 
 no blow struck; they didn t see no dead man, and they 
 didn t see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes. 
 Look at them now how they set there, wishing they 
 hadn t been so handy with their tongues; anyway, 
 they ll wish it before I get done. 
 
 " That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers 
 did see one man lugging off another one. That much 
 of what they said is true, and the rest is lies. First off 
 they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas s corn 
 you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out 
 somebody overheard them say that. That s because 
 they found out by and by who it was that was doing 
 the lugging, and they know best why they swore here 
 that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait which it 
 wasn t, and they knowed it when they swore to that lie. 
 
 "A man out in the moonlight did see a murdered 
 person put under ground in the tobacker field - but it 
 wasn t Uncle Silas that done the burying. He was in 
 his bed at that very time. 
 
 "Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if 
 you ve ever noticed this: that people, when they re 
 thinking deep, or when they re worried, are most always 
 doing something with their hands, and they don t know 
 it, and don t notice what it is their hands are doing. 
 Some stroke their chins ; some stroke their noses ; some 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 217 
 
 stroke up under their chin with their hand ; some twirl 
 a chain, some fumble a button, then there s some that 
 draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their 
 cheek, or under their chin or on their under lip. That s 
 my way. When I m restless, or worried, or thinking 
 hard, I draw capital V s on my cheek or on my under 
 lip or under my chin, and never anything but capital 
 V s and half the time I don t notice it and don t 
 know I m doing it." 
 
 That was odd. That is just what I do; only I make 
 an O. And I could see people nodding to one another, 
 same as they do when they mean " Thaf s so." 
 
 " Now, then, I ll go on. That same Saturday no, 
 it was the night before there was a steamboat laying 
 at Flagler s Landing, forty miles above here, and it 
 was raining and storming like the nation. And there 
 was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di monds 
 that s advertised out here on this courthouse door; 
 and he slipped ashore with his hand-bag and struck 
 out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping 
 he could get to this town all right and be safe. But he 
 had two pals aboard the boat, hiding, and he knowed 
 they was going to kill him the first chance they got and 
 take the di monds; because all three stole them, and 
 then this fellow he got hold of them and skipped. 
 
 ;< Well, he hadn t been gone more n ten minutes be 
 fore his pals found it out, and they jumped ashore and 
 lit out after him. Prob ly they burnt matches and 
 found his tracks. Anyway, they dogged along after 
 him all day Saturday and kept out of his sight; and 
 
218 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 towards sundown he come to the bunch of sycamores 
 down by Uncle Silas s field, and he went in there to 
 get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before 
 he showed himself here in the town and mind you he 
 done that just a little after the time that Uncle Silas was 
 hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the head with a club for 
 he did hit him. 
 
 " But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the 
 bunch of sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes 
 and slid in after him. 
 
 They fell on him and clubbed him to death. 
 1 Yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never 
 had no mercy on him, but clubbed him to death. And 
 two men that was running along the road heard him 
 yelling that way, and they made a rush into the syca 
 more bunch which was where they was bound for, 
 anyway and when the pals saw them they lit out and 
 the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight as 
 they could go. But only a minute or two then these 
 two new men slipped back very quiet into the syca 
 mores. 
 
 Then what did they do ? I will tell you what they 
 done. They found where the thief had got his disguise 
 out of his carpet-sack to put on ; so one of them strips 
 and puts on that disguise." 
 
 Tom waited a little here, for some more " effect "^ 
 then he says, very deliberate: 
 
 The man that put on that dead man s disguise was 
 Jubiter Dunlap ! 
 
 "Great Scott!" everybody shouted, all over the 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 219 
 
 house, and old Uncle Silas he looked perfectly 
 astonished. 
 
 "Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see. 
 Then they pulled off the dead man s boots and put 
 Jubiter Dunlap s old ragged shoes on the corpse and put 
 the corpse s boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter 
 Dunlap stayed where he was, and the other man lugged 
 the dead body off in the twilight ; and after midnight 
 he went to Uncle Silas s house, and took his old green 
 work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the 
 passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on, 
 and stole the long-handled shovel and went off down 
 into the tobacker field and buried the murdered man." 
 
 He stopped, and stood half a minute. Then 
 
 "And who do you reckon the murdered man was f 
 It was Jake Dunlap, the long-lost burglar!" 
 
 "Great Scott!" 
 
 "And the man that buried him was Brace Dunlap, 
 his brother!" 
 
 "Great Scott!" 
 
 "And who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here 
 that s letting on all these weeks to be a deef and dumb 
 stranger? It s Jubiter Dunlap !" 
 
 My land, they all busted out in a howl, and you 
 never see the like of that excitement since the day you 
 was born. And Tom he made a jump for Jubiter and 
 snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there 
 was the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as 
 anybody ! And Aunt Sally and Benny they went to 
 hugging and crying and kissing and smothering old 
 
220 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 Uncle Silas to that degree he was more muddled and 
 confused and mushed up in his mind than he ever was 
 before, and that is saying considerable. And next, 
 people begun to yell : 
 
 Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up every 
 body, and let him go on ! Go on, Tom Sawyer !" 
 
 Which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was 
 nuts for Tom Sawyer to be a public character that- 
 away, and a hero, as he calls it, So when it was all 
 quiet, he says : 
 
 " There ain t much left, only this. When that man 
 there, Bruce Dunlap, had most worried the life and 
 sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he plumb lost his 
 mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a 
 club, I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for 
 the woods to hide, and I reckon the game was for him 
 to slide out, in the night, and leave the country. 
 Then Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas 
 killed him and hid his body somers ; and that would 
 ruin Uncle Silas and drive him out of the country 
 hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they found 
 their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing 
 him, because he was so battered up, they see they had 
 a better thing; disguise both and bury Jake and dig 
 him up presently all dressed up in Jubiter s clothes, 
 and hire Jim Lane and Bill Withers and the others to 
 swear to some handy lies which they done. And 
 there they set, now, and I told them they would be 
 looking sick before I got done, and that is the way 
 they re looking now. 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 221 
 
 "Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on 
 the boat with the thieves, and the dead one told us all 
 about the di monds, and said the others would murder 
 him if they got the chance ; and we was going to help 
 him all we could. We was bound for the sycamores 
 when we heard them killing him in there ; but we was 
 in there in the early morning after the storm and 
 allowed nobody hadn t been killed, after all. And 
 when we see Jubiter Dunlap here spreading around in 
 the very same disguise Jake told us he was going to 
 wear, we thought it was Jake his own self and he was 
 goo-gooing deef and dumb, and that was according to 
 agreement. 
 
 " Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse 
 after the others quit, and we found it. And was proud, 
 too ; but Uncle Silas he knocked us crazy by telling us 
 he killed the man. So we was mighty sorry we found 
 the body, and was bound to save Uncle Silas s neck if 
 we could; and it was going to be tough work, too, 
 because he wouldn t let us break him out of prison the 
 way we done with our old nigger Jim. 
 
 " I done everything I could the whole month to think 
 up some way to save Uncle Silas, but I couldn t strike 
 a thing. So when we come into court to-day I come 
 empty, and couldn t see no chance anywheres. But 
 by and by I had a glimpse of something that set me 
 thinking just a little wee glimpse only that, and 
 not enough to make sure ; but it set me thinking hard 
 and watching, when I was only letting on to think ; 
 and by and by, sure enough, when Uncle Silas was pil- 
 
222 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 ing out that stuff about him killing Jubiter Dunlap, I 
 catched that glimpse again, and this time I jumped up 
 and shut down the proceedings, because I knowed 
 Jubiter Dunlap was a-setting here before me. I knowed 
 him by a thing which I seen him do and I remem 
 bered it. I d seen him do it when I was here a year 
 ago." 
 
 He stopped then, and studied a minute laying for 
 an "effect" I knowed it perfectly well. Then he 
 turned off like he was going to leave the platform, and 
 says, kind of lazy and indifferent: 
 
 "Well, I believe that is all." 
 
 Why, you never heard such a howl ! and it come 
 from the whole house : 
 
 " What was it you seen him do? Stay where you 
 are, you little devil ! You think you are going to 
 work a body up till his mouth s a-watering and stop 
 there? What was it he done?" 
 
 That was it, you see he just done it to get an 
 11 effect " ; you couldn t a pulled him off of that plat 
 form with a yoke of oxen. 
 
 " Oh, it wasn t anything much," he says. " I seen 
 him looking a little excited when he found Uncle Silas 
 was actuly fixing to hang himself for a murder that 
 warn t ever done; and he got more and more nervous 
 and worried, I a-watching him sharp but not seeming 
 to look at him and all of a sudden his hands begun 
 to work and fidget, and pretty soon his left crept up 
 and his finger drawed a cross on Jiis cheek, and then I 
 had him !" 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 223 
 
 Well, then they ripped and howled and stomped and 
 clapped their hands till Tom Sawyer was that proud 
 and happy he didn t know what to do with him 
 self. 
 
 And then the judge he looked down over his pulpit 
 and says : 
 
 " My boy, did you see all the various details of this 
 strange conspiracy and tragedy that you ve been de 
 scribing?" 
 
 " No, your honor, I didn t see any of them." 
 
 "Didn t see any of them! Why, you ve told the 
 whole history straight through, just the same as if 
 you d seen it with your eyes. How did you manage 
 that?" 
 
 Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable: 
 
 " Oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and 
 that together, your honor; just an ordinary little bit of 
 detective work; anybody could a done it." 
 
 " Nothing of the kind ! Not two in a million could 
 a done it. You are a very remarkable boy." 
 
 Then they let go and give Tom another smashing 
 round, and he well, he wouldn t a sold out for a 
 silver mine. Then the judge says : 
 
 " But are you certain you ve got this curious history 
 straight?" 
 
 84 Perfectly, your honor. Here is Brace Dunlap 
 let him deny his share of it if he wants to take the 
 chance; I ll engage to make him wish he hadn t said 
 anything Well, you see he s pretty quiet. And 
 
 his brother s pretty quiet, and them four witnesses that 
 15 
 
224 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 lied so and got paid for it, they re pretty quiet. And 
 as for Uncle Silas, it ain t any use for him to put in 
 his oar, I wouldn t believe him under oath!" 
 
 Well, sir, that fairly made them shout; and even the 
 judge he let go and laughed. Tom he was just feeling 
 like a rainbow. When they was done laughing he 
 looks up at the judge and says : 
 
 Your honor, there s a thief in this house." 
 
 "A thief?" 
 
 Yes, sir. And he s got them twelve-thousand- 
 dollar di monds on him." 
 
 By gracious, but it made a stir ! Everybody went 
 shouting: 
 
 "Which is him? which is him? p int him out!" 
 
 And the judge says : 
 
 " Point him out, my lad. Sheriff, you will arrest 
 him. Which one is it?" 
 
 Tom says : 
 This late dead man here Jubiter Dunlap." 
 
 Then there was another thundering let-go of astonish 
 ment and excitement; but Jubiter, which was astonished 
 enough before, was just fairly putrified with astonish 
 ment this time. And he spoke up, about half crying, 
 and says: 
 
 " Now that s a lie. Your honor, it ain t fair; I m 
 plenty bad enough without that. I done the other 
 things Brace he put me up to it, and persuaded me, 
 and promised he d make me rich, some day, and I done 
 it, and I m sorry I done it, and I wisht I hadn t; but I 
 hain t stole no di monds, and I hain t got no di monds; 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 225 
 
 I wisht I may never stir if it ain t so. The sheriff can 
 search me and see." 
 
 Tom says : 
 
 Your honor, it wasn t right to call him a thief, and 
 I ll let up on that a little. He did steal the di monds, 
 but he didn t know it. He stole them from his brother 
 Jake when he was laying dead, after Jake had stole them 
 from the other thieves; but Jubiter didn t know he was 
 stealing them; and he s been swelling around here with 
 them a month; yes, sir, twelve thousand dollars worth 
 of di monds on him all that riches, and going around 
 here every day just like a poor man. Yes, your honor, 
 he s got them on him now." 
 
 The judge spoke up and says : 
 
 " Search him, sheriff." 
 
 Well, sir, the sheriff he ransacked him high and low, 
 and everywhere: searched his hat, socks, seams, boots, 
 everything and Tom he stood there quiet, laying for 
 another of them effects of hisn. Finally the sheriff he 
 give it up, and everybody looked disappointed, and 
 Jubiter says : 
 
 "There, now! what d I tell you?" 
 
 And the judge says : 
 
 14 It appears you were mistaken this time, my 
 boy." 
 
 Then Tom took an attitude and let on to be studying 
 with all his might, and scratching his head. Then all 
 of a sudden he glanced up chipper, and says : 
 
 " Oh, now I ve got it! I d forgot." 
 
 Which was a lie, and I knowed it. Then he says: 
 
226 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 " Will somebody be good enough to lend me a little 
 small screwdriver? There was one in your brother s 
 hand-bag that you smouched, Jubiter, but I reckon 
 you didn t fetch it with you." 
 
 "No, I didn t. I didn t want it, and I give it 
 away." 
 
 "That was because you didn t know what it was 
 for." 
 
 Jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when 
 the thing Tom wanted was passed over the people s 
 heads till it got to him, he says to Jubiter: 
 
 " Put up your foot on this chair." And he kneeled 
 down and begun to unscrew the heel-plate, everybody 
 watching; and when he got that big di mond out of 
 that boot-heel and held it up and let it flash and blaze 
 and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it just took every 
 body s breath; and Jubiter he looked so sick and sorry 
 you never see the like of it. And when Tom held up 
 the other di mond he looked sorrier than ever. Land ! 
 he was thinking how he would a skipped out and been 
 rich and independent in a foreign land if he d only had 
 the luck to guess what the screwdriver was in the 
 carpet-bag for. 
 
 Well, it was a most exciting time, take it all around, 
 and Tom got cords of glory. The judge took the 
 di monds, and stood up in his pulpit, and cleared his 
 throat, and shoved his spectacles back on his head, and 
 says: 
 
 "I ll keep them and notify the owners; and when 
 they send for them it will be a real pleasure to rne to 
 
Tom Sawyer, Detective 22? 
 
 hand you the two thousand dollars, for you ve earned 
 the money yes, and you ve earned the deepest and 
 most sincerest thanks of this community besides, for 
 lifting a wronged and innocent family out of ruin and 
 shame, and saving a good and honorable man from a 
 felon s death, and for exposing to infamy and the pun 
 ishment of the law a cruel and odious scoundrel and his 
 miserable creatures!" 
 
 Well, sir, if there d been a brass band to bust out 
 some music, then, it would a been just the perfectest 
 thing I ever see, and Tom Sawyer he said the same. 
 
 Then the sheriff he nabbed Brace Dunlap and his 
 crowd, and by and by next month the judge had them 
 up for trial and jailed the whole lot. And everybody 
 crowded back to Uncle Silas s little old church, and was 
 ever so loving and kind to him and the family and 
 couldn t do enough for them; and Uncle Silas he 
 preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons 
 you ever struck, and would tangle you up so you 
 couldn t find your way home in daylight; but the peo 
 ple never let on but what they thought it was the clear 
 est and brightest and elegantest sermons that ever was ; 
 and they would set there and cry, for love and pity ; 
 but, by George, they give me the jim-jams and the fan- 
 tods and caked up what brains I had, and turned them 
 solid ; but by and by they loved the old man s intellects 
 back into him again, and he was as sound in his skull as 
 ever he was, which ain t no flattery, I reckon. And 
 so the whole family was as happy as birds, and nobody 
 could be gratefuler and lovinger than what they was to 
 o* 
 
228 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 Tom Sawyer; and the same to me, though I hadn t 
 done nothing. And when the two thousand dollars 
 come, Tom give half of it to me, and never told any 
 body so, which didn t surprise me, because I knowed 
 him. 
 
THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT* 
 
 THE following curious history was related to me by 
 a chance railway acquaintance. He was a gentle 
 man more than seventy years of age, and his thoroughly 
 good and gentle face and earnest and sincere manner 
 imprinted the unmistakable stamp of truth upon every 
 statement which fell from his lips. He said : 
 
 You know in what reverence the royal white elephant 
 of Siam is held by the people of that country. You 
 know it is sacred to kings, only kings may possess it, 
 and that it is, indeed, in a measure even superior to 
 kings, since it receives not merely honor but worship. 
 Very well; five years ago, when the troubles concern 
 ing the frontier line arose between Great Britain and 
 Siam, it was presently manifest that Siam had been in 
 the wrong. Therefore every reparation was quickly 
 made, and the British representative stated that he 
 was satisfied and the past should be forgotten. This 
 
 *Left out of " A Tramp Abroad," because it was feared that some of 
 the particulars had been exaggerated, and that others were not true. Before 
 these suspicions had been proven groundless, the book had gone to press. 
 M. T. 
 
 (229) 
 
230 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 greatly relieved the King of Siam, and partly as a 
 token of gratitude, but partly also, perhaps, to wipe 
 out any little remaining vestige of unpleasantness 
 which England might feel toward him, he wished to 
 send the Queen a present the sole sure way of 
 propitiating an enemy, according to Oriental ideas. 
 This present ought not only to be a royal one, but 
 transcendently royal. Wherefore, what offering could 
 be so meet as that of a white elephant? My position 
 in the Indian civil service was such that I was deemed 
 peculiarly worthy of the honor of conveying the present 
 to her Majesty. A ship was fitted out for me and my 
 servants and the officers and attendants of the elephant, 
 and in due time I arrived in New York harbor and 
 placed my royal charge in admirable quarters in Jersey 
 City. It was necessary to remain awhile in order to 
 recruit the animal s health before resuming the voyage. 
 All went well during a fortnight then my calamities 
 began. The white elephant was stolen ! I was called 
 up at dead of night and informed of this fearful mis 
 fortune. For some moments I was beside myself with 
 terror and anxiety; I was helpless. Then I grew 
 calmer and collected my faculties. I soon saw my 
 course for, indeed, there was but the one course for 
 an intelligent man to pursue. Late as it was, I flew to 
 New York and got a policeman to conduct me to the 
 headquarters of the detective force. Fortunately I 
 arrived in time, though the chief of the force, the cele 
 brated Inspector Blunt, was just on the point of leaving 
 for his home. He was a man of middle size and com 
 pact frame, and when he was thinking deeply he had a 
 way of knitting his brows and tapping his forehead 
 reflectively with his ringer, which impressed you at 
 once with the conviction that you stood in the presence 
 of a person of no common order. The very sight of 
 him gave me confidence and made me hopeful. I 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 2}1 
 
 stated my errand. It did not flurry him in the least; 
 it had no more visible effect upon his iron self- 
 possession that if I had told him somebody had stolen 
 my dog. He motioned me to a seat, and said, calmly: 
 
 " Allow me to think a moment, please." 
 
 So saying, he sat down at his office table and leaned 
 his head upon his hand. Several clerks were at work 
 at the other end of the room ; the scratching of their 
 pens was all the sound I heard during the next six or 
 seven minutes. Meantime the inspector sat there, 
 buried in thought. Finally he raised his head, and 
 there was that in the firm lines of his face which 
 showed me that his brain had done its work and his 
 plan was made. Said he and his voice was low and 
 impressive : 
 
 "This is no ordinary case. Every step must be 
 warily taken ; each step must be made sure before the 
 next is ventured. And secrecy must be observed 
 secrecy profound and absolute. Speak to no one 
 about the matter, not even the reporters. I will take 
 care of them ; I will see that they get only what it may 
 suit my ends to let them know." He touched a bell; 
 a youth appeared. " Alaric, tell the reporters to re 
 main for the present." The boy retired. " Now let 
 us proceed to business and systematically. Nothing 
 can be accomplished in this trade of mine without strict 
 and minute method." 
 
 He took a pen and some paper. " Now name of 
 the elephant?" 
 
 " Hassan Ben Ali Ben Selim Abdallah Mohammed 
 Moise Alhammal Jamsetjejeebhoy Dhuleep Sultan Ebu 
 Bhudpoor." 
 
 Very well. Given name?" 
 
 "Jumbo." 
 Very well. Place of birth?" 
 
 " The capital city of Siam." 
 
 I 
 
232 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 " Parents living?" 
 
 "No dead." 
 
 " Had they any other issue beside this one?" 
 
 " None. He was an only child." 
 Very well. These matters are sufficient under that 
 head. Now please describe the elephant, and leave 
 out no particular, however insignificant that is, insig 
 nificant from your point of view. To men in my pro 
 fession there are no insignificant particulars ; they dq 
 not exist." 
 
 I described he wrote. When I was done, hq 
 said : 
 
 " Now listen. If I have made any mistakes, correct 
 me." 
 
 He read as follows : 
 
 "Height, 19 feet; length from apex of forehead to 
 insertion of tail, 26 feet; length of trunk, 16 feet; 
 length of tail, 6 feet; total length, including trunk and 
 tail, 48 feet; length of tusks, 9*^ feet; ears in keeping 
 with these dimensions ; footprint resembles the mark 
 left when one up-ends a barrel in the snow; color of 
 the elephant, a dull white ; has a hole the size of a 
 plate in each ear for the insertion of jewelry, and pos 
 sesses the habit in a remarkable degree of squirting 
 water upon spectators and of maltreating with his trunk 
 not only such persons as he is acquainted with, but 
 even entire strangers ; limps slightly with his right hind 
 leg, and has a small scar in his left armpit caused by a 
 former boil; had on, when stolen, a castle containing 
 seats for fifteen persons, and a gold-cloth saddle- 
 blanket the size of an ordinary carpet." 
 
 There were no mistakes. The inspector touched the 
 bell, handed the description to Alaric, and said: 
 
 * Have fifty thousand copies of this printed at once 
 and mailed to every detective office and pawnbroker s 
 shop on the continent." Alaric retired. There 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 233 
 
 so far, so good. Next, I must have a photograph of 
 the property." 
 
 I gave him one. He examined it critically, and said : 
 
 " It must do, since we can do no better; but he has 
 his trunk curled up and tucked into his mouth. That 
 is unfortunate, and is calculated to mislead, for of 
 course he does not usually have it in that position." 
 He touched his bell. 
 
 44 Alaric, have fifty thousand copies of this photo 
 graph made the first thing in the morning, and mail 
 them with the descriptive circulars." 
 
 Alaric retired to execute his orders. The inspector 
 said : 
 
 " It will be necessary to offer a reward, of course. 
 Now as to the amount?" 
 
 " What sum would you suggest?" 
 
 To begin with, I should say well, twenty-five 
 thousand dollars. It is an intricate and difficult busi 
 ness ; there are a thousand avenues of escape and op 
 portunities of concealment. These thieves have friends 
 and pals everywhere " 
 
 " Bless me, do you know who they are?" 
 
 The wary face, practiced in concealing the thoughts 
 and feelings within, gave me no token, nor yet the 
 replying words, so quietly uttered : 
 
 " Never mind about that. I may, and I may not, 
 We generally gather a pretty shrewd inkling of who 
 our man is by the manner of his work and the size of 
 the game he goes after. We are not dealing with a 
 pickpocket or a hall thief now, make up your mind to 
 that. This property was not * lifted by a novice. 
 But, as I was saying, considering the amount of travel 
 which will have to be done, and the diligence with 
 which the thieves will cover up their traces as they move 
 along, twenty-five thousand may be too small a sum 
 to offer, yet I think it worth while to start with that." 
 
234 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 So we determined upon that figure as a beginning. 
 Then this man, whom nothing escaped which could by 
 any possibility be made to serve as a clew, said : 
 
 There are cases in detective history to show that 
 criminals have been detected through peculiarities in 
 their appetites. Now, what does this elephant eat, and 
 how much?" 
 
 "Well, as to what he eats he will eat anything. 
 He will eat a man, he will eat a Bible he will eat 
 anything between a man and a Bible." 
 
 " Good very good, indeed, but too general. De 
 tails are necessary details are the only valuable things 
 in our trade. Very well as to men. At one meal 
 or, if you prefer, during one day how many men 
 will he eat, if fresh?" 
 
 " He would not care whether they were fresh or 
 not; at a single meal he would eat five ordinary men." 
 Very good; five men; we will put that down. 
 What nationalities would he prefer?" 
 
 " He is indifferent about nationalities. He prefers 
 acquaintances, but is not prejudiced against strangers." 
 Very good. Now, as to Bibles. How many Bibles 
 would he eat at a meal?" 
 
 " He would eat an entire edition." 
 
 "It is hardly succinct enough. Do you mean the 
 ordinary octavo, or the family illustrated?" 
 
 "I think he would be indifferent to illustrations; 
 that is, I think he would not value illustrations above 
 simple letter-press." 
 
 "No, you do not get my idea. I refer to bulk. 
 The ordinary octavo Bible weighs about two pounds 
 and a half, while the great quarto with the illustrations 
 weighs ten or twelve. How many Dore Bibles would 
 he eat at a meal?" 
 
 " If you knew this elephant, you could not ask. He 
 would take what they had." 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 235 
 
 "Well, put it in dollars and cents, then. We must 
 get at it somehow. The Dore costs a hundred dollars 
 a copy, Russia leather, beveled." 
 
 "He would require about fifty thousand dollars 
 worth say an edition of five hundred copies." 
 
 "Now that is more exact. I will put that down. 
 Very well; he likes men and Bibles; so far, so good. 
 What else will he eat? I want particulars." 
 
 " He will leave Bibles to eat bricks, he will leave 
 bricks to eat bottles, he will leave bottles to eat 
 clothing, he will leave clothing to eat cats, he will 
 leave cats to eat oysters, he will leave oysters to eat 
 ham, he will leave ham to eat sugar, he will leave sugar 
 to eat pie, he will leave pie to eat potatoes, he will 
 leave potatoes to eat bran, he will leave bran to eat hay, 
 he will leave hay to eat oats, he will leave oats to eat 
 rice, for he was mainly raised on it. There is nothing 
 whatever that he will not eat but European butter, and 
 he would eat that if he could taste it." 
 
 "Very good. General quantity at a meal say 
 about " 
 
 " Well, anywhere from a quarter to half a ton." 
 
 "And he drinks" 
 
 "Everything that is fluid. Milk, water, whisky, 
 molasses, castor oil, camphene, carbolic acid- it is 
 no use to go into particulars ; whatever fluid occurs to 
 you set it down. He will drink anything that is fluid, 
 except European coffee." 
 
 " Very good. As to quantity?" 
 
 "Put it down five to fifteen barrels his thirst 
 varies; his other appetites do not." 
 
 " These things are unusual. They ought to furnish 
 quite good clews toward tracing him." 
 
 He touched the bell. 
 
 " Alaric, summon Captain Burns." 
 
 Burns appeared. Inspector Blunt unfolded the whole 
 
236 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 matter to him, detail by detail. Then he said in the 
 clear, decisive tones of a man whose plans are clearly 
 defined in his head, and who is accustomed to com 
 mand : 
 
 " Captain Burns, detail Detectives Jones, Davis, 
 Halsey, Bates, and Hackett to shadow the elephant/ 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Detail Detectives Moses, Dakin, Murphy, Rogers, 
 Tupper ; Higgins, and Bartholomew to shadow the 
 thieves/ 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Place a strong guard a guard of thirty picked 
 men, with a relief of thirty- over the place from 
 whence the elephant was stolen, to keep strict watch 
 there night and day, and allow none to approach 
 except reporters without written authority from me. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Place detectives in plain clothes in the railway, 
 steamship, and ferry depots, and upon all roadways 
 leading out of Jersey City, with orders to search all 
 suspicious persons." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Furnish all these men with photograph and accom 
 panying description of the elephant, and instruct them 
 to search all trains and outgoing ferry-boats and other 
 vessels." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " If the elephant should be found, let him be seized, 
 and the information forwarded to me by telegraph." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Let me be informed at once if any clews should be 
 found footprints of the animal, or anything of that 
 kind." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Get an order commanding the harbor police to 
 patrol the frontages vigilantly." 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 237 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Despatch detectives in plain clothes over all the 
 railways, north as far as Canada, west as far as Ohio, 
 south as far as Washington." 
 4 Yes, sir." 
 
 " Place experts in all the telegraph offices to listen 
 to all messages; and let them require that all cipher 
 dispatches be interpreted to them." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Let all these things be done with the utmost 
 secrecy mind, the most impenetrable secrecy." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Report to me promptly at the usual hour." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Go!" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 He was gone. 
 
 Inspector Blunt was silent and thoughtful a moment, 
 while the fire in his eye cooled down and faded out. 
 Then he turned to me and said in a placid voice : 
 
 "I am not given to boasting, it is not my habit; 
 but we shall find the elephant." 
 
 I shook him warmly by the hand and thanked him ; 
 and I felt my thanks, too. The more I had seen of 
 the man the more I liked him and the more I admired 
 him and marveled over the mysterious wonders of his 
 profession. Then we parted for the night, and I went 
 home with a far happier heart than I had carried with 
 me to his office. 
 
238 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 II. 
 
 NEXT morning it was all in the newspapers, in the 
 minutest detail. It even had additions consisting 
 of Detective This, Detective That, and Detective 
 The Other s " Theory " as to how the robbery was 
 done, who the robbers were, and whither they had 
 flown with their booty. There were eleven of these 
 theories, and they covered all the possibilities; and 
 this single fact shows what independent thinkers detect 
 ives are. No two theories were alike, or even much 
 resembled each other, save in one striking particular, 
 and in that one all the other eleven theories were abso^ 
 lutely agreed. That was, that although the rear of my 
 building was torn out and the only door remained 
 locked, the elephant had not been removed through the 
 rent, but by some other (undiscovered) outlet. All 
 agreed that the robbers had made that rent only to 
 mislead the detectives. That never would have oc 
 curred to me or to any other layman, perhaps, but it 
 had not deceived the detectives for a moment. Thus, 
 what I had supposed was the only thing that had no 
 mystery about it was in fact the very thing I had gone 
 furthest astray in. The eleven theories all named the 
 supposed robbers, but no two named the same robbers: 
 the total number of suspected persons was thirty-seven. 
 The various newspaper accounts all closed with the 
 most important opinion of all that of Chief Inspector 
 Blunt. A portion of this statement read as follows : 
 
 "The chief knows who the two principals are, namely, Brick Duffy 
 and Red McFadden. Ten days before the robbery was achieved he was 
 already aware that it was to be attempted, and had quietly proceeded to 
 shadow these two noted villains; but unfortunately on the night in ques- 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 239 
 
 tion their track was lost, and before it could be found again the bird was 
 flown that is, the elephant. 
 
 "Duffy and McFadden are the boldest scoundrels in the profession; 
 the chief has reasons for believing that they are the men who stole the stove 
 out of the detective headquarters on a bitter night last winter in conse 
 quence of which the chief and every detective present were in the hands of 
 the physicians before morning, some with frozen feet, others with frozen 
 fingers, ears, and other members." 
 
 When I read the first half of that I was more aston 
 ished than ever at the wonderful sagacity of this strange 
 man. He not only saw everything in the present with 
 a clear eye, but even the future could not be hidden 
 from him. I was soon at his office, and said I could 
 not help wishing he had had those men arrested, and 
 so prevented the trouble and loss ; but his reply was 
 simple and unanswerable : 
 
 "It is not our province to prevent crime, but to 
 punish it. We cannot punish it until it is com 
 mitted." 
 
 I remarked that the secrecy with which we had begun 
 had been marred by the newspapers ; not only all our 
 facts but all our plans and purposes had been revealed ; 
 even all the suspected persons had been named ; these 
 would doubtless disguise themselves now, or go into 
 hiding. 
 
 " Let them. They will find that when I am ready 
 for them my hand will descend upon them, in their 
 secret places, as unerringly as the hand of fate. As to 
 the newspapers, we must keep in with them. Fame, 
 reputation, constant public mention these are the 
 detective s bread and butter. He must publish his 
 facts, else he will be supposed to have none; he must 
 publish his theory, for nothing is so strange or striking 
 as a detective s theory, or brings him so much wonder 
 ing respect; we must publish our plans, for these the 
 journals insist upon having, and we could not deny 
 
 16 
 
240 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 them without offending. We must constantly show the 
 public what we are doing, or they will believe we are 
 doing nothing. It is much pleasanter to have a news 
 paper say, Inspector Blunt s ingenious and extraordi 
 nary theory is as follows/ than to have it say some 
 harsh thing, or, worse still, some sarcastic one." 
 
 "I see the force of what you say. But I noticed 
 that in one part of your remarks in the papers this 
 morning you refused to reveal your opinion upon a 
 certain minor point." 
 
 Yes, we always do that; it has a good effect. 
 Besides, I had not formed any opinion on that point, 
 anyway." 
 
 I deposited a considerable sum of money with the 
 inspector, to meet current expenses, and sat down to 
 wait for news. We were expecting the telegrams to 
 begin to arrive at any moment now. Meantime I re 
 read the newspapers and also our descriptive circular, 
 and observed that our $2 5,000 reward seemed to be 
 offered only to detectives. I said I thought it ought to 
 be offered to anybody who would catch the elephant. 
 The inspector said : 
 
 " It is the detectives who will find the elephant, hence 
 the reward will go to the right place. If other people 
 found the animal, it would only be by watching the 
 detectives and taking advantage of clews and indications 
 stolen from them, and that would entitle the detectives 
 to the reward, after all. The proper office of a reward 
 is to stimulate the men who deliver up their time and 
 their trained sagacities to this sort of work, and not to 
 confer benefits upon chance citizens who stumble upon 
 a capture without having earned the benefits by their 
 own merits and labors." 
 
 This was reasonable enough, certainly. Now the 
 telegraphic machine in the corner began to click, and 
 the following dispatch was the result: 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 241 
 
 FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 7.30 A.M. 
 
 Have got a clew. Found a succession of deep tracks across a farm near 
 here. Followed them two miles east without result; think elephant went 
 west. Shall now shadow him in that direction. 
 
 DARLEY, Detective. 
 
 " Barley s one of the best men on the force," said 
 the inspector. "We shall hear from him again be 
 fore long." 
 
 Telegram No. 2 came: 
 
 BARKER S, N. J., 7.40 A.M. 
 
 Just arrived. Glass factory broken open here during night, and eight 
 hundred bottles taken. Only water in large quantity near here is five miles 
 distant. Shall strike for there. Elephant will be thirsty. Bottles were 
 
 empty. 
 
 BAKER, Detective. 
 
 " That promises well, too," said the inspector. " I 
 told you the creature s appetites would not be bad 
 clews." 
 
 Telegram No 3 : 
 
 TAYLORVILLE, L. I., 8.15 A.M. 
 A haystack near here disappeared during night. Probably eaten. 
 
 Have got a clue, and am off. 
 
 HUBBARD, Detective. 
 
 "How he does move around!" said the inspector. 
 " I knew we had a difficult job on hand, but we shall 
 catch him yet." 
 
 FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 9 A.M. 
 
 Shadowed the tracks three miles westward. Large, deep, and ragged. 
 Have just met a farmer who says they are not elephant tracks. Says they 
 are holes where he dug up saplings for shade-trees when ground was frozen 
 last winter. Give me orders how to proceed. 
 
 DARLEY, Detective. 
 
 "Aha! a confederate of the thieves! The thing 
 grows warm," said the inspector. 
 16** 
 
242 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 He dictated the following telegram to Darley : 
 
 Arrest the man and force him to name his pals. Continue to follow the 
 tracks to the Pacific, if necessary. 
 
 Chief BLUNT. 
 
 Next telegram: 
 
 CONEY POINT, PA., 8.45 A.M. 
 
 Gas office broken open here during night and three months unpaid gas 
 bills taken. Have got a clue and am away. 
 
 MURPHY, Detective. 
 
 " Heavens!" said the inspector; " would he eat gas 
 bills?" 
 
 "Through ignorance yes; but they cannot sup 
 port life. At least, unassisted." 
 
 Now came this exciting telegram : 
 
 IRONVILLE, N. Y., 9.30 A.M. 
 
 Just arrived. This village in consternation. Elephant passed through 
 here at five this morning. Some say he went east, some say west, some 
 north, some south but all say they did not wait to notice particularly. 
 He killed a horse; have secured a piece of it for a clew. Killed it with 
 his trunk; from style of blow, think he struck it left-handed. From posi 
 tion in which horse lies, think elephant traveled northward along line of 
 Berkley railway. Has four and a half hours start, but I move on his track 
 at once. 
 
 HAWES, Detective. 
 
 I uttered exclamations of joy. The inspector was as 
 self-contained as a graven image. He calmly touched 
 his bell. 
 
 " Alaric, send Captain Burns here." 
 
 Burns appeared. 
 
 14 How many men are ready for instant orders?" 
 
 " Ninety-six, sir." 
 
 14 Send them north at once. Let them concentrate 
 along the line of the Berkley road north of Ironville." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 243 
 
 " Let them conduct their movements with the utmost 
 secrecy. As fast as others are at liberty, hold them for 
 orders." 
 
 "Yes, sir/ 1 
 
 "Go!" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 Presently came another telegram : 
 
 SAGE CORNERS, N. Y., 10.30. 
 
 Just arrived. Elephant passed through here at 8.15. All escaped from 
 the town but a policeman. Apparently elephant did not strike at police 
 man, but at the lamp-post. Got both. I have secured a portion of the 
 policeman as clew. 
 
 STUMM, Detective. 
 
 "So the elephant has turned westward," said the 
 inspector. " However, he will not escape, for my men 
 are scattered all over that region." 
 
 The next telegram said : 
 
 GLOVER S, 11.15. 
 
 Just arrived. Village deserted, except sick and aged. Elephant passed 
 through three-quarters of an hour ago. The anti-temperance mass-meeting 
 was in session; he put his trunk in at a window and washed it out with 
 water from cistern. Some swallowed it since dead; several drowned. 
 Detectives Cross and O Shaughnessy were passing through town, but going 
 south so missed elephant. Whole region for many miles around in ter 
 ror people flying from their homes. Wherever they turn they meet 
 elephant, and many are killed. 
 
 BRANT, Detective. 
 
 I could have shed tears, this havoc so distressed me. 
 But the inspector only said : 
 
 " You see we are closing in on him. He feels our 
 presence; he has turned eastward again." 
 
 Yet further troublous news was in store for us. The 
 telegraph brought this : 
 
 HOGANSPORT, 12.19. 
 
 Just arrived. Elephant passed through half an hour ago, creating wild- 
 
244 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 est fright and excitement. Elephant raged around streets; two plumbers 
 going by, killed one other escaped. Regret general. 
 
 O FLAHERTY, Detective. 
 
 " Now he is right in the midst of my men," said the 
 inspector. " Nothing can save him." 
 
 A succession of telegrams came from detectives who 
 were scattered through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 
 and who were following clews consisting of ravaged 
 barns, factories, and Sunday-school libraries, with high 
 hopes hopes amounting to certainties, indeed. The 
 inspector said : 
 
 " I wish I could communicate with them and order 
 them north, but that is impossible. A detective only 
 visits a telegraph office to send his report ; then he is 
 off again, and you don t know where to put your hand 
 on him." 
 
 Now came this dispatch : 
 
 BRIDGEPORT, CT. $ 12.15. 
 
 Barnum offers rate of $4,000 a year for exclusive privilege of using 
 elephant as traveling advertising medium from now till detectives find 
 him. Wants to paste circus-posters on him. Desires immediate answer. 
 
 BOGGS, Detective. 
 
 1 That is perfectly absurd !" I exclaimed. 
 
 11 Of course it is," said the inspector. " Evidently 
 Mr. Barnum, who thinks he is so sharp, does not know 
 me but I know him." 
 
 Then he dictated this answer to the dispatch : 
 
 Mr. Barnum s offer declined. Make it $7,000 or nothing. 
 
 Chief BLUNT. 
 
 "There. We shall not have to wait long for an 
 answer. Mr. Barnum is not at home; he is in the 
 telegraph office it is his way when he has business 
 on hand. Inside of three " 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 245 
 
 DONE. P. T. BARNUM. 
 
 So interrupted the clicking telegraphic instrument. 
 Before I could make a comment upon this extraordi 
 nary episode, the following dispatch carried my 
 thoughts into another and very distressing channel : 
 
 BOLIVIA, N. Y., 12.50. 
 
 Elephant arrived here from the south and passed through toward the 
 forest at 11.50, dispersing a funeral on the way, and diminishing the mourn 
 ers by two. Citizens fired some small cannon-balls into him, and then fled. 
 Detective Burke and I arrived ten minutes later, from the north, but mis 
 took some excavations for footprints, and so lost a good deal of time; but 
 at last we struck the right trail and followed it to the woods. We then got 
 down on our hands and knees and continued to keep a sharp eye on the 
 track, and so shadowed it into the brush. Burke was in advance. Unfor 
 tunately the animal had stopped to rest ; therefore, Burke having his head 
 down, intent upon the track, butted up against the elephant s hind legs 
 before he was aware of his vicinity. Burke instantly arose to his, feet, 
 seized the tail, and exclaimed joyfully, " I claim the re " but got no fur 
 ther, for a single blow of the huge trunk laid the brave fellow s fragments 
 low in death. I fled rearward, and the elephant turned and shadowed me 
 to the edge of the wood, making tremendous speed, and I should inevitably 
 have been lost, but that the remains of the funeral providentially intervened 
 again and diverted his attention. I have just learned that nothing of that 
 funeral is now left; but this is no loss, for there is abundance of material 
 for another. Meantime, the elephant has disappeared again. 
 
 MULROONEY, Detective. 
 
 We heard no news except from the diligent and con 
 fident detectives scattered about New Jersey, Pennsyl 
 vania, Delaware, and Virginia who were all following 
 fresh and encouraging clews until shortly after 2 
 P. M., when this telegram came: 
 
 BAXTER CENTER, 2.15. 
 
 Elephant been here, plastered over with circus-bills, and broke up a 
 revival, striking down and damaging many who were on the point of enter 
 ing upon a better life. Citizens penned him up and established a guard. 
 
246 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 When Detective Brown and I arrived, some time after, we entered enclos 
 ure and proceeded to identify elephant by photograph and description. All 
 marks tallied exactly except one, which we could not see the boil-scar 
 under armpit. To make sure, Brown crept under to look, and was imme 
 diately brained that is, head crushed and destroyed, though nothing 
 issued from debris. All fled; so did elephant, striking right and left with 
 much effect. Has escaped, but left bold blood-track from cannon-wounds. 
 Rediscovery certain. He broke southward, through a dense forest. 
 
 BRENT, Detective. 
 
 That was the last telegram. At nightfall a fog shut 
 down which was so dense that objects but three feet 
 away could not be discerned. This lasted all night. 
 The ferry-boats and even the omnibuses had to stop 
 running. 
 
 III. 
 
 NEXT morning the papers were as full of detective 
 theories as before; they had all our tragic facts 
 in detail also, and a great many more which they 
 had received from their telegraphic correspondents. 
 Column after column was occupied, a third of its way 
 down, with glaring head-lines, which it made my heart 
 sick to read. Their general tone was like this: 
 
 "THE WHITE ELEPHANT AT LARGE! HE MOVES UPON HIS FATAL 
 MARCH! WHOLE VILLAGES DESERTED BY THEIR FRIGHT- STRICKEN 
 OCCUPANTS! PALE TERROR GOES BEFORE HIM, DEATH AND DEVASTA 
 TION FOLLOW AFTER! AFTER THESE, THE DETECTIVES! BARNS DE 
 STROYED, FACTORIES GUTTED, HARVESTS DEVOURED, PUBLIC ASSEMBLAGES 
 DISPERSED, ACCOMPANIED BY SCENES OF CARNAGE IMPOSSIBLE TO DE 
 SCRIBE ! THEORIES OF THIRTY-FOUR OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED DE 
 TECTIVES ON THE FORCE! THEORY OF CHIEF BLUNT!" 
 
 There!" said Inspector Blunt, almost betrayed 
 into excitement, * * this is magnificent ! This is the 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 247 
 
 greatest windfall that any detective organization ever 
 had. The fame of it will travel to the ends of the 
 earth, and endure to the end of time, and my name 
 with it." 
 
 But there was no joy for me. I felt as if I had com 
 mitted all those red crimes, and that the elephant was 
 only my irresponsible agent. And how the list had 
 grown! In one place he had "interfered with an 
 election and killed five repeaters." He had followed 
 this act with the destruction of two poor fellows, 
 named O Donohue and McFlannigan, who had " found 
 a refuge in the home of the oppressed of all lands only 
 the day before, and were in the act of exercising for 
 the first time the noble right of American citizens at 
 the polls, when stricken down by the relentless hand of 
 the Scourge of Siam." In another, he had " found a 
 crazy sensation-preacher preparing his next season s 
 heroic attacks on the dance, the theater, and other 
 things which can t strike back, and had stepped on 
 him." And in still another place he had "killed a 
 lightning-rod agent." And so the list went on, grow 
 ing redder and redder, and more and more heart 
 breaking. Sixty persons had been killed, and two 
 hundred and forty wounded. All the accounts bore 
 just testimony to the activity and devotion of the de 
 tectives, and all closed with the remark that "three 
 hundred thousand citizens and four detectives saw the 
 dread creature, and two of the latter he destroyed." 
 
 I dreaded to hear the telegraphic instrument begin 
 to click again. By and by the messages began to pour 
 in, but I was happily disappointed in their nature. It 
 was soon apparent that all trace of the elephant was 
 lost. The fog had enabled him to search out a good 
 hiding-place unobserved. Telegrams from the most 
 absurdly distant points reported that a dim vast mass 
 had been glimpsed there through the fog at such and 
 
248 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 such an hour, and was " undoubtedly the elephant." 
 This dim vast mass had been glimpsed in New Haven, 
 in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, in interior New York, 
 in Brooklyn, and even in the city of New York itself ! 
 But in all cases the dim vast mass had vanished quickly 
 and left no trace. Every detective of the large force 
 scattered over this huge extent of country sent his 
 hourly report, and each and every one of them had a 
 clew, and was shadowing something, and was hot upon 
 the heels of it. 
 
 But the day passed without other result. 
 
 The next day the same. 
 
 The next just the same. 
 
 The newspaper reports began to grow monotonous 
 with facts that amounted to nothing, clews which led 
 to nothing, and theories which had nearly exhausted 
 the elements which surprise and delight and dazzle. 
 
 By advice of the inspector I doubled the reward. 
 
 Four more dull days followed. Then came a bitter 
 blow to the poor, hardworking detectives the jour 
 nalists declined to print their theories, and coldly said, 
 44 Give us a rest." 
 
 Two weeks after the elephant s disappearance I 
 raised the reward to $75,000 by the inspector s ad 
 vice. It was a great sum, but I felt that I would rather 
 sacrifice my whole private fortune than lose my credit 
 with my government. Now that the detectives were in 
 adversity, the newspapers turned upon them, and began 
 to fling the most stinging sarcasms at them. This gave 
 the minstrels an idea, and they dressed themselves as 
 detectives and hunted the elephant on the stage in the 
 most extravagant way. The caricaturists made pictures 
 of detectives scanning the country with spy glasses, 
 while the elephant, at their backs, stole apples out of 
 their pockets. And they made all sorts of ridiculous 
 pictures of the detective badge you have seen that 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 249 
 
 badge printed in gold on the back of detective novels, 
 no doubt it is a wide-staring eye, with the legend, 
 "WE NEVER SLEEP." When detectives called for a 
 drink, the would-be facetious barkeeper resurrected an 
 obsolete form of expression and said, " Will you have 
 an eye-opener?" All the air was thick with sar 
 casms. 
 
 But there was one man who moved calm, untouched, 
 unaffected, through it all. It was that heart of oak, 
 the chief inspector. His brave eye never drooped, his 
 serene confidence never wavered. He always said : 
 
 * Let them rail on ; he laughs best who laughs 
 last." 
 
 My admiration for the man grew into a species of 
 worship. I was at his side always. His office had be 
 come an unpleasant place to me, and now became daily 
 more and more so. Yet if he could endure it I meant 
 to do so also at least, as long as I could. So I 
 came regularly, and stayed the only outsider who 
 seemed to be capable of it. Everybody wondered how 
 I could ; and often it seemed to me that I must desert, 
 but at such times I looked into that calm and apparently 
 unconscious face, and held my ground. 
 
 About three weeks after the elephant s disappearance 
 I was about to say, one morning, that I should have to 
 strike my colors and retire, when the great detective 
 arrested the thought by proposing one more superb 
 and masterly move. 
 
 This was to compromise with the robbers. The 
 fertility of this man s invention exceeded anything I 
 have ever seen, and I have had a wide intercourse with 
 the world s finest minds. He said he was confident he 
 could compromise for $100,000 and recover the ele 
 phant. I said I believed I could scrape the amount 
 together, but what would become of the poor detec 
 tives who had worked so faithfully? He said: 
 
250 The Stolen White Elephant 
 
 11 In compromises they always get half." 
 This removed my only objection. So the inspector 
 wrote two notes, in this form : 
 
 DEAR MADAM, Your husband can make a large sum of money (and 
 be entirely protected from the law) by making an immediate appointment 
 with me. 
 
 Chief BLUNT. 
 
 He sent one of these by his confidential messenger 
 to the " reputed wife" of Brick Duffy, and the other 
 to the reputed wife of Red McFadden. 
 
 Within the hour these offensive answers came : 
 
 YE OWLD FOOL : brick McDuffys bin ded 2 yere. 
 
 BRIDGET MAHONEY. 
 
 CHIEF BAT, Red McFadden is hung and in heving 18 month. Any 
 Ass but a detective knose that. 
 
 MARY O HOOLIGAN. 
 
 "I had long suspected these facts," said the in 
 spector ; this testimony proves the unerring accuracy 
 of my instinct." 
 
 The moment one resource failed him he was ready 
 with another. He immediately wrote an advertisement 
 for the morning papers, and I kept a copy of it : 
 
 A. xwblv. 242 N. Tjnd fz328wmlg. Ozpo, ; 2m! ogw. Mum. 
 
 He said that if the thief was alive this would bring 
 him to the usual rendezvous. He further explained 
 that the usual rendezvous was a place where all busi 
 ness affairs between detectives and criminals were con 
 ducted. This meeting would take place at twelve the 
 next night. 
 
 We could do nothing till then, and I lost no time in 
 getting out of the office, and was grateful indeed for 
 the privilege. 
 
 At ii the next night I brought $100,000 in bank 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 251 
 
 notes and put them into the chief s hands, and shortly 
 afterward he took his leave, with the brave old un- 
 dimmed confidence m his eye. An almost intolerable 
 hour dragged to a close ; then I heard his welcome 
 tread, and rose gasping and tottered to meet him. 
 How his fine eyes flamed with triumph ! He said ; 
 
 "We ve compromised! The jokers will sing a dif 
 ferent tune to-morrow! Follow me!" 
 
 He took a lighted candle and strode down into the 
 vast vaulted basement where sixty detectives always 
 slept, and where a score were now playing cards to 
 while the time. I followed close after him. He 
 walked swiftly down to the dim and remote end of the 
 place, and just as I succumbed to the pangs of suffoca 
 tion and was swooning away he stumbled and fell over 
 the outlying members of a mighty object, and I heard 
 him exclaim as he went down : 
 
 44 Our noble profession is vindicated. Here is your 
 elephant!" 
 
 I was carried to the office above and restored with 
 carbolic acid. The whole detective force swarmed in, 
 and such another season of triumphant rejoicing ensued 
 as I had never witnessed before. The reporters were 
 called, baskets of champagne were opened, toasts were 
 drunk, the handshakings and congratulations were con 
 tinuous and enthusiastic. Naturally the chief was the 
 hero of the hour, and his happiness was so complete 
 and had been so patiently and worthily and bravely 
 won that it made me happy to see it, though I stood 
 there a homeless beggar, my priceless charge dead, 
 and my position in my country s service lost to me 
 through what would always seem my fatally careless 
 execution of a great trust. Many an eloquent eye 
 testified its deep admiration for the chief, and many a 
 detective s voice murmured, Look at him just the 
 king of the profession; only give him a clew, it s all 
 
252 The Stolen White Elephant" 
 
 he wants, and there ain t anything hid that he can t 
 find." The dividing of the $50,000 made great pleas 
 ure ; when it was finished the chief made a little speech 
 while he put his share in his pocket, in which he said, 
 14 Enjoy it, boys, for you ve earned it; and more than 
 that you ve earned for the detective profession undying 
 fame. ? 
 
 A telegram arrived, which read: 
 
 MONROE, MICH., 10 P.M. 
 
 First time I ve struck a telegraph office in over three weeks. Have 
 followed those footprints, horseback, through the woods, a thousand miles 
 to here, and they get stronger and bigger and fresher every day. Don t 
 worry inside of another week I ll have the elephant. This is dead sure. 
 
 DARLEY, Detective. 
 
 The chief ordered three cheers for * Darley, one of 
 the finest minds on the force," and then commanded 
 that he be telegraphed to come home and receive his 
 share of the reward. 
 
 So ended that marvelous episode of the stolen ele 
 phant. The newspapers were pleasant with praises 
 once more, the next day, with one contemptible excep 
 tion. This sheet said, "Great is the detective! He 
 may be a little slow in finding a little thing like a mis 
 laid elephant he may hunt him all day and sleep 
 with his rotting carcass all night for three weeks, but 
 he will find him at last if he can get the man who 
 mislaid him to show him the place !" 
 
 Poor Hassan was lost to me forever. The cannon- 
 shots had wounded him fatally, he had crept to that 
 unfriendly place in the fog, and there, surrounded by 
 his enemies and in constant danger of detection, he had 
 wasted away with hunger and suffering till death gave 
 him peace. 
 
 The compromise cost me $100,000; my detective 
 expenses were $42,000 more; I never applied for a 
 
The Stolen White Elephant 253 
 
 place again under my government; I am a ruined man 
 and a wanderer in the earth but my admiration for 
 that man, whom I believe to be the greatest detective 
 the world has ever produced, remains undimmed to this 
 day, and will so remain unto the end. 
 
SOME RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE 
 EXCURSION 
 
 I. 
 
 ALL the journeyings I had ever done had been 
 purely in the way of business. The pleasant May 
 weather suggested a novelty namely, a trip for pure 
 recreation, the bread-and-butter element left out. The 
 Reverend said he would go, too; a good man, one of 
 the best of men, although a clergyman. By eleven at 
 night we were in New Haven and on board the New 
 York boat. We bought our tickets, and then went 
 wandering around here and there, in the solid comfort 
 of being free and idle, and of putting distance between 
 ourselves and the mails and telegraphs. 
 
 After a while I went to my stateroom and undressed, 
 but the night was too enticing for bed. We were 
 moving down the bay now, and it was pleasant to stand 
 at the window and take the cool night breeze and watch 
 the gliding lights on shore. Presently, two elderly men 
 sat down under that window and began a conversation. 
 Their talk was properly no business of mine, yet I was 
 feeling friendly toward the world and willing to be 
 entertained. I soon gathered that they were brothers, 
 that they were from a small Connecticut village, and 
 that the matter in hand concerned the cemetery. Said 
 one : 
 
 (254) 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 255 
 
 " Now, John, we talked it all over amongst ourselves, 
 and this is what we ve done. You see, everybody was 
 a-movin from the old buryin ground, and our folks 
 was most about left to theirselves, as you may say. 
 They was crowded, too, as you know; lot wa n t big 
 enough in the first place; and last year, when Seth s 
 wife died, we couldn t hardly tuck her in. She sort o 
 overlaid Deacon Shorb s lot, and he soured on her, so 
 to speak, and on the rest of us, too. So we talked it 
 over, and I was for a lay-out in the new simitery on 
 the hill. They wa n t unwilling, if it was cheap. 
 Well, the two best and biggest plots was No. 8 and 
 No. 9 both of a size; nice comfortable room for 
 twenty-six twenty-six full-growns, that is; but you 
 reckon in children and other shorts, and strike an 
 everage, and I should say you might lay in thirty, or 
 may be thirty-two or three, pretty genteel no crowd- 
 in to signify." 
 
 "That s a plenty, William. Which one did you 
 buy?" 
 
 "Well, I m a-comin to that, John. You see, No. 
 8 was thirteen dollars, No. 9 fourteen " 
 
 " I see. So s t you took No. 8." 
 
 "You wait. I took No, 9. And I ll tell you for 
 why. In the first place, Deacon Shorb wanted it. 
 Well, after the way he d gone on about Seth s wife 
 overlappin his prem ses, I d a beat him out of that 
 No. 9 if I d a had to stand two dollars extra, let 
 alone one. That s the way I felt about it. Says I, 
 what s a dollar, anyway? Life s on y a pilgrimage, 
 says I; we ain t here for good, and we can t take it 
 with us, says I. So I just dumped it down, knowin 
 the Lord don t suffer a good deed to go for nothin , 
 and cal latin to take it out o somebody in the course 
 o trade. Then there was another reason, John. No. 
 9 s a long way the handiest lot in the simitery, and the 
 
 17 
 
256 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 likeliest for situation. It lays right on top of a knoll 
 in the dead center of the buryin ground; and you can 
 see Millport from there, and Tracy s, and Hopper 
 Mount, and a raft o farms, and so on. There ain t 
 no better outlook from a buryin plot in the State. Si 
 Higgins says so, and I reckon he ought to know. 
 Well, and that ain t all. Course Shorb had to take 
 No. 8; wa n t no help for t. Now, No. 8 jines on to 
 No. 9, but it s on the slope of the hill, and every time 
 it rains it ll soak right down on to the Shorbs. Si 
 Higgins says t when the deacon s time comes, he 
 better take out fire and marine insurance both on his 
 remains." 
 
 Here there was the sound of a low, placid, duplicate 
 chuckle of appreciation and satisfaction. 
 
 " Now, John, here s a little rough draught of the 
 ground that I ve made on a piece of paper. Up here 
 in the left-hand corner we ve bunched the departed ; 
 took them from the old graveyard and stowed them 
 one along side o t other, on a first-come-first-served 
 plan, no partialities, with Gran ther Jones for a starter, 
 on y because it happened so, and windin up indis 
 criminate with Seth s twins. A little crowded towards 
 the end of the lay-out, may be, but we reckoned 
 twa n t best to scatter the twins. Well, next comes 
 the livin . Here, where it s marked A, we re goin to 
 put Mariar and her family, when they re called; B, 
 that s for Brother Hosea and hisn ; C, Calvin and 
 tribe. What s left is these two lots here just the 
 gem of the whole patch for general style and outlook ; 
 they re for me and my folks, and you and yourn. 
 Which of them would you ruther be buried in?" 
 
 " I swan, you ve took me mighty unexpected, 
 William ! It sort of started the shivers. Fact is, I was 
 thinkin so busy about makin things comfortable for the 
 others, I hadn t thought about being buried myself." 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 257 
 
 " Life s on y a fleetin show, John, as the sayin is. 
 We ve all got to go, sooner or later. To go with a 
 clean record s the main thing. Fact is, it s the on y 
 thing worth strivin for, John." 
 
 "Yes, that s so, William, that s so; there ain t no 
 getting around it. Which of these lots would you 
 recommend?" 
 
 " Well, it depends, John. Are you particular about 
 outlook?" 
 
 "I don t say I am, William, I don t say I ain t. 
 Reely, I don t know. But mainly, I reckon, I d set 
 store by a south exposure." 
 
 " That s easy fixed, John. They re both south ex 
 posure. They take the sun, and the Shorbs get the 
 shade." 
 
 " How about sile, William?" 
 
 " D s a sandy sile, E s mostly loom." 
 
 "You may gimme E, then, William; a sandy sile 
 caves in, more or less, and costs for repairs." 
 
 "All right, set your name down here, John, under 
 E. Now, if you don t mind payin me your share of 
 the fourteen dollars, John, while we re on the business, 
 everything s fixed." 
 
 After some higgling and sharp bargaining the money 
 was paid, and John bade his brother good night and 
 took his leave. There was silence for some moments ; 
 then a soft chuckle welled up from the lonely William, 
 and he muttered: " I declare for t, if I haven t made 
 a mistake ! It s D that s mostly loom, not E. And 
 John s booked for a sandy sile, after all." 
 
 There was another soft chuckle, and William de 
 parted to his rest also. 
 
 The next day, in New York, was a hot one. Still we 
 
 managed to get more or less entertainment out of it. 
 
 Toward the middle of the afternoon we arrived on 
 
 board the stanch steamship Bermuda , with bag and bag- 
 
 !?* 
 
258 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 gage, and hunted for a shady place. It was blazing 
 summer weather, until we were half way down the 
 harbor. Then I buttoned my coat closely; half an 
 hour later I put on a spring overcoat and buttoned 
 that. As we passed the lightship I added an ulster 
 and tied a handkerchief around the collar to hold it 
 snug to my neck. So rapidly had the summer gone 
 and winter come again ! 
 
 By nightfall we were far out at sea, with no land in 
 sight. No telegrams could come here, no letters, no 
 news. This was an uplifting thought. It was still 
 more uplifting to reflect that the millions of harassed 
 people on shore behind us were suffering just as usual. 
 
 The next day brought us into the midst of the 
 Atlantic solitudes out of smoke-colored soundings 
 into fathomless deep blue ; no ships visible anywhere 
 over the wide ocean; no company but Mother Gary s 
 chickens wheeling, darting, skimming the waves in the 
 sun. There were some seafaring men among the pas 
 sengers, and conversation drifted into matters concern 
 ing ships and sailors. One said that "true as the 
 needle to the pole " was a bad figure, since the needle 
 seldom pointed to the pole. He said a ship s compass 
 was not faithful to any particular point, but was the 
 most fickle and treacherous of the servants of man. It 
 was forever changing. It changed every day in the 
 year; consequently the amount of the daily variation 
 had to be ciphered out and allowance made for it, else 
 the mariner would go utterly astray. Another said 
 there was a vast fortune waiting for the genius who 
 should invent a compass that would not be affected by 
 the local influences of an iron ship. He said there was 
 only one creature more fickle than a wooden ship s 
 compass, and that was the compass of an iron ship. 
 Then came reference to the well-known fact that an 
 experienced manner can look at the compass of a new 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 259 
 
 iron vessel, thousands of miles from her birthplace, and 
 tell which way her head was pointing when she was in 
 process of building. 
 
 Now an ancient whale-ship master fell to talking 
 about the sort of crews they used to have in his early 
 days. Said he: 
 
 " Sometimes we d have a batch of college students. 
 Queer lot. Ignorant? Why, they didn t know the 
 catheads from the main brace. But if you took them 
 for fools you d get bit, sure. They d learn more in a 
 month than another man would in a year. We had 
 one, once, in the Mary Ann, that came aboard with 
 gold spectacles on. And besides, he was rigged out 
 from main truck to keelson in the nobbiest clothes that 
 ever saw a fo castle. He had a chest full, too; cloaks, 
 and broadcloth coats, and velvet vests; everything 
 swell, you know; and didn t the salt water fix them 
 out for him? I guess not! Well, going to sea, the 
 mate told him to go aloft and help shake out the fore- 
 to gallants 1. Up he shins to the foretop, with his 
 spectacles on, and in a minute down he comes again, 
 looking insulted. Says the mate, * What did you come 
 down for? Says the chap, P r aps you didn t notice 
 that there ain t any ladders above there. You see we 
 hadn t any shrouds above the foretop. The men 
 bursted out in a laugh such as I guess you never 
 heard the like of. Next night, which was dark and 
 rainy, the mate ordered this chap to go aloft about 
 something, and I m dummed if he didn t start up with 
 an umbrella and a lantern ! But no matter ; he made 
 a mighty good sailor before the voyage was done, and 
 we had to hunt up something else to laugh at. Years 
 afterwards, when I had forgot all about him, I comes 
 into Boston, mate of a ship, and was loafing around 
 town with the second mate, and it so happened that we 
 stepped into the Revere House, thinking maybe we 
 
260 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 would chance the salt-horse in that big dining-room 
 for a flyer, as the boys say. Some fellows were talk 
 ing just at our elbow, and one says, * Vender s the new 
 governor of Massachusetts at that table over there 
 with the ladies. We took a good look, my mate and 
 I, for we hadn t either of us ever seen a governor be 
 fore. I looked and looked at that face, and then all 
 of a sudden it popped on me ! But I didn t give any 
 sign. Says I, Mate, I ve a notion to go over and 
 shake hands with him. Says he, I think I see you 
 doing it, Tom. Says I, Mate, I m a-going to do it. 
 Says he, Oh, yes, I guess so! May be you don t 
 want to bet you will, Tom? Says I, I don t mind 
 going a V on it, mate. Says he, * Put it up. Up 
 she goes, says I, planking the cash. This surprised 
 him. But he covered it, and says, pretty sarcastic, 
 Hadn t you better take your grub with the governor 
 and the ladies, Tom? Says I, Upon second thoughts, 
 I will. Says he, Well, Tom, you are a dum fool. 
 Says I, Maybe I am, maybe I ain t; but the main 
 question is, do you want to risk two and a half that I 
 won t do it? Make it a V, says he. Done, says 
 I. I started, him a-giggling and slapping his hand on 
 his thigh, he felt so good. I went over there and 
 leaned my knuckles on the table a minute and looked 
 the governor in the face, and says I, Mr. Gardner, 
 don t you know me? He stared, and I stared, and 
 he stared. Then all of a sudden he sings out, Tom 
 Bowling, by the holy poker! Ladies, it s old Tom 
 Bowling, that you ve heard me talk about shipmate 
 of mine in the Mary Ann. He rose up and shook 
 hands with me ever so hearty I sort of glanced 
 around and took a realizing sense of my mate s saucer 
 eyes and then says the governor, Plant yourself, 
 Tom, plant yourself; you can t cat your anchor again 
 till you ve had a feed with me and the ladies! I 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 261 
 
 planted myself alongside the governor, and canted my 
 eye around toward my mate. Well, sir, his dead 
 lights were bugged out like tompions ; and his mouth 
 stood that wide open that you could have laid a ham in 
 it without him noticing it." 
 
 There was great applause at the conclusion of the 
 old captain s story; then, after a moment s silence, a 
 grave, pale young man said : 
 
 " Had you ever met the governor before?" 
 
 The old captain looked steadily at this inquirer 
 awhile, and then got up and walked aft without making 
 any reply. One passenger after another stole a furtive 
 glance at the inquirer, but failed to make him out, and 
 so gave him up. It took some little work to get the 
 talk-machinery to running smoothly again after this 
 derangement; but at length a conversation sprang up 
 about that important and jealously guarded instrument, 
 a ship s timekeeper, its exceeding delicate accuracy, 
 and the wreck and destruction that have sometimes 
 resulted from its varying a few seemingly trifling mo 
 ments from the true time; then, in due course, my 
 comrade, the Reverend, got off on a yarn, with a fair 
 wind and everything drawing. It was a true story, 
 too about Captain Rounceville s shipwreck true in 
 every detail. It was to this effect: 
 
 Captain Rounceville s vessel was lost in mid-Atlantic, 
 and likewise his wife and his two little children. Cap 
 tain Rounceville and seven seamen escaped with life, 
 but with little else. A small, rudely constructed raft 
 was to be their home for eight days. They had neither 
 provisions nor water. They had scarcely any clothing; 
 no one had a coat but the captain. This coat was 
 changing hands all the time, for the weather was very 
 cold. Whenever a man became exhausted with the 
 cold, they put the coat on him and laid him down be 
 tween two shipmates until the garment and their bodies 
 
262 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 had warmed life into him again. Among the sailors 
 was a Portuguese who knew no English. He seemed to 
 have no thought of his own calamity, but was concerned 
 only about the captain s bitter loss of wife and children. 
 By day he would look his dumb compassion in the 
 captain s face; and by night, in the darkness and the 
 driving spray and rain, he would seek out the captain 
 and try to comfort him with caressing pats on the 
 shoulder. One day, when hunger and thirst were 
 making their sure inroads upon the men s strength and 
 spirits, a floating barrel was seen at a distance. It 
 seemed a great find, for doubtless it contained food of 
 some sort. A brave fellow swam to it, and after long 
 and exhausting effort got it to the raft. It was eagerly 
 opened. It was a barrel of magnesia! On the fifth 
 day an onion was spied. A sailor -swam off and got it. 
 Although perishing with hunger, he brought it in its 
 integrity and put it into the captain s hand. The 
 history of the sea teaches that among starving, ship 
 wrecked men selfishness is rare, and a wonder- 
 compelling magnanimity the rule. The onion was 
 equally divided into eight parts, and eaten with deep 
 thanksgivings. On the eighth day a distant ship was 
 sighted. Attempts were made to hoist an oar, with 
 Captain Rounceville s coat on it for a signal. There 
 were many failures, for the men were but skeletons 
 now, and strengthless. At last success was achieved, 
 but the signal brought no help. The ship faded out of 
 sight and left despair behind her. By and by another 
 ship appeared, and passed so near that the castaways, 
 every eye eloquent with gratitude, made ready to wel 
 come the boat that would be sent to save them. But 
 this ship also drove on, and left these men staring their 
 unutterable surprise and dismay into each other s ashen 
 faces. Late in the day, still another ship came up out 
 of the distance, but the men noted with a pang that 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 263 
 
 her course was one which would not bring her nearer. 
 Their remnant of life was nearly spent ; their lips and 
 tongues were swollen, parched, cracked with eight 
 days thirst ; their bodies starved ; and here was their 
 last chance gliding relentlessly from them ; they would 
 not be alive when the next sun rose. For a day or two 
 past the men had lost their voices, but now Captain 
 Rounceville whispered, "Let us pray." The Portu 
 guese patted him on the shoulder in sign of deep ap 
 proval. All knelt at the base of the oar that was 
 waving the signal-coat aloft, and bowed their heads. 
 The sea was tossing; the sun rested, a red, rayless 
 disk, on the sea-line in the west. When the men pres 
 ently raised their heads they would have roared a halle 
 lujah if they had had a voice; the ship s sails lay 
 wrinkled and flapping against her masts she was 
 going about ! Here was rescue at last, and in the very 
 last instant of time that was left for it. No, not rescue 
 yet only the imminent prospect of it. The red disk 
 sank under the sea, and darkness blotted out the ship. 
 By and by came a pleasant sound oars moving in a 
 boat s rowlocks. Nearer it came, and nearer within 
 thirty steps, but nothing visible. Then a deep voice: 
 Hol-/0/" The castaways could not answer; their 
 swollen tongues refused voice. The boat skirted round 
 and round the raft, started away the agony of it! 
 returned, rested the oars, close at hand, listening, no 
 doubt. The deep voice again: " Hol-/0 / Where are 
 ye, shipmates?" Captain Rounceville whispered to 
 his men, saying: "Whisper your best, boys! now 
 all at once!" So they sent out an eightfold whisper 
 in hoarse concert: " Here !" There was life in it if it 
 succeeded; death if it failed. After that supreme mo 
 ment Captain Rounceville was conscious of nothing 
 until he came to himself on board the saving ship. 
 Said the Reverend, concluding: 
 
264 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 There was one little moment of time in which that 
 raft could be visible from that ship, and only one. If 
 that one little fleeting moment had passed unfruitful, 
 those men s doom was sealed. As close as that does 
 God shave events foreordained from the beginning of 
 the world. When the sun reached the water s .edge 
 that day, the captain of that ship was sitting on deck 
 reading his prayer-book. The book fell ; he stooped 
 to pick it up, and happened to glance at the sun. In 
 that instant that far-off raft appeared for a second 
 against the red disk, its needle-like oar and diminutive 
 signal cut sharp and black against the bright surface, 
 and in the next instant was thrust away into the dusk 
 again. But that ship, that captain, and that pregnant 
 instant had had their work appointed for them in the 
 dawn of time and could not fail of the performance. 
 The chronometer of God never errs !" 
 
 There was deep, thoughtful silence for some mo 
 ments. Then the grave, pale young man said: 
 
 " What is the chronometer of God?" 
 
 ii. 
 
 AT dinner, six o clock, the same people assembled 
 whom we had talked with on deck and seen at luncheon 
 and breakfast this second day out, and at dinner the 
 evening before. That is to say, three journeying ship 
 masters, a Boston merchant, and a returning Bermudian 
 who had been absent from his Bermuda thirteen years ; 
 these sat on the starboard side. On the port side sat 
 the Reverend in the seat of honor; the pale young 
 man next to him ; I next ; next to me an aged Ber 
 mudian, returning to his sunny islands after an absence 
 of twenty-seven years. Of course, our captain was 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 265 
 
 at the head of the table, the purser at the foot of 
 it. A small company, but small companies are 
 pleasantest. 
 
 No racks upon the table ; the sky cloudless, the sun 
 brilliant, the blue sea scarcely ruffled ; then what had 
 become of the four married couples, the three bachelors, 
 and the active and obliging doctor from the rural dis 
 tricts of Pennsylvania? for all these were on deck 
 when we sailed down New York harbor. This is the 
 explanation. I quote from my note-book: 
 
 Thursday, 3.30 P.M, Under way, passing the Battery. The large party, 
 of four married couples, three bachelors, and a cheery, exhilarating doctor 
 from the wilds of Pennsylvania, are evidently traveling together. All but 
 the doctor grouped in camp-chairs on deck. 
 
 Passing principal fort. The doctor is one of those people who has an 
 infallible preventive of sea-sickness; is flitting from friend to friend admin 
 istering it and saying, "Don t you be afraid; I know this medicine; abso 
 lutely infallible; prepared under my own supervision." Takes a dose 
 himself, intrepidly. 
 
 4.15 P.M. Two of those ladies have struck their colors, notwithstand 
 ing the "infallible." They have gone below. The other two begin to 
 show distress. 
 
 5 P.M. Exit one husband and one bachelor. These still had their 
 infallible in cargo when they started, but arrived at the companionway 
 without it. 
 
 5.10. Lady No. 3, two bachelors, and one married man have gone 
 below with their own opinion of the infallible. 
 
 5.20. Passing Quarantine Hulk. The infallible has done the business 
 for all the party except the Scotchman s wife and the author of that formid 
 able remedy. 
 
 Nearing the Light-Ship. Exit the Scotchman s wife, head drooped on 
 stewardess s shoulder. 
 
 Entering the open sea. Exit doctor ! 
 
 The rout seems permanent; hence the smallness of 
 the company at table since the voyage began. Our 
 captain is a grave, handsome Hercules of thirty-five, 
 with a brown hand of such majestic size that one can- 
 
266 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 not eat for admiring it and wondering if a single kid or 
 calf could furnish material for gloving it. 
 
 Conversation not general; drones along between 
 couples. One catches a sentence here and there. 
 Like this, from Bermudian of thirteen years absence : 
 "It is the nature of women to ask trivial, irrelevant, 
 and pursuing questions questions that pursue you 
 from a beginning in nothing to a run-to-cover in no 
 where." Reply of Bermudian of twenty-seven years 
 absence: "Yes; and to think they have logical, ana 
 lytical minds and argumentative ability. You see em 
 begin to whet up whenever they smell argument in the 
 air." Plainly these be philosophers. 
 
 Twice since we left port our engines have stopped 
 for a couple of minutes at a time. Now they stop 
 again. Says the pale young man, meditatively, " There ! 
 that engineer is sitting down to rest again." 
 
 Grave stare from the captain, whose mighty jaws 
 cease to work, and whose harpooned potato stops in 
 mid-air on its way to his open, paralyzed mouth. 
 Presently he says ir measured tones, "Is it your idea 
 that the engineer of this ship propels her by a crank 
 turned by his own hands?" 
 
 The pale young man studies over this a moment, 
 then lifts up his guileless eyes, and says, " Don t he?" 
 
 Thus gently falls the death-blow to further conversa 
 tion, and the dinner drags to its close in a reflective 
 silence, disturbed by no sounds but the murmurous 
 wash of the sea and the subdued clash of teeth. 
 
 After a smoke and a promenade on deck, where is 
 no motion to discompose our steps, we think of a game 
 of whist. We ask the brisk and capable stewardess 
 from Ireland if there are any cards in the ship. 
 
 " Bless your soul, dear, indeed there is. Not a whole 
 pack, true for ye, but not enough missing to signify." 
 
 However, I happened by accident to bethink me of a 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 267 
 
 new pack in a morocco case, in my trunk, which I had 
 placed there by mistake, thinking it to be a flask of 
 something. So a party of us conquered the tedium of 
 the evening with a few games and were ready for bed 
 at six bells, mariner s time, the signal for putting out 
 the lights. 
 
 There was much chat in the smoking-cabin on the 
 upper deck after luncheon to-day, mostly whaler yarns 
 from those old sea captains. Captain Tom Bowling 
 was garrulous. He had that garrulous attention to 
 minor detail which is born of secluded farm life or life 
 at sea on long voyages, where there is little to do and 
 time no object. He would sail along till he was right 
 in the most exciting part of a yarn, and then say, 
 "Well, as I was saying, the rudder was fouled, ship 
 driving before the gale, head-on, straight for the ice 
 berg, all hands holding their breath, turned to stone, 
 top-hamper giving way, sails blown to ribbons, first 
 one stick going, then another, boom ! smash ! crash ! 
 duck your head and stand from under ! when up comes 
 Johnny Rogers, capstan bar in hand, eyes a-blazing, 
 
 hair a-flying no, twa n t Johnny Rogers 
 
 lemme see seems to me Johnny Rogers wa n t 
 
 along that voyage; he was along one voyage, I know 
 that mighty well, but somehow it seems to me that he 
 signed the articles for this voyage, but but whether 
 he come along or not, or got left, or something hap 
 pened " 
 
 And so on and so on till the excitement all cooled 
 down and nobody cared whether the ship struck the 
 iceberg or not. 
 
 In the course of his talk he rambled into a criticism 
 upon New England degrees of merit in shipbuilding. 
 Said he "You get a vessel built away down Maine- 
 way; Bath, for instance; what s the result? First 
 thing you do, you want to heave her down for repairs 
 
268 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 that s the result! Well, sir, she hain t been hove 
 down a week till you can heave a dog through her 
 seams. You send that vessel to sea, and what s the 
 result? She wets her oakum the first trip ! Leave it 
 to any man if tain t so. Well, you let our folks build 
 you a vessel down New Bedford-way. What s the 
 result? Well, sir, you might take that ship and heave 
 her down, and keep her hove down six months, and 
 she ll never shed a tear !" 
 
 Everybody, landsmen and all, recognized the descrip 
 tive neatness of that figure, and applauded, which 
 greatly pleased the old man. A moment later, the 
 meek eyes of the pale young fellow heretofore men 
 tioned came up slowly, rested upon the old man s face 
 a moment, and the meek mouth began to open. 
 
 " Shet your head !" shouted the old mariner. 
 
 It was a rather startling surprise to everybody, but it 
 was effective in the matter of its purpose. So the con 
 versation flowed on instead of perishing. 
 
 There was some talk about the perils of the sea, and 
 a landsman delivered himself of the customary non 
 sense about the poor mariner wandering in far oceans, 
 tempest-tossed, pursued by dangers, every storm-blast 
 and thunder-bolt in the home skies moving the friends 
 by snug firesides to compassion for that poor manner, 
 and prayers for his succor. Captain Bowling put up 
 with this for a while, and then burst out with a new 
 view of the matter. 
 
 " Come, belay there! I have read this kind of rot 
 all my life in poetry and tales and such like rubbage. 
 Pity for the poor mariner ! sympathy for the poor 
 manner ! All right enough, but not in the way the 
 poetry puts it. Pity for the mariner s wife ! all right 
 again, but not in the way the poetry puts it. Look-a- 
 here ! whose life s the safest in the whole world? The 
 poor mariner s. You look at the statistics, you ll see. 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 269 
 
 So don t you fool away any sympathy on the poor 
 mariner s dangers and privations and sufferings. Leave 
 that to the poetry muffs. Now you look at the other 
 side a minute. Here is Captain Brace, forty years old, 
 been at sea thirty. On his way now to take command 
 of his ship and sail south from Bermuda. Next week 
 he ll be under way; easy times; comfortable quarters; 
 passengers, sociable company; just enough to do to 
 keep his mind healthy and not tire him ; king over his 
 ship, boss of everything and everybody; thirty years 
 safety to learn him that his profession ain t a dangerous 
 one. Now you look back at his home. His wife s a 
 feeble woman; she s a stranger in New York; shut up 
 in blazing hot or freezing cold lodgings, according to 
 the season; don t know anybody hardly ; no company 
 but her lonesomeness and her thoughts ; husband gone 
 six months at a time. She has borne eight children ; 
 five of them she has buried without her husband ever 
 setting eyes on them. She watched them all the long 
 nights till they died he comfortable on the sea ; she 
 followed them to the grave, she heard the clods fall 
 that broke her heart he comfortable on the sea; she 
 mourned at home, weeks and weeks, missing them 
 every day and every hour he cheerful at sea, know 
 ing nothing about it. Now look at it a minute turn 
 it over in your mind and size it: five children born, 
 she among strangers, and him not by to hearten her; 
 buried, and him not by to comfort her; think of that! 
 Sympathy for the poor mariner s perils is rot; give it 
 to his wife s hard lines, where it belongs! Poetry 
 makes out that all the wife worries about is the dangers 
 her husband s running. She s got substantialer things 
 to worry over, I tell you. Poetry s always pitying the 
 poor mariner on account of his perils at sea; better a 
 blamed sight pity him for the nights he can t sleep for 
 thinking of how he had to leave his wife in her very 
 
270 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 birth pains, lonesome and friendless, in the thick of 
 disease and trouble and death. If there s one thing 
 that can make me madder than another, it s this sappy, 
 damned maritime poetry!" 
 
 Captain Brace was a patient, gentle, seldom-speaking 
 man, with a pathetic something in his bronzed face 
 that had been a mystery up to this time, but stood 
 interpreted now since we had heard his story. He had 
 voyaged eighteen times to the Mediterranean, seven 
 times to India, once to the arctic pole in a discovery- 
 ship, and * between times " had visited all the remote 
 seas and ocean corners of the globe. But he said that 
 twelve years go, on account of his family, he " settled 
 down," and ever since then had ceased to roam. And 
 what do you suppose was this simple-hearted, lifelong 
 wanderer s idea of settling down and ceasing to roam? 
 Why, the making of two five-month voyages a year 
 between Surinam and Boston for sugar and molasses ! 
 
 Among other talk to-day, it came out that whale- 
 ships carry no doctor. The captain adds the doctor- 
 ship to his own duties. He not only gives medicines, 
 but sets broken limbs after notions of his own, or saws 
 them off and sears the stump when amputation seems 
 best. The captain is provided with a medicine-chest, 
 with the medicines numbered instead of named. A 
 book of directions goes with this. It describes diseases 
 and symptoms, and says, " Give a teaspoonful of No. 
 9 once an hour," or " Give ten grains of No. 12 every 
 half hour," etc. One of our sea captains came across 
 a skipper in the North Pacific who was in a state of 
 great surprise and perplexity. Said he : 
 
 There s something rotten about this medicine-chest 
 business. One of my men was sick nothing much 
 the matter. I looked in the book: it said, give him a 
 teaspoonful of No. 15. I went to the medicine-chest, 
 and I see I was out of No. 15. I judged I d got to 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 271 
 
 get up a combination somehow that would fill the bill ; 
 so I hove into the fellow half a teaspoonful of No. 8 
 and half a teaspoonful of No. 7, and I ll be hanged if 
 it didn t kill him in fifteen minutes! There s some 
 thing about this medicine-chest system that s too many 
 for me !" 
 
 There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old 
 Captain "Hurricane" Jones, of the Pacific ocean 
 peace to his ashes ! Two or three of us present had 
 known him ; I particularly well, for I had made four sea- 
 voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. 
 He was born in a ship ; he picked up what little educa 
 tion he had among his shipmates ; he began life in the 
 forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the cap 
 taincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were 
 spent at sea. He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, 
 and borrowed a tint from all climates. When a man 
 has been fifty years at sea he necessarily knows nothing 
 of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing 
 of the world s thought, nothing of the world s learning 
 but its A B C, and that blurred and distorted by the 
 unfocused lenses of an untrained mind. Such a man 
 is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old 
 Hurricane Jones was simply an innocent, lovable old 
 infant. When his spirit was in repose he was as sweet 
 and gentle as a girl ; when his wrath was up he was a 
 hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descrip 
 tive. He was formidable in a fight, for he was of 
 powerful build and dauntless courage. He was fres 
 coed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes 
 tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him 
 one voyage when he got his last vacant space tattooed ; 
 this vacant space was around his left ankle. During 
 three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle 
 bare and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and 
 an^ry out trom a clouding of India ink: " Virtue is its 
 
 18 
 
272 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 own R d." (There was a lack of room.) He was 
 deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fish- 
 woman. He considered swearing blameless, because 
 sailors would not understand an order unillumined by 
 it. He was a profound biblical scholar that is, he 
 thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible 
 but he had his own methods of arriving at his beliefs,, 
 He was of the " advanced " school of thinkers, and 
 applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles, 
 somewhat on the plan of the people who make the 
 six days of creation six geological epochs, and so 
 forth. Without being aware of it, he was a rather 
 severe satire on modern scientific religionists. Such 
 a man as I have been describing is rabidly fond of 
 disquisition and argument; one knows that without 
 being told it. 
 
 One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but 
 did not know he was a clergyman, since the passenger 
 list did not betray the fact. He took a great liking to 
 this Reverend Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great 
 deal; told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of 
 personal history, and wove a glittering streak of pro 
 fanity through his garrulous fabric that was refreshing 
 to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated 
 speech. One day the captain said, " Peters, do you 
 ever read the Bible?" 
 
 -Well yes." 
 
 " I judge it ain t often, by the way you say it. 
 Now, you tackle it in dead earnest once, and you ll 
 find it ll pay. Don t you get discouraged, but hang 
 right on. First, you won t understand it; but by and 
 by things will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn t 
 lay it down to eat." 
 
 " Yes, I have heard that said." 
 
 " And it s so, too. There ain t a book that begins 
 with it. It lays over m all, Peters. There s some 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 273 
 
 pretty tough things in it there ain t any getting 
 around that but you stick to them and think them 
 out, and when once you get on the inside everything s 
 plain as day." 
 
 "The miracles, too, captain?" 
 
 Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Everyone of them. 
 Now, there s that business with the prophets of Baal; 
 like enough that stumped you?" 
 
 "Well, I don t know but" 
 
 "Own up now; it stumped you. Well, I don t 
 wonder. You hadn t had any experience in raveling 
 such things out, and naturally it was too many for you. 
 Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, 
 and show you how to get at the meat of these matters?" 
 
 " Indeed, I would, captain, if you don t mind." 
 
 Then the captain proceeded as follows: " I ll do it 
 with pleasure. First, you see, I read and read, and 
 thought and thought, till I got to understand what sort 
 of people they were in the old Bible times, and then 
 after that it was all clear and easy. Now this was the 
 way I put it up, concerning Isaac* and the prophets of 
 Baal. There was some mighty sharp men among the 
 public characters of that old ancient day, and Isaac 
 was one of them. Isaac had his failings plenty of 
 them, too; it ain t for me to apologize for Isaac; he 
 played it on the prophets of Baal, and like enough he 
 was justifiable, considering the odds that was against 
 him. No, all I say is, twa n t any miracle, and that 
 I ll show you so s t you can see it yourself. 
 
 "Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher 
 for prophets that is, prophets of Isaac s denomina 
 tion. There was four hundred and fifty prophets of 
 Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; 
 that is, if Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he 
 was, but it don t say. Naturally, the prophets of Baal 
 
 * This is the captain s own mistake. 
 18** 
 
274 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 took all the trade. Isaac was pretty low-spirited, I 
 reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt 
 he went a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a 
 land-office business, but twa n t any use; he couldn t 
 run any opposition to amount to anything. By and by 
 things got desperate with him; he sets his head to 
 work and thinks it all out, and then what does he do? 
 Why, he begins to throw out hints that the other 
 parties are this and that and t other nothing very 
 definite, maybe, but just kind of undermining their 
 reputation in a quiet way. This made talk, of course, 
 and finally got to the king. The king asked Isaac 
 what he meant by his talk. Says Isaac, Oh, nothing 
 particular; only, can they pray down fire from heaven 
 on an altar? It ain t much, maybe, your majesty, 
 only can they do it? That s the idea. So the king 
 was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the prophets 
 of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an 
 altar ready, they were ready; and they intimated he 
 better get it insured, too. 
 
 " So next morning all the children of Israel and their 
 parents and the other people gathered themselves to 
 gether. Well, here was that great crowd of prophets 
 of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking 
 up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. 
 When time was called, Isaac let on to be comfortable 
 and indifferent; told the other team to take the first 
 innings. So they went at it, the whole four hundred 
 and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopeful, and 
 doing their level best. They prayed an hour two 
 hours three hours and so on, plumb till noon. It 
 wa n t any use; they hadn t took a trick. Of course 
 they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and 
 well they might. Now, what would a magnanimous 
 man do? Keep still, wouldn t he? Of course. What 
 did Isaac do ? He graveled the prophets of Baal every 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 275 
 
 way he could think of. Says he, You don t speak 
 up loud enough; your god s asleep, like enough, or 
 maybe he s taking a walk; you want to holler, you 
 know or words to that effect; I don t recollect the 
 exact language. Mind, I don t apologize for Isaac; 
 he had his faults. 
 
 4 Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best 
 they knew how all the afternoon, and never raised a 
 spark. At last, about sundown, they were all tuckered 
 out, and they owned up and quit. 
 
 "What does Isaac do now? He steps up and says 
 to some friends of his there, Pour four barrels of 
 water on the altar! Everybody was astonished; for 
 the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got 
 whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, Heave 
 on four more barrels. Then he says, Heave on four 
 more. Twelve barrels, you see, altogether. The 
 water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, 
 and filled up a trench around it that would hold a 
 couple of hogsheads measures, it says; I reckon it 
 means about a hogshead. Some of the people were 
 going to put on their things and go, for they allowed 
 he was crazy. They didn t know Isaac. Isaac knelt 
 down and began to pray; he strung along, and strung 
 along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about 
 the sister churches, and about the state and the country 
 at large, and about those that s in authority in the 
 government, and all the usual programme, you know, 
 till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about 
 something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody 
 was noticing, he outs with a match and rakes it on the 
 under side of his leg, and pff ! up the whole thing 
 blazes like a house afire ! Twelve barrels of water ? 
 Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that s what it was!" 
 
 "Petroleum, captain?" 
 4 Yes. sir: the country was full of it. Isaac knew 
 
276 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 all about that. You read the Bible. Don t you worry 
 about the tough places. They ain t tough when you 
 come to think them out and throw light on them. 
 There ain t a thing in the Bible but what is true; all 
 you want is to go prayerfully to work and cipher out 
 how t was done." 
 
 At eight o clock on the third morning out from New 
 York, land was sighted. Away across the sunny waves 
 one saw a faint dark stripe stretched along under the 
 horizon or pretended to see it, for the credit of his 
 eyesight. Even the Reverend said he saw it, a thing 
 which was manifestly not so. But I never have seen 
 any one who was morally strong enough to confess 
 that he could not see land when others claimed that 
 they could. 
 
 By and by the Bermuda islands were easily visible. 
 The principal one lay upon the water in the distance, 
 a long, dull-colored body, scalloped with slight hills 
 and valleys. We could not go straight at it, but had 
 to travel all the way around it, sixteen miles from 
 shore, because it is fenced with an invisible coral reef. 
 At last we sighted buoys, bobbing here and there, and 
 then we glided into a narrow channel among them, 
 " raised the reef," and came upon shoaling blue water 
 that soon further shoaled into pale green, with a sur 
 face scarcely rippled. Now came the resurrection 
 hour; the berths gave up their dead. Who are these 
 pale specters in plug hats and silken flounces that file 
 up the companion-way in melancholy procession and 
 step upon the deck? These are they which took the 
 infallible preventive of seasickness in New York harbor 
 and then disappeared and were forgotten. Also there 
 came two or three faces not seen before until this mo 
 ment. One s impulse is to ask, " Where did you come 
 aboard?" 
 
 We followed the narrow channel a long time, with 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 277 
 
 land on both sides low hills that might have been 
 green and grassy, but had a faded look instead. How 
 ever, the land-locked water was lovely, at any rate, 
 with its glittering belts of blue and green where moder 
 ate soundings were, and its broad splotches of rich 
 brown where the rocks lay near the surface. Every 
 body was feeling so well that even the grave, pale 
 young man (who, by a sort of kindly common consent, 
 had come latterly to be referred to as "The Ass") 
 received frequent and friendly notice which was right 
 enough, for there was no harm in him. 
 
 At last we steamed between two island points whose 
 rocky jaws allowed only just enough room for the 
 vessel s body, and now before us loomed Hamilton on 
 her clustered hillsides and summits, the whitest mass 
 of terraced architecture that exists in the world, perhaps. 
 
 It was Sunday afternoon, and on the pier were 
 gathered one or two hundred Bermudians, half of them 
 black, half of them white, and all of them nobbily 
 dressed, as the poet says. 
 
 Several boats came off to the ship, bringing citizens. 
 One of these citizens was a faded, diminutive old 
 gentleman, who approached our most ancient passen 
 ger with a childlike joy in his twinkling eyes, halted 
 before him, folded his arms, and said, smiling with all 
 his might and with all the simple delight that was in 
 him, " You don t know me, John! Come, out with it 
 now; you know you don t!" 
 
 The ancient passenger scanned him perplexedly, 
 scanned the napless, threadbare costume of venerable 
 fashion that had done Sunday service no man knows 
 how many years, contemplated the marvelous stove 
 pipe hat of still more ancient and venerable pattern, 
 with its poor pathetic old stiff brim canted up " gal- 
 lusly " in the wrong places, and said, with a hesitation 
 that indicated strong internal effort to "place" the 
 
278 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 gentle old apparition, " Why let me see 
 
 plague on it there s something about you that 
 
 er er but I ve been gone from Ber 
 muda for twenty-seven years, and hum, hum 
 
 I don t seem to get at it, somehow, but there s 
 
 something about you that is just as familiar to me 
 as" 
 
 14 Likely it might be his hat," murmured the Ass, 
 with innocent, sympathetic interest. 
 
 III. 
 
 So the Reverend and I had at last arrived at Hamil 
 ton, the principal town in the Bermuda Islands. A 
 wonderfully white town ; white as snow itself. White 
 as marble ; white as flour. Yet looking like none of 
 these, exactly. Never mind, we said; we shall hit 
 upon a figure by and by that will describe this peculiar 
 white. 
 
 It was a town that was compacted together upon the 
 sides and tops of a cluster of small hills. Its outlying 
 borders fringed off and thinned away among the cedar 
 forests, and there was no woody distance of curving 
 coast, or leafy islet sleeping upon the dimpled, painted 
 sea, but was flecked with shining white points half- 
 concealed houses peeping out of the foliage. The 
 architecture of the town was mainly Spanish, inherited 
 from the colonists of two hundred and fifty years ago. 
 Some ragged-topped cocoa-palms, glimpsed here and 
 there, gave the land a tropical aspect. 
 
 There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon 
 this, under shelter, were some thousands of barrels con 
 taining that product which has carried the fame of Ber 
 muda to many lands, the potato. With here and there 
 
WE CATCHED FISH 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 279 
 
 an onion. That last sentence is facetious; for they 
 grow at least two onions in Bermuda to one potato. 
 The onion is the pride and joy of Bermuda. It is her 
 jewel, her gem of gems. In her conversation, her pul 
 pit, her literature, it is her most frequent and eloquent 
 figure. In Bermuda metaphor it stands for perfection 
 perfection absolute. 
 
 The Bermudian weeping over the departed exhausts 
 praise when he says, "He was an onion!" The 
 Bermudian extolling the living hero bankrupts applause 
 when he says, "He is an onion!" The Bermudian 
 setting his son upon the stage of life to dare and do for 
 himself climaxes all counsel, supplication, admonition, 
 comprehends all ambition, when he says, "Be an 
 
 onion ! 
 
 When parallel with the pier, and ten or fifteen steps 
 outside it, we anchored. It was Sunday, bright and 
 sunny. The groups upon the pier men, youths, and 
 boys were whites and blacks in about equal propor 
 tion. All were well and neatly dressed, many of them 
 nattily, a few of them very stylishly. One would have 
 to travel far before he would find another town of 
 twelve thousand inhabitants that could represent itself 
 so respectably, in the matter of clothes, on a freight 
 pier, without premeditation or effort. The women and 
 young girls, black and white, who occasionally passed 
 by, were nicely clad, and many were elegantly and 
 fashionably so. The men did not affect summer cloth 
 ing much, but the girls and women did, and their white 
 garments were good to look at, after so many months 
 of familiarity with somber colors. 
 
 Around one isolated potato barrel stood four young 
 gentlemen, two black, two white, becomingly dressed, 
 each with the head of a slender cane pressed against his 
 teeth, and each with a foot propped up on the barrel. 
 Another young gentleman came up, looked longingly 
 
280 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 at the barrel, but saw no rest for his foot there, and 
 turned pensively away to seek another barrel. He 
 wandered here and there, but without result. Nobody 
 sat upon a barrel, as is the custom of the idle in other 
 lands, yet all the isolated barrels were humanly occu 
 pied. Whosoever had a foot to spare put it on a bar 
 rel, if all the places on it were not already taken. The 
 habits of all peoples are determined by their circum 
 stances. The Bermudians lean upon barrels because 
 of the scarcity of lamp-posts. 
 
 Many citizens came on board and spoke eagerly to the 
 officers inquiring about the Turco-Russian war news, 
 I supposed. However, by listening judiciously I found 
 that this was not so. They said, "What is the price 
 of onions?" or, " How s onions?" Naturally enough 
 this was their first interest ; but they dropped into the 
 war the moment it was satisfied. 
 
 We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant 
 nature: there were no hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses 
 on the pier or about it anywhere, and nobody offered 
 his services to us, or molested us in any way. I said 
 it was like being in heaven. The Reverend rebukingly 
 and rather pointedly advised me to make the most of 
 it, then. We knew of a boarding-house, and what we 
 needed now was somebody to pilot us to it. Presently 
 a little barefooted colored boy came along, whose rag- 
 gedness was conspicuously un-Bermudian. His rear 
 was so marvelously bepatched with colored squares and 
 triangles that one was half persuaded he had got it out 
 of an atlas. When the sun struck him right, he was 
 as good to follow as a lightning-bug. We hired him 
 and dropped into his wake. He piloted us through one 
 picturesque street after another, and in due course de 
 posited us where we belonged. He charged nothing 
 for his map, and but a trifle for his services: so the 
 Reverend doubled it. The little chap received the 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 281 
 
 money with a beaming applause in his eye which 
 plainly said, " This man s an onion !" 
 
 We had brought no letters of introduction ; our 
 names had been misspelt in the passenger list; nobody 
 knew whether we were honest folk or otherwise. So 
 we were expecting to have a good private time in case 
 there was nothing in our general aspect to close board 
 ing-house doors against us. We had no trouble. 
 Bermuda has had but little experience of rascals, and 
 is not suspicious. We got large, cool, well-lighted 
 rooms on a second floor, overlooking a bloomy display 
 of flowers and flowering shrubs, calla and annuncia 
 tion lilies, lantanas, heliotrope, jessamine, roses, pinks, 
 double geraniums, oleanders, pomegranates, blue morn 
 ing-glories of a great size, and many plants that were 
 unknown to me. 
 
 We took a long afternoon walk, and soon found out 
 that that exceedingly white town was built of blocks of 
 white coral. Bermuda is a coral island, with a six-inch 
 crust of soil on top of it, and every man has a quarry 
 on his own premises. Everywhere you go you see 
 square recesses cut into the hillsides, with perpendicular 
 walls unmarred by crack or crevice, and perhaps you 
 fancy that a house grew out of the ground there, and 
 has been removed in a single piece from the mould. 
 If you do, you err. But the material for a house has 
 been quarried there. They cut right down through the 
 coral, to any depth that is convenient ten to twenty 
 feet and take it out in great square blocks. This 
 cutting is done with a chisel that has a handle twelve or 
 fifteen feet long, and is used as one uses a crowbar 
 when he is drilling a hole, or a dasher when he is churn 
 ing. Thus soft is this stone. Then with a common 
 handsaw they saw the great blocks into handsome, 
 huge bricks that are two feet long, a foot wide, and 
 about six inches thick. These stand loosely piled 
 
282 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 during a month to harden ; then the work of building 
 begins. 
 
 The house is built of these blocks ; it is roofed with 
 broad coral slabs an inch thick, whose edges lap upon 
 each other, so that the roof looks like a succession of 
 shallow steps or terraces ; the chimneys are built of the 
 coral blocks, and sawed into graceful and picturesque 
 patterns; the ground-flour veranda is paved with coral 
 blocks : also the walk to the gate ; the fence is built of 
 coral blocks built in massive panels, with broad cap 
 stones and heavy gateposts, and the whole trimmed 
 into easy lines and comely shape with the saw. Then 
 they put a hard coat of whitewash, as thick as your 
 thumb nail, on the fence and all over the house, roof, 
 chimneys, and all ; the sun comes out and shines on 
 this spectacle, and it is time for you to shut your unac 
 customed eyes, lest they be put out. It is the whitest 
 white you can conceive of, and the blindingest. A 
 Bermuda house does not look like marble ; it is a much 
 intenser white than that; and, besides, there is a dainty, 
 indefinable something else about its look that is not 
 marble-like. We put in a great deal of solid talk and 
 reflection over this matter of trying to find a figure that 
 would describe the unique white of a Bermuda house, 
 and we contrived to hit upon it at last. It is exactly the 
 white of the icing of a cake, and has the same un- 
 emphasized and scarcely perceptible polish. The white 
 of marble is modest and retiring compared with it. 
 
 After the house is cased in its hard scale of white 
 wash, not a crack, or sign of a seam, or joining of the 
 blocks is detectable, from base-stone to chimney-top ; 
 the building looks as if it had been carved from a single 
 block of stone, and the doors and windows sawed out 
 afterwards. A white marble house has a cold, tomb- 
 like, unsociable look, and takes the conversation out of 
 a body and depresses him. Not so with a Bermuda 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 283 
 
 house. There is something exhilarating, even hilarious, 
 about its vivid whiteness when the sun plays upon it. 
 If it be of picturesque shape and graceful contour 
 and many of the Bermudian dwellings are it will so 
 fascinate you that you will keep your eyes on it until 
 they ache. One of those clean-cut, fanciful chimneys 
 too pure and white for this world with one side 
 glowing in the sun and the other touched with a soft 
 shadow, is an object that will charm one s gaze by the 
 hour. I know of no other country that has chimneys 
 worthy to be gazed at and gloated over. One of those 
 snowy houses, half concealed and half glimpsed through 
 green foliage, is a pretty thing to see; and if it takes 
 one by surprise and suddenly, as he turns a sharp 
 corner of a country road, it will wring an exclamation 
 from him, sure. 
 
 Wherever you go, in town or country, you find those 
 snowy houses, and always with masses of bright-colored 
 flowers about them, but with no vines climbing their 
 walls; vines cannot take hold of the smooth, hard 
 whitewash. Wherever you go, in the town or along 
 the country roads, among little potato farms and 
 patches or expensive country seats, these stainless white 
 dwellings, gleaming out from flowers and foliage, meet 
 you at every turn. The least little bit of a cottage is 
 as white and blemishless as the stateliest mansion. 
 Nowhere is there dirt or stench, puddle or hog-wallow, 
 neglect, disorder, or lack of trimness and neatness. 
 The roads, the streets, the dwellings, the people, the 
 clothes, this neatness extends to everything that falls 
 under the eye. It is the tidiest country in the world. 
 And very much the tidiest, too. 
 
 Considering these things, the question came up, 
 Where do the poor live? No answer was arrived at. 
 Therefore, we agreed to leave this conundrum for 
 future statesmen to wrangle over. 
 
284 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 What a bright and startling spectacle one of those 
 blazing white country palaces, with its brown-tinted 
 window caps and ledges, and green shutters, and its 
 wealth of caressing flowers and foliage, would be in 
 black London ! And what a gleaming surprise it would 
 be in nearly any American city one could mention, too ! 
 
 Bermuda roads are made by cutting down a few 
 inches into the solid white coral or a good many 
 feet, where a hill intrudes itself and smoothing off 
 the surface of the roadbed. It is a simple and easy 
 process. The grain of the coral is coarse and porous; 
 the roadbed has the look of being made of coarse white 
 sugar. Its excessive cleanness and whiteness are a 
 trouble in one way : the sun is reflected into your eyes 
 with such energy as you walk along that you want to 
 sneeze all the time. Old Captain Tom Bowling found 
 another difficulty. He joined us in our walk, but kept 
 wandering unrestfully to the roadside. Finally he ex 
 plained. Said he, "Well, I chew, you know, and the 
 road s so plaguy clean." 
 
 We walked several miles that afternoon in the be 
 wildering glare of the sun, the white roads, and the 
 white buildings. Our eyes got to paining us a good 
 deal. By and by a soothing, blessed twilight spread its 
 cool balm around. We looked up in pleased surprise 
 and saw that it proceeded from an intensely black negro 
 who was going by. We answered his military salute 
 in the grateful gloom of his near presence, and then 
 passed on into the pitiless white glare again. 
 
 The colored women whom we met usually bowed and 
 spoke ; so did the children. The colored men com 
 monly gave the military salute. They borrow this fash 
 ion from the soldiers, no doubt; England has kept a 
 garrison here for generations. The younger men s 
 custom of carrying small canes is also borrowed from 
 the soldiers, I suppose, who always carry a cane, in 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 285 
 
 Bermuda as everywhere else in Britain s broad domin 
 ions. 
 
 The country roads curve and wind hither and thither 
 in the delightfulest way, unfolding pretty surprises at 
 every turn : billowy masses of oleander that seem to 
 float out from behind distant projections like the pink 
 cloud-banks of sunset; sudden plunges among cottages 
 and gardens, life and activity, followed by as sudden 
 plunges into the somber twilight and stillness of the 
 woods; flitting visions of white fortresses and beacon 
 towers pictured against the sky on remote hilltops ; 
 glimpses of shining green sea caught for a moment 
 through opening headlands, then lost again; more 
 woods and solitude; and by and by another turn lays 
 bare, without warning, the full sweep of the inland 
 ocean, enriched with its bars of soft color and graced 
 with its wandering sails. 
 
 Take any road you please, you may depend upon it 
 you will not stay in it half a mile. Your road is every 
 thing that a road ought to be : it is bordered with 
 trees, and with strange plants and flowers ; it is shady 
 and pleasant, or sunny and still pleasant ; it carries you 
 by the prettiest and peacefulest and most homelike of 
 homes, and through stretches of forest that lie in a deep 
 hush sometimes, and sometimes are alive with the music 
 of birds ; it curves always, which is a continual promise, 
 whereas straight roads reveal everything at a glance and 
 kill interest. Your road is all this, and yet you will 
 not stay in it half a mile, for the reason that little se 
 ductive, mysterious roads are always branching out from 
 it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and 
 hide what is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation 
 to desert your own chosen road and explore them. 
 You are usually paid for your trouble ; consequently, 
 your walk inland always turns out to be one of the 
 most crooked, involved, purposeless, and interesting 
 
286 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 experiences a body can imagine. There is enough of 
 variety. Sometimes you are in the level open, with 
 marshes thick grown with flag-lances that are ten feet 
 high on the one hand, and potato and onion orchards 
 on the other; next, you are on a hilltop, with the 
 ocean and the islands spread around you ; presently the 
 road winds through a deep cut, shut in by perpendicu 
 lar walls thirty or forty feet high, marked with the odd 
 est and abruptest stratum lines, suggestive of sudden 
 and eccentric old upheavals, and garnished with here 
 and there a clinging adventurous flower, and here and 
 there a dangling vine ; and by and by your way is along 
 the sea edge, and you may look down a fathom or two 
 through the transparent water and watch the diamond- 
 like flash and play of the light upon the rocks and sands 
 on the bottom until you are tired of it if you are so 
 constituted as to be able to get tired of it. 
 
 You may march the country roads in maiden medita 
 tion, fancy free, by field and farm, for no dog will 
 plunge out at you from unsuspected gate, with breath 
 taking surprise of ferocious bark, notwithstanding it is 
 a Christian land and a civilized. We saw upwards of a 
 million cats in Bermuda, but the people are very ab 
 stemious in the matter of dogs. Two or three nights 
 we prowled the country far and wide, and never once 
 were accosted by a dog. It is a great privilege to visit 
 such a land. The cats were no offense when properly 
 distributed, but when piled they obstructed travel. 
 
 As we entered the edge of the town that Sunday 
 afternoon, we stopped at a cottage to get a drink of 
 water. The proprietor, a middle-aged man with a 
 good face, asked us to sit down and rest. His dame 
 brought chairs, and we grouped ourselves in the shade 
 of the trees by the door. Mr. Smith that was not 
 his name, but it will answer questioned us about our 
 selves and our country, and we answered him truthfully, 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 287 
 
 as a general thing, and questioned him in return. It 
 was all very simple and pleasant and sociable. Rural, 
 too ; for there was a pig and a small donkey and a hen 
 anchored out, close at hand, by cords to their legs, on 
 a spot that purported to be grassy. Presently, a 
 woman passed along, and although she coldly said noth 
 ing she changed the drift of our talk. Said Smith : 
 
 " She didn t look this way, you noticed? Well, she 
 is our next neighbor on one side, and there s another 
 family that s our next neighbors on the other side; but 
 there s a general coolness all around now, and we don t 
 speak. Yet these three families, one generation and 
 another, have lived here side by side and been as 
 friendly as weavers for a hundred and fifty years, till 
 about a year ago." 
 
 "Why, what calamity could have been powerful 
 enough to break up so old a friendship?" 
 
 " Well, it was too bad, but it couldn t be helped. It 
 happened like this : About a year or more ago, the 
 rats got to pestering my place a good deal, and I set up 
 a steel trap in my back-yard. Both of these neighbors 
 run considerable to cats, and so I warned them about 
 the trap, because their cats were pretty sociable around 
 here nights, ami they might get into trouble without my 
 intending it. Well, they shut up their cats for a while, 
 but you know how it is with people ; they got careless, 
 and sure enough one night the trap took Mrs. Jones s 
 principal tomcat into camp and finished him up. In 
 the morning Mrs. Jones comes here with the corpse in 
 her arms, and cries and takes on the same as if it was a 
 child. It was a cat by the name of Yelverton Hector 
 G. Yelverton a troublesome old rip, with no more 
 principle than an Injun, though you couldn t make her 
 believe it. I said all a man could to comfort her, but 
 no, nothing would do but I must pay for him. Finally, 
 1 said I warn t investing in cats now as much as I was, 
 
 19 
 
288 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 and with that she walked off in a huff, carrying the re 
 mains with her. That closed our intercourse with the 
 Joneses. Mrs. Jones joined another church and took 
 her tribe with her. She said she would not hold fellow 
 ship with assassins. Well, by and by comes Mrs. 
 Brown s turn she that went by here a minute ago. 
 She had a disgraceful old yellow cat that she thought as 
 much of as if he was twins, and one night he tried that 
 trap on his neck, and it fitted him so, and was so sort 
 of satisfactory, that he laid down and curled up and 
 stayed with it. Such was the end of Sir John 
 Baldwin." 
 
 "Was that the name of the cat?" 
 
 11 The same. There s cats around herewith names 
 that would surprise you. Maria" (to his wife), 
 " what was that cat s name that eat a keg of ratsbane 
 by mistake over at Hooper s, and started home and got 
 struck by lightning and took the blind staggers and fell 
 in the well and was most drowned before they could 
 fish him out?" 
 
 That was that colored Deacon Jackson s cat. I 
 only remember the last end of its name, which was 
 Hold-The-Fort-For-I-Am-Coming Jackson. 
 
 " Sho ! that ain t the one. That s the one that eat 
 up an entire box of Seidlitz powders, and then hadn t 
 any more judgment than to go and take a drink. He 
 was considered to be a great loss, but I never could see 
 it. Well, no matter about the names. Mrs. Brown 
 wanted to be reasonable, but Mrs. Jones wouldn t let 
 her. She put her up to going to law for damages. So 
 to law she went, and had the face to claim seven shil 
 lings and sixpence. It made a great stir. All the 
 neighbors went to court. Everybody took sides. It 
 got hotter and hotter, and broke up all the friendships 
 for three hundred yards around friendships that had 
 lasted for generations and generations. 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 289 
 
 " Well, I proved by eleven witnesses that the cat was 
 of a low character and very ornery, and warn t worth 
 a canceled postage-stamp, anyway, taking the average 
 of cats here; but I lost the case. What could I ex 
 pect? The system is all wrong here, and is bound to 
 make revolution and bloodshed some day. You see, 
 they give the magistrate a poor little starvation salary, 
 and then turn him loose on the public to gouge for fees 
 and costs to live on. What is the natural result? 
 Why, he never looks into the justice of a case never 
 once. All he looks at is which client has got the 
 money. So this one piled the fees and costs and every 
 thing on to me. I could pay specie, don t you see? 
 and he knew mighty well that if he put the verdict 
 on to Mrs. Brown, where it belonged, he d have to take 
 his swag in currency." 
 
 " Currency? Why, has Bermuda a currency?" 
 Yes onions. And they were forty per cent, 
 discount, too, then, because the season had been over 
 as much as three months. So I lost my case. I had 
 to pay for that cat. But the general trouble the case 
 made was the worst thing about it. Broke up so much 
 good feeling. The neighbors don t speak to each other 
 now. Mrs. Brown had named a child after me. But 
 she changed its name right away. She is a Baptist. 
 Well, in the course of baptizing it over again, it got 
 drowned. I was hoping we might get to be friendly 
 again some time or other, but of course this drowning 
 the child knocked that all out of the question. It 
 would have saved a world of heart-break and ill blood 
 if she had named it dry." 
 
 I knew by the sigh that this was honest. All this 
 trouble and all this destruction of confidence in the 
 purity of the bench on account of a seven-shilling law 
 suit about a cat! Somehow, it seemed to " size " the 
 country. 
 19** 
 
290 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 At this point we observed that an English flag had 
 just been placed at half-mast on a building a hundred 
 yards away. I and my friends were busy in an instant 
 trying to imagine whose death, among the island dig 
 nitaries, could command such a mark of respect as this. 
 Then a shudder shook them and me at the- same 
 moment, and I knew that we had jumped to one and 
 the same conclusion : The governor has gone to 
 England ; it is for the British admiral !" 
 
 At this moment Mr. Smith noticed the flag. He 
 said with emotion : 
 
 "That s on a boarding-house. I judge there s a 
 boarder dead." 
 
 A dozen other flags within view went to half-mast. 
 
 " It s a boarder, sure," said Smith. 
 
 "But would they half-mast the flags here for a 
 boarder, Mr. Smith?" 
 
 " Why, certainly they would, if he was dead." 
 
 That seemed to size the country again. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE early twilight of a Sunday evening in Hamilton, 
 Bermuda, is an alluring time. There is just enough of 
 whispering breeze, fragrance of flowers, and sense of 
 repose to raise one s thoughts heavenward; and just 
 enough amateur piano music to keep him reminded of 
 the other place. There are many venerable pianos in 
 Hamilton, and they all play at twilight. Age enlarges 
 and enriches the powers of some musical instruments 
 notably those of the violin but it seems to set a 
 piano s teeth on edge. Most of the music in vogue 
 there is the same that those pianos prattled in their in 
 nocent infancy; and there is something very pathetic 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 291 
 
 about it when they go over it now, in their asthmatic 
 second childhood, dropping a note here and there, 
 where a tooth is gone. 
 
 We attended evening service at the stately Episcopal 
 church on the hill, where were five or six hundred 
 people, half of them white and the other half black, 
 according to the usual Bermudian proportions ; and all 
 well dressed a thing which is also usual in Bermuda 
 and to be confidently expected. There was good 
 music, which we heard, and doubtless a good sermon, 
 but there was a wonderful deal of coughing, and so 
 only the high parts of the argument carried over it. 
 &s we came out, after service, I overheard one young 
 girl says to another : 
 
 "Why, you don t mean to say you pay duty on 
 gloves and laces ! I only pay postage ; have them 
 done up and sent in the Boston Advertiser." 
 
 There are those that believe that the most difficult 
 thing to create is a woman who can comprehend that it 
 is wrong to smuggle ; and that an impossible thing to 
 create is a woman who will not smuggle, whether or 
 no, when she gets a chance. But these may be errors. 
 
 We went wandering off toward the country, and were 
 soon far down in the lonely black depths of a road that 
 was roofed over with the dense foliage of a double rank 
 of great cedars. There was no sound of any kind 
 there, it was perfectly still. And it was so dark that 
 one could detect nothing but somber outlines. We 
 strode farther and farther down this tunnel, cheering 
 the way with chat. 
 
 Presently the chat took this shape : * How insensibly 
 the character of the people and of a government makes 
 its impress upon a stranger, and gives him a sense of 
 security or of insecurity without his taking deliberate 
 thought upon the matter or asking anybody a question J 
 We have been in this land half a day ; we have seen 
 
292 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 none but honest faces ; we have noted the British flag 
 flying, which means efficient government and good 
 order ; so without inquiry we plunge unarmed and with 
 perfect confidence into this dismal place, which in 
 almost any other country would swarm with thugs and 
 garroters 
 
 "Sh! What was that? Stealthy footsteps ! Low 
 voices ! We gasp, we close up together, and wait. 
 A vague shape glides out of the dusk and confronts us. 
 A voice speaks demands money ! 
 
 "A shilling, gentlemen, if you please, to help build 
 the new Methodist church." 
 
 Blessed sound ! Holy sound ! We contribute with 
 thankful avidity to the new Methodist church, and are 
 happy to think how lucky it was that those little colored 
 Sunday-school scholars did not seize upon everything 
 we had with violence, before we recovered from our 
 momentary helpless condition. By the light of cigars 
 we write down the names of weightier philanthropists 
 than ourselves on the contribution cards, and then pass 
 on into the farther darkness, saying, What sort of a 
 government do they call this, where they allow little 
 black pious children, with contribution cards, to plunge 
 out upon peaceable strangers in the dark and scare 
 them to death? 
 
 We prowled on several hours, sometimes by the sea 
 side, sometimes inland, and finally managed to get lost, 
 which is a feat that requires talent in Bermuda. I had 
 on new shoes. They were No. 7 s when I started, but 
 were not more than 5 s now, and still diminishing. I 
 walked two hours in those shoes after that, before we 
 reached home. Doubtless I could have the reader s 
 sympathy for the asking. Many people have never had 
 the headache or the toothache, and I am one of those 
 myself; but everybody has worn tight shoes for two or 
 three hours, and known the luxury of taking them off 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 293 
 
 in a retired place and seeing his feet swell up and ob- 
 secure the firmament. Once when I was a callow, bash 
 ful cub, I took a plain, unsentimental country girl to a 
 comedy one night. I had known her a day; she 
 seemed divine; I wore my new boots. At the end of 
 the first half-hour she said, "Why do you fidget so 
 with your feet?" I said, " Did I?" Then I put my 
 attention there and kept still. At the end of another 
 half-hour she said, " Why do you say, * Yes, oh yes ! 
 and Ha, ha, oh, certainly! very true! to everything 
 I say, when half the time those are entirely irrelevant 
 answers?" I blushed, and explained that I had been a 
 little absent-minded. At the end of another half-hour 
 she said, " Please, why do you grin so steadfastly at 
 vacancy, and yet look so sad?" I explained that I 
 always did that when I was reflecting. An hour passed, 
 and then she turned and contemplated me with her 
 earnest eyes and said, " Why do you cry all the time?" 
 I explained that very funny comedies always made me 
 cry. At last human nature surrendered, and I secretly 
 slipped my boots off. This was a mistake. I was not 
 able to get them on any more. It was a rainy night; 
 there were no omnibuses going our way; and as I 
 walked home, burning up with shame, with the girl on 
 one arm and my boots under the other, I was an object 
 worthy of some compassion especially in those 
 moments of martyrdom when I had to pass through 
 the glare that fell upon the pavement from street 
 lamps. Finally, this child of the forest said, " Where 
 are your boots?" and being taken unprepared, I put a 
 fitting finish to the follies of the evening with the stupid 
 remark, The higher classes do not wear them to the 
 theater." 
 
 The Reverend had been an army chaplain during the 
 war, and while we were hunting for a road that would 
 
294 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 lead to Hamilton he told a story about two dying soldiers 
 which interested me in spite of my feet. He said that 
 in the Potomac hospitals rough pine coffins were fur 
 nished by government, but that it was not always pos 
 sible to keep up with the demand; so, when a man 
 died, if there was no coffin at hand he was buried with 
 out one. One night, late, two soldiers lay dying in a 
 ward. A man came in with a coffin on his shoulder, 
 and stood trying to make up his mind which of these 
 two poor fellows would be likely to need it first. Both 
 of them begged for it with their fading eyes they 
 were past talking. Then one of them protruded a 
 wasted hand from his blankets and made a feeble beck 
 oning sign with the fingers, to signify, " Be a good fel 
 low; put it under my bed, please." The man did it, 
 and left. The lucky soldier painfully turned himself in 
 his bed until he faced the other warrior, raised himself 
 partly on his elbow, and began to work up a mysterious 
 expression of some kind in his face. Gradually, irk 
 somely, but surely and steadily, it developed, and at 
 last it took definite form as a pretty successful wink. 
 The sufferer fell back exhausted with his labor, but 
 bathed in glory. Now entered a personal friend of 
 No. 2, the despoiled soldier. No. 2 pleaded with him 
 with eloquent eyes, till presently he understood, and re 
 moved the coffin from under No. I s bed and put it 
 under No. 2 s. No. 2 indicated his joy, and made 
 some more signs; the friend understood again, and put 
 his arm under No. 2 s shoulders and lifted him partly 
 up. Then the dying hero turned the dim exultation of 
 his eye upon No. I, and began a slow and labored 
 work with his hands ; gradually he lifted one hand up 
 toward his face ; it grew weak and dropped back again ; 
 once more he made the effort, but failed again. He 
 took a rest; he gathered all the remnant of his strength, 
 and this time he slowly but surely carried his thumb to 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 295 
 
 the side of his nose, spread the gaunt fingers wide in 
 triumph, and dropped back dead. That picture sticks 
 by me yet. The " situation " is unique. 
 
 The next morning, at what seemed a very early hour, 
 the little white table-waiter appeared suddenly in my 
 room and shot a single word out of himself : Break 
 fast!" 
 
 This was a remarkable boy in many ways. He was 
 about eleven years old ; he had alert, intent black eyes ; 
 he was quick of movement; there was no hesitation, 
 no uncertainty about him anywhere ; there was a mili 
 tary decision in his lip, his manner, his speech, that 
 was an astonishing thing to see in a little chap like him ; 
 he wasted no words ; his answers always came so quick 
 and brief that they seemed to be part of the question 
 that had been asked instead of a reply to it. When he 
 stood at table with his fly-brush, rigid, erect, his face 
 set in a cast-iron gravity, he was a statue till he detected 
 a dawning want in somebody s eye; then he pounced 
 down, supplied it, and was instantly a statue again. 
 When he was sent to the kitchen for anything, he 
 marched upright till he got to the door; he turned 
 hand-springs the rest of the way. 
 
 "Breakfast!" 
 
 I thought I would make one more effort to get some 
 conversation out of this being. 
 
 " Have you called the Reverend, or are " 
 
 "Yes s r!" 
 
 "Is it early, or is " 
 
 " Eight-five." 
 
 "Do you have to do all the chores, or is there 
 somebody to give you a " 
 
 "Colored girl." 
 
 16 Is there only one parish in this island, or are 
 there" 
 
 "Eight!" 
 
296 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 " Is the big church on the hill a parish church, or is 
 it" 
 
 "Chapel-of-ease!" 
 
 "Is taxation here classified into poll, parish, town, 
 and" 
 
 "Don t know!" 
 
 Before I could cudgel another question out of my 
 head, he was below, hand-springing across the back 
 yard. He had slid down the balusters, head-first. I 
 gave up trying to provoke a discussion with him. The 
 essential element of discussion had been left out of 
 him ; his answers were so final and exact that they did 
 not leave a doubt to hang conversation on. I suspect 
 that there is the making of a mighty man or a mighty 
 rascal in this boy according to circumstances but 
 they are going to apprentice him to a carpenter. It is 
 the way the world uses its opportunities. 
 
 During this day and the next we took carriage drives 
 about the island and over to the town of St. George s, 
 fifteen or twenty miles away. Such hard, excellent 
 roads to drive over are not to be found elsewhere out 
 of Europe. An intelligent young colored man drove 
 us, and acted as guide-book. In the edge of the town 
 we saw five or six mountain-cabbage palms (atrocious 
 name!) standing in a straight row, and equidistant 
 from each other. These were not the largest or the 
 tallest trees I have ever seen, but they were the state 
 liest, the most majestic. That row of them must be 
 the nearest that nature has ever come to counterfeiting 
 a colonnade. These trees are all the same height, say 
 sixty feet ; the trunks as gray as granite, with a very 
 gradual and perfect taper; without sign of branch or 
 knot or flaw ; the surface not looking like bark, but like 
 granite that has been dressed and not polished. Thus all 
 the way up the diminishing shaft for fifty feet ; then it 
 begins to take the appearance of being closely wrapped, 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 297 
 
 spool-fashion, with gray cord, or of having been turned 
 in a lathe. Above this point there is an outward swell, 
 and thence upwards, for six feet or more, the cylinder 
 is a bright, fresh green, and is formed of wrappings 
 like those of an ear of green Indian corn. Then comes 
 the great, spraying palm plume, also green. Other 
 palm trees always lean out of the perpendicular, or 
 have a curve in them. But the plumb-line could not 
 detect a deflection in any individual of this stately 
 row ; they stand as straight as the colonnade of Baal 
 bee; they have its great height, they have its grace 
 fulness, they have its dignity; in moonlight or twilight, 
 and shorn of their plumes, they would duplicate it. 
 
 The birds we came across in the country were singu 
 larly tame; even that wild creature, the quail, would 
 pick around in the grass at ease while we inspected it 
 and talked about it at leisure. A small bird of the 
 canary species had to be stirred up with the butt-end 
 of the whip before it would move, and then it moved 
 only a couple of feet. It is said that even the sus 
 picious flea is tame and sociable in Bermuda, and will 
 allow himself to be caught and caressed without misgiv 
 ings. This should be taken with allowance, for doubt 
 less there is more or less brag about it. In San Fran 
 cisco they used to claim that their native flea could kick 
 a child over, as if it were a merit in a flea to be able to 
 do that; as if the knowledge of it trumpeted abroad 
 ought to entice immigration. Such a thing in nine 
 cases out of ten would be almost sure to deter a think 
 ing man from coming. 
 
 We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was 
 thinking of saying in print, in a general way, that there 
 were none at all; but one night after I had gone to bed, 
 the Reverend came into my room carrying something, 
 and asked, " Is this your boot?" I said it was, and 
 he said he had met a spider going off with it. Next 
 
298 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 morning he stated that just at dawn the same spider 
 raised his window and was coming in to get a shirt, but 
 saw him and fled. 
 
 I inquired, " Did he get the shirt?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " How did you know it was a shirt he was after?" 
 
 " I could see it in his eye." 
 
 We inquired around, but could hear of no Bermu- 
 dian spider capable of doing these things. Citizens 
 said that their largest spiders could not more than 
 spread their legs over an ordinary saucer, and that they 
 had always been considered honest. Here was testi 
 mony of a clergyman against the testimony of mere 
 worldings interested ones, too. On the whole, I 
 judged it best to lock up my things. 
 
 Here and there on the country roads we found lemon, 
 papaw, orange, lime, and fig trees; also several sorts 
 of palms, among them the cocoa, the date, and the 
 palmetto. We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with 
 stems as thick as a man s arm. Jungles of the man 
 grove-tree stood up out of swamps, propped on their 
 interlacing roots as upon a tangle of stilts. In drier 
 places the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud 
 of shade. Here and there the blossomy tamarisk 
 adorned the roadside. There was a curious gnarled 
 and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on it. It 
 might have passed itself off for a dead apple tree but 
 for the fact that it had a star-like, red-hot flower 
 sprinkled sparsely over its person. It had the scattery 
 red glow that a constellation might have when glimpsed 
 through smoked glass. It is possible that our constel 
 lations have been so constructed as to be invisible 
 through smoked glass; if this is so it is a great mistake. 
 
 We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as calmly 
 and unostentatiously as a vine would do it. We saw 
 an India-rubber-tree, but out of season, possibly, so 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 299 
 
 there were no shoes on it, nor suspenders, nor any 
 thing that a person would properly expect to find there. 
 This gave it an impressively fraudulent look. There 
 was exactly one mahogany tree on the jsland. I know 
 this to be reliable, because I saw a man who said he 
 had counted it many a time and could not be mistaken. 
 He was a man with a harelip and a pure heart, and 
 everybody said he was as true as steel. Such men are 
 all too few. 
 
 One s eye caught near and far the pink cloud of the 
 oleander and the red blaze of the pomegranate blossom. 
 In one piece of wild wood the morning-glory vines 
 had wrapped the trees to their very tops, and decorated 
 them all over with couples and clusters of great blue 
 bells a fine and striking spectacle, at a little distance. 
 But the dull cedar is everywhere, and is the prevail 
 ing foliage. One does not appreciate how dull it is 
 until the varnished, bright green attire of the infrequent 
 lemon tree pleasantly intrudes its contrast. In one 
 thing Bermuda is eminently tropical was in May, at 
 least the unbrilliant, slightly faded, unrejoicing look 
 of the landscape. For forests arrayed in a blemishless 
 magnificence of glowing green foliage that seems to 
 exult in its own existence and can move the beholder 
 to an enthusiasm that will make him either shout or 
 cry, one must go to countries that have malignant 
 winters. 
 
 We saw scores of colored farmers digging their crops 
 of potatoes and onions, their wives and children help 
 ing entirely contented and comfortable, if looks go 
 for anything. We never met a man, or woman, or 
 child anywhere in this sunny island who seemed to be 
 unprosperous, or discontented, or sorry about anything. 
 This sort of monotony became very tiresome presently, 
 and even something worse. The spectacle of an entire 
 nation groveling in contentment is an infuriating thing. 
 
300 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 We felt the lack of something in this community a 
 vague, an undefinable, an elusive something, and yet 
 a lack. But after considerable thought we made out 
 what it was tramps. Let them go there, right now, 
 in a body. It is utterly virgin soil. Passage is cheap. 
 Every true patriot in America will help buy tickets. 
 Whole armies of these excellent beings can be spared 
 from our midst and our polls ; they will find a delicious 
 climate and a green, kind-hearted people. There are 
 potatoes and onions for all, and a generous welcome 
 for the first batch that arrives, and elegant graves for 
 the second. 
 
 It was the Early Rose potato the people were dig 
 ging. Later in the year they have another crop, which 
 they call the Garnet. We buy their potatoes (retail) 
 at fifteen dollars a barrel ; and those colored farmers 
 buy ours for a song, and live on them. Havana might 
 exchange cigars with Connecticut in the same ad 
 vantageous way, if she thought of it. 
 
 We passed a roadside grocery with a sign up, " Pota 
 toes Wanted." An ignorant stranger, doubtless. He 
 could not have gone thirty steps from his place without 
 finding plenty of them. 
 
 In several fields the arrowroot crop was already 
 sprouting. Bermuda used to make a vast annual 
 profit out of this staple before firearms came into such 
 general use. 
 
 The island is not large. Somewhere in the interior a 
 man ahead of us had a very slow horse. I suggested 
 that we had better go by him ; but the driver said the 
 man had but a little way to go. I waited to see, 
 wondering how he could know. Presently the man did 
 turn down another road. I asked, "How did you 
 know he would?" 
 
 " Because I knew the man, and where he lived." 
 
 I asked him, satirically, if he knew everybody in the 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 301 
 
 island; he answered, very simply, that he did. This 
 gives a body s mind a good substantial grip on the 
 dimensions of the place. 
 
 At the principal hotel at St. George s, a young girl, 
 with a sweet, serious face, said we could not be fur 
 nished with dinner, because we had not been expected, 
 and no preparation had been made. Yet it was still an 
 hour before dinner time. We argued, she yielded not; 
 we supplicated, she was serene. The hotel had not 
 been expecting an inundation of two people, and so it 
 seemed that we should have to go home dinnerless. I 
 said we were not very hungry; a fish would do. My 
 little maid answered, it was not the market day for fish. 
 Things began to look serious ; but presently the boarder 
 who sustained the hotel came in, and when the case 
 was laid before him he was cheerfully willing to divide. 
 So we had much pleasant chat at table about St, 
 George s chief industry, the repairing of damaged 
 ships ; and in between we had a soup that had some 
 thing in it that seemed to taste like the hereafter, but it 
 proved to be only pepper of a particularly vivacious 
 kind. And we had an iron-clad chicken that was de- 
 liciously cooked, but not in the right way. Baking was 
 not the thing to convince his sort. He ought to have 
 been put through a quartz mill until the "tuck" was 
 taken out of him, and then boiled till we came again. 
 We got a good deal of sport out of him, but not enough 
 sustenance to leave the victory on our side. No mat 
 ter; we had potatoes and a pie and a sociable good 
 time. Then a ramble through the town, which is a 
 quaint one, with interesting, crooked streets, and nar 
 row, crooked lanes, with here and there a grain of dust. 
 Here, as in Hamilton, the dwellings had Venetian 
 blinds of a very sensible pattern. They were not 
 double shutters, hinged at the sides, but a single broad 
 shutter, hinged at the top; you push it outward, from 
 
302 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 the bottom, and fasten it at any angle required by the 
 sun or desired by yourself. 
 
 All about the island one sees great white scars on the 
 hill-slopes. These are dished spaces where the soil has 
 been scraped off and the coral exposed and glazed with 
 hard whitewash. Some of these are a quarter-acre in 
 size. They catch and carry the rainfall to reservoirs ; 
 for the wells are few and poor, and there are no natural 
 springs and no brooks. 
 
 They say that the Bermuda climate is mild and 
 equable, with never any snow or ice, and that one 
 may be very comfortable in spring clothing the year 
 round, there. We had delightful and decided summer 
 weather in May, with a flaming sun that permitted the 
 thinnest of raiment, and yet there was a constant 
 breeze ; consequently we were never discomforted by 
 heat. At four or five in the afternoon the mercury 
 began to go down, and then it became necessary to 
 change to thick garments. I went to St. George s in the 
 morning clothed in the thinnest of linen, and reached 
 home at five in the afternoon with two overcoats on. 
 The nights are said to be always cool and bracing. 
 We had mosquito nets, and the Reverend said the 
 mosquitoes persecuted him a good deal. I often heard 
 him slapping and banging at these imaginary creatures 
 with as much zeal as if they had been real. There are 
 no mosquitoes in the Bermudas in May. 
 
 The poet Thomas Moore spent several months in 
 Bermuda more than seventy years ago. He was sent 
 out to be registrar of the admiralty. I am not quite 
 clear as to the function of a registrar of the admiralty 
 of Bermuda, but I think it is his duty to keep a record 
 of all the admirals born there. I will inquire into this. 
 There was not much doing in admirals, and Moore got 
 tired and went away. A reverently preserved souvenir 
 of him is still one of the treasures of the islands. I 
 
Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 303 
 
 gathered the idea, vaguely, that it was a jug, but was 
 persistently thwarted in the twenty-two efforts I made 
 to visit it. However, it was no matter, for I found out 
 afterwards that it was only a chair. 
 
 There are several "sights" in the Bermudas, of 
 course, but they are easily avoided. This is a great 
 advantage one cannot have it in Europe. Bermuda 
 is the right country for a jaded man to "loaf" in. 
 There are no harassments ; the deep peace and quiet of 
 the country sink into one s body and bones and give 
 his conscience a rest, and chloroform the legion of in 
 visible small devils that are always trying to whitewash 
 his hair. A good many Americans go there about the 
 first of March and remain until the early spring weeks 
 have finished their villainies at home. 
 
 The Bermudians are hoping soon to have telegraphic 
 communication with the world. But even after they 
 shall have acquired this curse it will still be a good 
 country to go to for a vacation, for there are charming 
 little islets scattered about the enclosed sea where one 
 could live secure from interruption. The telegraph 
 boy would have to come in a boat, and one could easily 
 kill him while he was making his landing. 
 
 We had spent four days in Bermuda three bright 
 ones out of doors and one rainy one in the house, we 
 being disappointed about getting a yacht for a sail ; 
 and now our furlough was ended, and we entered into 
 the ship again and sailed homeward. 
 
 We made the run home to New York quarantine in 
 three days and five hours, and could have gone right 
 along up to the city if we had had a health permit. 
 But health permits are not granted after seven in the 
 evening, partly because a ship cannot be inspected 
 and overhauled with exhaustive thoroughness except in 
 daylight, and partly because health officers are liable 
 to catch cold if they expose themselves to the night 
 
3O4 Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 
 
 air. Still, you can buy a permit after hours for five 
 dollars extra, and the officer will do the inspecting 
 next week. Our ship and passengers lay under ex 
 pense and in humiliating captivity all night, under the 
 very nose of the little official reptile who is supposed 
 to protect New York from pestilence by his vigilant 
 "inspections." This imposing rigor gave everybody 
 a solemn and awful idea of the beneficent watchfulness 
 of our government, and there were some who wondered 
 if anything finer could be found in other countries. 
 
 In the morning we were all a-tiptoe to witness the 
 intricate ceremony of inspecting the ship. But it was 
 a disappointing thing. The health officer s tug ranged 
 alongside for a moment, our purser handed the lawful 
 three-dollar permit fee to the health officer s bootblack, 
 who passed us a folded paper in a forked stick, and 
 away we went. The entire " inspection " did not oc 
 cupy thirteen seconds. 
 
 The health officer s place is worth a hundred thou 
 sand dollars a year to him. His system of inspection 
 is perfect, and therefore cannot be improved on ; but 
 it seems to me that his system of collecting his fees 
 might be amended. For a great ship to lie idle all 
 night is a most costly loss of time ; for her passengers 
 to have to do the same thing works to them the same 
 damage, with the addition of an amount of exaspera 
 tion and bitterness of soul that the spectacle of that 
 health officer s ashes on a shovel could hardly sweeten. 
 Now why would it not be better and simpler to let the 
 ships pass in unmolested, and the fees and permits be 
 exchanged once a year by post? 
 
THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT 
 
 CARNIVAL OF CRIME IN 
 
 CONNECTICUT 
 
 I WAS feeling blithe, almost jocund. I put a match 
 to my cigar, and just then the morning s mail was 
 handed in. The first superscription I glanced at was 
 in a handwriting that sent a thrill of pleasure through 
 and through me. It was Aunt Mary s; and she was 
 the person I loved and honored most in all the world, 
 outside of my own household. She had been my boy 
 hood s idol; maturity, which is fatal to so many en 
 chantments, had not been able to dislodge her from 
 her pedestal; no, it had only justified her right to be 
 there, and placed her dethronement permanently among 
 the impossibilities. To show how strong her influence 
 over me was, I will observe that long after everybody 
 else s "^-stop-smoking" had ceased to affect me in 
 the slightest degree, Aunt Mary could still stir my 
 torpid conscience into faint signs of life when she 
 touched upon the matter. But all things have their 
 limit in this world. A happy day came at last, when 
 even Aunt Mary s words could no longer move me. I 
 was not merely glad to see that day arrive ; I was more 
 than glad I was grateful ; for when its sun had set, 
 the one alloy that was able to mar my enjoyment of 
 my aunt s society was gone. The remainder of her 
 20** (305) 
 
306 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 stay with us that winter was in every way a delight. 
 Of course she pleaded with me just as earnestly as 
 ever, after that blessed day, to quit my pernicious 
 habit, but to no purpose whatever; the moment she 
 opened the subject I at once became calmly, peace 
 fully, contentedly indifferent absolutely, adamantinely 
 indifferent. Consequently the closing weeks of that 
 memorable visit melted away as pleasantly as a dream, 
 they were so freighted for me with tranquil satisfaction. 
 I could not have enjoyed my pet vice more if my gentle 
 tormentor had been a smoker herself, and an advocate 
 of the practice. Well, the sight of her handwriting 
 reminded me that I was getting very hungry to see her 
 again. I easily guessed what I should find in her 
 letter. I opened it. Good! just as I expected; she 
 was coming! Coming this very day, too, and by the 
 morning train ; I might expect her any moment. 
 
 I said to myself, " I am thoroughly happy and con 
 tent now. If my most pitiless enemy could appear 
 before me at this moment, I would freely right any 
 wrong I may have done him." 
 
 Straightway the door opened, and a shriveled, 
 shabby dwarf entered. He was not more than two 
 feet high. He seemed to be about forty years old. 
 Every feature and every inch of him was a trifle out of 
 shape; and so, while one could not put his finger 
 upon any particular part and say, " This is a conspicu 
 ous deformity," the spectator perceived that this little 
 person was a deformity as a whole a vague, general, 
 evenly blended, nicely adjusted deformity. There was 
 a fox-like cunning in the face and the sharp little eyes, 
 and also alertness and malice. And yet, this vile bit of 
 human rubbish seemed to bear a sort of remote and ill- 
 defined resemblance to me ! It was dully perceptible 
 in the mean form, the countenance, and even the 
 clothes, gestures, manner, and attitudes of the creature. 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 307 
 
 He was a far-fetched, dim suggestion of a burlesque 
 upon me, a caricature of me in little. One thing about 
 him struck me forcibly, and most unpleasantly : he was 
 covered all over with a fuzzy, greenish mould, such as 
 one sometimes sees upon mildewed bread. The sight 
 of it was nauseating. 
 
 He stepped along with a chipper air, and flung him 
 self into a doll s chair in a very free-and-easy way, 
 without waiting to be asked. He tossed his hat into 
 the waste-basket. He picked up my old chalk pipe 
 from the floor, gave the stem a wipe or two on his 
 knee, filled the bowl from the tobacco-box at his side, 
 and said to me in a tone of pert command : 
 
 " Gimme a match !" 
 
 I blushed to the roots of my hair; partly with indig 
 nation, but mainly because it somehow seemed to me 
 that this whole performance was very like an exaggera 
 tion of conduct which I myself had sometimes been 
 guilty of in my intercourse with familiar friends but 
 never, never with strangers, I observed to myself. I 
 wanted to kick the pigmy into the fire, but some in 
 comprehensible sense of being legally and legitimately 
 under his authority forced me to obey his order. He 
 applied the match to the pipe, took a contemplative 
 whiff or two, and remarked, in an irritatingly familiar 
 way: 
 
 " Seems to me it s devilish odd weather for this time 
 of year." 
 
 I flushed again, and in anger and humiliation as be 
 fore ; for the language was hardly an exaggeration of 
 some that I have uttered in my day, and moreover was 
 delivered in a tone of voice and with an exasperating 
 drawl that had the seeming of a deliberate travesty of 
 my style. Now there is nothing I am quite so sensitive 
 about as a mocking imitation of my drawling infirmity 
 of speech. I spoke up sharply and said : 
 
303 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 "Look here, you miserable ash-cat! you will have 
 to give a little more attention to your manners, or I will 
 throw you out of the window !" 
 
 The manikin smiled a smile of malicious content and 
 security, puffed a whiff of smoke contemptuously 
 toward me, and said, with a still more elaborate drawl: 
 
 "Come go gently now; don t put on too many 
 airs with your betters." 
 
 This cool snub rasped me all over, but it seemed to 
 subjugate me, too, for a moment. The pigmy con 
 templated me awhile with his weasel eyes, and then 
 said, in a peculiarly sneering way: 
 
 "You turned a tramp away from your door this 
 morning." 
 
 I said crustily: 
 
 Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn t. How do you 
 know?" 
 
 "Well, I know. It isn t any matter how I know." 
 
 " Very well. Suppose I did turn a tramp away from 
 the door what of it?" 
 
 " Oh, nothing; nothing in particular. Only you lied 
 to him." 
 
 I didn t! That is, I" 
 
 "Yes, but you did; you lied to him." 
 
 I felt a guilty pang in truth, I had felt it forty 
 times before that tramp had traveled a block from my 
 door but still I resolved to make a show of feeling 
 slandered ; so I said : 
 
 This is a baseless impertinence. I said to the 
 tramp " 
 
 There wait. You were about to lie again. / 
 know what you said to him. You said the cook was 
 gone down town and there was nothing left from break 
 fast. Two lies. You knew the cook was behind the 
 door, and plenty of provisions behind her" 
 
 This astonishing accuracy silenced me ; and it filled 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 309 
 
 me with wondering speculations, too, as to how this 
 cub could have got his information. Of course he 
 could have culled the conversation from the tramp, but 
 by what sort of magic had he contrived to find out 
 about the concealed cook? Now the dwarf spoke 
 again : 
 
 " It was rather pitiful, rather small, in you to refuse 
 to read that poor young woman s manuscript the other 
 day, and give her an opinion as to its literary value ; 
 and she had come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now 
 wasn t it?" 
 
 I felt like a cur ! And I had felt so every time the 
 thing had recurred to my mind, I may as well confess. 
 I flushed hotly and said : 
 
 "Look here, have you nothing better to do than 
 prowl around prying into other people s business? 
 Did that girl tell you that?" 
 
 "Never mind whether she did or not. The main 
 thing is, you did that contemptible thing. And you 
 felt ashamed of it afterward. Aha ! you feel ashamed 
 of it now /" 
 
 This was a sort of devilish glee. With fiery earnest 
 ness I responded : 
 
 " I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I 
 could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one s 
 manuscript, because an individual s verdict was worth 
 less. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose 
 it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production 
 and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. 
 I said that the great public was the only tribunal com 
 petent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and 
 therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal 
 in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by 
 that mighty court s decision anyway." 
 
 * Yes, you said all that. So you did, you juggling, 
 small-souled shuffler ! And yet when the happy hope- 
 
310 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 fulness faded out of that poor girl s face, when you 
 saw her furtively slip beneath her shawl the scroll she 
 had so patiently and honestly scribbled at so ashamed 
 of her darling now, so proud of it before when you 
 saw the gladness go out of her eyes and the tears corne 
 there, when she crept away so humbly who had come 
 so" 
 
 " Oh, peace ! peace ! peace ! Blister your merciless 
 tongue, haven t all these thoughts tortured me enough 
 without your coming here to fetch them back again!" 
 
 Remorse ! remorse ! It seemed to me that it would 
 eat the very heart out of me ! And yet that small 
 fiend only sat there leering at me with joy and con 
 tempt, and placidly chuckling. Presently he began to 
 speak again. Every sentence was an accusation, and 
 every accusation a truth. Every clause was freighted 
 with sarcasm and derision, every slow-dropping word 
 burned like vitriol. The dwarf reminded me of times 
 when I had flown at my children in anger and punished 
 them for faults which a little inquiry would have taught 
 me that others, and not they, had committed. He re 
 minded me of how I had disloyally allowed old friends 
 to be traduced in my hearing, and been too craven to 
 utter a word in their defense. He reminded me of 
 many dishonest things which I had done ; of many 
 which I had procured to be done by children and other 
 irresponsible persons ; of some which I had planned, 
 thought upon, and longed to do, and been kept from 
 the performance by fear of consequences only. With 
 exquisite cruelty he recalled to my mind, item by item, 
 wrongs and unkindnesses I had inflicted and humilia 
 tions I had put upon friends since dead, " who died 
 thinking of those injuries, maybe, and grieving over 
 them," he added, by way of poison to the stab. 
 
 "For instance," said he, "take the case of your 
 younger brother, when you two were boys together, 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 311 
 
 many a long year ago. He always lovingly trusted in 
 you with a fidelity that your manifold treacheries were 
 not able to shake. He followed you about like a dog, 
 content to suffer wrong and abuse if he might only be 
 with you ; patient under these injuries so long as it was 
 your hand that inflicted them. The latest picture you 
 have of him in health and strength must be such a 
 comfort to you ! You pledged your honor that if he 
 would let you blindfold him no harm should come to 
 him; and then, giggling and choking over the rare fun 
 of the joke, you led him to a brook thinly glazed with 
 ice, and pushed him in ; and how you did laugh ! 
 Man, you will never forget the gentle, reproachful 
 look he gave you as he struggled shivering out, if you 
 live a thousand years ! Oho ! you see it now, you see 
 it now /" 
 
 " Beast, I have seen it a million times, and shall see 
 it a million more ! and may you rot away piecemeal, 
 and suffer till doomsday what I suffer now, for bring 
 ing it back to me again !" 
 
 The dwarf chuckled contentedly, and went on with 
 his accusing history of my career. I dropped into a 
 moody, vengeful state, and suffered in silence under 
 the merciless lash. At last this remark of his gave me 
 a sudden rouse : 
 
 4 Two months ago, on a Tuesday, you woke up, 
 away in the night, and fell to thinking, with shame, 
 about a peculiarly mean and pitiful act of yours toward 
 a poor ignorant Indian in the wilds of the Rocky 
 Mountains in the winter of eighteen hundred and " 
 
 " Stop a moment, devil! Stop! Do you mean to 
 tell me that even my very thoughts are not hidden from 
 you?" 
 
 " It seems to look like that. Didn t you think the 
 thoughts I have just mentioned?" 
 
 " If I didn t, I wish I may never breathe again! 
 
312 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 Look here, friend look me in the eye. Who are 
 you?" 
 
 " Well, who do you think?" 
 
 "I think you are Satan himself. I think you are 
 the devil." 
 
 "No." 
 
 11 No? Then who can you be?" 
 
 " Would you really like to know?" 
 
 " Indeed I would." 
 
 " Well, I am your Conscience /" 
 
 In an instant I was in a blaze of joy and exultation. 
 I sprang at the creature, roaring: 
 
 " Curse you, I have wished a hundred million times 
 that you were tangible, and that I could get my hands 
 on your throat once ! Oh, but I will wreak a deadly 
 vengeance on " 
 
 Folly ! Lightning does not move more quickly than 
 my Conscience did ! He darted aloft so suddenly that 
 in the moment my fingers clutched the empty air he 
 was already perched on the top of the high bookcase, 
 with his thumb at his nose in token of derision. I 
 flung the poker at him, and missed. I fired the boot 
 jack. In a blind rage I flew from place to place, and 
 snatched and hurled any missile that came handy ; the 
 storm of books, inkstands, and chunks of coal gloomed 
 the air and beat about the manikin s perch relentlessly, 
 but all to no purpose ; the nimble figure dodged every 
 shot; and not only that, but burst into a cackle of 
 sarcastic and triumphant laughter as I sat down ex 
 hausted. While I puffed and gasped with fatigue and 
 excitement, my Conscience talked to this effect : 
 
 "My good slave, you are curiously witless no, I 
 mean characteristically so. In truth, you are always 
 consistent, always yourself, always an ass. Otherwise 
 it must have occurred to you that if you attempted this 
 murder with a sad heart and a heavy conscience, I 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 313 
 
 would droop under the burdening influence instantly. 
 Fool, I should have weighed a ton, and could not have 
 budged from the floor; but instead, you are so cheer 
 fully anxious to kill me that your conscience is as light 
 as a feather ; hence I am away up here out of your 
 reach. I can almost respect a mere ordinary sort of 
 fool ; but you pah ! 
 
 I would have given anything, then, to be heavy- 
 hearted, so that I could get this person down from 
 there and take his life, but I could no more be heavy- 
 hearted over such a desire than I could have sorrowed 
 over its accomplishment. So I could only look long 
 ingly up at my master, and rave at the ill-luck that 
 denied me a heavy conscience the one only time that I 
 had ever wanted such a thing in my life. By and by I 
 got to musing over the hour s strange adventure, and 
 of course my human curiosity began to work. I set 
 myself to framing in my mind some questions for this 
 fiend to answer. Just then one of my boys entered, 
 leaving the door open behind him, and exclaimed: 
 
 " My ! what has been going on here? The bookcase 
 is all one riddle of " 
 
 I sprang up in consternation, and shouted: 
 
 "Out of this! Hurry! Jump! Fly! Shut the 
 door! Quick, or my Conscience will get away!" 
 
 The door slammed to, and I locked it. I glanced 
 up and was grateful, to the bottom of my heart, to see 
 that my owner was still my prisoner. I said : 
 
 II Hang you, I might have lost you ! Children are 
 the heedlessest creatures. But look here, friend, the 
 boy did not seem to notice you at all; how is that?" 
 
 " For a very good reason. I am invisible to all but 
 you." 
 
 I made a mental note of that piece of information 
 with a good deal of satisfaction. I could kill this mis 
 creant now, if I got a chance, and no one would know 
 
314 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 it. But this very reflection made me so light-hearted 
 that my Conscience could hardly keep his seat, but was 
 like to float aloft toward the ceiling like a toy balloon. 
 I said, presently: 
 
 " Come, my Conscience, let us be friendly. Let us 
 fly a flag of truce for a while. I am suffering to ask 
 you some questions." 
 
 "Very well. Begin." 
 
 " Well, then, in the first place, why were you never 
 visible to me before? " 
 
 Because you never asked to see me before ; that 
 is, you never asked in the right spirit and the proper 
 form before. You were just in the right spirit this 
 time, and when you called for your most pitiless enemy 
 I was that person by a very large majority, though you 
 did not suspect it." 
 
 14 Well, did that remark of mine turn you into flesh 
 and blood?" 
 
 " No. It only made me visible to you. I am un 
 substantial, just as other spirits are." 
 
 This remark prodded me with a sharp misgiving. If 
 he was unsubstantial, how was I going to kill him? 
 But I dissembled, and said persuasively: 
 
 " Conscience, it isn t sociable of you to keep at such 
 a distance. Come down and take another smoke." 
 
 This was answered with a look that was full of 
 derision, and with this observation added: 
 
 " Come where you can get at me and kill me? The 
 invitation is declined with thanks." 
 
 56 All right," said I to myself; "so it seems a spirit 
 can be killed, after all; there will be one spirit lacking 
 in this world, presently, or I lose my guess." Then I 
 said aloud : 
 
 -Friend" 
 
 There; wait a bit. I am not your friend, I am 
 your enemy; I am not your equal, I am your master. 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 315 
 
 Call me my lord, if you please. You are too 
 familiar." 
 
 " I don t like such titles. I am willing to call you 
 sir. That is as far as " 
 
 " We will have no argument about this. Just obey; 
 that is all. Go on with your chatter." 
 
 "Very well, my lord since nothing but my lord 
 will suit you I was going to ask you how long 
 you will be visible to me?" 
 
 "Always!" 
 
 I broke out with strong indignation : This is simply 
 an outrage. That is what I think of it. You have 
 dogged, and dogged, and dogged me, all the days of 
 my life, invisible. That was misery enough; now to 
 have such a looking thing as you tagging after me like 
 another shadow all the rest of my days is an intolerable 
 prospect. You have my opinion, my lord ; make the 
 most of it." 
 
 "My lad, there was never so pleased a conscience 
 in this world as I was when you made me visible. It 
 gives me an inconceivable advantage. Now I can look 
 you straight in the eye, and call you names, and leer 
 at you, jeer at you, sneer at you; and you know what 
 eloquence there is in visible gesture and expression, 
 more especially when the effect is heightened by audible 
 speech. I shall always address you henceforth in your 
 o-w-n s-n-i-v-e-1-i-n-g d-r-a-w-1 baby !" 
 
 I let fly with the coal-hod. No result. My lord 
 said : 
 
 " Come, come ! Remember the flag of truce !" 
 
 " Ah, I forgot that. I will try to be civil; and you 
 try it, too, for a novelty. The idea of a civil con 
 science ! It is a good joke; an excellent joke. All 
 the consciences / have ever heard of were nagging, 
 badgering, fault-finding, execrable savages ! Yes ; and 
 always in a sweat about some poor little insignificant 
 
316 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 trifle or other destruction catch the lot of them, / 
 say ! I would trade mine for the small-pox and seven 
 kinds of consumption, and be glad of the chance. 
 Now tell me, why is it that a conscience can t haul a 
 man over the coals once, for an offense, and then let 
 him alone? Why is it that it wants to keep on pegging 
 at him, day and night and night and day, week in and 
 week out, forever and ever, about the same old thing? 
 There is no sense in that, and no reason in it. I think 
 a conscience that will act like that is meaner than the 
 very dirt itself." 
 
 " Well, we like it; that suffices." 
 
 Do you do it with the honest intent to improve a 
 man?" 
 
 That question produced a sarcastic smile, and this 
 reply : 
 
 " No, sir. Excuse me. We do it simply because 
 it is business. It is our trade. The purpose of it is 
 to improve the man, but we are merely disinterested 
 agents. We are appointed by authority, and haven t 
 anything to say in the matter. We obey orders and 
 leave the consequences where they belong. But I am 
 willing to admit this much : we do crowd the orders a 
 trifle when we get a chance, which is most of the time. 
 We enjoy it. We are instructed to remind a man a 
 few times of an error; and I don t mind acknowledging 
 that we try to give pretty good measure. And when 
 we get hold of a man of a peculiarly sensitive nature, 
 oh, but we do haze him ! I have consciences to come 
 all the way from China and Russia to see a person of 
 that kind put through his paces, on a special occasion. 
 Why, I knew a man of that sort who had accidentally 
 crippled a mulatto baby; the news went abroad, and I 
 wish you may never commit another sin if the con 
 sciences didn t flock from all over the earth to enjoy 
 the fun and help his master exercise him. That man 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 317 
 
 walked the floor in torture for forty-eight hours, with 
 out eating or sleeping, and then blew his brains out. 
 The child was perfectly well again in three weeks." 
 
 Well, you are a precious crew, not to put it too 
 strong. I think I begin to see now why you have 
 always been a trifle inconsistent with me. In your 
 anxiety to get all the juice you can out of a sin, you 
 make a man repent of it in three or four different ways. 
 For instance, you found fault with me for lying to that 
 tramp, and I suffered over that. But it was only 
 yesterday that I told a tramp the square truth, to wit, 
 that, it being regarded as bad citizenship to encourage 
 vagrancy, I would give him nothing. What did you 
 do then ? Why, you made me say to myself, * Ah, it 
 would have been so much kinder and more blameless 
 to ease him off with a little white lie, and send him 
 away feeling that if he could not have bread, the gentle 
 treatment was at least something to be grateful for! 
 Well, I suffered all day about that. Three days before 
 I had fed a tramp, and fed him freely, supposing it a 
 virtuous act. Straight off you said, * Oh, false citizen, 
 to have fed a tramp ! and I suffered as usual. I gave 
 a tramp work; you objected to it after the contract 
 was made, of course; you never speak up beforehand. 
 Next, I refused a tramp work; you objected to that. 
 Next, I proposed to kill a tramp ; you kept me awake 
 all night, oozing remorse at every pore. Sure I was 
 going to be right this time, I sent the next tramp away 
 with my benediction; and I wish you may live as long 
 as I do, if you didn t make me smart all night again 
 because I didn t kill him. Is there any way of satisfy 
 ing that malignant invention which is called a con 
 science?" 
 
 14 Ha, ha ! this is luxury ! Go on !" 
 
 " But come, now, answer me that question. Is there 
 any way?" 
 
318 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 "Well, none that I propose to tell you, my son. 
 Ass ! I don t care what act you may turn your hand 
 to, I can straightway whisper a word in your ear and 
 make you think you have committed a dreadful mean 
 ness. It is my business and my joy to make you 
 repent of everything you do. If I have fooled away 
 any opportunities it was not intentional; I beg to 
 assure you it was not intentional ! 
 
 " Don t worry ; you haven t missed a trick that 1 
 know of. I never did a thing in all my life, virtuous 
 or otherwise, that I didn t repent of in twenty-four 
 hours. In church last Sunday I listened to a charity 
 sermon. My first impulse was to give three hundred 
 and fifty dollars ; I repented of that and reduced it a 
 hundred ; repented of that and reduced it another hun 
 dred ; repented of that and reduced it another hundred ; 
 repented of that and reduced the remaining fifty to 
 twenty-five ; repented of that and came down to fifteen ; 
 repented of that and dropped to two dollars and a half ; 
 when the plate came around at last, I repented once 
 more and contributed ten cents. Well, when I got 
 home, I did wish to goodness I had that ten cents back 
 again ! You never did let me get through a charity 
 sermon without having something to sweat about." 
 
 " Oh, and I never shall, I never shall. You can 
 always depend on me." 
 
 "I think so. Many and many s the restless night 
 I ve wanted to take you by the neck. If I could only 
 get hold of you now ! 
 
 1 Yes, no doubt. But I am not an ass; I am only 
 the saddle of an ass. But go on, go on. You enter 
 tain me more than I like to confess." 
 
 I am glad of that. (You will not mind my lying 
 a little, to keep in practice.) Look here; not to be 
 too personal, I think you are about the shabbiest and 
 most contemptible little shriveled-up reptile that can be 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 319 
 
 imagined. I am grateful enough that you are invisible 
 to other people, for I should die with shame to be seen 
 with such a mildewed monkey of a conscience as you 
 are. Now if you were five or six feet high, and " 
 
 " Oh, come ! who is to blame?" 
 
 " /don t know." 
 
 "Why, you are; nobody else." 
 
 " Confound you, I w r asn t consulted about your per 
 sonal appearance." 
 
 " I don t care, you had a good deal to do with it, 
 nevertheless. When you were eight or nine years old, 
 I was seven feet high, and as pretty as a picture." 
 
 " I wish you had died young! So you have grown 
 the wrong way, have you?" 
 
 " Some of us grow one way and some the other. 
 You had a large conscience once; if you ve a small 
 conscience now I reckon there are reasons for it. 
 However, both of us are to blame, you and I. You 
 see, you used to be conscientious about a great many 
 things; morbidly so, I may say. It was a great many 
 years ago. You probably do not remember it now. 
 Well, I took a great interest in my work, and I so 
 enjoyed the anguish which certain pet sins of yours 
 afflicted you with, that I kept pelting at you until I 
 rather overdid the matter. You began to rebel. Of 
 course I began to lose ground, then, and shrivel a little 
 diminish in stature, get mouldy, and grow deformed. 
 The more I weakened, the more stubbornly you fastened 
 on to those particular sins ; till at last the places on my 
 person that represent those vices became as callous as 
 shark skin. Take smoking, for instance. I played 
 that card a little too long, and I lost. When people 
 plead with you at this late day to quit that vice, that 
 old callous place seems to enlarge and cover me all 
 over like a shirt of mail. It exerts a mysterious, 
 smothering effect; and presently I, your faithful hater, 
 
320 Concerning the Carnivu.1 of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 your devoted Conscience, go sound asleep! Sound? 
 It is no name for it. I couldn t hear it thunder at 
 such a time. You have some few other vices per 
 haps eighty, or maybe ninety that affect me in much 
 the same way." 
 
 This is flattering ; you must be asleep a good part 
 of your time." 
 
 Yes, of late years. I should be asleep all the 
 time, but for the help I get." 
 
 "Who helps you?" 
 
 14 Other consciences. Whenever a person whose 
 conscience I am acquainted with tries to plead with 
 you about the vices you are callous to, I get my friend 
 to give his client a pang concerning some villainy of his 
 own, and that shuts off his meddling and starts him off 
 to hunt personal consolation. My field of usefulness 
 is about trimmed down to tramps, budding authoresses, 
 and that line of goods now; but don t you worry 
 I ll harry you on them while they last! Just you put 
 your trust in me." 
 
 "I think I can. But if you had only been good 
 enough to mention these facts some thirty years ago, I 
 should have turned my particular attention to sin, and 
 I think that by this time I should not only have had 
 you pretty permanently asleep on the entire list of 
 human vices, but reduced to the size of a homoeopathic 
 pill, at that. That is about the style of conscience / 
 am pining for. If I only had you shrunk down to a 
 homoeopathic pill, and could get my hands on you, 
 would I put you in a glass case for a keepsake? No, 
 sir. I would give you to a yellow dog ! That is where 
 you ought to be you and all your tribe. You are 
 not fit to be in society, in my opinion. Now another 
 question. Do you know a good many consciences in 
 this section?" 
 
 "Plenty of them." 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 321 
 
 "I would give anything to see some of them! 
 Could you bring them here? And would they be 
 visible to me?" 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 " I suppose I ought to have known that without ask 
 ing. But no matter, you can describe them. Tell me 
 about my neighbor Thompson s conscience, please." 
 
 "Very well. I know him intimately; have known 
 him many years. I knew him when he was eleven feet 
 high and of a faultless figure. But he is very rusty 
 and tough and misshapen now, and hardly ever interests 
 himself about anything. As to his present size -well, 
 he sleeps in a cigar box." 
 
 "Likely enough. There are few smaller, meaner 
 men in this region than Hugh Thompson. Do you 
 know Robinson s conscience?" 
 
 "Yes. He is a shade under four and a half feet 
 high ; used to be a blonde ; is a brunette now, but still 
 shapely and comely." 
 
 "Well, Robinson is a good fellow. Do you know 
 Tom Smith s conscience?" 
 
 " I have known him from childhood. He was 
 thirteen inches high, and rather sluggish, when he was 
 two years old as nearly all of us are at that age. He 
 is thirty-seven feet high now, and the stateliest figure 
 in America. His legs are still racked with growing- 
 pains, but he has a good time, nevertheless. Never 
 sleeps. He is the most active and energetic member 
 of the New England Conscience Club ; is president of 
 it. Night and day you can find him pegging away at 
 Smith, panting with his labor, sleeves rolled up, 
 countenance all alive with enjoyment. He has got his 
 victim splendidly dragooned now. He can make poor 
 Smith imagine that the most innocent little thing he 
 does is an odious sin ; and then he sets to work and 
 almost tortures the soul out of him about it." 
 21** 
 
322 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 " Smith is the noblest man in all this section, and 
 the purest; and yet is always breaking his heart be 
 cause he cannot be good ! Only a conscience could 
 find pleasure in heaping agony upon a spirit like that. 
 Do you know my aunt Mary s conscience?" 
 
 "I have seen her at a distance, but am not ac 
 quainted with her. She lives in the open air altogether, 
 because no door is large enough to admit her." 
 
 ;< I can believe that. Let me see. Do you know 
 the conscience of that publisher who once stole some 
 sketches of mine for a series of his, and then left me 
 to pay the law expenses I had to incur in order to 
 choke him off?" 
 
 " Yes. He has a wide fame. He was exhibited, a 
 month ago, with some other antiquities, for the benefit 
 of a recent Member of the Cabinet s conscience that 
 was starving in exile. Tickets and fares were high, 
 but I traveled for nothing by pretending to be the con 
 science of an editor, and got in for half-price by repre 
 senting myself to be the conscience of a clergyman. 
 However, the publisher s conscience, which was to 
 have been the main feature of the entertainment, was a 
 failure as an exhibition. He was there, but what of 
 that? The management had provided a microscope 
 with a magnifying power of only thirty thousand 
 diameters, and so nobody got to see him, after all. 
 There was great and general dissatisfaction, of course, 
 but" 
 
 Just here there was an eager footstep on the stair ; I 
 opened the door, and my aunt Mary burst into the 
 room. It was a joyful meeting and a cheery bombard 
 ment of questions and answers concerning family mat 
 ters ensued. By and by my aunt said : 
 
 " But I am going to abuse you a little now. You 
 promised me, the day I saw you last, that you would 
 look after the needs of the poor family around the 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 323 
 
 corner as faithfully as I had done it myself. Well, I 
 found out by accident that you failed of your promise. 
 Was that right?" 
 
 In simple truth, I never had thought of that family a 
 second time ! And now such a splintering pang of 
 guilt shot through me ! I glanced up at my Conscience. 
 Plainly, my heavy heart was affecting him. His body 
 was drooping forward ; he seemed about to fall from 
 the bookcase. My aunt continued : 
 
 " And think how you have neglected my poor protigt 
 at the almshouse, you dear, hard-hearted promise- 
 breaker!" I blushed scarlet, and my tongue was tied. 
 As the sense of my guilty negligence waxed sharper 
 and stronger, my Conscience began to sway heavily 
 back and forth ; and when my aunt, after a little pause, 
 said in a grieved tone, * Since you never once went to 
 see her, maybe it will not distress you now to know 
 that that poor child died, months ago, utterly friendless 
 and forsaken !" my Conscience could no longer bear 
 up under the weight of my sufferings, but tumbled 
 headlong from his high perch and struck the floor with 
 a dull, leaden thump. He lay there writhing with pain 
 and quaking with apprehension, but straining every 
 muscle in frantic efforts to get. up. In a fever of ex 
 pectancy I sprang to the door, locked it, placed my 
 back against it, and bent a watchful gaze upon my 
 struggling master. Already my fingers were itching to 
 begin their murderous work. 
 
 " Oh, what can be the matter!" exclaimed by aunt, 
 shrinking from me, and following with her frightened 
 eyes the direction of mine. My breath was coming in 
 short, quick gasps now, and my excitement was almost 
 uncontrollable. My aunt cried out: 
 
 " Oh, do not look so ! You appall me ! Oh, what 
 can the matter be ? What is it you see ? Why do you 
 stare so? Why do you work your fingers like that? 7 
 
324 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 
 
 "Peace, woman!" I said, in a hoarse whisper. 
 "Look elsewhere; pay no attention to me; it is 
 nothing nothing. I am often this way. It will 
 pass in a moment. It comes from smoking too 
 much." 
 
 My injured lord was up, wild-eyed with terror, and 
 trying to hobble toward the door. I could hardly 
 breathe, I was so wrought up. My aunt wrung her 
 hands, and said : 
 
 " Oh, I knew how it would be ; I knew it would come 
 to this at last ! Oh, I implore you to crush out that fatal 
 habit while it may yet be time ! You must not, you 
 shall not be deaf to my supplications longer!" My 
 struggling Conscience showed sudden signs of weari 
 ness ! " Oh, promise me you will throw off this hate 
 ful slavery of tobacco!" My Conscience began to 
 reel drowsily, and grope with his hands enchanting 
 spectacle ! "I beg you, I beseech you, I implore you ! 
 Your reason is deserting you ! There is madness in 
 your eye ! It flames with frenzy ! Oh, hear me, hear 
 me, and be saved ! See, I plead with you on my very 
 knees!" As she sank before me my Conscience reeled 
 again, and then drooped languidly to the floor, blink 
 ing toward me a last supplication for mercy, with heavy 
 eyes. "Oh, promise, or you are lost! Promise, and 
 be redeemed! Promise! Promise and live!" With 
 a long-drawn sigh my conquered Conscience closed his 
 eyes and fell fast asleep ! 
 
 With an exultant shout I sprang past my aunt, and 
 in an instant I had my lifelong foe by the throat. 
 After so many years of waiting and longing, he was mine 
 at last. I tore him to shreds and fragments. I rent 
 the fragments to bits. I cast the bleeding rubbish into 
 the fire, and drew into my nostrils the grateful incense 
 of my burnt-offering. At last, and forever, my Con 
 science was dead ! 
 
Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut 325 
 
 I was a free man ! I turned upon my poor aunt, 
 who was almost petrified with terror, and shouted : 
 
 * Out of this with your paupers, your charities, your 
 reforms, your pestilent morals ! You behold before 
 you a man whose life-conflict is done, whose soul is at 
 peace ; a man whose heart is dead to sorrow, dead to 
 suffering, dead to remorse; a man WITHOUT A CON 
 SCIENCE! In my joy I spare you, though I could 
 throttle you and never feel a pang ! Fly ! 
 
 She fled. Since that day my life is all bliss. Bliss, 
 unalloyed bliss. Nothing in all the world could per 
 suade me to have a conscience again. I settled all my 
 old outstanding scores, and began the world anew. I 
 killed thirty-eight persons during the first two weeks 
 all of them on account of ancient grudges. I burned a 
 dwelling that interrupted my view. I swindled a widow 
 and some orphans out of their last cow, which is a very 
 good one, though not thoroughbred, I believe. I have 
 also committed scores of crimes, of various kinds, and 
 have enjoyed my work exceedingly, whereas it would 
 formerly have broken my heart and turned my hair 
 gray, I have no doubt. 
 
 In conclusion, I wish to state, by way of advertise 
 ment, that medical colleges desiring assorted tramps 
 for scientific purposes, either by the gross, by cord 
 measurement, or per ton, will do well to examine the 
 lot in my cellar before purchasing elsewhere, as these 
 were all selected and prepared by myself, and can be 
 had at a low rate, because I wish to clear out my stock 
 and get ready for the spring trade. 
 
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 re 
 search accomplished my task. I will lay the result be 
 fore you, giving you each anecdote in its turn, and fol 
 lowing 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, 
 
 (326) 
 
About Magnanimous-Incident Literature 327 
 
 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 physi 
 cian 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 instru 
 ment 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 requir 
 ing 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, oc 
 cupying 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 on-looking citizens made great and in 
 spiring cheer, but traffic was interrupted in that street. 
 The good physician hired a couple of assistant surgeons 
 
328 About Magnanimous-Incident Literature 
 
 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 im 
 mediately put aside his own matters and proceeded to 
 
About Magnanimous- Incident Literature 329 
 
 peruse one of the despised manuscripts. Having com 
 pleted 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 afterwards 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 sur 
 prised, 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 some 
 thing fresh in the noble-episode line. His enthusiasm 
 took a chill. Still, he could not bear to repulse this 
 
330 About Magnanimous-Incident Literature 
 
 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 blis 
 tering 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 coach 
 man from his box and leaving the occupants of the car 
 riage 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.* 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 
 
 * This is probably a misprint. M. T. 
 
About Magnanimous-Incident Literature 331 
 
 brave young person, and, placing a check for five 
 hundred dollars in his hand, said, " Take this as a re 
 ward for your noble act, William Ferguson, and if ever 
 you shall need a friend, remember that Thompson Mc- 
 Spadden has a grateful heart. Let us learn from this 
 that a good deed cannot fail to benefit the doer, how 
 ever 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 underclerkship at a good salary. 
 
 Presently William Ferguson s mother fell sick, and 
 William Well, to cut the story short, Mr. Mc 
 Spadden 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 
 downstairs 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 
 
33 2 About Magnanimous-Incident Literature 
 
 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 pro 
 fane lips refused to do their office. When she re 
 covered 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 Scribner s 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 
 
About Magnanimous-Incident Literature 333 
 
 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 epi 
 sode 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 Presi 
 dent 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 1 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 Fer 
 guson incident occurred, and within my personal knowl 
 edge though I have changed the nature of the de 
 tails, 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 Magnan 
 imous-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 fol 
 lowing 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 care 
 fully laid out my day s work the day before a thrill 
 ing 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, 
 
 (334) 
 
Punch, Brothers, Punch 335 
 
 "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 tot 
 tering wreck, and went forth to fulfill 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 : 
 
 11 Mark, are you sick? I never saw a man look so 
 haggard and worn and absent-minded. Say some 
 thing, 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: 
 
336 Punch, Brothers, Punch 
 
 " 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, heart-breaking " 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 land 
 scape ! Look at it ! look at it ! Feast your eyes 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 con 
 cern, 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: 
 
 l< Why, what a captivating jingle it is ! It is almost 
 music. It flows along so nicely. I have nearly caught 
 
Punch, Brothers, Punch 337 
 
 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 grate 
 ful 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. 
 22** 
 
338 Punch, Brothers, Punch 
 
 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 passen 
 jare. 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 be 
 lieve 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 
 
Punch, Brothers, Punch 339 
 
 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 ! 
 1 Loved him ! Loved who? 
 4 Why, my poor George ! my poor nephew ! 
 " Oh him! Yes oh, yes, yes. Certainly 
 certainly. Punch punch oh, this misery will kill 
 me! 
 
 4 Bless you ! bless you, sir, for these sweet words ! 
 /, too, suffer in this dear loss. Were you present 
 during his last moments? 
 
 Yes. I whose last moments? 
 " 4 His. The dear departed s. 
 
 " Yes! Oh, yes yes yes! I suppose so, I 
 think so, / don t know! Oh, certainly I was there 
 / 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 preg 
 nant minute, and then he said impressively: 
 
 " Mark, you do not say anything. You do not offer 
 
340 Punch, Brothers, Punch 
 
 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 
 come 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 them 
 selves on shore. 
 
 Pitcairn s is so far removed from the track of com 
 merce that it was many years before another vessel 
 touched there. It had always been considered an un 
 inhabited 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 be 
 fore 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 
 
 (34i) 
 
342 The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 
 
 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; every 
 body 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, devas 
 tating epidemics, fallen thrones, and ruined dynasties, 
 
The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 343 
 
 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; pine 
 apples, 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 pur 
 poses, 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 re 
 spected. A Bible class is held every Wednesday, when all who conven 
 iently 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 par 
 taken of without asking God s blessing before and afterwards. 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. 
 
344 The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 
 
 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 Butter- 
 worth Stavely. As soon as he had become well ac 
 quainted 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 
 
The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 345 
 
 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 chil 
 dren, 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 pro 
 ceeded 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 whale-boat; 
 and, most unfortunately, a pretext for this impeach 
 ment 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 afore 
 said did deliver the aforesaid remains to the said Eliza 
 beth Young, and did demand one bushel of yams in 
 satisfaction of the damage done." But Elizabeth 
 Young considered the demand exorbitant ; the parties 
 
346 The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 
 
 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 courtroom 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. 
 
The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 347 
 
 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 grand 
 children intermarried; after them, great and great- 
 great-grandchildren intermarried ; so that to-day every 
 body is blood kin to everybody. Moreover, the rela 
 tionships 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 step-sister, 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 magis 
 trate 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 morn 
 ing 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 in- 
 
348 The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 
 
 elude 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 for 
 bidding 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 tradi 
 tions, 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, 
 
The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 349 
 
 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 hap 
 pen 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?" 
 
 11 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 Eng 
 land resist?" 
 
 " Let her. This rock is a Gibraltar." 
 
350 The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 
 
 "True. But about the empire? Do we need an 
 empire and an emperor?" 
 
 " What you needy my friends, is unification. Look 
 at Germany; look at Italy. They are unified. Unifi 
 cation is the thing. It makes living dear. That con 
 stitutes 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 unifica 
 tion 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 re 
 joicings and festivities. The entire nation, with the ex 
 ception of fourteen persons, mainly little children, 
 marched past the throne in single file, with banners and 
 music, the procession being upwards 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 for 
 eign powers. Some generals and admirals were ap 
 pointed; 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 
 
The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 351 
 
 given great offices, and consequently would not consent 
 to serve in the ranks ; wherefore his standing army was 
 at a standstill. The Marquis of Ararat, minister of the 
 navy, made a similar complaint. He said he was will 
 ing to steer the whale-boat himself, but he must have 
 somebody to man her. 
 
 The emperor did the best he could in the circum 
 stances : 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-gen 
 erals. 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 in wait for the emperor and threw 
 yams at him, unmindful of the bodyguard. 
 
 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 a 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 Emme- 
 line, 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. 
 
 23 
 
352 The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 
 
 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 im 
 perial 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 em 
 peror s reply " 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 upwards of forty-five dol 
 lars 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 
 
The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 353 
 
 unless something was done, and done immediately, 
 national bankruptcy must ensue, and possibly insurrec 
 tion 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 meantime, as any prophet might have fore 
 seen, 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 revolu 
 tionists were of the other sex, The infantry threw 
 down their pitchforks; the artillery cast aside their 
 cocoanuts ; 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, cen- 
 23** 
 
354 The Great Revolution in Pitcairn 
 
 tralized 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 my 
 self from their too heavy burden. For your sake I took 
 them up; for your sake I lay them down. The im 
 perial 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 banish 
 ment 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 atten 
 tion to the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam 
 patches, and the rehabilitation of the old useful indus 
 tries 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 demo 
 crat 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 acquisi 
 tion." 
 
ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF 
 LYING 
 
 ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE HIS. 
 TORICAL AND ANTIQUARIAN CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OF- 
 FERED FOR THE THIRTY DOLLAR PRIZE. NOW FIRST 
 PUBLISHED.* 
 
 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 con 
 cerns 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 with 
 out 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 criticise 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 
 
 * Did not take the prize. 
 
 w** (355) 
 
356 On the Decay of the Art of Lying 
 
 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 par 
 ticulars 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 ahvays 
 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 im 
 beciles 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 
 
On the Decay of the Art of Lying 357 
 
 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 four 
 teen of them out" not meaning that they found out 
 anything against the fourteen no, that was only a col 
 loquial phrase to signify that they were not at home 
 and their manner of saying it expressed their lively sat 
 isfaction in that fact. Now their pretense of wanting to 
 seethe 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 deflec 
 tion 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 
 
358 On the Decay of the Art of Lying 
 
 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 lov 
 ing art, and should be cultivated. The highest perfec 
 tion 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- 
 
On the Decay of the Art of Lying 359 
 
 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 f " " 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 re 
 quired 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 ex 
 plicit in your answers, for the welfare of the service re 
 quires that the nurses be promptly fined or otherwise 
 
360 On the Decay of the Art of Lying 
 
 punished for derelictions. You told me you were per 
 fectly delighted with that nurse that she had a thou 
 sand 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 
 4 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 im 
 pulse was right, but your judgment was crude; this 
 comes of unintelligent practice. Now observe the re 
 sult 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 four 
 teen 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 
 
On the Decay of the Art of Lying 36! 
 
 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 fraud 
 ulent compliment further along in the paper. She 
 could have said, " In one respect the sick-nurse is per 
 fection 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, chari 
 tably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously ; to 
 lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clum 
 sily; 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 ex 
 ecrable weather. Then But I am but a new and 
 feeble student in this gracious art; I cannot instruct 
 this Club. 
 
 Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise ex 
 amination into what sorts of lies are best and whole- 
 somest to be indulged, seeing we must all lie and do all 
 
362 On the Decay of the Art of Lying 
 
 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 flat 
 tery, Old Masters. 
 
THE CANVASSER S TALE 
 
 r)OOR, sad-eyed stranger ! There was that about 
 his humble mien, his tired look, his decayed-gen 
 tility 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. Be 
 fore 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 
 
 (363) 
 
364 The Canvasser s Tale 
 
 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 aesthetic taste was the prevail 
 ing 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 gentlemen s vast collec 
 tion of shells; another s noble collection of meerschaum 
 pipes; another s elevating and refining collection of 
 undecipherable autographs; another s priceless collec 
 tion 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 collec 
 tion, the former difficulty supervened ; his great heart 
 
The Canvasser s Tale 365 
 
 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 posses 
 sion 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 dis 
 appointment 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. 
 
 44 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 por 
 tion of the crag which reflected it having tumbled down.. 
 He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few thou 
 sand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with 
 masonry, treble the repeating capacity; but the archi- 
 
366 The Canvasser s Tale 
 
 tect who undertook the job had never built an echo be 
 fore, 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 Gat- 
 ling-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 meantime my path was a path of roses. 
 I was the accepted suitor of the only and lovely daugliter 
 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 aesthetic 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. 
 
The Canvasser s Tale 367 
 
 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 thou 
 sand 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 con 
 tent 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 re 
 flect 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 
 
368 The Canvasser s Tale 
 
 property, because it was impalpable to sight and touch, 
 and yet was purchaseable, 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 dol 
 lars 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 de 
 barred 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, 4< Sir, do you call this wealth? 
 but doubtless you do in your inflated country. Sir, 
 
The Canvasser s Tale 369 
 
 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 hum 
 ble, 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 twelve month, 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 
 24** 
 
370 The Canvasser s Tale 
 
 inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolish 
 ness. 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 intoler 
 able 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. Urn! 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. / 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 //" 
 
 x** (37i) 
 
372 An Encounter with an Interviewer 
 
 "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 Una 
 bridged, 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 cus 
 tomarily 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 cal 
 culated 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." 
 
An Encounter with an Interviewer 3/3 
 
 " 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, some 
 how. 
 
 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? 
 
374 An Encounter with an Interviewer 
 
 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 mat 
 ter 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 re 
 member. 
 
 Q. W^ell, 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 i 
 
 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? 
 
An Encounter with an Interviewer 375 
 
 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. Some 
 body 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 be 
 fore. 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, / 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 heart-breaking troubles enough with 
 out adding this. 
 
 Q. Well, I believe I have got material enough for the 
 present, and I am very much obliged to you for the 
 
376 An Encounter with an Interviewer 
 
 pains you have taken. But I was a good dekl 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 witli the driver. 
 
 Then the young man reverently withdrew. He was 
 very pleasant company, and I was sorry to see him go. 
 
PARIS NOTES* 
 
 HPHE Parisian travels but little, he knows no language 
 I but his own, reads no literature but his own, and 
 consequently he is pretty narrow and pretty self-suffi 
 cient. 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 im 
 possible 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. 
 
 /. These are fine oranges. Where are they grown? 
 
 He. More? Yes, I will bring them. 
 
 /. 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 inflec 
 tion.) 
 
 /. Yes. Can you tell me what country they are from ? 
 
 He. Yes? (blandly, with rising inflection.) 
 
 * Crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad" to make room for more vital 
 statistics. M. T. 
 
 (377) 
 
378 Paris Notes 
 
 / (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 exhaust 
 ive 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 ser 
 mon is like a French speech it never names a his 
 torical 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 2ist January cast off our chains ; that the 
 loth August relieved us of the shameful presence of foreign spies; that the 
 5th September was its own justification before heaven and humanity; that 
 the 1 8th Brumaire contained the seeds of its own punishment; that the 
 1 4th July was the mighty voice of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the 
 
Paris Notes 379 
 
 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 1 7th March in 
 history, no 1 2th October, no igth January, no 22d April, no i6th Novem 
 ber, no 3Oth September, no 2d July, no I4th February, no 2pth June, no 
 I5th August, no 3ist 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 I3th Jan 
 uary. The results of the vast crime of the I3th January have been in just 
 proportion to the magnitude of the act itself. But for it there had been no 
 3<Dth November sorrowful spectacle ! The grisly deed of the 1 6th June 
 had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the i6th June known 
 existence; to it alone the 3d September was due, also the fatal I2th Octo 
 ber. Shall we, then, be grateful for the I3th 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 I3th January is Adam; the crime of 
 that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful 
 spectacle of the 3<Dth November was the expulsion from 
 Eden ; the grisly deed of the i6th June was the murder 
 of Abel ; the act of the 3d September was the begin 
 ning of the journey to the land of Nod; the I2th 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* 
 
 I. 
 
 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 tur 
 moils 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 this love became a passion, almost 
 a worship. Now at his birth the soothsayers had dili 
 gently 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 
 
 *Left out of "A Tramp Abroad" because its authenticity seemed 
 doubtful, and could not at that time be proved. M. T. 
 
 (380) 
 
Legend of Sagenfeld, in Germany 38! 
 
 king arid 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 unen 
 durable ; 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 
 
382 Legend of Sagenfeld, in Germany 
 
 make way for another candidate. The precious min 
 utes 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 him 
 self 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 
 
Legend of Sagenfeld, in Germany 333 
 
 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 appre 
 hension. 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 
 
3&4 Legend of Sagenfeld, in Germany 
 
 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 nightin 
 gale 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 
 
Legend of Sagenfeld, in Germany 385 
 
 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 or 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 them 
 selves 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 in 
 sensible. When he came to himself, a linnet was sing 
 ing. He listened with apathy. His faith was gone. 
 "These birds," he said, "can bring no help; land 
 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 
 25** 
 
386 Legend of Sagenfeld, in Germany 
 
 dawn of the third morning was breaking. Ah, the 
 world seemed very beautiful to those worn eyes. Sud 
 denly 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 in 
 stant 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 
 
Legend of Sagenfeld, in Germany 387 
 
 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 moulder 
 ing 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 : 
 
 1 Waw he \ 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 good deal, 
 and even something over. You soldiers all know that 
 when that 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, dis 
 tance, weather, or anything else. You had to execute 
 his order whether it was possible or not. And there 
 
 (388) 
 
Speech on the Babies 589 
 
 was only one form of marching in his manual of tac 
 tics, 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 warwhoop you ad 
 vanced 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 immortal 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 whisper 
 ing 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 morn 
 ing, 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 
 
390 Speech on the Babies 
 
 prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your 
 martial voices and tried to sing / " Rock-a-by baby 
 in the tree-top," 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 Re 
 public 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. 
 
Speech on the Babies 391 
 
 In one of these 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 grap 
 ple 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 illus 
 trious 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 
 
 (392) 
 
Speech on the Weather 393 
 
 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 speci 
 mens 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 con 
 fessed 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 Proba 
 bilities 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 Wis 
 consin 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, 
 
394 Speech on the Weather 
 
 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 be 
 tween, 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 post 
 script from his wandering mind, to cover accidents : 
 But it is possible that the programme may be wholly 
 changed in the mean time." Yes, one of the brightest 
 gems in the New England weather is the dazzling un 
 certainty 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 pecu 
 liar; 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 lull as it can stick, you will see that New England 
 
Speech on the Weather 395 
 
 weather sticking out beyond the edges and projecting 
 around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neigh 
 boring 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 bewitch 
 ing 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 mag 
 nificence. One cannot make the words too strong. 
 
CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LAN 
 GUAGE* 
 
 THERE was an 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 pro 
 digious, 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 intro 
 duced new words among us and changed the meanings 
 of many old ones. English people talk through their 
 noses ; we do not. We say knew, English people say 
 ndo ; we say cow, the Briton says kdow ; we 
 
 * Being part of a chapter which was crowded out of "A Tramp 
 Abroad." M. T. 
 
 (396) 
 
Concerning the American Language 397 
 
 " Oh, come ! that is pure Yankee; everybody knows 
 that." 
 
 1 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 them 
 selves planted it there, two hundred and fifty years ago, 
 and there it remains; it has never spread. But Eng 
 land 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 pro 
 nunciation." 
 
 We argued this point at some length ; nobody won ; 
 but no matter, the fact remains Englishmen say iiao 
 and kdow 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 #, 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 bahsketj 
 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 
 
398 Concerning the American Language 
 
 English Dictionary, so it was proper enough that it 
 should stick to English forms, perhaps. It still calls 
 itself an English Dictionary to-day, 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 ob 
 taining 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 //, 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 
 /i s because your writers still keep up the fashion of 
 putting an before those words, instead of a. This is 
 what Mr. Darwin might call a rudimentary sign that 
 an 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 
 
Concerning the American Language 399 
 
 *H yaah! h yaah! We pronounce it heer in some 
 sections, \vyer* 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 
 1 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 
 4 after a little. When you say clever, you mean 
 4 capable ; with us the word used to mean 4 accom 
 modating, but I don t know what it means now. Your 
 word 4 stout means 4 fleshy ; our word 4 stout usually 
 means strong. Your words 4 gentleman and 4 lady 
 have a very restricted meaning; with us they include 
 the barmaid, butcher, burglar, harlot, and horse thief. 
 You say, 4 I haven t^v/ any stockings on/ 4 I haven t 
 got any memory, 4 I haven t got any money in my 
 purse ; we usually say, 4 I haven t any stockings on, 
 4 I haven t any memory, 4 I haven t any money in my 
 purse. You say 4 out of window ; we always put in 
 a the. If one asks 4 How old is that man? the Briton 
 answers, 4 He will be about forty; in the American 
 language, we should say, 4 He is about forty. How 
 ever, 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." 
 
400 Concerning the American Language 
 
 11 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 Eng 
 land, where I stayed awhile. His stepfather had mar 
 ried a distant relative of mine who was afterwards 
 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, 
 26** (401) 
 
402 Rogers 
 
 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 ter 
 rors, 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 men 
 tion my nom de plume and the tailor would put his best 
 work on my garment, as complimentary people some 
 times do, but said his tailor would hardly trouble him 
 self for an unknown person (unknown person, when I 
 thought I was so celebrated in England ! that was the 
 crudest cut), but cautioned me to mention his name, 
 and it would be all right. Thinking to be facetious, I 
 said : 
 
 11 But he might sit up all night and injure his 
 health." 
 
 * Well, /^/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 
 
Rogers 403 
 
 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 bottom 
 less 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 ex 
 pected 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 Lon 
 don, 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 mantel-piece and contemplate 
 
404 Rogers 
 
 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 ad 
 dressed 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 in 
 quiring 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 fol 
 lowing 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 con 
 sequence, 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 
 
Rogers 405 
 
 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 upwards of 
 two centuries given to him by the late Lord Palmer- 
 ston (been offered a prodigious sum for it) these 
 were the contents of the room. Also a brass candle 
 stick 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 sur 
 prise my palate with an article of champagne that sel 
 dom 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 represent 
 ing 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 : 
 
 44 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 keep 
 ing 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 Theo 
 dore 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 
 
406 Rogers 
 
 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 practiced 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 be 
 fore 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 re 
 appeared, 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. 
 
 4< 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. 
 
Rogers 4O7 
 
 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.* 
 
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 any body 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 
 
 (408) 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 409 
 
 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 drench 
 ing 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. 
 1 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. 
 
410 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 " 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 downstairs 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?" 
 
 44 Yes. I m too lazy and comfortable to go down 
 stairs; 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." 
 1 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 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 411 
 
 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." 
 4 Had breakfast?" 
 1 Yes, indeed, an hour ago." 
 
 "Busy?" 
 
 " No except sewing. Why?" 
 
 " Got any company?" 
 
 " No, but I expect some at half-past nine." 
 
 I wish 7 did. I m lonesome. I want to talk to 
 somebody." 
 
 4 Very well, talk to me." 
 
 " But this is very private." 
 
 14 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." 
 
 11 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 " 
 
 14 Oh, please go on ! I love you, and feel for you. 
 Tell me all. Confide in me. What is it?" 
 
412 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 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; 1 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 be 
 fore 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, 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 413 
 
 and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rear 
 ward 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 in 
 stead 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 in 
 troduce to you my favorite nephew, Mr. Alonzo Fitz 
 
414 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 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-bye; 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 sensi 
 ble 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 fan 
 cifully embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored 
 crewels, and other strings and odds and ends protrud 
 ing 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, up 
 holstered 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 bou 
 quet 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 every 
 where : Robertson s Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 415 
 
 Sanky, 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 mantel-piece, 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 con 
 templation: delicately chiseled features, of Grecian 
 cast ; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that 
 is receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scar 
 let 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 were instinct with native grace. 
 
 Her dress and adornment were marked by that ex 
 quisite 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 handker 
 chief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft 
 saffron tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure 
 
 37 
 
416 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 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-bye, 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-bye. 
 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?" 
 1 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 uncon 
 cern, " Five minutes after eleven." 
 
 "Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 417 
 
 * I m sorry." 
 
 No reply. 
 
 4 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 whirl 
 ing snow and the raging winds come again ! But she 
 said good-bye . She didn t say good-morning, she said 
 
 good-bye ! The clock was right, after all. 
 
 What a lightning-winged two hours it was !" 
 
 He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for 
 awhile, 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 1" 
 
 About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the 
 window-seat of her bed-chamber, book in hand, was 
 gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas that washed the 
 Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, " How differ 
 ent 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 
 
418 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 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 under- 
 standingly. That seemed to settle the thing for Mr. 
 Burley; his vivacity decreased little by little, and a de 
 jected 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, leav 
 ing him with the mistress, to whom he said : 
 
 4 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 upstairs 
 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 upstairs, 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 recog 
 nized ; 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: 
 
 44 So has yours, dearest!" 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 419 
 
 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 heart-breaking con 
 versation 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. 
 1 Thank you, my Rosannah ! The photograph flat 
 ters me, but you must not allow yourself to think of 
 that. Sweetheart?" 
 4 Yes, Alonzo." 
 
 11 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 cloudland, 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 for 
 ever ! 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. 
 
420 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 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. 
 
 11 So ho!" exclaimed Mrs. Fitz Clarence, " this ex 
 plains 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 hap 
 piness. 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 lemon 
 ade." 
 
 Unto the other was given the order, " Put out this 
 fire, and bring me two palmleaf 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 tak 
 ing formal leave of anybody. He hissed through his 
 teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 421 
 
 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 some 
 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 re 
 tired 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 tele 
 phones, 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 inven 
 tion will stop all that." 
 
 Well, answered Alonzo, "if the owner of the 
 music could not miss what was stolen, why should he 
 care?" 
 
 4 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." 
 
422 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 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 com 
 fort 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 anymore 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." 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 423 
 
 " I suppose it becomes me as much as your very 
 polite speech became you, Mr. Fitz Clarence." 
 
 " Mister Fitz Clarence! Rosannah, there was noth 
 ing 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 didnt? " 
 
 "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 ! 
 
 Oh, 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, re 
 pentant voice, tremulous with tears, said : 
 
424 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 "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 coldy 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 
 came to the oft-repeated cry of " Rosannah!" 
 
 But, alas, it was Aunt Susan s voice that spake. 
 She said : 
 
 11 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 fright 
 ened 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 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 425 
 
 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 hap 
 pened. It had early transpired that Rosannah, poor 
 suffering orphan, had neither returned to her grand 
 mother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her 
 save a duplicate of the woful note she had left in the 
 mansion on Telegraph Hill. Whosoever was shelter 
 ing 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 
 
426 Loves of A, Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 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 some 
 thing 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 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 427 
 
 on he waiting, listening, rising slowly and uncon 
 sciously from his recumbent position. At last he ex 
 claimed : 
 
 11 It is ! it is she ! Oh, the divine flatted 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 forth with the exclamation : 
 
 " Oh, thank Heavens, found at last! Speak to me, 
 Rosannah, dearest! The cruel mystery has been un 
 raveled ; 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 Rosan 
 nah, and you shall have the proof, ample and abundant 
 proof ! J> 
 
 " 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!" 
 
 11 Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosan 
 nah, 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?" 
 
428 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 " 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." 
 
 14 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 con 
 tent 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?" 
 
 11 The steamer leaves San Francisco day after to 
 morrow. The passage is eight days. She would be 
 here the 3ist of March." 
 
 " Then name the ist of April; do, Rosannah, dear." 
 
 " Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo !" 
 
 "So we be the happiest ones that that day s sun 
 looks down upon in the whole broad expanse of the 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 429 
 
 globe, why need we care? Call it the 1st of April, 
 dear." 
 
 " Then the ist of April it 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 ex 
 changing 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 foot-hills 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 pic 
 turesque group of dusky natives, enjoying the blister 
 ing 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 
 
430 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 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 importunities, and said I would name the day. I 
 name the ist of April eight in the morning. Now 
 go!" 
 
 * Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a lifetime " 
 11 Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all com 
 munication with you, until that hour. No no sup 
 plications ; 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 Rowland, 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. 
 
Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 431 
 
 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 Hon 
 olulu, 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 ex 
 tended journey. 
 
 Toward the close of that memorable day, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Alonzo Fitz Clarence were buried in sweet con 
 verse 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 
 
 28 
 
432 Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 
 
 across our continent, and had the happiness of witness 
 ing 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. 
 
MAP OF PARIS 
 
 TO THE READER 
 
 THE accompanying map explains itself. 
 The idea of this map is not original with me, 
 but is borrowed from the great metropolitan journals. 
 
 I claim no other merit for this production (if I may 
 so call it) than that it is accurate. The main blemish 
 of the city paper maps, of which it is an imitation, is 
 that in them more attention seems paid to artistic 
 picturesqueness than geographical reliability. 
 
 Inasmuch as this is the first time I ever tried to draft 
 and engrave a map, or attempted anything in any line 
 of art, the commendations the work has received and 
 the admiration it has excited among the people have 
 been very grateful to my feelings. And it is touching 
 to reflect that by far the most enthusiastic of these 
 praises have come from people who knew nothing at 
 all about art. 
 
 By an unimportant oversight I have engraved the 
 map so that it reads wrong end first, except to left- 
 handed people. I forgot that in order to make it right 
 in print, it should be drawn and engraved upside 
 down. However, let the student who desires to con 
 template the map stand on his head or hold it before a 
 looking-glass. That will bring it right. 
 
 The reader will comprehend at a glance that that 
 
 * Written about 1871, 
 
 28** (433) 
 
434 Map of Paris 
 
 piece of river with the " High Bridge " over it got left 
 out to one side by reason of a slip of the graving-tool, 
 which rendered it necessary to change the entire course 
 of the River Rhine, or else spoil the map. After 
 having spent two days in digging and gouging at the 
 map, I would have changed the course of the Atlantic 
 Ocean before I would lose so much work. 
 
 I never had so much trouble with anything in my 
 life as I had with this map. I had heaps of little 
 fortifications scattered all around Paris at first, but 
 every now and then my instruments would slip and 
 fetch away whole miles of batteries, and leave the 
 vicinity as clean as if the Prussians had been there. 
 
 The reader will find it well to frame this map for 
 future reference, so that it may aid in extending 
 popular intelligence, and in dispelling the widespread 
 ignorance of the day. MARK TWAIN. 
 
 OFFICIAL COMMENDATIONS. 
 It is the only map of the kind I ever saw. 
 
 U. S. GRANT. 
 
 It places the situation in an entirely new light. 
 
 BISMARCK. 
 
 I cannot look upon it without shedding tears. 
 
 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 
 
 It is very nice large print. 
 
 NAPOLEON. 
 
 My wife was for years afflicted with freckles, and, though everything 
 was done for her relief that could be done, all was in vain. But, sir, since 
 her first glance at your map, they have entirely left her. She has nothing 
 but convulsions now. 
 
 J. SMITH. 
 
Map of Paris 
 
 435 
 
 BB** 
 
436 Map of Paris 
 
 If I had had this map, I could have got out of Metz without any trouble. 
 
 BAZAINE. 
 
 I have seen a great many maps in my time, but none that this one 
 reminds me of. 
 
 TROCHU. 
 
 It is but fair to say that in some respects it is a truly remarkable map. 
 
 W. T. SHERMAN. 
 
 I said to my son Frederick William, " If you could only make a map 
 like that, I should be perfectly willing to see you die even anxious." 
 
 WILLIAM III. 
 
LETTER READ AT A DINNER 
 
 OF THE KNIGHTS OF ST. PATRICK 
 
 HARTFORD, CONN., March 16, 1876. 
 To THE CHAIRMAN : 
 
 DEAR SIR, I am very sorry that I cannot be with 
 the Knights of St. Patrick to-morrow evening. In this 
 centennial year we ought to find a peculiar pleasure in 
 doing honor to the memory of a man whose good 
 name has endured through fourteen centuries. We 
 ought to find pleasure in it for the reason that at this 
 time we naturally have a fellow-feeling for such a man. 
 He wrought a great work in his day. He found Ire 
 land a prosperous republic, and looked about him to 
 see if he might find some useful thing to turn his hand 
 to. He observed that the president of that republic 
 was in the habit of sheltering his great officials from 
 deserved punishment, so he lifted up his staff and smote 
 him, and he died. He found that the secretary of war 
 had been so unbecomingly economical as to have laid 
 up $12,000 a year out of a salary of $8,000, and he 
 killed him. He found that the secretary of the interior 
 always prayed over every separate and distinct barrel 
 of salt beef that was intended for the unconverted sav 
 age, and then kept that beef himself, so he killed him 
 also. He found that the secretary of the navy knew 
 more about handling suspicious claims than he did 
 
 (437) 
 
438 Letter Read at a Dinner 
 
 about handling a ship, and he at once made an end of 
 him. He found that a very foul private secretary had 
 been engineered through a sham trial, so he destroyed 
 him, He discovered that the congress which pretended 
 to prodigious virtue was very anxious to investigate an 
 ambassador who had dishonored the country abroad, 
 but was equally anxious to prevent the appointment of 
 any spotless man to a similar post ; that this congress 
 had no God but party ; no system of morals but party 
 policy; no vision but a bat s vision; and no reason or 
 excus e for existing anyhow. Therefore he massacred 
 that congress to the last man. 
 
 When he had finished his great work, he said, in his 
 figurative way, 4t Lo, I have destroyed all the reptiles 
 in Ireland." 
 
 St. Patrick had no politics ; his sympathies lay with 
 the right that was politics enough. When he 
 came across a reptile, he forgot to inquire whether he 
 was a democrat or a republican, but simply exalted his 
 staff and "let him have it." Honored be his name 
 I wish we had him here to trim us up for the centen 
 nial. But that cannot be. His staff, which was the 
 symbol of real, not sham reform, is idle. However, 
 we still have with us the symbol of Truth George 
 Washington s little hatchet for I know where they ve 
 buried it. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 MARK TWAIN. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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